So Very Wrong About Games

We sometimes don't understand the appeal of food-based games, friends and neighbours. To be sure, we adore Food Chain Magnate, but that is not parasitic upon our sincere appreciation of (say) lemonade and pizza. There seem to be many games based on enthusiasm for beer, coffee, whiskey, spicy food, wine... Wait, I'm noticing a trend. Is our indifference to alcohol poisoning yet another area of life...

Podcasts are often a discursive medium, and so naturally we find ourselves touching on many and diverse topics. This week, we delve into poetry and Star Trek, just in case you were under the illusion that we were anything other than unreconstructed nerds. Walker, being part jock, had to be restrained so as to not spontaneously give himself a wedgie. AYURIS: Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done 2m06s (Seth...

There are so many life lessons to be learned from the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon. For one, shave before debates. For another, hire limber secretaries with flexible standards on truth. Always be sure to hire expert lockpickers. Make sure your vice president will have your back (Nixon at least got a mulligan on that one). I mean, he's not a role model of mine--I wouldn't get his face tattoo...

Subtitles are to be used with discretion. Some people can't be trusted with them, and most of those people seem to work in Hollywood and non-fiction publishing. We resist the urge much of the time, but every once in a while the dam bursts and we must find an outlet for our pent-up subtitling impulses. We have over twenty this time. We're sorry. AYURIS: Teotihuacan: City of Gods 3m53s (Daniele Tasc...

A rulebook generates expectations, and whether and how those expectations are met or frustrated is an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes you get exactly what you want and that's a good thing--and sometimes the rules promise a set of experiences that never manifest. Over time, you start to get a better feel for what a game might be like by virtue of its rulebook, but even experienced gamers can be t...

“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”― F...

No daunts are asked and no daunts are given this week. "I don't give a daunt" is tattooed on Walker's back, no doubt an homage to Rhett Butler's famous ending line. We needed a little breather this time--a break from two-hour epic experiences. A little palate cleanser to ease us into a purely digital gaming life; because, to be frank, in this stage of isolation, we felt a little daunted. We will p...

Isolation gaming continues, so we turn our lonely eyes to gaming alone--an endeavour that predates plague-induced solitude, but is certainly thriving now. Many a gamer is experimenting with those (increasingly frequent) variants for the first time. We understand--any port in a storm. Let us game alone together. AYURIS: Coimbra 1m48s (Flaminia Brasini & Virginio Gigli, eggertspiele, 2018)Games Play...

A little throwback for you, our dear and loyal listeners, a small taste of the pre-summer schedule splendour and abundance where we spoil you with both a topic and a feature game. It happened organically, you see, what with all the social distancing -mandated two-player gaming we've been doing. That, and we want to try to give you a little more in light of the world giving you a little less. Of co...

Ripped from the headlines, as Dick Wolf is wont to say, we present to you the most timely of discussions. Of course, Walker takes us down theoretical tangents once again, whereas Mark rolls his eyes and tried to keep things on track--the standard roles that our hosts always seem to fall into. In Walker's defense, the Kool-Aid Man is a pressing philosophical issue. Fortunately, boardgaming has reso...

All of your burning questions shall be addressed! Why is there something rather than nothing? Quid est veritas? War, huh! What is it good for? Why do birds suddenly appear every time a Knizia game is near? Rest assured that the topics covered are vast--Macross, objectivism, fictional Thai kick boxers, and so much more. Featuring special guests Dan Thurot (spacebiff.com), Charlie Theel (playerelimi...

Warning: there is some implied discussion of the existence of the health care field in this week's review. No jokes were made about current viral events, though, and given the general low-brow nature of this podcast that's a minor miracle. The only jokes about current affairs are related to hip hop, and even those references are dated to over twenty years ago. Games Played Last Week:-Street Master...

Some of you might be unfamiliar with the traditions surrounding birthdays in Canada. They are savage affairs, drenched in blood and feats of suffering. I mean, there's the cake, sure, and that part is pretty benign--except for the baking of it, come to think of it, where the birthday girl or birthday boy is expected to remove the cake from an oven with their bare hands and devour the thing whole;...

Would you like a job at Asmodee? Well guess what, if you need any replacement parts from them, you've just been drafted to work as their support staff. Best of all, your salary is nothing! Are we doomed to become ever more curmudgeonly, rambling to young gamers about how "back in my day, we got replacement parts just by sending an email" and the the young 'uns would be all like "Ok, Millennial, bu...

On must acknowledge that in many instances, pre-judgment is an adaptive advantage--I don't mean with respect to people, but in terms of being able to sift through the endless data with which we are constantly bombarded. Most of our concepts are pre-fabricated little categories that we can shove sense data into in order to make sense of the world (there's your Kantianism in three seconds for you)....

One must learn as a child that just because something is difficult does not mean it isn't worth doing. Sometimes we here at SVWAG feel that the corollary for adults is that just because something is difficult doesn't mean it is worthwhile. Some hard things should just be avoided. It's hard to drive a nail through your own skull, but it doesn't follow that it's necessarily a prime opportunity for s...

My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious. AYURIS: Level 7 [Omega Protocol] 2m34s (Will Schoonover, Privateer Press, 2013)Games Played Last Week:-Guards of Atlantis II: Tabletop MOBA 6m38s (Artyom Nichipurov, Wolff Designaa, 2020)-Las Vegas...

Rarely has a game been as deeply, frighteningly cynical as Imperial. We are sadly inured to the notion of vast military conflicts; and we are sadly inured to the corrupting influence of enormous wealth; but never before has a game combined the two and posited the Schlieffen Plan as a gambit to improve the marginal rate of return of someone's portfolio. Oh, my RRSP is Russian firepower, by the way....

Eventually a charge becomes so tired and rote that it becomes accepted without critical thought--but so often these hackneyed claims are false. Knizia games are themeless is a good example. Canadians are polite is another. The one that rears its ugly head this week is Walker's insistence that he is bullied, which has definitely got to count as attempted gaslighting at this point. On the plus side,...

Better late and wrong than never wrong, am I right? Wait, that doesn't make sense. Suffice to say that we wanted to be as certain as we could this year, as past years offered rather significant asterisks on our best-of lists--but this year, with only minor exceptions, we're pretty confident we played the games most likely to make the cut. I'm sure this sense of certainty and comprehensiveness will...

Look, it's hard enough to remember games without them injecting too many dates into their titles. Claustrophobia 1643 I keep misremembering as 1648 (Treaty of Westphalia), Ausburg 15whenever is as forgettable as the game, Pulsar 2849 barely sticks in my mind, and now Caylus 1303. I'd be tempted to just try and parse the game as "Caylus 13XX," but it's not about trains, now, is it? Games Played Las...

The Holidays are upon us--Christmas very soon, Hanukkah is ongoing, Kwanzaa around the corner--but today on SVWAG, as it is on most days, we celebrate Festivus. On Mark's insistence, we forego the Feats of Strength, as the outcome would be certain and humiliating; O, but the Airing of the Grievances! Canadians have much to complain about, what with one mess of a fulfillment after another. And comp...

Perhaps it would be inevitable that there would be juvenile comments about the components in Catan: Starfarers. This is, after all, the gaming series that brought us endless unfunny remarks about wood and sheep. Perhaps the sculptors for the pieces knew what they were doing and, in turn, laughing at us. I suppose we must be thankful that Klaus Teuber remained high-minded--one shudders to imagine w...

There are times when immediately upon finishing recording, one or both of our hosts immediately feel the tremendous regret of having forgotten The Thing. But, alas, the moment has passed, and they cannot now mention The Thing. The only redress available is this episode description, which sadly no one but you reads. We salute you, hyper-literate outlier! This week, The Thing is Wavelength--recently...

Black Secret was an expansion to Ghost Stories where you played as vicious, frenetic shoppers trying to ascertain what were the best hidden deals on Black Friday. I think. If nothing else, one can appreciate the fact that online shopping might one day prevent the trampling deaths that accompany this uniquely retail "holiday." The end of brick and mortar retail will surely be a great loss, and one...