Warning: This Blog May Cause Choking

I was watching T.V. last night when I saw a commercial for one of the many types of drugs that are now available to make our lives better, happier and healthier. This one began by telling you that there were no sexual side-effects. Whew, that's a load off my mind! But at the end we are informed that it may cause seizures. Well, as long as it doesn’t cause sexual side-effects, no worries. Do these people even HEAR what they’re telling us?

This led me to thinking of the many silly product warnings that I’ve read about such as the warning on a can of spray paint which passes on the useful hint: do not spray in face. How about the baby stroller that has the mind-boggling caution: remove child before folding? My favorite is the chainsaw warning which many men will appreciate: do not attempt to stop chain with your hands or genitals.

This, in turn, led me to wonder what dangers lurk in our game boxes? I know that people who love strategy games tend to be quite intelligent and not prone to doing incredibly stupid things, but could there possibly be some people out there who must be told the obvious? Some games may need a precautionary warning to prevent injury to the user or damage to the game itself, or to keep disillusionment to a minimum, which can also be the basis for frivolous lawsuits.

BLOKUS—pieces have sharp corners that could cause injury when thrown with great force..

SEA SIM—no fish were harmed in the making of this game.

PLUNDER—do not play with the boats in the bathtub.

THROUGH THE DESERT—the camels are not edible.

WALLENSTEIN—do not remove the ledges from the tower; pieces are supposed to get caught in there.

MAHARAJA—do not hit glass pieces with a hammer.

TRIAS—very small pieces which can cause breathing problems if inserted in the nose.

ROBORALLY—robots are not battery operated.

SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT—be careful when handling Excalibur; you’ll poke your eye out!

MEMOIR ’44, AXIS & ALLIES, war games of all sorts—parental guidance advised. Teenagers may become violent and go on a shooting spree, killing their family, friends and neighbors.

FORMULA DE and other race car games—do not play this game on the street.

MONKEYS ON THE MOON—NASA has found no evidence to prove that monkeys ever existed on the moon.

QUEEN’S NECKLACE—trying to pawn the necklace and rings will make you look like an ass.

Well, it was just a thought.
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Contest Winners

My thanks to everyone who took the time to try my Name & Number Contest and for the compliments you gave me in your emails. Here is what was in the jar:

2 towers from Die Magier von Pangea
1 ship from Hansa
2 temples from Magna Grecia
15 fish from SeaSim (Ocean)
14 pieces (6 men & 8 ships) from Hellas
1 YINSH ring
3 trees from O Zoo le Mio
3 planes from World in War: Combined Arms 1939-1945
8 coins from Kontor
8 red camels from Desert Oasis (Oasis)
43 pieces (40 cubes & 3 dice) from Carolus Magnus
1 airplane from Screaming Eagles
2 place holders from Can’t Stop
30 Phoenix pieces
6 blue dinos from Trias
1 round, short piece from Quarto
4 knights from Torres
13 trains from Union Pacific
2 towers from Meridian
3 pieces (2 pieces & the crown) from Rosenkonig

Total of 162 pieces

The closest guess for total number of pieces was from Mr. Johnson. If you’re reading, I need to know your BGG name.

As for naming the 20 games, there were actually 4 people who got them all and many who got 18 or 19. Well done! The first to email me was Chad Krizan, who wins the 15 GG. Since everyone doesn’t read this blog at the same time, or have time to sit down immediately to puzzle out the answer, I’m giving 5 GG to the other three people with the 20 correct game names: Katie Harris, Morgan Dontanville and Kevin O’Brien.
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Games

Sunday I finally got to try Ta Yu with 3 players, one playing the bad guy who tries to thwart the efforts of the other 2. Richard, Chris (my son), and I thoroughly enjoyed the twist that the 3-player variant puts on the game.

We played twice so I got to taste the roles of both the bad guy and the good guy. It’s fun being the bad guy but I also felt the pressure to fight being the kingmaker. If both players are pretty much in an equal position and the piece you choose can harm either one, you must now choose which player to slow down. After the first game, Chris complained of his lack of choices so for the second game we played with one piece in hand, which I like better since you have some choice without being bogged down with TOO many options.

I’d like to get a chance to play the 4-player partnership game but I’m worried that it would be quite slow, though that can be just the thing you’re looking for if you’re in a chatty mood. Just for the record, I haven’t won a game of Ta Yu yet which means, of course, that we’ll just have to keep playing it!
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Until next time, remember: chance favors the prepared mind.

Mary

Ode to the Games Journal

As some of you may have heard by now, The Games Journal has decided to throw in the towel. A sad day.

If you look at some of the later issues, a great number of the articles were submitted by Greg, himself. For the October issue, there was only a single submission: Ethics in Gaming 5.0 by yours truly. Greg wrote to me two weeks ago and told me that he wouldn't be able to publish the journal with only one submission and that he was throwing in the towel.

I suspect the lack of submissions to TGJ is due to the great number of blogs and other private web sites. It used to be easier to send an article to someone else to publish rather than go through the trouble of doing it yourself. This is no longer true.

Still, there is something to be said for having a collection of articles in one place all having been checked by an editor for length and quality. Self-publishing simply means that other people have to wade through everything to find the good stuff; and some of that good stuff could be better with a bit of editing.

Alfred's "best of the blogosphere" posts, along with all of those other blogs that point out good material on the net, such as Techdirt, are doing the "collecting job" that a journal should do. The difference is that, unlike a monthly journal, a blog journal (or "blournal") "publishes" as necessary instead of once a month with a certain number of articles. The other difference is that a blournal doesn't edit the articles it links to.

TGJ, like the Game Cabinet, published hundreds of useful and excellent articles in its time. Among my favorites:

Two summaries of the games industry:
To Boldly Go
A Brief History of Gaming

The tactical art of trading in games, first in a series of articles on game strategy:
Trading

The fine art of teaching games:
Teaching Rules

A look at game systems, first in a series:
Game Systems

Hosting a Games Day, which I refered to before starting my own:
Games Day

Groundrules for gaming in a game group:
Groundrules

Misadventures in Gaming, just one of a long series, the rest of which used to be on the Terminal City Gamers site (are they still on line somewhere?):
Misadventures in Gaming

The story arc in a game, first in a series of game design elements:
Story Arc

Game Design by Wolfgang Kramer:
What Makes a Game

A good overview on dice:
Dice Fest

A survey of board types:
Boards

How games and computers could interact:
Bits and Pieces

You'll note how many of these are precient to the topics we write about here on Gone Gaming. I left out all of the reviews, puzzles, letters, and so on.

So long TGJ.

Greg: what are you going to do next?

Everyone else: on we go.

Redesigning Empire Builder, Part One

As I said last month, I've got a few different topics that I'd like to cover in this column. This one is the final, and last, of the three, following "Don't Get Me Started" and "Views and Reviews". At right you should see the rhyming title "Game Design with Appelcline", and this is where I'm going to talk more coherently about the design of games.

The Empire Builder Series

I like the Empire Builder series of crayon railroad games. Something about their freeform nature, where you start with a blank slate and slowly fill in that canvas, appeals to my right brain and makes me think that I'm really creating something. Beyond that it has a neat puzzle aspect to it, where at any time you're juggling a set of three demand cards, each with three demands, and trying to figure out how to best and most efficiently serve them. Creativity + Puzzles together define some of my favorite game design elements.

As a result the Empire Builder series of games is, perhaps, the only games that I played in college that I still play today. Dune, Dragon Pass, Hacker, and others now largely gather dust, but I play a couple of tabletop games of Empire Builder (or one of the variants) every year, and I play the Iron Dragon computer game with much more frequency than that (albeit with frequent swearing at the slow and dumb AI).

Unfortunately Empire Builder is dated. The original game was released in 1980 and though there have been a lot of neat new maps, events, and terrain types since then there have been very few changes to the basic game. As a result, the game is too long and doesn't make good enough use of its components. It's also too solitaire and it's got some rough corners that any modern developer would probably smooth right out. Unfortunately, Mayfair doesn't seem too inclined to change the game. And who can blame them? Based on the continual flow of Empire Builder variants I have to imagine that the games remain good sellers, and that's something that you don't mess with.

But they should. The games are enjoyable enough that they deserve an even wider audience than they have right now. So, in this column and the next I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and offer up how I'd redesign Empire Builder if I had the chance.

I'm working on the assumption that any new version of the game would have to keep the base ideals of the original game: building track by drawing on a board with crayons, then moving goods along those tracks in trains in order to meet randomly drawn demand cards. However, even with those tight constraints I think there's a lot of room for change and improvement.

Redesigning the Cards

In recent years Mayfair has slowly been rereleasing their Empire Builder games, and as they have they've been producing nicer looking boards, boxes with prettier covers, and even some new money. What they've largely missed, however, is a redesign of the demand cards.

Demand cards tell you what to do in Empire Builder. Each one lists three different cities, each of which wants a different good. You pick one of those goods to deliver to one of those cities and then you receive a payout.

This might have all worked somewhat well in the original Empire Builder, which was set in the United States, but as the series expanded to different locations it start centering games on maps that people were less familiar with. As a result you now had to constantly look up where each item was available at and then where both those source cities and the destination cities were located on the map. Mayfair tried to make this easy by including reference charts listing where everything was, but it meant that there was always a lot of looking up of locations whenever you got a new demand card.

If there's one thing that The Settlers of Catan taught us, it's that things don't have to be this way. You can incorporate a lot of game information on the cards and other components that you include in a game. And, I think this is the place to really start redesigning Empire Builder.

Nearby I've mocked up a card from Australian Rails (above right) and then I've offered a simple variant (left) of it which simply lists the map grid location of the destination city. With a day or two's work you could probably revamp all the existing cards without changing their layout, and you'd end up with a game that had, perhaps, 20% more usability.

Of course this is in no way the be-all or end-all. Better would be to list all the places where your goods could come from as well. So I tried this out in the new card design that you can see nearby (right). It indeed has all of the information: where a good comes from as well as the grid locations for both those sources and the destinations.

I have no doubt that this card does the job. However, it also loses a lot of the simple elegance of the original design, and there's no good focus on the two most important factors: goods and destination. Instead everything mashes together into a singular whole.

This card design stuff can be tough.

I'm happier with my second try at the same, left, which I think makes the information easier to quickly assess. I'm sure it could be better, but I'm putting together a quick sample rather than actually doing a graphic design. The main point is that all the information is in one place, rather than requiring flipping through a booklet or memorizing a bunch of information. I think Settlers has really shown the power of this type of design.

I think another thing that Settlers taught us, which I wasn't able to mock up here, is the value of graphical information in place of simple text. In my ideal card design for Empire Builder each demand would be graphically depicted via a map. You'd see the overall area covered by the game, with source cities marked in red and the destination city marked in green. Maybe there'd even be lines between these points listing the minimal costs for getting from one place to the other, to make it easier for you to assess which source you wanted to go to.

The problem with this final possibility is that the teeny little cards, with three demands each, can't really accomodate it. You'd either need larger cards or, more rationally, you'd need to put a single demand on a card rather than three, and that delves further into upsetting the base design of Empire Builder than I want to this week.

Conclusion

If I've offered one insight into game design this week, I hope it's that graphic design is very important. I'm fairly convinced that The Settlers of Catan has succeeded as one of the best-selling Games of Ours not just because of its gameplay, but also because of its very good and utilitarian graphic design sense. Empire Builder shows how non-utilitarian component design often was just one gaming generation before Catan, but also how there's simple room for improvement.

Next time I'm going to finish up my survey of Empire Builder by talking about some of the other design that could be overhauled to create a richer, and generally improved, twenty-first century game.

PS: Game Store Confidential should be back in this space next Monday.

Something I'm going to go ahead and TRY

Sorry to disappoint many IF they figured that this 'involved' Psychiatry in any form or manner, but WHAT I 'meant' is that I'm going to 'see' about doing some a GINORMOUS 'favor'. One of my favorite series of games are '4' done upon some ''American Revolutionary War'' Battles by 'Oldenberg Grenadiers' and of which there were to have been around '6' MORE! I've included a 'clipping' as you can view here, that HAS these listed upon this. You'll need to 'click' on it to enlarge that to look closely upon the other 'titles' that were to have been. There are even some ''Campaign'' games of which were to 'cost' a bit more, but I'd bet that they'd have been well worth what little 'Extra' this might have entailed. Considering the quality of the 'ones' that WERE produced and distributed, then I see the standards would have been kept up too.

Now, what I am 'proposing' to DO is to ''re-issue'' these on my very OWN with some upgrades of my 'own' devising as well, for those already out. I'm hoping to ''flush out'' these folks and FIND out just what happened to the rest of them! Somebody has to have gotten a lot of 'work' done on the 'future' additions to this 'Line' of games in order to be able to present them in many publications with advertisements for such. I don't recall having this particular 'flier' in ANY of the games that I had gotten, while I did obtain mine around 1975 or 1976 and later on. It was only a few years ago that I was even made 'aware' of it from an old magazine that I have and was thumbing through, when it caught my attention. After careful reading upon this, THEN it became evident that I, along with many others, had been missing OUT from the enjoyment of possibly others in this entire 'uncompleted' series! Sure, lots of companies went out on a limb in this regards, while many would complain that I 'may' be diluting the VALUE of the games that 'they' still have by doing thusly. For those of YOU who aren't too familiar with them, then these 'command' Collector's PRICES at around '8'-times or more than what they originally 'cost'! I've had some others that have been able to fetch even ever greater 'ratios' for their price that I had 'paid' for them, like how's about '31'-times for a prime example? But to be 'fair', then I will mention that this particular 'game' that got the highest 'return' did only 'cost' me a mere '$2' when I bought that, while I had it for a couple of years AND it consisted of around '4' Games in a 'Set' or SERIES for them. I knew that I wouldn't ever get around to actually playing any of those and I needed the money instead, at the time. Even now, I'm willing to part with certain ones IF they can get me an indecently 'rewarding' PRICE for that.

Continuing on then, I don't wish to manufacture these 'Games' and THEN 'ask' for an outrageously ridiculous PRICE, in case some are wondering. I also realize that there are many others, since these were first created, that have become readily available and still are. I've got some of them as well and mainly due to them covering additonal 'Battles' that hadn't 'been' done until then. Still, I always liked just HOW these played out with their elegantly easy and simple approaches for this particular 'era' that they covered. When we were able to sit down and actually PLAY a couple of them within the span of one evening's 'sessions', then that displays to ME, just so much the better these are for gaming enjoyment. Sure, we'd have to get used to them at first, but once we did, then we could quickly proceed with the current game and take on another with little difficulty soon thereafter. I won't promise to 'match' their production values on this, since I don't have the 'means' for that, but they won't 'be' some cheap or chintzy appearing 'products' either! If I could keep this around $20~$30 with plenty of ''do it yourself'' on whomever's part, then that'd make it worthwhile for myself and any others that have always wanted to try them out, but couldn't AFFORD to due to their circumstancs. I'm still considering just which 'style' to pursue on these with, such as 'iconic' Soldiers, or maybe just the NATO symbols with spruced up 'Flags' and the like for ease of production. One thing I'd like to avoid is to have these become 'gaudy'(*stunned silence!*) as I've seen in some others that are akin to this period of Historical gaming. Those are all just fine for those who like that sort of 'thing', while I prefer NOT to have them looking like some ''Circus Warfield'' myself, if YOU can 'believe' that! So, if anyone reading this is mildly interested, then let me know and I'll keep you updated upon their 'progress' or whatever. Don't worry, as I intend on 're-doing' almost ALL of the major components and I will be bringing this 'project' onto my own 'blog' so's NOT to get these guys into any 'trouble' that may be resultant from it.

Five Games I Don't Like

Often when I review I choose to talk about games that I like, to help spread the love and bring more gamers into the fold of my favorites. It's a rarity that I specifically pull out a bad game to write a review about--unless it seems to be generating a lot of unwarranted publicity (or unless I've been given a review copy, which pretty much necessitates a review unless it was sent to me cold).

This week, however, I want to change things up a bit, and to talk about a number of the games that I don't like, all of which are considered classics.

Chess

What better place to start than the king of games, what most folks think you're talking about when you say you're playing a "serious" game.

Chess has, I think, been corrupted by its own success.

Back in High School I used to try and play Chess. I'd go by the Chess club at lunch because that's what all the nerds did. But after a year or so I gave up the habit, because I never found Chess that enjoyable--it had too wide of a decision tree, and thus required too much thought--and because I decided that the Chess club members were even more socially retarded than I. That's simply a statement that I really have tried Chess, however, not a statement of why I don't like it.

The biggest actual problem with Chess is the huge amount of literature that has been written about it: the exhaustive listings of starting moves, strategems, and counter-strategems. The necessity to have memorized these hundreds or thousands of standard strategies turns Chess into a game of memory rather than strategy.

That we can now program computers to play as well as the top humans says a lot about how staid and automatic this game has become at any truly competitive level.

Scrabble

Scrabble has much the same problem. It can be perfectly enjoyable at a non-competitive level where players drop down words with their spouses, friends, or loved ones, and might know that "aa" and "qat" are perfectly acceptable words, but not a lot more.

Where Scrabble falls apart, however, is again at the competitive level. It was Word Freak which showed me how truly degenerate Scrabble play is among professionals, with its descriptions of obsessive and continuous memorization of 3-, 4-, and even 5-letter words. Like Chess, Scrabble loses its strategy at higher levels of play and instead becomes a game of memory.

Bridge

Bridge is a fine, though not particularly notable, trick-taking game. The bidding system for Bridge is what really stinks.

I played Bridge for a while when courting my then wife-to-be, and in the process I studied crib sheets carefully. I learned what bids to make with how many points and started to eke out the meanings of what my partner might mean when she was making a bid herself.

I eventually came to the realization that there was no real game to the bidding of Bridge, it was simply the act of learning a secret code--a foreign language--and then applying that linguistic knowledge. And I decided that if I wanted a foreign language in my gaming I'd do better to work on a more useful one, for example by playing A Game of Thrones entirely in Spanish:

"You deseo ... uh ... ser un amigo con blanco. Lobos blancos? Blanco y verde solamente amigos. Muerto ... muertamos rojo. Uh ... Rojo no juega. El pollo rojo esta en la casa loca, mis amigos."

Texas Hold 'em

Before I got involved in European games, I used to have a Poker night every week. It was always Dealer's Choice play, and inevitably someone would offer up one of the Texas Hold 'em variants to play. Usually these games just confounded me, because I didn't understand where the game was.

More recently I was given a review copy of a Texas Hold 'em computer game, and I've now spent several hours trying it out. And I've come to the conclusion that this is scarcely a game worth playing.

Clearly Texas Hold 'em is intended to be a game of almost pure bluff. You're given two cards, and then you can combine those with a set of (eventually) five face-up cards to form the best five-card hand you can. You never get to see anyone else's cards until the very end, and so you have to make your assessment of other peoples' strengths solely based on their bids (and their past behavior).

However, as a game of pure bluff, this is one of the more boring that I've seen. In a 10-player game, you can usually expect 6-9 players to fold before any cards are flipped face-up. The vast majority of games end with the penultimate person folding. For the most part, you don't want to stay in unless you have a pocket pair or a nice high matched set in your hidden cards. So round after round after round it's nothing but "fold", "fold", "fold", "call", "fold", "fold". I think it speaks a lot for how broken this game is that in most games two players are forced to bid--else the folding which takes up the vast majority of gameplay would take up just about all of it.

The forced bids (which increase in value throughout the game) also seem to largely break endgame play where the last few players have to bid every round and the amounts are so high that victory swings back and forth based largely on the draw of the cards.

The problem with Texas Hold 'em is, pretty clearly, that it was developed for TV play. The one "exciting" part of the game is when a couple of players are "all in" and then you slowly reveal the common cards one at a time to see who the actual winner is. Of course, this is a probabilistically random event, with no strategy at all because you've already made your bidding decisions.

On TV these showdowns can look great, and conversely you don't have to sit through hours of people folding. In real life you do, marking Texas Hold 'em as a failure in my book despite its immense popularity.

Puerto Rico

At last we come to one of These Games of Ours. To be honest, I do like Puerto Rico. I think it's an entirely clever and fun game and I often enjoy playing it with some of my best friends.

What I don't like, however, is many of the people who play Puerto Rico. As Puerto Rico has gained renown as one of the most strategic and thoughtful games of the German Invasion, it's begun to suffer from Chess Syndrome, with pre-programmed moves and "optimal" strategies slowly sucking the life out of the game.

Take a moment and listen to the conversation at one of the nearby Puerto Rico tables:

"Well, I would have won if I hadn't been sitting to Jeremy's right, and he kept taking Producer when there was no logical reason for him to do so."

...

"So I took Producer which of course meant that Jamie Sold, then Alexa shipped, which was exactly what I expected because it then let me build on the next turn, though that played into Alexa's hands who had saved up a larger store of money, but if I'd instead built with my then lesser resources, then Jamie would have produced, I would have gotten left with no coffee and Alexa would have shipped anyway, and shipping wasn't an option for me either because then Jamie would still have sold and Alexa would have refused to produce at all ..."

...

"No, no, if he took builder then you have to grab a quarry with settler. Anything else is a subpar move."

There's nothing like a bit of I-know-better-than-you-itis to destroy the fun factor of a game.

(Jeremy Avery expanded on this same topic a while ago in The Jedi of Puerto Rico, though I only found that article after I drafted the above. Ironically my use of the name "Jeremy" in one of my examples had nothing to do with his scribing.)

Final Notes

Perhaps listing this as five games I don't like was a bit strong. I actually like Scrabble and Puerto Rico, two of the games on the list, and if I didn't find it as boring as staring at a blank wall, I'd think the gameplay of Chess was OK.

However each of the five games I list this week, from Chess to Puerto Rico, has what I'd call meta-problems: issues outside the central focus of the game which can still destroy any fun that the game can offer.

Published moves, rote memorization of words, secret codes, made for TV play, and obnoxious know-it-alls, while somewhat beyond the internal scope of these games, still can contribute to their fun (or lack thereof) in the real world.

Christmas in October?

Or a Cruel Joke Perpetrated by the Game Gods?

Into the game store I flew like a flash,
Tore open the doors and looked at the stash.
The light of the neon shown with a glow,
illuminating the games on the shelf there below.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a fabulous game and eight tiny reindeer.

On Saturday morning my kids were invited to a 7-year-old's birthday party set for that afternoon. I got tagged to run into town to pick up a birthday present. Since my wife had reluctantly given me the checkbook to buy a present, I thought I would press my luck and stop by the game store to pick up Alexander the Great. Since the game store is on the way to WalMart I stopped there first.

As I got out of my car and approached the game store I had trouble restraining myself. I could see my breath in the early morning air. A couple puddles were frozen over in the parking lot. Not a breath of wind to be felt. Ahhhhhhh, my favorite time of year, not too hot, not too cold. I had a premonition there was something magical in the air.

I got into the store and what did I see? Not eight tiny reindeer, but something nearly as thrilling... Age of Steam.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! SCORE!!!! High fives all around!! CHRISTMAS IN OCTOBER! Alexander was quickly forgotten and I excitedly picked up the only copy of Age of Steam.

I first decided to buy Age of Steam about 10 minutes after it went out of print 2 years ago. It was widely available from on-line stores one day, and, without warning, sold out the next. As soon as it sold out there were promises of a reprint to be available in October 2004, possibly even available by GenCon 2004. It has been a long wait.

After fondling and paying for my latest game I rushed to WalMart, bought some cheap, plastic crap that a seven year-old would like, and rushed home to play with my new toy. I devoured the rules, but I still wasn't comfortable enough with the game to play on Saturday afternoon.

That afternoon we played Rheinlander and Louis XIV after the birthday party, I then pressured everyone at the birthday party to reconvene the next day for a game of Age of Steam.

So, with a better grasp of the rules, three of us got together on Sunday afternoon for our first game of AoS.

Unfortunately, I was the only person who had been anticipating the re-release of this game.

It went over like a fart on a crowded bus.

The one player who is always confused when we first play a game, was still confused, but also bored because I had to refer to the rule book often, generally put-off with my enthusiasm for the game, and sympathetic to the third player who was convinced that the game was broken after I explained how expenses were calculated.

Despite everything, we played a couple rounds. The game was going all right, but we realized all of us had made significant strategic mistakes and mutually agreed to start again. I thought a restart might soften some of the negative feelings toward the game, and bring an air of positivity to the room.

Big mistake.

We should have never restarted. On try 2 there was only one route that was available that could score points on the first round. That route was a good one, though. All the goods could be transported back and forth between both cities. The first two players tied up the available routes between those two cities and left the third guy with nothing.

There were, literally, no goods that could be transported after that. Not even if you were to build a new city. The three of us pored over the board for several minutes looking for a route that could be utilized on the first turn, and there was none, nothing, zip, nada. There wasn't even a route that could be utilized if we let him build 4 rails instead of the 3 he was entitled to.

But forget the first round. Even if you wrote off the first round and set yourself up to transport goods in the second round, you could, at most, before goods were replenished at the end of the first turn, transport 1 good, 1 space during the second round, even with two engines.

Three of us pored over the map looking for any possibility, there were none, nothing, zip, nada.

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. I mean maaaaaaaaaaaaan. What are the odds of that happening? That was the final straw. The game was deemed "broken" and everyone found an excuse to leave.

Had I been the third player everything would have still been okay. I would have continued to play, looking for an advantage later in the game. But with feelings running high that the expense phase was broken, the game didn't stand a chance. Looking back, I should have just volunteered to go last. As it was, I was so disappointed that I wasn't thinking clearly.

I may have to seek opponents from outside of the state if I am to ever play Age of Steam again. And, make no mistake, I will play it again.

I was very impressed with the system. The rules were better organized than other Martin Wallace designs, and the game felt well developed to me. After one, partial game, I think the economic system has been greatly improved, yet simplified over other 18xx Railroad games. The player actions seemed a little hokey, but they seemed to be well developed, and appropriate to the goals of the game.

Mark my words, in this The Year of Our Lord 2005, the Seventh Day of October, in the Early A.M Hours Alaska Time. I will fly to Seattle before I will wait another two years to play Age of Steam. I will fly to Botswana to play another game of AoS if I have to.

I was very intrigued. It may be a "10".

Tichu (Passing strategy)

What cards to pass is an important part of Tichu strategy. When deciding what to pass, there are several goals that should weigh on one's decision. These are:

1)Enabling one of the two players in your partnership to be able to call Tichu with a strong chance of making it, if possible.

2)Eliminating hard to play cards (losers) from your hand, especially, low single cards.

3)Not passing the same card to a given opponent as your opponent passed them, setting them up with at least a double, and possibly turning a double into a bomb.

For goal number one, you should determine whether your hand is probably going to be strong enough to call Tichu. If it is, then you probably do not want to pass a winner (Ace, Dragon or Phoenix) to your partner. Instead, a good rule is to pass a relatively high single card, getting it out of your hand. This pass doesn't hurt your partner, and possibly gives them a high double or triple to use as a winner. If you need to pass your partner a lower single, it is justified in this case, as you are going to call Tichu. Your hope here is that your partner will help you out, and increase your chance to make a Tichu by passing you an Ace, Dragon, or Phoenix. However, if your hand is so overpowered that you could pass one of those winners to your partner and still have a very high chance of making Tichu, you should do it, in hopes that it helps them to go out 1-2 with you.

If your hand is not strong enough to call Tichu, then you will probably want to pass a winner to your partner, hoping to enable them to call.

For goal number two, you are passing two low single cards to your opponents in most cases. I should note that if you have a straight which has a couple extra duplicate cards in it, then those cards should be considered singles. For example, 8776554 should be considered and 87654 straight, and an extra 7 and 5 singles. The 7 and 5 would be good cards to pass to your opponents. In a case where you have only one or zero low singles, but you have a low pair, especially a very low pair like 2s or 3s, you should pass the low pair, one card to each opponent. One benefit of this is that it is not possible for you to have handed your opponents a 4 of a kind bomb.

For goal number three, you should develop a passing scheme with your partner. An example could be 'pass odd, low, left'. This would indicate that one is trying to pass an odd card left and an even card right, or barring that, the lower card left and the higher card right. If both players on a team do this, it minimizes the chance that you will each pass one of your opponents the same card. For example, if I am passing a 2 and a 3, and my partner is passing a 2 and a 3, we each pass our 3s left (to different players), and our 2s right to different players, so each opponent gets a 2 and a 3 from us. Without this rule, there is a 50% chance that we would have just passes one opponent a pair of 2s, and the other a pair of 3s, which is far worse for us, as those cards take less time to get out of their hands, and might create a bomb.

If one is passing two odd cards or two even cards, they pass the lower one left and the higher one right. While this isn't perfect, it is a greatly reduced chance of passing a duplicate card. Obviously, any system will work, as long as you agree to it with your partner ahead of time.

A couple notes on passing certain cards:
If you have the phoenix, and you aren't going to call Tichu, you should almost certainly pass it to your partner unless it is critical for something like a long straight for you, like 345P789, where without the phoenix you are left with a number of singles. This is because there is a significant chance it will enable your partner to make a straight out of some singles or to extend a straight, and can be a huge help in their calling Tichu.

If you pass the dog to your partner, it had better be because you are going to call Tichu. If you pass the dog to your partner, you may have just wrecked their Tichu. If you don't call one yourself, it could end up costing you 100 points. Of course, if after receiving the pass, your hand is wrecked and you cant make it, don't call it and lose another 100 points, but if your hand is such that the Tichu would be shaky unless the pass is good for you, you probably shouldn't pass your partner the dog. Instead, you might pass them a winner, hope they call Tichu, and help them by playing the dog yourself.

I don't recommend passing the Dog to your opponents, unless there is a player on their team that is just calling Tichu almost every hand. In that case, they could be using a plan of having the other player always pass that player their best card, to enable Tichu. Here, you could give the dog to the constant Tichu caller. Another exception, of course, is if an opponent has called Grand Tichu, or for some reason called Tichu before the pass. Here, you would always want to pass the dog to that player, since it is the lowest loser of all, and they must waste a lead getting rid of it.

The 1 is a card that you probably have no need to pass. Definitely don't pass it to your opponents, and there is probably no need to give it to your partner. One except ion is if someone has called Grand Tichu. Here, if you have the 1, get it to the player before the Grand Tichu caller, and have them play it and wish for an Ace. This 'wastes' an ace from the Grand Tichu caller's hand.

Name and Number Contest

I'm not sure where this idea came from but I hope we can have a little fun with it. This contest offers the chance for 30 GG, 15 for each half of the contest. The jar in the pictures contain pieces from 20 different games, some have just one piece represented, others have several pieces. Your mission, should you decide to take it, is:

1) to name as many of the games represented as you can. This answer should be emailed to me at: sodakladygamer@yahoo.com.

2) to guess how many pieces are in the jar (which is about 1 1/2 cups in size). This answer can be posted right here on the blog.





~~~~~~~~
Games

Call me crazy if you'd like, but my husband and I really enjoy Fjords but I wondered what would happen if there were more tiles so you play only one round rather than 3. To this end, I bought a second copy and, after marking the tiles so they could be separated out again, we gave this a try. We used 6 farmhouses and all of the field markers.

The game started quite normally but after I'd placed 4 houses, there were still half the tiles to play which meant I would have to very selective with the last 2. I was worried that we would be forced to create an island before we'd gone through most of the tiles since there are many more water tiles, but that didn't happen. In fact, we ended the game with EVERY tile placed! The final result was very close with Richard beating me by 4 points.

We liked this variation which seems to force you to think more carefully about when and where you place your farmhouses and makes the placing of the field markers less obvious since there are several places which demand immediate attention. I'm considering using only 5 farmhouses as a way to make it even tougher.

We only played once but I can see this as a nice change from the normal play. I would also like to try playing with 3 players just to see if that would work. Unfortunately, that means begging or threatening to get my daughter to play with us! I think 3-player would offer a totally different strategy when placing farmhouses since there are 2 interlopers you have to fend off.
~~~~~~~
Until next time, Clubs are trump.

Mary

Happy New Year

The Jewish holidays are upon us. Starting Monday night and going until Wednesday night is Rosh Hashana (the new year). That's why I'm posting this blog entry early.

Next week we have Yom Kippur, Wed night to Thursday night. After that, Monday night to Tuesday night is the "first night" of Sukkot (Tabernacles to you Latin speakers; outside of Israel, the "first night" is two nights instead of one, and therefore goes until Wed night) and the following Monday night to Tuesday night is Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah (I won't translate that one for you. Suffice to say, a strange combination of praying for rain and dancing around semi-drunk; again, outside of Israel, two nights.)

The JSGC is hosting a Game Day on Oct 23.

God willing, the day after Simchat Torah, Wed night, Oct 26, I am headed for Dallas, in order to be at BGG.con. While in the U.S., I hope to get a chance to pimp my game. To whom ... I'm not exactly sure. I hope, at least, to get a chance to talk to the publisher currently interested in it. I will have other copies to play at the con and to send to game groups and reviewers who may be interested, in the hopes of generating some combination of critical feedback/good review in order to spur on publication.

Contact me if you want a copy.

I will also be bringing complete sets of the best/most interesting of my Puerto Rico buildings (while I'm making mockups of my game, why not print these at the same time? I asked myself. Why not indeed? I replied.). Contact me if you want a copy.

So, what is it about cons? I've never been to one. The closest I ever came was back in the days when my information about the gaming world came from Dragon magazines. I really wanted to go to Gen Con. I lived in NY, and Gen Con was in Ohio. The only person I knew who could drive and might be interested in going was Gary, otherwise known as "The Prince of Darkness". He said that it wasn't worth it - he calculated the cost of the trip based on how many speeding tickets he could expect to receive every 100 miles.

That didn't stop me from planning what I would do at Gen Con down to the last detail. The Gen Con supplement in the Dragon had a list of every scheduled game session, according to module type, game system, DM, and who knows what else. It must have been 20-30 pages of information in teensy script. I made this huge calendar and went through every single session description looking for the most normal, and therefore the most interesting games, to me. No wierd systems, no "humorous" games - just adventure, thievery, hack-and-slash. Straight AD&D.

The exception was a good game of Cosmic Encounter, which was occasionally scheduled, if I recall correctly. I was always up for that.

I filled out the registration form, making sure every block of time, morning to night, was filled with exactly what I wanted to do and play. I just never mailed it. Sad.

I must have had tons more fun preparing for the con then I ever would have had actually going. How much do we actually experience while something is happening, anyway, compared to the anticipation of it happening? I remember my first wedding; actually, I remember the blur that was my first wedding.

My D&D campaigns were the same. It didn't matter if I was the player or the DM. As the player, I read and re-read the Player's Guide a dozen times, looking for every little rule in the equipment (including making my own), the spells, and the languages that never came into play. The alignments - yeesh. As the DM, every page of the DMG and the MMs: I, II, and the FF. Every potion chart. Every word about weather. Of course, I then went on to design dungeons with an endless series of 30 by 30 rooms and random monsters and treasure. Sure, playing was fun. But think of all the enjoyment I got off-hours.

That must have been why, when the nineties came around, Magic was such a natural fit for me. A game that required preparation. Yes! I never had tons of money to spend, and frankly, I never really cared. I bought maybe a few dozen starters and boosters, traded for a few hundred commons, and inherited a few thousand commons from a friend (all of which I gave away to others to help them start their own collections).

I built and rebuilt decks. I scoured and read every major site on Magic strategy and deck building - The Dojo, MTG-STRATEGY-L, r.g.t-c.m.s, etc... I never had any of the key cards in the major tournament decks, except by some accident (I had a Necro or two, an Armageddon, etc...) I had no desire to go spend more than 10 cents on any card. Never did. Never will. I had no desire to play competitive in the cons. I played with my friends.

We played constructed deck maybe five or six times when we first started, because that was what the rulebook said. Then we began mixing cards together and played draft games, and we never looked back. The building, the preparing, the playing - they are a lot of fun. Beating someone because I have better cards than they do isn't.

Now I have a game group. I read tons of web sites. I buy very few games. Before I play, I read all the rules, try to make everything ready before people come. More preparation.

And preparation for the con. I still don't know what is going to happen, but I scour web sites looking for things to do, people to play with. And I will be missing half of it! I will be staying near the Valley Mall, about 8 miles north of downtown on Willow, so from Friday evening until Saturday evening I will be unable to play. Unless some kind souls want to travel up to the house I'll be staying in, in which case I can play with you there.

And how do I budget my time? Do I plan on playing all Thursday night, possibly missing gaming on Friday, or sleep Thursday night and play on Friday? What about Saturday night/Sunday? Will there be a place for me to drop off in the hotel, since I won't be staying there? What is going to happen? Panic in the streets!

This brings me back to the New Year. The Jewish New Year is one of repentance, and looking forward to doing better in the coming year, kind of like New Year's resolutions times a thousand. From the outside, it looks like Rosh Hashana is one (two) day(s) of preparation for a year of activity, but that is incorrect. We spend thirty days before Rosh Hashana preparing for one/two days of prayer and transformation. That transformation is then supposed to carry us through the year, because afterwards we are supposed to be better people.

So which is it? The preparation? The doing? Both? That kind of tension is what makes life interesting.

Yehuda

Stating the case for ''state of the art''

With some very vivid & descriptive 'ideas' regarding just WHAT would become the ''latest & greatest'' regarding boardgame 'designs', then from the sounds of it, you can easily see technology rearing its head on this. I'm sure that many would envision some sort of 'gaming table' in which you could push some buttons or enter a ''game ID'' and have that become visually & virtually displayed then. Sure, that'd be nice, as long as you don't have power outages, or your data gets 'corrupted', while for some others then they happen to LIKE the 'feel' of their 'bits' as well. I'm in the latter 'group' myself since I've actually been creating my own kinds for various games for close to a couple of decades now and from scratch in most instances. I've got a good gaming 'buddy' that I LOST to computer gaming a good while ago, and he's not coming back! He's always trying to get ME to join him on this, and I did for a while, but I didn't get the same satisfaction as I would with 'boardgames'. Yet, when I press him about turning over his 'collection' to me, of which I would compensate him handsomely for this, then he insists that he just wants to 'keep 'em' for the nostalgia factor- ain't that about a BLIP!?! Hell, at least with my OWN amassing of these, then I did have a 'dream' for creating numerous ''Gaming Libraries'' across the entire WORLD with these, hence my acquiring numerous copies of certain titles that I felt would be most 'popular'. If others would be inspired to do likewise, then maybe we can resurrect the sense of 'community' from our efforts on this?

Then we have the folks that think that there's enough game designs being formulated and released as it is, and they could be correct on this. Still, others lament the next 'Expansion' for the likes of certain games, when they'd just as soon SEE some other 'fresh' creation instead. What can you say? Those people are just milking that for what it's worth and maybe they ARE in some sort of 'rut', in regards to this. So just seek out some other games from another that would interest YOU, and maybe get out of your OWN 'rut' too. My GAWD! They're even remaking ''the Fog'' movie! Maybe to have that take on an even greater 'relevance', then they could have at LEAST gone with reworking of the main title to: ''the SMOG'', as many folks could definitely relate with THAT! What's next: ''Insolvent Soylent Greeners''? To paraphrase the late, great 'one': ''these kids these days have NO 'respect' I tell ya!'' Plenty of people wish to have an original design reprinted with practically the same old 'style' as that, while others look forward to the 'updated' version of such. In most cases, then the subsequent COST factor also increases significantly due mostly to inflation or production of such. I think that with some companies adopting the ''Pre-Order'' doctrines for some of their products, then this may just become the case for the smaller facilities, as then they can count upon those to gear up and get something completed without going broke in the process. The other larger ones can afford to go with what they're currently doing, since they may have many other things that could 'buck up' any flagging sales for the time being.

As another matter to keep in mind, then I recall some criticisms from certain people-they KNOW who they are-about myself and any others 'critiquing' games. Their response was to inform us to design our OWN and have these undergo scrutiny, while I have no problem with such. Yet the whole notion that ''you can't criticize something UNLESS you've done likewise'' is fairly moot, since I don't have to 'be' a Movie producer, Book writer, or Musician to truly appreciate another's efforts, and then decide for myself whether or NOT I'd like something of theirs. Considering that not too many so-called 'reviewers' have the SAME 'credentials' in regards to one another, then just HOW would anyone expect to gain experiences in this? Sure, I readily admit that my 'style' tends to offend plenty of people, who factiously tend to overlook their OWN gaming preferences, I'll mention. I guess they should just 'restrict' themselves to the likes of CHESS or Checkers with their ''Black & White'' connotations for this?
''my EYES! zee 'goggles' zhey do NUTHINK!''

A Whole Lot of Nothing

I've always been ambivalent about rating games. My first instinct was that it was impossible, pointless, and probably not healthy. Why should I assign a number to something as fluid and mysterious as the fun of a game? It would be like bar-coding butterflies, or keeping a tally of how many chews I got out of a piece of gum. After all, the one necessary ingredient of any game is enthusiasm, and enthusiasm feeds on itself; to nail such a thing down would be to stunt its growth and my own. If I played a game, thought it was okay, and assigned it the number 'six', how could I ever get caught up in the fun of playing it again knowing that somewhere in the distance there were supposed to be seven, eights, nines and tens? Conversely, could an assignation of a 'nine' keep me from letting go of something when it was time to move on? Would I owe a debt of loyalty to a cardboard box?

In time, though, I saw that the ratings do have their uses. They are a helpful way to define one's thoughts about gaming, and a very easy way to convey that information to others. I could write a whole essay on the balance between control and chaos or work expended versus points gained, or I could just tell you that Euphrat & Tigris is an eight and Taj Mahal is a nine, and from that you could probably peg what sort of gamer I am and would know whether you would ever want to sit at the same table with me.

So for a while it was something that I enjoyed working at, as it was a way of defining an aesthetic which seemed so clear and yet was not so easy to put into words.

The catch is that there are sucky things in the world, or stuff that I just don't happen to like, and so, regardless of the positivity in the original intention, once I started assigning numbers to games, some stuff had to wind up in the bottom half of the scale. What could I do? If I don't like something, what else can I say except that I don't like it?

Certainly I could just shut up and say nothing, but there was trap set in all of this, which is that little bit of vanity in me which would like people to take my opinions seriously. I mean, anyone can say "I like this and this and this," but the follow-up question that no one wants to hear is "fine, but who gives a rat's ass?" If one wants to be discerning, one needs to know both sides of the coin, the good and the bad, and if one wants to be perceived as discerning, one needs to illustrate that knowledge. After all, if I only tell you which ten games I like, you'll never know whether I like those games because they're good or if I like them because I like everything I play and those are the ten games that I've happened to play.

So, as I said, in addition to the earnest and well-intentioned recommendations of games that I liked, I also gave bad ratings to games that I didn't like. Why not? It all makes sense, in an abstract, mule-headed sort of way.

And yet...I often felt a twinge of guilt when the subject of negativity came up in the various online fora devoted to our hobby. One comment that particularly struck me was something which my blogmate Yehuda said last month: "I think this is a great lesson in life, and one of the hardest. You must always ask yourself before you say anything negative: Why am I speaking? What am I trying to accomplish?" I immediately agreed with this thought, and in fact I felt that I could have written the same words myself, but in hearing this idea from someone else, I was suddenly struck by the question of whether had I ever really taken the advice to heart.

Was what I was doing really serving any purpose? I'm not so sure.

In reading other people's opinions online, one thing has made itself aggressively clear to me: there is no hobby game so inimical to my tastes that there isn't someone out there who loves it to death. Now, inasmuch as the hobby ought to be about having fun, and inasmuch as you believe what I said above about the one necessary ingredient to any game being enthusiasm, am I doing more harm than good by publicly knocking games for no reason? Sure, if someone asked me a direct question about whether I liked something, I would say so if I didn't, because presumably the person only asked me because they knew my tastes, knew that they jibed with their own, and were interested in hearing what I had to say; however, to just leave a judgment of "three out of ten" hanging out in cyberspace might turn someone away from something they could have really enjoyed.

The counter-argument, I suppose, would be that negative comments help steer people away from mediocre or bad stuff, but I've come to the realization that that is not my function in life. If you're a person who feels that he or she can't afford to take a chance on buying a game that he might not like, my advice to you is to not buy anything and to enjoy the games that you already have.

So, the upshot of this whole long, boring thing is that I ditched most of my low ratings on BGG, and toned down the comments that were left behind so that they were more expressive of a point of view rather than a judgment. In short, I think I would rather base the way I use the ratings on a recommendation model rather than on a critical one; the message can be "this is what I like" instead of "this is what I think." Maybe on seeing the absence of that pleasing bell curve some people will doubt whether I am a critical thinker, and so may not take what I say very seriously, but, well, so what?

I must admit, though, that I did keep a couple of lowish ratings for games that I actually own. For some reason I feel like if I shelled out for a game and it's still cluttering up my shelf I have the right to thumb my nose at it a little. I might change my mind about that later, though; maybe I'll make 'six' the cutoff point, or 'seven', or 'eight', or maybe I'll just wipe it all out entirely.

I'll finish this little bit of nothing by saying that all this isn't intended to be a put-down of critics, even ones who are habitually negative. A good critic can be a very useful person; a good critic will let the reader know his frame of reference, his standards, and the logic behind his statements. If you disagree with a good critic, you at least know why and can apply your knowledge of your two different frames of reference to what that person says and get predictable results. An excellent example of a good critic is, of course, Chris Farrell, whose experience, insight and writing skills make for some great reading, if you happen to share his aesthetic. Most importantly, he has a good set of priorities, I think: he just wants something that's interesting, replayable and fun. Me too!

Unfortunately, the mistake I made is in thinking that just because a good critic is a useful thing to have, everyone ought to play the critic. I don't think that's true, or at least I don't think it's true for me. As much as I'd like to, I don't have the time or mental space to do justice to that role. I still want to continue to write critically about games, but only about those for which I can claim to have some enthusiasm; probably my writing is most worthwhile when I'm getting people excited about playing games and not the reverse. That I can make time for.

Help! What's The Best Game to Introduce to a Non-Gaming Co-Worker?

How many times have you seen that on BGG this week? This month?

There seems to be a lot of talk and plotting amongst boardgamers on the best way to introduce our hobby to others. Game geeks are constantly seeking advice on which games to spring on their friends or coworkers. I have noticed this trend for the 3 or 4 years I have been visiting Boardgamegeek, and occasionally in the game blogs.

Do other hobbies have this "you'll love it if you only try it" mentality. Sky divers? Possibly. Surfers? Quilters? Scrap Bookers? Horse riding enthusiasts? I doubt it.

Do Dead Heads talk about the best songs to use to introduce the Grateful Dead to their uninitiated friends? Do AC/DC, Garth Brooks, and Dead Clown Posse fans do the same thing?

And spouses. What other hobby has so many enthusiasts concerned about the exact item needed to lure their significant other over to the hobby?

Now, don't get me wrong. It can be quite satisfying to share a hobby with your spouse. Camping, hiking, partying, golf, poetry, gardening, and the like are all hobbies that are frequently enjoyed by a couple. My in-laws enjoy hunting. My parents are rock-hounds (digging for sapphires in particular). Couples that enjoy these hobbies together are often more content than couples who have no mutual hobbies. But do gardeners lose sleep and consult other gardeners over how to best lure their spouse into the magical world of perennials?

Many enthusiasts are eager to share their hobby with others, this is to be expected. However, rarely do they plot to lure in people who would otherwise have no interest. People who volunteer to teach shooting at the local gun club don't want to teach people who were blackmailed to be there. The people who come to learn shooting made the decision on their own and come seeking guidance on their own free will. Teaching willing participants to shoot properly is a rewarding activity for gun enthusiasts.

A fellow who thinks Ronald Reagan is the greatest President, and collects Reagan paraphernalia may be eager to show his collection to his friend. However, when it becomes apparent that the friend isn't interested, most collectors don't seek advice from other collectors as to what one item he needs to add to his collection to really impress his non-collecting friends.

I've been to miniature gaming websites, and miniature collectors/players don't seem to obsess about drawing their friends/spouses into the hobby. Wargamers on BGG sometimes obsess about introducing the hobby to their peers. Wargamers on ConSim World don't. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

What sets boardgame geeks apart? Is it that other hobbies can be enjoyed without a group? Boardgamers need at least one other partner and preferably several to be able to participate in their hobby.

Is it that we tend to have no friends? Are we socially inept?

While those are distinct possibilities, I doubt it is the root of the phenomenon.

While it is true that most hobbies can be enjoyed alone, boardgames are best with a group. That might be where the distinction lies, except for the fact that other gamers, such as bridge and poker enthusiasts, seem to be content to let non-card playing friends remain non-card playing friends.

I just don't know. I wonder, but I don't know.

Would You Like to Play a Game?

What do you do when no one wants or has time to play a game with you? Head for the Internet, of course. There are quite a few games out there, of which I've only tried a few.

My first online experience was when Jody Ludwick invited me to try Cartagena at youplayit.com. Imagine the meeting of minds of the #1 Mom in Indiana and the #1 Mom in South Dakota over a virtual game board. We played and chatted about husbands, kids, food, chores, pets--just 2 friends sitting around with a cup of coffee and our respective four-legged company. Of course, we talked about games, too, and I have Jody to thank for several games in my collection including El Grande. We then tried Lost Cities at flexgames.com, which also has a nice presentation of Schotten-Totten. Both of these sites have very nice interfaces and I recommend them for someone looking to pass some time in light gaming.

I was shown around Brettspielwelt by Gerald Cameron, who offered to teach me Princes of Florence. BSW is a scary place when you first arrive mainly because it's so big, it's in German and you don't know anyone. A quote from a Gene Wilder movie, The Frisco Kid, comes to mind: "Find thyself a teacher" and I had found an excellent one. Gerald showed me how to get BSW to talk to me in English, some shortcut keys, and introduced me to some people with whom he plays regularly. If you ask around on BGG, I'm sure you'll find someone more than willing to introduce you to the wonders of BSW.

When I showed interest in playing Tigris and Euphrates, Richard Fawkes volunteered. He enlisted two other Geeks, Chester Ogborn and my BSW friend, Gerald, and started a game on BGG to teach me the intricacies of T & E--we've been playing together ever since. The interface for T & E is excellent and you can even set it up to play by yourself if you just want to practice or get the feel for it. As a warning, I must tell you that there is one small omission in the rules--you can not remove a Leader from the board. Don't let that stop you from giving it a try. If you've never played, all you need do is mention that you'd like to learn and teachers will answer.

I've played a couple of games of Puerto Rico at puertoricogame.net and while the interface is a good one, I did have one minor problem with it, though it may have been my browser: the mouse-over for buildings which explains their benefits would only show part of the explanation such as "gives you an extra VP for..." If you're unfamiliar with the game, keep a list handy.

Ludagora.net has several popular games of which I've played Through the Desert, Vinci and Medina. The first two are very nicely done with great graphics and useful mouse-overs everywhere in English. My first, and only, game of Medina is still ongoing and has been a pain in the (insert body part of your choice). The problem comes when you can no longer place a castle piece since it doesn't automatically discard them. There is a pop-up that you activate (mind you, this game is all in French) which gives you a place to vote to discard that type of piece. But ALL the players must vote and if you're playing with strangers who don't speak very good English and are unfamiliar with the game and/or who don't show up unless it's their turn, the game is stuck.

Lately, I've been playing a lot of Torres at boiteajeux.net. A great interface though the numbers can be hard to read on the pieces and blocks, especially the 5 and 6. When setting up the game, you can choose between the three variations for the Action Cards: draw one from a single pile, draw 3-choose 1 from your own set, or all cards in hand. The site, for now, is all in French so put Babel Fish on another tab and give it a shot. Boiteajeux.net offers several other games as well including Alhambra, DVONN and GIPF.

And lastly, for now anyway, is Wallenstein which can be found at spielbyweb.com. This is a complicated game with a lot of information to display and I think they've managed it very well. Alas, the virtual dice tower is just as arbitrary as the real thing but that's part of its charm. Hoity Toity and Bus can also be found on this site.

These sites, except for BSW and flexgames, are Play By E-Mail so you can take your time to decide a move, fit a move into your lunch hour or during a commercial break, or in the middle of the night when you have insomnia. How great is that?

Now stop complaining and get out there and play a game.
~~~~~~~~

Until next time, play with your mouse.
Mary

Encounter 4/9

Encounter

By Yehuda Berlinger. Copyright 2005, Yehuda Berlinger. All rights reserved.

(Chapter 3 is here.)

Chapter 4: Mind

"Rabbi Nachman of Bretzlov told the following story: Once there was a King who had everything he wanted, including a good son for a prince. The prince was about to be a man. Soon he would be married. The future of the kingdom seemed assured. And then, one day, the prince took off all of his clothes, crawled under the table, and began to crow like a rooster."

Sarah shivered in her bed, her head fuzzed like her NetMind. Sweating, she reached for her bedside table, knocking a Snickers bar to the floor and upsetting the half glass of tepid water for which she was reaching. She wi'd the table's halogen light to a dim diffuseness. The water glowed black on the edges of the table as it seeped over.

Mom?, she sent.

What do you need, dear? I’ll send David up.

Briefcase swaying with the rhythm of her long legs, Sarah briskly walked the hallway with her usual, purposeful stride. Behind her, Sarah and Mitchell followed side by side. Beneath a fresco of peeling white paint, yellowed in the timid hall lights, Sarah walked hastily, glancing furtively at Mitchell, whose eyes casually took in both the cracked walls around the door frames and the alternating light and shadow on the back of the figure before them.

"For days, for weeks, for months, the prince would do nothing but crawl around under the table, without any clothes, eating scraps off the floor, and crowing like a rooster. The king didn’t know what to do. He brought in all the great advisers, scientists, philosophers, whomever he could think of, to help cure his son. He offered a great reward to anyone who could solve the problem. Nothing helped. The prince continued to act like a rooster."

Moments later, a hesitant knock, and her brother appeared in the dim light by the doorway. Her brother, two years younger than her, was short and sandy-haired, with a speckled, convivial face. He was holding a tan towel and full glass of water. Refracting his navy shirt in the faint light, the water looked like a glowing cobalt tube of energy.

Sarah's wi winked and the door slid open while they were still ten feet away. They entered a short hall which opened on the left into a kitchen and then on the right into a large living room. The floors of the apartment were scraped up old-style hardwood and the furniture covered in old faded and starched fabric of an indeterminate color and yellowed plastic. The cobwebbed black light fixtures were just bright enough to read by. A heady air of pizza, humid metal, and shampoo permeated the room.

There was a table in the middle of the living room, and a tall thin unshaven man with a kippah and a slightly shorter woman with a blue kerchief laced with gold were sharing a beer. They were resting their hands on the head of a pretty young girl between them who appeared to be asleep, and talking over her head.

Isn't that uncomfortable for her? Mitchell messaged.

That's Avital, their daughter. She's asleep, so I guess she doesn't mind, Sarah messaged back.

"One day a little Jew was passing through the town and heard the story of the prince. He went to the palace and presented himself before the king. 'I can cure your son, but you must let me do it in my own way and promise not to interfere' said the little Jew. Everyone looked at him and laughed. This little Jew thinks he can cure the prince, when all the great advisers, scientists, and philosophers couldn't? But the king was desperate, and was willing to let the little Jew try. 'After all, what can it hurt?' the king thought. The king promised the little Jew a great reward if he succeeded."

David's smile faltered a little when he saw her damp forehead. "Hey, how are you feeling?" he asked.

"Don't you start. You sound like Mom," Sarah answered, raising her arm towards the glass in David's hand.

"Heh. Oh, here," he said, handing the glass to her. Held in her hand, the water was once again clear liquid. It was cool and felt like honey to her hot throat. She placed the half full glass on the bedside table, avoiding the black puddle.

Others sat around the table; Mitchell already knew their names. The couple was Daniel and Marla. The blond, Swedish looking guy on Daniel's right was Chris. The two brothers on Marla’s right were Charlie and Alan. After the quiet of the hallway, conversation erupted around them like plane engines starting up.

"Hey! Hi! Hi, Sarah. Mitchell! Good to meet you. Same here. You're looking great. How are you feeling in Long Island? Where's uptown Sarah? Yeah, she's starting a class on Hassidut, remember? It goes for nine weeks. Aw, that sucks. Did they get your order right for once? I think they got it right for once. Really! That's a surprise. They never get it right! What are we playing?"

"The little Jew went straight to the room with the prince, took off all of his clothes, went right under the table, and began crowing like a rooster, just like the prince! The prince, who assumed that the little Jew was a rooster like himself, was very happy for company. All day long for a week the prince and the little Jew sat under the table without any clothes, eating scraps from the floor and crowing like roosters."

David pressed the towel onto the black surface of her bedside table, and then threw it onto the floor near the bed, moving it around with his foot. He turned to go, and then back as Sarah said, "Wait. Want to play a game? I can't sleep." She smiled up at him, weakly.

"Sure." David grabbed a chair from her desk and sat down on the opposite side of the bedside table. The black table surface changed under the water glass, displaying a black and white menu of different games. The water now looked like newsprint.

"Bring the TCP board. I don't want to have to lean forward so much." Sarah told him where to find it in the closet. Shutting off the table, David rummaged the game out of the closet. He pulled the board from the box with a clatter of plastic pieces falling onto the table and floor and plugged the board into the side of the table. David's face glowed in the soft white light that illuminated the three thin levels of clear plastic hexagons. He sorted the pegs into colors and gave her half of them.

Sarah apologized about the twists. At the suggestion of Daniel, the group started off with two light games.

While Mitchell played, he leaned back in his chair in the hot apartment. Sarah saw that his face wore that same damn ever-present grin. Mitchell messaged as often as he opened his mouth. While his eyes and attention gave due respect to all players in the group, they generally returned like a compass to his pretty classmate.

Meanwhile, the two Sarahs' eyes met frequently as they shared thoughts that required no NetMinds to convey.

"One morning the prince woke up to see his new friend wearing a pair of pants!

"'What are you doing wearing pants? Roosters don’t wear pants!' he said to his new friend. 'Aren’t you a rooster like me?'

"'Yes, I am a rooster,' answered the little Jew. 'Just because I wear pants doesn't stop me from being a rooster. Besides, it's cold on the floor. So I'm a rooster wearing pants, big deal!'

"The prince thought about this and decided that his new friend was right. He also decided to put on pants. For more days they crowed under the table, eating scraps."

Each of them chose their winning row of colors. David started placing pegs first, sliding a blue peg into a slot on the lower level on his side of the board. Sarah followed with a blue and a red into two of the middle slots on her side. As they played, the colors slid towards the center of the board, crossed, and changed from blues, reds, and yellows to greens, oranges, purples, and browns. The colored pegs dropped out of the ends of the board as new ones entered.

After some discussion, Sarah found herself seated opposite Mitchell for a game of Mugwump, together with Daniel and Marla. The others played something called Tigris and Euphrates, a game pronounced "not for beginners". Mitchell was unfazed at this pronouncement. Sarah was slightly disconcerted to be playing alone with Mitchell without her other self, having expected him to play, if not exclusively, then generally with the other Sarah. She gave him a friendly smile, but sent "Help!" to herself. Down on the other end of the table, Sarah stuck her tongue out at her.

Mitchell played with the graciousness of a prince and the cunning of a fox. His pieces always seemed to be positioned so that he collected what he needed, while giving away useless items in return. Each round he collected his disks, allocated what he needed for battle and kept the rest reserved for energizing. His battle allocations were prudent but sufficient. By the time the Mugwump appeared on the board, he had two thirds of the crystal cards he needed to win, twice as much as anyone else.

"One day the prince woke up in the morning to see his friend eating with a fork!

"'What are you doing eating with a fork? Roosters don’t eat with forks!' he said.

"'I am a rooster eating with a fork, so what?' answered his little friend. 'Just because I am a rooster doesn't mean I can't eat with a fork. And just because I eat with a fork doesn't make me any less of a rooster. I'd just like to see someone try to tell me that!'

"And so the price also began to eat with a fork."

David spun the middle level a third of the way around and added another blue piece. Sarah picked up a yellow and red piece, one in each hand, and moved them towards each other at eye level until they overlapped. They became orange.

"Are you ok?" David asked.

"Now it gets tricky," Sarah warned Mitchell, "since the Muwump always chases the leading player. You're playing very well. Are you sure you haven't played before?"

"Not that I know of. Can I get this microwaved?" he asked, holding out the last limp untouched slice of pizza.

"Sure. I'll get it," said Daniel. He took it and headed for the kitchen.

"Time went on. Eventually, the little Jew got the prince to wear a shirt, sit in a chair, and so on, until he was acting like a prince again. The king was overjoyed and paid the little Jew a handsome reward, for the prince was cured."

Sarah closed her eyes, and opened them again.

"Who am I, David?" she asked.

David's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean?"

"Thank god for the microwave," Mitchell remarked, smiling.

Avital raised her head, and recited:

We thank thee happy microwave
That speeds us on to early grave
By radiating vegetables
And other fine comestibles

And went back to sleep.

"That's part of a poem Avital wrote last year for school," said Marla, her hand lazily stroking Avital's straight brown hair. "You can Google the rest. We don't know whether to be proud of her or to drop her off somewhere in the Amazon rainforest to finish out her childhood."

"Marla doesn't know," added Daniel, returning with the pizza. "I voted for the woods ages ago." Eyes still closed, Avital's hand swung out, swatting her father.

"But was the prince really cured?

"The prince was acting like a prince, but he still thought he was a rooster. If you act like a prince, talk like a prince, and eat like a prince, does this make you a prince? What you do on the outside is good enough to fool everyone else, but can you fool yourself? Who are you, really?"

"... Never mind." Sarah paused looking at her yellow piece. After a moment, she spun the top board 180 degrees, slid the red piece into the top level, and said, "I've won." She lay back down on the bed.

"Let me see," David said. He uncovered her winning row and quickly found the corresponding colors on the board. "Hey, good game."

But Sarah was already asleep.

Keeping one step away from the Mugwump at all times, Mitchell won easily three turns later.

The 'issue' WITH ''Re-issues''

They're beginning to 'crop up' with much greater frequency, or so it 'seems' like this will become the FAD for many company's considerations. Sure, lots of them ought to get this 'treatment', while for many folks, then it will usually NOT become the 'one' of which they'd like. For myself, then it was Avalon Hill that tended to go whole-hog on their acquisitions from other GAME companies, when they 'gobbled' them up. Now, they didn't 'do' this with every 'product' from the many 'lines' of which that they could have, such as 'Battleline's' ''Insurgency'', ''Armor Supremacy'', ''Custer's Last Stand'', ''Objective: Atlanta'', ''Seven Days Battle'', ''Shenandoah'', ''Viva Espana!'', and some of their 'Rules Sets' as well. It's not like they already HAD anything produced on their OWN, based upon any of these mentioned, while it is too bad that they couldn't find the time & gumption for almost all of them. Then again, that has allowed plenty of others to fill in the gaps on these 'topics' as well, since I do believe that 'Decision Games' produced their own version of the ''Seven Days Campaign'' akin to their reissue of the ''Blue & Gray'' QUAD games, and even some others for that in a bunch of issues of 'S&T', when they were covering this. There have been several additional 'remakes' from a few relatively NEW Companies as well, as I've seen those over the years, or should I 'say' decades! I can think of even a ''Custer'' game being released here shortly and that looks to be very decent for it's subject matter, while many would believe it to be a 'lost cause' sort of background material. I happen to be a huge(and getting 'huger' in girth) FAN of the 'Cavalry & Injuns' types of games and even when we didn't have enough of that, then we'd even create some of our OWN! It would involve some 'Campaigns' using the Western portion of the ''War between the States'' gamemap, and allocating 'forces' around various locations on it. Then we would 'Strategically' move our Groups about, and when they encountered one another, we'd find and use an appropriate 'Battlemap' of some game's, and set up our 'Combattling' Units where they ought to 'be'. Since we only had the game counters from the 'Battleline' game of ''Custer's Last Stand'', or actually '2' complete sets of that, then we had to limit ourselves with just those. Yes, there were a few others out at the time and even somewhat later AFTER we had been getting into this, but they didn't mesh well with what we liked to become 'involved' in, with regards to our whimsy.

For those wishing to delve futher into the matter regarding 'rights' to publish something or another, then Good Luck! I know that it was mentioned at one time, about those for a certain game, of which it could be 'obtained' for the paltry sum of around $10,000, yet I wouldn't believe this until I actually saw the 'contract' concerning that. Still, many an owner of the original games under serious considerations feel somewhat justly, that theirs would somehow become 'devalued' with re-releases of them. Then there are the folks who just HAVE to 'have' the very first 'version' of one, for its 'collectibility' factor no doubt, and I'm not really that type, but if I can then I would get me one, and I have on several 'accounts'. But for the most part then I just 'lucked out' on these since I might have another later edition of which I happen to like better for the more obvious reasons on this. While even with the later & greater looking products, then it is just nice to know that having the ''one that begat the others'' has that certain desirability and will garner envious appeals from others. A very good example of this has to do with the original series of the ''Star Trek'' T V show and their 'Concordance' for that. Some of you might recall this with its slick front cover and the multitude of information minutae for the episodes of the '3' seasons contained within this. But what you probably didn't know until NOW, is that there was an earlier version of that and of which I happen to have a copy of IT! Mine 'only' contains & covers the very first '2' Seasons of the series, and is very plain looking with just Black & White typeface & drawings of the contents. I took this one time to a devout 'Trek' shop in the Tacoma area to get an appraisal from the owner of that establishment, and the look on his face was...''priceless''! He'd never seen or even heard of this particular 'one' that I had, and of course he wanted to 'buy' it from me at the time, but I said NO way! I'll bet that he's been trying to 'find' one ever since and this was like 7 or 8 years ago! They may not be too RARE, but they're most likely 'very' and I've never seen another just like this one, although the later version can be found much more easily. Yep, I'm fully admitting being a ''Trek'r'', while I'm NOT the 'only' one and I could 'name names', but I won't.

In relation to that as well, then I also have a copy of ''Lou Zocchi's'' Rules Set for the ''Star Fleet Battle Manual'' and then he lost the 'publishing rights' to another, of which 'Task Force Games' managed to get that. They made quite the pile'O'money off`n that, while yet another company might even be doing thusly even today. I even recall ole 'Lou' being the first to offer some very nicely detailed MINIS for the game, with some of these being White plastic, Clear plastic, and even ''Glow in the DARK'' plastics! For any 'die-hard' fan of whatever, then they don't care WHO happens to produce this sort of stuff, just as long as they can still get their 'fix' on the most recent product of it. I don't know if any of the ''Up Front'' crowd got the chance to actually 'see' the expansions that have just become available for that, but I did! It was even ON the BGG site and is where I got to view those, although I can't even recall their exact 'names' for them, but I did notice that one covered the Polish, and another was on the SS forces, and maybe '2' more, but I forget their exact details, so get busy and 'find' them yourselves since I've never 'cared' for this myself. Hey! I did discover one of these and it is called ''The Waffen SS'' (subtitled 'Fuhrer's Firemen') with the BGG Game ID of 19588-heh heh heh-''veeeeeery interestink!'' Maybe contact the guy who submitted this and then you too can take a gander at the others that I attempted to recollect. They must have been just submitted to the site during the past week, so if it helps anyone in their 'Quest' or search on this, then good for you! It sure was nice of 'moi' to at least have mentioned this for anyone else to partake of those once they've located them, although I couldn't re-locate the others from this one 'source', but maybe someone else will be able to?