You Stay in That Television!

All I play anymore is trick-takers. I don’t play as many trick-takers as I used to. For the most part, that’s fine by me. Sometimes, too much of a good thing makes for a real tummy ache, and while it’s a rare week that doesn’t see me tackling at least one of the hobby’s elder statesmen, nothing makes a board game quite like a board. I will admit, though, there’s always the siren call of the latest pure tricker. “Come back to the table,” it sings, except in, I dunno, Greek. Calling me. Haunting me. Dead Channels, for example. This is the latest title by Daniel Newman, whose designs we’ve tussled with once or twice. Test signals. In the fashion of elder trick-takers — modern ones still do this, but older ones too — this is one of those trickers where the designer mines untapped veins from the minutest of changes. The idea is that every card shows two states. One of those states is colorful, like the tuning image you’d get on an old television. The other is fuzzed gray with static. As…