230 – Intensive Gaming Getaway – The Family Gamers Podcast

230 Fact! Section 230 is the US law stating that internet content providers (like social media or ISPs) cannot be treated as publishers or held liable for the things their users say on the internet. It may be up for review again in the near future.

First Move Financial gives some advice for our listeners on insuring your board game collection (check your homeowners’ or renters’ insurance). If you want to ask First Move your questions, schedule a free meeting with them by going to firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers.

We went away for 48 hours and played SO MANY games. It was awesome. So without further ado…

What We’ve Been Playing

Kraken Attack – before the trip. A tower defense game with no reading required. Sounds fun!

Pop-Tarts Game – after returning from the trip. We recorded a FOR SCIENCE, but the sound quality was absolutely terrible :( We toasted & froze at least one of each variety represented in the game and then taste-tested them all, along with some of the combinations from the bonus cards. We learned that frozen chocolate fudge + toasted chocolate fudge combined together are pretty incredible!

Tussie Mussie
Arcane Bakery Clash
Town Builder Coevorden
Space Explorers
Via Magica
Orbital Velocity
Res Arcana
Flatline
Meeple Land
Wordsy
Camp Pinetop
San Juan
Einstein: His Amazing Life and Incomparable Science
Sola Fide
Ladder 29

SNAP Review: The Pop-Tarts Game

Manipulate the line of Pop-Tarts and collect combinations of frozen and toasted Pop-Tarts on your plate. “Eat” specific combos to get bonuses! A simple game for up to 6 players.

See more pictures and read the transcript at our SNAP review page.

Back to the Games We Played

We focus on the ones you (in the FB community) asked about.

Meeple Land (Blue Orange Games) – Make an amusement park for little meeples to enjoy themselves. Primarily tile-laying, but you’re restricted by needing to connect the paths throughout the park, the types of meeples that each attraction can hold, and wanting to collect a wide variety of attractions. There’s also a draft for buses of meeples. Meeples in your park earn you money – but meeples left outside at the end of the game will cost you!

Camp Pinetop (Talon Strikes Studios) – Rank up your troop through earning merit badges. Explore the camp and get “activity” resources (themed as fishing, hiking, canoeing, etc) that you pay to get the merit badges that you pass over on the map. Remarkably thematic – if you have any connection to scouting (whether that’s Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, or even the “Wilderness Scouts” from Disney’s UP), you’ll appreciate what’s going on in this game.

Via Magica (Hurrican / Luma) – This is a bag-draw/bingo game. One player draws tiles one at a time out of a bag, and every player allocates a crystal to the element represented on one of their cards. In this game, you’re “summoning” creatures out of specific portals. You’re trying to meet the requirements for various bonus awards, and get a little bit of combo effects going between multiple cards. Interested? Take a look at it on Board Game Arena!

Sola Fide (Stronghold Games) – out of print, but you can still find it. The artwork makes this look super-serious and heavy. But it’s actually a very straightforward area-control game. You can lock down each “Imperial circle” by controlling all of the spots on either the “nobility” or “commoner” side AND moving the power token (“dominant/subordinate”) to the same side that you control. At that point, that tile is removed to your scoring pile, then you’ll open up some new tiles and get a special bonus action. As Protestants who appreciate the historical significance of the Reformation, we also enjoyed how much information was packed in to a relatively simple game.

Res Arcana (Sand Castle Games) – first, we learn from listener Peter Ellis that Tom Lehmann (designer of Res Arcana) also contributed majorly to San Juan and “San Juan in space” AKA Race for the Galaxy. You have just a few cards, to use as tools or resources to help you build your engine. Victory points are primarily achieved through buying “monuments” and “places of power” (which in turn can help further build your engine). There’s some attacking, but life is a resource (one of many), so attacking other players and making them lose “life” didn’t seem like it had much effect.

Games We Liked Best

Members of our community also asked: which games did we like best?

Sola Fide – obviously.

Wordsy (Formal Ferret Games) – we were shocked how much we liked this. A very straightforward word game from Gil Hova. Set out letter cards at random, each gets points assigned. Make a word that uses as many high-value letters as possible.

San Juan (Ravensberger) – this is the card game version of Puerto Rico, which has a very problematic theme (acquiring people and using them to “man” your buildings). San Juan sidesteps this completely; there are no people! Now it’s just buildings and resources. Players still draft the different roles, but everything else is cards – a very old-fashioned approach to multi-use cards. Either you’re laying down a building in your tableau (and paying for it by discarding cards), or you’re gaining resources (represented by a face-down card, drawn from the deck, placed on a production building), and when you sell resources, you get more cards to put in your hand!

Space Explorers (25th Century Games) gets an honorable mention. It was much lighter gameplay and more retro-space-age than we had been expecting. Very enjoyable.

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