The board gaming podcast where different industry veterans bring a game and a topic for the group to discuss. By Christina Ha, Dan "Shoe" Hsu, and Mike Zipkin.
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181: The top board game conventions (and what they offer) (guest: Paula Deming)
Board game conventions: These massive gatherings of game makers, game players, and games can be so fun (and sometimes chaotic), but how do you know which to go to? You've got Gen Con, Essen Spiel, BGG.CON, PAX Unplugged, Origins, Dice Tower...and these are just the big-name ones. This week, we're joined by Paula Deming of Things Get Dicey (and about a billion other board-game-related projects).…
180: Gen Con 2026: The news, the games, the almost-tornado
Gen Con 2026 was eventful. We saw some big shifts in the tabletop industry, we previewed a trillion new games, and we even got a close call with a tornado. Yes, a real-life tornado. As cool as it would've been to see thousands of cards, dice, cubes, and other pieces swirling into the heavens, we were thankful no precious games got hurt. Oh, and people, too. We're back from North America's largest…
Last episode, we had an expert come on the show to talk about trick-taking games. But we're not sure what's an "expert" for the broader category of just "card games" so...no guest today! Just Christina and Shoe talking about new cards games they got to try that all have one interesting element or twist to them. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Cozy Stickerville. Sponsored spot: MILLRAT Pack! –…
178: 7 new, different, and weird trick-taking games to check out (guest: Taylor's Trick-Taking Table)
You just can't miss 'em: trick-taking games are everywhere. Maybe there are too many -- but we did find some interesting new ones that are worth a closer look. And who better to join us in this discussion than Taylor Reiner of Taylor's Trick-Taking Table? Taylor's done it all in this category: content creation, game development, and original designs. Together, we cover a few noteworthy new…
177: All the interesting bits from the 2026 UK Games Expo
It's always fun to get a peek at what goes on at these giant board game conventions in faraway exotic lands -- in this case, the United Kingdom. The 2026 UK Games Expo is behind us now, but our man on the inside (of the country) got to go and tells us all about it. Henry Stenhouse, frequent Going Analog contributor and full-time British guy, gives us his thoughts on the UK's largest hobby games…
176: Making board games is harder than making video games (guest: Tim Schafer, Double Fine)
Legendary video game designer Tim Schafer of Double Fine (Psychonauts, Broken Age, and most recently, Kiln) has been one of our board game buddies for years now. So we took advantage of that relationship and put Tim on the show, filmed right in Double Fine's studio. As our guest, he gets to pick the topic, and he had several good ideas. We steered him toward our favorite, though: Why making board…
175: The 2026 American Tabletop Awards (guest: What's Eric Playing?)
We were a little late in getting Eric Yurko from What's Eric Playing? on the show to discuss The American Tabletop Awards. But hey, these are 2026's winners and nominees...for games released in 2025. So who's to say when we should be covering these things? We are also on the judging committee, so it's always fun to do this each year: bring Eric on, discuss the winners and almost-winners, and tell…
174: Big deck energy, Let's Go! To France (guest: designer Josh Wood)
Our industry guests pick the topic that they want to discuss on our show, and Josh Wood, designer of Let's Go! To Japan (and the upcoming Let's Go! To France), asked us if he can talk about "big decks." That was an immediate "yes" from us, without even knowing what he meant (Hey, "big decks" makes for a great headline). What it's really about: the recent trend of huge decks of cards that supply…
173: A bunch of light/party games we wanna tell you about
Last episode got too heavy for us, so we're going super light this time around. Light games, party games...we have a dozen of them to chat about this week! Chapters: Game pick: Vantage. Light/party games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We might need to make this an annual tradition: We get new heavy games in. We take forever to learn them. We then spend hours playing them (with our good friend Daniel from The Game Table, who even spent the night at our place this time to get in more gaming the next day). Then we record a podcast episode giving our thoughts on them. We have a bunch of new, newish, and future releases to cover, so…
Fort Circle Games takes history very seriously...but not overly so. Titles like Votes for Women and The Halls of Montezuma treat their subject matters with respect (the women's suffrage movement and the Mexican-American War, respectively) with research, consultants, and even facsimiles of documents. It might sound a little dry, but Fort Circle is on a mission: to bring this knowledge to gamers…