About Mercer's Corner

Mechanical engineer by day, six years into a weekly Tuesday game night that started with one coworker's copy of Ticket to Ride and now fills a shelf. I started writing things down originally just to remember which games actually got replayed versus which ones looked good in the box and never came back out. I read mostly in the 40 minutes before bed and on flights, and I've got a stubborn preference for finishing a book even when it's not working for me.

I write about the board games I actually play and the books I actually finish, from a table in my converted garage in Bend, Oregon. I'm not a critic by trade, I'm a mechanical engineer who got into games through a work friend's Tuesday night group about six years ago and never really left. I don't review press copies and I don't chase what's new; if a game's been on my shelf a year and I haven't touched it, I say so.

What this is

Somebody asked me once whether there's a formula behind the ratings, why one thing gets a 3 and another gets a 5. There isn't. I write the review first, actually work through what held up and what didn't, and the number comes out of that afterward, whatever the review already said.

I turn down review copies from publishers and game companies. It keeps me from owing anyone an opinion on something I wouldn't have picked up myself. The same logic runs the other way: if a book lost me by page sixty, that's not a review, that's just me complaining, so it stays out of the log.

Every so often something shows up in the feed that isn't a review at all, the Tuesday group, something from the day job that somehow ties back to a hobby, life out here in Bend. It's up for the same reason everything else is: it actually happened, and I wanted it written down.

Never got around to setting up a newsletter or affiliate links here, and I don't plan to. Nothing on this page is trying to get anything out of you.