These are all the pieces of a “game.” No really, these are a lot of fun
We live in a wonderful time to be a geek. Summer blockbusters are predominantly sci-fi oriented and comic books are being adapted into movies and TV shows at an alarming rate. Even lesser known (or formerly lesser known) creator owned comics like Kick Ass and Walking Dead are getting mainstream, major releases. Video games were once the pastime of nerds and geeks and there was a slim chance that jocks or your mom would be playing them. Now, thanks to Call of Duty, mobile games, the Wii and a million other reasons, video games is a huge growth industry rivaling Hollywood. Those pushes into the mainstream mean that being a “geek” has a lot less stigma than it used to. Which is good for us (the geeks). Hell, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are developing a Preacher pilot for AMC. Indeed, we live in a golden age of geekiness.
One of the amazing side effects of this geek boom is the creation of amazing (and often very inspired by geek intellectual properties) board games. Once upon a time a movie themed board game would either be a) terrible or b) Monopoly reskinned with references to said movie. No longer. Battlestar Galactica, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and a whole host of other IPs have great board games. As a result of these popular franchises board games in general have gotten a whole lot better.
I remember going into hobby shops and there being a pile of Warhammer miniature figurines, a rack of RPG rule books and a little section of board games (Twilight Imperium, Settlers of Catan and a host of Steve Jackson mini-games spring to mind). Now, the situation is almost completely reversed. Head into a game shop and you’ll have a wide variety of awesome board games that are well designed, complex and sometimes tied to source material you’re already well aware of. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
