Decision Space

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 53 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Tempo in Board Games and What It Isn't This game has a great tempo! That move just gained you so much tempo! I have tempo in this situation! All of these phrases can say a lot about a game, a game state, and a game's decision space. The challenge is that in each phrase, the word tempo is actually referring to something different. In this week's WWTA episode of Decision Space, we deep dive tempo in board games as well as a few things, like initiative and pacing, that it isn't. Hop into the interdecisional spaceship allegro because we are taking off now! Games Discussed Chess, Magic: the Gathering, Azul, Tigris and Euprhates, Underwater Cities, Castles of Burgundy, and more.   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Decision Space is the podcast about decisions in board games! Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 52 - Evolution: Climate This week we begin with a brief "What's on Your Mind" discussion. Brendan has been playing Calico, and Jake recaps an epic birthday game day. After that, we hop right into our signature deep dive discussion of the Evolution system with a focus on Evolution: Climate, designed by Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre, and Sergey Machin with art by Ben Goldman and Catherine Hamilton. Our interdecisional spaceship navigates us to the heart of this decision space and to a question of politics. What is it that makes this game inherently political... or is it? Bleep bloop. Interdecisional Spaceship computer is booting up. Initiating podcast module.    Games Covered Evolution: Climate, Oceans, Calico, So Clover, Dune Imperium, A Feast for Odin, and Cascadia.   Timestamps What's on My Mind - 0:00 Game Overview - 10:55 Rules Overview - 17:40 Evolution: Climate Feature Discussion - 20:31 Calls to Action - 1:07:06   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Join the crew today! (Decision Space Patreon)   Episode 51 - Palaces of Carrara Jake and Brendan are back in the interdecisional spaceship and - look out! - we're heading straight for Kramer and Kiesling's 2012 game Palaces of Carrara -- a decision space some call ungrokable. Find out what we say as wee discuss this sleek design that's oddly hard to talk about in this week;s episode of Decision Space, the podcast about decisions in games. Stick around for the end, where Jake shares the biggest hit party game from a recent bachelor party he attended in the "What's on My Mind" segment.   Timestamps What's on My Mind - 1:01:10   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!    Episode 50 - Mission Planning 10 Games We Want to Explore in 2022, Podcast Aspiration, Book Club, and a Big Announcement Our biggest milestone yet -- episode 50! In this episode, we do a little pre-planning of our own and discuss 10 we want to cover imminently in 2022. We also share our podcast aspirations for 2022. If that wasn't enough, we have two announcements. For one, we will be starting the first ever Decision Space book club and reading Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen. (More information in the Decision Space discord.) But before all that, we start the show with a bang with our big announcement. Decision Space is officially on Patreon! That's right, you can officially join the crew. We spent a lot of time thinking through the perks and how we can add value, so if you are interested at all, I hope you will consider supporting us if you are financially able to do so!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!    Episode 49 - Splendor The week we change things up. No, really! It's the return of the "What's on Your Mind" segment where Jake and Brendan each share one game that we've been playing lately. Then we take off for Splendor's decision space in our interdecisional spaceship. We ask if this mega-hit is truly an engine building game, and, returning to Splendor after some time away, we ask if these gems still shine as brightly as they once did. You'll have to listen in to find out! Games Discussed So Clover - 2:49 Palaces of Carrara - 9:18 Splendor Feature Discussion - 14:15   Preplan Your Next Turn Next week on Decision Space is a mission planning episode, where we'll discuss the games we are most interested in exploring in 2022 and reveal some future plans and dreams for the future of Decision Space!   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!    Episode 48 - End of Year Special where We Rank Every Game Featured on Decision Space in 2021 In the end of year special edition of Decision Space, we rank every game featured on the show this year from 30 to 1. Thank you for making this first year of Decision Space such a wonderful experience. Here's to even bigger things in 2022. Games Featured in this Episode Kanagawa, Carpe Diem, Res Arcana, Underwater Cities, The Fox in the Forest, Terraforming Mars, Magic: the Gathering, Welcome To..., El Grande, Star Realms, Lost Ruins of Arnak, KeyForge, Grand Austria Hotel, Carcassonne, The Castles of Burgundy, "Hey, That's My Fish!", Keyflower, Bruges, Villagers, Jaipur, Imhotep, Kingdomino, Praga Caput Regni, Spirit Island, Race for the Galaxy, Patchwork, Kingdom Builder, Raiders of the North Sea, and Azul   Preplan Your Next Turn Next week on Decision Space we explore the decisions in Splendor!   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!  Click on this link to participate in our end of the year community top 10 poll.    Episode 47 - Azul 2018 Spiel Des Jahres winner, the 58th best game of all time on Board Game Geek, and designed by the esteemed Michael Kiesling, you don't need our podcast to tell you that Azul is a good game. So today on Decision Space, we dive deep into the decision space that emerges from Azul's simple set of mechanisms as players tussle over tile supremacy. You'll never guess which game/region of France this discussion will take us to, so hop in the Interdecisional Spaceship and we'll tell you on the way! Preplan Your Next Turn Next week on Decision Space is our epic end of the year episode where we will rank EVERY game featured on decision space this year. We need your help. Participate in our community ranking poll at the following link: Rankings — Decision Space (decisionspacepodcast.com). We'll share our community voted top 10 games at the end of next week's episode! Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!    Episode 46 - Raiders of the North Sea If you've been playing hobby board games over the past six years, then you likely have at least a passing awareness of the output of Garphill games and designer Shem Phillips. (If you are new to hobby board games, then welcome!) In today's episode we cover the Garphill Game that first put Shem on ther radar for many of us, Raiders of the North Sea. Raiders is a worker placement game, with an efficiently brilliant work displacement mechanic that has not only stayed in the conversation six years post publication, but today finds itself inside the top 100 games of all time on Board Game Geek. Time to hop in the Interdecisional Spaceship with a course set for decision exploration. Wait... are those sleigh bells? Preplan Your Next Turn Next week on Decision Space we will explore the decisions in Azul. Preplan your turn with on board game arena. You can find games and people to play with in the Decision Space discord linked above. Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!    Episode 45 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Irrational Actors with Special Guest Tony Faber Is a new player pretty much the same thing as a drunk player? This is just one of the many hard-hitting questions we'll dig into (seriously) on this week's episode of Decision Space. The topic of irrational actors at the board game table, an unwieldy topic that spans social contracts, sobriety, siding with spies, and so much more. There's no way we could tackle this alone. Fortunately, we are joined for the discussion by special guest Tony Faber. Tony is a host of the Two Wood for a Wheat Podcast as well as the author of The Secrets of Great Games blog on Board Game Geek. We hope you'll enjoy the show. The Interdecisional Spaceship is now preparing to launch! Preplan Your Next Turn Next week on Decision Space.... We explore the decisions in Raiders of the North Sea, the first game we're featuring from Garphill Games!   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!

Click on the link to join our active and welcoming Discord community!    Episode 44 - Kingdom Builder Back with yet another classic game and yet another Spiel De Jahres winner, this week on Decision Space it is Kingdom Builder. We bring out our magnifying glasses to explore the decisions in this game, and it is a good thing we did because is the smallest decision space we've come across yet. But perhaps a small decision space is all you need to have a great time and, after all, this game did win the most prestigious award in board games. So what exactly is the deal here? Only one way to find out. We now welcome you into our Interdecisional Spaceship and into this conversation which will continue as always in our discord after the conclusion of the show. Preplan Your Next Turn Next week on Decision Space is a What We Talk About episode, where we will discuss irrational actors in board games. In next, next week's episode, we will explore the decisions in Raiders of the North Sea.   Music Credits Thank you to Hembree for our intro and outro music from their song Reach Out. You can listen to the full song on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQuuRPfOyMw&list=TLGGFNH7VEDPgwgyNTA4MjAyMQ&t=3s You can find more information about Hembree at https://www.hembreemusic.com/.  Rules Overview Music:  Way Home by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060​ Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/tokyo-music-walker-way...​ Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/pJThZlOuDtI   Contact We can be reached individually on Twitter at @jakefryd and @burnsidebh. You can also follow Decision Space on Twitter @DecisionSpa and talk to us there! If you prefer email, then hit us up at decisionspa@gmail.com. This information is all available along with episodes at our new website decisionspacepodcast.com. Bye!