I Knew It!

So last night I'm playing Torres (session report coming) and Nathan Winchester tells me I'm doing it wrong - that the tower pieces roll over from phase to phase and round to round. I tell him, no they don't - that'd be retarded and makes no sense. Lo and behold, the rules support exactly what he said. But I'm POSITIVE that was not how Jason Sato taught me the game. And I'm right - apparently Kramer changed the rules. Which is dumb. It is a dumb rule change. Part of the game was always the decision over using points for moving and/or creating knights which not only used action points, but wasted some of your tower pieces. Now there is no waste. After about two rounds, you should have enough tower pieces to always place as many as you want in any round - which is full on retarded.

Something of No Interest

Fantasy Flight games now does premium card sleeves in multiple Euro game sizes. They have been doing standard CCG sleeves for a while, but lately there has been a market for smaller sleeves - eurogame sized sleeves. Currently there are two producers: Mayday Games and Fantasy Flight. Both are producing 59x92MM sleeves. Mayday originally came out with their version of the penny sleeves in this size (penny = thin and cheap) which pleased the Dominion crowd to no end. I was among those that purchased 500 of them (actually, I purchased 1000) for Dominion. Then I traded Dominion and the other 500 away. Why? I decided I didn't really need to own Dominion and I also decided that I didn't care for the super thin sleeves. I waited until Mayday offered a premium version of their sleeve (125% thicker) and bought a couple hundred. Since I saw some of the FF ones at the store, I grabbed some of them today to compare the two. So here is what I'm seeing:

• Both about the same thickness - they feel about same.
• The FF ones are larger. Not by a large amount, but very slightly wider and longer. Noticeably longer once you put a card in.
• The FF ones are clearer. Having said that, once I put cards in both sleeves, I didn't notice the difference, nor did I notice one being easier to read than the other.

So, which should you pick? Based on the above, the Mayday Games sleeves. Slightly less long and wide means easier shuffling. But here is one more reason to buy the Mayday games sleeves. A pack of 50 from Mayday is $0.13 cheaper than the ones from Fantasy Flight. Not a big deal, but if you want to sleeve the 1000 cards for Dominion and its expansion you save $2-3 (yeah, another 50 sleeves!). Both are available from the producer as well as through Boards and Bits (which seems to have the best price).

I Own It and I Played It

yep, I own Stratego: Legends. I even own the expansions Celestial Vengeance and Qa'ans Resurgence. I actually even played this game the other day. So what is it? Stratego is a classic board game circa 1947. Two players have a set of pieces with numbers (representing an army), some bombs and a flag. The idea is to capture the flag of the other player. The trick being, you can't see the value of the other guy's pieces until you attack with one of yours. If your number is lower, you win and their piece comes off the board. Find their flag and win. Run into a bomb and lose your piece. There are pieces that can beat bombs, but they are weak. The weakest piece on the board can only beat the toughest piece. So each player would set up their board to try and get the other guy to run into bombs or good pieces while trying to sniff out the other side's flag. Lots of bluffing in the setup and movement. I learned this game as a child - my grandparents had this one in the closet and I got to play it a bunch whenever we visited, so it had fond memories for me. When I first got into board games as a hobby, I discovered that there were a lot of new games and re-makes of older games (we are not talking about re-themes of Monopoly here - stay with me people). I discovered that Hasbro/Avalon Hill had created a new version of Stratego called Stratego: Legends. This version had a board with terrain that affected the game and came as tiles so the layout could be different. The pieces were also new. Not only did it have a fantasy theme, there were unique powers to go with the raw numeric strengths of the unit. How cool. And, I found out that there were expansion sets of pieces. So here was a game I remember loving with a whole set of changes that sounded awesome. I got a copy and tracked down the expansions. And then it sat on my shelf. For close to five and a half years they have sat on my shelf. But, I now have a son who loves to play games. And while I'd love to teach him to play Combat Commander: Europe or something equally cool, I realize that there has to be a certain progression of learning games (think along the lines of JOSHUA from Wargames) - you start with the easier ones and learn basic tactics and strategies rather than being overwhelmed. At any rate, I didn't feel like playing another game of Pokemon or dragging out the Heroscape stuff (though I do love me some of the comic guys for Heroscape) so I offered to teach Ashton a new game. He always loves seeing new games come out and rarely isn't interested. Well, I pulled this out, which he recognized as Stratego (which he had apparently "played" at school), but also knew this was different than the one he played. I explained the rules (which he grasped pretty quickly - it isn't a hard rule set) and we started to play.
So the first thing of note - this is not your parent's Stratego (or my grandparent's). As I mentioned, each side is a unique set of pieces with unique powers that allow them to break rules or behave differently depending on the terrain or who is next to them and so on. The bombs are replaced with spells that both act like a bomb (destroy the piece attacking) as well as the potential to change the rules (ever so slightly) of the game. Some pieces can fly (jump across the board) or move on the diagonal. Others can sacrifice themselves to return a different piece that died to the board. Also of note, the numbering system reversed itself at some point (which I think happened to the original game somewhere in the 70s or 80s). Lastly, you don't setup the pieces. You randomly lay them out. So is this a better game? The purist in me says no. The gamer in me says yes. You see, the purist in me is upset at what this game does to my childhood memories and what it does to the classic cat and mouse game. There is no tension in this version. The gamer in me likes the flavor of this game and the fact that games last about 10 minutes - that's right 10 minutes. Tops. Now, I could certainly see where a couple of really serious players could get some AP and sit there trying to maximize their plays and pieces, but there is too much chaos for that. Your best piece (10) could die - so what? No big deal if you have another piece that can bring him back. Losing it isn't the big swing you thought it was. Also, pieces can move diagonally, so the old "surround your flag with bombs" play doesn't really work. In fact, the setup is random, so you couldn't if you wanted to. So, this is actually an ok game for what it is. Where it fails, is what it tried to be. Collectible. Apparently, they tried to make it so that people would buy booster armies with random pieces to try and get people to collect the whole set of pieces. Having played it, I can say, "Who cares?" It isn't like a CCG where you can really build your army/deck and customize it - yes, you could customize it, but it wouldn't really matter that much. I'm sure it'll get some more play - my son enjoys the surprise element that comes with attacking an unknown piece and the joy when I attack his magic pieces and lose a good piece. In the end, it is the quick version of a classic - maybe it is perfect for those of us in the video game era of quick plays with lots of flash. I have lots of other games waiting for him when he's ready for something meaty (CC:E anyone?)

Heroscape News

Yeah, like I don't have enough Heroscape stuff already... Heroscapers.com has a couple of interesting things to report. Namely, a new master set is coming out. The new master set has "D&D theme attached to it. There will be an official campaign in the set as well as some new rules and new glyphs." Sweet. Heroscape already has a load of dragons, elves, knights, goblins, etc but it'll be cool to see some units based on D&D monsters too. Additionally, they are going to be releasing some of the previously exclusive figures. It looks like the Elite Onyx Vipers, Nerak from Gencon 2006, and Sir Hawthorne from Gencon 2007 will be made available as well as some re-paints of older figures as new units. Of course, combined with the 70 superheroes my son has (or will have in the next week) it'll just add up to more stuff I neither have room for nor have played. I can't wait :)

Space Hulk is Being Reprinted

Well, nobody thought it would happen, but GW is reprinting Space Hulk. The question is - should I care? It is a pretty good chunk of change ($99) for a game with some minis (unpainted), cardboard tiles and dice. Offhand, it sounds a lot like Doom: The Boardgame (which can be found much much cheaper). A lot of folks say this is the better game, but is it $60 better (or $100 if I already own Doom)? Doom is one against many (each player controls a single marine) where in Space Hulk the marine player controls a squad. Doom has a variety of foe type, while Space Hulk is all about one type. There is a GW place not too far from my house, maybe I'll get a chance to check it out, but I'm not sure I'm ready to dump the money on this one yet. If that's the case, then why did I bother posting this like some kind of fan-boy? If they reprint this, maybe there is hope yet for a reprint of Warhammer Quest.

Game Night

My friend Amelia Boli had something of a long day down in Tucson and after she finally got back in town, she and Matthew Frederick stopped by for a bit of late night gaming. We had discussed playing Agricola since it hadn't gotten played recently due to Le Havre being the game of choice so I pulled this out for us to play. We did a quick draft of I deck only items and occupations and got started. Matthew managed to expand his home very early and had his family growing rapidly. I managed to get a food engine in place only after a couple of harvests and didn't get an expanded family until WAY too late in the game. With his extra family members, the outcome was decided pretty early in the game and Matthew had no trouble whooping Amelia and I. At this point, I can't say that I prefer Agricola or Le Havre over the other. Both are similar feeling, but different. If I only had one of the two, I wouldn't be terribly disappointed that I didn't have the other.
We felt like we had another game in us, so Matthew taught us Yspahan. This Ystari game is one I have wanted to try for a while now (plus there is a single player computer version available). Basically, its is a tactical luck management game - the options each player has on a turn are based on the roll of a number of dice. The first player gets first pick and then the next player gets to choose from the remaining actions and so forth, then the turns rotate. After 7 rounds, the board is scored then cleared and you repeat twice more. In the end, luck is certainly a factor, but this is pretty short and was enjoyable enough (though I probably took too long deciding my actions). Matthew's first roll of the game netted him a load of camels which he bankrolled into a couple of buildings which gave him an early advantage. After the second round, we had zero chance of catching him. In fact, I scored only enough in the last round to tie his second round score.

Catching Up (part II)

So what if this post has a different title? The night was July 24th and I headed over to the Gamer's Inn for a bit of gaming. I started the night with a game of Excape with Matt Cullinan and Noah Antwiller. Good starter for the night while we waited for others to show up. I started out well, but rolled into crap and Noah outlasted us for the win. Next I pulled out the Flaschenteufel (Bottle Imp) for the three of us. This is supposed to be an excellent three player trick taking game. It may be, but it was a bit confusing the first go round. We all kind of played in a daze. I'm not sure I can even explain it, but basically there is a bottle that you don't want to end up with. Get it and you score negative. The bottle comes to you if you play a low card - lower than the current bottle "price". The trick is to ditch your low cards under someone elses, but to do so means giving someone else points. I need to try it again I think. Luckily we had some arrivals and we called it after one hand - my brain was tired. Next up, we played a very long game of Power Grid. Not only did we play the China map, we played it with 6-players. Noah, Matt and I were joined by Amelia Boli, Matthew Frederick and (new to me) Jeff Stafford. Despite being brain dead, I played a good game until the very last round, when I attempted to raise the bidding on Amelia and got stuck buying a plant that cost me the ability to get the 14th city I needed to be in it at the end. Jeff snuck in a tie-breaker win by $1.
Next up - a little play testing of Cow Tipping by Matthew Frederick. This one should be published this year or next, but there is still a little development work going on, so we tried out some variants to see how they played out. I won't go into them and since this was the first I ever played of the game, I can't say how it compares to the game's previous rule set. It was light and fun and we played it straight up and in partnerships.
The last game of the night was one that I had just picked up from the Game Depot that afternoon on impulse - Tales of the Arabian Nights. I only knew that it was a storytelling game and was astonished by the pure weight of the box. When you open the box, you find a nice set of game bits and the source of the weight - the story book. The game is literally a choose your own adventure "game" (man I loved those as a kid). Set in the Arabian Nights fictional accounts, you journey around the world on adventures gaining "points" towards your secret goals. As you move around the board, you have adventures that are influenced by a bit of randomness and your choice on how you play the story out. My story had me starting out on the wrong foot and I was being PURSUED by Brigands for quite a while. I also went insane, was super envious of everyone, injured, blessed and so forth. For all my stories, I was getting nowhere in the game. IIRC, Noah was able to win sometime in the early morning. So what do I think? I think the game does a great job of telling stories and immersing you in the setting. As a GAME, its pretty simple and luck filled. As an experience, it is well done and fun. Not one I'd pull out all the time, but one I enjoyed and plan to play a bit more.

The Long Awaited Return - part I

Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah blah! WTF?! It has been since like July 7th? Where you been? Ok, I've been busy. Let us see if I can catch up on some session reports (assuming I can remember and my notes make any sense at all). First we have to set the Wayback Machine to June 19th. That particular Friday evening, I headed over to Erik Von Burg's for some early gaming while his wife went out for diner. We chose to play a little Runebound since it was only the two of us, and I figured it was a game I wouldn't normally get to play. Erik is a big fan, so that helps. We played the normal game (skipping any of the expansions Erik has). Erik ran into trouble right off the bat and died 2-3 times while I cruised around. I eventually got myself overpowered and on my second red encounter, killed the Dragon King and won the game. We headed over to the Gamer's Inn after that and snuck in a game of Tichu against Rob Smolka and Steve Bauer. Erik and I never seem to have any luck when we partner for this and this night wasn't an exception. We lost 1095-550. I'm pretty sure the match wasn't even that close. Erik took off and I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around or call it for the night, but Steve had brought along Space Alert AND a CD player, so I figured I'd at least try it out. Besides Steve and I, we were joined by Gary Passmore, Noah Antwiller, and Dan Brugman. This game is basically a pre-programmed co-op game (robo rally meets pandemic). The mission briefing comes as a timed audio track during which things are announced and the players scramble to lock down what they will do and when. Then when the allotted time is up, you play it all out and wonder how things could get so screwed up. We played the training mission (and won) to get the gist of the game. Then we set out to handle the Advanced Mission #3. We also won this, though there were a couple times we all thought that wasn't going to happen. Space Alert was dripping in theme and fun, though it isn't one that I need to play very often - I apparently am take it or leave it when it comes to programed move games.
Between then and July, I played a bit of Heroscape (always with Marvel Heroes and Marvel Customs), Epic Duels, Killer Bunnies (and Kinder Bunnies), Pokemon, Blokus and Doom with my son and/or the rest of my family. I did one session report on a Heroscape game already. For the most part though, I'll probably not detail out those. Suffice to say, my son has been earning new custom heroes as weekly rewards and he has a ton of guys now. I'm not sure I'm keeping up with my inventory. He still has another 21 heroes to earn and he's also getting another dozen or so Batman customs here in a couple of weeks for his birthday. As fun as Heroscape is, to me the comic book guys raise it to another level of entertainment. I'd be done with Epic Duels except for two things - Star Wars and 15 minute play time. It is sooooooo simple I can't believe it is so highly sought after. As far as Pokemon goes, I can't say enough good things. I managed to get a steal-of-a-deal on some cards off craigslist and have built 8 or so decks out of the cards and swapped some cards into existing decks my son and I had. Really, this is a beaut of a game. Deck building is ridiculously easy and the game plays out quickly and without fuss, but the variety of cards keeps it just interesting enough. I truly understand the allure of CCGs and have to force myself to avoid running out to buy retail boosters. The best part is we just have fun playing it.
Jumping forward to July 10th we find ourselves at the Gamer's Inn for another Friday night game night. This evening I brought along Timber Tom to try out. Steve Bauer and I were joined by Dan Brugman and a new player whose name escapes me. Timber Tom is basically a puzzle/race game played out on a 3D game board with some of the most overproduced pieces. It scratches the same itch for me as Ice Flow (another over produced race/puzzle game). It isn't a bad game by any means, but it just misses the mark somehow. I think it needs a minor variant to really make it a great game (I just don't know what that is yet). I managed to beat out Steve for the win by one turn, but I'm sure it was because I got a "wild" card that let me have a crazy turn of extra space movement and basically clearing all the obstacles from my path. After that was over, Matthew Frederick and Amelia Boli and I sat down to play Runebound (which they expressed interest in trying out). It took us a while to get going as I was explaining both Runebound and Confucius to another table of players. Eventually, we settled in and ran around the board. Amelia had a TERRIBLE streak of bad rolls (she was channeling her inner Rob Smolka) and died like a half dozen times. I think we eventually got to a point where Matthew and Ameila both conceded the game to me (I was the closest to winning and they had very little chance to improve their lot). It is amazing how much longer the game becomes with three players. Definitely a fun game, but its a bit of a reach past two-players. When we wrapped up Runebound and Confucius we all jumped into a 9 player game of Time's Up!. We broke into three player teams (I only remember Matthew, Amelia and I together and winning) and had a pretty good time. There are always a number of funny moments playing this game and this was true for this game too. Like Noah giving the clue - "The capital of Texas" and following that with, "No, the other one" after his team said Austin. Steve and Erik were on one team and got the card "Bill Belichick" all three rounds. The first time, Steve had no clue and Erik knew it as one of his original cards. After that, a shrug from Steve nailed that card in 0.5 seconds for the second and third rounds. Love this game.
Moving on - a while ago I got Caylus Magna Carta in a math trade. I had never played it, but heard comments that it was the faster brother to Caylus (much like San Juan and Puerto Rico). This appealed to me more than learning Caylus, but it had sat on my shelf until July, 17th. On that evening, Nathan Winchester popped in to pick up some games that had finally shipped to us from Boards and Bits and we managed to sneak in a game. The rules seemed straight forward enough (though of course we promptly forgot one rule). I enjoyed it and would like to play it again with 3-4 people as I imagine it plays a bit differently. Nathan pulled out the win 30-26 before heading home.

Whatcha Doin? This and that...

Summer is busy! Work, and 4 day a week swim lessons for the kids has kept me busy. That and taking advantage of my pool on the weekends, but I digress. Hey! Remember me? Um, yeah - cause you are me. Not likely to forget that. Why are you blathering on instead of writing a weeks old session report you still owe us? Owe who? Whatever. Cause I feel like blathering. Anyway...
Ystari games announced a set of expansions called... The Ystari Box (clever!). At any rate, this has expansions for: Caylus Magna Carta, Amyitis, Yspahan, Sylla, Metropolys, and Rio Grande announced it would include Mykerinos: The Nile as well. Sweet! Sweet? You dumbass, you only own two of those (Mykerinos and Caylus Magna Carta). Yeah, but I want Metropolys and I've heard Amyitis, Yspahan and Sylla are decent games. So? You still haven't tried any of them except for Metropolys - in fact, you haven't even played CMC (or the real Caylus). So? Never having played a game has never stopped me from buying! Less picking on me and more blathering!!
I finally got my copy of Timber Tom yesterday. For those that have heard this is a nice looking game and drooled over the pictures, all I can say is - the pictures offer no justice to what you get. I agree with the blathering idiot - it is pretty impressive. And I don't just mean that the 3D board is awesome (it is), but everything is top notch. The box is really sturdy (and surprisingly light despite its size). The cover art is impressive. The interior is the first time I have seen an insert that was perfect (ok, it might be a bit large). The insert is cut foam so there is an exact place for all the components. Player mats? These are the kind that one would normally make to "pimp out" a game - they are foamboard with cutouts for all of a players pieces. This is really a top notch game presentation. I hope the game is decent. I'd be really sad if this was a "Front Porch Classics" type game. Front Porch Classics? Like the three you own and display in your collection? Shut it!
Speaking of Cult of the New - I just can't seem to get enough Heroscape. Erik and I pitched in on an order and I finally got a couple of the Ticalla Jungle sets. I also got one each of the wave 9 set. I'll eventually want to get more I'm sure, but for now I'll need to see what these guys can do. This to go along with the two new castle sets I got. And the 4 boxes of Minions and Drones I found at Walmart. I thought you were all into the HEROscape thing. Give up on that already? Nope, not at all. But, I did get a pretty good sized collection of them. I have 34 more Marvel heroes and villains (on top of the 10 that come in the official Marvel set) and a common squad (S.H.I.E.L.D Agents). That includes the entire Fantastic Four, a rouges gallery of Spider-Man villains, some X-Men, etc. You have all the X-Men? Um, no. Avengers? No. Brotherhood of Mutants? Sigh - no. Magneto? No. Geez, really? You don't even have Magneto? What about The Masters of Evil? Well, you did say Spidey-Villians, so you must have the Sinister Six then... Well... Oh come on! Don't start in on me! There are a number of incarnations of the six and well, I just don't have Kraven or the Vulture yet. And now Ashton is asking about Batman guys, so DC is coming soon. What about Carnage? Ok, so all these guys are Heroclix guys - Carnage is a rare or some crap and sells for like $15 - a bit much for one retarded guy. Ashton is not getting Carnage.
Speaking of Ashton. Besides Heroscape, I got to teach him Doom the other day. Teach? I think he took YOU to school! Well, yeah that's true. I've read over and over that the marines get the short end of the stick, so I was going easy on him. I gave him extra armor and didn't attack him unless I was adjacent. I explained that he won if he found the red key and got to the exit. I told him I won if I fragged him 6 times. 6 is apparently a lot to him, so he didn't mind at all getting killed. It also helped that his abilities let him cancel three of my cards and let him walk through my bad guys. I killed him like three times, which I think just helped "jump" him towards the exit faster.
I also taught him Zooloretto. He doesn't understand the concepts fully yet, but he gets the basic mechanics well enough. Despite snagging males and females of all the species I had, I still only managed a point more than he had because I forgot to fill out my 10pt area.
I'm starting to realize that he can grasp the rules to games. I could teach him another dozen games pretty easily, but he hasn't developed enough to understand anything besides some very basic strategies (so in many ways it is like playing with Jerry, except that Ashton is 5, so I can forgive him - Jerry is just annoying). Recently we've played Epic Duels (which is so retardedly simple I'm not sure why there is such a big following - really, it is a basic game and skirmishes are 10 minute affairs), Runebound, Mutant Chronicles - there are a dozen more that are easily in his grasp I'm sure. You just said that. Yeah, I'm getting tired now. Time to end the blathering.

Hey True Believer!

Well, I finally got to play a little HEROScape true believers. Dr. Doom had put together a nefarious plan to use his mind control powers to take over the world. Together with his Doombot, Hawkeye and the Boomerang (whom he must have taken control of earlier - yeah that's the ticket), they plotted. The mystic energies of the universe lead Thor, God of Thunder and the Silver Surfer to a remote forest location (where there were custom made rocks) for a confrontation with the forces of EEEEvville. Dr. Ashton Von Doom sent Hawkeye to the front and through his amazing skills, managed to wound the Silver Surfer. The Surfer then flew to action and returned fire using his cosmic blast to force Hawkeye to his knees. The Doombot entered the fray, but was initially ineffective in the fight. Thor saw his chance to finish off Hawkeye, but the bowman used his smoke arrows to hide all the agents of Doom from Thor's ranged attacks. The Silver Surfer ended up wounded from later attacks by the Doombot, but was able to finally finish off Hawkeye and then retreated to allow Thor to bash away. Boomerang was able to maneuver across the forest and in short order had actually managed to take down the former herald of Galactus. Seeing his brave companion fall, the God of Thunder went to work, quickly eliminating Boomerang and Doctor Doom's Doombot. Thor then turned his fury to the mastermind of the scheme. However, the tables quickly turned as a nearly defeated Von Doom managed to use his mind control powers to take control of the God of Thunder. A crushing blow to the powers of good! We can't wait to see what adventure is told next!

The Hero in Heroscape

Hmmm. I'm going to need to do a serious comic book Heroscape soon. I've been putting together some customs of Marvel heroes (I have nothing against DC, I just went with Marvel first). I actually decide to use them as rewards for my son. He can pick any four guys at the end of the week if he fills up his reward chart. His first picks were: Doombot, Nightcrawler, Hawkeye and Boomerang. All the figures are from Heroclix. I don't think the sculps are as good as the Marvel Heroscape, but they fit right in. Maybe when my new castle sets get in, I can do a huge bridge 'scape. Here's the list of customs that I have cards for (using GreyOwl's customs). Some are a little random (I got one lot of guys and then a bunch of single $1 guys off ebay), but I was trying to round out some of the heroes (Fantastic Four - done, X-Men - not so much, Avengers - a couple) and some bad guys (my son knows most of the Spider-Man ones, so I got a lot of them). I have a couple of other figures that I need to change the image on the cards to match the figures I have (Electra, Typhoid Mary) and a couple of guys (Arcane, Avalanche, Destiny) that this guy didn't have (I chose to go with one designer of cards to be consistent). This group makes 34 on top of the original 10. Very cool...

• Annihilus
• Asp
• Bishop
• Black Cat
• Boomerang
• Daredevil
• Doctor Octopus
• Doombot
• Dr. Strange
• Gambit
• Green Goblin
• Hawkeye
• Human Torch
• Iceman
• Juggernaut
• Kingpin
• Lizard
• Mandarin
• Mr. Fantastic
• Mysterio
• Mystique
• Nightcrawler
• Professor X
• Rhino
• S.H.I.E.L.D Agents
• Sabertooth
• Sandman
• Shadowcat
• Shocker
• Spider-Girl
• Thing
• Thor
• Titanium Man
• Toad
• Wolverine

The Post Office is not the Only Winner...

I make a lot of game trades and my friend Mike "The Fonz" Garrett likes to point out that the only one coming out ahead is the post office. Obviously I feel ok ditching a game if I won't play it and will get something I will (even if I have to pay shipping). Occasionally a trade works out properly and I can come out ahead (though again, the point of my trading is to come out ahead in the "games I want" category not value). This time I did come out ahead. It started with finding a copy of We the People for around $25. I traded that for a NIS copy of Evo. I've been holding Evo for a bit now, but I received an offer for it the other day. The offer was for Liberté, an out of print Martin Wallace game (maybe someday we'll see the reprint from Valley, but I quit holding my breath waiting for anything from them). So, I'll be out about a total of $50 (including all the shipping) and have an unplayed copy of Liberté. Seems like a good deal to me.

Custom Heroes

Thor, Rhino, Daredevil, Annihilus, Hobgoblin, Wolverine, Sabertooth, Kingpin. These are all Marvel comic characters, and all guys that didn't come in the Marvel Heroscape set. Luckily there is a community out there that has created custom cards for the "others". The cards are easy - the figures aren't terribly hard either though. Heroclix figures are the target, and easy to pick up off eBay (unless I want to do Fin Fang Foom - he's like $80). So I started scouting eBay to pick up sets of guys. This time around I got the above listed group - $11.36 shipped for that group. That's $1.40 each, which isn't great, but I didn't pay more for a ton of guys I'd have to get rid of either. I'll probably work a bit on Spidey villains and allies, the Fantastic Four, and possibly the Avengers. I could go DC too, but for now I'm sticking to Marvel.

Gaming

Man, it has been busy summer - and we just started. I would have had this posted sooner, but the BGG was down again, so no links or pics were available. First off, last Thursday was a three-way Heroscape match. Erik VonBurg and Nathan Winchester came over and we ended up playing Bridge to the Forgotten Forest: Fall of the Dumutef Bridge. Erik had to hold the bridge against the combined might of Nathan and I. Armies drafted were - Charles: Minions and werewolves, Nathan: Sacred Band and Heroes to match, Erik: Dumutef Guards, Raelin, rats, Valkries, snipers and elven archers. Of course, Erik got reinforcements a couple of times during the game. This one was weird in that nobody drafted a ranged guy - a fact that we all missed until we started playing. Erik took advantage of that by getting some snipers later in the game, but my Minions were able to make a good push to keep Erik off the bridge. The team battle was fun and I got to see a few new combos. All I really see is the need to add more duplicates (more on that later).
Friday night was game night at the Gamer's Inn. The night started slowly and the first group of folks to arrive included Jerry George. Of course, I was in no hurry to sit down to a game with him, and I was waiting for Matthew and Amelia to get in a game of Confucius. After a while though, I got a note from Matthew that they'd be a little late, so I got talked into a game of Go West! with Dion Garner, Ray Morgan and Jerry. I had never played Go West! before and it was neither terrible, nor special. I kidded Dion that the last player (me) was screwed, because I was in WAY last place after a couple of guys scored the board. However, I shot out to a good sized lead and then held out the rest of the game. The trick was really to simply take the first and last territories and control them for scoring. Everyone moved the wagons off the last spot to keep me from scoring them (thus taking them out of the game).
Matthew Frederick and Amelia Boli had arrived as we finished up and they played a quick game of Balloon Cup while they waited. After everyone was done, I setup Confucius and we were joined by Dan Brugman. I have a hard time describing Confucius - it is a worker placement game with a unique little negotiation tool built in through the means of obligating other players to you through the use of gifts. There are a very limited amount of points to be earned in the game, so it has a nice tense feeling to it - I spend most of the game feeling like I either need another action, or that I'm an action behind everyone else and just following them. This game was especially bad, as I screwed up my first turn and then spent the rest of the games counting the number of actions I was wasting. The only thing keeping me in the game was that I appeared to be the only person using the student for the majority of the game (Amelia stepped in to steal it a couple times). Matthew won a close game with 21 points, Dan at 20, myself at 18, and Amelia with 7 points. I think we didn't do the bribery quite right (I don't think you can bribe and official that is un-secured by another player), but I'm pretty sure this only hosed me. The rules aren't entirely clear - I think I need to re-read through them. Regardless, this is a really fun game and might make my top 10 here after another playing or two.
After Confucius, Matthew and Amelia settled on playing a three-player game of Le Havre. I've been playing this a bit on the computer (as the short, solo version) and have found it to be a bit mechanical. Playing face to face (in a full game) is much better - shocking I know. This one is still a bit more mechanical than Agricola, but a good game none the less. This was only my second sit down playing of the game, but I was determined to get a ship (or two) as early as I could to avoid drowning in debt for food. This paid off really well for me (especially since Amelia took all the cattle). Though I felt pretty behind most of the game, it was apparent in the last 3-4 rounds that I had a decent shot. I was able to load up on coal and turn it into coke and then ship it and the cattle I had for really good money in the last round. There is a lesson there - if you build up the energy reserve and have enough ships, you only need to ship once, not lots of times. I admit I had a secret reservation about playing, but I did enjoy it and even got a win. Charles: 175, Amelia: 129, Matthew: 142.
On Saturday, I finished my first game in the online In The Year of the Dragon tournament. This was one of those games where everything that could go right, did go right. I was first player (I'll be interested to see how many first player wins there are) and took the dragon scroll x2. I never looked back. Of course, I'm not doing as well in any of my other games. I think I still prefer Notre Dame over ItYotD by a little bit. Saturday night, Erik came by for a quick game of Heroscape. We played Mirming's Lair, which is a two-player scenario where the first player to kill the dragon and get home with his heart wins the game. Both of us selected teams (rather than draft) and I got screwed. I pulled out a vampire and Major Q9 team. Erik pulled out a Blastitron / Gladitron + Deathwalker team. His soulborgs were immune to my most powerful ability. With very little in the way of power to combat Erik, my troops took their beating in short order. I didn't have the troops to contain him and he was able to get two attack glyphs and high ground that let his Blastitrons tear me up. It was a good army and has me thinking about how to best take it apart.

More Heroscape

Ashton asked for some more Heroscape, this time asking to play with the frozen terrain. I pulled out the booklet and built The Battlefield of Frozen Souls and we played the Storm of Frozen Shards scenario. I ended up the defender of the glacier, which meant I got 450 points and had to have the Dzu-Teh as part of the army. Ashton thought that was un-fair, so he took a set for himself. After our draft, this is what we had - Ashton: Cyprien Esenwein, Sonlen, Warriors of Ashra, Dzu-Teh, Shades of Bleakewoode, and Kozuke Samurai. Me: Isamu, Dzu-Teh, Major Q9, and Nilfheim. Ashton has been dying to use the ghosts and I've been wanting to play with a dragon. It worked out for both of us. What didn't work out was Major Q9 vs Cyprien Esenwein. Ashton moved Cyprien first and rolled a 20 for his special, which hit Major Q9 for 6 points (and knocked him out) before I got to even do a thing. That single stroke of luck pretty much sealed my chance of winning. Though I was immune to the storms that happened each turn, thanks to a glyph, Ashton used Cyprien to take that from me. The first two storms helped me to kill a couple of Ashton's guys, but after losing the glyph, two storms knocked me out of the game. Ashton had two full squads still left as we finished the game.

Heroscape With My Son

Well, since I still had the map setup from playing with Nathan last night, my son asked if we could play Heroscape this morning. Well, that's fine with me - it lets me try out new combinations of guys. This time, I not only introduced him to the advanced rules (he doesn't really remember all the guys powers, but he does like them) but also threw in the glyphs. This one was a 300pt army + 160pt reinforcements. I let him pick a guy or two for his army, then helped him finish it out and he ended up with: Agent Carr, Ninjas of the North Wind, Crixus, and for his reinforcement - Sonlen. I got Valguard, the Tarn Viking Warriors, Finn the Viking Champion, Me-Burq-Sa and Major Q10 for my reinforcement (he was too cool last night not to take again). Ashton made straight away for the initiative glyph, since he loves going first. His Ninjas arrived and also grabbed the defensive glyph before I could get my Vikings over to stop him. Valguard took the attack glyph, and I got Major Q10 almost immediately. It didn't look good for my son as I wasted his Ninja's quickly, but he killed Valguard with little effort and took the attack glyph with Agent Carr. I moved Major Q10 into place to shoot Agent Carr up, but by the time I got a few hits, he managed to make it to the heal glyph, erasing the damage. Having his guys on the attack glyph was bad for me. Sonlen was rolling 6 attack dice at range and picking off my troops and I couldn't make a dent against him. In fact, the ninjas were his only casualty. I hardly had a chance.

Game Night

My wife was off doing something for work this weekend, so Nathan Winchester stopped by after I had the kids in bed. I guess even before that, I started the night with a game of Pokémon with Ashton. He had earned a new deck (with Mightyena on it) and wanted to try it out against a new deck I had picked up for $6 at the Game Depot. Well, my deck was not a good match for his and he wasted me with his Charmeleon in about 5 minutes flat. That's ok, it happens in this game, and I enjoy the glee on his face when he wins that big. And I also like that when he wins REALLY big, he feels bad for me. Mostly I just like playing games with the guy - he's turning into a good gamer.
So, back to when Nathan arrived. I pulled Ido off my shelf for us to try. Nathan is of course almost always willing to play an abstract (a good thing), so off we went. Ido is this strange game where you have two sizes of blocks. Each block is only allowed to move to a space which is the appropriate size for that type of piece and the goal is to move the pieces across the board from your start to your exit space. The trick of the game is that there is a grid "overlay" that you can move - moving it changes the board and possibly moves your pieces around. I'm not sure I saw the strategies or anything, but I apparently grok'd it better than Nathan and pulled off a win. He wants to play again, but he didn't get it out of the gate.
After Ido, Nathan indicated he'd be willing to try out Heroscape. I showed him the folder of cards to look through as I setup the battlefield. I put together the Foresaken Waters battlefield and we played the "advanced game" scenario Winter Holdout (without glyphs). This scenario was 300pt teams, with a 160pt team of reinforcements that can enter the game between turns if you roll 16+. Nathan built a team of mostly Marro: Ne-Gok-Sa, Me-Burq-Sa, Marro Stingers, Marrden Hounds, and Isamu (whom he took with his last 10 points). His reinforcements were Arrow Gruts and Grimnack (he should have taken Krug, but whatever). My army was a mishmash of guys. I had: Syvarris, Theracus, Minions of utgar, Iskra Esenwein and Major Q10 as my reinforcements. I started strong, using my Minions of Utgar to take out Me-Burq-Sa before he could do anything. I also used Theracus to get Syvarris into prime sniping position. Nathan's hounds made up for it and then some, taking out nearly everything else of mine. Luckily, I got my reinforcements on the third round and the Major went to town with his deadly multiple attacks each round. In fact, I was down to a 2hp Major looking at a number of Nathan's squads. Fortunately he didn't have much left in the firepower department and the Major made short work of Nathan's troops. It was close at the end though. Nathan had two gruts left and they had the highground. The Major had one HP left and all it would take was one bad roll for Nathan to swipe away the victory I had fought for. The Major made his defensive rolls and his wrist rocket attack left two smoldering spots where only moments before had been two orcs with bow and arrows.

Heroscape

Heroscape. I have it on the brain lately. I think I've had it on the brain for a long time really. I mean why else buy all the waves of expansions without having ever played it? The appeal has always been obvious to me - miniatures with variable powers, armies drafted and built for different play styles, and terrain that can be built however you like. Plus, its really easy to play - no stupid living rules that get updated and cost a fortune. No painting armies (yeah, I'm looking at you Warhammer). So far, my only true disappointment with the game is that the superhero branch has apparently died. The first Marvel-Heroscape set came out and then the followup never happened. We saw figures, but nothing ever came out and most doubt they ever will. That's ok though. There is a fan site - heroscapers.com where a number of the contributors have built custom figures and cards using Heroclix guys. For a small amount of money (to buy the figures) and some printing, it looks like I can expand the hero side of this game dramatically.
Unfortunately for me, in poking around the site, I've had an overpowering urge to start making custom terrain. I really like the custom pieces folks have made - especially some of the trees and the broken columns. There are also some nice crystal pieces that started ideas running around my head (I keep seeing the Fortress of Solitude). I'll try and suppress those urges, but don't be surprised if you see me poking around the cake decorating section of the local Hobby Lobby...

Blah Blah Blah part III - Revenge of the Blah

• Placed that last order with Boards and Bits, now I have to see if I can truly avoid buying more games until July.
• Sadly, avoiding buying more games is not the same as spending no money in the gaming arena though. I'd certainly be willing to trade a game, and then of course paying for shipping is just part of the trade.
• I'm also likely to upgrade a few things here or there. For example, I pulled out Heroscape over the weekend and decided that I need to get some different storage for my armies. It is way to hard to sort through a bin of guys (when you have at least one of all the armies) to find three guys. (The exception is apparently the three bright white snipers - why the hell would snipers be bright white?) I'll go to Wal-Mart and pick up some Plano boxes.
• Heroscape is good light fun. I played just the basic game with my son over the weekend and he had a great time.
• Marvel Heroscape was not meant to be played in the basic form. BOOOOORING.
  
• After playing Combat Commander: Europe, I can see a couple of the chits that could be replaced with wooden pawns or disks for the various tracks. I also need a wood piece here or there for some other games, so I may have to place a parts order. Bobby replaced the wood in Pandemic with disks - they are much better to play with.
• I need to finalize my poker chip designs and order the labels for those. That's been on the backburner for too long
  

Game Night

Friday Night was game night at the Gamer's Inn, though it was a generally quiet night. Mike Gingold and Bobby Warren arrived just before I did and had started a game of Race for the Galaxy, so I went and grabbed some card sleeves and another cardboard card box for my son's Pokémon cards (I had found another couple of cheap pre-built decks at the Game Depot earlier in the day). When they were done, we pulled out Qwirkle Cubes so Bobby and Mike could try it out. I think they both preferred the original over this version, but hey - its Qwirkle. 5-6 other gamers had showed up at this point and they were all facilitated with watching us play, as they didn't pull out any games until we were done. One thing of note in this game was that the vast majority of the first set of cubes played were all stars. Since we all focused on the stars (they were scoring a lot of points, so it was hard not to), it was hard to get a lot of other things going. Bobby went out first and won with 125, I had 117 and Mike 109.
Mike then pulled out Steel Driver and Greg Perschbacher joined us. Steel Driver is something of a stock game with a vaguely Chicago Express feel to it. It is sufficiently different that I'm likely going to end up owning this as well. I probably played this a little too much like Chicago Express and didn't end up making enough money on any one company to compete with the 4 (of 5) shares in black that Mike had. The scores were all close (though I apparently lost them - I'll update when I get them from Bobby), but it was Mike for the win (he was the only one to have played before).
Bobby had time for something short, so he pulled out die Weinhändler - a little card auction / set collection game. I'm not sure what our deal was, but Greg and I were agonizing a bit much over the values of everything and then game dragged on a bit longer than it needed to. I believe that Greg pulled off the win with a very one colored pyramid of wine cards.
Bobby was leaving, so I got Mike to pull out Combat Commander: Europe. This is a really well done sqaud level WWII, CDG (card driven game). Yes, it has chits for the units, but not stacks of them. Yes the rules are a bit technical looking, but they are clear and after Mike explained it, they are not terribly complex. The game is extremely engaging and was a lot of fun. As we started, it looked like I was going to get a newbie squashing, but I took a little risk and was able to eliminate one flank of Mike's Russian troops. My other group of men holed up in a house and were nearly impossible for Mike to dig out, even with his heavy machine gun - thanks in part to TERRIBLE rolls. You'd think I was playing Jason Sato or Rob Smolka (btw, Jason would have LOVED this game). Just when it looked like beginner's luck was going to rule the day, Mike slowly was able to push me back a bit and finally flushed me out of the house and took it over. Now the tide had gone back the other way. The game's timer was getting close to the end and I was pretty sure I was ahead by a few points, so I started discarding cards rapidly when I didn't have orders to fire at the Russians (the goal being to eat through both our card decks to advance the timer further). Mike managed to avoid most of the time cards by re-rolling, but the decks running out forced the end of the game around 8 I believe. We tallied it all up and I had managed a 4 point win. The game took about 2.5 hours with him explaining the rules and this being my first playing - also, as I said, Mike avoided a lot of sudden death checks. I imagine this gets much faster. I need to get my copy punched and cards sleeved. I really can't wait to play this again.