Author: Jason
Welcome to my Top Ten Games for 2019! You’ve gotten some list from lots of different angles over on the main Board Gamers Anonymous podcast, and there are many lists of popular board games for all ages, but I’m here to provide a lighter, more thematic take on my favorite games of the year. 10 – Edge of Darkness I really disliked Mystic Vale. It felt like a single mechanisms blown up into its own game. As I would later find out, that’s exactly what it was! The card crafting mechanism was always meant for this game, which is a…
Greetings, fans of Every Night is Game Night! Here are my favorite eleven episodes that we’ve done so far. I wanted to highlight all the different kinds of episodes we do, so I grouped them in general categories like Improve your Plays, Roundtables, etc. Why have I done this? Uh, I’m not sure. Anthony can attest to my mania for organization. Writing this all up also helped me take stock of where we’ve been so we could better inform where we are going. And heck, maybe someone out there will get something out of having all of their favorite episodes…
Cerebria: The Card Game is a competitive, tactical, and highly interactive game for 2-5 players, designed by Frigyes Shoberi with Istvan Posci, Richard Amann and Viktor Peter, published by Mindclash Games. — I recently taught the behemoth of a board game known as Cerebria: The Inside World at a local library event. Almost everyone at the meetup, at one point or another, slowed down to behold the full Cerebria game laid out on the table. The huge board and dazzling color scheme drew them in, while many folks also thumbed through the decks of cards to check out Inside World’s…
Expedition is a light-hearted, card-based storytelling game with an open sourced system for user written adventures. It was designed by Scott Martin and Todd Medema, published by Fabricate IO. You can take a look at the content, explore the app, or buy a copy here: https://expeditiongame.com/ How to Play Expedition: The Role Playing Card Game Central Appiland doesn’t attract your usual sort of adventurers. Many of the mightiest and most dedicated adventurers spend hours, sometimes days, exploring dungeons and fighting dragons on Appiland’s fabled coastline. Central Appliand, on the other hand, draws misfits, brigands, freebooters, hoodlums, hoi polloi, ne’er-do-wellers,…
Marvel Strike Teams is a scenario-based skirmish game in the Marvel Superhero universe, and also in the HeroClix line. It was designed by Andrew Parks and published by WizKids. Marvel Strike Teams is something of a reboot and a return to roots, as well as being an evolution of the HeroClix system, all at once. Created and published in 2002, the original HeroClix skirmish game eventually grew to include just about every character in every popular comic, movie, or video game. Yet, it began as a Marvel game. Marvel Strike Teams returns HeroClix to the Marvel Universe, only in a…
I’m not sure how I feel about the year 2018 in gaming as a whole. I didn’t think there were any breakout, must-own games this year. 2017 gave us Gloomhaven and Spirit Island, 2016 brought Scythe, Terraforming Mars, 2015 had Pandemic Legacy Season One, TIME Stories, and Codenames. Anyone can feel however they feel about any of these games, but there’s no denying that pretty much all of these are behemoths that really moved the gaming ball forward. Having said that, I gave an 8 rating to all of the games I listed here. To me, that’s a game I’m…
The Dwarves is a Pandemic-style cooperative game for 2-5 players, designed by Michael Palm and Lucas Zach and published by Pegasus Spiele in Germany as ‘Die Zwerge.’ An English translation of the base game and it’s first major expansion, The Saga, crowdfunded in 2015. All images in this review are from the 2015 Kickstarter edition. In The Dwarves, you play a mighty Dwarven champion who seeks to save their homeland from a horde of invaders, including Orcs, Trolls, and… Elves! Yes, the Elves (called Alfar) are bad guys in this game. The lore underpinning the game comes from a series of…
Are you in one of those playgroups that manages to sneak in a game (or three) of Resistance, or Avalon, during every game night? Or, if a particular game night swells to 8 available players, is one of those two games the immediate crowd pleaser? If you are a bit tired of all that but want to stay solidly in the realm of social deduction, Doppelganger is here for you. It takes many of the same mechanisms and adds many more wrinkles to spice up gameplay. Doppelganger certainly offers more than its social deduction antecedents. But is it better? How…
Temporal Odyssey is a 2 player card dueling game (4 players with a team variant), designed by Chris Solis and published by CGC Games and Level 99 Games. Art provided by Adrienne Mata. — Magic the Gathering, the long reigning and undisputed king of card dueling games, continues to attract millions of players around the world. However, along with attracting lots of folks, it also repels its share of players, with a cumbersome, intimidating metagame, pay-to-win tendencies, and other significant barriers to entry. As long as MtG has been around, we’ve gotten tons of alternative card dueling games to compete…
(We are happy to welcome Liz Davidson from the Beyond Solitaire blog as a guest reviewer! Please visit her website for more reviews, videos, and previews covering solo-playable games – www.beyondsolitaire.net). Hey gamers! This is Liz Davidson from Beyond Solitaire, and I am delighted to be a guest on Board Gamers Anonymous. I’ve been invited to bring you a review of the solo modes for Hoplomachus from Chip Theory Games. Which Hoplomachus game will I write about, you ask? Well, you’re in luck: I’m going to give you a quick rundown of all of them! What is Hoplomachus, and how…