"Let us go then, you and I, When the board is spread out against the table Like a beast euthanized inside a stable; Let us go, through certain half-deserted tracks, The muttering attacks During restless nights of one-play bad games And sepia box lids with familiar names: Rules that follow like a tedious argument Of soporific intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What to play?” Let us go and have our say. In the room the gamers come and stay Talking of Asmodee.&#...
Nov 08, 2022•1 hr 2 min
Replete with a robust menagerie in this episode, we perhaps begin to see why anthropomorphic animals seem to feature in every other game lately. We have Dalmations (plus a cow named Doog trying to impersonate a Dalmation), horsies, goats, weasels and wombats (seldom do we see such an august alliteration!), meeses (not to be confused with mooses), and some needed stinkin' badgers. Not a great petting zoo, sure--of limited utility in a game of Ark Nova--but an impressive collection nonetheless...
Nov 01, 2022•1 hr 13 min
We apologize for the all-caps implied yelling, but really, given this volume we had to have a corresponding... uh, volume. The puns are also somewhat fishy--but those you can feel free to skip, jack. The nautical theme doesn't end with fishing, as the recent Crash Octopus (when compared with older titles that are comparatively crusty) shone. More specifically given that it's about an octopus and we want to minimize the yelling, it's a safe, low pod. Wait, no, that's the wrong fam...
Oct 25, 2022•1 hr 19 min
Live at SHUX 2022, we are joined with extra-special guest Quinns from Shut Up and Sit Down! He was clearly thrilled to be with us, as evinced by the following exchange: Mark: "We're professionals, Quinns." Quinns: "Citation needed." 02:26 AYURIS: Hallertau (Uwe Rosenberg, Lookout Games, 2020) Games Played Last Week: 05:11 -The Siege of Runedar (Reiner Knizia, Ludonova, 2021) 09:00 -Marrakesh (Stefan Feld, Queen Games, 2022) 14:18 -Endless Winter: Paleoamericans (Stan Kordonsk...
Oct 18, 2022•58 min
We apologize for the poor quality of Mark's half of the audio this week. We offer two possible explanations. One is that Walker, motivated as he is by spite and malice, engaged in an elaborate act of sabotage so as to undermine Mark in public. The other is that Mark (the editor, mind you) messed up the audio settings. I agree that the latter is too improbable, too conspiratorial, to take seriously--but we include it for the sake of comprehensiveness. Games Played Last Week: 01:32 -Twilight I...
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr 5 min
001 You approach a door. Test perception. If you fail, go to paragraph 105. If you succeed, go to paragraph 166. 105 You fail to notice a sharp thing, so you step on it and take 1 wound. Go to paragraph 166. 166 On the other side of the door are things you must kill for reasons. Dig out tiles 2B, 4A, 6A, 8B and 12B and get ready for some paperwork. 02:23 AYURIS: Tungaru (Louis Malz & Stefan Malz, Alley Cat Games, 2020) Games Played Last Week: 03:48 -Blood Rage (Eric Lang, CMON, 2015) 06:29 -...
Sep 27, 2022•1 hr 16 min
Even the steadfastly Imperial Americans are familiar with metric measurements of distance, volume, and temperature; but alas, the metric French Republican calendar has fallen by the wayside. Consisting of 12 months of exactly 30 days each (3 10-day weeks) with 5 (or 6, for leap years) interstitial days called "complementary days." I mean, you couldn't call them holidays what with your trying to purge religious influence on your calendar! In a fun twist, each of the 360 normal days, i...
Sep 20, 2022•58 min
We encourage elaborate deception in this week's episode. Go on designers, up your game. While we can't accept anything from you in terms of gifts or donations, you can totally fool us. Stack yourselves three deep in a trenchcoat! Pretend to be long-lost, estranged, and newly-dead relatives! Don silly hats and fake moustaches! Games Played Last Week: 01:00 -Monumental (Matthew Dunstan, Funforge, 2020) 06:37 -Spirit Island: Jagged Earth (R. Eric Reuss, Greater Than Games, 2020) 08:52 -Ragu...
Sep 13, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Fatal Fury 3's subtitle was Road to the Final Victory, ironic given that there were then four more Fatal Fury titles (the first's subtitle was The King of Fighters, which is its own huge delightful kettle of fish). While Fatal Fury Special (the actual third Fatal Fury title, which made 3 the fourth, please do keep up) was worthy in its own right, 3 is clearly where the Fatal Fury series hit its stride. This is to say nothing of the introductions of Ryuji Yamazaki and Blue Mary! It's ...
Sep 06, 2022•55 min
Not every game needs to be four huge boxes full of other boxes and plastic. Some can be delightfully simple games... with boxes that are too big due to crowdfunding. Other games could be underappreciated Reiner Knizia classics brought to a new underappreciating audience! Via, I guess, the medium of crowdfunding. Hm. I suppose I don't have a point, except that we, like pearls before swine or a Knizia before a gamer, are ungrateful contradictory ingrates. Games Played Last Week: 01:58 -Meadow ...
Aug 30, 2022•1 hr 3 min
I met a gamer from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of plastic Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Cool Mini or Not, Kickstarter of Kickstarters. Look on my pledges ye...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr 10 min
The Smart Car was truly out-of-the-box thinking. "Why do passenger cars all have to be the way they are?" asked some clever group of designers, and designed the minimalistic teensy Smart Car. Of course, the challenges posed by manufacturing the little thing, or driving the little thing on a highway, or walking away from a crash in the little thing, proved to be compelling arguments in favour of more traditional passenger car manufacture. What I'm saying is that sometimes the box exis...
Aug 16, 2022•1 hr 12 min
There was a time you could just stroll in a big box store in the United States and just buy a miniatures skirmish game that was actually pretty good. Sure, it didn't have analog movement or anything, but it used true line of sight and had amazing plastic terrain. So much plastic. Like, a whole lot. One the one hand, Hasbro says they're bringing HeroScape back, but on the other, ain't no way it's coming back the same as it was. They're going to bleed us dry for those little pr...
Aug 09, 2022•59 min
Times are bad. Children no longer listen to their elders and everyone is running a Kickstarter. When I started this hobby I had no idea I would get a crash course in international shipping and logistics. Back in the day you might have had a friend in Germany send you the hot new thing, now you're tracking to see when the container ship with your stuff gets to leave port in China. 01:24 AYURIS: Beyond the Sun (Dennis K. Chan, Rio Grande Games, 2020) Games Played Last Week: 03:42 -Legacy of Dr...
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Much talk of animals this week, what with wombats and mass animal harvesting in Stroganov. Mark's experience was that despite covering many hot-button issues in his medical ethics classes, the one that invariably produced the most voluble emotional responses was that of medical testing on animals. Pit Bull owners, in particular; despite there being no medical testing of the type discussed on Pit Bulls. Go figure. Games Played Last Week: 01:03 -San Francisco (Reiner Knizia, Rebel Studio, 2022...
Jul 26, 2022•1 hr
We celebrate the release of a palindrome episode with the glorious news of the return of SHUX, the Shut Up & Sit Down Expo. Perhaps more relevantly, SVWAG are invited guests! Both Mark and Walker will be in Vancouver from September 30th to October 2nd. Now that you know where they will be, you can more efficiently avoid them. Or you could go play a game with them, whatevs. 02:54 AYURIS: Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef (Tim Eisner & Ben Eisner, Druid City Games, 2020) Games Played Last W...
Jul 19, 2022•1 hr 4 min
It's a weird little thematic disconnect when you're not sure who or what your avatar in-game is. Perhaps we have swallowed corporate personhood so fully that we can easily accept playing as a corporation but balk a little at an amorphous group of power brokers--or a faceless protagonist channeling tree spirits. Games Played Last Week: 01:51 -The Great Wall (Kamil 'Sanex' Cieśla, Robert Plesowicz, & Łukasz Włodarczyk, Awaken Realms, 2021) 08:19 -Stars of Akarios (Brendan McCas...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Enjoy the works of Thomas Lehmann while you can! Despite the lack of player interaction of Dice Realms, Mr. Lehmann has violated local, provincial, and federal law by not supplying a solo mode. International treaty has also been flouted by the absence of a campaign. I fear he may be put in boardgame jail as a consequence. Can he build a tableau convincing enough as his defence? His attorney, Dr. Gonzo, does not inspire much confidence. Games Played Last Week: 01:01 -Titan (Matthieu Podevin, Holy...
Jul 05, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Mark had to reign himself in considerably this week, what with the song temptations of the Talking Heads followed by his favourite torch song teased by Welcome to the Moon. He also tried to workshop a Gourds of Atlantis joke, but responses were--to put it mildly--not encouraging. It wasn't a total loss, as he managed to sneak in some Norse mythology in Telestrations. So that's... something. Games Played Last Week: 01:11 -XenoShyft: Onslaught (Keren Philosophales & Michael Shinall, CM...
Jun 28, 2022•1 hr 5 min
The dam has burst, and the flow of large player-count games rushes without signs of abating. We are willing to be sufficiently foolhardy to gather in larger groups, so the demand for 6+ player games has skyrocketed; and with it, the chance to return to old favourites. Dare we call it... a party? Games Played Last Week: 02:22 -Guards of Atlantis II (Artyom Nichipurov, Wolff Designa, 2022) 07:46 -Thor (Reiner Knizia, Heidelberger Spieleverlag, 2002) 10:37 -Reichbusters: Project Vril (Jake Thornton...
Jun 21, 2022•53 min
Walker yearns for a universal grammar, a sort of iconograhic Esperanto. That is a bridge too far for Mark, but they nonetheless find common ground on certain time terms and certain graphical conventions. They may be alone, of course, but they would rather that everyone deferred to their intuitions. 01:17 AYURIS: The Castles of Tuscany (Stefan Feld, alea, 2020) Games Played Last Week: 03:17 -Unsettled (Marc Neidlinger & Tom Mattson, Orange Nebula, 2021) 08:45 -Sniper Elite: The Board Game (Ro...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 9 min
After a purgatorial thirteen months, Mark will be released from his Cain-like wanderings and allowed to repatriate to Kingston where he will get to be home. He figures that if Immanuel Kant got to be world famous before the age of global communications without leaving a 50 kilometer radius of his hometown, he has more than paid his dues. If anyone wants him to attend a function in the future, they had best plan on getting married and/or dying in close proximity to Mark's home. 01:43 AYURIS: ...
Jun 07, 2022•52 min
Multi-Deck System Games! Canadian content! Kevin Bacon! So many digressions in an episode packed with so much culture it couldn't even fit in one of Vin Diesel's muscle shirts. We do, however, focus on games long enough to rhetorically ask--with several stress patterns--of David Thompson: who is this guy? As a note, during the time of the taping of this episode, David Thompson released five more excellent board games. Oh, sorry, I type slowly, make that six. 01:23 AYURIS: Fort (Grant Rod...
May 31, 2022•1 hr 26 min
On Mark's drive across Canada (the first time), he stopped in Drumheller, Alberta for some dinosaur tourism. It has a truly impressive nodosaur specimen. The nodosaur is a close relative of the ankylosaur, a key difference being the former's lack of a thagomizer, the club-like appendage at the end of an ankylosaur's tail. Mark bought a plastic ankylosaur as a souvenir. Its name is Angie. Perseverance doesn't have any ankylosaurs or nodosaurs. A shame. Games Played Last Week: 00:5...
May 24, 2022•1 hr 21 min
We received a number of questions of a more personal nature which we have decided not to address. This is only partially out of a sense of privacy. Rather, we are firmly of the editorial position that the show is best when we focus on games, rather than the personal details of the hosts. We pride ourselves in only wasting a certain amount of your valuable time, and were we to indulge in more personal digressions that could easily balloon the show well beyond the limits of absurdity. 01:08 AYURIS...
May 17, 2022•1 hr 5 min
Inquiring minds demand to know, and we, your humble servants, must perforce answer. Mark resists the urge to elaborate on Kant and Macross! Walker resists the siren call of nineties hip hop! Such feats of iron will are the least of what our curious and/or trolling listeners deserve. (It's the curious trolls that always get you in the end) 01:21 AYURIS: Babylonia (Reiner Knizia, Ludonova, 2019) Games Played Last Week: 03:05 -Switch & Signal (David Thompson, KOSMOS, 2020) 05:30 -Cryptid: U...
May 10, 2022•1 hr 15 min
I wanna be where the patients are I wanna see, wanna see 'em coughin' Buildin' your wings, you don't get too far Clients are required for billing, charging Up where they sneeze, up where they shudder Up where they stay all day just to suffer Treatin' for a fee, wish I could be Part of that world 01:37 AYURIS: Cosmic Frog (Jim Felli, Devious Weasel Games, 2020) Games Played Last Week: 04:10 -Wonderland's War (Tim Eisner, Ben Eisner, & Ian Moss, Druid City Games, 2022) ...
May 03, 2022•1 hr 18 min
Preparation is important. We very carefully do our advance research here at SVWAG, but occasionally mild errors do creep in. For this week, Mark studiously crafted notes and observations on such issues as four octave vocal ranges, Nickelodeon celebrity culture, and whether boredom of a third party constitutes necessary or sufficient conditions for breaking up with one's girlfriend. Sadly for Mark, Ariana was not the Grande under discussion this week, so he was forced to begin anew. Games Pla...
Apr 26, 2022•1 hr 21 min
A tragedy of consuming media or goods is that sometimes, regardless of how diligent you are, you cannot keep up with new releases. The creators you love might keep putting out new products, and even a casual enthusiast of a given medium might be disappointed to learn that they missed out on an offering. What I'm trying to get at is that HOW DARE they make a new Macross tabletop game and NOT TELL MARK. 01:15 AYURIS: Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy (Touko Tahkokallio, Lautapelit.fl, 2020) ...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 14 min
Yes, we are but slaves to the new releases, which is why we are reviewing a fifteen-year-old game. "But that's impossible!" you reply, "No one was alive back then!" Records are scant, but there is a rich oral tradition that people have been playing games at least since the release of Nirvana's Nevermind. Archeologists are still trying to carbon-date that period exactly, though. Games Played Last Week: 01:39 -Dead Reckoning (John D. Clair, Alderac Entertainment Group, 2022...
Apr 12, 2022•1 hr 2 min
