Blog Archives
I’m an Asclepiad, Jim, Not an Ocularius
Medical history is one of my favorite topics. As an undergrad I was fortunate to work with a second edition of Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, that revolutionary tome that contested and updated Galen’s anatomical observations from over a millennium earlier.
This shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of Galen. Unlike his far-removed successor, the Roman prohibition on human dissection forced guesswork on his part. If anything, the anatomists led remarkably parallel careers. Both challenged received wisdom, ran afoul of their period’s traditions, and eventually escaped into self-imposed exile. Where Vesalius drew fire by concluding that men didn’t have fewer ribs than women, a detail that clashed with the Catholic Church’s belief that Adam’s rib had formed Eve, Galen threaded an awkward middle ground between the dominant dogmatist and empiric schools of medicine, drawing ire and threats of poisoning when he spurned their guiding philosophies.
Galenus, designed by Harry-Pekka Kuusela, steps into the testy waters of Galen’s poison-laced Rome. It’s a fascinating setting. If only it provided more of a deep dive than a shallow wade.
Bios:Bugs
My daughter wants to be an entomologist. Normally we’d chalk it up to passing whimsy — she’s only eight, after all — but that’s been her consistent answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” for something like four years now. She loves the things. Potato bugs, caterpillars, earthworms, she’ll dig ’em out of the ground and care for them, but only for a while before insisting they need to be returned home lest they perish in a mason jar.
Bios: Mesofauna, designed by Phil Eklund (yes, that one), acts as a sister title to Bios: Megafauna, this time focusing on bugs rather than ten-meter sloths. It treats its insect playthings with significantly less gentleness than my kid.
I Can’t Help Stationfalling in Love With You
I have a pet theory that board games are great at enabling humorous moments but terrible at comedy. Humorous moments are singular: a joke, a misstep, a callback. Comedy is sustained. That makes it harder because even a single flub can ruin the whole thing. Ever played a party game that was funny for a few minutes but quickly grew dull? Or something like Munchkin, with the occasional cutesy card but agonizing gameplay? It’s one thing to provide prompts and let players riff. Another entirely to keep the humor coming. There’s a reason funny games are usually short. They exist to enable humorous moments, not real comedy.
Hence my personal metric: It isn’t enough to be funny. A great comedy board game has to be funny even when you’re losing. By that metric, Matt Eklund’s Stationfall is the latest addition to my personal pantheon of games that never fail to make me laugh.
Blood Rage
For a group that usually conjures images of blood-rimmed axes, freshly extracted skulls, and ransacked monasteries, Jon Manker’s Pax Viking certainly knows how to make its Vikings seem almost tolerable to spend an afternoon with.
Previewpalooza: Bullet, Intrepid, Pax Viking
Woe is me. I have let too many previews pile up, and now the reaper is coming to collect his due. What follows are three games that I’ve played only in limited fashion — digitally, in prototype, with unfinished components or rules — but certainly enough to get excited about. In other words, it’s fun to be enthusiastic, but be warned that the final game might be totally different from what I actually played.
Cool? Cool. Here we go.
More Than Merely a Civilization Game
When I complain about civgames, my harping comes from a place of deep affection. It’s just that civgames tend to be very good at one model of how civilizations flourish, and very bad at every other model. If it isn’t steady border expansion and technological growth, with very little diversity or ideological synthesis, it doesn’t usually rate. Because really, how many civilizations have spanned from remote BCE to far CE without redefining who they are? Without changing languages, dynasties, ethics, goals? I’ll give you a clue: not many. Even fewer were captained by Sid Meier’s immortal and nuke-happy Gandhi.
Enter Phil Eklund and Jon Manker’s Bios: Origins. As the third in the Bios trilogy, set after the multi-cellular life of Genesis and the prehistoric beasts of Megafauna, Origins is a civgame right down to certain familiar trappings. Tech tracks, cities, and special resources are all present and accounted for. But these trappings are only part of the story. What makes Origins special is the way it answers the questions that other civgames don’t even begin to think about. Questions like who you are — you, the player — what you want, and how very different peoples and civilizations can prosper across the ages.
SPACE-BIFF! 