It is finished.

Come explore Magic Realm, THE MOST COMPLICATED BOARD GAME OF ALL TIME. 

This 1978 classic adventure fantasy game has long been deemed unapproachable by most, hopefully this episode can change that. 

In this episode I will give you a basic walkthrough of playing the most basic version of the game.  And the best part is you can play along with me using the Robin Warren's fantastic computer verion of the game RealmSpeak.  (available at www.realmspeak.dewkid.com)

I will help you through the basics of your first few games, teaching you the goals of the game, the basic steps of a turn and the combat system.  In no time you will be able to dive in deeper with the other 15 characters, exploring the magic system, hiring the native populations and more.

Also to accompany the episode I am providing my How to Play "Teaching Guide" for reference as you listen to the episode and for future reference in remembering or teaching the game.

This is available here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/58497/teaching-guide-for-magic-realm-from-the-how-to-pla

On a side note teaching aides are also now available for Caylus and Le Havre and I hopefully will have more upcoming from my past episodes.

Enjoy exploring the Magic Realm.

Further resources:

Realmspeak computer Program: http://realmspeak.dewkid.com/

Magic Realm rules 3.1: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/14379/mr-31-complete-pdf

MRIPE - Magic Realm in Plain English: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/9357/mripe-pdf

The least you need to know to play magic realm: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/4475/leastmr8-pdf

The Magic Realm Wiki: http://homenowned.com/wiki-mr/pmwiki.php

Bookshelf games Magic Realm Videos: http://www.bookshelfgames.com/index.html

Today I hope to inspire you to give painting miniatures a try.  I start with a motivational speech and then launch into equipment you need to paint your game pieces.  I follow that with a brief description of the basics of painting miniatures and include a few of the most popular techniques.

Enjoy!

From a close vote at the guild today's chosen episode is Shadows over Camelot.

Gasp!  A cooperative thematic experience game, not your typical HTP material!  I talk about making this experience a great one.  I also discussing using the Teach as You Go technique.  A technique that works well with this game particularly and have a short discussion on other similar cooperative games.

Enjoy.

Today we cover a fabulous gateway game, Alhambra.  This is a great midweight game to bring out with family or friends.  As such in the musings I discuss the topic of attempting to turn your family or friends into gamers, can it be done and how?  I also go over the other games in the Alhambra line and revisit my occasional tendencies towards silliness.  I hope you enjoy.

This time around I cover Uwe Rosenberg's other game, Le Havre.  This is quickly becoming one of my favorite games.  The mechanics of the game are simple but navigating the strategy can be quite challenging, hopefully listening to this show can give you a leg up on your first few plays of this great game or on how to teach this game.  In the musings for this game I muse on Honesty and compare Le Havre to some similar games.

It's time for another lettered episode How to Play fans.  The lettered episodes are episodes that don't follow our typical How to Play format and do something just a bit different.  In this very special How to Play I give you a rundown of the current top 50 strategy games as ranked at BGG.  I give you a short summary of the games' themes and mechanics and my rating and personal opinion of each game.  I start the episode by musing a bit about the pros and cons of the categorization of games and the differences between thematic, strategy and abstract games.  I hope you enjoy it.

-Ryan

Today I cover Reiner Knizia's excellent auction game, Medici.  How to Play is also graced with our first actual real life Guest Stars, Scott Nicholson and Donald Dennis from "On Board Games" oh and the ubiquitous "Derek from Canada" I'm not quite sure what ubiquitous means but I like the way it sounds.   In the musings segment we muse together on the Auction Game Genre. Enjoy!

After an editing battle Episode #15: Caylus is finally finished.

My love for this game caused the length for this to get out of hand because I had a lot I wanted to talk about!

I start the episode with a segment trying to restore Caylus’ damaged reputation and explain why I think it is such a great game.

I include a lot of beginning strategy throughout the explanation and provide some strategic path guides in the hamster.  In the vegetables I give you some seed ideas on basic strategy for favors.

In the musings I talk about a variety of Caylus-related topics, including a beginners guide to get started playing online at the great real time board game site BSW, at which Caylus is one of the many fantastic games.

But the big announcement in this episode is the launching of the “Caylubration:” International Caylus Celebration Day.  June 6^th 2010.  A holiday that I just made up.  The idea of the Caylubration is to spread the gaming goodness that is Caylus. 

It is also a challenge to see how many people we can get to play Caylus at the same time.  Sign the online pledge to pledge to play at least one game of Caylus online or in person, that day, or at least that week.  I will be giving away a geekgold prize of 20 Geekgold! to one random lucky participant.

Let see how many we can get, can we get, 10? 100? Catch Caylus fever, join the Caylubration.  Sign the pledge from the link on the How to Play guild at Board Game Geek or from the forums of the Caylus game page.

Enjoy!

-Ryan

Ryan grew up in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota.  There he received a Masters of Education and started his teaching career of now over ten years.  He has taught upper elementary children of grades three through six in Minnesota, New Hampshire and now Western New York.

Games have always been a part of Ryan’s life from the first board games he played as a child, to role-playing games in high school, to collectible card games in college, and now euro games as an adult. 

Ryan has combined his passion for games and education.  Throughout his teaching career Ryan has worked on developing curriculum for the classroom that incorporates games and game like structures.  He is also very interested in the use of games to support social skills and character education.  Ryan is currently hard at work developing some of this curriculum work for self-publication.

In wanting to make a contribution to the hobby of board games, in early 2008, Ryan used his education background to write a lengthy detailed article on the basics of teaching board games.  This article was very well received and was even translated into Spanish and Portuguese and published in the Spanish gaming magazine, “Ludo.”

In the fall of 2009 he took the method developed in this article to go on and record a series of game explanations in his podcast, “How to Play.”  This podcast is created with the focus for gamers to learn games as well as to learn to teach games.  He also occasionally contributes segments to the highly popular podcast, “The Dice Tower.”

Ryan currently resides in Western New York with his wife and baby girl. Through his continuing efforts, both professionally and as a hobby, he looks forward to sharing his passion for games and showing what they can be capable of.

Ryan can be contacted directly at howtoplaypodcast@msn.com, at the guild or through BGG.

Citadels the game of outguessing your opponents, its ten years old this year and still going strong.  This was one of very first requests and I am finally fufilling that request.  Sorry about more Princess Bride references but it just kind of fit, no more Vizzini and Inigo I promise.

In this episode's musings I talk about the included expansion to the game, the games wide polarity of opinion and wide range of players, with a focus on playing Citadels with just two.

I hope you enjoy it!

-Ryan