軍師軍略 (Strategist Strategy)

Designer: Satochika Daimon (大門 聖史)
Artist: Cossack
Publisher: Grandoor Games
Players: 2
Ages: 14+
Times Played: 3

Strategist Strategy was not likely to be a game for me and a two-player only tactical skirmish game was unlikely to hit the table.  But one of the things I realized at BGGCON this past year was that I didn’t pack enough two-player games for the occasional convention intermezzo. As I headed to Granite Game Summit recently, I made sure to bring this one along (and also Small Indigo Plant, though that one was so small I forgot I had brought it while I was there!)

Besides, there’s a chance it’s for me.  Somewhere inside I have an attraction to such games.  It’s the part of me that enjoyed Battlelore that one time and used to own Commands & Colors: Napoleonics.  It’s the part of me that remembers that game of Combat Commander as the gaming highlight of the time I went to HeavyCon. 

It also has programming.  Shenanigans programming? Well, that was my interpretation of the rules.  If I plan a card now, that isn’t going to execute for 4 turns…things will…change in the meantime. That will be funny, yes? I do have a penchant for programming games where things spin out of control.

So anyway, I gave it a shot.

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3 free print and play games from SdJ nominated designer Stephen Glenn!

Stephen Glenn and I go back a long way – he is in fact one of my first gaming friends made over the Internets. Probably back from rec.games.board. For reasons I honestly cannot remember, I used to call him Snoop, and we used to place Acquire via ASCII emails via my mainframe computer email account.

We go back so far that I don’t even have a picture of us together! Here is a pic with an erstwhile OG contributor, W Eric Martin, on the left, and Mr. Glenn on the right.

His career got off to a rocket hot start with Balloon Cup, and he has had a number of successes since then. And Rattlebones. We recently reviewed his game, Butterfly, here on the blog. Mr Glenn, along with the rest of us, has been cooped up in his house this month, and he has decided to work on a couple of small print and play games which he has released for everyone to enjoy.

The Games (and some notes about them from a brutally short email interview) – all links take you to a google drive directory with the required files within

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Posted in First Impressions | 3 Comments

Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2020 (Part 6)

So, here we are in uncertain times. Gatherings (outside immediate family) in my part of the world have been limited to yourself and one other person for the foreseeable future. All face-to-face gaming has come to a crushing halt; as is completely appropriate.

Here is Patrick, with another hobby that also only requires one other person

I’ve been working from home for some weeks. I’m better suited to it than most being a solid “I” on the Myer-Briggs scale. While I don’t enjoy the unstructured social of dinners and parties, I definitely miss the structured social that work and gaming provides. While online zoom work meetings and online gaming with Skype / Discord chatter helps, it’s not the same.  That’s the new normal though.

For the purposes of this semi-regular column, it’s tricky to learn new games. I’ve played nearly all the games that are available online, and frankly, I have lots of great games to play with my family throughout the interregnum without needing to import more. As such, it may turn out this is the last such column for the year – most of this list was compiled before lock-downs, and I only managed to complete it with a solo game yesterday.

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Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 18

Over the next few months, instead of going with my Three Games articles, I am going to take a look at my collection and try to discuss why certain titles survived the great purge of 2019. During this process I may take a look at some games that didn’t survive, but only as a measuring stick for what did survive. Since I am silly, like a lot of gamers, I use Ikea Kallax shelves to display the games that we own. This makes it pretty easy to break things down cube by cube, so that’s what we’re going to do, twenty-four cubes, plus a top shelf for games that don’t fit in the cubes, over the course of a few months. I hope you enjoy!

If you are a BoardGameGeek user, you can also follow along on the Geeklist I created.


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Game Science Research Center

IMT Lucca and University of Modena and Reggio Emilia gave to life the first Italian Game Science Research Center

GAME SCIENCE is an emerging and still partially undefined area of scientific research, characterized by a strong multidisciplinary focus spanning many different disciplines (human, social, life, and natural sciences).

Game Science investigates various phenomena related to the notion of “game”, intended both as a model of strategic behavior (i.e., interactive decision-making) and as a system of rules and mechanics for ludic activities (i.e., gaming and play). Game Science encompasses the field of Game Studies as well as Game Theory and related quantitative areas of research.

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Man Muss Auch Gönnen Können (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

  • Designers: Ulrich Blum & Jens Merkl
  • Art: Leon Schiffer
  • Publisher: Schmidt Spiele
  • Players: 1-4
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Times Played: 5 (at 2 & 3 players) 1 (solo)

“You also have to be able to treat yourself”

                                                 -Google Translate

Every time that I think that I am done with the roll and write genre, someone points me to the “next big thing” and I jump at it, like a cat at a laser pointer. This latest flavor of the month comes with a strong pedigree, at least. The Klein & Fein line of games from Schmidt has been pretty much the saving grace of the roll and write genre for me. Ganz Schön Clever, Döppelt so Clever, Noch Mal, and Dizzle have all been hits here. So how does the newest entry stack up? Let’s take a look and find out. 

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