Hasbro is teaming up with Discovery to create a channel based on Hasbro’s toy and game product lines.

The channel will replace the current Discovery Kids network. It is set to launch in late 2010.

With programming like that, who needs advertising?

Update: Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood blasts the move.

(source)

• 0 Comments

Following the last post on mainstream game cakes, here are a few more amazing cakes from Charm City, including Magic: the Gathering, Samurai, Puerto Rico, Candy Land, Chess (with pieces), Scrabble, and an Operation game cake that actually works (sheesh).

• 0 Comments

Greencastle, PA: 5 men scam $200 from a man in a card game. (source)

North Middleton, PA: 4 men try to rob a man at a card game, but he rebuffs them. (source)

Dublin, Ireland: Man shot in both knees. His enemies found him on his way to a card game. (source)

Miami, FL: Five shot while gambling outside a house, in the same area were several were shot a few weeks ago while gambling. (source)

Panama City, FL:  Woman kills self and another in a DUI returning intoxicated from a dice game. (source)

Carmel, NY: One man stabs another with a broken beer bottle at a card game. (source)

Fort Wayne, IN: Here’s a tip off to aspiring criminals: after stealing $136,000 from your employer (Walmart) and hoofing it to a gmabling den, don’t sit down at the card table and start threatening everyone around you with harm. It just gets the police called on you. (source)

• 0 Comments

FunAgain Games is having a spring cleaning sale, with some games on sale for cheaper than their usual discount. Some picks:

24/7 for $12

Bootleggers for $12

Chaotic M’arillian and regular Chaotic starter decks for $1 each

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects for $20

Goldbrau for $12

Mr Jack expansion for $11

• 0 Comments

Treehugger pimps board games as an alternative to electricity and brain-draining television. Includes pimps for The Settlers of Catan and Escape from Colditz. (source)

School Library Journal pimps Eurogames for educational curricula, including Pandemic, Amun Re, Bolide, LetterFlip, 1960 The Making of the President, Here I Stand, and Oregon. (source)

• 0 Comments

Brenda Brathwaite is a star of the video game world, and also a fan of board games. This article in the Escapist relates how she set out one day to make a few games that would deeply affect their players.

In one of the games, Train, the players compete to fit their people on trains and get them from point A to point B. Only after the game was over did she reveal that point B was Auschwitz. It’s a game that can be played innocently only once. If you can play and enjoy it a second time, you’re entering territory covered by Nazi-era games such as Juden Raus.

Another game, which was not really much fun, explained to her daughter how the slave trade separated and killed families from Africa.

• 0 Comments

Tasty Minstrel Games is a new, small publisher publishing games from a few well-known BGGers. Their current games, both of which were already prototypes back in 2006:

• Homesteaders: By Alex Rockwell, developed by Seth Jaffee. A game set in 1862 about acquiring new land in the American midwest. Homesteaders is an auction and resource management game, in which players bid on land to use to develop buildings. Each round features an income era, where players acquire resources, and an auction and building era, in which players bid for available land, and then spend their resources to develop a building on that land.

I don’t know about you, but just looking at that resource conversion chart makes my thumbs sweat.

• Terra Prime: By Seth Jaffe. A game of interstellar exploration and colonization for 2-5 players. The goal of the game is to show the most Leadership by exploring the space around Terra Prime, founding colonies on planets discovered, delivering resources to Terra Prime, and driving off hostile aliens. The value of colonies and the resources they produce increase the farther away from Terra Prime you get, but so do the dangers of exploration! Customize your command ship to support your strategy.

• 1 Comment

The Active Learning Initiative is a part of the University of North Texas Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment and Redesign. It creates educational and historically themed board games and lesson plans.

One such example is What’s the Deal?, a “roleplaying board game” about the Great Depression. From the video, the mechanics seem to be just roll, move, pick, and read.

• 0 Comments