Game Store Confidential ~ A kinder, gentler DW

If you're the kind of sick & twisted individual who checks here on Mondays to see who I'm going to try and piss off today... you're out of luck.

That's because I spent so much time gaming lately that I haven't had a free moment to contemplate all the many things that irritate me about games, gamers, the game industry, game design and the selling of games.

So instead, how about a quick overview of my feelings about some of the games and gamers I spent time with lately? Okay, here we go:

Hive ~ A boring and silly looking product. A bunch of wood hexes with stickers that are beneath the quaility of the stickers Steve Jackson games prints for that tiddly-wink insect game. In fact, I'd rather play any Steve Jackson game than Hive. And I like stickers. My thanks to Johhnybravoh for wasting 15 minutes of my life.

Railroad Tycoon ~ A masterpiece. It's distant cousin, Age of Steam, is an unforgiving and anal offshoot that pales in comparison. But, some people just don't have the huevos to play a real game, so Age of Steam does have it's niche. With three noobs and one expert who made a huge error and the host sucking on scotch, this was an easy win for me.

Rhinelander ~ Hmmm. I think we played this wrong. Other than that though I can see how this game sucks even if played correctly. I won by eventually ruling the universe.

Formula Motor Racing ~ I love this game. It has little plastic race cars. This is not a game to get all wordy about. If you think this game sucks then you are really, really stuck-up and snooty. That RK guy who designs a lot of games designed this one. But I think he just kind of altered a similar game from the 60's or something.

Liars Dice ~ What can I say? Anyone who doesn't enjoy this game is not worth gaming with. Even though I never seem to win I get great pleasure out of lying.

Wizards ~ You know, I used to sell this game in my store. For years and years. I never even looked at it. It was just some dumb card game and I was a.... real gamer! But we played this and I was transported in time back to the winter of 1967 and 1968 when I was stuck on the UK, freezing my keister off in a frigid hovel in South Godstone, playing Oh Hell! with a bunch of English welfare recepients for a penny or two a point. Two things happened that winter... I earned enough money from the Brits to get to Spain... and I developed a passion for trick-taking games. I haven't played a trick-taking game for 25 years and I am definitely going to start again. Great game.

Risk 2210 ~ My thanks to Pugwahn and Ski, two former employees in my old store for coming over and teaching me that not all Risk is bad Risk. Now I understand why this version gets decent marks on BGG. I thouroughly enjoyed playing this even though I didn't win. I despise Risk but I think I'll hunt this down. A nice one.

Bang! ~ Because of my local standing as a Game Guru and the fact that most people I game with are irritated by my running commentary I tend to get shot at by everybody in this game. I was dead before my second turn. That freed me up to walk around the table, as a ghost, making irritating comments about the players who weren't dead. Next time maybe they'll learn.

Lawless ~ I used to like this little card game. It's not as entertaining as it used to be. It needs to leave my collection.

Now I want to comment on Amun-re. When someone brought this out I took one look and suddenly remembered I needed to get home before midnight. I left as the game was being opened. The next day one of the players, Jason... who is often evil and annoying when we game, showed up for the next day's gaming and said he'd never play Amun-re again. He said it was slow, boring beyond belief, nothing more than a Puerto Rico solitaire knock-off that wasn't even as good as Puerto Rico, which he has total contempt for to begin with. I was sort of amazed because evil Jason does like Euro's and he also likes Age of Steam... which leads me to believe that he has even greater emotional issues that are outwardly evident.

What does this all mean? And how am I to reconcile Jason's hate of the game with Joe Gola's tremendous session report on BGG about it? Phew! What a quandry. Thankfully, despite there being cool looking little plastic pyramids in the box, I didn't see any real signs of a game there so it all just adds more evidence to my suspicion that the vast majority of highly ranked Euro's are nothing more than self-induced feelings of superiority by gamers who are not mature enough to deal with randomness, chance, buckets of dice and the shouts of glee and wimpers of defeat in a real game.

Again, I apologize about not being inflammatory this week. I'll try and get back on my game before next Monday.