Oh Amazon, you don’t let any good idea get past you. The site has seen the success of indie video game bundles, like the Humble Indie Bundle, and has decided to jump on the bandwagon. The result is the Indie Combat Pack (and Ticket to Ride), a 10 game pack that gives people a pretty more »

hile “the boy” Wesley Crusher was far from the most popular Star Trek character, actor Wil Wheaton has successfully won over many gamers as fans. Continuing in that vein, he’ll play as part of Mayfair Game’s Star Trek: Catan Warp Speed charity event. The first 48 gamers who sign up for Gen Con (and donate $100 to the event) will get the chance to play Star Trek: Catan with Wil “the man” Wheaton. In addition to playing a cool game with a cool guy, the benefactors will know that their money goes to support Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Indiana, a most worthy cause.

Pandemic is an award winning cooperative game from Z-Man Games, and perhaps their most celebrated product, based around players trying to stop the world from being overwhelmed in a series of epidemics. Pandemic is a cooperative game, the players all either win or lose as a team. While cooperative games run a risk of being a little too beatable once the primary strategy is found, Pandemic escapes this trap by using a card system that randomly spawns diseases across the world, along with randomly assigning roles to players. After five years, Z-Man decided it must be time for a new edition. This new version has more clear rules, and includes two new character classes for even more gaming variety.

Perhaps the most famous battle of the 19th century is Waterloo, where two titanic armies, led by the finest military minds of the age, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, clashed. Napoleon lost, forever changing the destiny of Europe; had he won, what we call Europe would probably be better known as the “Greater French Empire.” There have been a few boardgames based around the classic battle, but perhaps the most popular was Napoleon: The Waterloo Campaign 1815. It addressed the mighty battle (along with skirmishes in the area in Waterloo) in a mere two hours, using a rules system that anyone can pick up and play without studying the rulebook. It’s been 20 years since the third edition of the game came out, so Columbia Games figures it must be time for new edition.

Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has been steadily re-releasing old Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) products, and they’ve finally hit the end of the line: a reprint of the original game books when D&D first found its way onto store shelves. Dungeons and Dragons has come a loooong way from it’s 1974 release. While a D&D book today is hardcover, covered in full-color artwork, and runs hundreds of full-size pages, the original game was played with just a few small rulebooks, each decorated with but a handful of black and white drawings. Role playing games might have higher production values today, but there are plenty of folks that still play games where the character sheets don’t look like something the IRS put together.

I really think I’ve seen everything now. Mass Effect Risk: Galaxy at War Edition just puts me over the edge. Granted, this cross-over shouldn’t surprise anyone, since it would be a good fit. Some people can be different races or Reapers, all trying to take over the entire galaxy, but still. I did not expect more »

This time of year, I start to fantasize just a little bit about going to the beach and being warm, and such fantasies attracted me Tahiti, a game where players take the role of tribespeople on a Pacific island, exploring the local islands and gathering resources, with the winner being the best gatherer of food. Tahiti exits only due to a successful Kickstarter campaign; it’s amazing how many little game products come to market now through Kickstarter.

The iron is so 2012. I mean really, it’s call about the cat token now. The Monopoly fans know it, and that’s why the Save Your Token promotion has resulted in the iron being shoved into a cut-rate retirement facility so the cat can take its place on the game board with the battleship, boot, more »

Easily, the best board game I played in 2012 was Mage Knight, no doubt about it. I played it long after I was done reviewing it, only putting it away when I really needed the space for a Christmas tree. It was also the most complicated board game I’ve played in years (and I’ve played hard core games like Squad Leader), meaning I could only play it with serious gamer friends, “pick and play” gamers took one look at the many cards with the eensy print and asked if we could just play Smallworld instead.

Gaming conventions come in many forms. BlizzCon and QuakeCon are naturally computer game orieanted, while Gen Con leans towards tabletop games with a heavy emphasis on role playing games. Such conventions aren’t restritive, though, and in between “formal” games you can easily find folks playing around of Magic: The Gathering or whatever. ColumbiaCon , in Charlottesville, Virigina, is one of the few (only?) conventions that focus on boardgames.

Most board games have a winner, with everyone else being a loser, but Pandemic was one of the first games to change that paradigm. Pandemic is a cooperative game, with the players (from one to four) working together to stop four plagues that have broken out simultaneously. Everybody either wins or loses, making it a game with few hurt feelings and almost always a good time for everyone. It totally rocked the gaming world when it came out five years ago, and an expansion (On the Brink) only added to the fun.

Hasbro’s Monopoly Save Your Token campaign is going to break a lot of hearts. In the name of progress, Hasbro is doing a culling of Monopoly tokens again. It’s like the 1990′s all over again, when the money bag briefly appeared and the horse and cannon tokens were removed. Of course, this time the removal more »