Nathan Winchester came on over Thursday night for a few games. I had just finished playing Blink and Viva Topo! with the kids, so as I put them to bed, Nathan pondered the collection. We had talked about a rematch of DVONN earlier, so I pulled this off the shelf to start us out. I tried for (and got) lots of outside places on the initial setup, but it worked against me and Nathan kicked my butt. In a stupid side note - the box picture shows the pieces concave down, opposite of how we have been playing (not that it makes a difference one way or another). Just curious which way other people play with the pieces. I also grabbed Taluva, which Nathan had bought and played some with his wife. having a few games under his belt made for a closer game than last time. This time around, I needed a grassy area on my last tile for the win, and didn't get it, allowing Nathan to dump the rest of his huts. Next up was Samurai, which Nathan and I haven't played in a couple months. I like this game a lot, but usually play a ton until I'm burned out, then I quit and "forget" how to play well. Well, I played poorly against Nathan and failed to notice that he was going to win until after he did. Nathan started an online game for us - I hope to acquit myself a bit better. I followed that up with Ingenious. Nathan seems to enjoy abstracts so its a good thing I have a ton of them (unfortunately, he's better at them than I am). I did manage a win against Nathan this time, but I have to give him most of the credit as he pointed out he had no green, so I cut off all the green for him. Thanks Nathan! We finished the night with a game new to us both - Mexica. A read of the rules didn't seem bad (though we missed two small things, neither effected the game at all) and we got underway. I started the game making plays that sucked and Nathan made me pay immediately after each turn. Despite that, the game wasn't terribly out of hand, and I felt like I had a shot near the end. I played it a bit too close though and Nathan ended the game (I didn't think he could) before I could get my last buildings down. The end scores don't look close, but it was one turn from going the other way. Nathan won 131 to 113. We ended the night playing a quick (5 minute) game of Tsuro. I dropped my rating on this, because there is nothing interesting here. Its simple and short, but that's about it. There isn't much strategy or tactical play really. It is nice looking, but that's all.
The results are in from the latest math trade, and I did ok. I traded 1000 euro-card sleeves for New England. I only played NE once (with Mr. Sato), but enjoyed it. The best part is that I don't have to ship my sleeves (not that it would have been more than $3 anyway). They are going to Bobby.
If you ask me, the best part of having children is watching them learn. You get to see the lightbulb moment a lot. If teaching had paid more reasonably, I'd have probably been a teacher, because I enjoy that moment a lot. At any rate, my son asked to play Ticket to Ride yesterday (more accurately, he did not ask, he simply got it out and set it up and got caught). At any rate, he couldn't remember exactly how we played, so I re-explained it. I also introduced tickets this time (we had previously played without any tickets). I gave my son 1 ticket and explained that if he made the route connecting the two places on his ticket, he'd get the points on the card. He immediately understood the idea and went to work. Of course, his focus was on doing the links in order, but he did a good job and it focused his decisions on which cards to take. Once he completed the ticket, I offered him two more tickets and let him pick which he wanted. Of course, the one he wanted was the bigger point value ticket. this was the Seattle to Montreal route, which I eventually had to point out to him that he didn't have to do them in order (he had a lot of black cards he needed for a link, but was planning to use them for a neutral route). When I told him, he looked at the board a little, and then BAM! the light went on and he got it. I imagine he'll have a little less tunnel vision the next time around. Still, I love playing games with him, because I love showing him something (whether I show him, or beat him with a tactic in game) because he usually gets it and can incorporate or adjust to it.
Nathan Winchester stopped over Thursday night to play a few games. While I was helping my wife load up the car with stuff, Nathan was looking over the collection and inquired about my set of GIPF games (which of course doesn't even include the original GIPF itself). I told him we could play them all (easily) in the night, so I pulled them down. We started with YINSH, which is the longest of the group as far as I have seen (having not played GIPF itself). I enjoy YINSH a lot, but I don't seem to be very good at it. I must be getting a little better though, because I managed to hold on for a win over Nathan, though I think that was only due to having played a number of times. Next we moved to DVONN. I had not ever played this before, but I saw it played once - it was quick. This is a very very short game and it clicked with me for whatever reason. I really liked it a lot. I also beat Nathan soundly, capturing all the stacks. With this being short, I may just keep it in the bag each game night so that I have filler when I want to avoid Jerry from now on. We took a small break from the GIPFD series to playa short game with my son Ashton. He had brought over The Great Race and asked if we'd play it with him. Since it is short and he was going to bed soon, I said yes (thanks for playing Nathan). The great race is an overly simple roll and move race game, with no decision making at all. I only keep this for my 3.5 year old daughter, as this is easy enough for her to play. Nathan and his motorcycle managed to beat me and my race car and Ashton and his roller skates. Heading back to the GIPF games, we played PUNCT - which is yet another one of the series I'm terrible at. I just can't see the game. I don't hate this one, but man do I suck at it. Nathan won in less time than it took me to explain the game. Lastly, we played ZERTZ, which I don't care for. I don't know what this game has done to me, but I just don't like it - and I've won both times I've played it. This time, I manipulated Nathan and grabbed three white marbles pretty quickly to win. Nathan commented that the marbles are annoying (since you have to keep them from rolling off the table). I agree. Its a nice looking game, but annoying. After putting up the GIPF series, I pulled out Tikal. This is a good intro to the action point set of games (I think Nathan will really like Torres when we get to it). I have not played this two player before, but wanted to teach Nathan so we could play it a bit online. We played the normal (non-auction variant) and the game was quite close in the end. I capped two big pyramids early on (10 and 9), but Nathan was keeping up with his huge amount of recovered treasures. In fact, after the third volcano, he was leading me by two points. That probably saved me, letting me score first in the last scoring. I managed to win over Nathan by two points.
My son is now semi-into Pokemon. As such, I jumped all over the $8 Pokemon Master Trainer game I found at Bookman's for him. We actually got to play this the other night and its not terrible for what is really a super glorified roll and move game. In fact, its perfect for my son - there is just enough card text to encourage him to read it (and its easy enough for an emerging reader). There is also a small amount of math needed (for battles) and just enough decision making to keep him interested without overwhelming him. Basically, you roll the die, move your guy along the board and do whatever the space you land on lets you. Typically the space you land on is - try to capture a pokemon or draw cards. To capture a pokemon, you flip the tile on the space and roll the die, trying to match the die pictured on the tile. After getting a certain "value" worth of total pokemon, you can go to the center of the board and try to beat a random "boss" for the win. You also want to try and capture the evolved versions of pokemon you already have, as this gives you a bonus when fighting. And that's about it. My son likes this a lot and really enjoyed getting a twice-evoloved pokemon, which let him win the game.
First off, you have to understand the first (and only) playing I've had so far was tainted in two ways. One, we badly mis-played a rule which made things waaaaayyyy out of whack. Second, Jerry played. That aside for a minute, Senji is a combination of set collection, negotiation, and war. Basically, each player is a controlling house in feudal Japan. Each player gets a set of cards with different values (both the cards and the sets are different for each house). The cards are three types - hostages (your family), trade cards, and military support. Each player starts with three spaces on the board where you will place orders - as your empire expands or shrinks, you will place more or less orders each turn. Each player also starts out with three military units (all units are the same) and one unique Samurai. Each Samurai in the game has unique powers and a player can gain and lose them throughout the game. The player that has the Samurai with the highest honor starts the game "hosting the Emporer" - which means making all the decisions. Lastly, each player gets a starting hand of Hanafuda cards (the set collection cards used for trade). After that the player in the lead at the end of the round makes all the choices the next round. Each round starts with 4 minutes (no more) of negotiation. This is not a lot of time in the least. Hostage cards are leverage to discourage another player from attacking you (or if you give the hostage, from you attacking them). They are leverage, because if you attack, the hostage can be executed which costs you points AND earns the other player points. Trade cards are guarantees that you will perform a trade with another player when called upon of your Hanafuda cards. Military support cards are powerful ally cards that buff the ally you grant them to. If you plan to attack, these cards will make a HUGE difference (and its the part we mis-played, which made the game crazy bad). You don't need military support to fight, but you don't want to go into battle without cards against someone else that has them. Given the rate at which we negotiated, 4 minutes flies by. Recognizing the military value now, I'd guess the 4 minute mark will seem even closer next time. After the negotiation phase, each player secretly places orders in each area of the board they control. You have three options - get Hanafuda cards, get 2 armies in that area, or move (which generally means fight). You secretly place them ala A Game of Thrones - face down. Following the order placement, the guy in control (The Emperor's host) picks each province in whatever order (s)he wants and the player does the action. Obviously, 2/3 of the actions take about 5 seconds to resolve. Moving/fighting is actually pretty easy to resolve and involves a slight amount of luck (dice offer a 1/6 chance to give support to either) in addition to any military support that players want to use from other players. Win or lose, both armies are reduced by the same amount - the only difference being who gets the honor points (if the attacker wins, they get double). The last phase of each turn is the trade phase. Here players will trade with each other, turn in sets of Hanafuda cards or whatever to score points, or recruit new Samurai. After the round is over, the new leader (if there is one) gains control and you rinse and repeat. The beauty here is that there is actually a lot to do and pay attention to, even though things seem pretty simple. There are lots of ways to score points - Hanafuda cards, combat, and even simply getting other players to work deals with you (if you can acquire and not use 5 cards from other players - any 5 cards, you can return those cards and gain 10 points - 1/6 of what you need to win the game). I really hope this gets another shot at the table. I'm not sure that everyone will care for it - it really is a negotiation game and one that could potentially bog down a little if folks aren't doing much each turn. However, if you aren't trading cards with the other players, you probably aren't giving yourself a chance to win.
Friday Feb. 13, 2009. I arrived at the Gamer's Inn Friday Night, planning to play a little Senji and Vinci - and played both. The night started with a light game - Gem Dealer, which Dion Garner wanted to try out. Basically, Gem Dealer is the poor cousin of Ivanhoe. By poor, I mean that it takes out all the fun parts and makes this a simple luck of the draw game with very little in the way of interesting decisions. In addition to Dion and I, also bored by this playing were Noah Antwiller and Eddie. After that, we pulled out Senji and setup. At first, I wasn't sure that we weren't going to have a minor incident before the game, as one of the six folks that wanted to play was Jerry. Prepared to play where myself, Dion, Matthew, Amelia, Noah, and Jerry. Matthew had a brief discussion with him about preferring not playing with him, since the last game they played in Jerry quit part way through. Jerry denied any wrong doings, but Dion backed Matthew's claim. We eventually let him play, but it was clear we were not particularly thrilled with him. That aside, we covered the rules and started and I managed to hose myself early on through my poor ability to sit next to Jerry and concentrate (or something). I'll cover the actual game of Senji in another post, but about 45 minutes into the game, Jake pointed out we were very badly misplaying one rule and we called the game. I think that most of the players will give it another shot (albeit without Jerry I'm sure), which I'm glad for, because I think there is an interesting game here. After the Senji fiasco, we broke up, with some guys going to play Le Havre. Amelia and I decided to play Vinci with some other guys that were still finishing their game of Power Grid, so we pulled out Poison and played a few hands with Jerry and Jake. Amelia got hosed the whole game, while Jake, Jerry and I did ok, getting hosed about once each over three rounds. In the end, Jake got hosed the least for the win. Amelia and I switched tables after that and were joined by Steve Bauer, Matt Cullinan and Rob Smolka for our game of Vinci. I like this game a good amount and had been bringing it for a couple weeks now. Steve had told me last time he wanted to play, so I made a point of making sure I had it with me this week. My first civ came into contact with Rob's slavers very early, so I put them into decline and then watched in amazement as they were left nearly untouched for at least three rounds (scoring me at least 7 points each round). My second civ had forts (which EVERYONE has been mis-playing and nobody realized are way overpowered) and I loaded up that civ with forts in the forests while riding my declined civ for points. As we neared the endgame and the others attempted to slow me down, I was able to get a pretty large sized civ which let me take out Steve's declined civ, taking him out of contention. I didn't suspect Matt had a chance, but he came up one point short of beating me after I passed the 100pt mark. We finished up the night with a 6-player playing of Himalaya. Matthew, Noah and Dion were done with Le Havre, so they joined Matt, Amelia and I. I avoided trying to make deliveries in the first third of the game (to nab points for goods), but I didn't get a load of points, nor did I get any decent goods. In fact, I had trouble with goods most of the game and didn't see a green all game. I also discovered I had been misplaying a rule (this appears to be a theme for the night) with the stupas - stupas in bigger town are worth more than the smaller towns (ie 3,2,1 pts, not equal). This makes a difference in the strategy to be sure. It didn't matter - I could hardly get three deliveries done the whole game, mostly following other players around and watching them do what I hoped to do before I did it. Matt voiced his dislike for this game with 6 players (though surprisingly he does like it with 4), though I kinda think that the only thing extra players bring is stronger competition for the political majorities since with more players, you have more towns with goods and deliveries. Dion (on his birthday no less), survived all the eliminations for the win. I still enjoy this one enough to play with any number 4-6.
Yeah, I'm listening to the Jay-Z song... Anyway, there are a number of "pimps" for the C&C:Ancients game. A number of fools actually bought minis for the armies (I'm in the camp that the blocks are easier to play with and less fussy and thus prefer them slightly over minis). That aside, one guy actually made NEW sticker sheets that you can print out. Ok, hold on. There is a limit here. If I print out new sheets, I have to cut them myself. Then I'd have to RE-STICKER my existing set (and I do mean remove the old ones and apply new ones, not cover the existing). As nice looking as the new armies are, lets face it - the blocks are small and I doubt I'd really notice that much. And given that each expansion has a bazillion blocks to sticker, I don't need more work through re-stickering the base game. Plus then you'd have to update the reference cards to match. Its just not worth it. There are limits to what I'll do to make a game better :)
Well, it is February so onto the new game I'd like to play - Senji. Senji is supposed to combine diplomacy, conquest, and economics mechanics into a 90 minute game. It is by Bruno Cathala and Serge Laget(Shadows over Camelot). A lot of the mechanics sound a lot like A Game of Thrones "lite", which to me is a good thing. Senji is about the waring states of Japan and trying to accumulate honor (VPs). Each round, whomever is in the lead "hosts the Emperor" which allows them to determine the play order for the round. Bash the leader? You bet, but not before they take advantage of it. Each round starts with 4 minutes of diplomatic time (via timer). You can make verbal agreements or "binding" agreements by trading cards (which represent your house/clan/family or other player's cards). Next, everyone places their orders (recruit troops, draw cards, or move) face down in their provinces. Then the player hosting the Emperor activates the provinces in whatever order they see fit. After the orders have been completed, players can turn in their economic cards in various sets (which earns points). Then rinse and repeat until someone scores the required number of points to win. There are a couple of routes to victory, since you can score points for attacking (and defending) and you can score points economically (the cards represent trade) as well as for how you treat the other player's cards you are given. I like that there are multiple paths to victory, some amount of negotiation/bluffing that can take place and so forth. I'm also pretty sure that I will suck at this game and much like the bribery part that can take place in games where one guy is in control (Santigo), I think I'll suck at both influencing the person in charge and /or being the person in charge. Be that as it may, the lure of a 90 minute A Game of Thrones is hard to pass up.
My wife was going out with some friends Friday night, so after I got the kids in bed, Nathan Winchester came by for a little two-player gaming. We started out with C&C:Ancients. I really enjoy the system and like the whole series (I think it grows on you the more you play). We started with the first scenario (Battle of Akragas) with Nathan playing the (dirty)Carthaginians and I took the Syracuse army. As is typical for me, the dice hated me and Nathan won his first game 5-3. Rather than flipping sides, we moved to the next scenario (Crimissos River) and kept the same alliances. This time, I was afraid the sacred band of Carthaginians was going to make me miserable, but I wiped them out and had a commanding lead. Nathan got one kill in to avoid the shutout as the dice that hated me in the first game, hated him in the second. Next, I pulled out a game I enjoy that plays pretty quickly for two - Taluva. After I showed him how to play, he asked for a second helping. I think he enjoyed this one and he seemed right on the edge of groking it, but experience helped me to win both our sessions. I have played this with three and it is really different than with two - I need to bring this along next week to see it with four. After that, I showed Nathan Pandemic. The two us us went head to head with a 5-epidemic deck. Nathan as Scientist and myself as the Researcher. I fed Nathan cards and we cured two, but the yellow disease had manifested itself nastily in South America, and outbreaks happened way too much. We finally lost after the third epidemic, when we didn't have enough yellow cubes to keep going. We ended the night with a playing of Attika. I like this two player, though it was a bit vanilla this night. I had two advantages over Nathan - I drew my city first token, and I got my harbor down right before he did in a prime spot, saving me a good amount of cost. I'd have likely won sooner than I did, but I kept drawing my whites in basically reverse optimal order. I built all my buildings while Nathan still had two left to go.
And no, I don't really mean all the Pokémon, nor all the boardgames out there. But you wouldn't think that. I've acquired a few new games recently. Pokémon Master Trainer was sitting on the shelf at Bookman's for $8, so I grabbed that for my son. They also had a copy of Domination - the old Sid Saxon classic that won the Spiel in 1988. Most of the time, thrifting is boring and not worth the effort, but occassionally you find something. I also acquired a large lot of games from a math trade. I traded War! Age of Imperialism for all of the following:
Now, most of those aren't great, but it turned out that a couple are nice display pieces (Quarto!, Chung Toi) and there are a couple interesting abstracts too. I've wanted to try Dragonmaster out for a long long time, so despite the wear on the game, it was a nice little addition. I also recently acquired Pow Wow (next game to try at my next dinner) and Othello (Shrek edition) for some card games (Escalation, Control Nut, Coloretto). And lastly, I have Mammoth Hunters coming as one of the last items in a math trade (for Age of Mythology).
My friend Mike Garrett (aka the Fonz, so as not to be confused with the other Mike G), was in town for the weekend with his fiance Amy Jo Schafer. Mike is a gaming buddy from Omaha, so I was looking forward to some decent gaming over the weekend as well as getting to spend time with Amy and my wife. At any rate, Friday morning (Jan, 29, 2009) started out with my teaching Mike and Amy Galaxy Trucker. Now, I'm no expert at this, but playing a couple of times and against slower new players really helps! That is not to say I won (I did not), but my ships were much much better. I still was last to finish, but my ships were much better in terms of having things I needed. We cut our game short after two rounds so my wife and Amy could go do something less interesting than playing games. Mike was ahead at that point, so we declared him the winner. After that, I pulled out A Game of Thrones: LCG for us to give a whirl. Only after the first turn did I realize that you don't pick offices when playing head-to-head, so I was glad to catch that early on. Mike had grabbed Lannister and I randomly grabbed the Starks. The Stark deck is nasty and I put a hurt on those Lannisters (which would not be the first time I saw Lannister go down this day). Though interesting, I think this game is much more interesting with multiple players. The options and timing of things seems like it just is better. Fast forward to that evening at the Gamer's Inn. Knowing Mike would want to play, I had arranged for us to play A Game of Thrones (the real game) with Matthew Frederick, Amelia Boli, Noah Antwiller and Nathan Winchester. Noah had setup for us ahead of time, so all we had to do was decide on our options. We went with the Storm of Swords Westeros cards, The Clash of Kings house cards, and ports. Now, before we had arrived, Mike had declared if he was house Greyjoy, he'd be able to win in 4 turns. As it turns out, he was Greyjoy. He was also entrenched between Nathan (Lannister) and I (Stark). He did put a good squeeze on Lannister immediately, but I was able to keep him in check to the north. Sadly, that was about all I was able to do. Noah (Martel) came after Amelia (Baratheon) early and looked like he was in the lead. However, Matthew (Tyrell) punished Noah and without any real resistance from Lannister, was able to win on turn 6. With the early win, we were able to get some more gaming in! Mike had suggested Union Pacific, so I had brought it along, knowing Matthew liked it. Amelia left us to play Scepter of Zavandor, so it was Matthew, Noah, Nathan, Mike and I. We played with unlimited UP stock, but I realized again why I don't prefer this game over similar games like Chicago Express. The reason? Lack of control. Matthew got an early lead by playing the sole stock in one company. By playing 5 trains to it, he pulled down 9 income(VPs) a turn twice while we were all sharing 2-4 incomes (plus his other income). Noah also had a monopoly and was also able to get in on Matthew's action later in the game. I never had a draw at anything solo nor anything that was making serious enough cash. I went for loads of UP and managed a couple of firsts in the last two payouts to pull me out of last (barely) and into third. Noah won with 110, Matthew 98, Me 90, Mike 89, Nathan 80. As I explained - Matthew only had to play 5 trains to make income of 9 a turn for his monopoly. To make that same amount, I'd have to have equal shares in a company with someone else, and we'd have to play 17 combined trains - obviously putting us at a disadvantage. Since the stock you will have access to in the start of the game is done by random draw, you basically have to guess correctly at the start of the game what will come out and what other people will play. That's strike one. The next strike is that you only have the ability to attack the leader(s) if you are lucky enough to have sufficient access to their stock. If the remainder of their stock is at the bottom of the deck, or comes up after you play, there is nothing you can do about it. For the length of this game, these flaws probably keep this on the shelf for me. If I hadn't actually worked for Union Pacific, I'd probably trade the game as i really think I prefer Wabash. Apparently we hadn't gotten out our need to play Alan Moon train themed games, as we pulled Ticket To Ride out. I suggested this as something 5 of us could play with reasonable speed while we waited for Steve, Amelia and Greg to finish their game. This was new to Nathan, but the rest of us dove into the vanilla version of the game (indeed, playing pretty quickly). I went for the "Sato" strategy (draw cards until you are forced to claim a route) and at one point had about as many cards in my hand as there were left in the deck. Matthew was all over grabbing routes in the middle of the map with Noah and I didn't grab a route until Nathan started taking west coast routes. Of course, by the time I was in play, I was behind and my last ditch attempt at drawing tickets cost me a lot of points. I also mis-played the last turn and was one round short of finishing another ticket. Final tally: Matthew-77, Noah, 101, Nathan 105, Mike-85, Charles-77. We finished the night with a group party game. Steve had the new version of Time's Up!, Time's Up - Title Recall. I was teamed with Dan Brugman, Steve Bauer and Greg Perschbacher were a team, Matthew and Amelia played together, and Mike and Noah were the last team. Roughly speaking, in Title Recall the cards have books, movies, songs, and tv shows. We had a pretty good time, with a number of cards that people just didn't know. I have never read, nor know nothing about Watership Down, which about half the group didn't either (this is important later). We also had to sing Stand By your Man for Amelia. I'm nearly positive that those of us familiar with the song only knew it from the Blues Brothers. I had also thrown in the classic John Denver song - Thank God I'm a Country BoyWhich NOBODY seeemed to know - it caused fits the whole game. Well, the game was good for a number of laughs and in the end I Matthew and Amelia won 34-29(Mike+Noah)-26(Dan+Charles)-31(Steve+Greg). Saturday continued the fun. I had some (mostly non-gamer) friends over for dinner and after we ate, we played some party games. We started with Cluzzle and then finished with Time's Up!. Cluzzle was modeled after the 1988 Spiel des Jahres winner - Barbarossa. Basically, players have clay and make a thing then other players try to guess the object. You want to get guessed, but not until after a couple rounds of players trying to figure out what you made. I'm apparently terrible at art, and wasn't getting guessed at all. The picture here is of Amy and her "Ostrich", which is obvious once I tell you that, however it was less obvious from here answers to questions like, "Is it a bird?" - to which we were not told "Yes". Guessing things is much harder when the answers are ambiguous (which killed me and my anemone looking eyelash). Not actually owning Time's Up, we got out index cards and everyone wrote out a couple songs, movies, books and TV shows. We had one duplicate song - Don't Fear the Reaper and someone (not Mike or I) threw in Watership Down. When the clue was being given for this, Mike and did a double take at each other - a strange little moment given that we didn't know it from the previous night, yet knew from the "bloody rabbits" clue what the book was instantly. And, one official apology to my wife for not getting "The Office" despite her walking to the doorway of MY OFFICE and pointing in during the last round. I suck. Sunday was Mike and Amy's last day with us before heading home and we got a couple last minutes games in with my kids. Mike, Ashton, Ainsley, and I got in a game of Tier auf Tier (Animal on Animal). This is a light little dexterity game that should favor children, but doesn't favor my son who pretty much haphazardly throws his animals on top of the pile. My timid daughter carefully placed her way to the win here. We followed that game with Eureka, which is a Ravensburger family game where your prospector is trying to find gold and avoid the bandits before the train arrives in town. Mostly, its a little press your luck game which my son seems to enjoy. I got on a lucky streak of large gold finds and the train came in quickly letting me win with 40 points. Mike had 19 and my son had 13 after encountering the wrong bandits. A long weekend of gaming indeed!
Um, that was a long title for a very short post. BGG is down for some software upgrades. Apparently things are not working quite right yet (not surprising in the software world - especially the BGG one). So at any rate, despite a massive amount of game related junk recently (lots of trades and games played) I haven't posted about any of it yet. Yes, I'm going through withdrawal.
Math trade time. This time I moved a couple of things I was probably never going to play for a couple things I'm probably not going to play. First the outgoing. War! Age of Imperialism, Age of Mythology: The Boardgame, Control Nut! (plus Coloretto and Escalation!) for Mammoth Hunters, Pow Wow (plus Othello), and Quoridor (plus Quarto!, Fire and Ice, and Chung Toi). Whew! So, I got a large number of abstract wooden games - hopefully I can put at least Quarto! out on display (not sure if my dumb-ass dog would try and eat it or not). Mammoth Hunters is part of the Alea Big Box set and is supposed to be an ok game to boot (not special, just ok). I'm getting closer to the set, though my shelves won't hold the set on one shelf, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. Getting rid of War! and AoM frees up a good amount of space that was just being taken up. I finally accepted that I was not going to play either and even if I did, I probably have something else that's similar I like more. As for the card games - Coloretto is ok, but I have both Zooloretto and Aquaretto, so I really don't need the card game too, so I threw it in. I also threw in Escalation!, which is ok, but take it or leave it. Control Nut! sounded more fun than it was, which is too bad, but oh well.
Or not. My son has "earned" Pokemon cards. Entirely his choice - I would not have chosen any kind of collectible game for him to get started in until he could at least earn his own money, but this is the thing he really wanted and it appears to have motivated him along. So at any rate, we bought a couple of theme decks at target and he earned one. Now of course, Dad had to have a deck as well (or else he couldn't have played and I'm not spending money on these cards so he can look at them), so I picked up one of the decks at random to be "Dad's Pokemon cards". After he got his cards, I read through the rules and we sat down to play. Now, my son is just learning to read, and while he can read the cards after some effort, the names of the Pokemon confuse him - he doesn't know if a word is a word, he's sounded it out incorrectly, or what - so I just basically explained the game and read the cards for him. Each round, he'd go through the things he could do and I offer him his options (do you have a power card? do you have a basic guy to play to your bench? do you have training cards? who do you want to attack?). Well, as it turned out, Dad's cards were all vulnerable to Red and Yellow energy. Guess what color cards my boy got? Yep - Red and Yellow. Now, I still won most of the games, but there was one game he just trounced me like 6-1. There was also a close game he had against my wife where he just barely lost because she got out a stage 2 guy and it took a long time for my son to realize he should knock it out. Overall, this is not a complex CCG, but its not so light as to be unfun. Its actually a pretty good introduction to this kind of game. I think as my son's reading improves, new decks will start to be enjoyable to him as well. I'm trying to keep him clear of the whole idea of boosters, because I hate the idea of spending $5 for a packet of cards (especially when a fully playable deck is there for $12). Deck building or even replacing a couple of cards is still probably out of his scope for a while, but I hope I'm not creating a monster.
Friday Jan. 23, 2009 - Gamer's Inn. Well, after a very late night Friday, I needed a couple days to recover ;). Friday was a pretty good game night with six different games getting played - including two being new and plus one new expansion. The night started off with a game of Ra. Nathan Winchester had wanted to try some more auction games, so I had pulled this one out (though I would have rather played Vegas Showdown, Amelia and Matthew had not arrived with it in tow yet). So joining Nathan and I were Dan Brugman, Noah Antwiller, and Rob Smolka. This was an odd game, in that we saw hardly any Ra tiles or bad tiles. Rob also sucked down most of the flood tiles, which made the other two rounds less interesting. The first round also saw Dan make a HUGE lead that he never relinquished - he won easily. After that, we had something like 7 folks milling around, so Noah grabbed Smarty Party!. This was something I had heard the group playing a couple weeks ago that sounded like a bit of fun. This time, joining the five of us from Ra were Rob Ehlers and Filipe Lopez. As far as trivia games go, it was decent enough fun, though near the end, Rob Ehlers and Noah were apparently annoying each other as the playful jesting was getting a little nasty. Things broke up into a couple of different games after that, so when Noah suggested A Game of Thrones: LCG, I was happy to give this a whirl. Nathan, Noah and I were joined by Amelia Boli, who also had wanted to try this out. So, the four of us set about seeing what the rules had for us and what the cards and houses were like. Noah was Stark, Nathan was Baratheon, Amelia played the Lannisters, and I was the Targaryens. The first couple of rounds made it look and feel like the game would last forever, but I then saw what I had been missing - to generate the winning power you need to win uncontested conflicts. By spreading around your attacks, it was often very easy to grab power two or three a pop (renown+red(attack)+uncontested conflict win would be worth three). There is a lot to like and a little that was annoying. The combinations of the core decks were a lot of fun to get into play. It was pretty annoying seeing some of the other deck's awesome combinations. Amelia also got smacked a bit, since Noah and I had awesome RED characters in play (though we each lost those in some nasty business). Really, our first game was a bit long, but I thought it was pretty fun. There is a lot of text to read and try to absorb, but having played through once I now have a better feel for the flow of the game and I also know that there are some nasty cards out there (there are some cards that will wipe out every standing character on the table - fall behind? Make it even!). I thought play was pretty aggressive, but I think it'd be even more nasty now. Really a fun game despite how long our first playing was. Once I realized what needed to be done, I went for it, only to come up with only 14 of the needed 15 power for the win. Noah was able to easily get to the 15 he needed immediately after I tried. Our game had gone on a bit long, so Matthew had moved onto his own long game of Le Havre. Still just the four of us, I suggested Power Grid, since Nathan has been bugging me to try that out. Knowing the others would be game, I suggested to Amelia we play with the new power plant deck since that would level the playing field a bit for Nathan (since we wouldn't have much clue on what the coming plants might be like). So, that's what we did. We played the American map (all eastern zones) and away we went. I'm not sure I care for the new deck - seemed to be lot of power that took a lot of fuel too. At one point, I got lucky and snagged a nice 1 oil-->4 cities plant and Amelia got hosed with the next draw. She paid me back by keeping me out of oil for that plant a turn later, which I figured would cost me the game. We actually hit Step 3, and I grasped at a power 7 cities plant, but figured Noah or Amelia would snatch up all the oil for the last turn, and screw me. Instead, neither did and Noah pushed us to the finish, but powered one less plant than I did. Matthew's group was finishing up their game of Leonardo DaVinci, so I suggested a quick game of No Thanks! with Amelia and Nathan. This game takes about 10 minutes with three, so I figured was a good finisher for the night. It was, despite finishing a point behind Nathan. I was ready to head out, but Steve Bauer was complaining that it had been weeks since he'd been able to sit and play something together, so he and Dion Garner talked Nathan and I into staying for a game of Dominion (which turned into two). This was Nathan's first go round with the game, so after playing a quick game of Big Money, he was immediately ready for the next. Steve wanted to try Size Distortion (that's what she said), so we played that too. BTW, I don't think I care for that combination of cards. Not that I minded the interactive cards, it just wasn't my thing. Still, a good way to end the night
2 of 10, 7 of 20, 14 of 30, 21 of 40, and 25 of 50. That is to say I have not played 2 of the top 10, 7 of the top 20, etc etc from the BGG top 50 ranked games. Seeing that there are 25 of those games in the top 50, I didn't even bother extending that to the top 100. Interestingly (or not) I only own 6 of those titles. A number of those I doubt I'll ever try - like the ridiculously long and chit-heavy Paths of Glory. The two top ten games I haven't tried are Caylus and Through the Ages. Mike Gingold and Dion Garner are always trying to get me to play Through the Ages, so I'm likely to try that. I'm less inclined to play Caylus I think, but wouldn't walk away if that was the choice. I loved the Civ computer games, so I'm sure I'd love TtA, but have kept from purchasing this because of the number of production issues that the FRED editions have had. However (Dion, pay attention if you read this), I'm not playing this with more than three people. The next 5 games or whatever I haven't played includes Brass, Die Macher and Shogun. I'm going to get all of these played this year I'm sure. After that, I'm really more interested in my owned and unplayed list than the BGG top 50.
Done with my purchases for the month. I can't say there won't be any new games - you never know if a trade might come up, but at the moment I'm cutting off new purchases for the rest of the month (let us hope no crazy sales come up that I have to say no to). So far I have made two trades (via math trade) and four purchases:
Dread Pirate - this really is one of the nicest looking games ever. Should be good with my son, since this is supposed to be a pretty simplistic game.
The aMAZEing Labyrinth - $2 at goodwill was to hard to say no. I actually liked Master Labyrinth more than I thought I would, so this simpler version should eventually work with my son
Senji - this one sounds like a slightly lighter take on A Game of Thrones, finishing in under two hours.
DVONN - yet another project GIPF game I don't have. That actually makes it just GIPF and TZAAR that I won't have (well, and TAMSK, but its box doesn't fit the set and it was replaced by TZAAR and stuff).
A Game of Thrones LCG - I added 6 chapter packs from the initial set. No multiples unless I really get into the game and deck building and league play. And even then, I might be more inclined to try and just track down the cards I want.
Ok, I haven't been talking about tracking games at all, but whatever. Matthew Frederick created and sells game journals on his website Genimuse. I finally got one and plan to log my plays there this year (have no fear, session reports will still get posted). I also plan to log my plays more thoroughly on the BGG this year - the recorded plays section allows for quite a good bit of extended details. Last year I kept a running geeklist going with my plays and opponents, but it didn't seem as useful as I thought it would be. Also, I was looking at my friendless extended numbers and the list of games I should play soon (minus the expansions) definitely is spot on. Here are the top 10:
El Grande - needs five players, but I've only played once and as I've indicated before, that's just not right
Fortress America - needs four players that are up for a dicefest
Torres - three or four players and shouldn't be too hard to get to the table, if I'd bring it out
I've been reading the few posts to the game on the BGG. Found a few rules clarifications and subtleties. If any agents are removed from your corporation, the pawn stays in place on the board. If you can re-fill that spot before the pawn is revealed, you do indeed get to use the new character in that spot. We house ruled the other way in our game, which might have then allowed Eric the ability to beat Amelia in the final confrontation. Oh well. That still seems weak to me. I also read a rules clarification about some of the support properties that (in my mind) makes a few properties more valuable. Properties that give a +1 to a profession (say +1 to scientists from the lab) give the +1 to each in that zone. So you can send multiples and get a multi-bonus. You can also use that bonus for the ability check (if you didn't use it in the conflict resolution phase). That's pretty useful too - IFF (that's if and only if) you are using some variant on the resolution (no random card or half random card value).
Nathan Winchester came on over Thursday night for a few games. I had just finished playing Blink and Viva Topo! with the kids, so as I put them to bed, Nathan pondered the collection. We had talked about a rematch of DVONN earlier, so I pulled this off the shelf to start us out. I tried for (and got) lots of outside places on the initial setup, but it worked against me and Nathan kicked my butt. In a stupid side note - the box picture shows the pieces concave down, opposite of how we have been playing (not that it makes a difference one way or another). Just curious which way other people play with the pieces. 
We finished the night with a game new to us both - Mexica. A read of the rules didn't seem bad (though we missed two small things, neither effected the game at all) and we got underway. I started the game making plays that sucked and Nathan made me pay immediately after each turn. Despite that, the game wasn't terribly out of hand, and I felt like I had a shot near the end. I played it a bit too close though and Nathan ended the game (I didn't think he could) before I could get my last buildings down. The end scores don't look close, but it was one turn from going the other way. Nathan won 131 to 113.
