Boardgames To Go 237 - BGG Hall of Fame (with Scott Alden) plus EsCon report
Release Date: 02/01/2025
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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Boardgames To Go 239 - Reminder for Mark Madness
Boardgames To Go
If you're playing along with Mark Madness this year, the time for predictions is over and you'd better start voting. Whether you've done a prediction or not, the link below takes you to the place where you can choose your favorite game cover art as 64 titles square off against each other in one-on-one matchups.
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Boardgames To Go 239A - Mark Madness 2025 Kickoff (with Eryn Roston)
Boardgames To Go
Play along and predict the winners at Predictions must be submitted by March 12 to be in the contest Once again, the month of March give me a chance to bring back "Mark Madness," my podcast-hosted voting contest. Like its namesake sports tournament, Mark Madness is where 64 games are pitted against each other in successive rounds of single-elimination votes. As before, I took the winner of llast year's contest, Eryn Roston, and asked him to co-host this year's contest. Furthermore, Eryn has helped define the special nature of the contest this year. It's...
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Opener: Everyone knows Aldie, right? Feels like we do. Scott Alden, the man behind BoardGameGeek, is one creative entrepreneur, let me tell ya. Anyone could've thought to make a central website where boardgamers come for information and community, but it takes more than a good idea for something to be reality. For 25 years Aldie has been adding features, listening to comments, growing the hobby, and doing way more than most to enhance boardgaming around the world. I can't believe it's been so long since I've had him on the podcast. I'll be sure to do it again soon.
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Here Scott joins me to talk about the BGG Hall of Fame, where 25 famous titles were inducted into an inaugural collection. Jennifer Schlickbernd headed up the project with Aldie's blessing, and Candice Harris was responsible producing & editing the awesome videos that accompanied this launch. I was pleased to be invited to be the initial jury that came up with the games, and also pleased with the end result. We each had our own experiences & different appreciations for various titles, but it was a group effort--including much group deliberation--that resulted in the final list.
Schacht The Monkey con
After the interview, I go on to talk about most of the games I played at a recent, regional convention: EsCon. The games all have one thing in common--they were all designed by Michael Schacht. As long as my friends are onboard, I really have fun focusing on something at events like these. Sometimes it's SdJ winners, or trick-taking games, or pre-2000 boardgames. This time it was focused on a single designer. As EsCon host Steve Paap likes to label these things, we called it our Schacht The Monkey con.
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Closer: The following month's episode will be this podcast's own 20th anniversary. Can you believe it? Dave Arnott will be on to interview me and I can tell stories (some old, some new) about the past two decades behind a laptop and inexpensive microphone. If you've got questions or otherwise want to me to talk about something, send in your feedback now. Thanks.
-Mark