I know a good number of you are probably upset, or at least skeptical, right now because of how I’ve titled this article. But, if

When I, along with the rest of the world, began to realize that we’d be spending a lot more time at home in early 2020,

This article is a loose continuation of some of the thoughts I offered here and here. I have a keen interest in how we analyze

This article is sort of a continuation of this article from last week, inspired by discussions on twitter mostly located here and here. I made

A little over a decade ago on a night like tonight I’m probably outside, briskly walking through the cool Pennsylvania evening, talking on the phone

The time has come for everyone to scramble for those last minute Christmas gifts to pile up under the tree and once again The Thoughtful

I don’t understand the thought process that leads to using established metrics in game reviews. That sounds pompous but I’m being earnest. I’m open to

I think a lot about how to review board games. It’s what I do. I’m a bit obsessive. This particular topic has been on my

Geoff Engelstein is one of the best people in board gaming at teasing out and explaining the complex factors that go into game design and

Alright, people, listen up. I don’t have many gaming pet peeves but this is the biggest one so pay attention. Can we stop calling games

I slept through the changing of the year, and it might as well have gone that way, what with the general consensus that 2020 was

Why? What’s the point?  No, really, what’s the point of reviewing games? Why do I do this week in and week out? I could talk

A common refrain in my game group is that Descent is fun despite itself. I think this is accurate. We certainly had a blast playing

I kind of liked not doing Kickstarter Curmudgeon last month, as scheduling things led to me simply not getting around to it. So when I

I keep seeing this question on social media and elsewhere and I can’t quite figure it out. Where’d we get the idea that surprise hit

We’re in the dog days of August, and I guess that seasonal malaise affects board game marketing, because there were a surprising absence of interesting

Oh how time flies! It seems like only last week that I was grouching at a host of Kickstarter campaigns, though to be honest a

The Kickstarter culture in board gaming has always felt a bit odd to me. I don’t avoid it completely. I’ve backed a couple of Red

In 2017 the Game Developers Conference hosted a number of board game designers and publishers for the first time to talk about tabletop games. Across

The house always had a funerial sense about it–the smell of camellias mixed with stale cigarette smoke when I was young; the sense of void

I’m ⅔ of the way done with this article and I’m realizing that this is less a structured argument and more a collection of loosely

People love narratives. We love not just the narratives we get in the form of designed stories in books and TV and movies. We love

At the risk of outing myself as a gamer who doesn’t play “enough” games, let’s talk about my gaming stats for 2017. I started logging

“Cult of the new” is an unfortunate phrase I hear a lot around the board game community to describe behavior where people get excited only

As we enter the advertising onslaught that we call the “holiday season”, I’d like to both shamelessly use this time to recommend some cool games

Back in highschool my friends determined that my future career path was going to be a critic. It didn’t so much matter what I’d be

For some reason today is a day of reflection for me. I suppose it’s because I’m preparing to launch on Patreon and trying to line

The hard part, of course, is that this kind of post is now cliche.(1) It’s also tremendously hard to formulate. I mean, what’s my point

I don’t remember how old I was–maybe 11 or 12, but one day my dad decided that I needed to learn how to play chess.

It’s Memorial Day here in the states, and in true American fashion that means the consumption of a lot of beer and red meat. Hopefully,

I originally intended this article to be about effective point scales and the BGG rating system, but a few posts on the boardgames subreddit have

The following is a collection of mostly incomplete thoughts. I’m publishing this now in order to get the thoughts onto the page and to begin