Boardgames To Go 245 - Revisiting Deep Thoughts (with Greg Pettit)
Boardgames To Go
Please join us on the where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Reminder! Please join other podcast listeners for the next online BGTG Mini-Con, scheduled for September 6. I plan to be online from 9am-9pm Pacific time, including the for voice & video. The games will mostly be played on BoardgameArena, but adventurous gamers can also use Yucata, Brettspielwelt, Boardgames.io, Steam, apps, or whatever. It's free, and no RSVP or signup is necessary. Openers: Mark: Greg: Closers: Greg: "I don't know" ❤️ Mark:...
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Boardgames To Go 244 - Summer Game Convention Season
Boardgames To Go
Announcement! Please join other podcast listeners for the next online BGTG Mini-Con, scheduled for September 6. I plan to be online from 9am-9pm Pacific time, including Discord for voice & video. The games will mostly be played on BoardgameArena, but adventurous gamers can also use Yucata, Brettspielwelt, Boardgames.io, Steam, apps, or whatever. It's free, and no RSVP or signup is necessary. Opener: Closer: , which we watched/listened to live on the drive back from a convention Over the years you've heard me talk about a number of game conventions....
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Boardgames To Go 243 - SdJ & Kennerspiel 2025 Opinions & Predictions
Boardgames To Go
Opener: , and again I'm talking about vacation-linked boardgames Closer: The Dornücopia we've got planned for EsCon in a couple weeks. I'm always happy to talk about the Spiel des Jahres. The winners, the nominees, the recommended titles, the jury process, and the award's immense, positive impact on our hobby. That goes for the Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel, too...though I'm woefully ignorant about the children's category. This time it's just me talking about the games, severall of which I've played, but some I've missed. I don't think...
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Boardgames To Go 242 - Spiel des Jahres Wayback Machine for 2005 (with Jonathan Takagi)
Boardgames To Go
Please join us on the where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Openers: Mark: Jonathan: 2005 Flashback & Quiz Closers: Jonathan: My top games of 2005 Mark: Hosting my own (small) event instead of traveling to a con? The Wayback Machine is back. One more time, a friend joins me to go back in time to an earlier Spiel des Jahres, looking at the winner but also the other nominees and recommended games. In addition, my guest helps me think about the earlier time itself, and how the games, the hobby, and the community may have...
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Boardgames To Go 241 - Session Report & Feedback
Boardgames To Go
Please join us on the where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Opener: Join us to play games online together on May 3. We're meeting on the , as well as the I set out to give myself a break this month, just talking about some recent games and fielding a few questions sent to me. In fact, I've been doing so much gaming lately that I had to whittle my list down to just these six games to share my impressions about. Then the feedback questions ended up being more fun to dive into than I expected. These kinds of shows are...
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Boardgames To Go 240 - Dice Tower West and the Mark Madness 2025 Champions
Boardgames To Go
The annual voting/predicting competition called Mark Madness is now finished. The results are posted with the rest of the updates for episode 239, and here co-host Eryn Roston returns one last time to share the winners. Unconscious Mind was our collective favorite for game cover art, and Adam Brocker is this year's winner. The plan now is for Adam to help me run next year's Mark Madness, in 2026. Next, I share my time at Dice Tower West. This is the second year in a row that I've gone to this national boardgame convention. Is it national? I think so. It's certainly big. Held in Las...
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Boardgames To Go 239E - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston)
Boardgames To Go
The Championship is now set! https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston
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Boardgames To Go 239D - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston) Elite Eight
Boardgames To Go
Be sure to go vote at https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston?itemid=11634552#11634552
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Boardgames To Go 239C - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston) Sweet 16
Boardgames To Go
The round of 32 is finished, leaving us now voting on the Sweet 16 of game cover artworks. The choices are getting more difficult. And we have a new leader in our prediction contest. #Davecember celebrity loofish is representing his namesakes with a currently-in-first-place position for his guess...but with others on his tail.
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Boardgames To Go 239B - Mark Madness 2025 (with Eryn Roston) Round of 32
Boardgames To Go
Eryn is back to talk with me about the results of the first round voting. Half of our original 64 game cover art entries have now been knocked out of the contest. Now successive voting rounds keep halving the remaining contestants every three days. What have we seen so far? No ties, though a couple matchups were close. A few more were blowouts. Are there common threads? Surprises? Plus...Eryn teaches me how to look at art more critically...by SQUINTING. Achievement unlocked. -Mark
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As he's done many times, my friend Greg Pettit joins me for a mega-episode discussing all the games we played at BGGcon. Greg's an every-timer to BGGcon, while I went to the first one (2005), then a decade until my next in 2014 (first year I was an empty-nester), and sort of every-other-year since then. Looking back, I see I also went in 2015, 2017, 2019, 2022, and now 2024. I enjoy myself every time I go, but it's difficult to swing it every year.
When you listen to this episode, you may find it helpful to follow along with our geeklist. That way you can track what games we've talked about, which are coming next, and what are 5-star ratings are. I've also inserted the game boxes here in the order discussed, which will also appear in the shownotes.
The "Newest of the New" Games
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A Bunch of Two-Player Games
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Mostly Trick-Taking Games, or at least Card Games...but not always even that!
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The "Leftovers" I Couldn't Otherwise Categorize
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Old Favorites 
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