Calico – Five By Review

This review originally appeared in episode 96 of The Five By – you can listen to it here. It’s time to talk about a new release that’s been bringing colour, joy, and adorable cats to our quarantined selves. That game is of course 2020’s Calico, designed by Kevin Russ, published by Flatout Games, and illustrated…

Azul: Summer Pavilion – Five By Review

Azul: Summer Pavilion is the third installment in Michael Keisling’s Azul series published by Plan B games under their Next Move imprint. The three games are themed around the work of Portuguese artisans working on projects for the royal family. This 2019 game has two to four players working to create the magnificent Summer Pavilion…

The Five By – Mercado Review

This review was recorded and originally released as part of Episode 72 of the Five By. You can follow that link to hear it plus four other reviews of games we’ve been enjoying at our (sadly imaginary) podcast HQ, or continue reading for the non-audio version. Apologies for slight differences between the two– minor edits…

The Five By – Episode 72

Episode 72 of The Five By released this morning featuring myself and four of my co-collaborators talking about games we’ve been enjoying. Of the games I didn’t review, two were games I’d played, one was a game I’d almost backed on Kickstarter before deciding against, and one was a game I’d never heard of. First…

Five By Review – Targi (Episode 47)

Hello Five By listeners (and blog readers), it’s Ruth here, fresh from a day playing a lot of new releases and ready to talk about a game that well, isn’t. First published in 2012, Targi was one of the first specifically two-player games to capture my attention. Previously I preferred playing games with more versatility,…

Favelas – Links to Look Further

While writing my segment for the latest Five By episode, I ended up looking at a number of resources. This is not an exhaustive list, but below are links to some of the things I found most helpful and/or interesting: What is a Favela? a really interesting video explaining the Favelas in both a historical…

The Games of The Five By: Episode 22

I’ve been oscillating between slacking off and cursing my writer’s block, and so haven’t published my thoughts on the games featured in episodes 20 and 21. But I’m hoping to get a bunch of drafts and notes cleaned up and organized over the next few weekends so I should be able to get my thoughts…

The Five By: The Games of Episode 19

This episode of The Five By featured a number of games with which I was passingly familiar, having either played once a while back, or just games I’d heard of. This meant I was, of course, left itching to play everything after the episode ended, and in fact have been repeatedly finding myself checking out…

The Five By: The Games of Episodes 17 and 18

Episode 17 of the show dropped on the first day of TBGT, a five day gaming event held locally that pretty much meant I was offline for a week or so. So I’m combining my thoughts on that episode’s games with my thoughts on the game covered in episode 18 which was released this week….

Weekly Round-Up: September 10th

It’s been a slow-ish week as people’s attention has been rightfully focused on brewing weather conditions and the ongoing hellish landscape that is the political world, but I do have a few small items to share: The Inside Voices Network has added another amazing podcast to its line-up – Becky & Kelly of Board Games…

Weekly Round-Up – September 2nd

Continuing this small series of news recaps, here’s some more stuff you might have missed over the last week: Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and Louisiana hard, and many have been affected by the resultant flooding, power outages, and shortages. BGG has a Hurricane Harvey Relief geeklist to keep track of their efforts, or you can…

The Five By: The Games of Episode 16

For this episode I got to sit back and just listen for a change. My co-hosts did a damn fine job as usual, and covered yet another interesting mix of games. In addition to five awesome reviews, this episode also features a contest! That’s right, the amazing Nolan Nasser donated some of his beautiful mousemats…