Dragon's Demize

Hello listeners, and happy Labor Day! We’re celebrating with a review of the super fun new game Palace of Mad King Ludwig. As a spiritual successor to Castles of Mad King Ludwig, you can imagine that there’s plenty of strategic tile-laying and maximizing adjacency bonuses. But in Palace, all the players are building one giant castle together! You’re each racing to complete the most rooms and activate the most bonuses before the moat is finished and closes off the castle. It’s a great fast-paced game that captures a lot of the spirit of the original.

As usual, we also talk about What We’ve Been Playing. This week, that list includes Warsaw: City of Ruins and an unpublished RPG tentatively called Alter Arms Tokusatsu.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Welcome back to Dragon’s Demize! On today’s episode, Greg and Jakub cast a critical eye at one of their favorite genres: co-op games. We love co-op games, but they do have some issues, including quarterbacking and finding the right difficulty. We discuss these and more on today’s episode. Don’t forget to send us a message if you think we were too critical or if we left anything out!

We also talk about What We’ve Been Playing, including Palace of Mad King Ludwig, Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective, and Zipang. Finally, we close by plugging two new Kickstarter campaigns launched by some of the great people we met at Origins. Gamma Grunts is a fast-paced, deck building combat game for 2-4 players. Nexus is a brutal arena combat game with kickass miniatures. You can check out both campaigns now!

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Hello listeners! It’s Greg and Lesley on the podcast today, bringing you a review of Path of Light and Shadow. A deck-building meets territory control game for 2-4 players. Each turn, you can use your hand of followers to build, promote, and conquer. By putting together a winning strategy, you can earn the most influence and reclaim the throne that is your birthright!

In addition, Lesley gives us a special Con Report from her time at Gen Con, and we talk about What We’ve Been Playing, including Lowlands and Spirit Island.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Hello listeners! On this week’s episode, Jakub and Greg tackle another RPG topic: high level campaigns. We had the pleasure of running one for Jakub’s recent birthday shindig, and it really got us thinking about some of the unique opportunities and challenges presented by late-game RPGs. Whether it’s designing an encounter or making full use of your spectacular class features, we break down what makes high level D&D so awesome.

We also talk about What We’ve Been Playing lately, including Spirit Island and Near and Far.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Welcome back to another episode of Dragon’s Demize! This week we’re reviewing Space Base, a tableau-building game for 2-5 players. Each player has an array of ships, numbered 1-12. On each turn, they roll two dice and activate ships according to the values rolled, either individually or combined. They earn income to buy more and more powerful ships, and eventually the first player past 40 points wins. It’s a solid, well-designed game, and we hope you check out the full review.

We also talk about What We’ve Been Playing Lately. We get unusually critical in this week’s segment, bringing up aspects of Empires of the Void II and Gloomhaven that we think could be stronger. It’s definitely a change of pace, so let us know if you like it, or if you don’t!

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Hello listeners! Got an extra treat for you this week. Jim Felli of Devious Weasel Games, who we had a chance to sit down with at Origins this year, is at Gen Con right now celebrating the release of his game Duhr: The Lesser Houses. We thought this would be a perfect opportunity for us to do the same! Duhr is a “social combat” game where 4-6 players duke it out to be the last house standing. Theres’s policical maneuvering, deal-making, backstabbing. Machiaveli would love it. Check out our full review for the rundown.

As usual, we also dicuss What We’ve Been Playing Lately. The highlight this week is Palace of Mad King Ludwig, which we though did a great job capturing the feel of the original in the new shared board.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Welcome back to Dragon’s Demize, listeners! Today, Jakub and Greg are tackling game components, and the impact that they can have on a game. We’ve all had games with excellent components, and otherwise great games whose components are… lackluster. We look at a few examples of each and discuss our thoughts as players on what exactly makes a component good or bad.

We also talk about What We’ve Been Playing Lately, including a new one (for us) called Keyper. Also on the list are Eldritch Horror and Mystic Vale.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Welcome back to Dragon’s Demize, listeners! We’ve got a treat for you this week. Not one, not two, but THREE reviews! We’re reviewing three small games that we’re talked about several times before, but never actually reviewed: NMBR 9, Small Star Empires, and Fantasy Realms. Each is distinct, but they all share core mechanics that are extremely simple. That doesn’t stop them from making an impact, however, and they all have a lot going for them. Tune in for our full thoughts!

We also have tons to talk about on What We’ve Been Playing, most of which are new! We discuss Space Base, The Tea Dragon Society, and Botswana, plus one other that… doesn’t quite measure up.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Hello listeners, and welcome back to Dragon’s Demize. We’ve talked a lot about the podcast and what we do here, but there’s one thing that we haven’t talked as much about: ourselves! On today’s episode, Greg, Jakub, and Lesley sit down to answer some questions about who they are as people, as gamers, and as co-hosts of the podcast. Thankfully none of these backstories are tragic, but they are interesting. Check out the podcast to get all the insights!

We also discuss how we’d like to make our individual personalities a little more prominent. We wanted to stay on brand, so of course each of us decided to pick a dragon to align with! Greg chose Silver, Jakub chose Crystal, and Lesley chose Brass. Tune in to hear our reasons, and be on the lookout for our new identities across social media. – DDSilver

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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Hello listeners! Dragon’s Demize is back to our old habits with a good old-fashioned review. This time, we’re reviewing Xia: Legends of a Drift System, and its expansion Embers of a Forsaken Star. Both games really live up to their space opera-inspired names. Xia is best described as a 3x game: Explore, Exploit, Exterminate. Players pilot their ships across the galaxy, filling in the blank edges and finding new planets to investigate. Gameplay is totally open ended. You can fight for dominance or establish yourself through trade. You can run missions to help the locals or just go it alone. Combine that with an elaborate advancement system and plenty of titles to claim, and you’ve got a truly massive space-faring experience.

We also take this opportunity to talk about What We’ve Been Playing! Greg finally tried out In the Name of Odin, and we go thoroughly wrecked by Dark Souls. Mystic Vale also gets a mention as one of our perennial favorites.

Thank you as always to O Abnormal and Agata Poniatowski for the artwork and Strangelette for the music. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more from Dragon’s Demize, you can find us on Facebook, Google+, and Discord. We’re also on Twitter and Instagram if that’s more your speed. Finally, you can find all of our streams, vlogs, and other video content on Youtube or catch us live every Wednesday on Twitch.

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