John Clowdus will start shipping the fourth title from Small Box Games, Dirge: Carnage in Crimson, the week of May 12, 2008, but there’s still time to preorder the game at a discounted rate. Dirge is a two-player miniatures combat game with a basic action point system; wreck the other player’s army, and you win. You can download the rules from the Dirge webpage on the Small Box Games website.
This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.
Luke Hooper at Innovention Toys says that the Tower of Kadesh expansion for Khet – which was first shown at NY Toy Fair back in February 2007 – has finally arrived at the company’s warehouse. He adds, “After our full inspection they will begin shipping next week!”
This game has been updated on Gone Cardboard.
Looney Labs has announced that it will release a Monty Python-themed version of Fluxx before the end of 2008. According to designer Andy Looney, the card mix “focuses heavily on Holy Grail but pulls in as many other bits and references as I can squeeze in.” The previously announced Martian Fluxx has been moved to the second quarter of 2009 to make room for this title.
These games have been updated on Gone Cardboard.
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But I’m getting ahead of myself. At it’s heart, Pirateology is a roll-and-move game. Players move their pirate tokens—the game comes with five painted pirate tokens and five pirate ship tokens—on a series of paths that wind around a series of fictional islands. Players can choose which way to move, and the biggest decision players face on most turns is which space to land on. Some spaces give players cards, others give them a gold piece. Some spaces contain penalties, but no one ever chooses to land on these.
Some cards eventually let players attack other players, and wager gold pieces or cards on the outcome. Both attacker and defender try to produce weapons cards to help them in their battle; a card with one weapon on it allows players to roll one combat die, a card with two weapons allows two combat dice, and a cannon card allows the use of three dice. Highest total die roll wins the combat, and the wager.
Just to make the game longer and less interesting, the rules allow players to bury some of their treasure on the various islands if they land on the right space. This keeps players with buried treasure from being eliminated from the game if they lose their gold in combat. Other players must land by exact count on the treasure space and have a treasure map card in order to claim buried treasure.
Pirateology (from the Templar Company and Sababa Toys) comes with a fine set of toys, including plastic coins and a skull with a hole in the side of it to act as a storage bank for the coins. But I doubt any real gamer will enjoy the interminable luck-driven game play. I would rather walk the plank than play it again.
Blackbeard, the latest incarnation of the Richard Berg game that was first published by Avalon Hill many years ago, is a frigate of a different color. This is a game of wargame-worthy detail that exhibits the designer’s research into the history of actual pirates as well as his experience with modern Euro-game mechanisms.
In Blackbeard, players direct the fates of one or more historical pirates, and they occasionally also control King’s Commissioners, pirate-hunters that can be sent to chase and destroy the pirates of opposing players. The goal of each player is to accumulate booty and notoriety, both of which can be converted into victory points. The main way that pirates accumulate cash and infamy is by capturing and looting merchant ships, and attacking and sacking various ports.
GMT has given Blackbeard an impressively thick and sturdy game box, a colorful and attractive map, a fine set of cards with a moisture-resistant coating, two sets of player aids, and what seems like about 1000 cardboard tokens that represent everything from pirates and their enemies to the presence of scurvy or a drunken crew.
The actual game play is more complicated and fiddly than the average Euro-gamer is probably used to. There are lots and lots of die rolls, and lots of die roll modifiers. In the middle of our game on Wednesday night, Dave and I noticed Tom rolling a die for no apparent reason. When questioned, Tom said that he assumed that whatever was happening in the game at that moment probably required a die roll. It says something about Blackbeard that that seemed a perfectly reasonable explanation.
The Appalachian Gamer reaction to Blackbeard was mixed. We all appreciated the fine physical production of the game, and the attempt to simulate something based on history rather than Hollywood. We are all willing—and perhaps eager—to try the game again.
But there was also a realization that much of the game play was repetitious. Chasing and looting one merchant ship was much like chasing and looting another, and once a player is strong enough to sack one town, he can probably sack most of the rest. A pirate with a high combat factor can be nearly invincible, and we ended our game after a couple of hours when it became clear that Tom had such a high notoriety rating that he was sure to win. He achieved that high rating by fighting and destroying three King’s Commissioners that I foolishly sent against him. There may have been strategies that could have hindered Tom’s progress, but an invincible pirate does not make for a suspenseful game.
In many adventure games (especially fantasy games) player abilities and the challenges they face both grow as the game progresses, but the growth of both is limited in Blackbeard. Pirates can get a bigger ship on occasion, and can increase their combat factor with a heavy guns card, but that is about the extent of the improvement of pirate abilities. Money can be used to buy a safe haven, but other than that it is just used to buy victory points. It seemed odd to me that players couldn’t purchase a larger ship, bigger guns, or a better crew. At the very least, I would have thought that players could speed up the refitting of their ships in port with cash, or reward their crews with gold to increase their loyalty. Of course, such mechanisms would necessitate pirate opposition that grows stronger with the pirates themselves. Maybe we will see some player variants that simulate this.
At the end of Wednesday night, Tom suggested that the best way to play Blackbeard was to get all the players drunk and make them play the game using silly pirate accents. (That might be the best way to play every game from Apples to Apples to Zooloretto—but it seems especially apt for Blackbeard). That suggests to me that Blackbeard is more of an experience game than a strategy game.
I’m not passing any lasting judgments on Blackbeard until I’ve played it a few more times. But even if I conclude it isn’t a perfect pirate game, it is still the pirate game I am most likely to choose if I was allowed to take one with me to a deserted island.
Asmodée Editions had initially given a Q3 2008 release date for Okko, Era of the Asagiri, but in a rare display of overachievement on the part of a game publisher, Okko is now due out in June 2008.
Okko, Era of the Asagiri is a two-player miniature-style game with modular game tiles, a ton of characters, and a heaping helping of dice. For more details, head to Asmodée’s Okko webpage or visit the official Okko website, which includes a PDF of the English rules.
This game has been updated on Gone Cardboard.
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FRED Distribution has passed on images for the first titles in its Gryphon Games line: Money and Gem Dealer, both due out in September 2008, and High Society, which is now scheduled for early 2009. Gryphon games will be 6"x8" with a bookshelf look and perhaps 8-10 titles in the series once it’s complete. “They’re not all going to be card games,” says FRED’s Keith Blume. “But they will be family-friendly games that you can get into in five minutes and play in 20-40 minutes. That’s the ballpark we’re shooting for.”
Money, as you might expect, is all about the bills. Blume says that the money cards will be Lost Cities-sized to give you more grip on the geld.
By W. Eric Martin
Publisher: Gryphon Forge Games
Designers: Eric Drever & Matthew Stipes
Players: 2-5
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Rules Language: English
Game Played: Production copy
Number of Plays: Thrice, once each with 2, 3 and 5 players
Ryan Bretsch must be affecting my mind. In comments on BGN and elsewhere, Bretsch, a mainstream game fan, has cried out for publishers to stop using geeky subject matter. “No more elves or trolls or generic fantasy worlds or obscure foreign cities or Renaissance art fests or all those other things that game publishers do repeatedly,” he demands. While I normally roll my eyes at such requests – since many people dig fantasy worlds and topics shunned by mainstream games – I found myself unexpectedly sighing while reading the ad copy on the back of Wizard’s Gambit:
]]>| Long forgotten as myths of a time past, the Fallen have returned, bringing war to all the Kingdoms of Hyrathia. It has been over a thousand years since the convocation of Wizards has had a need for a war mage, and now they must just a Grand Siege Magus to take on that role, leading the wizards of Hyrathia against this ancient enemy. |
And so on and so forth. Normally I’m theme agnostic and breeze past themes and settings no matter how pedestrian and overused in order to focus on the mechanisms of game play, that is, the ins-and-outs of what you need to do to win. This time, though, I found myself wishing for a game that didn’t involve wizards and made-up myths. Were the particulars of Wizard’s Gambit that unappealing, or have I just burned out on such settings?
Setting the Dishes
Whatever the case might be, let’s see what’s going on inside the first release from Gryphon Forge Games, Omelets of Infinite Power. Each player is a sous chef, practicing his skills under the tutelage of Master Chef René Fouet-a-oeufs. While all of you are skilled at creating fine omelets, only one trainee can don the Toque of the Ages and take charge of the Overlord’s kitchen, earning the right to feed him healthy and nutritious breakfasts as he prepares to restructure the kingdom’s tax code and develop a realistic budget for the next fiscal year.
To win this scrambled skirmish, you must assemble ten pounds of delicious omelets before any of the other competitors. Four omelet recipe cards, with listed weights of one to five pounds each, are randomly laid out on the table. Each omelet card shows some number of ingredients, along with a special power that you can use once you’ve added the card to your recipe book. You can use the power of only your most recently gained recipe as you always have your hands full stirring eggs and can’t spend lots of time flipping through the laminated pages of your recipe book. The stove is on – get cookin’!
Players start with a hand of ingredient cards, action cards, and a single Egg Smash! card. (Additional Egg Smash! cards are shuffled into the deck; more on them later.) On a turn, you must play an ingredient card on one unclaimed recipe and you can optionally play an action or Egg Smash! card. The action cards allow all the things you’d expect of naughty student chefs: Steal ingredients from a competitor; clean out your fridge and get a new set of ingredients; force a player away from the stove for one turn; discard all ingredients on a recipe; and so on.
There are six types of ingredients – peppers, onions, mushrooms, ham, tomatoes and cheese – and one wild ingredient – bacon – that can replace any of the other ingredients in a recipe. (Everything’s better with bacon, right?) If a player adds the final ingredient to an omelet card, he claims it, adding it to his recipe book and revealing a new recipe from the deck for players to fight over, i.e., slowly add ingredients to turn-by-turn.
The Egg Smash! card lets you (1) block everyone from adding ingredients to a recipe, (2) neutralize the special power granted by someone else’s completed recipe, or (3) counter either one of the first two actions that are played by someone else. Note that in case #1 you can’t add ingredients to the blocked recipe either, but you can choose to discard your own Egg Smash! at the start of your turn to free the recipe card for that final ingredient.
Spoiled Rotten
As you might have gathered while reading the paragraphs above, Omelets of Infinite Power is the game of not wanting to set up other players but being forced to anyway and not being able to do much about it. Sure, you may hold action cards that might be useful and you start with an Egg Smash! that lets you reserve one nearly completed recipe for yourself – but another player can counter Smash! and take the recipe anyway. I did just that in a two-player game to take possession of my first recipe.
Even worse than the egg on his face after that assault, my opponent had to suffer through the power of my newly claimed recipe, “Clumsy Student,” which reads: “At the beginning of your turn, you may choose a player. That player must discard their hand.” While this recipe would inspire respect even with five players, with only two players it lived up to the game’s promise of Infinite Power for if at any time a wizard has no cards in hand, he must end his turn and draw five cards. All my opponent could do was draw and discard until I claimed another recipe and turned the page on this malicious one.
But wait! What recipe-to-be became available for learning but the one pictured above, “Remix.” (The card might be hard to read at actual size, as shown, so click on it for a larger image. You also might think it’s called “Sleight” and not “Remix,” but you’re mistaken.) I was able to claim this recipe next, which brought “Clumsy Student” back to the top of my recipe book and a look of dismay back to my opponent’s face. No egg drop soup for you!
The graphic design of Omelets of Infinite Power works against its usability. The blue and purple on the ingredient cards are too similar, as are the white and black(!), something you don’t normally encounter in a game since they’re opposites. Not this time, though, as the dark background on the white led to confusion with the white highlight on the black. The ingredient cards include no corner index, and the font chosen for the name is craggy, multi-layered, highly detailed, and blurred with a drop shadow. You don’t need to read the ingredient name to know what it is
What’s worse, the ingredients on each recipe card are huge, while the text is in ALL CAPS and really tiny. Once a recipe card is on the table and three feet away from your eyeballs, you can’t read what it does; tellingly, none of the players seemed to care. The game design screamed “Don’t read me!” so we shrugged and didn’t bother, just playing ingredients willy-nilly until someone mastered the art of the egg. Even with only two players, when we were able to crowd closely around the cards, my opponent (a former Magic: the Gathering player) didn’t bother to read the recipes to see what they did until I reminded him of their powers. “Oh, is that what those tiny lines are?”
The graphic and design problems are evidence of a starter company learning how not to make products. The Gryphon Forge website, with orange text on a mottled dark grey background, is further evidence of the training wheels. While some gamers will dig a randomish egg-themed card game with some “take that” action – as I undoubtedly would have in my youth while playing constantly against my brother – here’s hoping that future offerings from the Forge prove to be more appetizing for this diner…
Want to make the meals and judge the game for yourself? Then head to the Games for Animals page and take this review copy from me!
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Ah, lateness. This column was written two weeks ago, just missing my Thursday appearance… Hooray!
I’ve just wound my way back into California after a three day stint at the GAMA Trade Show in Las Vegas. As you may or may not know, GTS1 is the trade show for the Hobby Game Industry2. As far as board games, especially Euro-style board games, it’s an odd show to report on. Why odd?
]]>Well, first off, there’s no Rio Grande booth. Rio Grande imports, translates, and releases the largest number of board games in the hobby, but it doesn’t usually run a booth. Over the past eight years3 of attending the show, I think Rio Grande ran a booth once. Maybe twice – but not this year.This means that wandering the show floor leaves about one-fourth of the year’s domestic board game releases not present – a larger percentage of the Eurogames. That’s odd. Also, most of the games shown aren’t ready for production. We aren’t looking at the newly released games like at Essen, Gen Con, or other consumer oriented shows. I saw lots of production proofs, several spiffed up prototypes, and several completed games.
My own focus while at GTS is on our store, so I don’t spend much time playing games. I also don’t spend much time listening to rules or how to play games. I mostly ask questions about price points, critique potential box presentations, talk to other retailers, and do other sundry business stuff. I played one full game this year, which is more than usual.
So… was there anything interesting to note?
Fantasy Flight is in final development of its Battlestar Galactica game, which is cooperative with one or more traitors, so it’s really more like a many-against-one game. Perhaps the most interesting bit is that halfway through the game, loyalty cards get dealt a second time and you can find out that you are a sleeper agent… a cylon despite your intentions.
In addition to the title above, Fantasy Flight has the two Nexus big box games (Battles of Napoleon and Conan), plus another Descent expansion (Ice Caves), plus their .5 revision of Talisman4, plus, plus, plus. We’ll see how many actually make it out this year.
I was especially impressed by the packaging for the relaunch of the Game of Thrones, an ex-CCG which is now a Living Card Game5 that contains four balanced decks packaged with a board and some additional bits. It looks like a great standalone game that will have the gameplay of a multiplayer CCG-style game. It’s packaged in a Kosmos-sized big box. Very nice.
FRED Distribution is launching a full line of lighter games, which include reprints of Money, Worm Race, High Society and more. They are pretty far from production, so there wasn’t much to see. The fix-it packs for Through the Ages were available.
Pandemic is finally coming back. Neuland is apparently now the most family friendly brain-burner ever. I think Zev said something about releasing 22 games this year. You can probably find the total over at Gone Cardboard. He had printouts of the Z-deck for Agricola on which to gaze.
There was some strange company called Bucephalus Games6. Ahem, I mean a new company. They had about a zillion board games. Ahem. I mean, at least ten new in-development games. I avoided them all week. I didn’t like the look of them. I completely failed. I apologize. When they release the best game ever, I will apologize even more profusely. The will is weak.
There are two potential non-Munchkin games this year: One is a full box, modern production of Ogre; the other is a full box production of Tribes, which was an odd little negotiation-centered game that had a Ziploc black-and-white edition several years ago. You can play the game as a single tribe or as several multi-player tribes trying to gain the most children. I like odd games, and Tribes is certainly odd.
Delving outside Eurogames, I was favorably inclined towards the WoW miniatures game, which is basically a board-based character combat game. It was a bit better than okay, and sounds like it will be playable with only a couple figures, thus keeping the cost in check. Upper Deck also has a real-time card game with the Call of Duty license. And Bandai is publishing an abstract game7.
This was the one game I played. There’s a strong memory element, plus the game flow appears to change significantly when playing with four instead of three8. I am undecided about how I feel and will definitely have to play with four. It certainly isn’t a carbon copy of TtR.
I’m not a fan of the Bejeweled edition of the Titan masterboard. In person, I like it even less. The battleboards and the monster counters were pretty nice though. This was a proof copy, so there are still some color changes to be made. Plus, my camera skillz are poor.
The reality game of Traffic USA.
1Abbreviation of Gama Trade Show. Cunning.
2Defined as those game stores, on-line and off-line, that carry games which are not in the mass market. At one time, often called the Adventure Game industry, but that has faded as Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer have become merely two aspects of the larger product mix within a hobby game store.
3I’ve attended the show seven times. Whee…
4Mostly component upgrades. There will be an upgrade pack available to convert your Black Industries edition into 4.5, which is necessary to use the expansions that Fantasy Flight plans to produce.
5With “Living Card Game” being essentially a CCG minus the random packs. About as collectible as Runebound. Zev, if you are reading this, do this for Shadowfist.
6And the company doesn’t even have a website. Or if it does, my Google-fu cannot find it. This is almost inexcusable. [Editor’s note: Aaron filed this report upon his return from GTS, and Bucephalus Games has since launched its website. Very curious titles there...]
7As a relatively business minded person (at least while on the trade show floor), GTS inspires a bit of depression in me. I dislike the failure that I can sometimes get from companies. Can you see where this is going? I show up at the Bandai booth because a friend mentioned that Bandai was publishing a board game. I was surprised since, after all, the Bandai booth is covered with Dragonball Z CCG and Naruto CCG banners. Lo and behold, three green and black boards are set up on a table, with double-sided pieces (one side marked, one side not). One Bandai booth person mans the table. There is another Bandai person, but he is at the other end of the booth (which isn’t small) showing off one of the CCGs. I ask what the game is and get a short description: It’s a five-in-a-row game, with each piece starting off the board, and later moving like a rook until it jumps an opponent’s piece, when it flips and starts moving like a queen. There might be more that I missed. I then ask what the box looks like (since there isn’t one there). She looks puzzled, then says she doesn’t know if it has one yet. I ask how much the game will cost. She looks puzzled, then goes to a podium, where she flips through a printout of a Japanese website that is obviously about this game. It doesn’t answer her question, so she tells me she doesn’t know. I then ask what the name of the game is. She flips through the printout and answers the same way: “I don’t know.” I left barely better informed than before.
8Which is how many people were playing. Counting me.
--
Two Week later Update?
Bucephalus games is at http://www.bucephalus.biz/news/list
Ticket to Ride the Card Game is still on the jury list. I’ve played with four though.
| You might say Ken Fonarow is doing a little spring cleaning.
After buying and selling board and role-playing games for 25 years and hawking his wares at shows around the country, the retired policeman is selling his personal collection — for $150,000. Fonarow’s 20,000 games — from one-of-a-kind collector’s items to out-of-print rarities — is being snatched up by board and role-playing game Internet retailer TrollandToad.com, based in Barbourville, Ky. TrollandToad.com spokesman Ryan Severin says the acquisition is the largest in the company’s 17 years of doing business. It has 75 employees and had sales of $5 million last year. |
Visit the MailTribune.com for the complete article, which includes a pic of Fonarow and a tiny part of his collection.
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| They gathered at Potomac Community Center for game night as they do every Wednesday; never mind that it was the day after Christmas. Initially, they considered playing board and card games unfamiliar to most of the public but popular among the gaming faithful: Qwirkle, Anno 1503 and Loot. But ultimately, the evening would begin with a traditional favorite.
“I want to say it’s been a long time since I played Uno, but actually I played about a month ago,” said Wei-Hwa Huang, 32, a software engineer at California-based Google who was visiting his hometown of North Potomac for the holidays. |
Head to the BaltimoreSun.com for the entire article, which covers the Games Club of Maryland as well as more traditional family game nights.
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Zev Shlasinger has an incredible number of plates in the air right now, and while he’d love to take a rest, most of them will be spinning against his will until June or July. (Hmm, that analogy doesn’t really work, does it?) Here’s an update on many titles forthcoming from Z-Man Games:
North Star Games’ Wits & Wagers graduates from board game to electronic time suck today with its appearance on Xbox LIVE Arcade, courtesy of developer Hidden Path Entertainment. IGN has published an interview with Hidden Path’s CEO, Jeff Pobst, about the game’s development and the players’ funky dances.
Thanks to Ted Alspach for pointing out this interview!
Instead, I’m going to concentrate on a few things about my new recreational space, and it will take the form of a photo essay… Smaller pics will show up on the screen as you read the column, but you can click on the pictures to see the full-size pics!
I’ve managed to get most of the games out into the open with the remodel. Before we redid the basement, my game collection was crammed onto Plano plastic shelves in a basement storage closet. There was some organization, but mostly I was trying to maximize the space that I had, so I had boxes piled upon boxes with almost no organization. My system to find a game was simply to try to remember where I had last put it away. It wasn’t a great system, and the fact that the shelves were hidden made it very difficult to introduce people to my favorite hobby as none of my games could be found in the house to serve as a conversation starter. To make things worse, the old basement was only partially finished, so it wasn’t the kind of place that we were going to take people to while entertaining!
While getting the games into the open is a plus, I’ve had to give up about 40% of my original storage space as a result of the remodel. As you’ve likely read in this column, I’ve been trying to sell off games over the past year in anticipation of this reduced storage space. I also had to undergo a fairly painful purge in the past week where I sent a lot of my incomplete thrift store finds to the trash dump (finally) – though not before I cannibalized all the boards and interesting looking bits for prototype use! I also ended up combining all of the children’s games in one area. No longer will there be “kids games for the kids” and “kids games reserved for me” – I’m hoping that I don’t lose too many components to my beloved kids games!
However, things have changed since we’ve redone the room. We now have about 900 square feet of space for fun! Here is the view as you walk down the stairs from the main portion of the house:
Before we get to the games, let me walk in front of the game shelves and give a picture of the other side of the basement (that you couldn’t see in the last picture). This side of the room is more for the kids. The Nintendo Wii will be hooked up to the TV as well as a DVD player for their movies. The door you can see just to the left of the TV is a little closet formed from the space underneath the staircase. We’re calling it the “Harry Potter” room, and it’s a storage closet for the kids and their toys. There is also another storage closet, which you can barely see hiding behind the corner of the pool table which holds the children’s games.
As you likely noticed in the first picture, the shelves are split into two sections (currently cleverly named “the left side” and “the right side"). The door that splits the shelves is the door to the garage, in case you’re interested. Anywho, here is a better view of the left side of the shelves. There are essentially three built in bookcases with a cabinet underneath each one. Another nice feature of the new basement is that the window casement provides me a nice shelf to show off my Hu-Dey beer cans (made especially for the Bengals’ trip to Super Bowl XVI by a local brewery) – there’s still beer inside those cans, but I’m fairly certain that I won’t ever be drinking it!
So what else was I going to talk about? Well, I was going to create an exhaustive list of the things that I really like to have in my game room, but again, Mary has beaten me to the punch. Instead, let me just highlight a few of my “necessities”:
Tables: While standard fold-out card tables are great, they’re actually a little low on space for some games. With the new shelves, we could possibly use the surface in front of the bookcases as an extension of the table for storage. However, I have a few other solutions for this problem. First, I have two gate-fold tables – you can just make out the shape of one on the very left of the third picture above. Here is the page of the Ikea table that is quite similar to one of my tables. The other table is more like this with the four wooden chairs stored in the space underneath the table leaves. I like having both of these tables around because they can be compact when not in use. Additionally, as you can choose to raise one side or both, the size of the table can be customized to the number of players or space needed.
Table extensions: The other table accessory that I’m glad to have are card table extensions. I have two right now. One is a simple round board that sits on top of the card table to convert it from a four-person square table to a six-person round table. The other addition is a octagonal poker tabletop - similar to this one - which is nice because it has areas to hold poker chips or other gaming bits.
Rubber bands: Though I know that many people hate putting rubber bands on their games, I have found it to be quite helpful, especially because I store many of my games on their side. I have found that File folder bands work really well; they are 7” long and can wrap around just about any game that I have. I had previously used four-way rubber bands as well, but they are simply too expensive for regular use.
Baggies: I’m a bagger. I pretty much feel compelled to bag all the bits up, so I keep plenty of bags around. I buy them in bulk, and often split orders with other local gamers. I’ve found that ULine and the Associated Bag Company have always provided quality bags at a cheap price. I usually have four or five different sizes around at any time.
Laminator: I love having a laminator around to help prepare some of the player aids that I download from the Internet. I have a pouch laminator similar to this one which has been invaluable over the years.
Paper cutter: I also couldn’t live without my paper-cutter which I use on just about every prototype I work on.
I think the rest of my usual supplies have been covered in enough detail by Mary, so I’m going to continue tidying up the basement now in order to play games soon!
CRAZY DALE’S GAME BAZAAR
You can download my current list of games for sale (which should be the worksheet of this Excel file labeled FOR SALE). As usual, if you’re interested, please contact me at BGNAdvisor@gmail.com . Buyer is responsible for all shipping, etc. I am not against trading; you can use the full inventory included in that file to see what I don’t already have, but really, I’m trying to pare down the collection so it’d have to be really, really good…
Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor
It’s a game with a truly Spanish thematic :-)
In the Reiner Knizia‘s game, 66 wooden castellers are used to go high and high (The game could remind Penguin by Reiner Knizia, but both games have nothing to do and they are totally diferent). It is ilustrated by Bié, made by Games & Co. and published by Devir in June 2008. It will have rules in four languages, including English.
This new game has been updated on the Gone Cardboard Spain webpage.
¡Nos jugamos!
Voting for the 2008 Deutscher Spiele Preis is now under way, and you – yes, you – can participate by submitting up to five games for consideration. Your first title listed is awarded five points, the next title four points, and so on. You can also submit a single title for the best children’s game released in the latter half of 2007 and early 2008.
To vote, visit DSPvoting.de and complete the form there, including all of the fields at the bottom of the screen: first name, last name, street, ZIP/mailing code, city/state, country, phone number, email address, email address take two. The deadline for entry is July 31, 2008.
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TeamXbox.com has published a preview of the Xbox LIVE Arcade version of Ticket to Ride, something I ran a news item on back in March 2008, although Days of Wonder’s Mark Kaufmann was coy at the time about an XBLA version of the Spiel des Jahres-winning title.
While the Team Xbox preview doesn’t include a release date beyond “later this year,” it does include a few screen shots, including one which looks more like an embroidery pattern than a U.S. map with potential train routes. Maybe I just need to get used to the new look…
Christophe Boelinger’s Dungeon Twister has launched eight expansions to date – including Fire & Water, due out in English in Q3 2008 from Asmodée Editions – but the biggest expansion might be the one still to come: an electronic version from French development studio Hydravision Entertainment that will be available on the Xbox LIVE Arcade, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo DS.
Asmodée lists a release date of 2009 on its gossip page, while March 2008 SEC filings by Dutch/American game publisher Playlogic Entertainment lists a Q4 2008 release date.
Almost a year after it first announced the project, Asmodée Editions has decided not to release Renaissance – a sequel to designer Pascal Bernard’s Joan of Arc – in English after all. Eric Franklin’s English translation of the rules is available for download from the BoardGameGeek Renaissance page for those who want to pick up the game in French.
This game has been removed from Gone Cardboard.
While English speakers are still waiting for the new edition of Chinatown – currently due out in June 2008 from Z-Man Games – Canadian publisher Filosofia has already released the French edition of the game. Illustrator Mathieu Leysseyne (Animalia, Jamaica) continues his fine work with yet another game that features inviting and squeezably real characters and objects. Check out Filosofia’s Chinatown minisite for multiple pics from the game, along with avatars you can adopt.
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JKLM Games has delayed the release of Huang Di and Athene – both originally due for release at the upcoming UK Games Expo at the end of May – due to production issues, according to David Norman. The games should instead be available in July, but Norman says, “we will have demo copies at the Expo for people to try.”
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By W. Eric Martin
Publisher: Strategic Space
Designer: Mark Salzwedel
Players: 2-8
Playing Time: 10-120 minutes
Price: $14.95
Rules Language: English
Version: Production copy
Times Played: Twice with two players
“Leaves room for improvement” – that was the diplomatic response of my playing partner, quoting a teaching colleague of his that knows how to deliver bad news to inept students. My more unvarnished response?
“Hell to the no.”
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The concept of 4th Corner is simple – an introductory game design concept, you might say: Escape from the maze and you win. Theseus faced the same challenge a couple of millenia ago, with the added complexity of a minotaur that needed slaying. Corn mazes have been a staple at farms across America for decades, and poor misunderstood Jack Torrence froze to death while looking for his son in a hedge maze. Fail!
I picked up Tom Jolly’s G.O.O.T.M.U. back in the early 1990s while working at a game store and played that silly thing at least a couple of dozen times. While the game was light on strategy, it was big on fun, with players wandering through a shifting maze, picking up crazy objects, avoiding a monster, and trying to assemble the three parts of their personal “get out of the maze unit” (aka G.O.O.T.M.U.) in order to win. It was advanced roll-and-move and worth the time spent playing.
4th Corner is much simpler than G.O.O.T.M.U. and lacks the fun that must be paired with simplicity in order to make a game like this work. The game consists of interior wall tiles (straight, elbow, plus, diagonal pairs) and exterior wall tiles (straight with and without an interior wall, elbow, one exit tile). Players start on a plus tile, and a turn consists of drawing and placing a tile, then optionally moving your marker one space. Interior wall tiles don’t have to line up, while the exterior – once the first brick section is laid – must expand continuously, looping around the interior walls until it eats its own tail.
The exit tile is added to the face-down draw pile once the fourth exterior corner has been placed. At that point, you can then start replacing interior tiles (instead of simply adding to the maze), which you might need to do if you’ve been boxed in.
Two problems doom the game play in 4th Corner:
Even when we adopted a “spirit of the game” rule in which we tried to force the exterior wall into the expected shape, we never came close to making the ends meet. Instead we would place interior walls next to the opponent in ways that would force the exterior elsewhere, ruling out any hope of closure, because…
While the rules depict a closed border, which implies a tight competitive space that might allow anyone to win once the exit is drawn, the game didn’t turn out that way in practice. I’d place four interior tiles in a row to push the exterior away from my opponent. He’d trap me through the placement of one tile, and I’d release myself with the next draw since you can replace tiles at any time once the exit is in the mix. Ho-hum.
Want to try out 4th Corner for yourself? Perhaps not after that less-than-glowing review, but if you do, head to BGN’s new Games for the Animals page!
]]>If you are going to allow snacks and drinks in your game room (or around your games), you probably want to be sure they are “board game friendly,” i.e., they’re not covered with that dreaded orange powder (a la Cheetos or Doritos) and they won’t leave rings on your table (such as from condensation on soda cans). Some people may not allow others to handle food or drinks around their games – after seeing a couple drinks go all over other people’s games, I can understand why – but if you want to combine snacking and sipping with gaming because they go so well together, here are ideas for snacks that should minimize the chances for disaster.
My favorite snacks for the game room are small twisty pretzels and M&M’s – but here’s the trick: you eat them together! Put one pretzel and a couple M&M’s in your mouth and chew. Yum! I prefer dark chocolate M&M’s, but milk chocolate ones will do in a pinch. I also really like the peanut butter M&M’s, either with pretzels or alone. In addition to these flavors, M&M’s come in Peanut, Dark Chocolate Peanut, Almond, and two limited edition flavors: Widly Cherry and Mint Crisp. You can even order customized colors and messages!
Other coated candies, such as Reese’s Pieces or malted milk balls make perfect snacks around games. If your guests are more trustworthy and not likely to smear chocolatey fingers on your games, you can do what we do and put a bowl of mini-candy bars in the game room. Most of our guests eat them from the wrapper to minimize mess.
Small bags of snacks are nice to have in the game room, specifically individual sized bags or snack packs of non-orange powdered chips: Stacy’s Pita Chips, Stacy’s Bagel Chips, Original Sun Chips, Pringles, Fritos, and, of course, pretzels. Some potato chips are really greasy, so I don’t recommend them. Other great snacks: nuts (almonds, cashews, shelled/uncolored pistachios, peanuts), wasabi peas, Wheat Thins, dried fruit (apples, apricots, bananas, cranberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches), gummies, veggie chips, rice snacks, and sesame sticks. On the slightly more messy side: cheese (string cheese, Babybel, cheddar), veggies and dip (cherry tomatoes, baby carrot sticks, broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, peppers), fruit (seedless grapes, apples), and cookies. My favorite cookies are the break-apart-and-cook variety such as Toll House Refrigerated Cookie Dough Ultimates: Peanut Butter Cups, Chips and Chocolate Chunks, followed by Toll House Sugar Cookies.
For the More Adventurous Homeowner
We typically keep the bulk of foods in the kitchen but allow guests to bring plates of food to the game room. Some favorite foods for game days include spinach dip with pita chips, nacho cheese or guacamole with bite-size white corn chips – I don’t recommend salsa because it’s very messy, although it is okay if you blend it with cream cheese, which makes it thicker – hummus and pita, deviled eggs, pinwheels, stuffed mushrooms, olives, mini-sausages, meatballs, mini éclairs, and mini creampuffs. For holidays, I roll out the sugar cookie dough (mentioned above), cut with appropriate holiday cookie-cutters, cook, then frost with colored home-made butter/cream cheese frostings.
Bookcases: To begin with, if you can afford it, I highly recommend built-in bookcases with adjustable shelves in which to store your games. Be sure the span is not too large or the shelves will sag over time. The shelving material should be thick enough to stand up to the weight of games and also not sag over time. We painted our shelves using an oil-based paint (with a proper base coat applied before the paint) as latex paint tends to stick to plastics and even game boxes. If you are planning to move or want something a bit less expensive, buy free standing bookcases. We got a good deal on some oak bookcases with adjustable shelves many years ago; they have been through several moves and still look great and function well.
Tables & chairs: I recommend a small variety of tables (rectangle/oval, round, or square) due to some games being better played on round tables (Crokinole, Villa Paletti, Nacht der Magier), some on square (Tichu), and others on rectangle/oval (Age of Steam, Agricola, Time’s Up!, Indonesia). A small round table can usually function like a square and vice versa as far as some games go (e.g. partnership games). Tables with leaves are probably the most versatile – some can be square/round without the leaves then made into various rectangles/ovals with leaves – although they tend to cost more.
For the time being, we went the less expensive route. Most of our tables are the Lifetime brand folding tables, which we bought at Costco. We have one 48-inch round, two 6-foot commercial folding, and two 4-foot commercial folding tables. Our chairs are cushioned folding chairs (also from Costco). Lastly, we have an old kitchen table (with leaves) and matching chairs in the room. We used to have blue tablecloths on all the tables but they kept slipping off. I was going to try tablecloth clips like these but have not bought any so far. We ditched most of the tablecloths for the time being.
Side tables/coasters: You may want to get small side tables for drinks and snacks to keep them off the game table. I have a pair of nesting tables that work well for this, although we do allow drinks on the main table – as long as they’re on coasters.
Coasters are a must for drinks. They can be as simple as unwanted CDs – all those AOL and Earthlink disks that are sent as junk mail make great coasters! – or as fancy as coaster board games. Check out Martian Coasters or Cosmic Coasters offered by Looney Labs. Some restaurants have interesting coasters as well. Eat out a lot and collect ‘em all!
Cozies: For canned and bottled drinks, we offer our guests cozies (or koozies). One of the best ones I’ve used had a liner, but I can’t seem to find where to buy them. (I used it at a friend’s house.) We settled on the neoprene ones, which have thinner foam with material on the outside. They work pretty well, keep the condensation off the table, and fit in most drink holders (like the ones in my car). We found ours at a grocery store in Columbus, Ohio, and they cost about $1.30. Unfortunately the designs are not the greatest – solid colors would have been much preferred.
Frontgate offers a fancy version – a cozy with cachet, as it were. Our local stores have only the heavier foam cozies, which are the worst ones in my opinion. Once the can warms up, you pretty much have to crush it to get it out of the cozy.
Small necessities: We keep a supply of paper napkins around the room. I also recommend having wet-wipes handy. Not only are they great for wiping up messy fingers, but they may be used for cleaning up wet-erase marker mistakes during games (see below). We keep a box of facial tissues in the room as well.
Instead of paper or (shudder) Styrofoam plates, we prefer to use colorful, washable, reusable plastic plates (ours have dividers) and bowls. We found some at Target for about $2 each. We tell our guests to remember their color and where they put the plate so it can be used all day. You may want to check out melamine or acrylic plates (although they may not be microwave safe). We have a variety of colors of acrylic drinking glasses for water, juice, etc.
We keep a supply of pens and mechanical pencils as well as pads of paper and scrap paper in the room. I purchased some cute half-size colorful pens and pencils at our local Staples (their own brand, under the name Smartz) for about fifty cents per pack of twelve. Costco usually has packs of pens and mechanical pencils for a great price. They are useful for games that require writing or drawing (e.g. some party games) or for scorekeeping.
Trash can: We bought a kitchen size, stainless steel step-on/flip top model. Perfect for all those candy wrappers, shrink wrap, cellophane, and punched out game sprues. (No, we don’t keep ours, and while we are able to recycle most of them, the plastic type get dumped.)
Wall clock: So you know if the pizza delivery is late.
Wet-erase markers: Although they are hard to find, I prefer Staedtler Non-Permanent Lumocolor superfine (or fine) wet-erase markers. Here is one place that has an eight-color pack but I have not yet ordered from them. I currently have an eight-color pack of Sanford EXPO Vis-à-Vis wet-erase markers, and most office supply stores carry them. We use them mostly for keeping score and for our “crayon rail” games. We laminate score sheets that come with games so they can be reused.
We buy laminated maps of crayon rail games directly from Mayfair Games. To find them, go to Mayfair’s online shop under “Train Games,” click the appropriate train game, and look for “Flat Laminated Map.” They run about $12 each. (Alternately, you may use Plexiglas over the game board – see below.) I don’t know how well the markers would work on the game boards themselves.
Use wet-wipes to clean up small mistakes during the game (such as “Oops, I didn’t mean to draw across the mountains"). Some people use dry-erase markers but for certain games, I think they are too easy to accidentally erase.
White board & dry-erase markers: Some games already use them, e.g. Wits & Wagers, but I bought an eight-color pack of EXPO low odor fine tip markers at Costco. They may be used on white boards, laminated items, or Plexiglas. I keep a wall-mounted white board in the room, and sometimes write messages on it for game days (such as, “Eat candy from their wrappers to minimize mess!") or use it (or a small hand-held white board) for scorekeeping. Some white boards are magnetized, in which case small magnets might be handy.
Plexiglas: It’s great to have a good sized piece on hand that’s big enough to cover and hold down your average-sized or slightly larger board game, e.g. Roads and Boats, but I don’t recommend trying to cover something the size of Railroad Tycoon. The Plexiglas helps hold game boards down (which is especially useful on the roll-up type). You can draw on the Plexiglas with wet or dry markers – just don’t get a piece that’s too thick or the offset between the board and drawing will become annoying. Make sure the edges and corners aren’t sharp, or they may cut you or the table during handling. I usually use a fine grain sandpaper (with mask) to carefully sand any sharp edges and corners before using for the sheet for board gaming. You can find Plexiglas at Home Depot or Lowes.
Laminator/sticker maker: I highly recommend buying a Xyron 9” Creative Station machine and cartridges. You can get them at a local craft store such as AC Moore or Michaels. (Look for 40 and 50% off coupons that are offered regularly online or in local papers.) The cartridges are super easy to change. I find the following cartridges useful: acid-free permanent adhesive (makes stickers out of anything flat, including paper, foil and material), acid-free repositionable adhesive, two-sided lamination (cold laminate, which can be trimmed closer than hot laminate), one-sided lamination/adhesive (repositionable and permanent) and one-sided laminate/magnet. The Xyron 9” comes with a removable trimmer but I prefer to use a separate rotary trimmer.
I also have a hot laminate machine; the lamination is nicer (thicker, glossier) than the cold but it cannot be trimmed as close or the seal will break. The sticker cartridges are great for paste-ups.
Label maker:We have a small Brother P-Touch label maker. We use it to label generic boxes, e.g. deck boxes, cardboard boxes, and compartmental boxes.
Boxes: These can be plastic compartmental boxes for holding game pieces (purchased at craft stores in the bead or jewelry department or in the fishing department of stores like Wal-Mart), deck boxes for card games (not just CCGs), and cardboard boxes for holding cards or deck boxes. ("Shoebox" and “pizza box” sized ones made for storing cards can be bought at hobby shops.)
Ziploc baggies: Game pieces must have baggies! Buy them in bulk, use them! They keep your game pieces neat so they don’t roll around the box (or possibly escape). Some recommended sizes: 2"x3", 3"x4", 4"x6".
Card sleeves & pocket page protectors: For games that see a lot of use, card sleeves will protect your cards from becoming dirty and dinged up. Be careful when shuffling; shuffle using the bottom and sides since the tops are open. Page protectors are mainly useful for CCGs but you can perhaps find other uses in the game room. Richard Garfield used them as an integral part of his game Filthy Rich. I prefer UltraPro brand for both of these.
Dice Tower/Boot and adventure dice bags: Most online board gaming stores carry the clear polycarbonate Dice Boot ($18). If you want something fancier, check out the dice towers from VixenTor Games. They can even make you your own custom dice tower.
Another great product is VixenTor’s Adventure Dice Bag; it functions both as a dice bag and – when completely opened, with its flat surface and raised sides – a nice place to roll dice.
Dice bags and cloth bags: Dice bags are good to hold dice or glass counters. The larger sizes of cloth bags are handy to hold tiles/chits/cubes for blind draw (e.g., with Ra, Merchant of Venus, Age of Steam) or to hold large (usually wood) game pieces (Die Mauer, Bausack). Some games come with bags already but many don’t.
Dice and the deck of dice: I love dice. I have loads of them, with my favorites being purple, blue, speckled, and swirled dice in many sizes and shapes, from D4 to D20. Dice, not returning the love, hate me. For this reason, I also have a deck of dice.
Counters/markers: We have many colors of glass beads to use as counters and markers. Mostly we use them for CCGs, but we also use them to mark dead spaces on a game board (Zatre) and lock cards (as with the Public-Locking variant for crayon rail games). Abacus counters or life counters with dials are useful in CCGs and sometimes for keeping score in other games instead of using pen or pencil.
Poker chips: We bought a variety of colors to use in place of paper money in games such as Power Grid, St. Petersburg, Merchant of Venus, all crayon rail games, and Monopoly. (NOT! Just seeing if you were paying attention!) Click here for information about poker chips. I believe we have the heavy weighted composite 11.5 or 13.5 gram dice chips.
Warning: The box is very heavy. Try not to drop it on your foot – or worse, on one of your games.
Game timer: A good game timer is worth its weight in gold, especially if you have an over-thinker in your game group. We wouldn’t play all those crayon-rail games without it! You can pick one up at most online board gaming stores.
First player spinner or Start Player deck: We put a spinner on each table. I found the Spin-4-It version at Boulder Games for fifty cents. If you want a more inventive way to determine a start player, try the Start Player deck by Bézier Games.
Books & board game magazines: If you play word games like Scrabble, Boggle, or Letter Head, you should have a dictionary in your game room. For Catan players, check out the specialized book of games, “Die Siedler von Catan: Das Buch zum Spielen.” When gamers are standing around the room waiting for a game to end, having reading material around might be handy (and it keeps them from getting involved in everyone else’s games). Pick up a copy of “Hobby Games: The 100 Best” and display it proudly in the game room. We also have a pile of board gaming magazines, e.g. Counter (also available at Funagain), and Knucklebones (which has halted subscriptions, although back issues are available on its website).
Showpiece games: Front Porch Classics makes some beautiful showpiece games, especially in its “Coffee Table Games” line. Check out Dread Pirate, for example; although the game is just okay, the pieces are incredible. Also take a look under the “Desktop Games” line for Liar’s Dice. I have seen some nice editions of more traditional board games such as Chess or Scrabble from various companies. Some people might like to display Ystari’s Premium Limited Edition line of games with art by Mike Doyle.
Puzzle mover: I love doing puzzles and usually have one set up in the game room (shocking!). If you like puzzles but may need to move it around, check out the Ravensburger Puzzle Stow & Go (Barnes & Noble, Amazon) which allows you to roll up a puzzle in progress.
For your convenience, you can download a printable checklist summarizing all of the suggestions listed above.
Mood music in the background can add some fun to a game, such as the CD that comes with Space Dealer, dungeon crawl music for Descent, scary music for Arkham Horror, etc. An excellent source of background music is Midnight Syndicate. You could play the music on a portable CD player, but a full stereo system or iPod with good speakers is so much better! We’ve put our old stereo system in the game room, along with our old (non-HD) TV. We have a Playstation 2 in there as well (perhaps some day to be upgraded to a PS3 or XBox360… sigh!), along with a full Rock Band setup and DDR pads from Cobalt Flux. The DDR pads are probably my best investment in video game equipment ever; DDR is a great work out! We’ve had them a couple years and still use them all the time. No need for a gym membership!
For PC/Mac/console/handheld gamers, you might be interested in performance game chairs from Pyramat. I personally don’t like the chairs that are low to the ground (bad knees, getting old!), but the company does have a more standard chair with rolling base and pneumatic height adjustment.
We have a wireless network in the house. I would love to have a dedicated computer in the game room, along with a direct line to my favorite board gaming websites: Boardgame News and BoardGameGeek! Since the beautiful one-piece iMacs have come down so much in price, it is tempting to get one. Right now we use my husband’s laptop. My husband (a.k.a. Snoozefest) has several spreadsheets for aiding in board games such as Civilization and 1830 and has even created a GeekList of laptop and PDA player aids. Another GeekList about spreadsheets is also available.
A color printer is a great tool for printing player aids (don’t forget to laminate!) and tuckboxes (by printing on cardstock). Color printers have really come down in price, making them quite affordable. My husband makes custom tuckboxes for our games by scanning the game image and using a tuckbox template to determine the right size.
I’m sure I missed some items, so feel free to leave them in comments! I purposely didn’t mention items for painting and handling miniatures since I rarely do that sort of stuff. (Painting my robots for Robo Rally was my main experience.)
Note: There is one item in the accessories image (the one with poker chips and white background) that I did not mention – what is it, and why did I include it? (Click on the image to make it larger.) I’ll let you know if you figure it out. Now go build that game room so that you can start a game group!
]]>Or maybe not.
]]>• You didn’t tell me that rule!May you need none of these this week!
See you in 2 weeks,
Melissa
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It was at this point that the story became newsworthy. While Sara’s team was trying to figure out what to do, the pitcher from the Central Washington team, Mallory Holtman, approached the referee and asked if any rules existed that would prevent the opposing team from helping Tucholsky. The ref said that there were no such restrictions. So Holtman and Central Washington first baseman, Liz Wallace, carried their injured opponent around the diamond allowing her to gently touch each base as they passed. The home run thus became valid, allowing Western Oregon to win the game.
The incident was deemed of sufficent interest to be covered by ESPN, as evidenced by the video on YouTube.
But why is that? Why has this story become “news”?
One of the reasons parents sign their children up for little league, soccer, and baseball, I am told, is to teach them socialization, respect for the rules of fair play, regard for others, and graciousness in losing. So what happened along the way that we, when encountering true sportsmanship, are all surprised and stunned?
Maybe it starts with the notion that, as a culture, we’re taught conformity and orderliness are mandatory. A society can’t function with disorder. Stay in your seat. Cross with the light. Follow the rules. Contradictorily, though, society actually rewards those that think outside the box, those who bend the rules, those who set themselves apart from the pack, those that win.
Is it really a surprise then, that general sentiment believes people who follow rules, subscribe to good manners, believe in sportsmanship are automatons, fussbudgets, and losers?
While it’s common for most kids to have played on some sort of team during their childhoods, most adults don’t have the opportunity, time, or inclination to play a team sport. As we age, the lessons and importance of sportsmanship become less relevant, or have less opportunity to be displayed. In the business world, is it more common to hear stories about businesses dealing ethically with each other, or trying to manipulate situations to their own benefit?
Most boardgames don’t really promote good sportsmanship. Rather, they automatically assume that the players understand and will follow the tenets of sportsmanship. Rulesets don’t usually explicitly tell the players that they can’t cheat, or steal from their opponents, or lose their temper when something doesn’t go their way. It’s understood that by the time you become an adult that you will play games in a sportsmanlike manner.
But you and I both know that that’s not the reality. I’ll bet you can name at least one incident where you saw an adult playing a game and they acted in a way that was less than sportsmanlike. Unfortunately, we don’t have many mechanisms that will teach adults better game manners. Sure, it is possible to shun someone who you don’t want to play with, but unless you confront them, they probably won’t put 1 and 1 together to realize that they are a poor sport and need to improve their social skills.
Interestingly, only a handful of games over the last decade, such as Lord of the Rings, Betrayal at House on the Hill, Shadows Over Camelot, and Pandemic, are designed to make players work as a team toward a common goal. All have been very successful; the latter game so much so that it immediately sold out. Maybe boardgamers actually crave the opportunity to work together instead of constantly as adversaries.
And maybe one day, a tale of sportsmanship won’t be newsworthy.
]]>How lazy are you feeling? As the school year nears the end, I do find that I am less likely to squeeze in an extra night of gaming. Actually, this has been a crazy year with our 10-year University accreditation visit (lots of awful paperwork and meetings), my application for tenure (lots of awful paperwork and stress), and the regular stuff. Early in the fall I gave up my weekly pub game night and I made far fewer gaming trips this year. I really can’t wait to get back to a more regular gaming schedule this summer. But on a school night, an evening of snuggling on the couch with honey bunny and Bones often wins out over that game of 1960 I keep meaning to have hubby teach me.
]]>How far away is it? I’m impressed that Kris Hall drove 3 ½ hours each way to join us at CABS on Friday. I almost didn’t play games tonight because Ian, the host, lives 35 minutes across town (and I have two episodes of Torchwood on Netflix)! Of course, if the length of gaming is at least as long as the round trip, I usually decide it’s worth it. (So I need at least 20 hours of gaming to make a trip to GA worth it.)Who’s going to be there? Now, now.... I don’t mean it like that. I can’t think of anyone in any of my game groups that would detract from the gaming fun enough to make the couch potato win out over the gamer. But there are some people I’ll go extra lengths to game with, like my “nephews” (Dale’s boys). Ok, fine, and I get to watch Survivor with Dale and Tracy if I make the trip to Cinci.
How much is it going to cost? Can you believe the gas prices these days? With a longer event, you also need to figure in housing, food, and registration costs. Again, like the travel time, there needs to be sufficient bang for the buck— unless the writer’s strike is finally over and I’ve got a new episode of Gossip Girl.
What will we be playing? There are games I won’t get off the couch for--especially if David Cook (American Idol) is singing.
Sigh. TV is bad.
I’d rather be watching How I Met Your Mother, er, I mean gaming,
Valerie Putman
