Story. It’s all about story. Games now are either dry as Nevada or plump vessels packed to the paper mache gills with prose. Comanauts is the latter of course, offering a stick and asking you to swing away. It almost convinces as anecdotes and adventure peek from the breach. Almost. Perhaps Jerry Hawthorne bit off…
Trick-taking games have never really been my thing. Give me a Space Marine with a boltgun and you can keep your card with a suit. So now that we’ve set the stage, you may be surprised to discover that I’m crushing on Pirate Tricks. Out of the blue came a kill-crazy crew Whose motto was…
No Thanks! is the one true filler. Fully explained in a single breath, new players instantly get it. Yet it’s full of wonderful depth, trash talking, and scattered dramatic moments where you’ve pushed your luck and fate has pushed back. It’s nothing short of magnificent. Thorsten Gimmler was a man, but more importantly he was…
We must celebrate the notion that games can extend beyond the pressed cardboard and molded plastic of their form, reaching out to move us in unpredictable and startling ways. Games can be art and don’t let anyone advise you differently. So I approached Holding On: the Life of Billy Kerr with wide idealistic eyes. It…
A year. 365 days of work and family and games, of work and family and work, of work and family and work and games. Some of that work was playing and writing about these games–experiences I cherish as well as regret. Foisting bad games upon a group of amiable souls can feel Faustian, trading the…
No score and seven years ago Martin Wallace brought forth on this hobby, a new game, conceived in cunning, and dedicated to the proposition that all decks are not created equal. Before we proceed the hour calls for a little history. I’ve not lost my mind. What I’m talking about is the nigh wonderful A…
One special night I was sitting in front of the television set carelessly flipping through channels, a slave to my genetic programming of laziness and stupor. “Isn’t that the same thing you do every night, Charlie?” Why yes, yes it is Pinky. That’s not what made this particular night special. After breezing by a Tony…
I’ve been chewing on a couple of games, and in turn, they’ve been chewing on me. Both Discover: Lands Unknown and Here’s Negan are intriguing designs full of virtue as well as imperfection. They each lean into a semi-cooperative structure that has players working together one moment and refusing to the next. This goes back…
My relationship with Martin Wallace is shaky. His designs tend to be sophisticated works of deft subtlety, consistently marred by a single flaw or maladroit quality which undermines the whole. Take A Few Acres of Snow; this was a wonderful meld of deck-building and war-game set in one of the most interesting conflicts of North…
Sparks! Slontze! Toss in maybe a quote or two from the book series and this is how we begin. Or at least that’s how I’m supposed to begin. As an old man from another beloved IP said, “this isn’t going to go how you think.” The Reckoners, that is the board game, is getting incredible…
