dary! And welcome to Episode 99 of The Last Standee Podcast!

In this episode, stars align and omens appear as we are about to kiss goodbye to two digits for good!

The episode begins as usual, with a Standee Catchup with Fen and Cara, of dogs and humankind so to say.

Then we begin with Freedom Five, a Defenders of the Realm game from Greater than Games: Fen does the honors here; fun fact: the game has four expansions and a promo which appear to be engulfed in a time paradox (see BGG stats!). The three of us then continue with two games from Cara's fortnightly game night - Big Shot and Qwirkle - great additions to any collection, if a little aged. To finish up, Alessio talks a bit about Odin (the Norse deity, not the number one in languages with Cyrillic alphabet), the proud winner of As D'Or 2025.

And that's about it! See you next episode!

Welcome to Episode 98 of The Last Standee Podcast!

This is one where we have to apologize in advance for making you listen to Alessio for a feature-length episode. No, the team is still there. It's just that it's a mess sometimes to put together speakers geographically distant, and when illnesses and shaky world situation interfere, that's a recipe for missed episodes. We pull through the best we can, though, thank you.

...It was way more informative than what I meant initially, but it's fine. THIS IS FINE. EVERYTHING IS FINE.

Anyway, Alessio takes the chance of being alone in the recording to talk about niche and upcoming project, such as Eternal Decks (take it!) in the Standee Catch-up, then talks about a Canadian (nonetheless!) project of three innovative games set up in the Twisted Realms.

After this, it's time to do the laundry with the review of two Unmatched sets for the new course: Sun's Origin (for two players) and Slings and Arrows (for four players) - public domain heroes, the best ones!

Finally, as it's compulsory for solo episodes, it's time for the big, genre-defining solo game of the episode: this time, we talk about Legacy of Yu.

Uhhh, next one is episode 99! Can't wait for it! It will be legen

Hello and welcome to Episode 97 of The Last Standee Podcast!

In this episode, we TRAVEL!

After the Standee Catch-up, Fen breaks ice by talking about a recently fulfilling pet project of ours from COVID times, aka Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, from the same author as Xia: Legends of a Drift System. Then, Audrey recounts her experience with Faraway (not to be mistaken with Far Away, an entirely different game we also reviewed), a card game with an innovative scoring mechanism. Finally, Alessio closes the episode with crazy car races and wanton destruction with Joyride: Survival of the Fastest - and closes-closes the episode with all the crazy stuff that happened around it.

Until next episode, fasten your seatbelt and safe travels!

Welcome to 2025, and also to Episode 96 of The Last Standee Podcast!

Moderation and sobriety mark the start of the year with the A Team (Alexis-Audrey-Alessio, cue '80s music), while we learn in the Standee catch-up what everyone has been up to (spoiler: it's flu, mostly. And dealing with job market. Yeah, moderation and sobriety).

After that, we begin dabbling into games (I hope you will appreciate the effort put into finding a good name for the episode) - Alessio tells us about Steam Power, a long-awaited game from THE Martin Wallace about trains and economy. Big names come to mind. The question is, is this game up to the likes of the legends of the past? (spoiler: it's an entire different thing - for the rest, you'll have to listen to the episode. After that, it's trains again, with Alexis presenting us Next Station game series. Ever wondered what all the fuss was about, or which one to pick in a pinch? Today's your lucky day, then! Finally, Audrey closes the triptych for this episode with Knight: An Avalon RPG - a French production just recently landed to international audiences. And if Space Knights of the Round Table with Saint Seiya armors doesn't even make you flinch, you have a heart of stone and I feel sorry for you (and yes, that title for a movie is taken, sorry!)

Let's begin the new year with a BANG! (No, not with Bang!. Or yes, if you want - we just won't be talking about it).

Hello, hello, hello!

The storm went and passed through, and the team is back at work to provide you our best quality entertainment!

...which is an assessment of _our_ best quality, not best quality in general. Anyway!

After the Standee Catch-up (guest star: Pamcha!), Cara leads the team into the raging 1995 to talk about the old titan in every gamer's room, Catan! And the team has STORIES.

Then, Alessio leads two very different discussions: one about the last fatigue from Nerdlab Games, Agent Avenue - a simple yet entertaining game of spies playing tag along a circular board using cards acquired through an "I cut, you choose" mechanism - the other hails back to the time we discussed Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest and has to do with unconfirmed preferences and Fen's own allegations.

Finally, Fen wraps up thoughts about the state of Kingdom Death Simulator and Nova Aetas: Renaissance, the big box fatigue from Ludus Magnus Studio set in the world of Nova Aetas - alternate Renaissance with mages? Sign us up!

Welcome to Episode 94 of The Last Standee Podcast!

From a certain perspective, this is a one-of-a-thing episode with fun twists and shenanigans.

From another perspective, though, this is an episode where there's only Alessio. Feeling so alone that he added a text-to-speech track to keep him company!

(No seriously, we had good reasons to have so few speakers these last episodes! This is one exceptional case!)

Because this is TRUE SOLO, where a LONELY speaker will talk about a very appreciated SOLO GAME.

Jokes aside, this is truly the best container to talk about a game which is a pretty good game, an even better story, and when everything is tied together it becomes art. We'll be talking about Eila and Something Shiny.

ONE host. ONE game. ONE player.

Welcome to Singularity.

Welcome to Episode 93 of The Last Standee Podcast!

This episode we reach theatrical heights as we start up in comedy, trying to make an intro right; let's say that quickly turns into tragedy without pretty much of a warning. I mean, I hope you had fun listening at least half as much we had recording.

Whatevs! In the Standee catch-up we get some notable excerpts from games presented at Essen SPIEL 2024 (heavy-heavy games left off on purpose) and an insight in our broken lives, then it's building time!

Cara builds up momentum with Catacombs Cubes, a perhaps-too-much easygoing game of building blocks in the Catacombs series, then Alessio capitalizes on that with a well-placed rooftop, uh, talk, about Tower Up, a small 2024 hidden gem which is way more complicated to describe than to play.

So, be it building with blocks or blocking buildings, this episode is very construction-centric. Discover with us what happened to Alexis! See you next episode!

Wouldn't "ensorcelled" be a good "second E" in the outro? But I digress.

Welcome to Episode 92 of The Last Standee Podcast!

The Standee Catch-up kicks off the episode, then it's news galore (yes, we sometimes take time to relay boardgaming news too), along with a few comments and impressions from the team and boardgame small talk.

After the news segment, it's Cara's reviews time! This time, we tackle Witchcraft: Moonlight Magic, a game to wich/witch BGG community assigned a weight of 1 - but is it really all that there's to know about it?

After Cara, Alessio talks about a game which is definitely not ranked 1 in weight: Hegemony: Lead your Class to Victory! That's possibly a first time reviewing a game this heavy in the podcast, how did we go?

Welcome to episode 91 of The Last Standee Podcast!

In this episode, after the usual Standee Catch-up and a bit of news, we have Fen discussing Bloomburrow for Magic: The Gathering and, more widely, having a chat about the Cube Format and its applications throughout the (T/L)CG panorama. After that, Alexis guides a review with the team for the Frogdog expansion.

Welcome to Episode 90 of The Last Standee Podcast!

How are you, fellas? Refreshed from vacations? Tired from their lack thereof? Meh, as usual? (seriously, let's set the bar a bit higher than "meh")

GenCon has come and gone, "closing" 2024 as far as releases that will be honestly reviewed for this year will go. Essen SPIEL is behind the corner, and a new year's worth of new releases is elbowing its way in (I mean, we'll have Unmatched Ninja Turtles!), but let's do things properly.

This Standee Catch-up brings a bit of news from later this August along with tidbits from our gaming lives, and after that it's Alessio talking about Compile from GTG, a surprisingly very good 1v1 card game presented at GenCon out of the blue. Next comes Audrey with her impressions about Dune: Imperium, the mix of deckbuilding and worker placement you didn't know you needed in your life. Finally, to follow up with the AI-contingent theme, there's Cara with Hive (I know, right?) and Warhammer 40000: Combat Patrol.