Frank Branham

This section contains the columns of Frank Branham. Frank will be posting his column on Thursdays.

About Frank Branham:

Frank Branham is a noted game hoarder. Beginning with an anemic 70 game collection from childhood, he has amassed a shrine of towering proportions containing over 2800 games. He even plays them every now and then.

Frank hopped onto the whole German invasion phenomena early on around 1992. He ran the now defunct translation archive "The Gaming Dumpster", and translated many rules for older and French games. He has also done some freelance work translating games for Eurogames, designed a few games, written many reviews and articles, and tortured many people with the obscure artifacts of his vast game collection.

His other hobbies mostly include videogames and roleplaying games, so he doesn't actually have time for anything else. He has written reviews for a couple of videogame sites, and was one of the instigating designers of that whole live vampire thing.

Frank lives in Norcross, Georgia in the United States.

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Frank Branham: Craft 302: Descent RtL Gratuitous Product Placement

In the last bit, I discussed the use of Kitty Puke (an unholy mix of paint, glue, and ground up bits) to create a rather nice looking ground texture to slather onto tiles.

I also said that Kitty Puke dries in 2-3 days. I suspect that it really takes about a week to full dry, at least in Georgia humidity. The outer crust of the substance when I cut the tiles was bone dry, but the insides were a bit rubbery. It is also possible that the outside forms a hermetic seal, and the glue and paint never actually dry.

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Frank Branham: Craft 301 - Descent Road to Legend - Kitty Puke

One of the puzzles I've been trying to work out is how to make a Hirst Arts-style outdoor tile set to match the dungeon tile set. I've worked out the basic techniques.

Sadly, Bruce Hirst doesn't make anything useable for outdoor tiles. After looking over lots of the miniature stuff on the web, I've found the base structure and techniques for outdoors tiles.

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Frank Branham: Perry Rhodan and Merchants of Venus Review

There hasn't been a lot of information or people begging for the Perry Rhodan game that entered the Kosmos two-player line. This is even though the author claims that he was trying to design a card game version of Merchants of Venus.

I was totally hooked by that line.

It is a fairly easy game to review if you know much about Merchants of Venus. Of course, no one reading this actually knows much about Merchants of Venus or has already dismissed it as either too long or too fluffy. Looks like I'll have to review that as well.

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Frank Branham: Milton Bradley, why hast thou forsaken me and Caveman

Did anyone happen to look at the boardgame shelves at the large toy retailers this season. Toys R Us and Walmart both lost some shelf space for board games, perhaps as much as 30%.

We're entering a bit of a shift in the types of games available as well. It seems now that games must come with DVDs, in a metal tin, and be the deluxe edition. Plastic bits are few in number, but are hand painted movers for a hybrid trivia / roll and move.

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Frank Branham: Quick Thoughts on Essen Games; Galaxy Trucker; Rock and Roll

Sigh, I got stuck working a bit late two evenings this week and was otherwise distracted.

Agricola: Aside from my merry trashing of the phenomenon last week, I think I really like this game. It will take a few more plays, but I think it might suit me more than Caylus. I particularly like how the interaction is all focused around choosing actions instead of fighting over turning in sets, and how scoring seems more like you are actually building things instead of just turning in sets of cubes.

Crazy Diamond: I've played only the title game with three. This is, most certainly, not a game for three. It felt almost like playing a pretty form of air traffic control backgammon with multiple paths. You are always trying to find a reasonably optimal move that gives you maximum distance and allows you to advance well on any future roll. This part is remarkably compelling in a kind of good 60s roll-and-move family game kind of way.

The odd part is that the second part of the game where you close down routes doesn't work with three. With three, it is not worth buying routes, and the game seems to need four or five players before that becomes a viable option.

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Frank Branham: Rant—Nothing Bad Happens in Agricola, and BGG is Broken

I've played only one game of Agricola so far, gotten two rules horribly wrong, but finally come to grips with the translation and actions. I can't say much about the game yet, as there is so much game there that it will take awhile to digest, and quite a few more plays.

To me, the fact that the game exists is worth chatting about. Agricola is a basic SdJ-targetted family game, a gamer's game, and the first two expansions for the gamer's game all piled into a box together.

The decision to produce it this way is really odd. The high price point and complexity certainly knock them out of the running for SdJ. The price is daunting, complex to translate, and seriously reduced the chances of an English translation. (Zev at Z-Man is trying to do one, which is a fairly risky proposition. The game is good enough that it SHOULD work out for him. Hopefully.)

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Frank Branham: Prophecy 2nd Edition Deep Dive

I was so very happy that a Through the Ages won the IGA award this year, even though it was not my favorite game from last year.

My fave is Prophecy, a game by the same designer, Vlaada Chvatil. It didn't garner enough nominations. This is not very suprising—the game looks exactly like yet another in a long line of Talisman clones. Almost invariably, Talisman clones are the worst of games. They last for many hours, stuff happens at random, and eventually somebody wins, which makes everyone happy because the game is finally over.

Prophecy was actually quite fun, with much cleaner rules, more control over movement, and wonderful synergistic character advancements. So I kept playing.

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Frank Branham: Pictureka, Talisman, Mercer Gaming Ex, Portal, CAKE!

I've been doing precious little board gaming the past few weeks, as the run up to the Mercer Gaming Extravaganza ate into my time a bit.

This went well, the final total was 105 people, and I think we made a profit even after the food. While we're still trying to work out what we learned, I'm pretty certain that:

1. Reducing the entrance fee by $2 for people who bring snacks means that there is a steady flow of snacks. People spent much more than $2--two cakes showed up, as well as a couple of veggie and fruit trays. We still have a lot of our original food left for Mercer Thursdays.

2. Most gamers seem immune to any sort of scheduled events. (We made them all strictly optional, not stopping the open gaming for anything.)

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Frank Branham:  Anno 1701 The Card Game and Descent minis…AGAIN

I am a big fan of Anno 1503 the board game, as well as most of Teuber's Settler derivative games.

And this is another one of them. Combine bits of the Settlers Card Game, Anno 1503, and a hint of the Starfarers card game and you come up with Anno 1701.

Problem is, is just isn't as good as its ancestors. It is a decent and interesting game, just not as good as the superb games that formed this particular stew.

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Frank Branham: Nifty finds at Toys R Us

I do shop TRU occasionally (ok...frequently) and pick up the odd game. My most recent 3 acquisitions are kind of interesting. I've yet to fully play and tear through all of them, but most of the games you find at TRU are pure popcorn.

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Frank Branham: Craft 105 Dragonriders, and a Retraction

Rio Grande released a game called Dragonriders last year. It looked like a reworking of a game that I had always hoped would be reworked -- Ben Hur by Jean du Poel.

Jean du Poel's games usually have interesting ideas, great components, but erratic development and fairly confusing rules. The end results vary from interesting (I still try and play Mare Mediterraneum once per year.) to unplayable.

Ben Hur had a miniatures movement system where you place a stick alongside the big honking wooden chariot to move it. It also used a hand of cards like Ausgrebremst to choose which length of stick you used to move. The passing and collision rules were terribly unforgiving, and the game ended up being not much fun.

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Frank Branham: Balance, Age of Discovery, Handicapping

The following theoretical example is quite extreme and tortured:

Suppose your favorite game had an optional rule that required you to roll a die at the start of the game. The die roll determined the winner of the game at the start, but you still continued to play the game because that is the fun part.

But would you still actually have fun given that you knew the game's outcome?

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Frank Branham: Oops, I’m Running a Con Again

Running any sort of game event is quite a bit of work. I know that well from the Techwood Con and LARP days. I pretty much swore at some point I'd never EVER do it again. Never. Nope. Not me. Not a freaking chance.

Oops.

Mercer Game Event is October 19th and 20th at Mercer College in Decatur, GA (just NE of Atlanta.)

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Frank Branham: Bonus Weekend Bioshock Review

Yes, it is odd that I'm reviewing a videogame on a boardgame site. Yes, it really has nothing at all to do with boardgames. But I got a request, and work is slow today.

So those you have no interest, would you kindly avoid commenting about this misplaced review. Bioshock is at least a very interesting game. It has been the darling of videogame journalists for most of a year, prompting review scores in the 9.7 and 10 range, and remarkable amounts of oohing and aahing.

Part of this is due to the game's heritage, descended from legendary games like System Shock, Thief, and indirectly from Deus Ex. Part of the hype is due to the unusual 40's setting of an Art Deco underwater city. And part of the hype is no doubt due to the gorgeous visuals.

Much of it is deserved. Mostly for the setting. The game itself is ....a first person shooter.

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Frank Branham: Craft 104 Hirst Arts Descent Dungeon

I made a dungeon a couple of months back. So in lieu of actually writing something, this week will be pics of my Hirst Arts build.

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Frank Branham: Mechanics that need to Die #2 - Race Order

While this game mechanic doesn't necessarily need to die, it has implications that cause....problems.

I also bring it up because people have pretty much stopped doing racing games, and the genre could really use some fresh ideas.

Race Order is a simple concept: Players move their cars in order from the front of the pack to the back. As best as I know, Speed Circuit from 3M is the first game to use it. Speed Circuit is interesting because it is a very close adaptation of the Formula-1 game from Parker Brothers. It adds Race Order for turn order and simultaneous selection of speeds, as well as the perfect line concept.

And I like Formula-1 better.

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Frank Branham: Journeys, Endings, Bioshock

Easily the best gaming-like experience I've had in the past several months is playing the Bioshock demo for my Xbox360. I've been looking forward to the game, reading intently the praise heaped on the game, and awed by the pretty pictures.

That's only a taste of actually playing the game. At its core, it is a first person shooter, with some funky magic/genetic effects and some really freaky enemy AI. You pretty much know at the start that you are going to be wandering through a set of buildings killing things and that there is going to be a boss overseeing the place that you will have to kill.

With Bioshock, it is all about the journey. The setting is a creepy underwater Art Deco world filled with corpses, flowing water, and flickering neon. The story is told in a very Dracula-ish style, as you see little films, listen to audio diaries of the inhabitants, and stare at the copious advertising debris littering the ground.

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Frank Branham: Craft 103 - Descent Beastman Basic Painting Tutorial

This all started because Alan Moon has an impressive Descent setup: Two tackle boxes filled with a Hirst Arts 3D Descent tileset, all of the bits, and D&D Miniatures figures to replace most of the Descent figures.

As I had the Hirst Arts dungeon all done and painted—more on that in a later installment—I was really interested in getting the painted minis to go with it.

Until I looked at the price on some of the older rares that you kind of have to pick up. I can paint figures in batches averaging about 30 minutes per figure. They won't be competition, but they'll match the game perfectly, and the paint jobs will be better than the D&D minis. And when I think about it, the techniques I'm using aren't really that hard to do as long as you can color in between the lines. (And I could actually never do that as a kid.)

So I thought I'd share and take photos as I prep, paint, and generally muck with my set of Beastmen.

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Frank Branham: Mechanics that need to die #1 - Majority bonuses

Weekly World News is ceasing publication this week. Apparently, Ed Anger and Bat Boy could not quite keep up with the lunacy present in daily interaction with the Internet.

It will be missed.

Alas, it does mean that I should write a more ranting column this week.

When the same game mechanic is used in different games, it has varying degrees of importance. The majority bonus is probably the most offensive to me because it is of key importance in games from El Grande to Age of Empire III.

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Frank Branham: Stories and Characters

In last week's article, I was thinking about games where stories are being told by the author or designer, or from the game system's point of view, but all of the comments were about the sort of game where the players and game create the story as they play.

This is of course far more common and natural than the niche case I was thinking about.

The thing is, most Eurogames don't really pull his off. As best as I can figure out, the thing that is missing is people. The games we think about as presenting stories all have single people represented in the game somewhere. Jenseits von Theben has individual archaeologists and assistants. Betrayal and Arkham Horror of course have very distinctive characters with evocative art.

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Frank Branham: Stories….Again

One of the ideas that I've been trying to promote is that each play of a well themed game should tell a coherent story.

The problem is that all of the stories that games tell start with "A bunch of people sit down to play a game." At no point in the proceedings can we see the stories within the game. We can't break through the fourth wall and become fully invested in a story going on within the game world.

We CAN see glimpses into that world, however.

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Frank Branham: Absence, RSI, Robot Martini games

(For the next few weeks, I'll be doing rather shorter bits. I've been both caught up in work as well as hit with tendonitis in my wrists. While the wrist braces I am now wearing for work are helping, long typing sessions in the braces are rather difficult.)

I do like it when people send me free games. Some of them end up being games I would have happily bought myself (Battlelore), some end up being obscure gems (Neuroshima Hex), and some I end up not reviewing.

At the Gathering, I tried to buy the Robot Martini Sushi Project collection of games and was promptly rebuffed by Dave Chalker who handed me the lot. I've played through most of them, and they are pretty much games.

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Frank Branham: Poland Has Gamers!!!!? Neuroshima Hex Review

Yes. Yes it does. Eric received a request to send a review copy of Neuroshima Hex. Eric apparently found it quite odd and immediately thought of me. So I got a box from Poland containing the divine Neuroshima Hex and the first issue of a magazine.

The magazine is the first issue of a gorgeous gaming magazine called Swiat Gier Planszowych. It is quite nice, being 80 pages mostly black and white, but with a very professional layout.

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Frank Branham: Big moments - God of War II

Instead of playing many boardgames that past week, I've been sucked into God of War II. This is far and away the best game Sony has released since they launched the Playstation 3 last fall.

Sadly, the game is actually for the PS 2. Someone at Sony really does have a lot of 'splainin to do.

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Frank Branham: I Miss Paragraph Games

One of the odder and more terrifying sights for many at the Gathering in April might have been three adult males clustered about a table containing the bright pink box of the Barbara Cartland game.

Yes. I picked it up, and yes, I somehow convinced two other people to play it. My rationale was that it was a paragraph game I hadn't played. It is, however, a pretty terrible game.

I was a roleplayer in my youth. While I never got into the Fighting Fantasy or Choose Your Own Adventure Books, I have sought out boardgames that have massive amounts of text and have a very exploration-like feel to them.

Of course, paragraph games seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs and thin perforated cards. City of Chaos' massive bulk may have been the last one ever.

I miss them.

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