Pirates, Pirates Everywhere (May 2020 newsletter) (Patreon)

Man there are a lot of pirate games coming to kickstarter these days. I've had to play two games for Rahdo's channel (Sea of Legends and recently Tiny Epic Pirates), and I know there are going to be two more featured in the coming weeks. Also, since y'all get the secret behind-the-scenes scoop, I'll let you know that Sea of Legends is the better game by far. Of course, it's also significantly more expensive, so do with that as you will. What always surprises me about these theme-based surges is the fact that it takes a long time to design a game, meaning that several people independently had the idea to make a pirate game several months/years ago. It's weird.

Also on Rahdo's channel this month I got to play Pax Pamir 2nd Edition, which I enjoyed even more than I thought I would. And on top of that I filmed my first ever Top 10 games list. The topic being what games would we bring with us to a desert island. I've mostly shied away from doing these because my knowledge if games strongly skews towards depth rather than breadth. As you'll see if you watch that entirely too long video, there are quite a few games on the others' lists that I just haven't played, whereas most of my games are pretty well known. However we did enjoy making the video and people seemed to like it, so we'll probably be making more. I also thoroughly enjoyed breaking people's expectations with picks like this.

As for RTFM, we're into the boring part of the video process, writing the script for War of the Ring. Not that I dislike it, but it certainly takes a fair bit of time to do. It is continuing apace however, and I'm looking forward to shooting it. I was hoping to get both the game and all of the expansions, but one of them is currently out of print until July and there's a new expansion coming out in Q4, so I've decided to hold off on the expansion video until I can get all of them together in one.

To anyone who's played War of the Ring, I'm curious about something. I've played five games of it now (2 as Shadow and 3 as the Free Peoples) and every single time the Shadow player has won. I hear a lot about how balanced it is, and I want to believe that, but this is a pretty surprising outcome. I definitely feel like the strategy for Shadow is a lot more obvious from the get-go, but even now, both Nick and I feel like the Free Peoples have a pretty hard time. Have any of you had similar experiences?

And now for the obligatory Spirit Island pic. We actually managed to win this game, though it was very close at times.

I hope everyone is staying safe out there. LA is in a pretty tumultuous state at the moment, as are quite a few cities across the US. So whether you're out protesting or staying at home, make sure to take care of yourself and the people around you.