Everyday Meeple

We are back with another conversation about board game things. This time we talk a bit about Yahtzee and Yahtzee related things. Mitch does a horrible job explaining how to play Elder Sign and Las Vegas and Steve goes down a rabbit hole about Dead Heads and Cosmic Whimps.

In this episode, the conversation is about video games and how they intersect with board games. Mostly we focus on how the video game industry often creates a board game from successful game IPs and, well, what we think about that. Some games that come up are Undermining and Super Motherload, Mechs vs Minions, Doom, Descent, Dark Souls, Slay the Spire, God of War among others, nothing overly in-depth just a fun conversation.

Mistakes: Oops. There are probably plenty as always but one big stand out was not knowing the name for the Game Artisans of Canada group. I got it confused and called it the League of Canadian Designers - not the same.

Steve's back! And we catch up talking briefly about the Kennerspiele winner the Crew and trick-taking games, I keep giving the outdoor game list a hard time - during which we call K2, K-9 (sorry about that). I talk about Archaeology by Phil Walker-Harding and Broom Service the Card Game by Andreas Pelikan, Alexander Pfister. It's a good time.

I mention the Steven Universe : Beach-a-Palooza Kickstarter in the episode but unfortunately it ended on July 31, 2 days before this episode actually aired. Dang.

Dave is back and we ramble on about Wingspan and Survive! Escape from Atlantis among other nonsense.

This weeks episode marks the return of Dave, one of the original hosts of Everyday Meeple. In Dave's first CHMA hosted episode, we talk about Tides of Time / Madness, Biblios, and a bit about Magic the Gathering. We also talk a bit about Thomas Lehmans Race for the Galaxy universe that includes RftG as well as Jump Drive, Roll for the Galaxy and the newest addition New Frontiers.

EM July 5 2020 by Everyday Meeple

This is the lost "Episode 16"

EM - June 21 2020 by Everyday Meeple

Everyday Meeple made a switch to a weekly radio show on our local college station CHMA 106.9 FM. We still record as a podcast as well but most of our shows are light and conversational.

Everyday Meeple made a switch to a weekly radio show on our local college station CHMA 106.9 FM. We still record as a podcast as well but most of our shows are light and conversational.

Everyday Meeple made a switch to a weekly radio show on our local college station CHMA 106.9 FM. We still record as a podcast as well but most of our shows are light and conversational.

EM June 28 2020 by Everyday Meeple

Everyday Meeple made a switch to a weekly radio show on our local college station CHMA 106.9 FM. We still record as a podcast as well but most of our shows are light and conversational.

This week we celebrate the triple-threat designer, artist and publisher, Ryan Laukat of Red Raven games. Ryan is responsible for hit games like Near and Far and Above and Below. He has a fascinating story of how he started in the board game industry as an artist, then a designer. We dig into all of that goodness and go on to gush over our favourite Red Raven games. While we’ve only played a small sampling of his games, the art, mechanics, narrative and world-building at play has left us craving more.

Ryan’s character and setting art bring to mind Disney animation or the whimsical worlds brought to life by Studio Ghibli. His wide range of characters varies from human to robots to anthropomorphic birds and reptiles. His worlds are full of bizarre architecture and buildings that you just want to visit. His written narrative sections are thoughtful and not filled with fantasy tropes. It’s obvious that Laukat has a deep love for board games as an art form and he seems to give his all in his game designs. His games feature hundreds of unique card illustrations, pages upon pages of storytelling and character art that never seems to get reused.

I’ve gushed on enough. Listen on to hear more praise for the man of our hour and hear about us exploring the underground caves of Above and Below and swashbuckling our way through Islebound. We also eagerly anticipate the time when we can enter the other worlds that Ryan Laukat has so lovingly created and speculate on other games of his like Empires of the Void 2 and the upcoming Sleeping Gods.

Long live Red Raven!

With a quick nod to Elisabeth Hargrave and the Wingspan team for winning 8 Golden Geek awards we move into a discussion of Champions of Midgard and how much fun it is losing.

In this episode we try and tackle deck-building but it is such a vast topic that we really just scratch a small itch on the surface. A brief time-line from the explosive force that was Magic: The Gathering to the emergence of a new mechanic through Donald X Vaccarino's Dominion. There is so much to love with deck-building and so little time in our show to give it the attention it deserves.


Some of the games we bring up: MTG, Dominion, Clank!, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Ascension, Dale of Merchants, Quest for El Dorado, Vikings Gone Wild, Thunderstone, Baseball Highlights 2045, Abandon all Artichokes, Slay the Spire

The Isolation Episodes #3 by Everyday Meeple

Our second show from isolation has us talking with some technical improvements as we settle into the new system. It also finds us talking about how some publishers are trying to help out during this awkward moment.

As we all tuck ourselves neatly away into our homes during this peculiar time I reach out to Steve in his underground board game bunker so we can catch up and try and find some things to keep us all sane.

We talk a bit about what we've been playing with our families and come up with a few ways that people who may not have a board game collection to fall back on may find something fun to play without leaving their homes.

We joked we would call it the co-op episode but that's really a bit of a misnomer. While we do focus on the Ravensburger game Horrified, which is a beautiful family weight, gateway co-op. And we do spend a lot of time talking about the benefits of playing co-op games with kids, and what some favourites are. I would say we spend the bulk of the time talking about the game design enigma that is Prospero Hall.

Prospero Hall is a design studio that has slowly been making a "name" for itself since about 2016. They have come into their own with some really solid games and a business plan that shakes up conventions and has landed them some really big IPs including Disney. There is a good chance you have been playing a Prospero Hall game without even knowing it.

For episode 9 I get a bit excited and try and explain to Steve what I find fascinating about the world before Catan.

I had something in my head about the game Acquire having been mentioned as the seed of modern Eurogames. Which really interested me. I started looking into and did not find too much at first then came across the book "Eurogames: The Design, Culture and Play of Modern European Board Games" by Stewart Woods and it is crammed full of history. Which I do a shaky job trying to relay to Steve. It's a great book though if you are looking for a good book on some game history.

We also talk about our recent experience tackling Clank! Legacy, the most fun I have had with a Legacy game to date.

We made a few mistakes though. One, I said "Social Game" when I meant to say "Society Game" from the German: "Gesellschaftpiele" Steve mentioned, "Leaving Earth" when he meant to say "Excavation Earth" when talking about Dávid Turczi games.

After a bit of a hiatus, we return with a rambling conversation about Theme and the language we use to describe board games. We talk about how the word "theme" is often used as a catch-all term for board games and how, as board games evolve with more complex stories and gameplay, the term doesn't quite work as well anymore. We talk about how it may be beneficial to discuss board games with a broader vocabulary the way movies and literature are discussed.

This makes it sound dense, but we ramble through things constantly stumbling on the fact that the point can be argued in either direction. It's just a conversation to start a conversation in the end.

We mention our love of Lords of Waterdeep, the idea that themes within a game might change in the literary sense with games like Dominion, how Spirit Island touches upon important themes as a counterbalance to the recurring theme of colonialism in games like Catan. We wonder if "space" is really a theme or more of a setting or a genre and so much more.

Give a listen and let us know what you think. Is there a better way to discuss board games than trying to blanket things into a "theme" based on the subject or setting of the game?

Halloween has come and gone and we spend this episode talking about a few Lovecraft themed board games we like and discuss our first play of Mountains of Madness.

For episode 4 we venture into the on-going conversation about "gateway" games. What were ours, what are "the big three", what are some new ones and seriously, what does that even mean really?

Macy and I were probably both a little to sleepy to try this again but she really wanted to. So we did. We probably shouldn't have though, but again, why not. This time around she wanted to talk about Sleeping Queens again and Mystery Garden.

Without preparing and without much sleep Steve and I decided to get a podcast together while Dave is home visiting in Newfoundland. WE ramble on about a bunch of stuff. Talisman, Dad Joke Face-Off, 7-Wonders Duel, Isle of Trains, Welcome To..., Hexagony and a whole lot more.

This is it, this is Steve's Thunderstone Episode where we talk about our love of Thunderstone in all it's incarnations and how Thunderstone Quest is the proverbial cherry on top of the legacy that Mike Elliott created. We also break in our new mixer, it is much smaller than the Thunderstone box and is almost as fun.

In the second episode between our "regular" epsiodes we ramble on about a few games and what have you. Mostly we focus on Caverna by Uwe Rosenberg, Friday by Friedemann Friese, and 51st State by Ignacy Trzewiczek and that naturally leads us to bits about some of our favourites like Terraforming Mars and Race for the Galaxy, but that's what rambling is all about right?

In this, our 3 effort, we stumble around our microphones discussing the game Terraforming Mars and what we like about it as well as some other stuff they may or may not relate.

We decided we should just keep talking between figuring out what we should talk about next so we have decided to fill the space in between with casual talks about more board game stuff. This epsiode we talk about the Board Game Stats app.

In our first, dare we say, haphazard adventure into the podcast universe we discuss the 7.5lb box of good times that is Wasteland Express Delivery Service by Pandasaurus Games.