Front Page

Content

Authors

Game Index

Forums

Site Tools

Submissions

About

Articles

  • The Twelve Games Of Christmas - 2014 Edition

    The holiday season is a time for tradition, and as we all know “tradition” is a Christmas-y word for obligation. I’ve been at my tradition for five years now, where I look at my twelve favorite games and see what has shifted over the last year. My approach has evolved some, but I do it again from scratch every year. Our tastes aren’t set in stone after all. You can see by reading my lists from201020112012, and 2013

  • The Tyranny of Choice

    choice.jpgMy little girl, age three, seems to be neither more or less interested in playing structured games than any other three year old. She likes to get my “grown up” game off the shelf and play with the pieces though - recently a couple of cavalry pieces from Battles of the Third Age became horsies and a board of Helms’ Deep became a fair. But I digress. Recently I played two games with her in consecutive days that made me think, very hard, about an aspect of game design which has become so sacrosanct as to be almost a religious commandment: the need for a game of any length to present the players with “meaningful choice” in order to be a good design.

  • The Ultimate Interview - Quest for the Dragonlords’ Robert Johannessen


    If you know me, you probably figured this was coming eventually. Yeah, that's right. It's the Dragonlords, baby. Forget that Starcraft foolishness that Barnes has been hyping as the greatest game of 2007. He'll move on to Laser Squad or some crap like that when it comes out next week. We're talking about the ultimate board game EVER CREATED here. So without further ado, here is the man himself - Robert Johannessen (AKA DLord Slayer).

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being (a Cylon)


    Battlestar GalacticaThere comes a time when every person must come to grips with the fact that they never truly know any person, even their closest friends, for within us all lie secrets, motives, and desires; some grandiose, some mundane.


    And there is nothing on this earth save for various illegal forms of torture that can reveal this fact quite like a game of Battlestar Galactica.

  • The Valley of Gwangi

    For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved dinosaurs. My Mum once told me that when I was about six my primary school teacher had privately admitted that she’d stopped trying to teach the class about dinosaurs because I knew more about it than she did. Dinosaurs are awesome – if it wasn’t enough that they were genuine, real life monsters that dwelt here on this earth millions of years ago then get the added value of the rich storytelling one can weave about the painstaking detective work that it took and takes to discover these extraordinary creatures and piece together their world, and the astonishing variety and bizarre variations on the basic dinosaur theme – such as Therizinosaurus – that abound. I’m certain that I’d have been a palaeontologist had I not had the self-awareness to realise that having the manual dexterity of an elephant and the attention span of a gnat aren’t the greatest assets in a job which requires unbelievably careful and time-consuming digging and preparation of fossil specimens.

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot - 06/01/2007

     

     

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot - 6/22/2007

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot - 6/29/2007

     

     

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot--October 12, 2007

    "Gee Brain, what do you want to do tonight?"

     

    "The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to do...uh...whatever the hell it is that's supposed to be going on in this game."
    Man, I hate abstracts.
    Today's image was brought to us by Simon Mueller. Thanks, Simon!
    __________________________________
    If you've got a great image that just screams Ameritrash, email us the image or a URL.
    It can be an image you created or an image you found on the web. We don't care! If it meets our strict quality standards, we'll publish it in The Weekly AT Snapshot, instantly making you an undeniable global celebrity.
    We'll even pimp your website if you send us the URL for that. 
     
    This is a copy of an article originally published on the old F:AT blog. Read original comments. 

     

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot–November 9th, 2007

    FINALLY!
    A HYBRID YOU CAN SINK YOUR TEETH INTO!

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot–October 19th, 2007

    Little Timmy has just received a Candyland set for his third birthday! He and his buddies tear open the box and sit down to play.

    What game could be more appropriate for these overexcited, sugar-filled little scamps?It is a long, long journey, but Timmy has successfully navigated the lollypop woods, escaped from the molasses swamp, evaded the gooey gumdrops, and reached the final purple space. He draws his very last card...

    (Unbeknownst to Timmy and his parents, the evil Michael Barnes has recently infiltrated Milton Bradley's printers, furthering his dastardly plot to insert the Horrible Black Void into each and every board game known to man.)

     

    Today's photo and write-up come to us again from Mark "NeonPeon" Wrynn. Thanks, Mark!

     

    ___________________________________

     

    If you've got a great image that just screams Ameritrash, email us the image or a URL.

     

    It can be an image you created or an image you found on the web. We don't care! If it meets our strict quality standards, we'll publish it in The Weekly AT Snapshot, instantly making you an undeniable global celebrity.

    We'll even pimp your website if you send us the URL for that.

    This is a copy of an article originally published on the old F:AT blog. Read original comments

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot, 11/16/07: Viewer Discretion is Advised

    Chappy hits us with another beauty...however, in the interests of a safe and decent society, I need to warn you that the following article has been rated

  • The Weekly AT Snapshot, 11/30/07--Now with 100% More Games About Dull Professions!

     

     

     
    "Cubicula where you have to work in a cubicle making white cubes (paper) into grey cubes (reports) then give them to impress your boss for VP's! This 8 hours (not including playing overtime) allows you to experience the life of an office worker! Optimize your grey cube delivery for the best score! "

  • THE WEEKLY SNAPSHOT RETURNS...briefly. An Online Gamer's Guide to WWII

    So it's been awhile since we've had a Snapshot submission...they used to be a weekly feature.


    (Subliminal message:  Hey you lazy bastards, start sending us photochops again!)


    Anyway, a friend of mine sent me this and it's hilarious.  Consider it a history lesson molded into a form that a modern online gamer will understand.  Either that, or just some funny shit.  Enjoy!

  • The Weight of Complexity

    weightGiven the importance of actually communicating with one another using words which have a shared mutual understanding, I remain amazed that the word "weight" remains in frequent board gaming parlance without having been split or somehow qualified into several different terms, because there are so many different ways of understanding it in relation to gaming. The problem is illustrated easily by the game Go: to me, Gois a heavy game because it demands intense concentration during play. To many other people (and this is illustrated by its weight rating on BGG) it's a light game because it has few rules and is easy to learn.

  • Thematic Education

    Teaching-ChessRegular readers will by now be familiar with my personal tale of the woe which, as a nascent board game hobbyist, arose out of the difference in what I’d been lead to believe Eurogames represented, and what they actually are. I’ll wager that many users on this site could tell you a similar story of disappointment so I won’t go over it again in its entirety. But one of the key things I took away from learning about early Eurogames is that, potentially, they were family games that most people could learn, play, and enjoy.

  • Theme, Repeated

    It's no secret that I'm sick to death of board games being stuck in a thematic rut. I'm barely excited any more to play any game that has anything to do with controlling a fantasy hero that stabs monsters and gets a +1 sword. I've got my favorite games that do that already, and it's a huge disappointment that there's few designers out there, at least published ones, who are willing to do something different and explore some new themes for a change. I don't know whether it's a fear of taking risks or just the simple fact that most designers are inspired solely by other board games, but either way I challenge anyone working in designing or publishing today to bring us games about _new_ subject matter.

  • There Will Be Games Act II: Money Is Not Our God

    Dollar Bill,   Yo!
  • There Will Be Games Act III: I Built My Dreams Around You

    deathstar
  • There Will Be Games Act IV: Tyranny and the Hired Hand

    So I'm sitting here looking at my just-arrived copy of RISK: BLACK OPS and Bill Abner over at Gameshark.com has the gall to interrupt my communion with this beautiful new game by telling me that the next installment of THERE WILL BE GAMES is up.