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Dale Yu: Getting Ready for Thanksgiving or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Pasteup
Well, things get busy around the Yu household at this time of year. The holidays are a nice time to have family and friends over for a few days, enjoy a nice meal or two, and get some good gaming in.
I must admit that the end of the year is perhaps the best time for me to get in gaming. During 2007, I was lucky to get regular gaming in more than twice a month. Between my work schedule, the schedule of the kids, and trying to get the local gaming group organized on a day when we were all free, there always seemed to be something that got in the way of me playing games!
The trip to Essen signals the start of the increase in gaming activity at the end of the year. Six days of gaming bliss—though the focus of that trip is more on game acquisition rather than game playing! However, it is a heady week where every waking minute (and many of the sleeping minutes) are filled with nothing but games. Directly following Essen is Great Lakes Games. This is one of the many events that have positioned themselves in the calendar just after Essen. Other similar events would be Euroquest and LobsterTrap. These events provide their attendees with a great opportunity to get together with friends and play a lot of the new Essen releases.
BGG.con is another event (which starts tomorrow!) which gives people a good chance to try out the new games. The organizers of BGG.con (Aldie, Derk, et al) have a great game library system where many games are available for the convention attendees to check out and play. Additionally, they have made sure that many of the newest releases from Essen are available in the library. I was able to briefly orient Randy Shipp, this year’s BGG.con-designated game mule, at Essen this year. However, after our short meeting on Wednesday, I never saw him again as he and his wife were busy getting all the newest games for the BGG.con library! I was able to make it last year to Dallas for this con, but I will sadly miss it this year.
Even missing out on BGG.con this year, Thanksgiving presents an opportunity for another three-day mini-con at my house. [NB: Of course, I still have to clear these plans with my wife, but I might as well be optimistic about it!] Usually, I end up with three to six gamers at my place for a Friday, Saturday and Sunday’s worth of gaming. This should provide me with a great opportunity to finish up the first pass at the new games from Essen. And there are plenty of turkey sandwiches to go around for mealtime!
So with the prospect of more gaming in my immediate future, I am trying to get the rest of my games ready for prime time. This year, that means reading the rules to the final few games that have yet to be played. Additionally, I still have to track down a few more translations (or do them myself!), primarily for Anno 1701. I still await translations to the new Settlers expansions, but I’ve bribed Mark Jackson into doing them by providing him with the source material to translate.
I think that I’m finally done with all my pasting-up for the year. This is the first year in many that I’ve actually done pasteups. Generally, if a game needed significant work, I just chose to leave it behind or try to fumble through it in the native language. However, there were a couple of games this year that just could not go without a pasteup treatment: High School Election and (of course) Agricola.
High School Election needed paste-ups because every card has text on it that is integral to gameplay. Unfortunately for me, unlike German, I can really not make any sense at all out of the Japanese kanji characters. Luckily for me, the game came pre-packaged with all of the stickers that I needed to make the game playable. The cards are conveniently numbered and each pasteup had the matching number on the sticker. The only problem with this process was that some of the pasteups were quite small. Furthermore, many of the stickers didn’t have an easy-remove backing to them. I spent quite a bit of time trying to peel the extremely small stickers off of the backing! Thanks to Charlie Davis and Valerie for helping me out as we whiled the Great Lakes Games prize table away.
However, the work put into High School Election is nothing compared to what I had to do for Agricola. Agricola has 360 cards in the game that are all festooned with German text. Though you can play the basic game without the cards, I have gone ahead and placed each of the cards in a Magic card sleeve, then added a little slip with the translation into the sleeve. The question that always comes up is: Was it worth it?
For Agricola, the answer is a resounding Yes! It took me between six and seven hours to get the game ready to play, but I would say that the game has already seen at least 30 plays total. That amount of play certainly offsets the time it took to put it together. Do the cards look great? To be honest, not really—they’re functional at best. But they do represent the only way for me to play the game right now.
I’m not one for putting real stickers on the cards. I’m always afraid that I’m going to make some mistake which becomes irreversible from using a sticker or that I’ll somehow damage the game in the process of the pasting up. So I’ve resorted to using the deck sleeves and slips of paper for the cards. I have put stickers on the board itself, but these stickers are the removable type so that the board underneath will remain pristine.
The other question that I have fielded often about Agricola is: Would I still get an English version if and when it becomes available? The answer is also: Yes! Though my copy is playable, it’s still a bit awkward with the card sleeves and whatnot. I’d much prefer to play the game with real cards in English.
So, as I mentioned earlier, I used to be firmly in the camp of no pasting up. However, my experiences this fall may be moving me more towards consideration of this in the future. To be honest, I’m not sure that there are many other games out there that would involve as much translation/pasting up as Agricola, and it really turned out to be a pretty tolerable experience. And without the effort, I’d be waiting a few extra months to play the game! Additionally, having access to better equipment, most notably a color copier/laser printer, has made the end product a lot better looking as well.
I’ll admit that my pasting-up skills are also hampered by the fact that I’m really not good at Photoshopping things. I am continually amazed by the work that people are able to do with Photoshop in creating player aids or paste-ups for games. I think that if I had access to such hi-quality materials when I initially made up my mind about pasting up, I might have had a much different view of it! I’m not exactly looking for new games to paste up at this point, but I’m certainly not afraid of the process anymore either!
Well, I’m off to re-pasteup my Agricola… Hanno and Melissa Rogerson have just posted up a new and revised set of card translations—can’t afford to have inferior translations in my cards! Even though right now I’m only playing solo games, it’s still going to bother me to not have the most up-to-date cards possible…
SOLO AGRICOLA UPDATE
I went through the bloody play-by-play last week which may have been too much information for most of you. I’ve continued on with my solo game, choosing to keep the Lensherr, and starting the game with 12 extra food given my score from the previous game. I was able to get another favorable deal in the second game and was able to get a few good combinations, especially the Fachwerkhaus—which gave me 18 points for my six room stone house! My final score in the second game was 69, which exceeds the goal by 14. So the next game will start with 14 food. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to give up the Lensherr!
I’m in the process of constructing a ledger sheet to keep track of your solo games. Look for it in the next week or so once I make sure it’s workable.
PICTURES, PICTURES, PICTURES
As a final note, I’ve finally put my Essen pictures online…. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll cut it a bit short this week and let you enjoy the pictures—
Dale’s 2007 Essen Pictures
CRAZY DALE’S GAME BAZAAR
Well, there have been a number of requests for my extended sale list, enough that I will just go ahead and post the list here. If you’re interested in these, contact me at BGNAdvisor at gmail dot com. Again, all shipping is USPS unless otherwise requested, and buyer is responsible for shipping charges. Feel free to make other offers and quantity discounts likely apply.
$20 each
Pueblo
Heart of africa
$15 each
Ahoy
Cronberg
Wordwild
Zoosim
Halunken und Spelunken
Die Brucken von ShangriLa
La strada
Der zerstreute pharao
Pony express
Das letzte kamel
Time pirates
Lumberjack
Media mogul
Aloha
Krieg und frieden
Donnerwetter
Condottiere
Der garten des sonnenkonigs
Venezia
Phoenix
Industria
New york architecture game
Aquadukt
Abenteur tierwelt
Oltre mare (small box)
Aton
Cityscape
Palazzo
Power lunch
Wie hund und katz
Die siedler von catan wurfelspiel
Meurtre a L’abbaye
Paparazzo
Balanx
Ballast
Black box
Ido
Finale
Orient express
Enter the Rising Sun
Der fliegende hollander
Kraut & Ruben
Socks in the City
Body boggle
Chicago
Tahiti
Zwergen Ziehen
Zum Kuckuck!
Fruchtchen
Twins
Ausbrecher AG
Die Wilden Fussballe Kerle
Klunker
Der Ausreisser
Alles Im Griff
Raub Ritter
Fist of Dragonstones
Bongo
$10
Don
Liftoff
Remmi Demmi
Arriba
Nobody But Us Chickens
Olympia 2000
Wie Hund und Katz
Inkognito the Card Game
Die weinhandler
Power Lunch
It’s Mine
Hands up
Birds, Bugs and Beans
GREED
Fettnapf
Einfach TIerisch
Gargon
Im 80 Karten um die welt
Where’s Bob’s Hat
Robin Hood
Limits
Corruption
Lunch Money
Justice League Mega Clash
Badaboom!
Mamma Mia
What’s It To Ya?
Stamp
$5 each
Nurmut!
Earthquake
Alpha Blitz
Twitch
Fiasko
Stop
Split
Ein Arsch kommt selten Allen
Falling
Kathai
Bayon
Up and Down
Flix Mix
Express
Loopino
Pompeji
Viele Dinge
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor
© 2007 Dale Yu
Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 14, 2007 at 01:00 AM in Columnists, Dale Yu / 1076
Comments:
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Nice title, Doctor Strangegame...er...Gaming Doctor. (Body Boggle???) I’d be happy to have your German version of Agricola after you get the English one (if I can wait that long to order the German one myself, of course). Posted by Jeff Allers on Nov 14, 2007 at 03:54 AM | #
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Really great pictures, Dale! What’s the game with the Don King meeples? Posted by Scott Tepper on Nov 14, 2007 at 06:19 AM | #
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Jeff—Umm, you really need to order the German one… It’s your duty as someone who can speak German! The licensing of Agricola is likely dependent on the success of the German version. Though I don’t have any hard numbers, I’d guess that at least 60% of the German copies would have to sell before it makes any sense to license it out to other companies. Scott - Altamira (Zoch) Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 14, 2007 at 07:10 AM | #
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Dale, this year’s BGG.Con seems to be the one where a lot of people who made the first couple can’t make it. I suspect that being so close to Thanksgiving may be the reason for some. You’ll be missed… By the way, Zev announced that Agricola will see an English edition earlier this morning on BGG - http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/239977 . He’s going to be using a pre-order system, looking for 750 orders. Pre-orderers will get some new cards as a bonus. Good news! Posted by David Reed on Nov 14, 2007 at 07:56 AM | #
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Dale, I haven’t seen Agricola yet. Is the German text really festooned? That almost always implies curvature, or something draped. What shape did you have to make the stickers? Posted by Josh Adelson on Nov 14, 2007 at 10:35 AM | #
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Cranky - There is text along bottom 40% of the card, just like a MtG card… there are also some notes in the upper left corner at times. My paste-ups are fairly utilitarian. They are rectangular in shape, and they roughly cover the bottom text area. I have tried to include all the needed text in that area. It’s not pretty but it’s playable. Dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 14, 2007 at 10:40 AM | #
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Josh - and one other thing to make clear. I didn’t use stickers. No cards were harmed or maimed in the process of making my game playable. The pasteups (maybe a misnomer) are simply slips of paper that are placed in front of the card in the card sleeve. dale Posted by Dale Yu on Nov 14, 2007 at 10:42 AM | #
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Ah yes, I glossed over the technology involved, and I commend you for the clever use of sleeves. At one point I bought a rolling cutter and sheets of printer labels (removable), but I just never embarked on the pasting up of anything because a) I’m exceptionally lazy, and b) I dislike maiming game components, even in the service of playing them.... Happy Holidays to you and yours. Posted by Josh Adelson on Nov 14, 2007 at 11:16 AM | #
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hm, Dale perhaps it would be more appropriate for you to refer to them as pasties as opposed to paste ups.... Happy Holidays Posted by Lorna Wong on Nov 14, 2007 at 04:13 PM | #
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