Show Notes
Why hello there! This month is the first part of our discussion about the wonderful world of trick-taking games, starting with the old classics and covering the first part of their resurgence in the 1990s. The rest of the topic, including the second (current) surge of clever new designs, will come next month. This could realistically have been a single episode, but for various uninteresting logistical reasons, we're splitting it into two, each of which is slightly shorter than usual. (Think of them as Fun-Size episodes.) We discuss:
The origin of modern playing cards as fortune-telling devices, and the game (and deck) that was designed to let people have fun without associating with sorcery or (gasp!) gambling. A surprising number of fond memories of learning various old-people games from our families. Brian's mom was very fond of this analog bridge computer thing. A build-your-own trick-taking game. Don't have the right card to play? Make another player play for you!
Also, we apologize for the number of times that this topic requires us to say the word "trump." Do you have any favorite trick-taking games we haven't gotten to yet? (All the recent ones are coming next month...) Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them. As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!
Website: https://www.ascentofboardgames.com Email: [email protected] Discord: https://discord.gg/tdH3QAn Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ascentboardgames/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ascentofboardgames.bsky.social Discord: http://discord.ascentofboardgames.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ascentofboardgames/ And, very occasionally, Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ascentofboardgames
Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved. Thank you for listening!
More from The Ascent of Board Games
Hi, folks! It's time for another designer deep dive, and this month we're looking at a designer who probably deserves the attention more than anyone else - the prolific, the legendary, the first-man-to-win-all-three-Spiel-des-Jahres-awards, Dr. Reiner Knizia. He's designed hundreds of games - not even counting all the rethemes, rereleases, and reimplementations - so this episode can only scratch the surface of his résumé, but we're gonna do our best.
Hi folks! This month we conclude our review of our favorite games that don't exist. Or at least didn't used to. Look, it makes more sense if you just listen to the episode. And don't worry - whatever you thought you heard at the end of last episode, Joe is fine and has definitely not been implanted with a government mind-control chip. Contents include but are not limited to:
Hello everyone! We've spent lo these many months talking about real games - now it's time for us to talk about games that DON'T exist. Although some of them actually do exist now, but didn't originally. Come on along with us - maybe it will make more sense if you give this a listen! Among the games we discuss:
Hi folks! If you listened to last month's episode (or have been following the board game industry for the last decade or so), you probably have a pretty good idea about what's going to happen in this month's episode - the Fall of Fantasy Flight Games. We're not saying that Fantasy Flight's 2014 merger with Asmodee is responsible for the collapse of one of the world's biggest and most respected board game publishers...but we're not not saying that, either. Are you - or were you - a Fantasy Flight Fan? Are there other game companies you'd like us to give this kind of treatment to? Was this a terrible idea? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds! As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them. As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!
Hi folks! We're back (yes, even including Jayson!) with an episode that's a little different than our usual - do let us know what you think! This month and next month, we're doing a different kind of deep dive. Rather than specifically looking at a single game mechanic or designer, we're looking at a game company - in this case, Fantasy Flight Games. Not to give anything away, but the fact that this episode is subtitled "The Rise" might give you a moment's pause about next month's episode...