On top of providing our own brand of video reviews, we’ve decided to also produce concise audio / video board game tutorials that focus on providing the bare essentials necessary for bringing a new player up to speed.

The hope is that not only will we be able to teach your chums how to play your favorite game in under 3 minutes, but we’ll also be able to supplement a basic understanding of the play incorporated in the games that we review.

We had originally meant to release the Summoner Wars review before heading out of town for the holiday, but family and travel had a ruthless habit of intervening. Before all of the hustle and bustle, a portion of the 2D6 staff had a chance to get together and have a six person double, elimination tournament – which incorporated both of the currently available player sets. As usual, there was a fair amount of the swearing coming from Matt’s side of the room. Surprisingly, I think that Emily may have been the culprit.

Before the holidays are in full swing, I thought that I would take a moment to do a brief news update. Over the last few days, we’ve been finalizing how we’re going to approach producing the tutorial sections of forthcoming reviews. We’ve decided that instead of including a tutorial section in the review videos themselves, with each review, we’ll include a separate, very brief video. Approaching our tutorials this way will allow those of you that want to learn about the game, to have the ability to do so without obstructing the review itself.

Before I announce the winners, I wanted to take a moment to mention that we had over 130 people enter to win a copy of Summoner Wars. Given the enthusiasm of those that entered, the 2D6 staff and I have decided to try to do a giveaway of this nature each month. The games themselves may vary from those that have been recently released / lightly played for our review purposes, to previously released games that still bare plastic wrap. At any rate, outside of enjoying high quality video reviews and interviews, members of the 2D6 community will have a monthly opportunity to win a game courtesy of the staff and our partners.

Conflict of Heroes: Storms of Steel (CoH:SoS) is a very enthralling wargame that succeeds in ways that many wargames do not. Like most games of it’s kind, CoH:SoS does include a significant rulebook, which does involve a considerable learning curve. However, it strikes a very comfortable balance between providing a deep war gaming experience, while still remaining accessible and fun for a demographic that may not typically be into playing meatier war games.

Once the dice started rolling, we found ourselves engaged by the amount of intuitive complexity and ease of turn progression…

It’s been brought to my attention that the 2D6 gaming shelf has become a bit crowded over the last month. So in celebration of our Summoner Wars video review release on December 21, we’ll be giving away a copy of Summoner Wars to one registered 2D6 user. Make note that, in order for the 2D6 staff to review the game, the box was opened and the game has been played a few times – however, the game is in like-new condition and will be a great addition to any lucky registered 2D6 user’s board game collection.

Oh, and we’ll take care of shipping.

First and foremost, on behalf of the 2D6 staff, I wanted to take a moment to thank those of you that have been sending emails and posting replies here / on our Board Game Geek review threads. The intent of our first three videos was essentially to acquire community feedback and to get the site launched with content.

Based on your feedback, we’ve taken some time to consider areas in which we could improve upon our current reviews, while not dramatically increasing the video duration length or overall production time required to produce each review. We’ve come up with the following changes…

Just before evacuating town for our respective Thanksgiving holiday plans, we had a chance to sit down and play a few games of Race for the Galaxy. For a card game, we were fairly surprised by the amount of depth and strategy that the game incorporates. One side effect however, was that unlike some of the other card games found on the market, Race has a significant learning curve that, for some of us, was enough to discourage us from including it in our normal gaming rotation. That’s not to say that we felt that the game wasn’t fun or well designed, as that is by no means the case.