G*M*S Magazine Podcast Channel

By Dr Mike Reddy

00:00 Introduction - http://www.gmsmagazine.com/podcasts/the-boardroom

00:02 Interview with Hannah and Ryan of the Counters The Board Game Cafe, Cardiff - https://www.facebook.com/countersBGC

00:13 Interview with Tom Nolan, designer of StakBots the card game, and their upcoming KickStarter for the expansion - http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/643459158/stak-bots-battling-card-game-expansion

00:35 Pandemic: The Cure, the dice game prototype - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/150658/pandemic-the-cure - with Michael from the Little Metal Dog Show Podcast - http://littlemetaldog.com/ - and Chris from The Sausage Factory Podcast - http://spong.com/podcasts/tsf/

01:08 End credits

The Cthulhu Britannica London Boxet for Call of Cthulhu Kickstarter campaign has been very successful. And it’s not surprising because the team behind it are as passionate as they’re experienced.

To find out more about what sort of thinking has gone behind the production of all the writing in this project, I got together wit Stuart Boon, the line manager for the Cthulhu Britannica series of books from Cubicle 7.

Apart from making even more excited about the Kickstarter, he also was very reassuring about the content and future of the whole line.

Hope you enjoy the interview!

Let me make this *very* clear: I don’t like Poker. At all. I find it a pretty pointless game that people take too seriously and doesn’t serve any purpose because I don’t find it fun.

I know a lot of people like it. I know a lot of people sing its praises, but it’s just not for me.

Therefore, when Sirlin Games asked me if I wanted to playtest and review their game Pandante, I was a bit.. err… “meh!”. I was feeling that way because Pandante is, basically, Poker with a few bits and bobs added.

The bits and bobs added, though, turn it into a game that I was curious enough to actually say “yes, I’ll review it”.

Pandante is like Poker, but with lying, bluffing (no… bluffing more than in normal Poker) and abilities. And Pandas! Lots and lots of Pandas!

So I sat down with Michael Chamberlain and Max Murray in the review room and we played it. And we recorded our impressions.

If you are on time, you might want to head now to Kickstarter and back this project.

If you aren’t on time, you might want to get a copy… it’s been funded, so it should be available.

If it isn’t available, get it from someone else. Just make sure you get this game.

Dragonmeet comes one more year and things are changing!

Things are changing because they’re getting better and more interesting, which is why I thought it’d be a good idea to invite Cat Tobin, one of the organisers and masterminds who’ve put the show together to ask her about the new goodness coming in!

This year there is a more comprehensive selection of seminars, traders role playing and board games organised, an art exhibition and a charity auction, this year promises to be really special.

Hope you enjoy the interview and it inspires you to come to the show in London!

Boxsets where the norm when I got into roleplaying games. The gorgeous boxes from the D&D range and many other games of the mid 80s marked the format that turned my summer – and winter – afternoons and evenings into amazing times.

Of course among those boxes were a few Cthulhu related boxes. And, unfortunately, then they went away. That’s not to say there haven’t been *great* game material written for Call of Cthulhu, but boxes? Not as many as I’d like!

Enter Cubicle 7!

The C7 humans have had the Cthulhu Britannica series goign on for a while and some fantastic products have been released. If you haven’t got Shadows Over Scotland, please do yourself a favour and get a copy. Now they’re upping their game and releasing the London version of their Cthulhu Britannica series, and for that they’ve gone to Kickstarter to get some money.

But is it worth backing this? I think it is and thus I’ve backed it, and hopefully the interview with Dom McDower-Thomas, Cubicle 7 mastermind will hopefully help you find reasons to back this project too!

Few authors, if any,  provide with as many  roleplaying games as Jim Pinto. The mastermind behind Postworld Games keeps churning ideas and turning them into games at a speed that makes the Enterprise seem like a child’s tricycle. 

Mr Pinto, friend of the show, has been at it again. Now he’s in Kickstarter offering 15 games for a price that is more than reasonable.

As always, he offers great value for money *and* great entertainment!

Hope you enjoy the interview!

Some of us like the sort of retro Sci-Fi look from the 50s and 60s and also love the movies from that time. As someone who’s first sci-fi experience was Forbidden Planet, the cheesy and wonderful future imagined at the time was, and indeed still is, incredibly attractive.

That’s one of the reasons I felt compelled to look further into Fortress Moon, a game by Thorin and Alan Thompson.

Fortress Moon is a heavy strategy game that, if funded, will come with 280 miniatures and a ton of components for a 2 to 4 players experience.

In this interview, I spoke to Thorin and Alan about the game and what makes it special.

Hope you enjoy it!

By Doctor Mike Reddy

This podcast was recorded between the 11th October and the 11th November 2013

00:00 Introduction

02:58 What We’ve Been Playing:

• 02:58 Dungeon Roll (Paco)
• 12:12 Stone Age (Kara)
• 12:48 Love Letter (Kara and Paco)
• 13:15 Fauna (Kara)
• 14:36 Pixel Lincoln (Paco)
• 17:15 Mice and Mystics (Paco)
• 22:33 Battleships: The Card Game (Dr. Mike)
• 26:11 Monopoly Deal (Kara)

27:38 Preparation for Essen (Paco and Kara)

Paco and Kara tell us of their plans for Spiel in Essen. Of course it is done and dusted now and they are safely back in the UK. Look out for news and interviews about Essen on this feed.

30:58 Teaser for Monopoly Wars Part One (Dr. Mike)

Dr. Mike teases the interview with Chris Michaud of the Flip the Table podcast, about the virtues of Monopoly; see later in this episode! We will be revisiting this debate with future guests arguing against the dreaded ‘M’ word of gaming…

 32:12 More Games Paco has been playing:

• 32:12 Spartacus (Paco and Kara) -Dr. Mike corrects the pronunciation of “gladiator”
• 37:06 CO2 (Paco) including mentions of
• 40:00 Terra Mystica (Paco)
• 40:38 CaRBoNiCiTy (Dr. Mike)

48:30 Teaser for the Boardgame Review Room: First Play Reviews (Paco)

•  53:01 Ladies Slacks [The IT Crowd] (Kara)

 54:46 Teaser for Android and iOS Board Games (Dr. Mike)

• 55:53 Words with Friends: The Board Game (Dr. Mike and Kara)
• 57:36 Civilisation (Kara)

58:06 In which we cover old ground 

• 58:06 Battleships: The Card Game (redux)
• 58:30 Mice and Mystics (redux)
•  59:16 Love Letter (redux)
• 01:00:28 Paco believes in Santa!
• 01:00:59 Zombicide
• 01:01:35 Santa IS real, and so is the Tooth Fairy!
• 01:05:00 Essen (redux)
• 01:08:20 BSc Computer Game Development

01:11:00 Part Two: Interview with Chris Michaud from the Flip the Table Podcast

01:11:46 Introduction and Counters Board Game Cafe

 01:13:18 What We’ve Been Playing (redux) including:

• 01:13:48 Nibble Nibble (Dr. Mike)
• 01:15:01 Rhino Rampage (Dr. Mike)
• 01:15:56 Forbidden Island (Dr. Mike and Chris)
• 01:16:10 Forbidden Desert (Chris)
• 01:16:58 Roll Through the Ages (Chris)
• 01:17:57 Forbidden Desert [redux]  (Chris)
• 01:19:02 Dominion (Chris)

01: 21:00 Monopoly Wars debate with Chris from Flip the Table

01:52:36 The Outro and Belated Goodbyes from Paco and Kara

Compact, light, gorgeous, fun, simple, engaging… Those are words are words any game designer would like to  see or hear applied to their game, and indeed a lot of games promise all those things so you, the gamer, will part with your hard-earned cash and buy it. Or get it for Christmas. That’d be OK too.

Well, Love Letter, from Alderac Entertainment Group promises all those things, and by damn it delivers them!

We sat down to take a look at this game, played the heck out of it and decided to put everything on record so you can make an informed decision about buying it.

Because you’ll want to buy it…

Yes friends we have another interview with a Kickstarter project, and this one could very well be of interest!

Although it looks like a racing game, it’s not a racing game. Even though it looks like a funny and silly game it’s not…. err… sorry, yes, it is a funny game that can get very silly.

You see, Thrash Car is the sort of game that, with the right group and if you’re prepared to be mean to your friends, could be really good fun indeed and the creators are making a lot of effort to make sure it turns up really, really fun.

But, as usual with Kickstarter, knowing what to expect is a bit of a lottery because you’re paying for a product that doesn’t exist yet. So doing these interviews is the way from G*M*S Magazine to actually try to find out as much as we can and tell you all about it so you can make an informed decision.

Hope you do make an informed decision and hope you tell me what it was!