A Gamer's Eye

Remarkabe Marketing

2007-03-13T12:41:00.000-05:00

Sitting in an airport with a lot of time to kill, I went browsing through the bookstore, and was amazed at just how much there was devoted to sudoku. To the best of my knowledge, this particular puzzle was a rarity over here less than 5 years ago, and now, there are sudoku puzzles in magazines, sudoku books, sudoku electronic games, sudoku Rubik's cubes, and even a couple sudoku boardgames. How this relatively simple puzzle took off and became such a phenomenon is a mystery to me, but some marketing person somewhere clearly knows what they're doing.

It got me thinking about other games that are so simple you can put them together and play at a fraction of the cost, and yet people buy retail games, showing that the market indeed likes prettier bits. How about a few examples?

Can't Stop: I saw this dice game, and I knew my wife enjoyed press-your-luck type games, but saw the price tag of some $30 to get the commercial game with a mountain diagram and some little climbers. The game was simple enough, though, so I printed out one of the many grid substitutes available online, grabbed 4 dice and some buttons, and we were able to play easily. Sadly, she didn't really enjoy the game, but trying it first saved us $30.

Pickomino: Another simple game to duplicate, this needs 8 dice and some index cards numbered 21-36, with 1-4 worms on them...I cobbled it together, and we played. She found she liked it, and while we could quite easily have continued playing with this, it just didn't have the same tactile feel as the wooden dice with worms replacing 6s, and the domino tiles to take. We happily parted with $25, and have gotten plenty of play from this filler.

Skip-Bo: is basically the playing card game Spite and Malice with an extra deck...of course, I didn't know it at the time, or I would have likely bought some other game....

No Thanks!: for a while, Geschenckt simply wasn't available in the states, so I had no choice but to put the game together with some index cards numbered 3 to 35, and some buttons again. We liked it enough that we bought the game when it arrived in stores here.

Category 5: is a deck of cards numbered 1-104...again, not hard to duplicate...but again, we bought it....

So that puts me in the camp of buying games, although I could easily have played a home-made version for next to nothing. Why did I buy them? Quality of the bits? Support for those who designed and marketed the game? Gullibility that the 'real game' was better? Guilt over 'stealing' by playing the game without a purchase?

To tell the truth, I don't really know for sure. I'd like to say I believe in supporting the hard work of designers, but more likely, my motive wasn't that altruistic. I mainly like the look and feel of the produced game more than a bunch of handwritten index cards or computer printouts. This is likely why I've never tried any of the print & play games...or maybe I'm just lazy :) Of course, a pretty, colorful, well-produced game is also easier to entice other people to play, and in the end, who cares how much money you saved if you have nobody to play with?

Enjoy our hobby, and support those who help to keep it alive!

Gaming Villainy

2007-02-07T12:13:00.000-06:00

I've been reading and catching up on things, and I came across an article by Valerie Putman over on BoardgameNews.com titled "There is No Villain in Monopoly." She had been inspired in the title and subject because of someone on Survivor defending his actions on the show. Frankly, I felt they both had a point, in that when playing a game, even a political one like survivor, it seems silly to proclaim someone a villain just because they are treating the game as a game rather than the communal love-fest that so many contestants want it to be. I haven't watched Survivor in a long time, but I remember the pirate-themed one when Johnny "Fairplay" played on his opponents' sympathies to win the challenge to visit with a loved one from home by arranging months before the game to have his best friend pretend his grandmother had died. Hey, it's helped kids play hooky for years...why not use it to win a game in which emotional manipulation is part of the rules?

Of course, justifying Survivor plays or repeating Valerie's article is not what I'm here to do. I'm in kind of a listing mood, so based on paying attention to what people complain about, here's a run-down of broad types that are regarded, at least a little bit, as gaming "villains". I probably fall into some of these categories; I think we all do at some time or another -- how many do you match?

The Cheater : This one pretty much had to top the list, as breaking the rules just to say you won a game which has no real relevance in the grand scheme of things is the most heinous of gaming crimes. "Wow, buddy, another 20....you're just on a roll tonight! That puts you, what, 100 points ahead of everyone else?" If you want to win that badly, why not just put some effort into learning to play the game well?
Mr. Intensity : This type simply takes the game entirely too seriously. They are likely to explode over any socializing around the game, talking about the game, sub-optimal moves by any player, or even just accidentally drawing a card from the wrong deck while you're learning the game. If they're not doing well, their anger at themselves becomes palpable, ruining the fun for the rest of the players as well, who don't want to see them explode.
Chicken Little : This is the player who is convinced they're going to lose any game they sit down to, no matter whether it's new to them or not. They declare in various ways throughout the game about how poorly they're doing, complain about almost every turn if it doesn't immediately benefit them, and takes offense whenever any other player messes up their plans, directly or indirectly. Sometimes this player may actually be in the lead, but they are often so focused on how close other players are to winning that they don't recognize that they are even closer. Being so vocal about how bad they're doing makes other players almost want to throw the game, or otherwise play at less than their best, and feel guilty for winning.
Chaos Incarnate : Similar to Chicken Little, except they don't get depressed about losing. Rather, they think that since they're going to lose anyway, what they do doesn't matter, so they make nonsensical movements every turn.
The Thinker : This is the player afficted with analysis paralysis...no matter what game you're playing. You could be sitting around a game of The Great Dalmuti, in which case your only two decisions are: 1) do you have the same number of cards but with a lower number? And 2) do you want to play them now or pass? Particularly frustrating to play light games with, if placed in a medium or heavy-weight game, the Thinker can quickly cause every other player to start debating playing another game on the side while the slow player takes their turn.
Don Juan : This is the one who regards the game club as simply a quieter cocktail bar. Any new female player (and only female players) becomes their target, to "help" their game, flirt with, or otherwise try to draw their attention to the person, not the game. This player can often ensure that the game group consists solely of men, yet they are often the most vocal about "how few women play games."
The Eurosnoot : Often someone fairly new to the boardgame hobby, they've been introduced to European games, and got caught up in how different they are from every game they played before. From that moment, all games from America are automatically crap, because all they've ever played from America are the traditional children's games that no longer interest them. Even years into the hobby, this person will stubbornly rant on and on about the virtues of eurogames above all else.
The Ameritrash Enthusiast : This player is the exact opposite of the Eurosnoot, in which they will scoff at wooden cubes and "pasted-on-themes," declaring all eurogames to be dull and lifeless. Like the Eurosnoot, this gamer can and will gleefully rant about the superiority of their games.
The ADD Twins : So named because there are two varieties of the short-attention-span nemesis. First is the one who will only play filler games - if it goes longer than 30 minutes, they will begin huffing and fidgiting in boredom, perhaps making poor moves just to get the game over with. The other, more common, twin is the one who never plays the same game twice. Ever. This player thrives on new experiences, but has no interest in getting to know the depth and nuance of any game.
The Amnesiac : Sad to say, but once in a while, the rules and basic strategy of a game just won't stick in the head of this player, and no matter how many times they play a given game, how patiently it is explained, or how simple it is, they will always play poorly and ask for constant reminders of the rules and advice on what to do next. Every time they play this game, it is like they are playing for the first time. This player and newbies play into the woe of the Blame-Assigner.
The Blame-Assigner : Maybe they only learned one winning strategy to a game and use it exclusively, maybe they have no concept of probabilities and luck management, but when this player loses a game, it is always due to an outside factor, never their poor play. Perhaps it is because they sat on the wrong side of a weak player, perhaps they drew the wrong cards, or maybe they were sick and couldn't think. Regardless, they cannot see that perhaps the other players were better at the game, only that something outside their control must have caused their loss.

I think that's enough for this post length...what gaming villains have you run across in your time in the hobby? Which ones have you been? All of us have our little quirks that can get on others' nerves. What matters is that we can relax and enjoy a game anyway.

They're called "Family Games," After All...

2006-12-13T09:27:00.000-06:00

Well, here we are right smack in the middle of the holiday shopping season, and people are scrambling for gifts, which makes a pefect time for testing the waters with a game, to see if we can gain more regular opponents to play with. So like many other blog writers at this time of here, it's time to chip in with my suggestions for ideas of games to give, or at least to play with your family and friends, assuming you can tear them away from their thousandth viewing of "It's a Wonderful Life" or whatever else is on TV.

An excellent beginner's game, touted by many as THE gateway game, is the Ticket to Ride series, released by Days of Wonder. The original Ticket to Ride is simple, drawing colored cards and playing them in sets to claim routes on a map of the United States and Canada. Ticket to Ride: Europe added a little more balance by splitting up the long and short routes, as well as ferries and a few other features. Ticket to Ride: Märklin added a passenger mechanic. Any of these games are fun to play, and I suspect it has to do with the way that the pieces are placed on the board to easily see your growing network...each time you build a route, you can really feel like you've made progress. This makes for an excellent family game.

Other good connection games include either TransAmerica or TransEuropa, in which your goal is to connect five cities on a map, using a network that begins as individual, but becomes a shared network as the game progresses. A turn is ridiculously simple - either place two tracks on single lines attached to your start marker, or place one track on a double line. Believe it or not, I also had success teaching Railroad Tycoon to gaming beginners, despite the increased complexity.

If connection games aren't your thing, there are plenty of other good ones that are easy to teach and enjoyable to play. Niagara catches your eye with its little canoes, plastic gemstones, and the waterfall from the board hanging over the box. Simply put, you race down river to retrieve gems, and fight your way back upriver to make sure you keep them, while the river moves forward, pushing you all toward the falls looming at the end. Three different winning combinations of gems prevent one player from completely locking others out of contention. Pirate's Cove is seen by many as purely luck, especially with so much dice-rolling combat, but at it's heart, it's really a game of reading your opponents and anticipating their moves. If you're skilled at this, you might never get into combat for the entire game and just keep racking up the fame points. But the reason this game really shines at a family gathering is the chance to play up the fun of being pirates, with light-hearted combat and cool little ships to move around the board, not to mention the chance to gang up on famed pirates such as Blackbeard or Captain Hook. Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is also a fairly simple game -- either draw cards or build something, while trying to avoid collecting corruption tokens. This game is also designed to make use of the box itself and looks beautiful toward the end of the game. Very simple, rich in theme and looks....a good choice for family gaming.

A little-heralded game that I also enjoyed after buying it on impulse, having never played it, is Attika. This simple resource-development game is easily accessible to newcomers. You either draw 2 tiles (one at a time) from your building type stacks and place it on your mat or build it immediately, play 3 previously mat-placed buildings, or draw cards to pay for buildings. Buildings cost less depending on board placement, and you win by either connecting two points with your buildings, or being the first to build all your buildings. There's a bit more detail, but that's the basic idea. I've played this game many times since then, and I love it from 2 all the way up to 4 players, and it does an excellent job of introducing the resource-management concept to beginning gamers.

Card games are also a big hit...with fewer bits, people are usually more willing to learn a card game than a board game...I've had success with San Juan, Coloretto, Category 5, and The Great Dalmuti.

San Juan is basically Puerto Rico's little brother, in which you are spending cards from your hand to build cards from your hand, earning cards for your hand by selling goods which are also cards from the deck. Players select a role and everyone gets to take an action, while the role selector gets to take that action a little bit extra. The deck of cards represent money, buildings, and production goods, and while it's a bit deeper than many other card games, I've found that people catch on relatively quickly, and it's a great way to introduce them to the role selection concepts of Puerto Rico.

Coloretto is a much simpler game of collecting sets of various colors. On your turn, you can either draw a card from the deck and put it into a group, or you may claim a group and all the cards in it. The decisions can be tense as you draw a card that's good for you, but risk an opponent taking it before your next turn. Your score is determined by your top three colors, minus any other colors you've collected, on a pyramid scoring scale.

Category 5 is another gem, in which players each choose a card from their hands, reveal them simultaneously, and then place them on a layout according to 4 simple placement rules. Your goal is to use these rules and choose your cards carefully in order to avoid being forced to take rows of cards, especially since the negative point value of the cards varies. Also known as "6 Nimmt," Category 5 is the English-language version (makes the rules easier to read), also called "The Hurricaine Game". My wife couldn't resist -- she took it to FEMA to play at the Christmas party. With only a few players, the game can be very strategic, while larger groups add a lot of chaos, so that your play may not produce the results you'd expect.

The Great Dalmuti is a simple climbing card game, in which the goal is to play all your cards in specific combinations and run out -- if you'd like a more complex climbing game, Tichu is a very popular choice. The cards in The Great Dalmuti are simply ranked from 1 to 12, with a number of cards in each rank equal to the bumber of the rank (there are only four 4's , for example). Additionally, there are 2 jokers, which are ranked 13 if played singly, or are wild when played with other cards. A player leads with a set of matching ranked cards (ranks are high numbers - most common and thus lowest - up to low numbers - more rare and thus worth more). Following player may then play the same number of cards, but of a higher rank (lower number) than the previously-played set (Beat four 12s with four 11s, which can be beat by four 10s, etc.) The winner has the next lead. Part of the fun in this game is the musical chairs aspect -- as players go out, their "ranking" for the next hand changes based on the order one went out, from "Great Dalmuti" all the way down to "Lesser Peasant". With a required exchange (taxation) of cards at the beginning of each hand, the lower ranks can find it hard to go out and advance their station, which leads to plenty of silly trash-talking. I love this game, although it really needs at least 5 players.

Any of these make an excellent stocking-stuffer, as do dice games. Some of my favorites include Pickomino, Cosmic Wimpout, and Cloud 9, all of which are good press-your-luck games.

For word games, Palabra is my hands-down favorite. Our deck has gotten so much use the laminate on the cards is beginning to peel off. Fairly simple to teach, point-earning options other than playing a word so you don't have to waste a turn if you don't have good letters, and a bit of take-that with point-cancelling cards and the ability to steal points with letters that match those played by an opponent make this a word game that has become virtually the only one we still play.

If you have a big family, party games such as Apples to Apples are simple and fun to play, although I have been in games where other players took some of the silliness out of the game by being too logical about the winning cards. A couple of previously-mentioned games, Category 5 and The Great Dalmuti are a lot of fun with large groups. Pass the Bomb works for just about any number of players, requiring quick thinking and the ability to remember your vocabulary under pressure. I'm also intrigued by Luck of the Draw, in which everyone draws a picture from a word or phrase drawn from a deck, then the drawings are shuffled and several humorous category cards are drawn. Players then vote to award the drawings for being recognized as "Best use of White Space", "Most Likely to be Confused as a Mess the Cat Made", "Had Way Too Much Time", and others. Much like Apples to Apples, play this game lightly, don't take it seriously, and you probably won't be able to help but to have fun.

Well, I think that's enough evangelizing for now...I feel like a host on the Home Shopping Network...enjoy the holidays, spend some quality time with your family, and just see how much fun you can have when you turn off the TV for a while.

Hurrah! I Taught Tichu!

2006-11-27T12:05:00.000-06:00

As always, I thankfully slept in on Black Friday, while people lined up for early morning sales -- my wife mentioned that on her way to work that morning (she has to be there by 6:30am), she saw a line that went completely around a Best Buy. Alas, the one place that didn't seem to be having a sale with ridiculously low prices was the one store I did happen to go by that day -- my FLGS. Sadly, I wouldn't have had much to pick up anything -- just paid a bunch of bills (darn my responsible nature!) and wouldn't gain more till a week later, but this isn't the place for me to whine about bad timing.

What I did go there for was a gathering that had been put together on Meetup.com, to play boardgames in the back room. Sadly, I wasn't able to stay very long, but I did get to play a couple games of Tichu and one of Yspahan before I had to leave. I'm glad I finally got to play Tichu with 4 players, as the game really shines....the 3-player rules as included in the box feel clumsy, and I'm never fond of playing an phantom hand, much less one that is open. Later during the weekend, I did try a different 3-player variant for a few hands, and we agreed it retained the feel of the game with only a minor modification, although it does come off a bit more cutthroat.

3-Player Tichu Variant
Modify the deck by removing the Dog and the 2s....since there are no partners in this game, the Dog is unneccesary, and the removal of the 2s gives a deck of 51 cards, which can conveniently be dealt out fully 3 ways, each player ending up with 17 cards. Should you wish to break up the deal for Grand Tichu calls, break at 10 cards, then deal the remaining 7.

Gameplay is as normal for Tichu, although naturally, the Mahjongg card cannot be used in a straight, given the missing 2s (unless the Phoenix is also used). As the two people I was playtesting with are still getting the hang of using combinations, I have not yet added in card passing with them, but I feel that one should pass 1 card to each of the other two players, as normal.

Last player out must give their hand and tricks to whomever went out first -- yes, this means a player with a zero score. When a trick is won with the Dragon, it is given to either one of the other two players.

What I did notice is that if one player is weak strategically and hasn't yet learned to manipulate the tricks, they will likely remain with a zero score over and over again. Three players of equal experience should not see this problem. Also, with 17 cards in hand, bombs are more likely....I normally rarely see them come into play, but while testing, I saw one each hand.

Overall, it seemed to work pretty well, so those of you out there having trouble finding a 4th for Tichu, give it a try and let me know what you think!

I'll post a review of Yspahan soon -- overall, I enjoyed it and it has now been added to my Wish List :)

Sorta Spooky Story

2006-10-31T11:22:00.000-06:00

BOOOOM!!!

Everyone at the table jumped at the sudden cacaphony of noise as the lightning flashed and thunder virtually exploded over our house. The constant rush of white noise from the deluge pouring over the land was punctuated more and more by the flash-bang concussions of static electricity. It was the worst storm any of us had ever seen; it was a miracle the lights were still--

"Aw, damnit!" arose a shout as we were abruptly plunged into darkness.

"Hang on, lemme find a flashlight and then I think I have some hurricaine lanterns around here somewhere."

I stumbled through the house, my path lit by the faint glow of my cell phone as I gathered the needed items and returned to the table. Soon, the room was alight with flickering shadows as tiny flames danced in their prisons, lending a great deal more mood to the already oppressive sound of the storm beating the earth into submission.

"Okay, whose turn was it?"

"Mine, I think," Angela said as she shakily rolled the dice and prepared to move her figure. I rubbed her back comfortingly -- she doesn't like thunderstorms to begin with, and this one seemed determined to show us what a thunderstorm was really all about.

"Hm, I think there's a yellow quest in your range," Brandy piped up, pointing out the appropriate hex. "The way you've been rolling, it should be an easy couple of experience points for you."

"Sounds good to me," Angela grinned, moving to the hex and drawing the quest card. "Uh-oh, Razorwing attack."

A faint sound amidst the storm caught my ear for a moment. "Did I just hear squeaking?"

"Aw, probably mice running from the rain," Brandy stated confidently.

"Yeah, probably. Okay, sweetie, roll to deal with the attack."

Angela picked up the dice, her face a mask of shadows as she grinned and rolled. And missed!

"Sorry, sweetie, take a hit," I said, reaching for one of her life counters.

"Grr...okay, now melee combat," she frowned. "At least that's a better roll."

scrape, scrape, scrape

"What was that?"

"I dunno....something out in the rain?"

"Maybe it's Rob's cat."

"Aw, poor thing! Can you go out and check while I roll?"

"Okay, but it's staying in the garage if it needs shelter -- we don't need to deal with a bunch of cats fighting all evening."

I could hear Angela rolling behind me as I opened the door, expecting to see a sodden black and white cat at our front door. What I saw instead, or think I saw, was a pair of glowing red eyes as a giant winged shape swooped out of the watery darkness, fangs bared.

"Ha! Take that!"

FLASH! BOOOM!!!!

Another lightning strike, this time much closer, blinding me for a moment. I blinked until I stopped seeing spots and peered again into the void, but saw nothing.

"Well? Do you see his cat?" The girls called from the table.

"Uh...no. Nothing there," I said carefully. "Must be hearing things."

-----
Sheesh....wonder what would have been there if we'd been playing Cleopatra and the Society of Architects......

I've Been Drawn Into the Nexus

2006-10-17T17:10:00.000-05:00

I had the opportunity last night to play a game that I'd seen on the shelf and dismissed many times, as wargames just don't hold much interest for me. Of course, that would be simply because I haven't yet had an enjoyable wargame experience. In the wargames I've tried, the play consisted of:

Light Mechanics and Unbearably Long Playing Time - e.g. Risk - get armies, place armies in your countries, attack neighbors until you're tired of rolling dice, then watch them roll back over you on their turn...lather, rinse repeat for several hours)
Complex Mechanics and Lots of Cross-Referencing - e.g. Starfleet Battles - check your engines, make your move, acquire target, fire, figure out which section of the ship you hit, then which subsection, did it actually get through the shields and armor, what were those to-hit modifiers for difficult shots, how many points of damage did you do, did it affect other systems on the ship, etc.
Uneven Turn Lengths - This wasn't even due to analysis paralysis. The chosen scenario (with fog of war blindness, so I didn't see his forces nor he mine) had me entrenched to hold an area and my opponent with dozens of units to move each turn. Since I was just trying to hold my position and repel his forces as they became visible, my turns took some 5 minutes or so. Meanwhile, he had so many pieces to move and think about for placement that his turns literally took an hour and a half EACH TURN. after the first half hour, I actually left the room and hung out on the computer, telling him to come get me when it was my turn).

Needless to say, my experiences with the wargame genre in general haven't made the best impression. My available time is usually the span of an evening, while it seems many wargames require a large portion of the day. This is not to put down anyone who plays them, but just an explanation of why they aren't really my cup of tea.

Until last night.

Last night, I was introduced to Nexus Ops, which isn't so much a wargame in feel as small, squad-based tactical combat. The game we played (albeit to only 6 points instead of the normal 12) took only about an hour and a half, including rules explanation. The game play reminded me a bit of the Strategy RPG genre of video games, such as Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea. Combat was extremely simple and quickly resolved, and your turn was primarily tactical movement to hold various places, a bit of quick combat if a space was contested, then collect money for mines you held. Here's a quick run-down:

The board is randomly laid out from shuffled tiles into a basic hexagonal pattern, at the center of which is a raised piece referred to as a monolith. Exploration tiles (which contain either mines worth 1 or 2 rubium (money) per turn, or one-time free unit activation, or sometimes both) are laid out over each space except the monolith, and each player begins with a home base consisting of a rock hex, a fungoid hex, and a crystal hex. The rock hex on the base has a level 3 mine, and the other two spaces have level 2 mines. The rest of the board is made up of these three types of terrain, as well as magma, and of course, the monolith.

Each player is given a different color of army, but starts with no pieces on the board. Units must be purchased at the beginning of the turn and always move out from the player's home base. All players have the same units in their pool. The different pieces are:

Humans - Cost 2 to activate, move one space per turn, fights last (sixth) in combat, only hits on a 6 or better on a 6-sided die. Capable of mining if present on a space containing a mine you control.
Fungoid - Cost 3 to activate, moves one space per turn, fights fifth in combat, normally hits on 5 or better, but 4 or better on fungoid hexes, and 6 or better if on crystal spaces. Capable of mining if present on a space containing a mine you control.
Crystal Warrior - Exactly the same as the fungoid, except it fights better on crystal hexes and worse on fungoid hexes. Fights fourth in combat.
Rock Strider - Costs 6 to activate, moves one space per turn (two if the first or second space of movement is a rock hex), fights third in combat, and hits on 4 or better. This is the first of the three large units. Only the large units may move onto the monolith.
Lava Leaper - Costs 8 to activate, moves one space per turn (two if "leaping" from a magma hex, which can jump over enemy units - usually you must stop movement if you enter an enemy-occupied hex), fights second in combat, and hits on 3 or better. Normally, the defender chooses which unit is removed if a hit occurs from the attacker. If the lava leaper hits with a 5 or better, the attacking player chooses the unit to remove.
Rubium Dragon - Costs 12 to activate, moves one space per turn (if moving off the monolith, may fly to any hex on the board), fights first in combat, and hits on a 2 or better. Also may choose to attack an adjacent hex after moving and before normal combat (no counterattack is allowed from the defending hex for this ability), which hits on a 4 or better.

Each player begins with a small amount of money. The first player has the least (I think 8) and each following player has a little more than the one before, to compensate for the first-turn advantage. A player's turn consists of the following sequence:

Activate new units and play start-of-turn Engergize cards.
Move units.
Reveal exploration tiles. If a mine is indicated, a mine token is placed. If a unit is indicated, the player places a unit of the appropriate type in the hex the tile was at. Exploration tiles, once revealed, are removed from the game.
Resolve combat on contested hexes with (if any).
- Roll a die for the pieces in the order mentioned above. Each unit only gets one attack on a given player's turn. Units which are at the same position in the attack order attack simultaneously.
- The defending player for each attack chooses which unit is lost in the event of a hit, except if the attacking creature is a lava leaper which rolled 5 or better.
- After all unit types on the hex have made their one attack roll, check the status of the hex. If more than one player still has pieces on the hex, the space remains contested, and mines on the hex (if any) may not be used this turn.
- If only one player still has pieces on the hex, they have won the battle. The defeated player (if it's not their turn) gains an Energize card, which grant special abilities.
- The winning player may take and play a 1-point "Win a Battle" red-mission card OR play a red mission card from their hand of Secret Mission cards (if accomplished), AND may play any white-mission cards they may have accomplished. In other words, you can play as many white-mission cards as you complete them on your turn, but ONLY one red-mission card per turn.
Collect money from mines you control (those which only have pieces of your color -- any other player's pieces indicate the hex is contested and may not be mined) and have human, fungoid, or crystal warrior units. Large units cannot mine.
Draw one secret mission card. Accomplishing the goal only counts after you've drawn the card -- if you destroyed a rock strider in an earlier battle, and later draw the "Slay Rock Strider" mission, you don't get to lay the mission card down until you slay another one.
If you control the monolith (only pieces of your color are present there), you gain 2 Energize cards.

And that's the turn -- it goes pretty quickly, and nobody is left waiting too long. Energize card are the rule-bending cards, adding bonuses to die rolls, special movement, extra money, or other such things.

The mission cards are an interesting idea, as the game is played for victory points by accomplishing missions, not for simply killing off the other players and being the last person standing. Some missions are to defeat a particular unit type, while others are to win a battle on a particular type of terrain. Still others encourage more than one combat -- for one point (or was it two?), I "started trouble" by fighting a battle in two different hexes on the same turn.

The game is over as soon as someone has the required number of points. There are also rules for team play.

As I said before, so many of my wargame experiences left a bad taste in my mouth that when I saw this box on the shelf, I simply kept overlooking it due to lack of interest. After playing the game, the small-scale tactical combat with simple mission-type objectives turned around my opinion. I'm still not interested in large-scale wargames, but I'm putting Nexus Ops on my wish list, and now I'm curious to see what other fast-playing wargames might have a similar feel to them.

Empty City

2006-09-26T17:02:00.000-05:00

My next cartoon -- comments and suggestions welcome...

Sheep for Wood?

2006-09-22T14:08:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I had a webcomic for my anime club....now I'm playing boardgames, but this time, I have no artist, so please bear with my CGI attempts :) As always, looking for comments...

I'm No Fool, No Sirree....

2006-08-23T11:48:00.000-05:00

This is post one hundred and three!

(and if you get the joke, you get bonus victory points)

I know my posts seem to be coming further and further apart, but that's not to say that I have nothing to write about....rather, I seem to have too much! Course, that just leads to more writer's block, which means more ideas pile up, which leads to more block....etc. It's a vicious cycle, and one that should be familiar to anyone who has played a game and been caught up in analysis paralysis. You have too many choices, and you just can't seem to pick one.

You examine the choices, and think ahead about the possible results, based on what you think you know about all the other players' playing styles. You think again with a different choice. And again, and again, and again. Or sometimes, you might narrow it down to a couple choices, but they both look equally good to you -- either they help you equally, or they both break down quickly into chaos by the other players that you can't look any farther ahead than a turn or so. Maybe the move doesn't help you at all, but it slows everyone else down. Should you play offensively or defensively? Make another step toward your overall strategy, or gain those immediate victory points? Is there an opening you missed? You start moving a piece and catch someone's wry grin -- are you about to play right into their hands...or did someone simply make a joke that you missed?

In the end, this condition is tied to one thing and one thing only -- winning. People may joke about a player with AP not being able to think on their feet as fast as the others, but this isn't necessarily the case. I've seen people who play games very quickly otherwise, suddenly get bogged down thinking if they are convinced that there is a better move out there. AP is all about winning the game, pure and simple.

This, of course, changes the question from "Why do people get AP?" to "Why does winning matter so much?"

Most of us are raised with the good sportsmanship ideal of "not whether you when or lose, but how you play the game," or that "winning isn't everything." That's a nice sentiment, but it's counteracted by so many other sayings -- "The early bird gets the worm", "Second place is only the first loser", "To the victor go the spoils", "Winners never quit and quitters never win," "Do your best," etc.

Our society is supposedly a meritocracy, with the best things going to those who earn them. We are taught this from an early age, between praise from parents, ridicule from peers, the grading system in schools, etc. In the real world, what matters is results, not what you did leading up to it. Your boss doesn't care how hard you worked on something if you didn't finish in time, or if it wasn't the needed result. As such, with all this influence from the real world, much of our self esteem is tied to doing well.

This includes doing well at games. Many people, if they lose a game over and over and over again, will start to feel as though they are stupid for not "getting" the game. We all crave the thrill of victory -- imagine if you never succeeded at anything you attempted. You might not want to try it again...after all, you''ve lost every time in the past, you're probably going to lose this time too...what would be the point? Or, conversely....you've done well at other games, so you must be pretty good at them....if someone starts beating you, you won't be as good as you thought you were, or you were sloppy and missed something, so you'd better pay attention.

Voila! Analysis Paralysis. You need to win to be successful in your peer group (we don't just want to be accepted among our peers...we want to be respected). Or so the perception goes. After all, it's true for every other peer group...why shouldn't it be true in gaming?

Because playing games is supposed to be exactly that -- play. This is why games with a great deal of randomness are so popular among non-gamers -- everyone has a fairly equal shot at winning. And this is why I tend to play with people who are interested in the mechanics of the game and whether it's fun. It's why I don't track the scores at the end of the game, or write session reports with blow-by-blow descriptions of who did what to whom.

At the end of the day, I want to set aside the ambition and drive to succeed that is so very necessary in the rest of my life, and just enjoy a little social entertainment, while exercising my brain. I believe in doing my best, but in a casual way, not applying really deep thought to it. I don't intend to go out and become a professional Power Grid player, so if someone beats me by a city or four, who cares? Congratulate them on out-witting you, and if you have time and enjoyed the thought process, clear the board and play again.

*walks away humming -- "I'm no fool, no sirree...."*

Collection Snapshot : Can I Have a Word With You? -- Part Two

2006-07-31T13:29:00.000-05:00

Okay, so to continue with the mini reviews of all my word games...all that's left are Palabra, BuyWord, and Pass the Bomb. Let's see what we have, shall we?

Let's start with the simplest one first -- Pass the Bomb. This one was pretty hard to find -- I quested for close to a year, eventually stumbling across it while I was doing tech support at a mall in Austin -- turns out they have the only Go! The Game Store I've actually seen open year-'round. Shh -- don't tell the boss I bought it while on the clock...even if it did only take 5 minutes or so.... ;) Now the interesting thing is how I heard of Pass the Bomb in the first place -- I actually read about it in the infamous Misadventures in Gaming, currently being posted on BoardGameNews.com. In it, he described the frustrating experience of trying to play it with his family, but interrupted because someone told a really long joke (although I loved the punchline). Even though he didn't strictly give the rules of the game in his story, Mr. Bosley made my wife and I quite eager to play this game -- hence the quest.

If you want a quick and easy, not to mention very silly party game, you can't do much better than Pass the Bomb. Here's how you play:

Shuffle and stack 13 cards from the deck (or more if you want). Each card is double-sided with a combination of letters (DG, THI, UNT, etcetera).
Roll the die (we treat this as optional) -- if it says "Tick", letter combinations may not be at the beginning of the word, if it says "Bang", they can't be at the end, and if it reads "Tick-Tack", it can be anywhere in the word. Our group's personal preference is that this increases the pressure considerably above that of a quick silly party game, so we play without the die.
Flip a card, and press the button on the bottom of the bomb to start it ticking. The bomb will tick for a random amount of time between 10 and 60 seconds.
Say a word containing the revealed letter combination, and pass the bomb on to the next player. For example, the combination CANT could be VACANT, CANTRIP, PICANTE, etc. The letters must be together in the word exactly in the sequence on the card. So for the card GG, you could use GIGGLE or BOGGLE, but not GAG.
When the bomb goes off, the person holding it gets the card as a point.
When you run out of cards, the person with the least points wins!

See? Easy game. According to the rules, slang and foreign words are allowed if they are in common usage. Hmm, I should try EMBIGGENS next time to see how people react. If a word is challenged (invalid word, or used before during the round), there is discussion as to the verdict on the challenged word. If it is judged invalid, the person who said it has to think of a new word before passing the bomb. If judged okay, play continues. The catch is that the bomb doesn't stop ticking while this is going on. The rules therefore state that even if a word is challenged, the player after the challenged participant may say a valid word anyway and just pass the bomb on, rather than waiting to get stuck with the point if it goes off before a decision is made.

To summarize, Pass the Bomb is an easy game to teach and play. What makes it a challenge, though, is the sheer pressure you feel from holding a ticking bomb (with a fuse, strangely enough) and trying to concentrate to come up with a word, knowing all the while that if you take too long, not only might the bomb go off, but everyone else might come up with two or three ideas for their next word, and the bomb will simply whip around the table right back to you. This game has been a hit every time I've brought it out -- I already had to replace the batteries in the bomb because people kept asking to play over and over again. If you can find a copy, I highly recommend picking this one up.

Next, we come to the all-time favorite word game around here, Palabra. We fell in love with this game at a New Year's Day party, and bought a copy on the spot (the host had recently returned from GAMA and had several, since at the time, it wasn't in the local stores). When I ask my wife if she wants to play a game, Palabrais the first word out of her mouth. Lately, though, Blokus has been the second...

To those who haven't seen many word games, Palabra is basically "Scrabble with cards." While this description doesn't strictly fit (words played remain in front of the player for possible attack by other players, but on their next turn, is discarded, and any remaining points "safe"). The deck is composed of 120 cards. 115 are letter cards (red, blue, green, yellow, with some red/blue and some yellow/green letters). Each of the colors has a shape associated with it, for the benefit of those who are color-blind. Three of the remaining 5 cards are wild, and the last 2 are black "joker" cards, which can affect scoring, as explained below.

The letter cards all have a point value, and some have 2 or 3 stars on them, which multiply the value of the word formed. These stars do "stack," so to speak, but multiply each other, rather than adding. For example, a word with a 2-star letter and a 3-star letter is multiplied by 6 (2x3), not 5 (2+3). A word's value is also doubled if all the letters are the same color (called "color-locked," which also has other special features in play). If all letters in the word are dual-color cards of the same two colors, then the word is double-color-locked and worth 4 times the normal score. With the right combination of stars and colors, a word can be quite profitable -- the example given on the cover is LAUGHS, which would be worth only X points in Scrabble, plus any double or triple letter or word scores. The picture on the box includes two 3-star cards, and two 2-star cards, multiplying the letter value by a whopping 36 times, for a total of 504 points. While we haven't gotten a word that impressive, we have seen GLOM for 396 points.

The turn consists of 2 steps, a Pre-Play, and a Play. Pre-plays are actually easier to explain after covering the different Play options, which are:

Word -This is the basic play. Build a word from your hand of 7 cards. Stars and color-locks apply to the scoring. The word remains in front of you until your next turn.
Straight - This is a run of 3 or more letters in sequence, and the alphabet does wrap around. GHI, XYZAB, YZA are all valid straights. Stars and color-locks do apply to the letter values.
Flush - Play at least 5 cards of the same color from your hand. You only score the number value, no star values or color-locks.
Build - Build onto either end (not the middle) of another player's word or straight. The result is then placed in front of you as your word. Star values only count from the new cards you lay down -- any existing stars are not multiplied again. It is possible to connect two words or straights with a build play, but you may only build on one of them. (Example : adding P to LAY and adding another player's MATE to form PLAYMATE is allowed, but adding a P to LAY and an M to ATE is not.) Color lock bonuses still apply, but you may only build in the color of the original word.
Vowels - This allows you to basically "exchange" a hand composed mostly of vowels for fresh cards, for a flat point value. Turn in 6 vowels (yes, Y counts) for 20 points, or 7 vowels for 40 points. This is a flat score -- no star values, color-locks, or palabra bonuses apply.
Palabra - When a player plays a word or build (and only a word or build) that uses all 7 cards from his hand, earns a 70-point bonus. Stars and color-locks do not multiply this bonus, but if it ends the game (see explanation of the game-end bonus below), the Palabra bonus is doubled.
Exchange - You may exchange up to 7 of your cards by first drawing the replacements from the deck, then shuffling the undesired cards back into the deck. You lose this turn, and may not exchange cards 2 turns in a row.
Pass - You may pass your turn, either because you don't have a play, or strategically, trying to avoid an unplayed joker with a high-scoring word.

Got all the plays? Good. Like I said, this is a complex game to explain, although the included player aids help greatly, by summarizing the plays and pre-play options. You'll typically muddle through the first game, but then be playing smoothly for the second. On to the Pre-Plays! These are much simpler. A Pre-Play can only be made at the beginning of your turn (I've lost count of the number of times I've had to remind eager Joker-throwers that they had to wait till their turn to use it). You may only make one pre-play, and then the used cards are replaced in your hand so you have 7 cards with which to make an actual Play. There are only two possible Pre-Plays:

Shave - This allows you to steal points from the player who went just before you. You cannot shave any player except the one immediately before you in the turn order. Basically, you play letters out of your hand which match those of the word or straight you're shaving. (Only one card per shaved letter, but more than one letter may be shaved.) The points stolen are the originally scored points, regardless of the star-values of the card you played. For example, if the previous player had a word with two 2-star cards, and you steal an N (1 point) from them, they lose 4 points and you gain 4 points, because of the multiplication. If you shave with an N with 3 stars on it, you still only get 4 points. Now the last catch -- color-locks do matter, not just for scoring, not just for building, but for shaving as well. If you are trying to shave from a color-locked word, you must use a letter of the same color. As you can see, color-locking a word or straight is not just good for your score, it helps to protect the word from interference.
Joker - Finally, the sinister black card...A Joker cancels any remaining points on any player's word or straight that is still in front of them. It doesn't cancel points which have already been shaved, as those points are already lost. Also, if another player builds on the word, the original word's score is safe from Jokering (which is why the building player moves it in front of him). There are only two Jokers in the deck, so even a devestating attack on a high-scoring word can be recovered from later in the game.

Palabra is a surprisingly sophisticated word game, with many ways to vary play to customize your experience. The rulebook includes many of these variant rules, which can be used individually or combined to change the strategy of the game entirely. There's just not much negative I can say about this game. The cards are superbly produced; the rules, though complex, are relatively easy to follow; and the game is just plain fun! Plus it packs easily, being a card game. I don't see Palabra leaving our collection anytime soon.

Finally, we come to the game that inspired this post in the first place...BuyWord. This game is fairly fun, although the scoring takes a little getting used to. In this game, the score is tracked with play money. You begin with X dollars and a number of wild tiles that you may use throughout the game (all wilds are separated from the letters, and dealt evenly among the players -- each can only be used once), and choose a player to start. This player rolls a 6-sided die, which shows 2, 3, 4, 5, or "choice" (this option is on the die twice, and allows the player to pick a number between 2 and 5). This determines how many tiles each player (starting with the first) will draw from the bag.

Now is when BuyWord earns its name. You must "buy" all of the letters you drew, or pass on them. You don't get to pick and choose, and passed letters go out of play. How much they cost is calculated by counting the number of dots on the tiles (each letter has between 1 and 4 dots), then squaring the total -- for example, a 1-dot, 2-dot, 1-dot, 1-dot tile draw comes to 5 total dots, and would cost $25 to buy. Once you have your tiles, players are all allowed to make as many words as they can out of their tiles, or save them for future turns. When playing a word, its value (payoff) is calculated the same way as when drawing tiles -- count the dots, and square the total -- there is a handy chart for the less math-savvy among us, although the rules are a bit sarcastic when noting it. Obviously, you want to play words with more dots than the tiles you drew.

Lather, rinse, repeat until there aren't any more tiles to draw.

Overall, I kinda liked BuyWord, despite its simplicity. Since there is no real interaction between players in the main rules, the game comes off fairly cerebral and standoffish. Fortunately, it also comes with a number of variants, including options to trade or auction tiles, which adds a nice social element to the game. Considering all my other options, BuyWord was kinda "meh," but if all you have is Scrabble, it's a nice change of pace.

Well, that's all my word games, and I think one of my wordier posts, too. I love strategy games, but words also have a special place in my gaming heart.

Now if you'll excuse me, my wife is challenging me to a game of Palabra.

Collection Snapshot : Can I Have a Word With You? (Part 1)

2006-06-23T10:19:00.000-05:00

Oh, all right, all right, you good grammar-types out there....May I have a word with you?

This last weekend, we went on a trip to visit my father, and the plan had been to go to Sea World. Naturally, after 38 consecutive days without any rain, it picked this weekend to let loose. So instead, we went shopping for this and that, and played a few games with the folks. I introduced my dad to Balloon Cup, and then we played For Sale and Palabra before letting the fatigue from the drive down finally conquer me. On the way back, we also stopped at the Tanger Outlet Mall in San Marcos, where we found that they had some of the seasonal stuff from Christmas on sale, including the remaining stock from "Go! The Game Store." Of course I couldn't resist browsing...and ended up picking up a couple of games, one of which was Buyword. Now, I already have several word games, so hadn't really seriously considered Buyword, but for twelve bucks, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Naturally, after getting a good taste of it, I wanted to type up my impressions, but while I'm at it, let's take a look at my collection word games...

First, Scrabble, one of the mainstream household names when it comes to wordplay. In this game, you will be forming a crossword on a matrix, using tiles from your hand of seven letters. These tiles each ave a point value on them, depending on how common the letter is, and your score is simply the sum of these numbers, modified by any special spaces on the board that your word crosses.

At the beginning of the game, the tiles are shuffled, most commonly with an opaque bag, and the starting player is determined by each person drawing a tile -- closest to the beginning of the alphabet goes first. The turn order tiles are returned, and beginning with the first player, each person draws seven tiles.

For the first turn, there is a designated square in the center of the board that the first word played *must* pass through (horizontally or vertically, just like a crossword puzzle), and is colored to act as a double-word score (twice the points the word would normally generate). After the first word, every word must connect to at least one letter of a word already on the board as it is being played. Special scoring squares only count for the word if they are covered by tiles in the new word -- previously used special spaces are not reusable. You may lay a word along the side of another word, if and only if all the intersections form valid words. This is frequently one of the complaints that casual players have when going against more seasoned opponents, as a good memory for obscure two-letter words can prove to be a large advantage. Also, using all seven of your tiles when forming a word gives you a 50-point bonus. If you can't come up with a word, you may exchange any number of your tiles for those in the bag.

Scrabble has lasted as long as it has because it is genuinely fun to play. The wooden tiles are a pleasure to handle, and working with anagrams to get a good word is a workout for the brain. On the flip side, it is easy to fall into the old analysis paralysis habit as you shift tiles around, trying to come up with a good scoring word. Casual players often consult the dictionary, rather than following the official game rule of playing a word you think is valid, and risking a challenge by the other players. As a result, I have on occasion had time to fix myself a sandwich while waiting for someone to take their turn. The deluxe version of Scrabble includes a small timer to help deal with this issue. Despite this, it is a pretty lightweight game, which can become quite educational for vocabulary-building if you really wish to improve your gameplay.

Next up is Quiddler. It has beautiful cards, with woodcut-style letters, and a few letter combinations (like TH or QU). In the first round, the game is played with only 3 cards, then 4, then 5, and so on until you play a hand with 10 cards. Thus, the game will last for 8 hands. Like Gin, you will draw, determine if you can go out, and then either go out or discard a card. If you go out, you must use ALL the cards in your hand, AND be able to discard. Words must be formed of at least 2 cards. The remaining players get one last turn (including a draw), and any leftover cards that they can't use in a word count against them. Cards pretty much score their face value, with bonuses given for most words played and longest word. Quiddler is probably the simplest of the card-based word games I own....and unfortunately, it never really grabbed us to play more than a handful of times. The calligraphy is excellent, and the rules include a solitaire variant, but in general, this one was just kind of "meh" for me.

Moving on, the next game on the block is Play On Words. This game feels like a cross between Gin, Rummy, and Scrabble. The game is played in 10 hands, with each hand having a different goal, like 3 pure words, or a 7-letter mixed word, or some combination of pure and mixed words. The reason for these terms is that the deck is divided into three colors, each with their own distribution of letters. Each color is missing some letters, while each also has a letter or two that doesn't exist in the other two colors. Some of the cards are wild, and there are also several "double-wild" cards, which must be used to represent 2 letters. Only a few cards have a point value listed on them, and difficult to use letters may be marked with "Bonus." The scoring described in the rulebook felt quite complicated : basically, you score points for the cards left in your opponent's hand after you "go out," and if you lay down a word containing a "bonus" letter, it scores its point value immediately, unless you use a wild card in the word formed, in which case, it scores nothing. Most of the time when my wife and I play, the rounds go so fast that it's easier to just score by the number of hands won, claiming the challenge card for that round as we go. If it's even after round 10, we shuffle the challenges and play one more hand.

Anyway, on to the gameplay, as we enjoy this game immensely, comparing it favorably to Phase 10, another rummy-like game. In Play on Words, you begin each round with a hand of 11 cards. The rest form a draw pile, and then there are two discard piles. On your turn, you draw a card, from either of the discard piles or the draw pile. If you can play cards out of your hand to meet the current challenge (a pure word is formed from 3 or more letters of the same color, while a mixed word is multiple colors of at least the length specified in the round card), then you may, and then discard a card. Note that the entire challenge must be met at once -- if the requirement is three words, you may not play them one at a time. Later challenges are generally more difficult, and the final few rounds allow you to draw one or two cards, but you may still only discard one at a time.

Of course, once you play your cards, you may still have some left over. These are played to either modify your words or those of your opponents. You may not modify your own words on the turn that you first lay them down, but otherwise, it's pretty well unresctricted. You can play a letter on top of another letter to form a new word (COT to POT or FOX), you can add letters on the end (FIEND to FIENDISH), and you can insert letters (LET to LEFT), or a combination of these (ABOUT to ABSOLUTELY). You may not replace a double-wild card, though, not may you subtract letters. Lather, rinse, repeat until one of you either plays or discards your last card, thus "going out."

Play on Words is a simple, fast-playing word game, and it was generally my wife's favorite word game until we picked up Palabra, which has a lot more options for card play. But I'll get to that next time, as this entry is starting to look a little long for casual reading.

Next Time : Palabra, BuyWord, and what word game entry would be complete without mentioning Pass the Bomb?

Bit of Humor -- 6-20-06

2006-06-20T08:39:00.000-05:00

The other day, while playing Corsari, I happened to take a good look at the artwork on the cards (as I was tending to play just by color and number), and the image on the 5 just struck me as funny. Now I have to go looking through my other games for artwork that just begs for a goofy caption.

A rare portrait of Amazon Annie, Scourge of the Mediterranean, early in her career.

"Are you sure this is how I'm supposed to hold it?"

"Darn this bra...the scabbard never works right..."

New for Pirates! The Do-It-Yourself Tattoo Kit!

Got any caption ideas? Comment away!

Random Thoughts, Cause It's Just Been That Kind of Day....

2006-06-16T07:24:00.000-05:00

Would a meeple in a field technically have wood for sheep?

Are you every really sorry when you play the Sorry card?

When you use only coal to power your cities, do the diamond mines get mad?

Alhambras were the import shopping malls of their time -- why else would you use 4 types of currency?

Someone once asked me if Palabra was a word, so we looked it up...it was in fact a word, meaning "a word."

Why are they called "turn phases" if nobody rotates anything or puts stuff through solid objects?

Are you allowed to play Gin without the appropriate beverage?

Come to think of it, does the same go for Rummy?

Are green meeples the children of yellow and blue meeples?

When playing tile-laying games, what type of grout should I use?

In a game of Railroad Tycoon, if Player A is shipping a red cube from Buffalo to Chicago, and Player B is shipping a blue cube from Toronto to Pittsburgh, how many turns will it take before Player B notices that Player A is in fact a robot double from the future?

Have the wooden cubes in your games ever tried to assimilate the other playing pieces?

It seems more and more common to see boardgames in coffeeshops. Not that I'm complaining, but I wonder why that is....I have yet to see a boardgame being played at a topless bar...of course, I wasn't looking at the tables at the time.

In the Game of Life, what if you can't find a girlfriend before you get to the mandatory marriage space? Do you have to backtrack to the personal ads space until you get one?

How come nobody closes their eyes in a blind-bidding game?

Am I the only one who thinks something completely non-game-related when the term "fiddly bits" comes up?

Why would people pick a busy reviewer like Tom Vasel and write a complaint about the quality of his reviews that's more words than it would take to write a review themselves to show him how it should be done?

Someone suggested ludography as a new label for the boardgaming hobby. Isn't ludography the study of the giant beast character, Ludo, from Labyrinth?

Munchkin -- is that some kind of incestuous cannibalism?

Ninja burgers aren't make from real ninjas -- they're too hard to catch.

What happens if you de-Frag your SJ Games collection?

Is there a Formula Night?

Do the Shadows Over Camelot know the evil that lurks in the hearts of men?

What did you put that Carcass onne?

I eat jelly beans when playing Bohnanza.

Meeples are peoples and peoples like meeples, so meeples like peoples too.
They pray in the steeples and drive things that beeples and swim in the deeples blue,
But some say the meeples just give them the creeples and burn them in heaples -- they do!
And then those brave meeples, they take a great leaples and ride on a sheeples or two
Until they find peoples who wouldn't burn meeples and game in their sleeples, like you!

Hm...note to self...find a real topic for next time.....

Phenomenal Kosmos Power!

2006-06-13T23:06:00.000-05:00

It's been a little while since I've done a game review entry (okay, a loooonggg while), so here's a few, reviewing my current collection of two-player games in Rio Grand Games' Kosmos line. I haven't been able to make it to the game night for a few weeks, but I've gotten to play a bunch of two-player games, and so I've been on kind of a kick to pick up more games that were designed from the ground up for two players...over the weekend, I bought a copy of Jambo, which was my third Kosmos game, and so far, I've been pretty impressed with the line.

My first Kosmos game was Lost Cities, which is touted by many as a so-called "wife game." Interestingly enough, my wife never really got into it, but I've had fun playing with other people. Lost Cities is themed around 5 pulp-novel expeditions -- the center of the earth via volcano, deep jungle ancient ruins, the lost city of Shangri-La, Atlantis, and deep inside an Egyptian tomb. Play itself is fairly simple -- each expedition has 9 crds numbered 2 through 10, and three handshake score-multiplying cards. Each player is dealt a hand of eight cards, and a turn is composed of either playing a card to your side of the board in the appropriate expedition (in numerical order, and handshake cards for an expedition cannot be played after numeric cards for that destination have been played on your side of the board), or discarding into one of 5 discard piles, one for each expedition. After you either play or discard, you draw a card, either from the draw pile, or from the top of any single discard pile. The game ends after the last card is drawn from the deck (so the last card never gets played), and the expeditions are scored.

So far, it seems like a pretty bland game, but what adds a press-your-luck kind of tension is how the scoring works. You see, an expedition costs money to embark on, and it might not be profitable, or so the theme goes... Put into mechanical terms, as soon as you lay the first card down in an expedition, it's already worth negative 20 points. A pile is scored as (-20 + card values) x multiplier cards (one is worth x2, two is x3, and three is x4) + 20 points (if and only if the column contains 8 or more cards). So if, for example, you only play the 10 on Atlantis, you can never play any other cards there (as 10 is the highest card), and that column is worth negative 10 points total. Two handshakes and the 10 alone would score -30 points. The back of the instructions shows a visual example of how a game is scored, which really helps to understand it the first time you play.

Because of the possibility of scoring negative points if you don't play enough high-scoring cards in an expedition, as well as the chance to score large multiples of positive scores, the game becomes an exercise in risk assessment. Do you play multipliers when you have them and hope you have enough cards of the right color to make it worthwhile? Do you wait to see if you get that 5 before going ahead and playing your 6? Do you discard that 9 that you have no use for, and if you do, will your opponent pick it up? As you can see, the game is packed with agonizing decisions, although all the conflict is indirect. Good math skills can help in this game, but since you really only need to be able to count to 20 and how many turns are available (you're allowed to count the cards remaining in the draw stack at any time) to know if it's worth attempting an expedition or not. This is primarily a game of risk assessment, which fits well with the theme. Overall, a nice way to spend 15 minutes or so each hand...the game is usually played for 2 hands and the scores combined.

The next Kosmos game I picked up was Balloon Cup, mostly because I change my Windows desktop to a new boardgame each week at work, and the picture from the BGG Recent Images that week looked pretty cool. I played a couple games on Gravon to find out if it was fun, and fell in love with the game.

The theme of Balloon Cup is a bit thinner, although you do get a sense of racing as you play. Basically there are 5 trophies of different colors and values, and your goal is to win three of them by capturing a number of cubes in that color (I'll get to that in a moment). The trophies, in order, are: 3 gray, 4 Blue, 5 Green, 6 Yellow, and 7 Red. As you might guess, the lower the number of cubes required, the more rarely they appear.

The "board" consists of 4 tiles, numbered 1 through 4, interestingly enough. Each of these tiles is double-sided, with one side showing mountains, and the other showing plains. When the game is initially set up, all the colored cubes are placed in a bag to draw from, and you must lay out the tiles in order from 1 through 4, alternating sides (mountain, plain, mountain, plain, or vice-versa...it doesn't matter which way you start, as long as it alternates). You then place on each tile a number of cubes from the bag equal to the number on the tile (so tile 4 gets 4 cubes, while tile 1 gets 1). When the tile is resolved (someone wins the cubes), it's flipped to the other side, and replacement cubes are placed...unless there aren't enough cubes to fill the tile, in which case it is set aside, out of play.

To play the game, each player starts with 8 cards, and will play one from their hand to either side of the board, then draw a replacement from the draw stack. Yes, the conflict is a bit more direct in this game, since you can place cards on your opponent's side. The only restriction to card placement is that the color of the card must match a cube on the tile that has not already been matched to a card on each side. (e.g., if there are two red cubes and a yellow cube on a tile, and your opponent has two reds and a yellow on his side, while you have two reds on your side, you may only place a yellow card on your side of the tile). The tile is resolved when both sides have a number of cards on each side matching the number and color of cubes on the tile. If the mountains are showing, then the player with the highest numeric total wins the cubes, and if it shows the plains, the player with the lowest numeric total wins them. If the result is a tie, then the player who played the last card (no matter which side it was placed on) wins the cubes. Play then continues with the player who lost the tile going next (because of this rule, it is possible to go twice if you resolve a tile in your opponent's favor). These cards are then discarded, and the discard pile is shuffled if the draw pile runs out.

When a player has enough cubes to win a given trophy, he collects it immediately, setting the cubes used to win it aside, and from that point on, that player and only that player may use three cubes in that trophy color to substitute for a cube of a different color, but only for the purpose of winning another trophy. For example, Player A has won the blue trophy earlier, and currently has 2 blue cubes and 5 red cubes. He wins the 2 tile with a blue cube and a red cube. He can then use the 6 red cubes and 3 blue cubes to win the red trophy. The game is over when someone wins 3 trophies.

Occasionally, you may have a hand in which you cannot play any cards. And I mean cannot -- you can't do this if you just don't want to play them....if there's an available move, whether it helps you or your opponent, you must play. In the case that you have no legal play, you may trade in up to 4 of your cards for fresh cards from the deck.

This game is a fun exercise in mathemetics, risk-assessment, and good-natured take-that play. While the fly high over the mountains and fly low over the plains aspect is a paper-thin theme, the overall race to beat your opponent to winning trophies works very well and it's a satisfying experience when you win. While not a particularly deep game, it races along and keeps you interested and engaged until the end of the ride. Besides, my wife loves it....probably because it gives her the chance to screw up my plans...

And finally, last weekend I picked up Jambo. The description on the box implies that it is a trading game, which rarely works well with two players, as in my experience, two players rarely trade with each other, preferring to work their own game plan. Fortunately, this isn't that kind of trading game. It's a fast-paced little economic game with a great deal of player conflict, as many of the special cards have a take-that effect. It is a bit fiddly, with item tokens, money tokens, action point tokens, and a deck of cards, but once you've started playing, it all works together well, and we didn't really notice how many bits were moving around after a few turns.

Put simply, each player starts with a large market stand (which holds 6 possible items). The various items are Hides, Silk, Tea, Salt, Trinkets, and Fruit. Your starting hand is 5 cards, which will grow and shrink as you play -- there is no hand limit. You also begin with 20 gold. Now, before I get to the turn mechanics, a brief familiarity with the cards will help it make sense:

Ware Cards - This is the most common type of card, picturing either 3 or 6 items on the card. You use the card to either buy wares for your market stand, or to sell existing product from your stand. The 6-item cards always picture 1 each of the 6 wares, allowing you to buy all 6 for 10 gold, or to sell all 6 for 18 gold. There are 3 different kinds of 3-item cards...3 of a kind (buy for 3, sell for 10), 2 of 1 kind and 1 of another (buy for 4, sell for 11), and 3 different items (buy for 5 and sell for 12). When you play it, you must declare whether you are buying or selling the goods. If buying, all of the items must exist in the central pool...and if selling, you must have all of them in your stand. When buyng, if you fill the 6th space on your large market stand, you must pay an extra 2 gold. Once played, ware cards are discarded.
Small Stand Cards - There are only 5 of these in the deck. They picture 3 more spaces to fill with goods. The first one built in the game costs 6 gold. Every subsequent stand (no matter who plays it) costs only 3 gold.
Utility Cards - These are devices that give you special abilities, usually trading money, gold, and wares with the central pool. You first build them (maximum of 3 in play for your side), and then may use them once per turn per card for the remainder of the game, or until you replace it with another utility.
People Cards - These are played for various special effects, and then are discarded. Some examples are looking ahead in the deck, auctioning cards or wares, or making buying/selling more favorable for your entire turn.
Animal Cards - Like People Cards, they are played and then discarded for a special effect. These usually mess with your opponent in some way, which is why there is a Guard person card to counteract it.

As you might have noticed, Jambo is a little deeper and more complex than Lost Cities and Balloon Cup. Here's how your turn works. It is divided into 2 phases, the drawing phase, and the action phase. These phases are played in order...once you begin playing cards, you cannot go back to draw cards unless the card you played instructs you to do so. You also have 5 action points to divide between these two phases (yes, you can skip phase 1 or 2 if you want), tracked by your opponent so you can concentrate on your turn. Unless specified otherwise, it costs 1 action point for each thing you do. The possible actions are:

Draw a Card - (Drawing Phase) Draw the top card of the draw stack and decide if you want to keep it or discard it. If kept, you must move on to the action phase. If you discard, you may draw again at the cost of another action point, or move on to the action phase. So while you can draw up to 5 cards, you'll only be able to keep one of them, and the more draws you take, the less cards you can play.
Buy / Sell Wares - (Action Phase) Play a ware card from your hand and declare if you are buying or selling. When buying, pay the listed price, and take the wares from the pool. All the wares must be available to buy, and you must have space for all of them. When selling, place the listed items back into the pool and take the appropriate amount of gold. You must have the entire set available on your cart to sell. Finally, discard the ware card.
Play a Utility - (Action Phase) Place the utility card from your hand below your large market cart. You may have up to three in play maximum. The card's effect does not go into effect when initially laying it down. That costs another action.
Use a Utility - (Action Phase) Flip a Utility Card that you previously put into play over, and follow the instructions in the card text. Each card may only be used once per turn. You may have more than one of a given utility built in order to get its effects more than once.
Build a Small Market Stand - (Action Phase) Place a Small Market Stand from your hand next to your Large Market Stand. Pay the appropriate amount of gold to the bank (6 gold if it's the first one built in the game, 3 gold otherwise).
Play a Person / Animal Card - (Action Phase) Play a person or animal card from your hand and follow the instructions on the card. Remember that animal cards can be counteracted with a Guard.

Play continues until one player has accumulated 60 or more gold, triggering the endgame. The opponent then has one turn to make as much gold as they can. If they pass or tie the leader, then they win. Otherwise, the leader wins the game. Suffice it to say, don't get 60 gold unless you're sure your opponent can't catch up. While it looks like there's a lot to remember, you will find that after the first play, it's very easy to keep the available options in mind. This is a very opportunistic game -- there is a great deal of luck, thanks to the card draws, but so far, our games have been pretty close, even when someone got lucky and played a good combination of cards to get way ahead. Finding the right time to play all the different types of cards is a key component to this game, and we found that the metagame can come into play as well. For instance, I played an animal card which would have let me steal a ware, and she debated aloud whether she should stop it or not, and then decided not to. So next, I played a feint with another animal card that she would guard against, and then hit her with a third to accomplish my actual goal after she wasted the guard. Opportunities, like I said. Of course, I then had to use several turns to refill my hand because of the limiting drawing rules, so it still balanced out.

I liked this game a lot. You can play it nicely, and just concentract on the economic aspect, or you can play ruthlessly, and let the special cards fly to foil your opponent's plans. Now I've gotten hooked on the Kosmos line, I'll have to look into the other titles -- right now, Caesar and Cleopatra, Hera and Zeus, Odin's Ravens, and Babel are on my radar as games to research for possible purchase.

Until next time, trade your wares, buy a balloon, and go find that city!

Getting Used to BSW, Take Two....

2006-06-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

Well, after finding out about the client and setting it up, as well as registering a username at the BSW website, I found my way onto EnglishTown (although at the moment I still seem to run into a lot of German-speakers when I actually play a game). I've had a marginally better experience, having played Lost Cities, 6 Nimmt! and TransAmerica over a couple of different lunch hours. In general, the players were helpful, especially in the TransAmerica game, when it was getting started and I still hadn't seen any pieces to click on.

And then I tried to play Tichu. Now, I've had a little experience with the game, having gone over the rules and played out several 4-hand games solo, as well as demonstrating it for others and playing a couple 3-player games (which is the same as the 4-player except one person plays his and his partner's hand). I'd hardly call myself an expert, but I do know how to play, and was looking to play a few actual 4-handed games to learn some of the strategy....okay, mainly to just have some fun and play a game, but if I picked up strategy along the way, great.

So I went online and checked the GamePartner menu to see who was looking for players. Found several games right away -- apparently Tichu is a pretty popular game ;)

In the first room, as soon as I wandered in and before I could say hello, the person hosting the game said "welcome, join all." just to be sure, I asked "may I play" and he repeated the entreaty to jon the game. "Wow, what a friendly room," I thought.

A moment later, a new player entered, and the host again welcomed the new entry and said "join all." The other player responded "I don't play with unregistered players." Hm...a bit snobby, but understandable, I thought. While I was in the middle of typing that I thought I had registered, as I was logged on with a real username, not a guest name with a nick, the host and this other person left the room, leaving me alone at position number 2 on the table without another word to me. I waited a bit to see if they would come back, while a few people wordlessly entered and left the room, ignoring my greetings. After a while, I gave up and checked another table which had been looking for players.

Again I arrived and only the host was in the room. I said hello and asked if I could join the game. This time, I was flatly told "no."

Fair enough...maybe he's just looking for people he knows. I said thank you and was about to look at the GamePartner menu for another room to check when the host decided to continue the conversation with, "You don't show any Tichu played, so how could you know the game?"

This just got under my skin, as it seemed a rude thing to say after I had already accepted that he declined to let me join the game and was on my way elsewhere. I replied that I knew the game because I'd played it with a physical deck of real cards, then thanked him for his time again and left the room.

By this time, I figured I'd simply create my own game, sent out a GameWish, and managed to get a few players together...they were polite and not critical of my obvious novice grasp of the game, and we had a good time.

While I can understand wanting to play with a familiar group, or with experienced players online, I wish I could have an easier time finding games to explore and get into, as there's so much there to play on BSW. But so far, with a lot of the people I have met, I'm sticking to games that are simple, short, and that I already know the rules to. With some of the impatience that I've seen displayed several times, I'm reluctant to try and find people to teach me a game on BSW that I've never played before, so it looks like I'm going to have to continue buying a game to find out if it's any good before playing it online.

And as always in the real world, when someone walks up and asks if they can play in any game that hasn't started yet, my response will be, "Of course! Do you already know the rules, or would you like to learn?"

Growing Up a Bard...

2006-06-08T16:08:00.000-05:00

(author's note: so my dialogue is modern and thus anachronistic...there's only so much detail I'm willing to put in a D&D character history ;)

"Duran, put the book away and come on! Father is looking for you. He says you forgot to clean the coop this morning!"

"Feh, chickens are filthy whether I clean the coop or not...I still don't know why my parents apprenticed me to a farm anyway."

"Probably the usual stuff about an honest day's work that my parents are always lecturing me for. Now let's get out of here before Father shows up with the switch!"

"Sure, Geoffrey...I was in the mood to go swimming, anyway."

The two ran for the pond, laughing at the lazy summer afternoon ahead of them...well, until their chores caught up with them, anyway.

Duran's father had grown a succesful liquor trading business, transporting alcohol and brewing recipes across the land to many inns and taverns, and in the process making some small rural vineyards quite wealthy from the popularity of their beverages. Thanks to his prosperity, he was able to send Duran to reputable schools, but he never forgot his field-working roots. As such, he wanted to be sure that his son learned that there were some things you had to work for, that the simple value of completing something with your own two hands was a worthy endeavor in and of itself.

He meant well, as all parents do. Of course, as all children do, Duran took every opportunity to avoid learning this lesson.

Cliche' farm life and adolescent power struggles aside, there was the occasional event of interest....

"Hey Geoffrey, I heard there was a bunch of strangers in town!"

"Yeah, they're musicians and jugglers and acrobats and more! They're putting up a show in the clearing near Bats' Harvest Grove!"

"Wow....I wish I could be a musician like that, going from town to town, getting paid to sing and tell stories," Duran sighed. "Not nearly as boring as baling hay and shoveling manure."

"Yeah...me too."

"You gonna go?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

"Me neither. I'll meet you by the barn after your folks are asleep."

What the boys saw that evening was an inspiration to Duran, and he knew that he would never be satisfied as a farmer or booze trader. He resolved to join the troupe and seek a life of adventure. A few days later, Geoffrey came across him throwing some food and an extra set of clothing into a sack.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to leave with the players this morning...I talked to Briston -- he's the leader, and he said they could use another hand to set up and help with the animals, and in exchange, they'll teach me what they know until I'm ready to be part of the show."

"Wow, that sounds like it'll be fun! I wish I could go with you..."

"I could ask Briston--"

"No, I'm sure he doesn't let just any old farm boy join up with him. You're smarter and more talented than I am, after all. My place is here, on the farm."

"You've been a good friend, Geoffrey."

"As have you, and I look forward to the day you come back as an entertainer."

"When I do, I promise to get you in to see the show."

"You do that, Duran. Good luck to you."

"And to you, my friend. I will see you again."

But he didn't. For months and years, Duran sent letters home and to his friend, telling of the adventures he was having with the travelling band of entertainers, of the places and things he would see, until in time, he returned to the sleepy little village where he had abandoned his apprenticeship.

When he ventured to the farm, though, he found it overgrown, and deserted.

To be continued....assuming the game goes on ;)

Before the backstory -- the way-backstory...

2006-05-04T17:22:00.000-05:00

It had been in existance as long as any recorded history would show. A simple sphere, it had held many names as it passed from owner to owner, scholar to thief, warrior to wizard. When it was known as the L'hazzakh Thitchnor, the Pearl of Passage, it was said to have once belonged to the gods, and allowed them to go between the heavens and the mortal realm. As the Aelean Moduun, the Eye of Banishment, it was a great weapon created by a master sorcerer to turn whole armies to dust. As the Siildr Timorr, it was an historian's tool, invented by a brilliant gnome to study how things might have gone differently. It seemed indestructable, as though more solid than those who held it. Legend said that anyone who could unravel all its secrets would hold the power of the gods

Long ago, before the Great War, when the tainted lands were yet lush and green, a man of vast power and wealth found that all the lands at his command could not sate his hunger for domination of his fellows. He knew, though, that mere military aggresion would be defeated in time, as attrition took its toll, and his enemies found allies in former foes to turn together against him. He studied and hunted, and raided many ancient ruins for secrets and lore, seeking a weapon that made his armies obsolete.

After many years, his efforts yielded a sphere teeming with magical power. Research revealed it to be the Eye of Banishment, which was once used in an ancient war. The legend said that a great sorcerer held it aloft, spoke the words of power, and in an instant, the assembled force before him vanished without a trace. This, he saw, was exactly the weapon he had been searching for. And so he set about studying to discover how to use it, that he might reach his goal.

Such misdeeds do not go unanswered by the gods. But rather than directly interfere in the affairs of mortals, they prefer to pit them against one another. They guided a group of heroes together, and set them on the path that would eventually lead them to a confrontation with the holder of the Orb...

After a long and hard battle, the power-mad noble lay defeated, dying at the hands of the woman who had slain him. With his final breath, he cursed her and her bloodline, vowing that he would one day return to reclaim the Eye.

Their names, and the fate of the artifact are lost to time. No one knows what became of the warrior or her children, although it is believed that her bloodline yet lives...

to be continued....

And now for something a little different...

2006-05-02T12:19:00.000-05:00

...I've recently been given the opportunity to play again in an RPG group, meeting biweekly. Last week, we built our characters, and I opted to go with a storytelling bard. Now, it's been a long time since I've gotten to roleplay, and so I needed a little help in coming up with a backstory for my character, not having any immediate inspiration. So, to kickstart my muse, I grabbed my trusty "Hero Builder's Guidebook," rolled on the given tables, and got the results below. In my next few entries, I'll see what sort of story I can weave from the rolled-up answers. I may not make use of all the details, deeming some to be irrelevant to the story, but I will not change any of them.

Home Climate: Warm (tropical & subtropical)
Home Terrain: Plains
Home Community: Small Tribe
Family Economic Status: Monastic Order - you live with a group of monks; they live a spartan lifestyle, and so do you
Family Social Standing: Skilled Trade and/or Merchant Family
Family Defense Readiness: Rudimentary - simple weapons only
Family Private Ethics: Fair - they will follow a contract to the letter of the law
Family Public Ethics: Normal - their public ethics matches their private ones
Family Religious Commitment: Enmity - your family is actively against one or more religious orders
Family Reputation: Outstanding
Family Political Views: Apolitical - you don't follow political affairs
Family Power Structure: Patriarchy
Ancestors of Note: Magic Item - ancestor owned a magic item of specific or unusual note that may or may not have become a family heirloom
Early Childhood Instruction: Book Learning - you know how to read and write
Formal Education: Natural History - biology, geology, etc.
Learning a Trade (apprenticeship): Farmer
Early Childhood Events: Witness - saw horrible crime or violence
Youth Events: Battle - aided defense of community against raiders or maurading monsters
Pivotal Events: None
Parents: Both Alive
Siblings: None
Grandparents: One alive on each side
Extended Family: 8 living relatives
Friends: Lost - significant friend is dead or missing
Enemies: Enemy of the family
Instructors: Vanished - the person who taught you everything you know is missing

Hm...interesting -- stay tuned....

Memories of Gaming : Pirate's Cove

2006-04-17T11:54:00.000-05:00

I'm not entirely sure when it started, but suffice to say that I've something of an interest in pirates.

*waits while the laughter dies down from the people who've been to my house*

Okay, I have a large interest in pirates....not so much the violent or thieving aspects of reality, but more the fun, rogueish charm and swashbuckling aspects of the romanticised pirate. My game room has been decorated with a pirate theme in mind, from pictures of ships on the walls (not to mention the large model ship), the pirate caricatures of my wife and I, the antique captain's wheel, cutlass, and working sextant, right down to the welcome mat and pool table with blue felt, you can't help but feel that I like pirates. Heck, you should see me decked out in pirate garb for the Rennaisance festival or Halloween!

So naturally, I keep an eye out for pirate-themed games...if nothing else, you get an excuse to talk and growl with awful accents and say "arrr" and "booty" a lot. There's still quite a few I haven't bought yet, but one of my early purchases was Pirate's Cove. While being a very chaotic and luck-based game, it's also quite a lot of fun, and the pacing of the game works very well for it.

In Pirate's Cove, your goal is to become a famous pirate, both from collecting fame points for travelling to particular islands, but also by burying treasure gathered through the course of the game and defeating dread pirates as well as your opponents in battle.

Well, there is one other battle you can win for fame, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

For a while, I attended the game sessions of the Fort Worth Gamers on Tuesday nights. They meet in a Barnes & Noble near Hulen Mall, generally out of the way in the back room by the musical section. The group was okay -- I mainly stopped going because of the round-trip distance involved.

Anyway, once a month, another club also meets at that Barnes & Noble. This group is for those with a love of classical music. They listen to musical pieces, then discuss how they felt about it, the composer's intent, stuff like that...similar to those who have an appreciation for art and discuss paintings.

Now, meeting in the same place and at the same time as a social (and sometimes rambunctious) activity like boardgaming, there are naturally conflicts. The classical music appreciation group tends to have a bit more clout with the store, since the store actually sells the products for their hobby, and thus they spend more money in the store than the boardgame group does.

I got to discover this inequity firsthand when I went and we could not hear each other at all over the loud music playing. It may have been very pretty music, but it was still way too loud, which makes it difficult to say the least when trying to teach people how to play a game.

The defining moment of that game, though, which makes the evening truly stand out in my mind, was coincidental timing of a music piece with a play by an opponent. We had just moved our ships, and one player laid down a card that sends an obstacle after players at an outlying island of their choice, worth 4 fame if defeated. At the exact moment he played the card, the speaker above our heads blared out:

Hail Brittania! Brittania rules the waves!

The hazard played, of course, was the Royal Navy.

Game Design : Word Away (for the Alpha Deck)

2006-04-12T19:40:00.000-05:00

As always, title suggestions are welcome -- I just don't seem to be that good at coming up with them :)

This is an adaptation of a German card game called 6 Nimmt!, which has also been produced here in the U.S. as Category 5. (you might recall my discussion of Category 5 in previous entries) I do have a few bugs to work out for the occasional tie, but here's how the game is played:

Items needed: 1 Alpha Deck

Number of Players: 2-6

Setup: Remove the ? wild cards from the deck, shuffle it, and deal 10 cards to each player. Deal 3 cards face-up to the center of the table to start three rows. One of the ? wild cards is given to a player chosen at random. This is the "Omega" card and is discussed under the "Special Circumstances" section. (Alpha and Omega, get it?? *snicker*)

Play
Each round, all players will choose a card from their hand and hold it face-down in front of them. When everyone has chosen their card, the cards are revealed simultaneously and then placed in order from the lowest card (earliest in the alphabet) to the highest, according to the 4 rules below.

A card must be placed at the end of a row next to a card that it is later in the alphabet than (for example, a G would be placed next to a D, but not an L).
If Rule 1 allows for more than one placement, then the card must be placed next to the card that it is closer to, while still following Rule 1 (so if there were also a row ending in F, the G would have to be placed there, not next to the D)
If the card to be placed would be the 6th card in the row, the player must take all the cards in that row and set them aside for the scoring round, described later (captured cards do not go into the players' hands), and the played card would become the first card in a new row to replace the taken one.
If a card has no legal placement (i.e., it's earlier in the alphabet than the last card in all three rows), then the player must choose a row to take, and then the played card becomes the first in a new row.

In each round, after placing all the cards, the Omega card passes one player clockwise. After 10 rounds, all players would have used up the cards dealt to them at the beginning of the game, and so the scoring phase begins. See "Scoring," below.

Special Circumstances

Semi-Wild vowels, when played, must be determined as to which letter they are played as when being revealed. An easy way to do this is to position the card such that the letter that you want it to be is pointed toward the center of the table when you flip it. This is to determine placement order and position in the rows. Once played into a row, the card reverts to semi-wild status and can be played on as either vowel (this may give a player a choice of two rows when placing cards). In scoring, semi-wilds can be used as either vowel.

Tie for placement can occur if more than one person plays the same letter. In this situation, start with the player to the left of the holder of the Omega card and place the tied letters in clockwise order, ending at the Omega in sequence (only the tied letters get placed in this situation, and it is possible that two or more cycles to the Omega can occur, as the Omega is merely a marker to determine an endpoint).

Sometimes a row will have a Z at the end of it -- this basically just blocks that row off for play until someone takes it by choice.

Scoring

This is the point at which this becomes an actual word game :)

Players score the numeric value of the cards they took while playing. This score can be reduced by forming words with the cards you took.
Words must be at least 3 letters in length, and letters may only be used once. Any leftover cards are still points against you. (If you have a semi-wild with a 1-point letter and a 2-point U, it counts as 1 point). The player with the lowest score wins.

In the event of a tie (for example, all players are able to use all their taken letters as words), the player with the fewest total taken cards wins.

If still tied, the player who formed the longest word with their taken cards wins.

Still tied? The longest word worth the most points wins (because it's usually formed with harder-to-use letters).

If you are still tied after all that, repeat the last two steps with the second-longest word and so on. Beyond that, if your skill level is that equal, you should play a tie-breaker game. :)

Game on TV : American Inventor

2006-04-10T13:07:00.000-05:00

Over the past few weeks, I've been watching the auditions for a new show called American Inventor. In this program, hopeful innovators present their original design to four judges to be evaluated for originality, usefulness, and marketability. In the auditions, they're supposed to be deciding which prototypes have potential, and then 3 yes votes from the 4 judges move them on to the next round -- I'm not sure what happens after that, but several finalists will get $50,000 for development, and then a final winner will get a bucketload of money and a patent.

Of course, I'm not here to discuss inventions...this is a gaming blog, and as such, I will focus my attention on a couple of games that ended up on the air (for all I know, there were others that simply got edited out), and what I thought about them based on what little was shown on TV. Overall, though, while I enjoy game design and its results as much as the next person, I didn't really see either of these items as meeting the spirit of the show as described. After all, if you go delving into the world of gaming, there are many innovative designs out there, but in an invention show, what comes to mind for me is new devices that solve a problem, not a set of rules and bits to play with. I may dabble in game design, but I wouldn't even think of going this route to get something to market if that was my goal....somehow I don't think engineers would appreciate my work in the same way.

That said, let's look at the games -- the first was a dexterity game called BulletBall. The idea for it came to the inventor when he and his wife were rolling a pet toy across their kitchen table at each other while talking. They started rolling faster and faster, batting the ball back and forth to try and get it to roll off the table on their opponent's side. At that point, he decided they needed rules, and so he developed BulletBall.

In the form shown on American Inventor, the playing surface seemed to be a kitchen table with a cool-looking design, and a couple of small walls to the left and right of the players at the edge of the table. Basically, take a circle, divide it into quadrants, put what appeared to be 3 or 4-inch high walls along the curve of two opposite quadrants, and you have a BulletBall table. The ball itself just appeared to be a simple plastic colored ball a little bigger than a ping-pong ball. While the rules weren't described, they played a little, and it basically just looks like you use your forearms to knock the ball toward your opponent's goal (open space between the walls). I didn't see that the design on the table had anything to do with the game.

From what was shown, that was all there was to the game....air hockey with a ball and a round table, using your arms and no hands. I can't say I'm surprised that this game didn't make it to the next round. It looked like fun, but not really an innovative invention to me. I also couldn't see how the guy could have spent as much as he said he did on it, since it looked like a table you could have built professionally for about $1,000.00. The inventor claimed to have sold everything and was living out of his car. I feel bad for the guy if this is true, but I guess I just don't know how inventing works, because I just can't fathom what he might have spent all the money on.

The other game, Word Ace, which seems to consist of a 6-point buzzer and some cards. The goal of the game as stated is to be the first to buzz in with a correctly spelled word with stated criteria (number of letters and starting letter -- for example, "seven-letter word starting with k", *scribbling something down*, *BUZZ!*, "Kissing?", "That's correct, take a point!"). That seems to be it. And the inventor claims to have spent $80,000 on this. More and more, as I watch this show, I wonder what the various inventors spent that kind of money on. The one that struck me as unique out of all of them was the guy who invented a curved foam pole to use to help train a football receiver to catch the ball correctly. When asked what he spent, he replied, "About thirty bucks." So where does the money go for other simple-seeming inventions? The six-point buzzer seemed pretty slick, but for $80,000, I would have thought the game had handwriting recognition or something. It seems a fun educational game, and my wife and I love word games, but as I saw someone else mention on BoardGameGeek, the game seems like it could be played with flash cards and people raising their hand. I'm curious to see if Word Ace has more depth. Who knows? Maybe it could evolve to be the next great party game.

*shrugs* Ah well...I guess I'm just ignorant about the cost of development....I'll stick to coming up with variants and such for fun....and be on the lookout for a new wordgame based on Category 5 here in the next few days....I just have to structure the rules into something readable.

Memories of Gaming : Category 5

2006-03-22T12:00:00.000-06:00

It's funny....so much of the frustration involved with being a gamer is trying to find opponents to play with. About the only thing more frustrating is when you find people who are happy to play, but they just don't seem to "get it." This happened a couple of days ago when I had some friends over to be guinea pigs for my first attempt to smoke a brisket. The food came out delicious, but the game of Settlers seemed to give them difficulty, with the two ways that the robber steals cards, and the ports with 2:1 trades for particular resources. So afterward, I thought I'd bring out a nice simple game, with only a few rules....

"Okay, this one should be easier. This game is called Category 5. It's a simple card game in which you're trying to avoid taking points."

"How do you get points?"

"Well, there are 104 cards, numbered, interestingly enough, 1 through 104. Each card also has these little flags in the corner. Those are points that you get if you end up taking cards. You don't want to take cards if you can avoid it. So here's how the game plays, and remember, this first time is to learn it, so don't worry about strategy right now; you'll see what strategies there are as we play. Each of us will start with a hand of 10 cards, and there will be four dealt face up in the center of the table that we will be adding to, forming rows as we play. For now, think of them as 'Category 1' storms. Each round, you'll pick one card from your hand and lay it face-down in front of you, like this."

"How will I know which card to pick?"

"Well, that relates to the 4 placement rules I'm about to explain. For the first couple of turns, since we're just learning the game, don't worry about it and go ahead and pick one at random, until you see how placing the cards work."

"Okay. Who goes first?"

"Actually, we all pick a card at the same time, and put them face-down in front of us. Then we all reveal our chosen card at the same time, and they'll be placed into the rows starting with the lowest card played and going up in order to the highest card played."

"How do you pick where to put them?"

"I was just getting to that. There are four rules that dictate where the cards have to be played. Once the cards have been revealed, you don't get to choose where they go, as you must follow these rules. Ready?"

"Okay."

"Rule number 1 : The card must be played in a row where it is higher than the last number in that row."

"Okay."

"Rule number 2 : If there is more than one possible placement by Rule 1, then you place the card where there is the least difference between the two cards."

"Okay, so my 26 would go next to the 27 here, then, right?"

"No, your 26 would go next to the 14, here."

"But the 26 is closer to the 27."

"Yes, but it still has to follow Rule 1, and 26 is less than 27, so it has to go next to the 14."

"Um....okay."

"All right. Rule number 3 : If by following Rule 1 and Rule 2, your card is placed to be the 6th card in a row, then you take the other cards in that row as points, and your card becomes the first card of a new row. Remember, your goal is not to get points, since you want the lowest score at the end."

"Okay."

"And finally, rule number 4 : If your card has no legal placement - in other words, if it's less than the last card in each row - then you get to pick the row you'll take (usually people pick the row with the least points in it), and your card becomes the first card in a new row."

"Okay."

"Good. Everyone ready?"

"Ready!"

So we start playing....it's only a few minutes in before:

"And my 57 goes here, next to the 52."

"No, actually, it has to go next to the 54, over here, and you'll take that row."

"Crap, are you sure?"

"Yes, 54 is closer to 57 than 52 is."

"Awww...."

"And then my 55 goes here, by the 52...."

"Wait a minute....55?"

"Yeah...why?"

"Um, the 55 was supposed to get played first, since it's before 57."

"It is?"

"Yeah...we pick our cards at the same time, and they get played in order from lowest to highest."

"Oh."

Still later.....

"And my 95....aw man, I have to take this row....."

"Yeah, sorry."

"Okay, and everyone's last card is....."

"Hey, how come we've all only got one card and she still has 7?"

"I dunno."

"Have you been putting the cards you've been taking into your hand?"

"Maybe...I guess so?"

"Yeah, come to think of it, I think that 95 had been mine a couple of rounds ago, before she just played it."

"So which one of those cards is actually hers?"

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember which cards you took and which you started with?"

"Nope."

"Okay...let me have everyone's cards back, and we'll try one more time. Remember, cards you take are set aside as points. They do not go into your hand to be used again. We each start with 10 cards, and we will be playing one card at a time, simultaneously, for 10 rounds. By now, I think we have the placement rules down. Okay, any questions?"

"I have a question."

"Okay, shoot."

"How do I know which card to pick?"

Collection Snapshot : Nothing! Absolutely Nothing!

2006-03-09T21:36:00.000-06:00

(bonus geek culture points if you get the reference)

Looking over my game shelves, I realize I have ample blog-fodder for mini-reviews of the games I own....simply dream up a category, figure out what games fit that mold, and run with it. For my first trick, Press-Your-Luck games!

In most press-your-luck games, the mechanics are pretty random, but in thinking about how they work, I determined my own definition to be a little wider (so I have more than just a couple dice games). To me, for a game to be press-your-luck, your turn should boil down to one decision : Take guaranteed points (positive or negative), or accept an unknown quantity to possibly get better while taking the risk that you end up losing all the points you had lined up.

My first example is easily recognized as a press-your-luck game (uh...PYL, just so I don't have to keep typing it) : Cosmic Wimpout. In Cosmic Wimpout, the board is nothing more than a way to count your score. The game centers around 5 dice. On them, the one is replaced by a 10, and the five has the number 5 on it, rather than pips. Finally, 1 die is a different color, and the 3 face has a picture of a sun. On your turn, you start by rolling all 5 dice. Scoring combinations are as follows:

5 or 10 -- scores 5 or 10 points, respectively
3 of a kind -- also known as a "Flash," this scores 10 times the number on the die, but only when all three of those dice are rolled at once (so if you keep 2 fives from an earlier roll and happen to roll a third, it doesn't count as a flash, but rather just another 5 points). The catch with a flash is that it must be "cleared" by rolling any non-scoring dice and for them to come up in a scoring combination without rolling the number you're trying to clear -- if you roll the flash number, you re-roll all the dice you're trying to clear the flash with, even if one of them was a 5 or 10 and would have scored otherwise. More on re-rolling in a moment.
5 of a kind -- also known as a "Freight Train," this scores 100 times the number on the dice, again only if all five dice were rolled at once to produce it. Fortunately, this roll doesn't have to be cleared, although it does fall under the rule that forces you to re-roll if all dice have scored (see below). There are also a couple of special cases -- a freight train of sixes is an automatic win, while a freight train of 10s is "too many points" and an automatic loss. I know, weird game, but still fun.
The Flaming Sun -- this is a wild card. You can choose for it to be scoring or non-scoring, except in one case. If it is rolled with a pair of anything else, then it must be used as that number to form a flash, which then must be cleared as above.

Any other number rolled is considered a non-scoring die. To take your turn, you first roll all 5 dice. Any scoring dice are set aside, and then you choose whether you want to roll the remaining non-scoring dice. This can go on as long as you think you can score on the remaining dice. A flash forces a re-roll, and if all five dice have scored, that also forces a re-roll. If at any time you roll dice and don't produce a scoring number (except when trying to clear a flash and rolling that number, which means you re-roll all the dice you were trying to clear the flash with), then you "Wimp out" : all the points you've accumulated that turn are lost, and your turn is over.

Cosmic Wimpout has a couple of re-roll rules that take a few turns to wrap your head around, but is otherwise a good game to play with a bunch of people, especially if you like rolling dice. It's basicaly just a race game to get to whatever you set the ending score to be. Best of all, since all it really needs are the dice, the game is very portable.

Another good dice game, although a bit pricey, is Pickomino. I reviewed this game before, but it's worth mentioning again for this list. In Pickomino, you have 16 dominos, with numbers ranging from 21 to 36, and each showing a number of worms (1 worm on the first four, 2 on the next, etc.) You also have 8 dice, with the sixes replaced by pictures of worms.

On your turn, you roll the eight dice, and pick a number (or worm) to set aside as a scoring number. All numbers are worth their face value, and worms are worth 5 points each. After that, you may choose to score the dice you've kept (if you can...more below), or re-roll the remaining dice. The catch is that a number, once set aside, cannot be set aside again. So if you roll a couple of 5s, set them aside, and then on your next roll produce four more, you can't keep them -- they would be non-scoring. If you roll and either run out of dice without being able to score because you don't have enough points, or if you roll and have no new numbers to set aside, your points are lost, you lose the top domino on your stack, the highest domino waiting to be claimed is turned over (out of play), and your turn is over.

If you want to stop and score, you look at your total points, and then take an unclaimed domino of equal or lesser value. This domino then is stacked in front of you so that only one is ever visible. This is important, because if you have exactly the right total, you can steal a domino from the top of another player's stack.

At the end of the game, you count the number of worms on each domino captured by each player, and that is their score. High score wins.

This is another simple game in which you really feel the pressure as you try and calculate the odds of which dice to keep and which dice to re-roll, and more importantly, whether to stop or go for that higher-value domino worth more points at the end of the game. The quality of the dominos is pretty high, however, which puts the game at a steep $25 price-point. I don't know that I've gotten my $25 worth of plays out of it yet, but I'm working on it.

Moving away from dice, my next exhibit is No Thanks, also known as Geschenckt (hope I spelled that right). I'd read about this game some time ago, and am pleased that it's made its way here to the U.S., although I haven't yet had enough players together to try it out yet.

In this game, you have a deck of 33 cards, numbered 3 to 35. You also have a number of chips, 11 to begin with. Shuffle the deck, remove 9 cards that nobody sees, and place the top card of the deck face-up. Your turn is simple. Either place a chip next to the card, or take it and any chips next to it. What makes this a PYL game is the scoring, because it forces that decision on you -- should you take the known points of the card and gain the chips next to it, or should you give up one of your precious chips in the hope of a greater gain on your next turn?

Scoring in No Thanks is fairly simple. The cards are worth face value. If you have several numbers in sequence, then only the lowest card in that sequence is scored. Add the numbers up, and the lowest score wins. The neat feature of this game is that with 9 cards missing, there are guaranteed to be gaps somewhere, and with a limited number of chips, you can't avoid taking cards forever.

In another card game, the decision isn't quite the same, but no less agonizing. Coloretto is a game in which you're trying to collect sets of colors. You score based on the three colors you have the most cards in, and lose points for any extra color cards. What makes Coloretto tricky is the play itself. The game handles from three to five players, and there are a number of "row cards" equal to the number of players. On your turn you may either turn over the next card in the deck, at which point you must place it in one of the available rows (up to a maximum of three cards may be in each row), or you may claim a row and all the cards in it. Once you claim a row, you are done for the round until all rows have been claimed.

The cards in Coloretto are eye-catching, but once again, for such a simple game, the play is tricky. Unless you play extremely conservatively (which means you likely won't have very strong colors by the time the game is over), then you won't be able to help picking up an extra color or two during the game. So which do you do? Take the row with only one card that gives you a few points? Or do you take a chance and turn over the next card in the deck and place it, hoping that your opponents don't take the row you need and leave you with negative points?

In my experience, press your luck games make excellent filler, and good party games with non-gamer friends. The rules are usually very simple, and the gameplay is fast and tense. Luck plays a big factor in these games. There is no perfect strategy that I have found, and most of your tactical decisions will be based on the probabilities of improving your score versus taking a known quantity in the hopes your opponents can't do better. This is one of my favorite types of quick game, and it's definitely worth having at least one press-your-luck game in your arsenal.

What Have I Been Reading? -- 3/2/06

2006-03-02T12:29:00.000-06:00

It's time once again for the "clip blog," where I give you a peek into my interests by showing you what has caught my eye recently in the boardgame world.

First on the block, and found just last night is Postcards from Berlin a new article series over on BoardGameNews, about an American living in Berlin and immersing himself in gamer culture where gaming is mainstream. I confess I have no idea how to pronounce his German word of the month; it reminds me of the "safe word" Cooper was given in Amsterdam in the movie Eurotrip. i even tried sounding it out, and my tongue knotted up. The article itself is well-written, and compares the difference between socializing with Americans and socializing with Germans. Fascinating stuff...I'll be reading this one regularly.

Next up is Greg J. Schloesser, also on BoardGameNews, with an article comparing the differences between hosting a club publicly, and hosting one privately in one's home. Now, having played both ways, I do like that you can more easily gather new members to a game club by inviting them to a public place -- it's viewed as "safer" in most people's eyes. But while I've often heard talk about how playing publicly would raise awareness of the hobby, I don't see that this is the case. In the year or so that the Thursday Night Metagamers met at a very busy coffeeshop in Arlington, I can only think of one occasion that one of the other patrons was interested enough to sit down and join in -- and even then, he only came once. Just about every other member was gathered via invitations by members of the group, or had seen us at some other gaming event. I also like the casualness of meeting in one's home with a group of close friends. There's not usually as much of a time limit, tables and chairs can be more easily rearranged, and you're usually in more control of the environment (not too hot, not too cold, not too loud, enough room for everyone, etc.). I'd have to come down in favor of private meetings for this one.

Meanwhile, over on Gone Gaming, as well as on his own blog, Yehuda shows that he's a more talented writer than I hope to be (well, I'm a little lazy about refining my craft, and I haven't written fiction since high school, unless you count the occasional RPG character backstory....hm...maybe I should post some of those -- blog entries I don't have to write! :) His skill at writing in the styles of other authors is something to be admired....and the parody of what "reality" can be in a war-themed eurogame had me laughing as I read it, and then read it aloud to my friends when they asked what I was laughing about.

The other items I was reading, I already wrote about, so I'll be on my way...in the meantime, though, another idea for a tagline:

"Ore and grain?? I thought it took rock & roll to build a city!"

Memories of Gaming : Big Badda Boom!

2006-02-28T11:51:00.000-06:00

This was a few years ago, but still before I was really into playing designer games...all I had learned at this point was Settlers of Catan, and I hadn't yet discovered the resource that was BoardGameGeek. That, and I was mostly playing roleplaying games at the time, and as such, I really loved rolling dice.

Frag just meshed with my friends and I naturally.

Frag is basically a board game simulation of a first-person shooter computer game. The board represents the game environment, and there are various weapons, health packs, and devices that you can pick up in order to do better. Some of the cards represent computer upgrades, and as anyone who's playing online with a 56K modem and a basic VGA card against someone on broadband with a high-end graphics processor can tell you, those things really make a difference in the game.

Basically, you have three stats - health (armor raises this), speed (how far you can move on your turn), and accuracy (how far away you can fire your weapon, assuming you have line-of-sight). Each of these stats determines how many dice you roll when checking them. The weapons themselves also have a number of dice on them, representing how much damage they do.

When shooting someone, you roll accuracy to see if you hit them, and if so, you then roll the damage dice on the weapon. The target then rolls their health (plus extra dice for armor). Divide the total on the damage dice by the total on the defense dice, discard the remainder, and that's how many health points you lose. Armor goes first, of course. Very fast-paced, assuming you can do the math in your head quickly, and very simple, but then shooters themselves rarely need much more than terrain obstacles and a bunch of people with guns blowing things up to be fun.

So anyway, we were playing with a friend of ours, and my wife had started out with the maximum health you can get (3 dice), and had later picked up the good armor (+2 dice)....and on top of that, dice tend to like her, so all our 4-6 die weapons were pretty much just plinking of of her....she may not have been fast, but just envision a heavy armored suit wading through a bunch of foot soldiers with pistols, and you'll get the idea.

But our friend had a plan. He had found (drawn) the coveted Tactical Nuke (9 dice of damage, can strike anywhere regardless of accuracy rating -- good thing the game is played to 3 kills) -- now, this alone wouldn't stop the juggernaut...she was rolling more than half that many dice in defense, after all.

Ah, but he also had a secret weapon -- a card which is played with a weapon use to double the damage. Now he'd be rolling a devastating 18 dice against her. Surely enough to make her respawn at least once (she already had killed us each once, so she only needed one more to win).

We hid on the other side of the board as he launched his attack. 18 dice rolled!

uh-oh.

He rolled a lot of 1s and 2s.....

My wife rolled her defense....it's still 18 dice against her, no problem, assuming normal statistics come into play on her 5 dice! Right?

oh no.

She rolled almost all 5s and 6s.

Oops.

In the end, the division showed she only took 2 points, which was absorbed by the armor. So I imagined the situation as such:

We fired the nuke -- suddenly the entire game world lit up in a blinding flash of light and searing heat washed over us, hiding behind a bunker. Eventually, the dust settled, and we peer over the wall at the Unstoppable Walking Armor.

There she was, coughing through the clearing smoke, perfectly healthy as the charred remains of her armor dropped off her body.

tink.

tink, tink

She looked up, saw both of us, and smirked evilly as she shouldered the rocket launcher......

If you're AP-y and you know it, hurry up!

2006-02-27T12:00:00.000-06:00

I saw a thread last week on BoardGameGeek asking what was wrong with "Analysis Paralysis," as the term came up in many board game reviews as a negative. People leaped in on both sides of the argument in a hurry. Some decried AP as the bane of boardgaming society, to be stamped out without mercy, that these players were "stealing time." Others said their main pleasure was in thinking through a move, and that you shouldn't rush them, that people who tried to do so were rude, sniveling jerks who probably didn't make good moves because they didn't think about them. It was clear that both sides were pretty passionate about their opinions, and nobody was likely to budge anytime soon. So, excuse me for a moment while I hop on this bandwagon....

In general, I see myself as a fast player. Partly because I think of several strategies I can employ depending on what the other players do on their turn based on the options they have at the time, and by the time it gets back to me, I already know what I'm going to do. I can do this because most of the games I play have a very limited set of possibilities for action on each player's turn. Mostly, though, I just pick up on game mechanics quickly and tend to go for immediate or short-term gain.

Put another way, I'm a tactical player. I make moves that benefit me for the moment, even if that means I sometimes don't do well in the long run of the game. I've never been interested in really studying a game to find the optimal movements to secure eventual victory.

My guess is that players with AP are often strategic players, with an overall plan in mind, and when the chaos that is other people playing the game does something to screw up the logical next move, they freeze up, having to rethink their entire strategy.

To put it into real terms, have you ever played Scrabble, and been all ready with this high-scoring word, only to have someone put another word down either using the letter you wanted, or positioned in such a way that you couldn't access it? Now it's your turn, the plan you had was ruined, and you didn't have a backup plan in mind. Now you have to put the entire game on hold while you wrack your brain trying to figure out another possibility. You study your tiles, study the board, and then glance at your opponents to see this glazed, bored look in their eyes while they wait on you to make up your mind and just play something.

Sound familiar? To a degree, and in certain situations, we've probably all been guilty of Analysis Paralysis. The negative connotation comes from those who have this re-thinking problem during every turn, even when there are only 2 possible moves, and one can't possibly benefit them. These players turn what should be a light and fun 45-minute game into an agonizing 2-hour marathon. If everyone was playing that way, looking deeply into the game, and had agreed that it was okay, then I personally don't see a problem with it.

On the other hand, I don't feel a zen-like relaxation by studying a board, whipping out a calculator, and thinking 10 moves ahead to make the perfect move for that turn. I feel bored. And when someone else does it, I have time to think up a dozen possible, equally useful moves and then have time to be bored waiting for it to get back to me. A fast-paced game is my preference. Or if not really fast, at least a smooth enough time between turns that it feels like you're playing against someone who knows the game at least as well as I do. When faced with an AP-player, it tends to feel less like I'm playing against someone who can really see way ahead in the game, and more like I'm playing against someone who's still learning.

I don't mind when someone is still learning a game -- heck, I love to teach them, and if requested, I'll freely outline their possible moves and what the likely results will be, even if it does hurt me (I don't do this during a multi-player game unless the other players are also amenable, only in a two-player game...but that's a topic for a whole other entry).

I guess what I'm saying is that I may understand why some people might be more prone to AP than others, but in my own personal preference, AP only has a place in deep, thoughtful games, and when learning a new game. Not when figuring out where to lay two tracks in TransAmerica. I'll be nice, and play my turns, but if that person was experienced in a game that should play quickly, then I probably won't want to play that game with them again.

To me, games are a form of escape and socialization. I like puzzles and brainteasers, but not all the time. Relax, play the game, and let yourself make mistakes -- you'll learn from them faster than trying to think ahead of what all the possibilities are.

Besides, wouldn't it be nice to have all that time left over to play another game?

Gamers vs. "The Ignorant Masses"

2006-02-24T22:52:00.000-06:00

Now, I've seen many articles on the subject of gamers versus non-gamers, and most of them mainly bemoan the fact that it's hard to get people interested in our hobby. For a long time, gamers simply acknowledged that maybe these people just didn't care about games -- believe it or not, it is possible that non-gamers just won't be interested in playing games, any more than some people aren't interested in watching opera, or monster-truck pulls, or doing crafts like jewelry or candle-making. Recently, though, I have seen a post on BoardGameGeek and an entry on someone's blog attributing a lack of interest in games to a supposed decline in literacy or the dumbing-down of the American public.

That bothered me.

I don't feel that one has to do with the other at all. I'm fairly sure that there are many smart people who also have no interest whatsoever in finding out whether their friends have wood for sheep or plan on shipping a boatload of indigo. They don't worry about where their meeples go, or how that camel might earn a bunch of points.

Games are a HOBBY. I love games, but I also remember that it is one fun activity to pass the time with, and needn't rule my life's decisions. Yes, games can help people develop skills in mathematics, lateral thinking, problem-solving, and some might even teach a little bit of history. But so do other activities that people are equally passionate about.

I've known people who started watching anime, and then decided that they wanted to be able to watch the show in its original form and read the comics as well, so they taught themselves Japanese. They may throw out the random Japanese word here or there when speaking, but in general, I haven't seen them look down on the rest of the world as "stupid" because they didn't care about anime.

Or take another, slightly more common field, like cars. I may be smart when working with computers and such, but I am completely incompetent when it comes to my car. I don't know how to change my own oil, or wouldn't be able to diagnose the difference between a bad contact on the battery or a dead alternator. Do the people who work with cars all the time and are passionate about them regard me as ignorant or unenlightened with regards to their chosen hobby?

I like to read books, and I used to read a wide variety of subjects, devouring non-fiction as quickly as fiction. But now, my interest peaks and fades quickly, and I just skim a little bit when a subject catches my eye, and most of my recreational reading is simple fare like Terry Pratchet's Discworld series. This doesn't make me any dumber or less literate, just more interested in spending my leisure time on leisure and not study.

Gaming is an evangelistic hobby by nature, as we'd all like more people to play with and to share our love of games. So we talk up the positive aspects of modern board games to people we meet.

But don't think they're stupid just because they don't want to play with you. Relax, find another hobby that you both enjoy, and then try talking about games with someone else.

Game Review : Hunting Party

2006-02-23T12:25:00.000-06:00

A week or two ago, I had a friend over and was given the opportunity to try Hunting Party, a card game billing itself as "German strategy meets American fantasy." From what I could tell, it was basically what you would get if you took the board away from Runebound and added the deductive elements from Clue.

In Hunting Party, the evil Dark Shadow casts his...well...shadow across the land and his agents are numerous, making it quite dangerous to venture through the Magic Vale, Dark Woods, Catacombs or Palace. To succeed in defeating the Evil One and his minions, you must recruit a party of heroes with a wide range of fighting and knowledge skill combinations from the Arena, Tavern, Temple, Forest, or Tower. You will also find it useful to purchase items from the three Market stacks.

The Dark Shadow is also well hidden. He can only be defeated by one type of fighting skill (melee, ranged, magic, or subduing), found by one type of seeking skill (knowledge, sorcery, tracking, or bait), and is only found in one place (the dangerous locations listed above). Even worse, you need two of the correct fighting skill to destroy him, which means you must hire at least one more hero.

Of course, your heroes won't work for free. In order to hire them, you must bid for them with a number of shares of any gold you get as rewards for defeating minions or the Dark Shadow. I say bid because when you make an offer, each other player also gets a chance to do so as well. When you draw a new hero, you may choose to bid first or last.

On your turn, you will choose to buy an item, hire a hero, or go on a hunt. To hunt, you state where you are going as well as the seeking and fighting skills you plan to use. The first catch is that you actually have to have these skills and locations listed as being in your party. Since technically you're always hunting for the Dark Shadow, you then get clues to see if you can be thwarted in your hunt. After stating your intent, each player looks through their prophecy cards to see if they have any which match the fighting skill, seeking skill, or destination stated. If so, they secretly reveal this information to the active player, and he is thwarted, at which point he turns over the top card in the appropriate deck and faces the monster there. If no one (including the active player) is able to thwart the hunt, then the Dark Shadow is revealed, and must be fought.

Now, on all hunts (even thwarted ones), you will face some kind of challenge and must possess the appropriate skills to overcome it. If you do, the King rewards you with gold, which you divide up among your party, depending on how many shares you promised them. Of course, for a cost of 1 gold per share, you can buy out your party members, dismissing them.

The feel of Hunting Party is like a light role-playing dungeon-romp. Luck can play a big hand here, and you're randomly drawing heroes and then deciding whether to keep them or not. That and you're never sure what monsters will be in the deck....I got lucky on a lot of early hunts and pretty much had the game wrapped up thanks to sheer resources. My opponent almost caught up and went for the win, but had to hold back because upon defeating the Dark Shadow, the winner is the player with the most gold, and I was WAY ahead in gold. Bad luck with a monster as he was trying to build up his gold, and he lost a key party member. At that point, he agreed it was only a matter of time, since I'd just be looking though the hero decks for the right skill, and then go whip the Dark Shadow into submission while his odds of catching up were very slim indeed.

The deduction aspect and having to share treasures was an interesting twist, but in general, this game seemed a little flat...maybe because playing with two players just barely limps along to work -- I'm given to understand that 3 is the ideal number. I'd be willing to give it another play, but it doesn't seem the kind of game I'd fall in love with.

Is it ever okay to cheat?

2006-02-19T17:35:00.000-06:00

Some time ago, I followed a link to an article about playing games with children and whether or not it was okay to let them win. There were some good arguments on both sides, but in general, it seemed the consensus was to not let them win.

Now, I'm not a parent, and I'm not going to tell people how to raise their kids, but I *am* going to shift to another, similar subject -- playing games with people who just plain aren't "good" at them. Most of the time, this is a non-gaming roommate, spouse, or other significant other with whom you want to play games, but they don't want to play them with you because from their point of view, they always lose.

Do you let them win? Even though it's cheating?

What about not making the best move you can see to give them a chance at keeping up? Technically, that's cheating too.

How about giving strategic advice? Showing them how they can make a move that hurts you? Letting them take back a move that they made while not fully understanding the rules of the game? Where do you draw the line at how much you are willing to cheat in order to ensure that you get to play the game again?

The simple fact is that unless you are playing a game that is completely random, gaming is a skill to be practiced and refined. Those of us for whom it is a hobby may not even think about the amount of effort we put into learning how to play games. We read rules and reviews, tinker with variants and strategies, and in general, those non-gamers are correct when they see us as "better" at games than they are, simply because they don't have enough interest to put in the kind of work we do.

But for us, just reading about the games isn't enough. We want to play them. The problem, though, is that we have a hunger to play them. and finding opponents who also wish to feed that hunger as often as we can be difficult as we work around other hobbies, social commitments, jobs, kids, chores, and everything else that comes with being a grownup. So we turn to people we live with and see every day, hoping to get a game in, but we hear something like:

"Another game? Can't we play one I already know?", "But you always win...what's the point?", or "Not right now; let's just watch a movie."

And so we have to wait until we can play with our gamer friends. It's scenes like this that keep threads alive about making designer games mainstream -- we want more opponents; we want people who see the games we play and go "ooh, what's that?" instead of seeing the bits, assuming it's too hard because they don't recognize it, and going on with whatever they were doing.

And yet....and yet we have this problem with doing less than our best, because it's cheating. If we don't play our best, we can feel like we cheapened the game somehow, like we didn't get the full experience.

But look at it from the non-gamer's point of view. I remember when I was in high school, and someone had a chess set in the academic decathlon classroom (sorta like study hall, but for credit, since it was for an academic competition). I offered to play with him, since I knew the game, having played in a chess club in middle school for a while. However, while I found chess enjoyable, I wasn't in love with it enough to devote serious study to the game. He, on the other hand, did. So he beat me in 10 moves.

Then in 7.

And again.

And again.

By this point, it wasn't really fun for me, since I could see that without putting some real time and effort into learning strategy and tactics, I would never be able to give him any sort of challenge, and I didn't care enough about chess to want to make that effort. And for him, it wasn't even a mental workout, so he wasn't really getting anything out of the game either.

So he quit doing his best.

He played intuitively, making less than optimal movements to extend the game, created openings for me to take advantage of, pointed them out after the fact if I missed them, and made it a longer game of attrition rather than a short game played to checkmate. He still won, since he was, after all, far better at the game than I was.

But I also had a lot more fun.

As such, I was more willing to play again. And he enjoyed helping me learn. Sure, he may not have ever gotten a truly competitive opponent out of me, but he had someone to play against. Someone to have fun with. In the end, games are about socializing face to face with people and having a good time together. If you're close in skill, then you should of course play the best you can. To do anything less would be cheating. But if the other person isn't anywhere close to your level, relax a little. You don't have to let them win to give a false sense of self-esteem. But you can cheat in small ways to help them become better at the game. Otherwise, if they can't see that they're making any progress against you, they won't really want to play again.

And the rulebook doesn't make much of an opponent.

Tuesday Link-Fest - 2-14-06

2006-02-14T21:10:00.000-06:00

So here I am with ideas floating around in my head for blog entries, but not enough creative energy to write any of them up. So I thought I'd take the relatively easy way out and jot down some links to what I've been reading over the last few days.

First up was this post by Tom Vasel on BoardGameNews about the online community and how sometimes with too many adoring fans online, one can develop an overinflated sense of importance, and that through it all, we should keep our humility about us. Like many bloggers out there, I'm writing mostly for my own amusement, and I read other people's work and comments as I have a spare moment or two around everything else I do throughout the day. If somebody actually takes the time to comment here, well, hey, I'm just happy people are reading my ramblings...commentary opens up the possibility for discussion, but even without it, I'll keep writing so long as it's fun for me.

Next, and also on BoardGameNews, Rick Thornquist rants about useless game components, those random bits in a box that neve seem to actually get any use...but simply get taken out of the box during setup and sit on the table like benched athletes, knowing that the first string has it handled -- they won't actually be used for the game. Of course, maybe I should go through the rules in the various games I own and see if I can likewise find superfluous game rules, like why they felt it was necessary to say a player has to say "Loco!" when playing the Zero card in Loco, since it doesn't have anything to do with the gameplay or scoring, and doesn't have any kind of penalties or anything associated with it -- you're just supposed to say it.

Meanwhile, over on Gone Gaming, Yehuda wrote an article about the differences between phases, turns, rounds and actions and trying to analyze why different games use the same terms to mean different things. Somewhere in there, I think I got lost in the depth of his explanation, so I'll probably have to go back and re-read it. And then DWTripp suggests that henpecked men should ask for trouble and then be men about it when it comes to expanding their game collection. Having seen many of my friends afraid to stand up with their own opinions and actually work out a compromise with their wives or girlfriends instead of giving up their own identities and hobbies, I'd have to say he has a point. share your hobby, gentlemen -- don't hide it.

At Gamer's Mind, ekted posted a puzzle a few days ago. I confess to having to Google up half the answers, since some quotes were familiar to me, but I didn't know the details, but even then, I'm not sure if I have the right answer. I think it was Carcassonne, but I could easily be wrong...

And finally, a picture on BoardGameGeek caught my eye, and now I'm reading up on Ingenious -- seems I might have another game to add to my want list, as it looks like fun...

Hopefully, with all that reading, sooner or later I'll have enough creative juice to write another actual entry....or if nothing else, maybe I'll have at least one entry a week to say what I'm reading ;)

Memory of Gaming : Monopoly

2006-02-12T14:23:00.000-06:00

Once upon a time, before I ever heard of any designer games, and even before I got into playing RPGs, I got to play Monopoly with three pretty girls and discovered the importance of a fair trade. This was back in the early 90s, and I was in my first semester of college. Not having the funding to get into a dormitory (who knows what kinds of friends or adventures I could have had in a dorm...), I was living in a co-op house. For those who don't know what the difference is, I'll try and explain it. A co-op is similar to a fraternity or sorority house in that it is nearby, but off-campus, and generally has only students living in it. They are typically co-ed, though, and in exchange for a lower rent than a dorm, you are expected to do a certain amount of chores for the cooperative as a whole. This can range from cooking meals for everyone, to cleaning up, to administrative work, etc. The house I lived in was the smallest of the entire cooperative, with only 11 residents.

We had some good times in the co-op, and it was while there that I was first introduced to playing GURPS, but that's an entirely different story. No, on this particular occasion, I was hanging out in the livingroom watching this new show called "The Simpsons," when the two girls who lived in the garage came in and said they had a frriend over to play Monopoly and were looking for a 4th player. Well, not one to turn down a pretty girl (much less three), I decided to go ahead and play.

You know, thinking back on it, I might have had the beginnings of a letter to one of those magazines I swear I've never, ever read (honest!) if I wasn't the shy, geeky type back then. Innocently, I actually went in there just to play the game.

I guess I just didn't have the hang of what college life was supposed to be like ;)

Anyway, so we're playing Monopoly with the house rule of leaving fees and taxes on Free Parking, and I'm employing my usual strategy of buying everything I land on in order to have leverage later when people are trying to complete their monopolies. Now, since most people don't read the actual rules to the game, a lot of the times I played back then, people also were often very relaxed about the trading rules. Not only were money, property and "Get out of Jail Free" cards up for trade, but we also often traded things like free rent at a later time. Well, on this particular occasion, I kept offering that last card to give them a monopoly in exchange for free rent when later landing on that group of properties.

Strangely enough, nobody thought to counter-offer of negotiate me down, or even to object to the trade from the sidelines. And I managed to keep making this trade until I eventually had free run of most of the board, even though I only owned a couple of scattered properties in the low-rent slums. Naturally, being able to keep my cash like that gave me a big advantage while the others pretty much wiped each other out, and then they also didn't understand that the mortgaged properties of someone who was bankrupted didn't go to the bank (of course, I didn't know that either at the time), so i bought all that up and came from behind to win the game.

It was goofy, and I was more having a good time hanging out with three ladies than paying attention to the game itself, but while it happened to work out in my favor this time, I carried that lesson with me of watching it in trading games when opponents offer me a trade that sounds too good to be true. Always at least think of a counter-offer, and look at the game from their point of view to determine if they're trading for a short-term gain, or for long-term devastation.

Or even more to the point, if you're in college and are invited to a game with three pretty girls in their room.....forget the game and get to the letter -- life's too short to miss out on an opportunity like that.

Game Review : Antike

2006-02-10T10:54:00.000-06:00

Last night, I was introduced to Antike, which is a light conquest game. Now, wargames usually leave a sour taste in my mouth, as I'm a very casual game player, but I know that some people take winning or losing much more seriously. In a game with direct player conflict like this, the type of person who gets their feelings hurt when the game isn't fitting in their plans will usually end up mad or sulking every time someone attacks them, which is just part of the game. That kind of negative energy combined with the fact that just throwing waves of armies at people usually bores me, which is why I never play Risk. Suffice to say, wargames of any sort are simpy not my cup of tea.

That being said, I actually didn't find Antike to be that bad. If played with a mix of players who simply get into the spirit of "goofing around with army meeples and ships," this can be a pretty enjoyable little game.

Players are each given a bunch of meeples, ships, disks (cities) and rondellas (posts) in their color. They are then randomly assigned a civilization card, which defines their starting three cities. They each also get an iron token, two marble tokens, and three gold tokens. Iron, marble, and gold are used to build armies/ships, temples, and know-how, respectively, or one of each builds a city in an empty province so long as an army or ship is present.

The map is divided into many provinces, with a side in German and another in English. In one corner is the 8-space circular Rondel, which shows the various actions players can take. To start, each player can begin at any point on the Rondel they wish for their first turn, but thereafter move 1-3 spaces clockwise, paying a resource per extra space they wish to move. This is the second phase of the turn. On the first, each player is given a coin (which can be used as any resource) at the beginning of the starting player's turn (this is the player with the highest number highlighted on their civilization card). In sequence, the Rondel spaces are as follows:

Maneuver - The active player may make one movement action per unit (army or ship). If the player has gained the know-how skills of the Wheel (armies) or Sailing (ships), then an additional action is granted to the appropriate unit. Both of these know-how abilities can also be upgraded to level 2 for yet another action. As each action, these units may either move into an adjacent province OR may conquer a city in a province they are already present in. The defending city has a defensive value of 1 for the city token alone, +2 for a temple in the city, +1 for each defending army/ship, +1 or +2 for the know-how skills of Monarchy or Democracy. Total the value of the defending city versus the number of attacking units, and eliminate them at a 1:1 ratio. A tie goes to the attacker, which is unique in my experience with conflict games. You may not attack a player's final city.
Arming - The active player may build one army or ship per unit of iron spent in any city controlled by that player. Only one new unit may be placed in any given city, unless it has a temple, in which case, up to three may be placed.
Marble - The active player produces one marble per city on a marble province. If a player owns a temple on a marble city, they produce 3 marble instead of 1 for that city. Additionally, the Market know-how skill grants an additional marble, or the Currency skill grants 2 extra marble.
Know-How - The active player may spend gold for a know-how skill. If they are the first player to buy a particular skill, it costs 7 for level 1, and 10 gold to upgrade a level 1 to a level 2. Being first has an advantage in that it gives you a victory point card. After someone has opened a given skill, the other players pay a lower cost in gold to copy it (3 and 5, repectively), but do not gain a victory point for the skill.
Maneuver - As above.
Iron - As Marble, except with Iron.
Temple - The active player may pay 5 marble to place a temple on a city. For every three temples the player controls, they get a victory point card.
Gold - As Marble, except with Gold.

After performing the action on the Rondel, players may choose to build a new city in any empty province in which they have a unit. A city costs 1 marble, 1 iron, and 1 gold.

The goal of the game is to acquire victory point cards for certain conditions. Once these conditions are met, you gain the appropriate card (until they run out -- there are limited numbers of each card). If, after getting the card, a setback occurs (like the loss of a city or temple), you do not have to return the card -- it simply means a longer way to go to get another one. The victory points you can gain are as follows:

For every 5 cities you control, a King card
For every 3 temples you control, a Priest card
For being the first to gain a know-how skill, a Scientist card
For conquering a city with a temple (which destroys the temple), a Conquest card
For having a ship in 7 different sea provinces, a Sailor card (a second one if you have ships in 14 provinces)

That's basically the game -- build up your territory, conquer your neighbors, or make a truce and pass through their territory if they'll let you. The game ends at a specified number of victory points based on the number of players.

As conquest games are not to my personal taste, this one won't be going on my list of must-buy games, but if you liked Risk and are interested in a game with more depth, plays faster, less luck, and are willing to pay a bit more, then Antike would be a good game to pick up.

FLGS or Online Shopping?

2006-01-22T14:20:00.000-06:00

I few days ago, I had some free time to browse the forums over at BoardGameGeek, and found there was a hot debate raging over whether to support a FLGS (Friendly Local Gaming Store, in case I have any readers not up on their gaming slang ;) to foster a sense of community, or to purchase online, and save a fair amount of money. The argument often seemed to center around whether supporting a local store was akin to charity, keeping them around because they're "one of us", and of course, the fact that sales tax does go into useful things like roads and schools and such. The main argument for purchasing online seemed to be the mistaken belief that game stores are dark, dank, elitist places where they'll try to rip you off for every penny. As someone who's debating whether to start purchasing online more in the future, here's my take on it.

See, much like anyone who purchases online, there is often more at stake than simply savings on the game -- I'm often an impulse buyer, and will get a hankering for a game, and then go questing until I find it. I'm basically trying to get over that habit and adjust my budget to a specific amount per month, and then get several games to tide me over until the next month. Another big reason is gas -- I no longer live within 10 minutes of the nearest gaming store. The times given below are each way, not round-trip.

Lone Star Comics (20 minutes) : This is the closer of the two stores in my area. Unfortunately, it's also the smaller one -- almost its entire floorspace is dedicated to comics. They have a couple of shelves for RPGs, an area for action figures, a lot of knick-knacks and dice near the front, and then on a small shelving unit (at least it's near the front door), some board games. While they have a couple of german games, much of it is fairly typical fare you could get at Wal-Mart -- trivia games, monopoly, etc. This store is well-lit, with a reasonably knowledgeable staff, assuming you're looking for WizKids or other collectible games. They have no permanent playing area, although I'm given to understand they occasionally do a family game night, and once in a while I've seen a minuatures or CCG game going on in the store.

Lone Star Comics (40 minutes) : This is the store I usually went to when I lived in the apartment. Nice large store, plenty of room in the aisles, and a staff that was pretty friendly. I was a relative regular, but not nearly the type who'd lay down several hundred dollars a month in the store. As such, they didn't know me by name, but some at least acted like they recognized me. Again, most of their space is dedicated to comics and books. This store has a much larger area for RPG books, minis, terrain, and action figures. Near the front of the store, they have added a fairly decent lineup of board games, and quite a few german ones....well, at least, the very popular board games -- I only see a few card games. Their knowledge has improved, but they still have a pretty moderate selection. I remember a couple of years ago, when I went to purchase Carcassonne, and they'd never heard of it. More recently, I was looking for Alhambra, and while the manager had heard of the game, it didn't exist in their database. Selection is what mainly keeps me going elsewhere -- when I go to Lone Star, it's kind of a shot in the dark to see if I can avoid driving further. In the back of the store, there is a very large gaming area, that is often populated by RPGs and minis games. I don't think I've ever seen a boardgame being played back there, although I haven't been around for their Family Game Night on Saturdays. Of course, the games they advertise on their flyers are very mainstream and not eye-catching to me. They are also usually closed by 6 or 7, which is kinda limiting to someone with a regular 8-5 job.

Cosmic Comics (45 minutes) : This is closer to the stereotypical game store that people think of. While it is well-lit, the store is dominated by comic racks, and the front is piled high with CCGs. Along one wall is a very limited RPG selection, and no boardgames at all to be seen. The only reason I ever even call this store when I'm looking for something is because of one time 4 or 5 years ago when I bough Chez Geek, and they were the only place that had it.

Generation X (50 minutes) : This store has moderate lighting, not really bright, and has pretty cramped aisles -- if I wasn't tall and skinny, I wouldn't place good odds on being able to pass someone already in the aisles. They have a selection about on par with the larger Lone Star Comics, just in less space. I'm not sure if they have a back room with tables to play on, but they do have a few computers hooked up for LAN gaming. The staff seems moderately knowledgeable about boardgames, and a couple of times when I was doing the circling-out method of game purchasing, if Lone Star didn't have it, I found it at Generation X. Typically, though, I end up having to go to the next store...

Game Chest (1 hour, 15 minutes) :In Dallas, this is the store with the selection. Located in Valley View Mall (open till 9...bonus), the store is well-lit, has a friendly staff that will sometimes help you figure out a good game to get if you went in with only a vague idea of what you were looking for. They only have a moderate selection of comics, a large selection of 'opolies, plenty of puzzles, lots of dice (even in bins, so you don't have to buy a whole set), and a very wide selection of card and board games. If I have a hankering for a particular title, there's good odds that they'll have it. They don't have any tables or even a back room (I remember year ago they had one), and as near as I can tell, everything is priced at retail. Even so, I usually didn't mind paying full price because I knew that if I went there, they'd have the game I wanted (well, except Pass the Bomb...). Seriously, after playing Formula Motor Racing and deciding I wanted it, Game Chest had it even though it was out of print....only the one copy, but they had it. The main downside for me here is the distance -- I think I spent more in gas going to buy Coloretto than I did on the game...it almost seems a waste of a trip if I go there and don't find something costing at least $30 to buy to justify the trip.

In all of these stores, most of them are doing something right -- Game Chest has the selection, but Lone Star fosters at least some sense of community (with a bulletin board in the back to find players for RPG groups). Still, I've never seen any of them do anything like offer discounts to regular customers, or open a game off the shelf and show you how to play to see if it's any good before you hand them your $30 to $50 bucks. In general, I haven't bought many bad games because of the gaming group on Thursday nights, which lets me find out about new games, or because of reading about games online. There is a much larger community online, with blogs, reviews, variants, and such all about games out there. I haven't looked into many stores online, and have only bought one game online -- Bohnanza from Funagain Games. I mainly bought from them because I figured I'd do something with the couple of dollars I picked up from their affiliate program. (Thank you to whomever bought whatever it was you bought). They have a frequent buyer program (the cost of each purchase gets translated into points which add up to give you a discount on future purchases), and the shipping was fast -- I had my game only 2 or 3 days after buying it. And the lower prices means I can buy more games.

The local stores don't seem to need my money....I'm not a huge spender, and I don't really see much sense of community except among the role-playing gamers. The boardgame selection is limited, showing that boardgamers are simply not their main market. Game Chest has a great selection, but not really any sense of community...just another specialty shop in a mall, and they have a good amount of distance. While I appreciate that local game stores were the place to be before the internet came along, I lean toward the argument that my choice as a consumer to spend my money elsewhere and be able to purchase games AND the occasional latte AND the rare movie or video game is something I shouldn't feel guilty about it. A game store is a business, and boardgaming, while growing, is still a niche market in many areas. To do well in a niche market, you need selection AND community. If I feel like I'm just another customer in your store, I'm going to make my purchase, and if I find another store that offers basically the same thing with greater convenience and a lower price, even if they also only treat me like I'm just another customer, then they'll get my business.

The problem is that many gamers are shy except when around other gamers. If you want that sense of community, you're going to have to create it, by reaching out to your customers and working to get through that shell. Then to be practical, you'll have to come up with some way of ensuring you get the money you need to pay your bills and be able to grow as a business, and not get stuck with just the leeches who buy their games online and then show up to play. Yes, like any hobby, there's bad eggs out there who make it hard to survive as a business. But that's just it -- it's business...for the consumer as well as the business owner. If the consumer isn't getting something extra for that extra dollar, they have no obligation or responsibility to keep your business afloat just for old time's sake.

Gaming stores would probably do well to evolve, and supplement their brick & mortar locations with an online presence. If Game Chest had an online store, I'd buy from them, if only to save myself the drive.

Until next time, favor a greater value, but if all else is equal, I'd like to play more games.

Game Review : Category 5

2006-01-21T15:57:00.000-06:00

A week or so ago, I was at the store to pick up a copy of Poison, and on a whim, decided to also pick up Category 5, the American release of the highly successful 6 Nimmt! card game. As near as I can tell from reading online translations, the rules remain exactly the same -- only the theme has changed from cattle to hurricaines. As part of this change, the cards and rules have been filled with lots of interesting facts about hurricaines. Most cards have the alphabetical names that have been pre-selected for these storms, while others have retired names of hurricaines, the date they struck, category, and where they made landfall. After the big storms of last year, I figured I'd look for their names in the cards. Oddly enough, the K name for 2005 wasn't one of the cards in the deck, but I did find Rita and Wilma. The rules also have hurricaine facts, such as the 74 point mark that ends the game is also the wind speed that upgrades a storm to a category 1 hurricaine. The theme also helps remind you that there can be no more than 5 cards in any row.

The rules are simple : the game consists of 104 cards, numbered 1-104. Players are each dealt 10 cards, and then 4 more are laid out on the table to begin rows. On each turn, players all select one card from their hands to play for the round. When everyone has chosen their card, they are all revealed simultaneously. Cards are then added to the rows in turn, starting with the lowest card. All placement follows 4 rules.

The card must be higher than the card at the end of the current row. (e.g. a 7 next to a 6, a 20 after a 15, etc.)
If there is more than one possible placement according to rule #1, the card will be placed next to the choice with the lest difference..for example, a 72 needs to be placed, and the rows currently end with 15, 37, 89 and 64. The 72 must be placed next to the 64.
If there are already 5 cards in the row that a card must be placed in, then the player takes that entire row of cards to be scored at the end of the hand. The card that was to be played becomes the starting card of a new row.
If there is no legal placement by rule #1 (i.e., if your card is lower than every possible row), the player must choose a row (1 card is fine) to take, replacing it with the card they were going to place.

Play continues for 10 rounds, which empties everyone's hand. At this point, you take note of the number of hurricaine warning flags on each card that the players have captured, adding it to their score, and then the cards are shuffled for the next hand. The game is over when someone reaches 74 points, and the winner is the person with the lowest score.

While there is some limited strategy in this game, there is also a fair helping of luck, as sometimes you may try to avoid taking a row for several plays, and then get stuck with it anyway as you eventually have no choice. As a filler game, it's easy to teach and fast-playing, with a enough press-your-luck tension to keep players interested. My wife is flat-out addicted to this game and has been requesting to play it almost every time there's been a little free time. Course, for all I know, part of the reason she likes it so much is because we've found a game she can consistently whoop me at, not that it detracts from my enjoyment of the game at all. Heck, I'm always happy to find a game that she likes enough to request repeatedly, even if it might fill up my Last 10 Games Played list.

If you're looking for a good filler game to play with your gamer friends and that even non-game-fanatics (but at least game players) will like, Category 5 looks like a winner.

Ode to Board Games

2006-01-20T09:41:00.000-06:00

I dunno...it popped in my head...

O folded pretty
Cardboard square
With colored bits
For here and there
A hand of cards
To go around
Some turns or phases
Make a round
The goal to win
Or just to play
To be with friends
Enjoy the day
To chat and plot
A crucial move
You place your piece
There, that'll prove
Your mastery
Your gaming groove
And when it's done
And someone wins
I think I'd like
To play again.

Okay, poetry out of my system....now to think of my next real entry :)

The Truth About the Cat People

2006-01-17T12:04:00.000-06:00

I am a cat person. There can be no denying it when people game with me at my home and see five little furballs dash and hide -- well,four dash and hide, the other one lurks around and occasionally socializes. But as I was playing one of my new acquisitions -- Category 5...look for a review soon -- I realized something.

Most of the real gamers I know are cat people. Then I started musing on why this could be, and I think it's because gamers are a lot like cats themselves. Yes, these are obviously generalizations, but bear with me...

Gamers are afraid of liquid of any kind - Just look at any damaged board or cards and you'll easily see why. This is why a gamer will often wipe the table down to make sure it's dry before playing, any why some can be downright obsessive about the use of coasters.
Gamers are territorial - We mark our areas of our homes with shelves of games or game bits. Each of us dreams of having a game room, dedicated solely to our collection.
Gamers are neat (sorta) - Sure, we'll mess up other people's areas, but within our boxes, components are in little baggies, cardboard sleeves carefully placed around paper money...
Gamers are curious - How many of us have seen a new game, and bought it just to see if it's any good? sure, it's wise to do research and read the rules and such first, but I bet all of us have bought a game at least once just based on the box art or theme.
Gamers love shiny things - Okay, not necessarily shiny, but cool bits certainly catch our eye. Go look through the picture gallery at BoardGameGeek and see how many images are of the game bits...some of them beautiful enough to print out and hang on the wall, they were so carefully taken...
Gamers can quickly grow apathetic toward their new toy as another one catches their eye - I've seen many a gamer (myself included) buy a new game, play it and play it and play it and play it, and then just kind of have an attitude of being...done...with it as they look for the next game to play. Yeah, games will make repeat appearances, but not to the degree that they would in non-gamer households....we're always looking for the next game to play, while simultaneously loving our existing ones...just setting them aside for a while.
Gamers are playful - 'Nuff said.
Gamers can viciously play against each other - This may seem to the outside observer to be a life-or-death struggle, but when the game is over, they will often be laughing and patting each other on the back...no harm, no foul...it's just part of the game.

I think the reason many of my gamer friends own cats is because it's easier to spook them away from the playing area before they can mess up the game.....but I'll keep an eye out for slitted pupils and pointed ears...

Jacob
A beer and pretzels gamer, because beer and cheese puffs is too messy...

The quest for the bunny game...

2006-01-12T13:46:00.000-06:00

A few days ago, a guest at a gaming party introduced me to Formula Motor Racing, which is a quick-playing racing card game. It comes with a dozen plastic cars in 6 different colors, a 12-sided die, scoring pad and rulebook...oh, and the cards, of course.

Play is very simple. Each player chooses a color, and thus has two cars of their color. The Pit Crew cards (which are just used to show which player is which color) are then shuffled, and dealt one at a time to determine the starting lineup. The first color has first and last place, the next has second and 11th, the third has third and 10th place, etc. The game plays three to six players -- if you have less than 6 players, the other pit crews are still in the race without belonging to anyone. The player earliest in the lineup has the first play.

Each player has a hand of five cards. Simply play a card, then draw a card, and play passes to the next player. The person who draws the last card will also have the final play after one final round. After the final play, the round is scored based on the position of each car -- the first six cars score...seventh place and on score nothing.

Each card played shifts the lineup of cars. There are color-coded Overtake cards, which let you choose a car of that color in the lineup, and it (and the car behind) move ahead of the listed number of cars. Some cards have negative numbers, and the player chooses any car in the line to go back that number of spaces. Some cards require you to roll a die (some for Pit Stops to cause a car to go back in the lineup, sometimes to determine a car to be out of the race) -- the most fun of these are the Charge cards. To use a Charge card, you would pick any car in the line and roll the die -- on a 1 through 9, the car moves up 1 position...on a 10 through 12, it either goes to last place or out of the race, depending on the type of Charge card used. What makes the Charge card exciting is that you can continue to roll until you are either in 1st place (well, one more roll is allowed there, just in case you're trying to get rid of an opponent), or you fail a roll.

The game moves fast, and with good-natured take-that play and simple, easy-to understand rules and card designs, this is an easy game to teach people and lots of fun to play as a quick filler.

The down side is that it's also out of print.

After playing this game and deciding I wanted it, I looked around at various online stores and even the website of the last company to release it, GMT. Alas, it was nowhere to be found. But, since it was fresh in my mind, I wandered over to BoardGameGeek and found a nice picture of the game to use as my desktop at work this week. Of course, when my wife happened to be at the office, she commented that the plastic cars looked like bunnies from the angle the picture was shot at.

Laughing about the "Bunny Game," I was in the mood to go to Game Chest in Valley View Mall, mainly to pick up another card game called Coloretto, which I had also gotten recently hooked on -- I had even found a website that allows you to play the game against some online bots, so you can learn the strategy.

Coloretto is another excellent filler game. Simply, it's a color set-collection card game, but with some agonizing press-your-luck decisions. It plays 3-5 players, and for the number of players, an equal number of "row cards" is placed on the table. Each player is then dealt a single color card to start their hand -- each one should be a different color. The deck is then shuffled and placed in the center of the table. On your turn, you may take only one of two possible actions. Either draw the next card from the top of the deck, and place it next to a row card (each of these row cards may have up to three cards next to them), OR pick up a row card and all the cards next to it.

Once you've selected a row card, you are done for that round. Each round ends after all the players have selected a row card. This does mean that if a player has not yet selected a row card after all the other players have theirs, they can technically draw up to three cards to fill out that row before taking it if they so choose.

After each round, the empty row cards are replaced in the center of the table, and the person who took the last row is the first player in the new round. Play continues in this manner until a "last round" card has been revealed. After the last round card, the current round is completed, and then you do the scoring.

Here's the catch -- you only score for the three colors you have the most of -- every other color card is worth negative points. For your three strongest colors, 1 card in that color is worth 1 point, 2 cards is 3 points, 3 cards is 6 points, 4 cards 10 points, 5 cards 15, and finally a maximum of 21 points for 6 or more cards. Every other color is negative one points along the same scale. Note that there are also Wild cards, which helps to add points to your strong colors, and cards simply labeled "+2", which add two points each to your score after calculating your positive and negative points.

Typically, you play for 4 rounds and accumulate your score between rounds, but you can extend the game to as many hands as you like.

Anyway, when we got to Game Chest to pick up Coloretto, I figured I'd browse around in case they had a copy of Formula Motor Racing buried on the shelf somewhere. The clerk had never heard of it, but I had time that night.

Lo and behold, nestled between a copy of Formula De and Goa was a copy of Formula Motor Racing, and although it was a pricey $20, it was worth it considering the difficulty of finding an out-of-print game normally.

"Bunny Game" in hand, our quest was complete. This game will probably be a regular in my filler game arsenal.

Until next time, good gaming, everyone!

Wow, I'm officially a game designer...

2006-01-11T14:02:00.000-06:00

Some time ago, I made an entry for the Icehouse Game Design Contest, combining one stash of Icehouse pieces with an Alpha Deck for a simple 2-player strategy game in which you maneuver pieces on the board, claim cards, and then after all the pieces have been used, form words with the cards claimed, and which Icehouse piece was used to capture it determined the point value of the card.

I called this game something silly, like Ice Dis-Speller...and then someone suggested the name Cold Spell. Well, it got second place in the game design contest, which was kind of neat, but tempered with the fact that there were only 9 or so votes.

Some time later, I heard from the creator of the Alpha Deck (as I had also posted the rules of the game into the Alpha Deck Yahoo group). Turns out he liked the game and was looking for some rules clarifications. Well, I figured out a couple streamlining ideas, and then he actually got his game group to playtest a bunch of rules ideas.

Still more time passed, and someone else posted on the Yahoo group about how much they were hooked on the game, and then a while later, I heard back from Tim again, and he wanted to purchase the rights to the game.

Wow.

I mean, I was just happy someone out there was having a good time playing my game -- I tend to do rules designs and such for fun, since I like to tinker with rules and variants, but to actually be told that a game I designed was good enough to be bought by a game company (even if it is a little one) is still pretty darn cool.

Well, I got my check, and I've signed and returned the contract giving TJ Games the rights to Cold Spell, although I think I still get a line as the original author, but they are going to take over rules tweaks, playtesting, and such. I think it'll be neat to order another Alpha Deck after Cold Spell is added to the rules booklet that comes with it, if only to see my game in print.

Of course, if they decide to try and get the game really published to a wide market, I'll be right there at the FLGS to try and buy a pretty copy.

Good luck, Tim, and good gaming, everyone!

Am I being sent a sign?

2006-01-05T13:51:00.000-06:00

I haven't attended many Thursday night game meetings lately. Things just keep happening on Thursdays in the rest of my life -- one week, a friend in need, another I'm out of town for work, or Angela's feeling really tired and can't stay too long, or we're moving, or it's Thanksgiving, or whatever. I had planned to attend tonight, but then this morning I get a call from Angela who was on her way to work and the "Service Engine Soon" light came on. So she's going to take it in to a dealer, who might have to keep it overnight, and if that's the case, it'll be enough of an effort just to get her home (she works in Denton, but we live in Grand Prairie), much less make it the half-hour drive away to game night. It was easier when the coffeehouse was just down the road from us.

With the way life is interfering, I've been entertaining thoughts of either seeing if people wanted to do another night, or since we're not gathering new folks by meeting in a public place, maybe go back to meeting at each others' houses, rotating who hosts.

I think that could work out -- be an advertised club, but allow new people by invitation from an existing member only, and get back to the basics of visiting with friends and playing games where there's plenty of room and other things to do if you're out of a particular game.

Already have a name too -- the Metroplex Metagamers -- or maybe Mobile Metagamers....either way, being able to shorten a game club name to M&Ms could be fun.

Any thoughts?

Mmmm...a day of luck, with meat, chocolate, and games!

2006-01-05T13:41:00.000-06:00

We were invited over to the Sadler's place for New Years' Day for a day of gaming. Angela and I were the first to arrive, and discovered a feast being laid out -- green bean casserole, cabbage, black-eyed peas, Frito salad, veggie tray, ham, turkey, brownies, potato chips, corn chips, crackers, crab dip, cookies, brisket and mashed potatoes. This was great for us, as we hadn't eaten yet....so natually I started shovelling food in my face while we waited for the others to arrive. Seems they just wanted to make sure they had every tradition covered to be lucky in the new year.

Eventually more people showed up, and after a little chatter, we started dividing up to play some games....well, after a little chatter and most of the first episode of the Muppet Show (been forever since I've seen the Manahmanah skit). Brent had miraculously never actually gotten to play Settlers of Catan, so I had promised to teach him. We rounded up Angela and one more player (Bob), and headed for the smaller table, where I had already set up the game.

After the quick 5-minute version of the rules, we placed out first settlements and got started. Boy, it's been too long since I've played Settlers with more than 2 players -- I forgot how easy it is to get blocked in with 4 people. This turned out to be a sheep-rich game, which worked out well for me, because I started off with the sheep port. Grain came up much more often than expected (with 5, 3, 4 and 11 being the only producers). Brick was very hard to come by, which meant slow expansion for much of the game. Eventually, though, Bob won, but it caught him by surprise, since he hadn't really been paying attention to the scores. Overall, they liked the game, though, and want to play more of it, as expected. For me, though, I'm becoming more curious to get a copy of Das Buch, which has a lot of new bits and 15 new scenarios for Settlers.

Afterward, I had been wanting to try David and Goliath ever since Brent showed that he had picked it up at GAMA. This is a card game, which I never seem to get to play enough of. The name of the game may spook the hardcore anti-religious people away from even looking at it, but it's really nothing more than a simple theme to remind you of the mechanics of the game. Playing the game is simple enough -- there are 5 suits (colors) of cards, numbered 1-18 (although you play with some numbers removed with fewer players). The first player leads a card (any card), and just as with any trick-taking game, you must follow suit if you can, but if you can't, you may play any card. The special mechanic in the game is that at the end of the trick, COLOR DOESN'T MATTER. The person who played the lowest numbered card (the David), captures the highest numbered card (the Goliath). If there is a tie for being David, the David is the last card played that was the low number. Then the person who played the Goliath captures the rest of the cards (including the David, interestingly enough). Again, if there's a tie for highest, the last one played is the Goliath. These cards are then separated by color in front of the capturing player and remain until the end of the game. Once all the tricks have been played, then you look at the cards in front of you. If you have only 1 or 2 cards of a color, then they are worth their face value. If you have three or more cards of a given color, they are each worth 1 point. Your goal, of course, is to have the most points in cards.

So while the mechanics are simple, the strategy can be very chaotic, and a lot of card-counting can be going on as people try to figure out how much of a given color is still left out. There's ample opportunity for "take that" style play, as you force someone to take a third card, reducing their points dramatically (in my case, from 15 down to 3) in that color. If you enjoy trick-taking games like Spades or Hearts but want a bit more of a challenge than either making a bid or not capturing a particular suit, then David and Goliath makes a good choice -- and it looks like it costs less than $10, too!

After that, we were requested to introduce everyone there to a game of Pass the Bomb. I'm not sure why this game is so hard to find -- it's been a hit every time we've brought it out. Miraculously, we even managed to lay off the dirty words for one whole game :)

By this time, Dave had gotten back with Anno 1503, which I had been eager to try after playing Candamir, also by Klaus Teuber. While this game involves some resource collection and building, it is mostly an exploration game, with a single ocean board used by all players, and individual island boards for each player. The island boards have a number of spaces in which you build different settlers (pioneer, settler, townsman, and merchant), with four spaces for buildings that you simply get for free with each of your last four settlers as you build them. The buildings have special effects which I will describe later. Also on the island are five ports for goods production and where you can add on other goods production ports found in the ocean, as well as three ports on the right for treaties.

A player's turn goes fairly quickly, so unless they find a way to overanalyse the situation, there should be a minimum of down time between turns. Basically, you first roll a die. This allows one of the 5 ports at the top of everyone's island to produce a good (and it's different for each player) : a brick, tool, wood, cloth, or item of your choice. Two additional resource possibilities are spice and tobacco, which can only be obtained by buying from the bank, finding the right port island in the ocean and claiming it, or choosing it when your choice item number rolls up. If you have a second island on any port, you do not get both resources -- you have to pick one.

Now you may be asking about what happens if you roll a six. After all, there's only 5 goods -- what, one produces twice as much? No, you're right....when a 6 is rolled, bad stuff happens.

Usually.

Simply put, you re-roll the die. If you roll a 1 or 2, the pirate event happens (summed up, you pay a gold for each add-on to the top or side of your island...if you can't pay, you lose one of your choice, it gets shuffled back into the island pile, and then one is placed back on the ocean board, furthest from the starting point). if you roll a 3 or 4, a fire breaks out, and you have to pay a gold for each settler on your island outside the marked fire-proof zone. If you can't pay, then you lose the last settler (furthest to the right), and whatever building (if any) was under it. On a 5 or 6, each player gets a resource of their choice.

After production, you move into the turn itself. Here, you have a few options, and you can do as many or as few as you would like and have resources for.

Sell a Resource - Each type of settler will buy a given resource or resources pictured at the top of their tile, for a value in gold listed as the number/type of settler -- Pioneers are 1, Settlers 2, Townsman 3 and Merchants 4. Each settler type can only be used once, so if you're selling several of the same kind of resource, you will need several people to sell to.
Buy a Resource - Pick any resource you want, and pay a flat fee of 6 gold to the bank. This cost is reduced by 1 for each treaty you have attached to your island board, down to a minimal 3 gold per resource.
Build a Ship - Each player has 2 ship tokens. One starts on the board. To build another, simply spend the resources necessary and place it on the starting space. Players can have a maximum of 2 ships at any given time.
Fashion a Pioneer out of Clay - Well, actually, out of a brick, wood and a tool, if I recall correctly. Spend the resources and you place a pioneer in the next spot on the board. If there is a space below the new settler, you get to choose from a variety of buildings with special effects when you create the pioneer. of course, if you have no more pioneer tiles, you'll have to promote somebody to get one back.
Educate Them Island-Folk - Spend the resources, and you can promote a settler to the next level (pioneer to settler, settler to townsman, or townsman to merchant).
Move a Ship - Each ship token has a number of "action points" each turn equal to the number of players. One point allows the ship to move orthagonally one sqaure in the ocean, or to look at the contents of an island tile the ship is next to. If the player decides to keep that tile, it and the ship are removed from the ocean, and the tile is used. Some tiles are ports for goods, some are treaties, while others are gold or a free promotion for an island settler.

After you have taken as many actions as you care to do and can afford, the die goes to the next player and your turn is over.

This is a simple enough game of island development, with minor competition to be the first to achieve three out of five possible goals (30 gold, 3 merchants, 4 goods ports, 3 treaties, or 4 buildings). Since you get your choice of buildings when you build over those spaces, there are some that have the potential to unbalance the game. For example, I took a risk and first built something that let my Settlers and Townsmen buy cloth and spice respectively for 4 gold instead of 2 or 3. This kept my cash flow high enough that I was soon able to get another pioneer and built a building that was proof against the fire event (so I never had to pay for my buildings and they were never in danger). Next, I built a smith, which makes you immune to the pirate event as well. With this combination, my opponents kept losing gold, settlers and ports to game events while I coasted along, built a 4th building (thus accomplishing a goal), then built ships and sailed until I just had any 4 goods ports, and then just sat there and sold everything that rolled up until I had 30 gold. By this time, the others had only 1 score point on the board, and were in no danger of catching up easily.

Course, that may just have been beginner's luck and not necessarily work the next time, but it sure looked like a tough combination of abilities to beat...unless we read it wrong and you're still supposed to pay on those events, but you're just in no danger if you can't.

Regardless, though, Anno 1503 is a game I plan to add to my collection...that intent has been reinforced now that I've played it. While some say it has a solitaire aspect to it (as you're not directly affecting your opponents), it was a good, fun, game you could easily socialize over.

Bringing in the New Year with a Bang!

2006-01-01T01:14:00.000-06:00

Well, not with fireworks -- there's currently a burn ban here in Texas, thanks to a rash of grass fires recently. There was even one less than a quarter mile from our new house. We ran the sprinklers, just to be safe...sorta... I had heard you couldn't even have a sparkler this year...too bad.

Not the card game, Bang, either...no, we instead hung out with friends, played a nice long game of Railroad Tycoon, and then a couple quick games of Pass the Bomb before heading home (alas, but Angela had been up early today, and she was starting to fall alseep)...too bad, as I had been looking forward to trying Anno 1503

Aside from that, looking forward to more gaming tomorrow during the day....

Game Review : Railroad Tycoon

2005-12-31T11:36:00.000-06:00

Yes, I was one of the many who received Railroad Tycoon for Christmas, and of course I punched out all the pieces right away, but I had to wait a day before I could play it.

I will agree with everyone who says that the bits in Railroad Tycoon are top-notch. The shares are printed on something that feels like plastic, and the railroad operation and tycoon cards themselves have a good feel to them. The empty city markers are very cool, although sometimes they are large enough to obscure the color of a city, which makes it take only very slightly more effort to find a city of the appropriate color to ship a good to. The trains are nicely molded -- I had thought it would be hard to top the cool little trains in Ticket to Ride, but these surpass them easily. The cards showing what level your engine is are almost over-produced -- they could just have easily been a numbered index card with a price, but instead they are printed on heavier cardstock than most cardboard boxes I've seen, have a picture showing a train of the period along with its name, and a price to upgrade to that train from the previous one. I've seen others complain about the gameboard itself being warped, but mine appears to be fine.

In fact, I only have one complaint about the component quality, and that's on the game's box itself. After one playing, in which I did nothing more than open the box and get the pieces out, setting the box lid aside, the box lid already has a ripped corner which I have to tape to prevent further damage. That's it...I wish the box itself were made out of studier cardboard....maybe the same stuff as the engine level cards...

My other complaint is about the track tiles themselves -- it's nice to have made them double-sided, but there's different things on each side, and it's not consistent. As a result, one cannot divide up the track tiles to easily find a particular type -- the tiles must be placed in a pile to be pawed through each time a player wants a tile. Now, there are many of each kind, so finding the one you want isn't difficult, but I would have liked to have the straight tracks simply double-sided with one side being open land and the other being hills, and the same with curves and each of the three crossover types (two curves, curve and straight, and two straights)

For a game that feels this rich, explaining it is surprisingly easy:

A turn is comprised of three phases. The first and third phase are easy -- in the first, you bid for who gets to go first during the second phase (in $1,000 increments), and in the third, you do minor maintenance to prepare for the next turn (give people their income, pay share dividends to the bank, turn over the next railroad operation card to be available, and remove incomplete links). The second phase is where all the actual game play is. It is divided into three rounds, in which each player takes a turn starting with the first player bid winner, and proceding clockwise. The possible actions are:

Build Track -- Starting at a city or track you already laid, you may build up to 4 hexes worth of track (or until you reach a city, whichever comes first). Track costs $2,000 per hex if it crosses open land (the green hexes), or if it follows a river (the track entry and exit points in that hex are the same as the river). It costs $3,000 at a river crossing (the entry and exit points are not the same at the river), $4,000 to cross hills (the brown hexes), and an additional $4,000 to cross a "ridge line" (dark brown lines on some hill hex borders. Once you've built the first hex of track, you must extend it until you complete a "link" (a line of track between two cities), or the track is removed for not being complete in phase 3. As you're building, you place one of your plastic locomotives on that line to show you own that link. You may not build on another player's link, although you may cross over it, but only if you can do so without redirecting their line (finding the right track tile can be important). Note that when starting a new link, you can do so anywhere on the board -- you are not limited to wherever you started your rail network.
Urbanize -- For $10,000, you may pick a New City tile of any color and place it on the gray city of your choice, adding two random goods cubes to any that may already be there. That city may now receive goods cubes of the color you chose.
Upgrade Engine -- Pay the amount shown on the next higher number of engine, and you upgrade to that level. The number of the engine determines how many links may be traveled to deliver a goods cube from its origin city to its destination city. This is important, because the more links you take a goods cube to deliver it, the more points you get for that delivery.
Deliver Goods Cube -- This is how you score points (not counting bonuses from Railroad Operation Cards or Tycoon cards). Simply pick a goods cube and deliver it to a like-colored city. The first link you cross must belong to you, but otherwise, you may use links belonging to your opponents. The catch is that the player who owns each link scores one point for it being crossed. So, if you crossed 3 links all belonging to you (assuming you have a level 3 engine), then you score three points. But if another player owned the third link, you would score two points, they would score one. Note that a goods cube may not pause in a city that it doesn't match -- a delivery must go completely from the origin city to a destination city that matches the cube color. Finally, when travelling, a goods cube gets delivered in the first correct color city it encounters (for example, if you're delivering a blue cube, you can't ignore one blue city along the route to another blue city that's further away). The delivered cube is then placed back in the Goods draw bag.
Take Railroad Operation Card -- There are several different kinds of cards -- the ones with green lights, you just get by accomplishing the listed goal. All other available cards must be selected as an action. Some are used right away, while others remain with you for the rest of the game.
Build Western Link -- After building a normal link to either Des Moines or Kansas City, you can spend an action and $30,000 to place a special "Western Link" tile. It then gets 4 red cubes which must go to Chicago. When delivering these cubes, you get the points for delivering to Chicago, but then two new random goods cubes are placed in Chicago for delivery elsewhere. This simulates how important Chicago was as a link to the West at the time.

That's basically how the game is played, although there are some unique features of note. First of all, you don't start with any money. During the beginning stages of the game, you will need to issue Share certificates. The share is placed in front of you, along with $5,000. Issuing a share is a free action and you can issue as many as you'd like. There is a catch, though. These shares are not the same thing as loans -- you cannot pay them back. During the third phase of every turn for the rest of the game, you must deduct $1,000 from your income per share you've issued. If you have more shares than income, you have to pay the bank -- of course, you can issue more shares to cover this debt (same thing when bidding for first player). Also, at the end of the game, you lose one point for each share you have issued.

Second, you will notice there are only three red cities (New York, Chicago, and Charleston), and no red New City markers. This is to represent the importance these cities had as hubs during the railroad era. Also, the scoring track (which adjusts your income as you gain points) raises your income at first, takes it back down after about 49 points and keeps going down until you pass 100 points, and then goes up again. I'm not entirely sure what this is supposed to represent, unless it's simply there to slow down the leaders while those trailing have a chance to catch up. And finally, the game ends based on a number of empty cities (suggestions based on the number of players are in the book, but if you want the game to be shorter or longer, you can easily set the number yourself).

I've only played this game a few times, and only with a couple of players (although tonight I expect to play with a full table), but so far I really enjoy it. It's got an economic basis, but many ways to earn victory points -- hotels in major hub cities, delivering goods, owning key links for others to deliver goods along, and of course bonus points from cards. Definitely a game I'd recommend, and one that will likely have quite a few plays before I'm done with it.

Game Design : World Domination Poker (original rules)

2005-12-26T10:55:00.000-06:00

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

OBJECT
To be the only territory left in the world by eliminating your opponents through either financial ruin or direct conquest.

WHAT YOU NEED

An ordinary deck of poker cards (1 deck for each 4 players recommended).
A grid to represent the "world." The more spaces in the world, the longer the game.
Colored tokens for each player (beads or buttons work well) These are a player's "countries."
Poker chips (white is worth $1, red $5, and blue $10)
Some 6-sided dice
A little bit of luck.
And don't forget your little dictator hat -- okay, so this one is optional...

SETUP
Players begin the game with $50 in chips (2 blue, 4 red, and 10 white works well), and 2 Special Tactics cards. Each player chooses a color to represent their "territory", and begins with 4 tokens ("countries") of their territory's color placed on the board anywhere they wish, with the only rule being that each of the 4 countries is adjacent to at least 1 other country of the same color.

HOW TO PLAY

POKER HAND
Choose a player to be the first Dealer. Play hands of any variety of poker the Dealer chooses. Ante is a minimum of $1 per game. For those unfamiliar with the basic game of poker, a primer is provided in the back of this rule book, as well as a brief description of some of my favorite variants. After each game of poker, pass the cards to the player on your left - they become the next Dealer and have the right to name the next variant of poker game to play.

BETWEEN-HAND PHASE
After each hand of poker, and before the start of the next hand, players receive a number of chips equal to $1 for each country they have on the board, unless they are irradiated. See "Irradiated Countries," below. Afterward, each player may take ONE of the following actions, beginning with the winner of the last hand and proceeding to the left.

Explore new territory - Place another of your countries on the board. (Note that you may only purchase one country at a time) See pricing chart below:

Adjacent to one of your countries $5
Any other open space on the board $8
If space is irradiated (see "Getting Nuked", below) Add $1

Evacuate - Give up one of your countries to the bank. Countries in an irradiated square are worth $1, and healthy countries are worth $3.

Go to war - You may attack any territory adjacent to your own, for a cost. See "War Is Hell" below.

Train your armies - Pay $10 to the bank, and draw another Special Tactics card.

Pass - Do nothing this turn. Once you have passed, you may not take any more actions until after the next poker hand.

Action turns continue until everyone passes. Then the next hand of poker is dealt. Note that Special Tactics cards may be played at any time, and do NOT count as an action in this phase.

SPECIAL TACTICS CARDS
You start the game with 2 of these cards, and each time a player is eliminated, players each draw a single "Special Tactics" card from the deck. In addition, you may purchase one from the bank during the Between-Hand Phase. (see "Train Your Armies" above) These cards may be played at any time, although they do not always go into effect immediately. However, once played, they are discarded. Note that you MAY NOT sell Special Tactics cards back to the bank. When the Special Tactics deck has been exhausted, reshuffle the discards. Remember, these cards change the rules for a time, so follow the instructions carefully!

WAR IS HELL
A player may spend $5 per attacking country during the between-hand phase to attack as many or as few of another territory's countries as they wish. The attacker must declare which of their countries are attacking, as well as which countries are being attacked. Each of the defending countries must be adjacent to at least one of the attacking countries. If you request a PDF of these rules, I have convenient diagrams :)

Once the attacker has chosen which countries to attack, the defending territory has the option of spending $5 per country to use more of their countries in defense. (the countries the attacker chose defend at no cost to the defending territory). Again, reinforcing countries MUST be adjacent to at least one of the attacking countries.

The marked countries represent the "warfront." After the defender has decided which countries will defend, players roll a number of dice equal to how many countries they each have on the warfront. Each die represents a "battle." Battles are decided in order from the highest die roll for each side to the lowest. The higher die wins the battle and earns the right to replace one of the opposing territory's countries with one of their own. Ties always go to the defender. Any dice which do not have a die to battle against on the opposing side have no effect, and nobody loses a country to it. (exception: the defender may NOT choose to have one of the countries which was initially attacked fail to defend itself -- i.e., not roll a die for it. If a country was chosen by the attacker to be in the battle, and the defender does not roll a die in its defense, that country is automatically lost.)

Players take turns replacing countries, starting with the winner of the first (highest roll) battle. Please note that players may NOT change a country color which has switched sides in this war.

GETTING NUKED
Some Special Tactics cards cause one or more players to choose a country to be "nuked." In this case, that country is removed from play, and that space has become a nuclear wasteland, uninhabitable. Mark that space on the board with a token of a different color (orange or black should work well). Even worse, spaces adjacent to the nuked country are considered "irradiated."

IRRADIATED COUNTRIES
Having a country next to a nuked space has some serious drawbacks, as follows:

Nobody wants to live there - Placing a new country in an irradiated space costs extra.
Your workers are sick - Irradiated countries produce income at half their normal rate, rounded down. (1 irradiated country produces nothing, 2 produce $1) This amount is calculated BEFORE any modifications by cards in play. For example, if you have 7 irradiated countries, your income is $3. If you then play Soaring Economy, your income is doubled to $6, NOT the original $7 the countries would have produced when healthy.
Nobody else wants to take it off your hands - Selling an irradiated country back to the bank is only worth $1.
Your troops are sick, too - When attacking or defending, you subtract 1 from all die rolls made by that country (minimum of 1).

STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL
At any time while playing a hand of poker, you may take another draw, at a price. Give up one country to the bank (you don't receive any chips for this), then take your draw.

BARGAINING WITH YOUR COUNTRIES
During a hand of poker, it is inevitable that someone won't have enough cash in chips to make the current bet. In this event (AND ONLY in this event), that person may use their countries to "call" the current bet. Each country is worth up to $5 and no "change" is given (if the bet to you was only $1, and you use a country to meet it, and then someone else raises the bet, you're outta luck...you have to either bet another country, or forfeit the one you already bet) Mark these countries in some way, because they become the property of whomever wins the hand.

WINNING THE GAME
The last territory with countries on the board is the winner, provided the other players do not have enough cash to buy a country to place on the board, and not enought to ante to stay in the game

And that's the game -- anyone interested in a PDF of the rules and Special Tactics cards, send me an e-mail, and I'll be happy to get it to you. Comments, of course, would be appreciated.

In my own experience while playtesting, people have generally reacted positively, although with the elimination aspect, games tended to run pretty long. I'm going to see if I can trim these rules and make use of poker dice to streamline them a bit.

Review : Gametable Online

2005-12-24T17:45:00.000-06:00

Last month, I used my free trial time at Game Table Online to check them out and see what they had to offer. I had tried Brettspielwelt, the German board game server, but had a difficult time just figuring out what could and could not be clicked on, much less dealing with the language barrier -- I had originally thought I could fake it with the handy-dandy translator at Babelfish, but even with that, I still couldn't follow enough of the conversation to figure out if I was even in the right chat room, much less find a friendly person to help me figure out the interface. So, I took a look around Game Table Online, to see what they had to offer.

The system appears to be in its infancy, with a little over a dozen available games, although I haven't heard of many of them, and skimming the rules, a lot of them just didn't interest me. As of this writing, the selection includes Battle of the Bands, Bosworth, Cosmic Wimpout, Creepy Freaks, Euphrat & Tigris, Igel Argern, Kill Dr. Lucky, Lemmings in Space, Lord of the Fries, Nuclear War, and Reiner Knizia's Vampire.

The interface is simple -- you look through the list of games, and then elect to either read the rules or play the game. Selecting play will drop you into a Java-based chat room. There is only one chat area that covers the entire site -- individual players have an abbreviation of the game they intend to play listed in parentheses after their name. After talking some opponents into following you in, you simply create or join a table, check the settings for options, and then click that you're ready to play. Inside the games, the controls are fairly intuitive, and the graphics are very well done, simulating a play of the game around a table.

In time, as more games come online, this will be a good place to go. As it is, I've gotten rather hooked on Eurogames, and since there are a limited number of them on Game Table Online, I didn't find it worth $4.95 a month, although with that you get unlimited plays, and can even earn GTO points to get some free stuff. I looked through the items in the "Treaure Chest" area, but none of them grabbed me. Frankly, I might have liked the chance to earn some GTO swag, a t-shirt or mug or something instead.

I enjoyed my time at Game Table Online, and although it wasn't really for me at this time, I'll be keeping an eye on it.

Cold weather, a warm house, and the computer's up!

2005-12-07T23:06:00.000-06:00

Well, we're still in the middle of moving, which is of course my excuse for not having been writing -- yeah, I know, I have that fancy new laptop and offline software to write with, but I've been so tied up with moving things from the apartment to the house, buying items to replace things that got damaged in the move, the shopping trip to ensure we have plenty of food in the new pantry and deep freeze, unpacking, etc., that I haven't actually turned the darn thing on in about a week. I'm starting to twich, too....haven't had much opportunity to play a boardgame. Of course, I *did* get that new pool table, so naturally I made a little time to shoot a couple games of 8-ball....and promptly snapped the tip off my cue, so now I need a tip repair kit.

Then again, the weather down here did turn really bad today, with a nasty amount of sleet, and depending on how the roads look tomorrow morning, I might not go to work...riding that scooter in morning traffic is dangerous enough without adding ice to the equation. I'f I'm stranded at home, though, I'll make sure to squeeze in a game or two to tlk about...or at least dig up the World Domination Poker rules I promised you a couple weeks ago.

After all, I just finished getting the computer desk put together, so the computer is back online now....

Poker Dice Games?

2005-11-27T17:09:00.000-06:00

Here I sit with a handful of poker dice, and I wonder if there might be more than just 1 or two games I can play with them. The basic rules are pretty simple -- Roll the dice. Pick a couple to "hold" and roll the rest. Do this one more time, and then see how good your "hand" is. That's it. Very simple, very fast, and relatively boring. Now, some people might argue that poker itself is a fairly boring game, but I know that the card game has tons and tons of variant rules, with wild cards, draw rules, betting rules with a set hand of cards, community cards, blind betting rules, and all kinds of other stuff. It's a game that you can spice up with these rules to make it a more interesting diversion.

But with poker dice, the only variant rule I've seen is somebody's scoring system, and a rule that another player chooses one of the originally-rolled dice that the roller MUST re-roll. It looks interesting, but I wonder what else could be done with these dice. Basically, you've got a 9 of clubs, 10 of hearts, jack, queen, king, and ace of spades. The face cards have no suit. Basically, it's possible to roll nothing, a pair, three of a kind, four of a kind, five of a kind, or a straight (which, oddly enough, doesn't count in the standard game). I suppose one possible game might be to play it like a "shut-the-box" game, in which all the ranks are listed, and your goal is to be the first to roll all of them, but not in any particular order.

A variant of this would be to add a "push your luck" mechanic and make you advance through the ranks one at a time. If you succeed on a particular hand rank, you get another turn, but if you fail to advance to the next rank, you go down any ranks you've advanced this turn. So first you'd want to get nothing, then a pair, then three of a kind, a full house, four of a kind, and five of a kind. If you roll better than you're trying to roll, you still only advance the one rank.

I dunno...at least the points system gives me another game to play with dice and the Cosmic Wimpout board :)

Thinking about it, the speed of play could make my World Domination Poker game play quite a bit faster...I'll have to think on that and write up another article containing rules for World Domination Poker with poker dice....

Oh? You're wondering what World Domination Poker is? Well, that one has a bit of a story to it. My wife and I went to a party that was to be for several days, and for a long while, it was just us, the hosts, and one other guest, so we figured we'd play a game of poker. We didn't have chips to bet with, and nobody knew each other well enough to suggest strip poker, so we jokingly started betting countries (yet another use for geographical knowledge). We were having fun -- "I'll see your Portugal and raise you the Galapagos Islands!", but since we were just arbitrarily naming places, it didn't really matter who won.

Much later -- like two years or so, I was reminiscing, and thought it might be amusing to put together a World Domination Poker deck, with countries depicted on cards with some value listed on them, and just to be a bit educational, a little bit about the country as well. Of course, about 20 or so cards in, I jst wasn't pleased with how it was looking, and playing with the cards, it just didn't seem as fun. So I scrapped that idea, and made it more of a board game, with poker hands, and then movement on the board between hands, and earning more chips to play with depending on your countries on the board. This worked best as an abstract game, and then I added a bunch of "Special Tactics" cards to level the playing field a bit, by letting less skilled players mess with the skilled poker players a bit. Of course, skill would still win out in this game, but people liked to screw with the other players.

In general, the friends I played this game with liked it (I still get requests to play it when we get together for a party or something), but it also goes on much too long, since I didn't build in any self-limiting mechanics, so it ended up being an elimination game. Elimination games can work, but I don't really enjoy them if it takes to long for the game to end before starting a new one. In short, I'm proud of my game, but I would probably only give it a rating of 5 or 6 out of 10, just due to how long it goes on. I'll post the regular rules in the next entry, and if someone wants a PDF of the rules or cards, shoot me an e-mail and I'd be happy to let you have it.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to go see how poker dice might improve the game....

Who Goes First?

2005-11-25T07:38:00.000-06:00

So I'm killing time in a coffeeshop waiting for my bank to open so I can deposit my wife's paycheck, and then it's off to pick up my newly-repaired car and drop off the rental. It's surprisingly quiet in here -- I guess everyone's either sleeping in, or they're busy shopping, looking for those amazing early-morning deals. I never really got into that...Black Friday is not something I participate in. It has nothing to do with the whole silly "Buy Nothing Day" movement, but more with the fact that I simply prefer not to get up that early....well, that and not having enough money to warrant going and blowing it all at 4 in the morning. Of course, if a game store had that kind of crazy idea, I might reconsider.

Anyway, I'm sitting here, and it's quiet, and I'm kinda bored, and that's usually when goofy blog ideas run through my head, and thanks to this handy offline blogging program and the new laptop, I can let loose and start typing on whatever pops into my head. With any luck, it'll lead to more regular posting ;)

Well, the thought occurring to me right now is how different groups decide the first player in a game. Much of the time in our circle, the conversation goes :

"Okay, who wants to go first?"

"I dunno."

"Okay, I'll go first."

"Sounds good."

While this works much of the time, I wondered if there might be more interesting methods. So I'm thinking up a list. Some of these are actually rules in some games I've played. It reminds me that one of these days I need to go over the rulebooks in detail just to jot down funny rules that I find. Anyway, here we go:

The first person to say they're going first
The owner of the game
(here's a cruel one) The new player
The youngest player
The eldest player
The person with the longest hair (actual rule from "Viking's Fury")
Gather up all the players' tokens, shake 'em up, and let one drop out of your closed fist...that player goes first
Pick a number between one and one hundred, and let everybody guess -- closest to it wins
The first person to guess your locker combination from 10th grade (nah, just kidding)
Rock-Paper-Scissors
A brain teaser competition -- see who solves a problem the fastest. (okay, that's just a fancy way of saying the smartest person goes first...usually)
A quick game of Pass the Bomb :)
One potato, two potato, three potato, four. Five potato, six potato, seven potato, ore!
Poker dice -- of course, that gets me wondering if there are any other games you can play with poker dice besides the normal Yahtzee-like rules....but that's a topic for another entry...
The most well-travelled (actual rule from "Ticket to Ride")
(if playing several games) The winner (or loser) of the last game.
The person with the cleanest car
The person who drove the furthest to get to the game's location
The person who knows the ballistic airspeed of an unladen swallow
Cut a deck of cards - high (or low) card goes first
Use an Alpha Deck (or Scrabble tiles, or Quiddler cards, or anything with an alphabet) -- closest to the front (or end) of the alphabet goes first
The person who brought snacks for the group
The person with the lowest (or highest) numerical phone number
Pick an arbitrary number between 1 and 8. Check everyone's license (or ID), and see who has the lowest (or highest) digit in that position.

Okay, so I'm starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Any other ideas? How does your group choose the first player? Leave a comment!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-24T14:39:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm sitting in the livingroom of my apartment, not cooking anything, mostly because I didn't want to mess up a whole bunch of dishes right before having to pack them all. Our house is pretty much complete, and we're supposed to close on Tuesday, which means next week, I'll be moving! Of course, technically, that means that this week I should be packing, but after packing a bit, I realized I just kinda wanted a day off.

Okay, so I'm really just being lazy because I wanted to play on the new laptop I won in a sales contest at work -- well, technically, I won a cruise, but with the difficulty of my wife getting a long-enough period of time off to take one, I just talked the boss into saving himself some money and buy me a laptop :). So I'm down in the livingroom while some dishes are being washed (see? I'm doing something useful too!), while watching a bunch of TiVo stuff that's been waiting for my attention for weeks.

I'm also playing with some posting software I found, called wbloggar....so far, the interface looks nice, but I still don't know what all the buttons do. Hm...lemme try this one -- *click* -- and then I showed up at Dave's place for the Game Day meeting and then a bit of boardgaming, but discovered that being on time was not something they were used to happening when they invited people over -- *click* -- Oh, that's what that does...it's the button that makes me get to the point and actually talk about gaming stuff :). Guess I should click it again and get on with this post.

*click*

Anyway, we got there at the time that was in the e-mail, but after three rings of the doorbell, 4 knockings on the door, and two phone calls to the answering machine, we confirmed that yes, we had the right house, and no, they weren't home. So then I tried calling Brent to find out if there was a plan B...no answer. Tried calling Mike to see if he had heard anything -- no answer. Tried Brent's house -- no answer. Tried his cell again -- still no answer. I was starting to wonder if there was some sort of bizarre motive-less conspiracy to keep me sitting on that curb. Good thing in Texas, it's fairly warm, even in November.

Fortunately, just as we had given up and re-packed all our games and snacks in the car, Dave rolled up -- no harm, no foul. Then Brent called while I was in the process of bringing all the games in and told me what was going on for Game Day, as it turned out he wasn't going to be able to make it.

For Game Day : it seems that the "Get Out of the Cold and Game" concept was the clear winner, with just about everyone saying they liked that one the best. The database is almost ready for GMs to start registering for what they're going to run at the next Game Day in January. Right now, I'm figuring on a bunch of stuff for the BoardGames 101 table, but I haven't yet decided on whether I'll host any tables besides the BG101. Right now, I'm liking Alhambra, Power Grid, or maybe Clippers -- mainly for something not run there before. Who knows? Maybe I'll bring Frag, if only because I haven't seen it since the first time I went to Game Day some 3 years ago, but mainly because you get to roll a LOT of dice.

So anyway, keep an eye on the RGC Game Day website, and register to run something as soon as GM registration opens up.

After passing on the information from the phone call, we sat down and got ready to game, to kick off National Games Week. First up was Elfenland, which Brent had requested we play sometime. Unfortunately, he wasn't there, but we opted to play it anyway, since there were 6 people, and we needed something to handle a lot of players. So Mike, Dave, Michelle, Brandy, Angela and I sat down to race across Elfenland on wild boars, elfcycles, troll wagons, etc. I explained the game, and got blank looks for my trouble, but after a couple turns, they seemed to have the hang of it. Of course, we moved onto another game afterward, but in general, Elfenland got a good reception.

Next up, Mike had brought a copy of Sucking Vacuum. This game mixes cooperation and competition. At first, the tiles remind one of Zombies, except on a space station. In this game, the International Space Station has just had an explosion in the one and only escape pod, exposing it and the hallway next to it to open vacuum. As a result, your goal is to fuel the escape pod (apparently they don't believe in keeping it gassed up and ready to go), gather the three parts of a space suit (which are all scattered all over the place instead of in suit lockers), and leave the station. The bad news is that the pod requires two and only two people aboard in order to launch -- no more, no less. So at the same time as you're trying to screw the other players out of making it off the station, you also have to make a deal with one of them in order to escape yourself. It's an intriguing premise, and the game can be quite fun. Unfortunately, it also suffers from the flaw that it is possible to set the game up in such a way that it is impossible to win. The way we had it set up, there were more than 10 spaces of vacuum to get from the nearest oxygen tank to the escape pod. The rules state, however, that it takes one oxygen (from your tank's maximum of 10) to move one space, but that if you get down to zero, you must start making your way back to the nearest oxygen tank. As a result, since both jetpacks (which allows you to go from one room to another without having to walk) had been used, you would only end up walking up and down the same hallway over and over again. After one game, we were very much ready to try something else, but our initial analysis is that the game would be worth giving another try, if there is a placement restriction that requires a room to be placed between hallways.

After this, we moved on to the game that would turn out to be a surprise hit with this group -- Pass the Bomb, which I had read about quite some time ago in Dan Bosley's New Misadventures in Gaming. It had seemed like a fun game, and my wife and I ended up questing for it for months (I know, we should simply have ordered it from somewhere online, but I like being able to play a game right away....maybe after we move, I'll order from online stores more often instead of driving all the way to a local place). As it happened, I was in Austin on business, and happened across a Go! The Game Store. Every other one of these stores I had seen was seasonal, only open around Christmas, but this one looked to be open year-round. Anyway, while browsing around in there (I had some time to kill), I saw Pass the Bomb, and knew I had to get it in case I didn't see it again anytime soon. The premise of the game is simple -- turn over a card (each contains a combination of letters), start the bomb ticking, say a word containing those letters in the sequence they're written on the card, and pass the bomb on. If you have the bomb when it explodes, you get the card. The goal is to have the least cards after a number of rounds (the rules say 13, but I suppose it could be any number the players agree to). Interestingly, in this game, anything goes -- slang, proper nouns, foreign words in common use, anything. There is a die to restrict where in the word the letters can be used, but we found there was enough pressure to begin with, so for now, we've been playing without the die. One thing I can say about this game is that you definitely get a taste of what it must be like to be on a game show. Oh yeah, you might be able to think of all kinds of words that use the letters, but when you get that ticking bomb in your hands, and you know it could go off any second, your mind goes completely blank, and you might sit there staring at something like YD for the whole time the bomb is ticking and not be able to come up with anything. Then the next day, you get reminded about Hyde, Boyd, Lloyd, Hydrate, Hydrogen, Hydrate, Hydrant, and more. This game makes you think fast, and even Mike, who normally is terrible at word games, was having a great time. I forsee that this game will make many appearances at Thursday Nights, as well as any party we attend or throw.

Next up was Castle of Magic. In this game, you have a secret identity, and your own unique goal. Sometimes this goal will coincide with another player's, but only a bit. In this game, there is a monster lurking in a magic castle. Your job is determined by your character. Some characters want to control the monster, others to banish it. Still others actually want the monster to go free and rampage through the countryside. There are quite a few variables, in terms of which country controls a magic object, which player currently possesses that magic object (crown, scepter, or amulet), and the all-important status of the Bell (ringing or silent), Book (open or closed), and Candle (lit or unlit). Each player's score is determined by the final result of the ritual spell that is cast (not literally, of course) at the end of the game. In fact, the endgame is the only interesting part of the game, with constant fighting back and forth to gain control of the outcome of the Bell, Book, and Candle's position when the ritual spell is cast. Up until then, you're just rolling the die, moving to a position on the board, and then rolling again to see if you gain control of a magic object, learn the position of a country, learn the result of a ritual positioning, get a controlled move result to use later, learn a "secret" about one of the other players (a hint to what their goal might be), or simply get a better chance at succeeding at one of the other actions. This game's randomness is such that it is very difficult to influence your luck to gain a decent toehold and keep it. After an hour or so of this, you eventually move into the inner areas of the board and the fight begins to influence the outcome of the game. And that is where this game fails. I can deal with randomness in a game - it usually allows new players to stand a reasonable chance at keeping up - but in the case of Castle of Magic, the randomness causes the game to drag on and on and on. Poor Dave wasted some 10 turns just trying to learn the identity of a country, because he just could not roll anything other than a 6 when testing to see if he succeeded. No "spell" can be any better than a 5, and to cast it, you must roll its number or lower. To succeed at this game, you really need to be aware of all the different ways that your character can score, and then you really need to roll well. I happened to be the Monster, so my goal was to rampage. It took me only about half an hour to find which ritual result was best for me, and then I started trying to land on the Bell, Book, and Candle spaces to get them to my favored positions, and then land on the doom counter to rush the ritual before the others could stop me. I had 5 power in all of my spells to affect the bell, book, and candle, but then I just couldn't land on the right spaces. I was well in the lead, but then after a dozen or so wasted turns, and the other three players having figured out my goal, the positioning was off, and then I still couldn't land on the right spaces. As a result, due partly to unlucky rolling, but mainly because I wasn't also shooting for a secondary or tertiary goal, I ended up under Mike's control when the spell was finally cast. Overall, I found Castle of Magic to be mediocre. It doesn't really get interesting until the end of the game, when the spell is nearly cast. The information gathering phase of the game goes on entirely too long. I wonder if the game might be better if it were redesigned with an action-point system for movement and information gathering.

The last game we played (well, except for another game of Pass the Bomb) was Alhambra. I had played this game a couple of Thursdays ago and liked it enough to go ahead and buy it. This was my first chance to play it with my wife. Now, she doesn't normally like strategy games, as she insists she can't get the hang of the strategy. In my observation, I think she mainly just needs to learn when to shift from one tactic to another, rather than worrying about the overall strategy. She ended up getting left behind in this game, but her score ended up about where all the scores were the second time I'd ever played, so I thought she did reasonably well for her first time. She said she was willing to give it another try, and see if she could learn how to play better.

So, we played one last game of Pass the Bomb, as I mentioned before, and then headed home.

Of course, that was Sunday, and now it's Thursday, and I know we won't get a chance to play tonight, as the coffeeshop will likely be closed. I don't know if I'll get to play anything over the weekend, as there's a lot of packing to be done. Then there's the move itself, but after that....the first time I have some time with people at the table in the new house, it will be time to celebrate!

With a game, of course ;)

January Game Day Flyer Ideas

2005-11-14T07:32:00.000-06:00

The next Game Day is rapidly approaching...only 2 months away, and since I volunteered to help out with flyers this time, I figured I'd better brainstorm some ideas for what they should look like, so after the meeting this coming Sunday, we can get started on them. So here are some that I've come up with so far. Tell me what you think! Would a flyer looking like any of these catch your eye? I'm basically going to list them by header/slogan, and then a rough description of what the artwork would be.

Concept : Get Out of the Cold & Game!
This one would show a person bundled up in winter clothing, shivering and looking longingly in a window where a group of people are playing a game. I figured this might fit the fact that the next one is in January.

Concept : A Little Bit of Everything at RGC Game Day
My first idea for this slogan was to have several different boardgame, cardgame, and RPG cover art inside a picture of one of the RGC tote bags.

Then a bizarre idea came to me -- show a list of the things we will be doing at the next game day, mentioning dealers, demos, boardgames, mini painting, rpgs, card games, door prizes, LARPing, and whatever else we come up with as activities, and then arrange them so they appear to be on their way into the top of a meat grinder. Then, where ground meat would normally come out of the machine, show RGC Game Day.

Concept : First Game Day of the Year!
I thought this idea was a bit weak, myself, but it was a brainstorming session, after all -- basically a simple flyer with fireworks as the graphic theme.

Concept : Badge Battles -- only at RGC Game Day
We're considering making the registrant badges as 2 1/4" pin-back buttons. I'm a fan of the Button Men dice-rolling game, and thought it might be interesting to add a few die stats onto each button so people looking to kill some time can battle other attendees. This flyer would promote that.

Concept : Explore a New World of Gaming!
I figured do a scenic vista comprised of different boardgame bits, and have an Indiana Jones-type explorer cresting a hill, or pushing aside some jungle foliage to reveal it.

The other idea for this slogan was to take a couple of ship-bits, and have them sailing toward an island of Catan.

Concept : Witness a Gaming Invasion!
Of course, the ship idea inspired another concept, which was to put together a picture with a fleet of sailing ships (not bits...actual ships), and have the sails depicting cover art of different games.

Or I could take my cue from the Meeple Wars post over on Game Fest and have a picture of invading game pieces...not like I don't have enough of them.

Anyway, that's what I've got so far -- any thoughts?

Thursday Night Metagamers 11/10/05 : I played...

2005-11-11T19:11:00.000-06:00

Busy busy busy....haven't sat down to write a blog entry in a while.
Things have been moving quickly on my new house, and I expect to move in
starting on the 29th of November....add to that work and a social life,
and I've been a lazy writer :)

Anyway, last night went pretty well....we saw a couple more new people that we had met at the Game Day last month, and we're seeing the value of why I always brought a couple filler games in addition to the full-length games.

As people were arriving and a decision had yet to be made on what to play, I grabbed three people to play Loco with me. Loco is a deceptively simple card game. The 30-card deck is shuffled, and a number of cards are removed from the game -- 2 if there are 2 or 4 players, 3 if there are three players. The deck is then dealt out completely to all players. There are also a number of colored chips that are placed in the middle of the table. There are 5 colors - red, green, yellow, blue, and purple. In the deck, these 5 colors are also represented, with cards numbered from 0 through 5.

Your turn is simple. Play any card from your hand, placing it on top of any pile of its color so that you know what the last card played of each color is. Next, you take any colored chip from the middle of the table. That's it. Play a card and take a chip. Simple, huh?

Ah, but maybe not quite so simple after all. You see, when the 6th card of any color is played, the game is over. At this point, the colored chips you've been collecting are each worth whatever the top card of that colored pile is. So have you been wise in collecting your chips? Did you ensure that the game ended with your chips being worth the most? Did you play low cards on the piles that other people had been hoarding chips from, making those chips as close to worthless as possible?

Therein like the mathematical challenge that seems to lie at the heart of most Reiner Knizia games. You think it's simple, and then the math bites you in the ass when it comes time to take score. Definitely a fun and fast filler game.

Next, I saw that someone had brought a copy of Alhambra, which I had seen mentioned in a bunch of places, but didn't actually know anything about. I was in the mood to learn something new, so asked to play it. Soon afterward, we had 4 players and the rules were being explained to us.

Alhambra is a tile-placement game, in which each player is trying to build their own alhambra, which as near as I can tell is a kind of Rennaisance-era mall. There are 6 different kinds of tiles, aside from the fountain that everyone's alhambra starts with. These are pavilions, manors, mezzanines, chambers, gardens, and towers. On top of that, there are also 4 different kinds of money (I don't recall the names, but I do remember they were yellow, green, blue, and orange :). Each player gets a reserve board which also reminds you how to do scoring, which takes place 3 times during the game, and a colored token to place on their fountain. This serves no purpose except to remind you which colored token on the scoreboard is yours.

Your starting money is also determined a little oddly. The money cards are shuffled, and then you get dealt cards off the top until you have a sum of money (colors don't count yet) equal to or greather than 20. This means that everyone will start out with different amounts, but also a mix of currencies. After everyone has their starting money, two scoring cards are put in the pile, one about a third of the way down, and one about two-thirds of the way down. The first four money cards are then laid face-up next to the tile board, and then four tiles are turned face-up on this board, one for each type of currency.

On your turn, you may take one of three possible actions -- take money, buy a tile, or change your alhambra.

Taking money is pretty straightforward -- either take any one card, or any set of cards totalling 5 or less.

Buying a tile is also pretty straightforward. Look at the four tiles on the board, and if you want one, you must pay the listed price in that type of money. Note that you never get change back! If you pay exactly the correct amount, you get another action (any of the original three), while if you over-pay, that is your only action for that turn. At the end of your turn, any bought tiles are placed into your alhambra, following strict placement rules which I won't go into here, or onto your reserve board. Note that there are no hand limits nor limits on what can be held by your reserve board.

Changing your alhambra can be a bit more subtle. As this action, you may either move a tile from your alhambra onto your reserve board, or take a tile from your reserve board to play, or you may exchange a tile from the alhambra with your reserve, with the restriction that it go in the same place and still fit the placment rules.

After your turn, any bought tiles and taken money is refreshed. When a scoring card comes up, everyone checks their score, earning points for their longest continual outside wall, as well as for features in which they have a majority. If there is a tie, then points are split among the tied players. There are two scoring cards in the deck -- the third and final scoring round occurs after there are no longer enough tiles in the draw pile (or bag) to replenish those on the tile board.

I really liked this game. With its majority scoring mechanic, you can choose a type of feature to specialize in, as well as trying to tie on others to split points. The design of your alhambra and figuring out how to place your exterior walls is also very important, as the others found out when I managed to have my alhambra almost completely enclosed by the end of the game, scoring a large margin of points before looking at the majorities. Splitting up the money into different currencies and thus needing to keep your currency in your hand flexible adds an interesting complexity to the game, as you watch the money other people are picking up and try to figure out if they're going to buy the tile you want before you can afford it. On top of that, I just like playing tile games...most tiles just have a pleasant feel to them, making them enjoyable to handle and place.

After we put Alhambra away, it looked like the Bang game at the next table over was wrapping up, and we tried to figure out what we would play next. I'm not sure what everyone else played, but Mike said he'd stick around a bit longer if we wanted to play Tikal. I hadn't played this game yet either, and only knew it was an exploration game, so figured I'd give it a shot. Since this game is a little deeper and thus has more rules, I won't go into them here, since a) I can't remember most of them and b) it would make this entry ridiculously long if I did. I didn't do too well at this game. I ended up with most of the treasure, but got myself stranded in a low-value area of the board and it would have cost me too much to get to the high-value area that the other three players were dominating. I did the best I could to build up the temples I could reach, but it was too little effort too late in the game.

If you enjoy exploration games, Tikal certainly has a good amount of it, uncovering temples, clearings, treasures, and volcanos as you go through the terrain draw pile at the beginning of your turn. Players shape the board by placing these tiles to their best advantage (or at least, to their opponents' greatest detriment). You can also dig to make a temple you have a majority of population at more valuable. The action point system where the more valuable actions cost more points to use, works well. They explained the idea to me like it was a foreign concept, but many tactical videogames use an action-point mechanic, so it wasn't at all difficult to understand for me.

I don't think I liked the scoring rounds, as when the volcano tile comes up, everyone gets a full turn to move things around to maximize their score. This tends to bring out the analysis-paralysis in people as they try to figure out how to shift their workers around to get the highest score possible out of all the variables on the map. As a player who tends to play through his turn quickly and tries to plan ahead, the
scoring rounds felt like they bogged the game down for me. Overall, not a bad game for its genre, but probably not one I would acquire for myself.

I also heard that Dave's new Tuesday night game group did fairly well for its first outing. They meet at the Nizza Pizza at Green Oaks and Pleasant Ridge in Arlington, TX. With many more tables, there's a lot more room for the larger games, even though I like the coffeehouse atmosphere better, myself. I didn't make it the first Tuesday, as something more important came up, and next Tuesday I'll be out of town, but I'll see about making an appearance there soon.

RGC Game Day : I played....(part four...finally :)

2005-11-03T23:47:00.000-06:00

Back in street clothes, I grabbed another Dr. Pepper (I think my count at this point was up to 5 or 6) and made my way back to the table, where I began setting up Shadows Over Camelot. Someone asked when the game would be and I mistakenly said 6pm -- it turns out I had mis-read the little schedule grid and it was in fact 5:30.

While I was setting up, a few people came by and asked if they could play...I said sure, much like every other game I had run that day. A few minutes later, someone else pointed out there was a sign-up sheet and all 7 slots for the game had been claimed.

My response was something like, "I had a sign-up sheet??"

I told the un-signed-up people to stick around in case anyone didn't show. While they were waiting, a few people got there early and I started going through the rules of the game to save some time later (since only 2 of the signed-up folks were missing and this was a cooperative game, I figured a very brief summary would suffice for them and the other players would fill them in as the game went along -- and besides, we could simply make them last in the turn order so they saw how the game worked by the time it got to them). During the course of the game, we found that we had a couple of experienced players who really knew how to best use the various knight abilities, and the round table filled with white swords quite rapidly. By the end of the game, the knights were winning, 8 swords to 4....but nobody had accused anyone of being the traitor. If any of the seven players had drawn the traitor card from a deck of merely eight cards, two swords would turn to black, and evil wins if the game is a tie. Everyone revealed their loyalty, anxious to find if all their hard work was for naught.

Finally, I held up the loyalty card I'd kept in front of me the entire game after dealing the others to the 7 players who were actually playing, as I was just running the game.

"I told you I was the forces of evil..."

And the knights celebrated their victory over the forces of darkness!

As it turns out, I already reviewed Shadows Over Camelot in a previous entry. That review can be found here : http://gamerseye.blogspot.com/2005/09/thursday-night-metagamers-tonight-i.html

After the last game I was required to run, it was around 7pm, and I noticed there didn't seem to be anyone waiting on the Boardgames 101 table, so I wandered around for a bit and talked to the employee at the community center and even got a bit of a tour of the other rooms. Eventually, I wandered back into the game room and saw someone setting up a game of Puerto Rico. Apparently, this was the third time that Puerto Rico had been played that day, and I figured I'd step in and get my turn at it :)

The GM explained the rules, and then stepped out of the game so that someone else who hadn't played before was able to get the opportunity. The game was relatively well balanced, with one of the new players keeping up with the experienced players, and one who fell behind early and wasn't able to catch up.

Someone was having a bit of fun with the game, though....they had been playing a vampire-themed collectible card game earlier in the day, and had a bag of red stones. So every time he got a settler in the game, he placed the normal brown wooden disk above his player mat, and instead placed a red stone as his settler, so he had the army of the undead overrunning his island.

It's little touches like that which make playing the game against people so much more entertaining than playing against the computer.

Puerto Rico - If you read my earlier review of San Juan (if you haven't yet, you can find it here: http://gamerseye.blogspot.com/2005/07/thursday-night-metagamers-i-played_30.html ), you already know most of the feel of Puerto Rico, as San Juan is a scaled-down card game version. Puerto Rico has far more bits, though, as there are trade good barrels to represent trade goods (corn, indigo, sugar, tobacco, and coffee), as well as victory points gained for shipping goods (a new mechanic to those who have only played San Juan), plantation tiles to go along with production buildings, doubloons for money, and settlers to work the plantation tiles and the buildings.

Much like before, there are several roles to choose from. A governor is the starting player and makes the first selection. Everybody executes that role, with the person choosing it getting a bonus related to that role, and then the next player chooses a role, and so on. There will always be three remaining roles after everyone has selected, and each of these gets a doubloon placed on it as incentive to take that role later. Then all the chosen roles are returned, governorship passes to the next player, and the process starts again. There are no cards to have hand limits on, nor chapels, so being the governor only means you get to select the first role selection. The roles for Puerto Rico are described below:

Prospector : The Prospector gets 1 gold from the bank. Nothing happens for anyone else. In a 3-player game, there is no prospector; in a 4-player game, there's one; and in a 5-player game, both are used.
Settler : During the Settler role, everyone chooses a plantation from the face-up piles to put on their island. There is always one more face-up pile than there are players. Any leftover plantation tiles are discarded, and fresh tiles are turned over from several supply piles to be a face-up batch for the next settler phase. The person choosing Settler may opt instead to take a quarry, which can offer a discount on buildings.
Builder : During the builder role, everyone may choose to build from the available building tiles that are laid out on a central board. Like San Juan, there are production buildings and there are violet buildings. There are also some buildings that give you extra victory points at the end of the game depending on certain conditions described on the building itself. Unlike San Juan, you can only build one of any type of building -- production buildings are not excluded. If you build a small indigo plant, you can only have that one small indigo plant. You may not build another. Also, there are a limited number of each type of building. Once they're gone, they're gone. The building cost is listed in gray on each building, while the victory point value is in red. Quarries can help here, as they give you a 1-gold discount for each quarry worked by a settler (that is, there's a settler placed on the quarry tile). The buildings are divided into 4 columns, and depending on which column it is in, there is a limit on the number of quarries which may be applied toward the purchase cost. This means that some buildings may end up being acquired for free. The chooser of the Builder role also gets a 1-gold discount, in addition to any appropriate quarry discounts. If someone builds a building that fills their city of San Juan, the game is over at the end of that Builder phase.
Craftsman : The Craftsman role means that goods are produced. In order to produce goods, you must have settlers working the plantation, and an equal number of settlers working the appropriate plants. The only exception to this rule is corn, which has no associated plant. As an example, you have 2 corn fields, 2 indigo fields, 1 sugar field, and 3 tobacco fields. We will say that you have a settler in all except one of the tobacco fields. We will also say that you have a large indigo plant (which can use up to 3 settlers) with 1 settler, a small sugar plant with no settlers, a tobacco storage with 3 settlers and a coffee roaster with 1 settler. In this case, you would produce 2 corn (because corn needs no plant), 1 indigo (because the plant only has 1 settler, despite there being 2 in the fields), no sugar (as nobody is in the plant), and 2 tobacco (because you have one tobacco field with no settler in it, despite the plant being full) and zero coffee (because while you have a settler in the factory, there is no field to produce coffee). The Craftsman gets one extra good of a type they can produce after everyone else has produced their goods. It is possible for goods to run out (either because too many have been produced, or some are tied up on ships or the trading house). In this case, those players don't produce the missing goods.
Trader : During the Trader role, everyone, starting with the Trader has the opportunity to sell a good. The bad news is that the trading house only has four spaces, and worse, can only be sold one unit of any type of good, and then it will remain in the trading house until all four spaces have eventually been filled. At the end of that trading phase, the trading house is emptied. The Trader gets one extra gold for making a sale.
Mayor : During the Mayor role, starting with the Mayor, each player gets a settler from the colonist ship (this sometimes goes around more than once). This is the only time that settlers may be placed on plantations and buildings. You may also move settlers to new jobs -- they don't have to remain where you first place them. Note that no building gets its special ability if there is not a settler in that building. Victory points in red are still counted at the end of the game, regardless of whether a building has a worker. Note that the large buildings have bonus victory points as their function. If they don't have a settler at the end of the game, they don't provide their bonus. The Mayor then gets an extra settler from the supply pile before the colonist ship is refilled. The refill formula is simple -- count the number of unworked spaces in buildings (not plantations). If this number is greater than the number of players, then you place that many settlers on the boat. Otherwise, the number of settlers is equal to the number of players. If at the end of the Mayor phase, the boat cannot have the correct number of settlers placed upon it, the game is over.
Captain : During the Captain phase, players earn victory points by shipping goods on one of three trader ships. Each of these ships has a different number of available cargo spaces, and each may only hold one type of good. On top of that, each ship must be carrying a different type of good from the other two. This usually means that someone will not be able to ship a good at some point during the game. Starting with the Captain, players load all of any one type of good onto a ship of their choosing (or whichever ship is carrying the good they wish to load). This continues around until no more goods can be loaded (players can load more than one type of good during the course of the phase, but only one type of good at a time...if they have another type, they must wait until it comes around to them again). Players score one victory point for each unit of goods that they load. The Captain gets one additional victory point when shipping their first load. At the end of the captain phase, if any of the ships are full, their goods are returned to the supply piles, and the ship is once again able to carry any good as long as the same good is not already on either of the other two ships. Unfilled ships keep their goods through as many Captain phases as it takes to fill them. Spoilage also happens to those not wise enough to build warehouses. Players with unshipped goods may only keep one barrel of one good. Everything else is discarded back to supply. If victory point chips run out during this phase, the game is over.

The key to understanding this game is to know the roles...the strategy will gradually become clear during the course of the game, and of course, there are several paths to victory, by shipping a lot of goods, by building high-value buildings, or by coordinating things just right to cash in on bonus victory points at the end of the game. In my experience, once players understand the roles, the game flows very quickly, and because everyone gets a turn each time a role is chosen, there isn't much down time. While San Juan may be an easier game to demonstrate the mechanics of Puerto Rico, the boardgame is generally a richer experience.

Finally, we wrapped up the games, and looked around at the last few brave souls staying late into the evening to play with us. Game Day was over for now, and we packed up and returned home. I found myself already pondering what I would be running at the next Game Day, less than three months away...

RGC Game Day : I played....(part three)

2005-10-26T22:09:00.000-05:00

I had said some time back that when I ran Pirate's Cove, I would dress as a pirate. Besides, Game Day happened only 9 days before Halloween -- some dressing up was in order! Of course, I was the only one with a costume, although Brent did bring a viking helmet which made the rounds during the games of Munchkin. So I went and put on the whole pirate getup - shirt, poofy pants, sash, tricorn hat, hoop earring, boot tops, leather vest, leather wristband with skull & crossbones, and even a belt pouch with gold coins. Heck, I had spent the prior two weeks growing a mustache for this costume...now that's commitment! Alas, I couldn't manage the eyepatch...wearing glasses does limit you in some ways. I had allowed Dave to play with my hand-puppet parrot, so I had a sidekick, too :)

So I made my way back into the room and saw that I still had about an hour before my game was supposed to start, so I had a little while before I needed to set up. I wandered by the Lone Star Comics table to see what they had set out to kill a little time. They were playing a game they said could be played in 10 minutes, so I could play it several times before I had to get the next game ready. This was when I got sidetracked by the game I ended up buying the next day -- Tsuro...

Tsuro - If you're looking for an interesting, fast-playing filler game that is rich in theme and takes 30 seconds to explain, then you must buy Tsuro. From the design of the rules, to the board, bits, and tiles, this game just oozes elegance.

The rules as they were explained to me are very simple. The rules as written throw me a bit, particularly step 7 and 8 of the turn, and how the dragon tile works. If we ignore that and stick to the core of the game, here's how it's played:

The board consists of a 6x6 grid of squares. Each outer square has two hash-marks on each outer side. Players choose their playing piece and then take turns placing their token on one of these hash marks.

You will then be dealt a hand of three tiles. Each tile has eight endpoints, two per side, and paths connecting one point to another,
four paths per card.

On your turn, you will place a tile from your hand into the empty square next to your token, then move along the path formed until you reach an empty space again. Next, if you formed any paths in front of your opponents, they must move until they reach an end as well. Finally, you draw a new tile, and play passes to the next player.

The object here is very straightforward - don't fall off the path (i.e. don't take a path that leads you to the edge of the board again). If
you do, you're eliminated from the game. If your path leads you into another player (you bump into each other), then you're both eliminated from the game.

If you're directly responsible for eliminating another player (if the tile you laid down forces them off the path or into someone else), then you may exchange any tiles from your hand with an equal number of tiles from their hand, after which their tiles are shuffled into the deck.

Last person on the board wins the game. While normally I don't enjoy elimination games (see my review of Bang -- scroll down...it's in there *grin*) because they can go so long, with only 36 places to put tiles, this game moves very quickly. I enjoyed it greatly, and as I said, bought it the next day. Tsuro is good as a filler game, as an introductory game for non-gamers, or even just to look pretty and see if people ask to play :).

After three or so games of Tsuro, I finally made my way to my assigned table to set up Pirate's Cove. While I was digging out the pieces, two people who happened to be sitting there, apparently trying to decide what to do, looked at the board and asked me how to play. So I offered to run them through a couple sample turns while we waited for the actual start time, and then we'd reset when the other players arrived. During the actual game, there were some intense battles, and I believe someone actually managed to take out Captain Hook (the first Black Pirate of the game). One or two people lagged behind, but it was a very close game for the top three. I ended up winning, but only because I was lucky enough to have some high-value Fame cards from my tavern draws. Of course, I was dressed as a pirate, so that might have turned fortune in my favor :)

Pirate's Cove - Arr, and welcome aboard matey! If you're like me and get a kick out of playing pirates, then this game will definitely appeal to your inner buccaneer. While some of the normal rules can make it difficult for unlucky pirates who lose battles early in the game, as catching up in strength once you've lost it is a real chore, the flow of this game is very smooth (unlike this sentence).

The game board is divided up into 6 islands, plus the namesake cove. Each player is given a colored ship, 4 colored rings, a player mat depicting a pirate vessel, 9 starting gold, and a navigation wheel with an arrow depicting the 6 islands. The 5 outer islands have a deck of 12 treasure cards each, which contain possible fame, gold, treasure chests, or Tavern cards. Island number 1, the Tavern, has a deck of Tavern cards, which include special abilities, a little armor for a portion of your ship, or extra fame points to be redeemed at the end of the game. Each Tavern card lists what turn phase it may be played in and explains what it does. The 6th island is Treasure Island, where treasure chests and gold are redeemed for fame points during the game.

The player mat is divided into 4 lines of ship statistics, with circles that the 4 colored rings are used to mark. These are the sails (how fast you move: the higher the sail number, the earlier in combat you get to take action), the crew (how many cannons you can man: you will be able to fire a number of cannons equal to the lesser of your number of cannons or crew), the cannons (how many cannons are on your ship), and your hull (how many treasure chests you can store at once). To increase the strength of an area, you must be on the island that matches that statistic (#2 for hull, #3 for sails, #4 for crew, and #5 for cannons) and pay a cost in gold listed between each ring position. When on Treasure island, you can upgrade any portion of your ship, but at twice the normal cost.

At the beginning of the game, each player starts with their shiip rings in the second position for all statistics - this is marked with a small skull. The first Black pirate's ship (an NPC) is placed at Tavern Island (#1), and a card to determine which pirate is the Black Pirate is placed with the ship. Players may now customize their ship with their beginning gold by spending and moving their rings. After everyone has finished this, the first turn begins. The turn phases are as follows:

Treasure : Turn over the top Treasure card on each of the outer 5 islands. (Treasure island is at the center of the board, and has no Treasure Card deck)
Navigation : Players look at the available treasure and fame, and use their navigation wheel to secretly select an island to sail to this turn. When all players have decided, the wheels are revealed simultaneously, and player ships are moved to their chosen island.
Combat : If there are more than two ships at any outer island, there will be combat to see who gets to plunder the island. If not, skip to the Plunder phase. On Treasure Island, there is never any player versus player combat...only combat against the Black Ship if it's there. I'm not going to cover the full combat rules here, although you will basically be rolling a number of dice at each other depending on your crew and guns. You choose an opponent, and a section of their ship, then roll the dice. 5s and 6s hit; anything else is a miss. Each hit moves that section's marker down one space. If it goes all the way down, they lose the fight and end up in Pirate's Cove for the rest of this turn. During the fight, you can choose to run away, but you take a chance on losing fame if you do. The fights are resolved in order of the island numbers, until each island has only one pirate. It doesn't matter how many are in Pirate's Cove.
Plunder : Again, in order of the island numbers, the treasure on the card is collected by the player at that island. In Pirate's Cove, players have the option of receiving two tavern cards and spending two gold to bring a crippled section of their ship back to the initial starting position (with the little skull), or getting one tavern card and two gold, which will immediately be spent getting the crippled section of their ship back to the initial position. Yeah, theoretically you can run from a fight and collect a tavern card and two gold or two tavern cards, but in the dozen or so games I've played, only one person has ever run from a fight before being crippled, and that was at the beginning of the game when there was no fame to risk losing. On Treasure island, player drop off their treasure chests for one fame point each. They als have the option of spending three gold per one fame point to their heart's content, or their budget allows.
Upgrade : During this phase, players on ship section islands may uprade that section of their ship, or pay double and upgrade any section if they're on Treasure island. On Tavern island, they may buy up to three Tavern cards at a cost of two gold each.
Cleanup : Okay, so it might have a piratey name like swab the deck or something, but I'm not looking at the rulebook and don't recall the exact name for this phase. Basically, any unclaimed treasure cards are removed from the board and placed in the discard pile, and the Black pirate moves to the next numbered island (yes, he does go to Treasure island, and would be the only fight that occurs there if any swab is fool enough to challenge him. After Treasure island, he returns to Tavern island to start the second half of the game, as there are only 12 turns).

Wash, rinse, repeat 11 more times for a total of 12 turns. At the end of the game, the pirate with the most fame is the winner.

Now that I've covered the basics of the game and told you how much I enjoy it, let me explain some house rules that we've tried and why.

First of all, the Black pirate tends to be so powerful that he is rarely challenged even once during the game. To add incentive, one of the things we have tried is to have him accumulate an extra fame point every time he moves. Another idea we'd had is that if nobody challenges him to claim the treasure on the island he's moored at, then he collects that card and carries it with him. Sooner or later, that amount of booty will tempt someone to risk it.

Next, there's the issue that once you've lost a battle, you often cannot return your ship to being capable of facing the other players in the game, since they just have to hit you twice in that section to knock it back out while you'll likely have to land 4 or 5 hits. In order to combat this and also add a bit of tension in the Navigation (i.e. "guess where everyone else is trying to go and don't go there") phase, we sometimes leave unclaimed treasure cards in place to accumulate. It won't be long before there is some serious booty at that island waiting a brave sould to collect it. While this still has the potential of unbalancing the game in favor of the better-equipped players, we've found they also tend to duke it out, bringing each other back down to the level that the lesser ships can handle themselves against.

Finally, there's the mutiny issue. Sure, losing 2 points of fame and all your treasure can be a nasty penalty for running like the scurvy coward ye are, but there's only a 1 in 6 chance of it happening, so the odds are still in your favor that nothing will happen if ye run from every battle. Now this idea is untried, but in my next game, I may just make it a 1 in 3 chance and see how it affects the outcome of the game.

Well, after that rousing game, I saw that I only had an hour before my next game, so I took the opportunity to change out of the pirate getup (as it wasn't necessary for the next game) and prepare myself for Shadows Over Camelot!

To be concluded.....

RGC Game Day : I played.... (part two)

2005-10-25T22:21:00.000-05:00

So I guide them over to TransAmerica, knowing it will be very easy to teach them, it plays fast, and it offers a reasonable amount of strategy for a beginner's game. Brandy joined us, and the three of us played the first round of the game. By this time, several more people wandered by and we asked if they wanted to play. At first, they said no, they didn't want to interrupt a game in progress, and we pointed out that the game plays quickly and we were only one round in, so we'd be happy to reset the scores. So for the first time, I got to play a 6-player game of TransAmerica!

TransAmerica - If you want to introduce people to connection games, this is one of the best ones to start with (my other pick would be Ticket to Ride, of course).

Simply put, the board is a map of the United States, crisscrossed with a network of lines, both single lines and double lines, cutting the country up into many triangles. The country is also divided into five color-coded (each with a unique shape -- yay for being color-blind friendly) regions, with 7 cities each.

To play, each player chooses a color train and gets its matching start marker. The city cards are sorted by region, shuffled, and then dealt. Each player will get a hand containing one city from each region. The goal is to be the first to connect all five of your cities through a massive rail network back to your starting marker.

Players start with their train in the railhouse, representing 13 points. Choose a starting player, and that player will place their start marker somewhere on the board. Players may start at any intersection on the board, whether or not it contains a city. Each player in turn then places their start marker. Regular play then begins with the first player.

On your turn you will do one of two things. Either place a single track on a double line, or place two tracks, each on a single line. The tracks you place on your turn do not have to be right next to each other, but they must follow a line in some way back to your starting marker.

As the game progresses, you will eventually intersect with another player's rail network. At this point, since their entire network is now traceable back to your start marker, you may now build off of it. Usually, once networks begin to intersect, the round will be over very quickly. Each round is over immediately as soon as any player connects all five of their cities (thus, someone connecting to a rail network may inadvertantly end the game in favor of another player).

Scoring is very simple. The player who completed their network loses no points. All other players must look at the cities they did not connect to, and find the shortest route necessary to do so (if connecting to a rail network they hadn't joined yet is shorter than going around, then it is a valid route. For every single line, that player loses one point, and for every double line, they lose two points.

The goal is not to fall off the end of the track (less than one point). If the game is not over after two rounds, the end of the track moves up, and the game will be over as soon as someone has less than 3 points. The winner, of course, will be whomever has the highest score once someone falls off the end of the track.

That I own both TransAmericaand TransEuropa shows that I like the simplicity of this rail-building game, and since it's so simple to explain the rules, it's easy to get non-gamers to try it, and then hook them on boardgaming goodness. Being that it is a short game, that also makes it an excellent filler, which is another positive criteria in my book, as I usually try to have several filler games on hand.

After TransAmerica was completed, I was feeling a bit thirsty, so I wandered out to the cashier's desk to give some money to Suzanne and get a soda. However, there was a gentleman there talking her ear off with ideas for the January Game Day. I waited patiently, and then handed her a five, suggesting she just start a tab...because I would easily drink 10 sodas by the end of the day. I grabbed two (I figured I'd drink the first one really quickly), and wandered back into the game room.

Back at my table, I found two people digging through the Carcassonne tiles. They said they were looking for the start tile, so I pulled it out of the box (it wasn't in the draw bag :), and offered to play with them and help explain the rules to the player who was new to the game. My wife hates Carcassonne, as she can never seem to get the hang of meeple placement, and so I was eager for a chance to play it. We explained the rules, grabbed our meeples (with a bit of amusement, I pointed out that they are referred to as followers throughout the rules...meeples seems to be a name that someone once called them and it stuck throughout the boardgaming community), and started playing.

Carcassonne - This is an area control game at its finest, although later expansions complicate the rules somewhat. Players choose a color and take their supply of 8 followers, often referred to as meeples. One of them goes on the scoreboard, with zero points to start. The rest are your supply to use throughout the game.

On your turn, you will draw a tile at random (get a bag as soon as you can...drawing from the box lid gets old, and you risk damaging the box), which will contain at least one, and often as many as three, features, outlined in a moment. You must place this tile onto the growing map, as long as all sides match up with what it's next to. Next, you have the option of placing one of your meeples onto the tile, choosing a feature for it to be placed on (if the tile connects to a feature already controlled by another meeple, whether yours or another player's, you may not place on that feature). Finally, you score meeples from any feature this tile completes (your own and those of other players), and return scored meeples to their respective players' hands. Features and their scoring methods are outlined below.

City - A meeple placed in a city is a knight, and worth 2 points per tile the city covers if the city is completed (surrounded by a wall), plus 2 points for every pennant in the city.
Road - A meeple placed on a road is a thief, and worth 1 point per tile the road travels if the road is completed (connected by two endpoints - intersections, or running into a city or monestary, or made into a closed loop).
Monestary - A meeple placed here is a monk, and worth 9 points when the monestary is completely surrounded by other tiles, one for the monestary, and one for each surrounding tile.
Field - A meeple placed here is a farmer, and will be there until the end of the game, at which time it is scored at 4 points for every completed city (regardless of size) that the field touches.

Now, majority can be a major factor here in determining who gets the points, or if they are split among two or more players. Because of the placement restrictions, though, you have to be clever about getting more than one meeple in a structure, or even sharing points with another player. You must place your follower, and then connect the two tiles together later, before the feature is completed. Sounds easy, but you'd be surprised how tricky it can be.

The game ends when you run out of tiles, at which point uncompleted features are scored (cities are worth half, but all other features are worth the normal 1 point per tile, oddly enough.), and then farms are scored. Winner is the person with the highest score, obviously :)

This game can be played very lightly, just seeing where you can get a lot of points for your meeples, or it can be played very competitively, with such tactics as sealing off your opponent's field so it doesn't touch any cities, or completing their roads or cities for small scores instead of allowing them to grow, as well as taking control of a feature they've cultivated. I find it a pleasant strategy game, but if someone is intimidated by even the remotest hint of strategy, this may not be the best game for them. While this is often held up as a so-called "wife-friendly" (I guess they mean "non-gamer-friendly") game, my wife happens to hate it, for the reason I mentioned earlier. As a result, I don't have much incentive to buy the many expansions available, which add new scoring options.

After Carcassonne, the other players dug out a copy of Basari, and I glanced at the time, realizing that I would soon be setting up for the first of the two games I had actually signed up to run. This required a costume change....

To be continued....

RGC Game Day : I Played.... (Part One)

2005-10-24T19:08:00.000-05:00

....and played and played and played.....After all that preparation, Game Day was a big success, especially considering they were just getting started again after a year and a half haitus. Almost every game I played in was full, and several of the games that Brent and Suzanne were concerned wouldn't have enough to play managed to be played anyway. I'll have my commentary on what I thought worked and what didn't, as well as ideas for next time in a later entry. As it is, this entry will likely be a bit long, and I may end up breaking it up into multiple entries, so bear with me :)

The day started on an uncertain foot...one of the GMs had been called into work, and another had found out the day before that he had bronchitis, and also had a test to study for because he lost the whole day at the doctor's office. As a result, it was looking like a couple of tables would each be missing some 4 or more hours of gaming.

I had promised to do an ice run (it turned out we had too much, as the three bags of ice melting in my sink Saturday night would later attest), and stopped for some breakfast....mmm...S'mores-flavored hot chocolate and kolachis. (Or is that kolachii?)

Anyway, I got there a little late to help with the setup in the hall of concessions and the cashier's desk, but went inside to set up the Boardgames 101 table. My idea had been to set up three simple and eye-catching games and just run through a couple turns with people to familiarize them with some of the German board game concepts before sending them out to the main floor to play some of the other games we had available. So to start with, I set out Carcassonne, Tutankhamen, and TransAmerica. My table was looking mighty pretty....it was rather entertaining playing a 5-player game of Carcassonne by myself just to have a bit of board set out.

10:00am -- Game Day Officially Opens!
*crickets chirping*

I look around the room and see over a dozen GMs, but so far, only two players, and they're wandering around like they're browsing in a flea market. After a little while of this, I figure that since it's looking like people are going to trickle in anyway, I might as well join Dave's table and play Oltremare.

Oltremare - Despite the fact that a board comes packed in the box, this is primarily a card game. The theme is mainly trading, but much of the game's object involves set collection. Each player has a hand of cards, and a starting port (where their ship token starts at on the board...their other marker starts at 11 ducati in wealth, which doubles as your score). To determine your starting port, the deck is simply shuffled and then cards are dealt off the top for each player until a named card comes up for everyone. This card goes in front of the player, and is the first "load" of goods.

Now, the key to playing this game is to understanding how to read the cards, since there's a lot of information on each. At the top of each card is a set of flags -- this is your "maritime power" and basically tells you the maximum number of cards you can have in your hand at the beginning of your turn. If you have more than this, you discard down to the correct amount. Discards go into your "pirate deck," which is facedown next to your play pile. On the left side of the card is a series of circles. Some will have symbols in them, and others won't -- this will vary for each card. These symbols take effect when you "load your ship" - that is, play a series of cards onto your play pile. The possible actions are: get ducati, put cards in your pirate deck, get cards in your hand from the market (draw pile), or sail your ship (move it on the board to another port, where you might get a token with special abilities).

In the middle of the card is a picture of what good the card represents, and a set of number just below this picture shows how many ducati the good is worth at the end of the game, depending on how many of that card are together in your play pile (each time you change goods, this total starts over -- DO NOT sort your cards at the end of the game -- the order of your play pile matters! I've seen this mistake in a couple of games). Near the upper right of this picture is a number that shows how many of that good exist in the deck...obviously, the lower the number, the more rare (and more valuable) the card is.

Finally, at the bottom of the card is a set of nets. The number of them tells you how many cards you will load on your NEXT turn. So whatever card is on top is important, as it will control your current turn. Think carefully about the order in which you load multiple cards, as once you've played them, your play deck is stacked single-file...that is, you can only see the top card. You may not look through your deck to count cards...you have to keep track of this when you play.

On your turn, you will first check your maritime power as described above. Next, you'll have your trade phase. This allows you to either buy cards from the draw deck or your pirate deck at a cost of 3 ducati (any cards in your pirate deck at the end of the game are worth negative 1 ducati each). You can also trade cards or ducati with other players at whatever you can negotiate. However, if you do trade with them, then they gain 1 influence point, which is scored twice in the game...once in the middle, and then again at the end, when a certain card appears in the draw deck.

After this, you load your ship with a number of cards according to the top card from your previous turn (or home port at the beginning of the game). The actions are executed, your deck is straightened, and then play goes to the next player.

I like this game, as its elements of negotiation are done in such a way that they don't bog down the game. Once you understand the turn sequence, the play goes fairly quickly, with a handy chart describing the effects of the special tokens you pick up from various ports, and another one telling you how much gold, pirate cards, or market cards you get depending on how many times that action appears in each load. The scoring of influence encourages players to not simply hoard their cards and try to get a longer set in their decks. Many people have complained about the small board, which is why a large-board version is also being released. Personally, since the board plays such a small part, I don't mind the smaller board, but I can see where a large one would make seeing the ports and sailing routes much easier. Sooner or later, I intend to pick this one up.

During the game, I noticed the room was starting to fill up, and people began wandering near the Boardgames 101 table (you know, the post I abandoned to play a game :) I made sure to catch their attention and offer to show them a game, but they demurred, saying they'd wait until I was done. Fortunately, Lone Star Comics was right next to my table, also giving demos.

Finally, we wrapped up the game, and I moved back to my table, where I found people looking over the games I had set up (I think setting up the games tends to garner more interest than simply having the box sitting on the table), and saying they were waiting for another game that was due to start in an hour. They asked what I had to play that would take less than an hour. I said, "No problem! Have I got a game for you....."

To be continued....

Game Design : Cold Spell - Revised

2005-10-18T09:23:00.000-05:00

It's been months since I looked at Cold Spell...I thought it was great that I scored 2nd place in the design contest and all, but it was also a very small-scale contest (I think I read that there were only 9 votes or something like that). And of course, I also moved on to other games, as my attention span is rarely very long (I just realized I still haven't posted the rules to several other games I designed...sigh...)

But I've been contacted recently by Tim Schutz (the designer of the Alpha Deck) with his comments as his groups been playtesting it. He would like to see the game fleshed out and some of the rules tweaked a bit for better play, and then mentioned taking the finished game and adding it to the regular Alpha Deck website. Some of his suggestions were very interesting and got me thinking...and so, here are some revised rules. I still haven't gotten a chance to playtest this with more than 2 people, so I would like to know if it works well with 3 or 4. For now, I'm going to assume it doesn't, and limit it to 2 players.

Cold Spell

No. of Players : 2

Items Needed : one Alpha Deck, one stash of Icehouse pieces.

Object : To form the most valuable words with cards gathered from the playing field using the Icehouse pieces.

Setup : Shuffle the Alpha Deck and deal a 6 x 6 grid of cards (the "board") face-up. Set the rest of the deck aside, out of play. Separate out the Icehouse pieces and set them next to the playing area, for use by all players. Each player in turn will take one piece of each size and place it anywhere on the board as a starting piece. Thus the game will start with 6 pieces in play, 2 of each size.

Play : Determine a player to go first by whatever method you prefer. On your turn, you may take any two actions described below. Both of these actions may not be the same. (For example, if you move a piece as your first action, you may not move any pieces as your second action.) After taking your two actions, if there are less than 4 pieces on the board, and Icehouse pieces are still available in the pool, you must add one piece to the playing area on any non-claimed card.

Move a Piece : Move any upright Icehouse piece (but not those from the stash, obviously) orthagonally up to its number of pips + 1 (small may only move 2 spaces, medium up to 3, and large up to 4). A piece may move through a claimed card (see below), but may not land on it. Also, if a card has been taken from the playing field, the empty space may not be moved through or landed on.
Claim a Card : Choose any upright piece on the playing field and point it toward yourself. That card is now reserved for you, unless your claim is hijacked (see below).
Take a Card : Choose any card that you have claimed, and remove it from the field to place in front of you, along with the pyramid which claimed it (this is important for scoring). This card is out of play until the game is scored.
Hijack / Give up a Claim : Choose a pyramid that is claiming a card for an opponent (or yourself) and either
1. Swap it with another piece in the claiming position. The orientation of both pieces must remain the same when placed on their new cards. These cards may now only be taken by the piece claiming them. Turn them both sideways to reflect this.
2. OR replace a claimed card with the top card from the deck. This action may only be done once per board position -- turn the card sideways to represent this.
Force a Claim : Choose any upright piece on the playing field and point it toward an opponent. That card now belongs to them and must be taken by the end of the game.
Pass : End your turn. If both players pass their entire turn, the game is over, to avoid stalemates.

Game Over : The game ends when all the Icehouse pieces have been used to claim cards. Once no more Icehouse pieces are upright, players must take the remaining cards claimed by them, whether they want them or not (which is why forcing a claim is important near the end of the game). Only 15 cards will be taken during the course of a game.

Scoring : Use the cards you have gathered from the playing field to form words of 2 or more letters. Remember, the vowel cards can be used as either vowel. The blank wild cards are of course worth zero. Each card may only be used once.

In completed words : Multiply the value listed on the cards by the number of pips on the pyramid used to capture them, and add them together. For example, if a 3 point pyramid captured the letter Z, which is worth 10 points, that card is worth 30 points if it was used in a word.

The player with the longest word receives a 20-point bonus. If more than one player is tied for longest word, no one receives this bonus.

Penalty for letters not used in a word : Any cards captured which were not used in a word are multiplied as above, and subtracted from that player's score.

Comments would be welcomed, of course.

Thursday Night Metagamers : I Played...

2005-10-17T08:41:00.000-05:00

Thursday night was fun -- only got in about a game and a half, but that's partly because we spent a lot of time at the beginning talking about military life with Robert, who just signed up for the Navy. Of course, he doesn't actually ship out until April, but he's not living in the immediate area, so he can't always make it to the Thursday Night Metagamers meetings. We'll have to get a bunch of naval-themed games to send with him before he goes....maybe a copy of Battleship..... *smirk*

Anyway, I finally got around to learning & playing Elfenland. This is a fun little connection game designed as a race. The theme makes it an excellent game to introduce to younger players, while the strategy of route planning keeps the game engaging for adults. In this game, you play young elves about to reach adulthood. As a final challenge for status, you are to complete a race. Each player has a marker in 20 different cities around a map. Your goal is to travel to as many cities as possible in 4 turns, represented by collecting your marker as you reach each city. Your movement token is a colored wooden boot, and everyone starts in the city of Elvenhold.

The turn is pretty simple -- everyone first had their hand filled to eight Travel Cards -- these will be used later to actually move around the board. Next, each player draws one face-down transportation token from a draw pile, looks at it, and keeps it secret from other players. Then, each player in turn draws three more tiles which will be shown face-up, either from the face-down draw pile, or one of five face-up tiles next to the draw pile.

After the draw, players decide what routes will be valid for this round. Each player puts a travel token on the board, defining what kind of transportation can be used on a given route, or an obstacle on a defined route, requiring an additional travel card of that type to travel that route. After everyone has placed all their tiles, or all players pass, then movement occurs.

To move, play travel cards out of your hand matching the transportation tile, and move as many times as you want to, using your hand cards up as you go. After everybody has completed their turn, the used cards are shuffled back into the deck, the transportation tiles are shuffled back into the pile, and obstacle tiles that were used are removed from the game. Players then discard unused cards from their hand down to a maximum of 4, and discard any unused transportation tiles down to 1, which may be face-up or face-down. The starting turn for the next round then goes to the next player.

Like I said, this is a pretty straightforward game...I may have omitted a detail here or there, but this is the gist of the game. There's an interesting element of strategy as you try to figure out how to make use of the routes your opponents are planning, while simultaneously trying to sabotage their routes to make them spend more cards and not reach as many cities.

As this was our first game, the scores were fairly high -- I think the winner actually got all her pieces. I would imaging that after a couple of plays, the strategy of when to use obstacle tiles and focus more on diminishing your opponents' chances would take a greater role in the game. I am strongly considering getting a medium-sized dice bag for the transportation tiles, however. I've never liked shuffling cardboard chbits while trying to keep them all face-down. Otherwise, this is yet another Alan Moon success in my book -- so far, I've got Ticket to Ride, Clippers, and Elfenland and have enjoyed all of them.

Next, we got to play In the Shadow of the Emperor. This is a considerably more complex game, and I didn't do too well at it, so I don't think I could summarize the rules as easily. This game has an election element, and is heavy on the political machinations. You have single nobles, noble couples, and families, and are trying to gain control in several secular kingdoms, as well as gain influence in religious diocies. Each region you control gives you a special ability that you can use...perhaps more income, perhaps a doctor's services, or the ability to excommunicate a kingdom's vote for emperor, for example.

This is, however, a game where an early mistake can make it very difficult to recover later, as the game only lasts for 5 turns, and if you lose influence in an area, it can be very difficult to regain it. For example, I got control of a diocy early, but was battling another player for control of a kingdom that gained you 2 extra income per turn. However, he managed to hold control of that kingdom, and not only got the 2 income bonus, but also income from my castles in that kingdom. By the end of the second turn, I had somehow miraculously become emperor, but had no incluence in any kingdom or diocy on the board, and everyone else appeared so heavily entrenched that I didn't see a way to get a foothold to retain my power for more than one turn.

Fortunately, I didn't have to find out, as the coffeehouse announced it was almost closing time. In the Shadow of the Emperor, while a rich game, is not of a style that I am skilled with, and while I would be willing to play it again, I don't think it will enter my collection, simply because political games aren't my usual taste.

Goodbye to The Games Journal

2005-10-12T07:10:00.000-05:00

As of a couple of days ago, The Games Journal has closed its virtual doors, due to lack of contributions. (Their archives can still be found here) Compared to most of the blogging out on the net, the Journal was an excellent source of researched, well-thought-out articles. I only found out it existed four months ago, but I bought a game based on one of their reviews, and then spent plenty of my down time reading through the archives. The puzzles were kind of cool, but I had never heard of most of the games they referred to, so I'm afraid they weren't of much interest to me.

I do know exactly how Greg feels, however. I used to run an anime club, and for something like 3 years, we had an online newsletter, which was entirely driven by submissions from members of the club. Now, we didn't have articles as well-written as Greg, since we did the newsletter mainly for the entertainment of our members. I even put together puzzles and games for it, and thanks to an artist within the group donating his talents to my storyline ideas, we had 16 episodes of a webcomic.

Eventually, though, the submitters went their own way -- maybe they ran out of things to write about...maybe they got bored with the anime hobby, and maybe they had issues with the club itself and left the group entirely. I'll never really know. I also never really knew what people thought of the newsletter, as we rarely got any feedback from the other club members.

Heck, that may have been a reason that the submissions dried up. Nobody knew if anyone was reading what they wrote, and while many of us genuinely like to write, it helps if you know that people are reading what you write, to know that your words mean something to somebody. That's probably why many bloggers are so pleased every time they get a comment on an entry...it gives you the warm fuzzies to know people are not only reading your writings, but are interested enough to engage you in conversation about it.

But back to the subject at hand. The Games Journal was one of the more interesting sites for gaming on the web. Go check out their archives and see what you missed.

Who knows? Maybe if people start submitting again, Greg will consider making a comeback.

Flyer distributing...

2005-10-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

So we had another Game Day meeting last Saturday (hurriedly rescheduled from the previous evening because not enough people could make it), and we discussed many things. Among them was how we would be doing badges -- right now one idea is to try and to 2 1/4" buttons with people's names on them for the pre-registrants...course, I need to order more button backs if we're going to do that.

Heck, it just occured to me it might be amusing to make these buttons as Button Men, with a set of dice stats to battle with the other registrants :)

We also discussed some other ways of generating income to help make Game Day self-sufficient, as well as some preliminary plans for the January Game Day.

And we also assigned out places to go distribute flyers (oddly enough, after we were done and everybody else had left, I went back and noticed nobody had dropped off flyers at the America's Best Coffee that we'd been sitting in for all that time...so I took some off my stash to leave there).

Unfortunately, my weekend had quite a few other errands and such to take care of, and I only made it out to one of my assigned drop-off locations on Sunday afternoon. I went to the Game Chest in Valley View Mall, where I found that nobody there had even heard of RGC. The attitude when I asked them to distribute flyers was as though I was some loser with a club at home trying to get members -- "Well, I'll put them out for today, but if the boss comes back and says to take them down, we're gonna take them down."

Sigh...way to encourage the growth of the gaming community, especially considering how often we recommend that store to our friends and drive the 45 minutes to get there ourselves, simply for the game selection. It's attitudes like that which can make people want to shop exclusively online, save the money, and never support their FLGS.

Anyway, Monday evening, I started cruising around on the scooter to distribute some other flyers. Up at Lone Star Comics on Abrams Road, the reception was somewhat better -- they were out of flyers and happy to take more to pass out -- he just happened to be distracted with a customer at the time. If I recall, they're also planning on demonstrating some stuff at Game Day itself, so they're much more into the event.

Next, I made my way up to The Source, which is a local LAN gaming center on Park Row near Bowen, in the shopping center with the Book Rack. They still had flyers from a month or so ago, but we talked a little bit about what they were up to, and the back rooms, which they're trying to open up to the rest of the gaming community, not just the LAN gamers. They're trying to get a RPG group to meet there, and they're open to the idea of a boardgaming group as well. They have several tables that they say we can rearrange any way we want, and a couple of concession machines, which I wouldn't mind supporting, considering they're offering the space itself for free. It might not have the atmosphere of the coffeehouse, but it could be made a little less dungeon-feeling, I think. Anyone want to start a second game club that meets on a Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?

Finally, I went to the Anime Store, where they also still had some flyers left over, but I caught up on old times with Ray, the owner. I told him more about the Thursday Night Metagamers, and about Game Day itself. I have preliminary interest from him in possibly running a counter to sell items at the January Game Day.

Tonight, if the weather and time permits, the plan is to go to the last two places I was assigned -- 3Ds Comics on Arkansas and 360, and Cosmic Comics on Marshall and Beltline in Grand Prairie.

*note: all of the above locations were in Arlington, TX, except for Game Chest, which is in Dallas, and Cosmic Comics, which is in Grand Prairie.

Okay, normally I don't do this quiz stuff...

2005-10-05T16:01:00.000-05:00

...but this one was sufficiently bizarre, so I figured what the hell...I swear I'll have a normal gamer post soon :)

How to make a throkda

Ingredients:

1 part anger

5 parts brilliance

3 parts ego

Method:
Layer ingredientes in a shot glass. Serve with a slice of lovability and a pinch of salt. Yum!

Personality cocktail
From Go-Quiz.com

Rolling....rolling....rolling katamari....

2005-10-03T18:40:00.000-05:00

I know, I haven't been online lately. I've been playing We Love Katamari pretty much non-stop since it came out, with the occasional break for food, sleep, work, or the bathroom.

Oh, and showers too....wouldn't want to be unhygienic.

As a result, though, I haven't been anywhere near the computer, much less played any board games. I was at the Thursday Night Metagamers session this last week, and we had another go at Shadows Over Camelot.

We were the worst knights ever. I don't think Camelot has ever fallen so quickly. Of course, it turned out that King Arthur himself was the traitor, so what could you expect? In this case, I think our loss was mainly due to poor planning and lack of good communication. We had at least three people out of the seven who didn't quite grasp the code-speak for advising people in what cards were where, or how to request help on a given quest. We also split up and spread ourselves too thin, I think.

Of course, having something like 12 Despair cards near the top of the black deck to screw up the Grail quest didn't help, nor did the fact that Arthur kept suggesting we lay out siege engines to avoid more black cards. He also got the opportunity to rearrange the top five cards of the black deck and did so in such a way that it seriously advanced evil on three fronts.

We never stood a chance.

Afterward, most everyone else sat down to a game of Illuminati, but a friend and I were waiting on a couple of new guests she had invited that were supposed to show up late, so we played Phase 10 for a while, not to be antisocial to everyone else, but to be available to play a game with these potential new people. Unfortunately, they forgot what day the meeting was supposed to be and didn't show, but that's okay....I don't get to play common card games like Phase 10 often enough anyway.

Sometime last week, I acquired Elfenland, and while I haven't gotten around to giving it a first play yet (darn you, Katamari!), I did take the time to read the rules while my wife was watching something on TV that I'd already seen. So far, it looks like an intriguing connection/race game, and I can't wait to discover the fun factor.

This weekend was also my wife's and my anniversary, and one of her anniversary presents to me was TransAmerica. I think she wanted to get me Anno 1503, since I've found I like the exploration and resource collection nature of the Klaus Teuber games, but alas, the local game store didn't have it, and she wasn't interested in driving all the way out to Dallas to get it for me.

But yeah, I'm basically catching up on playing on the computer, and building that anticipation for Game Day, which is now in less than three weeks!

How to Learn a New Game

2005-09-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

I've seen several articles recently that advise people on how to teach a game, but what about those of us on the other side of the rulebook? Here are a few tips that can help you work more effectively with the person introducing the game so that you cana get playing more quickly.

1) Know your learning style - Learning a game is like learning anything else. It helps if you know what teaching method works best for you. Maybe you need to read the rules yourself because you can't remember them if someone else is verbalizing rules to you. Perhaps the way a rulebook is laid out makes it all look Greek to you, so you need an interpreter. Do you only remember something if you see it done? Do you have to do it yourself? Think about any game you bought for your own collection and were trying to figure it out so you could show your friends. How did you teach yourself?

2) Confidence is key - Just as the teacher needs to be confident enough at public speaking to explain to new players how the game works, so you need to have the confidence to speak up and ask a question when you're not clear on a concept, or to suggest that they teach you in a way more fitting with your learning style.

3) Pay attention - Very few people like to repeat themselves unneccesarily. During the rules explanation, repetition is expected as people ask questions. But if the person doing the teaching asks if there are any questions before you start playing and nobody asks any, then it can be somewhat annoying to them as well as the other players if it gets to your turn and you ask how something works that was gone over in detail during the explanation. A good teacher will be patient, especially if the game is complex, though.

4) Watch what the other players are doing during their turn - Not only will this help you remember the mechanics of the game, it will give you an additional opportunity to pick up basic strategy and alternate options for actions can take on your own turn.

5) The first game is a practice game - Remember, the expectation of a good gamer is to do your best when you play, to expect others to do the same, while trying to win. That is the good spirit of competition. However, you should never feel bad if you don't win a game, especially if it's your first time playing. The first game is the learning period when you are figuring out how the game works. If someone makes a particularly devestating move that puts them in the lead, remember it for after the game, as I'm about to explain.

6) Reviewing the game is important too - After the game is over, congratulate people on a game well-played, and then move on to any questions that came up during the game itself. If there was a move you didn't understand, or a strategy you didn't follow until it suddenly bit someone, or some concept that seemed a little vague because it didn't come up often, this is a good time to bring it up and cement any lingering confusion about the game.

7) Above all, BE PATIENT - while it may be nice to say that someone should know a game well before introducing it to other people, it's entirely possible that the person bringing the game just bought it, or they don't learn well just from reading the rules. Setting up the game and playing solo might not help them either. Regardless, there's always the chance that the game will be new for everyone there. In this situation, it's even more important to remember that the first game is a practice game. If you get a rule wrong and realize it later, just remember not to do it again, and remember you can always play the game again after the practice game, when you know all the rules and can play it correctly.

Until next time, may all your rulebooks be well-written :)

Yet more Game Day stuff!

2005-09-20T15:18:00.000-05:00

Well, we had another Game Day meeting, and things are shaping up well. We have at least one game store that reserved a table for the entire day to run demos on, figured out the games that will be running at the Boardgames 101 table, and have an approximation of who's going to be running the BG101 table at what times. We also plan to bring along pick-up games to play at any empty tables, trying to keep things filled for the entire day. We're also already looking ahead to the January Game Day, so if you'd like more people to play games with, head on over to the RGC Website and keep an eye out for when to sign up.

They seemed to like the BG101 essay I typed up recently, and now I'm needing to get with Suzanne to figure out what else she wants to include in the program. We're also planning to contact Mike Ward of the Fort Worth Gamers to see if he'd like to contribute some of his essays (such as "What is that Strange Game You're Playing?") to the Game Day program, so as to use a good essay that already exists, rather than having to write a new one from scratch.

Also, while I may not know many of the other groups playing in the D/FW area, I hope we can get most of them to either send some of their members to promote their club at Game Day, or at least get a roster of webpages, contact information, etc., so that we can include them on a list of local clubs to pass out at Game Day so that people who attend can be made aware of the many clubs that are available.

More for Boardgames 101

2005-09-17T07:24:00.000-05:00

Below is a potential article for use at the upcoming Game Day on October 22nd, here in Arlington. It is intended for use at the Boardgames 101 table. Of course, if any of these classes of games interest you, I've provided game names and links to help you get started.
---

Welcome to the world of modern boardgames! Games have come a long way since we played childhood favorites such as Monopoly, Sorry, Risk, or Clue (just to name a few well-known games). Much like Japanese animation has made its way into mainstream culture, so are European boardgames.

Many of the boardgames you will see here today may seem unusual at first, but you will see several things in common:

They often are finished in 2 hours or less.
They usually involve some light strategic thinking.
The components are of very high quality.
There is very little elimination.

The Boardgames 101 table is intended to give you a taste of what is available here today by allowing you to play some much shorter games (many playable in under half an hour) and learn some of the concepts that are common to many of the other games we will be playing throughout the day.

To begin with, the following list are some of the broad categories of games that are out there. It is hardly a comprehensive list (okay, so I couldn't come up with enough examples of everything :), but it does have the most common. We may not have all of them represented today, and there are some items that are not strictly boardgames, but it helps to know what the other tables are playing as well, right? Okay, here we go:

Area Control Games - In this type of game, you score by having your marker placed on a particular area of the board. Some areas are often worth more than others, and sometimes several players can claim control of the same area. Some examples of this type of game include Through the Desert, Viking's Fury, Oasis, Samurai, and Carcassone.
Bidding or Auction Games - If you are mainly familiar with card games, this term is sometimes confused with trick-taking games in which you bid how many hands you expect to win. This is not the case here. In a Bidding or Auction game, players will offer the game's money, resources, cards, or whatever is allowed for the privilege of gaining a resource, die roll, action, or property within the game. Sometimes the bidding is the focus of the game, and sometimes it is merely one component in a series of events within one's turn. Some examples of this type of play include Basari, Traders of Genoa, For Sale, Power Grid, and Modern Art.
Connection Games - Most train games fall into this category, but there are other games that fit as well. In this type of game, you are often starting from a point on the board and expanding a network. This might get you game money, resources, or points. Similar to Area Control Games, some points are often more valuable than others. Some examples include Trans Europa, Ticket to Ride, Clippers, Kahuna, and Power Grid.
Resource / Development Games - In this type of game, you will usually be collecting resources by either control of certain points on the board, playing cards from your hand, or gathering them through movement. You will then be "spending" these resources in order to "build" the items that increase your victory points (your score). There is often a trading aspect to these games that allow you to trade resources with other players. Some games in this category include The Settlers of Catan series, Puerto Rico, Civilization, and Candamir.
Adventure Games - In this type of game, you begin to get a taste of the Role-Playing Games I will describe in a moment. Typically, you and the other players will have a character that represents you in the game, and you will complete quests in order to move ahead. Unlike a role-playing game, your choices will be very limited, and the players will likely have the same choice of actions, but have special abilities for each character. These games also may or may not be cooperative. Some examples are Runebound, Shadows Over Camelot, Drakon, Ninja Burger, Candamir, and War of the Ring.
Conquest Games - These games pit the players more directly against each other. Much like Adventure Games are a prelude to Role-Playing Games, so Conquest Games are a prelude to Wargames. Typically, you will command some kind of unit, squadron, or army, and you will be attempting to take control of another player's territory, or achieve a particular victory condition, such as capturing a key piece or area. Some good examples are Chess, Memoir '44, Cosmic Encounter, Risk, Axis & Allies, Monsters Menace America, and Stratego.
Word Games - Simply, any game involving words. This may include spelling words, rearranging another player's word to form your own, matching one word to another, or guessing a word. Many party games fit into this category. Some good examples include Scrabble, Palabra, Play on Words, BuyWord, Apples to Apples, Taboo, Pass the Bomb, Scattergories, and Boggle.
Role-Playing Games - Pick up almost any role-playing game rulebook and look at the introduction, and almost all of them give a speech similar to the description I'm about to write here. Boiled down to its essentials, a role-playing game is a game of Pretend, with the goal being to tell a story, and rules to govern the outcome of a character's stated action. The setting of a role-playing game is usually agreed upon, and one player is chosen to be the "Game Master." This person determines the overall plot, the actions of background characters, and the opponents
to the main characters. The other players will each play a main character, defining their skills and abilities within the game's restrictions. They then decide and state how that character interacts with the game world, other main characters, background characters, and opponents. To add an element of uncertainty, many games use dice and probability to decide if a player succeeds at a chosen action. Otherwise, you are only limited by your imagination and the game-world's reality as to what your character can accomplish. Some examples of game systems include Dungeons & Dragons, Vampire: The Masquerade, Trinity, Risus, GURPS, and Shadowrun.
War Games - These are tactical simulations of a battle, some small-scale, some larger. Sometimes the goal is to play out the battle as it really happened, sometimes it is to explore alternate possibilities. Such games may be historical and based in reality, while others may be pure fantasy. Sometimes you can see the entire map to determine your strategy, while other games may simulate the "fog of war," blinding you to your opponent's actions. Some game examples include -- (actually, wargames generally are not my forte. Commenters? Can you give me a few game titles?)

As you can see, there are many different kinds of games, and the types listed above are but a small selection of what is out there. We encourage you to get your feet wet here at the Boardgames 101 table, and then to explore Game Day! If a game has already started, you are welcome to watch and learn how it is played. While the expense of modern boardgames may seem daunting, the price tag is often well worth it, but Game Day and local boardgaming clubs give you an opportunity to try games before you buy them. Take this opportunity to discover what your tastes are in games.

Good luck, and happy gaming!

On the road again...

2005-09-14T21:19:00.000-05:00

Blah....on the road, and the GPRS on my phone is acting up so I'm unable to browse the net or chat. Of course, maybe that's one way of forcing me to write some blog entries while I have the time.

In Game Day news, the time is fast approaching. More ideas abound for the Boardgaming 101 table -- so far, the contenders are San Juan, Tutankhamen, Trans Europa, and maybe Basari. I've now also promised to acquire and run Shadows Over Camelot (so I guess I'm buying that this weekend). The flyers are making their way to people now, and while the traffic is still limited on the RGC website, there is still some conversation going on.

For example, one poster happened to mention that there was a rent-a-LAN game store nearby that had some space in the back for tabletop gaming. I may just have to check them out...and drop off some Game Day flyers while I'm at it.

I also kinda want to see some more standard card games there, but it's mainly the usual Chez Geek / Munchkin fare. Not that I have anything against them, but they're just not my cup of tea...and I don't often see anyone playing Spades, Hearts, Canasta, Rook, Uno, Phase 10, or other "normal" card games. Maybe I'll suggest that as a table for the January Game Day (it's a little late to promote it for the upcoming one). Besides, I'm interested in acquiring and trying something like David & Goliath or the Bucket King (darn you, Dan Bosley, with your clever humorous Misadventures and mentioning games I'm gonna be curious about now....I still haven't gotten around to picking up Pass the Bomb, cause I'd have to order it online...not that I have anything against that besides my instant gratification nature)

Ah well....so many games, so few opponents...

Ooh! Another tagline idea! (makes a note to add it to the list later)

Taglines!

2005-09-13T20:57:00.000-05:00

As I said I would before, I'm brainstorming taglines. Leave comments with any that you liked! Oh, and Coldfoot, feel free to borrow some ;)

As for another idea, does anyone think they'd like me to do buttons of any of these to wear to conventions and such? I have a button-making machine....or I could set up an online store with other stuff...taglines, graphics, etc. I had an idea I thought would make a good button. A picture of a Catan board set up, with the slogan, "Settle this!"

Okay, enough babbling...on to the tagline parade:

May all your cities have power. (Power Grid)

May all your resources be stocked. (many games)

Meeples are people too! ((Carcassonne)

May your bits never get lost. (any game)

Your math teacher lied...all gamers know 8s roll more often than 6s. (a joke from a game of Settlers of Catan)

I'll see your uvuu and raise you two camels. (Oasis)

Meeples mopple but they don't fall down. (Carcassonne)

Dat ain't yo jongg, dat's mah jongg! (Mah Jongg)

The best burgers arrive by ninja! (Ninja Burger)

In the turn order of Life, how come I never go first?

May all your baskets be natural.(Canasta)

Why aren't there treat-taking games? (any trick-taking game)

When life deals your hand, how come you can't discard and re-draw?

Victory points, hah! In my day, we called it your score!

Wouldn't it be interesting if everything had loyalty cards? (Shadows Over Camelot)

If the board don't fit, you musn't quit...just get a bigger table.

So many gamers...so few opponents...

I don't play around when it comes to games!

Okay, off to watch some Tivo, so I'll update this entry when I think of more...

I ran out of bags last night....

2005-09-11T12:09:00.000-05:00

This has been a strange week for me. On Wednesday morning, my wife informed me that she was newly unemployed. Some time ago, her employer had unrealistically raised her quotas, and told her she had 7 days to make them. The 7 days went by, and she still had her job. Her employee review went by, and she still had her job. Then she was told she was on a day-by-day basis, that she wouldn't know from one day to the next whether she had a job. That sort of treatment puts serious stress on people, which means that naturally they won't work as efficiently as they would, had they not been worried that it was their last night.

So, she lost her job. The same day, our roommate also lost his job, although I'm not sure if he quit or was fired. She went ahead and called several of the staffing agencies she'd been applying to and let them know she was not fully available, and then on my advice and seconded by a friend's advice, went to bed (she works nights, so going to look for a job immediately would have been like you working a 12-hour shift, then immediately going out job hunting...too much of a chance for the stress to interfere in the interviewing process).

As fate would have it, one of the staffing agencies had been contacted by FEMA. As a result, without having to go out and pound the pavement at all, she got a new job in one day, and better yet, with a 30% or so pay raise! To celebrate, a friend took us to Tokyo One, where we pigged out on sushi.

This weekend, she plans to buy some new clothes so she has more variety that fits the dress code. I opted to go ahead and spluge and get a new big box game. I browsed through a few, and decided on Power Grid, not because the box art caught my eye...not because I knew anything about how the game was played...not because I had read up on it or saw a good review. I bought it because I had seen it mentioned in some blogs, and just decided to try it out.

It's nice to financially have that "everything is fine now" feeling that allows one to make whimsical decisions like that.

Alas, my wife had to go to work last night, but I talked a friend into coming by to play with me...okay, to be my guinea pig while I figured out the rules.

As it turns out, the rules make the game seem more complex than it is. Since I only got to play it once, it wouldn't really be fair to post a full description and review here. I'll try and work in another playing or two, and it'll make an appearance on Thursday night if I'm in town to go.

As for the title, well, I need to get a few more of the little baggies I use to divide up game bits. I finally ran out with the purchase of Power Grid. I had enough for the six colors of wooden houses that players use to mark the areas they control on the board, but not enough to bag up the resources. Granted, the game comes with a bag that holds all the houses and resources, but I prefer to go ahead and divide them up so that I don't have to take more time during setup to do so. Curiously, nobody seems to mind all that dividing when the game's over and we're putting everything away...that's something to ponder on...

On a side note, I want a tagline! Tom Vasel has a cool one ("Real men play board games."), and there's "May all your hits be crits," which I think is Jolly Blackburn, but I'm not sure. I need a good keep on gaming, or gaming is cool, or I want to game more kinda tagline...maybe I'll brainstorm and make an entry just out of ideas and ask for comments to see which one is the best.

So, with no good signoff tagline, until next time!

Big Gaming Weekend....

2005-09-06T21:26:00.000-05:00

Boy, did I get to scratch the itch this weekend....on Friday, my wife and I went to a friend's place to make characters for a Shadowrun campaign....she plans to run a physical adept, while I'm going to be a decker/face man. The players seem to mesh well enough together, and I'm eager to see how the game will go...of course, he was supposed to e-mail me with some Yahoo group that I'm to upload my character to, but I haven't heard from him.

On Saturday, I went ahead and bought Tutankhamen, and got to play it with some friends. They seemed to think it was okay, and then we went back to watching Penn & Teller's Bullshit -- an excellent show that pokes fun at common public beliefs.

Sunday was a barbecue with the Sadlers, where we discussed a little more about the upcoming Game Day -- what to play at the Boardgames 101 table, how to arrange the schedule, where to go distribute flyers, etc. After that, we played Palabra -- a word game I'd never heard of before, but enjoyed enough that I bought a copy on the spot. Then we played Pirate's Cove (the others soon saw why I posted those variants...poor Brent lost in a fight once, and never managed to come back from it). Of course, we thought of another interesting variant idea -- whatever island the black pirate lands on, he collects that card if nobody attacks him (rather than just accumulating fame). So the Legendary pirate very quickly becomes quite valuable! Finally, we played a four-player game of Puerto Rico.

Monday, we went to visit with a friend who was packing to move, and took a break to play three rounds of Palabra (man, we're hooked on that game....but it is a word game, so it just drew us to it)

I don't know....maybe it's just that on my home computer, I'm so easily distracted by all the other things I could be browsing, or games I could be playing, but my writing muse seems to be slacking on the job lately. I'll just have to sit down and pound something out to work through the darn writer's block. Of course, I have an out-of-town trip coming up, so I'll have plenty of time to maybe pre-write some stuff when I don't feel especially inspired.

Stick with me, folks....I'm not done writing yet :)

Adjacent to one of your countries	$5
Any other open space on the board	$8
If space is irradiated (see "Getting Nuked", below)	Add $1