Boardgames To Go

Here we are at another season already. The podcast has now reached it's 22nd season, which is a small miracle. We just keep chugging along. If anything, I think it now has a solid core of listeners and participants that feel like they're going to stick with me. :-)   With BGStats, it's now even easier for me to see my final tallies for the games I played last year. Plus, I can separate out the digital ones from the in-person plays. Though as you'll hear in the podcast, a bunch of those digital plays are as real as anything, thanks to live play and voice/video connections. I expect that trend will continue to be an important part of my hobby. After talking about those statistics and some more meta thoughts at the end of the year, I jump into some questions & comments from listeners. I used to do this regularly. Now, perhaps the Discord server itself serves some of that function. But it's still nice to respond on the podcast to questions. I'll probably do that again sometime. -Mark

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.   @Gregarius I know I said this episode would be my Feedback (or "mail bag") focused epsiode. And some may remember that previously I'd used the December 1st episode for my grinch-like Curmudgeon Show. In the end, I decided to push the Feedback episode back one month, to start the year with it on January 1st, 2026. You've got some more time to submit any questions or topics for me. While I'm not bringing back the Curmudgeon Show (just enjoy the grumbling on our special Discord channel!), I did bring back another old-timer who always joins me this time of year to talk about BGGcon. Greg Pettit is an "every-timer" to this wonderful event, and I've always had him back on the podcast to talk about his experiences & games played there. I wasn't able to join this year, but that's because I went to a different game convention the same month: San Diego History Con, or SDHistCon. So...I decided to blend our experiences and discussions into a combined episode about both conventions. Greg & I both intended to be more concise in this episode...but that didn't really happen. :-) Even after trimming our lists of some games, only talking about an interesting subset of them, we managed to have as much to say as ever. It's another big episode that will keep you going the entire holiday season. Is it a gift buying guide? Not really! We don't approach things that way, a little curmudgeon-ness leaks through sometimes, but we do gush about a few games. So perhaps it inspires some gift-giving, who knows? When you listen to this episode, you may find it helpful to follow along with our geeklist. That way you can track what games we've talked about, which are coming next, and what are 5-star ratings are. I've also inserted the game boxes here in the order discussed, which will also appear in the shownotes.                                 We both had good experiences at our respective cons, and I look forward to next year when I expect we'll get to sit across the same game table together in Dallas. As much as I'd like to go to all the good conventions, I can't. As it is, I'm at a point in my life (empty nester, nearing retirement) when I can go to more than ever before. In a month I'll return to the regional EsCon event, and in the spring I think I'll be back in Las Vegas for Dice Tower West.   -Mark

Opener: Please send in your comments, questions, or suggestions for next month's Feedback-focused episode Closer: When do you opt out of game night? Every year I pay special attention to Fairplay magazine's booth at Essen. In recent years, they've been great about sharing their Scoutaktion results on social media, too. Fairplay is primarily a German language print magazine for our hobby, but every year at Essen they do an additional service for our global hobby: they collect ratings for the first impressions of these new titles, and share them for all to see. Here's what they reported last year. Notice anything? The top rated game in the expert category went on to win the Kennerspiel a year later, and the same thing happened with the top-rated family category game winning the Spiel des Jahres! The predictions for later success & staying power aren't always that accurate, but they're always pretty good. They are definitely worth watching. For this episode I go through the 10 top titles in each of this year's Expert and Family categories for Fairplay booth voting. They call these their Scoutaktion reports. I've been following these avidly for a quarter-century. Amazing!   -Mark

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Opener: The games we played at the second BGTG Online Mini-Con Closer: Essen is almost here, and I'll still follow it (but not anticipate it) For a long time I've wanted to have a boardgamer's discussion about different sports...as games. I don't mean sports boardgames, or season/league play. Nor do I mean franchise management. I mean the physical game itself, on the field, with its rules. Sure, a sport is a physical activity. An enormous part of the resulting play comes from the athletic prowess and physical skill of the players. However, there's a lot of strategy in the best sports games. It's part of what makes them fun to watch, to discuss, to second-guess, and so on. Whether it's football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, or tennis, these games have rules, they have scoring systems, they have strategic texture. Right? If you don't see that, then it might explain why you don't care for sports. Maybe all sports have strategic texture. It's much harder for me to see in something like the dash races on the track or in a pool. Those seem to be much more measures of sheer physical athleticism. Though even in races, I've heard runners talk about the strategy for a race, especially with the energy management and psychological contest against other runners. However, I'm really focusing on sports that have more rules, more scoring. I think these provide greater opportunity for players and teams to differentiate from each other by their strategy. Sometimes it comes from the coach or manager, such as when managing the clock. Part of the reason this is a solo episode is that I've always had difficulty getting others to understand what I'm talking about. Or perhaps no one is interested! Whatever--I decided to record this episode by myself and find out what kind of response it generates. If you are a sports fan--and a boardgamer--does any of this make sense to you? Did I forget something? Especially with the sports I don't follow so much (soccer, basketball, hockey), I'm sure that I did. Boardgamers seem to gravitate toward baseball, a game that offers the opportunity for deep study and second-guessing. I'm anticipating some reaction there. -Mark

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Reminder! Please join other podcast listeners for the next online BGTG Mini-Con, scheduled for September 6. I plan to be online from 9am-9pm Pacific time, including the Boardgames To Go discord server for voice & video. The games will mostly be played on BoardgameArena, but adventurous gamers can also use Yucata, Brettspielwelt, Boardgames.io, Steam, apps, or whatever. It's free, and no RSVP or signup is necessary. Openers: Mark: Vantage Greg: Rock Hard 1977   Closers: Greg: "I don't know" ❤️ Mark: Finding my city on a game map @Gregarius Over two decades I've enjoyed having a lot of people join me on the podcast, most of them my friends from local game groups. Greg Pettit has been there from the beginning, and quite a few times. Especially in some earlier years of the podcast, Greg was one who was willing to tackle some deep topics, meta-topics around the hobby. Instead of talking about a specific game, we'd talk about the possible longevity of our hobby, artistic merit of some designs, the different types of thematic resonance in games, or how to be contemplative with our boardgames. He initiated several of those topics. (To be fair, some of my other friends do that, too. That's why they're my friends...they like dissecting our hobby with me.) With more & more years behind us, Greg suggested we revisit some of those subjects, at least at a high level. The hobby has grown & grown. Distribution is much wider and boardgames now come up conversations at work or your neighborhood. Game mechanisms and styles of play have changed. And...we've all gotten older. Greg has questions relating to all of these, and it's fun to talk about. -Mark