And we proudly present you our third and last guest comic of this summer! This week’s guest artist is David, who also made an amazing comic for us last year.

A few words from David himself:

Hi, my name’s David and I draw stuff! Last year I had the honour of guest-drawing a page for Semi Co-op and was delighted to get that opportunity again this year! It’s not been the best year for gaming, but digital gaming managed to fill the void for a while. I don’t think I’ll ever enjoy digital gaming that much, but I’m thankful for the websites out there for allowing us to all game together when we couldn’t physically meet! I hope you enjoyed this page!

Thanks for allowing me to do this again guys!!

We proudly present you this week’s guest comic artist, Hamu Dennis!

Hi! My name is Hamu Dennis (@Hamu_Dennis). I am an illustrator from New Orleans, la.  For the last three years I have been working with my brother Omari Akil developing games for www.boardgamebrothas.com .  In March of 2017 we decided to bring our culture to the board gaming industry. Then in January of 2020 “Rap Godz”, the first of a trilogy became available to the public.

“Hoop Godz” is the second game in that trilogy which will hit Kickstarter this October.  It is a 2 player 3v3 street ball game. It introduces our “Juice” system for energy management and real-time dice rolls to resolve the conflict of action vs reaction (shoot/block, steal/crossover and so on).  One thing that mattered to us during its creation was capturing the “feel” of a basketball game.  We did just that.

This comic is about enjoying a very intense basketball boardgame that totally captures the essence of the sport. Thanks Rachel and Heinze for the opportunity.  I really enjoyed it!!

I proudly present the last of our series of guest comics! This was made by David and he went all out, Heinze and myself were both staring at the screen in amazement when we received this. David has put a lot of work into this and be sure to check out his Instagram if you’d like to see more of his work.

Hi, my name is David and I love board games! When Heinze and Rachel wrote to me to let me know I had a guest spot my mind started racing about the possibilities for my page! Do I do a joke? A comment on board gaming habits? A comment on board gaming itself? It was that last one that really excited me, and so I decided to focus on an element of the hobby that I think is one of the most basic appeals, the escapism.

Escapism is incredibly important sometimes, and board gaming is a great way to both socialise and use your imagination, all whilst having fun. Board gaming is incredibly special to me, and that’s why I decided to try to put that across with this page. That, and the reality that the board game addiction can bring… 😀

Combining my two passions of gaming and illustration is something I’ve been undertaking recently, with my first comic style review on my Instagram page @davidslivens, with plans for many more to follow. My ultimate dream is to illustrate a board game, especially one that I design myself! If you like what you see here you can follow me on the above Instagram page, as well as @davidslivensdrawsstuff on Facebook!

Thanks so much to Heinze and Rachel for giving me the opportunity to illustrate this week! 

I hope all of you had just as much fun seeing other people’s comics here on Semi Co-op as I did, giving these talented artists and comic creators a stage. So another big thank you for Mariecke, Annika, Jan Jaap and David. My vacation was fun and relaxing, but is now really over – back to work!

It’s time for our third guest comic, done by JJ Sandee! We know Jan Jaap through our local Netrunner community and he used to run his own webcomic. You might also know him from the guest comic about Smallworld he did last year! This comic about the problem of sorting your games based on color – is there any logical system left? JJ came up with a clever solution. 😉

A few words from Jan Jaap himself:

JJ Sandee spends most of his time teaching software engineering at a university of applied science. Before that he spent a lot of time either doing webdevelopment or trying to make a career in drawing comics. These days I mostly draw for fun or when good friends ask. Or spend my time on any of my too many hobbies. About the comic: Board games tend to have color schemes going, but sorting them can be a bit of a mess. You have to put types together but it might end up looking like a weird mess of colors. Especially if you’re a designer this might be a challenge, luckily there are possible solutions…

Next week, we’ll publish the last guest comic of this summer!

And it’s time for guest comic number two, by Annika Heller! Annika was the perfect candidate for doing a guest comic for us, since, besides being a talented illustrator, she also works at a board game cafe! And that surely gives her enough memorable experiences for comics and I love the comic she made!

A few words from Annika herself:

Hi, my name is Annika Heller and I’m an illustrator and designer from Hamburg. When I’m not drawing I’m working at Würfel and Zucker – Germanys biggest board game café – to get in contact with real people and especially board game enthusiasts! I also really like comics (even if I haven’t produced many myself) so Semi Co-op combines two of my favourite hobbies!  I love learning new games and if they are about communication, getting to know people in a unique way and are beautifully illustrated, chances are high I’m a fan.

Of course my work at a board game café inspired the comic. It shows a very common situation: People come in and claim they are pros and high functioning board game fans which gives you as their guide the chance to explain something more advanced, maybe something you recently discovered and love. You get excited and start making a list of games you could recommend in your head. And then they start raving about Monopoly and the disappointment is real.

I’d love to illustrate more board games in the future, so if you’re an author, looking for someone who’s into the topic:
Feel free to contact me via mail (info@annika-heller.de), Twitter (@rotkopfchen), Instagram (@annikaheller_illustration) or my website annika-heller.de, I’d love to hear from you!

Having free time is fun, but somehow it also just flies by way too quickly! We’ve been away from home a lot last week and done a lot of cool things, but not really played that many board games. We might just do that this week! We did, however, find an expansion of Seasons that we’ve been looking for for years! The irony of the matter is that the expansions of Seasons have been reprinted and will hit the stores in a few weeks, but nonetheless, we feel victorious! It has been a ritual of ours to visit board game stores in other cities and look for the Path of Destiny expansion, but it was always sold out. But now we have it, and even an “original” copy, hah! Now we just have to think of a new ritual…

Hi, dear readers! We’re taking a break and thus, like last week, we have a guest comic for you! It’s made by Jonathan Ying, the designer of Bargain Quest! We love Bargain Quest and so do all the people we have played it so far. Bargain Quest second kickstarter has launched today, so if you’re interested in the game, you can get yourself a copy of the game… and the new expansion! Click here to see the Kickstarter project. We’d also like to thank Jonathan for the amazing guest comic. <3 We want our characters to always be dressed like this in the future. 

Having guest comics has been really cool, it has given us time to catch our breath and to see the creativity of others. Next week, we’re back with the ‘normal’ Semi Co-op comics. For now, a few words from Jonathan Ying:

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Hi everyone! This is Jonathan Ying! I’m a game designer and sometimes illustrator. I’m a big fan of Semi Co-op and was super excited to get the chance to do a guest comic! This particular one was a blast to draw and it covers a discussion I often consider regarding immersion and roleplaying in gaming! You can see more of what I do by going to my website jonathanying.com! Happy gaming!

Hello Semi Co-op readers! We’re Eran and Aviv, and we’re from a DIFFERENT WEBCOMIC WHAAAAT. We’ve been posting geeky tabletop strips for the past two years at Up to Four Players, along with some London-related stuff, and some “Israelis away from home” bits, which is quite niche, even for the internet, but there you have it. Starting next year we’re moving away from one-shot boardgames-related jokes to a new style of storytelling, focusing on our protagonists’ role playing adventures, so we’re really happy this Semi Cross-over happened before the Switch!

It’s funny, the different way in which you look at a comic when you’re just enjoying it is a reader, and when you’re “researching” it for homage purposes. You pay more attention to characters’ looks, the way they speak, act or emote, the number of cats per person per strip. For example, we’re not sure we ever noticed Rachel’s characters having only 4 fingers before starting to work on our guest comic. Have you?

It’s also a cool exercise to take on someone else’s characters and try to balance their inherent style with your own. It kinda reminded us of a special April’s Fools session Eran ran in our D&D campaign, where we each got to play a humorously abridged version of someone else’s character. It’s an interesting experience and lots of fun, so give it a shot, whatever medium you take your characters in!

Thank you, Rachel, for doing this switcheroo with us, it was a blast! And you guys can check out her guest comic on our website, over there.