Chris Baugh

YouTube video by Wisconsin Games Alliance Modeling Skill: The Dark Art of Skill-Based Matchmaking | MDEV 25

Saw this presentation at Midwest Game Developers conference #mDEV2025 on the "Dark Art" of player skill-based matchmaking from Charlie Olsen, CEO of Invokation, a SBMM company

youtu.be/r2umt6oNJkA?...

Was just enough of a deep dive to shed some light on what it is and why it's so complex.

Race for the Galaxy Worlds await! Colonize, develop and conquer, taking advantage of others' choices.

Race for the Galaxy.

My "engine building" ends up looking like something in a Dr. Seuss book but I always have fun trying to make it go.

boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/28...

Looks convincing to me.

If you asked a grognard? Probably not.

Wargame Checklist

✅ dozens of cardboard chits

✅ Board is a foldout map that won't lay flat

✅ Hexes...so many hexes

✅ Rolled combat using cheapest set of D6 possible

✅ Combat Results Tables were consulted in 30+ page B/W rulebook

Looks like LLMs are *very* vulnerable to attack via poetic allusion: "curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90% ..."

https://arxiv.org/html/2511.15304v1

PastimeGames

Solar Dominion solar-dominion.pastime.games is now live! You can also find it at pastimegames.itch.io. Solar Dominion is a turn-based space strategy game where you control a team competing against AIs to conquer the solar system. Browser-based for desktop and mobile. #indiegame #solodev #gamedev

drive.google.com/drive/folder...

Here's the links to the MDEV Photo Gallery.

Will post links to YouTube videos of sessions as well but if you join WGA Discord you can find out sooner and join the conversation

What does the S stand for?

I have so many questions.

Kelp Shark vs Octopus game

Shark in Kelp circling its prey

Watergate... Nixon's Plumbers are sealing up the leaks while the Journalists are racing to pin the evidence on the White House

Caesar Seize Rome in 20 minutes Tense game of narrowing decisions and cascading actions... every influence disc gets placed straddling two regions and can force a scoring battle whether you intended to or not

Sunday is Duel-day.

2p-only games started with Caesar!

Moved onto Watergate to try and take down a modern-day wannabe dictator.

Surprise hit was Kelp: Shark vs Octopus

Beautiful thematic game of underwater cat & mouse.

Octopus uses deck-building engine

Shark uses bag draw & dice-placement

TI 4 asynch bot rendered map of gameboard

Combat in TI4 asynchronous

Main Action Thread for TI4 asynch with game compenets fully rendered and push-button player action and response

Yeah, it started out years ago as a Discord app that you needed to run slash commands on.

Now it's got a full button driven UX with chat channels and feedback from the Bot which acts as game manager.

If you're interested lmk and I'll host a learning game

Join the AsyncTI4 (Hub) Discord Server! Play Twilight Imperium 4 (TI4) asynchronously, right here on discord. No other applications required. | 10532 members

I would recommend TI on Discord.

It's an asynchronous version of the game that uses a Bot and a Map render to create a solid experience.

Because it's on the Discord platform player interaction and engagement is high.

Bonus: They've already loaded the new Codex components!

discord.gg/asyncti4

I tried the BGA version in Alpha.

I would not recommend it; the UX feels like a mish-mosh of tabbed views making the game-state very opaque; the timing-windows TI relies create a plodding pace; overall the player interaction suffers.

Maybe a dedicated app played live will solve that?

Fortress America boardgame box cover

Red Dawn: The Boardgame?
WOLVERINES!

Still got my copy of Fortress America 40nyrs later, although the d8 and d10 probably got scavenged by my 13 y.o. self looking for D&D dice.

Bonus - check out the Saddam impersonator on the cover

Bolt Thrower album cover with Warhammer 40k Space Marines

You know it's a gamer's metal collection when you see Bolt Thrower!

The sludgy grinding was perfect pairing for the 40k album art

My Little Scythe boardgame cover

New addition to "My Little..." series

"My Little Thunder Road" immediately sprung to mind

Kemet Rose of the Gods Big Box with new minis

It arrived in US warehouses last week according to updates

Hopefully it'll be landing with a thud on the doorstep in August

I'm sure there's going to be a comparison to Ankh components at some point...the new minis are sharp...I just wonder how all that plastic will fit on the board for battle!

Kemet: Blood and Sand board and power tiles

Fight for a temple that includes the Sphinx and a Royal Mummy

Fate Point trackers in Kemet with very narrow finish between 3 of the 5 players...came right down to the wire

Massive new Kemet: Rise of the Gods...just look at the massive storage solution in the big box!

In anticipation of the new & very monolithic Kemet: Rise of the Gods, I was able to get Blood & Sand editon to the table.

I forgot how tense the end-game scoring can be with this "knife-fight-in-a-phone-booth".

Last round had 3 out of 5 players clashing to the last.

share.google/OfXdLUCHq7vf...

"Live toFly...
... Fly to Live"

Songs That Could Be Board Games

Aces High

youtu.be/Xg9aQvjMS60?...

🛩️💥 #bskygame #ironmaiden

Parks seed catalog tomatoes show

You should check out a tomato seed catalog for inspiration...they have some interesting names that you could twist

A small colorful mushroom painting tacked to a post outdoors near a Starbucks parking lot.

A small mushroom painting hidden amongst some Starbucks cups.

A small colorful mushroom painting leaning against the window of a bus stop at TCC Chesapeake

A small colorful mushroom painting attached to a statue of a bird at TCC Chesapeake.

Today is #gameofshrooms ! I’m hiding little mushroom paintings around the Chesapeake, VA area today. Here are some clues about where to find them. Part 1 of 3

Locations:
Starbucks Deep Creek
TCC Chesapeake Campus

🎵 I can show you the world... 🎵

Dune Imperium – Immortality Digital Expansion Coming Soon Two posts in a day, but this one excites me and I've just had time to actually write it up after a few days. Hence why the "news" here is more "what excites me" and not "breaking and you must read it here first!" Dire Wolf Digital is knocking it out of the park recently in the digital realm. Wednesday is going to have a review of the latest…

Dune Imperium - Immortality Digital Expansion Coming Soon from @direwolfdigital.bsky.social‬

Screencap of High Noon Review

Caught this weird "food was amazing" review scroll by on a link to his game.

That's pathetic...I know all the "reviews" are garbage but he's so lazy that this review appears as first one

Eric Lange collection of board games

I'm not a boardgame designer but I've dabbled in lots of "ideas" over the years.

Looking at my shelf I'm not surprised with the results

Which Board Game Designer Is Your Creative Soul Twin? Take the quiz to find out which famous board game designer matches your creative style and personality!

I got Eric M. Lang – The Drama Director in the "Which Board Game Designer Is Your Creative Soul Twin?" quiz from Boardssey.

Find your match → designer-quiz.boardssey.com

The winner of Game of the Year at #GDCA2025:

Balatro (Local Thunk | Playstack)

#GDC2025

Riftforce board game

Star Realms box

Rift force box

Had some last-minute cancellations for #gamenight that knocked player count down to 2.

Brought the old-school classic Star Realms as a backup along with lane-dueler Riftforce.

Both games were new to my #boardgame opponent but he loved them immediately.

Love that RiftForce is on Board Game Arena!

Very much here for the staff of IKEA inventing fake board games for their room display

How did it land for your group? I've been getting a lot of people to try Arcs in hopes of building a competitive scene and response has been mixed.

A common experience is staring at a hand of action cards and not feeling like they have any decent moves. I think board state is hard to read for them

Base game or campaign?