by Ava Jarvis
Like an amnesia patient, I started going through my old posts on BGG. What had I written about before? It's been years, after all. I vaguely remember nattering on about chess variants and BattleLore, but that's about it. I think I might also have combined Alan Moore's (not Moon's) analysis about spiritual planes with the thematic scale.So apparently I used to write about boardgame design: how games work, or don't work. I had an affinity, and still do, for boardgame systems like Icehouse pieces, the Decktet, and Piecepack.
I thought about wanting to write about boardgames again. I need to write, you see, or else the words start to bubble over in my head. (I know to some this sounds quaintly self-delusional, but they can shut up.) And my renewed obsession with boardgames seems to be setting me up to write pretty much exclusively about them.
Thus I'm spinning up yet another blog, this time analyzing game mechanics and sometimes individual games themselves. For instance, we can describe Feld games as "point salad", but many of his games, from The Castles of Burgundy to Amerigo, are often really a conglomeration of separate mechanics, and how successful a particular Feld game outside of the Feld fandom depends on how well those mechanics mesh together.
Stay tuned to this station. Subscribe if you like. I'll also start up a Geeklist to keep my collection clean, keeping at least three weights of each mechanic.