Evan Prescott's miscellany: science fiction and literary novels, board games from his regular rotation, and the occasional personal essay -- no review copies, no sponsorships, just what he actually read and played.https://evansmiscellany.com/en-UShttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/timing-how-long-it-takes-to-teach-a-game/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/timing-how-long-it-takes-to-teach-a-game/I started quietly timing my own rules explanations after the Netrunner disaster, and now I have an actual spreadsheet, which is either useful or a real sign of something.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/7-wonders/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/7-wonders/Card drafting scaled up to seven players without the runtime ballooning, and the coins are somehow the one component that lets the whole production down.Sun, 02 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT7 WondersEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/cthulhu-death-may-die/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/cthulhu-death-may-die/Cooperative dungeon crawling with a sanity track that punishes success as much as failure, and getting stronger while going insane is the actual hook.Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTCthulhu: Death May DieEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/discipline-and-punish/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/discipline-and-punish/Opens with a public execution described in unbearable detail and ends up arguing the prison was never really about reforming anyone, and the middle is a genuine slog worth pushing through.Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTDiscipline and PunishEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-faraway-at-two-players/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-faraway-at-two-players/I wrote that the small display made two-player Faraway too luck-dependent, then Priya and I played it eleven more times and I've quietly changed my mind.Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/summoner-wars/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/summoner-wars/A skirmish wargame with no miniatures at all, just a grid mat and cards, and somehow that turns out to be exactly enough.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTSummoner WarsEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/elder-scrolls-betrayal/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/elder-scrolls-betrayal/A licensed dungeon crawler with real character-building depth, held back at my table by print so small the story text needed a second read every time.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Elder Scrolls: BetrayalEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-deluxe-edition-i-regret/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-deluxe-edition-i-regret/The Castles of Burgundy special edition won me over completely. A different crowdfunded deluxe box, a couple years earlier, taught me exactly why that isn't the safe bet it looks like.Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-library-book-sale-i-go-to-every-october/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-library-book-sale-i-go-to-every-october/Same weekend every fall, the same folding tables in the same church basement, and I've started to suspect I go for the ritual of it as much as for any of the actual books.Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/steps-to-an-ecology-of-mind/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/steps-to-an-ecology-of-mind/A collection of essays that refuses to sit still in one discipline, and the metalogues in part one turn out to be the actual instructions for reading everything after them.Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTSteps to an Ecology of MindEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/his-masters-voice/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/his-masters-voice/A neutrino signal from the stars, a government project that spends years failing to decode it, and Lem's real subject turns out to be how badly big science handles not knowing.Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTHis Master's VoiceEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-gods-themselves/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-gods-themselves/Three loosely connected sections, one of them following an alien species whose biology and reproduction genuinely made me rethink what a science fiction character can be built out of.Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Gods ThemselvesEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/priyas-parents-visit-and-we-play-games-they-dont-like/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/priyas-parents-visit-and-we-play-games-they-dont-like/Twice a year her parents fly in, we set up a game after dinner out of habit, and twice a year I remember they'd genuinely rather be doing almost anything else.Wed, 06 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-notebook-where-i-keep-score/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-notebook-where-i-keep-score/Every book and game gets one line in a physical notebook the day I finish it, and the habit exists entirely because I got tired of not trusting my own memory at dinner parties.Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/magic-the-gathering/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/magic-the-gathering/The game that started the whole collectible category, and reviewing it thirty years on means reviewing the collectibility as much as the actual card play underneath it.Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTMagic: The GatheringEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/teaching-jonahs-sister-the-wrong-game-first/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/teaching-jonahs-sister-the-wrong-game-first/She'd never played anything heavier than Uno, I picked Android: Netrunner as her introduction to modern games, and it went about as well as that sounds.Fri, 17 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/dominion/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/dominion/The game that invented an entire genre almost by accident, and the reason it still holds up is that you're never playing the same ten cards twice.Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTDominionEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/small-gods/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/small-gods/A god reduced to a talking tortoise because nobody actually believes in him anymore, and a novice who might be the only true believer left, which is funnier and sadder than it has any right to be.Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTSmall GodsEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/android-netrunner/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/android-netrunner/Two players with completely different rulebooks, one hiding agendas and one hunting for them, and the asymmetry is doing almost all of the game's real work.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTAndroid: NetrunnerEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-rediscovery-of-man/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-rediscovery-of-man/The whole Instrumentality of Mankind in one collection, and by the last story I was flipping back to earlier ones to catch a name I half remembered, which is the best sign a shared universe is working.Tue, 24 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Rediscovery of ManEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/why-i-wont-read-a-novel-on-a-screen/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/why-i-wont-read-a-novel-on-a-screen/I spend all day editing text on a screen for a living, which is exactly why the one thing I won't do with a screen, off the clock, is read a book on it.Fri, 20 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-quantum-thief/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-quantum-thief/A post-singularity heist novel that throws you into the deep end of its own vocabulary and mostly trusts you to swim, which I respect more in theory than I enjoyed in practice.Tue, 17 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Quantum ThiefEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/sea-salt-and-paper/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/sea-salt-and-paper/Fifteen minutes, a small deck, and origami-fold art that does more for the game's presence than the actual card play ever quite earns.Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTSea Salt and PaperEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/brave-new-world/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/brave-new-world/The assigned-reading book everyone already thinks they know, and rereading it as an adult, the parts that actually unsettled me were not the ones I remembered from school.Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBrave New WorldEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-redline-i-couldnt-send-back/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-redline-i-couldnt-send-back/A vendor's install guide had a step missing, I flagged it the way I'd flag anything at work, and then I did the same thing that night to a board game rulebook nobody asked me to fix.Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/castles-of-burgundy-special-edition/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/castles-of-burgundy-special-edition/The Feld classic got the deluxe treatment, and the actual gameplay improvement isn't the acrylic tiles, it's the ability text printed on the back of every hex.Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Castles of Burgundy: Special EditionEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-cyberiad/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/the-cyberiad/Trurl and Klapaucius build machines that do exactly what's asked of them and nothing they're actually meant to, which turns out to be the whole joke, over and over, in the best way.Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe CyberiadEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/what-ann-arbor-winter-actually-costs-you/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/what-ann-arbor-winter-actually-costs-you/I bike to the office most of the year, and the six or so weeks where that stops being reasonable are the closest thing I have to a season I actually dread.Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/schilds-ladder/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/schilds-ladder/A vacuum experiment eats a chunk of the galaxy at half the speed of light, and Egan spends more time on the physics of the resulting border than on the people trying to live near it.Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTSchild's LadderEvan Prescotthttps://evansmiscellany.com/articles/faraway/https://evansmiscellany.com/articles/faraway/You score your cards backwards, from last played to first, which sounds like a gimmick and turns out to reorganize how you plan an entire hand.Mon, 08 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTFarawayEvan Prescott