Our show today is with Dr. Reiner Knizia. We met Reiner in Los Angles at OrcCon, one of the conventions under the Stratigicon umbrella. We had a great time playing with many Knizia designs at the convention, but the highlight was undoubtedly being able to spend some time with Reiner.

Reiner Knizia has hundreds of game titles on the shelf now and is recognized by any board gamer looking for quality. He was born in Germany and now lives in the U.K. where he enlists the aid of his now very experienced game testers to deliver polished product to the entire world. He has developed for many game companies. Those mentioned in today’s show include Fantasy Flight Games, Playroom Entertainment, Z-Man games, Hasbro, Face2Face, and Twilight Creations.

Reiner has a full schedule ahead of him and attends many conventions. His future attendances in the states include Gen Con and GameStorm. In Europe you will find at Essen and Baycon.

One of the games talked about at length today was a new release under the Ingenious brand. It was just shown for the first time in the states at Toy Fair and then again at OrcCon. He tells us some about the game and how you can work together to solve the puzzles presented in the game using the same hexagonal pieces you played with in Ingenious. If you haven’t yet played Ingenious you need to get a copy. It is a must have for your game shelf.

The Lord of the Rings board game is another must-have that gets a lot of attention during today’s show. Together, you and up to four other players work together to take the ring to Mount Doom to win. You really must work together if you expect to even have a chance. It is one of very few cooperative play games and is very successful at entertaining any group of players.

The first promo is for The Vintage Gamer by James Van Verth. We really enjoy listening to Jim talk about some of the older games that we don’t cover. The other promo you heard is for Geek Fu Action Grip by Mur Lafferty. Mur was gracious enough to come onto Pulp Gamer when we were just getting our feet wet. She writes and covers a wide variety of geek matter. As a matter of fact she has written one of the books on my shelf, Tips of the Podcasting Masters.