G*M*S Magazine Podcast Channel

Slavery has played a horrific role in the history of many countries for a very, very long time. Far from being a thing of the past, slavery is still very present in modern day and efforts to eradicate it continue.

Learning from history is probably the best way to understand where we come from and where we’re going. Freedom – The Underground Railroad does exactly that. Taking a massive risk, Academy Games has created a game that explores the efforts to free slaves.

The players take on the role of historical Abolitionists who will try to save as many slaves a possible between the 1800’s and the Civil War. A careful balance between raising funds for the cause and moving the slaves from location to location will be the key to save enough slaves and win the game. However every time the slaves are moved, the slave catchers will be alerted and will capture the slaves to send them back into slavery.

The game has received a great deal of praise and we were very curious to find out how it worked and if it really is as good as it sounds. This is keeping in mind that we have a certain Max Murray in our team who doesn’t really like cooperative games!

Hope you enjoy the show!

I have been looking forward to seeing Mindjammer for a long time. The Space Opera game that will probably set a new precedent for future sci-fi games is finally almost here and I am seriously looking forward to seeing what Sarah Newton is going to bless our gaming shelves with.

I came accross Mindjammer years ago when Sarah Newton published her first novel. I read it in a lot less time than I was expecting and it already gave me all I needed. Great characters, great technology, believable settings in an incredible way… the formula was there.

I never looked into the first edition of the game, Mindjammer, the only reason that the second one was coming and, knowing Sarah, it was bound to be a lot better than the first.

Now that the game is in pre-order, I had to interview the author and find out even more about this fantastic setting. But before we talked about Mindjammer, we also talked about Monsters & Magic, a new take on the Old School type of games that truly and genuinely take the old rules and make something fantastic and new with them.

As you can imagine, she didn’t disappoint!

Mage Company, the guys behind Wrong Chemistry and 12 Realms, have now gone to Kickstarter to fund their latest game, Hoyuk, a game in which you take on the role of a human 10,000 years ago trying to erect a village.

Although Hoyuk was released in 2006 as a print and play, the game has been reworked to be produced as a physical product and bring it onto the table.

As always, I was very curious about how they’re doing this and what plans they have for the game, so I got together with our friends from Mage Company to ask them lots of questions about the game, the new features they’ve brought into the system, the production values they’re aiming for and a lot more.

Hope you enjoy the show!

Published in 2012 by AEG, Dominare is part of the Tempest series of boardgame that the prolific company has released and that includes Mercante and others.

In Dominare you try to gain control of the city of Tempest by spreading your influence through the city and developing a network to control the different areas of the city.

Designed by Jim Pinto and with gorgeous artwork by Andrew Hepworth and Jeff Mimmelman, this game is a very promising edition to the series.

Michael, Cesare and Max sat down at the table and had a first play at this game.

Considering they like deep games with tons of options that make you think time and time again, will this game satisfy the intellectual demand of our intrepid players?

Let’s find out!

Doctor Reddy, Paco and Kara mingle a bit to bring you some reviews and conversation on the world of boardgaming.

00:00:00 Introduction
00:03:30 What games have Paco and Dr Mike been playing including Ghost Blitz and Duko
00:06:15 What Paco and Dr Mike got for Christmas including Ligretto, Lego Heroica and Pandemic and a chance to win Dungeon Roll
00:16:28 UK Games Expo Guests and Workshops including Chris Barry and and a chance to win some Red Dwarf paraphernalia, and X-Wing discussion
00:30:10 What games have we been playing (again) including Firefly: the boardgame, Council of Verona, Cornish Smuggler, Fleet, Pandante, Aquarius and Lego Heroica
00:47:09 Our hopes for 2014, including:
Firefly: the RPG, Salute, UK Games Expo, Emperor's New Clothes, You are the Hero: the history of Fighting Fantasy books, Torn Armour, Cthulhu Wars, 3D printers
00:50:30 X-Wing speculation, including
Quick Snitch, Counters the Board Game Cafe
00:57:57 Torn Armour update
00:59:12 Discussion with Kara about the Leisure Games Game Redesign Competition of Wilderness
01:09:01 What Kara has been playing, including:
Ivor, Cheaty Mages
01:11:06 Round up of Essen and hopes for UK Games Expo
01:14:45 What Dr Mike has been playing, including Cha Cha Chicken and Hanabi, and some more Essen discussion
01:22:55 X-Wing tournament woes, including the short-lived World Hall of Fame
01:31:59 X-Wing vs Attack Wing, including a comparison of Coup vs Maskerade
01:43:25 X-Wing Tournament update
01:49:25 Goodbye from Kara, Paco and Dr Mike

After a while in which we’ve kept the room under lock and key, we are back to discuss all things role play and cover topics gaming related that might, or might not, be of interest to you, our lovely listeners.

Together with the furniture, we’ve made some changes to the hosts. Or maybe I should say an addition.

I am very pleased to announce that Jim Pinto, of Postworld Games will be joining us on a permanent basis to co-host this podcast with Vickey Beaver and myself.

Jim has a wealth of experience in the world of RPG and boardgames with more designs in his portfolio than most, though he’s also less well-known than most.

However, I have read a few of his games and backed his most recent Kickstarter and the suspicion that he has some sort of super power or alien heritage, because few other people can write as much apart from him and Endzeitgeist.

Anyway. In this episode Jim explains why fads are a thing of the past and why cosplayer shouldn’t have a place at games conventions.

We also find out why I am a horrible human being around Halloween.

Enjoy the show!

I haven’t played an Euro with good theme since O2. And that wasn’t a game for beginners either. In fact it was quite a hard day.

Michael Chamberlain was very excited about this one but, since for him a headache induced by a game is the best way to rate how good a game is, I was a bit apprehensive.

The fact that this game is by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer did put me at ease a bit, but not much. It sounded like a heavy game and I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy it.

Then we started to play it and I have to say this game surprised me… a lot.

As well as looking totally gorgeous, the game plays with some mechanics and mechanisms that surprised me in the best possible way.

Hope you enjoy the show!

For a long time now I have been looking forward to playing Serpent’s Tongue, a game I came across at Spiel at the Arctic Union booth. The game looked just gorgeous and the premise was seriously alluring; two magi battle by casting spells against each other.

Presented like that you’d be forgiven for thinking I am just getting carried away and that there are many other battling games out there. You’d be right, but no… you’d be wrong.

This game has something unique. In this game you actually have to cast the spells by reading the symbols of magic and learning their pronunciation and their somatic component. You actually have to learn what sort of spell it is, how to pronounce the beautiful magic alphabet and develop your strategy to defeat your enemy.

The game comes more than a hundred spells, of which you can only use a handful in each battle, thus having a bit of deck building element to it.

So Michael Chamberlain and I got together, pulled the spells book and followed the walkthrough to learn to play this game.

This is our experience! Hope you enjoy the show!

I have learned to trust Michael Chamberlain when is about games. He kinda knows things I don’t. Tons of things.

One of the things he knows how to do is spot great ideas and great sounding games in Kickstarter, and that’s exactly what he has done with Scoville.

We got together with Ed Marriot and interview him about his game of chilly peppers farming. Must say it sounds a great deal more promising than I expected.

I am not particularly into farming games and I need theme in euro games for me to be interested in them. Scoville certainly has that. A game in which you cross-breed chilli peppers to get the best plants out there. Result!

Oh… and it looks gorgeous too!

Hope you enjoy the show!

By Paco Garcia Jaen

Time travel is one of those subjects that fascinate people throughout the Science Fiction and Fantasy spectrum and Timewatch wants to do something about it.

There are tons of movies, novels and games that do their best with the subject, but with something like traveling the waves of time, it’s tough to come up with something truly convincing, specially if you have or want to interact with it.

That is what Timewatch attempts to do.

The role playing game by Kevin Kulp uses the Gumshoe system, which powers Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents and other games published by Pelgrane Press.

With a very successful campaign that saw the game funded in a matter of days and then unravelled stretch goal after stretch goal,  I wanted to find out why it had attracted so much attention, so I had Kevin Kulp around the interview room to have a chat and find out about him and his game.

As someone who was very sceptical, I had quite a few questions to ask. And I got some really convincing answers!

Hope you enjoy the show!