No particular order here! Pax Pamir 2nd Edition Challengers! The King is Dead 2nd Edition Renature Modern Art Lords of Vegas Nokosu Dice Shikoku 1889 Blood on the Clocktower Trio

Go buy some @hollandspiele.bsky.social board games. They’re weird and fun and iconoclastic and a little punk rock. And it’s their annual sale right now. #boardgames

I was very up on Vantage after my initial plays, but at around five plays, I ended up closer to Tom’s opinion. I will say that the action system itself and the scale of the game are both staggering achievements, but I think that underlying system would be better served in a more focused experience.

My favorite games have me being shin kicked by other players, the game itself, and/or my own choices.

This probably sounds familiar to @seanfranco.bsky.social , especially when he’s wrangles me into playing Fresh Fish. I don’t know how I’m so capable of having all my disks expropriated and my paths made so long.

Funko Pops (potentially) finally dying reminds me of one of the most underrated Jeff Gerstmann bits

A surprisingly sweet and sad album about what it means to have devotion to one another in the bleakest circumstances. This feels like the culmination of their past decade of work and it’s something VERY special.

I self-identify as deeply Protestant, and this quiz sees “Protestant” through a clearly Anglican lens (rooted in a very individualized perspective, sorta seems more aligned with the First Great Awakening, etc.). I’m more anti-structuralist/hierarchy.

BREAKING NEWS: Florida man intimidated by artful premise

Jake and Brendan over at @decisionspace.bsky.social let me jump on the ship to talk about the intersection of fighting games and board games generally, and about one of my fav board game releases this year, Tag Team, specifically!

I haven’t read a piece of Dan’s criticism that I resonated with quite as much as this one. I sometimes wonder why I still call myself a Christian and identify as religious in spite of all of the bullshit it entails. Dan captures the feelings of doubt and hopefulness that drives my faith.

Can’t help but think of a piece of art that takes the clear opposite tonal approach to a “cozy surveillance state” game when talking about airport security.

An evisceration of Karine Jean-Pierre’s new book, by Becca Rothfeld. wapo.st/477lK5X

I don't know how a large review outlet that purports to take itself seriously can release a video "I don't care about your indie game". It's one thing to be realistic about what you can cover but this is just deeply incurious and unnecessarily cruel.

The title here is clickbait and not necessarily indicative of the content, but the video itself is symptomatic of the stuff about that hobby that makes me grumpy. In any other medium, the largest editorial (supposedly) outlet saying some of the things said in this video would be laughable 🧵

JESUS CHRIST. GO OUTSIDE. TALK TO A REAL PERSON.

historical board gaming's silk song / hades 2

As a bit of an outsider, this is kinda how I felt about people complaining that the map/board for the Blood Rage sequel was gonna be in the form of a house layout.

Sometimes you just get blindsided by a song.

My picks are Laura Marling, Jason Isbell (at least on Southeastern and Something More Than Free, I feel like he’s regressed a bit since then), Joni Mitchell, James McMurtry, Kendrick Lamar, Open Mike Eagle, Paul Simon, and Joan Armatrading.

This is a fascinating review for a lot of reasons, but I think the most fascinating part for me is how it reveals just how different of approaches and opinions two folks whose output you respect can have. It’s so clear here how different Jamey and Efka’s views on the ideal form for games are.

I think the thing that’s always sort of repelled me from Zach Bryan (in spite of me liking a lot of country and Americana music) is that he just kind of comes off like an idiot, even in his songs. So many of his contemporaries (Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, etc.) are sharp songwriters. He’s not

honestly if I have to pin down my apathy toward sell sheets, it's because making art & selling it are different skills and I resent how often they're expected to be bundled together - I resent any trend which *demands* the artist also be conversant in sales & advertising to get published

I like the term "trunk or treat" because it implies that some percentage of kids are getting tossed into trunks for daring to ask for candy.

This dude has always sucked.

Absolutely wild that they haven’t lost a step in their nearly 15 years of not playing together. They’ve still got it.

The one good thing NFTs did was prove that you can't just want something to work so badly that it succeeds. Yes, this is about ai.

I’ve been noodling on an idea all day and I have no idea if it’s totally bunk or not, so I’m just going to throw it out there: The modern euro space is an outgrowth of cross pollination with video games; above the table play is deemphasized to make way for play that centers mechanical mastery.

starting a school for would-be games critics and the first lesson is that you gotta learn to let both Ebert and your proverbial parents out of your mind

So happy that @petewiss.bsky.social has a game that’s gonna get the full Stonemaier sheen.

Absolute all-timer sentence in today's @nytimes.com

when I worked on This Guilty Land, and immersed myself in antebellum primary documents, the thing that really struck me is how incrementalism today is just the same shit it was then, responding to the same kind of bad faith arguments by evil fuckers, & treating real change as impossible & infantile.

I’m giving Fallon a pass this one time for having The Format on.

Ben Fold’s early to mid 2000’s output doesn’t the flowers it deserves. Rockin’ the Suburbs and Songs for Silverman are classics.

This is a completely unsupported hypothesis, but I wonder if the volume of online porn has accustomed younger people to viewing depictions of sex as something that you should only engage with in private, and that leaves them unable or unwilling to engage with it as a part of a more complete work.

In the waning days of his longshot reelection campaign—and likely his tenure at City Hall—Mayor Eric Adams has suddenly embraced transphobia.

just saw a cottage cheese commercial that shows two teens eating cottage cheese while gaming. it’s possible that i’m out of touch with today’s youth but i don’t know about that one

"Selling Out Is Bad" is a valuable concept and despite all the baggage and bullshit and elitism it could contain it's actually really good to reinforce the ideal that having integrity when it matters, especially when it hurts, is what good/cool people do. Should be adapted instead of jettisoned.

Non-Breaking Space’s approach to aesthetics and presentation REALLY resonate/ with me, and from the sound of it, this game will too. I don’t think there’s anyone as careful and thoughtful about presentation across the board (from promotion to art to graphic design) in board games.

The thing about being an artist is that sometimes you’ll have a really silly/cursed image enter your head and spend hours of your life drawing it. Hours you’ll never get back.

Somebody Somewhere was a perfect TV show, and it’s a shame it took so long for it to get this sort of recognition.

I know I know it's a well worn point but still. Plenty of people who would self-describe as Christians, for whom that is a very important identity, watch Fox News. I genuinely can think of very few messages as laser-targeted to be anti-Christian as "kill the homeless". Designed in a lab by Satan.

It’s frustrating how “civility“ is simultaneously an important civic good and the last and safest refuge of the vicious scoundrel

Ezra Klein is trying in this column to argue that Kirk was doing politics correctly if you just ignore the content of what he was advocating. That he was contributing to American democracy by arguing civilly for the subjugation of women, gay people, trans people. It simply doesn’t work.

9/11 is a great time to remember that the imperial power will seize on any opportunity to do what it was going to do anyway, especially if it gets to do it under the gaudy pagentry of being the Aggrieved

In 2014, Anita Sarkeesian canceled an event at Utah State after a credible assassination threat because the school’s response was that Utah allows guns on college campuses. People have warned about this kind of violence for years. But they weren’t the people the powers at be wanted to protect.

If you’re at all interested in the thematic potential of board games (and I mean that in the literary sense, not like theme on a amusement park ride), pick up Molly House on this run if you can. It’s an affecting work that touches on desire, community, jealousy, and survival.