Category Archives: Board Game
Darkest After the Dawn
“It’s like Among the Stars, but in space,” is how one of my friends jokingly summed up New Dawn, Artipia Games’ follow-up to one of our favorite games of last year. Of course, what he meant is that apart from the gloss — the same color scheme, a few recurring faces, and a setting that could best be described as a pan-galaxy alliance of alien races getting all passive-aggressive about building the best space station — New Dawn has pretty much nothing in common with Among the Stars.
Unfortunately, that largely includes compelling gameplay.
Space-Biff! Was Recently Devastated
Back in the day, our game group used to hold these little house tournaments all the time. Mostly Summoner Wars, though we could be counted on to make a lively competition out of nearly anything, from Omen: A Reign of War to The Duke. If we could play more than one match at a time, sharing table space and laughing about each other’s flubs, we were set.
Then, for whatever reason, we stopped playing like that.
Over the next year we occasionally discussed giving it another shot. Especially if we could hold a tournament using BattleCON: Devastation of Indines, because a colorful fighting game full of thirty asymmetrical characters, dead simple rules, and outguess-your-opponent gameplay seemed like the perfect sort of thing for a winner-takes-all brawl. Even so, our plans never coalesced into an actual event.
Well. A few weeks back, entirely unexpectedly, we were treated to a perfect situation: exactly eight players, all of whom arrived exactly at 8, nobody who reported needing to get to bed early, and every single one of them ready and willing to play.
It was on.
Roll Roll Roll Your Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy is a classic. Or so I hear. I only played it once, maybe six years ago, at my brother-in-law’s apartment. We ate popcorn. Both were enjoyable, and the game possessed a clever and clean design that felt a little bit less clean thanks to its wealth of hieroglyphics, leaving little for a newcomer to do other than etch a mental Rosetta Stone of hexagons, multicolored and soft-cornered rectangles, and eyeballs.
If nothing else, it’s a relief that Roll for the Galaxy, the dice game remix of Race’s original recipe, is kind enough to set plain old English script alongside the pictographs. I really do appreciate that.
Feign Inferiority, Encourage Arrogance
He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.
—Sun Tzu
If you are far from the enemy, make him believe you are near.
—Sun Tzu
When in doubt, attack Geoff.
—Sun Tzu
All excellent advice. Truly, Sun Tzu was wise in the art of war.
In VGHS, It’s All About the Game
I’m entirely unashamed to confess being a fan of Rocket Jump’s comedy webseries Video Game High School, even if the final whispered words to escape namby-pamby Brian D’s charred lips ought to have been, “I fought The Law and The Law won.”
The board game adaptation, coming from the talented folks at Plaid Hat Games, is filled to the brim with references to the show. Good gameplay, on the other hand? Well…
Unemployment is a Laughing Matter
I once had a job interview where I accidentally let slip my identity as a devout Roman Catholic. This was apparently a real mark in my favor, as the interviewer was also Catholic — right until I stuttered out that I wasn’t actually.
“Not actually what?” she asked.
“Not, um… I’m not actually Catholic,” I replied.
The look on her face. Jeez. You have no idea how much I wish I were just trying to be funny right now.
Anyway, Funemployed! is a game about that, except played for laughs instead of a lifetime of cringes. Come on in and we’ll talk about it.
Django Detrained
What’s the Western really about? Glad you asked. That’s one of my favorite questions. Ahem. Picture, if you would, the friscalating dusklight, making pillared shadows from a ghost town’s boot hill; the rich purples and scattershot crimsons of the evening silhouetting the lone stranger, Winchester thrown over his shoulder and horse led by a braided cord long worn smooth, the—
What’s that? You don’t have the time for this?
Well then. Fine. Colt Express it is.
Pax Eklundia
“The Borderlands.”
If that makes you picture that darn video game series, get out. Right now. Just git. If, on the other hand, you picture something out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, windswept and sun-beaten, rolling clouds of dust over shimmering broken earth, set to the hum of lawlessness and opportunism — well, then you just might be the sort of person to appreciate Phil and Matt Eklund’s Pax Porfiriana.
Best Week 2014, Staff Mutiny!
![Wait, what's going on? Wee Aquinas, is that— [muffled scuffling]](https://spacebiff.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/0-best-week-occupied.jpg "Wait, what's going on? Wee Aquinas, is that— [muffled scuffling]")
Ah. Hello. You were probably expecting Dan, weren’t you? I can tell by the facial tics projected through your webcam that you’re a little surprised by this turn of events — after all, hasn’t Best Week 2014 come to an end?
No. It has not. Because we’re in charge now. And this only ends when we say it ends.
Don’t worry, Dan will be fine. Brain damage on par with a night of heavy drinking, or maybe drowning for a few minutes. So let’s just call this a guest submission. Because we, the undersigned, are not content with Dan’s tyrannical “Top Thirty” list, or whatever he’s calling his puppet regime these days. We merely aim to correct his errors with the actual top games we played this year.
Best Week 2014, Day Five!
At long last, here we are. The top six games of the Space-Biff! year, sort of sorted into a coherent list of preference.
Appropriately, every single one of them contains zombies.
Okay, that was a big damn lie. Only some of them contain zombies.
SPACE-BIFF! 