The Great Con Heist

We recently traveled to Dexcon, an annual five-day convention in Morristown, NJ, where we played all sorts of games, and definitely drank all kinds of beers, but prominent among them was one of each that we decided to use for this week’s special-edition Game & Beer Pairing, straight from Dexcon 19. For months we’ve been hearing, … Read more…

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Oh, it’s Forbidden? Let’s Do it Anyway.

Forbidden Island has become such a classic in our eyes that it’s hard to believe it came out only six years ago. The mechanics are unique, the art is beautiful, and the game requires some serious strategizing and cooperation. Like Catan or Ticket to Ride, Forbidden Island is just one of those games that every … Read more…

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…

At the Brewery: The Battle for Papal Supremacy

We recently attended the inaugural Northeast Nerd Night, a soon-to-be regular evening of gaming and beer in the name of charity, held at Triumph Brewing Company in New Hope, PA. This month, we gathered in support of Fisherman’s Mark, a locally-based grassroots social service agency. The turnout was great, the games were a blast and … Read more…

Prototype Pairing: Huh, Looks Like Rain… OF SHARKS

If you’ve been following us on social media or here on Boards & Lager, then you know that we are making the official Sharknado™ board game, tentatively (and transparently) titled Sharknado™: The Board Game! And we’ve been playtesting like crazy. Recently we took a trip to our local beer distributor and found a whole bunch of … 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…