Despite the welcome relative absence of anthropomorphic animals this week--aside from some sundry ducks in Lorcana--we see a lot of animals and various critters this week. We eschew sacrifices to a dodgy snake in Imperium, we fling sheep with abandon, we throw down with some wrestling bugs, and that's on top of comparatively mundane animal husbandry in Keyflower. Mark offered some unflattering comparisons between Walker and various animals during Crokinole, but that doesn't quite count.

Games Played Last Week:

02:22 -Space Alert (Vlaada Chvátil, Czech Games Edition, 2008)

04:58 -Imperium: Horizons (Nigel Buckle and Dávid Turczi, Osprey Games, 2024)

09:17 CMYK's Magenta Series: Duos (Johannes Schmidauer-König, CMYK, 2025), Figment (Wolfgang Warsch, CMYK, 2025), Fives (Taiki Shinzawa, CMYK, 2025), Fruit Fight (Reiner Knizia, CMYK, 2025) 

12:21 -Heap-O-Sheep: The High Flying Game of Flingin' Sheep! (Dominic Yard, Fat Brain Toy Company, Unknown)

16:48 -Crokinole (Uncredited, Mayday, 2025)

19:36 -Kabuto Sumo: Sakura Slam (John Brieger, Michael Dunsmore, & Tony Miller, Allplay, 2024)

24:28 -Disney Lorcana (David Iezzi, Ryan Miller, and Steve Warner, Ravensburger, 2023)  

32:40 -Keyflower: The Farmers (Sebastian Bleasdale & Richard Breese, R&D Games, 2013)

News (and why it doesn't matter):

38:24 Agricola: Dead Harvest from Awaken Realms

39:07 Rest in peace, Rodger MacGowan, prolific designer and artist

40:01 Chris Farrell has a substack! https://chrisfarrell317.substack.com/p/week-of-feb-24th-2025

40:52 Please support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/svwag 

Patreon perk: early registration for SVWAG Con!

43:03 Feature Game: Beyond the Horizon (Dennis K. Chan, Adam Hill, Ben Pinchback, and Matt Riddle, Cranio Creations, 2024)

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Play along and predict the winners at https://challonge.com/MarkMadness2025 Predictions must be submitted by March 12 to be in the contest

Mark Johnson

@MarkEJohnson

eryn roston

@baditude

Once again, the month of March give me a chance to bring back "Mark Madness," my podcast-hosted voting contest. Like its namesake sports tournament, Mark Madness is where 64 games are pitted against each other in successive rounds of single-elimination votes. As before, I took the winner of llast year's contest, Eryn Roston, and asked him to co-host this year's contest. Furthermore, Eryn has helped define the special nature of the contest this year. It's still about boardgames, of course, but it's about boardgame art. Specifically, we're voting on the best boardgame cover art. Eryn picked four groupings, each with 16 titles apiece. Those groupings are called Divisions, and this year there are ones for Fantasy, Historical/Real-World, Nature-themed, and Science Fiction boardgame covers. You will see some you know, and some others you don't. Just by looking at the images alone you can decide which ones to vote for, but you'll have more fun if you also listen to Eryn describe why he picked these particular game covers for Mark Madness. You see, Eryn works professionally in the world of art, went to school for it, and knows more than your average bear about artwork. If you're like me, you'll learn something along the way and appreciate game art (& artists) even more.

Follow Eryn's own art creator account on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chickenscratch.er/

Play along! I hope we get a good number of folks who submit their own official predictions at challonge.com, which is free. Some have already done it. You've until March 12 to submit your brackets, so you need to move quickly. Then the voting rounds will start via Geeklist polling. As you can see from the chart above, the successive rounds of this voting will start happening every three days: On March 15 we'll have the results of the first round, when 64 teams are winnowed down to 32 survivors. Then it proceeds to the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and Championship. Who will be the winner? We expect to do "micro-episode" podcasts throughout the month to talk about each round. They'll show up in your regular feed, and I can link them here, too. -Mark Fantasy Division geeklist

Historical/Real-World Division geeklist

Nature Division geeklist

Sci Fi Division geeklist

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In today's episode, the guys discuss their recent plays and review Civolution. They wrap up with a draft of top games from 2015. Help support the podcast on Patreon! www.patreon.com/punchboardparadise Join our Discord! discord.gg/4FrZ8S3yCv Check out the Website! punchboardparadise.com Need a new shirt? www.punchboardparadise.threadless.com Music by HookSounds

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