Games in Rhyme

He travels all over Europe
Rarely leaving a clue.
Will you be able to catch him
Or will he catch you?
~~~~

Fifteen islands
Placed in a ring.
He who rules the castles
Will capture the win.

To rule the castles,
You can’t play nice;
You must control Paladins
By rolling the dice.
~~~~

It’s just you and me,
Under a tree,
Watching the river flow.
It merges then turns,
We’ll soon learn
To whose side it will go.
~~~~

Quietly choose a character,
Don’t even blink.
To win, it helps to know
How your enemies think.

Build your city in yellow
Green, red, purple and blue;
The faster you build,
The better you’ll do.
~~~~

Lay your tile wherever you wish
But the roads are required to match.
If you can capture Bonus tiles,
It’s likely you’ll score a good catch.
~~~~

Your brave Knights guard the castles,
Tall and wide.
If need arises, they walk through to
The other side.
When the King visits a castle,
He gives rewards
To any Knight that he meets on the
Floor that he guards.
~~~~

I’m in a race,
I know the place
That I’m supposed to go.
How I get there,
I do not care;
A card will let me know.

You may curse
If I reverse
And go into a spin.
But have fun,
Everyone,
Even if you don’t win.
~~~~

Poetry it’s not but I hope you have fun with these rhymes. How many games can you name? Look for the answers tomorrow in the comments section.

And lastly, a quick reminder that we’re looking for guest bloggers on Sundays so all of you clever gamers with something worth saying who’d like to get your message to millions of gamers….uh, thousands of…several gamers, send your articles to gonegaming@gmail.com.

Until then, may all your camels find water.
Mary

Ludolinguistics

When it comes right down to it, playing games has very little to do with playing games.

Consider the difference between eating and eating.

When one person sits down to eat, he needs to fill his belly and enjoy the taste while doing so. He doesn't eat when he is not hungry (unless it's cake) and he doesn't think much about the food development process, only whether he likes the results.

When another person sits down to eat, it is quite a different story. The food is examined and assessed. The wine is held up to the light and swirled. The dishes of the meal are deconstructed into parts, while the experience is evaluated as a whole.

Two different objectives for essentially the same activity, yet the perspective of the participants is so vastly different. Not only does one possess a different sensibility and subjective taste from the other, their conscious purposes are also different.

Whether or not they enjoy the meal depends only partly on any objective quality of the meal. It also depends on what they want out of a meal.

When Joe and Mary Average sit down to play a game, not only do they have different tastes than that of the prototypical gamer, they also have different reasons for playing. The Averages are playing to be entertained, to connect with their children, to pass the time, and so on. The gamer is playing to strategize, to evaluate, and to milk out an experience.

With such different possible reasons for playing, you might as well say that we are not even doing the same activity. Playing a game is not playing a game, any more than drinking to get drunk is like drinking to learn about wine. They only share some common physical props and methods.

If they were the same activity, but gamers simply liked "better" games, you would expect a chart comparing game types and tracking game likes and dislikes to follow a roughly linear curve, with gamers enjoying games at one end of the curve and the Averages enjoying games from the other end or middle of the curve. But consider the following:



The blue numbers are the top games on BGG, the red numbers the bottom 10, and the green names are a sampling of the top games enjoyed by the Averages.

You can see here that it is not a case of enjoying games at different parts of the curve. There are two distinct enjoyment curves that have nothing to do with each other. You would never even know that we were looking at the same activity.

What we need here are two different names for two different activities.

The Averages can continue to "play games". Maybe we "participate in ludographic recreational activities". Would you care to study ludography with me? Yes, please, but only one glass; I have to drive home.

Instead of "game groups", how about "ludography groups", subtitled "the study of board game cultures and game interaction"? You and I know that these are still fun, but when those Averages tell us that our games are boring, we can just say that academic studies generally appear to be so to those not steeped in the academic environment. And when they ask us why we don't like to play Barney's Chutes and Ladders, we can truthfully say that "we don't play games".

We separate two people who cannot convince each other why they enjoy entirely different activities. As usual for most arguments, the problem is our disagreement on more fundamental issues: not whether this or that game is any good, but what constitutes "good" for playing games.

Having separated the two activities, we can now make better distinctions. For "playing games", "good" means what the Averages want. For "ludography", "good" means what gamers want.

Another conflict solved.

Now on to more important matters. Rewriting the song "My Humps", because it annoys me.

The Blue Eyed Sesames sing "My Hephelumps"

Oscar:
(What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your can?)
I'ma get, get, get, get, real mad,
Get real mad, yes that's my plan.
My junk, my junk, my junk, my junk, my junk,
My junk, my junk, my junk, my lovely little dump. (Check it out)

Mr Snufflepagus:
I drive these muppets crazy,
Cause I am big and lazy,
They talk about me nicely,
They never really see me.
Larry, Gina Jefferson,
Elmo, Mr. Robinson,
Ernie, Bert be starin'
But my vision they ain't sharin'
I only got Big "Bad" Bird,
He tries to speak a few words
And tell 'em 'bout my livin'
They say 'no', an' they keep givin'
Out like I ain't out here
It's really dip that all year
That they all keep on dissin'
But it ain't all my business.

My Snuff, my Snuff, my Snuff, my Snuff
My Snufflepagus
My Snuff, my Snuff, my Snuff,
My Snufflepagus,
(He's got me spinnin'.)
(Oh) Spinnin' round and lookin' for me, but you ain't gonna see me.
(He's got me spinnin'.)
(Oh) Spinnin' round and lookin' for me, but you ain't gonna see me.

Oscar:
(What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside your can?)
I'ma get, get, get, get, real mad,
Get real mad, yes that's my plan.
(What you gon' do with all those cookies?
All those cookies on your plate?)
I'm a make, make, make, make a mess
Make a mess, make a - Wait!

Cookie Monster:
OH COOKIES! OH COOKIES! COOKIES! COOKIES!
I'm gonna eat you up, my yummy cookie lumps. (Oh yum yum yum!)

Elmo:
Elmo met a girl down by the sidewalk.
She said to Elmo "Hey, yeah let's go.
I could be your mommy, and you could be baby
Let's spend time together
And we'll be best friends forever
I'll give you milk and cookies
You can dip your cookies in my m ... hey, wait!"

Cookie Monster:
COOKIES! COOKIES! (yum yum yum, weck it wout)

Big "Bad" Bird:
They say I'm just a big bird
With birdie brains - it's absurd.
They always try to 'teach' me
Always saying words to me
Like "Can I say 'number 5'"?
Can I say 'number 5', man?
Now tell me what you're jivin'
Of course I can be fiving
Do I look like I just sprouted wings?
I talk to them real slowly
Cause they don't seem to get me
I got more brains in my feathers
Then they all got all together.

Oscar:
My dump, my dump, my dump, my dump,
My dump, my dump, my dump, my dump, my dump, my dump.
I love my little dump (dump)
I love my little dump (dump)
I'm lovin' all my junk (junk)
In the back and in the front (front)

Mrs Piggy:
My lovely Kerrrrmyyyy....

Kermit:
She got me hoppin'

Mrs. Piggy:
(Oh) I'm gonna get you froggy, froggy, you can't run from me, from me

Kermit:
She got me hoppin' (gulp)

Mrs Piggy:
(Oh) I'm gonna get you froggy, froggy, you can't run from me, from me

Ernie:
What you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk, Bert?

Bert:
I'ma gonna, gonna, throw it out,
In the garbage pail, Ernie.

Ernie:
What you gon' throw it out in,
Throw, throw it out in, Bert?

Bert:
Uh, I'm gonna use the garbage pail
The garbage pail, just like I said, ... Ernie.

Ernie:
This garbage pail's got a hole in it,
Hole in it, it's a piece of junk, Bert.

Bert:
Whatever! You can jus' just throw it out
Throw it out, with all the junk, Ernie.

Ernie:
Yeah, but how should I throw it, throw it out,
Throw it out, yeah, how, Bert?

Bert:
Argh! Just put it there with all that junk,
Inside that trunk. All right, Ernie?

Ernie:
Yeah, but what you gon' do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk, Bert?

Bert:
Aiiiieeeeyyyeeeee!

This song was brought to you by
(Oh) The number five, five, a beautiful number (Ah ha haaa! *crash*)
This song was brought to you by
(Oh) The letter "b", the letter "b", whis'prin' words of wisdom, letter "b".

The end.

Yehuda



Grover:
OK, OK, here is Grover, here is Grover. Grover is ready for his solo. OK.
What? Where did everybody go? Oh, I am a sad, late Grover monster.

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ Who you really ought to thank for the Golden Age of Gaming

Well, lucky me.

I get to write an article on Memorial Day.

This one's going to be shorter than usual because I have only a few things to say and then a large thank you to pass along. But to begin with, I want to talk about war games for a few paragraphs.

First off, I do understand that war games are offensive to some people. I'm not saying I understand why they are offensive... just that they are. Maybe it's similar to a fear of heights, or fear of snakes, it's just one of those unexplainable things that some personalities don't want to deal with.

War games though, are endlessly fascinating for many, many people. Even people who haven't been in a war or never intend to be in one. I've sat at tables with passionate peaceniks and played war games, also with Vets of a number of different wars. Truth is, war games really don't "teach" us anything about life. They can help those interested in history or military hardware understand how war works, but they don't send any message about war. Oddly enough, Euro Games don't send any particular message about Europe. Now that I think about it, backgammon tells me nothing about ancient gamblers and chess hasn't allowed me to see inside the minds of 15th century gamers.

Games are just games. War Games don't glorify war any more than playing a game of Puerto Rico glorifies slavery. People play war games because of an interest in strategy & tactics, or because they are fascinated with the difficulties of terrain and weapons. Some war games add morale into the equation, but even that is usually a die roll and the best Civil War general or English Lord can suddenly find himself with an entire army running away, Monty Python style, because you rolled a "1".

About 25 or 30 years ago I read a book by a brilliant historian named Gwyn Dyer. He was, I think, a respected professor at a major university in Canada and is currently an anti-war activist. His book was called, simply enough, "War".

Good title, because it was a fantastic book about human beings and their tendency to fight and kill one another. If I'm right, PBS made a series about the book, sort of like the Ken Brooks' Civil War series. But back on point here... Dyer said something in his book that still, 30 years later, rings so, so true... if you just pause and think about it. In essence, the message he conveyed about war is this; in the end, all wars lose meaning to future generations. All wars become footnotes in history and eventually even lose their footnote status, becoming a collection of moldy old facts buried in books and databases that only doctoral candidates examine. He pointed out something that at once made me feel insignificant and at the same time awed... he reminded his readers that there have been more wars fought on this planet that nobody alive knows about than the total amount of wars recorded in history books.

So why then do we here in America memorialize war heroes, and by inference, war, every May? If war is so meaningless and so insignificant in the end, why make a holiday to remember and acknowledge those men and women who fight wars? And in the gaming world, why are men (and a smattering of women) fascinated by games that abstract death and killing in the form of hexagonal maps, cardboard chits and combat result tables?

I think it's because of a very simple thing... wars, while they may pass into history and become moot to current generations, are important things. War has shaped our civilization. Forgetting for a moment that all wars are indiscriminate when it comes to good and bad, because each side will lose lives, what wars do is push mankind towards something... or perhaps pull mankind away from something.

I am not one of those people who glorifies war. Like most of you, I dislike the very idea of inflicting pain, suffering and death on someone and the grim aspect of "collateral damage" is not just bad for pacifists... nobody likes it. Unless they really are evil.

So Mister Dyer in his book, wrote about war in a way I'd never personally thought about it. He got me to understand that wars only solve today's problems... or sometimes create today's problems, but that in the long run, we'd probably be a whole lot better off on this planet if we could figure out how not to have the damned things.

But we aren't there yet. And so we will continue to fight.

This brings me to the thing that makes Memorial Day the only holiday that has real meaning to me... other than July 4th. Memorial Day is a day to acknowledge the sacrifices of the heroes who have allowed America to write her own history books for over 200 years. Politics aside -- because if you think about it, politics become meaningless much faster than wars do -- every nation that is free and has fair elections and civil rights was forged with war. Even yours. It's so easy to pick apart something politically and forget that the prime foundations of what makes all free people free are the sacrifices that others have made for us... and the tradition goes back until it diminishes and fades away, becoming Gwen Dyer's forgotten history.

From where I sit, I'm pretty happy that some wars were fought and won by people in my family and the families of my friends. Hell, I'm happy for you that people I know and people you know cared enough about you, even though you might not have existed when they did, to take up arms and defeat those who cared nothing for you. I'm alive and living a good life because of people in your family, who never heard of me and maybe didn't get a chance to anyway, they cared enough to make the same sacrifices my circle of family and friends made.

So today, Memorial Day, may be a BBQ holiday for most people... which is a good thing... but it's the one day I call my dad up and remind him that every single breath I take, every laugh I enjoy with his grandchildren and pretty much every good thing in my life has only been possible because him and hundreds of thousands of others like him fought in a war that will eventually be a footnote... and finally, a forgotten piece of time that future free people will never know.

Thanks Dad. And thanks to the soldiers I don't know, but you do.

The item pictured below is a newspaper clipping from the Dallas Morning News, clipped on Sunday November 26, 1944. My grandmother sent it to my dad just several months before he and his fellow Marines waded ashore at Okinawa. To my knowledge my dad has never particularly enjoyed poetry and frankly, the poem itself is more than a little hokey. But he carried it with him and here I am, 61 years later, scanning that same clipping and posting it on the internet. Hopefully the author's family doesn't mind.





My grandmother's note in the upper margins says: "Son, keep this in your billfold, you might like to read it sometime."

Granny meant to say a lot more than that, I'm sure, and I think whatever she wanted to say, my dad understood it because he still had the poem all those years later.









And here's a picture of my father. This was taken in China in late 1945 or early 1946. Dad had been wounded at Okinawa, which was the bloodiest battle of the Pacific Theater, recovered in Hawaii and then sent to China as part of an elite unit of Marines to see the start of another, much bloodier and much, much longer war.





That's my dad, Mel, on the left. The other Marine is his best friend AW Smith. What put this picture in perspective to me is that when this picture was taken my dad was 19 years old.













So why am I making today's article about someone you don't know and most likely never will? Well, I guess because I like war games and I have an intense dislike for war itself. But I did want to remind you that we are lucky to have the time, money, freedom and education to play war games or family games or Euro Games, and that my people aren't the only ones who played a major role in our present-day affluence and abundance of freedom... you have people that lined up in the past to create the same wealth. So, pass along my hearty thank you to your people when you see them and I'll keep my people from becoming footnotes as long as possible.

Finally, a special thank you from me to all the current men and women from free nations around the world doing the same job today that millions before them have done. Maybe, just maybe, we have reached a point in this world where sacrifice won't become forgotten history... that just might be the one thing make war a thing of the past... and war games will be played only by paunchy, middle-aged men with goatees and pony tails.

That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?

Goodbye Grog/Calling all bloggers

It is with regret that we bid adieu to Grognads. Yes, the blogger who never pulled any punches pulled up stakes and moved on to other pursuits.

Grog made the first real post to Gone Gaming, and whether you loved or hated his style, you must admit that there can never be another Grog. His contributions gave a flavor to Gone Gaming that was memorable and is irreplaceable.

The staff, management and corporate owners of Gone Gaming held a pow-wow and decided that we aren't going to have a regular blogger fill the Sunday slot, at least not right away. We did have several writers in mind, mainly BGGers who are unusually insightful or witty, but instead decided to solicit blogs from anyone who feels motivated to submit one.

If you fancy yourself as a blogger and would like to contribute to Gone Gaming, send submissions to gonegaming@gmail.com.

Guidelines are fairly loose. Each article should primarily be about boardgames, card games, wargames, role playing games, or the like. We might entertain audio blogs, or the occasional foreign language article if the article was also translated. We might entertain other ideas as well, although you would be wise to ask first.

We do not have a full-time employee who rejects submissions, but we will not post inappropriate material.

We do not have a full time editor either. If we need to make more than a couple corrections we probably won't post your submission. We may post submissions "as is" if you are a complete moron and need to be humiliated, but we aren't expecting any of those.

Thinly veiled advertisements for your self-published game will be looked upon with scorn, but not rejected out of hand. We do have a full-time scorn-looker at the Gone Gaming building, he is one of DW's relatives. Thinly veiled ads need to be very good to get past him. We're talking John Wayne/Hank Williams/Joe Montana good.

There is no compensation, if you were expecting compensation you would be a dope.

If we do get more submissions than we are expecting there is a very good chance that your article might get posted during the week as one regular blogger or the other takes time off to enjoy the summer.

And once again,
Goodbye Grog.

Brian "Coldfoot" Waters

Some lunchtime card variations

Our lunchtime games group usually varies between three and seven players depending on work and lunch commitments of the various members.

Over time we have dabbled in a few Euros, but given the one hour limit we generally end up with card games. The different numbers of players means either switching games or playing a variant. Our recent games have been:
Gang of Four - officially 3-4, we have played 3-5 (6 once)
6 Nimmt! - officially 2-10, we have played 3-7
Tichu - officially 4 or 6, we have played 4-6
Rage - officially 2-10, we have played 3-7
500 - officially 2-6, we have only played 5 so far.

Obviously 6 Nimmt! and Rage are the best for variable numbers, but they are not always available or we may prefer something else given the number of players, e.g. Tichu if we have four. On occasions, due to which ever particular game was actually available, we have had to come up with a variant or two to match the game with the number of players we have. Here are most of the ones we have come up with:

Gang of Four
Three player - Our preferred option is the official one. Deal four hands and if nobody has the student start card, the dealer swaps hands with the unused hand. The more chaotic, and less popular, option is the Jules variant. The cards are dealt out as three hands with the final card being discarded face up so all players are aware of what it is. This leads to very big and somewhat chaotic hands, although there are more gangs of four.
Five player - Rotating sitout each hand. The dealer deals four hands and sits out. The student card is the start card for every hand (as the previous hand's winner may be sitting out). Otherwise play proceeds as normal for four player. The sitout is rotated around the table and the player sitting out scores zero for the hand sat out.
Six player - Deal out the cards as six hands. This is actually uneven and since we only played it one day I have forgotten what we did with the short or extra cards. The hands were basically too small and thus play was very chaotic. We haven't tried this variant again and it does not come recommended.

• Highest score at end of game - 178 points (one off the mathematical maximum)
• Shortest game - 2 hands
• Longest game - 21 hands

6 Nimmt!
No variants required. We play with the full deck.

• Highest individual score for one hand - 53 points
• Highest end of game score - 105 points

Tichu
Five player - Play standard four player with one person sitting out. Scoring is kept for individuals as partnerships will probably change over the game, so the full points for the hand are allocated to each individual in the partnership for every hand. The last player for the hand sits out the next hand and swaps out with the player who is currently sitting out. This means that in the case of a one-two result the losing partnership needs to play out the rest of the hand to determine who will be sitting out the next hand.
Six player - We read the rules and were somewhat confused by the six player stuff. We play two partnerships of three. You pass only two cards, one to each of your partners. There is no one-two finish, but a one-two-three will score 300 points, although this has only happened once so far.

• Stupidest Tichu call - When a partnerships was on 970 points and at least two hundred ahead of the other partnership. The Tichu was not made.
• Most unfortunate Tichu call - - The hand had been going for a while. I was down to five cards and lead the bamboo which was the first single lead for the hand. Play progressed around until the player on my left played his first card and called Tichu. Looking at his hand later, it was pretty much a lay down win except for the fact that I had the Dragon and three aces as my remaining four cards. He called Tichu and I dropped the Dragon on his single and then the trio of aces. A Tichu call shot down in flames within two seconds of it being announced.

500
We have only played this once and that was yesterday. It will probably only get played with five, as four or six players are generally going to be reserved for Tichu, unless 500 really takes off anyway!

I grew up playing 500 with my grandmother. Nobody else at home really played games, so we played three handed with a dummy hand. I also played it a bit at school, but also either three player or four players as individuals. I probably haven't played it since school and I never played 500 as a partnership game before. In 500, after winning the bidding you may call for a partner by nominating a specific non-trump card. It is going to take me a little while to get used to the difference of five players and also having a partner, who should guarantee you one or more tricks depending on whether you have a void or not. I am still bidding on what is my hand, as opposed to factoring in the potential trick(s) from a partner.

Daughter the Elder update
Either I am getting worse at games or she is improving - I believe it is definitely the latter. Before bedtime tonight we played a game of San Juan followed by a game of Chess. We were tied for points in San Juan and she won on the tie breaker having both goods and cards in hand where as I had nothing but a single card in my hand. In Chess it came down to a stalemate - I had a king and she had her king and a knight.

On Being a Stranded Boardgamer

So I'm driving a cab one night. I pull up to the house and knock on the door. Lights are on, but no one answers the door.

I went back to the cab, waited a few minutes, nothing happened. I knocked again. Nothing.

As I drove away the dispatcher came on the radio and said, "Brian go back. They see you leaving, they will be right out."

Sure enough a guy comes running out of the house. "Sorry guy. We were in the middle of a boardgame. I was having too much fun."

Of course my ears perked up. "Oh." After a suitable pause I continued, "What were you playing?"

"Sorry."

At first I thought he was still apologizing for not answering the door. Then it dawned on me. "You were playing Sorry?"

"Yeah. It's pretty fun."

"Were you playing with kids?"

"No, no. I was playing with my brother and his wife. Have you heard of it."

What was there to say? "Yeah. I remember playing it when I was a kid."

"Really, I thought it was new."

Thus ended what started out as an intriguing conversation.


I saw an item in the Boardgamegeek forum the other day. It was pretty innocuous, but it got me thinking. Some fellow was asking about game stores in his area and stipulated that he didn't want to drive more than 20 miles. Twenty miles? I've driven 360 miles just on the off-chance I could play a game if enough players showed up.

Myself and one other fellow are the only BGG users listed in the gamer database for this area. Although he logs on to BGG a few times each month, he won't respond to his Geekmail and I have never met him. There are perhaps a dozen users listed in the rest of the state, but only one of those accounts is active. I have actually exchanged e-mails with that user, we have even talked on the phone, but so far we have been unable to meet.

There is one small game convention in the state. Statewide there are less than a half dozen stores that stock "real" games, and only one within 20 miles. That store also happens to be the only game store within 300 miles.

If I was interested in collectible card games and miniature gaming I would have an embarrassment of riches. The CCG tournaments at the Comic Shop are usually packed with young 'uns and a few old 'uns. On any given day there are usually a few guys hanging around the store painting miniatures. These games hold little appeal for me, and through many conversations I have gleaned that boardgames hold little appeal to the miniature and CCG players.

I know that I am not alone. There are many stranded gamers in various regions of the country (and world). So what's a geek to do? How do you cultivate a circle of game friends in a sparsely populated region?

Two words: Persist and Persist.

After you've persisted you might have to travel more than 20 miles.

On a couple occasions I left a sign on the gamer's bulletin board at the Comic Shop. Those efforts have garnered a single successful response. I've also posted on the Fairbanks Gamer Website which is now defunct, but that effort proved fruitless. There is a group that posts flyers for Saturday gaming at the college. According to the flyer everyone is welcome, bring a friend, every type of game is welcome, look forward to meeting you. I checked out Saturday gaming at the college on three occasions and on each occasion was not made to feel welcome. Miniature games were the only games being played and none of the dozen players would even make eye contact.

Sooooooo, that doesn't sound too promising, does it? But those were just the obvious places to look for like-minded gamers.

Where does one go to find gamers? I can't answer that, but I can tell you that you will be surprised who will show interest if you bring a game into work, or to the park. So far I haven't been able to convert any of those showing interest into regular gamers, but one day it will pay off.

A couple years ago I brought my kids to the park and read the rules to the revised Axis and Allies as they played. An older man noticed the cover of the rule book and stopped to talk about Axis and Allies. Unfortunately he was a tourist, so nothing came of the incident.

I frequently bring games to work to read the rules. The most unexpected person was absolutely fascinated with Memoir '44. We decided to play a game the next time we worked together. Unfortunately he was fired a day or two later, and I haven't seen him since. (Note: True story. He had worked there for well over a decade. The firing was completely out of the blue.)

There are many, many people who don't know that "our" games even exist. Many of them will be just as intrigued as you were when you discovered "German" games. Bring a game with you when you leave the house. Advertise a little. At a minimum you will be surprised, with luck you will reel in gamer.

My first boardgame connections in Alaska were made at church. Churches are always good places to make social connections. If you attend church invite likely victims gamers to the house for games. If they aren't interested they will let you know. That advice holds true for any social organization, such as a bowling league or a fraternal lodge.

Most of my game friends were made simply by meeting a friend of an existing game friend. One at a time. It took several years. All told, there are a half dozen adults I play with regularly, and a half dozen more with whom I play with occasionally.

A dozen. That's not bad. Lately we have been able to draw 6 or 7 gamers to a weekly Friday game night, and 4 or 5 to a second, Monday game night. There are gamers in more populated areas that don't have as many game connections.

Don't give up. It took me several years to acquire a circle of game friends. For a couple years it was just me, my wife, a guy from church and his pre-teen children. If I can do it you can do it.

The Italian Design Scene, Part One: The Analysis

In the last few years we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of Italian games being produced and being made available in America. A lot of this is due to the hard work of Mayfair Games, Z-Man Games, Fantasy Flight Games, and to a lesser extent Rio Grande Games in getting Italian games to the American market, but I think we're also seeing a new flood of Italian creativity, a renaissance if you would.

Over this week and next, I'm going to look at this Italian creativity, offering up my best outsider's view of the Italian game design scene. First up I'm going to discuss some of the more analytical stuff, featuring a look at the character of Italian game design and the network of Italian game designers.

Thanks to Andrea Ligabue, who's contributions to BoardGameNews gave me some insights for this article, and who was also kind enough to read early copies of these articles and to offer comments, clarifications, and additions.

The Italian National Character

Last December I wrote an article about schools of game design, and of the Italians I said I wasn't sure quite what their "average" game design was. Several months later I feel like I can put the overarching idea of Italian game design into a single word: "tough".

Italian design feels at the same time like the designers have never played another game, because they do things so wacky that I'm befuddled over the choices, and that they have, because despite the newness and strangeness, their designs still tend to work ... at least more often than not.

However, I also think Italian designers do one other thing which tends to make their games look alien to me: they depend upon the intelligence of their players. As I wrote in my 2005 year in review, I believe that German games have been getting simpler and more family oriented for a number of years. The Italians are releasing games in a different model. They have been publishing family-oriented games--it's clearly more than half of daVinci's releases--but at the same time they're also releasing "tough" games which require real thought.

To offer a few examples of this first major element of Italian game design:

• Alexandros and Go West are Leo Colovini designs which depend upon players choosing when to score, as I mentioned in my overview of Colovini. This is a pretty obvious case of depending on players being intelligent enough to know when to do the right thing.
  
• Il Principe is another example of a game needing its players to be smart. The auctioning is so open-ended, that you have to know what to bid in a way much deeper and more meaningful than in most auctions. Further, the requirements for building are so precise, that if you purchase badly, you can end up unable to do anything.
• Siena is another game that is tremendously open-ended: there are three roles in the game, and you can choose to become a merchant or a banker whenever you have the minimum funds necessary, but the best time to do so can be a totally open question.
  

In general: Italian games often give players many more choices and many more open-ended choices, thus requiring more thoughtfulness and a better understanding of the game's strategy.

A second element that shows up in a lot of Italian design is what I call an overloading of choices. This generally goes to game complexity, and is a lot of what makes Italian games "tough" for me.

Il Principe was the game that really highlighted this issue for me. Overloading shows up throughout the game. For example, when you build a city in Il Principe you spend cards. Directly that gets you the points for the city and lets you place some board-based majority-control tokens, but indirectly it also gives you the card majorities you need to collect roles. And roles in turn can give you cards, shields, or victory points. Many choices can have multiple, independent outcomes.

Many other Italian games include overloading:

• Lucca Citta overloads card playing. It affects your sets, other players' scoring, your points, and your turn order.
  
• Oltremare overloads a lot of different elements into each card: value, how many cards you can hold, how many cards you can play, pirates, ship movement, card draw, and money(!).
• Siena overloads actions related to the three classes (peasant, merchant, banker). Whenever you take an action it can aid players in each of the other classes.
  

I'm not convinced that overloading is the be-all and end-all of Italian game complexity, but it does seem to be a pretty unique feature, and not one seen to the same extent in other national game design characters.

I also think many Italian games include a third element: uneven development. The Italian game design scene is really just a few years old, so it's not that much a surprise that developers are still learning the ropes, but I suspect it contributes to the "difficulty" of Italian games just as much as the other two, more positive, elements do.

Six Degrees of Italy

Though I say the Italian game design is just a few years old, there have nonetheless been game companies in Italy for quite some time. However, the older companies seemed mainly to be oriented around roleplaying. With Quality Games in 1994 and Venice Connection in 1995 there was more of a move toward board & card game design, just around when The Settlers of Catan appeared in Germany. However, German-style board games didn't really start showing up in Italy until 2000.

As a result, today the companies still seem very young. In addition, Italian designers seem scattered. Some are old-time gamers who are familiar with the genre and may even have some older publications under their belt. However, there's also a number of new designers in Italy who are entering the industry because it's so quickly growing, but don't necessarily have a good understanding of it. (For the most part it's the old-time designers whose work is going international, while most of the new designers aren't showing up outside of Italy.)

Part of the newness of the Italian design scene can be seen when you plot out the "Six Degrees of Italy", using the same methods as The Six Degrees of Bruno Faidutti. There are nexuses around the older companies, Venice Connection and Quality Games. Meanwhile newer companies like daVinci Games and Nexus Games are much more fractured and some new designers don't show up at all in the interconnections. Leo Colovini and Andrea Angiolino each form mini-networks, but they're distinct. There are many more subgraphs of Italian designers who haven't worked with anyone else.

I suspect that today's Italy is in a similar situation to the US of the late 1970s or Germany of the 1980s, with lots of enthusiastic designers finally getting the opportunity to put out their games to a wider audience. Greater complexity and more innovation seem to walk hand-in-hand with this period of early game design.



Most of Andrea Ligabue's articles at BGN have been interviews with Italian designers. The numbers on my Six Degree charts refer to his interviews of these designers; go take a look if you'd like more information on them.

Conclusion

So that's my first take on Italian game design. Next week I'm going to provide a quick reference to Italian games, with a look at award winners and game producers.

Social Dynamics

Thomas "Smerf" Robertson wrote in a recent entry in his blog Musings and Mental Meanderings:

Games, at least games that involve multiple players, are interesting to me for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is that they change the structures that people use to interact with one another, and in so doing change the ways in which people interact with one another.

He doesn't give much detail; it is a preparatory entry for future discussions on the topic. I'm not even sure if he plans on talking about social structure within an RPG world or in the real world around the game table.

But it triggered some thoughts of mine. So forgive me, Thomas, if I co-opt anything about which you were planning to write.

The Myth of Equality around the Table

Certain rules of life inescapably apply to all people, such as existentialism and death. Other rules are seemingly unfairly applied, such as as taxes, access to clean water, and love. Still others are equally applied, but we each have unique starting positions that affect our ability to succeed - such as taxes, access to clean water, and love.

One apparent aspect of a game is that it provides a clean slate with a new set of rules. However, not all games provide equal rules for all players. You may be playing the dark versus the light in Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation. Or you may simply be seated second in Puerto Rico. Furthermore, not all game provide equal opportunities for all players. You may roll well or poorly, or you may draw the wrong or the right cards.

Beyond the explicit rules of the game, each of us comes to the table with our unique abilities, which play a strong factor in determining our success or failure in the game. These can include prior experience with the game, or simply a better "brain" for this type of game, be it area control, math skills, or negotiation.

From what looks like a fair start, it seems that we have a whole lot of inequality and predetermination in store for us.

The Social Leveling

The defining aspect of equality around the game board is our voluntary mutual acceptance of the rules before play, regardless of the fact that some people are going to be playing with advantages or disadvantages. When we first sit down at the table, we are of one mind.

I've sat down with eight year old boys, seventy-five year old grandparents, PhD mathematicians, world experts in national borders, policy makers, secretaries, housewives, househusbands, teachers, lawyers, you name it. Each one lives a life of carefully ordered social dynamics.

Whether at work, at home, or eating out, we rarely experience true equality. Any two people adjust themselves around lines of power within a relationship - parent versus child, expert versus layman, host versus guest. Our understanding of equality is expressed through a hope for mutual respect and through the lens of our common humanity. But the rules are set before each encounter, and we carry them with us as expectations. We have built them up throughout our lives.

Take any group of friends, and you will find complex layers of social inequality even among seemingly equal members of the group. Some will suggest ideas more than others, some nix ideas more than others. One always hosts, another always pays, another decides if the night is over. The specifics change, but I've never seen a group that doesn't exist within some subtle balance of power and control. The lines of power are long term and return during each encounter.

Sit down for a game, however, and the standard lines of power are temporarily set aside. Not entirely; my skill at Go is going to trump your skill at Go, if I've played it a lot more than you have. However, even if foregone, the new game represents a point of re-creation, like a Garden of Eden. Maybe all year long I respect you as the greater Go player. But when we sit down to play, you are no better than I am until the first move is made. You must be retested. And we mutually accept this.

Our sitting down to play a game is a voluntary dissolution of social hierarchy. What a world it could be if people could do this outside of the game framework. If political leaders could start from scratch before negotiating. If spouses could communicate from an Original Position with no fear of power loss or need to establish long term control.

Unfortunately, in games, as in life, someone wins and someone loses, whether due to luck or skill. Games, and life, without competition are generally uninteresting and unproductive. When the games are over, the prevailing social dynamics return. And no one gets a break from the social dynamics of life.

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ Is that a humungous telescope in your pocket? Or are you just happy to see me?

One of my very first customers, way back in 1982, was an ex-Army, gun collecting, long haired Nam vet named Steve. Put all of those aspects of who Steve was together with the fact that he was a grognard AND a postman and you have a recipe for "Film at 11 ~ War Gamer goes postal - while delivering the mail!"

So Steve, being a grognard, pissed and moaned every week about those newfangled RPG's... he poo-poo'd fantasy, he put down non-simulation games like Ogre and Warhammer, he ridiculed the younger gamers and just in general he looked down on anyone who couldn't ID every WWII military ship by silhouette and bought their ammo rather then loading it themselves.

In short, even though I'm talking here about a gamer who I first met 25 years ago, Steve was an elitist. He really was (and still is) a pretty good guy. He worked hard, served his country, raised a family and, to the best of my knowledge, never shot anyone on his carrier route that didn't have it coming. But he still was an elitist. He looked at any game that wasn't accurate in its reflection of historical accuracy as not worthy. And that elitism transferred to his opinion of the people who played those "fluffy" games. Steve could have cared less about art, die-cut counters needed to reflect the capabilities of the unit they depicted and if "art" reduced the data on the counter then the game was getting a bit too fluffy. Maps were all about topography, difficulty in traversing the terrain, cover and situational awareness. A box was created to hold the pieces, not entice lesser people to pick it up and wonder if it might contain that elusive quality we know as fun.






This is a real game. It's certified non-fluffy. Nobody really plays games this non-fluffy because they can't. Well, I suppose somebody could, but why would you want to? This game has individual frickin' counters for 50 gallon drums of diesel fuel! The only reason to own this game is so you can say you own it.



















This is a fluffy game. It's visually appealling, has cool miniatures, is easily played by all ages, generates gales of laughter and the colorful parts and pieces generate interest to even the casual observer. Anyone playing this game obviously has no real taste and is easily amused.

Hmmm... that description fits me.




About 18 years before I met Steve I was at a sock hop at my high school in El Paso, Texas. The hired DJ brought a Beatles album and that night changed everything about how us pointy-toe, shit-kickin' boot guys looked at music. I dug the Beatles. A lot. And after that school dance I began listening to music other than Hank Williams, Ray Price, Johnny Cash and Elvis. For the next several years, particularly the time I spent in the much more "with it" city of Dallas, I combed the record stores and discovered British Rock, British Blues, Talking Blues, Bob Dylan, Gospel, Blue Grass, Acid Rock, Wilson Pickett, Chuck Berry and a bevy of R&B artists. But until the final days of the Beatles, they remained my favorite band of the 60's and early 70's. I also discovered the musical equivalents of Steve The Grognard. The music elitists. To the man (and occasional woman) they looked down at my fascination with the Beatles. The Beatles weren't "real", they were too commercial, they didn't play well, they didn't do REAL drugs, they had no real musical roots, blah, blah, blah.

You know... it wasn't that I didn't like the music the elitists liked; I just had more fun listening to the Beatles. And to be honest, I viewed the elitists as beneath fun, perhaps even miserable, because everyone else but them seemed to be really enjoying music whereas they were somewhat offended that people listened to music for a good time and more than a little bit superior in their attitude that they, above all the lesser folks around them, really understood what music was all about.

Ha. What a bag of burning dog-crap that is.

This unendingly annoying trait, this elitism, this personality that demands it's "fun time" be spent seeped in accuracy, thoroughness, relevance and seriousness, it runs in all aspects of human endeavors. It just happens to be more annoying than normal when it comes to games. The music elitist can be ignored easily. I don't need him to listen to Travis Tritt, Rusted Root or Vivaldi Guitar Concertos. He can have his purity, I'll pop a beer, spin up Big & Rich's "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" and laugh my butt off listening. Even the auto or motorcycle elitist is easy to ignore. I no longer collect motorcycles and I never had enough money for a serious Porsche line-up, so I'll dial to Speed Channel's Barrett-Jackson Rich Guy Rip-off Auction when I want to see elitists spend the family fortune on a Chevy.

But the gamer elitist... now that guy is seriously annoying. We all need like-minded gamers to play the games we enjoy and that increases the chance of contact with one of these Game Geek Elite. I've met at least 100 or more of them in my career and the devious means I've had to employ to not have them at my game table have taken a lot of effort. Oh they're good enough people, Just like Grognard Steve. But man, they just grate on me. I don't care if something is misidentified, or rendered in less than historical accuracy. I don't care about the physics, the math, the engineering, the context or any of that. I just want to spend a few hours playing games... and the better the games looks, the more fluid and intuitive the mechanics, the more ergonomic the parts and pieces are... the more I enjoy it.

The thing that got me off on this tangent is a recent thread on BGG carping about the new artwork for the upcoming reprint of a game that is, at best, a passable way to spend some idle time but that I still did enjoy playing... mainly because the other players made it fun. Now the guys carping about the art may or may not be elitists, that's not the point. The point is - the publishers want to add some pizzazz! to the look of the game. They want it to have that "eye-candy" factor that grabs the eye. They want to, in short, sell even more copies of the game.


This is the artwork in question. Not only is the telescope unrealistically large, I mean John Holmes large, the math on the leftmost card, according to a few people who need a life, is wrong for the era. Now that I think about it, the Builder on the right? Doesn't he look a bit like Wolverine? And he isn't really "building", he's sculpting.




What struck me the most about this particular discussion was how seriously some people take their games. Even though I have made fun of Euro-Snoots many, many times, I never really saw any of them in the same light that I used to view Steve The Grognard. Steve was the iconic Game Elitist to me. In fact, grognards make really good elitists because you really have to know your silhouettes to be a war game elitist. Whereas to be a Euro-Snoot Elitist all you have to do is practice a good electronic sneer, write a few aloof and acerbic lines on BGG and rate anything low that is wildly popular and uses dice... and if it's designed and published in America, rate it lower... and if it even remotely touches on the theme of trains, Italian Princes or pleasing royalty, then rate it really low because it's a pale imitation of the real games dealing with those themes.



The image here shows similar tastelessness as the young lady has obviously been altered to appeal to the lowest common demoninator. While most elitist men would claim they were above her "type", I'd bet they'd see things differently if she dropped that set into their lap and they knew their shrewish wife wasn't around. Hey, fun is fun! The packaging is sometimes part of the fun.





I knew I was mingling with Euro Elitists when more than one person on the thread suggested they just might not purchase the game, when it was reprinted, because of the fantastic nature of the art. Huh? I thought it was such a great game? Really, really great. As a Beatles fan that would be like me wearing out my vinyl copy of the White Album and refusing to replace it with a CD because the cover was not plain white. If the music is good, it's good. No matter what's on the cover. If the game is good, it's good. No matter whether the art depicts the era fantastically or accurately.

The entire discussion reminds me of Steve the Grognard's virulent rants about D&D, Car Wars, BattleTech and even Axis & Allies... because it was not really a game, it was more like a toy set with dice.

In the summer of 1965 I was having a discussion about music with a friend who was a musical elitist of the era. He flat out told me, in no uncertain terms, that The Beatles sucked and had sold out. In his mind the real music was The Stones, Them and a few other (at the time in Texas) more edgy and obscure bands. Since my part time job was at a small radio station broadcasting on the recently opened FM bandwidth, I had heard pretty much all the edgy music of the time. For you Texas people, the lead station in Dallas was KLIF, an AM station playing The Beatles and endless hours of Surf music and The Ronnettes while the station I was employed at, KVIL, was broadcasting to techies who had purchased radios capable of FM reception... all 16 of them at the time. Nobody listened because nobody technically could do so, and KVIL played some pretty hot music for the time.

Essentially, my elitist friend's argument never got beyond this - You, and people like you, have heard of the Beatles, even purchased their music, therefore, their music is a sell-out and inferior to my music, which though it may suck and never be commercially viable, is still better because I am one of the few people I know cool enough to have listened to it.

I wonder if that guy even recalls the lengthy conversation we had... in light of the fact that The Stones, despite having already died, been embalmed, brought back to life, fallen from palm trees, slept with David Bowie, actually worn spandex on stage barely covering 60+ year old bony butts, had their classic "underground" sound used in hundreds of TV commercials, murdered people for body parts (especially lips) and in the process generated up several billion in sales... in light of all that, I wonder if that guy still think The Stones are hip.




Anyone who suggests that Keith Richards hasn't been repeatedly unearthed, filled with embalming fluids and then pointed in the general direction of a guitar has probably smoked way too many bowls of ganja. I'd have added an image of Mick's lips except the sight of them makes me hurl.












I know I don't. I think the last good track they laid down was "Under My Thumb".

Game Elitists, be they grognards or Euro-Snoots are pretty good people, at least the ones I know. But they do a minor disservice to the community in much the same way that any elitist does not serve their community of like-minded fans of the cars, music, stamps or whatever. The elitist attempts to take a basically classless activity, such as games or music, and add different classes to it. They seem to want to stratify the activity along the lines of this is good and if you think that is good, well then, see? You aren't quite as smart... or perhaps quite as discerning... or not nearly as tasteful... or perhaps blissfully ignorant... therefore the things you like, because they aren't __(fill in the blank)___ or are too __(fill in the blank)__ are just not as hip.

One thing I will say in defense of the elitist is this; usually they are themselves blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are an elitist. Which is why I don't take it personal when a guest in my pick-up truck can only find Country Western or Classic Rock on my radio presets and that puckish sneer starts to appear on their pinched up and judgmental little faces.

I took Steve's commentary for years and pretty much ignored it. I got him every war game he ever ordered, and some he didn't know existed, and I listened to him bitch about how hard it was to find anyone to play a war game with. I commiserated with him when he told me the horror story of meeting a war gamer on a BBS and then the guy was so fat that when he sat in the chair in Steve's dining room he put permanent dents in the linoleum... or that his boy only wanted to play BattleTech, D&D or later on MTG and the Star Trek CCG. Steve meant well, he was just a lost soul... he was living in an imaginary world that he had put boundaries on that very few people cared to enter. Steve assumed wrongly that there were viable groups of people who viewed games the way he did back in the 80's and 90's. Sadly, for Steve, 99.9% of game lovers view games the way I do... like this - Is it fun? Does it look cool? Can I teach the rules in something less than 20 minutes? Do the other people at the table laugh? Do they break out in a sweat and start asking if I will open the store at 3am to sell them a copy?

My way of judging a game has a whole lot to do with the impact that game has on me AND others. I want other people to want the game. I want them to be eager to play. I could give a crap if the game art depicts a telescope that is not historically accurate, or has a color selection that was probably not available in that era, or uses any fantastical elements that are intended to make the game attractive enough to buy, whether you have ever heard of it or not.

Those are all fun factors to me.

Grognard Update - About 1997 or so Steve's son convinced him to play a game of BattleTech. It was a bonding experience... Steve learned that when raising a child it's often best to ask them what they like and then do that with them. If you spend enough time teaching your kid that their time is as important as yours, they have a way of repaying that kindness with a very high rate of return. Over the next several years Steve and his son Marc played lots of games. Mostly non-historical ones. They even played EverCrack online together. And Steve, after he went through a divorce, found his current wife via that online game. I'm not going to suggest that Steve's elitism was keeping him from connecting with his son or seeing the need to get out of a bad marriage... but I do know that when he relented and started playing games for fun, despite their fantastical nature, some important things in his world improved.

But I'm still glad he's not my postman... I know he loads all his shells hot, and that scares the hell outta me.

Quiet times

It's been a quiet few weeks for me, at least in terms of gaming. Real Life has been somewhat busier, which is at least one reason why you won't see any profound analysis from me here.

I've not done much face-to-face gaming since the school game night, although I have finally cracked the shrinkwrap on our copy of Tichu (and am very much looking forward to playing it more and more).

Online, I've played a few play-by-web games. This generally works well for me, playing with people around the globe, although some games do seem to work better than others.

I like playing Hansa at Mabiweb, and usually have a few games going there at any time. Interestingly, this isn't a game that really excites me face-to-face - I don't hate it, but there are other games I would rather play.

At spielbyweb, I have tried Amun-Re, Tikal and Reef Encounter, all new games to me. Of these, I think my favourite was probably Tikal (hence the gingerbread). Reef Encounter left me feeling faintly confused (or possibly faint and confused) - I think I need to study the rules, although from what I hear that might just make it worse. Amun-Re, though, didn't work for me as a Play-by-Web. There are so many player actions, so many occasions where you might have to take ANOTHER action, that it just goes on and on - I think my games ran around 2 to 3 weeks. Maybe it was our playing style, but once there was a string of 2 or 3 contested bids for provinces the game really dragged out. And having people in different timezones didn't help with that at all - two or three actions meant anwyhere from two to four days.

As others have said, the best PbW games are games where a player takes a discrete turn and then the next player takes a discrete turn - games with minimal player interaction.

That's why, on the strength of a whole one game, I think that Through the Desert at Ludagora is a great example of a PbW game. There is no real interaction between players, and there is a simple sequence of moves. It's also not a game with grand strategy - you can take your turn and not think about what you're going to do next until it's your turn again.

(Is there a PbW Alhambra anywhere? That's another game with that very immediate element - I often play it with friends with very young children, who may have to go and deal with small emergencies during the game, because the turn-to-turn planning element is very low).


The other type of online gaming I have been doing is at bsw - again, I have learnt quite a few new games here. Before I joined, I was very sceptical about the people who said they had bought games based on having played them at BSW - but now I am a convert. Sadly for my future credit card bills, I am a convert with a longer game shopping list - specifically, Thurn und Taxis (how much do I love this game? Lots!), Emerald, Diamant, and of course Ingenious (which I really like as a solo puzzle as well as a multiplayer game). I've also rediscovered some games that haven't seen a lot of table time for us lately, like Ra, San Juan and Attika.


Lately, a lot of my BSW time has been working towards founding a new town with some friends from BGG. Reading up on the metagame is fascinating, and it will be interested to see it all put into practice soon (we hope!) So if you see a town called LupusLanding some time in early June, come by and say hello.

I missed posting the last couple Fridays, sorry about that. I had to return to Montana to attend my grandfather's funeral.

I suppose I was lucky when I was a kid, all four of my grandparents were alive until I was an adult and I can easily remember three of my great-grandparents. One great-grandparent passed away when I was in second grade, the other two when I was in high school.

Grandpa Licht was my last living grandparent. He was the patriarch of card games. Whist, pitch, poker and cribbage were frequently played when grandpa was present, but pinochle was king. He was a formidable opponent and formidable partner.

He never missed a play, and if you were his partner or opponent and missed a play you would not soon make the mistake a second time. He wouldn't chew you out, he would simply pause, or raise an eyebrow. If the error was subtle he would briefly explain what you missed.

I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Licht for a year when I was in high school. We played 3-handed pinochle every night, unless there was company in which case we would play 4-handed pinochle.

I can still remember the two of them making outrageously high bids. Grandpa would say, "You can't have that much. You're just bidding to piss me off. 480!"

Grandma would glare at him over the top of her glasses and mumble, "God. Damn. Asshole. 490!"

"Jez-uz pills.... 500."

"Now you're playing like a God-damned sausage. 510."

"God....... What have you got anyway? ....... You can't have anything. 520!"

"I got mine. You need to pay attention to the game. 530."

And so it would go. For the benefit of those who aren't familiar with pinochle, 300 is a pretty steep bid in 3-handed. Four hundred is a pretty steep bid in 4-handed pinochle.

For the first three decades of life my love of games was fostered almost exclusively with card games. I played a few boardgames when I was a kid. I played a few boardgames in the Army. I played a few boardgames in college. I played an awful lot of cards though. Played spades and hearts so often in the Army that I don't care if I ever play again. I also learned euchre in the Army, it quickly surpassed pinochle as my favorite game.

It has only been within the last 5 or 6 years that I became a boardgame fanatic. I often wonder how I could have missed out on the boardgame scene in my younger days. I sometimes feel as though I squandered three decades.

Looking back, those years weren't squandered. I enjoyed playing all those hours of card games. I still enjoy euchre, pinochle, cribbage, poker, etc., but since I moved to Alaska I am only rarely able to play those games. Perhaps it was the lack of card play that fueled my exploration into Euro games.

I guess I have my Grandfather to thank for fostering my love of games. My whole family has him to thank. He took the time to teach his children and grandchildren games. Gaming will be a part of his family for many decades after his passing. We are all better for it.

The Golden Age of Board Games

"The Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve."

It's a well-known quote popularized by David Hartwell in his essay of the same name. But, Hartwell never meant to say that we experience an age of wonder in our adolescence that cannot be replicated in adulthood. Instead, he claimed that the greatest wonder in science fiction comes when an individual is first introduced to it. The 1940s was not the true golden age of science-fiction, nor the 1960s, nor the 1980s; instead it was when each fan became a member of that culture.

When a reader is first introduced to science fiction, he enters a world of legends. He hears stories of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, rumors of a Rendezvous with Rama, perhaps even whisperings of Gene Wolfe's multilayered Book of the New Sun. They become larger than life, and so they take on mythic proportions. When a reader finally consumes Asimov, Clarke, or Wolfe he is not just consuming the actual tales--those words that they wrote--but he also is consuming every thing he has ever been told about them, and every image he has ever conjured up in his mind to tell those tales that he had not yet read.

So it is with board games as well.

I have enjoyed a Golden Age of gaming not once, but three times.

When I first discovered roleplaying games through the blue Dungeons & Dragons book, I began to seek out those legends that had come before. I searched out Greyhawk and Blackmoor, the two original supplements to the game. I tracked down back issues of Dragon magazine. Later I would sit in my childhood bedroom with a TSR catalog, wondering over such strange games as Dungeon, Saga, and They've Invaded Pleasantville.

A decade or more later I enjoyed a new interest in small-press American board games, and I often haunted convention flea markets and regularly visited game stores which sold used games. Divine Right, Arkham Horror, The Riddle of The Ring, and The Source of the Nile had taken on mythic qualities and thus they entered my collection in that time period.

And so it was a third time when I discovered Eurogames, four years ago now. Reiner Knizia, Klaus Teuber, and Wolfgang Kramer were the names spoken of in hushed, reverent tones. I pined for Ra, dreamed of Taj Mahal, and wished for Tikal. El Grande had already taken on such a legendary quality by the time I first played it that I was awash in its possibilities, awed by its magnificence.

My Golden Age of roleplaying games was 10, my Golden Age of American board games was 20, and my Golden Age of Eurogames was 30.

Now the mysteries have been uncovered. The legends have faced the harsh light of truth. There are few secrets left for me to uncover in the world of Eurogames, other than that which has not yet been published: the games still being developed and playtested by designers across the world.

My Golden Age has faded and become silver.

Other write of this and they call it "burn out". They ask, "Is it just me, or are this year's games not as good as last's?". They fondly say, "Do you remember 2000? That was the best year for games." Or maybe it was 1998 or 1995. Or 1975.

No reality can ever stand up to the dream. We are chasing after phantoms that will forever elude us. The Golden Age is behind us, always behind us, unless we move ever onward to new and different things: new genres, new entertainments.

But there is another option as well. If we look beyond the facade and see the truth we may find enjoyment there as well. It can not live up to the dream. Nothing could. But do you prefer dream or reality?

When I turn 40 perhaps I will have moved on to a new Golden Age. A new dream. Perhaps I will be chasing a new phantom. I can't see the future. However, in the world of board games I have found a strong core of enjoyment. I have found a true gold shining beneath golden dreams. So perhaps I will remain Eurogaming instead. I am certain that I will never again know that secret thrill that I felt the first time I heard of Puerto Rico, the first time I played El Grande, but that was a thrill born of phantasms, not facts.

Enjoy what you have, not what might be.

The Game Cabinet

Those of you coming late into the online board gaming scene will likely never have heard of The Game Cabinet, which was the major source for online board game information, along with The Game Report and rec.games.board, until Board Game Geek began.

I began playing OKBridge as early as 1993, commenting on rec.games.board.ce as early as 1994, and reading and commenting about both D&D and Magic throughout the 1990's on both newsgroups and mailing lists.

It never occurred to me to look at general board game sites until I hit upon the mention of Settlers of Catan in some Magic newsgroup at the tail end of the 90's. I acquired Settlers, and then a year later Cities and Knights, but I didn't hit the real sites for online board gaming until about 2002, by which time BGG was already a force.

There were still many links to the Game Cabinet around at that time, even though it had stopped around 2000. Owing to the long tail of time of the internet, the entire run of TGC is still available online. It contains many reviews, rules translations, original games, and commentaries, and so on. There are some nice gems still hidden in there.

The first two issues included the complete rules to Waving Hands, and a complete initial rules set for Nomic.

Mike Siggins reviewed Settlers, and decided that it probably didn't have much lasting power. He posited that some variants may be in the works which could help it out.

46 online game stores are listed on their links page as of Sept, 2000 (see bottom of page); only 21 still exist in some form, today. Note at the top of the page where the new site Board Game Geek is described as "the Gaming Dumpster on steroids with a self-image problem". I'm assuming that was meant to be facetious. Or a compliment.

While many people contributed content, the contributors page lists ten major contributors. Are they still active in games and on the net? I did some research to find out.

The three major players appear to have been:

Ken Tidwell, who was the major force behind the site. He still goes to game conventions, but doesn't have much online presence, otherwise.

Stuart Dagger, BGG. A co-editor, is now the editor of Counter Magazine, an IGA member and contributor to Board Game News.

Mike Siggins, BGG. Is active on BGG, a co-founder of IGA, and has a website (under maintenance). Mark Jackson interviewed him on Board Games To Go. He also contributes to Wargames Illustrated and is designing and developing games.

Additional regular contributors who are still active online in games:

Kurt Adam, BGG. Co-force behind Hangman Games.
Brian Bankler, BGG. Blog writer for Tao of Gaming.
Piet Notebaert, BGG. Maintains a huge real world game library in Belgium.

The remaining four:

Martin Higham, BGG. Blog writer for Ocasta, which has very little game content. He says that many of his play group sessions include playtesting games for Reiner Knizia, which is why he doesn't write about them online.

Peter Wotruba is registered on BGG, as is Tim Trant BGG, but I didn't find much else about them. Tim still goes to game cons.

Catherine Soubeyrand had written a series of articles about ancient games for the Game Cabinet, but doesn't appear to still be involved in gaming.

The Game Cabinet ended around 2000, with the rise of BGG and The Games Journal. The Games Journal stopped in 2005 with the rise of game blogs and podcasts.

Update: Some Q&A with Ken:

1. Aside from The Game Report and rec.board.games, what else was online during the nineties?

Ken: I believe Pagat had his card game site up.

2. Why did you stop the Game Cabinet, and what made you "drop offline" with regards to gaming since?

Ken: Startups and babies! I haven't even had time to play games, much less write about them. Alan Moon once opined that the typical fanzine editor lasts 3 to 5 years. I've continued to watch and I think he might be right. The time may have lengthened a bit because of the ease of publishing via the net but burnout looms large, in any case.

3. Was it worth it? Did you live for it, or was it more trouble than it was worth?

Ken: All of the above. I don't think I ever lived for it (you learn not to ever do that when you do what I do for a living) but I did enjoy it immensely. It immersed me in the world of gaming, it contributed to bringing German games to our doorsteps, and it allowed me to participate in the birth of the Web - the Game Cabinet is amongst the first 1000 web sites in the world. (For comparison, 17.5 million sites were ADDED in 2005...) All around, I had a good time being the editor for The Game Cabinet.

Yehuda

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ The Price of Being Lazy (or) Why Appelcline Is My Hero

I would like to be more like Shannon Appelcline.

Not that I know Shannon or anything... I don't. And I don't mean personality-wise or anything else. The one trait Shannon has that so many of us lack is that he is always ready in advance. Right now there are at least 6 written or partially written articles ready to go for "Gone Gaming". The guy really pisses me off.

Why is this a big deal? Here's why...

Saturday was an enjoyable game night. Jumbo, Robee, Shaun, Lyle and even their uncle Tim came ready to game. Considering that Jumbo had been being a big baby about not having ever learned A Game of Thrones it was decided we'd pull out the 6-player expansion and give it a go. I have played AGOT as have Lyle and Shaun so it was a simple matter of teaching the other three. A great time was had by all as we played A Game of Thrones twice and then when Jumbo and Robee left I taught Santa Fe Rails to the three remaining players.

As is usually the case, I was gathering little snippets of material for the blog today and thinking through the events in the games and since Jumbo and I had tried War of the Ring last week-end I had this whole hazy image of a blog dealing with big games and the way personality works in them.

Then I went to bed... at about 2:30 am early Sunday morning.

It's now 7:55 am early Monday morning and I have been up for less than an hour. What happened during the missing 32 hours isn't pretty. But it wouldn't matter if I was more like Shannon. I would have logged on, selected one of my pre-written and editied articles, clicked on submit and then sauntered away to trade some stocks or consult or whatever else people who are annoyingly efficient do while the rest of us struggle with life.

I got bit by a flu bug... I think. I remember once, when I was a teenager travelling in Spain I got sick for a similar period of time... just over 24 hours. This is pretty much what happened yesterday. It's as if someone really large took a 2x6 and used it to knock me face-first onto the ground. Very little energy, aching joints, no desire for food, no strength to get up and write a blog... so I just slept for all but maybe the 5 or 6 hours I spent listlessly pondering why I was listless or telling people who called me to stay away for a couple of days.

The bad thing about being like me instead of being like Shannon Appelcline is that I have three or four fleshed out articles I want to write for the Gone Gaming blog but they are drifitng around in the murky stew that exists somewhere in the general area of my head, whereas Shannon's are already finished and ready to go. So one wrench (or spanner, for you blokes out there) gets thrown into the mix and I'm screwed.

Did I start this blog by saying I wanted to be more like Shannon? Yep... maybe it'd be better for the rest of us if Shannon was more like us. Then we wouldn't have to be as good as him, which I assume is hard, and he could just be lazy like us and if not, well maybe we could threaten him or something.

So I guess I'll have to save my detailed article on why Meeples are not only evil, they're stupid as well, for later. And then the one about how to recover from the advice I gave several months ago to teach male gamers their wives and girlfriends had no right to tell them what they should and shouldn't do... it'll have to wait for a future Monday as well.

But back to A Game of Thrones... and something that never really occurred to me until Saturday's games of it. Here's what happened... Jumbo won the first game very quickly because we had three new players and were all concentrating on teaching them or getting familiar ourselves with the expansion rules. So of course we all told Jumbo his win didn't count. I pointed out to him though that since it was my house, if I won the second game then his win would "count". Anyway, everyone felt very comfortable with the rules and we re-drew our starting Houses and began a "real" game. This time I was House Greyjoy instead of Lannister, Robee was Lannister instead of GreyJoy and every one of the other four players drew the same houses as the first game.

It was during the course of this second game that I learned something interesting about game groups primarily composed of people in their 20's and 30's... they don't always understand that games like this are often won or lost because of treachery, guile, deceit and off-board commentary. The whole game through Lyle and Shaun were referring to me as "the Songbird", I guess because of my running commentary, which was designed to focus everyone's attention on any threat on the board other threats that my Greyjoy forces represented. It's not as if I was the only one chattering, A Game of Thrones, and others like it, generate lots of commentary during play. But still, I could see that at least two of the boys wanted me to shut up and quit pointing out how evil they were and how blessedly good I was.

The game came down to Harrenhall... as is often the case. I had 5 cities of the needed 6 and Lannister had lost all but Harrenhall and one other small region. Barethon didn't have any forces close enough to take it and Tyrell was a new player and he failed to properly threaten one of my cities. Once I saw the situation I pointed how how the Winterfell player (Shaun) had built enough boats to strike on both the west and east coast and if the game lasted long enough for the 2nd march order to be played he would win. Shaun blurted out something mean to me then... I'm not sure what, but I could tell he wasn't used to having his own evil intentions so easily seen and then revealed by the forces of Good from the Iron Islands.

What Shaun didn't realize was that Tyrell had given me the game by not attacking. The other thing he failed to see was that if Tyrell had attacked, costing me a city, then Martell would have won as they moved right after me and before Winterfell. All this really highlights why games like AGOT are so good and also that they are open to off-table gamesmanship like Diplomacy.

Speaking of which... there are many, many similarities bewteen AGOT and Diplomacy. I burnt out on Diplomacy in the early 80's and I never want to play again. But I could see that a group of gamers who are learning big games that have political elements to them could be well-schooled by games like Diplomacy. I would not enjoy AGOT or Conquest of the Empire or Struggle of Empires or Manifest Destiny if the players were required to not "chatter" between each other and attempt to sneakily move events into a favorable direction for them. Big games are often all about table-talk and at the same time the chatter can be annoying if specific players feel they're the target. I have often been the target, partially because for so many years I owned a game store and therefore I was automatically targeted. In addition, I am somewhat mouthy, a trait that can come back to haunt you in future games.

We all sit in our respective positions, each knowing what has to happen for our House to win the game on this turn. Everyone "knows" they can win if only this or that does or doesn't occur. So if someone had pointed out to newbie player Tim that Tyrell ought to attack Greyjoy and keep me from winning it might have ticked me off. And since I didn't point out Winterfell's evil plan until the turn started I suppose I wasn't out of line.

I believe that there ought to be some basic agreement between players about what is and isn't acceptable table-talk for certain games. AGOT and others like it require about 2 hours to play, some games much more time, and I believe a participant has a right to expect that he or she can invest their time and that everyone will play fairly. Fair though, needs to be defined so everyone understands it.

Anyway, the whole getting sick and being bed-ridden for 24+ hours thing allowed time for many different concepts to float through my mind and the special requirements, personality-wise, required for playing large, multi-player games like AGOT are not the same ones needed to get something out of, as an example, what seems to be Shannon's favorite game: Carcassonne. I suppose some of the appeal of Carcassonne and other Euro-style games is they have an absence of personality requirements in order to win. In that many of the multi-player war games are admittedly zero-sum and many of the popular Euro's try and cover the truth (that they too are zero sum games) by not having player elimination or in many cases, mechanics that require actual player interaction, getting the desired milage out of a particular game probably has as much to do with your personality as it does the quality of the game.

Carcassone and A Game of Thrones are perfect examples... I don't even recall how to play Carcassonne. It was so boring to me the few times I did play it that I was constantly amazed by how many I sold in my store. I never let on, of course, that Carcassonne was better than Sominex for ensuring a deep and restful sleep... unfortunately it usually happened to me in the middle of the game itself. I think the point is that games like Carcassone don't generate direct conflict or personality in the sense that games like AGOT or Struggle of Empires do. Which means playing Carcassone requires about the same level of people skills as playing Free Cell on your pc.... which is none.

I know I'm rambling a bit, blame it on the 20+ hours of sleep I had in the last 36 hours, but I'm actually headed somewhere with this. People like me do enjoy Euro Games, sometimes. The people-interaction though in most Euro's is not about the game itself because, in most cases, what you say isn't usually going to change the outcome. I'll play Euro's because I like games and usually enjoy the company of gamer people. But given a chance to play a game where what you say can and does affect the outcome of the game I'm all about that. Thinking back to the 70's and the angry games of Diplomacy and then into the 80's and games like Warrior Knights and Blood Royale where it was all about politicking a win, I can easily see that building up a thick skin and being impervious to the verbal assaults of other gamers is an important trait to have when playing direct-conflict games. If you don't have that trait (or don't want it, I suppose) then Euro's are the perfect style of game for you.

Since I started this whole muddled blog out stating that I wanted to be more like Shannon I suppose I ought to back up my statement with action. I hereby resolve to pull out my dusty copy of Carcassonne and get it to the table soon. I suspect the unruly and very emotional group I game with will not care for it, but damnit! Shannon likes it, and that alone is enough for me to give it another try.

Maybe some other of the goodness will rub off on me and I'll get one or two blogs done in advance. I think I'd like that and I'm certain Shannon would approve.

Urine the "Euro-nuch" ZONE

I had recently conducted some GAME "submissions" upon the BGG 'site', and then had these roundly "rejected" DUE to a notable sissyfied "admin's" outright BIGOTTED perceptions upon the matters. YOU won't be able to make any determinations upon 'this', since I can't imagine that it is "SAVED" in any manner. Here's what I had gotten as a "reply" for those, *quote*:"Reason:I told you before not to submit entries with all those quotes. If you persist I am afraid I will have to ban you from submitting new games." *end quote*
Here's MY "reply": *quote*:"Just because YOU have a "personal problem" regarding [i]EVERYTHING[/i] pertaining to what I had 'submitted'-what with their "quote" and 'other' markings, then why don't YOU just pass them along to someone ELSE
who "doesn't"? In case you hadn't even taken *notice*, then they were "directed" upon a specific 'person' in 'mind' so WTF were YOU doing going over those in the first place huh? I don't EXPECT whomever to "fess up" upon the matter, and why don't YOU provide this 'matter' as further "evidence" FOR your asinine 'behaviour' eh? I also don't believe that THIS will "survive" very long on here, while I do have a "remedy" for THAT as well!" *end quote* NOW, maybe you all can "fathom" the 'meaning' OF the "heading" for this here? Since I'm currently engaged within a "pissing contest" WITH whomever-(oh, and I do KNOW 'who' that IS by the way).

Holiday Happenings

Have a "Happy Mother's Day" for those who celebrate such!

Ratings where BGG and I agree the least.

A while back Melissa did an audio blog on the largest disparaties between her ratings and the BGG ratings. The raw data comes from John Farrell's extract from BGG. Now it is my turn, although you will not be hearing my dulcet tones, you will just have to read along :-)

Scrolling through the data that John has extracted the thing that I notice the most is that there are lot of games that I haven't rated yet that I should. Secondly I should revisit the ratings on quite a few, especially the first twenty or so game I rated which tend to rate a little higher than I would rate them now based on a small random sample.

Game	My Rating	BGG Rating
Set	2.0	6.56
Poisson d'Avril	4.0	7.39
Cosmic Encounter - Eon Expansion #6	3.5	6.7
Basari	4.0	7.01
LEGO Creator	8.0	5.22
Dawn of the Dead	3.0	5.53
Spellmaker	4.0	6.17
Crocodile Pool Party	6.5	4.55
Guillotine	8.5	6.57
Dwarves and Dice	4.0	5.75

With my ratings I try to base them on ideal game group and conditions, i.e. Civilization is being played with seven people who want to play, have no other commitments for the day and Daughter the Younger and Daughter the Elder are at their grandparents. Kids games are being played with the appropriately aged children, not a bunch of adults who would rather being playing ASL or Caylus. Thus there are games that I have not played in years that rate very highly simply because given the ideal conditions I would play them a lot and enjoy it. You can consider this the beginnings of my ratings mission statement. The mission however, is not complete. There are ratings that need to be reviewed and a lot more need to be added - with comments too.

Anyway, back to those disparaties.

Set - My position on this is that Set is not a game. It is competitive IQ testing, if I wanted to IQ tests I would do them, but I wouldn't try and pretend that it is a game. I have "played" this once and never to intend to "play" it again. A friend of mine who has also played it once and is not intending to play it again gave a brief session report of his game - "I sat there and didn't say a word, I came second". If I remember correctly there were five or six players. There are those who say people who don't like Set aren't any good at it. I am actually quite good at IQ tests, I just don't appreciate mutton being dressed up as lamb and being passed off as a game. I have better things to do with my life than pretend this is a game.

Poisson d'Avril - I really can't say much about this, otherwise the Secret Masters of Gaming would hunt me down. This is one the games that I should probably rerate.

Cosmic Encounter - Expansion #6 - I can sum this up in two words "Luchre sucks". Never liked them, disliked the majority of the ten powers introduced with this expansion. Played with luchre quite a few times which just reinforced my original opinion. Our set has them permanently removed (moons too, but that is another story).

Basari - I have only played this once, but I really did not enjoy the experience at all. Possibly it was the way it was taught, maybe it was the people, maybe it was the game. One thing that I do recognise as an irritating game mechanic is the resolution of the rock, paper, scissors action. In Basari if two players select the same thing, they are penalised, where as in Goldbräu two people who select the same action get the action they select but if you uniquely select an action you get a bonus. Basari uses a stick, where as Goldbräu uses a carrot. I prefer the carrot and this is part of the reason for my low rating.

LEGO Creator - One of the best roll and move children's games around. The game is so well designed that children who cannot read can play the game without any help from adults after less than one game. You get to collect LEGO pieces and build models and there is even decision making involved. My rating of 8.0 is possibly a touch too high, but I would still say you would be hard pressed to come up with a better game for children around five.

Dawn of the Dead - Many years ago, and we are talking pre Settlers of Catan years, a friend and I where down at his family's beach house. It was raining and cold. We broke out Dawn of the Dead, we reached the point that neither of us were going to take an excessive risk to win and were both playing it safe. The rain set it in and it didn't get any warmer and we had nothing better to do. Many hours passed. Without risking losing the game, neither of us were going to win. We eventually gave it up as a stalemate. The theme worked, the mechanics were good, with less even opponents we may have got a result, but with us nothing was going to ever happen. Thus my rating is fair, it is unlikely that I will ever play this again.

Spellmaker - There are some nice mechanics buried under some of the worst written rules you will ever come across and gameplay that stretches out towards infinity which is why this game lost many ratings points. One player gets close to achieving victory and the others jump on him or her, some turns later another player is close to achieving victory - rinse, lather and repeat. Ad infinitum. Playing this game brought up one of the few occasions I think Kingmaking is valid. The "Please make it stop, I can't bear it any more" reason. You will do whatever is in your power to let one player, any player win, just to stop the torment from continuing. The other option is to just pack the game away and play something decent, but for all the pain and suffering that has been endured, at least one person should get the satisfaction of winning. This game would be OK for a cold rainy day at the beach house when the person with the good games hasn't arrived yet, because eventually it will finish, but just not in a hurry!

Crocodile Pool Pary - There just may be a conspiracy amongst the minions of Tom Vasel to mark this game down. Now admittedly the theme is best described as fanciful to be polite, or just plain stupid to be accurate, however there is actually a nice little mathematical game buried in there. It's never going to hit the sevens in ratings but it should be well above a five in my book.

Guillotine - One of the very first games I rated on BGG. 8.5 is possibly a little high in retrospect, but not much. We have this since it was brand new and it still gets played and is popular with people who have never played it before.

Dwarves amd Dice - On the plus side this is a fun little colour recognition game for small children around three or four and up. In terms of a game it works quite well under you get towards the end of the tiles and realise that nobody had any thoughts past lets match the colours on the dice with the colours on the dwarves and their playtesting obviously ended before they were half way through the dwarves. Daughter the Elder and I introduced some house rules to stop the continuous re-rolling until you roll something that matches one of the tiles that is left. A nice educational tool, but not much of a game.

It may be interesting to revisit this some months down the track after I have gotten around to reviewing my existing ratings and filling in all the blanks for the games I haven't rated yet.

Mmm meeples taste like...

Blue Moon City

Beyond question, beyond examination, beyond any demand for rationalization, our world is one of grudges. We see names on the map and know that somewhere down in the basements and caves, in the bank vaults and board rooms, secret flames are tended by silent hands, kept sheltered and waiting for the moment to ignite a blaze. Was it always this way? In the ancient times, in the mythic days back when men had not yet been seduced by the written word, before the creepy crush on Permanence and the high-maintenance, one-sided love affair with Identity, you could almost imagine the heroes and kings of the day as simple and supple as schoolchildren, raging one day and embracing the next.

It seems OK, then, that the faux mythique civil war of Blue Moon should end in the reconciliation of Blue Moon City, a game about the reconstruction of the shattered capital of that distant, fantastical world authored by Kosmos and Knizia. With the help of the eight races and their unique talents, two to four players travel through the ruined metropolis and rebuild temple and handelshaus stone by stone; in so doing they will earn shards of the world's most sacred relic, the Holy Crystal of Psi, and these fragments will be returned to the city's central monument in a race to see who will be the one to make the crystal—and the land of Blue Moon—whole once again.

The board of this not-really-a-board-game is a layout of twenty two-sided tiles surrounding a central monument tile. The twenty tiles each represent an important building of the city, with one side being a sketchy blueprint and the other a rendering of the building as completed. To begin the game the tiles are placed semi-randomly around the monument with the blueprint side face-up. The players place their pawns at the monument and each draws a hand of eight cards from the deck of eighty.

Most player turns follow a very simple pattern: move, build, redraw. To start a player may make two orthogonal moves with her pawn, and after she has finished moving she may then choose to spend her cards to rebuild some part of the structure on which her pawn currently stands. The cards are split into eight suits which correspond to the eight peoples of the Blue Moon world, namely the Vulca, Aqua, Terrah, Flit, Pillar, Mimix, Hoax and Khind (black, blue, red, grey, gold, brown, white and green, respectively). Every building is essentially "owned" by one of these eight races,* with each race having three or four buildings on the map.* Each building plan will indicate between one and four building requirements, and each of those requirements will be a number between one and five; for example, the water temple, an Aqua building, has three requirements: 5 blue, 4 blue, and 3 blue. The active player may discard from her hand cards of the same people/color/suit as the building in order to complete one or more portions of that building. All the cards have a value between one and three, and to complete any one requirement the player needs to discard cards with a total value that matches or exceeds that requirement; in the case of the example, the player could discard Aqua cards valued at 1 and 2 to complete the easiest requirement. To mark her achievement, the player places one of her "building stones" (colored wooden cubes) on the printed box showing the requirement, thus indicating that that part of the project has been finished. Players may add more than one cube on a turn, but each build is a separate event; in the example, the player could not play four blue 2s to complete both the 5 and the 3.

Once a player completes the final requirement for a building, crystal fragments are awarded. All players who had cubes on the tile when it was completed will earn a specified crystal reward, and the player who contributed the most, the "master builder," will earn some additional bonus of crystals, cards and/or dragon scales, the dragon scales being an additional game mechanism that I will explain shortly (for now suffice it to say that the three dragons familiar to Blue Moon fans make an appearance in this game as well). The players retrieve their cubes and the tile is then flipped to the side which shows the completed structure. As an additional wrinkle, the flipped, "completed" side of the buildings lists yet another combination of cards, crystals and scales, and when a building is scored all involved players will also earn the card/crystal/scale awards indicated on all adjacent completed buildings. This bonus is an interesting and important mechanism that creates moments of drama and urgency in the game, and it also tends to make the board develop in a pleasingly organic way, since when one building is completed, all the unfinished buildings surrounding suddenly become more profitable, and so the result is that players tend to stick together to work the periphery. All this serves to increase the feeling of competition and prevent a game of multiplayer solitaire where players are wandering alone through the city streets.

Not every turn will involve a build, however. If the player ends her movement on the central monument tile, she may turn in some of her crystals to place one of her cubes on the monument leader board. This monument is actually the central competition of the game: the first player to make a specified number of crystal deliveries to it will be the winner. Two things are important in this regard. First, the cube placements become gradually more expensive; the first cube placed will only cost seven crystals, but the last can require a deposit of twelve. Practically speaking, this means that one cannot just hoard crystals until the endgame, as those early-bird discounts might be the difference between victory and defeat, and so another of the tricky decisions of the game is gauging when to tear one's self away from the feeding frenzy and get on the tote board. The other important rule is that, unlike adding cubes to the building tiles, a player can only make one crystal delivery per turn.

The active player then finishes her turn by drawing two cards into her hand, after which she has the option of discarding up to two cards and re-drawing the same number she discarded. The question of whether to try to tailor one's hand in this way is actually one of the most tricky and time-consuming decisions in the whole game, since a particular opportunity might cause a player to hanker for a particular card and yet she still might be able to imagine situations where the cards she's throwing away will suddenly come in handy.

Now, the more attentive readers will be wondering "if I don't need to make exact change when building, why would I ever want to hold onto a crummy 1 card when I might draw a 3?" The answer is that all the 1- and 2-value cards have alternate, rule-bending uses, much in the way that the cards in a card-driven wargame can be used as either operations or a special event. A straightforward example is that of the airborne Flit: discarding a Flit 2 card allows the player to add two to his pawn's movement allowance, whereas the 1 card flies the pawn to any tile in the layout. These special powers all tend to be nicely thematic; for another example, the cards of the Pillar, the master traders of the world, allow players to make more than one delivery to the monument per turn for an extra crystal fee. As an aside I'll mention that on first reading the rules I thought that the Pillar cards' special power was the least useful of any in the deck, but with experience I have come to see just how critical these can be to gain a turn on the competition.

Most of these special powers simply bend the rules or provide more flexibility, but some involve an additional element in the game, namely the aforementioned dragons and their scales. The cards of the Vulca, Aqua and Terrah—the guardians of fire, water and earth—can be used to move the three elemental dragons around the map. As some might recall from the card game, the dragons are the judges and guardians of all that is cool and groovy in the Blue Moon world, and in the case of Blue Moon City they supervise the players' rebuilding efforts and will reward those who impress them with their exploits. In game terms, three colorful dragon miniatures will be moved from one building tile to the next, and when a player builds and places his cubes on a tile on which a dragon is sitting, the dragon will award that player with a dragon scale as a token of his esteem. The dragon scales serve as a kind of sub-game within the game; there is a limited pool of scales, and when the pool is emptied, the player who has collected the most scales will turn these in for six crystals while every other player with at least three scales will turn them in for three crystals. Typically there will be two or three dragon-scale scorings taking place during the course of a game, and this side contest adds a nice extra tension to the decision-making; the blue, black and red cards are valuable because there are more buildings of those colors, and moreover the Fire, Water and Earth Temples are the three most lucrative building projects, but then on the other hand snagging six crystals out of nowhere while an opponent walks away with none is a plum too sweet not to be considered.

For the most part, those are the rules of the game. Players travel across the map, spend their cards, charm some dragons, and then haul ass back to the monument to turn in their crystals. In the broad strokes it's rather simple, though in practice the small details within the rules create a lot of interesting situations. The specifics of the crystal payouts for completed buildings create an complex dynamic among the players; as said, most buildings have more than one requirement for completion, and so there's a certain tension between trying to get involved in as many projects as possible and working one project with an eye towards shutting others out of a payout; in a tight game, this latter is an important way to get ahead of the competition.** Complicating matters are the bonuses on adjacent completed buildings, which can up the stakes for a particular tile quite significantly. The other interesting aspect of the game is the puzzle of how to get the most out of one's cards, as their dual-use nature gives the players a surprisingly large scope of possibility on their turn. Sometimes one's goals are obvious and the question is merely one of efficiency, while at other times there are painful decisions to be made as to whether to use cards for rebuilding purposes or for their special abilities. The tradeoffs are balanced and fiendishly exquisite, and once a couple of these conundrums have caught you in their crosshairs there'll be no doubt in your mind who the designer of the game is. Really Blue Moon City is almost like some kind of infinite generator of puzzles and tricky situations, and that might be its main charm.

There was another broad characteristic of the game that impressed itself upon me, but whether it is a good quality or a bad quality may depend on one's taste. Blue Moon City is actually quite unique in the Reiner Knizia canon in that it is almost immediately apprehensible. My mantra for Knizia games is "if you're only planning to play it once, don't bother," because it is very rare that one is able "get" everything on the first play. There are usually levels and sub-levels, and it's not at all unusual to hear someone say "you know, I thought this was pretty dull and pointless the first three times I played, but now that I'm trying it for the fourth time, I think I can say without a doubt that this is my favorite game of all time." Blue Moon City is different, though; the very first play will be a blast, but once you're done, well, you've pretty much "gotten" it. Now, that's not to say that the game won't be fun on repeat play—not at all—but there probably won't be any big "aha" moments several playings down the road in the way that you typically find with the designer's games.

Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. If anything it might be an extraordinarily shrewd move by Dr. Knizia, since the gaming scene is so overcrowded that if a game of this weight doesn't blow its players away on the first try it usually gets thrown in the trade pile.*** To me the quick dismissal of the devilishly clever Tower of Babel—not to mention the not-nearly-enthusiastic-enough-in-my-opinion reaction to the Blue Moon card game—confirms this train of thought, though of course the reader will have his own opinions about that stuff.**** Moreover, one could say that such a quality is perfectly suitable for a relatively simple middleweight that only lasts an hour.

On the other hand, I kind of like those "aha" moments.

The other criticism I have heard of the game is that the turn order is overly important. It's true that the games are often very close, with players saying "I could have done it with one more turn" at the end, and of course if the start player wins the game, folks are bound to wonder whether there's a problem. I'm actually not sure about the answer to this; I can't recall whether the start player has won more than his share of our games. Looking at the rules and knowing how the game plays out I can't see why this would necessarily be an issue, since there is no reason why any one player shouldn't be able to gain a turn or two on another, either by getting a lead in crystals through clever play or by saving time through use of a Flit or Pillar card. However, if players all do somehow manage to play perfectly matched games, then, yes, I suppose the first player does have an advantage. Does this bother me? No. Or at least not yet.

The last thing I'll mention is something about the number of players, which is that it seems to me that the sweet spot may be at three. With four players there is a chance of down time and the game overstaying its welcome, whereas with only three it's pretty much guaranteed to rip along with a speed that is in perfect keeping with its weight and depth. Additionally, with four players there's a chance that the group may at times separate into two pairs which won't really interact with each other for a while, which might be fun in an "us against them" way but which I think in practice is more like losing touch with half the players in the game. I will say, though, that the one two-player game I tried worked just fine, and while Blue Moon City probably wouldn't be my first choice if I only have one opponent, the game does work, and quite nicely at that.

To sum up, Blue Moon City is a fun little middleweight, suitable for brainy casual players and for gamers who occasionally like to kick back with something short and tactical but interesting. There are lots of tricky decisions, there's good player interaction, and there's potential for competitive play for those who look for it. It may not be as deep as most Knizia middleweights, but it makes up for this with a breezy accessibility, and even if it's not something you will want to drag out for five sessions in a row, it's still a very nice every-once-in-a-whiler and change of pace. Overall, if you enjoy middleweights and tactical puzzles and are curious about or are already enamored with the Blue Moon universe, it's definitely worth giving a try.


________________________________________

* ...with one exception which is interesting yet not quite worth detailing here.

** Despite what others have said, Blue Moon City is not at all an area majority game, because even if there is a bonus for being "Master Builder," the reward is usually rather small, relatively speaking. In fact, what is much more important than being Master Builder is simply being involved in as many builds as possible, particularly in light of the bonuses for adjacent completed buildings; coming in first on one tile may be far less lucrative than being an also-ran on another.

*** ...though this bit of supposed foresight on Dr. Knizia's part presumes that jaded gamers are in the forefront of his mind, something which is probably not really the case.

**** Quiet, Rick.

Anatomy of a Game: Carcassonne, Part Four: Complexity & The Rivers

This is the fourth article in my series about Carcassonne. See part one for a discussion of the base game, part two for a discussion of tile distribution and balance in the expansions and part three for a discussion of cooperation, competition, and theming in the expansions.

---

There are many ways to expand a successful game system. Ticket to Ride continues to put out new editions of the game, featuring new maps and some new rules, an approach also seen in Empire Builder and other games.

Alhambra continues to publish small, distinct supplements which are easy to put in a game or take out because they form very different game elements.

The Settlers of Catan has tried both approaches, with standalone games like The Settlers of the Stone Age and also distinct add-ons like The Seafarers of Catan and The Cities & Knights of Catan. It's also offered semi-new games such as the Historical Scenarios, which are very similar to the standalone variants offered by other systems but reuse game components

Carcassonne, on the other hand, has centered its expansion policy on a different, and somewhat dubious method. Hans im Gluck just keeps on adding new tiles to the game, which once mixed in are somewhat difficult to pull out, unless you have tile distribution sheets showing you exactly what belongs and what doesn't. In certain ways, Carcassonne shows how not to expand a game. Because tiles can't be removed without work, the game keeps getting longer and longer and more and more complex.

This week I want to concentrate on that complexity, and to map out what the gameplay of the SdJ winner looks like, comparing the original game, the classic expansions, and the more recent brood.

Adding Difficulty to a Game

As I wrote in part 3 of this series, it was King & Scout which started to burn me out on the game's complexity. That one additional thing to keep track of--the special VP tiles for closing the biggest roads and cities--was the figurative straw that broke my Carcassonne's back. Granted those two little tiles really aren't that complex, but as one more thing they were too much. I never play with the King and Robber Baron tiles any more. Other peoples' tolerances will be different, but I suspect the number of people who can mindfully play a MegaCarcassonne game, with all 160+ tiles, is small.

Classic Carcassonne: I've spoken elsewhere about how I consider the classic Carcassonne set of Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, and King & Scout to be a fairly ideal playing environment. In the last couple of articles I outlined some of the reasons, such as the fact that these three expansions filled out the game's tile distribution, and that these three expansions were the ones that fit in most with the original game's mix of cooperation and competition.

Diagraming out the expansion's anatomy, however, shows a surprising elegance to their overall structure, which may be another reason to like this particular set. The original Carcassonne game had a pure simplicity to it (as shown in the thumbnail, nearby). However the classic Carcassonne mixture maintains a surprising balance.

• There remain just three core actions: environment placement, token placement, and token conflict.
  
• There are now three main decisions: where to place a tile, which token to place, and where to place that token.
  
• There are now three general types of tiles: regular tiles, inn & cathedral tiles which modify scoring, and goods tiles which influence closure.
  
• There are now three general types of meeples: regular meeples which influence token conflicts, pigs which modify scoring, and builders which allow extra actions.
  
• There are now three general types of scoring markers: regular victory points, king & robber baron VP tiles, and goods.
  
• There are now three possible results for closing a terrain: scoring points, earning VP tiles, and earning goods.
  

Now I'm sure that Klaus-Jurgen Wrede didn't move through these supplements saying, "We should have three of each major game element", but I suspect he did try and keep things balanced, so that there weren't too many tile types, too many token types, or too many ways to score.

The result is a complex, but straightforward general gameplay model, as shown in the diagram below. Click for a larger, crisper view:



The Later Expansions: I'm sure there won't be much surprise when I again say that the later Carcassonne expansions moved things in some very different directions. As my final MegaCarcassonne diagram (below) shows, the game has gotten a lot more complex. My original Carcassonne gameplay diagram showed 7 distinct elements, and my classic Carcassonne diagram expanded that to 13. The later expansions increase that to 31. In other words, though the sizes of the classic Carcassonne and later Carcassonne sets are about the same, the later ones added about 3x as much complexity.

The biggest growth area is in gameplay "activity". Where before the expansions assiduously avoided changing Carcassonne's basic gameplay, starting with The Count of Carcassonne each new supplement adds a major new gameplay system. In Count it's the whole Carcassonne Count gameplay loop, in P&D it's the fairie-dragon loop, while in Tower it's the simpler Tower system.

I actually had a lot of trouble diagramming out the megaCarcassonne gameplay. Part of that was due to the restrictions of designing a diagram in a ratio that would be easily visible on the web, but part of it's because when you try and put the systems of all the later Carcassonne games together they form a spaghetti-like mess. Just trying to figure out the ordering of some of the interrelations, such as the ordering of the Princess knight-stealing and the dragon meeple-eating proved to be a challenge. I think the result is accurate but not necessarily obvious.

Althought some of the later expansion changes befuddle me (such as the tile distribution changes that I mentioned two articles ago), I have a theory as to why the complexity of Carcassonne started dramatically racheting up with Count; it also explains why the game suddenly became more competitive at that point. I'm guessing that by the time 2004 rolled around Hans im Gluck had sold most of what they were going to sell to the SdJ-worshipping general public, and so they explicitly decided to start pushing for the more serious gamers. And what do serious gamers want? Competition and complexity, the exact ingredients that a general audience would probably disprove of.

So that's my theory about the later Carcassonne expansions.

Here's my final anatomy diagram for Carcassonne, and the one that required the most time and hair-pulling of all of them. You're really going to need to click on this one to make out the details:



As I said, it's a spaghetti-like mess, and that was even after oversimplifying some of the component-action interrelations.

The Rivers

I've complained some about the recent evolution of Carcassonne, mostly because I don't like how much things changed after 2003. Carcassonne is no longer the game that I started playing, and competition and complexity aren't what I'm personally looking for if I sit down to play a Carcassonne game. (Instead I'm looking for a casual game to play with my wife or less gamerly friends, and if I want a more serious game, then I look elsewhere.) However I don't want to close this part of this series off with my whining. So, I'd like to talk about the recent release of River II. I think it shows not only how a supplement can be successfully remodeled, but also acts as a benchmark for the evolution of the game.

The nearby picture, though not as elegant as Aldaron's distribution diagrams, shows the differences between the two rivers. What's most surprising, perhaps, is that they're pretty similar. A minimum of changes have been made to the River, but all the changes are good.

The biggest complaint about the original river was always that it created huge fields, especially at the two ends of the river. This new river still has some of that potential, but it decreases field size. Where the original river cut the board into 5 starting fields, the new one cuts it into 7.

It's worth briefly mentioning the other changes:

• The new River better integrates with all the major expansions, because there's one inn (from I&C), one pig field (harkening to T&B), and one volcano (from P&D). This is a purely aesthetic boon, but a nice one.
  
• The river adds a branch, and now you can build on either branch. This slightly increases the strategy of the river-building phase since you now have two places to build on for some of the time.
  
• A pennant on the one castle corner, combined with that aforementioned inn help increase the valuations of these initial terrains, making people more likely to place on them, and thus more likely to feel like they're making important decisions.
• The volcano insures that the dragon gets placed on the board before any dragon tiles could move it, thus short-circuiting an inelegant aspect of the Princess & the Dragon expansion.
  

As I said, the changes to the river are pretty minor, but they're important, and I think they offer a great example of how to tweak a game to improve it.

Conclusion

I've spent a lot of time knocking the later expansions to Carcassonne throughout these articles, but I don't mean to suggest they're necessarily bad supplements. More correctly, they're different.

The classic Carcassonne supplements made certain decisions about balance (that all the terrain types should have somewhat comparable values), about tile distribution (that fields should be smaller and that stealing into someone's terrain should be a challenge), about competition (that it shouldn't be in your face), and about complexity (that it should be limited to new tiles and followers, not new action systems).

The later Carcassonne expansions have reversed almost all of these trends.

What I hope I've done in these three articles is to carefully denote (and graphically illustrate) how the game has changed over the last years, and to thus leave it open to any players to first see the interesting changes that have occurred, to second understand a bit more about some of the design decisions, and to third then go out and put together the exact Carcassonne that makes them happiest.

I'm not quite done with Carcassonne yet. Next I plan to look at the variant games that have been released over the last few years, to one more time examine what decisions have been made to slowly change the game system over a span of 6 years. However, while I wrote these first four articles all in one fell swoop (back in March, during a week that my wife was out of town), I haven't yet scribed the articles I'm planning on the variant games. So, I'm going to put them on hold for a bit, while I hopefully wait for The Discovery to enter mainstream distribution; when I have that in hand, I'll be back with some more discussions of Carcassonne, probably this summer and fall.

Coming up, I've got discussions of the Golden Age of Gaming and Italian Game Design planned. I'll see you back here to move into those topics in 7.

Love Songs and Poems

The Wargamer to His Love
Mark well this tank, and mark it thus,
'Tis but a token of my heart
Though it dost cut thy east flank thus
It shall not sever us apart.

And my small soldiers, know, my love,
As they defeat thy pale vanguard
Affections that I did speak of,
Thy fairest heart will yet bombard.

The tenderest feelings I am bound
To send, and thou accept, I trust
Though I do tenderize and pound
Thine armies into finest dust.

When victory is mine, I'll say
That love alone is all that's won
And nothing else. Oh, by the way,
The count is forty-four to one.

The Eurogamer to His Love
I'll trade with thee, and thou dost choose
To favor me, and thus return
My offer, then, upon my muse,
We two shall glean what we did earn.

For twain we shall fly on ahead
Together, like two white winged swans,
While common enemies instead
Do fret about their idling pawns.

And we shall see our harbors full
And build our cities tall and good
Abundant stores of brick and wool
And piles of ore, and wheat, and wood.

Upon a flowered field we'll lie
Singing sonnets, one to one,
Content and smiling, eye to eye,
Until the minute I have won.

The Roleplayer's Love Sonnet
How do I love thee? Let me roll the dice.
I love thee to the depth and breadth of Mandorralan's gorge,
Where we did brutally fight a party of hellish succubi
While the dim star of Romulus twinkled overhead.
I love thee like the ten thousand points of experience
We gained from that adventure,
As well as a magic scroll labelled Being and Ideal Grace,
Which still resists all of our attempts to identify.
I love thee to the twentieth level of Fangor's deep dungeon
A wicked maze of traps by torch-light,
Wherein Windwalker, our half-elven Ranger, turned one knob too many
And was disintegrated, and could be no longer resurrected.
I love thee freely, as surely as I did adorn my finger
With a Ring of Free Action;
I love thee purely, as surely as if I had just imbibed
A Potion of Sweet Water.
I love thee with the 18/00 strength necessary
To wield my Rod of Lordly Might,
Which has saved our party more times than I can mention,
And so must be running out of charges.
And I would love thee with my holy sword Avenger,
And with the lost artifact of Zaar, had they not been taken
In a snit by the DM, for having been too game-unbalancing.
I love thee with the shouts, smiles, and tears
of every dungeon crawl won and lost! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after thou coughest up
The five thousand gold pieces necessary
To buy for me a scroll of Raise Dead.

The CCG Player's Love Song
Heh heh. Boobies.

The Tragic Console Gamer's Tale
"O what can ail thee, joystick knight,
Alone and pale and quivering?
The rez has faded from your screen,
And no amps sing.

O what can ail thee, joystick knight!
So haggard and so crusty?
Thy trigger finger's faintly blue,
And the console's dusty.

I see dead pixels in thine eyes
Thy skin is moist with Mountain Dew
And on thy cheeks thy spittle streams
And though hast not bathed, too."

"I saw a lady in the zone
Full beautiful - a wootness child,
Her hair was long, her guns were prepped,
And her eyes were wild.

I armed the quip and holstered ray,
And like a tank stepped out of zone;
She trained my line, like silicon brick,
Which made me moan.

I linked her on my airtrack scopes.
We sped the web all twilight long,
A strand she never slackened, while she
Sang industrial song.

While under flare we shock and awed
'Til we were forced to camp and bait.
And sniping true, she texted me
"I love thee, mate."

Perim controlled, She avatarred
A question and I signed assent.
So good to go, I upped my 'word
And to her leant.

The next thing I remember
All my loot was gone. Ah, this suxxor!
A mesage from a mod imparted
All the score.

A company of leets besides
Had all been taken by this chick.
I cried, La Damn Bitch sans Mercy
Has done her trick!

And that is why I'm slouching here,
Alone and pale and quivering.
Though rez has faded from my screen,
And no amps sing."


Yehuda

(rolegamer props to EBB, console gamer props to JK)

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ Movin' On Up!

I'm Back!!!

And I have to tell ya... it feels good too. The last several months have been a dark and desperate blot on my usually sunny and cheerful disposition. I blame it all on being forced to live in that Hovel for five months. Yuck. Old, smelly, pitiful lighting. It had ceilings that were probably only about 7 feet tall.... well, maybe 7 feet 6 inches. I stand just about 5'11" and -- allright, I used to be 5'11" but now that I'm older I may have lost half an inch or so -- anyway, I could stand flatfooted and touch the ceiling. The Hovel was badly designed and had at some point suffered one, some or all of the items on this list:

* leaky roof
* life-threatening mold from leaky roof
* feline habitation
* feline carpet urination (has a half-life longer than plutonium)
* excessive use of curry in the kitchen
* dandelion infestation
* Federally approved habitat for box elder beetles
* felony use of yellow paint
* assault with a bright red shag carpet
* toilet refill time of 1 hour and 17 minutes

There were other things wrong with the Hovel that I didn't put on this list... after all, this is a blog about games, not living in bad houses. But since I've bitched so much about this place I figured I ought to include a picture of it...




Note the roof in need of repair. That's my dad's Toyota parked on the street. It's an older model so most of you Euro-Snoots probably won't recognize it.







The big move to the new house began Friday. I did the whole back and forth thing with small loads in my pick-up truck and then my Dad and his "friend" arrived. My dad will be 80 in a few weeks, so I'm at a total loss as to what to call his companion. He and Evelyn never married, but girlfriend doesn't quite fit when describing the relationship of two people who have already outlived the national average by nearly a full decade. So anyway, we used my dad's little Toyota pick-up to carry the oddly shaped items that wouldn't fit quite right in my 6,000 pound "utility vehicle". The most important thing we needed his Toyota for was to pick up and deliver my new game table. More on that later.

I really appreciated their help. But they are 80 years old. Eighty Years Old! So they're both kind of shaped like an upside-down capital "J" and they aren't in quite as good a condition as they were when they were young... say back when they were my age. On top of which, they have the "old person shuffle"... that slow gait that gives the impression of movement below the knees but real motion is not discernable unless time-lapse photography is used. The only other place I have ever seen that odd form of ambulation was when I was observing a Pakastani Air jumbo jet deplane in Chicago. Hundreds of little brown caterpillar segments appeared (actual Pakastanis, I think) and their feet shuffled so fast they blurred, but the line inched forward at a glacial pace.

But I was acknowledging my Dad and his "friend", who both helped quite a bit. The whole Pakastani thing must have been some sort of flashback related to Hovel Stress Disorder and the curry odors still lingering in my olfactory cells.

On Saturday Jumbo-Tron, Lyle and Shaun came to help. And help they did. They carried all the heavy stuff while I rushed around appearing both useful and knowledgable. We all knew though that my sole purpose was that I rented the U-Haul and I was buying the Pizza and drinks. The boys were suitably impressed with my new digs and the plan formulated that we would be done moving by 2pm and we could have pizza and goodies and a game going on my massive new game table by 3pm. Here's a picture of the new place...




It is a nice house. So nice in fact, that if Elvis were alive today he'd probably feel right at home here.









Since I have mentioned my table so much I guess I'd better include a picture of a real gaming table so all you city-slicking, apartment dwelling, Euro-trash metrosexuals can turn green with envy. I had this one custom made and it included set-up and delivery, all for a reasonable price...



I snapped this picture during a recent game
of my old favorite RPG from the 80's... Slugs & Ditches. This is a Live-Action session, which is easy to see because the third player from the left is struggling vainly to get out of the ditch while everyone else is staring vacantly at everyone else.








Lyle and Shaun wanted to learn Formula De and despite the fact that any time Lyle and dice are involved the whine-o-meter reaches inhumane levels, I agreed. Lyle doesn't do any worse with dice than any human being involved with cubes and other odd shapes and numbers. But dice bring with them a convenient whipping post for any mistakes, errors, lapses of judgement or just plain boneheaded decisions Lyle makes.

So, Lyle lost... badly and the rest of us had a great time. When Lyle swore he would never play Formula De again I made him sign a contract to that effect.

At that point Vegas Showdown came back on the table for the first time in maybe 6 months. Shaun had played but Lyle and Jumbo were newbies. I was reminded that I really do enjoy Vegas Showdown. It's not outstanding in any specific catagory whether it be component quality or game mechanics. But the sum of all the parts is greater than the whole...or is it that the sum doesn't add up to what the math would be if you simply added it? Whatever. It's a fine game made better by the fact that Avalon Hill gave me a free copy. We all had a great time. Lyle excelled and whipped us by a respectable point differential.

He then decided that, having actually won a game, he needed to go to a BBQ and get drunk. Jumbo's brother, Robee came by to tell us he too was going to go get drunk, so that left Jumbo, Shaun and myself. We decided to try out a game called Techno Witches, published in the USA by Rio Grande and designed by one of those European people with a name that makes me chortle every time I read it.

Here... hang on a moment, I'll look it up... Heinrich Glumpler. Woah. Man, if I was named Glumpler I'd drop $400 on the local court for a name change, pronto!

Which reminds me of this used car salesman I once worked with named Richard Hedd. I always asked him if I could call him Dick for short. He never laughed, never even chuckled at my little joke, which suprised me, it's not as if he'd heard it all his life or anything. I used to inquire about why, if his parents didn't want him to be known as Dick Hedd, they didn't name him something else... like Block. Or Penis. I don't know how that guy ever sold a single car because all I ever saw him do was frown when I was around. All of this brings to mind another guy I knew when I was in school in Southern California. His name was Daniel Dick. Daniel was an aspiring actor. He actually had a part in the Las Vegas production of Hair... HAIR!...co-starring: Daniel Dick.

So of course we all called him Daniel's Dick. That was mainly due to those 70's hip hugger jeans he wore, all tight around the groin area. Daniel would walk in and there'd be a chorus of, "Hey! It's Daniel's Dick!" And we'd all wave at his groin. Daniel decided that he'd never get anywhere in Hollywood with a name like Daniel Dick so he did pay the $400 for the name change. He got his name altered to Chad. Yep. That's a real Hollywood name... Chad Dick.




Most of you were probably not even born when HAIR was "all that", but I assure you, it was very profound. HAIR exemplified an entire generation (probably your parent's) by showcasing really grubby clothes, afro's on white people, exposed butt cheeks and "down with the establishment" lyrics of such lasting quality that I will forever be saddened by the fact that I grew up with these people.

She asks me why...I'm just a hairy guy
I'm hairy noon and night; Hair that's a fright.
I'm hairy high and low,
Don't ask me why; don't know!
It's not for lack of bread
Like the Grateful Dead




For all I know Glumpler also means "dick" in German, which has nothing to do with Techno Witches, but it's worth considering before you commit to any game designed by a guy with a name that may possibly describe a sexual organ in a foreign language.

Heinrich did design an okay game though. Borrowing a lot from several other games, such as the recent Wings of War and the more distant Sopwith, Techno Witches is a semi rip-off of the Harry Potter theme. All the players race vacuums around in the sky snagging cats, running obstacle courses or chasing Luddite wizards on broomsticks. The theme pretty much sucks. The game itself though works very well indeed. There are 20 little curvy pieces that you arrange in order around your "spellbook" and anytime you want you can "fly"... meaning you must use, in order, all the pieces you have selected. So you move one, two or more times all at once.

The results can be hilarious and the game plays in about 20 or 25 minutes with three players. I'm not much of a drinker but I can imagine Techno Wizards would be a great drinking game. Jumbo was all over the table and Shaun and myself crashed frequently. I think I sold at least one or maybe more future copies that night so Herr Glumpler can expect an increase in royalties... maybe even enough to pay for that much needed name change.

I believe things will now get back on track for me. New house, Tivo working, room to game, my boy sleeping in the living room with a Van Morrison special playing on CMT... transmitting those semi-Godlike Van Morrison vibes directly into his resting brain... what could be better?

See ya next week!

"Cruising" around the 'Gaming World'

In case some of you might have missed this little 'factoid', then ole "Tom Cruise" is making an appearance within our portion of "the sticks" for a 'Movie Premiere' of his latest 'action flick' with "Mission Impossible 3". My oldest nephew WON an online "Contest" for that, and has been the "talk of the town" due to this over the past week. Even HE could hardly believe that it had 'happened', since we're so beyond being "out of the loop" around these parts, that it almost 'dead ends' here. Now I am quite familiar with many another's 'opining' upon certain aspects with "T.C." and the 'Scientology' discussion, so don't even bother to mention upon just such as that as it doesn't pertain for anything, besides those making "fun" of another's 'beliefs'. We're only going with the beneficial manner in which THIS 'event' is allowing some attentions being drawn in our lowly 'direction' here. I wasn't even going to bother to attend at first, until I found out that the "eats" were FREE, and we'll even receive a complimentary "T-shirt" too. It is just a shame that our "olde tyme Naval vessel" of the "Lady Washington" isn't around to provide additional *star power* for it all here. That has been in a number of movies itself, while the looks of it had been changed around to obtain some "period feel" for the 'part' that this had "played" in those. Some of the notable kinds of films for which it has been within are: "Star Trek: Generations"; "Pirates of the Caribbean": "Master & Commander"; and a few others. She will usually be available in this region around the "Memorial Day" weekend, and provides "sailings" when this is within our harbor here. As usually, then the 'Media Circus' surrounding any potential "event" such as this, has those coming out of the 'woodwork', what with many an "Entertainment" T V show, including even some 'National' sorts, conducting their interviews as they are wont to do.

Now, I'm wondering if I should take this opportunity to make some sort of "presentation" upon ole "Tom" here, and perhaps attempt to 'enlightern & broaden' HIS "horizons" by pitching "boardgaming" to HIM, if given the chance for that? Of course, I would be more than willing to bring his 'attentions' upon the likes of "Wargaming", since I could bring UP the not as well known "game" with the MORE "famous" title of: "Top Gun" by 'FASA'. Then, maybe HE would delve deeper with our 'niche' of the "hobby" and find out about the many others of which there happens to be for it all. I'd be able to point out that there is even "online" gamings for when he would be jetting around, to help wile away the hours. I don't wish to HOG all of the "for REAL" sorts of 'celebrities' within the "Wargaming" groups, since "Curt Shilling" also 'shills' for the ASL crowds. Even Mr. "Walter Cronkite" has been a "grognard" for decades now, as I recall an advertisement that makes mention upon this at one time. Sure, we can 'use' ALL of the "attention whoring" that we can 'pimp out', for whatever manner that is available, since there are so many others that HAVE 'theirs' as well. While I am thinking upon a couple of easy to learn types of "games" for any purposes here, and of which I also have readily available. Oh I'm certain that MANY would 'object' to the likes of Mr. "T.C." gracing our prescences, just as they'd gladly 'object' to many others as well. Then I'd just advise those folks to "chew harder", while they ought to 'know' the REST of that little "saying" eh wot?

Here's what I'd be willing to 'donate' for this:
A copy of "Battle for Moscow" with the 'extension' VARIANT~this is the actual "game" itself and NOT the "print & play" sort
A copy of "Battle for Basra" with the 'fixed' counters in that.
perhaps a copy of "Sirocco" to help introduce "Card Driven Game" mechanisms with it

I am almost compelled to include some manner of 'Sci Fi' genre "game", but I don't wish to put him OFF with that, nor having this being construed with some 'slight' towards you-know-what. There would be another time in which to bring that up for his considerations upon, since it is just best to *spark* an 'interest' first of all. I will be sure to include some 'mention' upon the "Geek" as well, so that HE can check it out at his leisure, while I don't wish to get any's 'hopes' UP prematurely.Oh yeah, I should bring UP about how "Darryl Hannah" has her "game" here, and then maybe HE would feel 'obligated' to out-do even HER too.It would nice to have someone as famous as them, becoming an 'advocate' for "Historical Minatures Gaming" or even just "minis" in general. Then perhaps, those buffoons at the "HasBORG" would finally 'get IT & WITH the program' to avoid their many 'mistakes' that they're becoming ALL too 'proficient' upon eh?

School Game Evening

The school game evening was on Friday night. We thought it went very well. We didn't take a roll call, but we think we had about 40 people, roughly half children and half parents. We had one grown-up helper (thanks Stefanie) and also Daughter the Elder as a helper too.

Melissa made a GeekList of games we were thinking about taking before the event, you can find it here. Melissa will be updating it in the near future.

The games we brought that were played on the night were Formula Dé, Ticket to Ride, TransAmerica, Make 'n' Break , Apples to Apples Junior!, Carcassonne - Hunters and Gatherers, Dicke Luft in der Gruft (Dawn Under), Fish Eat Fish, Flix Mix, Hexentanz, Guillotine, Lost Cities, Piggy-back, Zendo, Catch The Match , Pick Picknic, Right Turn, Left Turn , Igloo Pop, and Carcassonne.

Games that families brought that were played were Connect Four, Blokus and Cluedo. Games that familes brought that were not played were Mouse Trap and Monopoly.

The most popular games for the evening were Formula Dé, Make 'n' Break and Flix Mix. All three were played pretty much all night from when they were set up. Formula Dé had one of us with it all night, but the other two games had the advantage that they could be taught to an initial group of people who could then teach new people to play when they joined for the next game, thus didn't need constant supervision.

This difference exemplifies the difference between a games night for predominantly non-gamers and a games night of gamers. Generally at a gamers night there will be at least one person who is well acquainted with every game that is present. It is very rare that you would pull out a game and find that nobody present had played it, with the possible exception of brand-new-hot-off-the-plane-from-Essen type games.

A school games night is pretty much the opposite, I believe of all the games that we had brought that Carcassonne was the only one that any of the people had played before and of course they were there to play new games, thus were not available to teach others. This meant an extra workload for us, especially Melissa who spent the whole night flitting from table to table.

A lesson we have learnt from this is to make sure we have some of the games that non-gamers can teach other non-gamers after a single game ready to go at the outset, so that they can be played all night without the requirement of constant supervision. Apples to Apples Junior, Make 'n' Break and Flix Mix all fall into this category.

Others lessons:

• Melissa should wear more comfortable shoes.
• Cap the numbers. We could not have coped with many more people at all, both due to the number of helpers we had and the number of tables available to play on.
• Try to ensure that there is a 1:1 parent child ratio. The children stay a bit more focused if they are playing with a parent. I had to give up trying to teach one game to five seven year olds, because three of them were more interested in playing with the tiles and had no parent to steer them back to playing the game. When those three left, the two remaining seven year olds and a parent were taught and played.
• Extra helpers.
• Nothing was damaged by food or drink spillages, but we would enforce a no food or drink at the table policy in future.
• Concentrate on simpler games unless there are extra helpers who can be spared to babysit a game.
• Give Daughter the Elder a list of games that she is allowed to teach people.

When I was teaching Carcassonne - Hunters & Gatherers I had three different families mention that they had or had played Carcassonne but hadn't seen the Hunters & Gatherers edition, interestingly nobody mentioned Settlers of Catan. Has Carcassonne usurped Settlers of Catan as the new gateway game to the general public?

From our point of view Formula Dé was labour intensive with a helper all night, but it was very popular with four to six players the whole time. I think it is worth taking again if we have a spare helper, I am less sure about something like Carcassonne for a future night though, as it is complicated enough that it probably needs someone who has played before to supervise it and it is less likely to be played all night. Ticket to Ride is simple enough that it does not need a helper to play the game with the new players. It can be explained to them in a few minutes, supervised for a few turns and then they can be left to themselves to play. They may need to occasionally query a rule or ask for a clarification, but generally it should just run itself.

This leads me to the realisation that there are two different groups of Gateway Games. One group where there is a dedicated teacher available which would include Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan and the second where there is no dedicated teacher available, just someone who can explain the rules and come back to answer queries if required. Ticket to Ride falls into this second category as it really only has about three rules.

Based on the queries we had along the lines of "Where can I buy this game?" the most popular games of the night were Formula Dé, Ticket to Ride, TransAmerica, Dawn Under and Make 'n' Break.

All in all it was a tiring night, but popular with all the attendees and I am sure we will be doing it again next term.

Mmm meeple taste like...

Last Season's Hot Games: A Top Ten from Essen 2005, Part Two

Last October I wrote up a list of my top ten games from Essen '05. In the six months since I've dutifully waited for those games to make their sometimes long, arduous trip from Europe, and have finally gotten to play all of them--or at least the nine that were actually released.

This is the second part of my review of those games, talking about what I liked and what I didn't. In my first article in this series I covered the top five, a set of games that I thought were entirely worth playing. Here I'm going to cover a few more above average games, but also a few that I was in the end disappointed by.

#6: PUNCT (B)

My Thoughts: just this article
Authors: Kris Burm
Synopsis: connections
Background: abstract
U.S. Publisher: Rio Grande Games

I'm generally not fond of abstracts & I don't own any of the other GIPF games. I played the original GIPF online, and wasn't impressed by the simplistic gameplay, and that was generally that. However, PUNCT interested me for two reasons. First, because I'd called it out here, I wanted to be able to follow-up on all of the games I mentioned from last year's Essen, not all-of-them-except-PUNCT. Second, it did interest me because of fond memories of Twixt. So when I saw an opportunity to get PUNCT as part of a trade earlier this year, I did. Nonetheless, I went into my first play of PUNCT not expecting a lot. I was surprised.

The basic idea of the game is connection building--creating links from one half of the board to another. It's a theme which has been seen in Twixt, Knots, Metro, and many others. However, the connectivity of this game is really made by two facts. First, you can not only move pieces after they're played, but you can in fact move pieces atop each other, changing PUNCT into a three-dimensional game reminescent of Java or Torres. Second, there's lots of interesting and clever tactics possible, along with bluffing and obfuscation, all in a very simple package.

There are some downsides too. The board feels flimsy and nothing stacks quite as simply as I'd like. I've seen new players get confused by adjacencies in a few different ways. And, some of the late gameplay can be really methodical, with strike and counterstrike centering on who makes the first mistake as much as who makes the more clever play.

Nonetheless, it's a fun game, and one of the best abstracts I've played in years (alongside Rumis and a few others). Sadly, my wife doesn't like it, but I keep sticking it into game bags hoping that a two-player play opportunity opens up.

#7: Hacienda (B)

My Thoughts: Mini-Review & Strategy Notes (1/06)
Authors: Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling
Synopsis: economics, connections, card management
Background: Argentica, early 19th century
U.S. Publisher: Rio Grande Games

Hacienda is a game that flared up very quickly for me, briefly enjoyed the status of "best. game. evar." and then dropped back down to an above-average rating.

On its face Hacienda is a somewhat complex card-collection & connection game. You're laying out a series of lands, animal herds, water, and hacienda to advance your position in the game. Lands, water, and hacienda are worth victory points, but animals are necessary for you to earn money needed to buy these resources. It's ultimately a delicate balance. There's so much richness there that it can be overwhelming at first, and that's what made me initially rank it higher.

Hacienda's problem, I think, is that it wasn't distributed in its optimal gamer's game form. Out of the box creating chains of land is very powerful and its very hard to block. This is what started to sour me on the game by my second time out, because all of those great, crunchy strategies devolved down into one push for victory.

Hacienda does give you some alternatives. There's two maps (one on either side of the board, a great innovation that more publishers should take note of) and the asymmetrical map makes it a tiny bit harder to create huge chains of land due to the breaks in terrain. Meanwhile I've been told that the alternate rules provided in the game increase the value of animals. I've been using the asymmetrical board the last few times I've played, but I haven't quite girded myself to learn an entirely different method of scoring not marked on the quick-ref sheets. If Hacienda had been distributed with a different default board and a different default ruleset I might have a slightly better impression, but honestly, it is first (or second) impressions that count.

Don't get me wrong. Hacienda is a fine game. In fact, it feels somewhat like the award-winning Ticket to Ride--in feel if not gameplay. There's semi-open card drafting, and there's brinkmanship as you push ahead of your opponents. Perhaps I just wanted a little more ...

#8: Mesopotamia (B-)

My Thoughts: Review (1/06)
Authors: Klaus-Jurgen Wrede
Synopsis: civilization building & resource management
Background: Mesopotamia, The Ancient World
U.S. Publisher: Mayfair Games

Although Mesopotamia isn't my worst rated of the exciting Essen games, it is the one which I expected the most of, but didn't deliver. From the start the production of Mesopotamia was clearly entirely beautiful. And, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede has a good rep with me. Carcassonne is great, I quite enjoy Der Untergang von Pompeji, and even though I didn't like his Die Fugger I thought it was an interesting design. My interest level in Mesopotamia just went up when I read the rules and discovered it was a very tactical game.

And then I played it and found it boring. And played it again and found it repetitive. When I reviewed Mesopotamia the best explanation I could give was that it "doesn't spark". However I think Tom Vasel hit it more dead-on when he said that the strategy is very much the same from game-to-game.

At heart Mesopotamia is a very logistical resource-management game. Everything in the genre is, to some degree or another, about producing your resources faster than everyone else, but the collection and conversion of resources are so explicitly a path toward victory in this game, that it's that much obvious that every misstep is a step away from victory, and that sucks a lot of the life out of the game for me.

Again, not a bad game, but not even as good as the aforementioned Hacienda. I rate it solely average on the actual gameplay, and I have a lot of above-average games to play instead. This is the first of the Essen games that I don't expect to keep in my collection because I doubt I'll play it again unless someone else is really enthusiastic.

#9: Antike (C+)

My Thoughts: First Thoughts (1/06), Mini-Review (2/06)
Authors: Mac Gerdts
Synopsis: civilization building, resource management & warfare
Background: Europe, The Ancient World
U.S. Publisher: None

This game was actually not on my original Essen list, but I've since added it to replace the no-show, Tempus. Though I, in the end, wasn't too happy with the design, I think it was a fine entrant for "interesting games released at Essen".

This game looks like a short wargame with technology and civilization building in and about Europe; in other words, Civilization Light, a Holy Grail for game designers, and a term which recently has been applied to many releases. Parthenon was another game that didn't actually match this hype last year, and the jury is still out on the aforementioned Tempus, another contender. However, one of the game's largest problems turns out to be a serious impression-to-gameplay disconnect.

In truth Antike isn't Civilization Light at all. Instead, it'ss a pretty serious logistics game, all about making the most efficient use of resources faster than your opponents, in some ways like the recently discussed Mesopotamia. So, call it St. Petersburg Heavy.

To be honest, I don't like logistical games that much, and I was further put off by Antike looking like a totally different type of game. However beyond that I also think Antike is an indie game in real need of outside development. The combat system doesn't quite work, and the victory system can potentially drive the game to a grinding halt if you're not lucky.

There's a lot of interesting ideas in the game, primary among them the original, circular role-selection system. This is a "roundel" which your pawn slowly circles. You get a special role action depended on where you land, but in order to move extra spaces around the roundel takes resources. Thus, you have to trade off between subpar matching of roles with no resource loss, or else take advantage of complementary roles, but only by getting rid of resources that you could have used elsewhere. The idea of paying resources to take roles does go back to at least Puerto Rico, where a somewhat similar mechanism is created by putting gold coins on unused roles, but here it's unadulterated (though as we'll see another game from this year, Siena, uses a similar mechanism).

The limited, card-based VPs are neat too, in idea if not execution.

However the overall resulting gameplay is average at best, and not something I'm very interested in repeating after a few times out.

Recent word indicates this game might soon be available from Rio Grande.

#10: Siena (C-)

My Thoughts: Review (4/06)
Authors: Mario Papini
Synopsis: card management & logistics
Background: Siena, 1338
U.S. Publisher: Z-Man Games

Siena was the last game I played of my Essen 10, and sadly, also the most disappointing. In my original article I said "The big idea here simply seems to be beautiful art: the background of the board is a classic mosaic." Beyond that the game is a somewhat interesting logistical game of purchasing cards through a draft, then using those cards to gain money and/or victory points. However, it's the painting that's really the center of the game, and that turns out to be a huge problem.

Clearly the game designer wanted to show the painting in its original form, and as a result the cards which reprint parts of the painting and the game board which is the painting have almost no player-usable information. You have to remember what cards do and what board locations do with very little help. Besides that, the rulebook is a trainwreck, badly translated, badly organized, and full of special cases. Almost any player is going to be put off the game before it ever hits the table.

Besides the fair logistics the game has three interesting points. First, you can quickly vary your money up and down and since it influences turn order and other issues, this can be a serious and meaningful tactical point. Second, players advance through three roles during the game (peasant/merchant/banker) and through two distinct phases of play, and the ways in which players of different levels interact is quite clever. Third, the final, banker phase, involves players circling around a 10-space city to undertake certain actions. They can also expend resources to circle more quickly, resulting in a game system that's extremely similar to the just-mentioned roundel in Antike; they're both the same, entirely innovative and unique, form of role-selection. Siena just has a geographical theming.

Siena also has one flaw in the gameplay: it's way too long, especially when people get to the banker phase and things get really dull. At 2-4 hours long, Siena at least doubly outlasts its stay with me. I can believe really serious logistical players might like it fine, because there is stuff to like, but given the terrible utility design of the components, most people aren't going to be willing to give this game the time of day.

Like Mesopotamia and Antike, I thought Siena had average gameplay with some high points and some low points. My main difference in rating these three games came down to components. Mesopotamia and Antike were both pretty easy to use, but the first was entirely beautiful and the second was just nice. Contrariwise Siena was one of those games that, while the components were pretty enough, they actively made it much more difficult to play the game.

---

Having finished my own rating of my Essen 2005 games, I thought it'd be interesting to compare my own ratings to those at BGG. The BGG ratings are not bayesian filtered, but the standings are.

Game	Me	BGG
Caylus	A	8.45 (#2)
Reef Encounter	A	7.80 (#37)
Il Principe	B+	7.01 (#400)
Elasund	B+	7.10 (#244)
Railroad Tycoon	B+	7.93 (#23)
PUNCT	B	7.59 (#155)
Hacienda	B	7.41 (#131)
Mesopotamia	B-	6.97(#353)
Antike	C+	7.58 (#102)
Siena	C-	6.94 (#543)

I apparently don't entirely march to the beat of the common drummer. From those standings I think that Il Principe and Elasund are both dramatically underappreciated and Antike overly so.

---

It's already been a couple of months since my Nurnberg 2006 list. (Ah, where does the time go?) Those games are trickling out much more slowly than the Essen games, which isn't a surprise since Nurnberg tends to show off more prototypes rather than just finished games.

I've played one of my ten games thus far, Ticket to Ride Marklin (A). I've played so much Ticket to Ride at this point that I'm not as enthused by a new edition, but it's clearly an excellent game, better balanced and more strategic than Europe, which was in turn better and more balanced than the original. That's the right direction to be heading in! I've also played Double or Nothing (C+), which would have been around #13 if I'd included more than 10 Nurnberg games. It was a pretty average press-your-luck game. Better designed than most, no surprise, but also a little less exciting.

Meanwhile, word out of the Gathering of Friends highlighted another couple of the games I mentioned. Most folks agreed that Augsburg 1520 and Thurn & Taxis were among the most played & beloved games. Meanwhile Cleopatra seems to have gotten much more of an average reception, which perhaps isn't a surprise, as no one ever said it was a gamer's game.

Colovini's Masons is the one game that I didn't mention that seems to have gotten some good positive attention. Colovini has been so hit-or-miss lately that the game's cool looking theme and beautiful pieces just didn't do it for me, but if I'd been making a post-Gathering list rather than post-Nurnberg one, it would have been in my top 10 (perhaps knocking Gloria Mundi off, based on the fact thatI'm not convinced it'll see print this Summer).

Meanwhile, two of the most-hated games out of the Gathering seem to be For Rum, Renown & Honor and Celtica. They got pulled from my top ten list for "the crime of being a family game", but they were still in my top 15. It looks like my decision to pull them was right!

I expect I'll follow up here with a list of my full after-thoughts on my Nurnberg 10, but it'll probably be this summer, as I still have 9 more to play!

Next week it's back to Carcassonne with my final look at the Carcassonne expansions, and some really fancy charts.

Longer than usual

The biggest laughs in the on-line boardgame community often come from the shortest comments. More often than not those short comments are posted by Mister Cranky.

I really don't know how to introduce Cranky (Josh Adelson) other than to say:

If you aren't familiar with Mr. Cranky I highly recommend keeping an eye out for him. Go to Game of the States and sort through all the "10" ratings. You'll find him in there somewhere. Look for the alligator avatar.

Enjoy

Incompleteness is not something you hear too many people blathering about as regards gaming. And that’s a shame. Part of my ongoing effort to increase the amount of meaningless blather attributed to this hobby will be to demonstrate—quite thoroughly and professionally—why rigorous academic standards are best left on the desks of the academicians and not in the web logs of board game enthusiasts. Let us commence:

In 1937 a fellow with an unpronounceable surname and a weak chin proffered to the world his version of things. Most of the world ignored him, albeit amiably, but some small segment of professional rabble-rousers took heed, and elevated this man to (some would say) unprecedented levels of obscurity. We shall not dwell on this man, his theories, the cosmetic surgery that might have obviated his self-esteem issues, or really anything else about him. Instead we shall dwell in the little houses we metaphorically place on the vertices of our cosmic game board (which come in all the usual colors and are easily distinguished from the other game bits because of the hint of a chimney that the woodcarver traditionally installs along the anterior roof element), coming out only occasionally in order to barter our sheep for wheat, etc.

[N.B.: At this point in the lecture, the people in the back are generally growing anxious. Whether it’s from a lack of nicotine or caffeine (or perhaps Ritalin) is never immediately clear, but as a professional educator I normally find it efficacious to slam a meter stick along my lectern’s surface, in order to quell any hint of free will. Please consider the meter stick slammed and use your sensory memory to insert a loud “whack” here.]

So, in short, to be considered a stalker by a well-regarded designer of games, one need merely bring up his name (or merely hint at it in an unmistakably lunar fashion) in every irrelevant context, while simultaneously grimacing in as fearsome a manner possible. Even if nobody is present to view the mien-darkening metamorphosis, it is eminently good practice, and it behooves the practitioner greatly to a small degree of contradictory compliance.

I thank the Royal Academy of Gamers for their apparent lack of both enmity and enthusiasm in inviting me to share this research, and I look forward to bright careers from all you earnest seekers of truth.

I would be quite remiss if I did not take this opportunity to mention that my monograph entitled “18XX as a Satanic Rite” is available just outside the hall for a nominal fee. All proceeds from the sale of my work directly benefits myself, and for your edification and amusement I’ve included a detachable line-drawing of the author slamming his meter stick into a lectern. I wish everyone a more successful evening of gaming thanks to the pointers provided here today.

Lazy Tuesday: Chess Pictures

I'm tired of writing, so here are some pictures of interesting chess pieces from Flickr ...










































Posted under Creative Commons or by permission. Click the picture to view the original on Flickr.

Yehuda