This time, we are LIVE at Dice Tower West 2024 in Las Vegas in front of a convention audience to discuss our Roses, Thorns, and Hula Hoops, pit three games in a Vegas-themed Showdown, share a Tale of Boardgaming Horror, and take questions from the audience.

01:04 - News for Dice Tower West 2025

03:17 - Games Tom Taught

04:26 - Eric Plays Wyrmspan

05:52 - What's Julie Been Doing?

07:33 - Way Too Many Cats

11:38 - Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux

13:45 - Paris: La Cité de la Lumière

17:27 - Mr. Jack

19:54 - Challengers: Beach Cup

22:47 - Video Game Champion

29:36 - Showdown Intro

30:27 - Vegas Showdown

31:19 - Lords of Vegas

33:52 - Vabanque

36:22 - Tale of Boardgaming Horror

41:12 - What is our favorite Stonemaier Game?

41:58 - Where does Tom keep his hats?

42:39 - What are our favorite Auction Games?

44:23 - What was our favorite non-gaming Vegas experience?

47:41 - What game surprised us after having low expectations?

50:24 - Do we implement house rules/post-release fixes?

54:54 - What is a good travel-sized deck-building game?

57:28 - What are our spouses' favorite games?

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We present to you a specially chemically-enhanced episode. Walker has been doping specifically in preparation, eschewing any sustenance other than military-grade lozenges. Mark will be performing his hosting duties while fully immersed in a tank of benzocaine oral painkiller. It is a good thing that the International Olympic Committee has no sway here in SVWAG studios, or we would likely get disqualified for the podcast luge event.

Games Played Last Week:

01:30 -Raising Robots (Brett Sobol & Seth Van Orden, Nauvoo Games, 2023)

08:26 -Omen: Banks of the Styx (John Clowdus, Small Box Games, 2024)

11:40 -Set a Watch (Mike Gnade and Todd Walsh, Rock Manor Games, 2019)

13:47 -Cryo (Tom Jolly & Luke Laurie, Z-Man Games, 2021)

17:33 -Formula D (Laurent Lavaur & Eric Randall, Asmodee, 2008)

18:39 -Riftforce (Carlo Bortolini, 1 More Time Games, 2021)

22:36 -Piazza Rabazza (Guido Hoffman and Jens-Peter Schliemann, Zoch Verlag, 2022)

News (and why it doesn't matter):

25:37 RoboRally Transformers: can Autobots get drunk?

27:12 An expansion to Unfathomable, the Battlestar Galactica re-theme

27:52 Burned was too pure for this crowdfunded world

28:19 Etherstone from ThunderGryph Games by Virginio Gigli and Simone Luciani on Kickstarter

29:11 Avatar: The Last Airbender co-op deckbuilder

29:43 Feature Game: Kutná Hora: The City of Silver (Ondřej Bystroň, Petr Čáslava, and Pavel Jarosch, Czech Games Edition, 2023)

51:24 SVWAG Presents Masterpiece Theatre: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)

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Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.

Play along and predict the winners at https://challonge.com/3abpsej6 Predictions must be submitted by March 12 to be in the contest

Mark Johnson

@MarkEJohnson

Patrick Pence

@Farsol

Last year I ran my first "March Madness" style, 64-game, single-elimination vote, with a contest to submit predictions for the entire bracket. If you've got a pool for the famous college basketball tournament in your office, or with your friends, then you know what this is. Actually, these days many other copycat tournament prediction contests exists--there's a big one on BoardGameGeek, my favorite movie podcast (Filmspotting) does one for films, and so on. My version is similar, but it lists a bunch of games to be voted on against each other. Listeners suggested I call it Mark Madness, and that's what we did. Last year I picked all 64 games that we voted on, pulling from recent award winners in different categories. Listener Patrick Pence ended up the winner of the contest, and for that reason he's my co-host this month for the 2024 Mark Madness. Not only that, more listeners on our Discord channel suggested that the contest be more specific to me, asking me to populate the bracket with games that mean something to me. I did about half of those, and asked Patrick to do the same. Then I combined our lists, added a few "people's choice" titles to round it out, and then set up the bracket. Play along! I hope we get a good number of folks who submit their own official predictions at challonge.com, which is free. Some have already done it. You've until March 12 to submit your brackets, so you need to move quickly. Then the voting rounds will start via Geeklist polling. As you can see from the chart above, the successive rounds of this voting will start happening every three days: On March 15 we'll have the results of the first round, when 64 teams are winnowed down to 32 survivors. Then it proceeds to the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and Championship. Who will be the winner? We expect to do "micro-episode" podcasts throughout the month to talk about each round. They'll show up in your regular feed, and I can link them here, too. -Mark

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Get your Sweet Sixteen votes in now! https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/328714/boardgames-go-season-20-2024?itemid=10561730&commentid=12074798#comment12074798

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On this week's episode Conor, Joe and Dan sit down with one of our favourite returning guests, Bobby Hill. We discuss the reception he received from 2021's Hadrian's Wall before diving into his upcoming 2025 release: The Anarchy. Bobby shares the story of this tumultuous time in history and how he was able to use it as inspiration for his next Euro-and-write game.

In Sizzling Games, Joe reveals that he is a real fungi, Dan is matching wits with his nemesis, Bobby is composing a winning symphony, and Conor is visiting space and feline fine.

There's also the Question of the Pod, Swear an Oath, and all of the usual shenanigans you've come to expect from the Board Game BBQ Podcast.

 

New Question of the Pod: What historical setting would you like to see made into a board game?

 

Follow Bobby's journey here: https://www.motherlodegames.rocks/

Sizzling Games:

Morels (45:40)

SideQuest : Nemesis (52:41)

Lacrimosa (58:17)

MLEM (1:03:16)

 

Question of the Pod Recap: (1:11:40)

Swear An Oath: (1:26:02)

 

PlayCon is coming in 2024. Make sure you sign-up at https://play-con.com/ so you don't miss out!

 

Check out our Eventbrite page for all of our upcoming Game Days: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/o/board-game-bbq-32833304483

 

Has this episode left you with a thirst for more? Here are all of the games that we discussed:

Hadrian's Wall (2021), The Anarchy (2025), Morels (2012), SideQuest: Nemesis (2023), Lacrimosa (2022), MLEM: Space Agency (2024), Pandemic: Season 2 (2017), 7th Citadel (2024), Ticket To Ride: Legends of the West (2023), Barcelona (2023), Too Many Bones: Unbreakable (2023), ISS Vanguard (2023), John Company 2nd Ed (2022) 

 

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Thanks again for all of your continued support. We work hard to create a welcoming and inclusive community and you are all awesome. See you at the BBQ!! Patreon link: https://www.patreon.com/BoardGameBBQ

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Support the podcast and join the community!

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