The Spiel – Episode 88 Small Press PowWow

The Spiel is one of the podcasts that I listen to regularly.  I enjoy listening to Stephen and Dave talk about games.  And I really like their show notes.  Lots of detail with links to the games and subjects discussed included.  Very impressive.  Here is feedback on Episode 88 – Small Press Powwow.

I really like the idea behind this episode.  Giving small press publishers some attention is great and is one of the things I hope to do with this blog.  More on that later.  The show covered several games – Kachina by Bucephalus Games, The Great Potlatch from Smal Box Games, Quackery by Tangent Games, and Captain Treasure Boots by Cheapass Games.

News and Notes discussed several games – Macao, Dungeon Lords, Jaipur, and Tobago.  Each is linked on the episode site if you are interested.  Of these up coming games, Dungeon Lords sounds the most interesting to me.  One – it has a fantasy theme.  I like fantasy.  And this game hits my GMing spot.  Check it out.  Tobago sounds fun too.  Treasure hunting in a jungle almost always catches my attention.  The guys do a good job of bringing these new games to our attention.  Also mentioned are the International Gamer Awards winners Le Havre and Day & Night.  While Le Havre sounds interesting the time frame most people are talking about with this game (3-4hours) is too much for me.   And I don’t think I could get anyone in my group to play it.  Day & Night has potential.  I like abstract strategy games.  Hive and the Gipf series are among my favorite games.  Day & Night is a game I need to look into more.

The List – First let me say that I like The List segment.  They go into a fair amount of detail on each game each episode.  I appreciate this.  Not many podcasts are spending this much time on the games they review.  So what came off the List this time – Kachina and The Great Potlatch.  Kachina is from Bucephalus Games.  The guys discuss Bucephalus and their track record so far a bit.  Then on to the game itself.  It’s theme is Native American mythos.   Stephen gives a good overview and some history of the theme.  I really like it when he does this.  I appreciate the extra time he takes to do this.  Keep it up Stephen.  The game has some interesting mechanics coupled to an entertaining theme.  This one goes on the Buy List.  Check it out.

Next up is The Great Potlatch.  Now, the name puts me off at first.  It does not sound appealing at all.  But after listening to their review I want to play this game.   Another Native American themed game – that’s cool.  Again Stephen gives us a good history lesson on the background of the theme.  It was interesting.  The Great Potlatch has a neat idea of multi-use cards.  The cards in the game can have multiple uses at various times during the game.  When to use them most effectively is one of the neat mechanics and leads to hard decisions.  I like that.  So, while it doesn’t make the Buy List yet, it does make the ‘I want to play this’ list.

The Backshelf Spotlight focused on one of the many Cheapass games – Captain Treasure Boots.  I haven’t played this one but it sounds like fun.  It’s your basic treasure hunt game with fighting.

Truckloads of Goober was about Cheapass Games again.  It went into their idea of you supply the game pieces – pawns, dice, etc..    This was a revolutionary idea at the time James Ernest started Cheapass.  So the guys talk about ways to enhance your games with things around the house or cannibalized from other games.    This reminded me of a Cheapass game that we own, Bitin’ Off Heads.  It’s a roll and move game of dinosaurs fighting to jump into the volcano first.  We use small plastic dinos with ours.  One of the guys mentioned school supply stores as a great place to get components.  I very much agree.  My wife works at the local homeschool store so we get lots of small doodads and erasers of various shapes and sizes.  Again there are dinosaurs ones, other types of animals, cars, lots of different types.  Lastly I was reminded of Run For Your Life Candyman, Smirk and Dagger’s game with the best component of all – actual gingerbread men.  And part of the game is eating them.  Sweet.

With the advent of print and play games, this is an economical way to buy/get games.  Speaking of print and play, you should head over to printandplay.blogspot.com.  Lots of cool games.

So that was Episode 88 – Small Press PowWow from The Spiel.

That is all for now.

Go Forth and Game.

tomg