“What is the best While Secret Lairs are relatively new to Magic’s illustrious 30-year history, they’ve already established themselves as a firm favourite among players and a fantastic celebration of the game. As Blake Rasmussen, Communications Director at Wizards of the Coast, puts it:
Hello, I'm Ben! I am the Assistant Manager of the Magic Madhouse Warehouse. I have been with the company nearly 10 years, and I'm a huge LEGO, board game, and role-playing game nerd.
Hi Ben! What RPGs have you been into recently?
Ben: If we're talking tabletop, it's mostly Dungeons & Dragons. I have dabbled in ALIEN: The Roleplaying Game and managed to kill some of my friends, which is a fantastic way of doing it.
Critical Role / Darrington Press - Dungeons & Dragons / Wizards of the Coast
What first got you into Critical Role?
Everything goes back to accidentally catching one episode of a web show called TableTop, with Wil Wheaton, which coincidentally also got me into board games and started my huge collection. I caught an episode with him [Wil Wheaton], and I think he was playing Ticket to Ride with his wife and a few other people. I was like, “that looks fun”. I literally went up into London at the time because, unfortunately, I didn't know Magic Madhouse was a thing back then. I bought the game home, played it that afternoon, and absolutely loved it.
That story sounds really good. I'm glad you enjoyed Ticket to Ride. It's such a great starter game.
Yeah, it's definitely, as I believe Wil Wheaton called it, "an infection vector".
It's one of those easy to pick up games; somewhat strategy, sometimes luck. Games that are good for a beginner. Same with Carcassonne, it’s quite good for that as well, and then from there, you can branch out into Machi Koro if you want to go strategy. You know, there's so many good little games.
Ticket to Ride/Days of Wonder
I know that you're also quite fond of video games. Do you ever play digital board games? Like Dorfromantik’s PC port, or even Carcassonne, which had a Nintendo DS version.
Yep. I have most of them in my Steam library, and a few of them on my Xbox as well. The one I played the most is probably going to also be Ticket to Ride on the iPad/iPhone. I even played it with the same people I played the physical version with that first day. Which is great, because sometimes it's hard to get the time and space for everyone to sit down together.
That's really nice. These adaptations fill a good niche there.
Definitely. Also, if Ticket to Ride is something you're interested in, the Legacy game; Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West is fantastic. It lets you build your own experience with your friends, and because the game is played over... I can't remember how many sessions, you get to feel like you're actually a part of the world that you're playing in. Which, I think, is a fantastic way building memories with a game and friends that will last forever.
You’ve also become a “3D printer guy”. Are there any upgrades you have done for your board games?
I don't know if you're familiar with Steamforged Games’ Resident Evil games? I've created some nice 3D doors for myself. So, when you actually get to the door, you get to actually move it out of the way. It’s nerdy, but it's so cool.
Steamforged Games/Cults3D
I'm still learning with the 3D printing. The doors are a bit stiff. I've also got loads of dead zombies on the floor, and typewriters for save rooms. I know that sometimes you can buy upgrades and pieces like that, but you can also find things that fans have created and print those.
You mentioned LEGO. How is your collection growing? I know that you've been picking up a lot of the larger sets.
The latest set I built was Minas Tirith, [The Lord of the Rings 11377], which is huge. Absolutely huge. It’s taking up an entire corner of my games room at the moment. I’m also trying to build a retro console LEGO collection. They’ve released the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Game Boy, and we've just stocked the Donkey Kong Arcade set. But first, I'm trying to make space. Any LEGO fan knows part three of being a LEGO fan is “I've got too much LEGO. Where can I put the new sets?”. One of the problems working here is you get to see all the cool sets come in and think, “I can see that on my shelf”.
Ben / Magic Madhouse
Seeing all the items come and go, have you ever been tempted to play or collect any trading card games?
I have. I was not the best at them, so it was kind of a failed attempt, but I enjoyed what I played. I got a lot of Magic: The Gathering cards, especially the Doctor Who set because I'm a huge Doctor Who fan as well. I also bought the Secret Lair x Doctor Who cards, but I sold those when I was clearing out my collection. Although, I do still have all of my Doctor Who Commander decks.
That must have freed up more space for the LEGO sets, I'm sure.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Literally. I had an entire KALLAX unit for MTG. Now I have a LEGO square and just a couple of deck boxes. I had to be honest with myself. It's fun, I'm just not very strategically minded, shall we say. So having to think around a commander table of five people, I don't have the chess mindset of thinking seven moves ahead in that respect.
But then it reminds me of... My brain is gone on the name of the game, the western train. You're either on top of the train or inside the train.
Colt Express? Truly, one of my favourite games*.
*(potential spoilers for a future edition of Magic Madhouse Staff Picks)
Colt Express! It's so much fun. But when somebody does something unexpected and completely ruins what you were planning on doing, it's both so satisfying and so frustrating because you're like, "aggghh!" But it's an interesting game. I haven't seen a huge amount of games do a mechanic like that. Obviously, you have to try to strategise around what other players are doing. But, I don't know, it seems to be quite outwardly effecting you compared to other games, I guess. Except for something like Catan when someone blocks you, but let's not talk about Catan.
Is Catan a sore point?
Let’s say some friends jokingly refuse to play Ticket to Ride with me because my score is always in the 200s and in kind I refuse to play Catan with some people because I find I always make poor choices where I choose to start, then I don't have the right resources, and I can't grow, which is my own fault. But again, it's that tactically minded thing.
CATAN
Interesting. So tactics and skills from one game could be a weakness in the next?
This is why I love them. But it also depends on who you play with. You can play with someone who can plan 20 moves ahead, and you can play with someone that doesn't think about it until their turn. You get such a different experience every time.
Unlike other hobbies, where it can basically be the same thing over and over again with minor changes, there are so many opportunities with a board game. From the moment you roll the first die or place the first card down, there's so many things that can occur. And that's the fun is seeing where you end up.
Then there’s expansions, and there’s also fan related content. Are you aware of the gold coin rule for Catan?
No, I don't think I've heard that one before.
So sometimes, like myself, players get left behind because they can’t get the right resources. There's a house rule that someone came up with, which we play with a lot; if you do a roll on your turn, and you don't get any resources, you get a gold coin. You can then use gold coins to buy any one resource that you want, but you need to pay your current points score in gold coins. So even if you're behind, you're still involved. So there are mechanics like that that aren't necessarily strictly in the rules of the game, but keep people involved, even if they're doing badly or, just not as well as they'd like.
That’s really interesting, sort of adding rubber banding to the game.
Yeah. Rubber banding, stabilizing. I'm not sure the right term for it, but as long as it’s fun.
That sounds great. I suppose, if you could leave any of our readers with one last poignant thought, what would you go with?
Buy a game that looks cool. If the rules are bad, or you don't like them, you can find a way of making it fun. But there's so many games that people will never experience because they look at it and they may think, “oh, that's going to be too complicated”.
You know, some of the best games sound complicated, but they’re so easy once you get into them, just give them a go.