Burninating the Countryside

Even as game designers, we’re constantly impressed by the creative ways in which dice are used in games. Far gone are the days of “roll dice, move X spaces” (or worse… Yahtzee!). Dice games have become a staple in our collections—they’re usually easy to learn, quick to play, and very portable.They tend to be luck-based … Read more…

Share

The Tripel Triple

We love a good Belgian-style tripel—high ABV, serious flavor, heavy on the malt. We’ll look for any excuse to pick one up. But pairing beers thematically with games sometimes isn’t so easy. So, to quench our thirst, we paired one beer with three games—hence, the tripel triple. We played three smaller games, all of which … Read more…

A Bitter, Superpowered Rivalry

One of our favorite gateway games is Sentinels of the Multiverse, a cooperative card game filled with tons of heroes, villains, environments, and other cool stuff. We’ve used it to turn several people to the side of gaming with great success. Then the guys over at Greater Than Games decided to put out a new … Read more…

Getting Smashed (Up) with Smash Up

What happens when you take every trope in gaming, from pirates and zombies to aliens and wizards, throw them together in a box, and declare all-out war? Unlikely alliances are forged and the fight gets brutal. In Smash-Up, from AEG, each faction has its own deck of twenty cards. Each player chooses two factions, shuffles them … Read more…

Drinking on the Job

A game doesn’t always have to be sci-fi, fantasy, or some alternate reality to be fun. Sometimes a game can parody, ridicule or downright imitate some aspect of ordinary life and still be pretty awesome. Case in point: This week we played You’re Fired!, a part-deduction, part-hand management game that lampoons the world of corporate … Read more…

Tsailing in Tcircles on the Tseven Tseas

Tsuro has been, for some time, a perennial favorite filler game in our group. It’s fast, it’s light, and it’s fun. (And yeah, Japanese enthusiasts, we know the “t” is not completely silent; we’re being cheeky.) Then, just a few years ago, Calliope Games released a sequel, Tsuro of the Seas—a game every bit as pretty … Read more…

Dead, Alive, or Out on a Beer Run?

When Erwin Schrödinger is away, his cats come out to play… and they’re also physicists. That’s the idea behind Schrödinger’s Cats, a bluffing/deduction game from Ninth Level Games, creators of the popular RPG Kobolds Ate My Baby (“All hail King Torg!”), and the subject of this week’s Game & Beer Pairing. As cat physicists, players replicate … Read more…

Chugging on the Choo-Choo

This week, we played a train game! And no, it wasn’t Ticket to Ride. Yardmaster Express by Crash Games is a micro-game that takes only minutes to play. It’s fast, it’s small, it’s simple—and most importantly, it’s thematic and fun. While we play our fair share of micro-games, we don’t often use them in Game … Read more…

Keep on Keepin’ On

Good game design balances choice—not only in the number of options a player might have, but especially in how meaningful those choices are to the outcome of a game. Some of the best games—at least in our opinion—are the ones in which choice matters enough to make us think twice before we roll the dice, … Read more…

The Bullfrog Croaks; the Hoppin’ Frog Wobbles

Lately we’ve been playing a lot of games that rely fairly heavily on luck, so we’ve been craving something with a bit more strategy in our Game & Beer Pairings, something in which players have more control over the outcome. You know, like chess… except not chess. Bullfrogs by Thunderworks Games fits that bill perfectly. … Read more…