Let Chad, Adam and Ryan take you back to those lazy summer days of gaming with our discussion on Cabin Games; the games of our summer youths and the future of these dusty shelf classics. What common characteristics do these games have? What games from our collections will be the future treasures of the next generation? We discuss this and more!

Also featured this episode is Descent: Journeys in the Dark 2nd Edition as well as a touch of Imperial Assault. This one-vs-many board game is the epitome of the dungeon crawling genre, but how does it hold up to today’s standard of gaming? We highlight the gameplay of it’s close cousin, Star Wars: Imperial Assault and dote on the app integrations recently released for both titles.

Finally we wrap up the episode with a summary of some games we’re playing and looking forward to play, including one of the newest Unlock entries, Ryan’s current obsession with Carl Chudyk, and Adam’s newfound love for Through the Ages.

Don’t forget our Azul Twitter Giveaway is still going on, sponsored by mrdiceguy.com - check our website for more information on how to enter!

CONTEST ALERT! Listen to the episode to hear how you can win a copy of Azul from MrDiceGuy.com!

Today we’ll be talking about a problem near and dear to all of our hearts - shelf toads. The games that do little more than collect dust on your shelves, but you can’t bear to part with. What games are more prone to the “shelf toad” status? How can we get them back to the table? We discuss this and more in our mid-July episode.

We take a break to announce our newest sponsorship partnership with Mr. Dice Guy, a local Canadian online game store. Check them out at mrdiceguy.com, and listen for details on how to win a copy of Azul in our twitter giveaway!

Our feature game of the episode is Through the Ages, where we talk about both the first and second editions, why this is a shelf toad in Chad’s collection, and what you can do to get a chance to play this great civilization-building game.

Finally we wrap up with some recent plays, including The Big Book of Madness, Twilight Struggle, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, and the latest Terraforming Mars expansions.

In our Canada Day episode, Adam, Chad and Ryan discuss summer games and the challenges of playing board games outside. Which games work well and which you may want to avoid when playing on patios.

The featured game is Azul, the tile laying abstract game designed by
Michael Kiesling, that is the number 1 abstract and the number 1 family game on boardgamegeek.com at the time of recording.

We finish off the show talking about Adam’s attempts to like Twilight Struggle, Chads first foray into Shadowrun, and Ryan plays a go-getter in Pursuit of Happiness and talks positively about a game hes already forgotten existed.

Chad, Adam and Ryan discuss the benefits of board gaming - from kids’ skills with taking turns and graceful winning to adults’ learning to work together and expanding your public speaking there’s a number of benefits that board games provide. Your three hosts discuss the great number of ways our active hobby improves the lives of its players.

After that we discuss Eclipse, our feature game of the episode. This euro-space-hybrid is soon up for its second edition kickstarter, so we spend some time enumerating how great the first edition is! Space battles, research, exploration, and colorful dice - we’ve got it all!

We wrap up talking about some of the games we’ve played and we’re hoping to play - Legacy of Dragonholt, The Shipwreck Arcana, Twilight Struggle, Incursion, Arkham Horror TCG, and more!

Ryan, Adam and Chad bring you their first off-the-air podcast episode featuring Diplomacy and Negotiation in board games. Negotiation is listed as a mechanic in board game geek’s database, but it’s a skill that can permeate almost every game. How does being a good negotiator affect the games you play? Do games that rely on negotiation work for all groups? Will your agreement ultimately end in betrayal? All this and more!

We move on to our feature game, Sheriff of Nottingham. This game has players as merchants attempting to transport and/or smuggle goods to their market stalls for sale all under the watchful eye of the Sheriff, who you can negotiate with, bribe, or otherwise threaten to get your way at the inspection gate. See what Adam and Chad think of this highly-regarded game as we break it down.

We end the show with a few hits of what we’ve been playing lately, including Dice Forge, Photosynthesis, Dungeons & Dragons, Snow Tails, Jaipur, and Super Motherload, and try out a new segment, “What do you WANT to play?”

Make sure to check our our website, ofdiceandmen.ca, and join our new BGG guild, #3302!

Adam, Ryan and Chad discuss the compulsion to collect collectible games. From competitive and co-operative card games to miniatures and everything inbetween, what makes this subset of the board game hobby so lucrative for publishers? Why do players enjoy going down the rabbit hole of scheduled releases and random booster packs? We’ll discuss all this and more!

After the half we talk about one of the newest entries into the collectible game sphere, DropMix. Harmonix’s latest money maker, DropMix is a game that uses cards, a custom peripheral, your phone or tablet, and music tracks to allow players to compete, work together, or just pretend they’re a DJ for a night. Find out what we thought of this head-bob-inducing game!

We finish off the show talking about some of our recent plays, including Adam’s 3-hour foray into Dungeons and/or Dragons, Ryan’s recent play of Above and Below, and Chad’s canoe trip in Lewis & Clark.

Finally, we say our farewell to our gracious host and local community radio station, CJTR. We’ll be continuing our show via the magic of the internet, but no longer will we be broadcasting with the station. We are eternally grateful for the support and start that CJTR has given us and hope you’ll continue to enjoy their programming and ours in the future.

Image credit: Eric from What’s Eric Playing! whatsericplaying.com/ boardgamegeek.com/image/3798873/dropmix

Chad and Adam are your hosts this week talking about how co-operative board games take on the “quarterbacking” or “alpha gamer” problem head on through the use of clever mechanics. It’s hard(er) to tell someone what to do when there’s a timer about to go off or they might be the traitor! We’ll list several different mechanics and the games that use them to ensure everyone at the table has a fair shake.

After the break we feature Space Alert, another game part of the Vlaada Conspiracy. This real-time co-operative board game has players in the role of space cadets, tasked with keeping their ship in one piece as they get warped to random galaxies in the name of science! A colorful game that takes 15 minutes to play and has a lot of replayability in the base box, only to be extended by the expansion’s campaign content.

Finally we discuss some games we’ve been playing lately, including Four Against Darkness, Gloomhaven, Clank! In! Space! and the classic Connect 4!

Ryan and Chad take on the definitive topic of Dudes on a Map in this episode. Not quite a mechanic, and certainly not a theme, how does this description so clearly classify a category of board game? We discuss the ‘requirements’ of such a genre, and discuss the several archetypes evolved within.

Staying on point, Chad and Ryan feature Rising Sun, the most recent ‘dudes on a map’ game released by CMON and Eric Lang. Where do we think it fits in the Eric Lang Dudes Trilogy? Listen to find out! Afterwards Ryan agrees with Chad on Decrypto, swarms some Protoss in Starcraft The Board Game, and blows up some post-apocalyptic wrecks in Gaslands. Chad defends a mediocre earth in Level 7: Invasion and robs a small bank with the help of his friends in Burgle Bros.

Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be May 6th at 8 PM CST.

Adam, Ryan, and Chad discuss one of the most diverse components in modern board games - Dice! Starting with the history and spilling over onto modern design, we discuss the ways that little plastic geometric shapes are used in the design and play of games, and some stand out examples of clever dice usage.

After the break we stick with the dice theme and discuss King of Tokyo and King of New York - two games that take the dice-rolling set-collection aspect of Yahtzee and turn it into a slug fest between monsters battling for control of their city. Finally Adam learns how to play cards with a Shopkins game, Ryan rolls some fancy custom dice in Quarriors, and Chad attempts to figure out what his coworkers are getting at in a game of Decrypto.

(Image credit: boardgamegeek.com/image/3262707/king-tokyo)

Of Dice and Men is broadcast live on 91.3 FM CJTR, Regina Community Radio - our next broadcast will be April 22nd at 8 PM CST.

Chad, Adam and Ryan discuss the different ways that board games take complicated real-life situations and boil them down to the roll of a die or the flip of a card. How can board games capture the feeling of being the leader of a nation during a cold war, a starving farmer in 1600’s Europe, or a fire fighter saving a cat from a burning apartment building? Through abstraction, of course!

At the half way point we transition to Terraforming Mars, our feature game for this episode. Terraforming Mars is a fantastic engine building game centered around the theme of, you guessed it, making Mars hospitable to humans. We talk about all the little things that make this 2016 release a stand-out game in a galaxy full of cardboard and cards.

Finally Adam crashes a kid’s birthday to play some snake game, Ryan comes up with the party game hit of 2018, and Chad goes on a terrible rant about Spirit Island.

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