Blog Archives
Space-Cast! #37. Pax Relationships
In her second-ever appearance on the Space-Cast!, today we’re joined by Matilda Simonsson, designer of hand-crafted games Turncoats and Pax Penning! As we discuss her second hit, we also delve into why she decided to create an entry in the Pax Series, the difficulty of writing history, and how every single historical board game except hers is wrong to use coins as their primary form of currency.
Listen here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.
Pax Partying
It hasn’t been all that long since Matilda Simonsson wowed me with Turncoats, her handmade game of hidden influence and third-party warfare. Now she’s back with a more ambitious — not to mention riskier — follow-up in the form of Pax Penning. As its title suggests, this is a riff on the venerable (and thorny) Pax Series, importing crucial details and framing, right down to the clarifying footnotes in the rulebook.
But it’s something more than that. While Pax Penning is identifiably Pax, it’s also a more intricate take on the ideas Simonsson explored in Turncoats. This is a game of tenuous alliances, unexpected turns, and riding the changing winds of politics. And that’s before we excavate how it reveals uncommon depths of history via the language of play.
SPACE-BIFF! 