Interview with Alexander Pfister!

So after playing Mombasa, which is an awesome game, I wanted to chat with the designer, Alexander Pfister because he also designed other games that I really liked, for example Broom Service. I wanted to find out more about his design process and specifically how Mombasa was "born". We initially tried an audio interview but due to technical issues, we had to follow up with a written interview instead. Here are the questions and answers:

The Politics of Mombasa

Mombasa is a very heavy game, with what seems like twenty different mechanics going on at the same time. Its main mechanic is a neat take on deckbuilding, but the game also offers some area control, light worker placement, and even a personal point track that everyone else can only marginally interfere with. Mombasa somehow harnesses these into a fun and coherent whole, as Eric explains in his 98th video. He recommends buying and playing the game on its mechanical merits alone, but for me, the most interesting part of the game is its theme.

You see, though Mombasa is an abstract strategy euro, it has a decidedly political statement printed on the front of its rulebook that explains the theme:

Push Your Luck Podcast Ep69!

Woot! 1st episode of 2016! Sorry it has been so long because we are both on holidays and enjoying ourselves and playing loads and loads of games!

This episode we talk about Jon's Best of 2015 geeklist and also a few games we have played recently.
Games covered are:

german railroads

dojo kun

automania

between 2 cities

mombasa

portao para o mundo, lisboa

nippon

karuba

7 wonders duel

argent: the consortium

broom service

the voyages of marco polo

grand austria hotel

codenames

the pursuit of happiness

watson & holmes

Also take note Push Your Luck Video will be releasing its 100th video soon! There will be a contest as well so subscribe to the channel and keep an eye on it!

The podcast can be downloaded here

http://feeds.feedburner.com/PushUrLuckPodcastpulp

Stats for 2015!

Another year has ended and it was a great year for gaming I must say! Especially since I had a chance to volunteer for Asmodee at their booth at GENCON 2015!

So here are my stats:

total games played: 301

total unique games played: 137

total 2015 unique games played: 57

2015 Games I played

1 codenames

2 pandemic legacy s1

3 the grizzled

4 rights

5 arboretum

6 troll

7 blood rage

8 broom service

9 discoveries

10 dragonwood

11 elysium

12 exploding kittens

13 kraftwagen

14 new york 1901

15 queen’s architect

16 shakespeare

17 the voyages of marco polo

18 xcom

19 above and below

20 air alliance

21 bad medicine

22 baseball highlights: 2045

23 best treehouse ever

24 between 2 cities

25 bomb squad academy

26 cacao

27 caffeine rush

28 chew

29 dark seas

30 dolmen

31 eternal dynasty

32 food chain magnate

33 fool’s gold

34 the great dinosaur rush

35 GEM

36 guns & steel

37 isle of skye

38 joraku

39 lanterns

40 letter tycoon

41 matcha

42 mottainai

43 my village

44 nevermore

45 ophir

46 parfum

47 pi mal pflaumen

48 risk star wars edition

49 nyet

50 specter ops

51 starfighter

52 stockpile

53 tides of time

54 trambahn

55 war band: against the darkness

56 warehouse 51

57 the world of smog