Eat Lunch and Board Game

I wish that I could say that I bought just a few games that came to my attention via Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop on YouTube, but that would be a lie. What I can say though, few games have come to my attention and immediately jumped into my top 5, if not top 3, like Champions of Midgard. Ole Steiness’s worker placement game made an immediate impact on me. I love worker placement games, yet there was something different about this game. Something about the way it played...

Who doesn’t love a good pun? I know I do. Also, who doesn’t know some form of rummy? I believe most people that have a grandma have been exposed to rummy. My grandma, my aunt, my cousins and siblings, and I used to play rummy all the time. There were stenographer notebooks filled with scoring tallies. Not just scores for their games, but also tally marks for the wins. My grandma recently passed, and a scorebook was buried with her...

It is no secret that I love racing games. I have many racing games in my collection. I have talked about many racing games on this show. I love them! Whether I am racing cars, postal vehicles, boats, bikes, chariots, or even camels, I am drawn to a racing game like a moth to the flame. While perusing the used games section at the local Half-Priced Books, I saw Asger Harding Granerud’s cycling racing game, Flamme Rouge. The Son and I have wanted this game for some time...

I am very active with the public library systems here in St. Louis City and County. I have taken many courses through them online. I have taken the kids to events. Heck, I took my kids to every single St. Louis Public Library branch. That was 15 branches. A let me tell you, some of those buildings were absolutely stunning.

During the pandemic, I used the library to print off many print and play games that I downloaded...

A few months back, like six or more, I sponsored a design competition on past guest JT Smith’s The Game Crafter. The competition was to design a lunchtime game. It had to be playable in a lunch hour and appropriate for work. There were 77 entries! Of those, seven were selected to be finalists. Those seven were then shipped to me to playtest. I took all of these to work to play with my coworkers. I mean, that was literally the purpose of the competition...

A few months back, I reviewed a hilarious game about a group of cats on their ninth and final life. I then interviewed the man that handmade each copy of that game. Then, out of the blue, Colby Lippencott reached back out to me to inform me that his new game, Quest for the Trident, was available. I couldn’t resist. I had to try the latest from Lab Rats Board Games...

I have mentioned a few times, like dozens probably, that The Son and I love to read books about board games at bedtime. I have also mentioned one such book many times, Family Games The 100 Best by Jeremy Lowder. Recently, I organized the first Protospiel St. Louis where we had over 40 designers come and show their game designs and over 50 playtesters come and play them. As part of the badge purchase, the store where we were holding the event offered 10% off purchases...

7 Wonders is one of my favorite lunchtime games of all time. I have played it probably close to one-hundred times. I did a very long, 18-minute, podcast episode on it a long time ago. It was actually the third episode of the show. At the time, I covered all the expansions that I had, which was all of them except Babel. I still have not purchased Babel. No interest. But, the completionist in me is calling to procure it. I am not going to lie...

In this episode, I am joined by designer James Cole. He designed and tested a game at work. His game, Thrown Under the Bus, is currently on Kickstarter. Give it a look. He also had some amazing game suggestions. Thanks for listening.

Thrown Under the Bus Kickstarter

 Well, quite simply put, I am now obsessed with the Pandemic world. After a rough relationship at the start with the original base game, my love was rekindled with Rapid Response and Hot Zone, coincidentally during the COVID pandemic. As I have been working my way through the Pandemic expansions, I branched out, like a disease, and decided to try some of the other versions of the game. First up, I located, purchased, and played The Cure...