Board All The Time – Details, episodes & analysis

Hey hey BATT Family! Thanks for coming on back for the next full episode of the show! If you've joined in after our recent interview with Jamey Stegmaier, thanks for coming back around! This week we got to have a dear friend of the show on to discuss the effects of colour vision issues in board gaming and the ways that games try and handle that - successfully and otherwise. We should note that it is a conversation with only one person with those colour vision issues, so his experience is replicable to his singular experience. But hopefully it helps provoke some thought and lets you hear some other opinions you may not have had the ability to yet! This episode we're also talking some games provided to us from Hobby World and Bellows Intent as well as finally getting Scott to play Ethnos and how that treated him. Like normal, hit us up with any thoughts or comments you may have!

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:55 - What's Been on the Table

00:06:06 - Topic of the Week: Colour Vision Issues in Board Gaming

00:31:08 - Why Did I Play That: Ethnos

00:40:15 - Table / Shelf / Trade

00:54:22 - Rotating Segment: The Archives

00:58:45 - Contact Info / Sponsors 

01:00:07 - Outro

---   Notes!

1) We should mention that this episode was recorded prior to the tariff stuff all dropping, which is why it wasn't mentioned in this episode. We're certainly not going to keep hammering on that topic as there isn't much we can directly do about it, but if you're wondering how we go from the interview we did to this episode, that would be why.

2) You can also hear just how long it's been since we recorded this since Scott was talking PopiCon at one point. Just general reshuffling of stuff between all the various issues of the past couple months. 

3) Scott was right! There was a third bigger expansion to Tiny Towns. Fortune, Villagers, and Architects (which released in 2024!). 

4) So it turns out that Scott's Archive game of Get Bit, we talked about in episode 19! Because I guess, let's just rip the curtain right away for this set of episode notes: The episode you heard as E19 was originally intended as E21 and this was to be E19. We figured since we had *just* had MacWagCon the previous weekend, we'd talk about it and release it while it was all fresh in our minds. So we recorded this PRIOR to MacWagCon where we summarily played Get Bit. But because it was better explained here, I decided to leave it in. 

5) And we did play Bob Ross: the Art of Chill (actually after we finished recording!). Scott enjoyed it, but I'll let him provide his commentary on it at a later date.

6) Also, my dog coughed an enormous amount through this episode. I decided to not stick you with that very odd, repetitive noise but that last tag made me laugh regardless.

7) And for those of you that have asked, my younger son is thankfully fine. The hospital stay went fine and he's back home and bouncing around like normal at this point. Sorry for the delay on the episode, we appreciate the patience. 

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Hey hey BATT Family! We had an incredible opportunity to sit down with Jamey Stegmaier from Stonemaier Games to discuss the current tariff situation, how it effects his business and the larger gaming industry as a whole, and some of the solutions he thinks could make the situation easier for everybody. We had a little bit over a half hour of his time and we stuck pretty closely to that. We have edited this conversation for clarity's sake, but other than that the conversation is presented as it was recorded. Scott and Mark were at the BATT studio in Indiana and Jamey joined in remotely from his office in St. Louis. 

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about what was discussed here, please feel free to reach out!

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Notes!

1) Jamey did provide his article that he researched supply chain labour certification. It is located here, https://stonemaiergames.com/how-can-we-fix-this-together-tariffs-manufacturing-and-a-solution/, and you can find all of his sources within that link. 

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Hey hey BATT Family! We're back with our next main episode! We hope you really enjoyed the Live! episode from PopiCon, we had a blast recording that one. Last week didn't have an off-week release unintentionally between returning from vacation, an absolute nightmare of a week at work, and preparing for MacWagCon (the studio honestly has probably never looked better). This week though we get to talk about theme and what brings us to games, finally getting Scott to play one of my all time favourite games, and a return to one of our favourite rotating segments. 

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:58 - What's Been on the Table

00:05:38 - Topic of the Week: What's In a Theme?

00:29:31 - Why Did It Take So Long To Play That: Aquatica

00:40:58 - Table / Shelf / Trade

01:02:05 - Rotating Segment: Visions of the Future

01:16:19 - Contact Info / Sponsors 

01:17:41 - Outro

---   Notes!

1) I know when talking about Skymines I could have said Moonbasa instead of Space Mombasa and frankly I'm as disappointed in myself as you are. 

2) Not sure what or why that weird metronomic popping is there for a few a bit around the 30:20 mark, but it appeared to be buried within the audio itself and I couldn't clear it out. Apologies! I'm still trying to get better at audio engineering!

3) It is ironic that we discussed theme for so long in the episode and then Faraway's gets discarded out of hand so fast when talking about it. The game was taught to me without using that theme and unforunately nothing in the gameplay reinforces it so I just kind of breezed past it.

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Hey BATT Family! We recorded this episode LIVE!!! at PopiCon 2025 on January 31. We're presenting it to you here largely unedited to just give you that live experience (and also have you see all the stuff that normally gets edited out!). We had a blast with this one and we're looking forward to our next time we get to do this. 

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Hey hey BATT Family! This week's episode is another episode of our This or That (or (in this case) the Other Thing) as we run down the three games of Stonemaier's Span series. We've been deliberating on two of the games for quite some time and now that we have Finspan in hand and have gotten to play it quite a bit, we felt it was finally time to break this down. We hope you enjoy this specific deep dive (pun unintended) into the three games!

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:45 - Game Overviews

00:03:36 - Theme

00:08:41 - Production

00:18:39 - Gameplay

00:26:54 - Teachability

00:29:22 - Replayability

00:29:55 - Expansions

00:35:33 - Solo Modes

00:38:00 - Final Thoughts / Pick

00:44:39 - Outro

---   Notes!

1) Our conversation is making the assumption you know the basic system of Wingspan as we don't go into specific detail of how to play any of the three in particular. We discuss their various differences but not how the games fully function.

2) All copies of the games we discussed were purchased by Mark and are his personal copies. This is not a sponsored set of reviews/comparisons in any way.

3) When choosing which game Mark would pick of the three during the Final Thoughts section, almost a minute of deliberation was cut as he couldn't choose. That's how close two of the games are for him. 

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

We're back! Episode 16 is a really fun conversation with Mark and Scott getting to talk about a surprising amount of ways to end games, geeking out entirely over a game that hasn't even hit crowdfunding yet, and starting in on series of games and the way they get out of hand sometimes. We hope you have a great time with this one - they were both focused in enough that there's really only one note of correction below. Who knew they could do such a thing?

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:01 - What's Been on the Table

00:08:13 - Topic of the Week: Game End Conditions

00:24:23 - Why Did I Play That: Azul Queen's Garden

00:34:27 - Table / Shelf / Trade

00:56:28 - Rotating Segment: Visions of the Future

01:03:05 - Contact Info / Sponsors 

01:04:28 - Outro

---   Notes!

1) In Mark's Vision of the Future, he said the game was from Nova Aetas Games and that's wrong (that's how ridiculously excited he was about it that he didn't even get that right). It is coming from Ludus Magnus Studios who developed the Nova Aetas world that Black Rose Wars and some of their other products are in. 

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Welcome to another review from the BATT team. Eila and Something Shiny is a  narrative adventure scenario/campaign game designed by Jeffery CCH and published by NorthStar Games (though it's original printing was from ICE Makes). It was acquired as a Christmas gift and so this is not sponsored by the publisher. It should be noted that the entirety of the Final Thoughts section is going to heavily spoil the game, so please keep that in mind if you want to listen to the first half of the review. We do timestamp and call out when that spoiler territory will be crossed and give ample time to stop listening. 

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This review's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro 

00:02:30 - Gameplay

00:04:50 - Learning Curve

00:05:31 - Art and Theme

00:06:03 - Components

00:08:28 - Iconography and Font

00:10:02 - Ease of Teach

00:10:16 - Replayability

00:11:11 - Final Thoughts (00:11:37 for getting past the spoiler buffer)

00:22:16 - Outro

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Links!

As stated, here are safe links to go read RubyQuest and NanQuest at. Please keep in mind that these become very adult and dark relatively quickly and I wouldn't recommend reading them around children or at work or on work devices. 

Ruby did come out first and I think is a better first read to get acquainted with the style but push comes to shove I actually think NanQuest is the superior of the two. 

RubyQuest: https://mozai.com/quests/RubyQuest/

NanQuest: https://mozai.com/quests/NanQuest/ ---

You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for gaming, so definitely check us out on there! https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

So there was a flood. Things were lost and that's never any fun. We ended up losing the original episode 15 and so what should have been Episode 16 has now taken it's place. We recorded as Jason's place to test through all of our equipment and just to make sure we had some extra content recorded since we went through our backlog during the holiday season. Every once in a while you may hear an odd echo or Stark (Jason's dog) running around but I did my best to clean all that out in the expedited editing process to get this episode out. I cut over 90 minutes out of this and it still ended up being our longest episode yet. This week we talk the flood, Scott is finally forced to play Tech Tree: the Game, and Mark is overly concerned that he talked an enormous amount. Thanks to Jason for the space and just being on the pod again. It's great to have his voice to start out the year with us. 

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - The Flood Notes 

00:02:21 - Intro

00:03:51 - What's Been on the Table

00:15:39 - Topic of the Week: Games Replacing Other Games

00:33:27 - Why Did I Play That: Beyond the Sun

00:56:34 - Table / Shelf / Trade

01:34:40 - Rotating Segment: The Archives

01:42:40 - Contact Info / Sponsors 

01:44:02 - Outro

---   Notes!

1) There are a lot more ums and uhs in the audio this time around. Blame that on the excessively abbreviated editing period and wanting to get this out even remotely on time. If/when I need to come back in and remove the preamble about the flood and episode numbering, I'll probably end up cleaning those up too. (And frankly while those filler words don't make for the cleanest audio ever, it's the inhales that drive me up a wall much, much more.)

2) When talking about Weirdwood Manor I realized just how much Scott and I talk with our hands and that is just a terrible thing to translate to an audio medium.

3) We know its Sagitarius A*, we just didn't say the * part.

4) Scott would have been talking about the new 2023 version of Castles of Burgundy from Awaken Realms, not the 2019 reprint from Alea. 

5) If anybody has a spare box for Kingsburg (2nd ed preferably, but I don't really care at this point), please reach out! That was one of the games that was lost. 

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

Happy 2025 everybody! Sorry for lying to you with yesterday's Odds & Ends episode saying that we were done until Episode 15 released. Whoops. Guess we just had more content in the can for you. We really are going to be done until Episode 15 releases on January 14th though. 

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Scott and Mark discuss their revised Top Ten of All Time lists in this episode. When we did the recording of our original lists in June, Scott simply hadn't done anything like that before. Mark's list was based off of doing them for five years at that point and it was an interesting conversation. This time around they both took a lot more time to craft the lists and there are a lot of interesting surprises here. There is a section of discussion about what the qualifications for making the list and how each list was compiled before actually getting into the top tens themselves. Per normal, all parts of the discussion are appropriately chaptered out if you want to jump to any portion, but hopefully you'll find what that first discussion as interesting as we did. If you would like to skip ahead into the list, that timestamp is 19:19.

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro 

00:03:48 - How the List Was Made

00:19:17 - Scott's Ten

00:20:47 - Mark's Ten

00:22:19 - Scott's Nine

00:24:00 - Mark's Nine

00:27:08 - Scott's Eight

00:29:01 - Mark's Eight

00:31:46 - Scott's Seven

00:34:23 - Mark's Seven

00:37:33 - Scott's Six

00:41:13 - Mark's Six

00:44:38 - Scott's Five

00:47:33 - Mark's Five

00:50:02 - Scott's Four

00:52:34 - Mark's Four

00:55:40 - Scott's Three

00:57:18 - Mark's Three

01:00:09 - Scott's Two

01:03:34 - Mark's Two

01:07:50 - Scott's One

01:11:17 - Mark's One

01:19:47 - Our Final Thoughts / Reactions

01:21:32 - Contact Info / Sponsors 

01:22:54 - Outro

---   Notes!

1) If you would like to check out Mark's Top 100 list, it can be found at: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/347553/top-100-games-2024-edition

2) Mark loves that Scott goes full Midwest around the 20:19 mark in his number ten.

3) Scott makes mention of something that will end up in the next Odds & Ends episode during Mark's nine that references his number eleven. Eleven gets talked about further on in the episode, but Mark did say what his thirteen was and that's part of that conversation. That whole discussion got lifted from this episode for length.

4) Mark totally missed an opportunity to say that we already have Ticket to Ride Legacy: Europe and it's called Brass. What a doof.

5) Scott basically screamed at 1:03:00 and Mark had to soften it down because he almost went deaf when it hit at original volume. 

6) There was mention of a photoshoot near the end of the episode. Some of those photos have ended up on our website (or will be soon), some are used in our socials, and some of them are on our media kits. [If you'd like to work with us and would like our media kit, please let us know!)

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music. 

It's the end of the year BATT Family! That means that we're going to be going dark until Episode 15 releases on January 14th to just give us a little bit of breathing room to catch up after the holidays. We always have all this extra content lying around for these Odds & Ends episodes and we hope that you enjoy this one. I also really hope that you enjoy the blooper reel, I certainly had a super fun time putting it together from all the stuff that got left behind. 

CONTENT WARNING: This episode is marked explicit because of the swearing in the blooper reel. If nothing else, you can see how tough it can be for us to maintain perfect professionalism while recording. 

CONTENT WARNING: The blooper reel ALSO has a lot of weird bodily noises - basically burps and weird mouth noises, but if you've got any kind of audio aversions maybe skip that part?

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This episode's segments:

00:00:00 - Intro 

00:00:41 - Mark's Thanks

00:03:43 - Thematic Games Honorable Mentions Intro

00:04:32 - Thematic Games Honorable Mentions

00:16:28 - Big Box Rant Intro

00:17:08 - Big Box Rant 

00:18:35 - 5 Games to Take Home Outcasts Intro

00:19:01 - 5 Games to Take Home Outcasts

00:24:35 - Ladies and Gentlemen TST Intro

00:25:20 - Ladies and Gentlemen TST 

00:29:34 - Final Intro for the Outro

00:30:19 - Scott's Thanks

00:32:05 - Blooper Reel

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Notes!

1) Scott's Thanks segment was recorded remotely via his cell, so that's why the audio quality is rougher than normal. We're still working on improving our remote record situation.  

2) Speaking of Scott's Thanks segment, how many of his ridiculous little puns did you catch? We know the number. First person to hit us up on BlueSky with the correct number will get ... something ... from us.What is it? WHO KNOWS.

3) Also lots and lots of Scott Mouth Noises (TM) in the blooper reel. Feel my pain of what I must cut so much of.

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You can email us at boardallthetimegaming@gmail.com.

We can be found at www.boardallthetime.com and on Facebook at Board All The Time. 

We're on BlueSky now and loving it! At this point it really feels like BlueSky is for board gaming, so definitely check us out on there at https://bsky.app/profile/boardallthetime.bsky.social

If you'd like to help support the show and assist with the hosting costs, you can do so with our Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/boardallthetime

Our Discord server, which is still in Beta, can be joined at https://discord.gg/VbRWEpc6

We'd like to thank our sponsors as well:

Robin's Nerd Supply: www.robinsnerdsupply.com

Eco Owl Press: www.ecoowlpress.com 

We'd also like to thank SoulProdMusic for the intro/outro music.