Eric M. Lang

Anyone who knows me knows that I love gaming. Video games are great for when I've had a stressful day; nothing eases stress like shooting some unknown video game enemy in the face, however I am also an avid board gamer. For most people, board games summon up images of people playing Monopoly and Scrabble. There is far more to the hobby than just the games available to us from the Argos catalogue.

The game that got me hooked on board games was Munchkin by Steve Jackson, and it is at this point where I bring in Eric Lang. Eric Lang is a well known Board Game designer. This talented game designer, who hails from Toronto, has been designing and co-designing board games since 2000. Initially starting out as a play tester for FASA before releasing his first game, Mystick, in 2000.

Some of the games Eric has designed or co-designed are: -

Blood Rage is among the Top 100 games on Board Game Geek. This game sees players leading clans of Vikings to Glory in order to ascend to Valhalla.

Players have many options of how they achieve victory. They can die in battle, fulfil quests or raid and pillage.

Rising Sun, much like Blood Rage, is about leading your clan to victory however this time it is set in feudal Japan instead of the land of Vikings.

In Rising Sun players can use Politics to help them earn victory. Players can also earn the favour of Kami and recruit monsters.

For anyone who is a fan of the Warhammer Miniature War Game or it's successor Age of Sigmar and the grimdark Warhammer 40K will enjoy this. In Chaos in the Old World, you play the role of one of the 4 Chaos Gods leading your forces of demons to victory over the others.

Chaos in the Old World sees you achieving victory by corrupting the landscape, battling the depraved fores of your enemy gods, and dominating the inhabitants of the battlefield.

That not dead which can eternal lie and with strange aeons even death may die. Despite being openly racist, common in the USA during the 1920s, Lovecraft's legacy has endured well beyond the man himself. There have been many games based on the Cthulhu Mythos and this is no exception.

Unlike most Cthulhu Mythos games where you are trying to stop the gods from breaching our reality, in Death May Die you are an already insane investigator who want to bring the monsters and gods from eldritch spaces so you can destroy them. The ultimate goal of the player is to shoot Cthulhu in the face.

I have to admit that I have never watched Game of Thrones. By the time I came to try and watch it, the show was on series 4 so I decided not to bother. However if you are a fan of the show, this could be a nice entry game for you.

In Game of Thrones the Card Game you take control of one of Westeros' warring factions. Using devious plots and back alley intrigue to challenge your opponents on the battlefield or in the political arena to win the game

It is often said that there in nothing left in the world that is original. All forms of entertainment seek other sources of entertainment for inspiration. There are many board games based on their video game cousins, and XCOM is no exception.

XCOM sees you and up to 3 friends saving the world from an alien invasion as the elite agents of XCOM. Waht is different about this game compared to most board games based of video games is that the game comes with a companion app, which controls the alien invasion during the game.

Like Chaos in the Old World, Conquest is set in the Warhammer universe but this time in the Grim-dark 41st Millennium.

In Conquest you are a warlord leading their army to victory. A common element in Living Card Games is that there are expansion packs to help bolster your army in order to achieve victory. A lot of planing and ensuring you establish a presence on planet is a must in order to help you win

When you look at the Eric's credentials you will see repeating patterns. There's a few pieces of Warhammer, a fair bit of Game of Thrones, and of course a few entries based on video games. Like XCOM, Bloodborne is one of those games based on the video game of the same name.

Based on the Chalice Dungeons in the game Bloodborne this game has been created to reflect the video game in many ways. Eric stated that it has been created in such a way to channel the frustration and intensity of the video game. At it's core this game is about Risk Management, which sets it apart from most video game based board games

As I said earlier, Munchkin was my entry game into the board game hobby. It's comical take on dungeon crawler RPGs such as D&D makes it worth playing. For some people it is a bit of a marmite game, you either love it or hate it. Munchkin Dungeon takes the game Munchkin and adds miniatures to make it bigger and in many ways better. You can never truly appreciate the size of the Plutonium Dragon until you have seen it in 3D.

Munchkin Dungeon like any Munchkin game is all about being a two-faced bar steward. The aim is to get your adventurer to the highest level in the game. This is done by equipping your Munchkin with the best of gear, do you have problems with people being taller than you? Then introduce them to your Hammer of Kneecapping. The game will see you forging alliances to beat monsters that are too strong, and then stabbing them in the back moments later.

To date Eric M. Lang has 517 credits to his name. Most of these are taken up with the expansions that make the games he has designed more interesting to play. It shows Eric's love for the games he creates as well as consistency, rather than having his name on a thousand games he has his name on a 100 or so games and then fleshes them out with expansions to improve them.

I probably haven't sold Eric Lang as well as I could. I haven't spoken about his history or his personal life. I have tried to highlight his influence in the board game community. The community is a richer place for the contribution Eric has made to the hobby. You can check out his works on BoardGameGeek and any good game shop near you.

Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek