Clint Warren-Davey

(Monotone German accent): Velcome to ze annual euro game awards. In third place ve have "Market Stall" - an innovative new title from Alexander Pfeister about selling resource cubes und accumulating victory points. In second place ve have "Cobblestone Paths" - a nice little…

War of the Ring Axis and Allies G40 Quartermaster General Fire in the Lake Twilight Imperium

Copies of Werwolf are now on boats headed to Australia and New Zealand - very exciting! Going straight here from China lets us avoid US tariffs for Aussie and NZ backers. This is my COIN-inspired alternate history game about insurgency in occupied Germany, 1945-48. Still…

You can tell how influential Diplomacy is by the fact that Larry Harris basically copied the map when making Axis and Allies 1914:

Another excellent bit of advice from Cole Wehrle: Asymmetry is expensive in every way that a game can be expensive: rules, balance, components, time, playtesting. You have to make sure it's worth it. Asymmetric factions shouldn't have to "lean in" to their differences, there…

Just listened to a great interview - Justin Gary and Cole Wehrle. Cole raised an interesting point. He said designers are leaving a lot of money on the table. Many games are too adverse to conflict and aggression. Cole said that he took a gamble with Root. The team at Leder…

So Dice Tower just get straight up paid to do positive reviews?

Yep. Be prepared for dirty people with fake looking leather armour, the camera lens making everything look grey, lots of rain and fog, filthy, cold, grey, drab buildings and maybe some battles where both sides run into each other and fight to the death one-on-one.

There's a game called Covenant that is currently number 1 on the hotness on bgg, despite having only 2 images and essentially no information about the game. No rulebook, no reviews, no previews, nothing. So now people are discussing how the bgg algorithm works and it's pretty…

Why is Diplomacy such a good game? Here's my thoughts: -Rules are really quick to explain and fairly simple to execute. You're mostly adding up numbers of 3 or less. -Every player has multiple opportunities to expand and build up their position from the very first turn. -From…

It's interesting how some theatres of war become insurgencies and others don't. The French had a lot of trouble occupying Spain in the Napoleonic Wars. But the Germans didn't have much trouble occupying the Low Countries in WW2. Sometimes you need harsh and active…

Vietnam in a Big Box - 1st Impressions of Purple Haze fm ⁦@___PHALANX⁩ via The Armchair Dragoons rockymountainnavy.com/2025/07/24/vie…

Played Diplomacy with my game design class today. Beginning to teach them about wargames. They loved it, and it was so good to see a full 7 player game in swing. I also explained to them some of the reasoning behind the rules - like how the deterministic combat system and…

Board game marketing question: How many followers should an "influencer" have before you consider sending them a review copy?

Retreats before battle. This has been something I've avoided in my wargame designs. Mostly because I make games at strategic or operational level and often it doesn't make sense. But also because I fear it will turn the game into an endless cat and mouse chase where no one…

I'm calling it now. The next big trend in board games is going to be choose-your-own-adventure style storybooks that accompany the game. Semi-RPG style. A handful of games are generating a lot of buzz with this. Especially Vantage (Stonemaier) and Purple Haze (Phalanx). The…

Reading about the new game Fief: England, the sequel to Fief: France 1429. This player raises an interesting point. The original was so good because of the marriages, which led to enforced alliances between players. This creates a lot of tension around diplomacy and…

My developer for One Hour WW2, Mark Wylie, has started his own publishing company - Five Star Board Games. He is specialising in solo book games but looking to expand to other types of games. Mark is a great guy and is rapidly figuring out a lot of things about the industry.…

Yes, agree with this. If you want non-Eurooean stories, tell actual non-European stories.

Hopefully my game One Hour English Civil War will help with this. My co-designer Ed Farren wants the game in British classrooms to help engage students with the ECW.