Gamer Guy

ROBA for March 2010

2010-03-30T10:40:00.005-04:00

Another month, another ROBA gaming session. This time it was my buddy Carl and I, his first time attending. Carl is one of my favorite players to have at the table. He's fun, capable, and willing to play just about anything. This month attendance seemed a little light, and the place seemed to empty somewhat early. There weren't many people there when we left around 6:00. Here's what we played.

Shadow Hunters game components.

We started off with a game of Shadow Hunters. I got a copy of this via Z-Force a couple of months ago and have been trying to get it to the table. One of my fellow gamers at ROBA brought their copy also, and said it was a favorite of hers, and so was happy to teach it. We played a 6-player game. For those who don't know, Shadow Hunters is a game where each player is dealt a character card at the beginning and no one else knows what it is. Each character is either a Hunter (trying to kill all the Shadows) a Shadow (trying to kill all the Hunters) or a Villager (with unique victory conditions.) You need to figure out who is who, then begin attacking your enemies and assisting your teammates. Most of the detective work is done via Hermit Cards. They say things like "I'll bet you're a Hunter! If you are, then take 2 damage." Between the cards and watching the interactions of the other players you need to deduce who is who.

I was a Werewolf, and revealed myself fairly early mostly just to see how the game works. I was the second person to be eliminated after the game explainer, who was a Hunter. One of the Villagers won on a questionable rules call, but Shadow Hunters was fun and everyone had a good time. I'm gonna try and get this to the table at my FLGS this week.

Brass: dry, stuffy and wonderful.

We then moved on to Brass, a game I've owned since August of last year but have been unable to get to the table. It was a 4-player game with 3 new players and someone who had played before a year or 2 ago. It played more smoothly than I expected from reading the rules. This comes from the many exceptions to the rules which don't come up a lot, so most of the time things are pretty straight forward. It took about 2.5 hours to finish, and it didn't feel like 2.5 hours which is usually the hallmark of a good game. I probably won't get to play Brass very often, but I'd sure like to...

Saint Petersburg.

We finished up with a game that's been on my radar for a long time: Saint Petersburg. I'll need to play this one again. I can see the appeal in it and the cleverness, it just didn't really do much to impress me. It's competent but not memorable. I wouldn't mind trying it again to see if I'm missing something.

All told, it was a good time as always.

Container: Economic Terror on the High Seas

2010-03-04T12:57:00.004-05:00

Oh, Container. I've had my eye on you for some time. You seemed so full of potential. People said you were a fantastic economic game, where there was no hidden information, where the decisions of the players determined the in-game economy. This meant I was either probably going to love you or hate you. You might break my heart. You'd never go on sale, though. And Valley Games has a bad reputation for shoddy components and poor customer service.

When tax return time came this year, I decided to finally give Container a try. I bought it along with its expansion (Second Shipment) from CoolStuffInc last month, and I got the chance to try it for the first time last night.

Yellow's ship arrives at the remote island with 4 containers of goods to auction off.

We played a 3-player game. The rules aren't too complicated, and once we had a few turns under our belt things flowed pretty smoothly. The game involves buying factory machines and using them to produce goods. Other players then buy the goods from you and sell them at their harbor store. Players have a ship which can sail from harbor to harbor buying goods from other players harbor stores. Once a ship has one or more goods on it, that player may choose to sail to the remote island where there is an auction for those goods. Since each player gets a secret scorecard at the beginning that tells how much each color of good is worth to them, everyone values things differently. Also, since players set their own sale prices, the economy is determined by the players.

I've only played the one game so far, but I'm really impressed with Container. I'm also pretty bad at it, which doesn't surprise me. It reminds me a little bit of Chicago Express, another game I enjoy and am bad at. There is a delicate balance to the gameplay. Sell your goods too high and no one will buy them. Sell them too low and you won't make enough money. You have to buy machines to produce goods, and warehouses to sell those goods at your harbor store. You also need to keep enough money around to compete in the auctions to get goods for your island. A low bid means you might get them for cheap, but it might also mean that the seller will just match your bid and keep them.

A game of Container in progress.

I feel like I will need many, many more plays to figure this game out. That's a good thing. At the moment, I'm absolutely fascinated by Container and look forward to playing with 4 or 5 players.

Best Board and Card Games of 2009

2010-01-18T10:54:00.016-05:00

2009 was my first full year as a board game geek. As one of my tens of thousands of loyal readers, you know how much I like making lists. Best of this, worst of that, etc. What better time to do that than the end of the year? Note that these are all games that were new to me this year, not necessarily games that were released this year. Note that I stole most of these categories and ideas from Tom Vasel, who runs the excellent gaming website The Dice Tower. On with it!

Best Expansion:

Dominion: Intrigue. Intrigue turned Dominion from a good game into a great one. It added victory cards that also provide coins and card draws, and also added action cards with multiple uses (Do action A, B or C.) These action cards provide some choices during your turn, and make it feel less like the game is playing itself. This expansion also added more cards, of course, which helps every game of Dominion feel unique. Intrigue had some strong competition for best expansion.

Runners up: Kingsburg - To Forge a Realm; Pandemic - On the Brink; Dominion - Seaside

Best Components:

Taluva. Taluva is the kind of game I'd leave set up on my coffee table if I had a coffee table. And no pets. Or kids. It's about building up civilizations on an island full of active volcanoes. It's a nifty, attractive little game.

Runners up: TAMSK, ZERTZ, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects

Best Artwork:
Stone Age. Michael Menzel did the artwork for Stone Age. His artwork is always gorgeous, see Pillars of the Earth and Terra Nova for other examples of this.

Runners up: Thurn and Taxis, Kingsburg

Best Children's Game:

Go Away Monster!: I bought this to play with my 3 year old daughter. It's a cute little game that teaches shapes, rules, sharing, and the concept of turns as well bravery in the face of the monsters that live in one's closet. Avery likes it, which is the most important criteria. It doesn't make me want to run screaming from the table, which is a bonus.

Runner up: Kids of Carcassonne

Best Family Game:

Thebes. Simple rules, attractive components, not-too-long play time. Enough choices that you don't feel like an observer, enough luck that anyone has a shot. Thebes is a winner.

Runners up: Blokus, Sorry! Sliders, Pack & Stack

Best Party Game:

Long Shot. Another fun filled game with simple rules. It can be played with 8 players without the game slowing to a crawl. This game has gone over well with everyone I've introduced it to.

Runners up: Incan Gold, Catch Phrase

Best Card Game:

Battle Line. My wife and I adore this game. It's short (~30 minutes) and it blends strategy (long term plans) tactics (short term plans) luck and bluffing into an amazing little package. Battle Line had stiff competition for best card game.

Runners up: Tichu, Dominion.

Most Innovative Game:

Space Alert. This is a cooperative game where the players are the crew of a Sitting Duck class spaceship, trying to survive long enough to gather data about a remote sector of the galaxy. This game comes with 2 audio cds. You play one of the 10-minute audio tracks and it tells you when threats appear and where. The threats come from decks of cards that come with the game. This means the game never plays the same way twice. The players need to discuss who goes where and who does what and when. Once the 10-minute audio track is done, you go back and resolve all of the players' actions and find out whether the crew succeeds or whether the ship is destroyed. The game is a hell of a lot of fun whether you win or lose.

Runners up: The Adventurers, TAMSK, Kingsburg

Worst Game of the Year:

The Haunting House. The game alternates between rounds where you choose your actions and rounds where you randomly draw your actions. The game is simply an exercise is frustration, where your characters are trying to escape from an ever-changing haunted house. The reward for escaping the house is that you get to stop playing.

Runners up: Torches & Pitchforks, After the Holocaust

Biggest Surprise of the year:

Long Shot. This game came out of nowhere and really, really impressed me. I demo games for Z-Man games, and this was their game of the month. I have no interest in horses or racing, and so wasn't particularly excited about Long Shot. It's really a terrific game, and an example of why a theme doesn't make or break a game for me.

Runners up: Formula D, Blokus

Biggest Disappointment:

Kamisado. I've only played it a couple of times, and this could certainly improve in my eyes. But so far, Kamisado is a disappointment. I had looked forward to it for months and months, and when it finally arrived it felt pretty underwhelming. It doesn't help that my wife did not like it at all.

Runners up: Ra: The Dice Game, Tales of the Arabian Nights

Best Board Game:

Tigris & Euphrates. My 2 best new games of the year are both card games, best new board game goes to T&E. It's a masterpiece whose strategies unfold with repeated plays. It's got layers of strategy, loads of depth and I can't wait to play it more.

Runners up: Steam, Metropolys, YINSH

All in all, a good year.

Note that these images were all taken from stock photos at various online vendors, or by the users at BoardGameGeek.

The Bryan Maxwell Game Hall of Fame

2009-12-24T21:32:00.007-05:00

Every once in a while, I play a game that is an instant classic. It's special, and immediately upon finishing a game, I want to play again. And again. I can hardly imagine a scenario where I'd turn down a game. For me, these are games filled with interesting decisions, though that's hardly an adequate descriptor. After all, nearly all good games are full of interesting decisions (at least in my book they are.) There are many, many excellent games out there, but only a few have this indefinable quality. It's what the French call a certain "I don't know what."

Rather than continue on trying to define something I can't pin down, I'll talk about the few games that I feel this way about.

Agricola

- Agricola. I've gone on about this one in the past on this blog. Let it suffice to say that I've played this more than any other single game, and considering games are usually 1-2 hours, that's saying something.

Battle Line

- Battle Line. This is a 2-player card game where the players vie for control of 9 flags. Control is determined by 3-card hands that get played in front of each flag, one card at a time. The game is a delicious blend of tactics, strategy and bluffing with a bit of luck tossed in. This may be the perfect 2-player game.

Tigris & Euphrates

- Tigris & Euphrates. This is an abstract tile-laying game about building and controlling kingdoms during the dawn of civilization. It's a diceless eurogame full of conflict, strategy and tactics (sound familiar?) Every decision made by every player has large, far-reaching affects on everything that happens in the game. You collect points in 4 different colors based on which tiles are played and where the leaders are positioned on the board. The catch is, at the end of the game your score is equal to whichever color you have the fewest points in, so you cannot afford to specialize. It's definitely a brain-burner, and that will turn some people off. I'm not especially good at the game, but I'm on love with it. Both Battle Line and T&E were designed by the same person (Reiner Knizia.)

Tichu

- Tichu. This is what would happen if you metaphorically threw Euchre and The Great Dalmuti in a blender, and it somehow manages to be greater than the sum of its parts.. Pure awesome. It's the best evolution of a team-play card game I've encountered. Plus, it spawned a few good phrases during our first night of playing it: Giving the Dog, Giving the Bird, and The Flush Bomb. Like Euchre, I love trying to get on the same page with a teammate I can't communicate with. It's wonderful when it happens, and developing a rapport by playing with the same partner for a prolonged time is very rewarding. I look forward to many, many plays of this in the future.

I was going to title this post "The Bryan Maxwell Board Game Hall of Fame," then realized that 2 of the 4 games are card games.

Math Trades: What They Are and Why They're Awesome

2009-11-06T16:41:00.004-05:00

This post will be all about board games and trading them with strangers on the internet. If you have no interest, turn back now. After all, there's plenty of internet out there for you to see.

Still here? Good. Now, I'm gonna get a little rambly here. But not too rambly. Long story short: I found a game on Xbox Live called Catan. Months later I bought the Settlers of Catan board game at Gen Con. The following year I bought a game called Gangsters. I decided to search online for more information about it, which led me to BoardGameGeek. And that was that, I was hooked.

Catan on Xbox Live.

First of all, let me say that these games are nothing like the board games most of us grew up with: Life, Monopoly, etc. Many of these traditional games don't have much depth and simply aren't very good. There are, of course, exceptions. Games like Scrabble, Yahtzee and Battleship are respectable, if not outstanding, games. The last 15-20 years have seen a huge amount of new, terrific board games released. This surge in new games originated in Germany, where board games are much more popular, and are a common family past time.

Scott Alden and Derk Solko have made an amazing website in BoardGameGeek. It's a database of photos, reviews, articles, questions, answers and information about pretty much every board game there is. Best part is, all of the content there is created by the users, so the site is extremely community-oriented. And it's free to all, though they do accept donations.

Through BGG, I found a website called CoolStuffInc that buys Magic cards and sells board games. Their prices are excellent, they offer free shipping on orders over $100, and they offer an extra 15% in store credit when you sell them Magic cards. So I had an expensive new hobby, a place to turn in the remains of my old hobby for a solid foundation of a new hobby, and a site where I could research these new purchases to my heart's content. So long story long, I ended up with a shitpot of new games.

For the most part, we end up enjoying the games I choose, but sometimes all the research in the world is no substitute for actually playing the game in question. There is a trade manager at BGG that involves emailing users with trade propositions. It's a very clumsy system, and while I had a few successes with it, it was a lot of work and not very user-friendly. I started reading up on math trades. They sounded intimidating.

Phat lewts.

And at a glance, it is intimidating. Even the name sounds like a lot of work. After reading a couple of well-written articles and having some questions answered by friendly gamers, I decided to try one. It turns out they're really not complicated at all. They're also a lot of fun. Here's how they work:

- Whoever is awesome enough to operate a math trade announces that they are doing so. They announce a starting date an ending date. He begins a post where people may list games for trade.
- People who want to participate list the games they are willing to trade away.
- Once the ending date arrives, no new games may be added to the trade list. Those participating typically are allowed 2-3 days to decide which games on the trade list they'd be willing to trade FOR.
- Here's where the math comes in. Once everyone has submitted their lists of which games they'd be willing to trade for, a computer program analyzes everyone's lists and spits out a list of who should send which games to who.

The result is a huge trade involving dozens of people and hundreds of games. Here's why it's awesome:

- You can trade games you don't want for games for games you do want. One man's garbage and all that.
- You never, ever receive a game you didn't ask for. If you make a bad trade, it's your own fault.
- If you don't see anything listed that you want, you don't have to trade your game.
- It's exciting when the results are announced to see what you got and didn't get.

Why they're potentially not awesome:

- You have to pay shipping costs. It's inevitable that there are costs involved. Shipping games within the US usually costs between $8 and $15. This extra cost has to be factored in when deciding which games are worth trading for.
- I have yet experience any problems, but if a user decided to shaft you and not ship their game to you, you'd have little recourse. Of course, that user would be ostracized and banned from future trades. Traders are rated much like on Ebay.

Math trades are great fun to participate in. I've sent unwanted games to people who will enjoy them, and in turn received games that my family, friends and I have had a lot of fun with.

Peace in Our Time

2009-10-28T11:32:00.005-04:00

Finally a day off!

I'm at home with daughter while wife is out shopping, presumably for aprons and laundry detergent. I recently acquired a spare copy of the classic game Sequence, so I brought out my old copy and played it with Avery. Not by any rules, of course (she's 2 years old.) I'd draw a card and ask her to find the card on the game board. Sometimes she did it very well, sometimes not at all. A few times she'd place a chip on the board and say "My point! My point, dada!" I never mentioned points, not sure where this came from. She just took her batch of miscellaneous dice, sorted out all the six-sided ones and stacked them in a little tower. She's learning things everyday, which is neat to watch.

My wife and I have been playing some Metropolys lately. I hadn't pegged it as a 2-player game, but it actually works pretty well. She beat me the other day. Other people shouldn't win at Metropolys. We'll very likely play some Ghost Stories tonight, keeping in theme with the upcoming holiday. I'll also be demoing some Z-Man games tonight at Cool City.

I've also been playing some Brutal Legend lately. Not a lot, but some. Video games just haven't been holding my interest for a long while now. This happens with me every so often. Still, Brutal Legend is pretty damn cool. Tim Schaeffer is great at making immersive, unique games with fun dialogue. Jack Black was the perfect choice to voice the main character, and I chuckled when I saw Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Killmeister in the game.

I've been pondering lately. As a matter of fact, I'm always pondering. I think about my plans for opening a hobby shop at some point, probably in a couple of years. I think of how great it would be to work at a job I'd enjoy and be good at. I could work somewhere where I could make people happy, help people enjoy themselves rather than a job where everyone's always rushed and pissed off. Then I think about the economy, my own finances (or lack thereof) and I get discouraged. Of course, then I go to work and think "No, I've GOT to do this. I can and WILL make it work." Because I'm working at my current job indefinitely, and that's just miserable and no way to live.

So I'm slowly working on building contacts in the game industry, figuring out finances and getting prices on rent, licenses, product etc. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It's very faint, but it's there.

If there's one mistake I've made...well, if I had to pick just one, that is, it's college. Big fucking bills I can't keep up with, a degree that has benefited me exactly zero. Sure, maybe it's my fault for choosing a poor program to go into, or for not keeping up with the industry after college. Still, $20,000 debt. Zero return.

Fuck you, ITT Tech.

October's ROBA Game Day

2009-10-21T09:36:00.006-04:00

This past Saturday I went with my friend Charles to my monthly ROBA board game group session. This was my second time attending, and Charles' first. We got to try some new games and teach some new games as well. All in all, my first session in August was better, largely because the games I played that day were much better. I played awesome games such as Steam, Formula D, Metropolys and Space Alert for the first time that day.

Here's what I played this time:

Khet the Laser game in progress. Someone used a smoke machine for this picture to make the red light more visible.

First, Charles and I tried a game called Khet. Each player has several mirrors, some non-mirror pieces and a Pharaoh. Each player also has a button on their side of the board. Each turn consists of either rotating one of your mirror pieces 90 degrees OR moving one of your pieces one space in any direction. You then press your button, which projects a red light. This light bounces off your mirrors and destroys the first non-mirrored surface it touches. The object of the game is to destroy your opponent's Pharaoh. We were both pretty lost for the first couple of turns. Charles soon caught on and started playing well. I, on the other hand, did not. Charles won easily. I admire the game but probably won't enjoy playing it very often. My turns consist of struggling to make a decision, then making a stupid decision.

I then taught Charles how to play YINSH, which I've ranted about before. We then played Pandemic with David (the guy who brought Khet) and his young son whose name I didn't catch. He's probably 7 or 8 years old, and did a great job in Pandemic. We played a standard 4-player game of Pandemic with 4 epidemics. We had the board pretty well under control for the entire game, but we never had a sense of urgency for getting cures done until it was too late. We lost the game when the draw deck ran out of cards. We had 3 cures and - get this - ZERO outbreaks when we lost. Charles remains winless at Pandemic. He's an albatross.

Giza: not bad, not great. There are better games to play.

We followed Pandemic up with a game of Pack & Stack, which David's son won pretty handily. Unlike last time I played, no tables were damaged this time. David and his son had time for one more quick game before they had to leave, and decided on a game called Giza which none of us had played before. After a quick skim of the rules, we started the game. Giza is a game where each player has their own board with spaces for building 3 pyramids and a statue. Each player starts with a hand of 4 tiles, and a turn consists of playing a tile (either onto your own board or an opponent's board) and drawing a tile. The tiles add either good floors (+ points) or shitty floors (- points) to a pyramid, or add treasure to a pyramid. There are also tiles which destroy a tile in play, halt production on a pyramid or add to a statue. The game moved pretty fast, which was good, but felt very random. Everyone kind of took turns getting ganged up on by the rest of the table. It's a pretty nasty, screw-your-neighbor kind of game. It's not terrible, but it's not something I have any desire to play again. David won by a single point.

A game of Manila in progress.

After defeating Charles at Dominion then splitting 2 games of Blokus, it was time for more new games. We sat down with Gary, Jon and Anne for a game called Manila. It's an interesting game that blends bidding, stock manipulation and dice rolling. The heart of the game is playing the odds of the dice rolls. It's an interesting game with a neat blend of mechanics, but it feels like something is missing to me. It may be a little too luck-based for me, then again it makes for a nice, lighter sort of game. Charles started very strong but ended up losing narrowly to Jon.

Cosmic Encounter game components.

Fatigue, hard folding chairs and a lack of real food were starting to take their toll on me by this time, but we decided to hang around for one more game. Gary suggested Cosmic Encounter. I've heard of the game, it's often spoken of as a classic. Richard Garfield (designer of Magic the Gathering) has said the game was a strong influence for him. The game features about 50 or so different races, and which race you end up with will influence how you play the game. I ended up with a race (The Triplers) which makes my weak combat cards strong and makes my strong combat cards weak. Charles ended up with a race called The Masochists. They say if you lose all of your ships, you win the game. I like having all the different races in the game, I imagine they help keep the game feeling fresh for many, many plays. It's a game of making and breaking alliances. Each turn you draw a card that tells you which player you'll be attacking that turn. You then may ask other players at the table to ally and contribute some ships, and the defender may do the same. Attacker and defender then play one of their combat cards from their hand and see who wins. The goal in the game is to occupy of your opponents' planets. Charles ended up winning this game by losing every one of his ships. Cosmic Encounter feels far too random for my tastes, between the handfuls of combat cards everyone has and drawing a card to tell me who to attack each turn. It's also largely a negotiation game, something I don't typically enjoy. Still, I can appreciate that it's a good, well-made game deserving of its reputation. It's just not my kind of game.

All said, I had a good time. It was nice to have Charles along this time. My only complaint would be that none of the new games I played really impressed me much. Still, I can't complain about spending a Saturday gaming. I'd like to think I'll be back next month, but working in retail means the next couple of months will be a special kind of hell for me, and I'm more likely to be back at ROBA in January.

I Have Joined The Z-Force

2009-10-16T16:15:00.002-04:00

This sounds like a team of superheroes. Unfortunately, it is nothing of the sort. What it is, is a group of gamers who promote board and card games from Z-Man Games. Our job is to schedule and run demos of Z-Man products at our local game shops.

We get some goodies in exchange for doing this. My concern is that there is only one such game store near me, I live in a small area and I'm concerned about being able to bring people into the store for this. If this works out, it means increased traffic/sales for the store, free goodies for me and an increased presence for the hobby in my area. If it doesn't, it will be a mark of shame upon me.

I'm thinking about running these demos on Wednesday afternoons or Wednesday evenings at Cool City Games in Port Huron (downtown, next to Alpine Cycle.)

The State of the Union

2009-10-12T10:51:00.005-04:00

The last few weeks have been somewhat unkind. I haven't lost my job, any loved ones or anything like that, I've just been sick. It started off with a cold I got after my wife who got it after Avery. The cold was interrupted by an abscess tooth which swelled painfully, forcing me to actually visit a doctor then a dentist. My tooth being pulled was closely followed my bi-annual allergy attack where all the bad shit in my head/face drain into my throat, making it raw and painful. That seems to be passing, finally.

Lost Cities: a popular card game for couples.

I have not, of course, been too sick to do some gaming. So far I've managed to try a handful of new games this month: Lost Cities, The Viking Game, Uptown and ZERTZ. There was a time when I wasn't interested in abstract games, but that has been reversed lately; of the above, all but Lost Cities are abstract. So far my wife fits right in with the stereotype and loves Lost Cities (I like it too. It's mathy, but quick and full of difficult decisions.) Uptown appeals to the Sudoku fan in me, while the Viking Game is an interesting tactical game from hundreds of years ago. ZERTZ is neat, but will take several games to wrap my head around, I think.

Space Alert: fun as hell!

We also managed to play a few games of Space Alert, which is fun as hell. In the game, the players are the crew of a spaceship (Sitting Duck Class) and their job is to teleport to various sectors of the galaxy, survive long enough to collect data about the area (10 minutes) and teleport back home. The game takes place in real time; it comes with CDs that you play to tell you when and where threats appear, when you're allowed to draw or trade cards, etc. The players must work together and plan out their actions to try to survive. After the 10 minute CD track finishes, you go back and resolve all the players actions and threats to see what actually happened. It's loud, chaotic and really damn fun.

Franzen went from key player to injured reserve as soon as I traded for him. Not very considerate.

While it's the holiday season, which fucking sucks, it's also sports fan season for me (NFL & NHL.) I've been doing fantasy sports for years, and I rarely trade. Not sure why, I just prefer to build my team via drafting and free agency. I went against my gut and pulled off a big hockey trade this past week: I traded Evgeni Malkin for Johan Franzen and Zdeno Chara. The next night, Franzen got injured and will now miss 4 months of action. Fate, you are a dirty bitch.

The NFL season has been surprising so far. I mean, Denver and Cincinnati are a combined 9-1! These teams looked like dogs on paper, but so far so good. On the other hand we had the Browns and Raiders who look like they should be maybe playing in the XFL? Seriously, I respect the Raiders history, and appreciate everything Al Davis has done for the game, but he needs to go. Problem is, he's the owner so he has no boss to fire him. Jamarcus Russell looks like a bust, Darren McFadden can't stay healthy, they gave Javon Walker a huge contract and he was inactive on Sunday. It's so hard to get excited about anything the Raiders do these days. The Browns, well...they looked so full of promise a few years ago. Derek Anderson and Braylon Edwards were Pro Bowlers, they were coming off a 10-6 season. That seems like ages ago now. The good news: they beat the Bill on Sunday. The bad news: the score was 6-3. A fucking baseball score. And you know it wasn't one of those great defensive efforts by both teams, it was a Three Stooges marathon by two inept offenses. Ugh. Terrell Owens must cry himself to sleep at night.

Jamarcus Russell: Just try to complete at least 50% of your passes, baby!

Anyhow, if all goes to plan I'll be able to attend my second ROBA board game group monthly meeting in Rochester this Saturday. It's the only time apart from weddings and funerals you'll find me in a church. My first time attending the group was very fun and welcoming, and I recommend any of my fellow local boardgamers out there attend.

Board Game Review: Agricola

2009-10-02T16:35:00.008-04:00

Normally I cross-post my reviews on my blog, Facebook and on BoardGameGeek. Agricola, however, is the #1 ranked game at BGG and has so many reviews and articles, another one won't do anyone there any good.

Though we always have new games that we play intensely for a short time, and others become regulars in the rotation, Agricola is our all-time favorite board game. I enjoy the metagame aspect of the board games hobby - that is, the hobby outside of the games themselves: reading articles and reviews, looking for user-made additions to print up for use with the games, extra little pieces and mini-expansions, etc. Nowhere is this more evident than with Agricola. The game comes with the following in the box:

- 3 player decks: E, I and K
- 5 boards, one for each potential player in the game
- Many little wooden bits: cubes in 3 different colors representing the 3 kinds of animals in the game, yellow grain discs, orange vegetable discs and a set of family markers, fences and stables in each of the 5 player colors.
- A set of action cards, one of which gets flipped each turn
- A set of Major Improvement cards representing upgrades to your farm such as a fireplace, a well, etc.
- Lots of little cardboard food tokens, and a set of begging cards for those who fail to feed their family.
- Tiles representing rooms in your houses and plowed fields
- A scoring pad
- Badly written rules

I have added/bought/printed the following:
- The Z-Deck
- The Ö-Deck
- The X-Deck
- The L-Deck
- The Through the Seasons postcard expansion
- Little wooden sheep, cattle and boars to replace the cubes that come with the game
- Little wooden grain and vegetable tokens, replacing the discs that come with the game
- Stickers for the family markers
- A dice game spinoff called Agricola Express, for which I bought blank dice and printed up stickers.
- Custom score sheets
- A Plano box to store all the wooden bits

They have also recently released player boards with alternate art. Who am I kidding, I'll wind up with a set of these. Once you're locked into a serious board game collection, the tendency is to push it as far as possible.

Look how far I've gotten without telling you anything substantial about the game! On another day I'd care more, but I'm writing this review which no one will read mostly for my own entertainment, and also to take my mind off the pain from my abscess tooth. My face hurts, is it killing you LOL?!!!1

Okay, Agricola is about farming. Farming the 17th century specifically. In fact, "Agricola" is latin for farmer. It's also pronounced "Uh-GREE-Co-Luh" or "Uh-GRIC-Oh-Luh." Of course, I sometimes prefer the american bastardized pronunciation of Agri-COLA. You know, because Americans are all smart, rich geniuses.

Agri-COLA: It's DELICIOUS!

Now, where were we? Yes, Agricola is a European boardgame for 1-5 players about farming. A 2-player game takes about an hour, with 5 players the game runs as long as 2-3hours, especially if there are new players at the table. You start off with a husband and wife and a 2-room wooden house. Each turn you may take one action for each member of your family. Eventually you can take the Family Growth action to add a family member. Of course, you need to build an additional room for your house first, and to do that you have to spend some of your actions collecting wood and reed. The game consists of 14 rounds, harvests after turn 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14. A harvest means 3 things:

- Your planted crops yield one additional grain or vegetable for your supply
- Your animals make love and have offspring
- You must feed your people 2 food each or take a begging card (lose 3 points) for each food you are short. It's possible to take a begging card and win, but it isn't very likely.

It's a tense game of micromanaging resources, long-term planning and difficult decisions. You score points at the end of the game for having a varied farm. So while you may focus on a bread-baking strategy or an animal cooking strategy to feed your people during the game, if you want a high score you'll need to branch out and try to have crops, pastures, a variety of livestock and a big, stone house full of family members. You'll often feel like you're doing very poorly until the last few rounds. Many people dislike the game for this reason, playing Agricola feels like being an inexperienced juggler. There's always a ball about to hit the floor, more behind it, and you're not sure how you're going to catch them all.

The action cards get added to the board in a semi-random order to help keep the game fresh, and that's where the family game ends. The advanced game adds cards to the mix, drawn from a huge pool and this is where the game really shines. Each player gets 7 Occupation cards and 7 Minor Improvement cards taken from the E Deck (for beginners) the I Deck (Interactive) or the K Deck (complex) or a combination of the three if you wish. There also the aftermarket decks available to help spice things up a bit. There are hundreds of cards in the game, and the real fun is seeing what you're dealt in a given game and finding the best way to make them work for you.

Occupations are just what they sound like: professions (or pseudo-professions) for you to play that give you special abilities and options during the game. For example, there is the Mushroom Collector which says that whenever you collect wood, you may leave 1 piece behind and take 2 food instead. There is also a Barbecue Minor Improvement card that says you may cook any number of animals and gain an extra food for each.

You can often make combos with the cards you're dealt, which appeals to my Magic the Gathering gene; the above photo is from a game where I made an essentially infinite supply of vegetables. It should be noted that I also lost the game.

Every decision has long-lasting effects, and one or two blunders can mean the difference between success and failure. Agricola is not a difficult game to learn how to play, but it's a difficult game to learn how to play well. We've logged 75 plays of Argicola, more than for any other game and, while we don't play it as frequently as we once did, we usually bring it out at least once a month. I wouldn't recommend it to new gamers as it is a bit complex and unforgiving, and the theme may be a turn-off to some, but if you're a fan of Eurogames you owe it to yourself to try Agricola.

Top 50 Games: 50-47

2009-09-16T12:31:00.007-04:00

A few years back, I did a listing of my best video games of all time on our shared blog. The process was fun for me, and I feel it's time for an agonizing reappraisal of the situation. I'm going to redo my personal top 50 video games list and post them here. There won't be a huge number of changes from the last one, as I've been playing video games for some 25 years now.

The rankings are based on my own personal feelings and whims. They have nothing to do with sales, awards or anything else.

Number 50:
Title: Theme Hospital
Platform: Sony Playstation
Genre: Strategy/Simulation

We'll kick things off with one most of you won't be familiar with. Theme Hospital is a PC game (later ported over to the Playstation) about constructing and managing a hospital. You'd start off with a certain amount of cash and an empty building. The game consists of building various diagnostics and treatment rooms and hiring a (hopefully) competent staff to run the operation. You need to make sure your layout is practical, otherwise people will have trouble getting from one place to another. If patients have to wait too long they'll either leave or die, neither of which is good. Your doctors, nurses, receptionists and janitors will work faster the more they're paid, and they'll often demand raises. The game is made by Bullfrog Games (it's a sequel to Theme Park) and is full of tongue-in-cheek humor. Among the ailments your patients have: TV Personalities, Corrugated Ankles, Bloaty Head and The Squits. Theme Hospital also has the distinction of being the first thing I ever purchased online. My mom and I went up to the Yale Library, went to Buy.com and bought the game with her credit card. Go capitalism go!

Number 49:
Title: Golden Axe
Platform: Arcade
Genre: Side-scrolling beat 'em up

In the late eighties, the beat up all the bad guys on the screen style of co-op games were pretty popular. Double Dragon was the first one I remember seeing, followed by things like Bad Dudes and Streets of Rage. The plot of Bad Dudes was "Ninjas have kidnapped the President. Are you BAD enough to rescue him?" How awesome is that? Anyhow, the best of these games was Golden Axe. You got to choose a character at the beginning from the male warrior (average at everything) the female warrior (poor at combat, powerful magic spells) or the dwarven warrior (weak magic, powerful combat.) I typically chose the dwarf. There was a story about Death-Adder and killing your parents or innocent villagers or some such nonsense. It was an excuse to run from stage to stage killing bad guys. Along the way there were mounts you could ride like dragons or weird lizard/bird hybrid monsters. In between stages you would make camp and sleep, and while you were sleeping little midgets would come and rob you. You got to chase them around and kick them until they gave your stuff back. If you beat the game, it showed the monsters coming out of the arcade cabinet and chasing you down the street. On the screen, I mean. Not in real life. Great game.

Number 48:
Title: Paper Mario
Platform: Nintendo 64
Genre: Roleplaying Game

If I had more memory of it, this spot would probably be held by Super Mario RPG for the Super Nintendo. I don't recall anything about the game other than the fact that I loved it. My sister, however, let her then-boyfriend borrow it some 15 years ago and it disappeared into the abyss. I do still own, remember and enjoy Paper Mario however. It's one of the (very) few good N64 games. Paper Mario had the typical Mario story of the princess being kidnapped by Bowser, and Mario needing to rescue her. The game is written with a good degree of humor, and definitely not afraid to poke fun at itself which is always welcome. It's a turn-based RPG with some timing thrown in, so you can score some bonus damage if you hit a button at just the right time or if you rotate the analog stick just right. That sort of thing helps keep the combat more involved than many old-school RPGs. If you like Mario and RPGs, odds are pretty good you'd like Paper Mario. It's also available for download on the Wii for a reasonable price.

Number 47:
Title: Tetris
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System
Genre: Puzzle

If I were basing the list on worldwide appeal and impact on the gaming industry, Tetris would probably be number one. It would certainly be in the top 5. After all, it is largely responsible for the success of the original Nintendo Gameboy, which helped get us where we are - with handhelds like the DS and PSP becoming major players in the video game industry. Every knows it, everyone knows how to play it, and I'd bet that people will still be playing it in 50 years. How many other games could you say that about?

Game Review: Attika

2009-09-05T09:58:00.007-04:00

What's in the box?

The game consists of several discs made up of hex spaces, a deck of small cards and a rule book. Each player also gets a player sheet to keep track of their buildings and 30 discs representing those buildings. The components are pretty good quality, and the aesthetic of the game really works for me. The cards are smallish, similar in size to the original Ticket to Ride cards. There isn't much information to be displayed on them, so the size works fine in a functional sense, they're just a little awkward to shuffle for those of us with big hands.

Everything that comes in the box with Attika

How long does it take to play?

Our 2-player games of Attika take about 45 minutes. If someone is sneaky enough (or if their opponent is careless enough) they can win the came more quickly, and likewise if one of the players is AP prone, the game could take longer.

How does the game end?

There are two ways to win the game:

- be the first to place all 30 of your buildings on the board or
- be the first to have a chain of buildings reaching from one shrine to the other (the game starts with a shrine marker at each end of the board.)

How does it work?

At the beginning of the game, you divide your building tokens into 4 random, face down stacks and deal resource cards to each player. You then randomly choose 4 pieces to build the game board from, placing a shrine marker at each end. The building tokens each have a list of the resources needed to build them, these resources correspond to the resource cards in your hand and the resource symbols on the game board. The resources are water, forests, hills and mountains.

To play a building on the board, you pay its cost in resources by placing it adjacent to those resources on the board and/or paying resource cards from your hand. You'll spend your turns drawing more building discs from your supply and either placing them on the board or on your player mat for use in future turns. There are ways to play building without paying any resources if they're built in a certain order, and placing certain clusters of buildings together gets you an amphora token, which can be spend to take an additional action. As you begin exhausting your supply of building tokens, you start adding additional sections to the board. In this way, it is possible to open new routes to the shrines that were previously blocked off.

Of the two winning conditions, I initially believed the 'place all 30 of your buildings' to be the much more common way to win - our first 3 games all ended this way. It seemed pretty easy to block an opponent from connecting the 2 shrines, but subsequent plays have shown that it is quite possible to connect the shrines, you just have to be crafty about it and do a bit of planning ahead. If your opponent isn't vigilant about blocking you early on in your progress, you can surprise them with some solid planning. One could focus on trying to connect the shrines, or focus on trying to place their buildings as cheaply as possible in an attempt to play them all quickly. Most games so far have been a mix of the two.

A 2-player game of Attika in progress

Who will enjoy this game?

Those who are looking for a quick, intelligent tactical game will find what they are looking for here. There is definitely a strong "take that" aspect to the game as well. The game rewards adaptation as well. It's nice to try to form a plan, but it's important to keep an eye on your opponent as well.

Who won't enjoy this game?

Those who don't like having their plan interrupted may be frustrated with the game. I can see how some would consider the game to be a bit dry as well. The art style may put some people off too, I suppose. There is a little bit of luck of the draw between drawing your buildings and drawing cards from the deck, but I don't see this causing any big swings. Indeed, I'm not sure I can imagine a loss in Attika I didn't have a chance to prevent.

What I liked:

I love the reactionary play of the game. Trying to find a balance between accomplishing my goals and thwarting yours is the meat and potatoes of Attika. I've had a game or two where I thought I knew what my wife was up to, figured I could wait a turn or two before trying to stop her and got surprised. Likewise, I like trying to hold back amphoras and resource cards until I can make one big push in a single turn and ambush my opponent.

What I didn't like:

The back side of the player mats and board pieces look like big Q-Bert boards and make my eyes hurt.

A close up of a Corinth player mat

The bottom line:

I love Attika. My wife likes it too. It feels like there is room to grow and learn as we play more games of it. You can learn new strategies from your opponent and incorporate them into your own play. The game feels like a race where you're always trying to trip each other. The game's aesthetic is simple and beautiful. I'm curious how this game will work with 3 or 4 players, but It's becoming a staple for my wife and I. It seems every time we sit down to game, she requests Vikings and I request Attika. Win/win.

Cool City Games in Port Huron

2009-09-04T09:33:00.002-04:00

Just a quick shout out to my Friendly Local Game Shop, Cool City Games in Port Huron. I'm typically there playing board games on Wednesday nights, I know they have Thursday night Magic events, I believe they have open gaming on Friday and Saturday nights as well. They sell Magic, board games and sports cards. They are located at 724 Huron Avenue (next to Alpine Cycle.)

Stop by and say hi sometime!

A Game Day with a New Group: Hello ROBA!

2009-08-30T09:08:00.011-04:00

All things considered, I get to game quite a bit. Not as much as I'd like, but quite a bit. I have a group that gets together for a couple of hours every Wednesday night, and my wife and I usually game a few nights a week (I love my woman.) I recently had the opportunity to change things up a little. There's a local gaming group called ROBA (Rochester/Oakland Boardgamers Association) that meets on the last Saturday of each month for a day of gaming. It's about a 75 minute drive for me, which is on the outer edge of how far I'd be willing to drive to attend. I've known about the group for a few months, but never had the day off work to attend until yesterday.

My wife and I were planning on attending together, but we were unable to find a babysitter for our daughter so that wasn't possible this time. This is significant for a couple of reasons:

- This meant I'd be driving to an unknown location alone. My direction sense isn't the best, and the prospect of getting lost without a navigator is a little distressing to me. Also:

- This meant I'd be walking into a room filled with people I'd never met, alone. I tend to be more of the hermit type of person, so interjecting myself into a crowd of people who would be familiar with each other was a little intimidating.

My wife urged me to go and have fun, and I'm very glad I did. Google Maps didn't let me down, I had no issues getting there or back. I even encountered a new road phenomenon, the Traffic Circle, along the way. Well, okay, I've seen one in Indianapolis, but this was my first time encountering them in the wild. Anyhow, I arrived at about 1:45 at St Luke's Church for the event.

Middle-Earth Quest by Fantasy Flight

My first impression upon walking in was that it wasn't anything big or extravagant, and I mean that in a good way. There were about 10 tables in the room for gaming, and a table up front with community games. People also placed their own games on the table up front with their names on them so others could use them if desired. This seems to run on the honor system, but it put off a good vibe to me. I'm the trusting type.

The first game I saw upon arriving was Fantasy Flight's new Middle-Earth Quest. I briefly considered asking if I could get in on the game, as they were just setting up, but decided against it. The game covers a little-known time period in the Lord of the Rings story, the time between Gandalf leaving the ring with Frodo and when he returns to start Frodo on his long journey. It appears to be a very short time, maybe a few days or weeks in the movie, but in the story it's actually 17 years if I remember correctly. It's nice to see a game covering this lesser known portion of the Tolkien mythos rather than the usual stuff we're all familiar with.

I pasted a name tag (HELLO MY NAME IS) to my shirt and walked around a bit, looking at the games going on and examining the games table at the front of the room. One table was playing Sylla, and another group was starting a game of Age of Conan. "It's a wargame!" he said while drafting players. That was enough for me to pass. I approached a guy named John and told him I was new to the event. He pointed me in the direction of Gary, the organizer of ROBA. He was just wrapping up the game he was playing (I didn't catch which game it was.) He explained the lay of the land and invited me to join him for a game.

Steam. This is NOT a picture of the actual game from yesterday. The picture shows a 3-player game. Yesterday's game had 5 players, and the board was MUCH more crowded.

He wanted to start up a game of Steam, which I was eager to play since I bought a copy at Gen Con but haven't had a chance to try it yet. It's a pretty deep and intimidating game, and I'm glad I had someone teach me as opposed to trying to learn the game on my own. Each turn consists of choosing one of 7 actions for the turn (which also determine player order for next round.) You then build track, then ships goods and/or improve your locomotive. You start the game with no money and have to take loans and go into negatives immediately. The game feels very much like Agricola for me, with the limited number of actions and especially the feeling of being behind where you want to be for most of the game. Every decision you make affects your future decisions and affects the other players at the table. The game has loads of depth, and I'm eager to play again. I was very far behind for about 80% of the game (at one point all 4 other players were at 0 or above on the income track while I was at -6.) I ended up making a late game surge and tying for (a distant) second. Very impressive game. We played the basic game. I don't think I want to move on to the advanced game for a bit.

A game of Formula D in progress.

After Steam, Gary wanted to play Formula D. I'd never played any racing games until I tried Snow Tails at Gen Con this month. I have no interest in real life racing, so that genre of board games has held no appeal for me. I walked around the room a bit, but everyone else was currently in a game. I decided it wouldn't hurt to try Formula D. We ended up with 5 players, and I rolled high to get the pole position. Each turn you start off by shifting up or down 1 gear if you wish. You roll a different die based on which gear you're in. For instance, everyone starts in 1st gear, which will move 1-2 spaces. 2nd gear gets you 2-4 spaces, all the way up to 6th gear which I believe is 22-30 (there was no place on the map we used for 6th gear.) The corners on the board are outlined, and you have to end your turn within the outline or you take tire damage. Some corners require you to end 2 turns within the corner, which requires some luck along with downshifting at the right time. One guy blew through a 2-stop corner all on one turn without stopping and wrecked his car. I had the lead for most of the race, until near the end when I rolled high and overshot a corner and spun out. When that happens you have to start in 1st gear again. I was able to hang on and win. This game was a lot more fun than I expected, and it's now on my wish list. We played on the Chicago/Sebring expansion board.

After Formula D, one of the guys had a Formula racing card game he really wanted to try, so we played Formula Motor Racing next. It was brief and simple, but I didn't care for it. There's a small board with 12 cars, 2 in each color. Players take turns playing cards to advance a car, crash a car, slow down a car, etc. When the game ends you score points based on the position of your 2 cars. It seems like holding onto one or 2 good cards until the end of the game is the way to go, with the last player having a big advantage. This was the only dud I played at ROBA.

Metropolys. It's good!

Gary brought out a game called Metropolys next. I'd read about it on BoardGameGeek and was glad to give it a try. It's an odd sort of auction game about placing buildings in zones around a city. Each player starts with 13 buildings numbered 1-13. The first player places a building in a zone, then each player in turn must pass or place a higher numbered building in a zone adjacent to the previous building placed. Whoever placed the highest numbered building leaves it on the board and everyone else picks their bids/buildings back up. Players are given secret objectives like trying to claim zones next to statues, or zones on each side of a bridge for example. This is a crafty, sometimes nasty little game. Metropoloys really clicked with me, and I'm planning acquiring it at my next opportunity. It didn't hurt that I won, either. The only thing I disliked about the game is the look of the board. It looks very muddled, messy and hard to sort out at a glance.

Incan Gold

By this time it was about 7:00. The players at the table (Gary, Cherish and Ross?) were wanting to play with Matt, who was almost done with his game (remember that game of Middle-Earth Quest that was starting up when I arrived at 1:45? It was almost done at 7:00.) Gary suggested a quick game called Incan Gold. Each player is a treasure hunter, and each card flipped represents either a treasure or a hazard. After each card, we individually decide whether to stay inside the temple or flee. If 2 of the same hazard cards come up, the players still in the tomb die and lose their treasure. If you leave the temple, you keep what you've amassed but do not get a share of any new treasure for that round. The game consists of 5 rounds and plays in about 20 minutes. It's a simple, fun push-your-luck game. Ross (I hope I'm not getting his name wrong) won the game; I chickened out too early a few times and finished last.

Space Alert!

Matt was done with Middle-Earth Quest, so it was time for the last game of the evening, one I've been excited about since I bought it a couple of months ago: Space Alert. It's a cooperative game that takes place in real time. Players take on the role of a crew manning a Sitting Duck Class spacecraft. The game comes with audio CDs that accompany the gameplay; a 10 minute audio track plays that tells you when a threat appears (draw a card from the threat deck) which part of the ship is under attack (left, right or center) and at what point it appears round 2, round 5, etc.) The threat cards have different movement speeds and attacks on them, and you want someone firing the cannons at them during their attack. So if a threat is attacking the left side of the ship, you want to make sure someone is manning the guns on that side. Of course, you need to have enough energy to fire the guns, so someone should be sure there is enough energy to charge the guns and shields. If that part of the ship looks like it is going to take damage, someone should probably recharge the shields. The guns and shields pull from the same energy sources, so the crew needs to be careful. After the 10 minute audio track has finished, you then reset the board to how it looked at the beginning and resolve the players actions and the threat cards to see what actually happened. It's a unique, very cool game. Teamwork and coordination are the keys to success, and it seems like it'd be hard for one player to 'take over' the way some people tend to do with co-op games. There's just too much going on. I'm looking forward to playing again and hopefully winning one!

All told, I had a great time at my first ROBA session and, while it looks like I will be unable to attend next month, I plan on becoming a regular attendee.

I should note that, as usual, these photos are taken from BoardGameGeek and were not taken by me.

Monuments: Look at the Size of Those

2009-08-24T23:31:00.005-04:00

Every year at Gen Con (well, the last 3 years now) we demo a bunch of games at the Mayfair Games booth. In exchange they give us a 50% off coupon and we buy stuff from them. This year, however, I attended the convention as a much bigger, more prepared board game nerd than ever before. I was enough of a nerd that I recognized every single game being demoed at their booth except one: Monuments.

My expectations were low. After all, I typically research a game pretty heavily on BoardGameGeek before I buy it and I'd never heard of Monuments. That means it isn't ranked highly enough to have caught my attention, and hadn't created any kind of a stir. Much to my surprise, the game was really good. Good enough that I used my 50% off coupon to buy it. It's a card game where you collect and play sets of monuments and reduce other players' sets of said monuments. There are some clever play mechanics and scoring rules at play as well.

After buying the game, I went to Board Game Geek and found it. It was ranked pretty low. The general consensus seemed to be that it's a boring, bland game. I can see how people would feel that way. Playing the game makes me feel old. It has a very quaint look to the art; the colors are fairly muted, the box cover and card backs show some dude hunched over at a desk scribbling on some parchment next to a stack of papers. I find it peaceful and relaxing, largely due to the aesthetics of the game. I feel like I should be sitting in my den which I don't have next to the fireplace I don't have smoking a pipe which I don't have while playing this game.

I played a 2-player game of Monuments for the first time tonight with my wife. I must say the game is lacking in the head-to-head play department. Fewer players means fewer people to swipe at during your historian turns. It also does away with the limits on the number of players that can build a given monument. Granted, I didn't see the official 2-player rules in the back of the rulebook until the game was almost over, I don't think it'd make a difference.

Sadly, Monuments will probably be a 3 or 4 players only game for me, which means it'll be relegated to waving it's arms, trying to be chosen for Wednesday game nights among its brethren on my board game shelves. No matter, I still like the game.

Post-Gen Con: New Games in the Library

2009-08-21T09:15:00.006-04:00

I returned from Gen Con this past weekend with a shitpot of new games. It'll be quite some time before I'm able to try them all I'm sure (especially with a few longer, more complex games like Steam and Brass.) The ones I've tried so far have been pretty successful.

Pack & Stack

A few of the new games are the exact opposite of the ones listed above: easy to teach, quick to play games. Pack & Stack is one of those games that people are skeptical about until they actually play it and see how much fun it is. Between the name and the cartoony artwork it definitely looks like a kids game, but it's fun for adults too. Each round consists of rolling colored dice to see which blocks you take and how many of each. Everyone then draws a truck tile upon which to stack your blocks. Each truck has different dimensions for height and shape that limit how the blocks may be stacked on it. You lose points for each empty space on your truck and for each block you are unable to place on your truck. Each person starts with 75 points and play continues until one player has lost all of their points. The game requires spatial thinking and the ability to quickly recognize which available truck will suit your blocks best then grab it before anyone else does. I wouldn't play it all day long, but it's a nice quick filler.

A couple of green cards from Fairy Tale. The one on the left forces you to flip a dragon card face down, the one on the right lets you turn a face-down dragon card face up.

I had planned on trying and possibly buying Pack & Stack at Gen Con. Fairy Tale, on the other hand, was an impulse buy. I'd heard of the game and knew it had a little cult following but that's about it. I'm not sure what compelled me to buy it at Z-Man Games' booth at Gen Con. Mybe it was the colorful artwork. Maybe it was the $10 price tag. Regardless, I'm glad I did pick it up. Much like Pack & Stack, it can be taught and played in about 10-15 minutes. Fairy Tale has more depth than Pack & Stack though. It is a card game where in each round, each player draws 5 cards, chooses 1 to keep and passes the rest to the player next to them. This process is repeated until each player has chosen and kept 5 cards. The game ends after 4 rounds. The cards have varying point values and abilities such as "when you play this card turn another card face down" or vice versa. I think this one's going to become a regular at game night.

A game of TZAAR in progress.

Continuing with the simple rules/quick play theme, we have TZAAR and YINSH, 2 games in the GIPF abstract game line. These games scratch the same itch as Chess in a fraction of the time. These are the kind of game you want to play many times against the same opponent to watch how the strategies and gameplay eveolves. I plan on eventually picking up the other games in the series.

YINSH in progress.

All said, the news games are good so far. I typically do research before I buy and it pays off well. I'll another mini-review thingy once I play a few more new ones. Until next time, kids.

It should be noted that none of these photos were taken by me.

I'm doing science and I'm still alive.

2009-08-19T10:29:00.007-04:00

Okay, so maybe I'm not doing science. But I am still alive. I haven't updated this blog in about 8 months, due in part to the fact that there is no one there to read it (I never advertised it's presence anywhere) and partly due to my lack of motivation. I'm great at talking myself out of things, after all.

Part of Fantasy Flight Games' booth at Gen Con.

Anyhow, I just got back from my annual journey to Gen Con a few days ago. I return to work tomorrow. These are 2 somewhat depressing pieces of data. I did have a great time, however. Most of my usual group wasn't able to go this year, but the new guys I went with had a good time. We had a stranger I found online in our room to help offset hotel costs (which didn't end up being high in the end.) He was a little odd, but didn't kill, rape or rob us so I consider the experiment a success.

I spent a good bit of cash, and got a huge amount of product to pack into the already-crowded van for the ride home. CoolStuffInc, my online retailer of choice, had a booth there as well. They had a selection of "ding & dent" board games being sold below their already low prices due to very minor box damage. I bought Steam, Pack & Stack, Age of Empires III and In the Year of the Dragon from them. I got to meet the owner of CoolStuffInc as well, which was cool.

Speaking of meeting people, I met Zev Shlasinger (owner of Z-Man games,) Jason Hill (creator of Last Night on Earth,) and Jay Tummelson (owner of Rio Grande Games.) Rio Grande Games had a room set up where people could play demos of their games all weekend. Jay was looking at board game prototypes all weekend. My goal is to have a prototype to show him by next year. GAME ON.

A table of reasonably intelligent people failing to win a cooperative board game.

We also picked up On the Brink, the expansion for Pandemic. My friends and I have played 6 games of it over the last couple of days and have lost 6 times. We also played some Dominion at the con; if there was a hot game this year, Dominion was it. I saw many people walking around with newly purchased copies of the game and Intrigue (it's expansion.) It's a non-collectible card game that may appeal to recovering Magic the Gathering junkies.

All in all it was a good time. On the way home everyone was talking about plans for coming back next year. Tonight I'll take some new games to the hobby shop for our weekly game night. Tomorrow I'll be back at the job I hate but am lucky to have in this failing economy.

We also saw a guy that looked just like Walter from the Big Lebowski:

It's Christmas Time

2008-12-24T00:30:00.002-05:00

The holiday season has descended upon us. The last month has seen the acquisition of still more board games as well as a couple of new video games: Civilization Revolutions for Xbox 360 and Spectromancer for the PC. That last one gently caresses the part of my brain that likes Magic and Culdcept. It's not perfect, but when you're twitching, digging through the trash hoping to find a half-smoked cigarette butt, you take what you can get.

I've been posting board game reviews over at BoardGameGeek, and recently found a new online game store that offers store credit in exchange for game reviews and articles. I've written my first one, and if all goes well I'll be writing a lot more for them.

I'll be having another game day in a few days while my friend Charles is home. It will be a welcome event after working for several days, having a likely busy Christmas Eve/Christmas Day followed by several more days of work. Fuck working retail. God. Just...fuck.

In other news, a strange thing happened tonight. You see, in our living room we have a vent in the wall that leads directly outside. There is a door that can be opened or closed with a chain. I never really understood the functionality of it, but I didn't need to. I left it alone and it left me alone. It's the same sort of relationship I have with many things. Trees, for example. Anyhow, tonight a fan inside the vent suddenly kicked on out of the blue. It's been on for about 3 hours with no signs of stopping. There is neither warm air nor cold air coming out of it. I do not know what activated it or how to make it stop. Oddly enough, the sound drives me crazy while my wife barely notices it. I feel like I'm in a supernatural mystery story. Great Old Cthulhu stirs in his slumber and my fan kicks on.

My buddy Fons let us borrow Firefly and Serenity. We got around to watching the pilot of Firefly the other night and it was pretty good. Space cowboys are a bit odd, but that's ok.

I'd like to post here more, but posting over at BGG where it might actually be read by humans is a nice change. You brought this upon yourself, internet.

Merry Christmas!

Board Game Review: Mr. Jack

2008-11-24T12:47:00.008-05:00

Last week I did my first board game trade (Thanks Boardgamegeek!) I got rid of Galaxy Trucker and picked up Guillotine and Mr. Jack. Guillotine is a fun, light and easy card game, and Mr. Jack is a 2-player strategy game that plays in about 30 minutes.

In Mr. Jack, there are 8 investigators out searching the streets for the infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper. One of the investigators secretly is Jack the ripper, and one of the players plays the detective who is trying to reveal Jack's identity while the other player takes on the role of Jack, attempting to keep his identity secret and, if possible, slip away in the night and escape.

What's in the box?

This is what you'll find inside the box.

The $30 asking price might feel like a bit on the high side for some, but I think it's about right. You get the game board, 9 wooden tokens (8 characters plus a marker to keep track of which round it is,) 8 character cards and 8 alibi cards. The cards are high quality and feel very durable, I have no doubt they'll hold up well for a long time. The Mr Jack Extension sounds like a different story, as I'd be hard pressed to pay $20 for 5 new characters.

How long does the game take to play?

Mr. Jack tends to last around 30 minutes. It can end quickly in a few unusual circumstances, or could run longer if one or both players have a tendency to over-analyze the board, but a half hour seems to be the sweet spot.

How does the game end?

Mr. Jack ends after the 8th round. Jack wins if: he manages to flee via one of the 4 exits while hidden or if he has not been revealed at the end of turn 8 or if the Detective player makes an incorrect accusation. The Detective wins by correctly deducing Jack's identity and accusing him.

How does it work?

At the beginning of the game the Jack player draws a card from the alibi cards and sets it aside. The character on the alibi card is secretly Jack the Ripper, and the Detective player must figure out which character is on that card. The board is then set up and the game is played over 8 rounds.

A round consists of 4 cards being laid face up from character card deck, and the Jack player and Detective player each choosing 2 of these characters, moving them around the board and using their special abilities to achieve their goal. At the end of every other round, the 8 character cards are shuffled back together ensuring that every character will be used an equal number of times in a full 8 round game.

A brief overview of the 8 characters:

The character cards and tokens for each of the 8 characters.

- Miss Stealthy: moves 1-4 spaces and can pass through buildings and other spaces that normally block movement.
- Sir William Gull: moves 1-3 spaces or may switch places with another character.
- Inspector Lestrade: moves 1-3 spaces and must move one of the police barricades to an open exit (there are 2 barricades, thus 2 of the exits are always open and 2 are always blocked.)
- John Smith: moves 1-3 spaces and must move one of the lamp tokens to an unlit lamp.
- Sergent Goodley: moves 1-3 spaces. He also can force other characters to move a total of 3 spaces in his direction (he calls them to him with his police whistle.)
- Sherlock Holmes: moves 1-3 spaces and allows you to draw an alibi card from the stack (the character on the alibi card is innocent.)
- John H. Watson: moves 1-3 spaces. He also holds a lantern which illuminates everything in a straight line in front of him (any characters in that line are considered to be seen.)
- Jeremy Bert: moves 1-3 spaces and must relocate one of the manhole covers to an open manhole (characters may use a movement point to enter the sewers and another point to emerge from any other open sewer on the board. The manhole cover marker closes a sewer entrance/exit.)

The game revolves around determining which characters on the board are hidden and which are currently seen. A character is seen if they are adjacent to a lit lamp post, next to another character or in the path of Dr Watson's lantern light. Otherwise the character is hidden. At the end of each round the Jack player tells their opponent whether Jack is currently seen or hidden. The Detective player than takes the token for each innocent character and flips it over so the grey side is up. The Detective must attempt to whittle down the number of suspects until they figure out who the killer is, while the Jack player needs to keep Jack's identity a secret as long as possible. If Jack was hidden at the end of last turn, he can escape via one of the 4 exits. I have yet to see this happen. It seems like something the Jack player could take advantage of if the opportunity presents itself, but I think it would be pretty difficult to arrange.

The game board during a typical Mr. Jack game.

Who will like this game?

Those of us who are very analytical will find a lot to like with this game. All of the options for everyone are laid out for all to see every turn, so the only luck comes from the order the characters are revealed for play each round, so people who are turned off by luck and rolling dice won't find either of those here.

Who won't like this game?

Some people might be turned away by the dark theme, after all for many people running around in the streets hunting for Jack the Ripper doesn't sound like a roaring good time. The art direction is fairly cartoonish, making the tone of the game pretty light despite the dark subjct matter. For the first few games I felt pretty overwhelmed by all the potential choices I had to consider while keeping the goal in mind, and that might turn some people away as well.

What I liked:

I like the combination of the dark theme and cartoony character art. The cat-and-mouse gameplay is really well done, and the games are quick but tense. The game's rules are simple and easy to pick up, but there is a lot of depth and strategy to be had here.

What I disliked:

Not much. I can see the Detective player having to make a blind guess in the last turn of the game if they haven't figured out who Jack is. This could give the game an anti-climactic "coin toss" sort of ending. Granted we've only been in this situation once, and my wife outsmarted me by moving the innocent suspect away and making it look like she was trying to keep him safe. I ignored the other suspect, caught the runner, accused him and lost. This was a memorable game, so I'm not sure if my concern here is warranted. Anyhow, I didn't find much to be unhappy about with Mr. Jack.

The Bottom Line:

Mr. Jack is a fun 2-player game that plays in about a half an hour, is easy to learn and requires quite a bit of thinking and analysis. It's a cat and mouse game, a battle of wits, and while the dark theme may turn some off, those folks will be missing out on a great little game. Mr. Jack is becoming one of our favorites.

Earth: The Last Night There

2008-11-07T10:11:00.004-05:00

Wife and I have been playing a new (to us) board game called Last Night on Earth. It's a survivors versus zombies spoof of those awful B-horror movies some of us love so much. One player (or team of players) plays the role of 4 human survivors drawn from a pool of 8. Each has different abilities, and while the items and weapons make the biggest difference in the game, the abilities help differentiate the heroes from each other a bit. You'll see many horror movie stereotypes here: the drifter, the high school quarterback, the priest, the drifter and the nurse among others. The player controlling the heroes get 4 characters, the player(s) controlling the zombies gets a pool of 14 zombies to use.

There are different scenarios in the game, each with different winning conditions. "Die Zombies Die!" simply asks the heroes to kill 15 zombies before dawn, while the "Gas up the Truck" scenario requires the heroes to find gasoline and keys, then get at least 2 heroes to the truck in the center of the map. Each team moves around the map, draws cards and engages in combat with the other team (though more often the heroes are trying to escape from the zombies.) There are lots of dice to be rolled, as this is very much an Ameritrash game: lots of combat, lots of dice, heavy theme, plenty of interaction with opponents, etc.

Last Night on Earth is good, campy fun. Between the card drawing and die rolling, there is definitely a strong element of luck, but there is plenty of room for strategy and decision making. It's a great game that isn't made to be taken too seriously. It's kind a lighter cousin to Arkham Horror, which is exactly what I wanted when I picked it out. I'm anxious to try this with more than 2 players.

It's November Now

2008-11-01T10:29:00.003-04:00

Last night was Halloween, the first one I've been actually involved with in a long time. We took daughter out trick-or-treating and had a good time. She was dressed as a ladybug, and she got lots of oohs and aahs and compliments. She was a little freaked out at first but she hit her stride after a few houses. She can say 'trick or treat,' just not when she's on someone's porch asking for candy. She would say 'please?' or, more commonly, 'puppy?' Wife was dressed as a pirate and I was dressed as a guy in a t-shirt and jacket. I did have a lady tell me I look like Mephistopheles.

In other news, I have a $25 Gamestop gift card burning a hole in my pants. There are so many great games that just came our/are coming out soon, I need to hang onto this until I can afford one. I may just use it to reserve Persona 4. Dragon Quest IV is the cheapest thing on my wishlist, but I think P4 may be harder to find so my Gamestop dollars are best spent there.

I found an old card game I got at Gen Con 97 called GROO: The Game, based on the comic strip of the same name. I remember Couch and I saw them sitting out on a table at a booth for free, so we each took one. The next day we passed by the booth and saw the same table full of GROO games with a big sign that said "$15.99 each." Whoops. Anyway, we played it a couple of times, and it was okay but nothing special. Fast forward to now and it seems the game is long since out of print, not too popular but somewhat sought after by the small cult following the comic strip has. I posted it on Ebay yesterday for $50. It's already got a bid and 6 days left, so woohoo! I'm thinking I might just leave the money in Paypal and periodically add to it to create a Gen Con fund for this year's vacation (which will hopefully actually happen.)

My wife after a game of Thurn & Taxis which she may have possibly won.

My latest batch of free board games showed up a few days ago. Wife and I wanted to try Fury of Dracula last night with it being Halloween and all, but so far it seems reminiscent of Arkham Horror - not in content but in the amount of components and size of the rulebook. We decided to play Thurn & Taxis instead. It's a game about the Bavarian postal service in the horse-and-carriage era, and it's quite fun. I'm not joking. Boo!

Alan? Alan? Where the Hell Are You?

2008-10-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

Alan Wake 'Cinematic' trailer HD

The Shopping Spree Continues

2008-10-20T17:40:00.010-04:00

So more of my old Magic cards and D&D minis are on their way to Florida for another $200 in store credit. I get to continue building my board game empire from the bones of my old hobby. The only difficult part is figuring out what to order. This reminds me of when I bought my first PC. There was an entire library of games already out there and I was able to wade directly into it and start buying. The important distinction here is that I don't have to worry about compatibility and hardware requirements. The only problem is finding things that are out of print, and with so many great games available it's hardly an issue. Sure, I'd like to find a copy of Betrayal at Hill House for less than $80, but hey.

Another batch is in the queue to be shipped here. This is probably the last I can milk out of my collection via CoolStuffInc, but their buy list is always changing, so who knows? Currently in the pipeline are:

Thurn and Taxis

-This is a game about building post office routes across Bavaria and trying to be efficient about it. Hearing the theme and seeing the pictures made me really excited to try this. It was one of those moments where it struck me what a huge nerd I am. I'm pumped about this one.

The Fury of Dracula

- One player plays the role of Dracula and the other(s) take the role of vampire hunters trying to catch him. Dracula's movements are hidden and the others have to track him down and kill him. Dracula tries to set up traps and misinformation in the various locations across Europe. Sounds like a winner.

War of the Ring

- One player controls the Free Peoples of Middle Earth and the other controls the Shadow Armies in a tactical simulation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The good guys try to sneak the ring-bearer into Mordor while the bad guys try to find him and off him. It's a large, beautiful, expensive game and I'd like to get it while it won't cost me actual money.

Pandemic

- I like cooperative games, and this is supposed to be a great one. The players take on various researcher and scientist roles and work together to try to prevent disease outbreaks around the globe. It's on back order, so I'll have to wait, which I'm very good at.

Stone Age

- The board is pretty and the game is chock full of little wooden bits. That's really all it takes.

Blue Moon City

- Very beautiful board game about rebuilding a destroyed city. Developed by Reiner Knizia with art by Franz Vohwinkel, Scott Fischer and many other artists I'm familiar with from my Magic the Gathering days.

TransAmerica

- Simple and fun. Already played this, just need to own a copy.

Wife and I have been gaming just about every night. It's nice to turn off the TV and get away from the PC for a bit to go sit at the game table in the front room. We've been playing San Juan, Ticket to Ride, Citadels and Agricola mostly, and we're always mixing it up.

Christmas Comes Twice

2008-10-10T18:38:00.005-04:00

Today, phase 2 of Bryan Swaps his Magic Cards for New Board Games went into effect. There will soon be another box of games UPSing their way from Florida up to Michigan. Admittedly, most of them are expansions (4 for Carcassonne, 1 for Ticket to Ride, 1 for TransAmerica) but still, it's nice to splurge on toys and be guilt free. I will be mailing another small batch of cards (about $50 worth) to them on Monday. That will be earmarked for Pandemic once it's back in stock.

In other news of great importance, I got Agricola in the mail yesterday and got a chance to learn how to play (the single player, family version.) It is a game about being a farming family in the 17th century (everyone's dream) and it seems to be worth the hype thus far. I like the wooden components, though I can see the appeal to 'pimping' your copy with little wooden cows and sheep. It's a worker placement game where you need to figure out the best use of your limited resources each turn. There are also 6 harvest stages (14 stages total) where you need to feed your family, so there is a constant need to keep up on your food supply.

Lots of little boards and bits and pieces. Lots of little baggies too!

The rulebook is awfully intimidating upon first read, but sitting down and actually playing through the game as I read made things pretty easy. The game was originally German, so the translation of the rulebook seems a little bit off in places. There are a shitpot of rules discussions and clarifications on the web (thanks BoardGameGeek!) and a quick look through these cleared some things up. No doubt once I start playing with the occupation cards, minor improvement cards and more players, more questions will arise. At this point, the game is full of potential and I'm looking forward to playing with my wife tonight.

Citadels

2008-10-09T09:17:00.002-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I sat down and taught myself how to play Citadels while wife was at work and daughter was sleeping. It's a card game meant for 2-8 players where each round sees players taking on different roles in an effort to build up their city. The first player to place 8 district cards (which make up your city) ends the game, high score wins. A round consists of each player taking their turn; the round then ends and each player chooses a new role card for the next round.

A typical player turn looks like this:
- Draw 2 district cards, keeping one in your hand and discarding the other

OR

- Take 2 gold from the bank.

- Build one district from your hand by paying the gold cost shown on the card.

- Utilize your role's special ability.

The turns happen in the order of the roles. That is, each role card has a number on it from 1-8. The assassin card is number one, so the player with the assassin card takes his turn first. The thief is number two, so whoever has the thief card goes second, and so on.

The roles:
1- Assassin: you call out another role name. That character is murdered and does not get a turn this round.
2- Thief: Name a role card. When that player's turn begins, the Thief takes that player's gold
3- Magician: You may discard any number of cards and draw the same number - OR - trade hands with any player.
4- King: You get first choice of roles next round. You gain 1 gold for each yellow district card in your city.
5- Bishop: You gain 1 gold for each blue district card in your city. Your cards may not be destroyed by the Warlord.
6- Merchant: You gain 1 additional gold after taking your action. You gain 1 gold for each green district card in your city.
7- Architect: After taking your action, draw two extra cards. You may building up to three districts.
8- Warlord: You gain 1 gold for each red district in your city. You may destroy 1 district on the board (by paying the district's gold cost minus 1.)

That's the gameplay in a nutshell. So far I've only played the 2 player game, but I'm excited at the prospect of playing with more. It's easy to learn but has a good amount of strategy and tactics.

My opponent has lots of green districts, so she'd be a fool not to take the Merchant role, because that would give her a lot of gold. So I should pick the Assassin role and try to murder the Merchant this round. But she knows I'm going to take the Assassin because she knows I think she'll take the merchant. I'd hate to take the Assassin then waste it by trying to murder a role who isn't picked this game. (This scenario played out last night. I out-thought myself and let her have the Merchant, scoring her lots of gold. Next round I took the Assassin and chose the Merchant as my target. That round, of course, she didn't choose the Merchant...)

Last night was the very first game we played and wife waffled me pretty good. The two player game sees each player choosing 2 roles, which works out well. I'm looking forward to playing a game with 5 or 6 people. I think this will be fun as hell.

I really wanted a clever title for this post, but since I can't make anything clever using the word and I'm feeling too shitty to try, Citadels it is!

The Old King is Dead! Long Live the King!

2008-10-04T11:55:00.011-04:00

Recent weeks have seen me plundering the remains of my Magic the Gathering collection. I sold the vast majority of it a few years ago (by vast majority, I'm referring to value, not quantity) and I've been picking the bones via both Ebay for cash, and CoolStuffInc for store credit. The cash will be largely used to toss a few pebbles into the well of debt I have, while the store credit will be used to bolster my growing board game library. At this particular moment, some of my cards are finding their way to their new owners, some of my new board games are trucking their way to Michigan and various electronic funds are sitting in stasis and waiting to be freed.

So long Magic, hello board games! My first large batch of store credit to be spent on toys will yield the following:

The Catan Dice Game:

Jimbob, BC and I played a demo for this at Gen Con this year. It's essentially Yahtzee meets Settlers of Catan. You roll dice to see which resources you get that turn, and you spend those resources to build roads, settlements , cities and knights. Each of these are worth a certain number of points, and the player with the most points after X rounds wins. It's simple, cheap and portable.

El Grande: Dicentennial Edition:

I don't know a whole heck of a lot about this game. It's very highly rated at Boardgamegeek. It's an area control game. I like the look of the board and components (that matters to me.) The game comes with the 2 expansions bundled in the box. "El Grande" is Spanish for "The Grande."

Power Grid:

Who hasn't dreamed of running a power company, purchasing power plants and trying to provide electricity to as many cities as possible? It's every little boy's dream come true! Seriously, the universally great reviews are enough for me to take a chance on this one.

Princes of Florence:

Another highly ranked game. It involves attracting artists, bakers, lawyers, traders and other specialists to your city in a competition to make your city the most awesome. I think. It reminded me a bit of some aspects of Civilization.

Agricola:

Currently the top rated game on BGG. The new hotness, finally took the #1 ranking from Puerto Rico after many years. This means that lots of people love it and lots of people hate it. It's about raising a family on a farm. Supposedly there are many ways to play, several different strategies and many paths towards victory. We shall see.

Ticket to Ride:

Played this on Xbox Live and loved it. Gotta have the board game version.

Ticket to Ride - Switzerland:

An add-on to the original game, this is (as I understand it) essentially an extra map designed with 2-3 players in mind. Sounds like a winner.

Citadels:

A card game for 2-7 players. Each turn you draw a different role card which gives you different options and abilities. Good price, well received. We'll try it.

Last Night on Earth - The Zombie Board Game:

This was kind of an impulse choice. It's got team play (survivors vs zombies) and it looks fun. Kind of like a much simpler, much lighter Arkham Horror. I think the people I play with would like this. We'll see.

This was Phase One of trading cards for games. The second and final phase will begin as soon as my cards arrive in Florida. As an aside, most of these pictures came from Board Game Geek and were taken by people who are not me.

Game Night: Second Edition

2008-09-28T23:21:00.003-04:00

I hosted another game day/night/event last night. Wife and daughter were out and about, so we had the house to ourselves all day. We started off playing Rock Band 2. Quite a lot of it. I'm not sure exactly what the problem was, but I think Rock Band 2 was moved down my wishlist if not dropped from it. It's not that I didn't have fun, but the game did not impress me at all. The only substantial change is the song selection, and while I think it's great that all the DLC and songs from the first game are available here, RB2's setlist sucks. I just looked up the complete song list, and of the 84 songs present, I see exactly 7 that interest me. As long as the DLC keeps coming for the first game, I'll stick with that.

From there we went to Castle Crashers, a game whose virtues I have praised here. A fun little beat 'em up game, my only real beef is that it gets repetitive, and a little bit hard to keep track of where your character is sometimes. Nevertheless, CC = fun. Then it was time for pizza, Mt Dew and board games.

We started off with TransAmerica, which went over very well. It was quick to learn, had some strategy and as an added bonus, is easy to play without making a mess while eating pizza. Since everyone was fairly new to the tawdry world of board games, TransAmerica is a suitable launching point. From there, we played a game of Settlers of Catan. This went pretty well too, even with people taking for-damn-ever trying to trade every turn. It helped that everyone was already familiar with the game.

We finished up with a fairly epic game of Arkham Horror. Considering that everyone else was new to the game, and we drew a real boner for the Ancient One, this game went great. I mean, the game took a hell of a long time largely because of Hastur's "you need 8 clue tokens to seal a gate" ability. Rob played well and rolled well and kicked a lot of ass. Luke played well, rolled and drew badly and ended up in limbo a lot. I was unsure of how to play my character and a little lost. I don't know what Fons was doing. But we closed the last gate and won the game right before Hastur was about to awaken. Right about at 2am.

All in all, a good time was had by all. The fact that several new players endured a very long, difficult and late game of Arkham Horror and enjoyed themselves makes me happy beyond measure.

TransAmerica

2008-09-26T09:09:00.002-04:00

Kat tells me that this was the name of a movie about transvestites. This post is not about ladies with penises, however. It's about a board game. And trains. Big ones.

My friend loaned me a copy of this board game last week, and my wife and I got a chance to play it last night. It made a pretty good first impression, TransAmerica is a lot like Ticket to Ride. It's very easy to learn and accessible, it's got a nice blend of luck and strategy, and most importantly it's a lot of fun.

Each round begins with each player drawing 5 cities from the deck and keeps them hidden. These are the cities that player will be trying to connect their train tracks to during that round. On each turn, each player may play 2 track pieces (or 1 if going over rivers or through mountains.) If your tracks are touching your opponent's tracks, you can build off of their tracks as well. The first player to connect their cities ends the round. Player who haven't connected their cities lose points based on how far they are from success. The game ends when one player has lost more than 12 points total. Whoever has the most points remaining at that point win the game.

It's luck elements come from the 5 city cards you draw to start each round. It's not completely random, and the game mechanics ensure that your cities will be at least somewhat distributed across the map. It's still possible to get a very favorable or unfavorable draw though. Much of the planning and strategy comes from deciding if and when to merge your tracks with your opponent's. If I can take care of connecting my cities in the west while you build to the east, then simply connect my tracks to yours, getting to my eastern cities will be much easier. Of course, things will get easier for you to.

Some luck, some strategy, easy rules. TransAmerica is much fun, and I plan on buying it eventually.

Ye Olde Backlog

2008-09-22T13:18:00.010-04:00

The backlog. I suspect all gamers have one. A stack of unplayed or unfinished games they've been meaning to get to. Sometimes I'll get a deal and wind up getting 2 or 3 games at once. Sometimes one game will eat up my playing time for weeks (Dragon Quest VIII) or months (World of Warcraft.) Sometimes I get to a frustrating point and leave the game be. Hell, sometimes a game appeals to me enough that I want to play it, but never enough to actually put it in and do so. My backlog looks like this:

Pikmin 2 for Gamecube

I played the first one and enjoyed it quite a bit, but got stuck somewhere and never finished it. Pikmin 2 I got for a song. I put it in for 5 minutes to see how it played. I'm sure it's great, it's just never worked its way to the top of the heap.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for Gamecube

I've sunk some time into this one. I remember being underwhelmed by it, largely because it was just like the N64 Paper Mario but not as good. I don't recall whether I got stuck or sidetracked by something better. I do recall taking it to Gamestop and being offered $1 trade-in value. It's a decent game, so it stays.

Beyond Good and Evil for Playstation 2

I played this a long time ago for the Gamecube. It didn't leave an impression on me and I traded it away. The game has such a good reputation and passionate following that when I saw it in the garbage bin for $6, I had to bring it home for another try. I have yet to put it in the console.

Grim Grimoire for Playstation 2

Gamestop was doing a 'buy 2 get 1 free' promo and this was my free one. It looks like a weird adventure/RPG/RTS hybrid. One day I'll find out.

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne for Playstation 2

After playing Persona 3, I had a powerful lust to try another game in the Shin Megami Tensei series but they were all rare and out of print. I found this at Gamestop after it was rereleased and snatched it up. I've sat down with it couple of times and it just hasn't grabbed me yet. I've seen lots of "my favorite JRPG ever" sentiment thrown around, and I want to like it. Hopefully it'll change my mind next time.

Persona 3: FES for Playstation 2

I nearly hit the 100 hour mark on Persona 3 when I was done with it, and it impressed me more than any game I'd played in a long time. So when they rereleased the game with the FES post-story content, I had to buy it. So far though, they've taken the overworld/daytime/social aspect out of the game and left me with only the dungeon crawl part. I'm going to pick the game back up at some point and hope that this changes

Rogue Galaxy for Playstation 2

I bought this one used a long time ago. I got the start of chapter 2 and the game would freeze. I ended up getting my money back because they were out of them. I re-acquired the game on clearance at Target last year and have yet to try it again.

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for Gamecube

I have made multiple efforts with this one. I have yet to meet a 3-D Zelda game I like. Last time I got stuck in a large dungeon inside a giat tree, got lost and pissed off. One day I'll finish this. Or not.

Half-Life 2: Episode 2 for Xbox 360

I'm an achievements whore. I playing this one right along, trying to get the Little Rocket Man achievement. This involves carrying a little garden gnome through the game with you and strapping him into the rocket ship when the time comes. It was little trouble until I got to the stage where you need to drive the car; the damn gnome will not stay in place, and everytime you drive he flies out of the car. Add to the mix a helicoptor shooting at you while driving and you get high frustration. This one is the most likely to get brought out and finished.

Oh, the Horror!

2008-09-20T09:36:00.003-04:00

It's everywhere!

So the Arkham Horror boardgame fell into my lap this week (Thanks, Fons.) It's a large, sprawling board game based on the Cthulhu mythos written by HP Lovecraft. I'm starting to get into his writings; I read Lurker at the Threshold a couple of years back, and I've started on his short stories like The Call of Cthulhu and Dagon. His stories are about supernatural evil, lurking just beyond the veil that seperates our world from theirs. Arkham Horror places 1-8 players in the role of a paranormal investigator seeking to prevent the ancient one from returning to our world and thus lowering property values and raising gas prices.

The game board represents the town of Arkham, as well as few smaller other dimensions the investigators must visit. On a given turn interdimensional gates will open, monsters will spawn into play and move around the board, players will find clues, fight monsters and attempt to seal the gates. Players can win the game by sealing a certain number of gates. If too many monsters get through, eventually the Ancient One returns and the players must do battle with him.

This is a co-operative, plaers versus the game experience. It's also got lots and lots of rules and exceptions to learn, and takes about 2-3 hours to complete. It's definitely not a pick up and play quickie game, and it seems to have quite a learning curve. Turns were dragging out as we kept referencing back to the rulebook. And sweet jesus, the horror spreads everywhere. Literally. The game is huge and sprawling, with an obscene amount of cards, dice, tokens and game pieces for everything under the sun.

That said, I'm liking the game so far, and I think it'll be a blast to play with the right group of people. We have yet to finish the first game (it's in stasis in the front room) but these are my early impressions. I love the setting and I'm looking forward to getting some more play time wiht this.

The Evolution of Catan

2008-09-17T11:25:00.004-04:00

At this past Gen Con, wife and I picked up a copy of the Cities and Knights expansion for the Settlers of Catan board game. Catan was our gateway game into the world of board game geekiness, and we've spent much of our convention time at the Mayfair booth the last couple of years. So, a month after buying it, last night came time to finally give the expansion a try.

Our first game of Cities and Knights in progress.

This expansion places a large emphasis on cities (the upgrades from basic settlements in Catan.) Rather than producing 2 standard resources, cities now produce 1 resource and 1 of the new commodity cards (paper, cloth or coin.) Those commodity cards are used to make upgrades to your cities (market, churches, etc.) These upgrades are what allow you to draw the new Progress cards (which replace development cards from the basic Catan game.)

Knights are soldier units that can be built mainly for the purpose of defending Catan from the barbarians that periodically lands on its shores to pillage its cities. Successfully defending Catan from the barbarians yields the strongest defender a victory point. Knight and cities each cost stone, and with these 2 elements being so key to the game, good resource management is key with this add-on.

Running a Settlers of Catan demo at the Mayfair Booth, Gen Con 07.

Long story short, Cities and Knights adds more complexity and strategy to basic Settlers of Catan game. Wife and I didn't get a chance to finish our game (it was late and the front room was filled with poison*) but I'm looking forward to giving it another go, and seeing how it works out with 3+ players. It was overwhelming at first, but after a few turns we got the hang of it pretty well. All in all, Cities and Knights adds a lot to the game. Next on my list is the Seafarers of Catan add-on.

*We had been using a large card table in the game room, which was still a little too small for our needs. For example, the Gangsters board game itself fit, but did not leave enough room for everyone's cards, game pieces and whatnot. On our front porch was a circular wooden table we'd bought at a garage sale a few years ago. It was on the front porch because we lacked the space to store it inside. After donating the recliner that was in the game room, it was time to bring the wooden table inside.

Now, there is a large roof covering our porch which has 2 effects:
- It protects the porch (and the table) from the elements.
- It has made our porch a haven for spiders.

The porch has become a warzone, pitting humans vs spiders. This table had been sitting on the porch for about a year, meaning it was crawling with spiders. First I took the broom to it and broomed the shit out of it. Spiders and nests begone! I then flipped the table and sprayed the hell out of the little nooks and crannies with pest killer. The resulting cloud of green poison made us evacuate the game room a little early. It is currently under quarantine and will be open again soon.

How I'm a Dick and Why

2008-09-09T17:45:00.000-04:00

It was brought to my attention while playing Castle Crashers cooperatively that I'm a greedy dick who takes all of the weapons and gold. Once I was accused of this behavior, I realized that it was true. When playing co-op games, I am generally aware of all of my teammates health, and I try to help them out if they look like they're in trouble. I point out food or health powerups when someone is in need of them. Whenever loot of some kinds hits the group, I instinctively snap it up without thinking. I share my in-game possessions selflessly, but I do try to take every single thing that appears.

Where did I go wrong? Was it my parents' fault? Were violent video games to blame? And it turns out that, like most murders, robberies, rapes and acts of terrorism, violent videos games are responsible. This loot-whoring behavior can be traced back to the seedy, smoky arcades I frequented growing up. The game responsible for me becoming a greedy, loot-snatching bastard would have to be Gauntlet. A 4-player co-op dungeon crawl littered with keys, treasure and food. Don't even get me started on the bonus treasure stages. And yes, I always chose the speedy little green elf character.

The next, and worst, offender is the 2 diablo games. Grabbing up all the equipment in original Playstation Diablo with my buddy was no big deal, but Diablo 2 on Battlenet is where the greed bug really took hold. When you're runnng through Diablo 2 with seven strangers, the quickest mouse pointer gets the loot, so it quickly became second nature to jump on anything that dropped. The focus was on the gameplay and grabbing up the loot simply became second nature, automatically handled by the reflexes in my brain.

I'm making an effort to change, but basically the stuff that drops in Castle Crashers? Mine.

Game Night: Maiden Voyage

2008-09-08T10:20:00.000-04:00

Saturday Night was the first of what I hope will be many game events hosted at my place. I've got 8 or 9 people on my invite list, with the expectation that I won't get more than 4 or 5 people on any given day. The first gathering was semi-successful. The first gamer showed up around 5 or so, and it was just he and I for an hour or so. Luke is relatively new to these crazy board games, so I imagine tonight was a lot to take in. We started off with a head to head game of Carcassonne: The Discovery. It was his first time playing Carcassonne in any form, and he picked it up very well, as my victory was pretty narrow. This probably took about 30 to 45 minutes, we then moved on to Rummikub for a bit.

Settling the island of Catan.

Matt showed up near the end of our Rummikub game, and he wanted to try Settlers of Catan so we set up the board, placed our starting settlements and got started. Jimbob showed up shortly after we got started, so we let him place 2 settlements, gave him a couple of bonus resources and he jumped in. Matt was the only one new to Catan at the table, and everyone enjoyed it though it was probably the longest game of Catan I've ever been a part of. The laws of probability failed us, as stone, which paid out on 8, 10 and 12, was incredibly scarce. 8 and 10 only rolled a couple of times each, while the dice continuously rolled 3s and 4s. Matt latched onto Longest Road early on and never let go. I eventually ended things when I got to a wood port and was able to trade up for stone and upgrade to cities. It's looking like I may need to pick up the 5-6 player add-on for Settlers of Catan in the near future.

Settlers took almost 2 hours, a hell of a long time for this game. We then busted out Gangster, a new favorite of Jimbob and myself, which the others wanted to try. This game went over very well, and everyone understood the scoring rules it got pretty competitive. I took advantage of a war between Matt and Jimbob and snagged several smaller territiories while the others fought over a few high point-value ones. The last round saw everyone conspiring to dump my men in the river while I scrambled about trying to end the game as quickly as possible.

Gangster: damn, it feels good.

All said, everything went pretty well, and the only real problem was that we didn't really get started until about 630 or so. That and the table in the gaming room is too damn small. Game Night: Part Deux is tentatively planned for Saturday Sept 20th.

Holiday Season Wishlist

2008-09-06T13:41:00.000-04:00

As usual, the fall-winter months are chock full of promising new releases sure to drain the bank accounts of many-a-gamer. I can't imagine I'll be able to afford more than one or two of these, but that just means I'll be able to get them later at discount prices. So it's a good thing...right?

Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise for Xbox 360

Filled with fun!

This one's already out. It's a sequel to the original Viva Pinata, a bright, cheery, kiddie, fun little killing and fucking simulator. It's beautiful, relaxing and surprisingly deep. I've also got the gotta-catch-em-all sickness, and having so many different species of pinata to attract to my garden is appealing.

Fallout 3 for Xbox 360, PC

Fallout 3: Family Edition

This one's been in development for a while now. It's made by the fine folks who gave us Oblivion a couple of years ago. The Fallout series is highly regarded, and it's one of those that I bought the games, and always meant to get into them but never did. Post-apocalyptic shenanigans sounds like fun to me, it also sounds like there are several ways to play the game and, reportedly, multiple endings which will give the game good replay value. If I can only get one title this season, it'll probably be this.

Persona 4 for Playstation 2

Persona 4: English Edition - coming in November

Yes, they're still making RPGs for Playstation 2. I said Fallout 3 was tops on my wishlist, that's bullshit. Persona 3 was an absolute blast, and Persona 4 keeps several of the game mechanics from its predecessor and throws in a murder mystery plot. I love those.

Dragon Quest IV for Nintendo DS

This is a remake of ye olde NES game from days gone by. One of my all-time favorite RPGs will be receiving a graphical facelift (obviously) as well as a major gameplay tweak: your party members will no longer be AI controlled. That enough makes the game a must-buy for me.

Alan Wake for Xbox 360, PC

Alan Wake is out looking for his develpoment studio with a flashlight and gun, planning to demand a release date. Or, better yet, a release.

Alan Wake looks and sounds great. It's about horror/thriller/adventure game about a writer working in a small, secluded town and involves supernatural shit. The bad part is, it's been in development for a couple of years now, and there's no release date in sight. Putting this on my holiday season wishlist is pure horseshit, but a guy can dream, right?

Rock Band 2 for Xbox 360

Rock Band 2 will be more of the same, with a few minor tweaks. Sounds good to me.

More songs. Band quickplay will be easier. Online world tour mode. More songs. All downloadable songs from Rock Band will be compatible with Rock Band 2. Harmonix is also including the option to import the songs from the first game disc into RB2 for 5 bucks.

There are several others upcoming as well, but these are the big-uns.

Best of Xbox Live Arcade

2008-09-01T20:39:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been doing the majority of my gaming with my XBLA games. It's a combination of not having enough money to buy expensive new games for the Xbox and there being some great downloadable titles out there. So I figured it's time for a top 5 list! Sure, they're pointless exercises in conceit but hey, no one's looking anyway. So I'll go ahead and indulge myself. I love writing these damn things as much as I love reading them. Here are the top 5 Xbox Live Arcade games in no particular order.

Pacifism in Geometry Wars 2.

Geometry Wars 2: The original Geometry Wars felt more like a throwback to my younger years in the arcades than any other game the service offers. Nothing to explain, easy to pick up and play, hard to put down. GW2 took an already great classic game and improved upon it. In addition to the orignal "kill everything and aim for the High Score" gameplay mode, the sequel adds some fun new modes to the mix. The best of these is Pacifism, where your ship cannot fire and must destroy the ever-growing mob of enemies by flying through gates that appear randomly. There is also a timed mode, a mode that involves flying from safe zone to safe zone (King) and a fast-paced, chaotic mode called Waves that becomes hopelessly hectic in a short time. Geometry Wars 2 captures your attention, keeping your focus glued to the game until the end. It has provided several of those "holy crap I haven't blinked in a hell of a long time" moments.

The thoroughly awesome and impossibly expensive super-ultra-comes-in-a-wooden-treasure-chest edition of Settlers of Catan.

Catan: Settlers of Catan made the transition from board game to Xbox Live with everything in tact. It's a great blend of strategy and chance that involves setting up territories near resources, building roads and new settlements and robbing your opponents. Each resource node in the game is given a number, and when that number is rolled everyone with an adjacent settlement gets that resource. It's a relatively simple to learn board game, and it's a gateway drug for more complexe strategy board games. It's the main reason we've spent the last couple of years at Gen Con playing and buying board games.

Puzzle + RPG = fun.

Puzzle Quest: Puzzle Quest took the addictive old "match 3 colored gems" gameplay of Bejeweled, added RPG elements and somehow the results were pure gold. Assuming you find gold impressive, that is. Your character can equip weapons and armor, gain experience levels and learn skills, so there is always a sense of progression in the game. Matching gems gives you mana which is used to fuel spells and skills, and there's that blend of skill and randomness that many of the best games have. There are 4 different classes to choose from, giving the game lots of replay value. Puzzle Quest isn't limited to Xbox Live - odds are, if you have any sort of electronic device, you can play Puzzle Quest on it. And you should. Now.

The evolution of Pac-Man.

Pac-Man Championship Edition: Namco Bandai took the classic Pac-Man game's weakness (an ever-unchaging stage) and made it a strength. The stages now morph as you play, and you can also chain together power pellets to rack up a huge score. These 2 simple changes make a world of difference, and this 30 year old game feels fresh and new again. My only beef with the game is that all the different game modes are timed, it could have benefitted from a classic "play until you run out of lives" mode. And a multiplayer mode of some sort. These shortcomings don't make it a bad game, there were just opportunities to make it better.

Goth Metroid with whips? Sounds good to me.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: As a horse's ass who missed out on this game back in the PS1 days, I will thrilled to see this available on XBL for 10 bucks. Thrilled as hell, let's say. Internet nerds everywhere refer to this as "Metroidvania," a Castlevania game using the mechanics of a Metroid game. It's an open game world where you are free to decide where you'd like to go, and you'll find several dead ends which remain closed to you until you find a skill or upgrade that lets you bypass it. There are also plenty of hidden areas and items you find for us "collecting stuff" junkies. This game is a classic for good reason.

These are my picks for the best Xbox Live Arcade has to offer, with apologies to Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride and Castle Crashers.

Crasher of Castles: Part Deux

2008-08-31T20:46:00.000-04:00

I completed Castle Crashers today on my own. Red Knight Guy is level 28, and strictly melee oriented. Now that I've had time with the game, I'm really happy with it. My complaints are minor and only relate to a few levels, the multiplayer (though still unstable over Xbox Live at the time of writing this) is absolutely a blast and there are things to collect and unlock. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.

There are adorable little animals you can find that will follow you around and give a bonus of some sort. For example the ram will periodically knock some enemies down for you, while the frog will retrieve items for you and the chicken will give you stat bonuses. Some are automatically found in the game and others are hidden in various stages. You can also unlock a shitpot of characters, mostly through finishing the game with each character. I'm not sure how many of these I'll do, but the option is nice. The only part of the game I really still dislike is the "All You Can Quaff" minigame, which is just a button bashing exercise. But this is totally optional and separate frtom the main game and is easily ignored.

All told, Castle Crashers is a pleasant surprise and highly recommended, particularly for those who have some friends to play with. It's also made by a small-time developer, and it's nice to give your bucks to the little guys once in a while, even if it is via Microsoft.

Crasher of Castles

2008-08-28T17:56:00.000-04:00

Castle Crashers was released on Xbox Live Arcade this week. I knew little about the game other than that there was a buzz on the various gaming sites/forums I visit, and that it was make by the people who did Alien Hominid (didn't care for it.) Apparently the game has been delayed several times, much to the chagrin of The Internet. Release day finally came, and I got to see what all of the fuss was about. I downloaded the demo and promptly purchased the game.

So far it's good but not great. It's a beat-em up, reminiscent of River City Ransom (including some obvious nods to the NES classic.) I can say that 2-player co-op is fun, and I'm looking forward to playing with 3 friends on Xbox Live. The game definitely does not take itself too seriously, and while the poop and fart humor isn't exactly my taste, it's light-hearted and fun. The game is at its best when it doesn't deviate too far from the classic beat 'em up with your pals gameplay. So far, the low points have been a short racing stage, a stage where you're fighting while being carried upstream, and an escape-before-the-timer-is-up level.

Still, the game is pretty fun and challenging without being overwhelming. My experience thusfar is that a strong melee character is far more powerful than a magic-oriented character (you assign skill points when you gain levels) but at higher levels it may be the other way around. All I know is that it's fun, not earth-shattering, but I'd say worth the $15 price tag. I'll make a spirited effort to post a full review here soon.

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

2008-08-26T08:30:00.000-04:00

One of the things on my shopping list at this year's Gen Con was a copy of the Ticket to Ride board game. I'd tooled around enough with it on Xbox live to believe it would be a sound investment. The first couple of days I kept an eye out for it and didn't see it for less than $42, which would have constituted a large chunk of our spending cash. I finally broke down and went to the Days of Wonder booth to get a copy and the nice German man there told me they were completely sold out. A single tear ran down my cheek.

It will be mine.

This week I finally got my wife to give it a try on the Xbox and we can hardly put the damn thing down. When we get the money, we'll have to grab a copy. It's a game of building railroads across the country to connect various cities. I've always been intrigued by train games but never tried one. Ticket to Ride is a great introduction to the genre, and I'm not sure if it's representative of how great train games are or an anomaly, but it's worth a look. The rules are simple to learn, there's good amount of planning and strategy involved, a little bit of luck and a dash of screw-your-neighbor thrown into the mix.

Ticket to Ride on Xbox Live

I know there's a whole subculture of train game people at the con every year locked away in the Puffing Billy room playing train games and only occassionaly emerging to be fed and watered. Who knows, maybe years from now I'll be one of the guys at the con in overalls and a little train conductor's hat.

The World Ends and it Somehow Involves You

2008-08-21T19:22:00.000-04:00

So I've spent a little over an hour with The World Ends With You, and I'm intrigued so far. The combat is unique, if a little chaotic. Battles take place in real time, and you control protagonist Neku with the stylus while controlling his partner on the top screen with the D-pad. I haven't died yet, but my efforts get ranked with an "E" more than anything. I expect when I face a boss, I may get my digital ass kicked.

Battles in TWEWY are a handful.

The music is interesting so far, but nothing special. I've always shied away from anime-ish things until Persona 3 captured my attention, and I suppose it's unfair to expect that sort of magic from another game. The jury's still out on TWEWY for me.

In other news, today was my first day back at work after a week off for Gen Con. I'm close to sawing my own head off.

Post-Gen Con 2008

2008-08-20T15:26:00.000-04:00

Wife and I just got back from Gen Con 08 on Sunday. We went with a couple of friends and had a great time. Can't believe it's already over, and that we won't be back for a whole year. We added a few titles to our small (but growing) board game collection.

Our little collection nearly doubled this weekend.

Much of our time was spent at the Mayfair Games booth, and we came home with the Cities and Knights expansion for Settlers of Catan (love it,) Gangster and Fredericus from them. We also picked up a Carcassonne spin-off called The Discovery (I thought I was buying the original, but it's all good) and a nifty, family-friendly little game called 10 Days in Europe.

Of these, I've spent the most time with Gangster and heartily recommend it to any board game/strategy game buffs out there. I'm currently trying to set up a semi-regular game day with friends, as I'm tired of only gaming a couple of times a year. Always having a full schedule is one of the drawbacks to being an adult I guess.

Great? Shit? Somewhere in between? Time will tell.

I also finally broke down and bought The World Ends with You for Nintendo DS today. I'm going to give it a go and report back some impressions as soon as I can put Final Fantasy Tactics A2 down...

The Big Introduction

2008-08-20T14:32:00.000-04:00

I've created this blog for my own purposes, just to have my own quiet little corner of the internet to rant and ramble about my hobbies and whatever else drifts through my thought space.

I'm a 30 year old, happily married father of one. Daughter is 20 months old, and she's a wonderful little handful who loves to get her hands on daddy's Xbox 360 controllers or the PC keyboards. My wife and I are both gamers, ranging from video games to board games to roleplaying games.

So essentially, this blog is some guy going on about various types of games. Because there aren't enough of those out there in internet-land.