spacebiff.com Open in urlscan Pro
192.0.78.25  Public Scan

Form analysis
4 forms found in the DOM

POST https://subscribe.wordpress.com

<form action="https://subscribe.wordpress.com" method="post" accept-charset="utf-8" id="subscribe-blog">
  <p>Tired of stopping by Space-Biff! fifteen times a day? Enter your email and you'll get a note every time I write something amazing. There's literally no reason not to.</p>
  <p id="subscribe-email">
    <label id="subscribe-field-label" for="subscribe-field" class="screen-reader-text"> Email Address: </label>
    <input type="email" name="email" style="width: 95%; padding: 1px 10px" placeholder="Enter your email address" value="" id="subscribe-field">
  </p>
  <p id="subscribe-submit">
    <input type="hidden" name="action" value="subscribe">
    <input type="hidden" name="blog_id" value="27557544">
    <input type="hidden" name="source" value="https://spacebiff.com/">
    <input type="hidden" name="sub-type" value="widget">
    <input type="hidden" name="redirect_fragment" value="subscribe-blog">
    <input type="hidden" id="_wpnonce" name="_wpnonce" value="2584edcacd"> <button type="submit" class="wp-block-button__link"> I choose to follow! </button>
  </p>
</form>

GET https://spacebiff.com/

<form method="get" id="searchform" action="https://spacebiff.com/">
  <div id="searchfield">
    <label for="s" class="screen-reader-text">Search for:</label>
    <input type="text" name="s" id="s" class="searchtext">
    <input type="submit" value="Go" class="searchbutton">
  </div>
</form>

POST https://subscribe.wordpress.com

<form method="post" action="https://subscribe.wordpress.com" accept-charset="utf-8" style="display: none;">
  <div class="actnbr-follow-count">Join 1,410 other followers</div>
  <div>
    <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Enter your email address" class="actnbr-email-field" aria-label="Enter your email address">
  </div>
  <input type="hidden" name="action" value="subscribe">
  <input type="hidden" name="blog_id" value="27557544">
  <input type="hidden" name="source" value="https://spacebiff.com/">
  <input type="hidden" name="sub-type" value="actionbar-follow">
  <input type="hidden" id="_wpnonce" name="_wpnonce" value="2584edcacd">
  <div class="actnbr-button-wrap">
    <button type="submit" value="Sign me up"> Sign me up </button>
  </div>
</form>

<form id="jp-carousel-comment-form">
  <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-comment-field" class="screen-reader-text">Write a Comment...</label>
  <textarea name="comment" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-textarea" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-comment-field" placeholder="Write a Comment..."></textarea>
  <div id="jp-carousel-comment-form-submit-and-info-wrapper">
    <div id="jp-carousel-comment-form-commenting-as">
      <fieldset>
        <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-email-field">Email</label>
        <input type="text" name="email" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-text-field" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-email-field">
      </fieldset>
      <fieldset>
        <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-author-field">Name</label>
        <input type="text" name="author" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-text-field" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-author-field">
      </fieldset>
      <fieldset>
        <label for="jp-carousel-comment-form-url-field">Website</label>
        <input type="text" name="url" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-field jp-carousel-comment-form-text-field" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-url-field">
      </fieldset>
    </div>
    <input type="submit" name="submit" class="jp-carousel-comment-form-button" id="jp-carousel-comment-form-button-submit" value="Post Comment">
  </div>
</form>

Text Content

 * Skip to navigation
 * Skip to main content
 * Skip to primary sidebar
 * Skip to secondary sidebar
 * Skip to footer


SPACE-BIFF!


FIERCELY INDEPENDENT. INDEPENDANT? CRAP.

 * Home
 * About, Contact, Policies
 * Support
 * Fiction




LE TEMPS DES CERISES

Mar 16

Posted by Dan Thurot

Mark Herman’s Fort Sumter was a lean, rangy filament of a game. After initially
falling for its charms, I soon found its leanness and ranginess a little too
emaciated, with not nearly enough muscle and fat beneath the skin. One of the
reasons I play historical games, after all, is to see how the history is
modeled, not to merely see it sketched out as the titles of locations and cards.

Enter Red Flag Over Paris. Designed by Frédéric Serval, it uses the system and
leanness of Fort Sumter while still piling on, well, everything else. Its topic
is the Paris Commune, the brief but fierce revolutionary outpouring that would
prove so influential on Karl Marx — and become a stain on the early days of the
French Third Republic.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

2 Comments

Tags: Board Games, Fred Serval, GMT Games, Red Flag Over Paris


LOVE IS A GHOST TRAIN HOWLING

Mar 15

Posted by Dan Thurot

There is something initially morbid about London Necropolis Railway, and not
only because Daniel Newman’s latest offering is set during a cholera epidemic
and will release in the third calendar year of our own century’s mismanaged
public health crisis. The historical Necropolis Railway was the solution to the
bodies piling up in the streets, a line only twenty miles long but devoted
entirely to the business of death and mourning. In Newman’s care, the whole
thing takes on the pallor of a funeral celebrant both jaunty and jaundiced. More
than that, it’s imbued with an uncommon dignity.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

5 Comments

Tags: Board Games, London Necropolis Railway, New Mill Industries, Spielworxx


PLEASE F— THE TELEPORTER

Mar 9

Posted by Dan Thurot

According to Star Trek, teleportation deconstructs you at the atomic level,
beams your particles elsewhere, and then reconstructs those exact same particles
in exactly the same format. You’re fine. You’re you. You aren’t obliterated
every time you request an emergency teleport to the bathroom. Never mind all the
times teleportation goes wrong and creates an evil clone or merges a redshirt
with a booger monster. Those are… not what happens with teleportation.

Propaganda. Starfleet’s working overtime to keep you from knowing the truth.
Every one of those starships is staffed with an army of unknowing buffer clones.

Ian Zang’s Please Fix the Teleporter is a five-minute game about the harsh
realities of teleportation. Theoretically, anyway.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

Leave a comment

Tags: Board Games, Gravitation Games, Please Fix the Teleporter


THE SYNOPTIC SOLUTION

Mar 8

Posted by Dan Thurot

I’ve been pondering the idea of game design as devotion. In the centuries
leading up to the Renaissance, so much European and Near Eastern art and
entertainment was principally religious, drawing on shared stories, imagery, and
even, one hopes, depth of feeling. Could the same be true of a board game? We
have yet to realize the extent of what cardboard might express, although the
medium seems better suited to models than emotions. There are, however,
exceptions. Ben Madison’s awe at the sweep of Christian history in The Mission.
Amabel Holland’s short-tempered but sanguine Nicaea.

And now, Jeff Warrender’s depiction of the composition of the gospels in The
Acts of Evangelists. It would be a mistake to dismiss this one out of hand.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

17 Comments

Tags: Belltower Games, Board Games, The Acts of the Evangelists


SLAM DUNC

Mar 4

Posted by Dan Thurot

Expansions always make for peculiar reviews. One of the realities of writing
about lots of board games is that there’s precious little time to revisit
anything. Even the most impressive titles often fall by the wayside. Paul
Dennen’s Dune: Imperium proved an exception, reappearing on my table again and
again thanks to its smart hybridization of deck-building and worker placement.
Now it has a major expansion, Rise of Ix, along with the usual burning
questions. What’s changed? Are there new avenues for a house aspirant to pursue
greatness? Doth the spice flow?

I’ll say this much: the Dennen who designed Rise of Ix must have played this
thing a thousand times, because he understands exactly what makes Dune: Imperium
tick.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

19 Comments

Tags: Board Games, Dire Wolf, Dune: Imperium, Rise of Ix


SAILING THE SEVEN SKIES

Mar 1

Posted by Dan Thurot

If there’s any one thing I’ve learned about pirates, it’s that they’re no good
at getting along. Paolo Mori channeled that not-getting-alongness into
Libertalia. To celebrate its decade anniversary, it’s now getting a spruced-up
version from Stonemaier Games, complete with nicer tokens, new cards, and a move
to the skies that’s riled up a few fans of the original.

But while the change in setting might be a lateral one, Libertalia: Winds of
Galecrest is otherwise a perfect remake. The original game was worthy of
appreciation; this one has the waxed timbers of a modern classic.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

8 Comments

Tags: Board Games, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, Stonemaier Games


SPACE-CAST! #19. ATTACKING THE BLOC

Feb 23

Posted by Dan Thurot

In the midst of a time of social unrest, one game dares to investigate the
polarities of popular protest. That game is Bloc by Bloc by T.L. Simons and Greg
Loring-Albright. For today’s episode, join Dan, T.L., and Greg as we discuss how
their game offers both contradiction and clarity in politics, violent and
nonviolent disobedience, popular expropriation, and the danger of having an
uprising stolen from under your feet. Bloc by Bloc: Uprising is currently
funding on Gamefound.

Listen over here or download here. Timestamps can be found after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

6 Comments

Tags: Bloc by Bloc, Board Games, Out of Order Games, The Space-Biff! Space-Cast!


RUNNIN’ THROUGH THE FOREST

Feb 22

Posted by Dan Thurot

The first Advent calendars were crafted by German Lutherans to count down the
days to Christmas and had Bible verses behind their windows. Two centuries
later, Michael Menzel, best known for designing Legends of Andor, came to the
conclusion that it would be much cooler to hide board game stuff back there.

For unto us The Adventures of Robin Hood is born.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

6 Comments

Tags: Board Games, KOSMOS, The Adventures of Robin Hood


WE CALL THEM CYLONS

Feb 16

Posted by Dan Thurot

There was never a chance that Unfathomable would sweep me off my feet. From its
very announcement, when news broke that Tony Fanchi would be recasting Cory
Konieczka’s Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game as yet another volume in
Fantasy Flight’s loosely connected Arkham Horror Files, a single unexpected,
uncharacteristic thought barged into my head:

How distasteful.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

36 Comments

Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Board Games, Fantasy Flight Games, Gale Force Nine,
Homeland, Unfathomable


AM I HAPPY OR IN MISERY?

Feb 13

Posted by Dan Thurot

Bernard Grzybowski’s Purple Haze, currently funding on Gamefound for the next
day or so, claims to be “an immersive story-creation campaign game for 1 to 4
players that drops you into the heart of darkness: Vietnam, 1967.”

As buzzwordy an introduction as that is, it’s all true on a technical level.
It’s a game. It’s immersive. It openly asks its players to take its icon-laden
framework and breathe the life of a personal story into its vacant lungs. Yes,
smart-ass, it plays with 1 to 4 players.

More than that, though, as I’ve been playing it over the past couple of weeks, I
can’t help but think there’s a better descriptor. Purple Haze is all of those
things. It is also a neon-lit warning sign about how difficult it can be to make
a game about serious subject matter.

Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Board Game

23 Comments

Tags: Board Games, PHALANX, Purple Haze

← Older Posts



 * FOLLOW!
   
   Tired of stopping by Space-Biff! fifteen times a day? Enter your email and
   you'll get a note every time I write something amazing. There's literally no
   reason not to.
   
   Email Address:
   
   I choose to follow!


 * SEARCH
   
   Search for:


 * SPACE-BIFF!
   
   * Le Temps des Cerises
   * Love Is a Ghost Train Howling
   * Please F— the Teleporter
   * The Synoptic Solution
   * Slam Dunc
   * Sailing the Seven Skies
   * Space-Cast! #19. Attacking the Bloc
   * Runnin’ Through the Forest
   * We Call Them Cylons
   * Am I Happy or in Misery?


 * OBLIGATORY SB! TWITTER FEED
   
   * @jaurls @fredserval @gmtgames That's very kind of you to say! I wish I had
     an answer so I could replicate the process more reliably. 21 minutes ago
   * Red Flag Over Paris by @fredserval and @gmtgames uses and improves upon the
     system found in Fort Sumter, creating a… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
     11 hours ago
   * RT @dnlnwmn: when i was in art school, i didn't really like to analyze my
     work - when people asked me what things meant, it always felt tri…
     1 day ago
   * RT @ulible: Thank you so much, Dan! "...it reintroduces some humanity to a
     genre that too often lets the living, let alone the deceased, go… 1 day ago
   * @Lordeoftheboard @williescottb @OspreyGames Yes! Me too. It looks fabulous.
     1 day ago

Blog at WordPress.com.


 * Follow Following
    * SPACE-BIFF!
      Join 1,410 other followers
      
      Sign me up
    * Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.

 *  * SPACE-BIFF!
    * Customize
    * Follow Following
    * Sign up
    * Log in
    * Report this content
    * View site in Reader
    * Manage subscriptions
    * Collapse this bar

 

Loading Comments...

 

Write a Comment...
Email Name Website