Climate, Environment

NASA finds 2014 hottest year in recorded history

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Boardgame Empire | Where board gaming, astronomy, science, science fiction and fantasy meet.
by Mike Clarke 
With files from NASA and the NOAA

It’s official. Last year was the warmest on Earth since record keeping began 135 years ago in 1880.

The announcement Friday, Jan 16, follows two separate analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ).

It’s the third time in a decade, the Earth has set a new global temperature record.

NASA map global temperatures 1880-2014
Map showing global temperatures in 1880 (left) and 2014 (right). (NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

Earth broke NOAA records set in 2010 and 2005. The last time the Earth set an annual NOAA cold record was in 1911.

“The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000,” said NASA in its release.  “This trend continues a long-term warming of the planet.”

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Board Game, featured

Mice and Mystics: Is it more than a kid’s Game?

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Boardgame Empire | Where board gaming, astronomy, science fiction and fantasy meet.

by Mike Clarke

This review was originally published to BoardGameGeek in November, 2012.

Like many of you I was wondering whether Mice and Mystics would work for gamers without kids. I even opened up a forum post on the subject and got mixed reviews so I went ahead and bought the damn thing.

Last weekend, my now grown kids, former role-players both came over to try it out. Here’s our story:

We settled in around the table with some snacks and after spending a little time catching up and setting up the game, I read them the intro and off we went. Now the intro could have been a little shorter.

It’s hard to sustain an audience for a new game with a long read. However, I kept them interested by telling them they should pay attention to the characters beause they were going to be choosing which of them they wanted to play. That helped them focus on the story a little better.

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Board Game, featured

Dominant Species — or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bits

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by Mike Clarke 

This, my very first game review, was published to BoardGameGeek in December 2010. 

Since its release, Dominant Species has been coming under criticism for a number of perceived shortcomings that nearly caused me to pass on the game.

So this is a review addressing some of the criticisms which might make you reluctant (like I was) to pick it up. I’m not going to review the game play. That’s been done several times already.

People have complained the components aren’t thematic, that the board is too plain, the tiles are too thin and their artwork too simplistic and that the cards and the element tokens make the game play too random.

I was intrigued by the game, but these criticisms made me postpone buying it until there was only one copy left in my area. However, faced with the prospect of waiting until March 2013, I took the plunge and bought the last copy.

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Ascending Empires: Is it spouse friendly?

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by Mike Clarke

This review was originally published to BoardGameGeek in June 2012.

A fellow gamer asked me to write up my thoughts on Ascending Empires as a two player spouse- friendly game after I spent a week researching a 4X (explore, exploit, expand, exterminate) game I could play with mine.

So here it is. Let’s start with: Is she clumsy?  Ascending Empires has one fairly unique feature. It uses dexterity instead of dice to simulate randomness.  You flick your ships over a smooth puzzle-piece board on, or within, a planet’s orbital “ring” allowing you to set up outposts and transfer troops as you expand your empire.

ascending empires star wars
A shot of the orbital rings on a set customized with Star Wars labels. (Jeremy Laverty/BoardGameGeek)

It’s light for a 4X game, but has a decent amount of strategy that includes a tech tree for customizing your ships.

It’s a 2-4 player game with each player represented by a coloured world. Each world has its own colour tech.  You accumulate more tech by exploring  worlds and unlocking the tech represented by that world’s colour.

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