Every Night is Game Night

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Episode 129 - How to Teach a Board Game in Easy Steps, pt. 2 Mar 08, 2019

Show notes

We move on with our thirteen easy steps to teach a board game. Please check out the show notes for the Episode 126 to check out the first five steps to teach a board game. Most of those were about prep and proper introduction.

Now we're starting to get into it. Steps Five, Six, and Seven all have to do with laying a proper foundation for players so that everything else about the game makes sense. They are:

5) "In this game, you are a _____ trying to do ____" (covered last episode) 6) Demonstrate general game flow 7) Describe the basic victory conditions.

Once players have that essential context, then we get get into the nitty gritty of teaching game mechanisms. That will vary wildly from game to game, but Anthony and Jason both agree in splitting up game elements into the following four areas:

8) Describe Basic Mechanisms and Player Actions 9) Describe Obstacles, Combat, and other Interactions 10) Describe the Endgame in Detail 11) Wrap up with Player Powers, Exceptions, etc.

After that, hopefully the teacher hangs out with the table and insures that folks are having a good time. That brings us to our final two steps:

12) Teaching etiquette during play 13) Debrief and prep for the next game!

In particular, we get into two critical questions that game teachers need to grapple with: how much do you try to win, and how much strategy help do you give players?

We hope that, by the end of these two episodes, we have provided a 360 degree view with lots of tips to improve your teaching game.

Episode 128 - How to Teach a Board Game in Thirteen Easy Steps, pt. 1 Mar 01, 2019

Show notes

Anthony and Jason are always showing off new games for folks and playing as much of the hottest stuff as possible. Practice makes perfect, as they say, so this episode is about sharing all the tips for good teaching that have been picked up along the way. We all know what bad teaching looks like, so let's help folks... uh, stop doing that!

Jason has organized his teaching method into thirteen easy steps that involve everything from learning the game initially, to gathering a table of people to play, all the way through the end. In this episode, after we share some teaching horror stories, we talk about the five steps of teaching games. The first four are preparatory steps:

1) Personal prep and/ or managing table expectation 2) Laying the game out and letting it do some of the teaching work 3) Giving an elevator pitch 4) Giving folks a heads up about the game - weight, length, theme, and interaction style

After that, we get into the proper intro to teaching, which starts with:

5) "In this game, you are a ____ trying to do ___".

If that doesn't make a lot of sense, then you're going to have to listen to the episode in order to put it all together. Stay tuned for part two next week!

ENGN Episode 127 - The ENGN Solo Awards for 2018, Part Two Feb 22, 2019

Show notes

Last week, you heard about the best from 2018 in a wide variety of categories. For this episode, we get down to brass tacks and present the absolute best games of 2018. Once again, we thank all of the presenters who helped us out with this episode. Please go follow them on social media and check out their channels!

Best Short Game (2:10), presented by Travis Hill of Low Player Count - @travisdhill
Best Family/ Gateway Game (9:50), presented by Jason and Anthony
Best Adventure Game (13:15), presented by Tristan Hall from the Board Chitless Podcast - @ninjadorg
Best Advanced Strategy Game (21:48), presented by Michelle Ridge from the Tabletop Crier blog - @feaien
Best Strategy Game (31:55), presented by Liz Davidson from Beyond Solitaire and Jeremy Howard from Jambalaya Plays Games - @beyondsolitaire, @jambapg.

Once again, we also thank those ruddy tossers from the Sporadically Board podcast, Mike and Dan - @SporadicBoard.

ENGN Episode 126 - The ENGN Solo Awards for 2018, Part One Feb 15, 2019

Show notes

Welcome to the Second Annual ENGN Solo Awards! If you do a thing twice, does it become an annual tradition? Regardless, we are back to bring you the absolute best of 2018, as decided by Anthony, Jason, and ENGN fans across Facebook and BGG.

We are happy to be joined once again by contributors from all over the board gaming universe - some familiar, some brand new. And this year, we also get to hear from the winners as well. Some folks went above and beyond with their clips, so please give a listen and check out their pages!

The categories we present in this episode are the following:

Best Digital Board Game (5:15), presented by Mandi and Suzanne from the Dice Tower - @boardgamerpinup and @425suzanne
Best Narrative Game (15:05), presented by Peter and Mike from Coop Cast - @mvpboardgames
Best New Edition of a Game (23:58) - presented by Raz from the Le Comboteur Fo blog - BGG user Razoupaf
Best Expansion - presented by Luke Hector (30:58), the Broken Meeple - @TheBrokenMeeple

Special thanks to Mike and Dan at the Sporadically Board podcast for also helping us out - @SporadicBoard

ENGN Episode 125 - Kickstarter Roundup: Wild Purple Cat Gardens Feb 08, 2019

Show notes

Liz from Beyond Solitaire and Jeremy from Jambalaya Plays Games are back for more recently delivered Kickstarter fun! Liz and Jeremy start us off with a highly portable and quirky cult classic which is finally seeing the published light of day (5:38). Then Jason and Liz share about Direwild (12:35), the latest game to take a stab at marrying deckbuilding and dungeon crawling. Our discussion gets into some larger points about deckbuilders - what we enjoy, what we think makes them good, etc. Liz and Jeremy jump back in to share about Donning the Purple (31:21) a 'king of the hill' style game that might offer some more aggressive play than you might be used to. Finally, a game which is the complete opposite of aggressive - Cat Rescue (40:11) a cooperative, small card game about training cats for adoption. Yes, we went from murdering one another for power and political gain to training cats. Yet another reason to love Kickstarter - you can find games about... anything, really!

ENGN Episode 124 - Kickstarter Roundup: Dawn of the King's Obsession with Crypts Feb 01, 2019

Show notes

We do this once a season, for the reason of new kickstarter deliveries hitting our tables. Liz from Beyond Solitaire and Jeremy from Jambalaya Plays Games hop back on the show to do what we do whether the mics are on or not... talk about games! First up, we have King's Guild (5:20), a game that Jeremy promises might kill that unkillable game for you - Splendor! It already has a one-up on Splendor in that is has a built-in solo mode, and Jeremy breaks down what else this one has to offer. After that, we get into Crypt (9:50), a small filler game with some dice and a cute theme that might get some chuckles as your local bar night. After that, we get a bit heavier and share about Dawn of Peacemakers (16:17), a VERY unique game where you play a diplomat running around in the field of battle, trying to bring two warring armies to a state where they don't want to kill each other any more. There's tactical movement, clever card play, and an ongoing, replayable campaign in this game, everything that Jason loves to see in a game. He'll tell you if it delivered or not. Finally, Liz gets to indulge her inner Jane Austin geek during our review of Obsession: Pride, Intrigue, and Prejudice in Victorian England (28:35). This one offers some simple tableau building and hand/ pawn management, wrapped with love in a theme that definitely does not get a ton of traffic. Rounding things out, we get into a bit about playing prototypes - what's fun about it, how to get into it, how it enables relationships with our favorite designers, and other aspects of it.

ENGN Preview Series 44 - 1001 Odysseys with Chris Cieslik and Julia Urquhart Jan 30, 2019

Show notes

Jason chats with Chris Cieslik and Julia Urquhart from Asmadi Games about one of his most anticipated games for 2019 - 1001 Odysseys! We've talked about it before during our PAX Unplugged recap episodes. For this Preview Series, we really blow it out and get under the hood with this cooperative story telling game.

If you liked Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this is the game for you!

We get into the very simple mechanisms here, how they directly answer to some of the other storytelling and Choose Your Own Adventure games that came before. However, when you try to solve design problems, you might create new ones. Jason gets into some critical issues that might arise from such a simple, open-ended system, such as retaining the ability of players to make meaningful choices.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/asmadigames/513161662

ENGN Episode 123 - More Pandemic and The State of Legacy Games Jan 25, 2019

Show notes

Jason gets to revel in some glory this week as we catch up on a whole bunch of Pandemic. We covered some of the earlier versions way back in episodes 14 and 15 of the show. Please hop over to our website (www.everynightisgamenight.com) or our GeekList (https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/228542/every-night-game-n...) to check those out. For this latest round, we start with the new hotness - Pandemic: Fall of Rome (4:09). Both of us have played it, so we're able to give a nice chunky review of it. After that, Jason runs through some earlier iterations of Pandemic that not many folks are talking about, but that Jason thinks are good regardless - Pandemic: Rising Tide (15:20) and Pandemic Legacy: Season Two (21:14). Finally, we get into out current thoughts on Legacy games. How are we doing with them? Are we able to get through them all, or even some of them? Are we still excited, or experiencing a bit of backlash? Once again, thanks to everyone in the Every Night is Game Night Facebook group who helped contribute thoughts, questions, etc.

ENGN Episode 122 - Recent Hotness and Tastemakers in Board Games Jan 18, 2019

Show notes

Anthony and Jason finally settle down for a chat about games, just the two of them. Nice to get back to our roots . We talk about two new games that have hit our table. First up is Architects of the West Kingdom (4:43), a very hot worker placement game that made a lot of people's Top Ten Games of the Year list. We get into what separates it from the pack, at least for some folks, as well as the very neat little solo bot included. Next up, we chat about Cerebria: The Inside World (17:26), a much more complicated game that one of us really loves, while the other... Finally, we chat about tastemakers in games. You know who the big ones are - Tom Vasel, Radho, Undead Viking, etc. What kind of impact do they have on us and on gamers? What's the best way to use them in your gaming life? What do you do when they point you in the wrong direction, whether towards buying a piece of garbage or avoiding what might be your next favorite game? Thank you to our Every Night is Game Night Facebook community for your contributions!

ENGN PS Episode 43: Animal Kingdoms with Carla Kopp and Dan Letzring Jan 15, 2019

Show notes

Animal Kingdoms, currently on Kickstarter, is the very first game from the new collaborative company, Galactic Raptor Games. The co-founders of Galactic Raptor, Carla Kopp and Dan Letzring, drop by to chat about the accessible nature of its card play, as well as the solo mode. Carla and Dan also chat about why they came together to form Galactic Raptor.

Stay tuned for the aftershow in this one! We get into some predictions for 2019, including a desire to see more diverse, off-the-beaten path games and what both Carla and Dan are doing to make that happen.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/galacticraptorgames/animal-kingdoms-an-award-winning-game-of-area-cont?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=animal%20kingdoms

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