Feb 2022: One in a million
Back when I used to try to send out newsy holiday letters, sometimes they ended up being Groundhog’s Day letters. Some were valentines. This year…happy President’s Day?
In this newsletter:
Game updates
Upcoming events
Miscellaneous media
Bird of the month: Sandhill Cranes
Game updates
Wingspan
Playtesting is done on the 3rd Wingspan expansion. There is still a lot of work to be done, and who knows what the global manufacturing and shipping situation will be this year…but Stonemaier’s prediction is that it will be out in the 3rd quarter of 2022.
Also:
Wingspan was voted #1 in the People’s Choice category for the Dice Tower’s 100 best boardgames of all time. This still blows my mind. If you voted, thanks!
Speaking of mind-blowing, Wingspan has now sold over a million copies. That is not a sentence I ever could have imagined writing even in my wildest dreams.
Tussie Mussie
Button Shy is in the midst of shipping out the new expansion(s) for Tussie Mussie. If you missed the Kickstarter you can pick up a copy here.
Mariposas
No news to report on the game, but there was very encouraging news from California this winter: a population count found almost 250,000 monarchs in the western US: a 100-fold increase from the previous year’s total, and the highest total since 2016.
Fox Experiment (name TBD)
I started a game a long time ago about the experiment in Russia that bred foxes into something close to domesticated dogs. It was in limbo for a long time. I think it might finally be close to done. I’ll be playtesting it a bunch more, but you might start hearing more about it later this year — and then you, too, can breed adorable baby foxes.
Mycorrhizal Mushrooms (name TBD)
I’ve also started working on a game about the way that trees and fungi trade resources underground. If you’re at all curious about this topic, I recommend Suzanne Simard’s new memoir, Finding the Mother Tree, which covers how she came to research and make stunning discoveries about the world beneath our feet.
Upcoming events
Fingers crossed that things keep heading in the right direction with COVID! If so:
I got a ticket for Washingcon, March 26-27 in Washington DC. I love this small local con. They’re requiring proof of vaccinations and masks.
I’ve done lots of board gaming events for Wingspan, but the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival will be my first birding event, May 12-15 at Indiana Dunes National & State Parks. (If you’ll be there, and want to help teach Wingspan to a bunch of birders who haven’t played it yet, I’ll hook you up with the volunteer coordinator!)
And then I’ll be at UnPub May 19-22 up in Baltimore. It’s an intense weekend of playtesting unpublished games, and free to attend if you just want to be a playtester.
Miscellaneous media
I was on an episode of the WBEZ podcast Nerdette for their “nerdy jobs” series (last 5 minutes of the episode)
The Biodiversity Editor at Vox wrote about Wingspan for the Vox Series One Good Thing.
I made some templates for mushroom-themed paper snowflakes and made a video about it.
I’m on a card in the game Ark Nova, a game in which you plan and design a modern, scientifically managed zoo! It’s significantly more complex than any of my games, but it’s getting rave reviews. Here’s the German version of the card, which uses a picture from a canoe camping trip I took a few years ago:
Bird of the Month: Sandhill Cranes
Part of the reason that I haven’t done a newsletter in a while is that I was down in Florida for a month. One day while we were eating lunch at Orlando Wetlands Park, a pair of sandhill cranes came and started lunching along side our car. But then one of them noticed its reflection…and started attacking! We shooed them back into the park, where there are no metallic foes to confront.
May all your foes be imaginary, and easily defeated —
❤️
Elizabeth