I wish, but not very likely. Too many other teams between them and 8th place. If they had a good goalie and a stronger blueline corps, I think they could do it next year.

I have had coffee with Tom. I can't remember if he ever fetched it for me. We need to work on this, obviously.

Probably Dominion, since it is fast and I think there are still lots of cool combos yet to be discovered.

Choosing between Tom and Bruce is pretty easy, since Bruce won't make stupid jokes about how lame sports are. In boardgaming, the game is often secondary to the conversation around it.

I've been playing CK2 since the beta, and I love it. It was stable and enjoyable even when most of the events were still unwritten. They even worked at getting the tip/advice text in place very early.

I have only dabbled in House Divided. So far, I like the challenges, especially the War Justification thing which lets you try to manufacture a casus belli but with the caveat that if you are discovered ginning things up you take an infamy hit.

Lots of good board gaming blogs and podcasts. Hard to choose my favorites, since I don't listen to as many podcasts as I would like.

I recommend Michael Barnes' Cracked LCD column over at Gameshark.com (as well as what he writes at No High Scores).

Shut Up and Sit Down is a good blog that is centered on what is really a quite good and getting better series of video reviews. Quintin Smith and Paul Dean do it, and I like it very much.

Beef. More leeway before it gets dry.

No single portal I can think of.

We've used:

brettspielwelt.de
yucata.de
gametableonline.com

There may be others, but these seem to cover our bases well.

Maybe. But you also have to consider Go, and Civilization and Diplomacy.

We can agree that the answer is not Stormrise.

Chess has a couple of advantages over most modern strategy games. First, it is ubiquitous because, like soccer, once you know the rules you need minimal material to actually play. 32 pieces that can be distinguished and a 64 tile board. Second, it has very simple rules that quickly spiral into an infinite depth of possible positions. There are stronger and weaker openings, of course, but there is something to be learned from all of them.

Chess's major weaknesses vis a vis modern strategy games are a reflection of its age. First, you have perfect information as a player - you always know everything your opponent has. You may not know what he/she is planning on doing with the material, but you have perfect information to judge that from and there is only a single opponent to evaluate. Second, it is limited to two players so you always have the same object.

These are not really big deals in the long run. I have wanted to return to chess for a while, and a recent documentary on Bobby Fischer has fired me again. It is a game that has withstood challenges from other games for many reasons, but its core beauty as a design is the foremost.

M. Thibaut would make a much better Napoleonic commander.

If I ever do - even behind closed doors - I am not sure I deserve to live.

Never write a community off - if they were fans of things you did, they may come back. So win them, of course. But don't do things just for the sole purpose of making them feel better; stick with your game design.

And Napoleon's Campaigns 2 may look like a Paradox design, but it's True AgeOD in most of its design elements (leadership, different levels of command, etc.) It is a wargame, not an empire management game.

I think it will be great. Still a long way off, but the Clauswitz engine makes everything look great and clear. And Pdox France/Ageod has sacrificed none of the army management stuff that makes their games so special.

Disclaimer: Nap Camp 2 is an Evolve client

On average? Europe.

Not a lot. Most of my travel is limited to Canada/USA

I have not been following Histwar in any detail. Clearly I need to check it out.

I am not Pocahantas.

I have a goodreads account, but I don't use it or update it. Great idea though, for us to have a means for book sharing.

Best of New Brunswick? Does leaving count? Seriously, the outdoors is probably the best part of NB beyond the people. Lots of spaces to cross country ski, snowmobile, hike, canoe, camp, etc. I'm not really an outdoor person, but I do miss the solitude of the forest and the sound of the river sometimes.

Best of Canada is me.

Yeah, I've played them and I like them a lot. The SSG games are brilliantly designed, good AI, clear objectives and quite a good UI for a deep wargame. Highly recommended.

We have done gateway games in general on the podcast. But this week's 3MA will be about Unity of Command, which I think is a great new gateway wargame about the Stalingrad campaign. From there, I think, you will be able to pick up on Operational Art of War or the Tiller Squad Battle Games.