You are a connector of people, and a pillar of the boardgame community. I love that you ask questions out of a desire to explore the probability space. You naturally engage people in thoughtful discussions. You bring people together in the most positive way. Your designs are imaginative and fresh.

Grumpy historian: that’s a strategic map, it can’t possibly represent Frederick the Great’s Oblique Order I…
Ohh…
Ohhh my…
I must have it

While I can understand the point you're making, it would be shortsighted to say that - at some time in history - all of the topics in the games already listed have not been the subject of political debate about governance. The Japanese court regulated the number of clothing layers a woman could wear

Viz: privacymatters.dlapiper.com/2024/04/euro...

I've sounded the alarm in past (to equally cavalier AI-lovers) that the GDPR is one of the most comprehensive and sets of legislation regarding personal information, and their AI Act is likely no slouch either. I think there are some surprises that will be baked into any AI operating in the EU ...

You can also choose which warlord is your favourite by the o-mamori charms you buy at the shrine. Me, I’m non-denominational. I got both the Uesugi and the Takeda charms.

Fun fact, though: if you go to the (supposed) site of the Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima, you can pray at a shrine that has a handrail that separates the “Uesugi” side from the “Takeda” side, so you can pray to your preferred dead warlord.

The general historical consensus is that the meeting between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen never happened. I am truly sorry.

I love the idea of more beautiful stuff - my kids would absolutely have gone for this. I remember them wanting to keep their favourite monsters in “Go Away Monster” back in the day - like a whole mechanic could be dedicated to making your player board more your “vibe”

Honestly no clue. To make it cost effective, maybe they could declare the first method didn’t work, rapidly devalue the existing company to pocket lint, then buy it for a song with a new company? You have a point though - how the heck can they do it (without just revealing the truth)?

The current model is a dead end, and not really AI. They need the money for a whole new theory of Artificial Intelligence.

I had heard that the original Catan had all of the bells and whistles and the genius of the game was that they got taken out… to be made into expansions

Apparently all the photos of shrines didn’t make it into the initial post…

Definitely just makes things meaninglessly more complex - you end up having to count the zeroes just to know you’re not a whole order of magnitude off on your calculations.

North: Mundare, Canada (tied with Liverpool, UK)
South: Jakarta, Indonesia
West: Honolulu, Hawaii
East: Narita, Japan

SNARF, a boardgame title that clearly has four letters because the R is silent when spoken in an English accent. A trick-taking deck-building game about the Thundercats (between episodes) attempting to get that goddamned Snarf creature to leave them alone and bother someone else.