ESPN Anchor Stuart Scott revealed his favorite board games while fielding a question in a recent edition of ESPN’s magazine.

Brad [Chappaqua, N.Y.]
Hi Stuart! You’ve told us about the sports you’ve loved playing. What games do you like to play?
If you’re talking board games, when I was a kid, me and my bro Stephen and our friends Sam and Cecil used to stay up all night playing Risk. Now, I get real serious about Guesstures, and me and my girls love playing Imaginiff.

(source)

• 0 Comments

Two thousand years ago, the Maccabees hid in caves plotting to overthrow the Greeks in Palestine. To hide the purpose of their meetings, they had a spinning top available. When the Greeks came knocking, they simply pretended that they were only gathered to play a game of dreidel.

Today, political rallies are outlawed in Armenia. So masses of protesters gather together with chess boards in the capital, Yerevan. When the police come knocking, they simply say that they’re playing chess.

(source)

• 0 Comments

According to Techtree, two online services for mediating live strategy games are themselves battling for publicity. Apparently, Turf is the original game but GoCrossCampus is getting more attention from the New York Times. As best I can tell, both implement some variant on the well-known game Risk, dividing college campuses or corporate organizations into territories and encouraging participants to negotiate the actions of their troops. Unfortunately, both web sites are steeped in the language of “building communities” but say little about how the games work.

• 0 Comments

Q-Workshop is running a dice design contest and there are only 30 days left to submit your entries. Q-Workshop is a Polish company that produces unusual engraved dice in elven, runic, nuke, dragon, and Call of Cthulhu sets, among others. Designs for this ubiquitous gaming accessory must cover the range of 4-sided to 20-sided dice. Entries are due April 30th in either historic/fantasy or future/sci-fi categories. Templates and further contest details are available here. For a view of the Guinness-certified world’s largest collection of dice, check this website.

• 0 Comments

In a recent message to regular customers, GMT Games announced that Combat Commander Battle Pack #2: Stalingrad has broken P500 records, generating 669 commitments in the first 2 weeks of its listing. P500 is GMT’s system for preordering games still in development. Because of the stunning demand, GMT is adding Stalingrad, as well as Combat Commander: Pacific, to its production schedule for a September release. Both are expansions to the very popular Combat Commander: Europe card-driven tactical World War II game.

(announcement, P500 system)

• 0 Comments