Episode 20 – The Best Things About Board Games

We want to look at all the best things about board games.

Music: Black Moons by The 126er on YouTube

Games List

In order of appearance:


2 Replies to “Episode 20 – The Best Things About Board Games”

  1. RogerBW

    I think there’s a lot of variation between your episodes, which makes it seem as though there have been more than there really have – compared with other shows where each one sounds a lot like the one before.

    Aeon’s End is one of those games that I love every time I play it, but I don’t play it often enough. A hint: in most deckbuilders you continue to buy cards all through the game and purge out your starter deck, but in AE card-destroying powers are quite rare, and towards the end of a game you should often be concentrating on spamming your unique character powers instead. Also… phew! I’m always edgy about recommending games to people I don’t know well, and I’m very glad you enjoy it!

    Don’t Get Got sounds like a social nightmare to me. Different tastes…

    Really interesting topic. I’m very much with you on the functional-collection thing, and particularly curating a collection, trimming here and adding there to make it as good as it can be.

    (But at the same time I have both V-Commandos and Flash Point, but I was surprised when a friend said that owning FP and having tried and enjoyed VC he didn’t feel it was different enough. OK, I suppose they’re pretty similar in mechanics, but they don’t feel like that to me.)

    The more popular and competitive a game is, the more it seems to attract unpleasant people, with the extreme version of this being Magic (from what I hear, don’t even try playing seriously if you’re not a white European-descended man, or develop a very thick skin, because the people running the organised play events just don’t care what players do to each other) where there’s also enough money floating around to make cheating commonplace. I like playing in competitions but never for serious reward. Fortunately I’m not good enough at any one game to take it further.

    I find my stories about boardgames are less “I did this sneaky thing to win” and more “and then I bought the rocket launcher, which somehow helped me to bring the bounty in alive – maybe by pointing out to him just how little money I’d lose if I fired it and brought him in dead”.

    • Oliver

      Thank you for your comment, Roger. I’m glad we offer a good variety of episodes to keep it fresh. Antoinette clearly likes Aeon’s End, so I’ll have to give it a go too. Yes, Don’t Get Got isn’t for everyone, and as you say, it’s not easy to recommend games to people you don’t know. I’m glad you liked the topic. There are so many great views out there about what makes board games great. I’m sorry that Magic has become such a terrible experience in competitions. Your board game story sounds great though. So, yes, thank you again for your comment and I hope we can continue to make interesting episodes.

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