Board All The Time

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to Episode 33 and this one is a super special episode for us. See around Mark’s birthday in March each year is MacWagCon and we just play games starting at 7p on Friday and go absurdly late for the next couple days. When we finally wrap up late on Sunday, we’re all exhausted. This year’s con was the biggest yet and we had some incredible guests join in - including our guest on this particular episode! We had a really great time speaking with Marc Specter from our channel sponsor Grand Gamers Guild. We had a winding conversation discussing what it’s like to be a small publisher, licensing and localizing games, editing rulebooks, and fighting off a collector’s mentality with him. Jason had a turn at Why Did I Play That this week and somehow caught himself in the blast too. And then we got to talking about a lot of different games in Table Shelf and Trade. It’s a longer one this week, we played a lot of games that weekend, but I do think it’s a really enjoyable episode regardless. Once you’ve listened to it, hit us up at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com and let us know what you think or if there is anything else you’d like to know from Marc!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to the review for Kaiser Cucumber & the Gangs of McChanicle Corners. This was provided to us by the folks over at Fight in a Box. Kaiser Cucumber is a great filler social deduction game 2-4 players (or 1-4 with the expansion). Once more we were entirely charmed by the art and had a good time with this one. Check out our review, go pick it up from Fight in a Box’s webstore (linked below) and then let us know how you liked it by hitting us up at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com. Thanks again to Fight in a Box for providing us the game!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to all the new folks that have come into the fold from the Brass content! We're stoked to have you with us. This episode is one where clearly the crew was having too much fun taking shots at each other. This time around we decided to break down those ambiguous terms of luck, tactics, and strategy to try and have a defined conversation; Scott nailed us with yet another word game (and had us using the phrase Banana Balls multiple times), and then we get into a surprisingly contentious Table Shelf or Trade segment that finishes out with us just feeling old because 2021 shouldn't be five years ago. Thanks for checking this episode out and make sure to let us know what you think of everything by hitting us up on the comments or emailing us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com! And if you haven't listened to our Brass content yet, go do so! --- This episode's segments: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:48 - What's Been on the Table 00:03:38 - Topic of the Week: Luck, Tactics, and Strategy 00:19:08 - Why Did I Play That: Sequitur 00:30:31 - Grand Gamers Guild Sponsor 00:31:38 - Table / Shelf / Trade 00:55:16 - Rotating Segment: The Archives 01:05:21 - Secret Door Sponsor 01:06:12 - Meeple Source Sponsor 01:07:12 - Victory Roll Sponsor 01:08:03 - Contact Info for BATT and Theater Geeks 01:09:15 - Outro --- Notes! 1) I'm gonna straight up copy what Roxley said about us in Update 19 here because I'm over the moon that we got this notice from them: "If you want the deepest mechanical breakdown of Brass: Pittsburgh out there right now, look no further than Board All the Time. Their love for the Brass series comes through in every minute of both videos, and their comparison with Birmingham might be the best discussion of what makes Pittsburgh its own thing that we've seen from any creator so far. Pittsburgh Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCOwDZ8YbY8 Birmingham vs. Pittsburgh Comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEm33dR9ajw If you want to go deep before the campaign closes, these podcasts are for you. " (HOW COOL IS THAT?!) --- 2) The Gamefound Link! https://gamefound.com/en/projects/roxley/brass-pittsburgh 3) Roxley's Brass Pittsburg Store Page: https://roxley.com/products/brass-pittsburgh 4) Brass: Pittsburgh BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/452264/brass-pittsburgh --- We'd like to thank our sponsors as well: Grand Gamers Guild! https://grandgamersguild.com. Use Discount Code BATT10 to make sure that we are supported AND you let them know that we sent you. Secret Door Games! They can be found at https://www.secretdoorgames.org or 215 S. Main St, Elkhart Indiana 46514. Meeple Source! https://meeplesource.com/?PARTNER=battg Be sure to keep that partner bit (?PARTNER=battg) on the end of any link on their site, and you'll get us our affiliate linking! Victory Roll Cafe! https://victoryrollcafe.com or 711 W McKinley Ave, Mishawaka, IN 46545. --- You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com. We finally put a linktree together! https://linktr.ee/boardallthetime We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/368857/top-100-games-2025-edition If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6 Theater Geeks! https://www.twitch.tv/theatergeeks --- We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music.

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this preview for Brass: Pittsburgh in support of their Gamefound campaign! The new standalone version, and the first one in eight years, of Brass from Roxley Games. This new game is going to feel both familiar to players of Birmingham as well as radically different for all the changes it makes. In this particular episode we’re actually comparing all three versions of Brass side by side largely looking at how the gameplay systems are executed on. We’ve intentionally kept a rules teach out of our Pittsburgh content right now since the rule set (as of this recording) isn’t finalized and changes could be forthcoming. Be sure to check the episode out, hit up their Gamefound page, and then get in touch with us about what you think about Brass: Pittsburgh! The link to the Gamefound campaign is below!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this review for Brass: Birmingham! Brass: Birmingham is a 2-4 player highly interactive, economic, heavy Euro game that we already had within the BATT Library. We are doing this in leadup to the release of Brass: Pittsburgh’s Gamefound campaign next week. You can find the links to that below. Brass: Birmingham is designed by Martin Wallace, Gavin Brown, and Matt Tolman and is a very different game than it’s originator, Brass: Lancashire. You may not like one if you like the other but it’s entirely worth trying both out to find that out for yourself. Check out the review to find out what we thought of it and let us know what you think after listening by emailing us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this Kickstarter preview for Fractured Sky: Awakening! The new expansion for the big box game Fractured Sky from IV Studios. This expansion is going to provide players with four brand new mix and match modules to put into all of their sessions of the game. Be sure to check the episode out, hit up their Kickstarter page, and then get in touch with us about what you think about Awakening! The link to the Kickstarter campaign is below and we hope you check it out! Also, listen to the end for us to revise our general opinions on Fractured Sky - turns out we’d been misinterpreting a rule that completely changed the way we felt about the game overall.

Hey BATT Family! We recorded this episode LIVE!!! at PopiCon 2026 on January 31, 2026. This was a really fun, weird, what-if type of list similar to what we did at PopiCon last year. It’s gone through a light editing pass to mostly condense the conversation and keep it from being overly long with a lot of the uhms and pauses, but you should feel like you were part of our audience that evening! Thanks again to PopiCon for hosting us and thank you so much for checking this episode out and we’ll catch you on the next one!

Hey hey BATT Family! Sorry to overload you with top ten lists recently, but here is Episode 30! As it’s a multiple of five it is a top ten list and this week’s episode is about Simultaneous Action games. This was recorded at Gen Con on July 30th, 2025 in the BATT hotel room, so it’s a bit more echoey than usual. This topic was brought by the guest of the show, Derian, who has been a good friend of ours for yeras and runs all of the demo tables at Gen Con. If you’ve ever seen the dude wearing a bright orange shirt, a mohawk, and a utilikilt - that’s our boy. We cover some really great games here and even had a couple (big ones) that were forgotten off of some of the lists. Give it a go, let us know what you think and we’ll see you in two weeks with Episode 31 where we have the president of Level 99 Games on with us!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to another top ten list! This time Mark and Scott are running down their best games of 2025! This was a great episode to record and it was amazing to realize how many games that we had played that released this year for us to actually be able to do this list. There are some really excellent games here, especially ones that we weren’t expecting to be on at all. We hope you have a great time with this one and let us know what YOUR top ten games of 2025 were!

Hey hey BATT Family! Huzzah for Episode 28! I would really love for one of these edits to go a lot smoother and thankfully I think this should be the last super difficult one for a while. Regardless! We have AJ from Van Ryder Games on with us and had an absolute blast talking with him! We got to talk the wide array of Van Ryder’s games, what games to show to new people, and I got to absolutely traumatize Scott and Jason with this week’s pick for Why Did I Play That? This one really was a ton of fun to record so we hope you enjoy it just as much as we did!

Hey hey BATT Family! The first major episode of Season Two is here! We have a great conversation with Curt Covert from Smirk and Dagger games for this episode and we break down the way they’ve seen the hobby change in the 22 years of their existence. Jason also has his first deployment of a game at Mark and Scott for Why Did I Play That and for the first time we have a guest join us for Table Shelf and Trade! It’s a super fun episode and we had a lot of it end up going to an Odds and Ends in the future like the way we did with James Hudson because otherwise this thing would have been almost three hours long. Hope you enjoy this and we can’t wait to hear what you think about it! Thanks for joining us for season two and getting to hear about all of our new sponsors as well!

Hey hey BATT Family! Welcome to this Kickstarter preview for Rolling in Wonderland! The new 2-4 player dice placement and set collection game from Bellows Intent and Borogove Games, this is mid-lightweight game where you’ll be rolling a handful of dice and triggering all sorts of asymmetric abilities. Today we are going to be covering everything the game is about as well as touching on some of the changes you’ll be seeing if you’ve gotten to play the game in a prior form. The game does come to us from designer Daniel Alves with art by Arthur Mask. Be sure to check the episode out, hit up their Kickstarter page, and then get in touch with us about what you think about Rolling in Wonderland! We love the guys over at Bellows are are psyched that they wanted to partner with us again on this. Spoiler alert, the whole BATT crew really enjoyed this so hopefully you will as well.