Scott - Minerva 🦉

Poster for international women's day, 10% off, use code IWD. Offer ends 10th March. Only use on bad squiddo products. Cool poster of some of our art by Martin Whitmore and some painted minis.

Oi oi it's #IWD26 & I'm a woman and I make little cast metal women! Use code IWD26 in the shop to get 10% off AND write a suggestion in the order notes - most popular will get made next! Wahey!

*10% off applies to Bad Squiddo products only but you can still add backdrop books etc to the same order

screenshot of an AI generated thumbnail with a pretend person holding a pretend box of the Old King's Crown expansion with the word's DON'T BUY IT on there

Hey board gamers - your feelings an opinions about games are being turned into slop.

There's a channel called Board Game Critique. All their videos are clearly made with AI. They fess up to this, but they claim that they write their own scripts.

I cannot definitively prove that they don't, but 1/x

Picture of my face and some BEAutiful board game pics with the caption “Ya boi is looking for full-time work! I’m searching for something on the creative/community side of the tabletop industry. All leads are welcome :) More info coming soon.”

Welp, Print & Play is closing...
I’ll post more about it soon, but for now, holler if you have any hot, new job gossip!
(I’ve worked full-time in the tabletop industry for 6 years and sure do hope to keep it that way 💁‍♂️.)

I have a regular indie RPG column in Tabletop Gaming Magazine in the UK. I am always on the lookout for games to include in the forthcoming part of that coliumn. Let me know about your projects coming out in April and beyond!

Orange and yellow writing which reads Origins, with the dots on the 'i's represented by hexagonal shapes meant to reflect gaming dice. The words Game Fair are underneath in smaller, black writing. Logo for the Origins Game Fair, where the annual Origins Awards are presented.

The Origins Awards, one of board gaming’s longest-running prizes voted on by industry professionals, has unveiled its latest slate of 120 nominees – and come under fire for failing to mention any of the games’ designers for the third year in a row:

boardgamewire.com/index.php/20...

Shame on GAMA for once again not including designers in their "Excellence in Game Design" award announcement.

Last year they promised that this would be corrected in 2026, but again designers are not given the recognition they deserve.

The omission is no longer an oversight. It is a GAMA policy.

I’m in a Discord for a miniature wargame and watching people declare a faction unplayable/overpowered after a brief look at the new rules is wild. They even argued with the designer who has spent FAR more time working on it than them why they were wrong 😬

Reviewers: if something doesn't seem right about a game, please take a moment to re-read the rules or even reach out to the publisher or designer for clarification before publishing a review. That extra step can save heartache and damaged reputation on both sides.

Registration for the Playtest Zone @ UKGE2026 is now open Registration for the Playtest Zone at the UK Games Expo 2026 is now open. This event is for designers, who would like members of the g...

Registration for the Playtest Zone at the UK Games Expo 2026 is now open, via @playtestuk.bsky.social

What a cool thing to do for your 21st birthday! 😉 Happy Birthday and shame on everyone who didn’t let you win your own tournament 😂

The cover of the new Senet magazine, featuring a wizard and a happy woman in a maze.

Issue 22 is out now! Including 4X, Robin Hood, Amabel Holland, Nick Nazzaro, Splendor, the new game from the makers of the Old King’s Crown, and more! Cover art by Mark Long. Go to senetmagazine.com to order your copy or subscribe. #boardgamesarebeautiful

If you live in the north east of England, as I do, you maybe interested in a board game convention I’ve taken over with a small team. If that sounds interesting you can see a very early first cut of our new website here: www.tynesidegamesexpo.co.uk - we love to have you come along!

My reaction exactly 😍

Cartoon image of a lightbulb with a yellow meeple as the filament, on a brown base which reads Cardboard Edison. The award is surrounded by light and dark orange lines radiating from the centre. Logo for the Cardboard Edison Award for unpublished games.

Head and upper body of a bearded man sitting at a table, constructing a castle from magnetic tiles. StrongHolds by Nelson de Castro, one of this year's Cardboard Edison Award finalists.

A black and white photo of a woman wearing glasses, and with long hair swept either side of her forehead. Suzanne Zinsli, co-founder of Cardboard Edison.

Wooden animal playing pieces in the shape of pink pigs, white sheep and brown cows, on a green and blue mat representing fields, forests and a river with a bridge. A blue string lasso is surrounding some of the animals. Braggin’ Wranglers by Luke Wolyncewicz, one of this year’s Cardboard Edison Award finalists.

“It’s crazy how it has grown globally”: unpublished board game design award Cardboard Edison unveils new finalists as entries more than double since 2020:

boardgamewire.com/index.php/20...

@cardboardedison.com

More games need this.

Wooden Male and Female Inca pieces smooching.

Also playing at 2p, there is a variant rule I recommend; when the Ayar reunite in the night phase, smooch your opponent.

😈👹🫠🥶 Personal Demons is a therapy ritual for 1-4 players. It's a unique pick-and-pass spatial puzzler with evolving player abilities and engine building, four sizes of increasingly huge cards, and 150 unique hand-inked artworks. Follow now on Kickstarter!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/tet...

Black t-shirt with a graphic that reads "Everything (heavier than helium) is metal)

𝕰𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖞𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖓𝖌 (heavier than helium) 𝖎𝖘 𝕸𝖊𝖙𝖆𝖑

See, the joke is that astronomy classifies any element besides hydrogen and helium as a metal. Oxygen? Metal. Carbon? Metal. Everything? Metal.
danielsolis.threadless.com/designs/ever...
#science #space #shirt #WeeklyTshirt #astronomy

BRB, contacting the US to get a refund on my Kickstarter project 😂

Actually, I want to quote this again, because I think some of us are making the misstep of allowing this conversation to proceed on Dancey's terms.

He insists he was only talking about *ideas*, not finished products. What goofballs we are! Except...

Head and shoulders image of a white haired man with a white goatee looking off into the distance to the right. Some buildings and a bit of water are visible behind him. Ryan Dancey, former COO of Alderac Entertainment Group.

Text from a LinkedIn post which says: Ryan Dancey Author Chief Operating Officer at Alderac Entertainment Group I have zero reason to believe that an AI couldn't "come up with Tiny Towns or Flip Seven or Cubitos". I can prompt any of several AIs RIGHT NOW and get ideas for games as good as those. The gaming industry doesn't exist because humans create otherwise unobtainable ideas. It exists because many many previous games exist, feed into the minds of designers, who produce new variants on those themes. People then apply risk capital against those ideas to see if there's a product market fit. Sometimes there is, and sometimes there is not. (In fact, much more often than not). Extremely occasionally (twice in my lifetime: D&D and Magic: the Gathering) a human has produced an all new form of gaming entertainment. Those moments are so rare and incandescent that they echo across decades. Game publishing isn't an industry of unique special ideas. It's an industry about execution, marketing, and attention to detail. All things AIs are great at.

Ryan Dancey, a more than 30-year veteran of the tabletop gaming industry, has lost his COO job at publisher AEG a day after saying AI could generate game ideas as good as his company’s titles Tiny Towns and Cubitos:

boardgamewire.com/index.php/20...

AI can't replace game designers but it can replace Ryan Dancey 😂

Today I want to share that Ryan Dancey and AEG have parted ways.
This is not an easy post to write. Ryan has been a significant part of AEG’s story, and I am personally grateful for the years of work, passion, and intensity he brought to the company. We have built a lot together.

Yeah sometimes I just have to be realistic and accept that no matter how much I like the idea of a game, it’s never or no longer going to be played.

The pro-AI, anti-game-designer nonsense Suz is quoting below is on LinkedIn, in the comments on a post by the SAME PERSON about how AI told him to *walk* to the car wash. (The cognitive dissonance is killing me!) Here's what I replied over there:

Press Pot Games' Mini Handmade TTRPG Zine Anthology Bundle Get a collection of 3+ TTRPG single-sheet, 8-fold zines, printed and folded by yours truly.

Just launched: Press Pot Games' Mini Handmade #TTRPG #Zine Anthology Bundle

In this, you can grab a bundle of 4, single-sheet, 8-fold zines, hand folded by me! Or you can grab a PDF and print on your own.

You'll find games about a cat, a mosh pit, and a revolution. It's my love letter to my past.

I’ve never been afraid to move on games that no longer have a place in my collection for whatever reason, but that’s mostly due to my restriction on space. I have 50 games at the moment but I’m culling about a third of those. Nothing’s really getting played at the moment anyway.

AEG would not exist without the creativity and hard work of designers.

I really enjoyed making entirely handmade prototypes after spending years only working digitally, it felt freeing.