Thu, 26 September 2013
Last year I failed to do my annual "Essen Anticipation" podcast. It was just too much. This year, however, I got an earlier jump on it...and I enlisted the help of a friend. |
Sun, 14 July 2013
Do you know the term, Experience Game? I thought everyone did, but in prepping for this episode I found that it's used a lot less often than I thought. Not only that, but I learned it's a term that was used more often in the early days of hobby boardgames, by which I mean the 1990s. Well, let's bring it up to 2013. (Actually, it IS still used sometimes.) |
Thu, 30 May 2013
I've been doing this podcast now for more than eight years! I can't quite believe it myself. In the beginning, more than a handful of shows were audio session reports, which I then combined with feedback that I read "on-air." These are simple episodes, inevitably solo shows, and I often used them to go between episodes with a guest about a particular subject. Especially as those shows are getting more and more meta about the hobby itself, a simple "session report & feedback" episode is kind of a relief. I hope you like them, also. I particularly like reading feedback on the podcast, as it reminds me of the Letters section in Sumo, Counter, or other boardgame zines. Those were always the best part. |
Fri, 24 May 2013
Stephen Glenn and Mark Jackson join me for part 3 of our 100 game countdown series. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/19524 |
Tue, 12 March 2013
Have you ever gone a boardgaming road trip? I expect quite a few people might drive a few hundred miles to go to a game convention, but I've never done that. Games Days on Saturdays are local for me, about the same hour's drive I do on my daily commute. Recently, though, my buddy Dave Arnott drove the two of us halfway up California to spend a weekend of games, food, and conversation with other gamer friends. That was different, and a complete blast! This is sort of like a session report show--remember when I did those? The podcast goes a little long, but that's because we were having fun talking about games on the drive back. That's right, we recorded the podcast about the road trip while we were still on the road trip. Vroom! We got to play a whole lot of great games: a few new ones and several more old favorites. Jeff Myers is working his way through Spiel des Jahres winners on his blog, [url=http://gameguythinks.com/mississippi-queen/]Gameguythinks[/url], so we made sure to play a couple more of those classic titles, [thing=256][/thing] and [thing=54][/thing]. Other old faves we played were [thing=1315][/thing], [thing=73][/thing], [thing=261][/thing] (1994!), and [thing=5306][/thing] (1962!). The newer ones were [thing=123260][/thing] and [thing=103185][/thing]. I'll cheat a little and include [thing=357][/thing], too, since there was a recent reprint. In between is [thing=40769][/thing], which seems to have slipped past people but is really pretty great. Has EnderWiggin does one of his awesome photo-reviews of Valdora? Seems right up his alley. Besides the boardgames, we get to tell a couple side stories. We stopped at a thrift store where I grabbed a few bargains (or not--you tell me). Another of Dave's hobbies is [url=http://www.letterboxing.org/]Letterboxing[/url], which is described as "an intriguing pastime combining navigational skills and rubber stamp artistry in a charming 'treasure hunt' style outdoor quest." Perfect for a road trip! We did that, and we also got to stop at the warehouse for wargame publisher Decision Games. I picked up a couple items in-person, but also had the fun of seeing what goes on at the publisher of Strategy & Tactics, as well as many good wargames. |
Sun, 24 February 2013
Every year I like to look back over the previous one in boardgaming, and reflect on what happened. At the most basic level, this means reviewing my statistics, the number of distinct titles played, as well as the overall total of games played. For me that's typically about 100 titles, 300 total plays, but you'll hear how 2012 was a bit higher than normal. I'm not entirely sure why that was, though I have some ideas. I also talk through my "nickels & dimes" list of games played at least five or ten times. |
Wed, 6 February 2013
The guys join me for part 2 of our 100 game countdown series. |
Thu, 3 January 2013
Have you seen the latest video project on BGG? It's called GameNight!, literally hosted (i.e. in their home) by Lincoln Damerst & Nikki Pontius, as well digitally hosted by Scott Alden on BoardgameGeek's YouTube channel. On this podcast I got to talk with both Scott and Lincoln about GameNight!. At the time of recording they'd put out one show, but by now there are three episodes up. http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/15465/bgtg-132-gamenight-with-scott-alden-and-lincoln |
Wed, 19 December 2012
Several years ago, Stephen Glenn and Mark Jackson polled a number of experienced gamers (a few designers, many reviewers, all enthusiasts) for their top games. I was pleased to be part of it. They consolidated the results, and published them with commentary in a blog called "The One Hundred." It carried the tongue-in-cheek subtitle "The Official & Completely Authoritative 100 Best Games of All Time Ever Without Question...So There!" Not everyone got the irony of that title, but if you knew these guys you'd know they never take themselves too seriously. Now in 2012 they felt it was time to do the survey again, adding some new people to the mix to get a broader range of input. I was happy to be asked for my input again, and then pleasantly surprised that they asked for my help with Boardgames To Go to get the survey results out via podcast. Hurray! This time around, I really like how Stephen describes it: "a fun list to discuss over coffee & pie." We were asked for our favorite games, not necessarily the best games. We even got to submit a top fifteen, which took the usual tough request for a top ten and gave us more breathing room for five more titles. I know in my case, it made it easier to add some very recent games to my longstanding faves. |
Tue, 11 December 2012
As he's done for the past few years, Greg Pettit joins me on the podcast to talk about the annual Boardgamegeek convention, BGG.con (do they still call it "dot con"? I always thought that was clever.) I didn't go to the convention. In fact, I've only made it to the first one, and I hear it's only gotten bigger & better since then. Greg, on the other hand, goes every year. I really need to make it back sometime. |