Nathan Woll

gaming sessions over the holidays playing old Avalon Hill games such as Feudal, Ploy, and the Woll family bugaboo – Diplomacy. Every Christmas break (most of my cousins were in the education field) and family reunions always included a few days for a Diplomacy game. Diplomacy was definitely my first love in the board game realm. Right about when it was published in 2002 my family discovered Puerto Rico and a fascination with modern board games was born. My dad, my cousins, and I would stay up late on holidays playing Puerto Rico, Acquire and all the other strategic board games we could find at the time. In 2004, my dad passed away from cancer at a relatively young age and I lost my favorite gaming partner. But my young son (born in 2002) soon grew into a formidable opponent. My brother is also a very strong opponent who mostly shares my tastes in gaming. I always loved puzzles and as early as my teenage years I would create my own puzzles of the type that would appear in Variety Puzzle books. It was a small step from designing puzzles to designing games, and in 2011, I made several board game prototypes for my brother and his wife to try out with me. Most of them were pretty bad, but I kept at it. Finally, in 2014, I hit upon a solid concept (that would later become Free Radicals) and I began going to conventions to playtest my designs. Protospiels and Unpub events propelled my designs forward quickly and the discovery of the NW Ohio Design Group (with members including Jon Gilmour, Ian Moss, Michael and Sarah Addison, Micah Sawyer, Travis Magrum, Brian Shoemaker and many more) helped me tremendously. Now I work as a Director of Merchandising at a FLGS. I describe myself as a variety gamer – I love super-heavy euros, but I also enjoy clever card games, trivia games, and abstract games.