Catchin’ Up

I’m almost caught up with my podcast listening.  I thought I would summerize the most recent ones.

First, Myriad Games Presentations.  They covered the game Infinite City.  I didn’t take notes as usual but I do remember that the podcast was informative and confirmed my interest in this game.  Dan and the gang helped get this one on The Buy List (which I need to update).  The Myriad crew also had a recap of the gaming world of 2009.  This was a fantastic retrospective show.  I was reminded of many games that had slipped from my mind as well as some of the interesting stories that happened last year.  The one thing that caught my interest the most was the pilot program that Myriad is in to sell and print PDF’s right there in the store.  I heard Chris Hanrahan of EndGame and Fred Hicks of Evil Hat talk about this last year and thought it was a superb idea.  I’m glad someone is doing it.  This was an excellent episode.

In a similar vein, I had the idea of putting freely available games (print and play, 1KM1KT, and other free rpg’s) on CD and giving them to friends.   It would be a neat way to introduce new games to a wider audience.

Next up, Pulp Gamer Inside Track.  Derrick interviewed Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games.  Z-Man’s one of the hot game companies in my opinion.  They have published several of the biggest games of recent years like Pandemic and Agricola.  Zev is very good at finding excellent games and getting them to us.  He talked about how he got started in the industry.  He reminded me that he puts out the B movie series card games.  I need to pick up a couple of those.  He talked about some of his early board games like Reef Encounter.  Zev is a very good interview.  Check this one out.

Continuing with Pulp Gamer, let’s look at the latest Game Kennel.  It covers The Downfall of Pompeii.  Ron gave a very good overview of the game.  It sounds like a lot of fun that my kids and my game groups would enjoy.  It is short, has a take that element, and has a plastic volcano that you throw meeples into.  I can get into that.

I’ve started listening to Atomic Array.  It’s a good podcast.  They talked to the creators of Savage Suzerain recently.  I did not know anything about this setting prior to listening to this.  It sounds interesting with some neat character possibilities and edges.  They describe it as ‘troubleshooters of the gods’.  The realms hopping aspect of the game is intriguing.

I listened to a recent Please Convince Me that talked about young earth vs. old earth creation.  This was very interesting and I need to look into this more.

Fear The Boot # 180 was about Fear The Con 3 and part one of their gamer health series.  It was pretty good.  They mentioned an Ira Glass video on overcoming creative perfectionism.  This sounds quite interesting to me and I need to check it out.  The gamer health segment covered the usual things – cut down on snacks while gaming, eat better snacks, decrease soda consumption, help your friends eat better.

The Dice Tower #65’s top 10 was about playing games online.  In addition, Geoff talked about a robot building competition for youth that sounded very cool.  We got a segment from Dexter & Chief that covered Dvonn very well.  There was a new segment on variants that I thought was really good.  It talked about a Risk variant called Nuclear Destruction(?) that is interesting.  I found a Risk zombie variant, and zombie and The Incredibles variants of Pandemic that I want to try.  Check out BGG for variants of popular games.  Con-ventional Wisdom, another new segament, covers upcoming conventions in the gaming world.  I was very interested in hearing the top ten.  I want to do more online gaming but need a new computer and need to overcome the intimidating nature of getting started at the sites.  Eric did a solo on this one and did an excellent job.  I will definitely try to do more online gaming as a result.  Thanks Eric.  Lastly, they answered some listener questions one of which was mine.  I had asked to know more about Eric’s voice work.  I think that is an interesting job.  He told us of several places where we can hear him doing his day job.  Very cool.  I also want to mention that Eric has an auction going to help raise $$ for Tom’s pending move back to the States.  It’s on BGG/geekdo.com.  Search for Summerer.  There are some good games there.

Garrett’s Games and Geekiness is back with a review of Macao.  It sounds very complex to me but I’m sure a play through would clear that up.  Doug and Shelley both liked it a lot.  I found the card activation mechanic interesting and the game seems to have a good variety of choices each turn.  They also gave us a very good report on games debuting at Nuremburg.  There are some good ones on the way for this year.

Let’s finish up with another Pulp Gamer Inside Track.  This one is an interview with Reality Blur’s Sean Preston.  Sean is a neat interview in spite of the fact that it was just after GenCon last year and he was exhausted.  It was a short episode where Sean talked about Realms of Cthulhu, their latest.  He also mentioned the other games they do like Iron Dynasties, Runepunk, Ravaged Earth, and Agent of Oblivion.  I’m very interested in the last one.  I have this idea…

That’s it for now.

Go Forth And Game.