Currently on Kickstarter: two review(ish) boardgame shows looking to do awesome stuff in their sixth year. Rahdo Runs Through is looking for funding for a sixth year of production, with most of his $30,000 goal reached. Rahdo’s funding comes through yearly campaigns like this: no YouTube ads are on his channel of gameplay videos. The Secret Cabal, a gaming podcast, looks to expand their offerings to video, additional programming, and more by making co-host Jamie Keagy a full-time media producer for the group. They’ve already hit this goal and offer several promo packs for a variety of games at a $45 pledge level.

I’ve always liked the games with transparent cards (see Gloom and Ren Faire from Atlas Games and Gamewright’s Imagine). XYbird is a monster-makin’ game that uses these cool components. Following your diabolical secret agenda (well, secret “breakthrough” cards), you build monsters from the lab with a combination of the 116 transparent cards to become the most infamous mad… no, genius scientist extraordinaire! The world will be yours! Or at least this cool game will be yours in November, for a $29 pledge.

Now I like the design of the ships in Star Eagles, a miniature spaceship combat game, and at $60 for a physical starter set good for two players, I don’t think the pricing of the game is off. But the lore or setting of the game is an original IP and isn’t spelled out on the campaign page apart from “here are some humans” and “here are the aliens” and “they fight”. The sculpts look great and the game system is said to adapt most small-ship fighting battles, so if you have some Cylon Raiders and Colonial Vipers handy… The pdf of the rules will be available in July along with files for your 3d printer, physical copies are to be available in September.

I have to recommend Lizard People: Lords of the Media for an interesting party game. I’m having a difficult time deciding if I should put it next to the “It’s just like Cards Against Humanity, except _____” graphic, because while it plays like Apples to Apples combined with Texas Hold ‘Em, somehow it looks… good? Like there’s an actual game here and not just like a fresh coat of paint on an already-acclaimed game design?

Here’s the deal: we’re all lizard people and we’re manipulating the media by pitching headlines for articles in the hopes of gaining favor with the editor so he’ll give us a human meat-suit disguise so we can walk among the humans and be One of Them. The editor plays three word cards from their hand (Horse, CEO, Uncovers) then the other players use at least two of those words in combination with their cards to create an article headline (Human CEO Discovers Teen Were- Horse). Editor picks the best, awarding a human body part covering to the winner. A $16 pledge will get you a copy of the game in December.

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On the eve of NY Toy Fair, Ben and Rett sat down to make their calls for the coming year in games. This was way back in the old days of this past weekend, when Popes didn’t retire. That said, you’ll have to listen to find out how accurate they are. And how entertaining. And witty. And handsome. (I probably shouldn’t be allowed to right my own press). In any case, listen in for this year’s takes on everything from the RPG market to Miniatures and Historicals as well as the manufacturing climate and everything in between.

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Did Ben and Rett do better than the Mayans at predicting the events of 2012? Find out as they go back through their predictions from last December point by point! And you can join in for 2013! Send us your 2013 predictions and we’ll include them on our next show. A perfect way to spend a cold January evening.

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Hello again! Like old friends or bad pennies, we have returned after a long absence. This week, Rett and Ben discuss GenCon, TAGIE, BGG.Con, and the Alliance Open House as well as Games Workshop’s latest legal maneuvering. Also, Rett’s new office chair is very squeaky and Ben is jealous that Rett has fans. Enjoy! We’ll have another show out later this month for our year end recap.

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Welcome to the calm before the storm. We are in the doldrums of summer, as manufacturers scurry silently towards Indianapolis – which means darn little news this week. Still, Ben and Rett make the most of it, discussing Gen Con and Origins dates out through 2020, dissecting some tidbits of news and answering reader mail about “expected value” and PDF product. We’ll see everyone next week at Gen Con. Drop us an email or post on the show notes or catch Rett at his home away from home (guess which booth?).

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Well, we survived the heat wave.. barely. We recorded the show Sunday night complaining about the lack of news and new product announcements. Paizo, of course, was releasing their new product announcements as we were recording. Thus, you should ignore the part of the show wherein we say there’ll be no news revelations until closer to GenCon. You SHOULD, however, listen to the show and enjoy the discussion of Kickstarter, WotC’s D&D 3.5 reprints, their new D&D Command minis game, and a wonderful aside on whether or not Spiderman jumped the shark, or at least the gun, with a series reboot after only 3 movies. All that plus reader mail and a comedic call for replacements for the “elderly” Mr. Rett Kipp.

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Ben and Rett are back with a hard hitting expose on…boxes. Well, maybe not an expose, but it is the long-feared “All About Boxes” episode. We have lots of news on Origins and other summer fun bits, too. Hopefully, all of this will make you forget the fact that we were very late getting the show out!

And we have an actual link for you:
Ed Pugh’s Evolution of Distribution video

Running Time: Just over 50 minutes of amazing and insightful industry commentary.

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We thought we’d do a wonderfully long, sprawling show talking about nothing but Miniatures games. We were wrong. We ended up doing a bang-bang 40 minute show talking about D&D designer Monte Cook’s departure from Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro’s first quarter blues and *then* talk about Adepticon’s ascension and Little Wars retention in the miniature market (that’s sort of a pun, really as the miniatures market is quite small, mostly).

Next show: Right smack on top of Origins at the end of May. (Origins? End of May? I know. I know.). We’ll be talking summer gaming and revisit Kickstarter.

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This was going to be our big GAMA Trade Show recap, but alas! There seems to be hardly any news to report, so we talk about the demise of Screen Life, answer a reader post about why a printer didn’t print their game, talk a bit about Digital versus Printed proofs (a remnant from our All About Art show) and generally inform and entertain for an alltogether too brief 30 odd minutes! Happy Spring!

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This month, Ben and Rett discuss a smidge of news, the Purple Pawn industry survey, and, of course, art. Ben goes all print nerd about art specs and you actually hear Rett’s eyes glaze over. Truly amazing stuff if you’ve ever wondered about printing a game. If not, stick with it to the end for a nice, concise discussion of the upcoming GAMA Trade Show.

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