Mollystix

Tribe Comics and Games continually amazes us with their donations!

Tribe is local to Austin, TX, and chooses a different charity each month. At the end of the month, they give change rounded up to the nearest dollar to that charity. Swing by their store to see their awesome comics and games, and come bid on their donations in the silent auction.

Thanks Tribe!

Retro Planet makes awesome retro gifts. They have mugs, towels, toys, and more, but our favorite are their super-cool superhero signs.

Go check out their website, and come bid on the signs in the silent auction. It could be you that wins!

Ree and Franklin Linker donated a ton of games to our Dutch Auction!

Come on out to play games, have fun, and take some games home with you!

The heartbreaking history of Libby, Montana.

Welcome to Libby, Montana, population 2,691.

In many ways, Libby is like any other small town. It sits nestled between bits of national forest, it has a train station and a few schools (go Loggers!), and for many years its economy was supported by the nearby logging and mining operations.

But in other ways, Libby is very different.

Downtown Libby, Montana. Image: U.S. EPA.

Libby has a heartbreaking story to tell.

For decades, the company W.R. Grace operated a vermiculite mine in Libby. Vermiculite is a mineral used for insulation and fireproofing in many building materials. (By the way, it's also the material used for those little white balls in potting soil.)

The vermiculite mine in Libby provided ... over 70% of all vermiculite sold in the U.S. between 1919 and 1990.

The vermiculite mine in Libby provided hundreds of jobs, as well as over 70% of all vermiculite sold in the U.S. between 1919 and 1990. And while vermiculite itself isn't known to be harmful, the Libby mine also included a large deposit of something much more dangerous: asbestos.

The asbestos in Libby's mine has caused 400 deaths — and counting.

Mining the vermiculite that lay alongside asbestos released harmful asbestos fibers into the air. The asbestos appeared as a fine dust that coated the entire mine — it got everywhere — and caused harm not only to the mine workers, but to their friends, family, and other town residents as well.

But it's never easy to criticize a company that plays such a huge role in a town's life. In the 2004 documentary "Libby, Montana" by High Plains Films, one resident explained:

"[W.R.] Grace was on the school board, Grace was on the hospital board, Grace owned the bank. And when you talked about dust control here and ... what [the dust] was doing harmful to these people here, the first thing to come out of their mouth was 'You gonna close that mine down, and you gonna put all these people out of work?' Well you didn't have very many friends here when you started talking like that."

Mine manager Earl Lovick held town positions outside the mine. Images: "Libby, Montana."

Fast-forward to today: An estimated 400 people in Libby have died from asbestos-related diseases, and more than 2,000 have been sickened by the asbestos. Hundreds more deaths are expected from these diseases, as they can take decades to manifest.

Records show that W.R. Grace knew about the adverse health effects from asbestos in the mine many years before the mine's closure in 1990. Mine manager Earl Lovick, who died of asbestosis in 1999, testified to having knowledge of the presence and dangers of asbestos. (Check out 9:46 and 12:24 in the video below for clips of Lovick's statements.)

The company has since paid out millions of dollars in settlement money for civil cases concerning the effects of the asbestos. In 2008, W.R. Grace faced thousands of personal injury claims and agreed to settle all present and future claims via a trust. The amount of money they're doling out is nearly incomprehensible. But does it really make up for the deaths and the sickness?

Libby continues to heal ... slowly but surely.

In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency responded to widespread concerns surrounding the asbestos in Libby. The agency collected hundreds of samples from around Libby. In 2002, the site was declared a Superfund site, and cleanup began.

A 2014 draft of the EPA's human health risk assessment states, "It is now possible to live and work in Libby without excessive exposure to asbestos. ... Remaining asbestos needs to be safely managed."

The asbestos risk may be under control (or close to it), but that doesn't mean the people of Libby have forgotten how W.R. Grace changed the course of their town's history.

Here's an excerpt from High Plains Films' documentary "Libby, Montana," which tells the story of asbestos exposure in Libby:

The video is an excerpt from the 2004 High Plains Films documentary "Libby, Montana." You can purchase the full film on iTunes.

If you suspect that you may have been exposed to asbestos from Libby's vermiculite, learn more from the EPA — and don't try to remove asbestos yourself. Contact a professional for safe removal.

Thabo Sefolosha was getting ready for the NBA playoffs when his season came to an abrupt end.

In the early hours of April 8, 2015, one of the best basketball teams in the NBA lost a crucial player to a very unexpected injury.

Atlanta Hawks forward Thabo Sefolosha was celebrating with friends after his team's 96-69 thrashing of the Phoenix Suns when he allegedly suffered a fractured leg after being put in a headlock and thrown to the ground by police outside of a New York City nightclub.

Police claimed that Sefolosha had interfered with efforts to set up a crime scene in the area near where another NBA player had been stabbed.

Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images.

Sefolosha's leg injury required surgery, which put an end to his season.

Days later, he released a statement confirming he had sustained injuries from police during his arrest.

The following is a statement from @ThaboSefolosha: pic.twitter.com/BmF8XSohsh— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) April 14, 2015

The initial reports put out by police claimed that Sefolosha and teammate Pero Antic were asked "six times" to leave the scene of a crime.

One officer claimed that he "observed the defendant Thabo Sefolosha run in an aggressive manner towards the direction of Police Officer Daniel Dongvort," and "Officer Dongvort's back was facing the defendant at the time."

Meanwhile, video and eyewitness reports didn't match what police said:

The real question here is: Had the police not forcibly subdued Sefolosha, would he have been injured at all?

Without Sefolosha, the Hawks eventually lost in the playoffs to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Bizarrely, Sefolosha's police-induced injury was barely mentioned in media coverage.

Remember, this is the world of sports, where people obsess over whether or not Tom Brady rubbed his (foot)balls too hard or whether or not LeBron James has a sore wrist. So, why wouldn't news of a player missing the entire postseason allegedly as the result of an interaction with the police be a part of the conversation?

Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images.

That's what The Nation's Dave Zirin wanted to know: Why doesn't the sports media seem to care?

In an article titled, "An NBA Player Is Missing the Playoffs Because the NYPD Broke His Leg — Why the Sports-Media Silence?" Zirin explores the question, concluding that one of the main reasons we haven't heard about this is because journalists self-censor (emphasis mine):

"The more I spoke to people, the clearer it was that this story has not garnered more coverage because of how the media police themselves. One person at Yahoo Sports said to me, 'We censor ourselves. We're risk-averse. White columnists feel like they'd get the story wrong, and black columnists don't want the responsibility and risk of having to be the ones to write about it. We end up in a state of paralysis.'"

I

Last point: there

And while it's certainly possible the Hawks would have lost to the Cavaliers even with Sefolosha playing, it's worth remembering why he wasn't there.

Police violence — especially the kind aimed at young black men — has been (and should be) a major story. And while Sefolosha wasn't shot like Mike Brown and wasn't choked to death like Eric Garner, his story follows the same, all-too-familiar narrative of an unarmed black man being attacked by police officers.

.@KingJames and @KyrieIrving wear “I CAN'T BREATHE

While this particular story is about a player missing some games, not about a person being murdered by police, it's still worth asking why we haven't heard more about it.

Because if a story involving a professional athlete can fly under the radar like this, just imagine how many other, lower-profile cases we haven't heard about.

Thumbnail by Photo by Alex Goodlett/Getty Images. Video by TMZSports.

Our daughter was still
Now she is a movin’ ba-
by and that is all.

by W. Eric Martin

• Designers Leonard Boyd and David Brashaw from Backspindle Games are taking preorders for Clacks: A Discworld Board Game, with the game scheduled to debut at the Irish Discworld Convention in early October 2015. Here's an overview of the game:

Clacks: A Discworld Board Game is based on the "Clacks" semaphore messaging system — the fastest (non-magical) messaging system on the Discworld — featured in Sir Terry Pratchett's novel Going Postal.

Using a semaphore system of shuttered lamps on top of high towers, the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company has revolutionized long-distance communications on the Discworld. Their network of towers covers most of the Unnamed Continent, but now the old postal service is fighting back. Driven by the determination of newly "volunteered" Post Master Moist Von Lipwig, the Ankh-Morpork Post Office has challenged the Clacks operators to a race from Ankh-Morpork to Genua.

Play against your friends and claim the title of Fastest Clacks Operator on the line, or play together as a team to win the race across the Discworld and prove that Clacks is here to stay. In more detail, Clacks: A Discworld Board Game contains rules for a player vs. player game, a co-operative race game against the Post Office, and a children's introductory game.

Preorders by midnight UK time on May 14, 2015 receive an unpainted miniature of Moist von Lipwig. Not sure what you might do with this miniature, but the offer is out there. PHALANX will release a Polish version of this game (Świat Dysku: Sekary) in 2015.

• Pegasus Spiele and Passport Game Studios have announced a partnership deal that will bring the eggertspiele/Pegasus titles Grog Island from Michael Rieneck and Hospital Rush from Laursen, Storgaard, and Thomsen to the U.S. in July 2015.

• Whoa, I totally missed the timing on this competition. In April 2015, AEG solicited factions for a future Smash Up release to be titled Smash Up: It's Your Fault, and I tweeted a notice about this call to action. On May 11, 2015 AEG announced the top 32(!) submissions (mechs, kaiju, jocks, hipsters, hippies, etc.), then placed them in brackets March Madness-style, and held daily votes until they settled on four factions today when I'm finally putting up a general game round-up and it's too late to do anything but announce the winners: dragons, sharks, superheroes, and Greek myth. Smash Up: It's Your Fault will now head to design for a release in Q2 2016.

• Rio Grande Games will release an English-language version of My First Bohnanza, which debuted in German from AMIGO in early 2015. This new version of the bean-planting classic allows for play with children as young as four thanks to a stripped-down version of the game, then it introduces more complexity through additional bean cards and one new rule at a time. No release date has been announced.

• Also coming from Rio Grande Games is Dominion: Guilds & Cornucopia, which combines the previously separate small box expansions into a single larger box.

• Rio Grande Games has also reacquired the rights to publish Franz-Benno Delonge's TransAmerica in English. The RGG website lists a release date of May 18, 2015, but I've double-checked with RGG on that date, and a more accurate release date right now is "2015".

by W. Eric Martin

• The publication history of Junta from designers Eric Goldberg, Ben Grossman and Vincent Tsao feels like a mini-lesson in the nature of juntas themselves, with the publisher name and graphic design changing on the box from decade to decade but the core content — the power brokers, if you will — staying the same. No matter who is standing on the balcony, the ones pulling the strings remain the same.

Okay, maybe it's just me. For those not familiar with Junta, which is being newly released in English by Alderac Entertainment Group based on the 2013 redesign by Pegasus Spiele, here's an overview of the game:

Players represent various office holders in the ruling Junta. Depending upon his office and the various cards he holds, each player has a certain number of votes. These are important as they must first elect El Presidente and then vote on the budget that he proposes. Here's where it can get sticky. El Presidente draws cards face down from the money deck (which varies in denomination from $1 to $3) and must propose a budget for the year, distributing the money as he sees fit amongst the various offices. Of course, loyalty to him is usually rewarded, while those pesky "thorns in his side" are usually cut off completely. The beauty of all this, though, is that El Presidente can — and most always does — keep some of the loot for himself. And since no one but he knows the value of what he drew, no one knows how much he's keeping. Suspicion is always keen.

Players may attempt to assassinate the other players by guessing where they will be from among five locations. Players who successfully assassinate another player take that player's money, as the only safe money is the money that has been deposited in a Swiss bank account, and the only way to get to the bank is to survive the assassination round.

If the players are unhappy, and there is an excuse, they can call for a coup, where the opposition players seek to take control of a majority of the power centers. Rebel players control the forces of the role which they were assigned (e.g. army, navy, air force), and players loyal to El Presidente do the same, seeking to control the strongholds until the rebellion is quelled.

The goal is to amass the greatest wealth secreted away in your Swiss bank account.

Junta will debut at Gen Con 2015 and be available through retail outlets in August 2015.


• Uli Blennemann of Spielworxx has announced that in 2016 he'll release a new title by La Granja designers Andreas Odendahl and Michael Keller that bears the working title of Dice for the Galaxy. (Update, Apr. 27, 2015: Due to the fevered response from people in this post and elsewhere, the working title for this game has been changed to Solar 3X.) Keller offers this short description of the game:

All known advanced civilizations of the galaxy are on the verge of awakening to expand into the endlessness of space. Only a few resource-rich or habitable planets remain, however, so the intergalactic race towards colonization has begun to advance through all available means. Exploit your planets and develop carefully because too much pollution will slow you down. Build up valuable resources, develop advanced technologies, and be a pioneer of space flight into the far reaches of the galaxy.

The player who has colonized the most valuable planet at the end of this race and is the most technologically advanced civilization collects the most sun points and wins the game.

Solar 3X is a fast-paced and strategic civilization game, with a novel dice-draft and resource-management mechanism.

• Blennemann also notes in passing that the second edition of La Granja should be available shortly. Pearl Games, which is releasing the game in French, has stated that it expects the game to be in stores approximately May 8, 2015. Stephen Buonocore at Stronghold Games expects to have the English language edition of La Granja available in July 2015.

• In a round-up of prototypes being shown at the Gathering of Friends, I linked to a long-distance shot of Food Chain Magnate from designers Jeroen Doumen and Joris Wiersinga, who publish as Splotter Spellen, but I didn't include any details of the game. Shame on me. Here's an overview of the game, followed by two pics from Doumen of the prototype:

"Orange juice? They want orange juice? What is the world coming to? I want commercials for burgers on all channels, every 15 minutes. We are the Home of the Original Burger, not a hippie health haven. And place a billboard next to that new house on the corner. I want them craving beer every second they sit in their posh new garden." The new management trainee trembles in front of the CEO and tries to politely point out that... "How do you mean, we don't have enough staff? The HR director reports to you. Hire more people! Train them! But whatever you do, don't pay them any real wages. I did not go into business to become poor. And fire that discount manager, he is only costing me money. From now on, we'll sell gourmet burgers. Same crap, double the price. Get my marketing director in here!"

Food Chain Magnate is a heavy strategy game about building a fast food chain. The focus is on building your company using a card-driven (human) resource management system. Players compete on a variable city map through purchasing, marketing and sales, and on a job market for key staff members. The game can be played by 2-5 serious gamers in 2-4 hours.

One meeeellion cards...

by W. Eric Martin

• U.S. publisher Stronghold Games has declared 2015 "The Year of Survive!", but I strongly suspect — and this might just be me talking through my hat but hear me out — that the declaration relates to certain games that Stronghold owner Stephen Buonocore plans to publish in 2015, starting with Survive: Space Attack!, a space-based reimagining of Julian Courtland-Smith's Survive: Escape from Atlantis! by a trio of designers already familiar with both Stronghold Games and spacey games: Brian, Sydney and Geoff Engelstein. Here's an overview of this game from the publisher:

In Survive: Space Attack!, players try to escape from a space station as it comes under attack by aliens. While Survive: Space Attack! is similar to the original Survive! — with players moving their tokens out of a tiled location that slowly falls apart and scoring points for those who survive — additional features of the new game include:

• A double-sided game board that enables a variety of starting set-ups, each with its own challenges.
• Fighter ships that give players the ability to capture and redeploy alien creatures.
• A weapon system of laser turrets that players can use to defend the space station against aliens.
• Special player powers on the tiles that can be combined in various ways.
• Four tile thicknesses to create a 3D look for the space station before it starts crumbling under fire.
• Alien creatures that can evolve to become even more powerful.

Buonocore expects to release Survive: Space Attack! in September 2015, and the base game will be joined by two mini-expansions: Survive: Space Attack! - The Crew Strikes Back!, which consists of twenty crew cards that players can use during the game, each with a unique power, and Survive: Space Attack! - 5-6 Player, which (unsurprisingly) includes extra spaceman tokens so that up to six players can try not to die in the cold vacuum of space. Survive: Space Attack! carries a $50 MSRP, with each expansion selling for $10.



• Also due out in September 2015 is Survive: Dolphins & Squids & 5-6 Players...Oh My!, which collects three mini-expansions — Dolphins & Dive Dice, Giant Squid, and 5-6 Players — for Survive: Escape from Atlantis! in a single $20 package.

• Stronghold Games has also opened preorders for Evan Derrick's Dark Moon (which is due out June 24, 2015) and Michael Keller and Andreas Odendahl's La Granja (which bears a July 2015 U.S. release date). (I'll note in passing that after speaking with the designer and publisher, Dark Moon will stay listed together with BSG Express and not separated. I'm sure that designer Evan Derrick can expound upon this reasoning in blog posts that he plans to write about the evolution of the game to its published form.)

• Other titles due out in 2015 from Stronghold include Among the Stars: Revival, which is both a two-player only game from Vangelis Bagiartakis and Panagiotis Zinoviadis and an expansion for their Among the Stars, and a 30th anniversary edition of Code 777, with both of these titles expected to be available in August 2015.

I had a dream…but I forgot about it
I went to church, I know, good for me
Abinadi told me to pick up the players Tom dropped
uhhhh, he dropped them because they were no good
That made me remember
I had a dream
That I was number 1 in our Ultimate Fantasy League

Pre-heat your oven to the temperature of a dragon’s breath and bake an awesome cake!