The Spiel

Timber! A tree falls on our padded cel, so the next full episode will be in two weeks. We discuss our upcoming summer schedule, including the Spiel des Jahres spectacular, Origins, Gen Con, and Listener's Choice shows.

Gone fishin'. The bait: wooden penguins and little rubber worms. We strike bargains with talking fish and dive under the ice looking for the big catch playing If Wishes Were Fishes and Hey! That's My Fish!

Eight quickies. Whether you need a game for a lunch break at work or to play with your kids for half an hour, it's good to have some filler games in your bag of tricks. We reach into our bag give you the scoop on eight titles, each reviewed in 5-7 minutes

Stand down from DEFCON 2! We rewrite history, replaying the Cold War not once, but twice in this superpower sized episode. We tackle Twilight Struggle and Cold War: CIA v KGB.

Break out your nine iron and flibberty-gibbets. The Spiel turns two! We take on Coppertwaddle a medieval card game with a rich (fake) history and we roll our way through Box of Golf in all its wooden splendour.

Play ball! But forget the steroids; we've got Divine Intervention. Just in time for Spring Training, we play Pizza Box Baseball, a light card-driven simulation. Then we ascend to the heavens to protect four mythical races in Age of Gods.

Much better than a pig in a poke. We reach into our bag of tricks and find two light but surprising little games: the abstract award-winning Qwirkle and the latest from German designer Freidemann Freise, Felix the Cat in the Sack.

Barbarians at the gates? Get rolling! We build a small but great wall in Chang Cheng and use dice to hire advisors to protect His Majesty's realm in Kingsburg.

Roll up your sleeves. Time to get your hands dirty. We chop wood and cut stone to build Kingsbridge Catehdral in Pillars of the Earth and send our swarms out to surround Queen bees in the strategy classic Hive.

Not miles... hours! 24 of them. We set out to play games for 24 consecutive hours in order to get our unplayed list of games below 200. This episode was recorded as we played and documents the events of our day including session reports on a truckload of games both large and small.