Articles > Boardgame Reviews

It was a hectic September full of gaming, music, and travelling; I'm hoping to get everyone updated, as a lot of what I wrote in September was written in advance.  So we've got a lot of catching up to do--let's see how much of it I can knock out this week.  Join us, won't you?  

I’ve always had a somewhat romanticized view of the Soviet Union. It’s not that I particularly agree with communism or that I’ve ever spent time in the country. I think it’s more that it’s like the bizarro version of the United States. It’s fascinating to think that, for as afraid as the US was during the Cold War, that our “enemies” had their own fears and struggles about us. Because of that 40-year struggle, the Russian culture has always felt like the other side of the coin to me, a counterpart that we’ve never been able to figure out....

My new plan of playing the games I actually enjoy even though I have a huge stack of review copies sitting in the corner of the room and calling in silent, hissing voices, 'play us!' is working out pretty well. Today, instead of playing one of the dozen games I've got lurking in the corners of my office like monstrous toddlers with sharpened teeth, I played two games of Risk Legacy. I may not have reduced the pile any, but DAMN! did I have a good time. The first time I reviewed...

I have a genre of games that I like to call “stupider like a fox.”  These games are profoundly silly, filled with ways for your planning to be rendered moot by simple bad luck. While this might make a lesser game aggravating, if a game goes far enough, it comes back around to being terrific. Only a couple games I’ve played have really been able to swing for the fence of stupidity and succeed so wildly. Magical Athlete and Dungeonquest are two such games.  But before them, there was Talisman.

Star Wars is cool again. On the Table X-wing it is. Full review.  It’s definitely in the competition for best of 2012. I’m glad I took a chance on it and listened to instinct rather than that dastardly Pete Ruth, who poo-pooed it and tried to get me to buy a bunch of Silent Death. This game is the Star Wars game that you’ve always wanted, and yes that means it blows The Queen’s Gambit out of the water if only because there’s no Jar-Jar Binks and you never once think about midchlorians...

    Spiral madly on in to Next of Ken, where this week it's a big pile of gaming talk as I recount all the games played at our 2nd annual "B. Brothers' Boardgaming Bash".  You'll hear all about one-sided ass beatings, "Less Filling, Tastes Okay" space operas, Jesus versus Stalin, and thankfully, not a single pirate joke.  Join us, won't ye?  Er...won't you?  

Circus Train is a terrific lesson in how far a good setting can take a game. It doesn’t draw on many original mechanics, but instead selects the appropriate ones for what it tries to accomplish. There’s some low-key economics, pick-up-and-deliver, and good old-fashion screwage. It shows how good design utilizes familiar tricks to do something altogether new and unique. The result is a game that is at once unexpected and familiar, and it makes me reflect that it’s too bad games like this are so rare.

 Hey you, Lyssan up!

I don’t much care for party games. It’s not like I hate them. They give me something to do with big groups, and they’re really good for people who probably wouldn’t be interested in learning Mage Knight. If it weren’t for party games, I would probably play about 75% fewer games with my family, which would be a shame. But I’ll almost never suggest one, and it’s entirely likely that I’ll try to find something else to play.

  Stagger (with pirate swagger) on in for Next of Ken, where this week it's pirates and goth chicks with reviews of Libertalia and Hemloch.  What's a pirate's favorite restaurant?  Arrrrrby's.  Who's a pirate's favorite basketball player?  Ron Arrrrrtest.  What's a pirate's favorite branch of the military?  .....No, it's the Navy, you dolt.