Boardgames To Go

Announcement! Please join other podcast listeners for the next online BGTG Mini-Con, scheduled for September 6. I plan to be online from 9am-9pm Pacific time, including Discord for voice & video. The games will mostly be played on BoardgameArena, but adventurous gamers can also use Yucata, Brettspielwelt, Boardgames.io, Steam, apps, or whatever. It's free, and no RSVP or signup is necessary. Opener: Qwinto Closer: The SdJ awards ceremony, which we watched/listened to live on the drive back from a convention Over the years you've heard me talk about a number of game conventions. Usually that's recounting the games I played, and my enthusiasm for them in a 5-star rating. This time, I'm taking more of a meta approach to the topic. Yes, I'm still talking about a convention I went to recently, and some games played there, but half of the episode is about the idea of game conventions in the first place. The different types, which ones I prefer, and so on. Then the second half was recorded at a recent c

Opener: Skara Brae, and again I'm talking about vacation-linked boardgames   Closer: The Dornücopia we've got planned for EsCon in a couple weeks.    I'm always happy to talk about the Spiel des Jahres. The winners, the nominees, the recommended titles, the jury process, and the award's immense, positive impact on our hobby. That goes for the Kennerspiel and Kinderspiel, too...though I'm woefully ignorant about the children's category. This time it's just me talking about the games, severall of which I've played, but some I've missed. I don't think my predictions for what will win are particularly interesting or insightful--I just like talking about the games and sharing what I think of them. For the SdJ, this year the nominees are Bomb Busters, Flip 7, and Krakel Orakel. (Plus the recommended titles are Agent Avenue, Castle Combo, Cities, Foxy, Perfect Words, and The Animals of Baker Street.)    Then for the Kennerspiel (a category that's only gotten more interesting to me as it has drifted into my p

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Openers: Mark: Space Empires 4X Jonathan: 2005 Flashback & Quiz Closers: Jonathan: My top games of 2005 Mark: Hosting my own (small) event instead of traveling to a con? Mark Johnson @MarkEJohnson Jonathan Takagi @jtakagi The Wayback Machine is back. One more time, a friend joins me to go back in time to an earlier Spiel des Jahres, looking at the winner but also the other nominees and recommended games. In addition, my guest helps me think about the earlier time itself, and how the games, the hobby, and the community may have changed over the years. This time it's my longtime friend & listener from San Diego, Jonathan Takagi. In fact, he's from a bit north, in Escondido, and Jonathan is another one of the people behind my favorite regional con, EsCon. I'll be going back there in a month! Jonathan decided to pick 2005 because it's twenty years ago...which also h

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. Opener: Join us to play games online together on May 3. We're meeting on the Discord server, as well as the Boardgames To Go Listeners group on BGA       I set out to give myself a break this month, just talking about some recent games and fielding a few questions sent to me. In fact, I've been doing so much gaming lately that I had to whittle my list down to just these six games to share my impressions about. Then the feedback questions ended up being more fun to dive into than I expected. These kinds of shows are fun & easy to do--I won't do them all the time, but every once in a while should be ok. Closer: Message me with any of your questions, and I may use them on a future Session Report & Feedback episode. -Mark

The annual voting/predicting competition called Mark Madness is now finished. The results are posted with the rest of the updates for episode 239, and here co-host Eryn Roston returns one last time to share the winners. Unconscious Mind was our collective favorite for game cover art, and Adam Brocker is this year's winner. The plan now is for Adam to help me run next year's Mark Madness, in 2026. Next, I share my time at Dice Tower West. This is the second year in a row that I've gone to this national boardgame convention. Is it national? I think so. It's certainly big. Held in Las Vegas every March, that's a destination I can reach by car. I join a bunch of friends there and we play most games together. Besides a number of fresh & new ones, the buddies I got to this con with enjoy focusing one entire day on old games. We define that as games more than 25 years old. Last year that went to 1999, and now we included other titles published in 2000.     -Mark

The Championship is now set!   https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston

Be sure to go vote at https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston?itemid=11634552#11634552

The round of 32 is finished, leaving us now voting on the Sweet 16 of game cover artworks. The choices are getting more difficult.   And we have a new leader in our prediction contest. #Davecember celebrity loofish is representing his namesakes with a currently-in-first-place position for his guess...but with others on his tail.

Eryn is back to talk with me about the results of the first round voting. Half of our original 64 game cover art entries have now been knocked out of the contest. Now successive voting rounds keep halving the remaining contestants every three days. What have we seen so far? No ties, though a couple matchups were close. A few more were blowouts. Are there common threads? Surprises? Plus...Eryn teaches me how to look at art more critically...by SQUINTING. Achievement unlocked.   -Mark

If you're playing along with Mark Madness this year, the time for predictions is over and you'd better start voting. Whether you've done a prediction or not, the link below takes you to the place where you can choose your favorite game cover art as 64 titles square off against each other in one-on-one matchups.    https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/354557/mark-madness-2025-game-cover-art-with-eryn-roston

Play along and predict the winners at https://challonge.com/MarkMadness2025 Predictions must be submitted by March 12 to be in the contest Mark Johnson @MarkEJohnson eryn roston @baditude Once again, the month of March give me a chance to bring back "Mark Madness," my podcast-hosted voting contest. Like its namesake sports tournament, Mark Madness is where 64 games are pitted against each other in successive rounds of single-elimination votes. As before, I took the winner of llast year's contest, Eryn Roston, and asked him to co-host this year's contest. Furthermore, Eryn has helped define the special nature of the contest this year. It's still about boardgames, of course, but it's about boardgame art. Specifically, we're voting on the best boardgame cover art. Eryn picked four groupings, each with 16 titles apiece. Those groupings are called Divisions, and this year there are ones for Fantasy, Historical/Real-World, Nature-themed, and Science Fiction boardgame covers. You will se

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. David Arnott @Arnott When did you start listening to podcasts? Do you remember your first ones? For me it was the first one ever about boardgames and the first about movies. That was Geekspeak and Reel Reviews. Even though I'm not so into wine, Grape Radio was another super early one for me. The medium was new, the tech was unfamiliar, and I loved the chance to listen to interesting audio on my commute, about unique subjects. Although those earliest shows seemed to use a lot of fancy, expensive equipment, I wondered if a more basic podcast could be produced with simple gear. On March 3, 2005, I threw my hat in the ring with Boardgames To Go, a new audio version of my blog of the same name. The response was quick & positive, so I kept at it. Two decades later, I'm still here. Twenty years is an important milestone for me. I never really saw myself doing the podcast this long. I've av

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.   Scott Alden @Aldie Opener: Everyone knows Aldie, right? Feels like we do. Scott Alden, the man behind BoardGameGeek, is one creative entrepreneur, let me tell ya. Anyone could've thought to make a central website where boardgamers come for information and community, but it takes more than a good idea for something to be reality. For 25 years Aldie has been adding features, listening to comments, growing the hobby, and doing way more than most to enhance boardgaming around the world. I can't believe it's been so long since I've had him on the podcast. I'll be sure to do it again soon.                            Here Scott joins me to talk about the BGG Hall of Fame, where 25 famous titles were inducted into an inaugural collection. Jennifer Schlickbernd headed up the project with Aldie's blessing, and Candice Harris was responsible producing & editing the awesome videos that accompani

Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners. I've been doing this podcast for twenty years! I never would've guessed this in the beginning. The actual "birthday" for the podcast is March 3rd, so focus on the anniversary then. But for now, this is the start of Season 21. Blackjack! Despite my teasing of Davebo during the Davecember episodes about putting too much stock in games-played data...I actually keep track of it myself. I'm not 100% accurate about it, but I'm probably 95% in recent years. (Earlier years weren't as detailed or accurate.) These days I'm using te BG Stats app, sync'd online to BGG. I don't record scores or game durations, but I DO record gaming locations, and that's permitted me to conclusively look at my data with & without online plays. For my own purposes, I've always included online plays in my totals, but I get why others may not. MJ's Games Played in 2024 with . . . and without online plays   In this episode I

I know a lot of Daves, and many of them have been on my podcast. With that in mind they're helping me celebrate a new holiday, Davecember, when each of them joins for me a mini-episode sprinkled randomly this month into your feed. I'll ask each of them similar questions, and each David also gets a bit of time to bring up something they want to share with my listeners. Enjoy! Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.     David Arnott @Arnott Bringing our Davecember to a fitting close, I welcome back Dave Arnott. He was the guy on my podcast earlier this fall when the idea of Davecember was born. He's been on plenty of my episodes before, but now we get to talk more about him. -Mark

I know a lot of Daves, and many of them have been on my podcast. With that in mind they're helping me celebrate a new holiday, Davecember, when each of them joins for me a mini-episode sprinkled randomly this month into your feed. I'll ask each of them similar questions, and each David also gets a bit of time to bring up something they want to share with my listeners. Enjoy! Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.     Dave OConnor @daveo1234 We're winding down now. DaveO is one of the remaining Davids that's still local to me. Local enough. He's near San Diego, I'm near LA, but that's close enough to have seen each other off & on over the years. We met around 20 years ago at a SoCal Games Day, I think. Now he's my roommate at Dice Tower West game convention, and a co-conspirator to bring old favorites to the table at a convention. -Mark

I know a lot of Daves, and many of them have been on my podcast. With that in mind they're helping me celebrate a new holiday, Davecember, when each of them joins for me a mini-episode sprinkled randomly this month into your feed. I'll ask each of them similar questions, and each David also gets a bit of time to bring up something they want to share with my listeners. Enjoy! Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.     David Reed @deacondavid David Reed claims to be our oldest Dave in the collection, but we're all reasonably close. Something about the audience for this podcast, I guess. Happy to have this generation. -Mark

I know a lot of Daves, and many of them have been on my podcast. With that in mind they're helping me celebrate a new holiday, Davecember, when each of them joins for me a mini-episode sprinkled randomly this month into your feed. I'll ask each of them similar questions, and each David also gets a bit of time to bring up something they want to share with my listeners. Enjoy! Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.     David @loofish The next David comes to us from a different part of North Carolina, and explains how the recent hurricane robbed them of power...but gave them a chance to play more analog games with kids. -Mark

I know a lot of Daves, and many of them have been on my podcast. With that in mind they're helping me celebrate a new holiday, Davecember, when each of them joins for me a mini-episode sprinkled randomly this month into your feed. I'll ask each of them similar questions, and each David also gets a bit of time to bring up something they want to share with my listeners. Enjoy! Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.   David Harding @huffa2 Another designer joins us, and he's in the game publishing world, too. David Harding of Elevenses, One Zero One, Matcha and Grail Games. -Mark

I know a lot of Daves, and many of them have been on my podcast. With that in mind they're helping me celebrate a new holiday, Davecember, when each of them joins for me a mini-episode sprinkled randomly this month into your feed. I'll ask each of them similar questions, and each David also gets a bit of time to bring up something they want to share with my listeners. Enjoy! Please join us on the Boardgames To Go discord server where you can chat online with other podcast listeners.       David Corbin joins us next, doubling our count of North Carolina based Davids...but he's not our last. He comes offering David's Aphorism, as well as David's Dictum. Heady stuff... -Mark