G*M*S Magazine Podcast Channel

The Mistborn Dice Kickstarter project is the latest and most recent project by RPG publishers Crafty Games. The creators of the Mistborn Adventure Game, based on the novels by author Brandon Sanderson, also released a series of customised dice at the time of releasing the game just over two years ago. Those dice flew off the shelf and I was lucky enough to get a couple of sets for posterity. Now the Crafty team are on Kickstarter with their first project to fund a new production batch of dice to play with their rather excellent game. But why are those dice important? What’s about them that makes it worth pledging and backing this project? Well, no one better than the project creator, Alex Flagg to let us know all about it. Hope you enjoy the show!

There is a lot to be said for ethics in games journalism. The fact is that it’s a very grey area because most of the journalism that goes on is done by amateurs for the love of it. Whether it is for boardgames or roleplaying games, there are just a handful of professional websites that are businesses. And those numbers are *tiny* compared with the number of bloggers and video-bloggers out there. People writing reviews, articles and giving opinions about games of all sorts. But are we an ethical lot? Probably not, though we also probably try our best and we’re not unethical maliciously. There’s just not an established code of ethics in our media and, let’s face it, we all do what we want to do. So what’s the solution? We discuss some options in this show.

Hive, has been out for quite a long time now and it is a very popular game. Well balanced, deep, tons of replayability and fun. Very good fun. One only has to look at the list of reputable publishers that have put their weight behind this game to realise that, despite its unassuming looks, this game is as solid as the pieces that form it. And let me tell you they are *very* solid. So did this game need expansions? Did its core mechanics need any sort of additions for gameplay’s sake? Michael Chamberlain and Max Murray sat down at the table and played them for the first time so they can tell you all about it! Hope you enjoy the show!Remember you can follow us on Twitter and Google+!

Luchador: Mexican Wrestling Dice is the  design of Mark Rivera and brings to the table the feeling of a wrestling match on the table. And it does pretty well at that! Released at Spiel 2013, the game was a sold-out in days and it’s been well received. Simple to play, silly fun and lots of dice rolling make a compelling experience that’s just fun. Not a lot of thinking, not a lot of arguing… just fun. Each player represents a wrestler and the dice will determine the moves for each player and the result of the roll will determine who lasts the longest in the ring. With a team play game available, swapping places with your friends to roll the dice really seems to double the fun. Now Backspindle games, the publisher behind the game, has taken onto Kickstarter to fund a second edition of the game with more werstlers, more gameplay and more fun. I spoke to Mark Rivera and Dave Brashaw to find out more about this new edition of the game that should be gracing your collection very soon. Even sooner if you back the Kickstarter project! Hope you enjoy the show!

Academy Games and its charismatic leader are well known for producing historical games that are, as it happen, easy and fun to play without compromising on historic accuracy. In this case 1775 deals with the the start for the American Revolution after Britain imposes unwelcome new taxes. Yeah… that was me being understating. Anyway, there was a lot of fighting and a lot of people died and the French were there and it got all messy and unpleasant. So Academy Games made a game to teach us about the horrors of war and the cost it carries. And yet they manage to do that in a way that doesn’t put you off from it. At least that’s been our experience with other of their games. We had to try 1775 and have a go to see how it plays for the first time. And now we’re telling you all about it! Hope you enjoy the show!

Dr. Hrubec is a party game from The Czech Board Company that was released at Spiel 2014. One of the cool things about this organisation is that they get together with designer in the Czech Republic and when they find a game they think it’s worthy, then they gather the funds and publish it. In 2013 they released Infarkt, a game that tests your healthy lifestyle and, if you’re unlucky, you get a heart attack. And then you lose the game, of course. In Dr. Hrubec you take the role of a doctor who has to organise an area of a hospital, choose patients and see if you have the skills to cure them. If you do, you get points, if you don’t, they die and you lose points. Yeah… it’s pretty grim and very adult. With really funny and sometimes offensive artwork, this game requires you to have a rather thick skin. But is it fun and a good game? Well, in this episode we tell you all about the experience of playing this game for the first time! Hope you enjoy the show!

Splendor is described as a fast and addictive game of chip-collecting and card development. An with good reason, it is very, very addictive, though not sure about the fast bit… people with paralysis analysis might find this one slowing them down a bit. However the game is totally awesome and fantastic even on a first play, which is pretty impressive! However, don’t take the last five lines of text as proof. Listen to the podcast and find out why Michael, Max and Cesare enjoyed this little gem that should be in anyone’s collection! Hope you enjoy the show!

Steampunk has become very, very fashionable in the last few decades. Although the concept has been with us for along time and novels with technology that had the flavour of what we currently know as Steampunk have been numerous by favour authors, it was only in the 80’s that the term Steampunk was coined by K.W. Jeter when he was looking for a term to works of novelists James Blaylock and Tim Powers. Fast forward to mid 00s and it became more and more popular to the point that now is actually “cool”. But is it a genre of anything or is it just a veneer of flavour thrown on top of something else because we need it to tell the story? Jim Pinto, Vidkey Beaver and myself have a chat about it! Hope you enjoy the show!

Hobby World is he biggest boardgame publishing company in Russia. Last year they went to Kickstarter with Septikon and succeeded (disgracefully I didn’t back it. Shame on me!) a game for two players that looks very much like a retro Space Invaders sort of game. Now they are back in Kickstarter with a different game. Hollywood; a game in which you win by creating the most successful Hollywood blockbuster. With some seriously fun and lovely artwork, fast gameplay and simple rules, this game promises a lot and Hobby World wants to bring it outside of Russia and for that they’re in Kickstarter funding this game. I had a chat with Nikolay Pegasov, the designer and asked him a whole bunch of questions about the game, how it plays and why people should back it. Hope you enjoy the show!

This is no secret: Michael Chamberlain takes this game to bed just like you take a teddy bear. Seriously. He *loves* this game more than I can tell. Funnily enough, this is a game that plenty of people dismissed before it even funded in Kickstarter because of the theme: you have to create your fishing fleet and make money with it. And that sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not. I mean, it is because the game mechanics are actually pretty simple and extremely elegant, but there is so much depth to this game that you’ll be able to play time and time again and never be bored. And now that the expansions are out and in the hands of the backers, have they done it right and actually added to the game? Well, we’re going to find out! Hope you enjoy the show!

Recently we reviewed 12 Realms in the Boardgame Review room and somehow we managed to dislike it. A combination of expectations not being met, mechanics we didn’t like, length of time we didn’t expect… It didn’t sit down well with us. And yet a lot of people love it, so we thought we might have got it wrong somehow. That and we really like Mage Company. We like Wrong Chemistry and we like the owners. They are good guys. So we couldn’t just give the game a bad review and not ask what was going and what did the originators of the game made of our review. Rather than doing it for our own benefit, we invited Alexander to come to the podcast and have an interview to discuss the reasons why we didn’t like the game. And he agreed! Hope you enjoy this interview, and I will say from the offset that Alexander was absolutely fantastic. Can’t thank him enough!

The UK Games Expo has become the flagship of gaming conventions in the UK. From its unassuming beginnings less than a decade ago, it is quickly turning into the perfect mix of GenCon and Spiel at a smaller scale but just as fun and well organised. Since I’m the one organising the panels, you’d be forgiven for thinking I am biased, I am; so I thought it’d be a good idea to interview the two main men behind the whole thing, Richard Denning and Tony Hyams so you can actually find out for yourselves why this convention is so damn cool: Because it’s organised by seriously good people and that comes across. So, without further ado, please make yourselves comfortable for this interview and get your suitcases ready because I am hoping to see you all (or as many as possible) at the Expo. Hope you enjoy the show!

This podcast episode is a good one. Mainly because the game is a very, very good one. Seriously good. Lewis Clark is the product of French designer Cedrick Chaboussit, who presented the game to Ludonaute and they didn’t waste a second in getting the game out there. With lovely artwork, terrific components and a gameplay to die for, this game was a hit in every single front. But you’ll have to listen to the podcast to find out why we liked it so much! It’ll be worth it, I promise!

This card game was funded in Kickstarter with a pretty terrific amount of success in 2013 and it quickly became obvious that expansions were indeed a good idea. So quickly in fact, that Saar Shai, the designer behind the game decided to design expansions and create another Kickstarter that is also currently funding and it’s also being *very* successful. But why? What does this game have that is getting people to want to pay for expansions and make them like it so much? The excellent artwork and quirky production values might have something to do with it. For example the cards are made of plastic and not cardboard and is a game that fits very nicely in a small bag but has enough replayability and depth to stop it from being a light game. However, how does a first play of this game go? Is it enjoyable and easy to grasp? That’s what we’re going to find out in this podcast! Hope you enjoy the show!

Mage Company released 12 Realms in Kickstarter and the game was sold at Spiel 2013 with all the extras that were obtained during the crowd-funding campaign. We also did the unboxing video of this game to give our viewers a precise idea of the components of the game and miniatures and can be seen here. Now we’ve sat down around the table and played the game for the first time. And without going into details I’ll tell you it didn’t go down as we wanted. Bring a first time play we can’t say we got everything right and our opinions and impressions of the game are just indicative of the sort of issues you might find on a first time play. We don’t hold our punches, though and it’s fair to say we weren’t impressed with the game. We’re hoping to soon have the publisher in the podcast for an interview so we can talk about the things we didn’t like about the game and what we might have missed. Meanwhile, hope you enjoy the show!