Yes, it's Meeplefest time once again, and the roundtable of luminaries is topped off with three designers:

Matt Leacock, fresh from his KedJ win for Daybreak/eMission where he went up against HIMSELF with Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West and known for such titles as Pandemic and Forbidden Island

Tom Lehmann, known for the classic Race for the Galaxy, and with new titles such as Winter Court and Chu Han

and Joe Huber, lover of trick takers and designer of such titles as Caravan, Blue Skies, and Burger Joint.

We spend some time talking about Matt's win, as well as design choices & the creative spark.

And here's that Auden quote which Tom sent to me after the podcast:

In his preface to The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden (1945) he wrote: In the eyes of every author, I fancy, his past work falls into four classes. First, the pure rubbish which he regrets ever having conceived; second–for him the most painful– the good ideas which his incompetence or impatience prevented from coming to much (The Orators seems to me such a case of the fair notion fatally injured); third, the pieces he had nothing against except their lack of importance; these must inevitably form the bulk of any collection since, were he to limit it to the fourth class alone, to those poems for which he is honestly grateful, his volume would be too depressingly slim.