The Ascent of Board Games

Let's talk about not talking! This month, we discuss games in which you have to use things other than words to communicate with your teammates. Highlights include: Charades may be older than we thought, but maybe not as old as BGG says it is. Frank's favorite part of Inkognito We delve into the historical era of...2009?...as Frank breaks the rules again to bring us a game that is l

We're back with more adorable animals (and some that you may not think of as adorable, but that's just, like, your opinion, man). This month's selection includes: Scythe With Wolves, or, The Dangers of Peer Pressure A lovely, solid game that just feels a little...icky Mike gets to make a picture panorama! The fox experiment that inspired The Fox Experiment The search for lost speci

Wildlife games! They're full of adorable meeples, heartwarming themes, and...interesting mechanics (which lead to some differences of opinion between us and the mainstream). Come join us as we talk about: Big chonky animeeples! We stump Frank on a Phil Eklund game, which turns out to not belong in this episode at all. Possibly the most useless insert ever to darken a game box. Cont

Happy New Year, everybody! To kick things off right, here's an episode looking at all the cool games we're hoping to play in 2024. It's full of plenty of laughter, largely because of the maniacal giggling of Curtis, our newest cohost! Among the things we're laughing at: This map from The Stifling Dark amuses Joe. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth as we pre-empt each other

Happy December, everybody! It's time to conclude our year-end wrap-up episode, during which we each count down our top 5 games or game-related things from the year that was, from #5 to #1. We covered our #4 and #5 entries last month, so here are our top 3 from 2023, including several unexpected entries. You'll also hear: Frank continues to assure us that our opinions are wrong. A s

Welcome, everybody! It's time once again for our year-end wrap-up episode, during which we each count down our top 5 games or game-related things from the year that was, from #5 to #1. ...or rather, from #5 to #4 this episode, with the rest coming next month, because BOY, do we like to talk about games. Highlights (and/or lowlights) include: Use This One Weird Trick to Diversify Yo

Happy spooky season, everybody! It's October, which means it's time for a horror game playthrough. This time, Frank brings us Hotel Lovecraft, an audio-powered paragraph-style game from Story Master's Tales. We've trimmed the game down to make for a reasonable episode length - and we got a few rules wrong along the way, to be honest - but hopefully you'll find it entertaining! Fran

It's time for another game designer interview! Kyle Rowan is the lead game designer at Wyrd Games and the main brain behind last year's smash hit Vagrantsong. In addition to talking about how Vagrantsong came to be and the exciting pair of expansions coming up on Kickstarter, we discuss: The game's esoteric set of inspirations, including the works of Jack Kerouac, the comic book Ha

We're back with even more SCIENCE! The nerdery continues as we discuss more recent science-themed board games, and offer such tidbits as: "BoardGameGeek - full of lies." - Joe Streeky, 2023 A brief digression on the interior starship lighting design of Picard season 3. The cards in Space Race mix English and iconography, but for why? The overarching threat of an all-Phil Eklund epi

SCIENCE! It's certainly closer to our areas of expertise than sports. In fact, Mike (a science teacher) says a lot of impressive-sounding science words when discussing various games, which some of you may understand. In addition: Smog plumes! Didja ever notice that most "evolution" boardgames are actually "intelligent design" boardgames? The most terrifying game board - oh, I'm sor