Ted Mann Schaller 🔜 ECCC, TCTC, Gamestorm

Oh, I also go through my follows on insta like 2x per year and cull folks I don’t care to follow, so they often show up too!

I find that the suggested friends list is mostly actual people I have met in person, but only like once or twice. Not frequently enough to actually want to follow. So in a way I guess it works well for me…

Coming soon: Walkable City - the Urban Planning Boardgame Asymmetric Cooperative boardgame about building a city without cars.

Announcing Walkable City - a 2-4 player coop game published by Fowers Games and designed by me!

Build out public infrastructure as different modes of transit - Waling, Biking, Bus & Light Rail - get denizens where they want to go. Follow the project below!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/fow...

Go back this lovely thing. It’s such a delightful game!

Unfortunately no. 😢 Hoping to make it back out there next year!

A delightful illustration showing a lizard, armadillo, and opossum playing a piano trio. The text Counterpoint is shown below.

Gearing up to take Counterpoint on the road next month for a few back to back tabletop cons.

Mar 5–8: Emerald City Comic Con (Seattle, Wa)
Mar 13–15: Terminal City Tabletop Convention (Vancouver, BC)
Mar 19–22: Gamestorm (Portland, OR)

Who will I get to see? Wanna play some music? 🎲✂️🎻🎵

My game design hot take is that you should rarely follow game designers’ advice. Especially industry professionals. Everyone has different goals they’re designing for and contexts they’re coming from that it’s rarely going to apply to you.

Definitely listen, but don’t feel like you have to follow

Today I emailed publishers about a concerning practice a board game media creator engaged in. This will likely become public, so I'm providing the details here to give the full context of what I shared.

1) Document: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/o8ovt...

2) Video: youtu.be/fHXGWflPj4c

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a lego diarama version of the hot dog suit scene from I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE, complete with tiny hot dog suited tim robinson and hot dog car, all the business people have scowling faces

photo from a friend at a lego convention right now, amazing 🌭

It's the nineties and there is time for JET SKIS! Two of the most garish and awesomely stylish jet skis in all the shapes and colors of the Saved by the Bell intro splashing by, with their drivers doing the bumpy, squatty balancing on the beautiful Caribbean Blue water as a friendly dolphin splashes the water as it's following them. All the colors are so bright and beautiful, it makes you wanna live there. Also, this is the image used as the banner for this BlueSky profile!

As the races progress later in the day, the clouds and ocean are basking in the lovely orange shades of the sunset as two racers closely chase each other, jumping off a ramp while doing a left-tilting trick, while the racer at the back having the more preferable position so they can look at that platinum dumpy of the leading driver.

One of the female racers in a white and pink outfit and jet ski, looking kinda like the Pink Ranger with her blonde hair waving under her helmet, currently doing a fancy and dangerous trick where she jumps and rotates around while holding the driving handles, like doing a gymnastics move on a pommel horse.

Just a beautiful, serene sunset panorama with some docked boats and palm trees lined up, lounging and sipping a margarita as the sun sets on the horizon. Aaaah, this is the life.

Wave Race 64 (N64) (1996)

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I got to test Ted’s co-op chamber music trick taker a year ago…and I REALLY want to play it again. Excellent depth, great theme, a novel core mechanic.

If you are a fan of Crew or LOTRFOTRTTTG, you should definitely check this out.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/squ...

LOTRFOTRTTTG just sent me! 🤣🤣🤣

Thank you for your note, friend! I hope you get to play it again sometime soon!

YouTube video by Board Game Buzzz Let's Fry Some Dice! - Gaming Mini-Vlog

Was super lucky to be able to show Carly Counterpoint recently. She is totally awesome! Glad to hear she enjoyed the game. 🤩🎻🎵

Coming soon to Kickstarter! Follow if you like trick-takers, classical music, or cute animals! www.kickstarter.com/projects/squ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL_n...

Sign in or sign up – Halcyon

Missed it last week? We launched Agentic Alerts—a new way to surface what matters most from new filings.

One favorite: Large Load Happenings—daily insights on data centers & large loads.

You can receive these alerts yourself with just one click 👇:
app.halcyon.io/alerts/subsc...

If you’ve not been listening to Wet Leg, I recommend them! Their new album, Moisturizer, is great!

Also Sudan Archives’ latest, The BPM, is easily a top 5 album of the year for me!

“We want all signal and no noise.”

Today, Halcyon launches Agentic Alerts — automated, query-driven alerts that surface insights, not filings.

This is a step change in how energy professionals track regulatory risk, opportunity, and change.

Full launch post by Bruce Falck: hubs.la/Q040PYGB0

Do you like charts? Oh yes you do. I've just published hundreds of them, as I do every year. www.nathanielbullard.com/presentations

So good! It's probably my favorite on the album...

10 great trick-taking and climbing games from 2025 Plus at least 12 more games I enjoyed this year.

I wrote about some of my favorite trick-taking and climbing games from 2025. The genre remains such fertile ground for interesting ideas.

www.donteatthemeeples.com/10-great-tri...

A game only exists in the context of BGG. If it is not on BGG then it is not a game! 😉

Honoured that That’s the Spirit is part of Best Week! This really has become my favourite genre of board game and it’s exciting being part of such great company.

CALLA
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I love my two blackout drunk Minnesota sons

Photo is of a full game of Chicken Fried Dice and a few folks observing at Blue Highway Games in Seattle, Washington. People just threw dice into a central space and are looking to pluck a die to help with their puzzle. In the back is a child wanting to play big heavy games and two amazing peers discussing things that arent related to the foreground. Shawn from Flatout Games is assisting a player in what to maybe focus on. This happened on an industry night that each month people in the local game design scene get together to play and discuss games enjoying each other in the process.

This game may not be for everyone, but you can't fake the joy that I see from literally everyone that plays this game. It's a testament to the work that @coinflip.games & I have done over the years, breaking the mold of what games can accomplish!
Q1, 2026 on KS y'all. Check us out⤵️⤵️

bit.ly/3XXLWdU

@boardgameghee.bsky.social @coinflip.games CFD sequel!!

BAMBOO
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As I sit here getting ready to publish a game called Counterpoint… Maybe I’ll publish it under the pseudonym “Peter Horn Thainthway” just to keep the tradition alive! Haha

So, here's a mystery: I'm working on a video about Rene Soriano, the designer of over 50 games published over the course of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. And one of the titles he listed was Counterpoint - a title which has been used for eight different games. So I ask him to describe it.🧵