Downtime: Shane, Dave and humbug together explore the graveyard where character sheets go, and talk about the myriad of topics relating to role-playing game character death. Features:

• Campaign lethality
• MERP
• Keeping it in the family
• Deathcon I
• The near-inevitability of death
• That cartoon
• Avoiding misery through all-powerful badassery
• Getting stoned out of your gaming group
• Avoiding misery through self-medication
• Blaze Of Glory Guy!
• A bit of the old group suicide
• Dungeons & Dragons
• Other peoples' fault
• Diplomacy
• The Camarilla
• Deadlands
• Avoiding misery through acclimatisation
• Killed by your own stupidity

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

The grueling rigours of Christmastime have filled editing time with dinner and drinking and prezzies and telly and all that, so this week's episode is delayed! Sorry about that!

+2 Downtime: With visions of sugar-plums dancing in their heads (or they would be if they knew what those are), Shane, Dave and humbug remember some of the great games they received as Christmas prezzies in the past, and think about what they'd love to get this year. But first, announcing the lucky winner of the Twilight: 2013 competition! Where by 'lucky' we mean 'knows a mildly unhealthy amount about gaming'. Features:

• Twilight: 2013
• Big money, big prizes
• Mithril Miniatures
• Pipe-licking
• Eason or Eason's or Easons'
• Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs
• Pterodactyl swoops!
• Volcano erupts!
• Subbuteo News (I'm not even kidding)
• Diameters, not dimensions, so there
• How to beat England
• Escape From Atlantis
• Send in the sharks!
• Battle Masters
• Memoir 44
• The skill of Battle Masters
• Fighting Fantasy
• Clever marketing ploys
• Some vampire game
• d8s where you don't expect
• Ogres and stuff
• Advanced Heroquest
• Advanced Space Crusade
• Perudo
• Screwball Scramble
• Waterboard stand-ins
• Dave's sad Christmas
• Escape From Colditz
• Do or die!
• Shoot to kill!
• Go For Broke!
• Shane dooms his family
• Robust horse-racing
• Pandemic
• Civilisation in the sky
• Battlestar Galactica
• Evil robot family
• GameScience dice
• The wrath of the dice gods!

+1 Downtime: Following on from last week's yak about weird games your family might like, Shane, Liam and humbug turn things around and consider family games your weirdo might like. Features:

• Scrabble
• Dictionaryifica
• The Power of Hydrogen!
• Monopoly
• Doggedly bankrupting little Johnny to death
• The charades hat
• Advanced self-policing game mechanics
• Kerplunk on BoardGameGeek
• A different game every time
• Pictionary
• Taboo
• Tree!
• Hedbanz
• Quentin Tarantino Versus Nazis
• Both Churchill AND egg-timers!
• Trivial Pursuit
• ...Harry Potter and Spice Girls edition
• Deal Or No Deal
• Poor explanation of game show mechanics
• Take me to the Derb
• Countdown
• Blockbusters
• Jenga
• Dread
• Better Jenging through tactics
• Things to do on Earth when you're alive
• Talisman
• Twister
• Sadism Twister
• A piece of crap with a Guaranteed Irish symbol on it... sort of like us!
• Discovering Ireland
• Hungry Hungry Hippos
• Fire & forget gaming
• Find The Egg-Timer Game Box

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Downtime: With impending family time looming on the horizon, Shane, humbug, Dave and Liam make some recommendations and some anti-recommendations for gamer games that you can dig out to play with a human family. Features:

• The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow
• Post-dinner eye-closing
• Risk
• Shogun
• Monopoly
• The elimination of house rules
• Dave's family tactics throughout history
• The Settlers of Catan
• Apples to Apples
• Cineplexity
• Setting anime fans on fire
• The true spirit of Christmas
• Perudo
• Carcassonne
• Hunters & Gatherers
• Carcassonne: Catapult
• Game of Life
• Ticket to Ride: Europe
• Tunnel RULES!
• A draw
• TransAmerica
• Continental snobbery
• Diplomacy
• Divorce in a box
• Through the Sausage
• Delicious candy-coloured camels
• Battlestar Galactica board game
• Riding and Shadowrun swear-words

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

Exp: With the holiday season finally unarguably upon us maybe people will stop looking oddly at Shane for wearing a Santa hat and even Mean Old Mr. Humbug has found some Christmas spirit, because they with Liam and guest expert Stu are reviewing Perudo (Dice of the Andes) as part of the Game Cryer Holiday Gift Guide project. You should buy this now. NOW! Features:

• Game Cryer Holiday Gift Guide
• Perudo
• Oh No, Not More Pirates
• Dank Peruvian Mexican Prison Cell
• Little sock of a game
• Ordinary human charisma
• Other prisonly activities
• Ignorant gamers
• Non-structural drink colour change
• Guesswork, bluff and luck
• Some kind of statistics
• Swearing
• The Conflict
• A rules example
• The House Rule
• What's hiding behind that moustache
• The Advanced Rules
• humbug's hip flask
• The bell curve of godhood
• Mojo loss

Discuss this episode on IrishGaming.Com!

GP: If you think having to roll for cholera, track how thirsty you are, perform constant preventative maintenance on your gun and count expenditure of valuable, irreplaceable ammunition sounds like fun, enter our competition to win a copy of Twilight: 2013! Alternatively, if you think naming all the games in our logo sounds like fun, you can enter too.

Today's episode is going to drop at 1800 instead of the usual midnight-wherever-our-server-is, because it's part of a bigger project spanning multiple gaming podcasts and blogs and they're trying to sync it all up. There'll be something to keep you occupied in the meantime though; watch this space. Shane