Podcasts are often a discursive medium, and so naturally we find ourselves touching on many and diverse topics. This week, we delve into poetry and Star Trek, just in case you were under the illusion that we were anything other than unreconstructed nerds. Walker, being part jock, had to be restrained so as to not spontaneously give himself a wedgie. AYURIS: Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done 2m06s (Seth Jaffee, Tasty Minstrel, 2018) Games Played Last Week: -Bullet♥︎ 3m22s (Joshua Van Laningham, Level 9...
May 19, 2020•1 hr 12 min
There are so many life lessons to be learned from the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon. For one, shave before debates. For another, hire limber secretaries with flexible standards on truth. Always be sure to hire expert lockpickers. Make sure your vice president will have your back (Nixon at least got a mulligan on that one). I mean, he's not a role model of mine--I wouldn't get his face tattooed on my back, to pick something at random--but he does serve as a potent set of object less...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Subtitles are to be used with discretion. Some people can't be trusted with them, and most of those people seem to work in Hollywood and non-fiction publishing. We resist the urge much of the time, but every once in a while the dam bursts and we must find an outlet for our pent-up subtitling impulses. We have over twenty this time. We're sorry. AYURIS: Teotihuacan: City of Gods 3m53s (Daniele Tascini, NSKN Games, 2018) Games Played Last Week: -Vanguard: Dawn of War 6m45s (Uncredited, Arc...
May 05, 2020•1 hr 7 min
A rulebook generates expectations, and whether and how those expectations are met or frustrated is an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes you get exactly what you want and that's a good thing--and sometimes the rules promise a set of experiences that never manifest. Over time, you start to get a better feel for what a game might be like by virtue of its rulebook, but even experienced gamers can be thrown for a loop by an unexpected mismatch. To summarize, what I'm saying here is that Nemes...
Apr 28, 2020•1 hr 12 min
“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov AYURIS: Gùgōng 1m22s (Andreas Steding, Game Brewer, 2018) ...
Apr 21, 2020•1 hr 5 min
No daunts are asked and no daunts are given this week. "I don't give a daunt" is tattooed on Walker's back, no doubt an homage to Rhett Butler's famous ending line. We needed a little breather this time--a break from two-hour epic experiences. A little palate cleanser to ease us into a purely digital gaming life; because, to be frank, in this stage of isolation, we felt a little daunted. We will plead for your indulgence, as our audio setup is once again in a state of flux as...
Apr 14, 2020•56 min
Isolation gaming continues, so we turn our lonely eyes to gaming alone--an endeavour that predates plague-induced solitude, but is certainly thriving now. Many a gamer is experimenting with those (increasingly frequent) variants for the first time. We understand--any port in a storm. Let us game alone together. AYURIS: Coimbra 1m48s (Flaminia Brasini & Virginio Gigli, eggertspiele, 2018) Games Played Last Week: -Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North 3m32s (Joanna Kijanka & Ignacy Trzew...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 14 min
A little throwback for you, our dear and loyal listeners, a small taste of the pre-summer schedule splendour and abundance where we spoil you with both a topic and a feature game. It happened organically, you see, what with all the social distancing -mandated two-player gaming we've been doing. That, and we want to try to give you a little more in light of the world giving you a little less. Of course, if you want to hear less of us, you always have that power. Games Played Last Week: -Menar...
Mar 31, 2020•1 hr 20 min
Ripped from the headlines, as Dick Wolf is wont to say, we present to you the most timely of discussions. Of course, Walker takes us down theoretical tangents once again, whereas Mark rolls his eyes and tried to keep things on track--the standard roles that our hosts always seem to fall into. In Walker's defense, the Kool-Aid Man is a pressing philosophical issue. Fortunately, boardgaming has resolved the thorny matter of his (its?) identity; with such a success, surely Fermat's Last The...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr 6 min
All of your burning questions shall be addressed! Why is there something rather than nothing? Quid est veritas? War, huh! What is it good for? Why do birds suddenly appear every time a Knizia game is near? Rest assured that the topics covered are vast--Macross, objectivism, fictional Thai kick boxers, and so much more. Featuring special guests Dan Thurot (spacebiff.com), Charlie Theel (playerelimination.com), and Kellen and Mark from Board Game Barrage (boardgamebarrage.com). AYURIS: Discover: L...
Mar 17, 2020•1 hr 12 min
Warning: there is some implied discussion of the existence of the health care field in this week's review. No jokes were made about current viral events, though, and given the general low-brow nature of this podcast that's a minor miracle. The only jokes about current affairs are related to hip hop, and even those references are dated to over twenty years ago. Games Played Last Week: -Street Masters: Aftershock 2m47s (Adam Sadler & Brady Sadler, Blacklist Games, 2019) -Stephenson'...
Mar 10, 2020•1 hr
Some of you might be unfamiliar with the traditions surrounding birthdays in Canada. They are savage affairs, drenched in blood and feats of suffering. I mean, there's the cake, sure, and that part is pretty benign--except for the baking of it, come to think of it, where the birthday girl or birthday boy is expected to remove the cake from an oven with their bare hands and devour the thing whole; then comes the declaration of threats, where the horribly burned, frosting-seared celebrant moun...
Mar 03, 2020•51 min
Would you like a job at Asmodee? Well guess what, if you need any replacement parts from them, you've just been drafted to work as their support staff. Best of all, your salary is nothing! Are we doomed to become ever more curmudgeonly, rambling to young gamers about how "back in my day, we got replacement parts just by sending an email" and the the young 'uns would be all like "Ok, Millennial, but what's an email?" Games Played Last Week: -Quartermaster General WW2 2...
Feb 25, 2020•1 hr 7 min
On must acknowledge that in many instances, pre-judgment is an adaptive advantage--I don't mean with respect to people, but in terms of being able to sift through the endless data with which we are constantly bombarded. Most of our concepts are pre-fabricated little categories that we can shove sense data into in order to make sense of the world (there's your Kantianism in three seconds for you). In boardgaming, were seventeen releases hit the market while I was typing this sentence, it ...
Feb 18, 2020•1 hr 1 min
One must learn as a child that just because something is difficult does not mean it isn't worth doing. Sometimes we here at SVWAG feel that the corollary for adults is that just because something is difficult doesn't mean it is worthwhile. Some hard things should just be avoided. It's hard to drive a nail through your own skull, but it doesn't follow that it's necessarily a prime opportunity for self-improvement that ought to be pursued. Unrelatedly, Vital Lacerda games. Game...
Feb 13, 2020•1 hr 14 min
My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious. AYURIS: Level 7 [Omega Protocol] 2m34s (Will Schoonover, Privateer Press, 2013) Games Played Last Week: -Guards of Atlantis II: Tabletop MOBA 6m38s (Artyom Nichipurov, Wolff Designaa, 2020) -Las Vegas Royale 11m13s (Rudiger Dorn, alea, 2019) -Tiny Epic Tactics 12m59s (Scot...
Feb 04, 2020•52 min
Rarely has a game been as deeply, frighteningly cynical as Imperial. We are sadly inured to the notion of vast military conflicts; and we are sadly inured to the corrupting influence of enormous wealth; but never before has a game combined the two and posited the Schlieffen Plan as a gambit to improve the marginal rate of return of someone's portfolio. Oh, my RRSP is Russian firepower, by the way. Games Played Last Week: -Papillon 1m42s (J.B. Howell, Kolossal, 2019) -Talon 3m47s (Jim Krohn, ...
Jan 28, 2020•1 hr 6 min
Eventually a charge becomes so tired and rote that it becomes accepted without critical thought--but so often these hackneyed claims are false. Knizia games are themeless is a good example. Canadians are polite is another. The one that rears its ugly head this week is Walker's insistence that he is bullied, which has definitely got to count as attempted gaslighting at this point. On the plus side, a New Year's resolution is made and then immediately fulfilled in the same episode! That is...
Jan 21, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Better late and wrong than never wrong, am I right? Wait, that doesn't make sense. Suffice to say that we wanted to be as certain as we could this year, as past years offered rather significant asterisks on our best-of lists--but this year, with only minor exceptions, we're pretty confident we played the games most likely to make the cut. I'm sure this sense of certainty and comprehensiveness will last perhaps as long as late January. Games Played Last Week: -Blood Rage 2m09s (Eric L...
Jan 14, 2020•2 hr 34 min
We're using "culture" pretty broadly, here--the SVWAG staff anthropologist is out with the flu, so there's only so much we can do. We're ready to accept some degree of cultural variance, but we don't endorse cultural relativism as a moral theory; our staff ethicist is still very much at his post. That said, social gatherings are most definitely susceptible to cultural standards than moral precepts are, and we are ever in thrall to one of SVWAG's primordial maxims: ...
Jan 07, 2020•59 min
Look, it's hard enough to remember games without them injecting too many dates into their titles. Claustrophobia 1643 I keep misremembering as 1648 (Treaty of Westphalia), Ausburg 15whenever is as forgettable as the game, Pulsar 2849 barely sticks in my mind, and now Caylus 1303. I'd be tempted to just try and parse the game as "Caylus 13XX," but it's not about trains, now, is it? Games Played Last Week: -Karate Tomate 3m01s (Reiner Knizia, AMIGO, 2018) -Telestrations: 12 Pla...
Dec 31, 2019•56 min
The Holidays are upon us--Christmas very soon, Hanukkah is ongoing, Kwanzaa around the corner--but today on SVWAG, as it is on most days, we celebrate Festivus. On Mark's insistence, we forego the Feats of Strength, as the outcome would be certain and humiliating; O, but the Airing of the Grievances! Canadians have much to complain about, what with one mess of a fulfillment after another. And complain we do. AYURIS: Too Many Bones: Undertow 3m15s (Adam Carlson & Josh J. Carlson, Chip The...
Dec 24, 2019•49 min
Perhaps it would be inevitable that there would be juvenile comments about the components in Catan: Starfarers. This is, after all, the gaming series that brought us endless unfunny remarks about wood and sheep. Perhaps the sculptors for the pieces knew what they were doing and, in turn, laughing at us. I suppose we must be thankful that Klaus Teuber remained high-minded--one shudders to imagine what the satirical outlook of, say, Vlaada Chvatil would have done with the same material. Games Play...
Dec 17, 2019•1 hr 4 min
There are times when immediately upon finishing recording, one or both of our hosts immediately feel the tremendous regret of having forgotten The Thing. But, alas, the moment has passed, and they cannot now mention The Thing. The only redress available is this episode description, which sadly no one but you reads. We salute you, hyper-literate outlier! This week, The Thing is Wavelength--recently-released masterful filler and wonderful fodder for holiday gaming in mixed circles. Rest assured th...
Dec 10, 2019•1 hr 8 min
Black Secret was an expansion to Ghost Stories where you played as vicious, frenetic shoppers trying to ascertain what were the best hidden deals on Black Friday. I think. If nothing else, one can appreciate the fact that online shopping might one day prevent the trampling deaths that accompany this uniquely retail "holiday." The end of brick and mortar retail will surely be a great loss, and one that hurts our hobby a great deal, but come on--that inevitable b-roll of crazed bargain hun...
Dec 03, 2019•1 hr 7 min
Walker introduces a new feature, the LIGHTNING ROUND. Destinies are determined and legends are forged in the lightning round, or at least they could be if it were not merely the pretext for his trolling. Someone should translate "I'm not saying, I'm just saying" into Latin so he can make it his family credo. AYURIS: The Voyages of Marco Polo 2m00s (Simone Luciani & Daniele Tascini, Hans im Gluck, 2015) Games Played Last Week: -The Menace Among Us 5m06s (Jeff Gum, Smirk & ...
Nov 26, 2019•1 hr 13 min
Sorry, people, no episode this week. Mark explains why. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Nov 19, 2019•8 min
We puzzle over the practices and intentions of game designers this week as though we were archaeologists trying to divine the practices of ashen Pompeiians. Why did these authors insert this mechanism into their artifact? Was it a mating ritual? Was it an obeisance to some vengeful, long-dead god? Was it to shoehorn in player interaction? Or was it to placate a Kickstarter audience? Oh, sorry, that one is redundant with the obeisance to a god thing. Also the mating ritual thing, if you think abo...
Nov 12, 2019•1 hr 10 min
You can replace the Mark and Walker voices with lovingly-rendered miniatures with the SVWAG Host Minis add-on, which you can have for $35, but only if you pay for it before you know what they look like and before you know the content of the episode. You can also buy the SVWAG playmat, metal coins, realistic resources, microphone first-player marker, and custom insert. This is a free podcast that can cost you a zillion dollars. Decide now, though! AYURIS: Root 2m02s (Cole Wehrle, Leder Games, 201...
Nov 05, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Fatherhood is the overall theme of this week's episode. Imagine Harry Chapin's Cat's in the Cradle, except with the father played by Vladimir the Great and the son by Svyatopolk the Accursed. "When you coming home, dad?" asks the Accursed, to which the reply is "I don't know when. But we'll get together then, son." And then, the son allegedly murders several of his siblings in a vicious power struggle. Just like in the song! Folk music of the seventies is more...
Oct 29, 2019•1 hr 6 min
