Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Dog Park: New Tricks, Blitzschnell!, and My First Escape Game: The Magical Forest. Then, we talk about real life escape rooms games and what we love and don't love about them (and how that's similar to our board game interests).

by Ambie Valdés

I was very excited when I heard about WizKids reprinting Tragedy Looper with new cases and an updated graphic design. I love the original game, but I had problems differentiating some of the tokens and the rulebook was pretty difficult to learn from, so I was hopeful that the new version would make the game easier to get played. When WizKids sent me Tragedy Looper: New Tragedies, I immediately opened it, combed through all the components, and read every word of the rulebook to compare it with the Z-Man games version of Tragedy Looper I have.

I received a review copy of Tragedy Looper: New Tragedies. Tragedy Looper is one of my favorite games of all time, but does the reprint do it justice? I read through the rulebooks and components (minus the spoilers) of both games to compare the versions in this video! Read my written comparison for more details & photos.

When my twins were a little over 2 years old, they started playing some board games by the actual rules! Before that, I had introduced them to board games and they liked playing with the pieces. I blogged about some of those experiences in my Training Games series. But when they started playing games by the rules, I started making overview videos of each game we've played. Here's the playlist on YouTube of all the videos I've made about children's games. I've also got pages linked below with compilations and all the overview videos grouped by how old my kids were when they first played the game by the rules. Those pages also have list videos of 5 of their favorites each year.

Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Phantom Ink, Fiction, and My City: Roll & Build. Then, we celebrate our 7 year podcast anniversary by taking you on a behind the scenes tour of how an episode of Board Game Blitz gets made!

In 2020 I started getting into print-and-play (PnP) games, specifically ones that are available for free. These are games where the files (rules and components) are made available online for you to print out at home and play! Sometimes you'll need to provide things like dice and counters, but most board gamers have some of those! I've made overview videos of a bunch of the games I played. Most/all of the games are available for free to print and play (or they were at the time I made the videos), and they're also playable solo. Here's the playlist on YouTube of all the videos I've made about free PnP games. The links to each overview video in the playlist are also below, grouped by type. Here's also a video on how I make PnP games.

Additionally, I made a list of some of them that I felt were worth it to print and play as a beginner to PnP!