Boardgames To Go

A quick show with my thoughts on boardgaming over the past year, and what I anticipate for 2007. These retrospectives are a little harder to do without stats . . . but then what would stats tell me, anyway? For me, the real point is to talk about games that have become new favorites, especially ones I think will be keepers for the long haul. To be honest, I'm not sure how many of even the "hits"

I've surprised myself by becoming more and more interested in abstract games over the years. However, as I discuss in this show, that's due to discovering a wide range of abstracts that don't make my head hurt. You see, I've never been a fan of chess, go, logic puzzles, or anything else that requires such hard thinking. It's just not fun for me. Even then, it's not the analysis that I find as

Whew! The show is now posted. You know that getting a podcast out during this part of the year is tricky for me (aren't we all busy with the holidays?), and with the backlog of material it has turned out to be a biggie. Good news, I hope. The last time I had a show larger than one audio CD, almost no one downloaded the split file--everyone downloaded the big sucker like usual. So either you've

Okay.That was a long break, wasn't it? Too long? I think so. In other words, I haven't quit the podcast. I want to do more... I will do more. But in this episode I explain how a combination of internal choices & external pressures has led to this major slowdown of Boardgames To Go.To be honest, I think I sound a little rusty in this one. But it'll come back to me. I'm looking forward to talking

I'm starting to catch up with some older feedback as I begin to do more Session Report shows again. I had a bit of a cold while recording this one, but I hope it still sounds ok. And I sure hope I edited out all the times I coughed!Something I forgot to mention was the information Gene Pool's designer posted about self-publishing his game. It's on the Board Game Designers Forum.-Mark

Whew! Finally a new show. Like the last time I (unintentionally) took a little time off from the podcast, it was a little hard to get back into the swing of things. Last time I thought a simpler Session Report and Feedback show was the way to get back into the podcasting groove, but this time I wanted to try a theme show. That's because I'd been hearing the excellent series hosted by Eric Burgess

Just like last year, I can't help sharing some of my excitement about the Essen game fair happening this week . . . even though I won't be going. I was lucky enough to be there in 2003, something that may never happen again. But you don't have to GO to Essen to be excited about all of the new game releases. Some of them have already been available for purchase from vendors, but most are making

As promised, here's the post-Essen followup show. A few weeks ago I talked about the games I was interested in hearing more about at Essen. Now here's Mike Siggins, coming on the podcast to give BGTG listeners some firsthand accounts of his time at the fair, and impressions of some games. Be sure to also read Mike's column (the "Gamer's Notebook") at Funagain on the same subject. -Mark

Once again, I hope people are reading the blog as well as listening to the podcast. Because I often think of things I missed after the podcast is finished. (It's not just me--the host for the highly recommended BBC Radio 4 program In Our Time does the same thing via post-show emails.)I really want to talk about the family gaming (and other non-gamer gaming) I've been doing lately, but that show

During the All About Vinci show, my guest Dave Arnott thought to bring up something we'd failed to cover during our previous All About show, covering Medici almost a year ago. Rather than include that in the Vinci show, I clipped that part out to be used later. Something similar happened when Dave turned the tables on me for the "Dark Johnson" interview, when we got into some discussion about