Board Game Madness 2/21

CRAZY busy at work, so short edition this week.

Fun:

• Thank you Laura for this Baby Blues comic
• Hysterical 5-second silent reviews: Dominion and Dungeonquest
• Pimp my game: GMT is offering plastic tokens for Dominant Species

New Games:

• Recently released: Locke & Key: The Game

iOS:

• Heroclix in development
• Survive expected out next month
• 7 Wonders in development, no date
• Evo in development, no date
• Wits and Wagers in development, no date

News:

• Board game nights are all the rage now. Maine, Madison Cty NY, Texas
• Some med students at Western University in Canada developed a board game to be used in school to teach how different medical disciplines approach health care

Recently Played:

• Didn't have an opponent at our monthly Blood Bowl meetup, so I taught Quarriors! a few more times and for the first time in my life I finally played Cosmic Wimpout. It was actually fun, in a really lucky sort of way.
• More Quarriors! for friends and a little Dominion thrown in for good measure.

Credits: BGG, Purple Pawn, Daily Ink, Google News

Happy gaming!

Board Game Madness 2/14

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! What game are you playing with your sweetheart tonight? Slaying the dragons in Runebound? Finding out where Jack the Ripper is in Mr. Jack? Or trading goods in the Mediterranean in... er... every Euro ever made?  

I kid because I can...

Fun:

• In the spirit of Valentine's Day, last week I put up a link to a geek proposal card from Ascension. I didn't realize there was a video too. This is awesome and the guys from Gary Games were involved too.
• Also for Valentine's Day, stories of how board gamer couples met, in only the way BGG can present: A geeklist
• Adding wildlife to any game automatically makes it better
• Someone pimped out Quarriors to get a little flavor from Board Game Geek
• Interesting look at some games that due to political pressures or just plain offensiveness in design and have been censored in some way
• Pimp my game: City models for Settlers of Catan (only on kickstarter, not in production yet)

New Games:

• Recent releases: A Fistful of Penguins, Hawaii, Last Will

iOS:

• Touch Arcade predicts Dominion (the RioGrande version) to be released this week
• Hive released this past week

News:

• I put out pictures of Lego: Star Wars: Battle of Hoth. Looked awesome. That's as close as I'll get to it. Apparently there's licensing issues preventing a US release according to W. Eric Martin of BoardGameNews
• Crossover alert: World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 will now be board games. Only not what you think. How about Monopoly: World of Warcraft and Risk: Starcraft
• Popsci interviews a Seattle game store owner on the German Board Game Phenomena

Recently Played:

• Got together with a few friends for an impromptu game of Milles Bornes followed by Pandemic (where as usual, it looked good for a while and then shut down in a hurry – sorry world. You're all dead)
• Played game 2 of the Long Island Blood Bowl League's 2nd season and my beloved Death Rockers went down to the NY Knicknevins 2-1. It was painful. I'm now 0-2.
• Taught my son how to play Quarriors! He loved it.

Credits: Board Game Geek, Touch Arcade, Google News

Happy gaming!

Board Game Madness 2/7

Congratulations Giants fans. Thanks for beating up on the Pats. (I'm a Jets fan...)

Fun:

• Awesome list of fictional board and card games from movies and television. My favorite is Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence from Ren and Stimpy. I remember when that aired!
• When NOT to follow instructions
• And on that day, the Meeple's heart grew 3 sizes larger...
• What happens when the #2 game on BGG (Agricola) meets the #2 computer game (Minecraft)?
• My son got one of those claw vendor boxes you see at arcades and such. This guy wants to turn it into a dice tower...
• Another geek proposal
• Life sized boards: Scrabble, Monopoly and Battleship
• Funny geeklist about some of the worst names for games
• I missed the first round of this, but if you are interested in a March-Madness-style tournament of your favorite game designers, the Derk Cup is in the second round

New Games:

• Recent Releases: Hex-A-Gon

iOS:

• Ticket to Ride owners got flashbombed the other day with news that the pocket app for the iPhone now has asynchronous multiplayer (a la Ascension). The iPad version however does not. That's upsetting. The reason why Ascension gets more play than any app on my device is solely because of asynchronous mode. Hopefully they'll fix that.

News:

• I'm not sure how this one escaped my attention. Shame on me. There's going to be a board gaming documentary called "Going Cardboard", which happens to be the old BoardGameNews section where they tracked new games that were coming out. It takes a look at the entire industry and the designers and players and how board gaming is not only surviving, but thriving right now. I can't wait to see it. Go to the Going Cardboard site for more info or directly to the trailer.
• Purple Pawn recently interviewed Ron Weingartner, a former VP over at Hasbro, on how to pitch a game to a game company. Fascinating read.
• Another interesting analysis article, this time from Fortress Ameritrash: How are board games different from card games? And where does the video game genre blur the lines?
• Apparently Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) has a favorite board game: Risk. Surprised?
• Seems there was a big lawsuit over a Wiggles board game that has now been cleared. Too bad my older son's now 9 and wouldn't be interested in it. He used to be a huge wiggles fan.

Recently played:

• Not much gaming this week, just a game of Thunderstone (Epic variant) which I lost badly. Then I got my friend back by beating him at Race for the Galaxy; a game he RARELY loses

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Mental Floss, Purple Pawn, Fortress Ameritrash, Google News