Category: Podcasts

Top 5 Board Games of 2020 (Saturday Review)

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As is customary at the end of a calendar year, it's time for my top 5 board games of this, rather odd, year and for me to announce the winner of the Top Table Award 2020. Let me say that this year, I happily allowed games into the top 5 list that were published before 2020, as long as these games were new to me this year. There is a clear winner for me, not just based on the number of plays, the amount of enjoyment the game brought and the nostalgia factor that the game has for me, but because this game took a well-established genre and took it to the next step, making it more accessible to a wider range of people. However, let me not spoil it for you, but start at number 5 and work my way to the top slot.

Harald Lieske (Let me illustrate)

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Harald Lieske was born in 1975 in Siegen, Germany and is an illustrator, game designer and musician. After beginning to study art in Siegen, he switched to studying design in Münster with a focus on game illustration and comics. Even during his studies, he already created relationships with publishers and was created illustrations for a few games. During this time he also worked on a handful of game prototypes. At the end of his studies, he had two prototypes, one of which (Das Gold der Inka) has already been published.

Game hoard (Topic Discussion)

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Many of us in the board game hobby love our collection. Some of us have many, many Kallax shelves with dozens upon dozens of games, others, like myself, have maybe 80 or so small games stashed under the sofa and in a small cupboard, and others still only have a handful. Normally I would say, it doesn't matter how many games you have, but for the purpose of this article I want to look at if maybe some of us have too many games. (This topic was inspired by the always wonderful Bez.)

Tinderblox (Saturday Review)

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It was getting dark, which meant it was time to light the campfire. We had already collected plenty of wood and tinder and someone had started to build the first layer of the fire. Now we were going to take turns and add more wood to it. After all, we were on a teambuilding camping trip, so we had to show we could work together. Of course, most of us were very competitive and soon people were starting to show off. The head of marketing decided that adding branches vertically, balancing them on the base, was the thing to do. IT, of course, went one further and decided to light the fire in a couple of places to add extra peril. It was quickly turning into a mad competition of Tinderblox by Alley Cat Games.

Christmas Spirit (Topic Discussion)

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It is the time of cheer and joy - and giving: Christmas. Of course, for many of us it's about receiving gifts, but there is also a lot of joy to be gotten from giving. If you think Christmas has become over-commercialized, then it's especially important that you give a gift - and I don't mean buying someone something, but giving away what you've already got. I'm talking about giving away some of your board games to spread the joy of our hobby to others.

The Cost (Digital Eyes)

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"Asbestos and its use have a long history. A naturally occurring mineral, asbestos was once celebrated for its seemingly wondrous resistant and strengthening properties until it was declared a human carcinogen by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1987. This odd dichotomy between the recognition of the harmful effects of the mineral and lure of the potential to make a profit on it is by no means new to industry or unique to asbestos. As game designers and game players, however, this is thought provoking." From the rulebook of The Cost by Spielworxx.

Mihai Georgescu (Let me illustrate)

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Mihai Georgescu is a freelance artist living in Scotland. He enjoys drawing goblins, painting miniatures and having too many hobbies. Throughout his career, he has created band logos, album covers, video game assets, and really silly sketches on sticky notes. He is most proficient in Adobe Photoshop and, more recently, Clip Studio Paint. His most ambitious project so far has been the continued work on the board game Arcane Blaster Casters as the art half of Battle Boar Games.

It’s tricky (Topic Discussion)

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As you can probably tell from my review of The Crew, I love trick-taking games. I grew up with them. I learned to shuffle cards when I was about six and started to play Skat with my family when I was about eight. In secondary school, I learned Doppelkopf. I didn't play them for many years after I left school and it was only when I played Vivaldi at Gaming Rules' evening during last year's Essen Spiel Messe that I rediscovered the genre. So I wanted to talk more about my fascination with these games.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (Saturday Review)

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Space, the final frontier. We're on a 50 mission journey to find a new planet in our solar system. We have to work together to seek out new theories, new experiments and new proof. It's no trick and we have to boldly go, where no scientist has gone before. These are the adventures of The Crew by Kosmos.

Overruled (Topic Discussion)

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The old topic of "house rules" keeps cropping up. Some of us are purists and feel that you have to play games with the rules they came with, because otherwise you won't get the experience that the designer intended. Others feel that tweaking a few rules here and there can make a game more fun for you and the people you play with and that designers want us to enjoy their games. In this article, I want to speak for the latter group and show that house rules aren't a sacrilege.