Friday Night Shots – Patreon

Welcome back to the bar!

It’s been a month, but I’m happy to welcome you back.

It’s always nice to get just a little bit of income from it, since nobody else really comes in here.

Other than Bob in the back, who’s sharing a drink they call loneliness, but for some reason he’s drinking it alone so I’m not sure what that’s about.

That kind of defeats the purpose!

Anyway, have a seat and let me pour you a drink or two so I can make something like $10 tonight.

Which would be a banner evening!

The jukebox is still on the fritz, though. It keeps on playing Bobby Brown even though I know I removed him from the playlist a long time ago.

I think it’s haunted!

Or maybe I’m just tired.

Anyway, there are a ton of gaming Patreons out there, and after joining a new one last night, I thought I would talk about some of them!

This idea started last night by considering the bane of my wallet’s existence (I like him a lot, but my wallet hates him with a white-hot passion).

Back a few years ago, I had joined the Heavy Cardboard Patreon because I was becoming a fan of heavier boardgames and that’s what Edward and his friends played and streamed!

Then I was trying to keep my Patreon purchases at a limit and I decided to drop it in favour of some other ones.

Since then, I’ve been consuming a lot of Edward’s content, and buying way too many games after consuming it.

He’s the reason I bought Shipyard, which is an amazing game.

He’s the reason I bought (and really enjoy) a slew of trick-taking games, such as Sandbag, Rebel Princess, Seven Prophecies, and Xylotar.

Not to mention Resafa! Which I don’t have yet, but it’s on pre-order for me.

Yeah, Edward’s cost me a lot of money, but has given me a lot of enjoyment too.

Here’s the Resafa playthrough that turned me on to that game.

Last night, I got to thinking that maybe I should get back on his Patreon and actually contribute some money to him as well.

Not to mention the Patron-only streams!

Anxious to go check out the Liberty or Death playthrough soon.

You also get access to a patron-only Slack channel where you can keep in touch with Edwards and whole bunch of other members of the Herd.

Anyway, I’m happy to support Heavy Cardboard and recommend it if you’re a fan of heavy games.

You can join it here.

Supporting one of my favourite board game reviewers was pretty much a no-brainer, which is why I support Dan Thurot (Space-Biff) in his endeavour to put my reviews to shame write some of the best board game reviews out there.

He’s the guy who has inspired some of my best reviews, and has inspired me to keep going when I kind of get down about writing reviews in the first place.

They are certainly not “I liked this game” or “This game sucks” reviews.

They are in-depth critiques of the games.

In my opinion, he’s one of the gold standards in review writing, and his posts about games and reviewing theory are also worth reading.

Patrons get those posts a month ahead of time, which is nice.

Thanks for being such an inspiration, Dan.

You can go support him here.

Another Patreon I support is my good friend Mike, or Zilla Blitz, for all of his Youtube content.

He has two Youtube channels (recently split off from one because they are basically two different streams and the algorithm was getting really confused).

The first (and original) is a gaming channel, mainly talking about wargames. Some of these wargames are digital, but it’s mostly on the table games.

There are playthroughs of games (both digital and on the table), such as many solo games.

I first found his channel when he was doing a “The Hunters” campaign, the game where you are a German submarine captain in early World War II, and trying to sink as much tonnage of Allied shipping as you can without getting destroyed.

Here’s the first one of that playthrough.

The solo playthroughs are awesome, but he also does unboxings and reviews, first looks, etc.

This channel also used to house his video game playthroughs, especially his American Truck Simulator and European Truck Simulator ones where he runs a trucking company, hiring drivers and also carrying goods all over the United States or Europe!

Videos like these have now been moved to the Zilla Blitz PC channel, and this is also where playthroughs of games like Crusader Kings reside.

You might think watching a guy drive a monster semi truck around on his computer screen would be boring, but Mike makes it fun with his monologues and being mystified when he somehow gets a speeding ticket or red light ticket.

After watching both of these channels for a while, I had to support him when he decided to open a Patreon.

And now I do.

And you can too! Do it here.

Another great Patreon that I highly recommend is the Incorrigible Party patreon. Emily, Alaina, Bill, Jon, and of course Leland Steel, all bring you a bi-weekly podcast RPG playthrough that is immensely entertaining.

They just finished a 3-year (I think?) campaign in the world of Aspara (that Leland created) and they are now 10 episodes into the Storm Cape campaign (also created by Leland).

In addition, they have one-shots GM’d by one of them (not always Leland) and some of them are patron-only!

Finally, the patron-only After Party discussions of the campaigns are always fun, along with the patron-only bloopers!

These are great people who I consider friends, and they do good work.

So why not support them?

This is mostly a gaming blog, but I do write some book reviews as well.

I haven’t written any reviews of Jonathan L. Howard’s books, but just let me say that his Johannes Cabal books are so amazingly awesome, hilarious but also thought-provoking, and his other books have also been good.

I haven’t read a story of his that I haven’t liked.

Cabal is a man who sold his soul in order to become a premiere necromancer.

In the first book, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, he decides that he wants his soul back.

What ensues must be read to be believed.

And enjoyed.

It was an easy decision to back his Patreon to help him out while he’s writing more stuff. You get monthly updates (sometimes more, sometimes less) on what he’s writing. Sometimes you get excerpts of stories or what he’s working on.

I highly recommend that you check out his books, and maybe decide to back him on Patreon as well.

Those are all the Patreons that I was backing…until I started writing this piece.

Then I realized there was a big hole that I should have filled a long time ago!

Grant and Alexander over at the Players’ Aid have provided many hours of great video content about wargames (almost exclusively).

I’ve been watching their channel and reading their blog almost since I’ve been writing my blog back in 2017.

They do reviews, unboxings, and first looks, that kind of thing.

I enjoy their videos, but I really love their conversations that they have while they’re driving to various conventions.

I love the off-the-cuff nature of those!

Grant in particular has also been wonderful, always encouraging me to keep going when I get down on myself about writing, and always supportive of my efforts here.

And it’s been great to be playing games with both of them on Rally the Troops!

Not sure why I haven’t been on their Patreon before now, but that oversight has now been rectified.

So that’s it!

What Patreons, if any, do you support?

Let me know in the comments.