Well, needless to say the hobby has changed tremendously in these last few weeks. Just a couple of weekends ago I was gaming with friends and lightly talking about the virus, and now some weeks later we are mostly confined to our houses and can’t get out and game together. However, there is an alternative, and I have been exploring digital implementations over these past few days and pairing them with virtual meetings to create the next best thing. I will break these down into categories, talk about each, and then present the options. If you are eager to game and connect there’s lot of great options out there!

Asynchronous Play

There are several websites that have asynchronous games where you can take your turn at your convenience. This gives you plenty of time to learn while you play, and fit in turns in spare moments of your day. These CAN work live although they are a little clunky that way, since they are more designed for long play over a series of hours or days. There is a downside of a player taking too long or being in a different time zone, but the upside is that the games are free and work on anything with a web browser. Definitely some great affordable entertainment!

Yucata.de is the oldest of these sites and has over 100 games to try. Easy to learn favorites of mine are Las Vegas, Machi Koro and The Castles of Burgundy (oddly listed in the T section of the site…)  All the games include instructions and/or how to play videos.

Boiteajeux.net is a French site but has an English option in the top right corner. Similar to Yucata but with fewer games, this site has some really great options as well. My personal favorites are Concordia and Deus.

These are definitely some of easiest options although they are not as flashy as dedicated board game apps. You can’t beat the price either!

Simultaneous Play

Simultaneous play is ideal for the virtual meeting format as everyone is playing at the same time. Games are much more seamless this way and don’t take as long as the asynchronous options above.

Boardgamearena.com is the best option for website based simultaneous play. The site has been getting a spike in traffic lately as more players try to log in, and is sometimes limited to just premium members. However, a premium membership for a month costs just 4 dollars, or 24 dollars for a year. For the price of a small card game this site offers over a hundred board games and has some really great features. Some real easy winners are Carcasonne, Kingdomino, Sushi Go, and Can’t Stop.

Virtual Tabletop

When an app or web implementation just doesn’t give the same feel as a board game, some player prefer a virtual tabletop. Here, there is no game logic or rules being implemented automatically like a video game. Instead, there are just virtual pieces that you you can look at and move around, much like a board game in real life. You move a virtual hand and can click different buttons to shuffle or flip cards, move tiles and roll dice. All book keeping and playing by the rules is up to the players themselves, and the honor system definitely applies! These implementations can be a little slow, as your mouse is never going to be as quick as your hands in real life, but that semi-tactile aspect can be more fun and worth that trade off.

Tabletopia.com has more than 800 games to play in this way, and works in any web browser. It is simply staggering to look at all the options here, as Kickstart campaigns often put up a virtual version of a game to convince players to back the project.  Some amazing games are available here including Wingspan, Scythe or Chess and traditional card games for folks who want something familiar.

Tabletop Simulator on Steam does a similar thing and costs $20. Players can load their own virtual tabletop games or pay for curate downloadable games from the publishers themselves. This is definitely the cadillac of virtual table top and even has the option to use VR to truly be “at” the table.

I am sure everyone is reaching saturation on how much they are hearing about COVID-19. And while I plan to blog about anything else, and all the fun of board games in the near future, I do want to make a small post about how to support local board game business during these strange times. Obviously game night is a no go outside of the groups people have chosen to socially isolate with (family, roommates, etc…) But these stores still deserve your business, and can help make what could be cabin fever into something a bit more sane.

Zombie Planet is still stocking and selling great games. They are offering to ship games to your house if you do not or cannot get out to pick up games yourself. 

Bard and Baker Board Game Cafe is offering great food delivery. Seriously, half the reason I love this place is because of their amazing food, so consider some takeout while you work from home near the Troy area.

They are also offering sanitized board game rentals. Board game rentals are a great low cost way to keep the Cabin Fever away. And heck, if you try before you buy, you’ll know exactly what to order from Zombie Planet.

Lastly Bard and Baker are offering an additional $25 gift card when you purchase a $100 dollar gift card, and offer free shipping as well. Those extra $25 equals 5 free game nights when life gets back to normal!

I realize these are strange times, and it might be a bit odd to be concerned about board games when many people are just worried about their next paycheck. But these small businesses do so much for our community that I want to do anything I can to support them. Please let me know if there are any other local board game businesses that have special programs and I will be sure to add them here!

Behold, my latest acquisition: Glen More II: Chronicles. A large box of cardboard treasures, and a re-implementation of an old favorite. And yet, despite the upgrade to a great game, this box has got me more annoyed than anything. For one thing, it doesn’t fit in a standard Ikea Kallax cube. It has to lay on its side to fit into what has become the defacto board game storage unit. Considering there is nothing inside the box that makes it have to be this tall, like some special large board etc this seems like an oversight or at least an odd choice. It also means it does not fit nicely with any of the other standard box sizes of board games in general.

Why all this whining about a box? Well, first, some context. Take a look at the original Glen More box. Isn’t it adorable? It’s hard to believe so much game used to come in such a little box. Now, granted, the components are… pretty meh. Alea, the publisher of the original game has been trying to revamp their image lately, with new releases of old classics that are upgraded to a bit more modern components. But for most of the storied history of the brand, you were there for the game first, and the pieces were… functional at best. In the 2010s and before, this worked. In the era of kickstarter, miniatures, metal components and, well, cardboard excess, this wouldn’t fly anymore. Even at the time, the tiles were flimsy, and there didn’t seem to be quite enough of the coins or victory point pieces to go around without making change all the time as points increased. I wished that such a great game got a little bit nicer treatment, like Days of Wonder who were the model of good components at the time.

Fast forward to the 2019  Glen More II Kickstarter campaign ,and I would say things went a little far in the other direction. While the kickstarter is not gaudy or overproduced, the box size still has me scratching my head. All of a sudden, this doesn’t fit in a backpack. All of a sudden I have to decide if I am bringing this one game or  2-3 medium games. It seems as though board game publishers in general have decided that their market demographic will just buy more shelves to make room for larger and larger games?

This is not the only case of the box size conundrum, other games have done this too. Endeavor came back into print with a new kickstarter edition, but was double the size of the original. Suburbia release a beautiful deluxe edition with an exclusive expansion but the box is the size of a small suitcase. At some point unless you are expanding your shelving solution you may be making the choice to keep one game vs two or three. And at that point the games value and fun has to really be worth it to justify the space. In the three cases above, all are expanded or collectors edition releases, so clearly appealing to an existing audience of fans, or folks who have heard buzz build up about the game over several years. Even more bold are the kickstarters for brand new unproven games that take up a monumental amount of shelf space. 

Perhaps this is just me shouting in a vacuum. Long ago I set down my own limits based on limited shelf space. This helps in several ways to stem the desire to accumulate  more and more games. But my goal is to have a well played, well kept library of games. And that’s just it. It is a library, intended for frequent use (in an ideal world) vs a collection, or a museum. I could likely own many more games if I had the shelves and the money to commit to them, and neither of those things are impossible to solve. But the time to dedicate to a collection twice as large is a whole different factor, let alone trying to keep even a fraction of those rules in my head. 

One might ask, why is Glen More II: Chronicles three times the size, did they make the pieces three times as big. Is there three times as much game here? Well, the pieces are indeed a bit larger, the tiles take up more real estate than the original and there’s a nice insert to keep it all organized. But most of what takes up space in this box are the Chronicles from the title. These are 9 miniature expansions, meant to give variety to the game. They are organized very nicely but also take up half of the box. I am all for variety and in a way this means if you love the game you already have modular expansions built it. No need to grab that expansion that used to come out a year or two later and would require some tetrising to fit in the box. But even then, a game and it’s expansion box rarely take up this much space.

I admit that I am likely old man board games yelling at kids to get off his lawn at this point, but this is a trend that I am not behind. I am just concerned that there is an ever accelerating components arms race that seems to be distracting from what actually matters; the game itself. That’s not to say that all publishers are guilty of this. Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right and its expansions have lovely art and custom screen printer wooden pieces. But it all fits in a reasonably sized box. The box for their upcoming game Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile also seems to fit regular dimensions. They showed an increasingly rare kind of restraint in just selling one version of the game and its components. No add-on expansions, no major kickstarter exclusives. Similarly Garphill Games keeps knocking it out of the park with their unique takes on worker placement games with the Raiders of the North Sea series and West Kingdom series. All of these are incredibly economical in terms of the depth of the game vs the shelf space it takes up.

The proof will be how Glen More II Chronicles is on the table. And that is a pending judgement. I must admit, it looks beautiful. So here is hoping that it is three times the game of its predecessor. I will report back what I find out!