What's Next (year)?

Random thoughts about gaming in 2009 (as we wrap up 2008):

Now that Nathan Winchester is hooked, maybe we can start a regular sort of two-player game thing - maybe C&C:Ancients, or some of the longer two player games - Hannibal, Twilight Struggle, etc

Hopefully Le Havre will arrive and I'll get to play it :)

Will 2009 be the year I'll finally get to play Die Macher? Probably. Dion is always pushing it.

Looking forward to the Geekway 2009 edition. Of course, its only a couple days, and of course I want to play like 5 epic games already...

I really need to find more excuses to post pictures of The Fonz

I kind of liked keeping track of trades, the games I acquired, and my plays in 2008 - but as the end of the year approached, I found I've been lazy. I won't be doing the same thing in 2009. Maybe its enough to just blog the playings and record them on the BGG.

I promised to teach my son Heroquest when he gets through with Kindergarten, so maybe I should read the rules so I know how to play.

I got through a pretty good number of my un-played games this last year. Hopefully I can keep cutting that number down in 2009. Its helped, because I finally got rid of some things that I really didn't need to keep. Some others that are on the fence that need to get tried so I can decide to keep them or cut them: Magna Grecia, Lost Valley, Mare Norstrum, Scepter of Zavandor,

Think I'm going to thin my "owned" list to take out the kids games. I'll still put comments on them as to appropriateness and record a play or something, but there is no need to clutter my collection with their kiddie games. My kiddie games are staying :)

Get another game shelf - I'm full and need more space. Even if I clear out stuff, I'm full and need more space. What will I do when my room is actually full?

Play some more: Age of Steam, Indonesia, A Game of Thrones,

Its About Time

In December of 2006, I last played A Game of Thrones (playing the Storm of Swords 4-player game). The last time I played the regular/expansion version was two and a half years ago! So I was quite happy to finally get this one to the table again. Joining me were Nathan Winchester, Mike Gingold, Matthew Frederick and Amelia Boli. Now the plan had originally been to play Starcraft, but that plan changed and in retrospect, I'm glad. A Game of Thrones is my #2 favorite game (behind Age of Steam of course), but it doesn't come out much, probably because of its length - if you don't start the night with it, you won't finish (or more likely, you stay up too long). At any rate, I drew Baratheon, Nathan was Tyrell, Mike was the Lannisters, Matthew was Grayjoy, and Amelia was house Stark. I've played Baratheon before, but never won with them, so that was fine by me. Having Amelia to the north of me was good, because I knew Matthew would be harassing her the whole game. Despite being a first time player, I don't assume Nathan will be an easy mark, so I needed to establish my foothold early and try to hold on hoping he and Mike would fight it out. The early game was a bit strange, as the first few turns saw Mike and Matthew dink around back and forth befor drawing a line in the sand and wasting a turn re-organizing and planning. Nathan played Tyrell well, but was probably not aggressive enough against either Mike of I. My problem stemmed from the fact that while there was early mustering, there was not much supply changing, which killed me in terms of armies - I was spread thin over too large an area. I eventually lost ground to Nathan (and probably should have lost more). However, I was able to place two ships off the northern areas, and those two ships probably made all the difference in the game. With them, I was able to help Amelia keep Matthew from decimating her and position myself for a strong last turn free for all. Going into the last turn, I had 5 cities, Nathan and Mike 4, and Matthew 3. First tie-breaker was supply and Mike was sitting at 6 barrels, so all he needed was to drop me one city - or so he thought. My plan involved finally turning on Stark and taking Amelia's area(s) through attacks that everyone else would think were happening in the south. Nathan struck first causing me to retreat. I used my ships and move my retreating knight to an empty space with a city in Amelia's area - in retrospect, I should have not done that, but it mattered little as Matthew immediately invaded the same space and booted me out. Strangely enough, Nathan moved a knight out of a city he controlled (forgetting to place any influence marker) and I ended up retreating their after losing another battle elsewhere. I was also able to take Harrenhall from Mike and ended up with 5 (or six cities - we didn't check if the retreating knight counted for occupying the city space, but it didn't matter as nobody else had 5). What I really enjoyed about this game (and every game I play of A Game of Thrones) is the balance. The game really balances well and while you may hate your current position or feel out of the game, it rarely happens. In fact, everyone spent most of the night complaining about not being able to do something, or how badly they had screwed up, but pretty much everyone was in it until the end. Our game clocked in at about 4.5 hours + 30 minutes for rules, which I didn't think was bad for a full 10 round game.

Mid-week Gaming

Dion called to see if I was up for some gaming, so Nathan Winchester and I dropped on over to his place. I thought we'd be getting in some Power Grid, but we ended up playing Agricola instead (for some reason, Thomas felt Agricola would be faster despite having played many games with Dion before). It was Dion Garner, Morgan Burt, Thomas Dunaj and Nathan and I. So we pulled out Agricola, did a draft with the I deck and off we went. This was the first time I had played the I deck before. It allows for a number of things to happen off other players, though most of what I saw wasn't really detrimental towards others (Nathan and Morgan each had one thing that cost you resources when you took a certain action), but for the most part, the interactive pieces were available to all or just piggybacked off actions to give you a benefit. During the draft, I mostly grabbed a few cards that matched up decently towards The Well - hoping to get an early start on food. I also got a minor improvement that gave me food anytime someone slaughtered any animal for food. Well, my well strategy seemed to play out. Between the early food from my Well related cards and the rate at which Nathan and Dion killed animals, I never worried about food and focused on getting points on the board. This allowed me to nab a lot of animals for my farm and afforded me the ability to get 5 family members at the end of the game. Final scores: Dion-35, Morgan-33, Thomas-26, Nathan-25, Charles-44 (I think 16 or 17 of those were bonus points from cards). BTW, Dion grabbed extra family members early in the game which the slowest guy should never do as I'm sure Dion added about 30 minutes to the game trying to figure out what to do with his extra guys at the end of each round ;) One last thing about drafting cards. It really shouldn't take too long to do the draft. Look them over and quickly and find something that is either cheap and helpful early, or compliments something you have already. If you do that, you can eliminate about half the cards you see each time you are passed a new stack. The point to drafting is so you don't end up with a handful of cards that never let you build your food engine, or cards that are all end game scoring for very different things. Its not like Dominion where you are trying to build the BEST hand - its really about just not having a CRAPPY hand.
Next up, we had a little time left for one more game, so Dion asked if we'd play Attika. This is one I haven't played in a while, so I was happy to teach the game. I also discovered that I had previously mis-understood a rule about the amphoras (you only earn them if you build the building group together - its not enough to just get them built). Anyway, I ended up being the unlucky first player (I think the first player gets hosed) and of course, didn't draw my main city, instead drawing The Fountain and the Silvermine - whoopppeee :( Then I spent the rest of the game trying to block out Morgan and Dion from connecting two temple/shrine things. Morgan was looking close to doing so, then Dion, but it was Nathan that was able to slap down all his roads for the connection. Though I still like this best as a two player game, its a good closer for four players and (like half the games I have) should come out more often.

Hurray for Trades

I got a trade request this morning for my Manoeuvre game (which I picked up nearly new at Bookman's). The offer was for Marvel Heroes, which is out of print and won't be reprinted due to licensing costs or some such. At any rate, my son will get a kick out of this game in a couple years. Now, Manoeuvre was ok, but it is still available if I want it, so I see this as a good trade for now. The best part was that I didn't have to go looking for it, it found me.

Best and Worst of 2008

Yes, its about that time of year. No, not Christmas or Bowl Games (both good things), but rather that time of year when the end of the year Geeklists start coming out. Being that I'm that kinda guy here are my best and worsts of 2008.

Best New Game Played in 2008

I played a number of new games this year, but I think my favorite game that I played that I had never played before would have to be Indonesia. This is a sweet Splotter economic game that is shaped by the choices of all the players. Its a little fiddly, but I have enjoyed it every time I play and each time its been pretty different. I think its actually better with five players than four, decreasing the playing time rather than lengthening the game.

Worst New Game Played in 2008
	Ok, I admit it was probably just the fact that the game I played in had a weird streak of stupid randomness, but I really didn't care for Manila. And of course, this was the game that I ended up winning (and subsequently giving away) at the Geekway 2008. It should have been a game I liked, but man did I think it stunk. I would have to be pretty desperate to be talked into another playing of this.

Most Played Game in 2008
	Samurai tops my list of most played games, mostly due to the number of games I played on MaBiWeb. Thanks to MaBiWeb, I played a lot more of In the Year of the Dragon too! Samurai has been one of the few games I play that I really enjoy the more I play it. It is such a different experience playing 2-3-4 players (and live vs web). This one just is fun to me.

Best Trade of 2008

I made a lot of trades in 2008. Most were of the sort where I got rid of something I didn't want for something I really did. A few were probably trade ups for the other person, but none are ones I'd take back. The one I can say I'm plenty happy with is the one where I traded Container for Galaxy Trucker. I had not played Container and it was looking more and more like I wouldn't. Galaxy Trucker however will get played around here and by my family. Its silly fun and I really am glad its in my collection.

Biggest Disappointment in 2008

Wow. That's hard to say. I'm not terribly disappointed in the games I've played this year. I was looking forward to Chicago Express (yes, I'll call it by its new name), Agricola and Dominion. They all lived up to the hype as far as I'm concerned. Chinatown was close, though I can't say I was that hyped about it anyway. Jambo was definitely one I thought would be much better than it was. Word of mouth on the 'Geek is still good on this, but I just don't see much to the game.

Surprise of 2008

Micro Mutants: Evolution is the hands down winner here. I had never even heard of this game. Then Jay Little pulled it off the Play-to-Win table at the Geekway and surprised us. This dexterity game has a fun theme, actually takes some skill, and is a blast to play. And I can play it with my son, who is much better at it than I thought he'd be. This one showed up for $10 on FFG's Holiday Sale, which is a little sad given how surprisingly good this game is.

Game I wished I had played in 2008

UPDATEDue to a change in plans, looks like I'm going to get to play A Game of Thrones. Now, since that is going to happen (knock on wood), I had to go back and look at my list and think about this one a little more (picking AGoT was easy). Maybe its my current mood or whatever, but I kind of want to pull Conquest of the Empire out. I played the original a lot as a kid in junior high. When the new release came out, I was only so so about actually getting it. Then I played the game with the revised rules and saw a cool game. I keep being told its Struggle of Empires lite, but since I've never played that game, what do I care - this is a cool game.

Gaming with My Wife

Nathan and his fiance Niecy came over for pizza Friday night. After I finished making pies and we had our fill, I pulled out a couple of games to play. We started the night by breaking into The Downfall of Pompeji - literally as I hadn't even broken the shrink on this since receiving it [gulp] last year from my secret Santa (sorry Jay). Now, while short and gamery, I knew that throwing people in the lava and burning them would appeal to Stephanie, and I wasn't off the mark on that call. Everyone had a good time burning each other's families and extracting revenge later. Niecy beat us all fairly easily. Somehow, I had the most people in the volcano...
After that, we played Zooloretto, which my wife had played before and liked. This evening however, our kids were not being very good as grandma put them to bed, and we had to take an intermission to deal with them (we threw them in the volcano). By the time we finished, my wife was tired and cranky and said the game lasted too long. Ah well.

Thursday Night Age of Steam

I invited Nathan over for a little gaming Thursday night. We were figuring out what to play (while at work), and Nathan sounded like he wanted to learn Age of Steam (which is fine by me, being my favorite game). So, I shot Dion Garner a line to see if he'd be interested in joining us. He was able to join us and also invited his neighbor Morgan Burt. Dion has played AoS before, but not often and not in a while. Morgan had played Railroad Tycoon, but not AoS. So after explaining the rules I pulled out the original rust belt map and off we went. Well, I started building first, using engineer to connect two cities through a town near the west-central part of the map. Morgan grabbed the SW and Dion the NW. Nathan played on the east coast all by himself. Of course that meant it only took until turn two for Morgan to screw me over. I had to adjust my plans a bit, and by the time I was ready to seriously move longer goods, I was leading the share race by 3-4 shares. Those extra shares took me right out of the game. Dion had never found any good routes, and didn't move many long ones at all. In the last round, Morgan managed to move to 6-routes and won. Morgan:83, Nathan:79, Charles: 75, Dion: 40
We had a little time left and looking for something short, I pulled out my new present from Secret Santa (thanks) - Ubongo Extrem. This is a little timed puzzle game where each player gets a different puzzle shape each round and has to fit 3-4 pieces onto the shape the fastest. It differs from the original Ubongo in that the pieces are built from hexagons rather than squares. Sometimes the puzzles are really easy and you can get them done in 10 seconds. We also had a number of them where we all cried uncle and threw the pieces back in the pot. There is a little bit of luck involved in the scoring, but the scores were tight and I'll happily claim the win. Charles: 30, Nathan:26, Dion 29, Morgan: 27

Game Day

Saturday Nov. 29, 2008 - Game Depot. The day started out with my arrival at the Game Depot. I spent a bit of time looking around and checking out the new games. Okko looked pretty interesting (though after checking on the geek, I'm less interested) as did the big box for the new Killer Bunnies game (yes, I know how bad the card game sucked, but I have a young son). The LCG for A Game of Thrones also caught my eye, but I said no more purchases for the year, so I sadly walked away from them all. Bobby had to run and get Christa from the airport, so when Mike G showed up, he offered to teach me Dominion with Bobby's copy. Dominion is one game that has been getting a load of hype and I wanted to try before I grabbed a copy. I can safely say that I'll be getting one sometime next year. Its a pretty good game that plays really quickly (which is good for what it is). Its a VP engine game where the action revolves around you building a deck of cards turn by turn and trying to balance the cards you need to accomplish your goals with getting victory point cards (which just water your deck down). As with any new game where there are a dozen actions that have text to pay attention to, I felt a bit overwhelmed to start the game. That lasted about 5 minutes and I never really felt it even when we changed cards for the second game. Mike beat me 43-31 in the first game and I came back for a 36-33 win in the second game.
Bobby and Christa arrived so the four of us sat down for some Tichu (Christa and I were partners). Apparently Bobby had talked a little smack outside to Christa, indicating he was the best Tichu player of the four of us - it came back to haunt him as he went out last in every hand we had (we played a half game to 500) and he and Mike scored a measly 45 points (to our 550). It should also be noted that Mike nabbed all of those points for their team.
After Tichu, we split into a couple of three player groups and Bobby, Christa and I started playing some Wasabi! This is a little set collection game with a sushi theme. The game is really gorgeous, though pretty straightforward to play. I got smoked here with Bobby winning 24-22-16(me).
Next up, I asked Bobby to teach me Arkadia, and he obliged. This one was a bit different and a little hard to describe, though easy to play. Its something of a influence game with a bit of the stock market and some spatial game play thrown in. I liked it a good amount and need to try and play it as a 2 or 4 player game. It really doesn't take too long to play and is probably a good finisher for the end of the night when you want something satisfying, but not long.
I finished off the day with a game of Agricola (using the standard deck) with Mike and Matt Cullinan. We did a card draft of the occupations and minor improvements. none of the cards were crazy special, and the game was pretty standard. Mike couldn't pin down which way he wanted to go and the game was between Matt and I. I eeked out a couple more points than Matt to win 33-31-19

What Was I Thinking?

At the beginning of the year, I built a list of things I hoped to do by the end of the year. As we approach the end of 2008, I thought I'd review the list. I Bought games I planned to: Starcraft, Commands & Colors: Ancients Expansion Pack #1: Greece & Eastern Kingdoms, La Citta (traded La Citta without ever playing it), Indonesia (though I thought it'd be Antiquity), Battle Cry and Himalya. Played games I planned to play: Race For The Galaxy and Agricola.
Failed: to paint my Descent set, put my BattleLore guys on bases, play Die Macher or A Game of Thrones (though I plan to get AGoT in yet), acquire a few games: the rest of the Alea big box set (which is ok - I don't have the room yet) and Through the Ages (quality control issues kept me away). I did manage to play or trade away a larger number of my unplayed games - the number is still big, but dropping faster than I thought it would. Some of that had to do with my son started playing games, so I did play a number of games with him. Some of that was just a better effort on my part.

Of course, things changed way back in April (we decided to move back to AZ) and that threw a wrench in things, but that's ok. It has been an interesting gaming year. I've started to think about next year a bit, but for now - the things I will try to do this month (aka, this year): finish Atolla for Mike Gingold. Play A Game of Thrones. Whew. Trust me, those are two big orders, but doable this year. There are also 19 games sitting at 3 or 4 plays that I might have to push up to the nickle list. Wabash is also close to needing to be on the dime list. Not sure I can stuff in two more playings, but we'll see. I have a lot of games that hit nickle and dimes this year - more than I certainly thought I would.

Game of the Month

November's game of the month is Dominion. Yep, the same super over-hyped Dominion. November's game of the month for me was again between Agricola and the eventual winner. Though I picked Agricola to play twice (as opposed to playing at the suggestion of others), Dominion was interesting enough to pass the big "A". Dominion is about building a victory point engine. You get VPs by actually building a money engine which you can use to buy actions that let you do more/buy more, or purchase VPs. The twist being that you build your engine through a deck of cards. Each player has their own deck. At first, you cards are nothing more than a combination of VPs and money and you pretty much are buying specialty cards to try and get the big VP cards. The downside to actually purchasing VP cards is that they get in the way! Whatever you purchase goes back into your deck and when you have played through all your cards, you shuffle them together and start back through them - meaning if you buy a lot of little VPs, your chances of getting good hands later starts to diminish. If you hold out for only the big VP cards, you won't win. There is a fine balancing act in collecting money, actions and victory points. What makes this interesting, is that the game scales well and is SHORT. You only draw 5 cards each hand, so typically, you've figured out your play while the other player/players are going. There is very very little downtime and the action is quick and yet still interesting. Its a fine game. If it has a flaw, it is that the shortness of the game means that you'll play through the card combinations fairly quickly. I fully expect that heavy players of the game will be bored and onto something else in a month or two. In fact a number of folks have logged huge numbers of plays online at Brettspielwelt. However, what I saw was that it really is a decent filler - you can get in three games easily while others finish off their games or in waiting for your group to show up. This is worth having JUST to have a filler worth playing. After having played it, I feel that I'll likely pick this up next year, along with card sleeves - you have to have sleeves for the cards. The cards are handled, shuffled and re-shuffled A LOT. I like this one a lot better than Race For The Galaxy. Though the only real similarity is that both of these are card games, they have a similar sort of feel in that you are building a points engine. Dominion however, is easier to learn. You'll only have the "overwhelmed with options and card text" feeling for about 5 minutes, then 5 minutes later the first game is done and you get it and are ready to play again. On the flip side, with Race For the Galaxy, you feel overwhelmed the entire first game. The second game you get it, but have no idea what combinations of cards work well. By the third or forth time through the cards, you start to get the picture, but by then you could have played about 16 games of Dominion. Competitively.

Agricola

Taught Agricola to Nathan Winchester. We played a two-player standard game (i.e. with occupations and minor improvements). It actually went fairly smoothly. We both ended up "cheating" slightly but caught our mistakes partway through the game and just kept on going. In fact, I'm sure that neither error would have changed the game's score. So how does it play with two player? Fine. It felt more fiddly with two players - maybe with more players helping restock and such it doesn't feel as fiddly, I don't know. At any rate, It doesn't feel as tight as with more players (though Nathan commented on how tight the game felt - not an unsurprising remark for a first play). I will note that having played 3 times now, I have twice had a hand of occupations that sucked. Most of my occupations were "end game scoring" type, meaning I had no early help for food. I really don't see why a short draft or redrawing of cards shouldn't be done. I do enjoy the game though and will probably try and get it out again a time or two before the end of the year.

Random Thoughts Monday

My mother and sister were in town and I got to play a number of games with my sister as well as my whole family and friends. We played some Blokus Trigon, Rumis, Chinese Checkers, Apples to Apples, YINSH, Jambo, and Zooloretto. My son also taught Grandma to play Blink and Ghost Party.
So after finally playing Jambo I'm left with - meh. The game sounds half interesting and simple enough, but its mostly just simple. There doesn't feel like enough interesting choices. and the game just goes along and then poof - its over. I want to play once more, but I don't see what the big deal is now that I've played.
A couple of plays of Rumis reminded my why I like that game. It plays quickly and I really enjoy spatial games. There was a puzzle my great-grandmother had when I was a kid, and the pieces remind me of that a lot. At any rate - I need to bring this along to game nights more - its a good way to knock out 30 minutes.
I still suck at YINSH.
Apples to Apples is a mixture of the mundane and the hilarious. But, its good enough for a group of non-gamer friends. What I really need to get is Why Did the Chicken...?. This is a game that is begging for the clever quip to come out.
Playing Zooloretto reminded me why it won the 2007 Spiel - its a good family game. My mother picked it up after one playing and did quite well the next couple of times. Next time, we'll play Aquaretto.
YAMT - this math trade saw me trading off Twilight Imperium II (and expansion) for the original Blackbeard. Don't know if Blackbeard is easier to trade, but it is worth more... I'll have to play it at least once to see if is worth keeping. (the picture reminds me of the stupid Yellowbeard movie). I like pirate-y games, but haven't played one that's really great. Pirate's Cove isn't bad, but its a bit lighter. I think most people (myself included) just aren't sure what we really want from a pirate game. Is it theme? Game play? Why can't we find a "decent" pirate game?
Well, its about that time. For the third straight year, I'm participating in the BGG Secret Santa. I'm about to leave a clue here for my secret Santa target (not that he'll ever find it). My target this year (I'm not naming him) explicitly stated that he didn't mind a used game. To this end, I'm making a trade with Mike Gingold for Groo: The Game. This doofy game (and its expansion) are near the top of his want list, and despite being doofy and a Groo game, just isn't that common. This should make a nice present. I'll probably see about throwing in a light little two player game for him and his wife as well. And what do I hope to get? I don't really know. Nor care. Mostly, I'd like to open my present and just say - I didn't expect that. Last year I made a friend in Jay Moore (despite his being an MU fan). He had a clever present a day thing for a couple of days leading up to Christmas where I was to try and work out who he was. It took a little work, but I did. I also got to meet him at the Geekway and thank him in person. The BGG has lead me to meet a lot of nice folks.

Trading in Circles

My friend Mike Garrett likes to point out that the true winners in all the math trades are the shipping services. I simply accept that cost as part of updating my collection. Better to pay $10 for a game that will get played than keep a game I don't want in my collection. Looking back at my trade list this year, I spot a few games I've traded away only to re-acquire. Jambo was one of the first I traded off (along with Masons) for Age of Mythology: The Boardgame and All Wound Up. All Wound Up was the game I wanted out of this trade, and I didn't feel bad giving up Jambo (which I knew I could get again) for a bigger game in Age of Mythology. Overall, a bad trade. Though Masons isn't that great, All Wound Up was terrible. I traded it away. AoM sits on my shelf. However, I'm getting Jambo again as part of a trade I made for Memoir 44. Next on the circle of trades - Basari. I traded this for Pizzaro and Co in a math trade (which I traded away later). I got Basari back as part of 3-game package for my BattleLore expansions in a math trade.
And the last one was Bus. I traded this for Bus. Yes, this was one of the first recorded same-game-arbitrage instances. I traded my copy for an upgrade to my warped boards. Annoyingly enough, almost right after my copy went out the door, I got an email from Splotter telling me they'd ship me a new board for free. So I could have saved myself some money by skipping this whole trade. Oh well. In looking at most of my trades this year, none standout as super trades, but I'm happy with the way 90% of them have ended up. I keep thinking I'm hitting the end of trading, but then I decided to move something else. I'm sure there are some games that will finally get some plays as my son gets older that will influence keeping things or trying to get others. Hopefully, folks will want to keep on changing out their collections as well.

Random Thoughts on Monday

Ok, I already broke down and bought a game. But I swear, that is the last one for the year. Really. I snagged a copy of Ubongo. There was only one copy being sold in the US (on the BGG market) and it was $25 so I grabbed it. It wasn't terribly expensive and its not getting traded much (well, Mike has a copy for trade, but he has everything anyway...) If it had been a new game or one that is always in stock by retailers or something I would have waited. So anyway, last game buy of the year.
And BTW, that really means last purchase after Le Havre - which was supposed to be the real last purchase. Le Havre is sounding a bit to me like the next Agricola (i.e. really popular, but not yet picked up by a company in the US). This could take another year to get over here, so a few of us in the area pitched in to import some copies. About $58 with shipping, which isn't too bad (my pre-order Agricola was more). If I don't like it (or need it), I'm sure it'll trade quickly this spring.
I purchased Sorry! Sliders for my son for Christmas. He'll love it, and I'm pretty sure his mother will too since she like Crokinole. While I love playing games with my son, its even better when we play things as a family. Sorry! Sliders is getting attention on the BGG because it is a mass market game that isn't derivative drivel of existing crappy games (how many versions of Stratego(19), Monopoly(360+?), Candyland(9), Risk(20), Operation, Chutes and Ladders, etc can they make). Having just said that, Stratego is not a terrible game, and I have a soft spot for Risk, but I really wish that the toy companies in the US would put some effort into creating something that isn't total ass or a Transformer version of an existing game. And nobody is playing Monopoly (and those of you that are, don't play it correctly anyway), so just stop buying them.
We played some Pitchcar last week. My son likes this and its fast, so my wife will play too. My daughter plays, but gets bored really really fast and walks off. That's ok, she still has a couple years to get to the point of really playing games. I also got in a game of Battleball with my son. I really like playing this with him, but its a pain putting the guys back into the plastic. Maybe I should just give up and throw it all into the box. Its not like I'm going to trade this game away or anything.

Game Night (sort of)

Well, rather than the planned normal Gamer's Inn night, I had to change plans. You see, my wife somehow managed to break her ankle early in the morning. With her out of action, I knew I'd be at home watching the kids. After dinner, Erik VonBurg stopped over to play a few games. I had promised my son that we'd play Micro Mutants and that he could play with us. Erik, being a good sport (and liking the game anyway) played along and Erik and I each "won" a game. Ashton enjoyed playing with us both and we all had fun.
After the kids went to bed, We looked at what to play next and Erik asked about Qwirkle. Since this is a quick game, I showed him how to play and we whipped through a game in no time. I was able to pull away a bit at the end of the game. Qwirkle is a light abstract with not much to it, and I'm not sure if Erik cared about it much one way or another. One thing I did note - in my dining room, you can't tell blue from green and red from orange. I keep this one because my wife likes it and it'll be a good family game as the kids get older.
After Qwirkle, I taught Erik how to play Pandemic (at the normal difficulty). We were the Dispatcher (me) and the Scientist. We managed to knock out the black plague right away and despite blue and yellow blowing up, we headed to asia to knock out red. We killed red by cheating and not getting to a research center. We realized our gaff a couple turns later, but kept going. It didn't matter. We had a huge number of outbreaks at the end of the game and lost. I should play this a little more often - its really a tense game for as short as it is.
As we headed back to the room to pick another game, Erik asked about Crokinole. I like Crokinole and don't play it as often as I should (for as much as the board cost), so I was happy to get it down. We played to 11 points (winner of each round scores a point). Erik and I went back and forth a bit, then I pulled away at the end with a bunch of way lucky shots.
We finished up the night playing a little PÜNCT. Neither of us had played this, so neither of us knew what to expect. What happened was Erik winning very quickly the first game. We played again, and I snuck in a win. We played the rubber match and it was a little more tight, but still quick with Erik winning. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this one. Its fast (fast as Zertz was), but I can't decide if that's good or bad. I should throw a Gipf game into my bag each week to blow out filler time if they are going to play this fast...

Samurai

Just finished a three-player game of Samurai on MaBiWeb with Nathan Winchester and Justin Easley. I believe this was Nathans first 3-player game and Justin was pretty brutal. I made a huge mistake in the first piece I played, which strangely, nobody took advantage of the whole game. Because of that, I played a mostly reactionary game, trying to take advantage where I could. I made a decent comeback, but Justin played a strong game and we had no real chance. Stupid Justin. Final scores (majorities, others, total) - Charles: 1 - 5 - 9, Justin: 1 - 5 - 10, Nathan: 0 - 7 - 7

Trade Trade Trade

Well, as I might have mentioned - no purchases doesn't mean no new games if I can trade. I made a random trade offer last night of Container (plus my pre-order resin containers) for Galaxy Trucker. I was pleasantly surprised to find an acceptance in my inbox this morning. Very happy. Now I get rid of one more un-played game in my collection for one that I know will get some play. Of course, now I want Galaxy Trucker: The Big Expansion, but one thing at a time. As for Container. I really thought I'd like it. It sounds like a game I'd enjoy, but I never got around to playing it. I saw it being played in AZ once, but I found out later that everyone but Scuba Steve hates it. Oh well - I know he brings it, so I can probably try it at some point, but I don't need to own this one at this point and I'd really rather have Galaxy Trucker. I also was able to work a deal for my Memoir '44 game, Eastern Front expansion, and winter/desert board. Looks like I'll be getting Lost Valley - a tile laying game where the tiles are diamond shaped and its about finding gold? Rumis - a 3D abstract game that is decent fun and Jambo, which is a two player card game that I never got to play when it was in my collection before. Not a bad set of trades really.

The Trouble with Trouble

I bought the game Trouble for my son about a year ago. I figured it would be easy enough to teach my son to play a roll and move game. At the time, he could count, but just didn't get the how to count out his move correctly - often he'd say one before lifting his piece or otherwise miss-move. No big deal really. We pulled it out last week and played with all the rules (which is to say you land on someone and send them back - something we didn't do before when we were still struggling to move correctly). Now, a year later, he got it just fine. In fact, its a good game to play with him, because it helps him adjust to bad things happening to him in the game (which he actually has no issues with, he's really fun to play with in that sense - he's a really good sport). Also, its really easy to set up my pieces so that he is more likely than not going to land on them. Which also points to the main reason this game is not played by anyone who isn't six years old. Its bad. The strategy to the game is don't move a piece out until someone else just goes past your starting block, then come out and land on them. Yes, there is a little luck, but beyond that there isn't much to the game. With four players playing similarly, the game is not only about luck, but would become unbearable long. I can only hope my son learns this early on so I'm not stuck playing this over and over for long periods of time.

I'm Done Buying Games

Well, no, not really. I'm done for a little while - say through the end of the year. I'm placing an order with some friends for Le Havre, and that will be my last purchase (for my collection) for the year. I'm taking a harder look at the old budget and I've decided I shouldn't be buying myself things with Christmas looming. I may be buying something for Secret Santa (but possibly not - I have a number of popular items in the shrink still I can send out) and probably will get Sorry! Sliders for my son for Christmas, but no more games for me this year. Which as I've noticed lately shouldn't be an issue. I need to play what I have more anyway. And, trades don't count - I still may get something I've been wanting through a trade. I just keep need to keep telling myself that I don't have to have every game and that there are enough people around that DO, so I can play those games anyway. So, what is on the front lines of things I want to buy? Dominion, Galaxy Trucker, Duck Dealer, and Ubongo are pretty high on my list. But again, I'll live just fine without any of them. I was on the fence with Dominion anyway, so I'd like to play it first and I want to play Ubongo to know if I need/want both Ubongo and the Extreme version. What I really need (and don't need), is for my son to get older so we can play more of my games.

Game of the Month

October was a fun month for games - I got to play a number of games with my son, who is sprouting into a little gamer. I played 33 games, 17 of which were with him. There were two games I was trying to decide on for October Game of the Month, but I think I have to go with Galaxy Trucker. Galaxy trucker is a "puzzle" game. There are three progressively harder rounds in two parts. The first part has you compete with the other players to place ship tiles onto your mat, thus making a ship with cargo holds, energy plants, weapons, engines, etc. After that phase is completed, there is a second phase where you run your newly built ship through a gauntlet of events that can fill your ship with valuable cargo or (more likely) blast your beautiful creation to pieces. The second part is pretty random, but its also fun and good for a couple laughs. I'm terrible at this, as are a couple of the guys I game with, but we all love this game.
The reason I picked this over my other choices is that it got me seriously in the mood for and thinking about other puzzle games. I've been looking at and thinking about getting Ubongo and Ubongo Extreme. Playing Master Labyrinth at the end of the month solidified in my mind that I truly enjoy puzzle games. Galaxy Trucker delivers that along with some goofy fun as you watch your creation fall apart.
So what missed the cut? Micro Mutants: Evolution was a close second. This lighter game (or heavy game of Tiddley Winks) is a lot of fun as far as I'm concerned and my son really enjoys it. It take a little skill and throws in some random (and unique per team) "powers". Its simple fun and it amazes me each time I play how quickly my son picked it up both from getting the rules to being able to jump the pieces around.

Happy Halloween

This year, I had a couple of fellow gamers over to my place for a few games. In between a quick baked ziti dinner and answering the door a few times, we snaked in a few games. Joining me were Amelia Boli, Matthew Frederick, Dion Garner, and Rob Smolka. We started the night with a new game that Rob brought over - New World: A Carcassonne Game. This is one that I had heard panned a number of times, but was willing to play since Carc games are not terribly long regardless. This one has a couple of differences in the scoring and adds a twist with the two explorer meeples, but in the end, its still just Carc - which to me is take it or leave it. I'll still happily play Carcassonne: The Castle, but just don't crave the rest. I did manage a win here, despite that I never thought it was possible. Charles:82, Dion: 80, Rob: 72, Amelia:81, Matthew: 64
Since it was Halloween, we moved on to a more thematically appropriate game - Ghost Party. This is basically a roll and move / push your luck game. You move around a track until the Hugo the Ghost makes his way to the top of the stairs, where he starts chasing you around the hallway. Each roll is either a number (you move on of your pawns) or a ghost (Hugo moves three spaces). I have no luck and Hugo managed to catch two of my three people nearly every round and I managed a very low score. Matthew managed an easy win here. Matthew:-14, Dion: -17, Amelia: -20, Rob: -26, Charles: -40
Next up, we stayed with the "spooky" theme and pulled out Betrayal at House on the Hill
. This is one of the AH/Hasbro games that is out of print and currently sells for a good amount of money. It has been unplayed in my collection now for a while, because I haven't had the right time / place / combination of people that would play. Basically, its like playing a B horror movie. A group of people are exploring a spooky mansion - does it matter why? As you explore the house, you find things and different things happen which test your character's mental and physical health. At a random point in the game, someone (again randomly) turns traitor. At that point, the combination of things that caused the traitor event indicate which of 50 scenarios you finish the game with. The traitor gets one booklet to read over and the rest of the players get another. Each side then has secret objectives to winning the game. Our particular game had Rob as the traitor. He found a "Spirit Board" and summoned a Banshee. He then set about trying to kill us all. We had to find a set of rooms and / or artifacts to do 5 exorcisms (skill rolls). At the time the haunt started, we had one of the rooms in play (and you could use each only once, so we were not looking good). To our luck, the Banshee was pretty much retarded and Rob had no real control over it to try and kill us. He did manage to get the banshee to kill Matthew, who had bad luck all night. In the first room he had looked in he managed to get caught on fire. Despite Matthew not having any luck for this game, we as a team we discovered a lot of the rooms fairly quickly and in short order won the game. Now, this isn't a great game, but if you like a cooperative horror themed game, its ok. Its A LOT shorter than Arkham, but I think you really have to have the 4-6 players to make it interesting. Also, the scenario we played wasn't that interesting and my readings indicate that some scenarios are better than others. I had the latest revisions to the scenarios printed out, so some of the issues that others have talked about with confusing scenarios wasn't an issue for us. It was a nice light ameri-trashy romp, but I don't see this coming out very often - even though it is short.
Amelia decided to head out, so with about another hours worth of gaming in us, Rob suggested we try Master Labyrinth. Getting to get in yet another new game was fine by me, so we set it up and started in. I predicited it taking a couple turns for this to grok, and at least for me, that was true. Dion seemed to hit his stride early on and grabbed tokens quickly. Matthew grabbed a couple and screwed me early, while Rob struggled and hated it the whole time. It finally clicked for me and I really hit stride grabbing a lot of points and one bonus. This game is a puzzle game and one that you'll like or hate. I liked it (winning helped). Final scores were - Charles: 105, Matthew: 93, Dion: 74, Rob: 41

AoE III

The conversion of Nathan Winchester (whose picture is HERE) continues. Last night I invited Nathan and Dion Garner over and after looking at the games, we settled on playing Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery. I pulled this one in part because Mike Gingold had talked about liking the three player game over the five player game he had been in. Having only played four and five player games, I was not quite sure what to expect. I ended up being first player and grabbed two buildings my first turn - a soldier in the discovery box and an extra colonist each round. These extra pieces from the second turn on made a huge difference for me. I managed a large number of discoveries (and profited twice off Dion's failed discoveries). I also ended up snagging the Missionary almost every turn and sending them overseas, which helped me snag a huge amount of points in the majorities phase each time. Dion was making money hand over fist with every one of the money buildings and the privateers (other players pay you). Nathan was a trade good crazy fool and also the rum king of the world. But, when all was said and done, I was well out in front - Charles: 153, Dion 102, Nathan 78. Three player was ok, but I think it lacks a bit of the tenseness you get when playing with 5. Though the colonist dock is always tight, the trade goods and specialists are especially tight with more players. Because there are "more" trade goods and buildings and so forth, money seemed less important than in a 5-player game. It was also easier to score points in the new world since there was not as much competition. All of that is not to say that it wasn't fun - it was. I think I just like the desperate need to grab multiple things in a 5-player game and watching them all get taken. Something that didn't really happen in our 3-player game. Now, this is a bit like another game I really like - Samurai. A lot of people don't care for the 2 or 4-player games. I like them all because your approach to the game has to be pretty different. I think this is probably VERY true with AoE III. In a 5-player game, you simply have to be very efficient and aggressive with the turn order at the right time. In a three player game, a lot more things are available, so you have to spread out to more areas than you normally would when there is more competition.

What's Left Revisited

After a couple of comments from Mike and Bobby, I thought I'd do a couple lists like Bobby did. The games will be listed in no particular order and all based on the games I own that are not yet played...
Five games I really want to try
Arkadia
Gulf, Mobile & Ohio
Bus
Shogun
Mexica

Five games I won't likely ever play, but won't get rid of
Honor of the Samurai
Cosmic Encounter (which is not to say I won't end up playing this, just not likely to be this one - maybe when the new FFG edition shows up)
Diplomacy
Axis and Allies:D-Day
Axis and Allies:Europe
These are just part of my collection at this point. MAYBE I'll play and A&A game with my son someday - maybe.

Five I'm probably just stuck with...
War! Age of Imperialism
Pirates of the Spanish Main
Ice Lake
High Bid
Age of Mythology

Samurai

So, I've introduce Nathan Winchester to the world of boardgames. We chatted a bit today and I ended up showing him Samurai on MaBiWeb. We played a couple of quick two player random-hand games to give him an idea of how the game works. The first game he forced a tie on the 3-totem city and I ended the game shortly after. So now he knows about the dumb rare tie-endgame-condition. The next game was much much closer. Nathan is a bright guy and he snagged the 3-totem city out from under me (all of it) and combined with my crappy mid-game hand (I didn't see a ship until the end of the game) was just killing me. However, I was able to force the end of the game (killing off both the hats and rice) and we tied with one majority each, and I snuck out the win with more "others" even though he had far more total pieces than I. So, now that I have shown him most of the "traps" we move on to three-players.

What's Left

So what is left for 2008 and gaming? There are three games in my Top Ten that I haven't played this year - Antike, Torres, and A Game of Thrones. I'm pretty sure I can get these all in during the next two months without much difficulty. My "Owned and Zero Plays Hit List" shows a number of games to try and learn still. I can probably knock out a couple of AoS maps, some of my new Winsome games, etc etc - maybe get through another dozen or so of those. I show 108 games on that list, but about 15 of them I'm not going to count for whatever reason, so lets say that leaves me a mere 80 games I own but haven't played. Sigh. Going to have to work harder at this....

Trade

Well, the Son of Oktoberfest Math Trade came and went and I managed a single trade - All Wound Up for Sword and Skull. Now I probably will play this once or twice with the kids, but mostly this trade was really about getting rid of All Wound Up. At least I'm getting another game in my AH/Hasbro collection that I didn't have yet. And its pirates - what could be wrong with that?

Random Thoughts of No Interest

I finally got my Ted Alspach map set I ordered months ago. As with all my other AoS maps, I'm interested to try them out, but it'll probably take another year to get through the maps I have not yet played. Of the most interest here is the Secret Blueprints where each player gets their own map. Its supposed to be a lot faster and I want to see how it works out.
I made an interesting trade the other day. This guy (who happened to be in the Phoenix area) offered a number of games for trade, but asked for surprise games in return (with a couple small restrictions). I was able to get the Apples to Apples party pack and the Party Pack Exp #1 (so essentially, the whole set of Apples to Apples through the 4 basic expansions). I also got Honor of the Samurai. This is a card game I had minor interest in, and it now sits in display with my other "oriental" games. In exchange, I traded my extra copy of Sunken City and I bought a copy of the Omega Virus at a thrift store for $10 to give him as well. He seemed quite pleased at the Omega Virus and neither of us had to ship anything - which was nice considering the size and weight of our trade.
I started painting some of my Heroquest stuff in preparations of playing it with my son next summer. I told him I'd teach it to him when he graduated from Kindergarten. No, I haven't finished my Descent figures. I've decided to come back to them when its more likely to be played a lot more.
Speaking of playing games, we still play Blink and Micro Mutants - those seem to be the ones asked for the most. I've been keeping my eyes out for Connect Four at a thrift shop, but no luck yet. My wife has been busy at work a lot lately, so we haven't had much of a chance to play games fully as a family (its hard anyhow, since my 3-year old daughter wants to play, but really can't yet. I did get her one little game for Christmas already - a Dora pack of dominoes and cards (crazy-8s and Go Fish! or something). My son is going to be getting Sorry Sliders!. This game has gotten nothing but good word of mouth. Mike Gingold said its a really good family game (his girls are about the same age as mine) and I'm happy to try out this little dexterity game. I'm pretty sure this will be a hit with the kids and my wife (and me). Plus, Toys-R-Us is selling it at 25% through Christmas (so for roughly $15). Though I doubt this will become scarce, I'll be buying it soon I think.
Have you seen the new expansion for Pitchcar? I love Pitchcar (though I don't pull it out often - maybe I should teach Ashton this one next :) ). I have all the current expansions and I'll get this one too as soon as the domestic retailers carry it. Hmmmmmmmm levels. Pitchcar was one of the games that was a hit with my sister and parents which is a ringing endorsement for this game. If this game has any downside, its that you need a huge flat area to play it on. I also personally like it better with lots of people trying to knock each other off the track. Justin Easley pointed out to me that if you are going to play with "poison" that if you are a lap back and knock someone off, they should lose a lap! That sounded nasty and I think I agree. Now I just need to figure out how to make the loop...
My sister and mother will be visiting in November. Whenever I see my sister, we tend to play a lot of Blokus. In fact she is the reason for my bazillion two-player plays of the game. We'll probably play a number of head to head games, as well as some Trigon. I'd like to teach her Samurai and YINSH (and I'm sure she'll learn Micro Mutants and Blink). These two games because we can then play them online...
There is another math trade going on. While I found more things to trade, there just isn't a ton of real interesting things in this trade, so we'll see what happens. I've listed loads of the gift certs, but not tons else for most of the stuff. I listed a lot of things for All Wound Up, which sounded good, looks cute, but sucks as a game. I'd pretty much be happy with any game that costs whatever it'll cost me to ship AWU.

Typhon

My friend Mike Gingold was kind enough to ping me the other day to see if I'd be interested in a copy of the Starcraft Promo. Apparently he has some friends that went to Blizzcon. This promo planet was one of the items in the swag bags and since neither of his friends have nor play the game, he was able to get a couple of these. Now, I'm not enough of a completist that I HAD to have one (I haven't even tried to get the Heroscape limited characters fetching loads on eBay), but it is certainly cool that I was able to get one of these. Now I just have to get this to the table again. Thanks Mike!

Indonesia

For the third time this year, I got to play Indonesia. This time with 5 players. Joining me were Matthew Frederick, Amelia Boli, Mike Gingold, and Nathan Winchester. Mike and Nathan had not played before while Amelia, Matthew and I had just a couple games played of this. After a quick cover of the rules, we were off. I started out with a shipping company, then promptly screwed myself by not taking slots for additional companies, nor extra hull space. While this shouldn't kill you, these early mistakes put me behind and I never recovered. Mike joined me early in shipping while Matthew played strongly with rice and spice. Amelia had a combo with shipping and rice, and Nathan also had shipping and spice going. We moved into the B phase almost immediately, and I managed to NOT snag anything but more shipping which sealed the deal for me. Matthew and Amelia looked to be taking over the game, but Matthew made a couple critical errors in bidding for turn order and fell apart mid to end game. He gathered himself together, but by then had lost a HUGE shipping line to Nathan who prospered by shipping spice and rubber at will while Matthew's SIAP FAJI company was formed too late to bring him back. The last round was particularly painful as Nathan made huge chunks of cash AND extra cash from others having to use his crazy shipping lanes. Final scores were: Nathan 1582, Amelia 1485, Matthew 1157, Mike 955, Charles 881. I got screwed in the last round by not being able to ship 3 of my oil, costing me another 240. Not that it would have helped at all, but it was typical of how the game went for me :)
So, how did this 5 player game go? Its interesting, but I think 5 players played out faster than the 4 player game. There seemed to be more cities on the board and the companies disappeared faster. The game was about 3.5 hours with rules (and slow Matthew - ha). My previous 4 player games were about an hour longer I think. What also seemed to happen (probably due to the speed of the game) was that companies didn't grow into huge beasts. Thus, shipping was not really as viable as way to make cash - the longer shipments really just didn't happen because the short routes, once taken, were all that was needed. We had a couple cities become yellow (sized 2) immediately and then nearly no growth until the end of the game when one of those became red. Again, not much of a surprise with the speed with which good types were hitting the board and the lack of company size keeping some goods from spreading out across the map. Really, quite different with five players from four. Some things still held true (and were more important with the smaller companies) - rubber and SIAP FAJI are key. The ability to make more cash quickly is killer. Oil had two rounds to make money, the last being the double round, so it was almost required to grab a viable oil company, but it wasn't in play long enough to be as critical as the other ones. We didn't see SIAP FAJI until a bit later in the game as mergers didn't come into play early on, but with 5-players, I think this was probably a good thing.

Blink

I pulled out another game to teach my son - Blink. I'm pretty sure I got this about 3 years ago from my sister and the only reason I held onto it, was because I remember playing Speed and having fun with that (though I'm not great at it). I explained how the game is played to my son and slowly we went through a first game. At first he'd only match the colors and miss the shapes or numbers, but he started catching on to that. He seemed to get it, so I gave him 20 cards to my 40 and we played. I went fairly easy on him, often "cleaning" the piles to make it easier for him to clearly see the stacks. We also played with our three cards face up and we'd call out what we play (green, green, four, stars, etc). Well, that didn't last long. Pretty quickly he caught on and started whipping through his pile. He's pretty good about seeing numbers, symbols, or colors, though you can tell when he fixates on something. And if you beat him to a pile and it switches on him, he has a hard time letting go of whatever he "thought" the card was - if he was planning to do stars, but I switch the shape, he gets a little stuck. However, in staying with the 20-40 card split, I can play as fast as I can go and we split games pretty evenly. I'm sure it won't be much longer until he gives me the handicap.

Kids Are Fun

Yesterday I taught my son a new game - Micro Mutants:Evolution. This game is best described as combat Tiddledy Winks (yes the BGG has an entry for that). Basically, you get a set of plastic disks that have different powers (there are 4 teams of unique bugs). You roll two dice, which indicates which two guys you can attack with. Each side has three cardboard hex bases which the other team tries to get. It sounds really dumb. Its actually pretty fun and takes a bit of skill. At any rate, I simplified it a bit for my son (no special powers, just land on three bases to win). Surprisingly (or not) he figured it out in record time and "killed" a number of my guys - not before I captured his three bases of course. Today, he asked to play again, and so I happily pulled it back out. This time, he wasted no time in both getting the first kill and capturing the first base. His aim was surprisingly good and I was shocked at how often his touch was perfect. I managed to win again through one lucky turn where I nailed two bases, but he was in position to easily get his second base and he was picking me off at a surprisingly good clip. The most interesting thing about this game though was his approach. He made great tactical choices. He picked the guys with the best shot each time. Yesterday was all about using the first piece he saw, or the one closest to him. Today was completely different as he chose the guys that had the easiest chance for a kill, and he didn't waste his chance to jump on a base. The best part is that even though he really wants to win, he still cheers when Dad makes a good shot and kills his guy (though not as loudly as he cheers himself when he makes a good shot) and he doesn't get upset when he doesn't win. I don't know how long it will last, but he really enjoys playing as much as anything else and it makes playing with him even more fun.

In the Year of the Dragon

Finished another game of In the Year of the Dragon on MaBiWeb. I had a whole log going of the game, then I got sick and missed some time and didn't finish it and so on. Anyway, I won, blah blah blah ;)

Game Night

Friday Oct 10, 2008 - Gamer's Inn
I started out gaming Friday by teaching Bobby Warren (and others) to play Glory to Rome. Bobby had a copy, but wanted to try it before cracking his open. I made him a deal. If he didn't want it after we played, I'd take it off his hands, so away we went. Now, having only played it once back in June, I had to go through the rules, picking it back up - and while it is not hard to do, I was having a hard time remembering anything until the first round of play. Joining us were Dion Garner, Chris Schraml, and Matt Cullinan. Now, I don't think I bad butchered the instructions, but there were a handful of conversations going on as I went over the game, so I know a bunch was being missed. As usual, Matt declared he hated the game about 1/3 of the way through and then easily beat the hell out of us. Final scores were Charles:16, Dion:12, Chris:10, Matt:23, Bobby:17
There were enough folks milling around for three games to get going, so I grabbed Dion's copy of Galaxy Trucker to try out. I had seen Dion and others playing a couple of weeks ago, and wanted to give it a go. Dan Brugman and Erik VonBurg joined Chris and I and after a quick run through of the rules, off we went. Now apparently, I am terrible at this game. That didn't make it one I disliked any less though. In fact, this is one of those games that is fun despite being a load of random chaos pretty much the whole time (unlike say RoboRally, which is chaos and no fun the whole time). Erik was kicking our butts until the slavers showed up after the pirates used up all of Erik's batteries in the third round. He ended up with nearly nothing and quickly went from first to last. I managed to have a decent third round to stay in front of Erik by 5 points. Final scores: Erik: 28, Charles: 33, Dan: 57, Chris: 41.
We ended the night by pairing Erik and I against Steve Bauer and Rob Smolka in Tichu. The hands were pretty average for a long time (I had a Tichu call early in the game I botched), and bad as the game progressed. Erik and I were already getting killed (I think we swapped queens with each other no less than 3 times because our own hands sucked to badly) when Rob called Grand Tichu with a Dragon, Phoenix, + 3 aces. His hand actually got no worse, as Steve passed him an ace (he didn't have to play the ace bomb) and we couldn't slow him down at all. I need to check with Steve, but we might have broken 300 by the time Rob and Steve finished hammering us (maybe).

Catching up.

Was sick earlier this week - ugh. Just slept for most of three days. So...
I had three trades in the math trade, with Micropul, Ice Flow and MBT going out, and me getting PÜNCT, YINSH, Modern Art, and California. Was this the best Math Trade evar? No, but I'm ok with the results.

Math Trade

I keep saying I have nothing left to trade, then I find something to trade...
This time around I have thrown in Ice Flow, Star Wars:Epic Duels, and my Memoir 44stuff. Ice Flow should be fairly tradeable, so lets see if we can't get something better. I just got two copies of Epic Duels so maybe I can get something decent for the extra. As far as Memoir goes - I'd just rather play C&C:A than Memoir or BattleLore. I'm also keeping BattleCry (which I like better anyway) so I still have a "minis version" of the system. Memoir is just taking up a lot of space that I can use for other games that I won't get played ;)

**UPDATE- I added a homemade, but wooden copy of micropul to the list. I ordered enough wood squares to make at least 3 sets, so I'd like to see if this gets traded or not.