Author: Anthony
Anthony
Anthony cofounded Board Gamers Anonymous in 2013 and has been on (almost) every episode. Today, he lives in Philadelphia with his family and teaches first year writing at Thomas Jefferson University.
We are calling an audible! We originally intended to release Part Two of our fantasy adventure discussion one week after Part One. However, why wait? We’ve decided to just give you double the content for the week, instead. Because of the double content week, we are going to give you Preview Series episode next week, then get back to our regular series of episodes one week after that. In Part Two of our conversation with Isaac, Frank, and Tristan, we talk about mechanisms that did and didn’t work in their games, as well as designers they get excited about and…
Here at ENGN, we always have fun when we bring a special guest on to share about their projects and their passion. For this episode, we have tripled down and brought together three designers whose passion led them to producing three massive, exciting fantasy games. We are happy to have the designers of Gloomhaven, The City of Kings, and Gloom of Kilforth, respectively, talk about their love of fantasy games and some interesting aspects to designing and producing them. Not only that, we took the majority of the questions from fans who were good enough to respond on Facebook and…
This week on BGA, Anthony and Chris are looking at 10 games that need expansions. Seriously, get on it. Make these! First up, though, we have three new Patreon backers – thank you to William, Michael and Antoine. You guys rock! If you haven’t yet, make sure to check out our Patreon page at https://patreon.com/bga. We’re having a contest the end of this month only for Producer-level backers and higher. Get in on it now. We also take a look at the new Terraforming Mars steam beta, and then read listener answers to our question of the week, “what game…
Many solo and cooperative gamers love Legendary Encounters: Alien. However, for as good as that game is, it doesn’t replicate the emotions of the original movie – the suspense, the dread, or the desperation to survive. Lifeform, currently on Kickstarter, aims to bring you just that. It is a one vs. many game where an unstoppable alien being has boarded your mining ship, and you have to scramble out of the ship as best you can. We get into some design questions about the one vs. many aspects of the game, as well as the solo mode that you can…
We welcome Kevin Erskine back to the show to continue… not talking about the current hotness! Last week, we went back and looked at a classic in the genre. This week, we look at more older games that we like, but which may have slipped under your radar. First, Jason takes a look at a stealth based cooperative game set in World War II called V-Commandos (3:27). Anthony, of course, sees Jason’s thematic cooperative game and counters with an older Euro – Troyes (7:52). Kevin jumps into the fun with a cooperative tower defense game, King’s Armory (14:02), then Jason…
Unlike most preview series episodes where we interview the designer or publisher, we were not able to get AJ Porfirio of Van Ryder Games on the show due to his being incredible busy. However, two good friends of the show stepped up to have a great chat about this product – Official ENGN Kickstarter correspondent Liz Davidson, as well as Wendy Barlow from the Singlehandedly blog. Did you love choose-your-own-adventure novels as a kid, or adventure video games like Broken Sword or Monkey Island? The Graphic Novel Adventure series, currently live in Kickstarter, takes those experiences and presents them in…
This week, Anthony and Chris are looking at six games you might like if you also like Azul, focusing on the pattern building and tableau aspect of the mega-hit game from Plan B. To kick things off, we’re talking about our question of the week, Would you buy less expensive versions of big games with cardboard instead of minis? Then we dive into our acquisition disorders for the week, Anthony focusing on Street Fighter: Miniatures Game and Chris looking at Good Dog, Bad Zombie, both on Kickstarter now. For our at the table reviews, Anthony digs into Michael Kiesling’s Heaven &…
Here’s an episode that we’ve wanted to do for quite a long time. Even as new, rich, and complex adventure games come out seemingly every month, Mage Knight fends off all pretenders to the throne and maintains itself as the gold standard of adventure solo gaming. With this in mind, we invited noted Mage Knight devotee Kevin Erskine back to the show (he of the Top 100 Solo Games People Choice) to talk about Mage Knight, specifically why we like it so much (4:20), as well as what expansions to get and whether to hold out for the upcoming Ultimate…
Maximum Apocalypse is a survival and exploration game that has already funded and shipped, and is currently being enjoyed by gamers in the wider community. It is an exploration and survival game where you and your friends travel on a modular map, looking for supplies and just trying to last long enough so that various monsters don’t eat you. The exploration part has elements of Forbidden Island/ Desert. As a player, you will handle a deck in a similar way that you would in games like Sentinels of the Multiverse or Andriod: Netrunner. Mike Gnade visits our show answer critical…
It’s that time of the month again – Anthony and Chris delve into the BGG Hotness for the end of March, including a quick discussion of the top 15 games in the hotness and why they are there. To kick things off, we discuss our question of the week, “With the launch of Asmodee Entertainment, which hobby board game property would you like to see as a movie or graphic novel?” Next up, Anthony looks at Railroad Rivals and Chris delves into 7 Wonders: Armada for our acquisition disorders of the week. Next up, we offer reviews of Bunny Kingdom…