In this episode, we build the technologies and societies needed to fight climate change in Daybreak!

Daybreak is a 2023 game published by CMYK and designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace. In this cooperative board game, up to four players take on the role of world powers like the U.S. and China enacting climate action policies. The goal of the game is to cut carbon emissions before the planet gets too hot or too many communities are put into crisis. That sounds like a lot of heavy lifting for a board game until you consider that one of the game’s designers, Matt Leacock, is the designer of the very popular cooperative board game Pandemic, another game that does a lot of heavy lifting.

Earlier this year, I had the chance to interview Daybreak’s other designer, Matteo Menapace, about the design of the game as a learning experience. In my day job, I help faculty and other instructors in higher education develop and refine their teaching skills and as part of that work I produce and host a podcast called Intentional Teaching. That podcast gives me a chance to interview all kinds of educators about the ways they approach their teaching. I couldn’t resist reaching out to Matteo to talk about Daybreak. He and I had a fascinating conversation about learning design in that context, and I share a few clips of that interview in this first-ever crossover between my two podcasts!

Links:

See my photos of Daybreak.

Visit the Daybreak website.

Listen to my full interview with Matteo Menapace.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road,” “Summer in Paradise” by Purple Planet.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In this episode, we celebrate four years (and 50 episodes) of the podcast by recommending my top five games to start your board game collection!

I started First Player Token to provide some advice to people who like playing board games with family and friends but maybe get a little overwhelmed when shopping for board games at Target or Barnes & Noble. In the spirit of welcoming new people into the board game hobby, I have five games to recommend in this episode if you’re just starting your board game collection.

I also have a pretty fun announcement: I’m a YouTuber! And by that I mean that I’ve produced my first how-to-play video. With lots of encouragement from Emily and my friend Jeff and others, I’ve finally tried my hand at taking my board game teaching skills to YouTube. On the First Player Token YouTube channel, you’ll now find “Space Explorers – Your First Play.”

Also, the two-year-old official joins the podcast in this episode, with some audio from his very first family board game experience!

Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road,” “Summer in Paradise,” and “Isola Bella” by Purple Planet.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Usually when I review and recommend a board game here on the podcast, I’ve played that game at least ten times. That way I know the game well and I know it has some staying power. That means I usually review older games, but I like to play new games, too. So here’s a FIRST PLAY review of a new game that I think you might like!

Today we’ll take a look at Color Field from 25th Century Games. Color Field is a 2024 game designed by Mondo Davis with art by Peach Benitez.

Links:

Buy Color Field on Amazon.

“How Mark Rothko Unlocked the Emotional Power of Colors” by Alina Cohen

Canva’s Color Wheel, where you can make your own tetradic color schemes

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road” and “Sunbeam” by Purple Planet. 

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In this episode, we put on our funny Viking hats and go plundering in Raiders of the North Sea!

Raiders of the North Sea is a two to four player game published in 2015 by Garphill Games. It was designed by Shem Phillips with art by Mihajlo Dimitrievski. The game is about building your Viking crew, raiding settlements, and bringing back plunder for your chieftain. Raiders offers an interesting twist on the worker placement genre of games. Each player has precisely one worker—a Viking—that they can send on their turn to some unoccupied location on the board. They activate that location, getting something useful from it, and then—here’s the twist—they choose another location that has a worker, activate that location, and retrieve the worker to use on their next turn.

Place a Viking, do a thing, retrieve a different Viking, do a different thing. This simple mechanic powers a very fun game with the right balance of strategic planning and beating your opponent to the punch.

Links:
See my photos of Raiders of the North Sea.

Buy Raiders of the North Sea on Amazon.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road” by Purple Planet.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In this episode, we board the Jolly Roger and steal from treasure from a Spanish galleon in Tortuga 1667!

In Tortuga 1667, players take on the role of pirates attacking Spanish ships near the island of Tortuga and stealing their gold. Half of the players are secretly working for the British and half for the French. At the start of the game, you know which team you’re on, but no one else does. As you play the game, triggering event cards, attacking the Spanish galleons, brawling on the island of Tortuga, and occasionally committing mutiny, you’ll start to figure out who is on which team. There’s treasure to be had in the game, and at the end of the game (triggered by the arrival of the Spanish armada) the team with the most treasure wins.

Tortuga 1667 has quickly become a favorite at our monthly game nights because of its quality production values, ability to handle high player counts (up to 9!), and the fun that can be had with hidden roles in the game. There can be a lot of chaos in the game, but usually also opportunities to use that chaos to your advantage, which sounds like the pirate’s life to me.

Links:

See my photos of Tortuga 1667.

Buy Tortuga 1667 on Amazon.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road” by Purple Planet. “Pirates!” by Tabletop Audio.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In The Wolves, we build our packs and carve out our territory!

The Wolves is a 2022 game designed by Ashwin Kamath and Clarence Simpson with art by Pauliina Linjama and a quality production from publisher Pandasaurus Games. In The Wolves, between two and five players each controls a pack of wolves vying for territory across a wilderness. This game is richly illustrated with tons of wolf tokens to represent your packs spreading across a semi-randomized map full of different terrain types. It has a unique action selection mechanism that uses those terrain types. I really like this game. I like how clever it can make me feel, I like the liberty it gives me to be as aggressive as I can be, and I like how quickly it escalates.

This episode features a review of The Wolves, as well as the podcast’s first-ever family color commentary segment!

Links:

See my photos of The Wolves.

Buy The Wolves on Amazon.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road” and “Sunbeam” by Purple Planet.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In this episode, we try to save the planet from a relentless alien invasion in Under Falling Skies!

Under Falling Skies is a 2020 board game designed by designed by Tomáš Uhlíř published by Czech Games Edition with art by Petr Boháček and Kwanchai Moriya. It’s a solo game about repelling an alien invasion that clearly takes some inspiration from the film Independence Day and from the classic arcade game Space Invaders, with those alien spaceships descending toward vulnerable cities one row at a time. Under Falling Skies is a fantastic solo game, with beautiful components, decisions that are full of painful trade-offs, and a campaign that will keep you returning to the game again and again.

This episode features a rousing speech, an overview of Under Falling Skies and why it’s so so good, a spoiler-warned set of thoughts on the game’s campaign mode, and a special appearance from the youngest member of the First Player Token crew!

Links:

See my photos of Under Falling Skies.

Read Tomáš Uhlíř’s designer diary for Under Falling Skies.

Buy Under Falling Skies on Amazon.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road: by Purple Planet.

“Space Invaders” by SilvaGunner.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In The Blood of an Englishman, we see if Jack can steal the goose that lays golden eggs from the giant at the top of the beanstalk!

In 2016, Renegade Games published a two-player card game inspired by “Jack and the Beanstalk” called The Blood of an Englishman. One player takes on the role of Jack, attempting to steal the giant’s treasure through a series of quick little moves, and the other player is the giant, trying to stop Jack. The game was designed by Dan Cassar and he said in an interview that he read his young son the story one night, and the kid went around shouting “Fee fi fo fum!” for days. He wanted to capture a bit of that energy in a game, and The Blood of an Englishman is the result. As you’ll hear in this episode, the game had the intended effect in our house!

The Blood of an Englishman is a great introduction to asymmetric games, and it’s one of my favorite two-player games.

Links:

See my photos of The Blood of an Englishman.

Read about linguistic phylogenetic research on fairy tales.

Read Dan Cassar’s designer diary.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

Music:

“Open Road” and “The Concept,” https://www.purple-planet.com/.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In this episode, I try out a new format by giving very brief reviews of ten games I played at our local board game convention, Tennessee Game Days, earlier this fall!

Tennessee Game Days is an event held each spring and fall here in Nashville, Tennessee, where people come from around the state and the region to spend a few days in hotel convention rooms playing all kinds of board games with friends and strangers. There’s a library of hundreds of board games you can check out and play, along with a play-to-win room and a distributed flea market.

My time at TGD was spent in two different ways: (1) playing games with my adult friends that we can’t find the time to play any other way and (2) bringing my family to the event and letting the kids pick games to check out of the game library to learn and play.  I thought it would be fun to offer some very short reviews of ten games I played at TGD in September, to give you a sense of what my family and friends and I are playing these days!

Links:

Learn more about Tennessee Game Days.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Instagram.

Music:

“Open Road” and “The Concept,” https://www.purple-planet.com/.

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.

In this episode, we try to figure out if our opponent put the poison in our glass or in his glass in the game In Vino Morte!

In Vino Morte is a 2016 game designed by Chris Anderson with art by Ben Toz and published by Button Shy Games. It’s inspired by that classic scene in The Princess Bride where the Dread Pirate Roberts and the scoundrel Vizzini face off over a couple of glasses of wine, one of which is poisoned. In Vino Morte takes that basic idea and scales it up to a 16-card game for three to nine players. I love In Vino Morte because it’s dead simple, it always leads to lively if nonsensical play, I can teach it in about 30 seconds, it plays in like 5 minutes, and it handles a bunch of players. We do, however, call the game “Grape Juice and Poison” when we play with kids…

In this episode, our viticulture correspondents (ages 9 and 10) review “Grape Juice and Poison” along with another great Button Shy wallet game, The Boy Who Cried Wolf. If you’re looking for a quick-to-teach, quick-to-play, kid-friendly game that’s more social than strategic, either of these games fits the bill.

Order In Vino Morte from Button Shy Games.

Purchase Button Shy print-and-play games on PNP Arcade.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Join the First Player Token Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Instagram.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Mastodon.

Music: “Open Road” and “The Concept,” https://www.purple-planet.com/. 

Send us a text

Podcast Links:

Order a First Player Token coffee mug.

Visit the First Player Token website.

Join the FPT Facebook group.

Follow @firstplayertoken on Bluesky.

Join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord.