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PODCAST

So Very Wrong About Games

A podcast about all manner of hobby games by Mike Walker and Mark Bigney. Bad games don"t go easy on you, so we don"t go easy on them. Thorough analysis via reviews, news, and discussion of topics in gaming. We take context seriously, we value your time, and we"re not into hype. Just because games are fun doesn"t mean we can"t take them seriously, and just because we take them seriously doesn"t mean we can"t have fun.

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All Episodes

75:36

#284: Zoo Vadis

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/10/24

On October 27th, 1962, a man named Vasili Arkhipov saved the world. Literally. Had he not stood up to his commanding officer and refused to launch a nuclear warhead during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the resulting retaliations would have obliterated all human life. Probably the marmosets and gibbons, too. We here at SVWAG think the man deserves a holiday in his honour, especially given that we all owe our lives to him. October 27th is Arkhipov Day.Games Played Last Week:01:05 -Undaunted: Stalingrad

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88:57

#283: Calling It a Win

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/10/17

"Somethin' tells me it's all happening at the zooI do believe itI do believe it's trueThe monkeys stand for honestyGiraffes are insincereAnd the elephants are kindly but they're dumbOrangutans are skepticalOf changes in their cagesAnd the zookeeper is very fond of rumZebras are reactionariesAntelopes are missionariesPigeons plot in secrecyAnd hamsters turn on frequentlyWhat a gas, you gotta come and seeAt the zoo"-Simon and Garfunkel, "At the Zoo", clearly written

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68:13

#282: City of the Great Machine

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/10/10

It's all Fat Bear Week and puns this week, both of which share one important characteristic--they have distended, pendulous bellies. Wait, that wasn't it.It's that they are both to be respected for their power and danger. Those people you hear about who try to live with bears always suffer the same fates as the serial deployers of puns, in that they are both found dead and alone. Games Played Last Week:01:42 -Undaunted: Stalingrad (Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson, Osprey Games,

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68:25

#281: Games for Mixed Company

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/10/03

We turn to yet another discussion of important issues in boardgaming, this time WE INTERRUPT YOUR SILLY EPISODE NOTES FOR A SERIOUS ANNOUNCEMENTIt is fat bear week! The possibility of a US federal government shutdown has been averted, and thus the voting public (even foreigners, we won't tell) may vote on which lorge bois of the ursine variety shall take the prize! For those uninitiated, the US National Park Service runs a bracketed competition to determine the preferred corpulent bear. Note:

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77:41

#280: Knarr

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/09/26

Any old person could consult Wikipedia, but only the true elite tune in to SVWAG to hear Walker summarize random boat-related articles for them. It's a power move to rival even the most outrageous exploits of the viking peoples. Games Played Last Week:00:50 -Faeries & Magical Creatures (Glenn Drover, Foridden Games, 2023)05:27 -Dogfight! (Carlo A. Rossi, PSC Games, 2023)09:48 -Ceylon (Chris Zinsli and Suzanne Zinsli, Ludonova, 2018)12:10 -Almost Innocent (Philippe Attali, Kolossal Games,

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68:38

#279: Barcelona

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/09/19

We return to the bizarre cant of Letterkenny, invoking specifically the term "ferda," which is a contraction of "for the boys/girls." It is a great way to punctuate a sentence, especially if you do not wish to be understood--but that is true of all cant. Relatedly, if you haven't already, please do peruse our own glossary on sowronggames.com! We are not above our own cant, especially given our penchant for acronyms.Games Played Last Week:02:07 -My Island (Reiner Knizia, KOSMOS,

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86:16

#278: Ending Games Early

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/09/12

Walker and Huey voted to end the game early, but there were then procedural questions as to whether that warranted a runoff in the French Presidential style. Chip III repeated his preference for a ranked-choice voting system, but he couldn't decide whether his second choice was a single transferable vote or first past the post. Meanwhile, Mark gerrymandered the rest of the table into one sprawling district, and made three new districts intersect at his spine so he got three votes to everyone

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63:27

#277: Race to the Raft

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/09/05

No cats were harmed during the recording of this episode. Official SVWAG cat Chandler (aka Potato aka Chan-Chan aka The Chan-Man) had his dignity challenged when Mark laughed at his strange partially-shaved body, but we don't think that counts. Official SVWAG dog Bruno (aka The Dog) resents human non-walk activities, but again, that probably doesn't count. The editorial gibbons and the HR gibbons colluded to classify Mark and Walker as "sub-animal automated speakboxes" and then took

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65:12

#276: Gaming on the Road

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/08/29

I was originally going to riff on Ginsberg's Howl, but I confess I had completely forgotten what a monster of a piece it is--redolent in imagery and references that are very much of a time since past. I considered then moving on to Nelson's On the Road Again, and faced the opposite problem--man, that song has some simple lyrics. I guess Shelley and Shakespeare are the sweet spot. 01:24 AYURIS: Praga Caput Regni (Vladimír Suchý, Delicious Games, 2020)Games Played Last Week:03:56 -Shadowrift

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72:25

#275: Nidavellir

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/08/22

As a certain talk-show huckster was wont to say, we train people how to treat us. Without absolving other people of their own responsibility, we can nonetheless take a certain amount of responsibility for entirely predictable reactions to our own decisions. "Don't feed the troll," goes the internet wisdom, and wise it is--Mark routinely fails to heed that good advice in the face of taunting by Walker. That said, Walker cannot claim to be long-suffering about Mark's mythological

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93:16

#274: Cruel Betrayal of Expectations

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/08/15

David Hume argued that all ideas are either simple or complex, and that in turn all complex ideas are merely composed of simple ideas. He wasn't a huge fan of some of those complex ideas; he used the example of a chimera, where you take a lion, a snake, and a goat (three simple ideas, but we can quibble with that later if you like) and smush them all together to get a complex idea. Hume was sceptical about complex ideas, to say the least.We can agree or disagree with Hume on many fronts, and

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85:43

#273: Games from the Crypt

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/08/08

There was A Time Before. Historians no doubt will soon abandon the antiquated notions of BCE and CE, and will instead resort to the infinitely more practical Pre-SVWAG and Post-SVWAG eras. In the dim and distant past of Pre-SVWAG, people had the audacity to release games before we could weigh in on them officially. Whether this was borne of opportunism, undue haste, or some other impulse we will not speculate.03:40 AYURIS: Khôra: Rise of an Empire (Head Quarter Simulation Game Club, IELLO,

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70:33

#272: Archeos Society

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/08/01

Perhaps the greatest lingering question is how and why the Ethnos fantasy races were translated into academic professions for Archeos Society's re-theme. Apparently dwarves (Ethnos) are analogous to photographers (Archeos Society), and orcs (orc board!) are akin to curators. Odd. Halflings into students seems appropriately condescending. As much as the comparison stings, though, I can't teally object into making trolls professors. I've met some that truly fit the description.Games Played

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70:39

#271: Expeditions

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/07/25

Some randomness is accepted nearly uncritically by many gamers. Conventional deckbuilders have exceptionally high variance as a rule, but no one bats an eye. We accept that anything martial might have mixed results, even after repeated attempts--in fact, many protest when the wound-making is too deterministic. Tiles from a bag? Sure. The instant that locomotion is involved, though, your typical gamer gets all shirty. Magical Athlete would like a word.Games Played Last Week:02:52 -Don't

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73:39

#270a: Bonus Patreon Sampler

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/07/22

We offer to you a sampler, a little smorgasbord, a variety platter of content from our Patreon. We hope this will placate you in light of our absence last week. If you'd like more, you can of course support us on Patreon. Only if you want to, though. We'll still be wrong either way.www.patreon.com/SVWAG03:46 Pledge of Indifference 2023-07-06 Audio (we also publish a video version)03:56 Shipwrights of the North Sea07:17 Tanares Adventures Ultimate Edition11:41 Cyclades Legendary Edition18:14

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88:56

#270: Ra

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/07/18

While we pride ourselves on editorial standards here at SVWAG, we have no shame when it comes to pandering. We thus present to you the episode of SVWAG with the most cat discussion yet. The good news is that Chandler (aka Chan-Chan aka Potato aka SVWAG Cat) is doing extremely well. Could a co-host stint be far behind? Perhaps a guest appearance by Bruno (aka SVWAG Dog)? Whatever we think the market wants.Games Played Last Week:02:20 -The Siege of Runedar (Reiner Knizia, Ludonova, 2021)03:27

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62:13

#269: Credibility in Crowdfunding

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/07/04

Two crowdfunding campaigns stand before you. One only tells lies, the other only tells the truth. Both claim to be innovative and to be able to deliver on time. How do you decide which one to back? Or wait, a crowdfunding campaign launches but during the funding period every individual component is replaced by a new one; is it the same campaign? Or wait, there are five crowdfunding campaigns on one side of a track and one campaign on the other, and this trolley...02:25 AYURIS: Imperium: The

en

71:17

#268: Undaunted: Battle of Britain

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/06/27

It is a well-known fact, observed by Infinity: the Game, Across the Spider-Verse, and Undaunted: Battle of Britain, that a Sikh man in uniform is always a good look. So here's to pilot Singh in his Hurricane! Not to mention Sergeant Singh in his power armour, and Captain Singh in his Spider-Man movie (in my heart, it is his film).Games Played Last Week:01:01 -The Defence of Procyon III (Dávid Turczi, PSC Games, 2021)11:02 -That's Not a Hat (Kasper Lapp, Ravensburger, 2023)14:49 -Beyond the

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79:45

#267: Top 10 Revisited & "Golden Age"

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/06/20

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is running a Kickstarter. It is trivially easy to string together quotations going back to the dawn of human civilization lamenting how the youth are ruining everything, how the good old days were so great, and wishing we could go back to the golden age. See, I blame it on the baby boomers aging and succumbing more and more to nostalgia. See, in the good old days, before the boomers, we had things in perspective.01:51 AYURIS: Anno

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79:52

#266: Pent-Up Extravaganza

So Very Wrong About Games ·

2023/06/13

Mark's enthusiasm for Dungeon Scrawlers is telling. Whereas most children enjoy mazes, drawing, or even colouring, Mark instead as a child enjoyed the programmatic, deterministic mundanity of connect-the-dots. Straight(ish) lines and ascending natural numbers only, please. No doubt at a similar age Walker was already pursuing his jock/theatre kid synthesis, doing a number from Gilbert & Sullivan as his endzone dance after scoring a touchdown. 01:13 AYURIS: Soldiers in Postmen's Uniforms

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