Each summer I'm in charge of deciding which boardgames to take on family summer vacation. The last time I looked at this question
was August last year. This year we are going on our first cruise, so packing space is a premium (and perhaps table space as well). My first thought for games that are easy to pack are card games, and then I brainstormed a few other ideas. I shopped the list around my family and dropped the ones they weren't interested in. We settled on the following:
Ridere, ludere, hoc est vivere.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Friday, August 14, 2015
WBC 2015
Keith Ferguson and I drove up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania last Thursday for our annual pilgrimage to the World Boardgaming Championships.
Friday, July 24, 2015
UnPub 5 Saturday - playtesting other prototypes
[Apparently I'd written this entry last February after UnPub 5 but never posted it. Then this evening I accidentally published it. For better or for worse, here it is.]
After two playtest sessions of "East India Company," it was time for me to make the rounds at UnPub 5. The great thing about a convention like UnPub is the people you meet. I spent a good part of the weekend chatting with Bruce and Mike of The Party Gamecast and playing a few games with them, including Red 7 and Marcus Ross's Discount Salmon (which was fun though not my style of card game). I had the opportunity to talk with Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me Games, Andy Looney of Looney Labs, Luke Peterschmidt of Fun to 11 Games, Mike Lee of Panda Game Manufacturing, and Diamonds designer Mike Fitzgerald. That is what a convention experience is all about. But I also played some games:
After two playtest sessions of "East India Company," it was time for me to make the rounds at UnPub 5. The great thing about a convention like UnPub is the people you meet. I spent a good part of the weekend chatting with Bruce and Mike of The Party Gamecast and playing a few games with them, including Red 7 and Marcus Ross's Discount Salmon (which was fun though not my style of card game). I had the opportunity to talk with Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me Games, Andy Looney of Looney Labs, Luke Peterschmidt of Fun to 11 Games, Mike Lee of Panda Game Manufacturing, and Diamonds designer Mike Fitzgerald. That is what a convention experience is all about. But I also played some games:
Friday, June 5, 2015
Importance of theme in a cooperative game
In a way it’s like a cooperative version of Blackjack, with much better art and a few special powers thrown in the mix. But that’s what it really boils down to in a sense: trying to hit a maximum total card value without going over.
Friday, May 22, 2015
Enchanted Grounds
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Star Wars X-wing family shoot-'em-up
Last week my oldest son was in town to visit, and I was glad
to get to the table Star Wars: X-wing
(designers Steven
Kimball, James
Kniffen, Corey
Konieczka, Jason
Little, Brady
Sadler, and Adam Sadler; publisher Fantasy Flight Games) for the first time since I acquired it last December with a Christmas gift
card. My whole family enjoys Star Wars, so I was optimistic that I
could get them interested in playing. I’d
supplemented the base game with Slave I
and two Z-95 Headhunters, and my wife gave me a Y-wing for my birthday, so we
had enough ships for all five of us.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
UnPub Mini Fredericksburg
Saturday Jarrett Melville organized an UnPub Mini event at The Game Vault in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This event was a nice informal gathering of game designers and playtesters at a friendly local game store that turned into a solid success.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Worker placement inventory
Part of Kathy's killer combination |
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Shep's Games
Monday, February 16, 2015
UnPub 5 Saturday - East India Company
Saturday 7 February was the first full day of UnPub 5, the unpublished game prototype playtesting convention that has grown dramatically in the last four years. I split a Tag Table with Tony Miller, and by mutual agreement, I took the table first on Saturday. I was glad to do so because I really wanted Lesley Louder to get a chance to play "East India Company" before she had to leave the convention early. When Lesley's husband Darrell, the convention director, heard that I was setting up a game of "EIC," he had Richard Launius (Arkham Horror, Elder Sign) join us. Rob Weaver made our fourth.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
UnPub 5: Friday
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Boardgame news of the week: Exploding Kittens
Okay, stop the presses. This is the news item that we'll be talking about all year. Out of nowhere, a card game has taken Kickstarter by storm and attracted (at this writing) over 106,000 backers to drop a modest $20 to $35 each - totaling over $4.1 million - on what amounts to a wacky-themed push-your-luck game - Exploding Kittens (designed and published by Matthew Inman, Elan Lee, and Shane Small). It has already broken crowdfunding records for board and card games and shows no sign of slowing.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Thinking ahead
Our first game of Legacy: Gears of Time |
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Statistical review of seasonal effects on Kickstarter funding
Lately, as I've been compiling notes each week for the Kickstarter report on the Dice Tower News podcast, I've come to notice an evident seasonal pattern: fewer boardgame projects tend to fund on Kickstarter this time of year. In recent weeks, the number of projects likely to fund has been particularly low. Do longer-term statistics bear out my recent observations?
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