Image Credit: Phoenix Comicon, Copyright 2010, 2014

This week brings us Phoenix Comicon Fan Fest 2014 at University of Phoenix Stadium – yay! To help get us prepared for the event, Jillian Squires from Phoenix Comicon dropped in to talk a little bit about the upcoming festivities. Also, I continue a discussion about whether or not Magic: The Gathering belongs in the pantheon of “classic” games. Also, congrats to Arizona’s first Preliminary PTQ winner – Zack Freeman – with his Abzan Reanimator deck!

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Topics

04:18 – Arizona Preliminary PTQ discussion, including the PPTQ coming up on Saturday, 12/13 at Play or Draw

05:35 – Emergents: Genesis DBG Kickstarter

06:08 – Modern Masters 2015 / Grand Prix Las Vegas

09:48 – Cards Against Humanity Holiday Bullshit Puzzle

13:26 – Casting of Suicide Squad

19:40 – Is Magic: The Gathering a “classic” game?

33:57 – Interview with Jillian Squires, Director of Public Relations for Phoenix Comicon

55:30 – Game night at the Casa Del Blogadin

Songs

15:53 - Jesse Malin – “Prisoners of Paradise”

28:18 - Sex and Patriotism – “Fit 2 b Tied”

50:38 – Dead Against the Rest – “White Ace”

A while back I recorded a video entry for Passport Game Studios’ Holiday Jingle contest (you can see my entry above). In short, they called for people to write new lyrics to a holiday song, and in those lyrics we were to mention Passport Games along with as many oftheir game titles as possible. The entries were whittled down to three, and whoever receives the most votes will get all the games they mentioned in the video.

Santa’s elves have aparently taken pity on me, for my entry broke through to the finals! Now I need your help. More specifically, I need your votes in the form of clicks and tweets. This will only take a few moments and won’t cost anything.

(Also, please note that if I win, I’ll be donating over half the games I receive to charity OR using them to help raise funds for chairty. If you have no desire to help me, do it for the kids! THE KIDS!!!)

(Seriously, though…charity.)

Votes are being accumulated on both Twitter and Facebook, and you can vote using both platforms. Here’s what I need you to do – and please do all that apply:

If you use Facebook

Navigate to this voting site, answer their brief questions (you DON’T have to “like” their page to vote), and vote for Finalist Number 2 – The Blogadin!

If you use Twitter

1) Navigate to this site and register to vote in the contest.

2) Retweet this tweet

If you have friends or family

Have them come to this page and make them follow the instructions provided above.

Thanks for all your help with this, folks! I truly appreciate each and every vote you’re able to provide!

This week I dive into an article from The Street where the author claims our collections are largely worthless, plus I give a brief review of Tiny Epic Galaxies (soon to be on Kickstarter) and cover the the week’s two biggest watercooler topics – the Star Wars trailer & The Walking Dead midseason finale.

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Notes

06:50 – I’ll be a guest host on The Geek Allstars Podcast at GenCon 2015

07:45 – The Dukes of Dice podcast

09:00 – Star Wars Episode VII Trailer

Stephen Colbert’s Lightsaber Explanation

George Lucas’ Special Edition of SW Ep 7 Trailer

14:15 – The Walking Dead Mid-season finale surprise

16:25 – The changing landscape of the convention scene

BGG-FAM convention announcement

25:50 – Your collections and why they’re (supposedly) worthless

Difference between “worth” vs. “value”

42:15 – Upcoming local events

Preliminary PTQ @ Desert Sky Games

Preliminary PTQ @ Play or Draw

Phoenix Comicon Fan Fest

45:20 – Tiny Epic Galaxies by Scott Almes & Gamelyn Games

Songs

21:10 - Udora – “The Beautiful Game”

38:15 - Black Lab – “Learn to Crawl”

This one was an unscheduled, non-streamed recording – the first of it’s kind so far from The Blogadin – to take the place of the usual streamed variety due to Mrs. Blogadin having been rudely involved in a highway accident (all parties involved are okay) on Tuesday. No guests and limited preparation, but I wanted to put it out there for you nonetheless. You may notice my voice sounds a little different on this one (hopefully for the better) due to some new audio settings I’m testing on the mixer. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Enjoy the time to play/buy more games
 

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Links

BoardGameGeek Thank You post

Boardgamegeek Convention

Mysterium – Portal Games

Credit – Orin Zebest – https://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/

There’s about 3,000 board gamers out in Dallas right now getting ready to put the bow on Board Game Geek Con 2014. I, unfortunately, am not one of them. Instead, I got to participate in #bggcant and enjoy some Korean food out in the deserts of Arizona – it’s not all bad, but it definitely isn’t as fun as it would have been to be in Dallas right now. C’est la vie.

Of those 3,000 people, there’s a small handful of them that I want to extend a hearty, “Thank you!” to – Brittanie Boe (@gamewiregirl), Stephanie Straw (@InsertStrawHere), Debbie Ohi (@BGGgirl), Tiffany Ralph (@TheOneTAR), Rhiannon Ochs (@rhiochs), Suzanne (@425Suzanne), Marguerite Cottrell (@maggiebot), and Kyle Van Winkle (@KRobVW). I’ve never met any of these people before – a crime for which I should be arrested – but they have done a fantastic job of helping me feel like I was only 100 miles from the convention instead of 1,000 by sharing pictures of the convention, new tattoos, and quotes of personal moments & bathroom frustration (although I do agree on both counts – bathrooms aren’t for socializing, & toilets should be kind enough to wait for you to leave before flushing). I even won Debbie’s impromptu doodle captioning contest!

Congrats @TheBlogadin for winning my impromptu #bggcon caption contest! pic.twitter.com/Rj2aDzGSDg

— Debbie Ridpath Ohi (@BGGgirl) November 23, 2014

By the way, if you’re on Twitter & love board games, you should be following those folks. They’re something I like to call “awesome”. It’s people like this that convinced me that Fall BGGCon 2015 is a MUST for me to attend. Can’t wait to invade the Lone Star State next year, hopefully with some of y’all along with me!

(Seriously, thanks for all the coverage and sharing the moments – it truly helped me feel like part of the con, if only in some small way!)

This week’s show featured the great Brian David-Marshall – the voice of the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour and Pro Tour Historian – to talk about his freshly-launched Kickstarter campaign for his new deckbuilding game, Emergents: Genesis. The game is an interactive PvP deckbuilder featuring characters from David-Marshall’s own comic book universe where the superheroes are called “Emergents”. We also discuss some of the interesting nerdy news from the past week, as well as mention local comic creator Raven Gregory’s latest project, Widow’s Web, now with limited edition variant covers available for sale.
 

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Topics

06:10 – The Euros hit a pebble in space from 4 billion miles away

09:15 – Fantasy Flight Games merges into the Asmodee Group

12:43 – ICV2 reports that Wizards of the Coast intends to bring back the Open Gaming License

19:50 – Interview with Brian David-Marshall

Emergents: Genesis Kickstarter Campaign

Urban Island Games

Top 8 Magic Podcast

Magic Articles

42:54 – Widow’s Web / Raven Gregory’s new site

Songs

16:05 – The Living End – “Long Live the Weekend”

Today’s episode wishes all our service members out there a Happy Veterans Day, and a special thanks goes out to all my Marines out there proudly sporting the eagle, globe & anchor! On your feet when you here the hymn, Marines! Featured in this show is a conversation with Mike Girard, owner of Mesa Comics and Sr. Game Designer for Renegade Game Studios, as well as me waxing not-so-poetically about why right now is the best time in history to be a nerd (true story!). Also featured early in the show is a bit of chatter on Blake Northcott’s Arena Mode saga & her Kickstarter campaign for the concluding book thereof, Final Empire.

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Topics

04:47 - Arena Mode Saga by Blake Northcott

09:56 - AEG announced their latest expansion to Smash Up, Pretty Pretty Smash Up.

12:47 - Blizzard announces Overwatch at Blizzcon 2014

22:15 – Right now is the best time in history to be a nerd

34:08 - Discussion with Mike Girard

Mesa Comics

Renegade Game Studios

53:30 – Fantasy Flight World Championship Weekend 2014

Living Card Game set rotation announced

A Game of Thrones LCG 2nd Edition announced

Songs

16:18 – “No Use Denying” – The Cool Waters Band

29:40 – “Throw Me a Line” – Kevin Reeves

49:05 - “Never Give it Up” – Crossfire

This episode marks the passing of the first month of our show…HUZZAH! It ran much longer than normal due to the epicly long chat with Trevor McGregor, Lead Developer (I got it right!) for My Little Pony CCG. Trevor and I go back in the gaming industry more than a decade, so the fact that things went long shouldn’t come as a suprise to me, I suppose. In any event, Trevor spoiled an upcoming card during our talk – the first official spoiler ever announced on the show, in fact – so be sure to listen in on the conversation for a taste of things to come in Canterlot!

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Topics

09:16 - Tiny Epic Kingdoms by Gamelyn Games

13:12 - Extra Life fundraising event at Imperial Outpost Games

15:21 - TCG Silver event at Play or Draw Games – plus demos of Munchkin Loot Letter!

21:32 – “The Confusing Hierarchy of the Board Game Community”

 Critical Question – Commandments

34:15 – Discussion with Trevor McGregor – Lead Developer at  Enterplay

Enterplay’s Facebook Page

Official Twitter feed for My Little Pony CCG

The Crystal Games Pre-release Application

Songs

16:41 – “Endless Struggle” – Throw the Fight

27:58 – “Fallaway” – Fissure

Solid show this week backed up by a Royals win in Game 6. Here’s to hoping that they replicate those results in Game 7 and take home the trophy!

Also, ownership of Mesa Comics has provided further details about their Grand Opening this weekend.

• Free hotdogs & tacos
• Raffle prizes
• Games for kids of all ages
• A visit from Spider-Man!

Be sure to call up the store at 480-582-6642 with any questions about their festivities, gaming schedule, or product lineup.

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Topics

05:15 – Apology for last week’s terribly poor, unpublishable audio content

Corey Young’s Twitter feed

Gravwell – Renegade Game Studios

06:55 – Cryptozoic responds to WotC lawsuit

10:47 – Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer released (this is the extended version released during the webcast!)

14:10 – The Flash is best debut for CW in 5 years & gets picked up for a full season

20:40 – Marvel announces movie lineup through 2018

Aggregated movie calendar for all known upcoming comic movies

31:17 – Randy Hoyt from Foxtrot Games discusses Lanterns: The Harvest Festival

Lanterns Kickstarter campaign

Randy’s Twitter feed

Foxtrot Games website

51:52 – Benefits of volunteering for a company in the industry that you want to enter

Songs

17:00 – “Wait” – Canto 6

27:58 – “Bubblegum and Beer” – Supersuckers

47:27 – “Lost Angeles” – Berman