The Family Gamers Podcast

322 Fact! What to Skull and Bones, ancient German secret societies, and the Georgia Guidestones have in common? March 22. Sponsor: Start making plans now to keep your holiday budget under control for next year. Maybe you can do a Secret Santa gift exchange or only give gifts to the children in the family… If you want to talk through other ideas to take some of the stress out of the holidays, set up a time to talk to First Move Financial by going to firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers today. What We’ve Been Playing QuartoStar Trek: Super-Skill PinballSplitterRoot Beer Float ChallengeboopFeatherlight (yes, the Potoo bird really does look that weird.) Welcome New Members Stop into the Family Gamers Community and say hi! Top Ten Small Games (Two Top Five Lists) Games that fit in a pocket (well, sort of) make it easy to play games anywhere. They’re also generally cheap, and so that makes them great to give as small gifts. Anitra’s favorites: Sprawlopolis (from Button Shy Games)A Gentle Rain (from Mondo Games)Deep Sea Adventure (from Oink Games – find it on Amazon)Get the MacGuffin (from Looney Labs – our review) – great for a big group!Tussie Mussie (also from Button Shy Games) Andrew’s favorites: Palm Island (from Portal Dragon Games – our review)Holiday Hijinks series (from Grand Gamers Guild – our reviews)Mr. Jack Pocket (from Hurrican – find it on Amazon)Similo (from Horrible Guild – our review)Duple (from Anomia Press) Giveaway And don’t forget about our four giveaways! Find Us Online: Facebook: @familygamersaa and thefamilygamers.com/communityTwitter (X): @familygamersaaInstagram: @familygamersaaTikTok: @familygamersaaBluesky: @familygamersaaThreads: @familygamersaaYoutube: TheFamilyGamers or join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord! thefamilygamers.com/discord Or, for the most direct method, email us! [email protected] and [email protected]. PLEASE don’t forget to subscribe to the show, tell your friends about the show, and leave us a review at Apple Podcast or whatever your podcast subscription source is. We’re also on Amazon Music, TuneIn, and Spotify. You can also now find us on YouTube Music! So pull it up and give us a listen while you’re toiling away at work :) Music for The Family Gamers Podcast is provided with permission from You Bred Raptors? Use the promo code GIFTS to get 10% off your Family Gamers merchandise! The Family Gamers is sponsored by First Move Financial. Go to FirstMoveFinancial.com/familygamers to learn how the team at First Move Financial can help you pile up the victory points. The post 322 – Top Ten Small Games appeared first on The Family Gamers.

Anitra went to PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia last week. What’s the latest and greatest we can expect to see in the coming year? Fact: 321 makes us think of the old educational TV show 3-2-1 Contact! Sponsor: If you want to talk through other ideas to take some of the stress out of the holidays set up a time to talk to First Move by going to firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers today. What We’ve Been Playing SprawlopolisGreen Team Wins (our review) – fun even when we “broke” the game with more playersJoan of Arc: Orleans Draw and Write – fun but hard on the eyesReady Set Bet!Kabuto Sumo – expansion changes it but doesn’t speed it up muchWinterMada – a little better with 3 players.Oh What Fun – review linked below.Head SpinStar Trek: Super-Skill PinballCastle Panic (new Big Box)Garden NationTuring Machine Giveaways! We have four giveaways starting today and running through Dec 24. Enter to win any of:The Quest Kids (w/expansion)AldabasFyfeTurtle Splash SNAP Review – Oh What Fun! Do you like Christmas? Do you like trivia and puzzles? Then you’ll have fun with Oh What Fun! A Christmas-themed party game from Project Genius. Watch the video or read the transcript for the whole review. PAX Unplugged Interviews Resonym with Mary Flanagan Phantom Ink – seance-themed party game. Can your team guess the secret object with clues from the spirits? Available now. Retrograde – “Yahtzee dice chaos” with a Space-Invaders theme. Roll doubles to blast invaders and also get special target cards to expand your abilities. Fulfilling to Kickstarter backers now, available in stores soon. Find out more at Resonym.com. Find them on Twitter @resonym and on Facebook @resonym. Dolphin Hat Games with Dave Campbell Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza Gimme That! – a hot potato game of speedy dice rolling and speedy writing. Both are available now. Find out more at DolphinHat.com or on Twitter @DolphinHatGames and Facebook @DolphinHatGames. Smirk & Laughter Games / Smirk & Dagger Games with Curt Covert boop is adorable and surprisingly challenging! You might have to wait for the next printing though – it’s sold out almost everywhere. Find out more at SmirkAndLaughter.com or on Twitter @SmirkAndDagger and Facebook @SmirkAndDagger. Randall Hampton, The Little Game Master The Little Game Master is “Dr. Seuss meets Dungeons & Dragons.” A series of illustrated storybooks to introduce kids to tabletop roleplaying. He’s also working on a game system – a set of rules for roleplaying intended for kids age 4-9. Coming to Kickstarter early 2023! Find out more at RandallHamptonArt.com or on Twitter @randall_hampton and Instagram @randallhampton and even Twitch @randall_hampton . Last Night Games with Jake Jenne The Finest Fish – tile placement on a goldfish! Make patterns and clusters of scales on your personal goldfish – available soon. Life of a Chameleon – move a chameleon around the board to eat bugs that match your color, in a certain order to complete objective cards. Of course, you’ll need to change your color to eat the right bugs! Available now. Find out more at LastNightGames.com. Or on Twitter @lastnightgames and Instagram @lastnightgames. Restoration Games with Matt Key to the Kingdom – the original game came out in 1990. Roll dice, move around the board… But the board opens up with big flaps to give you new areas to explore! Find out more at RestorationGames.com. Flagbearer Games with Collyn Messier Nations & Cannons is a campaign setting for D&D. This lets you play a completely historic setting using the D&D framework – or combine it with traditional D&D elements for a supernatural campaign. Nations & Cannons walks through the early Revolutionary War in the colonies, with roles such as Officer, Renegade, Pioneer, etc. and pulling in real characters from American history. Even the items, armor, spells (ie “gambits”), and enemies have been re-imagined to work in a 18th century historical setting. Keep an eye out for their coming Kickstarter in February for a campaign module covering the first half of the Revolution (seige of Boston through Valley Forge). Find out more: NationsAndCannons.com or Facebook: @NationsAndCannons or Twitter: @FlagbearerGames. One Day West Games with Bob & Ryan Craig Canosa – a two player abstract game. Sirens lure sailors (using “influence rings”) back to their islands. Find out more about Canosa and all their other games at OneDayWestGames.com, Twitter: @OneDayWestGames, Facebook: @OneDayWestGames, and Instagram: @OneDayWestGames. More PAX Unplugged with Anitra! Weird Giraffe Games is coming out with “macro games” (27 cards), most of which are tie-ins with their existing games. Explosion in the Laboratory is the first one. It just finished its Kickstarter and should be

Episode 320Room to Grow: Legacy Games Fact – This week on the show we talk about the A320 (the most popular aircraft family in the world). Sponsor – Visit FirstMoveFinancial.com/familygamers to schedule a quick phone and see if First Move is the right fit for you. What We’ve Been Playing Mada (review coming soon)Fox in the Forest DuetFramework (Dave’s review)Winter (review soon)Kabuto Sumo (review soon)Sobek: 2 Players (review soon)On TourColorfulOh My Brain (review soon)Suspects: Claire Harper Takes the Stage (review soon)SantoriniKingdomino & Unmatched (working on that family 10×10!) The Monthly Report Andrew: 30 plays, H-index: 2 – Draftosaurus, Suspects Anitra: 49 plays (ish), H-index: 3, most played: Kabuto Sumo, Draftosaurus, Mickey’s Christmas Carol Welcome New Members Stop in to the community and say hi! SNAP Review – Disney Mickey’s Christmas Carol Game This puzzle-assembling game is sturdy and perfect for young kids to play with an adult, or older kids to play on their own. It’s simple but feels classic. Elliot helps us talk about how to play. Read the transcript or watch the video of this SNAP review. Room to Grow: Legacy Games Our goal with Room to Grow is to bring your kids through a series of games that grow in complexity. We do our best to start with a game that shows a mechanic or play style very simply, and then move up to a game that is a little more complex, and then one even more complex. What is a legacy game? A legacy board game is one in which players make permanent changes to the game itself over the course of several play sessions. Pieces may be marked up or covered with stickers and then used again, components may be permanently trashed and new pieces added (or all of the above). (Listeners – If you’ve played a legacy game, what do you do with the components you’re told to “trash”?) Many legacy games bring the players through some sort of story (often called a “campaign”) over a set number of plays. A campaign brings you through some kind of a story. Not every legacy game is a campaign game, and vice-versa. For beginners: Zombie Kidz Evolution We’ve often called this “My First Legacy Game”. Zombie Kidz Evolution is a simple tower-defense style game. Every time you finish a game you make progress towards opening another envelope with new things to add to the game. You progress faster if you wing games, but you still get some reward just for playing, which makes it feel very forgiving. In addition to new pieces and new rules, you also put stickers in the rulebook and on some of the bad-guy zombies. There’s not really a story line here, but that’s OK. Our kids have loved this game and its sequel, Zombie Teenz Evolution. You can always dial back the difficulty and play an “earlier” (easier) style. Plus there is an achievement system that keeps the game feeling fresh, even if you’ve “finished” the game. A bit more: My City Unusual in legacy games, My City is not cooperative. Instead, up to four players will each keep a personal board and personal pieces. These will be changed both by the decisions you make, and by how well you do in each game (1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th place). My City is a simultaneous tile-laying, puzzley kind of game. Players who do well will be given additional challenges to make future plays harder, and players who finish poorly will be given advantages in future plays. Our biggest complaint is that the difficulty doesn’t adjust quickly enough for a family with wildly different levels of skill (like ours). We reviewed My City early in 2021. Play your heart out! Pandemic Legacy We would call this a “serious” legacy game. It’s not the first one, but it is the one that took off in popularity. If you know how to play Pandemic, you will be able to jump into Pandemic Legacy very easily. However, it’s a much harder game than the others we talked about here – and harder than the original Pandemic as well. As with My City, the difficulty level adjusts between plays. You have two chances to successfully complete each “month”; every time you lose, you get bonuses that will help you on the next play. But when you win, these bonuses are taken away. You must truly form a cooperative team, planning in sync, to do well in Pandemic Legacy. Find Us Online: Facebook: @familygamersaa and thefamilygamers.com/communityTwitter (X): @familygamersaaInstagram: @familygamersaaTikTok: @familygamersaaBluesky: @familygamersaaThreads: @familygamersaaYoutube: TheFamilyGamers or join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord! thefamilygamers.com/discord Or, for the most direct method, email us! [email protected] and [email protected]. PLEASE don’t forget to subscribe to the show, tell your friends about the show, and leave us a review at Apple Podcast or whatever your po

This week’s guest is Diandra Asbaty, a professional bowler. 319 Fact: The world’s largest sweet potato pie! 319kg, 200cm (over 6ft) in diameter! https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/445565-largest-pie-sweet-potato Sponsor message: For expert help applying some of the same principles that help you take down your friends in Agricola, head over to FirstMoveFinancial.com/FamilyGamers and schedule a call, today! Games We’ve Been Playing Green Team Wins (our review)Draftosaurus (our review)Super Mega Lucky Box (our review) – it was a little harder for Bingo-loving grandma than we expected.On Tour: ParisKingdomino (our review) Community Review – Tantrix Tantrix is an abstract tile laying game for one to four players. The game is played with hexagonal tiles that have three lines drawn on them (each line connects two sides of the hexagon) in three of four possible colors (red, yellow, blue, green). In the multiplayer game, each turn players draw one tile from a bag and try to make the longest line of their color. There are a few placement restrictions, like the line colors have to match. Loops don’t count as infinite points! Once the tiles run out, the game is over and longest line wins. In the solitaire version of the game, the player takes a set of tiles and makes a loop of a specific color. The tiles are numbered on the back and the number is the color for that solution (for example, on tile 3, the 3 is yellow so the player has to make a yellow loop). The first few puzzles are easy but with more tiles comes more difficulty. The game comes with about fifty tiles. I’ve only made it to the mid-twenties in the solitaire puzzles. The game is fun as multiplayer or single player. I prefer the single player. Young kids will have a challenge with planning ahead to make longer lines; also, if one player is prone to Analysis Paralysis, the game can drag. The tiles are sturdy bakelite and hold up well to many uses. They also look very good. My favorite way to play is the solitaire mode and I still have plenty of play left in my set. (more info at Tantrix.com) SNAP Review – Turtle Splash This dexterity and memory game from Lucky Duck Kids is adorable. It’s intended for young kids, but older kids and adults will enjoy it occasionally, too. Read the transcript or watch the video for Turtle Splash. Beyond Board Games with Diandra Asbaty Diandra is a bowler who has won many international medals and was on Team USA for fifteen years, is the official youth bowling spokesperson for the United States Bowling Congress (USBC), among many other accomplishments. She’s also a mom and a wife, and has her own brand: Beyond the Lanes – and is still winning tournaments now: this year with EJ Tackett. “I’m grateful to Grandma Betty for putting a bowling ball in my hand when I was five years old.” At a young age, Diandra decided she wanted to be the best in the world – starting with catching up to her big sister. It was hard work, with practicing every night. Sometimes very late at night, which meant that Diandra needed to take naps when getting home from school. Do your kids bowl too? “I have a boy that’s 12 and a girl that’s 8 – of course they bowl!” Diandra doesn’t push her kids to bowl, but they’ve always been around it. We love that bowling is a sport where everyone can play together, no matter their skill level. What are your favorite moments competing professionally? USBC Queens win (2012) – Diandra was figuring out how to be a mom and also still be a pro bowler. Winning was validation that she could pull back and be present for her children, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t still be a champion bowler. Advice for kids & teens who bowl? Bowling should always be fun. Make sure it’s fun, and enjoy it. Seek out people who know more than you, or find a coach. That’s how you get better! But if you’re not having fun, what’s the point? Just remember, “if this was easy, everyone would be great at it.” What is Beyond the Lanes? A way for Diandra to pass on lessons that she has learned through bowling. A curriculum centered around personal development. There is a free newsletter and blog, in addition to several structured courses at BeyondTheLanes.com And Board Games, of course! We talk about Pan Am (Andrew’s favorite)and Balderdash (Diandra’s favorite) … And then we try to find the perfect game for Diandra’s husband! We suggest the EXIT series and Unlock series of escape-room boxes. Anitra recommends BananagramsAndrew recommends Just Oneand Green Team Wins Find Diandra Online: BeyondTheLanes.com @diandraasbaty (instagram, Facebook, Twitter) Instagram: @diandraasbatyFacebook: @diandraasbatyTwitter: @diandraasbaty Find Us Online: Facebook: @familygamersaa and the