Back in 1994-95 two very influential board games came out on the market.   In Europe, Klaus Teuber designed Settlers of Catan and in the United States, Mark Herman designed We the People for Avalon Hill.

Convention season is upon us once more. Gencon and Essen are on the horizon and following close behind them are thousands of new releases. Our news feeds will be flooded by tantalising tabletop treasures, but with so many shiny baubles how do we avoid just buying the game that gets the biggest advertising splash, the most shoutouts on social media and the biggest names showing it off?

I did not expect to be enlightened so much in this interview. Knizia is truly no game hack, a brilliant man who was also super nice. Michael Barnes was also brilliant here and what a great time we had with this project.

Sometimes, there is a difference between what game you have played the most and what is your favorite. Leaving out the classics board games such Monopoly, Poker, and Clue, that have decades long head starts on modern board games, I tried to narrow down what game I have played the most. Some games, like Coup, have the advantage of short play time and virtually no set-up. Others, like King of Tokyo or Magic, have been around long enough to fall into the modern classic category. Even taking those into account, the game I have played this most is Evolution: The Beginning.

 Just some babbling on my part about a week+ loaded with gaming, my travels to one of Maryland's bastions for fine gaming (and tasty beer), the people I met along the way, and possibly some little mini-reviews of the stuff I got to play for the first time.

 You may ask yourself "why the hell was John Romero, designer of DAIKATANA, talking about Sid Sackson last week?" The answer is that Mr. Doom himself was giving a talk about the "Masters of Game Design" at a symposium at the Savannah College of Art and Design. The event was called "The Art History of Gaming", and it was an attempt to move toward a greater appreciate of gaming as an artistic medium.

In between reading high brow discussion about game design theory and pontificating about the relative lack of immersive narrative in today's games, I spend a lot of time making fun of games.  Other than bad box art (which is like shooting fish in a barrel) and games where the other players around the table are just decorations which have nothing to do with the puzzle you are working, my favorite target is stupid board game names.  Many are pretentious, attempt to draw attention away from the content of the game, or are otherwise misleading in some funny way.  Mostly I just like to make fun of stuff, and that definitely extends to board game names.

So, without further ado, here are some board game names I think are ripe for ridicule.

What are the essentials that make a game into a "wargame".

How much are you willing to pay for a boardgame? Logic dictates that prices will keep on climbing, which is to be expected. It’s just the world we live in, and publishers have to make money somehow. But since the advent of Kickstarter, I’m frankly a little shocked at how high some people are willing to go to get a game. The game that has put this in my mind is Cthulu Wars, which launched its own Kickstarter campaign just last week.

One of the fun things about being active on Twitter is getting know about people and organisations that you might never otherwise come across. So it is with Hide & Seek and their lead game designer, Holly Gramazio. As a game fan, you might be surprised to come across a games company and a designer you’ve never heard of before. I was. But it turns out that Hide & Seek aren’t an ordinary games company. It’s kind of hard to describe just what they are, but they seem to be equally interested in board games, video games and social games and to be interested in experimenting, mixing and matching and looking at games as pieces of performance art. It’s certainly a pretty captivating mixture and I’d love to go to some of the events they organise but it seems to be pretty London-centric.

Humor me for a moment.

Take a look at the following IMDB page, where it details the top 100 films.

The Top 250 Films according to IMDB users

Done? Okay, now here's a link to one of many video game user database sites, where they track similar ratings.

The Top 100 Games according to RF Generation users


Notice anything? For the most part, even if you're not a fan of cinema or video games, you've heard of many or most of these titles. Everyone knows who Mario is, or Sonic, or has certainly seen the controversial news stories about Grand Theft Auto. Even if someone has never seen the Godfather, they've certainly heard of it. Sure, there are a few oddities sprinkled in here and there on both lists, but many of them are a part of the public conciousness. My aunt, who has never seen Fight Club, knows about the phrase "You Do Not Talk About Fight Club."

The image above is what happened a couple of weeks back when we tried to play BLACKBEARD for the first time.

This week at Gameshark.com I'm confessing to the video game crowd about one of board gaming's most shameful, embarassing, and saddening situations- when a game goes off the rails and completely tanks.  You risk losing your credibility as a game selector, you risk ruining everybody's night, and at worse you could be branded a Fun Murderer.

FYI- "Mr. Blackberry" in the story is none other than F:AT's very own Robert Martin.

    "Running will only postpone your traitorous death."  Paul's voice was low, damn near cold-blooded.  All around him the others were arguing and yelling at each other in a fevered pitch as their plans for overthrow fell apart, but Paul was under control and all about business.  Though his comment was not directed at me, I made a mental note to never ever cross this guy in real life.

Why don’t classic or “new classic” games like Cosmic Encounters, Cyclades, and Roll for the Galaxy work for many people?

I think one of you guys has my Summoner Wars Master Set.  It’s not on the shelf.  Do me a favor, play it, or return it.  I don't much care which.

Go to new cities, learn their locations, and mispronounce their names.

A week after the nerfs to free up the meta, Hearthstone still mostly plays without the latest set.