Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Quantic Foundry – Boardgaming Profile
In yesterday’s Q&A, Bezier Games social media manager Phoebe Wild mentioned the Quantic Foundry boardgaming profile.
I had never heard of it, so I felt I had to check it out and see just what my profile is.
Not surprisingly, it’s quite a bit opposite of Phoebe’s (99% motivated by Strategy).
I do really enjoy the strategic element of games, and am greatly looking forward to sinking my teeth into a heavy strategy game this weekend.
But I do love my deck-building card games and dice games (Pandemic: the Cure is to die for), so my Chance rating really brought down my Strategy rating a great deal.
Interested in seeing what your profile is?
Why not take the test and find out?
Q & A – Phoebe Wild – Social Media Manager for Bezier Games
Nowadays, it’s very important for a company to be on social media. Especially board game companies, it seems.
I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with Phoebe Wild, social media manager for Bezier Games, a couple of times regarding certain issues. She’s always been incredibly kind and helpful, so I thought it would be neat to get a bit of a “behind the curtain” peek into what being social media manager of a major game company is like.
Phoebe graciously agreed to answer my questions, and those answers are below (with pictures of my experiences with Bezier games interspersed, because hey…this is a boardgame blog so you need pictures of boardgames!)
But first, I’ll allow her to introduce herself.
(Phoebe cosplaying as a 1950s Harley Quinn at PAX)
Boardgames That Work Better as Apps
In some of my social media postings, I have mentioned that Potion Explosion worked better for me in app form because it was too fiddly on the table.
This brings to mind something that I’ve thought about quite a bit.
What other board games have apps (either on iOS or Steam) that are preferable to playing the board game?
The crown jewel of that, for me, is Ascension. Deckbuilders in general work great as apps because you have no cards to wreck while shuffling and all of the shuffling/dealing is done for you. And you don’t have to put out more money for sleeves.
What’s not to like?
But there’s one game that I really think of when I think of board games that I have no interest in playing on the table but will easily play the electronic version.
That game is the Games Workshop classic, Talisman.
First, the app is just phenomenal and Nomad Games has done a marvelous job with it. They support it, put out plenty of bug fixes, and are working diligently at putting out all of the expansions. To date, they’ve released three of the big box expansions (expansions that add to the board) as well as four or five small box expansions (expansions that just add characters and cards).
Kickstarter – The Pursuit of Happiness: Community
This is the story of how I recently backed, and am greatly looking forward to, the new expansion for the game The Pursuit of Happiness. Called Community, it has a pledge level that allows you to get the base game as well.
I’m not normally a backer of Kickstarter board games. Hell, I think I’ve backed two video games and that’s it.
However, I’ve been recently rethinking that stance. I started playing some games that had originally been funded on Kickstarter and found that they were actually pretty cool games.
Then two things happened within hours of each other. First, I kept reading about how good this game was. I then was browsing the board game section of Kickstarter and found the Community expansion’s page there. I started thinking about it.
Then my friend and co-blogger wrote the great post about deciding what to crowdfund. The combination of those two things, plus a bit of heavy thinking, and suddenly I’m backing my first Kickstarter board game.
And I’m happy to do it.
Review – Diamonds
(Edit: This is one of my Top 25 Games Played of all Time, as of February 2019 anyway. Check out the other games as well!)
Everybody knows those standard card games. Hearts, Spades…of course the world needs games for the other suits, don’t they?
Yes, there is a Clubs game out too, but that’s not what this review is about.
It’s about the totally awesome (said totally in a Valley Girl way) game called Diamonds, published by Stronghold Games and designed by Mike Fitzgerald, thus completing the standard suit names for games (I think they probably win an award for that).
I have to say that this is quickly becoming my favourite card game ever. It takes everything that is cool about card games like Hearts or Spades, and then amps it up to infinity (ok, a tad overstated, but you get the gist).
News: New Ascension Expansion – Gift of the Elements
I am a big fan of the deck-building game Ascension. It was the first real game I played when I returned to the board-gaming world, so it’s always held a soft spot in my heart.
At the beginning of March, Ultra Pro and Stoneblade Entertainment announced an eleventh (holy crap, eleventh????) expansion for this wonderful franchise.
Called Ascension: Gift of the Elements, this expansion brings back a couple of mechanics that I’ve loved from previous editions: Events and Transform.
Crowdfunding Board Games: What Are You Looking For?
Pledging for Plebes
. . .
By @ravingmadfolio (contributor)
As if we’re not going to talk about board games enough, let’s talk about backing board game campaigns in crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
It’s All About the Insert
One of the really fun things about board games, besides playing them if they are really good, is that wonderful feeling when you first get a game. It’s all in shrink wrap, pristine, nobody has touched what’s inside. It has that new game smell.
What’s waiting for you when you take off that lid? You know that there are going to be a bunch of counter sheets and a board, or some cards or something, but what will it look like? And what will it look like when you have spent the time punching out everything and bagging it up?
Is there a nice place to put all of the stuff you just punched out or the cards from which you’ve removed all the cellophane? Is it an empty box without even any baggies (like the first edition of The Castles of Mad King Ludwig)?
Some games come with beautiful inserts that fit everything perfectly.
Others are Fantasy Flight Games.
(Planet Steam insert above)
Don’t get me wrong. Fantasy Flight Games isn’t the only competitor in the crappy insert tournament. But they would win a lot of years.
Review – World’s Fair 1893
(Edit – 2/1/21: Renegade Games has just announced an Amazon-exclusive new version of the game that will be more racially diverse than the original game. It will contain a new group of racially diverse playable historical figures. I’m not exactly sure what that means. Does “playable” just mean new personality cards that you collect like you do in the original game? Or something else?
Anyway, this is available for pre-order on Amazon.
It also has a cool new box cover!
This is great for them and I applaud them for it.)
(Edit: This is one of my Top 25 Games Played of all Time, as of February 2019 anyway. Check out the other games as well!)
(Previously published on Game Informer and BoardgameGeek)
I’m a gamer, but I’m also a history buff.
One of my new games bought in December manages to scratch both of those itches, and it is oh so pleasant a feeling! I picked it up the last week of December and played it 6 times between then and the end of February.
World’s Fair 1893 (designed by J. Alex Kevern and published by Foxtrot Games & Renegade Game Studios) is a 2016 game that combines elements of area control and set collection, in a masterfully simple and quick game that also has a bit of a worker placement feel to it as well.
It is a game for 2-4 players, and it scales really well to all player counts. It’s not one of those “it’s really for more players, but here’s some mechanism so that you can play it with 2” games.
It goes for 3 rounds, with a scoring phase happening at the end of each round.
Dude! Take Your Turn!
Welcome to the newest (until a couple of hours from now when I’m sure somebody else will start one) board gaming blog on the Internet!
I’ve been gaming heavily for the last seven years or so, and occasionally write about it on Board Game Geek (look me up here). However, I’ve been getting the urge to write more about them and I couldn’t really find a good outlet.
Off and on, I’ve blogged over at Game Informer in the User blog section. For a long time, I was a video gamer (still am, but not as much any more) and that was a great outlet for blogging about it. As my video game interest has waned, the blogging slowed down and I went through many lulls in posting.
When I finally decided to start posting about board games, I did over there. But while I know a few people enjoyed it, it didn’t really feel like the right venue.
On that point, here I am.
How many times have you been sitting there, waiting for somebody to take their turn when they’re oblivious to the game around them?
Especially in a game like Terra Mystica, the brain-burner that gives many people who are not prone to analysis paralysis the willies.
I hope you enjoy what you read here. Almost all of it is going to be board game related, but there may be some other stuff as well.
Please leave me a comment and let me know how I’m doing.
Dude! Take Your Turn! 