My Games on Display

There it is. I finally got enough other things done that I was FINALLY able to put together some new shelves and unpack all my games. And here they are in all their glory. I put together a geeklist to share my glorious collection (and of course to open myself to a little bit of ridicule). Well, I guess its back to unpacking the rest of the house and trying to figure out what to do with all the packing materials. Oh yeah, and I still need a real desk instead of this stupid folding table I have. I'd rather be playing games...

MT manipulations

This one doesn't come up in the rules much, but as a general thing, its frowned upon. I don't think most folks really think about it or think about doing it. I actually did it once in like the second math trade I participated in. I'd consider it again if this wasn't Jeffy Jeff's MT. Manipulating the results. yes, it is entirely possible to manipulate the trades when the algorithm for trading is trying to maximize the number of items that get traded. How? Create your own trade chains. Yep, that's right, list your own games as wants. For example, lets say I put in Age of Steam (AoS), Atlantic Star (AS) and Risk. Now, I know that AoS and AS are going to be desired (A LOT), and Risk is a maybe at best. If I want to increase the likelihood of Risk getting used in the MT's chains, I simply use my other items. For Risk I list AoS and nothing else, for AoS I list AS and nothing else, and for AS I build a list of stuff I want - something reasonable that I'd get for Risk - say Nexus Ops. As long as someone will pick up Risk, I will trade off Risk and get AoS, lose AoS (to me) and get AS and then get some game. Now, its likely you'd only pull off a good one like that once since the results would look retarded and obvious (Tatsu trades Risk to Tatsu for AoS. Tatsu trades AoS to Tatsu etc etc). This was something early mods used to explicitly ban. I have not seen anything like that recently. I don't usually go through the results that much either - I don't care what others are doing so much. Either I got what I wanted or I didn't. Oh well. I've also given up on the miracle trade up - just not going to happen. Or maybe it'll happen just once...

Math Trade Time

YAMT (yet another math trade) has shown up on the geek. And yes, I have joined in. Time to clear a bit of the cruft out. Of course the first thing I thought to put in the list was Atlantic Star - if only because it is one of the few games not still packed up. Its also one of the games I acquired mostly for trade bait. The next thing I added were my three expansion packs for BattleLore - Dwarves, Goblins and A Call to Arms. Jason Maxwell and Bobby Warren have also thrown in their BattleLore lots, so there is plenty on non-love for the game early in the trade. I also added Beppo der Bock which is a kids game that is slick, but boring. I don't mind certain kids games that are a stepping stone to other games or semi-entertaining to adults, but this is not either of those. It has a totally unique mechanism with a steel marble you roll down a track that gets attracted to a super strong magnet. When this happens, the ball snaps to the magnet and knocks the goat piece across the board (it is pretty cool). The trick is to aim the ramp the ball rolls down so that the ball will hit the goat from a certain angle and fling him where you want to go - very basic dexterity and planning game(i.e. a good little kids game). Finally, I found two copies of Midnight Party at a thrift store, so I added one of them to the trade (actually one was Ghost Party). I then spent a little time looking at my collection list and there is very little I think I want to get rid of at the moment. There is some more cruft to be sure, but a lot of it may very well fall into the untradeable category. *UPDATE* - I added a little card game - Margin For Error to the trade. There should be a huge number of the game California in the trade and I thought I'd see if I could snag one for the low low cost of shipping a deck of cards...

Game Night

Friday Aug. 22, 2008 - Nielsen's Custard
Friday was game night for the AZ Boardgamers and this week was the trial run of having the game night at Nielsen's Custard rather than the Gamer's Inn. I arrived at around 5:30 and found - nobody. I settled down to wait with a Philly Cheesesteak (very tasty), wondering how many folks would show up. Turned out to be 21! We didn't nearly have enough space (there was a wedding reception or something else taking up most of the rest of their place). I'm not sure how this will work out in the end, but the bright areas and easy access to food and frozen custard is not a bad thing.
Eventually folks arrived and I after finishing my messy diner, I sat down with Dion Garner, Amelia Boli, Matt Cullinan and Thomas Dunaj to play In The Year of the Dragon. I have not played with a full compliment before (having only tried 3 and 4 player games), but found that it played equally well - in fact I like this best with 4 or 5 I think. Dion dumped all his cash early for the double dragon points, despite having double taxation in the first half of the game (turns 3 an 5). That was apparently enough to keep anyone from catching him. He finished the game 8 points in front of Thomas and I, who didn't manage our populations very efficiently (we both dumped people left and right throughout the game). Final tally - Dion:89, me:81 (with tiebreaker), Thomas:81, Amelia:73, Matt: 67.
Next, I broke out Age of Steam, which I insisted I would get to the table when I got back to AZ. We were going to try out the N. Cali map, but when we had newcomer-to-AoS-Ric join us, we switched gears and played Scandinavia. Joining Ric Alpers and I were Noah Antwiller and Matthew Frederick. As is typical when playing with Noah, he sat back and let other players play aggressively and go into deep debt before he did. It also helped that he picked a prime position on the map that nobody else ever challenged him for. Matthew picked a decent position, and promptly put himself so far behind he never recovered. Ric spent far too many turns not moving goods and trying not to die. I'm not sure how he did it. As for me, I started with a good position, but my short sightedness never left me with any endgame routes and while I moved a couple of 5s, I never really prospered. Being few shares in front of Noah, I never had a chance. Final scores - Noah:81, me:56, Matthew:26, Ric:19.
We ended the night teaching Tichu to Linda Sandusky. Matthew and I teamed up against Linda and Noah. The game was not even as close as the score was, as Linda had a number of hands that a more experienced player would have murdered us with. In fact, her first had a straight flush bomb, pairs of kings and aces, the mahjong, and little else. Maybe the Dragon too. All I remember is thinking WTF!!! Noah also had a bomb and the Dog, and we had to laugh at how quickly Linda went out, without having any clue what she was doing. She caught on quickly and Matthew and I seemed to be tired and out of sync. We managed a few decent hands, but nothing special. In the end, we lost 405-295 (we had to retire when the shop closed).

Game Night

Aug. 16, 2008 - Game Depot
The Game Depot (can't find a URL for their store) was holding their monthly Saturday night gaming, and I needed a break from the stress of moving and unpacking. I headed out to meet up with Mike Gingold and/or Bobby Warren and play some games. When I arrived, Matt Cullinan was punching out the copy of Agricola he'd just purchased. Mike really wanted to play (to see if the game was worth the hype), so the two of us sat down with Matt to play. As we were explaining the rules, Dion Garner walked in and asked to join. Mike was the only new player (though the rest of us have only played once or a handful of times), and we butchered our way through an explanation. Mike, being a smart guy (and Agricola not really being that hard to grok after a turn or two), picked it up quickly. After the food-less fiasco of my first playing, I went to town on getting occupations into play quickly. My first let me grab a minimum 4 food anytime I took the Traveling Pants(?) action. The next occupation I got down let me grab a veggie anytime I did the day laborer action. My first minor improvement let me exchange one reed for 3 food during the harvest. These three cards pretty much set me up for the game for food. It also meant that I could spend the rest of the game concentrating on other things. I eventually played a card (riding plow), that let me plow 3 fields instead of 1 twice in the game. I used this to slap down 6 fields (and I sowed veggies twice). Since I wasn't in dire need of food, I was able to eventually build up a store of wood for fences and slapped out three pens (one for each animal). I also put down a guy that reduced my stone costs by one - basically making my upgrade from clay to stone house cost 1 reed (though in retrospect, I wonder now if I played that right - probably not, though I don't think it would have changed the outcome). In the end, my initial beating helped me to play better (it also helped that my cards didn't suck ass) and I won. Charles: 39, Mike G: 19, Matt: 24, Dion: 33. Mike not only had the new player disadvantage, he apparently also had sucky cards - he only had a few that he ever played.
There was only about 90 minutes left, so we ended up going with Mike's suggestion to try out Metropolys. This one is about building cities and has a bit of a Ra like mechanic where each player has buildings 1-13 and the person that plays the highest each round wins a spot on the board. Its a bit hard to describe without just flat out explaining the rules, but suffice to say I liked it and its a lighter game. Mike explained it (he had played once before) and away we went. Dion jumped out to an early lead, and I felt like I was falling rapidly behind. However, I was able to roar back with a load of spaces that met my personal game objectives and Mike and I tied with 34 points (I won the tie breaker since I played more pieces than he did). Dion finished 3rd with 25 and Matt had 22 points. This is one of those games I liked a lot, is probably a good closer (since it'll play 4 players in an hour) and yet I'm not sure I'd get it played a ton if I put it in my collection. It'll probably get to my collection eventually, but we'll see. This is a 7 or an 8. I do have to say the same thing everyone said - man is the board ugly. However, by the end of the game, it isn't that bad and its pretty simple to figure out. I do however love the box art, and its inspiring me for a piece I want to do for my game room.

In the Year of the Dragon

MaBiWeb recently added In The Year of the Dragon to the lineup, and Dion Garner invited folks for a game. Steve Bauer and I joined him and we played a three player game. I went for something of a builder strategy and grabbed a dragon lady early in the game to supplement my score. The game was looking fairly close for a long time, but I was in the back of the turn order 95% of the game and Steve managed to stay out in front enough to have his way most of the game. Final score - Steve: 108, Dion: 84, Charles: 101

A Last Few Games in Omaha

My last weekend in Omaha I had a few guys over for a last couple of games. Mike Garrett, John Davis and Steve Wicklund came on over to see me off. John only had a couple hours to play, so we pulled out something he's played before - Notre Dame. This was the first time I've played with 4 players and the game was about like I expected. I still think I prefer In the Year of the Dragon, but this game is pretty straight forward and enjoyable. Mike Garrett survived the rats the best, while my park strategy wasn't paying off since I wasn't making points left and right like Steve was. I somehow squeaked out more points than Steve through Notre Dame, but was still a ways back of Mike.
After John left, Steve wanted to play Power Grid. I hadn't played this in a long time and agreed (though its only so-so with three players). We played on the Germany map and things were weird. We had a lot of really high end plants get filtered out early - a sign that things would bog down. In fact, there were enough rounds that we sat and did nothing on that bidding for the good plants was insane. mid-20s plants that powered 25 cities were going for 80+ (which as it turned out, was a bargain when the next plant sucked). The huge amounts of cash on hand let me power through to 17 cities and I powered like 11 for the win (yeah, like 11 - I told you the plants came out teh suq).
After that, we finished up with our normal 3-player favorite - San Marco. Steve was at a disadvantage since Mike and I were experienced, and I used that to place the Doge in a territory I was a majority in (which also had no bridge off of) to start the game. We saw no bridge cards for a long time, which allowed me to score a load of time before he finally got moved out of that territory. Those early points let me finish the game well out in front.

Chip Backs

So, I'm trying to figure out whether to go double sided or whether to use something like this picture. Basically, its a Kanji character for Dragon in Japanese (I'll find a little cleaner version). Then it has my name (Hasegawa) circling the outside. I'll probably make the name slightly larger (but maybe not - its hard to get the spacing/sizing right). I'm also undecided if I should add the denomination as an overlay over the dragon character.

July 2008 Game of the Month

Well, July ended up being a lean month for gaming. I've been pretty busy just packing and trying to get my house sold (including trying to get my house repaired from storm damage last month). This pretty much left me with one game night and some cards with my folks another. Oh well. So, the game of the month this time is still a great game. Medici is one of Knizia's best auction games. The play is simple, so teaching the mechanics doesn't take very long *(even if you play the auction the wrong way). The beauty of this game is the risk/reward bidding. Your bids are done with your victory points. If you bid high early, you may miss out on things you need later. Wait too long, and there may be nothing left for you to bid on (cheaply or not). In short, when played with players that are familiar with the game, it becomes a great big game of chicken. There are loads of ways to score points each round, so you have to balance scoring (getting paid) with building up something that will help you a couple rounds later. This is fast and tense and I really really like this game. I have the new version of the game, which has a much better board (there are still flaws as far as I'm concerned, but it is still way way way better than the last crappy version). This version also uses tiles for the goods instead of cards, which are nice, yet not as easy to use as the cards. The tiles should hold up longer than cards being shuffled and handled and bent, but its really much easier to deal cards off a deck than to pull tiles from the bag (and try not to look at them) before each round. Its also easier to pass the deck than the bag of tiles. These are small quibbles though. If you are looking to get this game, buy the new release. Its pretty inexpensive and its about the best version I've seen so far.

Back to the Chips

Once again, inspiration struck. I've always really liked the Samurai Palace chips, since the first time I saw them. I think they are really slick looking chips. Unfortunately, they are also like $1.25 each. No way I'm spending that kind of cash on poker chips. I settled on Nexgen Las Vegas chips for a couple reasons. They have a nice clean two color look, and they have a recessed middle which makes them perfect for labeling. Now, I've been kicking around the art for the labels since before I got the chips. When I last did labels, I did a dragon theme with AZBoardgamers on them. This time around, I wanted to do something different, just didn't know what. So, inspired by the Samurai Palace chips, I dug around and for some Samurai art. I never did find anything simple like I wanted, but I did run into Hokusai. Hokusai was a Japanese artist most famous for The Great Wave of Kanagawa. So I started looking at some of his other art and found 6 images I liked. I scanned some chips and pasted the images on so I could see what they looked like. They actually look better than a lot of other things I've tried. Now I need to try out a little numbering/denominations on them and see how that looks. One nice thing about this art - it tends to have good chunks of open space to take the denominations. I'll probably not use the same thing on the backside of the chips. The Samurai Palace chips use a black back with a grey-ish kanji character and the denominations. I'm thinking about doing the same thing. Let me know what you think.

Game Collection

The BGG recently overhauled its game collection interface. I'm not sure that I care for the changes yet (I know I don't care for the new interface for games played, though I appreciate that you can now track opponents and wins). At any rate, I went back through my collection and updated a few ratings and added a few comments to games (and took out a few that I have traded recently). I'm sitting at 245 or so games. You can also track games you used to own if you care about that sort of thing. I don't care enough to go back through the system trying to find things I don't own anymore - I apparently didn't want them. If I did want them, they are on my wishlist. Going forward, I'll probably check the used to own box when I trade something away, but I'm not going to try and complete the backfill...
I'm trying to decide if I want to bother tracking Heroscape anymore. It got to be too hard to track the expansions using the geek (since it does it by wave, not each blister or whatever), so I started using the spreadsheets that folks were adding to the geek. Even that is a pain in the butt, but I have no better solution yet. At any rate, I'm thinking about taking out all the HS expansions from my collection on the BGG - they don't make much sense in that particular context. I won't record games played against an individual "wave". Nor would I rank them by wave. And finally, I'm not going to trade them. That ought to drop my collection about 10 games, but oh well.

Game Night

Friday, July 18, 2008
We are rapidly approaching the sale of my house (and thus my move back to Arizona). I decided to try and head down to the Game Shoppe for one last game night. Brian Gomez and Karen Zimmerli were going to meet up with me, as was Mike Garrett (though Mike wasn't sure what time he'd be able to get there as he was returning to town from a trip to Canada). Brian and I had worked out a trade too, so I was going to get a new game for one of my extra copies of an Age of Steam map. At any rate, I got there and Mike ended up being about 30 minutes away, so I pulled out Wabash Cannonball to teach Brian and Karen. As I have learned already, Wabash is not that great when played with new players vs experienced, but I didn't mind playing a teaching game. What happened right off the bat was that I ended up winning a share in Penn (red) for like $12 or $15 - something far far too low. I realized I'd need another share of something, as red was going to dead end pretty quickly. Karen bid up yellow (C&O), so I let that go. I bid up blue (B&O) and let Brian have green (NY). I started expanding both blue and red and then watched as Brian drove green to cut off red. Having no funds, I pretty much gave up or red and concentrated on making blue's value higher. I put up shares of yellow and green, but Brian and Karen didn't want to surrender control of their companies, and it wasn't until that third or forth share of each company that I finally captured some other share. Brian and Karen mostly concentrated on "their" companies, and so I ended up having the only share of blue the entire game. - basically earning me an average of $13 or so each dividend. The game went about as I expected for a three player "newbie" game. This one should really be more interesting when I finally play with folks that have played multiple times (and not just Mike Garrett, but a whole group of folks that have played).
Mike had finally arrived, so we were trying to figure out what to play next. The Shoppe had a copy of Ticket To Ride: The Card Game sitting out, and since Brian and Karen knew the game, I asked to be taught. All I knew was that it was a bit like Mamma Mia and had a memory aspect. Well, that's kinda true. You place train cards into a stack and then at the end of the game, use that stack to complete tickets. There is a slight amount of memorization of what you've been able to turn over into your pile (there is not a shared pile, but rather each player has their own stack to complete tickets) but its not as nearly tough as Mamma Mia. Its light and fast, and I'll probably try to grab this online to complete and order or something.
To finish up the night, we played a game of Medici. Turns out I remembered the auction incorrectly when I taught/played this at the Geekway a month ago - its a one and done, not round and round auction. A well. One and done and its still fun. And I did even better than when we had been in St. Louis.

Random Dreck

Just some random thoughts from a bored mind...
Martin Wallace has stopped the fight over the name Age of Steam. He and John Bohrer had been fighting over the name for months, delaying any reprint of Age of Steam and the publishing of Mayfair's new version of Martin's game. So? Well, it means that folks will someday finally be able to get a copy of AoS again, since JB will be able to print it again. It also means folks will be able to finally play Mayfair's version of the game (which is supposed to be compatible with all the AoS maps - how they'll mention that now is another story I suppose). Whether he was right or wrong, JB came off as an ass and turned off a lot of people. As much as I actually dislike JB, I sadly cannot keep him from my money, as I really like the stuff that Winsome is producing lately (maybe not the production quality, but the games themselves seemed to be my kind of game). So yes, I am going to be buying JB's USA release of his Essen 2008 set. All $130 bucks worth :( - its two new games, and AoS map set and an expansion for Wabash Cannonball.

Also in the limited edition news, Ted Alspach recently announced an Essen set of AoS maps in the $80 range. I really want these too, but man that's a lot of cash to drop considering I'm moving in 3 weeks or so. Damn their timing.

I didn't think I'd be doing any trading for a while, but then DoW bent me over and announced they'd be releasing TtR:Nordic in English in North America. So I unloaded it in the most recent math trade to get something of value (while this copy still had any). I ended up grabbing a brand new copy of Atlantic Star. I've never played this one, so I really just grabbed it as possible trade fodder down the road.

I still owe Mike Gingold a copy of Atolla Modulis. I bring this up as a reminder to myself to mount the stupid crap already and also because the last item I mentioned end up going to none other than Mr. Gingold himself. I had AS shipped to him and with any luck, when I finally (someday) get to Phoenix, I'll give Mike his two games and get my one.

Heh. I have another game awaiting me in Phoenix as well. I got a copy of Runebound 2nd ed in a math trade at the start of the summer. Knowing I'd be moving, I asked the trader to just hold it for me until I could get back. Well, soon enough I'll be back.

With any luck (or will of God, or whatever you prefer) I'll be living in Mesa, AZ and it turns out I'll be within a few miles of Eric Von Burg and Dion Garner. Both are gamer friends of mine that I enjoy very different styles of games with. Erik seems to really like the more thematic games and plays as much for the fun as anything. Dion is solid Euro guy. I'll probably get a bunch of games like Doom, Descent, Heroscape (lots of Heroscape), Heroquest, Runebound, etc played with Erik and will see about maybe doing something two-player-esque with Dion (maybe a C&C:Ancients campaign or something). I'm probably getting ahead of myself a bit, but I really miss those guys.

I'm going to miss the guys here too. I really liked playing with Justin Kosec, Mike Garrett, Mike, Mike, Dave, Conrad, Steve, John etc etc. Its too bad the Game Shoppe was so far away, as I enjoyed the store and the manager Becky and her boyfriend Heath. Everyone was great to game with and I played a LOAD of games with Mike Garrett that I'd probably not have ever played if I hadn't met him. I already miss Justin Easley and his brother Jason who are in Ill-in-noise already. Hopefully they will someday be passing through my corner of the world - I'll always welcome a face-to-face game of something.

Math Trades

I'm in a lull at the moment. There is a math trade that started up - I looked through the roughly 427 items and nothing caught my eye. Moreover, the one or two things that were interesting enough were not interesting enough that I'd part with anything in my collection. My collection has somewhat become like this:

• Games I'm just not going to part with - Age of Steam, A Game of Thrones, Indonesia, my Alea collection, my Crokinole board etc, etc
• Games that are ok, that I'd be ok parting with, but are not worth the effort of trading - Ingenious, Pizzaro and Co, St. Petersburg, Return of the Heroes etc
• Games I don't currently play (may not ever play), but I just can't bear to part with for various reasons - HeroQuest, versions of Axis and Allies (basically any of my Hasborg/AH collection), Spiel de Jahres winners, old family games (rummikub, mhing), whatever.

At any rate, I'm about 90% happy with the current state of my collection and a lot of the stuff I'd like to get anymore doesn't even fall into the normal stuff that gets listed in trade lists. To top it off, even if it did, I don't have anything I'd be willing to trade to acquire rare or top end game things. There is certainly some cruft that I'd get rid of in my collection if it wouldn't cost me as much in shipping the junk out as it would to buy a game that I could get in return. And yet, that won't stop me from adding a game...

Annoying Day

Today was an annoying day to be me. First - Days of Wonder went back on their word and announced today that they would be releasing TtR:Nordic Countries in English. Good thing I had my friend Marie go through the effort of bringing me one back from Norway. Not.
Last week, Bezier Games (Ted Alspach) announced a new Essen pack of AoS maps. That's all well and good, but its also $80. I was all set to order this, but then today I got the announcement that the Winsome Games Essen package will be released in October. This 4-game package will be a whopping $120 (plus shipping). One of the "4" games is an expansion for Wabash Cannonball. Now, having played Wabash and having read a lot about some Winsome games recently, I'm fairly certain I'd love the two games in the pack (the "3rd" is an AoS expansion). I'm also certain I'd like the AoS map and the expansion. However, the standard Winsome way means the games will look cheap as hell and I'll just end up re-doing them. Thus making a $130 investment annoying. Even more annoying is that I'm moving in the next few weeks and right now is a terrible time to try and spend $200 on some games. Ugh!

Top 10 Reasons Jason Gives Me, So I Will Keep Playing Memoir With Him

1. Run, run as fast as you can - you can't catch me I'm the gingerbread man! (I still have no clue what that means).
2. Hey its random, don't let that get you down.
3. At least the scenarios are over quickly
4. You don't suck that badly
5. See, your problem is that you always have to play your next card face up so I can abuse you like I do your mom.
   
6. After 51 scenarios, you are only down by 21 medals - that's less than 1/2 a medal per scenario!
7. After we get through all 128 scenarios, we can switch sides and then play with the rules that balance things.
8. Did I say 128? I meant 182
   
9. Don't feel bad - after all the Axis did win the war... um, never mind.
10. You still do better than Mike G does against me.

So yeah, I started another scenario today and in FIVE turns, he beat me 6-2. He beats me like a ho that's been holding out on him. I get beat more than a dog with a bladder infection and a timid personality. Well, that makes the Axis now ahead 226-205 for the campaign.

June 2008 Game of the Month

Well, I had a number of choices this month, as I went to the Geekway to the West 2008 and played a number of games and tried a number more. Honestly, the game I enjoyed the most was Indonesia - however, I want to keep this list unique each month if I can so that I talk about a different game rather than having the same one pop up over and over.

Glory to Rome wins this month as a game that I found FAR more interesting than Race For the Galaxy. It plays 5 out of the box and while the play is similar in features to Race (cards are used to build or for costs etc) it plays out a bit differently due to player interactions that aren't available in Race and that makes it a far more interesting game to me. Not only that, but its CHEAPER. Its a smaller company that makes this game and its the first game I plan to purchase after I move (I've put myself on a buying hiatus).

So, other games in contention this month? Medici was a candidate - this is my favorite Knizia auction game. Micro Mutants: Evolution showed me that tiddley winks could be cool and fun - fun enough for me to buy, but not to make the top game this month. Subbuteo was a lot of fun, but I don't know that I'd have as much fun with this one unless it was with Justin Easley.

Stop the Bleeding (please)

And after Bug River, Jason took it to me again in 6 turns, whopping me 6-2. I don't hate Memoir, but I don't recommend playing it as Jason and I have (just playing one side the whole way). Reason. Its too hard to balance. In a scenario that favors the Axis, I get screwed if luck slides a little to one side (and maybe I'm jaded here, but it seems that most of this damn game favors the Axis). There have been games I've won and won by a decent amount (though few and far between). Now, having said that, Jason probably plays just a little better than I do, but come on! Averaging a kill a turn? Stupid game. Axis now ahead 220-203 for the campaign.

Bug River

The never ending Memoir saga continued with the Bug River scenario. This one starts the Russians at a disadvantage unless they can get the train to station for some reinforcements. I didn't get the train to the station. Jason won 5-3. As is typical for me, whenever I'm one turn from turning the tide in my favor, Jason smashes me and ends the game. The Axis remains ahead 214-201 for the campaign.

More Trading

You'd think I'd be done trading things. Really. I just don't have that much left I want to trade. So anyway... a quicky 36 hour math trade popped up on the radar and I threw a few things in the ring. Arkham Horror, Fearsome Floors and Bus. I put up Arkham, because I'm not in love with it. Its a good game thematically and it is interesting, but I'm not that big on co-op games. I have Pandemic, which for me scratches that itch. Also, I'll never get Arkham to the table in Arizona with the guys I'll normally play with (and if I wanted to badly enough, there are other folks in AZ that have it and would play...). I got Fearsome Floors (NIS) off the trade table at the Geekway to the West 2008. I didn't really want it, but it was the best available choice (actually the best choice was a game I wanted but didn't see sitting there). At any rate, FF is ok at best. I didn't mind trading it at all. Bus. Remember Bus? I listed this in the MT, and I clearly stated that the boards were warped. However, as I got it, it was not going to get played, so I decided to get rid of it.
So what did I get? Beppo der Bock which is a kids game that uses magnets - the kids should love it. I'm also getting a like new copy of Doom: The Boardgame. I don't know why I want this. I just want this. I have Descent. I still want this. I finally got it. And yes, now I'll need the expansion. Lastly, I'm getting Bus. Yes, I'm getting Bus. A different copy. Couldn't be worse could it? I've traded with the guy in the past and he listed the game as being played, so the boards can't be anywhere near as bad.