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[quote="Josh Look" post=190333]I'm a devout ST:AW fan, and the balance of the game was completely thrown out the window with Borg, so yeah, I'd have some reservations about D&D.[/quote]I'd like to start off with a mention that Josh Look has been the Distinct Voice of Clarity on F:At for the past few weeks. On the money, insightful, loving his shit right now. This quote is lifted out of the Attack Wing/Dice Masters thread in Trash Talk, which in spite of the name is wandering into Star Trek Attack Wing territory. That quote up there looks like...

There’s weird connections in your brain, ya know? Stuff that apparently has nothing to do with each other but makes sense because it all came together at some point in your life. One of those weird connections to me is this one. The memory came back to me playing Kiss' best selling album Dynasty. It connects me to a holiday on Schiermonnikoog, late 1979 or early 1980. Schiermonnikoog is a small island just north of the Dutch coast and a regular place for our spring or autumn...

My lunch group at work has played a lot of games, but we mostly gravitate towards trick-takers and Magic. As a result, and because I got bored playing Spades and Rook all the time (see below) I've accumulated a number of good and unusual trick-taking games, and thought I would write them up.   You won't find Tichu here because I don't like climbing games much. will always play These are all great for one reason or another. Spades...

I attended a meeting of a NC game designers’ guild for the first time a few weeks ago.  The organizer, Matt Wolfe, asked about my design Sea Kings, which is currently on Kickstarter run by Worthington Publications.  At some point I said it was, at upwards of 45 minutes, inevitably a filler game; and he responded, that’s not a filler game any more, fillers are 20 minutes!  While it’s true that 45 minutes is sometimes more a serial filler (played several times consecutively), it’s surely not a destination game (you go to a regular game meeting with the intention...

September 18th, 1944 0700 Hours Arnhem Sector: The 18th dawns cold and foggy. The soldiers of the British 1st Airborne Division look skyward and feel their stomachs sink. Unless this weather clears, the 2nd drop scheduled for today will not arrive. At the very least, the 4th Parachute Brigade will be delayed. And delay is the one thing they cannot afford. Every minute brings more and more Germans to oppose them.  

There was some stuff that I hardly saw but quickly formed an opinion about:     Good impression: Historia was very much enjoyed by my friends. It offers a two-axis take on civilization with room for conflict.     ...

Saturday's 'one more for the road' game was Mythotopia, Martin Wallace's new offering. It's a bit of a cop out, really, to apply a mechanism to a fantasy (or sci fi) theme, but it works out well enough. As in A Few Acres of Snow the deck building mechanism is subordinated to the map manouever. You build the deck from 4 basic cards and 6 area cards, which gives every player a unique set of resources (grain, gold, bricks and military goods). You can add to your hand by conquering new areas and buying cards from the market...

 Text from the slides is below. Remember, I say more in the video than is in the slides, so commenting only on the basis of the text makes no sense.10 “Need to Knows” about Game DesignDr. Lewis PulsipherPulsipherGames.comWhat this is, and isn’tThis is for aspiring designers – pros likely already knowIt’s NOT about the business, not about marketing, it’s about designing games, creating gameplay that entertains (or informs)10 is an arbitrary number – in fact, I’ll be making another screencast for another 10. I’ve tried to pick the 10 most important hereA ListYou...

After our pretty successful first day in Essen, we returned still burning with curiosity and enthusiasm. Our first stroke on Friday was to try out Fire in the Lake at the UGG stand. We were quickly into the game as we’ve already played Cuba Libre. But while the mechanics are familiar, FitL is much more complex. There’s more units, more areas and possibly longer scenario’s. So we did a couple of...

I went to Essen with a rather long list of games I looked out for but it always proves hard to check everything you want and luckily you also run into happy accidents   Hyperborea was a great start to the show. It allows for different strategies, offers some interesting events and sets up for conflict. It’s rightly been likened to Eclipse. We went through a few rounds and then...