It’s awesome that March is here! It’s not awesome that it was -7 degrees this morning. Anyone else ready for warmer weather?

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to recap the Boards & Barley that I enjoyed last week. Let’s start with the Barley…

The Barley:

BARLEY SPOTLIGHT: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter

The Vanilla Porter from Breckenridge Brewery is my favorite vanilla beer. It has a great smooth and subtle vanilla flavor that adds a great layer of sweetness to the porter. I like to drink it as a slightly warmer temperature to help bring out even more vanilla. This is a highly enjoyable brew that I plan to enjoy again sometime before Winter is over.

• NEW! New Glarus 20th Anniversary Strong Ale: I enjoyed this with my friend Jeremy while watching the third and final episode from this season of Sherlock. It was a perfect accompaniment to the show!
• Potosi Belgian Abbey
• NEW! Shipyard Longfellow Winter Ale: I thought this was a pretty good winter beer. I would drink it again. But perhaps that’s because I love their logo.
• Wisconsin Brewing Amber Lager

THE BOARDS:

BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Crokinole

My friend Jeremy, the same one mentioned above, made his own Crokinole board. (I am hoping to have him write a guest post about his process). He finished up his “test board” the other night and so we played it a bunch during our board game night. It’s just a lot of fun to play, especially when you can make a board rather than paying over $100 for one!

• NEW! Il Vecchio: My friend Adam got this one to the table. It felt and looked and played very Euro-y, which is good for our group. Most of the time I didn’t have a good idea of why I was doing anything. I think the other guys felt that way early on as well. I snagged a 10 and 8 point location in one of the provinces and that helped propel me to victory in a tight game. We were all separated by 10 points total. It was one of those games where I wanted to play again right away so that I could do things a lot better.

Designer’s Corner:

I have been working on Brooklyn Bridge for some time now and it is like a big puzzle. There are some gameplay elements that are currently not fitting together. So I am toying with a few ideas to get them to work while not sacrificing fun or theme. I am still hoping to have this ready for Protospiel-Milwaukee later this month.

My current objective with the design is to put together a prototype and start solo playtesting it. That should help me find out how the gameplay elements will really fit together. I think I can put together a board and an objectives deck tonight. I may have to have an impromptu game night at some point this week to get my Level 1 playtesters to try it out.

So those are the Boards & Barley I enjoyed last week. What beer and board games did you enjoy?