Barbarossa’s Last Swim
I have a thing for controversial games. If board games can be art in addition to mere product — which is a point I would heatedly defend — then they can also say something about the world around us. National identity, history, aesthetics, social justice, cultural assumptions; it’s all up for grabs. A lot of the time a game will even tell us something without particularly meaning to. Sometimes that thing is even more telling than its actual message.
When I heard that Seth Jaffee’s Crusaders: They Will Be Done had sparked some minor controversy, with complaints ranging from the tone-deafness of its setting to racial insensitivity, I had to get a look. After all, my background is in religious history, up to and including the actual crusades. I’m practically obligated to have an opinion on such things. It’s as reflexive as noshing on potato chips if they happen to be sitting in front of me. Which is why, going in, my assumption was that I’d find the game’s mechanisms compelling but its history uninsightful.
Imagine my surprise when Crusaders tipped my assumption on its head.
Joshua Buergel: On Storytelling in Games
Today we’re in for a special treat! Guest contributor Joshua Buergel, designer of The Fox in the Forest and Hocus, is here to talk about a difficult design topic — the limitations and possibilities of storytelling in board games. It’s something that’s been on my own mind for a while, so I’m eager to hear his take.
Joshua, you have the conn.
Heroes of Land, Optimization & Chaos
My grandfather once told me that a good idea is about catching a spark, but good execution is about putting in the years. And while it’s possible this attitude is why ole granddad only accomplished two things in his entire life, I’m inclined to believe he was onto something. After all, there’s Heroes of Land, Air & Sea, which has a tremendous idea — a cardboard version of an old-school real-time strategy (RTS) game, complete with base-building, exploration, and heroes leading armies into battle! — it also so happens that it was executed… well, like this.
Unda da Sea: A Look at Oceans
To this day, Evolution — and in particular Evolution: Climate — remains one of those accessible games I’ll gladly recommend to nearly anybody. Family friendly, beautiful, fiercely competitive, and effortlessly illustrative of its namesake theory, it’s as easygoing or carnivorous as the people you’re playing with. Sometimes both at once.
But after three major iterations from North Star Games, the last thing I wanted was Evolution: Yet Again. Fortunately, their latest project, Oceans, understands its theme well enough to stay competitive. Which is why it transplants its predecessor’s core experiences — clever cardplay and an ever-shifting ecosystem — to not only beneath the waves, but also into an entirely new shape. And although this shift in DNA results in some castoffs along the way, this new form is fitter than ever.
Book-Space! #9: A Darkling Sea
What’s the commonality between a frozen ice planet, a pastiche of the Prime Directive, and Brock forgetting to use the correct mic? The ninth episode of the Space-Biff! Book-Space!, of course! Join Brock, Summer, and Dan as we discuss A Darkling Sea by James L. Cambias. Listen here or download here.
Next month, we’re talking about The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi.
In Defense of Monopoly
Monopoly gets a bad rap. Recently, an amusing video by YouTube channel Actualol even featured a woman getting shot point-blank in the head for having the gall to recommend a pleasant evening of purchasing properties and driving someone bankrupt two hours before the actual conclusion of the game. A few short minutes at your friendly local game store will confirm the sentiment that Monopoly is this generation’s favorite target of oppression and bigotry.
But surely 275 million copies sold can’t be wrong. Fun fact: did you know Hasbro prints $30 billion in paper Monopoly money every year? That’s roughly what The Bezos earns every time you enable one-click purchases on Amazon, but less depressing. Which is why I’ve decided to stake my reputation on defending this wonderful game with seven reasons why it’s better than you remember.
The Crisis Gets Lonely
Given this hobby’s churn of new releases, it isn’t often that I get to stick with a single game long enough for an expansion to roll around. Wray Ferrell and Brad Johnson’s Time of Crisis is an exception, and has reappeared on my table regularly ever since its release nearly two years back.
Good thing I waited around, because The Age of Iron and Rust may be one of my favorite expansions, adding three modules that transform this into one of my absolute favorite deck-building hybrids — and a considerable solo offering to boot.
Middara: Unintentional Apple
At this point, there almost isn’t much to say about Middara that hasn’t been said about a hundred other games.
Four years since it funded on Kickstarter. Preposterous production values counterbalanced by preposterous quantities of miniatures and cards and words. Those words, bound up in a 480-page adventure book, weaving a tale that speaks much while saying little, despite being only the first act of something grander and longer-winded. A gorgeous aesthetic that will certainly leave some people questioning why this fantasy world’s women feel such a universal need to bare breasts and thighs, and others responding that bared manly muscles make all fair. A dice-heavy combat system that’s simultaneously expansive and that’s it?
It’s dungeon crawling as a microcosm. All the excesses and shortcomings and triumphs and stipulations of the genre, compressed — or, more accurately, expressed, expanded, blown outward — into the confines of a single box that could serve as the cartoon anvil in a real-life homicide. Even the title tells you something important. This isn’t Middara. This is Middara: Unintentional Malum: Act I.
Brace for impact.
EXCEED Finds a Home in Street Fighter
I’ve been championing EXCEED for a while as the best card-driven implementation of the two-dimensional fighting game. It’s fast, it’s punchy, and it prizes smarts over speed — which means I can play it at all, since I have the reflexes of a loris. Unfortunately, the roster for EXCEED’s first two seasons was as unknowable as it was unique, borrowing or inventing characters with plenty of pizzazz but no recognizability. What’s the difference between Nehtali and Kikurage? Here’s a hint: one is a character from EXCEED and the other is a mushroom that’s delicious in ramen.
But let’s try this again: what’s the difference between Ryu and M. Bison? Or Chun-Li and Zangief? None of them are mushrooms, I’ll tell you that. Even someone like me, who as a child was kept far away from arcade cabinets for fear of demonic contamination, can tell you with some degree of accuracy what everyone from Street Fighter is capable of. That’s the value of a solid license, draping a familiar framework around something new. A context. A reason to care.
That license is also why this is the best time to give EXCEED a shot, because this fighting system has never been stronger.
Slip N Slide
There’s a shelf in my friendly local game store that I’ve only recently taken any interest in: the kid stuff. Not because of any stigma, mind you. I’ve always been of the opinion that the un-seriousness of kid games should be taken seriously, if only because they strip away every appendage and appendix, letting you isolate and interact with the gooey chocolate center that is the game’s — for lack of a better word — “fun.” You don’t have to be a child to recognize that Rhino Hero is a masterpiece.
Still, I’m an adult human man, and the kid shelf is literally beneath my level. Eye level. Because I don’t have eyes in my shins. And only recently have I had a companion whose eyes tend to be located shinward. When she saw a game with a wobbly penguin on the cover, I said sure. At the very least, maybe she’d cool it on Blob Lobber.
SPACE-BIFF! 