So Very Wrong About Games
A podcast about all manner of hobby games by Mike Walker and Mark Bigney. Bad games don't go easy on you, so we don't go easy on them. Thorough analysis via reviews, news, and discussion of topics in gaming. We take context seriously, we value your time, and we're not into hype. Just because games are fun doesn't mean we can't take them seriously, and just because we take them seriously doesn't mean we can't have fun.
Episodes
October 21, 2025 • 77 mins
As ever, we do not acknowledge one of the most pernicious false dichotomies in the rulebook space; whether rules should be strictly permissive (you can only do what the rules say you can) or strictly restrictive (you can do anything unless the rules say otherwise). I have never seen a rulebook forbid me from choking an opponent, nor have I see a rulebook give me permission to breathe. I will thus reject both models as being rather ...
Mark as Played
October 14, 2025 • 74 mins
"Wiarton Willie is the name given to a Canadian groundhog who lives in the community of Wiarton in Bruce County, Ontario. Every February 2, on Groundhog Day, Willie takes part in the local Wiarton Willie Festival. His role is to predict whether there will be an early spring. Although the original Wiarton Willie died in 1999, the Wiarton Groundhog Day celebrations continue each year with a successor of the original Willie (except in...
Mark as Played
October 7, 2025 • 82 mins
Rest assured that every topic we address here at SVWAG will be utterly comprehensive and final, unless and until we decide to address it again. Thus, when we discuss tile-laying games, we perforce will cover all of them, each and and every one, and failure to specifically mention any title means it does not exist and must be scrubbed from all records as a revisionist lie.
01:41 AYURIS: Kutná Hora: The City of Silver (Ondřej Byst...
Mark as Played
September 30, 2025 • 65 mins
"A quipu usually consists of cotton or camelid fiber cords, and contains categorized information based on dimensions like color, order and number. The Inca, in particular, used knots tied in a decimal positional system to store numbers and other values in quipu cords. Depending on its use and the amount of information it stored, a given quipu may have anywhere from a few to several thousand cords. [...]
Inca administration used ...
Mark as Played
September 23, 2025 • 75 mins
We are staunchly body positive here at SVWAG, but we do prefer our bears fat. "Let me have about me bears that are fat," said Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, or he would have, had he known about the glory that is Fat Bear Week. I guess Caesar wouldn't have been totally down with the democratic aspect of the whole voting thing, but whatever! Exercise your franchise and vote for the moist chonkers bears.
https://explore.org/fat-bear-we...
Mark as Played
September 16, 2025 • 71 mins
We tempt fate and refer to a number of third rails in the hobby community. For one, we acknowledge a loss in Regicide Legacy, which reliably summons the chattering mobs. Further, we mention both Star Trek and Star Wars, so undoubtedly we get a detail "wrong" that will "justify" a detailed response.
Look, we're experts here. We completed the Kobayashi Maru in under 12 parsecs. We're regular callers to Car Talk with Martok. Don't t...
Mark as Played
September 9, 2025 • 77 mins
"Well, that was your mother
And that was your father
Before you was born dude
When life was great
You are the burden of my generation
I sure do love you
But let’s get that straight"
-Paul Simon, "That Was Your Mother"
01:34 AYURIS: Nucleum (Simone Luciani & Dávid Turczi, Board&Dice, 2023)
Games Played Last Week:
04:04 -SILOS (Reiner Knizia, Bitewing Games, 2025)
09:34 -Ayar: Children of the Sun (Mandela Fernandez-G...
Mark as Played
September 2, 2025 • 65 mins
On this day of Labour, we offer our solidarity to you. We also offer our labour, because we don't take many days off. No union for us in the opinion mines! I'd complain to my manager, but since that's me, I guess I'd be inclined to ignore it. Classic conflict on interest. The gibbons only complicate the org chart in unhelpful ways.
Games Played Last Week:
01:01 -Hot Streak (Jon Perry, CMYK, 2025)
04:13 -High Tide (Marceline Le...
Mark as Played
August 26, 2025 • 68 mins
I've always chafed at the conventional wisdom that young goats are good at trick-taking games. Or, at least, ones where you are not incentivized to go null. Do they hold their cards in their cloven hooves? Do their dead eyes come to life when contemplating the vagaries of trump suits?
It must be true, though, because I have it on good authority from a cartoon rabbit that tricks are for kids.
01:23 AYURIS: Envelopes of Cash (And...
Mark as Played
August 19, 2025 • 67 mins
Losing a component is rough. Knowing that one of your games is incomplete is like having a permanent absence in your soul. It's one thing to eschew that one added expansion--that's a triumph of restraint. But that missing block in Viking See-Saw will taunt you forever, a blight on your consciousness that can never be healed. Maybe I'm exaggerating.
Games Played Last Week:
00:52 -Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor (Cornelius Cr...
Mark as Played
August 12, 2025 • 78 mins
Inigo: I am waiting for you, Vizzini. You told me to go back to the beginning. So I have. This is where I am, and this is where I’ll stay. I will not be moved.
Brute: But the Prince gave orders —
Inigo: — So did Vizzini — when a job went wrong, you went back to the beginning. And this is where we got the job. So it’s the beginning, and I’m staying till Vizzini comes.
-The Princess Bride
(who knew Inigo was a Black Sabbath fan...
Mark as Played
August 5, 2025 • 71 mins
"We don’t ask that you stop loving your fantasy world. We ask
you stop paying money for the privilege to dream of it. If
you want to read the [Harry Potter] books or watch the movies, consider
buying second-hand or renting them from a library. Small
changes can make sure you never put your hard-earned
money into JKR’s hands."
-Blacklist CGE zine
Games Played Last Week:
01:01 -Through the Desert (Reiner Knizia, KOSMOS, 1998)
05:49 ...
Mark as Played
July 29, 2025 • 68 mins
A chief misgiving Mark has about the con is that he is a terrible playtester. He was able to play two unpublished games, and while the designers were gracious he is seldom able to offer anything of much substance. "This game," he might say, "has cards. And other things." Past that, for some reason, when confronted with a prototype his faculties often fail him.
01:48 AYURIS: Arborea (Dani Garcia, Alley Cat Games, 2023)
Games Playe...
Mark as Played
July 22, 2025 • 79 mins
The purest juxtaposition that reveals the absurdity of "take that" effects can be found in many of your heavier games and some consims with cards. You gather the resources, marshal your forces, laboriously haul those troops hither and yon, and then sometimes have to manage some activation tokens or whatnot to finally get it on. And then your opponent plays the "nuh uh" card. Fun!
01:19 AYURIS: Daybreak (Matt Leacock & Matteo Menap...
Mark as Played
July 14, 2025 • 80 mins
"Dear friend, if you wanna feel better
Don't let the devil make you toss this letter
If you've been crossed up by hoodoo voodoo
A wizard or the lizard
You got family trouble, man trouble, woman trouble
No light through the tunnel
If you're lookin' for a true friend, or a true lover
Or if you've been livin' undercover
Well, I'm comin' to your town to break it all down
And help you with all of this
I'm lookin' to help you find bliss ...
Mark as Played
July 7, 2025 • 84 mins
It is remarkable to reflect on how much hobbies can demand of us, and certainly board gaming is no different. Setting aside the administrative, economic, and social burdens; we then have to spend so much time teaching, setting up, and tearing down. Alas! 23-step processes for general set up prior to the 12-step individual player board set up. It was not always thus, but here we are.
01:42 AYURIS: Voidfall (Nigel Buckle & Dávid Tur...
Mark as Played
July 1, 2025 • 73 mins
Apparently the American custom of the "push present" can trace its roots to the Anglo-Indian tradition of the "baby bauble", although in the latter case jewellery is the more standard gift (instead of, say, boardgames). Can we acknowledge that baby bauble is a much less crude term? Let's try to be classy here, people. There is already enough about childbirth that is fraught.
Games Played Last Week:
2:07 -Galactic Cruise (T.K. King...
Mark as Played
June 24, 2025 • 73 mins
Walker's approach to parenting eschews what he sees as the coddling endemic in other families. He believes in competition above all else, where newbs must be pwned and even babies must git gud. "L2P" is his family motto. Some appalled anthropologists tried making a documentary about the Walker household, but they were forced to tone it down and release it as Squid Game.
01:21 AYURIS: Through the Desert (Reiner Knizia, KOSMOS, 1998...
Mark as Played
June 17, 2025 • 74 mins
"Because of the long-standing mutual enmity between Meany and Brown, Meany was named among the suspects in The Case Of Encyclopedia Brown’s Mangled Corpse. Meany denied the allegations.
'It’s true that Detective Brown and I didn’t see eye to eye, but I would never do something so downright dirty rotten as murder him,' Meany said. 'Besides, it’s a matter of public record that, at the time the crime was committed, I was at the North...
Mark as Played
June 10, 2025 • 75 mins
We generally frown on ad hominem here at SVWAG, ensconced as we are in our glass houses. In the case of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (known affectionately as "Ja-Jay" by no one), though, who wrote extensively about proper methods of childhood education, we shall report that he confessed to rather callously sandbagging his lover into abandoning their children (Rousseau claimed there were five of them, though records are tricky). Way to be ...
Mark as Played
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