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BGI 416 The One About 3 Degrees from Kevin Bacon in Board Games 

22. April 2026 um 09:32

BGI 416 The One About 3 Degrees from Kevin Bacon in Board Games 

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Malaysia Boardgame Show 2026: 2 busy days!

18-19 Apr 2026 was the Malaysia Boardgame Show. It was held at Jaya One shopping mall in PJ. In the past few years there has been several different boardgame-specific events in Malaysia, like Asian Board Game Festival (in Penang), Boxcon, All Aboard, Dice & Dine, Anigames. Not all are recurring. MBS is organised by Jon, who is currently the most active game designer in Malaysia. He has

Nepo Demibabies

21. April 2026 um 20:50

oh yeah, that's the stuff. glaze an amphora for me. I love it.

Yesterday we looked at Pillars of Fate, a kinda-sorta remake of extended family reunion simulator Veiled Fate, and found it wanting for much the same reason as the original. The gods are capricious, everybody knows that, but their fickleness doesn’t exactly make them the most appealing playmates.

But here’s the thing. At the same time Austin Harrison, Max Anderson, and Zac Dixon were designing Pillars of Fate, another remake was, um, remade. On a superficial level, this one, Scales of Fate, resembles its namesakes. As in those other titles, dueling gods intend to deduce the identity of their rival’s offspring, minimize their impact on the world, and elevate their own bastards over everybody else. Basically, it’s a race to promote your nepo babies over everybody else’s at the family tire shop. And that tire shop happens to be the eternal mountain at the root of the world.

And it’s excellent. Scales of Fate just might be one of the tightest, nastiest deduction games out there. That it was built for two players only makes it the more impressive.

I don't really understand why this is Scales of Fate. Maybe they're fish-scales? Is the world a fish? I hope so.

But these are the ones standing on pillars…

For first-timers, the board presented by Scales of Fate is wonderfully labyrinthine. I say “wonderfully” because just look at it. It’s colorful. The pieces slot together like joined fingers. There’s a topography to the whole thing. You can tell the elevated pieces will be more important than the pieces seated a few millimeters below them. Even when I had no idea what any of these components portended, I wanted to know. Needed to know. Were they gears? Would my demigods traverse them? Veiled Fate presented its map as a wheel. Pillars of Fate offered three lanes. Both are fine. Good, even. But I’ve seen wheels and lanes before. A series of interlocked cogs and risers is something new. That’s a metaphorical depiction of a landscape if ever there was one.

In practice, Scales of Fate is surprisingly easy to get a handle on. Turns consist of three possible actions. One of those, while important, functions more as an exception, an occasional bolt of lightning, than as business as usual.

The main two actions, meanwhile, immediately explain the function of those wonderful cogs and pillars. First, a demigod can be placed atop a pillar to trigger its ability. Whether it’s to smite another demigod down to the underworld to cool their heels, obtain the loyalty of a servant, or… well, that’s it. Rather than offering a wide menu of abilities, there are really only two to keep in mind. Sure, there’s some variety within those categories, but they fall into camps rather than cluttering the decision-space with branching paths.

The second action has to do with those servants. Placed along the edge of the board’s cogs, they trigger the quests that will increase or decrease each demigod’s renown. But to understand what that means, we need to back up a bit.

In this case, those quests made them look like big buffoons. (Also, as in Pillars of Fate, the +/- renown icons could have stood to be slightly different shades.)

A servant sends two demigods on important quests.

Okay, so you’ve fathered/mothered/sea-foamed two half-divine offspring. Their identities are determined in secret at the beginning of the game. Put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it.

You want to elevate your children. Doing so openly is a surefire way to attract the wrath of your co-pantheonists. So you work in secret. The problem is that every demigod’s current standing is shown on the renown track, visible to both players. When the game begins, all nine demigods share the middle space. That’s seven renown. Even before they’ve done anything interesting, your offspring are worth something by means of their divine parentage.

What will they accomplish? Rather than doing the obvious thing — say, by asking you to push them up the renown track — Scales of Fate makes a tantalizing offer. Your children score points in one of two ways. If they occupy the same renown space when the game ends, they score its value. If both are seated on their starting space, having neither moved up nor down, that means they’ll be worth seven points. That’s respectable. Polite. Not a bad score. But if they move to different spaces on the track, now they score equal to the distance between them. Ticking one child up a single space means their combined value is one point. On the other hand, if your children should do the twin thing by embracing entirely opposite ends of the spectrum, they’ll be worth a whole lot more.

This introduces a wonderful sense of risk and reward to Scales of Fate, not to mention fixes my hangups with Veiled Fate. In that game, players earned points for ensuring their holy bastard earned the most renown. But that made their identity almost trivial. Once any one demigod got too hot for their britches, everyone would work together to take them down a peg. It was simple. Too simple.

Here, their relative standing makes the family tree more tangled. With nine demigods in the world, they’ll be all over the renown track. But what does that mean? Are those clusters on the track actually siblings working in tandem? Are those gods at the farthest edges secretly growing into a hero-villain rivalry that will shake the foundations of the earth?

My one quibble: There are only three cards per age. Gimme more!

Each age provides new clues on your rival’s childrens’ identities.

Of course, this is a deduction game, which means there are tools for producing those deductions. Some of these tools are subtle. With experience, I’ve made a habit of watching my opponent like a hawk and marking whenever they idly touch a piece or linger too long over a move. More often than not, some correlation can be drawn over time, hinting at favoritism or resolute neglect. (Similarly, I’ve developed the habit of studiously avoiding my own offspring. This, I’m sure, is a tell in its own right. If I reach out to tentatively brush the pink demigod, Isabel, before pulling back like my fingers were singed by her presence, you can reliably infer that I have nothing to do with her.)

But the game’s more explicit tool is provided each age. Scales of Fate takes place over three rounds, each of which provides a different criterion that will be checked at the round’s end. Early on, for example, you might be required to inform your opponent whether you have any demigods out of play. That means they weren’t sent to the board, whether to trigger actions or because someone blasted them down to the underworld. Later, your suspicions might be confirmed by evidence of divine parentage for any demigod placed on a highlighted action pillar.

Crucially, these cards ask yes/no questions rather than demanding specifics. If you’re clever enough to ensure that only one of your two children meets the current age’s criterion, you can simply say “yes” to their presence without giving too much away. For example, one first-age card asks whether one of your children is still seated at four to six renown on the track. Saying yes is almost worse than saying no, especially if nearly all of the demigods have yet to make a name for themselves.

In the meantime, nearly everything adjusts their standing on the renown track. When servants trigger quests — the cogs that surround the action pillars — the surrounding demigods shift up or down. When sent to the underworld, another action will determine the place’s magma forecast, thus providing feats or humiliations that also adjust their standing. Every little detail matters.

Shown: What my detective notebook would look like. "(A) or (B)! If x is guilty, then y is probably not. Syllogism: ö ≠ ü."

Now that’s nice.

And we still haven’t talked about the game’s cleverest touch. Remember when I mentioned we would return to the question of your children’s parentage? Turns out this pantheon is rocking one big orgy, with all the problems it poses for any paternity/maternity/sea-foam tests.

In most deduction games, including the basic rules for Veiled Fate, holding a card means nobody else is holding it. In Scales of Fate, both sides have their own duplicate deck. Just because your children are Agamar and Saghari doesn’t mean your rival won’t have some personal interest in one of them as well. Maybe even both of them, although that’s unlikely. This adds no small amount of static to the ongoing deductions. When one of your demigods gets bumped off their current space, is that because your rival has figured out that they’re your kid and is trying to mess with you, or are they chasing an ambition of their own? Some of my favorite matches have featured duplicate offspring, and while this calls into question what’s so demi- about these so-called demigods, it’s a brilliant addition to a shared-control deduction game.

That goes for the entire package. To some degree, I wish I could play a version of this game that featured more than two players. The idea behind Veiled Fate was always one that appealed to me, and while it finds its best expression here, there’s a slightness to Scales of Fate that I wish would be transposed into a more robust framework. Of course, it’s entirely possible that this game only functions because its manipulations are so laser-focused. It’s generally possible to figure out your rival’s progeny. At least one of them. I’m not sure that would be the case if we had to keep an eye on three other players rather than staring down only one person.

Along the way, there are other little touches that elevate the experience. Like the game-breaking powers that let you smite anyone or swap two demigods, but subtract points from your final tally. Or the way the end-game deduction rewards a correct genealogical discovery but only penalizes you for not uncovering at least one of your rival’s kids. Like the board’s cogs and pillars, everything locks together into one elegant whole, resulting in a crystallized experience where nothing is out of place.

This is my extended family reunion at this point. We barely know each other, but somebody's gonna bring up that time you did the thing when you were eleven.

Chillin’ with the cousins.

Honestly, it’s such a breath of fresh air. Not only that Scales of Fate is this good, but that it takes such a novel approach to almost every corner of its design. From the non-literal map to the way it uses relative proportions to signify importance, both on the board and between renown trackers. From the clever approach to shared control to the way players might find themselves accidentally co-parenting a demigod. It’s achingly smart.

More than smart, it feels great to handle, to push around, to study a rival and mark down a clue. When I first saw Scales of Fate, I knew I had to figure out how those pieces fit together. The beautiful thing is, their inner workings proved even better than they seemed from afar.

 

A complimentary copy of Scales of Fate was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read my first-quarter update of 2026: the best board games, movies, books, and more!)

Lucky Duck cuts back on “resource intensive” localisation strategy, shifts focus to developing own titles

21. April 2026 um 18:01

Lucky Duck Games, the board game publisher behind European localisations of major hits such as Dune Imperium and Cascadia, is scaling back that side of its operations to prioritise development of its own designs.

Scott Morris, the company’s global brand director, told BoardGameWire that while localisation had been an important part of the business over the years it was “resource intensive” and dependent on external factors – adding that developing in-house titles provided “more opportunity for long-term value”.

Lucky Duck has become a varied operator in the modern hobby games industry since it was founded in 2016, growing from a small design studio running Kickstarter campaigns into a global publisher, localiser and distributor with offices across Poland, the US, France, Italy and the UK.

That localisation activity has been centred most heavily around Lucky Duck’s home of Poland and early expansion country France, with the company becoming known for local language version of strategy titles and big-selling games such as Too Many Bones, Flamecraft and The Isle of Cats.

But Lucky Duck has a big hitter of its own in the Chronicles of Crime series of games, which have sold more than one million copies worldwide, and Morris told BoardGameWire the company was also “very confident” in its other recent releases Borealis: Arctic Expeditions, Purrramid and Oakspire.

He said, “We also have several games in development we have not announced yet, but we are very excited about. The team knows how to make fun and engaging games, which, at the end of the day, focus on our goal: bringing smiles to gamers everywhere.”

The French edition of Too Many Bones from Chip Theory Games, localised by Lucky Duck Games

Lucky Duck was bought by Rummikub manufacturer Goliath two years ago – and Morris said the global distribution opportunity offered by such a high-profile mass market player was part of the reason behind the strategy shift.

He said, “Since the acquisition, there has been a focus on leveraging Goliath’s global distribution network and operational scale. This includes expanding access to new retail channels and improving production and logistics capabilities.

“These changes are ongoing, but they are already opening new opportunities for our titles to reach wider audiences. We have seen significant growth in these new channels and are excited to continue to introduce our games to new retailers and customers.”

Morris was at pains to clarify that Lucky Duck is not ceasing all localisation activities, which was the impression given to some readers of a recent announcement about the changes on its French Facebook page.

He said, “I can understand how the announcement was received that way and we will work to make our announcements clearer in the future.

“We have decided to not localize some items we originally planned to, and we’re working with those partners to find the best solutions for everyone, in those situations. The decision is part of a broader strategic evolution, rather, and is not a France-specific decision.

“We are refining how we approach the different markets, with a greater emphasis on publishing and developing our own titles globally, while continuing to work with partners where the right opportunities exist.”

Some of those planned localisations which will now not go ahead include the French localisation of Cascadia Alpine Lakes, published by Flatout Games, which was only announced by Lucky Duck a few weeks ago.

Cascadia: Alpine lakes || Kickstarter image

Morris said the strategic shift did not affect the company’s Global Publishing Network operation, which is a separate business unit that acts as a localisation agency, connecting publishers and distribution buyers who localize in their regions.

He said, “Matt Goldrick leads this initiative for us and it has continued to be a stable, growing, and exciting part of the industry.”

It might appear that developing and publishing home-grown designs is a much riskier proposition than localising already popular titles which gamers are keen to get hold of in their language – but Morris said both approaches carry different types of risk.

He told BoardGameWire, “With the support of Goliath’s global infrastructure, we are in a stronger position to manage risks effectively. While localization benefits from existing demand, original publishing allows us to build long-term value, strengthen our own brand identity, and deeper our engagement with the players.

“We have a very talented design and development team in Poland, led by Michal Szewczyk, that has produced award winning games.

Toriki: Castaway Island has won several European gaming awards, [the recently-released] Purrramid was just names as a finalist for ASTRA’s best family game in their Play Awards, and of course, the highly successful and touted Chronicles of Crime series is continuing with our recent successful Kickstarter for the Beyond Doubt series of new games.”

He added, “By prioritizing internally developed titles, we have greater control over product development, timelines, and long-term brand building.”

Goliath CEO Jochanan Golad said at the time of the Lucky Duck takeover that it saw two major growth areas in games: adult party games and strategy games – but some publishers have begun to move away from larger box, complex titles and towards lighter, smaller games recently amid the fallout from last year’s US tariffs chaos.

Morris confirmed to BoardGameWire that strategy games “remain a key area of growth”, saying, “Our strategy reflects confidence in that segment, alongside opportunities in other categories.

“The Lucky Duck brand is focused primarily on strategy games… we’re both very happy with our recent releases, the reception they have seen, and our upcoming titles to announce soon!”

He added, “Tariffs have added significant pressure across the entire industry, affecting production costs and pricing strategies. It has been extremely hard to see our industry hit so negatively, and see so many people’s livelihoods, and in some cases, life’s work, stretched to, and beyond their breaking points.

“Like many publishers, we’ve had to adapt by optimizing supply chains and planning more carefully around manufacturing and distribution decisions.

“I strongly believe that our acquisition by Goliath could not have been timed better with regards to the tariff situation. Their global supply chain and logistics management helped us navigate the waters better than we could have prior to the acquisition.”

Chronicles of Crime: Beyond Doubt || Kickstarter image

Lucky Duck continues to run Kickstarter campaigns for its own designs – most recently with Oakspire, which has raised just over €133,000 with about seven days of the campaign left to run, and Chronicles of Crime: Beyond Doubt, which pulled in about €373,500 last November.

The company has hit choppy water with some of its unfulfilled Kickstarter campaigns, however, with heavy delays for €1m-raising The Dark Quarter – which was initially expected to deliver to backers in October 2023 – and Into the Godsgrave, which was slated for fulfillment in December 2024.

Morris said of Into The Godsgrave, “As with many large-scale projects, with unique designs, timelines can shift due to the complexity of production, logistics, and ensuring the final product meets expectations.

“The team has prioritized quality and delivery experience, which has contributed to the revised timeline. Our team, specifically Ben Poole our community manager, has worked hard to keep everyone updated through our project updates as to the status and milestones.

“We’re excited to get that game into players hands and on their tables. It’s a very fun and unique experience that I believe will impress.”

Regarding The Dark Quarter, he added, “Similar factors applied here, particularly around production and app development, plus global logistics challenges. Goliath’s strengths here will help us mitigate those risks in the future.

“We’ve worked hard to ensure the final product met the standard expected by backers, even if that required additional time and we have seen many positive responses as fulfillment progressed.

“I’m paraphrasing a famous quote, but as a wise man once said, a delayed game can be eventually good but a rushed game can be forever bad.”

The post Lucky Duck cuts back on “resource intensive” localisation strategy, shifts focus to developing own titles first appeared on .

Designer Diary: Threaded

21. April 2026 um 16:00

by Ellie Dix


The Theme
My granny made a medallion patter green and pink bargello cushion in the 1980s. She had it in her granny flat, where I often escaped to during my childhood. A few years ago, I realised I was spending too much time on my computer. Double-screening in the evenings. Working too much. So, I decided to take myself in hand and find a hobby that would pull me away from the screen. I came across a bargello-style craft kit to make a cushion, and the moment I saw it, I felt immediately drawn. It was like my granny guiding me towards it.

What started as one cushion has become something of an obsession. It was only a matter of time before this world crept into my game design.


Me, with a bargello cushion I made...

Mechanical Inspiration
But Threadeddidn’t start to take shape until I came across one particular component. I played Shogun and fell completely in love with the cube tower. It's a remarkable piece of kit - tactile, unpredictable, genuinely exciting - and yet it feels like a component that doesn't appear in nearly enough games. I knew I wanted to scratch that itch. The question was: what would the cube tower be doing?

The answer came quite naturally once I had the theme in mind. The tower would be a thread factory. Whatever comes out of the tower on any given turn represents the over-production - the threads that spill off the factory floor and become available. You can't predict exactly what you'll get. You just load it up and see what emerges.

The second idea arrived alongside it: an ordered worker placement system. Each worker carries a number, and those numbers change from round to round. When a location is resolved, the worker with the lowest number goes first. The interesting tension comes from decision-making at placement. You might choose to assign a higher number to the Workshop, if you're willing to gamble on going later in order to take a tapestry card further down the display row. High risk, potentially high reward.


The workers, who’s numbered days were numbered.

When Good Ideas Don't Survive
In honesty, the original version of the ordered worker placement system was a bit of a mess.

The drafting process had three nested rules about which numbers you were allowed to take and in what order. It was involved, fiddly, and crucially it didn't generate enough interesting decisions to justify all that overhead. The system as a whole was too clunky for the weight of game I was making and for the experience I was trying to craft. Playtesters were confused and simultaneously overwhelmed and underwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the amount of business and rules related to the numbered workers and underwhelmed by the decision space it afforded.

So, I cut it. In its place came a much simpler worker placement system: you queue at each location, and earlier arrivals have the benefit when the location resolves. The interesting decisions about timing are still there, just hopefully presented without the administrative burden.


Can you spot what made it and what didn’t?

I'll confess there's a version of that numbered system rattling around in my head where the timing of when your worker activates is the central puzzle. It just wasn't right for this game.

As many designers often find – a core part of the original design for a game often doesn't survive the development process. The cube tower made it. The ordered workers mechanism didn't. It’s sometimes hard to abandon core ideas from the original design, but I’m constantly reminded that it’s important to do so.

The Puzzle
What has never changed, from the very first prototype to the published version, is the core puzzle. It has two interlocking layers.
The first is the needle puzzle. How do I arrange the threads on my needle so the right colours become available at exactly the right moment? You add threads only to the ends of your needle. You can only remove from the ends. Everything in the middle is locked in by what's around it. Getting your threads into the wrong order is punishing, and planning ahead is deeply satisfying when it comes off.


The needle (grey foam object, with cubes), tested here in two-part form!

In the early versions, there was no basket, which give players additional storage and some flexibility to manage threads in the final version. Instead, your needle might hold twenty threads at once, and having one thread in the wrong position could be genuinely crippling. Some playtesters had a pretty bad experience of the game because they couldn’t manage the necessary advance planning with the timing of taking perfect tapestry cards. I experimented with various ways to ease the problem: allowing free discards so you could jettison a rogue thread from the middle of a promising sequence; shortening and splitting the needle into two parts that you could build on either side of; and a personal scraps pile that you could store things in, but that other players could raid. Eventually the needle shrunk and the personal basket found its shape.


A purse is a sort of like a small personal basket? Though this is more helpful for shops than thread.

The second layer is the scoring puzzle. Commission cards reward you for completing tapestries that meet their criteria. You can approach this either way: find commissions that complement each other and then hunt for tapestries to satisfy them, or take tapestry cards that appeal and work backwards to find commissions that reward your collection. Or of course, you can do a bit of both. The tapestry cards and commission cards themselves haven't changed since the first prototype.


Tapestry and commission cards, in prototype and final form.

Shops and Destinations
The ordering of the shops (destinations for workers) shifted several times during development.

In earlier versions, the Bargain Box appeared before the Thread Shop. The logic was transparent: everything left in the thread shop at the end of a round would be added to the cube tower, so players knew exactly what they'd be competing over. It felt fair. But it removed the mystery, and with it, some of the tension and excitement. Now the Bargain Box comes after, you don't quite know what the tower will produce, and that uncertainty makes every trip to it feel like an event.

One destination was added relatively late in development: a space that lets players pay to jump the queue at any of the other shops. It arrived because playtesting revealed that players sometimes felt their final workers had no good home. Once that space existed, that feeling disappeared. A small addition, but it made the whole system breathe better.

Working with Osprey
I pitched Threaded to Osprey three times. They passed twice.

Both times, they passed with real generosity - clear, specific feedback about what wasn't working, and an open door to resubmit if I could address it. Some of the mechanical changes in the game exist because of those conversations. It's normal to feel the sting of a rejection, but if a publisher has taken the time to play your game and tell you precisely what's not landing, the only sensible response is to take that seriously and ask if they'd be willing to look again.

The third time, they signed the game. And since signing, they've been wonderful to work with. The development and production process has felt collaborative and considered. They've helped my original design to shine through rather than reshape it into something else.

Full Circle
My latest Bargello project was footstool I made for my mum - a thatched design that echoes the colours of her William Morris curtains. It takes patience and planning and you have to think about what goes where before you commit the needle.


That's Threaded, really. The threads on your needle, the tapestries on the table, the commissions in your hand - all of it asking you to think three moves ahead, to hold your plan loosely enough to adapt, and to feel the particular satisfaction of a sequence coming together just as you intended.

My granny would have enjoyed it, I think.

Pacts Game Review

D.V.C., as wonderful and consistent and quirky a publisher as you’ll find, largely does its own design work. With the exception of 2020’s Rosetta: The Forgotten Language, all of D.V.C.’s games up till now have been credited to house designer Jasper Beatrix. In a just world, Jasper would be unable to walk down the street without being mobbed by fans, but there are two barriers to that: we certainly don’t live in a just world, and Jasper Beatrix doesn’t exist.

Not corporeally, anyway. Good ol’ J.B. is a pseudonym for a loose collective, a merry anarchic band of creatives who work together to make these wonderful games. They’re so prolific, and release games of such high quality, that the announcement of Pacts and the realization that it was not designed by Jasper Beatrix, was quite the surprise. This area-control game for two is the work of Ben Brin, a single corporeal designer.

Well. I assume.

A square, green cloth board sits on a wooden table. The map, a rough outline of Ireland, is divided into six regions. Each contains a number of cubes and scoring tiles.

I Pick I Pick You Choose

Pacts is an exemplar of I Split, You Choose, a mechanism whose promise is often let down by…

The post Pacts Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Stonesaga Review

21. April 2026 um 14:18
StonesagaI’ve exceeded my word count, so no witty intros today for Stonesaga, which is an expansive game that plays one to four players over 60 – 120 minutes per session, according to the box. Published by Open Owl Studios, Stonesaga is a cooperative survival crafting board game set in a unique and persistent world. Gameplay […]

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State of the Union: The Players’ Aid 10th Anniversary Edition! A Full Damn DECADE

Von: Grant
21. April 2026 um 14:00

A DECADE…a DECADE of content…a DECADE of wargaming…unreal! Time just flies by anymore and I am blown away to think that The Players’ Aid has existed for a FULL DAMN DECADE! That is literally 1/5th of my life! Just unbelievable but we are here and there is no going back or undoing the damage we have done over those 10 years. But we have reached our 10th Anniversary and if you told me 10 years ago that we would be around in 2026 I would have laughed at you. I thought that this was simply another experiment or hobby and that one day in a few years we would come to our senses and move on. But, that didn’t happen and frankly it was because of the fantastic support of the hobby, the strong “family” that we have built and the relationships that have been formed that has kept us fueled and going. Make no mistake, this landmark was reached by ALL of us in the hobby and we thank you all so much for the fantastic experience that we have had along with you.

2025 was another fantastic year for The Players’ Aid and we have continued playing and reviewing wargames and have hit several large milestones over the past 12 months including 3,300+ posts on the blog, nearly 6.4 million lifetime views on the blog and recently we surpassed the 21,500 YouTube subscribers threshold. It is cliche to say but what we do doesn’t feel like work, or a commitment or a chore, and we really enjoy what we do! And to have done this for 10 years is mind blowing. We are continually reenergized by our followers and your comments on our content and want to thank you all for that! I am not a person that needs praise and encouragement often, but when it comes organically it really feels good and pumps me up! Overall, the last year was a HUGE success for us as we have once again experienced good and steady growth in our written blog as well as in our YouTube Channel views. Even after all of this time doing what we do, we still have a desire to meet weekly and play new wargames to share with you. It has truly become our passion and we couldn’t envision a future without this.

Happy Birthday To Us!

We started the blog in 2016 with our first post being on April 17, 2016 which was a very short AAR on our first attempt at playing Empire of the Sun from GMT Games (I look at the pictures we used in that AAR and notice that the counters were not clipped! Barbarians!). We still laugh to this day about the fact that this was one of our first games that we tried to cover. I guess we both like diving into the deep end of the pool! From those meager beginnings, we have posted consistently and I think have improved the quality of our content since that first try. Your readership and viewing has helped keep us inspired and motivated to put out consistent content. Its been a lot of work, and does take up quite a bit of our free time, but we do enjoy it and have no plans to slow the train down. We also have been very lucky in the support that we have received from various publishers, websites and designers as they have worked to keep us going as well. From sharing our posts on Twitter and other social media sites, to posting our videos and reviews on the game pages on their websites, a good portion of our views come from these sources and we truly appreciate that. We know that we cannot possibly reach all of the wargamers out there by ourselves and need the community to help in spreading our words.

We also want to thank the host of game designers who have taken time out of their busy schedules to answer our long and sometimes deep questions about their designs in our written interviews. I know that when I reach out initially they are always gung-ho about answering the questions but then they get my email with 20+ questions and all of a sudden I am sure it feels like homework! Our Designer Interviews Series has been a huge success and is a big part of our weekly posts generally starting each week off with a new post on Mondays. II work hard to try and stay up on the newest games and give our readers an inside look at the mechanics, design process and game play on these in-design games. I have very rarely been told no by someone when I contact them on email to discuss their game and have been able to build quite a number of what I would call friendships with several of these designers. I will not name specific individuals, as I don’t want to inadvertently leave someone out, but thanks to you all! You are simply the best!

We have continued with our monthly Wargame Watch Series, Action PointsFirst Impressions posts and the occasional Best 3 Games with… Series and The Love/Hate Relationship Series. My newest series on the blog is the My Favorite Wargame Cards Series and we are now up to a total of 73 of these posts since May 2024. I really like revisiting some of these Card Driven Games that we have played in the past and finding those cards that are unique, interesting and that incorporate some of the historical flavor into the game through the cards. On our YouTube Channel, the Monthly Debrief Series is alive and well, although we have had a tougher time over the past 6+ months of getting them done on time mainly due to new job responsibilities and tough schedules, our Car Videos continue to do well and Alexander has continued his very interesting From Cover to Cover Series where he reads a historical book and shares his thoughts on it and pairs it with an overview of a few games on the subject. I have continued to work hard on my solo gaming and was able to fully play 17 new solitaire games in 2025 along with shooting playthrough and review videos. We appreciate all of your response to these continuing series and hope to be able to continue them but also create some fresh and new ideas in the future.

The Blog By the Numbers

With the introduction to the post and pleasantries out of the way, onto a look at the blog statistics, which is always my favorite part of writing this post! Statistics are a good indicator of how we are doing and I personally pay a lot of attention to our daily, weekly and monthly numbers. Actually, I might say that I am addicted to looking at them and check several times per day. I am a results driven person after all and have to win at everything!

Since the blog started in April 2016, we have been viewed nearly 6.4 million times (as compared to 5.4 million this time last year). These views have come from an astounding 2,127,173 visitors (as compared to 1,810,122 visitors as of April 2025). This means that each visitor that comes onto the blog averages 3.0 views. This number is down slightly form last year’s 3.04 views per visitor but is still very comparable. In fact, I have noticed that this views per visitor number has slightly gone down 6 out of the last 7 years. I am not sure I know why that is but it is a thing and it is good that when people do find us and come onto the blog they seem to spend some time viewing our current content and sometimes even dive back through our older stuff. That is one thing that I like about how our platform WordPress runs, as they will link comparable articles and posts below the new post so that when the reader is finished they can simply click a link there to take them to another similar article. This type of thing drives the number of views up and I am glad that it has this feature.

We have really been blown away by the response that we have seen in our blog over the past 10 years. While Alexander no longer writes on the blog, I have really enjoyed continuing to cover games in the written format as I know that there are people out there who prefer it to videos and our statistics prove that point. I know that I prefer written blogs over videos when consuming gaming content but everyone is different! I still marvel that we actually started this little venture but more importantly that we are still going 10 years later.

My mind is very analytical and I really like to think about and consider strategies and probabilities of outcomes during game plays. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a card counter or anything like that but I do like to consider the odds of success before taking certain actions. And I like to put those thoughts down on paper (digitally) here on the blog to share my insights with you. One of my most favorite series to write are Action Points. They give me the opportunity to sometimes create tables and graphs to look at the numbers inside of games as I analyze a game and its mechanics. These posts are not always the highest view garnering posts we do but I am not going to give up doing them as they are really for me and my enjoyment. If others read them and gain something from them, then that is great!

I also really do enjoy the process and activity of writing. It is soothing and takes my mind off of life for a while and really speaks to the creative side of my brain. I also love to consider how to introduce a subject to the reader, how to incorporate my brain’s hard drive full of nostalgia and movies into the narrative I am trying to spin. Sometimes I am more successful with this effort than others but I do enjoy doing that. I have no plans to stop writing but do have a bit of an obsession with it and spend a lot of time (really too much time) on the blog. Last year, I had quite the streak going with posting something on the blog every day for nearly 2 full years! That streak came to an end on January 2, 2026 when I didn’t post for 3 full days. The holidays were fun and I was spending lots of time with my family rather than with writing. I have tried to again get back to consistency this year and have done pretty well by posting at least 4-5 times per week and currently have a modest 35 day streak as of the posting of this entry.

You will also notice that we have done 3,325 posts over the 10-year period that our blog has existed. Remember though that 2016 only included 9 months of content while 2026 only takes into account the first three and a half months of the year, which accounts for the lower numbers for those shown years. If you look at the individual years’ numbers though you will see that we posted a lot in 2017 (432), 2018 (335), 2020 (355), 2023 (267), 2024 (410) and 2025 (385) while 2019 (194) and 2021 (200) were both a bit of a slow year as I had started a new job and was very busy with some travel and out of town work that kept me from my regular routine of writing. 2022 picked back up though and I made a concerted effort to get back to regular content. Also, early on, remember that there were three of us writing for the blog (remember Tim?) and over the past few years it has just been Alexander and I, although at this point as mentioned earlier I do 99.9% of the posts on the blog. Our posting consistency has kept our blog fresh in our readers minds and on their timelines. Over the past few years, the number of posts has begun to increase again but has slowed down a bit in 2025 and now in 2026. But never fear, posts will be regular. I promise!

Another interesting statistical compilation that is provided by our WordPress software is a look at not only the number of posts but also the total number of comments, total post likes, total words written as well as some averages across those numbers. Interaction on posts has been much improved over the past few years as compared to previous years with more comments and more likes saw a big drop in comments. I do love to hear your thoughts on my posts and about the games or subjects being covered so please say something if you would like. I consider myself to be pretty wordy in my posts and that is being proven with total word counts in 385 posts in 2025 of 662,977 and average words per post of 1,722, which are a bit lower than in 2024. It appears that through the first 3 1/2 months in 2026 I have become a bit wordier but I know that I have done more lists and have started some more in-depth looks at games.

Over the past 10 years, we have built quite a library of content and we still come up often in internet searches which brings a lot of visitors to our site. In fact, here is a look at some interesting data from the blog where you can see our top Referrers from 2025. These are sites that send visitors to our site as they have hosted or linked to our articles, videos or other content and people find us this way. Notice though that Search Engines sent 152,693 views our way, which is about 17.1% of our total views (Total Views for 2025 were 897,777). Social Media is also a good source for views as Facebook brought in 23,296 views and Twitter 5,450 (down quite a lot over 2024 from 15,401 views). Consimworld, which referred just 1,649 (down a bit 2023 from 7,287 views) used to be a much larger part of our referrers but has dipped and you will notice that GMT Games is not on the Top 10 list as it appears nothing has come from them. Not shown in the graphic are the myriad of smaller referrers that send views our way. That list is really very long and I couldn’t post the whole graphic but there are about another 130+ referrers ranging from 250 views referred all the way down to just a handful of referrals. We appreciate all the views though and will never not be grateful for any help that we can get.

The following graphic shows our Monthly Views since 2016 and tells a really interesting story. As you can see, our monthly views had been steadily increasing over the years, growing from a Monthly Average Views of just 16,153 in 2016 to over 71,856 in 2021. This slowed down quite a bit though in 2022 with a Monthly Average Views number of just 43,891. We refer to this as the “Dark Times”. As you can see, as I started posting on the blog less starting in July 2021, our monthly views dropped off to the lowest point since 2016. But in 2025 we had a banner year with a whopping 897,777 views, which was our largest annual view ever on the blog. Why was this the case? I am not sure but we did see China pop up as a country where views were coming from and that had never really been the case before so maybe the Party was monitoring my posts as a possible secret code to American operations across the globe. Thus far in 2026, we are doing solidly and have actually outpaced the views for the first 3 months of 2026 as compared to the same months in 2025; January with 57,200 views (52,700 in January 2025), February with 68,400 views (45,500 in February 2025) and March with 52,600 views (51,200 in March 2025). This is a good trend for the blog and I am happy to see it. We may not break the record for highest views this year but we are on pace for another very solid 600,000+ view year.

A few years ago when we posted these stats there was a request for a map of viewers and viewership based on location. The WordPress (powered by JetPack) statistics are pretty good so here’s a look at the top country views for 2025. Obviously the US (296,300 or 33%) is where the majority of views come from with the UK (68,100 or 7.5%), Canada (32,700 or 3.6%), Germany (28,600 or 3.2%) and France (27,800 or 3.1% ) bringing up the 3rd-6th spots respectively. But, this year we had a new entry in the views from Countries arena in China with 264,300 views or 29.4%. I am shocked. I do know that I saw where a couple of warganing focus sites had shared some posts that they translated into Chinese (without my permission I might add) but the added views has been nice. I am very pleased to see our growth in the non-English speaking (I realize some are bilingual and do speak English but not as their primary language) views from these great European nations and even from China. I am always surprised when we get a comment or interaction with fans from other countries and when I look at this graphic I realize that we are a global blog with lots of fans in lots of countries and that makes me very happy.

Top Performing Blog Posts for 2025

In the anniversary post last year, I showed you a list of our best performing posts on the blog. So I will continue that trend this year by showing our best performing posts for 2025. The same as last year, it seems that lists of games do the best, such as Alexander’s Top 10 Wargames, Grant’s Most Anticipated Wargames of 2023!, Grant’s Most Anticipated Wargames of 2025! and so on. People really like lists as they are a quick source of lots of good games that people can investigate, purchase and play. Most of our blog posts get 200-700 views in the first week they are on the blog and then over the next month will get an additional 200-400 views, sometimes more depending on the topic and how often I share them on social media. We are not a high view blog, partly because we are a wargaming blog really with only ever a smattering of coverage for traditional board games, but also because we don’t pay to promote our posts on social media nor do I spend a glut of time posting our stuff on other forums. I could do that and we would get more response but I just don’t have that kind of time.

Designer Interviews

In 2025, the blog hosted 51 interviews with designers (down 19 interviews as compared to 2024 with 70 hosted). That means that we posted almost every week (usually on Monday of each week) of that year. Thus far in 2026, we have posted 14 such interviews and seem to have no problem finding interested designers who want to share their games. I regularly scour various sources for news and anytime I find information about an upcoming game I add it to my list and try to reach out to at least 3-4 designers each month. The goal here is to have a continual pipeline of these designer interviews in the works, either having sent questions out to the designers or working to format and schedule interviews I have received back on the blog, I am always a few weeks ahead in order to make sure I have a continual flow of posts. Since our inception in April 2016, we have posted a whopping 587 designer interviews and I am very proud of that accomplishment. I was once told by Ty Bomba that our blog is an indispensable resource for designers and developers to read to understand how other designers have used interesting and new mechanics and overcome design issues and challenges. I like that and it makes me smile to think about the past 10 years of these weekly interviews and that someone has read them and learned something.

Currently, we have interviews already scheduled to post on the blog through May 4th and I have at least 8 others that I need to review, edit, format and then load onto the blog. Here is a look at some of our better performing designer interview posts from 2025:

Interview with Vince Cooper Designer of Field Commander: Robert E. Lee – A Civil War Solitaire Strategy Game from Dan Verssen Games

Interview with Volko Ruhnke Designer of Nevsky: Teutons and Rus in Collision, 1240-1242 from GMT Games (post was from 2018)

Interview with Brian Train Designer of COIN Series Volume XII China’s War: 1937-1941 from GMT Games (post was from 2019)

Interview with Fabrizio Vianello Designer of First Man in Rome – Strategikon Book II: The Civil War and the Fall of the Republic from Thin Red Line Games

These were simply a few of our best performing designer interviews on the blog throughout the year. To access our backlog of these interviews, just go to our blog and check out the Categories section located on the right side of the screen and enter Designer Interviews.

Social Media/Other Platforms

One of our most important marketing efforts is our focus on various Social Media platforms with the most used platform being Twitter or “X “as it is now called (although it is becoming a black hole and both interactions and views from are down) followed by Facebook. We share our posts from the blog on Twitter (@playersaidblog), Facebook (@theplayersaid), Mastadon, although this platform just hasn’t taken off yet and I am afraid is already dying (@theplayersaidgrant@wargamers.social) and Blue Sky (@playersaidblog.bsky.social) daily and have expanded into sharing in around 7 Facebook groups including Wargamers, Solitaire Wargames, Official GMT Games Group (when our posts focus on one of GMT’s games), GMT Games Fans, The Solo Board Wargamer, The Board Wargamer, THE BOARDGAME GROUP and finally our own page The Players’ Aid. I always worry about our frequency of posts and upsetting the groups but I do spend time trying to respond to comments and questions on our posts, share my gaming pictures there and read others posts and comment on them as well.

As you can see from the table above, I missed noting our stats for these Social Media platforms in 2019 but we have had a lot of growth in our Social Media reach in 2025 with a 4.3% increase in Twitter followers, 25.9% increase in our Facebook follows and 2.6% increase in Instagram followers (which is a platform that we really have ignored over the past couple of years). Our Blog Follows have dropped and I am not sure why. You can follow the blog one of two ways, either with your own WordPress site or through email. In just over 9 1/2 years, as we didn’t use social media much the first year, we have built a network of followers on these platforms that really helps us to engage and have discussions on various topics. In 2024, we added Blue Sky to our social media repertoire and have built a good little community there with a large number of increased subs of +240 and hope to continue good growth there so we can chat and connect with you.

Now we come to the YouTube Channel. And normally, I get to say that we had a banner year and added lots of subscribers, etc. But, in 2025, we just didn’t have a very good growth year on the channel. We added 1,363 subscribers, which is a good healthy growth number at +6.8%, but is not as good as we had seen over the past 4 or 5 years with double digit growth percentage and well over 2,000 to 3,000 new subscribers every year. I am a worrier by nature and Alexander doesn’t share my concern with the Channel but I look at others and their growth and we are no longer the largest pure wargaming channel out there. That position is now held by ZillaBlitz, and congratulations to Mike, as he has 28,400+ subscribers. I just take pause to ask myself what has changed? Have we somehow turned people off? I know that we are a bit all over the place and unorganized in our thoughts and videos with rambling discussions and over excited takes on games, which are all genuine for us and nothing is faked or staged. But what has happened? I would also say that over the past few months our views have dropped off by about 20% or so. I think that normally within a day or 2 of posting most of our videos, we would see well over 1,000 views but now we are seeing only 600-800. I just don’t know the answer and I wanted to make that statement here so you can help me to figure it out.

As you can see in the graphic below, we had 773,139 total views of our videos on YouTube over the past year (April 2025 through April 2026). That is about 100,000 less views than in 2024-2025. I am a bit disappointed in this number but feel that we are still really strong in our analytics. Sometimes people get disenfranchised with things and stop having interest. Plus there are even more content creators out there now than before and some of them are doing really well (I am looking at ZillaBlitz). If I were guessing, and based on our slower growth over the past year, I would say we will reach 22,500 subscribers in late 2026 so please subscribe to our channel if you haven’t already.

Overall, since starting the channel in 2017, we have had 6.4 million views, 229,400 Likes, 29,600 Comments and 18,200 Shares. That is very pleasing to see and we are so glad that our videos are being consumed and hopefully making a difference in the wargaming community. One other thing, it is interesting to see what videos are getting the most views and as expected these are our lists or our Monthly Debriefs, such as the Top 10 Wargames, Convention Debriefs and my Top 10 Solitaire Games of 2024 video.

Monthly Debrief Videos

In 2021, we started the Monthly Debrief Series of videos where we talk about what games we played the previous month and what we plan to play in the coming month as well as what games are on Kickstarter and a protracted discussion on a chosen monthly topic. These videos have been very well received. We have done one of these videos each month since their inception in January 2021 and to date are in Season 6 Episode 2 and these videos have garnered over 450,00 views. We tend to ramble on in these videos and they are over an hour each with some approaching 2 hours so thank you for watching and sticking with us as we go on and on! This year we have started Season 6 of these videos and I am really amazed that they still garner views and engagement. They are admittedly long, and I always find them fairly boring, but people tend to view them for sure. We still have lots of great topics that we can discuss and always seem to come up with something new to share.

To wrap this up, we just want to express our humble gratitude and say thank you for all of the support that you give us and for your interest in our content. Ultimately blogs and YouTube Channels only really continue with consistent posts if there is a response. The work involved, while it is a hobby and something that we do for the love of the games, does take us away from some of our other responsibilities at least partially and it is good to see that our content is having an impact on someone. We have made a lot of good friends through this little content creation experiment of ours and we look forward to seeing many of you this summer at great conventions like the World Boardgaming Championships (WBC) (July 25th-August 2nd), Gaming the American Revolution – Camden 250 (September 24-27th) and possibly at least one more, if I can spare the time in the fall, SDHistCon (November 6-9th) in San Diego, California. Please come out and say hi and maybe we can play a game together!

Please let us know what you would like to see from our blog and YouTube Channel in the future and also tell us what you enjoy about our content. Thanks and here is to another successful year in 2026!

-Grant

boardgaming in photos: 4 donkeys

Playing Bottle Imp with Alex and Ivan at ZUS Coffee. They were both highly intrigued and took learning the strategy seriously. This is a game with much depth. There are serious skills involved. This is an unusual and clever trick-taking game. I showed Pinocchio to Yip, Captain Fuaad and Kelvin. Right from the start Captain teased Yip that he was going to get four donkeys (and lose

Gods in All Their Fickleness

21. April 2026 um 01:49

are those the pillars

Ah, Veiled Fate. It’s been a while since we encountered IV Studio’s game of spurious divine parentage. At the time, it was dearly close to becoming a favorite, but its shortcomings were sufficient that the possibility was as scuttled as my own Olympian provenance. Now the team behind the original game — Austin Harrison, Max Anderson, and Zac Dixon — have revisited the concept via not one but two separate titles.

Today, we’re looking at the one that recasts the whole thing as a lane-battler. What could possibly go wrong?

or maybe it's the literal pillars

I think the lanes are the pillars.

The first time I played Pillars of Fate, it seemed like a stroke of genius. Maybe two strokes of genius folded together into an omelette of genius.

The idea is wonderfully simple. There are three lanes between players. Each lane has two separate scoring values. In all cases, one is higher than the other. Most of the time, the distance between them is so great that the lower range dips into negative points.

Into these lanes both would-be divinities play cards whose strength determines which side wins the contest. Obviously. So far we’re evoking, what, every lane-battler? What’s less obvious is that those cards also determine which scoring value the lane will trigger. Play feathers, the game’s symbol for its “light side,” and that’s the scoring that’ll be awarded to the stronger player. Conversely, a greater number of scorpions means the stronger player will earn the points on the “dark side” of the card.

To be clear, there’s no hard correspondence between “light” and positive points or “dark” and negative points. It’s entirely possible that feathers will spell negative points and vice versa. This introduces the first and most notable of a few graphical issues. Namely, that the points themselves are not color-coded. Whether feather or scorpion, light or dark, positive or negative, the points are rendered in the lane’s neutral hue. In our experience, it’s a missed step that bore rotten fruit on more than one occasion, making the lanes that much harder to read. And, in some cases, to reach the conclusion of a round and realize we’d made an early misstep in our understanding of a particular lane’s stakes.

Oops. Oh well. That’s on us, I suppose. Back to the grindstone.

I want that guy's hat.

Most cards are simple: strength and suit.

Over the course of three rounds — more epically entitled “ages” — those spills of positive and negative points veer back and forth. Sometimes you win a coup, others you find yourself toppled from heav’n’s lofty pillars.

Again, it initially feels genius. There’s room for subtlety. Each lane can accommodate a face-down card per player, allowing both sides to conceal their motives. Is your opponent trying to win that lane with their best cards, or nudging it toward a negative scoring value in the hopes that you’ll invest all your strength there instead? Most cards are straightforward strength values and feather/scorpion icons, but their possible range — as low as one strength, as high as nine — is enough to ensure some major swings.

And then there are the demigods. There are twenty of these special foil-embossed cards in all. (Although only their backside is so visibly rendered, another misstep of design that makes them a little harder to pick out from the crowd than I would have preferred.) Both players receive three at the beginning of the game, and then, after swapping a couple, can only deploy one per age.

As you might expect, the demigods are potent indeed. There’s the Mother of All, a real jerk who awards ten points if you lose all three lanes in an age — a blow that’s significantly lessened if by “losing” you really mean “your opponent just received thirteen negative points.” Or Naka, a demigoddess who has to be played face-up, but allows your other two lanes to hold two face-down cards instead of only one. So much for your rival’s headspace. Others are dead simple, like Vesper and Penance, both of whom have zero strength but so many feather or scorpion icons to single-handedly determine the status of a lane.

Despite this potency, not every member of this demipantheon is equivalent. Some cards are harder to utilize than others, and how. One, Hadria, dings your opponent five points if they win that lane, but boasts a hefty seven strength, forcing you to measure your other deployments carefully. The Steward alters the scorpion/feather composition of lanes bordering his holy self, but not by very much. These cards are still powerful if deployed smartly, but can also threaten to detonate in your face, making them as mercurial as Hercules was a family man. (Too soon?)

I love the art style, it must be said.

Demigods upend the usual rules.

This probably sounds good. Smart. Possessed of a spirit of genius. It did to me as well.

But there are problems, and not all of them are as minor as the game’s graphical omissions. Take, for example, the way cards are parceled out. Both sides have an identical deck of 32 champions, the little non-demigods that make up the bulk of your army. As noted earlier, the range on these cards is extreme. Some have strength as low as one. Others stretch up to nine. And while there’s some correlation between a card’s strength in battle and its capacity to manipulate the value of a lane, this isn’t always the case.

Put another way, Pillars of Fate is unusually subject to the vagaries of the draw. Missing out on a high card or two can prove disastrous. And that goes double if you find yourself poorly armed and holding the first-player token. Because let me tell you, going first in Pillars of Fate is the pits. Every turn leaks another crucial missive to your rival, letting them play reactively and with such precision that each and every one of your moves becomes Sisyphean. Play a card, watch it get countered. Play a card, watch it get countered. Fill a lane, watch your opponent take their sweet time responding. Really, you’ll almost certainly fill all three lanes in advance of your opponent. This often proves disastrous.

And there are none of the mitigating systems that have found their way into other lane-battlers. There’s no ability to withdraw a bad hand, as in Jon Perry’s Air, Land, & Sea. John Clowdus’s Omen: A Reign of War fills its war-torn cities with so many special units that they’re effectively all demigods, producing wild swings that can’t be entirely countered. Even The Old King’s Crown, itself a freshman design by Pablo Clark, understands this problem, asking players to assign cards to their lanes simultaneously rather than let trailing players repeatedly one-up the leader.

The result is a lane-battler that feels bad as often as it feels brilliant. That makes its face-down cards such potential swings that they’re agony to reveal at the age’s conclusion. That generally goes to whomever held the first-player token least. Somebody will, by the way. Hold that accursed token the least. The game is three ages long, remember. Even something as small as a fourth age might have mitigated the worst of the game’s imbalances.

The feathers/stingers are both curled, sharp-ended icons... which is a bit non-distinct as well.

The components are lovely.

To be clear, these issues don’t ruin Pillars of Fate. The game’s smartest touches are still present and accounted for. In particular there’s the way lanes can be manipulated to turn a rival’s momentum against themself, the points-tallying equivalent of judo. Oh, you’ve deployed your most strong-armed champions to this distant battlefield? Oops, the only prize here is a cornucopia of spoilt meat. In those moments, the game shows itself at its most devious.

At some level, I even feel the same way about the demigods. I wish they had been a little more level, ability-wise, so that some weren’t such obvious picks compared to their siblings. But the game’s restraint in only allowing one per side per age is noteworthy, keeping the contests a little tighter than they might have been otherwise. Sure, the huge gap in their strength — in all units’ strengths — makes outcomes a little harder to preempt and keeps the game’s fickleness intact. But when things are going right, those become strengths rather than frustrations. It’s just hard to know which way the game will go.

My greatest reservation, really, is that there are so many excellent lane-battlers right now. I’d rather play any of the titles I mentioned earlier. I’d rather play Compile. I’d even rather play Riftforce or An Empty Throne. It doesn’t help that Pillars of Fate somehow misses out on its predecessor’s potential. You aren’t a god pushing around progeny. You’re a big dude with an army of your own. That’s fine enough, but as another stab at what made Veiled Fate so interesting, it travels toward an entirely separate heading, and a much less interesting one at that.

Okay, here’s one way in which Pillars of Fate recaptures that spark. If you remember Veiled Fate, you might recall that sometimes its contests were determined by the flip of a coin or the turn of a card. There are no coin-flips in Pillars of Fate, but the wildness of those champion decks and the testiness of its demogods often results in a similar caprice. After all this time, one’s fate might still hinge on whether they’re holding the right cards. And a first-player token.

There's some incentive to play face-up because you earn the tie-breaker pillar. But ties are relatively uncommon.

In the early stages, most cards tend to be concealed.

Here’s the good news: Pillars of Fate isn’t alone. Its sister title, Scales of Fate, offers another attempt to make good on the promise of Veiled Fate. We’ll take a look at that one tomorrow, but I’ll tip my hand right now: that one got it right.

As for this one… well. Despite its flashes of brilliance, sometimes even a genius can prove more trouble than they’re worth.

 

A complimentary copy of Pillars of Fate was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read my first-quarter update of 2026: the best board games, movies, books, and more!)

Sea Salt & Paper: Extra Pepper Expansion Review

20. April 2026 um 18:06
Extra PepperSea Salt & Paper is one of my favorite small card games. Not only does it have beautiful and unique art, but the gameplay is a very nice balance of strategy and luck that works well for me. I added the Extra Salt expansion to my copy when it came out and always play with […]

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10 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Turned 30

20. April 2026 um 15:35
me at 30

I made a huge intentional shift in my life in 2011. I’m now 45 years old, and looking back I realize how distinctly different my life was before and after my 30th year (mostly for the better).

If I had the chance to speak to my 30-year-old self, here are a few things I might say:

1. Creativity thrives in the small windows of free time, not the big ones. For most of my 20s I hoped for big gaps in time that were completely clear of other responsibilities–weeks and months–when I could write a novel. But the two times I had a big gap of time (the summer after college and when I was between jobs), I mostly just played and procrastinated. When I turned 30, I decided to spend 2 hours every night writing the novel, and I was done in 2 months while still maintaining my day job, friendships, and other hobbies. Realizing I could do that motivated me to also spend those small windows of time to design a game, Viticulture. This is one of the biggest changes I’ve ever made in my life, and my career with Stonemaier Games wouldn’t exist without this shift.

2. A change in location won’t make me a different person. I’m an introvert with a rather crippling social anxiety regarding approaching people. I romanticized the idea of going somewhere completely new by myself to see if a different, fearless version of Jamey would emerge, so I booked a solo trip to Ireland for a few days in 2011. Not only did I learn that I much prefer to travel with at least one other person, but also found that I’m still myself–for better or worse–even in a different country where everyone is a stranger. Another way to put this is: For the things about myself that I most want to work on, there’s no magic bullet.

3. There is so much to learn after formal education. I’m incredibly grateful for the all the teachers and professors who guided me from kindergarten through college. But there’s a whole world of knowledge outside of the classroom. I’ve learned so much about game design, for example, by listening to podcasts, reading articles, and watching videos (along with actually playing and designing games).

4. Healthy living starts to take effort after a certain age. I’ve been physically active my entire life, and I was blessed with a great metabolism, so for many years I didn’t feel the need to eat with intention. That was all fine and dandy until I started running Stonemaier Games in my early 30s, a job that often involves sitting at a desk for 12 hours a day. I was no longer playing sports as regularly, yet my diet was the same as ever (and it wasn’t even terrible–I ate fruits and vegetables every day). My body changed incrementally, and before I knew it, I was 20 lbs heavier than I’d ever been. Fortunately I realized it’s never too late to change, but I wish I could tell myself what I was doing to my body and how even 20 minutes of exercise every day can make a huge difference.

5. I don’t want kids, and I’m not alone. For most of my life, I thought I wanted to have kids–I never questioned doing the same thing my parents did (I have a brother and sister). It wasn’t until my early 30s that started to realize that the creative, nurturing, and compassionate sides of myself were fulfilled and challenged better in other ways (game design, friends, cats, etc). But when my siblings and college friends started to have kids, I struggled sometimes to feel like an “adult.” But then I started to make some wonderful friends who were just as happy not having kids as I was–and I found a partner in Megan who also doesn’t want kids–and I’m so grateful for those relationships (they even helped the relationships I had with friends and family who do have kids).

me at 45

6. Money well spent makes a big difference. For the longest time, if I wanted a chocolate bar, I’d spend $0.50 at checkout at the grocery store. But one day I was shopping with a friend, and they said, “You love chocolate, right? If you love something, it’s worth paying for the best.” So I shelled out for a $5 chocolate bar, and it was amazing. This isn’t to say that I don’t still enjoy a Snickers, Kit-Kat, or Hersheys Almond from time to time. But I give myself permission to spend money on the things I love. Similarly, I’ve learned to pay for things that last–I have shoes and jeans that have lasted over a decade.

7. Every job before my career was a good use of time. I think there was a time when I didn’t believe this; I wished I could have found my path earlier in life. But whether it was waiting tables, project managing medical textbooks, or managing a nonprofit staff and fundraiser, I was learning indispensable skills and habits that have had a direct impact on Stonemaier Games’ success.

8. Loving a pet requires compassionate discipline. I adopted my beloved cat Biddy in 2007 when he was a tiny kitten, and raising him from beginning to end is one of the greatest joys of my life. Biddy loved to eat, and I gave him open access to cat food (and sometimes human food). At one point he tipped the scales at 20 lbs. He developed diabetes and required twice-daily insulin shots for the rest of his life. He died of intestinal cancer when he was 16 years old. While I don’t know if I could prevented any of Biddy’s ailments, I wish I had known earlier that I could have made Biddy’s life better overall by denying him a portion of the thing he wanted the most (kibble). Not enabling someone’s worst habit is a core part of loving them. I would truly do anything to have another month or year with Biddy–I miss him every day.

9. There is no rule that says everything must remain the way it’s always been. This applies to relationships, habits, routines, beliefs, hobbies, diet, behaviors, even our bodies. For example, for as long as I can remember, I had large protruding mole at the base of my back. I didn’t like it, but I figured it was too close to my spine to be removed. But then I asked a dermatologist about it, and she said, “Oh, sure, we can remove that right now.” Five minutes later, something that had bothered me for years was gone forever. I wish I could have known earlier that if there is any persistent element in my life that I could cut or add that would make me happier (and those around me), it’s never too late to choose to make that change.

10. Try a lot of different things to continually discover new passions. At 30, I thought I only enjoyed specific types of games and that I didn’t like party games…until I tried Telestrations, Just One, So Clover, Blob Party, and Caution Signs. At 30, I thought I enjoyed blogging as my only form of content creation…until I filmed a “my favorite mechanism” video for YouTube, tried a Facebook livecast, posted an Instagram photo, or recorded a podcast. At 30, I thought ultimate frisbee was the only disc-related sport I enjoyed…until I started playing disc golf during the pandemic and now play every week. The world is full of potential passions I have yet to try, and I won’t know if they’re for me until I actually try them!

I wasn’t sure where this list would take me, but I appreciate the opportunity to share. I’d love to hear if any of these resonate with you or if there’s something you wish you knew before you turned 30.

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Crowdfunding Campaigns of the Week – 4/20/26

20. April 2026 um 15:08
Crowdfunding Campaigns of the WeekWelcome to this week’s batch of crowdfunding campaigns. We have a variety of offerings here, so we hope you will find something that catches your eye. Also, if you want to chat with the BGQ team, join our Discord Server where we talk about games, movies, sports, and other fun stuff. Check it out and […]

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Wunderwaffen Game Review

It’s still early in 2026, but I think I’ve already played the game that will end the year with the widest array of opinions within my review crew.

Wunderwaffen was one of my targets at SPIEL Essen 2025, so I was eager to get it home and put it in front of my team. I was attracted to the game for a few reasons, chief amongst them the game’s publisher. Ares Games has done great work in steadily tight packages, from the Quartermaster General series to family-friendly fare such as TEDOKU and Builders of Sylvan Dale. Ares’ reprint of the Mega Civilization series, Mega Empires, didn’t hurt the cause.

Wunderwaffen is a fragile system, one that worked wonderfully for some players while landing badly for others. But as a very straightforward game that plays in about an hour at its full player count, it is certainly worth a look, especially for wargame lovers looking for a weeknight game they can table with both hobbyists and casual players.

Nazis, You Say?

Wunderwaffen looks, on the surface, like a one-versus-all wargame for strictly two OR four players. There are four playable factions in the box: Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet…

The post Wunderwaffen Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Jurassic Kart – A Dodos Riding Dinos Review

20. April 2026 um 15:00
Rubén Hernández’s Dodos Riding Dinos was one of those games people talked about. The kind of nutty activity that combines a longstanding tabletop genre with silly dexterity elements. I mentally associated it with killer titles like SEAL Team Flix, PitchCar, and Space Cadets. These games marry the frivolous kinetic energy of flicking with a more…

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