227 – Chatting with Jeremy Howard – The Family Gamers Podcast

Happy new year! We are excited to welcome Jeremy Howard on the show.

This episode is sponsored by First Move Financial. Be aware of scams, and reach out at firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers to schedule a 15 minute phone call.

Fact – 227 is an American sitcom that originally aired 1985-1990, starring Marla Gibbs (from “The Jeffersons”). Other cast members of the show included Hal Williams, Jackée Harry, Alaina Reed Hall, Helen Martin, Regina King, Curtis Baldwin, Kia Goodwin, Countess Vaughn, Toukie A. Smith, Barry Sobel, Paul Winfield and Stoney Jackson.

And now, on to our guest, Jeremy Howard! – A force of positivity in board game media, this guy is all over the place. Jeremy did some amazing board game giveaways this year working with all sorts of publishers. He works with Man Versus Meeple, and has been the creator of a bunch of awesome board game channels including Jambalaya Plays Games and “Dad and the Dude”. We first met Jeremy at PAX Unplugged two years ago, I think, and it’s really been fun to watch as he moves through the industry.

We’ll talk about all of these things in the second half of the show, but first, let’s talk about what we’ve been playing.

What We’ve Been Playing

Master Word (Scorpion Masque/ IELLO) – a cooperative guessing game. The guessers actually create rows of “clues” and the person who knows the word gives thumbs up to clues that help.

Zombie Kidz / Zombie Kidz Evolution (Scorpion Masque / IELLO) – cartoony zombies, lots of stickers, a great experience to play with kids.

Fleet: The Dice Game (Eagle-Gryphon Games) – FOUR times in the past week! “The best roll and write” according to Jeremy.

Meduris (HABA) – part of HABA’s “family game night” series – “for families that game”. Lots of tough decisions to make in what looks like a simple game!

Gods Love Dinosaurs (Pandasaurus) – build up prey on the board, so predators can eat them, so dinosaurs can eat THEM.

Silver & Gold (Pandasaurus) – so quick, so easy to get into it! Burn through the whole game in 15 minutes.

Kingswood (25th Century Games) – a rondel / action-selection game. Move shared adventurers around to various locations and fight monsters in the forest. A little bit of interest on off-turns.

Honey Buzz (Elf Creek Games) – a lovely game (squishy components!) in which bees pick tiles and build their honeycomb. Build certain configurations to use all the actions from those tiles and earn certain kinds of nectar. We saw this at PAX Unplugged 2019 (and so did Jeremy). It’s making its way out to Kickstarter backers right now.

Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (Eagle-Gryphon Games) – Anitra is crushing Andrew every time at this game. Press your luck on the die rolls to get different combinations of die rolls. Each player has a pegboard to keep track of resources, in addition to your sheet on which you cross off various objects.

Atheneum (Renegade) – a cool spatial puzzle of placing books on library shelves.

Rolled West (TMG)

We bond over our love of Prisma Arena (HUB Games) and Seikatsu (IDW Games). Both are so great to play with kids, and see where they’re at!

Fallout Shelter (Fantasy Flight Games) – you don’t need to know anything about Fallout to like this game (although you’ll appreciate all the nods to the theme if you love Fallout or the Fallout Shelter mobile game).

SNAP Review – Dragomino

All the kids help us tell you about this “My First” game from Blue Orange Games. Match up terrain dominoes to get eggs and hatch them. Some eggs have baby dragons, but some are empty. Whoever has the most dragons at the end of the game wins.

See more pictures and the full transcript at our SNAP review page.

Giveaway

We have a copy of Kingswood to give away! Enter now at https://www.thefamilygamers.com/giveaway-for-1000-twitter-followers/

Talking with Jeremy Howard

Jeremy used to run his own channel (Jambalya Plays Games), working with Board Game Revolution.

Nowadays he is working with Man vs Meeple, mostly making solo and cooperative content. He also “brings general brand awareness and community awareness” on his own, mostly on Facebook.

On Man vs Meeple, he is responsible for Solo Sunday videos, and also occasional contributor to Chit Chat.

How about Dad and the Dude? We really love seeing these videos of parents and kids talking about games together – not just Jeremy, but also Vince Vergonjeanne from Lucky Duck, and Michael Pittre with his son.

Jeremy regrets pushing his son too hard when he was very young, but they still make “Dad and the Dude” videos once in a while.

We talk about struggles with kids in games, and a reminder that some kids just aren’t into games (and all kids won’t be into games some of the time).

Playing with little kids? Short turns and lots of hands-on is what you need to present the best gaming experience to them.

SOS Dino and Kraken Attack are great co-operative games from Loki/IELLO that give your kids room to make choices and make mistakes.

“Learn to win through losing.” Be ready to LET your kids fail.

Jeremy recommend Isle of Cats as a game with many different difficulty levels. There are different ways of playing all in the same box.

What are you excited for in 2021? Conventions and seeing board game friends in person.

Find Jeremy Online:

Jeremy Howard on Facebook

Twitter: @jambapg

Man vs Meeple Solo Sunday (Facebook, Youtube)

Find Us Online:

Facebook: @familygamersaa and thefamilygamers.com/community
Twitter (X): @familygamersaa
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Youtube: TheFamilyGamers

or join the Family Tabletop Community on Discord! thefamilygamers.com/discord

Or, for the most direct method, email us! andrew@thefamilygamers.com and anitra@thefamilygamers.com.

Check out our new Family Gamers and Play Games with Your Kids merchandise – T-shirts, hoodies, and mugs – at thefamilygamers.com/merch.

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The Family Gamers is sponsored by First Move Financial. Go to FirstMoveFinancial.com/familygamers to learn how the team at First Move Financial can help you pile up the victory points.

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