(Almost) Monthly Recap from the Opinionated Gamers – April 8, 2011

Well – normally I don’t like to wait this long between recap posts here on the “OG”, but real life has kept me (and the other writers) quite busy.  I think that we’re finding a good balance right now between the collaborative reviews and other types of pieces.

This month has had a bit more of the gaming commentary – and I think that you’ll see more of this throughout the summer! We also had a week long retrospective on Japanese games during the past month.  The theme week idea seemed to go over well, and there are a few more themes in the pipeline for the coming months.

Well, it’s been a super long time since I’ve updated the recap section blog – so there a metric butt-ton of links here to keep you up to date with what we’ve been doing on “the OG”…  Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to have an overall index of the blog – so these recap posts are the best way to see what has been going on.

Gaming Commentary:

1. Debate: Is this the Golden Age of Boardgaming?

2. Patrick Korner: Random Musings and Witticisms

3. Rick Thornquist: Box Insert of the Year

4. Creating Black Vienna Online by Greg Aleknevicus

5. Jonathan Degann: The Frustration Factor
Some reviewers like to speak of the “Fun Factor” when evaluating a game. What about the “I’m-not-having-any-fun-at-all Factor”?

6. Dale Yu: Building the Perfect Miniature Rules Reference including cards for 20th Century, Firenze, Florenza, Grand Cru, Magnum Sal, Merkator, Troyes and other Essen games…

Interviews

1. The Art of Design: Interviews to game designers #5 – Michael Schacht
2. The Art of Design: Interviews to game designers #4 – Martin Wallace

Reviews:

1. Full Review of Nightfall by Matt Carlson

2. What’s My Word? by Dale Yu

3. Review: Alvin & Dexter: Monsters & Trains, Oh My! by Mark Jackson

4. Review: De Vulgari Eloquentia – by Doug Garrett

5. Van Helsing: Not much blood in the veins – Greg Schloesser

6. Review of Grand Cru by Luke Hedgren

7. Review of Hanabi & Ikebana by Dale Yu

8. Review: Cat & Chocolate – by Patrick Korner

9. Group Review – Japanese Potluck: Capsule Reviews of a number of different Japanese games including Grimoire, RRR, Hau La, Fairy Tale, Cheaty Mages and many more

10. Review of Kaigan by Rick Thornquist

11. Busstop: Get in line and get on the bus! by Dale Yu

First Impressions:

1. Mansions of Madness by Patrick Korner

And as always, twice weekly Board2Pieces comics can be found at Opinionated Gamers! and previous recap posts are here

What’s coming up?  Well, the schedule still isn’t set into stone yet – but we’ll certainly be bringing our opinions of games (both new and old) from the Gathering of Friends in the next two weeks… Not sure yet what format this will take!

Also, we started work on a few group-written pieces, such as the debate yesterday on the Golden Era of Boardgaming.  I’m guessing that you’ll see more pieces similar to this as the initial response we’ve received has been quite positive.  There will also be a retrospective of what we liked about 2010!

Any suggestions?  Feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Dale

About Dale Yu

Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.
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