Boardgames To Go

The last in the series of BGG.con-related shows, this one's only connection is the fact that I first tried to record it on the way to BGG.con . . . and the fact that it features Texas (Austin, this time). That original recording took place while on layover at the Denver airport. Unfortunately, the background noise was too distracting, so I ultimately had to discard it. But I'd kept my notes, and

[Nothing went wrong when I published the last show without a full proof-listen beforehand, so I'm doing it again. This isn't supposed to be my regular practice, but the holidays are upon us, family is coming to visit, and I fear if I don't publish this show now it will be another week before I get the chance. So out it goes. As before, if something is wrong please let me know immediately and I'll

[Against my better judgment, I'm posting this show before I've had a chance to listen to it. Someone please email me if there's something amiss, and I'll correct it ASAP. I don't have the opportunity to go through my normal recording-proofing-publishing routine, but want to get this out rather than sit on it. -Mark]Two shows ago I had an interview with Aldie & Derk about Boardgamegeek.con. At

At last! Another All About show, and one I'd been planning to do for some time. My buddy and BGG.com roommate Greg Pettit has played the game a fair bit, and shared his opinions about the game's strategies, reputation, graphic production, and more. Also, we managed to play the newly-released card game adaption of E&T at the con, which gave us even more to think about.-MarkP.S. Pretty ridiculous

My listeners will know that I wanted to record something at Boardgamegeek.con, and I finally got that chance in the final hours of the event: an interview with Aldie and Derk about the convention itself. Aldie had agreed to it as early as Friday, but those guys were just so busy throughout the weekend that we didn't get an opportunity until the very end. They were pretty fried, but probably

A bit of a delay last week, with family visiting and a conference. Just time enough to squeeze in one more show before BGG.con, which is in three days! This session report show enabled me to work through my backlog of feedback, positioned at the end of the show as always.Hansa is a game that might not be for everyone, but I still think is somewhat overlooked. (Was it really released in 2004? I

No, I'm not going to Essen this year. But I managed to go once, back in 2003, and not going never stopped me from getting excited about the event. In this podcast I talk about what observed myself when I got to attend, explain why I (normally) don't get worked up for limited edition games, and share the names of some new titles I'm anticipating.By the way, there's now one more way to submit

At last! A session report show! And these days, what's even more important to me than the session report about a couple games is the feedback section. I'm so pleased to get as much feedback as I do, and it's great fun to read & reply to it. Per my new format, all of the feedback is pushed to the end of the podcast, so those of you that only want to hear about games get to listen to the session

Mike suggested his own topic for this podcast: the elusive hybrid game that combines elements of Euro games (short play, elegant mechanics, nice bits) and wargames (real history, maybe nice maps). To a large degree, the games we want to talk about don't yet exist. But several attempts have been made to varying degrees of success, and that's what we discuss. Mike also speculates about the growth

Although this podcast will never be about wargames in a substantial way, I still play the occasional wargame and still consider myself a wargamer. Just an infrequent one. :-) Even though I don't play them so often, my interest in military history remains (all history, really). After hearing more about wargames on other podcasts, reading some Consimworld again, and generally experiencing my

Listener, Siggins.Siggins, Listener.The oldtimers in this hobby will recognize the name instantly, as well as my play on Ken Tidwell's introduction of Mike Siggins to his new readers on the Internet. Mike was one of the earliest writers and savvy reviewers of the new crop of German boardgames. Starting in the late 1980s(!) with other mags, he's most notable for his decade-long, near-solo effort

I think this is settling into a standard format for this podcast: an audio session report show with feedback/letters section tacked onto the end for BGTG-aholics. (The other standard format is the theme show, especially the All About shows featuring just one game in depth.) In this show I get back in the saddle again with a Santa Clarita Boardgamer session, though a bit too rambly at the

You can tell from the date that I've had this show recorded for a week already. The "All About" shows are often my most well-regarded . . . by both my listeners and myself! So you know I didn't want to sit on this one, especially for one of my favorite games. However, the quality of the sound recording meant that I had to work a little harder to fix this one up. I hope you're able to hear it ok,

Here's part 2 of the show, the longer part that is the in-depth treatment of Verräter. You know, I'd love to get a translation of Casasola Merkle's "Entsehung" page for the game. It tells the story of the game's development. I can understand part of it using an online translator, but those are always sketchy.-MarkLinksVerräterBrettspielwelt (where you can play Verräter and many others online in

Though I've missed the past three Santa Clarita Boardgamers sessions (drat), I've still had a few opportunities for playing games. Here are some opinions about those, including a new play-by-web offering, Torres.Also, I hadn't included any email (or voicemail!) feedback for a while, so it was starting to pile up. Rather than cut that short, I decided to move the feedback segment of the show to

Ryan shows up in lots of my session reports because he's the most constant figure at Santa Clarita Boardgamer sessions. He and his wife Erin host most of our game nights. With that in mind, this show was intended to be about the "care & feeding" of local game groups: how to start one up and keep it going strong. That's pretty much what was recorded, though it also rambled through some fun history

This was a fun show to record, sitting down with the local gamer & friend who designed the BGTG logo(s). After some general chat about how Greg's background, how he got into the hobby, and joined the Santa Clarita Boardgamers, we got into the main theme of the show: boardgame presentation. For a graphics and design-savvy guy like Greg, that value of a game's good presentation is obvious. For a

Another All About show, another with a second voice, and another long one! This should be interesting... Though I normally prefer shows to be shorter, perhaps only half as long, this is also the kind of show I'd like to listen to. But does anyone else feel the same? An hour of two guys talking minutiae about Medici: whether you ever flip more than one card for auction, offensive vs. defensive

It's been a long time coming, but I finally got my wife Candy to join me for a podcast. Considering how popular and everlasting the question "How can I get my wife/girlfriend to play games with me?" is on discussion boards, this podcast should be of interest to many. Candy plays games with me, sure, but she's not an avid hobbyist like myself. Or rather, she's got her own avid hobbies--boardgames

Sorry for the nearly 2-week break between podcasts. That wasn't my plan, but life sometimes gets busy. Fortunately, half of that was for a fun weekend spent winetasting with Candy when the kids stayed with my folks. We went to the Santa Ynez valley area made more famous recently by the movie Sideways.But this show isn't about that--it's about catching up on some older feedback (including another

A little bit longer podcast this time, as we played lots of games and had some interesting discussion to boot! Plus, I responded to feedback at the beginning of the show, something I hadn't done for a while.By the way, one of the reasons we played Tower of Babel at this session was to counteract the botched rules at an earlier outing. I wasn't at that previous session, so those forgotten/

Finally! I've wanted to get back to a theme show for a while, and one on microgames has been on my to-do list. As I say in the show, this is really sort of training me for doing some shows about wargames. I'm not ready to do that yet, but it will come someday.This was another recording using the mobile device, a Treo 650, rather than my normal laptop & headset mic rig. There's a drop in audio

Over a week between podcasts, rats! Well, sometimes our lives get busy, right? Between a crunch at work . . . and a literal crunch at home (car crash--everyone's ok), there wasn't a chance to record anything recently. Hopefully I'll catch up soon.First up is another in-between show. I guess it's mostly an audio session report, but since it talks about SoCal Games Day, and especially dads playing

Once again I included my son Sam on the podcast. This show is an audio session report for some games played with family over the 4th of July holiday weekend. So it's got some angst about getting family to play the sort of games I like, trying to pick things they like, and then worrying about how well they went over. :)Be sure to vote on the new logos using the webpoll in my right sidebar. Thanks!

This show was something of a hybrid, an audio session report that had an overall theme: 2-player games. That's because the most recent Santa Clarita Boardgamer session just had two players! Myself and BGTG logo designer Greg Wilzbach. We got in some good ones, and once again it made me think that we ought to play these more even on nights when we've got more turnout.Speaking of those logos, the

I've been wanting to do this for a while, talk for an entire show about one game. And now I've done it, about one of my very favorite games Entdecker. I suppose this kind of show is really something of an audio game review, though I didn't plan it that way when I started talking. Entdecker is a game that's been published in two separate versions, has a well-known variant, another I prefer, and

A quick little show, the shortest I've done in a while. Mostly I just struck while the iron was hot, but with a surge in subscribers due to podcast support in iTunes, it's proven to be timely. Welcome new listeners! As I say in the little audio aside, I encourage the new folks to check out the permanently linked shows at the top of the right sidebar: intro shows about podcasting and also strategy

I wonder how long it will be until I feel like I know what I'm doing?! Seems like every podcast I learn a little something new. This time it's as simple as making the podcast and blog post title with the games listed NOT in the order we played them. Otherwise, Tonga Bonga leads every audio SR this month, and at first glance it looks like I'm podcasting about the same thing. In a way, I guess I am

After a trio of shows sharing the microphone with someone else, I'm back to doing my solo show. That will still be what I do most of the time, I think. It's back to a theme show, too, focusing on the history of Internet communication on our hobby. Mailing lists, newsgroups, websites, that sort of thing. I didn't really get to all of the websites I wanted to cover—guess I'll have to have a part 2

Anyone who's a parent of multiple kids knows this rule: be fair to all of them. So after Sam got a chance to be on my podcast, talking about the games he likes, I knew that Molly deserved a turn. Actually, she had wanted to do it first! Molly just finished third grade, and was my little boardgame player even before her older brother. Although she plays the occasional video game, she's not into

Here's another show where I have someone else recording with me. Only this time it's my son Sam, and he's plugged in locally to the same laptop. (Technical aside: this was incredibly easy, just patching in a second microphone/headset using a five-dollar audio jack splitter! I need to do more of this with local friends.) Besides hearing from the horse's mouth about a 5th/6th grader's attitudes

Last week I joked that Tonga Bonga would be our Game of the Month. Here we were, playing it again--by request! Maybe it's meant to be. This time was different in that it was a 3-player game, and I won big instead of losing big. Then I got to try Ryan & Erin's new Crokinole board. It's not theirs, really--they bought it as a graduation gift for Erin's cousin. This board is from Crokinole World,

You asked for a second voice on Boardgames To Go? You got it!Ok, only some of you asked for a second voice. And ok, I won't have someone like Mike Mayer joining me on the podcast regularly. In fact, right now I think I'll still do the majority of the shows solo. But now that I've figured out how to patch in a remote collaborator for the show, I will do more of this in the future. I want to get

A nice, big session report. Last week's session wasn't any longer than the previous one, but instead of playing one big game (Struggle of Empires), this time we played several shorter games. These are always my favorite game nights, though I can handle a longer game once in a while.I also was able to open with several listener comments, which was fun. Keep 'em coming.Email Mark JohnsonGamesTonga

A show all about me. I hope this is still of interest to everyone--I figure it's important to know where your writer/podcaster is coming from. Once you're calibrated on who I am, you can interpret my reactions to different games a bit better. I start at the games I played as a kid, but then move through the microgames and roleplaying games that dominated high school and college. The boardgaming

This show may not be as interesting to listeners who have been enjoying this hobby for a while. But as I mentioned in a previous show, I think it's important that this podcast have one show intended for newcomers. Though there are at least a couple more boardgame podcasts out there, mine is still the one that pops up when someone does a podcast search specifically for boardgames (only because

I had a few technical challenges with this show--hopefully none of them come through in the recording. (I did the intro on my little Treo phone/PDA thingie, then pasted it into my normal Audacity recording software. I hadn't noticed that this fiddled with my normal sampling rate, which affects some CD burners. I think I fixed it, though.) By all means, let me know if something is amiss.Note the

A theme show I'd mentioned earlier, focusing on the ideas behind game awards. I was consciously trying to avoid just making this a rundown of the various awards, trying to get a little behind the purpose and motivation for game awards. Was I successful? Partially, I think.Email Mark JohnsonLinksBrett & Board's Awards pageInternational Gamers AwardsDeutscher Spiel Preis form (and Mik's explanation

Finishing up the earlier theme show about conventions, this time covering invitational events like The Gathering of Friends and Gulf Games, then wrapping up with some of the smallest but best events, public Games Days.At the end I mention the next theme show will be about the various game awards, and I'm asking for feedback/input about that topic in particular.Links(No website for private events

June 11 update: I've switched over to 32kbps MP3 exporting out of Audacity, rather than the 48 I was originally using. For speech the difference in audio quality ought to be barely detectable, while the filesize savings are nothing to sneeze at (around 25%).This particular podcast has nothing to do with boardgames! It's a special show about podcasting itself. The first third of the program are

Finally did the show about conventions, and I didn't even finish what I wanted to say. But I limited myself to a half-hour, just the same. I'll wrap up in a future show, though that will probably not be my next show. In this one I start at the top, discussing my one day at Essen 2003, other experiences with Origins and Gencon (well, at least Gencon SoCal), talk up some more-than-regional cons

Oof, that's a long title for this post. But I wanted that top line to tell people what's in this podcast, so that can see it in their RSS reader or podcast aggregator. This entire show is an audio session report. As you'll hear in the podcast, I received some good suggestions that I could kill two birds with one stone by keeping the session reports, just separating them out into their own show.

This audio session report mostly talks about the games I played at two recent Santa Clarita Boardgamer sessions. What do people listen for in an audio session report, anyway? I don't spend any time explaining the mechanics of the games. That's not a good use of anyone's time, especially my own. You can follow the links below to learn all you'll want about rules & mechanics.I'm primarily telling

Ok, with four of these shows "in the can," it's time to go live with this podcast/blog. Right after I upload this show I'll spread the word online and we'll see what happens. Naturally I hope people like it, but I'd certainly understand some . . . ahem . . . constructive criticism. (Especially after I suggested some Tough Love for Geek Speak once.) Fair's fair.As I mention near the end of this

This show is all about playing boardgames with your family. Well, with my family. A family who isn't as blown away by strategy boardgames as I am, they still humor me from time to time. They even enjoy some games now and then. The small audio session report tacked on the end is mostly about a mega Carcassonne game I played before El Grande last week.On the technical front, I changed some of my

This first one is a little rough, both because I was working with a poor microphone and mistakenly thought I should keep my voice relatively flat. But at least it's a start! At the end I wrap up with an audio session report from the Santa Clarita Boardgamers (Garden Gnome Society, Rumis, and Doom:The Boardgame).Email Mark Johnson

In the third show I describe a variety of online boardgames I like to play, using the play-by-web (or email) format, as opposed to a realtime format like Brettspielwelt or the Days of Wonder site. I also rifle through a session report of the Santa Clarita Boardgamers (Karawane, Rome: Circus Maximus, El Grande, Kraut & Rüben).Other linksBoardgamegeek [English] (Euphrat & Tigris, Auf Heller und

Second try, and this time I've got a slightly better microphone and less monotone voice. :) I talk about why I'm doing a podcast at all, why I hope there will be more boardgaming podcasts soon, and a session report for games played with my old group, the Left Coast Gamers (Evergreen, What Were You Thinking?, Durch die Wüste, and San Marco.)Email Mark Johnson