Matt Ollis

Today’s A Nice Cuppa came in at 9pts, just about “satisfying tea” and still satisfying to play.

Less good, I messed up the printing on Pentaquark so i couldn‘t even try that.

#sologames

52 Duels: Fight with Playing Cards Heroes clash in this 1-2 player print at home game from the creators of 52 Realms ⚔️

We've just launched the Kickstarter campaign for 52 Duels, our latest release from @postmarkgames.bsky.social !

It's a 1-2 player game using 2 decks of standard playing cards to duel with your opponent. Lots of different characters and strategies to explore!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/pos...

Backed. Looks great!

13pts and perfect tea on my first play of Scott Almes’s A Nice Cuppa, from @buttonshy.bsky.social.

Unfortunately, it was too interesting for me to retire it and claim I’m too good at it to play again. I might not hit these heights again, so I thought I’d declare it here.

#boardgames #sologames

Good showing from the midlands generally, not just AVFC. Something in the air?

Games: Agency as Art was great. I'm looking forward to this, now that I know it exists! Thanks for posting about it.

Crownfell Design Diary: No such thing as a bad idea - We Heart Games What started as a joke post snowballed into my favourite game design yet. Here's how it happened.

The entirety of #Crownfell 's existence was triggered by a throwaway joke...

With just 8 hours left in the crowd sale, here's the story of how it got started, and where it went from there. 🎲✂️

Three-player game of Fromage today, my second play. A close win for the 14yo on debut.

We now understand it well enough to fully enjoy it, I think. And it's very enjoyable. I also checked out what's in the Formaggio box, but we haven't tried adding anything in yet.

#boardgames

Without having actually played yet, I think Summoner Wars is as much of a touchpoint as chess, but that might be me connecting to what I'm familiar with. Somewhere between the two perhaps.

Both good games to be similar to though.

They also printed me a nice-looking board, but I stupidly left that in my office, so no pictures until next week.

Want your own copy? On sale *today*.

A selection of Crownfell cards, printed on 30mil PVC.

@weheart.games very kindly resized the beautiful #Crownfell cards to fit the PVC credit-card-like cards that the Emerson Print Shop have. They came out great! The black and white with flashes of red/blue really suits this, I think.

Now I have to play it!

#boardgames

Exclusive: available only where beer is sold.

Copy purchased! Thanks for making it available like this.

I'll print it next week and give it a whirl.

Victory! ...for my opponent. I lost 70-67.

But a fun game that looks and feels great. We'll definitely be playing more, and playing better now we've done it once to see how it all works. Probably a few more base games before digging into Formaggio.

Two player game of Fromage, set-up and ready to play.

Ready to go!

Going to play Fromage later this afternoon for the first time. We also have Formaggio (completely unplayed). For a first game is it best to stick with the Fromage board pieces, or are any of the Formaggio ones good to sub in on a first play?

#boardgames

Halfway between daydreaming and serious planning #2: what are some cool events or things to do that are:

* related to #maps,
* taking place between mid-May and mid-June 2026,
* accessible from Birmingham, UK?

Bonus points if they have an academic slant.

Halfway between daydreaming and serious planning: what are some events or things to do that are:

* related to #boardgames,
* taking place between mid-May and mid-June 2026,
* accessible from Birmingham, UK?

(And are not UK Games Expo---got that one!)

Bonus points if they have an academic slant.

My game studies students, who pretty much all came into the class with Monopoly as their mental image of the ideal game, will be reading the Obligatory Monopoly Chapter next week.

I'm pretty sure they'll be surprised, amused and interested!

Brilliant!

The size of those Pentaquest ones is the only option: 3.375"x2.125" on 30mil PVC. Do you think that's a viable size to tweak to? The art is so good, I'd love to do it justice!

I didn't get time to stop in in person, so I'm waiting for an email response.

I think I've changed my mind about 20 times while reading the thread. But, based roughly on amount of time invested and with hefty recency bias:

Can't Stop Express
Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Chess
Cosmos Empires
Heroscape
Mantis
Moonshine
Nekojima
Pandemic
Summoner Wars

Ha, yes. PVC bricks for the super-deluxe edition?!

Apparently I meant "mil", meaning thousandth of an inch, and something got mistranslated somewhere. So 30mil, which is a much more reasonable 0.03".

Oh, also meant to say: they're 30mm PVC (I don't know why two dimensions are imperial and one is metric) and double-sided printing is possible.

That'd be awesome! I've dug up the old emails and these are 2.125" x 3.375". Before you put any effort in though, let me talk to them when I'm in next week and see if there are other options.

Will do! Here're the Pentaquest ones I had done. The pictures don't really show off the card material. But they're really like the texture and firmness of credit cards, and might even be exactly the same stuff.

Just purchased the PNP version, including the solo expansion. The metal cards are intriguing, but I have a great printshop so I love PNP and choose it whenever possible. They made me some nice credit-card-like ones for Pentaquest; maybe I'll have them do the same here.

Looking forward to playing!

Cave Goblins are probably my favourite from the original and I like the Polar Dwarves and Fallen Kingdom a lot too. From the expansions I was enjoying the Skyspear Avians and Cloaks a lot before I stopped playing as much. I see there are a whole bunch of newer expansions to check out too.

I love Summoner Wars!