The Ascent of Board Games

Hi, folks! It's time for another designer deep dive, and this month we're looking at a designer who probably deserves the attention more than anyone else - the prolific, the legendary, the first-man-to-win-all-three-Spiel-des-Jahres-awards, Dr. Reiner Knizia. He's designed hundreds of games - not even counting all the rethemes, rereleases, and reimplementations - so this episode can only scratch the surface of his résumé, but we're gonna do our best.

How was Monopoly important in his early game design career?

Jayson's hopes for a cool mech game are raised and then dashed in the space of about 90 seconds.

We collectively discover a bunch of expansions for this Knizia favorite that we didn't know about and now must have.

Frank's favorite Knizia game was, in fact, designed by Rüdiger Dorn - and Mike will NOT let it go. (To be fair, none of us remembers which one is called what.)

What's your favorite Knizia title? What other game developers do we need to dive deep on? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds!

As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!

Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com

Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social

Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/

And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames

Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.

Thank you for listening!

Hi folks! This month we conclude our review of our favorite games that don't exist. Or at least didn't used to. Look, it makes more sense if you just listen to the episode. And don't worry - whatever you thought you heard at the end of last episode, Joe is fine and has definitely not been implanted with a government mind-control chip.

Contents include but are not limited to:

The soundtrack to The Last Starfighter: The Musical!

One possible rule set for George R.R. Martin's fantasy chess-alike, Cyvasse.

A quick look at the board games of Widow's Bay.

Are there any books, movies, or TV shows that made up a board game you'd like to play for real? What classics did we miss? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds!

As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!

Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com

Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social

Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/

And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames

Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.

Thanks to JellyfishSorbet at Pixabay for additional audio this episode!

Thank you for listening!

Hello everyone! We've spent lo these many months talking about real games - now it's time for us to talk about games that DON'T exist. Although some of them actually do exist now, but didn't originally. Come on along with us - maybe it will make more sense if you give this a listen! Among the games we discuss:

Jetan, or Martian Chess - an entirely playable game

Rithmomachia (which Frank refers to as "Rithomancy")

Star Trek games. So many Star Trek games:

3-D Chess

Strategema

Tongo (with unofficial rules here)

Kadis-Kot

Also at least one Star Wars game, which is fine because apparently none of us can tell Star Trek and Star Wars apart any more.

Plus a drive-by James Bond appearance.

Also, an excellent actual play of Mornington Crescent (and the tangentially related Numberwang!)

What's your favorite imaginary game? Which classics did we forget? And what happened to Joe? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds!

As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!

Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com

Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social

Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/

And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames

Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.

Thanks to JellyfishSorbet at Pixabay for additional audio this episode!

Thank you for listening!

Hi folks! If you listened to last month's episode (or have been following the board game industry for the last decade or so), you probably have a pretty good idea about what's going to happen in this month's episode - the Fall of Fantasy Flight Games.

We're not saying that Fantasy Flight's 2014 merger with Asmodee is responsible for the collapse of one of the world's biggest and most respected board game publishers...but we're not not saying that, either.

Are you - or were you - a Fantasy Flight Fan? Are there other game companies you'd like us to give this kind of treatment to? Was this a terrible idea? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds!

As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!

Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com

Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social

Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/

And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames

Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.

Thank you for listening!

Hi folks! We're back (yes, even including Jayson!) with an episode that's a little different than our usual - do let us know what you think!

This month and next month, we're doing a different kind of deep dive. Rather than specifically looking at a single game mechanic or designer, we're looking at a game company - in this case, Fantasy Flight Games. Not to give anything away, but the fact that this episode is subtitled "The Rise" might give you a moment's pause about next month's episode...

Have you ever wanted to read a novel set in one of FFG's game universes? Well, they released some anyway.

Diskwars: The Mess

FFG made a movie! Rotten Tomatoes has it at 8%, so you know we need to set up a watch party on Discord...

The War of the Ring Collector's Edition is mighty hard to find these days, but you can still get the only slightly less cool Two Decades Limited Edition.

Frank says the first edition of this FFG product had "one fatal flaw - it's a terrible game."

Are you - or were you - a Fantasy Flight Fan? Are there other game companies you'd like us to give this kind of treatment to? Was this a terrible idea? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds!

As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!

Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com

Email: ascentofboardgames@gmail.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social

Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/

And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames

Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.

Thank you for listening!