1 Player Podcast

This week Julius takes us back to the table with Lewis & Clark.  Go on a slow boat ride accoss the North American continent to explore lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and explore the yet unclaimed Pacific Northwest.  That is, not yet taken from the native populations of the are.

This week Julius and I explore a RPG about exploring a giant castle.  Giant doesn't do this castle justice though.  This is a world inside a castle so immense there are seas in it.  The castle is filled with room so large there are cities and villages in them.  You will wander around exploring and fighting Rooks, massive creatures made of stonework.  When you defeat one, you can gain powerful magic stones, Rookstones.

Colostole is a solo RPG by Nich Angell.

• Colostle (RPG Geek, Colostle.com)

This week Julius and I talk about looooong games.  These are games that take 3 or more hours to play!  Serioulsy, these are the kind of games I wish I could play more often but find it hard to get out on the table... <sigh>

• 03:44 7th Continent (BGG)
• 04:25 Sleeping Gods - Distant Skies (BGG)
• 08:28 Mr. President: The American Presidency (2001-2020) (BGG)
• 12:12 Cantalopp (BGG)
• 15:30 Silverton (BGG)
• 18:20 Kindgom Legacy: Fuedal Kingdom (BGG)
• 24:23 Ironsworn (RPG Geek)
• 26:52 Tales of the Arabian Nights (BGG)
• 29:00 Choose Your Own Adventure - The House of Danger (BGG)

This week, Julius introduces Fit to Print the newspaper layout game.  It actually sounds like a fun game with a timer.  In this game, you are buying the best stories and laying out on your newspaper to make the most captivating paper in town!  It sounds a big goofy but it also sounds really fun.

Also, Final Girl contest reminder!

• Fit to Print (BGG, AEG)

This week I tell Julius and the audience all about Free Ride, the train game by Friedemann Friese and published by Rio Grande Games.  This is a fun pick-up and deliver game with quick turns that includes a solo challenge.  Hop aboard and hear all about the game and what I think.

Also, listen in for the Final Girl Season 3 giveaway!

This week Julius tells us about the small game Welcome to Reckoning.  This 1 player game by Mike Heiman set in a wild wild west with cosmic horrors.  Gotta love those cosmic horrors.

This week we talk about a Vital Lacerda big-box game on wine making.  The game is the 2016 release of Vinhos: Deluxe Edition.  It's a fun game that lets produce wine, compete in wine fairs, sell and export.  All this in an effort to become the pre-eminent wine producer of Portugal.  It's a pretty neat game with an interesting theme but maybe too big for me.

• Vinhos: Deluxe Edition (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)

This week, we look at a year of gaming.  Well, sorta.  We look at games that have a year in them or somehow use the flow of time in them.  It was harder than expected, but we found a few games that do have a pretty decent sense of time passing.

Check out the sample fancy map someone drew for Cartographers:

• 02:30 Creature Comforts (BGG, KTBG)
• 04:30 Project Ecco (RPG Geek, More Blueberries)
• 07:55 Cartographers (BGG, Thunderworks)
• 11:50 Hostage Negotiator: Career (BGG, VRG)
• 16:50 Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 (BGG, Z-Man)
• 19:05 Fields of Arle (BGG, Asmodee)

Honorable mentions

• Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar (BGG, Buried Without Ceremony)
• Fox Curio's Floating Bookshop (RPG Geek, Lost Ways Club)
• The Quiet Year (RPG Geek)
• Legacy of Yu (BGG)

This week Julius and I look at a game about growing magic herbs and plants in a communal wizard's hedge.  Position your helper sprites to help you get the most plants from this shared garden.  This is an interesting game of area control in which, each turn, you are placing plant patches to trigger a variety of powers and increase your control over the garden.  This game's solo experience closely mimics the multiplayer game using a bot that doesn't really add any time to the play.  In fact, because of player analysis paralysis, it may be faster.

Julius and I talk about Bot Factory but Vital Lacerda.  Mostly Julius describes the game and I talk about how much it reminds me of Kanban and how I want to play either of those two games.  Bot Factory is based on Kanban in both the theme of managing a factory and the mechanics which are simplified quite a bit without making it a simple game at all.

• Bot Factory (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)
• Kanban EV (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)

This week we look back at a classic co-op game, Castle Panic. Monsters have decided to attach your castle in a clearing surrounded by dangerous woods.  Waves of monsters charge the castle.  Fortunately, the clever design makes it hard for the monsters to get at your castle and your highly trained warriors (knights, archers and fighters defend the castle), each specializing in combat on a certain type of terrain.  This is a pretty simple and accessible tower defense game that has had a relatively recent art upgrade and continues to be fun, if a bit simple.

* Castle Panic (BGG, Fireside games)

This week tells us about a Monster High-ish game called Mythic Mischief.  In it, you play a group of monster kids in school, trying to cause mischief in the library and get one of the rival cliques in trouble.  It's a head-to-head sportsball type game of out-maneuvering your opponent's team members so they get caught by the library's Tomekeeper.  The game also features a solo mode that sounds pretty fun to me.  You can get one of two different base games, each with a different set of factions as well as stand-alone expansions, each consisting of a new faction.

• Mythic Mischief (BGG, IV Studio)

• 04:20 - Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (BGG, Eagle-Gryphon)
• 08:55 - Cartographers (BGG, Thunderworks)
• 14:40 - Yahtzee! (BGG)
• 17:40 - Dungeon Dice (BGG)
• 22:45 - Railroad Ink (BGG)
• 27:39 - OctoDice (BGG)
• 31:27 - Clip-Cut Parks (BGG)
• 34:28 - Three Sisters (BGG)
• 36:23 - Catan: The Dice Game (BGG)

This week we talk about the game Aleph Null by Tony Boydell and published by Capstone Games.  The art is by Alex Leigh and music by Nicholas O'Neill.  I did not include music as I mentioned I might do, primarily because I didn't see it available on-line for public consumption.

Anway, this game is about summoning the demon Baphomet, the Sabbat Goat.  It's a bit creepy and would be creepier if not for the excellent and light-hearted art by Alex Leigh.  Either way, it's a really fun game in which you are trying to cast a ritual to summon Baphomet by playing cards from your hand and slowly using them up to do magics with the hope of finally completing the ritual as expected.

• Aleph Null (BGG, Capstone Games)

This week Julius and and daughter join this week to talk about the very lovely Wild Gardens.  This is a game about foraging for natural ingredients to put into your delicious recipes. It's a beautiful game that reminds of Studio Ghibli animations - think Totoro. 

• Wild Gardens (BGG, Rose Gauntlet)