I recently moved to a new city for a job. I’m in the middle of a four-day weekend. I’d been wearing my housecoat all day and had just eaten a dozen chocolate-chip cookies for supper while watching re-runs of Tenacious D on HBO on Demand. Good god, I’m bored.

Wait, I know! It’s been two months since I cracked open a board game… I should solo a game of Arkham Horror! And, great idea upon great idea, I should take notes and write up my first deliciously witty session report! (Never mind the fact that I can’t tell a story to save my life.)

There’s no denying the satisfaction of a village-market combo to buy the last province, shipping your last tobacco despite everyone else’s best efforts, or playing the last set of 5 city cards to finally prevent the earth from being ravaged by disease. Games are, after all, for gaming. But at what point does the hobby become less about playing the game and more about the experience of being a board gamer?

There’s been a dramatic increase in “story-driven” board games in the last year, including games like TIME Stories and Pandemic Legacy, but what’s driving this renewed consumer interest in interactive storytelling?

I’ve been playtesting Anachrony for the last month or two (about 5 games) and now that the kickstarter is live (and funded in 4 hours!) I thought it’d be helpful for others to hear my impressions of the game in case you’re on the fence about this one.

I’ve had the pleasure of helping playtest Days of Ire: Budapest 1956 the last month or so, and since they’re about to launch on Kickstarter I figured I would help some potential backers out by describing the gameplay in a bit of detail.

Like a lot of fellow board gamers, I fell head over heels when I heard that Mansions of Madness was getting a 2nd edition, and that it was going to be an app-driven co-op mirroring the recent success of the Descent 2nd Edition Road to Legend app. Road to Legend has breathed new life into Descent for a lot of gamers, since 1 v Many games can be a harder sell than a full co-op experience; not to mention the potential for solo play. Mansions of Madness 1st edition had much the same issue, further complicated by the extended set up of laying out the entire map and hand-picking miniature piles of cards for nearly every room. The MoM app promises to simplify setup by exposing the map as players explore the mansion (much like Descent’s RtL) and replacing the small groups of cards with tokens that are evaluated by the app.

Let me start by saying the component quality of The Long Night is stellar - they took the few things I had complaints about in the base game (namely the location paper boards) and made great strides in the quality of those components.

That’s about all I liked about it.

2016 is quickly drawing to a close, and as is tradition around this time of year, people with websites pretending to know what they’re talking about when it comes to board games tend to create “top 10” lists of the past 365 days of gameplay. We’re nowhere near as organized, so here’s some random thoughts on games we’ve played this year!

Our first episode ever! Listen to Chad, Ryan and Adam flub their way through their first live broadcast, where we discuss why we think board games are seeing a resurgence in this digital age, and recount some recent games we’ve played. Also Adam makes for an excellent buzzer.

Of Dice and Men is broadcasted live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be January 29th at 8 PM CST

These last few weeks were big for Fantasy Flight Games’ Arkham Files collection (and painful for my wallet). I totally forgot that I had tweeted that we’d be going over the newest ways to get consumed by cosmic beings in our last show, so to make up for it here’s a detailed breakdown of the newest additions to the collection!