Gaming in the Era of Social Distancing

Posted on March 31, 2020 by Dale Yu

Well, unless you’ve be living under a rock for the past few months, you’re aware of the new normal in the world of Covid-19…  Everyone is asked to stay at home when possible, schools are essentially closed for in-person learning, groups of 100 or more are illegal in my state.  I have already had two gaming conventions be canceled on me in March and April…  

I have been shown some articles which show that the Covid-19 virus might be able to live on boardgame materials for awhile.  Which begs the question – should my game group still meet regularly to play games? I was thinking about what my other options might be…  What games could be played over email/webcam/etc?

Over the years, I’ve played a few games PBEM (play by email) and a few PBM (play by mail). I have also dabbled in some gaming via the computer on Brettspielwelt and Yucata.de.  

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Posted in Commentary | 8 Comments

Dale Yu: Review of Miyabi

Posted on March 30, 2020 by Dale Yu

Miyabi

  • Designer: Michael Kiesling
  • Publisher: HABA
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 40 minutes
  • Times played: 5, with review copy provided by HABA USA

In Miyabi, players vie to make the most elegant Japanese garden.  Each player starts with an empty garden board, which has a 6×6 grid on it.  They also get six wooden lanterns in their color to mark off the different columns of their board.  In the center of the table is placed a scoring board which also keeps track of the four to six rounds of the game.

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 4 Comments

Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 15

Posted on March 29, 2020 by Brandon Kempf

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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Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2020 American Tabletop Award Winners

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Brandon Kempf

Wow, that was quicker than I had thought. I had thought there would be more build up and a bit of drama, but the award winners have already been announced.

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Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 14

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Brandon Kempf

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.

Sooooooo, this is the almost embarrassing shelf. I have a bit of an obsession with Modern Art and we’ll talk about that later, but I just wanted to be up front, I own too much Modern Art and plus I have two more copies ordered. Yeah, I know, I have a problem. 

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Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Dale Yu: First Impressions of Contact

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Dale Yu

Contact

  • Designer: Steffen Benndorf
  • Publisher: NSV
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20 mins
  • Played with review copy provided by NSV

Contact is a game that is not necessarily in my comfort zone.  I’m always skeptical of games with “limited communication” – sometimes I find the restriction too artificial, and it ends up frustrating me.   To balance that out, I generally like Benndorf games, so this one was worth trying no matter what. Which side will win out here?

In Contact, you follow a signal while knowing neither exactly where it comes from, nor who sends it out. This signal wants to lead you to a certain planet, but instead of space coordinates, you receive only a strange sequence of flight instructions for your spaceship. Can you identify the right target planet from this signal? And what will you find when you get there?

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Posted in Reviews | 3 Comments