So Very Wrong About Games

The Card Crafting System returns once more, its heaps of mylar inserting into our gaming life. I would say it darkens our door, but the things are mostly transparent, so the idiom doesn't quite fit. One wonders whether and how one could sleeve a Card Crafting game, given that the games largely consist of sleeves already--but once one has witnessed the recursive horror that is sleeve sleeves, you c...

There are happy stories. Stories of social serendipity, where you like them and they like you, and all opinions are as one and there is harmony. Where no awkward conversations need be had and no unfortunate lines drawn. Where no one is annoyed, and no one is harassed, and no one must bury their preferences so as to placate another. These are not these stories. AYURIS: Food Chain Magnate 1m37s (Jer...

So. Many. Games. Even after careful curation and surgical editing, Mark and Walker talk about thirteen different games they played last week, not even counting the feature game. It was truly a good week. New games! Old games! Co-ops, minis, dexterity, wargames! Come join us at the cornucopia of amusement that is this week's SVWAG.Games Played Last Week: -Beasts of Balance 1m29s (George Buckenham &...

What is gaming other than an outlet for vicarious experiences and thrills? To enjoy the simulacrum of killing, adventure, high finance, and impressing feudal lords? We can thus assert with great sincerity that ours shall be the very best GenCon coverage, in that we didn't go. Why trust the easily-misled first hand accounts? We know from both philosophy and science that sense data deceives. You can...

Failure can be a fortuitous thing, which is very good for Mark, as he is well accustomed to failure. While this week's review of Pax Renaissance is certainly not on the scale of, say, penicillin, it did give him the opportunity to play one of his top 20 games more. As to whether Walker profited or suffered from this development is a deep and abiding mystery solvable only by listening to this week'...

We can pretend that our adult pastimes are more sophisticated and evolved from the trivialities of mere children, but really, let's admit it--it's all the same. We can't claim any degree of superiority when compared to the antics of ankle-biters. Let's be mature about it and lean into the juvenalia, shall we? My doll is better than your doll. My doll has the Plasmanator Meltotron. You can't hit my...

"May you get everything you want" is nothing short of a curse, I think, and so this week we curse you with your own desires. You wanted us to play Middara, so we did. You wanted more information about Sol: Last Days of a Star, so we oblige. As you weep, surrounded by the wreckage wrought by your own wishes, don't come to us for solace, for we are but the accomplices of your own self-destruction. A...

Since tableau-building today is very much what auctions were twenty years ago, we take a look at both in this week's episode. The Pax games continue ever onward, even as most of our favourite auction game were published 10+ years ago. Mark resists the urge to go off on a tangent about the Trolley Problem, which allows Walker to resist the urge to send Mark's teeth off on a tangent from his mouth....

I swear, one dude gets his arm cut off in a cantina and we're still harping on about it forty years later. Have a sense of proportion! I got beat up in high school twenty years ago, but you don't hear me whining. That dude should have done what I did--rounded up a posse and threatened retaliation if any assault persisted. He could have rallied those pushed around by laser sword-wielding hermits an...

Knowing when to give up is a valuable skill. As children we are told to stick with painful and unpleasant things, and while that is often wise, sometimes it just results in more pain. Discerning the difference between choking down one's vegetables--good!--and pursuing a hobby merely for the sake of it--bad!--is a tricky bit of prudence that many adults can't quite seem to get. The notion of an "ac...

This is not, strictly speaking, the first foray into gaming that Hellboy has done--not even the first in the miniatures genre. There were some Hellboy Heroclix, but let us speak as adults--that's not really saying much. Everyone has been in Heroclix now. 43% of the human population has been represented as a Heroclix figure at some point. Walker has, like, four different versions (albeit two of tho...

Heroscape! This show has spent far, far too long talking about things that are not Heroscape. Today we attempt to remedy that deficiency by talking about Heroscape, which is a game--nay, an experience--nay, a lifestyle!--worth discussing. It was a wonderful retail oddity, an overproduced and affordable big box beauty. It is why basements were invented. It isn't the greatest game, but it is definit...

Do you sometimes feel like having your blind brother hurl spears at you as a party trick? Do you feel the urge to put your hand in a giant wolf's mouth to make your friends feel bad? Do you wish you could ride a chariot pulled by cats for no discernible reason? Do you long to carry on rambling conversations with a severed head? Do you want days of the week to be named after you? Well, this is your...

Names are powerful. The Spiel des Jahres means "game of the year" simpliciter, but for years we know that the juries have been casting a narrower and narrower net of what games thay would consider. It has become more of a specialized imprint, which is fine--but it's strange that the name still inspires such cachet. Anything with rules in excess of 3 or so pages seems now to be firmly beyond the pa...

Credibility, like a butterfly, is a fragile and beautiful thing. Mark is fundamentally opposed to subtlety and ephemeral joy, so he naturally seeks to destroy either whenever he encounters it. When it comes to credibility he does this by routinely making gross over-generalizations. This time he has managed to make an instant replay-esque correction, at least. As for what he does to butterflies, le...

Summer is here, friends and neighbours, and with it comes a a thickening of the blood that prompts torpor. We here at SVWAG are part lizard, you see, and so we must budget additional time to sun ourselves and slough off our scales. At any rate, we will be shifting to a summer schedule but still releasing an episode every week--though the magic of segment-swapping. How can such wizardry be true? Th...

We humble ourselves before you, O merciful audience, so as to lay bare our sins against the gaming world. Granted we toil as rules explainers on the behalf of ungrateful vermin who do not appreciate our labours, but nonetheless we take full responsibility for mildly inconveniencing the filthy ingrates who can't be bothered to read a rulebook. We implore that these monstrously selfish demons might...

"Money makes the world go 'round" is a common saying decried by most astronomers and physicists, who instead stubbornly maintain that it is due to some invisible thing that can't even qualify for a credit card. "More money than God" is also a strange phrasing, insofar as I believe the theological consensus (ranging from the Abrahamic faiths all the way to Pastafarianism) is that God does not hold...

We spare you the onomatopoeias this week, as our audio editing software cannot process the brightly-coloured spiky expostulations properly. Walker gets to backpedal at full speed this week, having previously declared his being done with both 1 vs. all games and games with tons of minis. So he surely wouldn't have any enthusiasm for this 1 vs. all minis-heavy game, would he? Could he?!Na na na na n...

Here's the thing, at least as Mark understands it: acquired tastes are weird. Some things are great the first time. Furthermore, some things are easy and great the first time. Take chocolate, for example. Most people start out champs at eating chocolate. Mark tried to get good at something once, but he found out that requires effort. Who has time for ten thousand hours when there's elite-level can...

Today is a telling day in the annals of SVWAG, especially with respect to Mark coming to terms with his own essential wrongness. He gets to partially repent for his tonal excesses with respect to the AYURIS; he gets to mull over painful loves lost in Billionaire Banshee; and he gets to realize that once again that while Walker cares deeply about people, he cares mostly about stuffing his face and...

HATE has landed, and you can't have it. CMON's dalliances with Kickstarter exclusives have been numerous, but now they have their first Kickstarter-exclusive game. We review it not to taunt you with things you can't acquire, but rather to give you the vicarious thrill of someone who can have everything. Let your imagination whisk you away to a universe that is all plastic cannibalistic hardcases!...

As my father is wont to say, "Accept credit, pass blame." Actually, no, I said that, and it's my father's fault that I forgot the correct attribution. Is that how that works? At any rate, we here at SVWAG are always happy to claim responsibility for all positive developments. When and if peace breaks out anywhere, we will assert it is our doing based merely on this aside. Such is the power of our...

Currencies drive many things, perhaps most things. HATE is driven by a currency called Savagery, which I believe is floated on the international market and its exchange rate fluctuates daily. We here at So Very Wrong About Games fuel our episodes with Snark, which is pegged conveniently to the Canadian Dollar. As a consequence, when some of you might be tempted to correct Mark on the name of the 1...

You do you, Walker always says, except he almost never does. Mark always says smoke 'em if you got 'em, despite his never uttering those words and frankly not knowing what they mean. He tried smoking once and didn't enjoy it. Why care about such petty things as truth or data when it feels consistent with a narrative you're peddling? Echoes of contemporary politics abound, as we ponder whether a ga...