The Board Game Faith Newsletter, Issue 16
Hello, Board Game Faithful!
Daniel: Some of our readers know already that my family recently moved. As part of our adjustment to the new house (which the previous owners left in amazing condition, by the way), we are in the midst of trying to set up a designated game room. I can’t express just how excited I am to see the room taking shape. Even more, I’m excited to finally get our games out of their boxes and onto the shelves! I’ll try to include photos in a future newsletter once we’re done.
Kevin: I plan to return Daniel’s missing copy of Ark Nova after he has everything alphabetized and in place, thus causing havoc to his planned gaming milieu. (In a published errata for Ark Nova, completing this mission scores you 20 additional points!) Also, I can’t stop singing Lil’ Durk’s “All My Life” song. (If I can go 24 hours without even humming the tune I get 5 additional points. Also, not overusing parentheses also scores me 5 more points.)
Behind the Episodes
Kevin: I’m trying to learn some tricks in Apple’s Final Cut Pro while I have the 90-day free trial. It is amazing what you can do with video these days, with live preview of the content while you scrub the mouse through the footage! (I think I used all those words correctly).
Daniel: You know what is one of the best things about recording a Board Game Faith episode? Getting to work with Kevin Taylor. I was reminded of this during our most recent recording, “Ameritrash vs. Euro Games - Which is Better for the Soul?” What a hoot that man is! Plus very insightful as well. I hope all of you dear listeners have as much fun with the episodes as we do recording them.
Coming Up
Daniel: I’m in the midst of reading Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Play to prepare for an upcoming book club episode about it. I’ve had to restart it, but I don’t mind: the insights into the essential role of play in our lives are dense but good!
Kevin: I agree that it’s dense. I don’t know why older books are so impenetrable, I think they watched less television, and they all read the same books and newspapers, so they all thought the same way, and we have to decode things today because nothing stays the same. Sigh.
Games We're All About Right Now
Kevin: John Company 2nd edition is THE GREATEST THING EVER. Especially stunning is the solo design by Game Designer and YouTuber Ricky Royal (YT: @boxofdelights). He’s masterful in his playthroughs (I learned so much through his YouTube video on Mage Knight), and to find out he designed a really clever solo mode for JC2E is completely unfair and I am utterly jealous.
Daniel: I had already heard good things about Bandido before buying it at our brand new local board game cafe, but I have still been surprised by what a great game it is! It comes in a micro box (though its table presence is big), it’s cooperative, it’s easy to teach, and it’s fun! I’ve taught it to several people now, and everyone has enjoyed it. I recommend!
Spirituality
Daniel: I recently came across an excerpt from the writings of C. S. Lewis in which he argues that busyness is the result of what he calls either “vanity” or “laziness.” If we are overly busy, he writes, it is either because we subconsciously like to project the image of being a very important person, or because we have not put in the effort to protect our own personal boundaries.
I don’t agree completely with Lewis, and I might use different terms: he was writing from an undeniable place of privilege as a well-off, white man in mid-20th century England, and I believe there may be other causes of busyness outside of what his perspective allowed him to see. For instance: poverty. A person experiencing poverty (especially as a result of racism or other systemic injustice) often has no choice but to be busy in order to survive and make ends meet.
Nevertheless, Lewis’ comments have haunted me. Is there a secret part of me that likes to appear busy in order to project the image of importance to others? Am I overwhelmed at times because I refuse to say “no” to things? As much as I hate to admit it, the answer to both those questions is probably yes. As such, those questions can also be invitations to me–and us all–to rest in God’s Spirit as our ultimate source of value and self worth.
Kevin: I have to give CSL a hat-tip on this point. I have noticed how powerful the Fear Of Missing Out is in our lives, as well as how much everyone likes to say How Busy I Am. It’s so tempting to feel that leisure is failure, and being busy can become a form of bragging and moral superiority. One reason The Dude from The Big Lebowski is so endearing is he has no such pretensions. He is horribly unbusy.
Media We're Digging Right Now
Kevin: The Kingsman is such a fun and watchable good time. It winks at the audience a lot because it knows how absolutely ridiculous it all is, but who doesn’t like a ridiculously ripping fun tale of a cabal of secret agents fighting a maniac set on world destruction? Plus there’s a couple of good quotes about manners and being a gentleman spy, that “manners maketh the man,” and “there is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
Thank You!
Thanks so much for being a part of the BGF community. We are grateful for each of you and the ways you make the world more awesome. And if you haven’t had a chance to tell us a little about yourself yet, we would love it if you could fill out this form please!