This is a copy of the “script” we used to organise Brainwaves Episode 151. It is not a full transcript but should give you an overview of the news as we reported it. Quotes are in italics.waves
Headlines
Commander Format Firestorm
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/on-the-future-of-commander
- Magic: The Gathering, the CCG that sees players as battling Planeswalkers, has many different formats in which you can play the game.
- One of these is Commander, a popular version effectively seen as a casual format for the game. It doesn’t have the same card restrictions that competitive play has, where cards are frequently cycled out to make room for new expansions. Decks can be up to 99 cards, but you are only allowed one copy of a given card in your deck, apart from the basic lands that power the economy of the game. Commander is often played multiplayer whereas regular Magic is a two player duel.
- Since 2011, Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of Magic, has produced products to support the format. However, the actual rules for this format of the game are managed by a Rules Committee made up of passionate players and some Magic judges. Becoming a Magic judge is quite difficult and does require folk to sit tests. There is also a Commander Advisory Group that has no say in the rules, but offers advice and feedback.
- Recently the rules committee issued a new banned/restricted list, and the reaction has been….unexpected is putting it mildly.
- Amongst the cards banned were 3 expensive cards; Mana Crypt, Dockside Extortionist, and Jeweled Lotus. Each of these cards sells for $80+. For many they were seen as poisonous to the format as they were so powerful that if you were playing competitive Commander you had to play them or play around them.
- However a vocal minority were angry that cards they had spent a lot of money on were suddenly banned.
- Things quickly got out of hand as both the Rules Committee and the ADvisory group started to receive death threats. Considering that members of both these groups frequently show up at tournaments and other public events, this was a worrying situation for all of them. Several of the vocal minority threatening the committees were urging each other to confront the members in person at events.
- Olivia Gobert-Hicks, the only woman on the Rules Committee, got the lion’s share of the abuse. It was revealed shortly after the banning announcement that Olivia was the only committee member who had voted against the changes.
- On the 30th of September this led to Wizards of the Coast posting an announcement called ‘On the Future of Commander’ which begins like this
- The past week has been tumultuous for Commander fans, members of the Commander Rules Committee, and the Magic community as a whole. Along the way, we’ve seen players and fans share a diverse range of passionate opinions—far too many of which were harmful or malicious.
- Below and over the next few days and weeks, we will be discussing quite a bit about Commander, starting with the most pressing: Over the past week, the conversation has escalated, culminating with unacceptable personal threats to the safety of members of the Commander Rules Committee. This is something we will not tolerate. No matter how you feel about something in Magic, it is never appropriate to threaten somebody. Everyone at Wizards of the Coast is united on this front—we will not hesitate to take action against individuals who threaten to harm community members or employees.
- This week has also demonstrated the truly monumental task that faced the Commander Rules Committee. The Commander RC is made up of five talented, caring individuals, all with other jobs and lives which they must balance with managing the most popular format in Magic. It results in incredible amounts of work, time spent deliberating, and exposure to the public.
- Nobody deserves to feel unsafe for supporting the game they love. Unfortunately, the task of managing Commander has far outgrown the scope and safety of being attached to any five people.
- So today, in partnership with members of the existing Rules Committee, we are announcing that the Rules Committee is giving management of the Commander format to the game design team of Wizards of the Coast.
- In that post Wizards of the Coast go onto say they are still working with members of both committees during this transition and are looking at ways to think about the different power levels in decks. This of course opens the possibility of unbanning cards. They say this about banning
- We will also be evaluating the current banned card list alongside both the Commander Rules Committee and the community. We will not ban additional cards as part of this evaluation. While discussion of the banned list started this, immediate changes to the list are not our priority.
- One of the Rules Committee, Jim lapage, posted this in response to the decision
- “What’s become clear to me is that fulfilling my commitments requires a level of global connectedness, proactive and reactive communication, research, and skill beyond what I am capable of providing. I don’t think it’s possible for a group of part-time volunteers to rise to this task,”
- Beyond that, my inability to protect myself and the people I care about casts this whole situation in a different light. This part needs to be dealt with immediately, and I need to acknowledge that I am not the right person to deliver on those commitments. The best chance I have of honouring Sheldon [Menery]’s legacy is to hand the keys over to people who are more capable and better-resourced.”
- Sheldon Menery was the original creator of The Commander format who died last year.
Zenobia Award Finalists Announced
- The Zenobia Award, which is now in its second year, has announced the finalists.
- The award aims to attract diverse design talent and to diversify historical topics covered in our hobby.
- The award is limited to contestants from underrepresented groups with ideas for tabletop game designs about human history.
- Games entered must be new, unpublished games, but can be at different stages of development and from designers with different levels of experience.
- This year’s finalists are:
- Aguirre by Annabel Journey, a game about Don Lope “the Madman” de Aguirre’s El Dorado expedition, where members of the group must survive the dangers of the Amazon jungle and Aguirre’s growing paranoia.
- House of Wisdom by Fagner Lima da Silva, which is set in Abbasid Baghdad, a historical centre for scholars, which is visited by caravans from cross North Africa, Europe and Asia looking for books for their libraries.
- Melaka – The Forgotten Empire by Effendy Norzaman, which is about the Malay Sultanate of Melaka, where you play loyal nobles who outsmart each other to build Melaka and expand its supremacy.
- Obraje by Diego Javier Luis, a game about colonial Mexico’s infamous textile mills, in which enslaved people confined to brutal labor confront moral dilemmas as they seek freedom.
- An Outstreched Hand by Max Bentovim, which is set during Russia’s annexation of Poland and Lithuania, where the State, nobles and various movements seek different fates for the huge Jews population.
- The Porters by Lucas Cockburn, Neco Cockburn and Alex Goss, a game about Canadian railways, in which an informal brotherhood of black porters tries to overcome racism.
- The Pursuit of Aguinaldo by Nicanor Marco P. Valdez, is about how the Philippine President evades capture by US forces in Luzon, while his outgunned army mounts a defensive campaign.
- Sabotage The Raj by Mohit Patel, Aakansha Patel and Chirag Prakash Arora, which is set in colonial Bengal, where secret revolutionaries plot against the British.
- Silencio by Luis M. Salas, a game set some years after a Mexican community had suffered a terrible wave of violence, when a journalist investigates what happened, hoping to interview the victim and also to avoid harm.
- Congratulations to the finalists.
CMON loses COO
https://investor.cmon.com/governance
- Board game news website BoardGameWire reported on the 19th of September that David Petri, Chief Operating Officer of miniatures-focused board game publisher Cool Mini or Not (CMON) is resigning from the role.CMON is known for games such as Rising Sun, Bloodborne: The Board Game and Zombicide.
- As an experienced game designer, Preti was primarily responsible for developing ideas for new games and the overall business development of CMON. As COO, Preti also oversaw sales, crowdfunding, marketing and logistics for global operations. Preti joined CMON as Creative Director in July 2016 and was promoted to COO in December 2018.
- Preti resignation will become effective on the 9th of March 2025, and in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, where CMON is listed, the company said that Preti will become a non-executive director immediately, moving him away from the day-to-day management of the business.
- CMON’s statement also said:
- “The board would like to express its gratitude to Mr Preti for his contributions during his tenure as an executive director and the chief operating officer of the company and welcome to Mr Preti in his new role as a non-executive director.
Updates
Cops called on TTWU protestors
https://www.rascal.news/brooklyn-strategist-owner-calls-police-on-employee-walkout
- We’ve reported a few times on the efforts by employees of a string of New York boardgame cafes to get better worker rights through the recognition of their union.
- The management of the Brooklyn Strategist, Jon Freeman and Greg May, have been hiring lawyers to deny the Union their demands and taken steps labelled as ‘retaliatory disciplinary action’ by members of the Union. This has included unilaterally changing established store policies and agreements, then disciplining members of the Union for violating these new rules.
- The latest walkout by the Union took place on the 28th of September and it gained some attention from an elected official, and the police
- Councillor Shahana Hanif joined the protestors outside the Brookly Strategist saying this
- “With over 75% of staff supporting unionization, it’s time for management to stop playing games and start respecting their workers,”
- “As after-school service providers, these workers deliver essential programs that build critical thinking and social skills through games. Yet, they receive little to no training! It’s time management steps up with adequate training, pay, and job security.”
- The police had been called by the management of the cafe. On arrival the 12 police officers, and this was not a large protest from the pictures we have seen, realised they couldn’t really stop the walkout and the protest ended without incident around 730 EDT
- The union is currently balloting on strike action across the stores that Freeman and May own. A hardship fund has been setup for the employees and a boycott is being signed by supportive customers. We will include links to those in our show notes
News
TCG Player workers call for Union contract
https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/459782/tcgplayer-union-ebay-rally-fair-pay
https://cwa-union.org/tapped-out-tcgplayer
- TCGplayer, the company responsible for authentication and valuing of trading cards from a wide variety of games, is alleging its parent company eBay isn’t paying them fair wages.
- We have previously covered the efforts of the workers at TCGplayer to form a union in episode 127. The union formed in March of 2023. rCWA-TCGUnion are the first group at eBay to win union representation in the US, and they have been bargaining for their first union contract for over a year.
- a report published by the Communications Workers of America union, which surveyed 54 Authentication Centre workers — says that 87% of the non managerial staff at the Acquisition Centre in Syracuse New York sometimes handle packs of up to fourteen thousand cards in a single package, and say that the average pay of $18.25 an hour is “insulting” for the specialised work they carry out, alongside the hourly wage being “less than a living wage in Syracuse, NY for a single person without children.”
- A representative for eBay told Polygon
- “When we began the bargaining process, we agreed with the CWA that we would address the non-economic components of the contract before discussing economic topics like wages. We have a handful of remaining non-economic proposals to agree upon before we move to economic discussions, which we expect to occur soon.”
- The representative said eBay and the union:
- “meet and bargain regularly,”
Games Workshop Shareholder Revolt
- Games Workshop, the UK company that makes popular tabletop miniatures game Warhammer, has suffered a major shareholder revolt after handing millions in bonuses to its top bosses.
- Almost 21% of the votes went against the company’s remuneration report and nearly 27% against its remuneration policy at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) on Wednesday, the 18th of September 2024.
- Games Workshop’s chief executive (CEO), Kevin Rountree, had been given a bonus worth 150 per cent of his base salary. Rountree has a total pay packet of £1.87m which is made up of £787,000 in fixed pay and the same amount linked to targets.
- Game Workshop’s chief financial officer (CFO), Rachel Tongue, stepped down from her role at the AGM and also received the same percentage bonus.
- The committee agreed to award both the CEO and CFO an annual increase in base salary of 7.4 per cent from the 1st of January 2024.
- The AGM vote came after Games Workshop reported record results and that customers continued to spend on fantasy miniatures and Warhammer-related PC games.
- The company’s revenue grew by 11.1 per cent to £494.7m for the 53 weeks that ended on the 2nd of June 2024. Core sales were up by 13.9 per cent to £507.4m. Its pre-tax profit also went up from £170.6m to £203m over the same 12 months.
- In a statement issued to the London Stock Exchange, where Games Workshop is listed, the company said:
- “The board notes that more than 20 per cent of the votes cast on resolutions 10 and 11 (the former of which is an advisory vote) were against those resolutions.
- “It takes the outcome of shareholder votes very seriously and will engage with shareholders to understand their views.
- “In accordance with the UK Corporate Governance Code, the company will publish the outcome of this engagement in the next six months.”
CAH sues Elon Musk
- Cards Against Humanity, the company that makes the popular card game of the same name, has found itself up against one of the world’s richest people.
- The company is suing Elon Musk for $15 million accusing SpaceX of trespassing on and damaging land that Cards Against Humanity own.
- The land was originally bought back in 2017 after a crowdfunding campaign that Cards Against Humanity ran. It was bought in order to disrupt President Trump’s attempt to build a border wall along the US mexico border. No wall was ever built there.
- The land is near SpaceX’s operation, known as Starbase. The lawsuit alleges that SpaceX has been using the land for staging operations without permission.
- The lawsuit states
- “CAH acquired the Property for the sole purpose of ensuring that it would stay that way,”
- “SpaceX’s abuse of this Property has not only destroyed its natural condition, but has also caused even greater harm to CAH by virtue of the damage it has caused to CAH’s relationship with its paying supporters,” it says.
- Cards against humanity have said that if they win the lawsuit, the original backers of the campaign to buy the land will get the money split between them.
2024 Player’s Handbook Breaks Dungeons & Dragons Records
- As reported on the 25th of September by ICv2, a website that provides news and information for geek culture retailers, Wizards of the Coast announced that their 2024 Player’s Handbook has become the fastest-selling Dungeons & Dragons product ever.
- The 2024 Player’s Handbook includes a number of improvements and was soft-launched at Gen Con 2024 with 3,000 copies sold at the show, making it the biggest product launch in the game’s 50-year history.
- Also, Wizards of the Coast printed three times the number of the 2024 edition than they had of the 2014 edition.
- Jess Lanzillo, VP of D&D Product and Franchise at Wizards of the Coast said about the Handbook:
- “We couldn’t be more pleased with the resounding critical and fan acclaim and record-breaking launch of the 2024 Player’s Handbook, and we have our loyal fans to thank for it. They played a major role in helping make this product what it is. Our team has been analyzing feedback from players since the release of the 2014 Player’s Handbook and have worked hard and thoughtfully to implement it into the new core rulebooks to create something that we hope everyone will enjoy.”
Big Bad Con Boycott
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mrxQaSbXd_SlFB7NJxhrCIHFsKKOvcvmLEHoXxVBstY/edit
- Big Bad Con is a convention that takes place in San Francisco every year in October. This year it is going on over the 24th to 27th, though it almost lost a lot of panellists over a stance it took.
- On twitter an attendee going by Esther laid out the issues that had occurred in a long statement. It starts like this
- Esther was approached about being on a panel on Jewishness and TTRPGs. As part of the panel pitch, all panelists were asked to sign onto a statement opposing the genocide in Palestine that would be published in the panel description. The statement originally included the phrases “anti-Zionist” and “from the river to the sea”. [Edit for clarity: The Jewish panel organizer drafted the statement. All members of the panel agreed to and were comfortable with the statement.]
- Big Bad Con asked for the removal of ‘Anti-zionist’ and ‘The river to the sea’ in the event description. The latter is a phrase that refers to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea or Palestine as we more commonly know it. The censorship was asked for to avoid conflict according to the con.
- Over August Esther and their friend Hamnah made numerous attempts to contact Big Bad Con eventually hearing from someone called Ash. After some emails back and forth with Ash, Nathan Black, one of the Community Coordinators of Big Bad Con, got in touch with Esther and Hamnah.
- He said that Big Bad Con was unwilling to speak publicly on Palestine and that the anti-zionist language in the panel description was inflammatory. Big Bad Con had conducted a meeting about including pro-palestinian language, but decided against it for fear of retaliatory actions.
- On Sunday August the 25ht, Hamnah and Esther responded to Nathan, stating their demands and that they would go public if Big Bad Con was unwilling to meet them. Those demands were
- Make a public values statement indicating that Big Bad Con is an anti-Zionist space. This statement cannot equivocate both sides, but rather must stand firmly for the decolonization of Palestine.
- Allow all events to include anti-Zionist language in their programming, including event descriptions.
- Commit to consulting with Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and anti-Zionist Jews within the TTRPG space to determine what actions the community would like to see from Big Bad Con in supporting them/us in 2025 and beyond.
- On September the 7th, Andi, another member of the Community Coordinators responds to follow up emails from Hamnah and Esther saying that Big Bad Con had a desire to change, but the timing would prevent changes coming in for this year.
- On Spetember the 9th Hamnah and Esther called for a boycott of the convention and gained hundreds of signatures of people pledging to do just that.
- After much back and forth between the organisers and the boycotters, they eventually reached an agreement on the 29th of September. Esther posted this to twitter
- Hey, #BigBadBoycott! Hamnah and I are delighted to announce that
- @bigbadcon
- has met our collective demands and we will NOT be proceeding with a boycott at this time. Our full communication with the con can be found here:
- However some groups are still pulling out of the convention citing safety concerns and fearing the convention may have attracted attention from folk outside the hobby as a focus of bad actors on this matter.
Deutscher Spiele Preis 2024 Winners Announced
- Spiel Essen, the world’s largest board game fair, announced the 2024 winners of the Deutscher Spiele Preis, the largest community award in Germany, in a press conference held on Wednesday, 2 October.
- The award is voted on by the general public and is divided into two categories: the Deutscher Spiele Preis, which is given to family and adult games, and the Kinderspiel Preis, which goes to children’s games.
- Mischwald, or Forest Shuffle, by Kosch rom Lookout Spiele won the family and adult game award, while the children’s games award went to Die magischen Schlüssel, The Magic Keys, by Markus Slawitscheck and Arno Steinwender from Game Factory andd Happy Baobab.
- Congratulations to the winners.
Stonemaier Games acquires “Tokaido” from Funforge
https://mailchi.mp/stonemaiergames/stonemaier-games-monthly-newsletter-august-2989870?e=f9ef617363
- In their October newsletter, Stomemaier Games, the publisher of board games such as Viticulture, Scythe and Wingspan, announced the acquisition of the Tokaido brand from FunForge, a French board game publisher of titles such as Far Cry and Monumental.
- As we reported recently in episode 148, FunForge has been having fulfilment issues with its crowdfunding projects for a while. This included having to absorb up to $250k of extra costs.
- With the acquisition of the Tokaido brand, at least that game’s future is secure.
- As FunForge is a French company and Stonemaier Games is based in the United States, there was a lot of legal work to do before both parties could sign the final agreement, meaning the acquisition process took a few months.
- Once everything was agreed, Stonemaier Games worked on an Automa solo mode and began production of a Stonemaier-branded version of the game.
- Stonemaier Games also mentioned that they have plans to reprint Stonemaier-branded versions of Tokaido Duo and Namiji and are even looking at developing a new game in the series.
- In their newsletter, Stonemaier Games said:
- “It’s our honor to continue Tokaido’s journey, and Funforge has been incredibly helpful. […] At Essen Spiel […] Stonemaier will have the last few copies of Tokaido Deluxe at [our] booth […].”
Jobs, Opportunities, and Events
Facebook board game jobs group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/TabletopJobs
Bluesky list of board game people
https://bsky.app/starter-pack/boardgamehottakes.bsky.social/3l5aovjrq6j2p
Tabletop Games Blog Board Game Raffle in aid of The Trussell Trust / UK Food Banks
https://tabletopgamesblog.com/raffle
- Oliver is hosting a monthly raffle in support of The Trussell Trust, which runs a large number of food banks across the UK.
- Tickets are £1, plus there are bundles available as well.
- You can win prototypes or review copies of games, which have been played a few times, but are still in very good condition, and sometimes there are also brand new games on offer.
- All proceeds, minus platform fees, payment charges and postage costs, go directly to this amazing charity that campaigns for a future where nobody needs to use emergency food.
- The October raffle is in full swing, so check it out.
- There is a link in the show notes.
Patreon Shoutouts
Kevin Bertram
James Naylor
Shaun Newman
game-a-lot.fun/en
facebook.com/gamealotboardgames
Our Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/thegiantbrain
Fanroll
https://fanrolldice.com/ref/2783
Outro
What we Clue-do in the Shadows
- Continuing our ongoing series of classic games with intellectual property you may know (needs a snappier title)
- Successful vampire flat-share comedy What We Do In the Shadows now has a Cluedo version, just in time for the series coming to an end.
- In this reskinning, Laszlo’s witch skin hat has gone missing, and someone is to blame. The suspects and player pieces are the main characters from the show and it’s set in the Staten Island mansion. Players have to find out WHO took the hat, WHERE they hid it, and WHAT item they used to hide it.
Our Links
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