TGG Episode 35 – Mob Ties, Black Friday, Thunderstone Advance, and 1812: The Invasion of Canada

I have to say I didn’t set about reading a ton of reviews of Black Friday after completing mine and those I did look at were simply skimmed. I don’t believe I laid claim that every review was positive as I have neither the time nor inclination to surf the web to find out what everyone writes about any particular game. As for ratings on BGG, I really don’t pay much attention to them so a 6.6 (out of ten) sounds about right as it will receive a 6 from me when the written review hits.

As far as “ragging” on Euros I believe most listeners came to the understanding in my second review, of 1812, I pointed out the design had quite a lot of Euro flavored mechanics and I found the game to be stellar. I believe my exact words at one point of the review were, “it sounds a lot like a Euro doesn’t it?”

I don’t believe I made any mention of games involving trading in the 16th century or the like in this episode either so I think you may have heard what you wanted to hear. As far as VPG, I’ll take a guess you probably have not played many of their States of Siege line. That’s just a guess though. The answer if it drives me crazy that they’re all the same would be no. The reasoning is that they aren’t all the same even though they all share some common design characteristics. I’m not sure how zombies, war, space, mountain climbing are all similar. There are some SoS titles that we’ve really enjoyed and others we didn’t feel were that great or even less than ok. Yet the fact there are design elements that run through many of the designs – and many fewer than you may think – doesn’t bother me in the least;some mechanics are the same not the games themselves.

Of course if every game in the SoS line was the same exact design with nearly identical themes (or vice versa) you bet I’d think that was crazy and would no doubt even publicly remark about that.

Elliott and I have asked numerous times for our visitors to share with us some of their favorite Euros so we can check them out. The fact is no one has and, unfortunately, the latest batch of games we’ve encountered as of late have left us cold. We play hundreds of games in a given year so you’ll have to excuse us if we seem to be in the midst of a current dry spell of fun Euros we’ve had a chance to encounter. What we’ve played lately just haven’t done it for us so we’ve been left with a bit of a bad taste right now.

Of course everyone has their own tastes in what they enjoy. I have to say I know Elliott really enjoys Lords of Vegas and we both did have a chance to play Age of Empires III and liked it (although we don’t review something based on a single play). I’m hoping to have a chance to check out London and A Few Acres of Snow at this weekend’s Vul-Con.

Thanks for the recommendations as we’ll look to give these a try!

Thanks Andy! I’m sure I speak for Elliott when I say we really appreciate the kind words.

I do like Agricola although I’ve only actually played online with Elliott and he wipes the floor with me but I still think it’s a damn fine game. Seeing I haven’t played the physical edition I can’t roll a review out but I don’t believe it would hit my top ten overall even if I did. I don’t write that as any sort of knock on Agricola because if I ranked it as far as game designs I’ve played in my life I’d guess it comes in around an 8.75 – that makes it an excellent game! Certainly not the best and nowhere even remotely approaching the worst.

In the past few months I think I’ve gotten the knock that I hate Euros, which isn’t the case; oh if you could read some of the emails I receive… You’d think I’ve stated Reiner Knizia, Friedemann Friese, and Martin Wallace should all be hauled out and shot! If that were the case I’d mount a campaign to start referring to Euros as Eurotrash since so many gamers are willing to categorize American designs as Ameritrash. In the end, trash is trash – as in garbage – and I have to say, in my over thirty years involved in gaming, I can probably count on both hands titles I would classify as utter trash.

I know our audience is made up of people like Andy: people who are open minded enough to give just about any game a try regardless of what genre it falls into. Those are the sorts of folks we launched the website for in the first place because those are the sort of gamers we are. My best friend and I did not get involved in this endeavor to be a pale imitation of any existing website, or podcast, nor have we ever thought we were in some sort of competition with anyone else. We wanted to share our thoughts and opinions in a very honest way while having fun sharing our love of a hobby we’ve both enjoyed for a longer period of time than some of our visitors have been alive. That never meant we’d be like the multitude of wallflowers who cover the hobby or, on the flip side, the type who sprinkle every other sentence in vulgarity as they talk about gaming.

Elliott and I are consistently amazed by the number of people who dig what we do and supremely thankful for the really nice things they share with us both publicly and privately. We hold no animosity toward people who don’t “get” us (mainly they tend to share that privately) as there are loads of sites and shows out there who will infinitely better serve their needs.