19 June - Mr. Jack, a terrific deductive duel |
Ridere, ludere, hoc est vivere.
Friday, October 16, 2015
Boardgames in the Backyard 2015
Today is probably the last pleasant day in northern Virginia for a while - perhaps our final opportunity for a boardgame in the backyard this year. Here's a reflection on games we played out back this season.
Friday, October 9, 2015
Bachelor weekend
My wife is at a writers' conference in North Carolina this weekend, which means it's just us guys in my house - my 19- and 14-year-old sons and me. I'm thinking Friday night is Star Wars X-wing, with the 19-year-old as Boba Fett in the Slave I against the 14-year-old and me flying X-wing and Z-95s against him. Two against one, but we're not afraid. [Update: We did indeed play X-wing, although I flew a Y-wing rather than Z-95s. There was no escape for Boba Fett this time, as a proton torpedo from my pursuing Y-wing delivered the fatal blow, even as he deployed a mine in my path.]
Friday, September 25, 2015
Kickstarters that should have funded
The proliferation of boardgames on Kickstarter is no secret. In preparing the Dice Tower News Kickstarter report, week in and week out, I find countless boardgames and card games that don't fund. Many fail to fund for understandable reasons - many never coming close - but from time to time a campaign that seems to have everything going for it somehow falls short of the mark, goes unfunded, and has to return to the drawing board. I thought it would be interesting to reflect on a few of those "projects that should have funded" as cautionary tales that remind us that nothing on Kickstarter is a sure thing - and perhaps to begin to understand why.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Fourth annual-ish "What to pack for a vacation"
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:
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?
Friday, December 12, 2014
The game time conundrum revisited
A couple of years ago, I looked over my game collection and sighed at the number of games that hadn't seen the attention they deserved. I wrote a post listing games that I wanted to spend more time on, even as I realized that as long as leisure time is limited and the game collection is big, there will always be neglected games on my shelves. It's a topic worth revisiting from time to time - both because it's interesting to see how the list has changed (and how it hasn't) and because it's helpful to look at the collection with fresh eyes and think about resurrecting a few titles that might bear dusting off and playing again.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Holiday gift meta-guide
The reader looking for boardgame gift ideas for the upcoming holidays may find recommendations from an overwhelming variety of sources. Rather than add to the noise, I thought I would help organize it with my own meta-guide of boardgame holiday gift guides. What follows is a consolidated list of sources, including the categories for which they provide recommendations, as well as a summary of highlights at the end. I hope the reader finds this meta-guide helpful.
Friday, November 7, 2014
A look back at hip-pocket wargames
Saturday, October 25, 2014
Most highly-rated out-of-print games
I was listening to The Geek All-stars Episode 87, in which Dan Patriss and his band of merry geeks list their Top 11 Stefan Feld designs, and someone mentioned in passing that a few of these well-regarded games are relatively unknown by game hobby newcomers because they have been out of print for some time. That got me to thinking about how many excellent games are difficult or impossible to obtain because no publisher is printing them. Hence the inspiration for today's post - a survey of the most highly-rated out-of-print games on boardgamegeek.com.
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