Author: Anthony

Our massive, multi-part GenCon recap rolls on! This week, we have some games that are heavily soaked in story and narrative. If you are looking to engage your family and/ or game group in some immersive experiences, we have some good picks for you. First, Anthony talks about Spy Club (3:20), a card-based game where you act as Nancy Drew-esque kid crime solvers, tracking down suspects and righting wrongs in your own home town. Anthony and Jason come down on surprisingly different sides of the fence for that one. Jason then describes and compares Z-Man Games Choose Your Own Adventure:…

Wait, what? Five years already? Dang, time flies. That’s what this episode is all about as we take a look back at the last year of the podcast with our favorites from 2017-18, but also at the last five years and what we’ve been able to accomplish in that time. Join us for four new reviews, a bevy of good games we’re excited to play soon, and some of our favorite stuff from recent episodes. To kick things off, we asked the listeners our question of the week, “What already published Kickstarted game would you like to see have a…

It’s been a little while since the last Preview Series pod, but we are back with a fun little card game (you know Jason loves his card games). Konstantinos Kokkinis, founder and CEO of Artipia Games, joins the show to chat about A Thief’s Fortune. This is a card drafting game with some neat mechanisms meant to highlight a richer storytelling element than you might find in similar games. Konstantinos gives his pitch for how the tactically inspired mechanisms lend to the theme, and also discusses the solo mode. After we chat about the game, Jason pokes his nose into…

Holy GenCon reviews! This is the first of a multi-part series where we cover all of the fun stuff we played post-GenCon. There was a LOT of games and, to our surprise, much of it was pretty good! We won’t keep all of these games on our shelves, but we can say that pretty much everything we talk about over the next few episodes will appeal to someone out there in our audience. This week, we chat about “filler” games. We do not mean that term pejoratively! These are games that might slide into anyone’s collection and provide fun for…

This time of year is full of gaming with the kids. School hasn’t quite started but the summer has slowed down, plus lots of new games from cons to get to the table. So this week we’re looking at the top ten children’s games we get to our tables. First up, though, we ask the listeners what gamer they love to play, but the more they play it, the worse they do. For our acquisition disorders, we have some new upcoming releases for later this year. Anthony is talking about the new Pax game from Matt Eklund, Pax Transhumanity, and…

We did it! Episode 100! The whole ENGN family has gathered – Anthony, Jason, and Liz. We chat about things we are thankful for, both with reference to the pod as well as to the larger world of board gaming. First, all three of us share some thoughts about an older game we are are very thankful for. These are three games that have permanent places in our collections, so we are happy to share about them with you – Nations (4:13), Space Alert (15:40), and Baseball Highlights 2045 (26:45). After that, we share some reflections about the last 100…

Are you a person who owns Star Wars: Rebellion, but it just sits there collecting dust because you don’t have the time or table space for it? This week, we have a game for you! We welcome Jon Simantov to the pod, designer of Liberation, which is an 18 card game which distills the essence of what makes Star Wars: Rebellion fun into a short, tight, and fun package. Jon discusses how he was able to recreate truly asymmertic gameplay in only 18 cards, as well as the advice he got from famous designers while making Liberation. Jason Tagmire from…

We’re tackling one of the great games of skill and chance this week as we look at six modern board games you might like if you’re a fan of Poker. Whether you’re getting into modern hobby games or just looking for something new with poker mechanics in it, we have a few you might want to check out. To kick things off, we asked the listeners our question of the week – what game mechanics they’d like to see in legacy games moving forward. Then for our acquisition disorders, Anthony looks at Santa Maria: American Kingdoms, a new expansion for…

For our last episode before 100, we are really excited to shine a big, bright spotlight on a few corners of the board gaming world that you might not know much about. If you want to build up some “indie cred” when it comes to some potential hot games in the future, this is the show for you! First up, we welcome back Chris Harris, who runs the Solitaire Print and Play game design contest on BGG. We spoke with Chris last year, and he’s back to talk about how much the contest has grown, how excited we are for…

Gen Con! We’re back from the big show and are excited to share with you everything we saw, played and experienced at the show this year. We start off by discussing the games we got a chance to demo or see that aren’t yet out, but that we are excited to see more of in the weeks and months to come. Then we delve into the games we DID bring home and you can look forward to reviews of in the next few weeks. Finally, we share some of our favorite moments from the show, including the shark jumping releases,…