Board Gamers Anonymous

Episode 595: Top Ten Phil Walker-Harding Games

From drafting the cartoon sushi plate to building a bear park, Phil Walker-Harding has designed board games that are easy to bring to the table and full of clever choices. But which ones are his best?

This week on Board Gamers Anonymous, Chris and Tim count down their Top Ten Phil Walker-Harding games! In Voice of the Gamers, we explore the designer’s catalog, celebrate the games that keep us coming back, and debate which deserve a spot at the top. Will your favorite make the list—or will it get left behind with the last piece of wasabi?

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Tim — All’s Well That Ends: Gather your party for a cooperative fantasy campaign featuring tactical card play, new abilities, and Wildlands adventures. Let’s hope all’s well that ends with everyone still standing.

Tim — Gothic: A Shadow’s Quest: Enter the dangerous world of the Gothic video games in a cooperative adventure filled with quests, exploration, and deadly enemies. The Old Camp is waiting—and it doesn’t sound especially welcoming.

Chris — Origins of Light: A Final Fantasy Board Game: Return to the worlds of the first three Final Fantasy games in a tabletop adventure inspired by their Pixel Remaster editions. Assemble your party and find out if the crystals are still in trouble.

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Chris — Dragonarium: Draft tiles, shape landscapes, and manage elemental powers as you create dragon habitats. But can this dragon-filled spatial puzzle really take flight?

Tim — Misfit Heroes: Mix and match character cards to create an unusual band of heroes, then build their influence across the kingdom. It’s card crafting, tableau building, and a reminder that heroes don’t have to fit the mold.

What’s your favorite Phil Walker-Harding game? Write in and let us know which game belongs at number one—or which overlooked favorite deserves more attention. Contact Board Gamers Anonymous.

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How to Win Friends and Influence Gamers

Which board game do you bring to game night when you have one chance to make everyone say, “We need to play that again”? This week on Board Gamers Anonymous, Chris and Tim share games to win over children, families, non-gamers, experienced gamers, and heavy strategy fans.

In Voice of the Gamers, we explore games that make a lasting impression through eye-catching production, memorable gameplay, and the right experience for the right crowd. Whether you’re introducing friends to modern board games or impressing someone who’s played everything, choosing the right game can turn a casual gathering into a regular game night.

Crowdfunding Updates

Kickstarter — The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit: A return to Middle-earth with a new tabletop adventure.

Gamefound — Defenders of the Realm: Definitive Edition: A refreshed edition of the cooperative fantasy game about heroes defending their realm against advancing enemy armies.

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Chris — Stormlight: War for Roshar: A strategy board game bringing the conflicts of Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive to the tabletop.

Chris — Lorenzo il Magnifico – A New Renaissance: A new take on Renaissance-era competition, building on the worker placement and engine building of Lorenzo il Magnifico.

Tim — On Call | A High-Octane ER Simulation Co-Op Board Game: A cooperative emergency-room simulation that challenges players to work together under pressure.

Roll for Review

Chris — Clash of Clans: The Epic Raid: Build your village, develop your army, and raid rival bases in this tabletop adaptation of the mobile game.

Tim — Kavango: Build a wildlife reserve in southern Africa, balancing animal conservation with the development of a thriving ecosystem.

What board game won over your friends or family?

Share your best game-night success story!

Visit Board Gamers Anonymous for more board game reviews, recommendations, and podcast episodes.

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Tim’s Darkest Timeline: One Game Has to Go

Three great games. One has to disappear from Tim’s gaming options forever. And Chris has generously volunteered Tim to make every terrible decision.

This week on Voice of the Gamers, we put Tim through a gauntlet of impossible board game choices. Beloved classics, modern favorites, and games he thought were safe on his shelf suddenly face elimination. Will he sacrifice nostalgia? Betray his favorite mechanisms? Spend ten minutes arguing that the question is fundamentally unfair? Chris brings the choices, Tim brings the anguish, and everyone listening gets to judge him from the comfort of their own untouched collections.

In Roll for Preview, Chris explores Arctica, an Arctic ecosystem engine builder with gear-based player boards, while Tim dives into Oceanic, where marine life and habitats form a shared ocean ecosystem. Both are on crowdfunding—because apparently choosing which games to buy wasn’t stressful enough.

In Roll for Review, Chris looks beneath the greenery in Under the Leaves, a garden tile-placement game, while Tim heads down the rabbit hole with Rolling in Wonderland, a competitive dice-drafting adventure. After all those eliminations, Wonderland might actually feel reasonable.

Visit Board Gamers Anonymous for amazing tabletop content, more gaming discussions, and plenty of reasons to make room on your shelves.

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Episode 592 – Never Play, but Never Purge!

It hasn’t hit the table in years. You can barely remember the rules. But suggest getting rid of it, and suddenly you’re prepared to defend that box like it contains a family heirloom.

This week, Chris and Tim tackle Never Play, but Never Purge! in our Voice of the Gamers feature: the games that don’t get played but will always have a home in our collections. From cherished memories and impossible-to-replace favorites to sprawling adventures waiting for the perfect group, we explore why a game’s value sometimes goes beyond its play count. Are we preserving a piece of our gaming history, holding onto the players we used to be, or keeping a seat open for the gamers we still hope to become? And exactly how many years can “we’ll play it someday” remain a credible argument?

In Roll for Preview, Chris heads to Middle-earth with The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit, a reimagining of the beloved Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit that brings interconnected battles and the journey to Mount Doom to the tabletop. Tim answers the call of Defenders of the Realm: Definitive Edition, a return to cooperative fantasy adventure with a new gameplay engine, distinct defender decks, and enemies that require different approaches. Apparently, protecting our shelves wasn’t enough—we also need to protect entire kingdoms.

Then, in Roll for Review, Chris explores Minikin City, a strategic card game where building your city means balancing immediate rewards against scoring opportunities unlocked by its tiny inhabitants. Tim examines Mosaic: A Story of Civilization – Wars and Disasters, an expansion that adds naval units, military conflict, and disasters to your civilization-building ambitions. He also reviews Falling, James Ernest’s frantic real-time card game where everyone is plummeting, and victory means hitting the ground last. From building a tiny city to weathering civilization’s upheavals to delaying a very personal disaster, there’s plenty to discuss.

What’s the one game you never play but will never purge?

If you haven’t yet, check out the recently updated BGA website at www.boardgamersanonymous.com.

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Episode 591 – What If?! Tabletop Twists

What if one moment in tabletop gaming history had gone differently?

This week on Board Gamers Anonymous, Chris and Tim are messing with the timeline. In our Voice of the Gamers feature, we ask the tabletop questions that probably shouldn't be asked: What if a landmark game had never been published? What if a major designer had made a completely different choice? What if an influential publisher never existed? What if a convention never took off—or a game that changed the hobby had completely flopped?

Change one decision, remove one game, alter one moment…and suddenly the tabletop hobby we know today might look very different. We're pulling at the loose threads of gaming history to see what unravels, what takes its place, and whether we'd even recognize the hobby on the other side.

Roll for Preview

Chris checks out Bookwyrm: A Cozy Strategy Game of Beautiful Bookshelves, a cozy strategy game where book-hoarding dragons attempt to organize their overflowing collections, building and scoring bookshelves while inevitably being tempted to acquire even more books. Because apparently dragons and board gamers have exactly the same problem.

Tim previews Electrify, the upcoming engine-building game from AEG designed by John D. Clair and Ian Hutchison. Players develop an evolving energy industry across five revolving sectors, upgrading and chaining actions as they attempt to meet an increasingly power-hungry world's demands.

Roll for Review

Chris heads somewhere considerably less cozy with Enemies of Gotham City, a competitive area-control game that puts Batman's famous rogues—not the Caped Crusader—in the spotlight. Joker, Poison Ivy, Penguin, Two-Face, and the rest battle for control of Gotham while Batman and his allies attempt to ruin everyone's perfectly reasonable plans for criminal domination.

Tim reviews Dewan, a fast-playing competitive game of territory, placement, and hand management from designers Johannes Goupy and Yoann Levet. Players lead their tribes across a resource-scarce landscape, establishing camps, gathering resources, and completing story objectives along the way.

So join us as we review what's coming, what's hitting our tables—and then completely rewrite tabletop history.

Because every great game starts with "What if?" This week, we're asking what happens when the answer changes everything.

If you haven’t yet, check out the recently updated BGA website at www.boardgamersanonymous.com.

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