The Board Game Secret Show

Molly Johnson and Shawn Stankewich are two of the three founders of FLATOUT GAMES, the studio behind 🎲 CASCADIA and 🐱 CALICO. They tell the story of an AEG exec brushing off POINT SALAD, why a small publisher stays on Kickstarter, and what a store owner said about their next game.

Check out Perennial: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flatoutgames/perennial-0

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🥗 The AEG exec who said "thanks" and walked away from POINT SALAD

🐱 A two-hour debate over one tile bag, a "53 versus 3 thing"

🎨 Why there is no 100% black anywhere in Flatout's art direction

📦 The $20-plus it costs to ship a CASCADIA to a home in the US

🌿 A store owner's advice: "don't make another nature-themed roll-and-write"

🦁 Molly's role-play lion in a damp, horrible forest

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🔗 LINKS

🎲 Flatout Games

▶ https://www.flatout.games/

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

01:16 - Who are Molly and Shawn?

02:09 - Weather chat and Canadian prairie roots

03:47 - Gen Con week spent meeting partners

06:02 - Getting bit by game design in 2016

09:47 - The convention feedback that made it real

12:02 - AEG walks away, then an email lands

16:32 - The Cardboard Edison finals email arrives

18:47 - Propolis turns out to be a really old design

21:47 - Picking palettes with no pure black

27:47 - How the Flatout collab publishes games

33:02 - Two-hour debate over one tile bag

37:32 - Why small-box games stay at $25

39:47 - Why simple family games are a dying breed on Kickstarter

42:47 - Design is only 20 percent of the week

48:02 - No growth for growth's sake

54:47 - Why a small publisher stays on Kickstarter

1:06:47 - Calico's goal: sit on the shelf next to Azul

1:11:17 - Store owners say no more nature roll-and-writes

1:19:32 - Why the casual gamer crowd keeps growing

1:30:47 - Why Beth Sobel's art gets people excited

1:35:17 - Whisperstone, the puzzle-piece RPG, explained

1:48:47 - Three and a half years building an RPG

1:59:17 - How Perennial's polyomino tiles work

2:08:07 - What success looks like in five years

#cardboard #bgss

Kylie Prymus took a dusty 1,000-square-foot shop doing $350,000 a year and turned it into a million-dollar store that sells no Magic, no Pokemon and no miniatures — on purpose. 🏪 GAMES UNLIMITED has been in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill since 1979, and the owner who bought it used to teach philosophy for a living.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🧪 The ALCHEMY talk behind the whole store: "a flower is just a weed with a marketing budget"

🎁 Dead stock wrapped in butcher paper sold out in a week — the clearance table never did

🟢 A counter above the demo bar with a big green button: the metric is games played, not dollars

🛏️ Six weeks of opening a coffee shop at 5:30am, napping in a sleeping bag out back, then working the store till 7

📠 "You're opening a business and you don't have a fax machine?" — "Because it's 2015."

📈 $350,000 in 2019 to over a million last year, out of 3,600 square feet with no event space at all

🎲 Why the heavyweight "greatest game ever" titles sell under a dozen copies a year while HOT STREAK sells 500

🚫 Why free demo copies are a trap: "you need skin in the game"

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🔗 LINKS

🏪 Games Unlimited — Pittsburgh

▶ https://gamesunl.com/

▶ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDWlkcNGxW4CFnRkpnuAPA

▶ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gamesunlimitedpgh/

▶ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gamesunl

▶ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GamesUnl

🎙️ Unbox Some Funcast — Kylie's podcast

▶ https://rss.com/podcasts/unbox-some-funcast

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:48 - Who is Kylie Prymus?

02:19 - The first game store owner on the show

06:30 - Alchemy, and the flower that's just a weed with a marketing budget

09:08 - Wrapping the dead stock in butcher paper

20:49 - Creating new gamers instead of acquiring customers

22:57 - No Magic, no Pokemon, no miniatures - on purpose

32:38 - The green button above the demo bar

35:55 - No free demo copies, because you need skin in the game

38:10 - Philosophy professor, coffee shop, game store

39:54 - Bob gets sick nine months into the apprenticeship

40:27 - The sleeping bag in the back of the coffee shop

46:08 - What you actually buy when you buy a game store

48:11 - "You're opening a business and you don't have a fax machine?"

51:34 - The pandemic move to Forbes Avenue

58:29 - "Are you guys new?" after 35 years down the hill

1:02:32 - $350,000 to over a million

1:08:34 - Third space is not a room full of tables

1:20:54 - Bare shelves, a fixed budget, and what to buy first

1:27:18 - The prestige heavyweights sell a dozen; Hot Streak sells 500

1:34:21 - Nobody needs anything we sell

1:45:10 - The Q4 stock-up, and buying 200 copies of one game

1:49:53 - Ordering 300 copies of a game you don't like

2:05:24 - Salaries, structure, and the staff who said "duh"

2:11:36 - Who else should I talk to?

#cardboard #bgss

Zero Strategy Games put a perfectly normal sheep on the cover of a horror game — and people did a double take all the way to a hit campaign. Jeremy Stark co-designed 🐑 THE SHEEP, 🗝️ SHUFFLE DUNGEONS and 🐉 UNHEIST.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🌪️ Surviving the Gen Con tornado in a 10×10 booth

🍻 A board game company founded over "one drink after another"

🏥 From project-managing Pennsylvania Medicaid to shipping board games

💸 Where THE SHEEP's campaign money went — "I didn't go home with half a million dollars"

🚫 Gamefound passed on UNHEIST: "not the type of game for us"

🏮 His claim to fame — the lantern economy, and why it split their community

🐉 UNHEIST — kobolds putting a sleeping dragon's stuff back before it wakes

🎲 A secret dragon dice-builder with minis on the way

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🔗 LINKS

🐑 Zero Strategy Games

▶ https://zerostratgames.com/

🐉 The Unheist of Hearthburn House: Mansion Decorating Madness — live on BackerKit through October 10

▶ https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/zero-strategy-games/the-unheist-of-hearthburn-house-mansion-decorating-madness

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:43 - Who is Jeremy Stark?

01:46 - The sheep cover that stopped David at Origins

03:26 - Gen Con: surviving the tornado in a 10x10 booth

05:51 - Should conventions actually make money?

11:00 - From Pennsylvania Medicaid to board games

15:15 - Why editors can tell he's a Magic player

18:25 - Cutthroat Cove, 750 backers, and one drink after another

29:06 - What made Shuffle Dungeons break out

32:35 - One campaign away from cutting hours

35:43 - Where The Sheep's campaign money actually went

40:37 - Paid ads, AI noise, and falling returns

44:18 - Why Unheist left Kickstarter for BackerKit

45:47 - Gamefound: "not the type of game for us"

49:07 - Shuffle Dungeons: double-sided cards, one-hour crawl

54:57 - It was never supposed to be co-op

1:00:25 - Why there's no day-one expansion

1:04:00 - What the hell is The Sheep? (and a plushie run)

1:09:15 - The rule they rewrote 10 times

1:16:10 - Jeremy's claim to fame: the lantern economy

1:22:26 - Killer sheep, The Black Sheep, and internal controversy

1:35:25 - Unheist: returning a dragon's stuff before it wakes

1:42:29 - Why it's literally called "stuff"

1:46:04 - A three-player minimum and no solo mode, on purpose

1:55:18 - What he tells new players to buy first

1:56:11 - Dragon minis and what's next for Zero Strategy

#cardboard #bgss #unheist #zerostrategygames

Tend began as a Stardew-flavored side project Toby Sarnelle built just for his friends — then IV Studio co-founder Zac Dixon helped turn it into one of the most-requested flip-and-writes out there. 🌱 TEND's designers open up the legacy version that almost shipped, and the two expansions coming next — 🐝 HIVE and 🍷 CELLAR.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🧪 The legacy "mega sheet" — a tech tree of colored stars they spun on for six months, then cut

🧱 Walls in the mines, doomed rondels, and IV's standing policy on Austin's ideas

🎮 What years designing TWO DOTS taught Toby about hooking a player fast

🐄 The one-cow problem Toby would patch in TEND tomorrow

🐝 HIVE: four apiaries, bee dice, and a true roll-and-write inside a flip-and-write

🍷 CELLAR: a three-game mini campaign where your first farm sets up your last

📦 "Bring me three expansions and a standalone" — and what comes after HIVE and CELLAR

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🔗 LINKS

🌱 Tend by IV Studio

▶ https://shop.iv.studio/products/tend-board-game

🐝 Tend: Hive & Cellar Expansions on Gamefound

▶ https://gamefound.com/en/projects/iv-studio/tend-expansions

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:42 - Who are Toby Sarnelle and Zac Dixon?

01:59 - How Toby ended up on the same box as Zac

02:58 - From Two Dots lead designer to board games

06:48 - "I didn't even know scratch-offs were possible"

09:14 - It was never supposed to be a Stardew game

12:42 - The legacy mega-sheet that almost happened

18:14 - Walls in the mines, and why they died

19:01 - IV's no-rondel policy

20:30 - A redesigned Monopoly was Toby's first prototype

21:59 - What board games can do that video games can't

34:55 - What Toby would patch in Tend today

37:16 - The one-cow problem

38:57 - The fishing feedback they get most

51:10 - Tend was a deck builder a week before prototype

54:59 - Hive and Cellar come out of the legacy version

56:50 - How Hive's apiaries work

1:08:39 - Awards, without the Kickstarter records

1:16:37 - Cellar: a three-game campaign

1:27:08 - "If you play an expansion, engage with it"

1:36:57 - "Bring me three expansions and a standalone"

1:38:56 - Why ship expansions as a set

1:43:35 - The big box

1:49:37 - A new direction for the scratcher

1:50:18 - Wrap

#cardboard #bgss #tend

Jeff Kornberg has taught hundreds of thousands of people how to play board games, and not one of those rules has ever been true. 📺 THE DRAGON'S TOMB is eight years of completely straight-faced tutorials with entirely invented rules — and the man making them spent his day job building 🎬 CONDÉ NAST's biggest YouTube series, with over 800 million views on videos he personally produced.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🚌 A Greyhound bus review so uneventful it killed the opening question

🏙️ He gave away TINY TOWNS — all 375 pieces, one winner per piece, mailed in flat envelopes

🎲 ROCK PAPER SCISSORS DELUXE: Beth Sobel art, Chip Theory lore, and a real Rodney Smith how-to-play

🤖 The $2,000 AI sex doll review — 357,000 views, his biggest video in eight years

🪑 He reviewed a board game table nobody ever sent him. Then the "scam" table turned up.

📧 He invented a fake game, asked 300+ creators what they'd charge for a good review, and kept every answer

📱 "Hey, this is Mr B" — the text that flew him to Greenville

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🔗 LINKS

📺 The Dragon's Tomb

▶ https://www.youtube.com/@TheDragonsTomb

💜 The Dragon's Tomb on Patreon

▶ https://www.patreon.com/TheDragonsTomb

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:50 - Who is Jeff Kornberg?

02:35 - Gen Con: Whisperwood, and a suitcase that stayed small

06:58 - What Dragon's Tomb actually is — fake rules, played straight

08:48 - The Tiny Towns giveaway: 375 winners, one piece each

10:21 - 'You ran a Kickstarter'

12:38 - Rock Paper Scissors Deluxe — Beth Sobel art, Chip Theory lore

16:27 - Reverse pranking: the companies who never check the channel

18:18 - Do publishers mind? The PAX Unplugged fake-rules event

19:49 - Never breaking — the deadpan, and four takes a line

20:57 - The $2,000 AI sex doll

23:53 - Did YouTube demonetize it?

26:32 - The tutorial he refunded

31:51 - Kinson Key sweeps the Dice Tower Awards

34:56 - They want the footage — and they won't pay for it

42:03 - Reviewing a board game table that didn't exist

44:31 - The 'scam' table nobody else got sent

45:45 - The fake game, and 300 creators asked to sell out

51:34 - A $3 campaign for the experience of crowdfunding

56:49 - The day job: Condé Nast, and 800 million views

1:00:57 - Fuse, Google's $2M, and learning what makes people click

1:06:28 - The AI lemonade stand: ChatGPT vs Claude

1:08:14 - 'Hey, this is Mr B' — the text out of nowhere

1:11:12 - Greenville: D&D, Catan and poker night

1:16:29 - 'I could save you so much time and money.' He didn't care.

1:19:21 - The best celebrity he ever worked with: Weird Al

1:23:10 - The Pandasaurus wrestling match, and the pizza guy

1:25:03 - Filming Jackie Chan

1:27:23 - Thanks, and a PAX Unplugged plan

#cardboard #bgss

Support my work and join my community: https://crdbrd.app/

Koltin Thompson took a sick day from teaching fourth grade to launch his Kickstarter. It did $300,000 in the first 24 hours. He went back to work the next morning anyway — state testing was coming — and his co-workers wanted to know what on earth he was doing there. That game was 🚀 GALACTIC CRUISE, and it just won Dice Tower Game of the Year. T.K. King, Dennis Northcott and Koltin of Kinson Key Games came on to tell the whole story.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🏆 Three Dice Tower awards in one night — and why Game of the Year was the one T.K. was watching for

😭 Turning in a resignation, tears in the school bathroom, and going full-time into board games

🤒 The sick day that launched a $300,000 Kickstarter — and the co-workers who asked why he came in

🚀 "I'm calling it Galactic Cruise for now" — the placeholder name that never went away

🧟 The Frankenstein prototype, and a first version that was wider and shallower than the game you know

📋 Who actually made that player aid — the one people call the best they've ever seen

🎨 Getting to Ian O'Toole: "you have to meet 20 people before you meet Ian"

🛸 EXCURSIONS — why it's a whole new game and not an expansion

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🔗 LINKS

🛸 Excursions — a Galactic Cruise Game (launching soon on Kickstarter)

▶ https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kinsonkeygames/excursions-a-galactic-cruise-game

🚀 Galactic Cruise

▶ https://kinsonkeygames.com/galactic-cruise

🎮 Kinson Key Games

▶ https://www.kinsonkeygames.com/

💬 Kinson Key Games on Discord

▶ https://discord.gg/ZSCRGYJfUC

📺 Kinson Key Games on YouTube

▶ https://www.youtube.com/@kinsonkeygames3478

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:43 - Who are Kinson Key Games?

04:39 - Three Dice Tower awards in one night

07:10 - How two friends started making games

14:32 - Dennis finds them at Proto ATL

22:30 - Going all in on the first day of 2023

27:22 - Doing the math on quitting a salary

28:51 - The resignation, and a $300,000 launch

32:42 - "I am calling it Galactic Cruise for now"

34:38 - The first version was wider and shallower

35:18 - The Frankenstein prototype

45:09 - Why T.K. loves worker placement

48:32 - Where Developments came from

56:37 - Building the Progress Track

58:25 - Teaching people how it scores

1:01:40 - Achievements and Advancements

1:08:59 - The top-ranked player in the world

1:14:25 - The player aid everyone remembers

1:22:43 - Landing the art on a debut game

1:34:10 - Pitching the Achievements expansion

1:40:18 - Excursions - and why it is not an expansion

1:56:45 - Publishing other designers

2:01:59 - Weight, box size and delivery dates

#cardboard #bgss #galacticcruise

Does Cola Wars match your taste? :https://crdbrd.app/hub/game/682109fe-a66d-402c-a141-f4f9cf13c2d6

Matthew Meeple took his first game to Gen Con, put six people on it at once, and found out mid-demo that it literally could not be won. He raised $476,000 on it anyway. He's the founder of One More Turn Games — publisher of ⚔️ ASCENDANCY and the upcoming 🥤 COLA WARS — and he quit his job to do all of it.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🎲 A working cardboard vending machine that rolls your dice — no batteries, just a wooden dowel

📦 The box fight: hundreds of backers arguing over a retro 1985 box nobody can fit in a Kallax

😰 The delay email he was "terrified" to send — and why the replies changed how he runs campaigns

🕹️ "We actually can't win the game" — the Gen Con demo that sent ASCENDANCY back to the drawing board

🥤 How he saw an 80s nostalgia game in Cameron Fleming's prototype from the title alone

🧠 Two battlefields — "mind share" in the consumer's head, "shelf share" in the aisles of Thirst City

💼 Hire executives, fire them for the salary savings, and send interns to file TPS reports

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🔗 LINKS

🥤 Cola Wars on Gamefound

▶ https://gamefound.com/en/projects/onemoreturngames/cola-wars

🎮 One More Turn Games

▶ https://onemoreturngames.com/pages/cola-wars

📺 One More Turn Games on YouTube

▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpadGN6IfX_gt5WhTFdytg

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:40 - Who is Matthew Meeple?

01:59 - He quit his job to go all-in on One More Turn Games

03:41 - ASCENDANCY funded fast - would he do it again?

07:15 - Why his FIRST game was a huge asymmetric 4X

08:33 - What the first campaign actually taught him

12:00 - Never missing an update - ethics or compulsion?

13:48 - The box fight: retro and unstorable, or shelf-friendly?

18:33 - Will COLA WARS go retail?

20:35 - The update he was terrified to send

22:51 - Is crowdfunding oversaturated?

31:35 - The crazy vending machine dice tower

34:23 - Publisher trust, and the CMON problem

39:15 - Why he switched from Kickstarter to Gamefound

41:09 - The Gen Con demo where nobody could win the game

50:42 - Cutting the scope to actually ship

1:00:23 - ASCENDANCY is going digital

1:01:33 - The crafting game he still wants to make

1:03:45 - Finding Cameron Fleming at Gen Con

1:07:33 - What 20 years in advertising brought to the mechanics

1:09:53 - Shelf space: fast food to fine dining

1:12:48 - How a cardboard vending machine rolls dice

1:14:30 - Market research: buying your way out of bad luck

1:20:59 - Why your mind share halves every year

1:23:20 - Vice presidents, and the Ari Gold problem

1:25:31 - Hiring executives - and interns who ruin everything

1:32:11 - What is in store for the campaign

#cardboard #bgss #colawars

Chad DeShon ran a million-dollar Kickstarter, added another half million in add-ons, and made basically nothing — then turned that wreckage into one of the busiest publishers in board games. He's the founder of 🎲 ALLPLAY, formerly 🪑 BOARDGAMETABLES.COM, and he runs the whole thing out of a limestone mine.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🕳️ The Allplay warehouse is inside a decommissioned limestone mine — down the road from 750,000 square feet of federal documents

🪑 2014: he emails a stranger about a furniture order and ends up selling board game tables with zero woodworking experience

📦 THE DUCHESS lands at $499 against a $4,000 market and funds in minutes — then 25 containers arrive damaged

💸 "Everybody had to get their table, or the whole business just went away"

🎲 He played QE, emailed the designer to ask if he could publish it, and accidentally became a publisher

🏷️ Every review started "this is QE by BoardGameTables.com" — the naming problem that forced the ALLPLAY rebrand

🧲 His pitch advice for designers: whatever is unique about your game has to be in the first two sentences

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🔗 LINKS

🎲 Allplay

▶ https://www.allplay.com/

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:57 - Who is Chad DeShon?

01:04 - His office is inside a limestone mine

03:42 - The founder story starts with a furniture order

07:40 - The first table sells the day after the website goes live

09:59 - The Duchess: gamers touch the table and walk away

12:18 - Cold-emailing furniture factories in China

13:18 - $499 against a $4,000 market — funded in minutes

18:00 - 25 containers of tables arrive damaged

20:20 - A $1M campaign that made basically no money

24:37 - Redesigning the table around the UPS weight limit

27:24 - Dropping table parts in his basement to test the boxes

32:11 - What he learned watching Geek Chic go under

36:19 - Moving production out of China

42:37 - Why BoardGameTables.com became Allplay

46:38 - On Tour, then QE — how he became a publisher

50:27 - Rescuing Container and Through the Desert

56:01 - The nine-game Kickstarter, and what went wrong

1:00:14 - About 20 games a year, and why that number stops here

1:05:21 - Things in Rings, and still waiting on their Wingspan

1:12:27 - COVID, containers, and forecasting the impossible

1:18:59 - Why QE was never re-themed with animals

1:23:51 - Enchanted Ivy, their first solo game

1:30:58 - The convention booth as a marketing machine

1:34:59 - Jibber Jabble at Gen Con

1:42:04 - Mountain Goats Legacy and Sail Legacy

1:48:20 - Rapid fire: one table, one game forever

#cardboard #bgss #allplay

#cardboard #bgss #dicethrone #wroth

Manny Trembly had never designed a board game when he made 🎲 DICE THRONE — he was a comic artist who'd just been laid off. Ten years, 40+ heroes and a Marvel licence later, he still draws it, designs it, and now runs his own studio inside Chip Theory building ⚔️ WROTH.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

💼 Laid off ten years ago this week — a prototype in Nate's kitchen two days later

✏️ Comic artist first — an Eisner nod for PX, 3D models for MYST

🎲 "Too asymmetrical, too many dice" — everyone told him it wouldn't work

⚔️ Gavin Brown, Roxley, and the absurd EXCALIBUR box

🌈 WROTH — built in 24 hours with his kids

🔮 NEXUS and DICE THRONE DIGITAL are coming

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🔗 LINKS

🎲 Dice Throne

▶ https://dicethrone.com/

⚔️ Wroth & Neon Knight Games

▶ https://chiptheorygames.com/

⚔️ Wreck

▶ https://gamefound.com/en/projects/chip-theory-games/wroth-reprint--wreck-expansion

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:32 - Who is Manny Trembly?

01:27 - Fresh off Gen Con

10:20 - Why the small booths are where the magic is

11:53 - Winning a Dice Tower Award for Tanglewood

16:38 - A Jim Lee comic and the two-page spread that started it

21:32 - PX, the Eisner nomination, and dropping the E

23:00 - Myst, Cyan Worlds, and 'grandpa who fought in WWII'

26:05 - Meeting Nate — and getting laid off the same week

30:34 - 'What if we just translate this sucker into a board game?'

34:00 - Roxley, Gavin Brown, and the Excalibur box

40:25 - 'What you're doing is cool, but it's not going to work'

46:32 - The art: what Manny draws vs what Nick Malara draws

57:00 - Why dice make better stories

1:10:44 - Neon Reign — art that predates Dice Throne

1:15:40 - Joining Chip Theory and starting Neon Knight

1:28:13 - Wroth: fixing what keeps people off Root

1:47:20 - Wreck: boats, cannon dice, and the Exodus

2:04:30 - What WROTH actually stands for

2:26:11 - Manny's favourite hero of all time

2:30:40 - Nexus, Dice Throne Digital, and what's next

#cardboard #bgss #dicethrone #wroth

Helaina Cappel turned down more games than she published — and that's why KTBG and Burnt Island look the way they do. Teacher, publisher, and the one who rescued ⚓ ENDEAVOR off Z-Man's shelf and steered it into 🌊 DEEP SEA.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE:

🎓 Teacher to publisher — FOODFIGHTERS at the kitchen table

⚓ A year convincing Jarratt & Carl to hand her ENDEAVOR

🌊 Leaving the colonization theme behind for DEEP SEA

🌱 Zero plastic — "but it's flammable"

🗝️ LAIRS: $33, three print runs, all sold out

🔮 Ten more years of Endeavor

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🔗 LINKS

🎲 Kids Table Board Gaming & Burnt Island Games

▶ https://www.kidstablebg.com/

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Cold open

00:33 - Intro — who is Helaina Cappel

01:45 - Before we started rolling

02:24 - The teacher, Josh, and Foodfighters

08:53 - Funding on day 31 — Kickstarter in 2015

13:23 - "When did KTBG become a business?"

20:08 - Catan, Carcassonne, Caylus — becoming a gamer

22:53 - The KTBG DNA: fun, and scalable

26:13 - The "family weight" problem

32:23 - Cystic fibrosis — an unexpected connection

37:03 - Why Burnt Island exists

39:38 - Endeavor: from Z-Man's shelf to a year of convincing

44:43 - Decolonising Endeavor into Deep Sea

53:53 - Zero plastic: the bagasse insert fight

59:23 - Age of Sail is out of print for good

1:02:53 - Fall of the Mountain King — the one that should have hit

1:08:23 - Killing the print ads

1:13:23 - "New is better" — the treadmill

1:17:23 - Tariffs, Play the North, looking past the US

1:25:43 - Lairs — the $33 game she can't print fast enough

1:42:23 - How Lairs found her — an Eric Lang post

1:47:43 - Gen Con and Essen slate

1:49:33 - The future of Endeavor — ten games in ten years

1:56:48 - Advice: ask every single question

#cardboard #bgss #endeavor #kidstableboardgaming #burntisland

He won a Magic: The Gathering national championship at 17 — the youngest ever — and got the cards he won with banned. Then he built Ascension in 18 months, bet his life savings on 10,000 copies, and sold out at Gen Con. Justin Gary of Stone Blade Entertainment opens up 15 years of design secrets: why balance is a misnomer, how the One Ring broke his game (and the story moment that fixed it), and what's coming in Ascension: The Lord of the Rings.

Guest: Justin Gary — https://x.com/Justin_Gary

Stone Blade Entertainment: https://stoneblade.com

Justin's podcast & book: Think Like a Game Designer

Lord of the Rings Ascension Campaign: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/stoneblade/the-lord-of-the-rings-ascension#/section/project-story

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Cold open & guest intro

1:07 Welcome + the Tim Ferriss DM story

13:53 The Magic pro years & the hacker mentality

14:54 $30,000 and two banned cards

25:59 Dominion & the deckbuilding boom

29:25 Building Ascension: 18 months, 10,000 copies

46:35 "Balance is a misnomer"

1:07:07 Lord of the Rings Ascension

1:24:03 Taming the One Ring

1:28:33 Favorite set + what's next

1:38:37 The crowdfund + where to find Justin

GAMES IN THIS EPISODE

Magic: The Gathering — https://crdbrd.app/hub/game/4dd82420-e5a0-4cc4-afaa-3b7d2b60ce97

Ascension: Deckbuilding Game — https://crdbrd.app/hub/game/077eee6c-9a23-4f10-b72b-776c45514d2a

Dominion — https://crdbrd.app/hub/game/0b300d7c-f019-4594-8d4b-ef94c0e26585

SolForge Fusion — https://crdbrd.app/hub/game/874e3f7f-413f-47df-bc57-8b603d33937b

Discover every game mentioned on the show: https://crdbrd.app

#cardboard #bgss #ascension

He invented card crafting — and he may have just reinvented deck building. John D. Clair designed 🚀 SPACE BASE, 🏴‍☠️ DEAD RECKONING, 🎲 CUBITOS, 🐎 READY SET BET, and 🔮 MYSTIC VALE — and his new "momentum" system in ⚔️ UNSTOPPABLE is the engine behind the smash-hit 👑 DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL board game. In this one, I review Unstoppable to the designer's face for the very first time.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE, WE GO DEEP:

🧒 Designing his first game at 9 (thanks, Mom)

💰 Quitting the day job — royalties, risk & the AEG deal

🃏 Dominion, Ascension & why deck building is a design "cheat code"

✂️ Card crafting — why it never spawned a genre

⚡ Momentum deck building & the 2009 prototype that waited a decade

🎲 Luck vs. agency — why new players blame the dice

🌶️ The BGG comments he SAVES & the review that stung

🗞️ BREAKING: Floors 5 & 6 in the works for Dungeon Crawler Carl

🔮 What's next — Stormlight Archive, Mystic Lands & Electrify

👉 If you want to get inside the mind of the most inventive card game designer working today, this one's a masterclass.

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🔗 LINKS

⚔️ Unstoppable — Renegade Game Studios

▶ https://renegadegamestudios.com/unstoppable/

👑 Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable + RPG

▶ https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/renegade-game-studios/dungeon-crawler-carl-rpg-unstoppable

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

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🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 - Intro — who is John D. Clair

00:52 - Designing his first game at 9 (Monster Cards)

05:19 - Maze books & gamifying mazes as a kid

13:24 - Going full-time in 2018 & the AEG deal

16:52 - Why Unstoppable went to Renegade — the IP bet

18:52 - The games he loves (and the two kinds he doesn't)

22:59 - Inspiration & giving credit to other designers

27:12 - Playing Dominion for the first time

30:46 - Why deck building is so addicting

34:38 - Ascension's influence & Dead Reckoning's 2D market

38:52 - Card crafting — a lateral evolution, not a genre

42:16 - The deck building problem card crafting solves

46:05 - Deck-driven board games — Dune: Imperium & Arnak

47:35 - Unstoppable & momentum deck building

50:45 - The 2009 prototype behind Unstoppable

58:04 - The magic moment — two dead cards into a combo

1:00:27 - Difficulty & learning to pump the brakes

1:08:08 - Luck, agency & why new players blame the dice

1:17:48 - How many plays before Unstoppable clicks?

1:18:46 - What do reviewers owe designers?

1:22:03 - BGG comments, Space Base's two bad cards & the review that stung

1:31:36 - Fixing the card market — six levels, straight to hand

1:41:44 - Has momentum transcended deck building?

1:46:01 - The bosses & designing variety

1:52:26 - My gripes — sleeving and that theme

1:55:06 - The IP vision & the future of the Unstoppable line

1:56:36 - Patching a physical game & the new co-op rule

2:00:35 - Dungeon Crawler Carl's campaign mode

2:04:47 - BREAKING — Floors 5 & 6 expansion in the works

2:05:54 - What's new in DCC — looming bosses, races & mana

2:13:39 - The "Unbeatable" difficulty & how John playtests

2:15:17 - Stormlight Archive: War of Roshar (September)

2:17:14 - Mystic Lands & the art problem of card crafting

2:21:03 - Mistborn expansion, Electrify & a 2027 auto-battler

2:23:01 - Wrap-up

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#boardgames #boardgamedesign #unstoppable #dungeoncrawlercarl #deckbuilding #tabletop #renegadegamestudios #boardgamepodcast

One of the most storied résumés in the entire board game industry. Zev founded Z-Man Games, published 🦠 PANDEMIC and the first English 🌾 AGRICOLA (and basically invented the "animeeple" by deluxing it), signed the original ENDEAVOR, spent seven years exploding the WizKids catalog with ~100 games, and now runs his own publisher — ✨ PLAY TO Z.

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🎙️ IN THIS EPISODE, WE GO DEEP:

💰 The real economics of conventions

🏆 Why Origins beats GenCon for a premiere

🃏 The CCG days & Shadow Fist

🤝 Betting on co-op when NOBODY wanted it

📦 Under-printing Pandemic

🌶️ His (spicy) take on expansions

📜 IP licensing headaches & the Middle-earth project

🚀 Crowdfunding, paid previews vs. review copies

🔮 What's next for Play to Z

👉 If you care at all about how the board game industry ACTUALLY works, this one's a masterclass.

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🔗 LINKS

⚔️ Siege Perilous — LIVE on Gamefound now (through July 14)

▶ https://gamefound.com/en/projects/play-to-z/siege-perilous

✨ Everything Play to Z has going

▶ https://www.playtozgames.com/

❤️ Support My Work — Join Cardboard

▶ https://crdbrd.app/

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎧 TOO LONG TO WATCH? THIS IS NOW A PODCAST!

🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-board-game-secret-show/id6785378165

🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033GRnTDINaxqcoJksaCl4

🔵 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/01414914-23bd-4f4c-a29f-50daa231f364

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⏱️ CHAPTERS

00:00 ▸ Intro — who is Zev Schlasinger

00:39 ▸ Origins & how the con has changed

03:04 ▸ Why publisher attendance is dropping

04:15 ▸ Conventions are marketing — money is gravy

05:03 ▸ The ROI secret: premiere something new

06:56 ▸ Why release at Origins instead of GenCon

🃏 THE CCG YEARS

09:07 ▸ From CCGs to board games — the Z-Man origin

09:53 ▸ Always a gamer: wargames, Magic & judging

11:31 ▸ Grave Robbers From Outer Space changes everything

13:16 ▸ Breaking into board games & the "Rio Grande wall"

16:40 ▸ How you found games to sign back then

18:33 ▸ Selling off Shadow Fist / leaving CCGs

23:38 ▸ Would he ever do a CCG again?

📈 BUILDING Z-MAN

24:49 ▸ When did Z-Man feel like a success? ("one disaster from bankruptcy")

28:21 ▸ Under-printing Pandemic & Agricola / print runs

33:04 ▸ Lead times then vs. now / the Soothsayers reprint

🦠 THE BIG HITS

36:01 ▸ Meeting Matt Leacock & signing Pandemic

38:03 ▸ Betting on co-op when nobody wanted it

42:22 ▸ Play to Z's philosophy: engaging & different

43:31 ▸ Signing Agricola, the $70 euro risk & animeeples

48:48 ▸ Publishing the very first Endeavor

52:40 ▸ Zev's honest take on expansions

🏢 Z-MAN, WIZKIDS & IP

1:05:00 ▸ Why he sold Z-Man (and kept working there)

1:07:28 ▸ The WizKids years — 100 games in 7

1:11:47 ▸ The reality of working with IP & licensing

1:20:54 ▸ The Middle-earth game & Asmodee's curation

✨ PLAY TO Z & THE INDUSTRY TODAY

1:27:08 ▸ Why start Play to Z — hitting the ground running

1:29:40 ▸ Crowdfunding — why he resisted it for so long

1:33:02 ▸ Crowdfunding vs. bank loans & publisher risk

1:39:37 ▸ Paid previews, review copies & marketing ROI

1:47:27 ▸ Social media & staying transparent with the community

1:52:29 ▸ Board games vs. digital / BGA & the tactile future

🎯 WHAT TO PLAY NOW

1:54:40 ▸ Play to Z's lineup — Siege Perilous, 23 Knives & more

1:56:52 ▸ The most slept-on Play to Z game

2:00:45 ▸ Late-year releases — Dogs of War, Soul Journey

2:03:21 ▸ Where to find Siege Perilous & wrap-up

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#boardgames #boardgamedesign #zmangames #pandemic #agricola #tabletop #playtoz #boardgamepodcast

Board game designer Peter Hayward (Rolling Deep, Things & Rings, That Time You Killed Me) sits down for a wide-ranging, 3-hour conversation about what actually makes a game fun, why he's stepping back from designing to chase screenwriting, and how he reverse-engineered the feeling of Balatro into a tabletop roguelike.

We get into the apex of game design, the difference between fun, satisfaction, and winning, why Flip Seven sparked a friendly fight, the $120k debt that nearly ended it all, the "offer he couldn't refuse," and the absurd timeline that took Rolling Deep from first prototype to Kickstarter in under six months.

🎲 Rolling Deep hits Kickstarter June 23rd: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bitewinggamesnick/rolling-deep-and-eureka-dice-adventure-roguelike-and-campaign

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 Cold open

0:42 Designer vs. salesman: the dream nobody warns you about

1:37 The real daily grind of a working designer

3:02 Willow, his sisters & "external processing"

5:27 23 Slack channels with his sister

8:44 How does Peter have fun?

9:07 Fun vs. satisfaction vs. winning

11:02 The apex of game design

11:48 Making "dumb apes feel clever"

12:32 Puzzles, Sudoku & writing sitcoms

15:47 Intrinsic vs. extrinsic joy

22:20 Breaking So Clover (and co-op games)

23:59 Is Flip Seven even a game?

25:29 The threshold of agency

26:03 Why Flip Seven might be a top design of 20 years

30:34 Being a board game "sommelier"

32:30 The Candyland question

33:40 Why he's ending the Fun Problems podcast

34:50 The screenwriting dream & getting into the US

39:02 A "typical" day & external obligations

43:12 $120k of debt to a net worth of zero

44:32 The offer he couldn't refuse

50:14 The ridiculous Rolling Deep timeline

51:36 The Cuphead artist & the cover

53:42 Why Peter designs mechanics-first

55:05 The three hooks: mechanical, component, thematic

1:08:42 Falling in love with Balatro

1:09:31 What Balatro actually is

1:24:08 So what is Rolling Deep?

1:30:39 Translating planet cards into mushrooms

1:33:08 Turning interest into a real decision

1:38:13 Bosses & engine destroyers

1:43:41 Jokers become tableau rows

1:48:13 Broken combos: feature or bug?

1:55:21 "Use the paints already on the tray"

2:04:48 Custom dice faces & the rules budget

2:19:11 Discovery cards

2:28:35 Achievements & roguelike unlocks

3:02:00 Going full-time: fuck around and find out

3:07:45 Peter's other income streams

3:09:40 Building an "engine" on YouTube

3:11:17 Wrap up

#boardgames #gamedesign #rollingdeep #kickstarter #tabletop #balatro

I need your help to keep this going. The #1 way you can support me is join my community here: https://crdbrd.app/

Zeshawn from Board and Shield has played over 500 board games — and he's just as deep in the book world as the board game one. In this episode of the Board Game Secret Show we go all the way down the rabbit hole: how a Game of Thrones version of Risk pulled him into the hobby, why he merged books and board games onto one account, the narrative campaign games worth your table (Dragon Eclipse, Oathsworn, Spire's End), a hot take that might get him canceled (Castles of Burgundy is overrated), and his complete all-time Top 10 — including why Black Rose Wars will NEVER leave the #1 spot.

We also cover the board-game-to-book pipeline: what to read if you love Blood Rage, the cozy parallel to CozyStickerville, and the standalone novels every gamer should pick up.

🎲 Follow Zeshawn here:

@ZeBoardandShield

https://www.instagram.com/boardandshield/

https://www.tiktok.com/@boardandshield

The #1 way you can support me is join my community here: https://crdbrd.app/

—————————————————

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

—————————————————

0:00 — Cold open / teaser

0:30 — Who is Zeeshan & Board and Shield

1:03 — How we connected on TikTok

2:34 — Cross-posting TikTok / IG / YouTube + why he hates editing

5:08 — Being authentic beats high production

6:07 — His first videos: nerves, photos → talking to camera

7:53 — Will we ever get long-form? The monthly-recap idea

9:29 — The origin story: Game of Thrones Risk changed everything

13:08 — Champions of Midgard & his first worker placement

14:31 — Getting people into the hobby (the gateway-game problem)

16:13 — Top 10 lists & the YouTubers that hooked him

18:26 — Books or board games — which came first?

18:53 — Between Two Fires: a horror book deep dive

21:57 — His reading journey & the deluxe-edition parallel to board games

25:01 — Why he merged books + board games onto one account

27:21 — Niching down vs. being yourself (and dealing with haters)

29:13 — Booktok creators worth following — and how huge that world is

31:39 — The golden age of Lord of the Rings board games

33:35 — There and Back Again & the "cozy" debate

34:22 — Cozy Stickerville obsession

37:15 — Corey Konieczka (Twilight Imperium → Cozy Stickerville) & Vantage

41:33 — Narrative campaign games: Dragon Eclipse & Oathsworn

44:04 — Dragon Eclipse as an arena battler ("I wish it were Pokémon")

47:03 — Can board game writing ever match a real novel?

48:32 — Tainted Grail & the Spire's End games

53:08 — Sponsor break: Cardboard

54:01 — Getting board gamers INTO books

56:08 — Legends & Lattes: the cozy book pick

57:06 — Can a book capture the *feeling* of a board game?

59:36 — Standalone book recs (The Sword of Kaigen, Blood Over Bright Haven)

1:00:21 — The paid-content & publisher journey

1:03:36 — Staying selective + the one publisher he hasn't worked with (Awaken Realms)

1:04:40 — Auto-buy publishers & designers: Board & Dice + Stefan Feld

1:05:41 — HOT TAKE: Castles of Burgundy is overrated

1:08:38 — Favorite Board & Dice game (Teotihuacan)

1:09:46 — Windmill Valley & Danny Garcia

1:11:20 — More hot takes: Ark Nova & Viticulture

1:14:07 — THE ALL-TIME TOP 10 — #10 Marvel Champions

1:17:36 — #9 Avalon

1:19:09 — #8 Nusfjord

1:21:13 — #7 Blood Rage

1:22:23 — #6 Primal: The Awakening

1:23:31 — #5 Dominion

1:26:36 — #4 Santorini

1:29:30 — #3 Inis

1:30:57 — #2 Spirit Island (is it really cozy?)

1:33:01 — #1 Black Rose Wars (the forever #1)

1:38:09 — Breaking into the list: Grimm Coven

1:44:15 — The future of Board and Shield & where to follow him

1:45:20 — How he finds time for all of it

1:46:37 — Closing thoughts: the stories behind the hobby

#boardgames #boardgamecommunity #tabletopgames #booktok #blackrosewars

BigPasti makes $1,000 a month on YouTube, refuses every free game publishers send him, and is building his own game designed to make you miserable. So we sat him down and ran through 20 of the spiciest board game takes on the internet — Earth, Secret Hitler, Zombicide, FOMO, sleeving, AI art, and whether the designer even matters.

Agree? Disagree? Drop your own hot take in the comments. 👇

🎲 Back his game, SUNLIT'S EULOGY, on GameFound: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/dear-euthyphro-studio/sunlits-eulogy

📺 Subscribe to BigPasti: https://www.youtube.com/@BigPasti

Support this show by becoming a member: https://www.crdbrd.app/pricing

Join the Secret Club Here: https://www.crdbrd.app/hub/clubs?club=the-board-game-secret-show

Want to work together?: https://crdbrd.app/hub/creator/neon_gorilla

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ CHAPTERS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

0:00 Intro

2:58 Who is BigPasti

3:31 How the channel blew up

4:21 He makes ~$1K/month (and won't take free games)

13:11 Why he refuses publisher copies

18:10 His game: Sunlit Eulogy (the religion game)

32:03 How Sunlit Eulogy actually plays

49:14 Designed to make you miserable

51:09 TAKE: If you bring it, you learn it

52:10 TAKE: A game is 90% discovery

58:43 TAKE: Bad rulebooks & the 30-second rule

1:02:22 TAKE: House rules aren't cheating

1:05:37 TAKE: Camel Up is the best game ever made

1:08:12 TAKE: Did you even play the game?

1:11:34 TAKE: Suboptimal play is still playing to win

1:12:45 TAKE: Don't trash a borrowed game

1:14:22 TAKE: Sleeving is a waste of time

1:18:12 TAKE: "Good mad" is good game design

1:30:10 TAKE: Multiplayer solitaire is boring

1:33:48 TAKE: Can you trust BGG ratings?

1:40:28 TAKE: What even IS a game?

1:45:51 TAKE: All games are art

1:53:00 TAKE: Looks-maxing wins

1:53:52 TAKE: Be honest about player count on the box

1:56:15 TAKE: Complexity isn't depth

2:02:18 TAKE: Secret Hitler is a baby game

2:05:02 TAKE: FOMO is the sin of the decade

2:13:42 TAKE: Zombicide is Funko Pop board gaming

2:14:35 TAKE: Earth is hollow

2:16:16 TAKE: AI art is cringe

2:27:26 TAKE: Reveal your income

2:31:29 TAKE: Does the designer matter? (Phil Eklund)

2:44:26 Wrap-up + the thumbnail A/B challenge

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

#boardgames #boardgame #tabletop #hottakes #bgg #boardgamereview #gamefound #kickstarter

Daniel from@thinkgaming fled his country in 2022 with no job, no money, and no plan. Three years later he's running one of YouTube's most dedicated nerdy strategy channels — 500+ hours into Elder Scrolls, the official How-to-Play creator for Too Many Bones, and somehow he's never missed an upload week.

We talked about losing everything in a single day, sleeping on a friend's couch in London, why he treats his channel like a library instead of a newsstand, and what it actually takes to build a niche board game channel without selling out to the algorithm.

If you've ever been told "the only way to grow is top-10 lists and preview videos," this episode is your permission slip to ignore that advice.

Support this show by becoming a member: https://www.crdbrd.app/pricing

Join the Secret Club Here: https://www.crdbrd.app/hub/clubs?club=the-board-game-secret-show

Want to work together?: https://crdbrd.app/hub/creator/neon_gorilla

Chapters

0:00 — Cold open

1:24 — Fleeing Moscow with nothing

6:15 — The bus across the border

9:14 — Discovering the Global Talent visa

10:25 — Falling into board games (Mice and Mystics → Gloomhaven)

14:23 — Finding purpose during visa limbo

16:11 — The first (failed) YouTube channel

20:03 — "A library, not a newspaper kiosk"

23:26 — Hobby vs. business: the Ali Abdaal scale

31:55 — Ikigai and the why behind the work

34:17 — The two things he's most proud of

35:50 — Two jobs, never a missed week

44:30 — Watching metrics without serving them

49:58 — Only covering games he actually loves

57:44 — Family, Cheltenham, and the introvert problem

1:04:08 — "I have to do this. This is my mission."

1:14:15 — Going deep on Grimcoven

1:24:03 — Too Many Bones and the Wave 2 wait

1:29:15 — Filming the official Too Many Bones tutorial

1:32:41 — Elder Scrolls vs. Too Many Bones

1:39:17 — Why he still hasn't reviewed Elder Scrolls

1:49:03 — Advice for aspiring creators

@iv-studio-games started making commercials for Nike, Amazon, and Bad Robot. Then one Christmas, Zac invited Austin over to "just make a board game" — for fun, for nostalgia, no plan. That became Moonraker. Six years later, IV Studios is one of the most design-forward indie publishers in the hobby — shipping on 9-to-12-month timelines, running 800-person community tours, and somehow maintaining a reputation for quality across many titles while Austin keeps losing his rondels every time he goes on vacation.

We talked about the moment they stopped making ads and decided to make the thing itself, what it actually looks like when three designers with contradictory ideas have to build one game, why they published their press kit publicly, and what Zac wrote a 120-page screenplay for. (It's a board game. It ships next year.)

If you've ever wondered how a small team ships beautiful games on time while also designing the next five and running a community tour — this is the blueprint.

Check out Altera: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/iv-studio/altera

Check out Honors End: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivstudios/honors-end

Check Out Realm of Reckoning: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivstudios/realm-of-reckoning

Support this show by becoming a member: https://www.crdbrd.app/pricing

Join the Secret Club Here: https://www.crdbrd.app/hub/clubs?club=the-board-game-secret-show

Want to work together?: https://crdbrd.app/hub/creator/neon_gorilla

Chapters

0:00 — Cold open

0:34 — Intro

1:48 — Animation studio to board games: the origin

4:22 — Ten years making ads for Nike, Amazon, and Bad Robot

5:34 — "We wanted to make the thing, not the thing talking about the thing"

5:59 — The Christmas break that made Moonraker

9:29 — "Grossly underqualified" — Austin runs the division anyway

13:22 — When did they actually believe this could be real?

15:06 — Six months in: "You should stop paying me"

18:32 — What happens when the design team disagrees?

24:03 — "Don't go on vacation — they'll take your rondel"

27:52 — Who leads a project and how does it get handed off?

28:46 — "You don't know anything until it hits the table"

30:22 — The cutting room floor and the games that came back

31:55 — Time to Panic was designed in a weekend (while Austin was traveling)

36:16 — Moon Rollers and why it doesn't feel like a small box game

38:40 — Toby Arnell and why Tend is a game they couldn't have made themselves

43:09 — Tend's complicated Kickstarter — their lowest ever

45:30 — How does one small team ship this many games?

48:19 — Everyone wears multiple hats (and tariffs killed the hiring plan)

49:27 — Direct to consumer, FLGS, and the Amazon experiment

53:25 — Would IV Studios survive without crowdfunding?

55:41 — What crowdfunding lets them do that nothing else can

57:50 — 800 people on the Altera tour and how feedback actually gets used

59:50 — How to parse feedback when half the room says opposite things

1:01:46 — The playtest mistake Zach had to stop and correct

1:03:38 — Danny Garcia barely plays his own games

1:05:34 — Where IV Studios stands on AI

1:09:22 — Designing for play 1 vs. play 50

1:11:38 — Why Leder Games impresses Zach as much as it does

1:13:23 — "The cover is the most important part of the game" — Zach disagrees

1:15:24 — Old Kings Crown and the second-game problem

1:17:48 — Do they actually design for the 100-play game?

1:19:04 — The guy who played Tend solo through 200 scratch sheets

1:20:48 — Why Austin gives every content creator his personal number

1:25:40 — Publishing the press kit publicly after the backlash

1:28:47 — 100 tens and 100 sevens vs. 100 nines and 100 twos

1:31:38 — "The worst thing we could possibly do is bore you"

1:34:32 — Mythic Mischief: the outlier

1:36:06 — Realm of Reckoning: the pitch

1:40:07 — How Moonraker became a co-op game (Honors End origin)

1:42:26 — The card-tucking breakthrough

1:45:08 — "I'm a quarterback co-op player and I hate that about myself"

1:47:16 — 9-to-12-month turnarounds (and why Honors End is late)

1:47:38 — Austin wrote a 120-page screenplay for a board game

1:49:21 — Nine chapters, nine envelopes, New Game+

1:51:21 — Altera: dice-builder worker placement and 12 asymmetric factions

1:55:59 — The "is this too big?" video and the unanimous playtesters

1:58:42 — Why there are no metal dice (and the Moon Rollers math)

2:00:28 — Pre-Columbian sci-fi and how they hire artists

2:03:42 — Luck vs. skill ceiling in a dice game

2:05:00 — "Toby demolished all of us yesterday"

Two Latvian guys, one YouTube channel, zero plans to stop — I sat down with Jānis G and Jānis T from Board Game Hangover to talk about building one of the most creatively ambitious channels in the hobby from Riga, Latvia, going viral with Eternals, refusing publisher money on principle, and what it actually costs to do this full time.

We get into the messy reality of running a board game channel you love — failed outdoor videos, box-sliding rituals, child labor allegations, two years without a paycheck, and why they're "cowards" who won't launch a Kickstarter. Plus a lightning trivia round featuring a truly catastrophic guess at the Monopoly man's name.

Board Game Hangover: @BoardGameHangover

Support this show by becoming a member: https://www.crdbrd.app/pricing

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Want to work together?: https://crdbrd.app/hub/creator/neon_gorilla

— CHAPTERS —

0:00 Intro

0:32 Meatball & Worker Placement Dad Joke

1:18 Their First Board Game Obsessions

7:26 How the Two Giannises Met

9:16 Latvia's Board Game Scene

14:27 Starting the Channel in 2020

15:44 Evolving Away From Top Ten Lists

20:18 Going Full Time

22:15 Their Biggest Failures (The Outdoor Video)

23:03 David's Camping Disaster ("Nobody at All")

27:35 Growth Story & Getting Recognized at Essen

32:35 Production Value & The Box Slide → Box Throw

39:15 The Team ("Child Labor on Our Channel")

40:12 Favorite Series to Make

47:33 The Eternals Video Nobody Expected

51:09 Covering Older Games vs. Chasing the Hotness

55:27 "We Don't Take Publisher Money"

1:01:35 Living Off Savings & Finally Getting Paid

1:06:13 "We're Cowards" — Why No Kickstarter

1:07:05 Review Copies: "Not Really Free"

1:13:03 Do You Still Love It? (Follow-Up Reviews)

1:18:19 Sons of Anarchy & Never Going Back

1:22:13 How Many Plays Before You Review?

1:29:49 Responsibility to Publishers

1:37:23 TRIVIA ROUND

1:48:54 Top Three Channels — "We're Not Leaving Until You Tell Us"

1:50:44 Outro

Danny Garcia has quietly become one of the most thoughtful designers in board games — and in this episode, we go deep on exactly why. We talk about his unconventional design process (he builds entire games in his head before writing a single note), his obsession with action selection, why theme always comes first, and what it means to share your culture through cardboard.

We also get an extended look at Diabolus, his upcoming crowdfunding game inspired by the Ball de Diables — a Catalan fire festival Danny has attended over 100 times. It's unlike anything he's designed before.

In January, Danny announced he had been diagnosed with ALS. His resilience and dedication to doing what he loves, for as long as he can, make this conversation even more meaningful.

Support People Like Dani Here: https://fundaciomiquelvalls.org/es/ela/

Support Research Here: https://www.als.org

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Go Follow Diables: https://gamefound.com/en/projects/saltandpepper/diables

Support this show by becoming a member: https://www.crdbrd.app/pricing

Join the Secret Club Here: https://www.crdbrd.app/hub/clubs?club=the-board-game-secret-show

Want to work together?: https://crdbrd.app/hub/creator/neon_gorilla

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00:00 — Intro: Who is Danny Garcia?

01:10 — Danny joins / host expresses his admiration

01:45 — Is Coming of Age underrated?

03:25 — "I was winning 1,995% of the times" — the luck debate

04:08 — The frustration mechanic: thematic brilliance explained

07:09 — Danny's background: 15 years in the video game industry

08:40 — How he discovered Euro games (hint: a table across the room)

10:49 — The night Brass changed everything

11:23 — Learning to design by watching Rahdo

12:28 — Weight preferences: tactical vs. strategic

15:16 — "You make the games you want to play"

16:34 — Danny's design process: no notes, just thinking

17:23 — Building the entire game in his head before prototyping

18:34 — Waiting for ideas to arrive (and why forcing it doesn't work)

20:14 — Ideas coming at midnight — and redesigning the next morning

21:12 — How he had 5 games signed before anyone knew his name

23:21 — Getting publishers to take a chance on an unknown designer

25:10 — Why he sends "unfinished" games to publishers on purpose

26:09 — The mistake most new designers make: over-polishing

28:40 — Choosing the right publisher for each game

29:08 — Why Barcelona's theme was non-negotiable

30:48 — Theme-first vs. mechanics-first: how Danny evolved

32:25 — Why theme is now the only way he can generate original ideas

34:35 — Diabolus: the game, the festival, the inspiration

36:50 — The Ball de Diables explained — and why the drums had to be in the game

39:42 — Danny's design signature: action selection

41:03 — Why action selection is where originality lives

44:42 — How action selection works in Diabolus

47:48 — The main board modules and how scoring works

51:34 — The social media mechanic — why it's in a medieval fire festival game

54:15 — How Diabolus compares to Danny's other designs

55:47 — Reinventing yourself with every game (Stefan Feld, Tomas Holik)

58:29 — Games with lasting replay value / what Danny returns to

01:00:19 — How Danny designs replayability into his games

01:01:18 — The Barcelona expansion: does it make the base game better?

01:02:16 — On designing expansions: "publishers ask, I prefer something new"

01:04:38 — Why Danny never holds back content for future expansions

01:05:47 — Does he ever regret a design decision after release?

01:06:19 — His recent themes: Catalonia, culture, childhood, home

01:07:33 — Using board games to share your culture with the world

01:09:47 — What's coming: Gaudi, Windmill Valley dual, an archaeology + time game

01:11:29 — Positive interaction as a design philosophy

01:13:03 — His obsession with time travel (and a game being designed around it)

01:14:15 — Do aliens exist? Does Danny believe in time travel?

01:15:39 — Final words on Diabolus

01:16:26 — Closing