Mikhail H. has loved games of all kinds since stripling times, cutting his milk-teeth playing Super Famicom with the older kids in his Cebu City barangay. He claims to have never fallen victim to the unplugged controller ruse. An elementary-school love affair with the Pokémon Trading Card Game turned into a pack-a-week Magic habit; it was by trading a Grave Titan for a copy of Donald X. Vaccarino’s Dominion that he became immersed in the nascent board game boom of the 2010s. He has spent almost a decade making his bones by working as a Game Guru at Toronto’s Snakes & Lattes, with supplementary stints as a host, background actor, and staff writer for The Mysterious Package Company. One of his favourite things is seeing a smile of comprehension flit onto the face of someone that he is explaining rules to, but he also loves cats, ramen, biking around, and delving into esoterica.