Welcome To Assorted Meeples!

We are 4 friends who have been gaming for decades and wanted to bring our love, excitement, and expertise of multiple gaming spaces into one place. So we created the Assorted Meeples group. Welcome to our website!

Assorted Meeples (Phil, Braden, Callahan, Shane, Brownie)
Pictured from left to right: Phil “Lucky Roller” Breja, Braden “The Business” Gardner, “Old Man” Callahan, and Shane “Corrupt Overlord” Dayton. Oh, and in the center, Brownie the Bear.

We hope you enjoy our website, below are some of our best posts as well as the most recent posts on Board Games, Video Games, Tabletop RPGs, Magic The Gathering (MTG), and more!

If you want to connect with us we can be found on YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and of course with our awesome Patreon community (includes a private Discord).

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Featured Posts

Alignment Chart - Lawful Good

D&D Lawful Good Alignment Guide

Understanding the subtle nuances of D&D alignments can be tricky, especially if you want to make your perfect character! Whether you’re leaning toward a traditional lawful good paladin or looking to spice things up with …

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amazing Farm Sim Forest Game like stardew valley

21 Best Games Like Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley is one of those games that it’s extremely difficult not to fall in love with. From clearing a completely rundown and overgrown property to slowly creating great fields, learning to craft, building a …

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Red Dragon Inn board game chest

Red Dragon Inn Review: My Personal Tier List Revealed!

It’s fair to say at this point that Red Dragon Inn is truly one of the great games out there. A great game, whether played on a board, with a deck of cards you’ve collected …

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Latest Tabletop RPG Posts

5E Armor Chart

5E Scale Mail Guide – Overlooked Cheap Effective Medium Armor?

I have a bit of a soft space for scale mail, in part because in a couple of low money, low level one shots or three shots I played a character that needed some degree …

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Alignment Chart - Neutral Evil

Neutral Evil D&D Alignment Guide: Bad to the Bone

As rare as they are, there are many exciting ways to go about being “evil” in Dungeons and Dragons. And among the evil spectrum, Neutral Evil (NE) can position itself right in the center of …

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two bareknuckle boxers

5E Unarmed Strike Explained: Punch, Box, and Chop Like a Pro!

While many D&D campaigns are all about the adventuring, at many of our tables it wouldn’t be a campaign unless there was a free-for-all at some local inn or tavern. Some of the best, and …

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Latest Video Game Posts

power axe swing Friends of Mineral Town

How Do You Level Up Your Axe in Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town?

Upgrading tools is a crucial part of not only succeeding in Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town, but also important to make the game more enjoyable and less of a grind. You only have …

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graveyard keeper tech tree for wood

How To Get Restoration Tools in Graveyard Keeper

Graveyard Keeper is one of the better cozy games out there, combining a surprisingly dark sense of humor with fun and unique mechanics not seen in most farm sims, an incredible soundtrack, great unique art, …

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Littlewood Title Screen

Is Littlewood Still Being Updated?

There are pros and cons with modern games constantly being updated. The anger many gamers feel towards big studios releasing games in a broken or not ready state is legitimate, but then indie-developed games like …

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Latest Board Game Posts

splendor game being played

Splendor Tips, Tricks, & Tactics: Upping Your Splendor Game

Splendor is one of our favorite board games to break out at Assorted Meeples. This is a great board game that is simple enough for enjoyable causal play with the parents or grandparents, but has …

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Godsforge board game

Godsforge Board Game Review

Etherium – the ender of famine, the bringer of peace and prosperity, used to be plentiful across the land. Now? Supplies have dried up and there is but a single site on the planet where …

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Board Games Featured Pic

Just Why Have Board Games Become So Popular?

Our group has long been into board games, and while many people have fond memories of basic board games like Life, Monopoly, Battleship, and others while kids, but as you get older you just want …

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Latest Magic: The Gathering Posts

MTG’s Best Red Tutors for Commander

If you asked a Commander player what the worst color in MTG was during the last few years, most would say white. Its lack of card draw and efficient mana ramp made it challenging to …

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MTG All is Dust card art

MTG’s Best Colorless Board Wipes for Commander

Colorless spells occupy a unique place in Magic: The Gathering‘s Commander format, as they can be included in any deck (barring mana symbols that influence their color identity). Better still, colorless cards can do a …

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MTG booster boxes

The Best Places to Buy MTG Booster Boxes

I’ve been opening packs of various cards since I was a kid. The trading card game (TCG) I bought cards for evolved as I got older, starting with Pokémon in elementary school, shifting to Yu-Gi-Oh! …

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YouTube Shows

Table for Two

husband and wife gamers playing spirit of the forest

Join Phil and his better half Heather (Go Team Heather!) for dozens of incredible playthroughs of 2-player board games that any couple can enjoy.

Unqualified Experts

gamers playing boardgame arena

Braden and Shane bring their knowledge, opinions, commentary, and sketch comedy stylings to tabletop RPGs, video games, and all things nerddom.

As Featured On Hobbylark Wicked Horror Levelskip The Devil's Elbow

Meet the Crew

Shane “Corrupt Overlord” Dayton

Shane

To say Shane has led an interesting life is an understatement, but a lifelong love for adventure, storytelling, and strategy fit very well into the world of gaming.

Axis & Allies was the first board game that proved to him that board games could be more than just dice luck and chance (not his strong points) and his love of RPGs stemmed from original NES games like Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda, and Crystalis while his strategic mind made him a nightmare in games like Medieval Total War II…or the Civilization series.

Braden introduced Shane to D&D nearly 10 years ago and he fell in love with TTRPGs instantly; no surprise for a fiction writer and avid storyteller. This table is where he also met Callahan with the two bonding instantly over twisted senses of humor and both having been professional poker players.

Shane is an avid player, DM, and loves creating TTRPG content and worlds. While he still loves great RPG video games, he spends most his time in the cozy farm-sim games like Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and dozens of others you may or may not have ever heard of.

Shane is author of the book My Brother’s Keeper and his gaming articles have also been featured on Level Skip and Hobby Lark, among others.

Braden “The Business” Gardner

Braden

When I find a hobby I enjoy, I tend to throw myself into it with abandon. As a kid, this involved video games, board games, trading card games, and reading (and I guess it still does). The Goosebumps series were my favorite books, and I’d be clamoring for a chance to go to the library each week to read the new ones and reread old favorites.

When I found out about a chance to meet the author, R.L. Stine, through the Brain Juice Terrifying Title Contest, I jumped at the opportunity, entering the title “Dead Dogs Still Fetch”. A few months later I was paid a surprise visit by the legendary author himself, an experience I was able to relive recently after successfully tracking down lost footage of the event. I’m even still writing to this day.

In the gaming space, no game has quite captured my attention like Magic: The Gathering. I spent several years with the Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card games before I found it, but the creativity of the Commander format has been a major part of what keeps me coming back for more.

While my interest in card games evolved as I got older, my favorite video games remained in the 8 and 16-bit eras. I’ve even gotten into speedrunning randomized versions of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past in addition to playing retro games on Twitch, so come say hi if you see me online!

Phil “Lucky Roller” Breja

Phillip

Board games have always been a source of joy for Phil, and his love for the medium is contagious. Growing up, family games of Uno, Yahtzee, and Rummy were frequent and competitive, making the progression to more strategic fare like Axis and Allies and Risk in his teen years all but inevitable.

In 2010, Phil began delving into the world of board game design, bringing lots of different concepts to his board game nights. This eventually resulted in the creation and refinement of Castlecomb in 2015, a hex-based tile game where players strategically try to set up the biggest cities possible to score points. In trying to find how to market this light but surprisingly deep game, he stumbled into the modern hobby board game niche and has been happily playing all the games he can get his hands on since.

A dedicated follower of Kickstarter’s board game corner for several years now, Phil is always on the lookout for the next big thing from indie developers and established industry names alike, as well as anything that just looks fun or unique. In addition to playing these games with his fellow Meeples and family, Phil also enjoys reviewing the games he acquires with a critical eye to see how they work mechanically and aesthetically, applying what he learns at the drawing board and game table.

Michael “Old Man” Callahan

Callahan

I first cut my chops playing Tripoley with my grandparents in the early 1980’s (and they would take your hard-earned pennies too, make no mistake). I mixed that with other classic games such as Monopoly and Risk, and would willingly spend hours a day every day on such endeavors.

Soon came Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, and at that moment, I was truly lost to the void of gaming. Games increased in complexity and number over the years, but it was with chess I began to truly appreciate the ability to anticipate the moves of my opponents based on my actions. This eventually led to my playing poker full-time to pay the bills after college. The hours were terrible and my associates were questionable, but I never missed a house payment in 2 years, nor did I during the years I was a poker dealer afterward.

Woodworking and 3D printing have also been major interests over the years, expanding what I can do in the gaming space exponentially (in fact, most shots that you’ll see of us playing board games occur over a solid oak gaming table that I built for Braden). Current/future projects include designing and building wooden board game boxes, printing miniatures (I highly recommend the Elegoo Mars v1 resin printer), 3D modeling of inserts, and writing material for use in fantasy TTRPG’s.