Board Game Madness

The second best time to start playing a board game (Arkham Horror the Card Game LCG)

2025-12-16T15:42:00.002-06:00

State of the hobby: cursed to live in interesting times that also involve probably spending money

Well, it's been an interesting few months since my last post. Fantasy Flight announced that 8 out of the 10 campaigns they had vaguely in print (but hadn't really been printing much of lately, especially with the tariffs) were, well, out of print. Not merely out of stock at the manufacturer, but gone/done/seeya. That changed a lot of the calculus about when to buy things... and the needle shifted to Right Now!

The fanbase went absolutely berserk and the entire market exploded. The Scarlet Keys campaign that had gotten middling reviews was now hailed as a triumph and shot up past $200. Stuff that had been staples and sleepy on the shelves had their prices hiked up or vanished. There had been a few sets that were already hard to get, and those climbed $50-150 in the secondary markets.

Here's a link of currently available sets, from the reddit. As you can see, it's pretty small and most of it is from the Drowned City storyline, which is going to be in print another 2 years.

There are still stragglers from the news asking when the reprints for the Scarlet Keys will happen, and the answer is: never, adjust your expectations.

Dawn of a new day: A new chapter opens. Literally.

Fantasy Flight announced that everything released so far is Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 will start April 30, 2026, with the release of a new updated core set (not to be confused with the 2022 "revised core set," not to be confused with the 2016 "core set"). They also announced a commitment to release 4 new AHtCG:LCG products a year, with the 4 releases for 2026 being the core set, 5 brand new investigator decks, a standalone scenario, and an investigator expansion. Not a full-length campaign, which some folks are very salty about.

Fantasy Flight has been releasing 1-2 cards worth of spoilers from the new core every few days, with varying degrees of acceptance from the fans. It'll have 5 mechanically new investigators, new encounter cards for campaigns going forward, and a brand new mini-campaign that everyone is very excited as the existing 2016/2022 cores' Night of the Zealot has some issues. Even folks steeped in chapter 1 releases thus have a lot of incentive to pick up the new core.

The original 5 investigator decks are great - several of them are fantastic upgrades to the card pool for each class, respectively. Jacqueline Fine's new spells, and the included higher level upgrades, are just stellar, especially for early on in a collection (I could say more about the other classes). All of them will be compatible with chapter 2, so I expect copies to start getting vacuumed up any minute. In a word, the new investigator decks are enticing, and are high on my list to acquire.

The new encounter cards are exciting - the old ones have been used in a lot of campaigns so switching up the calculus will make for fresher new adventures. New buyers coming in on chapter 2 won't care. Since new campaigns will use the new encounter cards and old campaigns use the old, if you want to play both, you'll need to have both a chapter 1 and chapter 2 core (which Fantasy Flight loves, of course) or use a workaround that Fantasy Flight has announced but not released. That's fine, because an actual full-length campaign isn't being released until 2027!

Recommendations, by motivation: Know yourself.

1. You want to play Arkham Horror the Card Game immediately and can put up with a little shopping: Buy a revised core set (or two old cores) and as much chapter 1 content as you can find. The five chapter 1 standalone investigators will be compatible with chapter 2, so they're excellent purchases. Don't spend a whole lot of money. There are different lots available on the secondary market, and buying one of those would kickstart your collection. Have a great time!

2. You want to play Arkham Horror right now, and you're cheap and crafty. Buy 2 old cores or a revised core, and print and play fan-made campaigns. Have a great time!

3. You want to play Arkham Horror now and at any point in the future, and you already have a crapton of chapter 1 content, and you're sick of Fantasy Flight's bullshit. Just play what you have, and wait for reviews on the new campaigns, maybe pick up new investigator stuff if it looks good. Also, if you need a medal for not buying the new content, please let me know, I'll post one for you. Have a great time!

4. You feel like chapter 1 is too complicated and/or you're not going to have any money till April 30, 2026. Don't worry about it. Buy a core set in May 2026, pick up more stuff if you like it. Chapter 1 investigator packs are compatible with chapter 2. Whatever happens, happens. Have a great time!

5.You want to really play a new full-length campaign, you own all of chapter 1 you want and have played it, and either can't find a PnP to build or hate the idea of assembling PDFs. Buy everything from chapter 2 in 2027, when the first full-length campaign is released OR buy the new investigator stuff in 2026 and replay a campaign you already have. Have a great time!

6. You own chapter 1 stuff, and the burden is too much. You've seen too much, and are haunted by the eldritch knowledge. Look up some prices and sell it off as a lot, or piece by piece. I guarantee someone will buy it. Collect the cash, do other cool stuff with it. Have a great time!

As you can see, there is no scenario where you do not have a great time. Until next time... have a great time!

The best time to start playing a board game (Arkham Horror: The Card Game), and the Big Ball Of Shit problem

2025-07-11T03:08:00.002-05:00

Of all the board game hits I regret getting into late, it's Magic: The Gathering, the grand-daddy of all TCGs (trading card games). In 1995, I played a microscopic amount of it on the 4th floor of my Honors dorm, and didn't really get it. I was broke as hell, and the idea of buying more than a few bucks for a random deck of cards seemed ridiculous. I never really got the deckbuilding experience, and the people were playing dumb mono-colored decks, so I just didn't get it. Therefore, I never bought any of the broken rares and never traded them for a mini-van. So it goes, Vonnegut said.

I did buy into other TCGs, mostly Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati: New World Order and Chaosium's Mythos, both of which figured into existing "literature." I spent money badly and randomly, and eventually gave away or sold my small collection, tired of the effort and frustrated by the return on the time and money I had put into it. I definitely had fun, but buying booster packs was too frustrating, especially on a budget.

In 1995 I also played (Settlers Of) Catan for the first time at Nancon, run by Houston fixture Nan's Games & Comics. A wag climbed the hotel sign and changed WELCOME NANCON to WELCOME CONAN, which was about how things went. A couple buddies of mine and I went, smuggled in boxed wine in a briefcase, and played Feng Shui, a great RPG that I think got at least a second, if not a third edition. But I ended up split up, and while a Puffing Billy tournament was using train whistles to announce rounds, a guy named Marvin taught me Settlers of Catan.

It was great, I bought a copy as soon as I could (for $28), and began a collection that enchants and delights my friends, my family, and myself. Pretty good ROI (I haven't played Catan in 15 years).

In the far, far past, there was a Games magazine 100 issue in 1987. They thought a board game called Arkham Horror was amazing. Monsters came out on the map of a town, moved in a programmed way, and you tried to fight them cooperatively to save the day. I coveted it, later bought it in college too dearly, and sold it off at a small loss. It was weird-looking, and I couldn't get it to the table, so away it went.

All of that changed in 2004. We were passing my infant daughter around a game table of the "new" Arkham Horror. There was a town, monsters came out, and you fought them cooperat- yadda-yadda, but the graphics and flow had been totally reworked, and it was a much slicker experience, though, er, a little too long for me. I never bought it. I think I was playing a lot of Ra, Puerto Rico, Tigris & Euphrates, and Power Grid.

Fast forward to 2024. I take two of my kids, now in their late teens, to the inaugural ZorCon, in Lake Jackson, Texas. It was great, a pure gaming con with no merch sales. I played the updated Dune game (won as the Fremen on a coalition victory with the Harkonnen, ha!), and played Arkham Horror (the board game) 3rd edition.

AH 3e had been massively reworked, with the old staid map of 1e now modular, and with some other cute QOL updates. Our host mentioned that it was strongly influenced by Arkham Horror: the Card Game, which was not a TCG but an LCG, a "living card game" where there were no random booster packs or random decks, but instead fixed packs so you always knew you were getting a fixed amount of fun instead of gambling.

Anyway, I had an absolute blast playing Arkham Horror the board game 3rd edition, and I already had experimented and rejected Netrunner and Lord of the Rings, other LCGs. So I was primed to learn more about the cooperative LCG.

I read up on Arkham Horror: the Card Game(2016). Within the last few years, Fantasy Flight, who put out a lot of games I enjoyed, had reworked their distribution model, for the better, by a lot. Fantasy Flight was running into a problem where they had to keep releasing product, but retailers' shelves were refusing to stretch infinitely to carry that product, let alone the poor retailers having to know minutiae.

The old way of buying: you bought two little old core sets, so you had enough cards for 4 players and had enough cards to deckbuild at all. Then there were scenarios sold in Mythos packs, of which 6 individual packages made up a whole campaign. If you liked that campaign, you could buy "Return To" packs that were sometimes basically fixpacks and remixes of the original campaigns (they didn't sell well and were discontinued, more on that later). There were individual standalone adventures, and some investigator decks. There were also stuff labeled "Deluxe" which they don't do any more.

The new way of buying: you buy a revised core set, with 4 players' worth of cards to start. Then each campaign has a "Campaign Expansion" and an "Investigator Expansion." If you want more adventures you buy campaign packs, if you want more investigators or the cards to build their decks with, you buy investigator packs.

So that's bonkers better. Retailers say, "Ok, do you want campaign cards or investigator cards?" and it's mix & match. Every campaign expansion gets you cooler encounter cards and monsters and adventures, every investigator expansion widens your band of hardy do-gooders and the many cards they need to investigate and fight evil. They specifically do not have to slap your hand away from buying a Return To pack if you don't have the original, and they don't have to pray to Retail Baby Jesus that all 6 Mythos packs are in stock so you can get a whole story. (You like whole stories, right?) Oh and you can buy those 5 individual investigator packs, they're still cool.

The downside of all of this consolidation, and updating, and the tariffs, is that Campaign Expansions retail for $70 and Investigator Expansions retail for $45. The revised core set to start it all is MSRP $60.

The revised core set has a little campaign in it. There are three scenarios, and everyone agrees the third one is super hard and basically unwinnable. (I'll just throw in here that the Lord of the Rings LCG was incredibly bastard hard, and basically the instructions for enjoying it out of the box are "buy a second box, get deck plans off the net, still expect to lose." There's a huge disagreement among co-op game players as to what the most satisfying ratio of wins to losses would be, for the perfect game. I stopped trying, sold mine off, the end.)

So clearly, the thing to do is buy a revised core set and a campaign expansion. Now, I have been mostly buying games used on Facebook Marketplace, so I didn't realize I was in for a headache. I bought an old small core set hella cheap, played a 2 player game with my buddy Ben, and a solo game myself with the suggested starter decks, with exactly the investigators they suggest. We loved it. There's great tension between wanting to draw a bunch of cards, and knowing your investigator has weaknesses in their deck, waiting to jump out and trouble them. The encounter deck gives some randomness, while still giving players luck mitigation, for the most part. Monsters? Oh, hell yeah. Investigators have a wide variety of weapons and a few spells to help kick monster ass. The whole thing flows effortlessly.

So, uh, I bought a used revised core set cheap on Facebook Marketplace, and on Ebay, I got a great deal on all 5 of the single investigator packs that give you more investigators and more ways to construct and improve investigator decks.

So now I looked around, and I ran into a gaming problem, really a collecting problem, I don't think I've articulated before. Because once you open all your Arkham Horror products you have a Big Ball Of Shit. All the investigator cards, you're gonna sort into the 5 archetypes/suits, along with the gray neutral cards. All the actual investigator cards like Roland or Winifred and their unique, required loadouts (usually one signature good card and one signature weakness) are gonna go in a stack. Encounter cards you'll sort by symbol, and when you play, you just use all the cards of the various symbols the scenario requests. You'll have rat cards from every campaign you've ever played, and so on. Expansive! All the adventures are gonna end up in little piles of adventure notes cards and the location cards that form little maps. So everything wants to be sorted by type and not original package, except adventures.

So, if you want to sell something, are you gonna try and sort absolutely every single card back into the original packaging sets of everything you've ever bought, across a dozen products (or 5 dozen products in the old distribution model)? Hell, no. You're gonna list your entire collection as a Big Ball Of Shit.

That's terrible. If I want to buy a copy of Twilight Imperium, I can go on BGG and the only notes I have to look at are "moderate shelf wear, complete" and the price, $70 or whatever. Every single lot of Arkham Horror: the Card Game has to be evaluated for value using the subvalues of everything in it, and looking back at old listings means you're again trying to parse their listings against every possible array of ownership and pricing. Reader, I died. Go look at Noble Knight listings of Arkham Horror: the Card Game collections. We movin' a lot of product, lately? (Noble Knight are buy-and-hold retailers, some of this is expected.)

Oh, and remember how I said the "Return To" sets were obsolete? They're out of print, so all the lots that include them are priced past the point of believability. If everything were divisible back into original boxes, people'd gleefully sell the in-print stuff and chisel for value on the OOP items. Catan boxes still work like that. Sometimes.

This is all great for Fantasy Flight. Players come in, can't really buy things used unless they're unopened, collect boxes at their own pace, accumulate Big Balls Of Shit, die and sink to the bottom of the ocean to lie there near-forever, like a whale fall.

Marvel Champions has much of the same problem, as do Dominion (see this classy Broken Token wooden organizer) and Marvel Legendary. Lotta SKUs, lot of natural incentives to get rid of boxes and condense expansions down into a super-dense pack to haul around, Jacob Marley-style.

Anyway, slow down on those bigger purchases, chew your food.

Ettin Games board game library as of June 29, 2025

2025-06-29T22:44:00.003-05:00

The Forge Game Library as of June 28, 2025

2025-06-29T01:00:00.001-05:00

The Forge's current location is in the shopping center at Memorial and Tully.

I just saw that they've gotten a big donation of RPG books and game aids, so I'll get pictures of those soon.

Don't forget that The Forge is moving to a bigger, nicer location in October!

Go read "You Will Die In This Place"

2025-06-17T13:02:00.001-05:00

Jay Dragon (of Wanderhome fame - it's being reprinted by Steve Jackson Games as a sumptuous hardcover, too) posted about "You Will Die In This Place" a couple days ago on Bluesky, so I picked up the digital download; it's pay-what-you-want right now, so tip well. It's a wild TTRPG that's also a metafictional delight.

The conceit is that Samantha Little, game designer, stumbles across design notes for a TTRPG by her friend Charlotte Avery, and puts them together. There's also an editor named KC who throws their two cents in.

I'm not done reading it yet, but I'm gonna tell ya: I love it so far. YWDITP is swinging for the fences at several levels, and it's a compelling read.

8th Dimension Comics & Games - Full Pictures of Game Library as of April 7, 2025

2025-06-11T23:15:00.002-05:00

We are big fans of 8th Dimension. This is a project I had been looking to do for some time.

New York City's Game Cafe Chaotic Good - Full Pictures of Game Library as of March 2025

2025-06-11T23:07:00.002-05:00

In March 2025, we visited NYC's game cafe Chaotic Good, and I took pictures of their game library. They also have a dummy BGG user set up with the library's contents.

Instant Pot Beef Stew Recipe

2025-03-31T21:11:00.002-05:00

Instant Pot Beef Stew

Ingredients

Meat:

~2-3 lbs stew meat (need 2 lbs minimum), thawed

Veggies:

4-5 big potatoes (not like monster Russets, no more than the size of an adult fist)

3-4 large carrots

2-3 stalks of celery

2-3 parsnips (optional)

1 medium white onion (optional) or dried onions (easier)

Spices/Fixins:

2-3 tablespoons of olive oil

1/4 cup flour

3 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine or red wine

5 or 6 hard shakes of Worcester sauce

Several shakes of dried oregano

salt

pepper

Instructions:

1. Get out your Instant Pot (mine is an 8-quart) and a large skillet. If you have an electric kettle, start 2 quarts of water on to boil.

2. Spread the flour on a plate. Roll some of the stew meat in the flour. Heat the skillet to medium and add a little olive oil. Using tongs, brown the meat well on at least a couple of sides. Toss the browned chunks into the empty Instant Pot. Do this until all meat is browned, and pour in any drippings from the pan.

3. Add the wine, Worcestershire sauce, and seasonings, along with enough boiling water to cover the meat. Set the Instant Pot to cook on high for 2 hours, seal it, and start it.

4. Using a cutting board, peel veggies and cut all of them into bite-size uniform-ish chunks. Go thinner on the celery, it's hardy and isn't going to get mushy very much.

5. Ten minutes before the Instant Pot finishes, start another kettle of water to boil.

6. When the Instant Pot finishes, turn it off. Either let it sit for a few minutes till it loses pressure, or vent it, as your beliefs require.

7. Dump all the veggies in. Pour in boiling water to cover - if you want more broth, fill it to the pots max pressure line.

8. Seal the pot, set to 15 minutes on high, and turn it on.

9. Hey, now's a great time to make some egg noodles! Drain these, toss with olive oil, and cover.

10. Once the Instant Pot finishes, either let it set till the pressurization subsides, or vent it, up to you. Personally, I am usually hungry and vent it.

11. Ladle stew over egg noodles. Damn, that's good eating. The wine adds a lot of umami, it's pretty great.

My statement regarding Darkest Dungeon 1

2021-10-25T23:10:00.009-05:00

"Darkest Dungeon is a video game for PC & Mac available from Red Hook Studios on Steam."

[Series of Twitter posts of entire party wipes]

"Darkest Dungeon is a video game about how work sucks," I said on Twitter. A friend chimed in gleefully, "Yes! Exactly!" Right after that, for my first time, my entire 4-person adventuring party all went insane, and then died in short order, some from stress-induced heart attacks. Gothic horror, after all, requires teeth.

Let's start at the beginning. "Darkest Dungeon is a video game for PC & Mac available from Red Hook Studios on Steam." Also, playing Darkest Dungeon led me to start talking at my tiny adventurers. "Mortmain! Don't eat corpses you find on the ground! That's how people get tapeworms! Is that what you want, Mortmain? Tapeworms?" I've played quite a bit of Darkest Dungeon (~350+ hours) on two different difficulty levels and two different platforms (PC and Mac), and thoroughly enjoyed the gravelly-voiced narration, faux-woodcut loading screens, and gleeful delight in imbalanced encounters.

You, the unnamed descendant, get a letter from a deceased ancestor asking you to reclaim your birthright. You show up at your ancestor's estate and discover it overrun by horrific monsters (you also begin to suspect your ancestor is an incredible jerk). To clear the wilds, you pick men and women of various medieval occupations who've arrived via stagecoach, and send them out in teams of 4 to explore the estate, in spite of it being overgrown and also overrun with monsters, some of whom are giant bosses. (The horrific monsters are also incredible jerks.) Once the characters are ready (or not), you send teams through the Darkest Dungeon, to see the grand epilogue.

Every character is made unique by random combinations of positive and negative quirks. Mortmain was a kleptomaniac early riser who got rabies, then later after getting better from rabies, got Tapeworms again, then got The Worries and became Curious. He was a handful, but that typically is the character arc: if you don't die, you get weird and kind of awesome.

Part of the fun of discovery is rolling your cursor over new detrimental effects. Rabies makes you less accurate but actually increases damage. The Worries, for instance, causes the afflicted person to suffer more stress. There’s a sanitarium at the Hamlet, and it's going to stay busy.

What do adventurers get stressed about? Being in the dark. Being in the VERY dark. Wearing items that are badass in the dark but stress-inducing in the light (or vice-versa). Meeting people/things they're afraid of. Stepping on spikes. Reading forbidden knowledge. Getting shanked by a bandit. Getting vomited on by a hideous Dr. Moreau-style pig-man. Accidentally locking themselves into an iron maiden. Having a straitjacket-clad madman proclaim their doom. Being tempted with a goblet of acid by a skeletal priest. Getting an arm caught in a giant clam. Watching someone else in the group do almost any of the above. Experiencing lurid ultra-violence from giant bosses in set-piece fights. Forgetting to pack enough snacks. It's brilliant, and just reciting that litany makes me want to play more.

Sure, characters have hit points, just like my adventuring party of Felpurr Ninjas and Elf Lords did in Wizardry 7: Crusaders of the Dark Savant, back in 1993. But unlike in 1993, reduction to 0 hit points doesn't have a character die instantly (and then be conveniently resurrected by a Faerie Monk to fight other palette-swapped monsters). Instead, the character is reduced to "Death's Door." and from there on, any damage they take forces them to roll against their Death's Door survival chance. Succeed, and they're still alive at Death's Door (with penalties to everything, including dodging). Fail, and they are dead-dead-dead. Perma-dead. 1993 didn't have that as an option. Yes, Darkest Dungeon gleefully autosaves in the background, so there's no reloading to save your darlings. Did I mention that watching your fellow adventurers dying is stressful for the survivors? Because OF COURSE IT IS. You can bring a Jester for that.

Through it all, there's a learning curve that keeps going. As you figure out party compositions and character loadouts and provisions, as you upgrade buildings, as you buy weapons and armor, as you equip trinkets, you get dramatic feedback on your choices. Teams usually want a healer, a couple damage dealers, and some folks with damage-over-time or stunning abilities. Each character can equip 4 of 7 possible skills, so you can easily have a front-line Occultist or a back-line Musketeer (some jerk monsters shuffle party order, for fun, because of course they do). Different parties play surprisingly differently, and some characters are better suited for one or more areas (especially if they have quirks that make them better explorers). Again, the whole thing is varied and one of the highlights of the game.

There is an active modding community and multiple difficulty levels, making replays attractive. Boss fights are challenging set-pieces, but all the regular missions are random, with enough random events to keep things interesting. The stress system is brilliant, and the DLC bits can be added in one at a time or all at once (the vampire-y Crimson Court area is really hard even if you know the game well, and I am saying that generously as an enthusiast).

Darkest Dungeon doesn't mind killing characters, but most of the time, deaths are preventable and just temporary setbacks even if a party wipes completely. Even trinkets lost in combat can be recovered by a special event. Part of the joy in the game is advancing the game state in ways small and large, and getting rewarded in various ways. There are always more fools and heroes on the Stagecoach.

I just finished a playthrough on Radiant (regular) difficulty in about two weeks, and had so much fun I got in most of another run, and of course Darkest Dungeon 2 comes out later tonight. It doesn't get much better than that.

Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp - Game Review

2021-06-22T16:29:00.001-05:00

(Note: I found this draft of a review from 2017, and it was too hilariously timely not to post.)

WILL YOU PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS

THE PLANET IS DYING

OKAY JUST HUMANITY

ANYWAY GET IT TOGETHER, PEOPLE

Whoa, easy there, chief. That's no way to talk to epidemiologists. Well, maybe the feuding ones who won't make nice long enough to find the cure for a super-bug about to kill everyone on the planet.

Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is a solitaire game by John Gibson, published by Victory Point Games as part of their Gold Banner series. I had been anticipating this game for a couple of years or so, thanks to the 7.5 rating on BGG, and was happy to get a copy in 2016. I finally got enough plays under my belt to feel like I could be coherent about it, wrote half a game review, and then promptly went on blogging hiatus.

The premise of the game is simple, and turns are short and procedural, in theory. There's a constantly mutating super-bug (not an insect, but instead a type of bacteria if you're playing easy mode, or a type of virus in hard mode) that is going to kill all of humanity unless you can find a cure. In easy mode, you get funding every turn while governments are still worried about budgets. In hard mode, you've got some seed funding, but don't get regular income. Finding cures for the individual strains of the infection get you money in varying amounts.

The central mechanic and biggest thing to understand in Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp is that there are two pools of chits to manage. The bad Molecules are represented by round chips with letters, some with singles, some repeating (A-L in bacterial mode, D-O in viral mode), and are placed in concentric hex rings in a simulated petri dish on a two-sided (bacterial/viral) playmat. You fight the bad Molecules (circle chits) with good Proteins, which are represented by chunky square chips with cute shapes. Each of the bad Molecules has a specific "recipe" for the cure as a specific set of proteins printed on the playmat, a die-cut sturdy cardboard production that assembles for a solid feel to a game coming from such a small box.

Every turn, an event card is flipped up. There are good and bad effects that can improve or restrict your choices. There is also a "Mutation" section on the card. Sometimes, new Molecules are drawn from a pool, and will either replace others (which are discarded for eventual recycling to a new pool), or just jump out to menace humanity further.

Every turn, you can harvest up to 2 of 4 Proteins shown in 4 Incubator spaces on the playmat (and pay for that privilege). Once you've completed a recipe, you can apply it to kill vulnerable Molecules with 3 or more exposed hex sides. Kill all the Molecules in your petri dish? You win! Let all the Molecules be put into play, or let a death track be completely traversed, and humanity dies and you lose! The best part is, the whole thing works really well. There's a lot of back-and-forth as you eradicate strains, old ones mutate away, and new ones pop up.

There is also a deck of cards, most of which is lab equipment you can buy, some of which are employees you can hire. Managing your limited funds is a balancing act. You need equipment to use the lab's special powers (once per turn, sadly, regardless of your collection), hire employees (some of whom will not work with another of their colleagues, pandemic be damned), and develop the Proteins you need to fight individual strains (there are several machines that revolve around re-drawing or re-using Proteins, with good, thinky, implications on how you might want to handle drawing and discarding. There are several obvious strategy archetypes, but the supplies deck is shufffled and has 5 cards tossed out of game randomly, at the beginning of game setup, regardless of difficulty level.

There's an event deck, and each card has several applications. The super-bug Molecules can be shifted or replaced by new ones from the pile, making your preparations useless. (Read through the rulebook definitions carefully, as the terminology looks similar but has a big impact on gameplay if you're doing it wrong. I did it right, but a couple of the keywords seem similar but do different things.)

All of which is to say, there's quite a bit of replayability here. Beyond the random variation of how each game progresses (revealed Molecules and employees/equipment), you can test different strategies and see what the individual moving parts do. The harder "Virus" level makes there be fewer identical bad Molecules, so the lucrative killing of duplicates in the Bacteria level can't happen. As mentioned earlier, in Virus mode you don't get the every-turn income you get in the early game in Bacteria mode. Money gets very tight, and you will have to make tougher decisions, knowing that overspending early will hobble you later.

I should mention, there is randomness. If you only own one copy of an equipment card, you need to roll a 4-6 on 1d6 (included, natch). With two copies, the power just works. Again, you can only try to use one power per turn, so there's a lot riding on how your equipment loadout develops. There's also the doom track, which requires rolling the same d6 not to progress along (the odds get worse as the game progresses and you get farther down the track). Some event cards modify that roll, as well, so there's a narrative being generated. "Well it was a quiet night and then nothing happened and then our lab equipment was out, and then the employees were feuding and then..." The flavor text isn't usually too grim, and is sometimes just plain goofy.

Last year, during the height of the pandemic, I got out Infection: Humanity's Last Gasp, and it held up really well. The core Molecules Do Stuff/Proteins Get Grouped To Treat Molecules engine is very solid. There are only 16 Protein chips. but only 4 are put out each round for purchase, barring special event or equipment bonuses. You can usually just buy 2, and their cost depends on the order drawn. I found the whole "I need these two Proteins, some of which have multiple copies. Do I buy the 4-cost one, or let it pass and hope the next round gives me a better spread?" super satisfying. It's nice to understand the implications and play smarter. Even a little rusty, I was able to still beat Bacteria fairly reliably and Virus level some of the time.

Overall, this is a very solid solo game with a lot of replayability. If you can tolerate the whims of a single d6, there's a lot of satisfying moments and emergent gameplay.

Patreon link: Ame Art Illustrations

2017-03-23T12:52:00.000-05:00

My friend Angela has started a Patreon for her art of cute funny animals. I have watched her draw from Twitter suggestions and her fluid style makes it easy to love. When I show my kids her drawings, they go "Awww..."; but her care in crafting and blocking out scenes gives her work charm.

Angela did a prior crowdfunding round while finishing school a ways back, and I donated. Angela went over and above on the reward she provided, and my daughters and I were delighted with the result.

Her Patreon page is at Ame Art Illustrations (Patreon link opens in new window.) Patrons backing at $10/month or higher level can request sketches. Go for it!

You can also follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ameartillus - She's a classic animation fan and has a lot of good analysis on more current movies, as well. #ff #art #hashtags

When the Going gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro!

2015-05-27T00:24:00.006-05:00

The title of this post was always followed by groans in our college gaming group, because it meant someone was about to play a "The Weird Turn Pro" card and power up some folks in SJG's long-dead Illuminati: New World Order. It's fair to say our INWO and Mythos playing kept me from being a Magic: The Gathering fan for at least a decade (I got into it later during the notoriously-underpowered Mercadian Masques block. Still loved it.) and was a huge influence on how a gaming group "should" operate.

Last week, I decided to go outside my comfort zone, and agreed to transcribe a Twitter person's podcast. She had been participating in the UK-led hashtag #BoardGameHour, which happens on Mondays, and mentioned that she was looking for someone to transcribe her podcast, and had about 30 minutes left of one episode to get done soon. I've done some short transcription work in the past for Amazon's Mechanical Turk, and it can be a lot of fun to work those aural muscles, so I jumped on the opportunity. I'm grateful I did, as I had a blast doing something interesting and stretching my skill set.

Today, Erin posted the episode I transcribed: "The Geeky Gimp Presents #6: A Podcast With Chris." It was a lot of fun to listen to, even having to jump back to get individual words clarified. I've added her site to my blogroll on the right, as well. She and Chris Preiman discuss Daredevil, comic book movies, and Star Trek. Chris is blind, and as you can imagine, has Daredevil Opinions. He and Erin are both well versed in tons of geeky subjects, and I really can't put into words how much I enjoyed listening to their conversation.

Life is busy

2015-04-27T17:32:00.000-05:00

I'm getting in lots of games, but not getting back to blogging.,. I'm sitting on a game to review, learned a few new titles, and played the living daylights out of others.

If you know anyone who wants a copy of Glory To Rome: Black Box edition who has $150 to spend, please send them my way.

DC Deckbuilder Batman Vs. Joker/DC Deckbuilder Villains: Forever Evil

2015-02-17T20:26:00.003-06:00

Last night Ben came over after I got the girls down. He and I played the DC Deckbuilder Batman vs. Joker Duel, and DC Deckbuilder Villains: Forever Evil.

They were great! The earliest Cryptozoic deckbuilder releases weren't very well balanced, and they keep tightening up the system across all the franchises (DC, Street Fighter, LotR/Hobbit, NHL, Naruto, etc.) The deck is small, and we triggered one end condition (a KO) once, and the other (deck runs out) once.

The Batman/Joker game adopts a mechanic they premiered in the NHL deckbuilder (it's good-ish). On your turn, you can either buy cards or "confront" your opponent. There are 3 stacked character cards for Batman and the Joker, each with a different power. Thus, what you do in the early game shapes what you have in the mid-game, and so on. Lots of cards have "During a confrontation, do X" text, in addition to buying power. This is great for giving players extra motivation to be ambitious.

There's very little deck-thinning, and many useful card combinations. We both enjoyed the first game enough to swap characters and play again (I won as Batman with a KO, then as the Joker on points). The second time was a very quick game, not sure what made the difference.

Forever Evil took longer. We got a shaky start when I defeated the Flash. Much like in the other "regular" DC deckbuilder, and the card that turned up removed the best card in both our decks. Our decks bloated up when bad cards came up, and it felt like we stalled for a couple turns.

Again, the card balance is much better. Clayface is still massively under-costed, again. There are very few ways to deal with opponents' Locations, but many of those are less powerful. The next super-hero card's attacks are just as damaging and unfair as vanilla DC Deckbuilder.

More cards seemed to have choices, making the turns a little slower but more tactically satisfying. Combos abound.

If Ben didn't already own all these and I were in acquisition mode, I'd consider picking up either or both games if I came across a decent deal or trade. We played 3 total games, including unshrinking and unboxing, in under 4 hours, but it felt like time flew by.

Embarrassment of Riches

2015-01-29T16:32:00.004-06:00

I'm working on a Best of 2014 wrap-up post, flailing on a post about Netrunner and other games that are hard to teach, as well as two other posts. One is tangentially about Hanabi. The other is about Spirits of the Rice Paddy, and also about mavens.

Gaming a ton, just not writing a ton here on the blog. Gaming scheduled again for this weekend for Todd Cole's birthday party, and then OwlCon the weekend after that.

Nile Deluxor review: it's good! buy it!

2014-11-01T08:05:00.000-05:00

Originally, I submitted this to The Proof, but as they are on hiatus, and Minion Games is running a great sale on Nile Deluxor and some other games, I dug this out of my email, just for you. Seriously, $9.99 for this game is fantastic, grab it while you can.

Review of Nile Deluxor ($27.99 from MinionGames.com or your friendly local game store)

Minion Games, a small games company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has risen in my esteem by publishing Nile Deluxor and Manhattan Project. I got several games in their back catalog by Kickstarting Tahiti (true to form on games I kickstart, I printed but didn't assemble the print-and-play file they provided, and still have the published game in the original shrinkwrap on my shelf of "Games To Play Sometime Soon." Nile Deluxor is the Minion Games product I've played the most, so I decided to walk through why I like it.

The original print run, called simply "Nile" had a major printing error where the game was printed on soft paper instead of sturdy backing, making the game nigh-unplayable. Fortunately for the world, Minion Games scraped together the cash to reprint it, along with an expansion, in a beautiful, sturdy production run, and called the result "Nile Deluxor." I have played it both with and without the expansion with several audiences, and I am pleased to report that it's become one of my favorite smaller card games for 2-6 players.

My sister Amy has a degree in historic preservation, and was quick to point out that the Art Deco style of the typeface and illustrations on the cards is reminiscent of the 1920s when Egyptology was the rage. The goods cards, such as castor, wheat, lettuce, and papyrus (essentially, suits) are easy to distinguish and pretty, even to my untrained eye. Seasons (shuffles of the deck) are tracked with attractive pictures of the various Egyptian deities.

The actual play is straightforward. The active player flips a card from the deck, representing the flood of the day. If a player has a field with the good or goods shown on the card, they score a card to their face-down score pile. The flooded good is then unable to be planted, presumably since the field for that type is underwater. The active player then has the option of discarding two cards from their hand to either draw a replacement card, or flip a new flood card. (This option is often used to dramatic effect in the last run through the deck.)

They can then plant one or more cards to fields in front of them, enabling them to hopefully score on future floods. A clever take-that mechanism is in place where planting more cards of a good than an existing field causes that field to be discarded. This leads to friendly banter at the table. "I'm gonna shame your lettuce!" "Oh no, ruin his flax instead!" Instead of planting, the player can also play Speculation cards to win, hopefully, more cards by predicting the next flood. At that point, they draw two cards and are done. Typically, hands build as the game progresses, providing more options for tactical play.

Much of the tension and decisions of the game come from a single Plague of Locusts card, which, when revealed, eats all of the fields that are tied for having the most cards. It's tempting to push your luck and ruin opponents' fields, but the threat of having your fields eaten makes for interesting decisions. There's no absolutely-best answer, and enough of the deck is in players' hands and score piles that card-counters who prefer perfect information will be frustrated by it. One of my most hardcore gamer friends rejected Nile Deluxor for this reason.

One nice feature is the game scales for number of players by adding more crops, but the length of the game is barely affected. As more cards are harvested, the deck gets shorter and shorter, so the last couple of seasons (reshuffles) in a 5 or 6 player game go very quickly, with players cashing in their hands at an attempt for one more precious harvest. There's slightly more down-time between turns in larger play groups, but the action moves quickly enough it's barely noticeable.

Games typically last around 45 minutes or so. Once the game ends, players look at the number of crops they harvested, and then look at the crop where they harvested the least, hoping for the most. The goal is variety, which is even tougher to achieve with more players. Scoring is fast and simple, which I liked.

The expansion adds the "crop" of stone, which permits players to build monuments with special powers. Overall, this adds even more options and make games play out with a different development arc, and give the players even more choices for how to play their cards (this may make some turns slightly longer as players consider their options). The powers seemed balanced, and a clever "erosion" mechanism keeps them moving in and out of play without cumbersome bookkeeping.

Overall, I'm a big fan and take Nile Deluxor to game days frequently. I was able to teach it to gamers and non-gamers alike, with little trouble. The planting rules are a little convoluted, but the rulebook has excellent illustrations to help explain, and non-gamers had a bit of difficulty understanding scoring (for old-school gamers, I just said "it's Tigris And Euphrates scoring," which sufficed). If I were to lose my copy, I would buy a replacement immediately. The great art and smooth play of Nile Deluxor evokes a nostalgia for an earlier generation of games like Touring or Mille Bornes, and I think it deserves a place in almost any collection.

Star Realms (almost a placeholder post)

2014-10-21T21:35:00.001-05:00

Star Realms is a small-box deckbuilding card game for 2 players you can get for under $20. Games take 30 minutes, maybe 45 if you really stare at your cards. It's a two-currency central row deckbuilder, if that means anything. It's LAB (Like Ascension But) as opposed to LDB (Like Dominion But). I bought the physical game and my daughter Alex really likes playing it with me. My gaming buddy Ben and I play it a lot. I've also played multi-deck 5 player games that were ridiculous in scope and execution. I've been playing Star Realms on my phone lately, so much so that I decided to talk about it.

I've been playing so much Star Realms on my phone, in fact, that I could barely force myself to write this not-a-review. The asynchronous play across multiple games means I have access to a lot of little tiny set-piece puzzles of how to spend my Space Money and Space Attack to blow my Space Opponent up In Space. Every new hand being revealed is interesting (in that boring-interesting way deckbuilders are interesting: you know what's coming up in the long run because you put it there, but are you going to get your Blob Fighter/Blob Carrier combo out in the same turn), but more importantly, every time you pass the turn, you ask: "Is my opponent about to blast me out of the sky and kill me?" It's got dramatic tension, and because you and your opponent's deck composition gets crazier and crazier, it's got a satisfying narrative arc.

If you download the game for free, you can play against multiple levels of AI all you want. If you give the nice people $5, you can play as many asynchronous games of Star Realms with nerds on the internet as you want, and it's platform-agnostic so Mac and Android folks can play each other without caring who has what. There's a ladder (I'm terrible at Star Realms) and challenges (I'm terrible at Star Realms). It tracks your win-loss ratio (46%) and your total games played (525).

There's even 4 mini-expansions for Star Realms coming out later this year, and I'll buy those, too, even though I disagree with the price point, the way they're packaged, the entire format of the expansions, some of what I read so far, etc. It'll still give me a lot of new gaming for about another $20.

Star Realms has been fun, but the most interesting thing about it is watching how my gamer and game designer friends experience it. Some were decidedly underimpressed, some jumped in whole-heartedly, and some started doing what I'm doing now, making grasping-claw motions with their hands as they agonized to put into words how weird the tension is between all the elements, and how it's not really clear whether the choices you make tactically or strategically are actually that interesting most of the time.

My point is, AEG's Valley of the Kings is a much better gamer's game (hat tip to Dave Lartigue's post for articulating why), but I've played tons more Star Realms in the last week than Valley of the Kings, because I can play one in line at the grocery store, and one I can't.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go play some Star Realms.

In-depth gaming for the year: I catch up on what's happening

2014-07-24T21:36:00.000-05:00

...well, not a lot of steady blogging, that's for damn sure. I have gotten in quite a bit of gaming so far, though. More than half of my gaming this year has been with my friend Ben, since he lives right down the road and is on a similar schedule to me right now. I've also attended several different board game Meetups (capitalizing to show they're Meetup.com groups) and some private gaming events. I'm excited to have shifted my schedule recently to allow attending more often at the Tuesday night Cafe Express-Central Houston Meetup.

I sold a few games, put others aside in a sale/trade pile, and made a couple-or-four acquisitions (most notably Race For the Galaxy: Alien Artifacts and a ton of Thunderstone Advance sets).

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I have played at least two games (and often more) of the following games this year, presented in no particular order:

Yardmaster, Puerto Rico, Rolling Freight, Thunderstone Advance (several sets), Race For The Galaxy (usually with Alien Artifacts), Through The Ages, DC Deckbuilder (both 1 and 2), Street Fighter Deckbuilder, Blue Moon City, Survive!, Netrunner LCG, Star Wars LCG, Lords of Waterdeep, King of Tokyo (with expansions), Roll Through The Ages, Dominion, Manhattan Project, Ascension, Ra, Forbidden Island, Smash Up, Outpost, and Phoenicia.

Yardmaster (my review on BGG) got many plays before I did the review of it. It hasn't hit the table in the last few weeks, and I'm still carrying it around in my car to try again on new players. A pleasant little filler. Can't wait to try Yardmaster Express.

Puerto Rico: Yesssss. Got in a couple of 3s and a 4. I used to be better at it, but still enjoy it quite a bit. It's been long enough since PR's release that there are lots of new gamers that haven't played yet, in spite of the once-integral position it held in the hobby.

Rolling Freight: God, I am terrible at this game, want to be good at it, and doubt I'll ever be more than mediocre. A shame since Alex really likes it.

Thunderstone Advance (pretty much all the sets): I have a lot of Thunderstone. Not all there is, but the first two sets of the original Thunderstone, and everything but the new Starter Set in Thunderstone Advance. It's one of my favorite deckbuilders, just oozing with theme and meaningful decisions. I have really mixed feelings about Numenera because I love the setting but feel like they failed to playtest a couple of cards well - no surprise given the sheer number of cards included in the box! Worlds Collide is more standard and definitely a solid set as well. The thing that kills me is I could probably play dozens more games of Thunderstone Advance and not really scratch the surface of card combinations, and yet, I still plan to buy the next set that comes out, as soon as it is available. If you were going to buy one set, I'd say grab Caverns of Bane or Worlds Collide. Second set, definitely Numenera, then backfill at random till you had them all. The Starter Set is so direly generic and underwhelming that there's no reason to start with it, and no reason to buy it ever, unless you're a total completist. Avatars are nigh-worthless in most setups. Familiars are interesting, but unbalanced.

Race For The Galaxy (Alien Artifacts): I'm a huge fan of Alien Artifacts. It sorta-kinda includes three new options for play (one with the new cards, one with the new cards and new map, and one with just the new map), but after only a few tries of using the new Orb map, I found it making games much longer, more swingy, and less fun. The new cards are great, though, especially the new start worlds. I definitely think that this expansion path is better than the first set, and am interested to see what the next set(s) are going to accomplish. Definitely buying at some point, though looking for a deal as I do so.

Through The Ages: Oh man, the meatiest game in the list. This civ-builder is chock-full of interesting decisions. It can feel a little spreadsheet-y at times, but there are so many interesting disruptions to the calculations that it's rarely business as usual. Ben and I have gotten in a few games and I can now conclude the following: Homer and Moses are really good leaders in antiquity, while Hammurabi is not as good as he originally looks. Cartography is incredibly good, and also cheap. The Pyramids and Code of Laws are good, but more expensive to get. Early culture production is usually better than early science production. Getting one colony early usually means you're going to get enough bonuses to get more colonies in a snowball effect. Likewise, losing early aggressions is going to get you beat on in future turns. There's also a free online implementation.

DC Deckbuilder 1 and 2: Yep, that's a deckbuilder. Plays pretty quickly, not super balanced, later turns get ridiculously overpowered. As a former total comic book nerd, I enjoyed this more than I should have. The second set is better than the first, and slightly more balanced, but I can't really articulate that vague notion?

Street Fighter Deckbuilder: Biggest surprise of the year. Tons of interesting tactical and strategic decisions abound. Ascension fans should check it out. A great 2-player game, not so sure about multi-player, though.

Blue Moon City: I love hand management games, and this game is no exception. Gorgeous art recycled from the card game, an icon salad that's second nature by the end of the first game, and great plastic dragons give Blue Moon City a unique appealing aesthetic.

Survive!: Played this with the girls, and they love having sharks, whales, and sea serpents moving around eating boats and swimmers willy-nilly. Great, over-the-top-production on components make this a delightful tactile experience.

Netrunner LCG: It's so good, and so deep, and so impossible to teach to a non-gamer. The asymmetric gameplay means play sessions aren't "same-y." This is a game that makes me feel smart, and I like to play even when I lose. Plenty of room as Hacker or Corp to build interesting decks and adopt multiple strategies.

Star Wars LCG: Mixed feelings here. In one of my introductory games of this, I equipped Darth Vader with his lightsabre, and went to town on my opponent. In another, as the hapless Light Side, I got overwhelmed by General Veers and a bunch of generic Stormtroopers. Deck-building has been simplified in a clever way: instead of cards, you have groups of cards, so you're only really choosing 10 stacks instead of 60 individual cards. Overall, it feels like the game is being aimed squarely at people who care about tournaments and nothing else, and I'm just not sure the overall timing mechanics allow enough room for games to develop organically (at least in a way that's pleasing to me). I was given a decent-sized play set so I'll try it some more, then probably trade it off.

Lords of Waterdeep, with and without Scoundrels of Skullport: I've been playing this some as a 2-player game, and loving it. The Scoundrels set isn't necessarily a must-buy (shiiiiit this hobby starts getting expensive), but now that I have it, I don't know that I'll play without it. Lords is pretty easy to teach, and it's not like there's a huge number of truly, amazingly-clever decisions in it, just spotting opportunities. Nevertheless, it's fun.

King of Tokyo (with and without expansions): I'm not very good at King of Tokyo, but it's definitely a clever enough tactical game. I don't like most of the expansions, other than the character-specific Evolutions. While I picked up the base set cheaply, I'm not going to get anything else for at least a dozen more plays.

Roll Through The Ages: I love how this game brilliantly evokes building a unique civilization in such a short time. Always up to play this.

Dominion: Dominion is like chess, in that there's a significant skill problem. These days, I mostly play with either people who play a lot more or a lot less than me, and that experience gap determines the outcome of the game. It's also a giant money pit. I enjoy the original set okay, have a lot of fun with Intrigue and Seaside, and am basically at sea for the last sprawling 2/3 of the Dominion print run excessiveness.

Manhattan Project: Winning a game of Manhattan Project is incredibly satisfying. Yes, you move workers around and push cubes. There's also a significant random factor in which buildings come out. Feel like playing a big-money strategy? Too bad, nothing but bomber production and mines are coming out. The back-and-forth as workers cover and uncover spots is elegant. Highly recommended.

Ascension: Yep, it's a deckbuilder. Ugly art abounds - so ugly that even I noticed it was ugly! I've only played with the first couple of sets, and I have to wonder who is buying so goddamn much Ascension. I've played this mostly with Alex in the last year, and she's done well on it as a gifted 9/10 year-old, sometimes beating me. I hear that the Ipad version is excellent, though.

Ra: A perennial favorite, even if I'm not very good at it. Lot of meaty decisions, never the same game twice.

Goa: Winning Goa is amazing, losing Goa is your own fault. Incredible system of auctions, actions, and spice production makes every move critical and meaningful. It's a real brain-burner, and a delight from start to finish. Second edition makes dramatic changes to how the auction works, preserves most other features. I've won under both rulesets but I think I prefer the first edition's bidding system with the, well, everything else of the second edition.

Forbidden Island: A delightful game for children and adults. Plenty of tension and a reasonable amount of strategy in such a small tin, with great production values. I like this so much more than Forbidden Desert, it hurts.

Smash Up: Yeah, I'll kick your ass at Smash Up, but only so we can go on and play a better, more interesting game. There's really not a whole lot going on here. You play cards to, ahem, win. If you draw badly, have bad match-ups, or play poorly, you lose. Expansions make for interesting scenarios. Nothing like your Dinosaurs/Bear Cavalry team beating down some Leprechaun Wizards. The Wizards faction has a lot more decisions than the average one, so it makes for huge differences in comparative downtime. Played fast, this is an okay filler. Played slow, it's a snoozer.

Outpost: I'm so bad at Outpost, and I like it so much. There's just something about having a handful of 13 production cards and figure out what to bid on new technologies. The Stronghold Games edition is both more beautiful, more functional, and more expansive than the original Tim/Jim edition, so buy that instead.

Phoenicia: Outpost's meek little brother. I have literally no idea how to make good decisions in Phoenicia, even less than I do in Outpost. Doesn't take all that much time, always ramping up towards painful decisions in final turns. Auctions feel as though designed for deliberate choke-points of the game's progress. I go hot and cold on how I feel about it. Good news is that copies flooded the market, so if you want one, it's gonna be easy to find.

Another external game review

2014-07-12T01:13:00.001-05:00

I wrote a short review of Punk Sucht Lady/Punk Seeks Lady that was published in the second issue of Earth Is Huge And We Are All On It. It's a neat little online zine, so go check it out!

Blurb: new art commissions

2014-06-16T17:32:00.001-05:00

My friend Adam is a talented artist with a wide range of styles. He recently opened commissions here so go grab one.

2014-04-26T21:48:00.003-05:00

I wrote a short review of Yardmaster over at BGG.

Lots of personal changes going on in the last few months, sorry for not posting more.

Dawn of a New Day

2013-08-02T05:31:00.000-05:00

Whew, health problems of various types have kept my posting down. I do have an upcoming game review being published in The Proof at some point in the future, so be sure to support them by grabbing a copy or even a subscription.

FreeStarter designer giveaway contest and interviews

2013-05-23T05:26:00.003-05:00

Four game designers I follow on Twitter have banded together and are giving away two sets of four games (one more casual set, one more serious set), as a promotion for their design interviews and as a neat way to drive traffic. Contest entries due by Friday, so get crackin'.

I don't usually link to contests, but I wanted to point out these folks because I read their insights and struggles in game design on Twitter and think they're definitely people to watch in game design. As a group, they've done a lot of the goals I'd like to do, with an emphasis on taking lots of different ways to succeed in getting games published.

Of the four's games, I've played Grant Rodiek's Farmageddon, which passed the Mom test and proved to be a decent take-that game with more depth than expected, at a very reasonable price.

Group Interview with AJ Porfirio (VanRyder Games)-great teaser on Tessen, which sounds like it's right up my alley.
Group Interview with Cheevee Dodd - Cheevee's posted a lot of good game design angst about Tuesday Night Tanks in his twitter feed, and I'm interested to try it.
Group Interview with Matt Worden ooh, good intro shot of Space Mission. On my radar as a pnp game gone pro, something that is tough to do without standing out as a gem.

(Watch this space for the last interview link with Grant Rodiek.)

For the contest entry, they do ask you to follow all the designers on twitter (@VanRyderGames, @cheeveedodd, @MattWordenGames, @herrohgrant), but honestly, if you care about indie card and board gaming, you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

A quick note to my search query folks

2013-02-22T05:12:00.000-06:00

I love looking at the Google searches that people are using to get to my blog!

"does half price books have board games"

Qualified yes. If the games are still in shrink, typically they'll be shelved in the game books section, between Dungeons & Dragons and chess books. Since the staff don't want to inventory open games, any game out of shrink will be marked at a couple of dollars and put in the Clearance section. I've gotten two copies of Travel Blokus this way.

"Expedit board games"

I love our Expedit shelves for board game storage, and it's nearly perfect. Two minor points: if you push the shelves all the way to the wall, you won't lose Travel Blokus pieces down behind the shelving, but if you do that, some games will stick out farther than others. My thrifted copies of Mouse Trap stick out about 4" from the Expedit shelf itself.

"board games like High Frontier"

It depends on which axis you want to progress along. If you like "pick up and deliver," then Lunar Rails or Merchant of Venus might be next logical steps. If you like complex simulations, the other Sierra Madre games like American Megafauna or Origins: How We Became Human are hugely-complex affairs. You should also check out Dominant Species (mix of mechanisms, similar competition for sites), and Here I Stand (all-day game, depth of study in the subject area).

"mike doyle game art"

Yes, Mike Doyle's game art is fantastic.

In other news, I need to do a wrap-up post on OwlCon. Spoiler: it was fun!

The Houston Gamers have lost a friend

2013-02-15T17:58:00.000-06:00

One of our friends, Doug Curry, passed away Thursday morning.

He is survived by his wife and adult children. Doug was a gamer, but more importantly, he was a great human being who was an all-around good guy. My memories of Doug are all happy ones.

Please, tell your friends and family you love them, because you never know how much time any one of us has.

As I head off to Owlcon today, there's a lump in my throat because I never told Doug how much his presence at the game table was appreciated. Seeing the folks I see rarely will be bittersweet with the knowledge of Doug's passing, and I'm going to do my best to thank those people for the joy they bring to the world.

Everyone who's participated in my gaming experiences, I appreciate you! Take good care of yourselves.