Hey hey BATT Family! The first major episode of Season Two is here! We have a great conversation with Curt Covert from Smirk and Dagger games for this episode and we break down the way they’ve seen the hobby change in the 22 years of their existence. Jason also has his first deployment of a game at Mark and Scott for Why Did I Play That and for the first time we have a guest join us for Table Shelf and Trade! It’s a super fun episode and we had a lot of it end up going to an Odds and Ends in the future like the way we did with James Hudson because otherwise this thing would have been almost three hours long. Hope you enjoy this and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it! Thanks for joining us for season two and getting to hear about all of our new sponsors as well!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this Kickstarter preview for Rolling in Wonderland! The new 2-4 player dice placement and set collection game from Bellows Intent and Borogove Games, this is mid-lightweight game where you’ll be rolling a handful of dice and triggering all sorts of asymmetric abilities. Today we are going to be covering everything the game is about as well as touching on some of the changes you’ll be seeing if you’ve gotten to play the game in a prior form. The game does come to us from designer Daniel Alves with art by Arthur Mask. Be sure to check the episode out, hit up their Kickstarter page, and then get in touch with us about what you think about Rolling in Wonderland! We love the guys over at Bellows are are psyched that they wanted to partner with us again on this. Spoiler alert, the whole BATT crew really enjoyed this so hopefully you will as well.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this Kickstarter preview for Honor’s End! The new 1-4 player co-op deckbuilding game from the mad scientists over at IV Studios, this is a beast of a game that has both an adventure mode as well as a full campaign. Today we are going to be specifically previewing that adventure mode and talking about how well the game plays at the 2-4 player ranges. Featuring wonderful art, you feel pulled into the world of Valoria here. Be sure to check the episode out, hit up their Kickstarter page, and then get in touch with us about what you think on Honor’s End! There is a great opportunity right now (as of time of publishing) that you can still get in on the playtesting for the later chapters of the game, so we’ll be putting a link to their Discord where the playtesting is occurring below as well.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to Season Two of the podcast! We’ve got a whole slew of cool things planned for the season and we wanted to ease you in with the reintroduction of the BATT hosts, this time featuring Jason! We’ll be releasing Episode 26 on Thursday because we didn’t want to overload you with four different episodes on the same day. We hope you’re as excited as we are for the content we’ve got coming though. And if you are new, then welcome to the BATT Family! We’re pleased you’re joining us and hope you have a great time being part of the community.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this review for Squirrel Away! Squirrel Away is a 3-6 player bluffing game that was provided to us by the publisher Floodgate Games. It is designed by Clarence Simpson and is legitimately a wonderful game. If you like bluffing and raucous moments in party games, you’ve gotta look into this one. Check out the review to find out what we thought of it and let us know what you think after listening by emailing us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to Episode 25, another of our top ten lists with a special guest. This time was us getting Mark’s good friend Austin onto the show to discuss the Top Ten Best Games We Don’t Play Anymore. It’s a fun topic for people who’ve played as many games for as long as we have to break down. We hope that you have as good of a time with us as we had recording it. This is also an episode where, yes, we are dedicating it entirely to older games but honestly it’s to remind ourselves of good memories as well as maybe intrigue you in some games you may have never heard of or just haven’t gotten to try. We played them all to where we’re done with them, but that certainly doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t enjoy them. If you do try any of them out, let us know! This is another moment of how long it’s been since we recorded as well - this episode is coming out in September and I believe this was recorded back in May. The choices are all still valid, but the weird timeline jumps if you’re listening to this back to back with Episode 24 is real. Regardless! Thanks for joining us on this final episode of Season One and we’ll catch you on the start of Season Two on October 7th!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this review for FlipToons! FlipToons was very kindly provided to us by ThunderWorks Games and is an autobattler for 1-4 players with a playtime of around 30 minutes. It’s a game with few rules and an easy teach that might be great for your next game night. Check out the review to find out what we thought of it and let us know what you think after listening by emailing us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

Hey hey BATT Family! Thanks for the wait on this main episode to come out! August, even removing Gen Con from the equation, turned into (politely) a lot for the entire BATT crew. Between medical scares and surgeries, job changes, and all manner of other things it just became the month where we ended up needing to take the break. But we’re stoked you’re still with us and this episode is a lot of fun! We have some serious ups and downs on opinions through this one, so be sure to let us know how you feel about everything by emailing us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com! On with the show!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to the review for Endangered (Second Edition). This was provided to us by Grand Gamers Guild in support of their new Kickstarter campaign for Endangered: Australia, which goes live on September 2nd. Endangered is a co-op game for 1-4 players and takes about an hour per session to play through trying to save an endangered species in scenario based gameplay. Spoiler alert, we really enjoyed this one. Check out the Kickstarter campaign at the link below and thanks again to Grand Gamers for providing us the game!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to the final Odds and Ends episode of Season 1! You read that right. We’re going to be giving a lot more detail a the beginning of the episode, but basically we’re going to be taking a small break. The first few minutes of the episode cover this, so be sure to listen in to at least that part!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to our series of reviews for the brand new, small box IV Studios games. In this review we’ll be taking a look at Pillars of Fate. Pillars of Fate is the new 2 player only game in the Veiled Fate series of games from IV. This game is a lane battler that will have players placing cards within 3 lanes over the course of 3 rounds called ages. This game will be using all of the characters as introducted between Veiled Fate and it’s Tribunal expansion and maintain the Scorpion/Feather structure that you may be used to from those games. While you do not have to have played the other two games in the series, having the familiarity of them and how they operate will make onboarding with this game much easier. A game of Pillars of Fate will take you about 30 minutes per session. We were provided this copy by IV and as such this is a sponsored review of the deluxe edition of the game that will be available at Gen Con later this week.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to our series of reviews for the brand new, small box IV Studios games. In this review we’ll be taking a look at Graft, the new small box drafting and push your luck game from IV Studios set in the world of another of their games, the soon to be released Tend. While you can very much see the threads connecting the two games together if you’ve played them - essentially the card rows you’ll be building in Graft are the manifest that you assemble by stamping in Tend - you certainly do not need to play one to know the other. Graft is the much, much lighter and shorter game for 3-5 players and will take you about 30 minutes per session. We were provided this copy by IV and as such this is a sponsored review of the deluxe edition of the game that will be available at Gen Con later this week.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to our series of reviews for the brand new, small box IV Studios games. In this review we’ll be taking a look at Time to Panic. In Time to Panic, you’re trying to repair a shattered timeline in this fully cooperative game for 1-4 players, taking approximately 30-45 minutes per session. Your goal is to fully align a series of cards numbered 1-36 into as correct of an order as possible. We were provided this copy by IV and as such this is a sponsored review of the deluxe edition of the game that will be available at Gen Con later this week.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to our review for Vantage. This is not a sponsored review, but Jason and I were provided our copies of the game as compensation for working the booth at GenCon. We refer to this within the episode itself, but to be clear we were given the game to learn and play so that we could accurately teach it at GenCon. Stonemaier did not ask for this review and we did get permission to do this ahead of time just in case. Regardless! We like the game quite a bit. If you’re concerned about any spoilers here, we drop our scores within the first few minutes before explaining anything at all about the game so that way you don’t have to worry about that. We actually managed to not spoil any of the content through our discussions but we also get that certain audiences don’t want to know anything beyond the basic dice/card interactions before opening the box and we wanted to respect that. Vantage is a huge open world sandbox game comprised of over 1700 cards for 1-6 players and was designed by Jamey Stegmaier over the course of eight years. Come crash land on the planet with us to learn what we thought about the game and then once you’ve gotten to do so let us know your opinions on it at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com!

Hey hey BATT Family! GenCon 2025 is ONE WEEK AWAY! That means that it is perfect timing to get out the GenCon preview list. We recorded this list on July 9th when there were 499 games on the list. While another 70 or so were added since then, we’re all still extremely happy with our lists and will still be looking for these games in particular. Scott, Jason, and Mark have all gathered to make sure that we’re telling you about 30 different games that we are excited to check out and hopefully bring home from the con in one way or another. We hope that you enjoy this episode and you let us know what you’re looking forward to on BlueSky or by emailing us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com. As a reminder, Mark and Jason will be teaching Vantage at the Stonemaier/MeepleSource booth at location 2909 this year and Scott will be demoing it in the play hall not too far away on Thursday and Friday mornings. Come say hi!

Welcome back to extra BATT content! This episode is a return to our series of The Games That Made Us. While Mark is finishing up the edit on the GenCon preview, we still wanted to make sure that we gave you content today the way we promised on BlueSky. So here is Scott talking about his love of Star Fleet Battles, a game by Stephen V. Cole from 1979 by Amarillo Design Bureau and Task Force Games. Scott got suprisingly whistful after listening to the edit of this, so while it may not have the heft of the HeroQuest episode, it’s clearly still a game that he holds with deep affection. If nothing else, it’s just fun to hear about another older game! And we’ll give a sly little announcement here in the notes: Mark was recently gifted a number of old games from the 60s and 70s. We’ll be doing a new segment soon called ”Dusting Off:” where we go back to these decades old games to see how they may (or may not) have influenced the gaming hobby and if they’re still worth going back to today. We hope you enjoy this episode and we’ll catch you on the next one very shortly.

Hey hey BATT Family! We have another sponsored review from Hobby World, this time their family game Tales of Tails. This is a light weight, take that, dungeon crawler featuring dogtaurs. It’s a game for 2-4 players and lasts approximately 30-45 minutes.

Hey hey BATT Family! We are back with another sponsored review, this time provided by Hobby World. Space Bureau is an action selection, pick up and deliver game for 1-4 players. It has a fun vibe about it and will appeal to players that like to build action networks and explore a galaxy. The game will play over 14 turns per player and give you a surprising amount of opportunity to do plenty of actions on each turn. We hope you enjoy this review and you let us know if you’ve gotten to try it yourself and what you think of it!

Hey hey BATT Family! Thanks for coming on back for the next full episode of the show! We apologize for the extra week on the release of this episode. Things just haven’t been slowing down. We’re considering taking a small recording break during the month of August to just slow down, finalize a bunch of things (the website finally!), and play all the new games. Oh and there may be a new logo coming too! OOooo. Regardless! This week is a fun one! Due to popular demand, we returned to the Mechanic’s Shop to talk Trick Taking. Then Mark got Scott to play one of his favourite dudes on a map games, and then we talked a wide variety of the games in the Table/Shelf/Trade segment. We did choose to leave off the rotating segment this week due to length, but you’ll find that in the next Odds and Ends episode, due out the week of GenCon! Come back on our next episode for our GenCon preview!

Hey hey BATT Family! We are stoked to take part in the Kickstarter launch for IV Studios’ next game, Realm of Reckoning. We spent an enormous amount of time with it because we did enjoy it as much as we did. This is a two to five player area control, drafting, bidding game that takes around ninety to one hundred twenty minutes to play. It is currently on Kickstarter and can be found at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivstudios/realm-of-reckoning. The base edition of the game starts at $89 but does have a variety of extra materials you can pick up as well. You’ve heard us say it before, but the mad scientists at IV are back at it and have provided an incredibly unique and genuinely fascinating game to play. We had a ton of things to say and tear apart with this one, so this preview episode is about double our regular length because we do feel it needs it. This is by far IV’s heaviest game but it still manages to be quite approachable. So check out the episode and then go check out the Kickstarter!