Merry Christmas!

by Susan Rozmiarek

Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy holiday-of-choice!!!!!

I hope that everyone is enjoying the festivities of the season and time off with their families. I'd like to thank those of you who have been reading my blog this past year. I truly appreciate the kind comments I've received. I hope to continue my digital gaming "scrapbook" into the next year.

As I write this, Christmas morning is winding down after a way-too-early start with kids eager to tear through their presents. Things have quieted down now although the new Zelda video game is playing in the background and there is the constant rattle of Legos. Had you come over to our house last night, you would have found this cozy scene in our living room.

Christmas Eve games by the fire.

That's Ed and our two sons playing Dragonland, a simple roll-and-move set collecting game with a few Knizia twists. We had seen the movie Eragon the day before, so a dragon themed game was a must. The weather was cold and wet, so we got a fire going and enjoyed our game to the accompaniment of Christmas specials on TV and twinkling lights all around us. Do you recognize the scary fellow captured on the TV screen? Later Ed made Christmas cookies which we enjoyed with hot chocolate. All-in-all, it's been a fine and peaceful Christmas.

Meta Comments on Comments

by Ed Rozmiarek

A couple months ago I upgraded our blog software to slow the number of spam comments that I had to deal with. The base MoveableType software was ok but the new "junk" system actually meant I had to handle more spam than the older "blacklist" system we were using. The blacklist filter would completely stop a lot of spam based on a list of banned words. The new junk system just marks spam comments as junk which must be examined. Also, it seemed like even more spam was getting through and was not being marked as junk.

After looking at the plugins for Movable Type, I found the Comment E-mail Filter plugin. This plugin uses a whitelist filter based on the e-mail address of the commenter. This system worked very well after I seeded the whitelist with the addresses of previous commenters. Those people who had previous posted comments would have their new comments posted right away while the spammers still went to the junk folder. In fact, after installing this plugin, no spam comments got through which meant I did not have to remove any spam from the blog.

However, I did have a couple problems with this system. Non spam comments from new commenters would still be marked as "junk" since they were not on the whitelist and there were a large number of spam comments to clean out every now and then. Since there might be good comments buried in the mass of spam, I would have to scan the spam comments looking for the valid ones. Luckily, I think I found them all and I don't think I deleted any good comments.

So, with some free time to tinker with the blog, I went looking for additional spam control help. I found a simple Comment Challenge plugin by the author of the old MT-Blacklist filter. This plugin uses a very simple CAPTCHA challenge with a hidden comment field. This is supposed to stop the spammers since they will not be sending the correct value for the hidden field.

Does it work? So far I would have to say yes. After installing this new challenge plugin we have had no spam comments make it to the "junk" folder and at least one good comment was posted to the blog. This small initial sample appears to be a very positive step. So, a thumbs up from me at this time.

If you have any trouble posting a comment to the blog, please e-mail me and let me know.

And yes, I know about the TypeKey system for commenter registration. I don't want to enable that system since I think that would discourage good comments.

Game Day Report for December 15, 2006

by Susan Rozmiarek

With a lot of people taking their end-of-the-year vacation days, John held two consecutive Friday game days and had a respectable crowd each time. I'm not bothering to write up a full report on the first one as the three games I played I've already written enough about. Well, what the heck. I'll quickly squeeze out another comment or two anyways:

Coloretto: This still remains a popular filler and it is so easy to teach.

Wits & Wagers: A party trivia game is not really my type of game but I don't mind playing it once in a while. It is REALLY not Ed's type of game which is why he is probably still in shock after winning this time. I can only hope that he doesn't want to add it to our collection now.

Ticket to Ride: I can only reiterate once again what a fabulous game this is to introduce people to Eurogames. They all seem to love it and I'm still not tired of playing it myself. I'm up to three non-gamer families that have purchased it after playing it with us and one even went on to buy the Europe sequel. Where's my commission?!

Okay, so on to this past Friday. I only got to play two games but both were new and both I really liked. Alas, no pictures as we never seem to remember our camera when we're not hosting.

Walhalla

This is one of the new games from Essen and it was surprisingly good. Surprisingly, because I haven't heard all that much about it. It's about Vikings so it has to be good, right? Players have a set of Viking helmet meeples that they place on ship tiles and then place the ships next to fjords composed of vertical rows of tiles. Each Viking moves onto the fjord space next to it. If there is another Viking already there, they fight, with the loser going to Valhalla and the victor occupying the tile. Losing is not always a bad thing though, because having a majority of Vikings in Valhalla gives you more Vikings to use in the next round. The fjord spaces are of varying terrain type and offer certain things - victory points immediately or at the end of a round, an event card, or influence on a fjord to be added at the end of a round when points are awarded to players with the majority on each fjord. The event cards do numerous things including bonus points for occupying certain terrain types or ensuring victory when battling. There were lots of tactical decisions, which I like, and several different ways to score which was another plus. I probably would not have liked it if it had just been another area majority game. We have sooooo many medium weight games though, so we'll see if it has enough legs to compete for attention on our crowded shelves.

Formidable Foes

I let myself be influenced by negative comments I've read online about this game and so had largely ignored it. Jon brought it though, and I was lured into playing by the hilarious art and the dungeon crawl theme. I've got a soft spot for dungeon crawls and I am often willing to overlook a few flaws to immerse myself in a rich fantasy theme. (OTOH, if I play yet another game with a dry, dull theme set in Renaissance Italy, Rome or trading in the Mediterranean, it better dang well be perfect!) Besides, I like many of Friedemann Friese's games and it turns out that I like this one as well. So, it was stupid of me to let a bit of online criticism deter me from it. It's light, but it's fun and should be a hit with the family. Unfortunately, we now have yet another game we want to buy. Sigh.

The game has players controlling an adventurer fighting their way through a dungeon, killing monsters and collecting gold. Yes, the same old stuff. Yawn. However, what's nice here is that the game all very simple and streamlined without all the fiddly special rules that clutter up most dungeon crawls. And yet, it maintains a lot of thematic feel. Combat is extremely simple. While it does involve a dice roll, instead of taking "hits" like most combat in games, you pay "power points" to make up the difference and defeat the monster. Power points are collected in the game by skipping a turn and you can always make sure you have enough to guarantee victory. Monsters also have wisdom values and yours must be equal to theirs to fight them. You gain wisdom each time you defeat a monster - the higher the monster, the more wisdom you'll get. Monsters are numbered from 1-50 wisdom and appear on the board in numerical order. Keeping pace with the other players in gaining wisdom is very important to keep from finding yourself in a situation where there are no more monsters on the board you can defeat. Fortunately there are some nice catch-up mechanisms. You can gain wisdom slowly by attaching yourself to other players and "learning" from them. There are also a few other things you can do if you are the "dumbest" (least wisdom) player. There are also some neat magic cards in the game that allow you to do some clever things. You get one of these when you defeat a monster. All-in-all this game is much more about managing wisdom and power points, a little route planning, and small tactical decisions than lucky dice rolling. It's also a race to level up and get to monsters before the other players.

Getting behind early in the game and never being able to catch up is one of the criticisms leveled at this game. This happened to Ed very early when I used a magic card to move a monster to me and defeat it. This was the only monster on the board he could defeat plus some bad dice rolls had depleted his power points. However, he hooked up with me and was able to bring up his wisdom level. Once he did that, he was able to quickly defeat a few monsters that caused his wisdom to jump right back up with the rest of us. We ended up tying with gold with me winning the tiebreaker (most power points). If he hadn't been able to do this, my opinion of the game would have been much poorer. I will have to say, it was fun referring to him as the dumbest player for a while!

It seems very important to set yourself up for the end game. The higher level monsters are worth a lot more gold and the game can end rather abruptly. I was on the wrong side of the board near the end, but I had saved a nice magic card that allowed me to switch the level 50 monster with one near me. I defeated him, getting lots of gold and ending the game.

The Downfall of Pompeii Review and a bit of rambling

by Susan Rozmiarek

I have finally written a new review. I probably shouldn't like The Downfall of Pompeii as much as I do, but what can I say? I've played it four times now with different people and it's always a hoot. It went on my "buy" list the very first time I played it at Gulf Games a few years ago.

My pile of review copies is still large enough to make me feel quite guilty. I'm working on it and some of them are never going to be reviewed simply because I don't like them enough to play them multiple times, but those will probably show up in game day report. Right now I'm working on a review of Leonardo da Vinci which is turning out to be a booger to write. I've played it three times and I need about a half dozen more to even hope to have a decent grasp of the strategy. Worse yet, my final verdict is that it is a good game that I don't really like which is a stance that I find difficult to explain. Add in a pile of rules when I still have trouble condensing that part of my reviews and I'll be lucky if I'm able to produce anything intelligent at all. But, I'm going to try anyway. I do have plenty of little nitpicks that will probably just make me sound like a crank. Who knows when I'll be finished though, because I'm looking at two full days of gaming, tomorrow and Saturday. Our Christmas orders have been rolling in. One of the perks of being an adult is the fact that you don't have to wait until Christmas to open your presents and ours are now punched and bagged as well. So, there are a lot of new games to be played and those, of course, will demand commentary as soon as possible!

Game Day Report for November 24, 2006

by Susan Rozmiarek

Rats. It's been well over a month since my last post. I look like one of those people who start a blog and abandon it when they get bored. I can assure you that this is not the case with me. I actually have a pretty good excuse this time. A sad but expected death in my extended family has taken me out-of-town several times in the past month. My time at home has been spent playing catch-up. Gaming and blogging have been unlucky casualties of a hectic schedule. I've squeezed a few games in here and there, but I haven't had time to post any thoughts. Things have settled down now, and with our weekends back due to the end of the kids' soccer season, Ed and I plan to cram as much gaming into December as we possibly can.

Just about anyone who lives in the USA is familiar with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when throngs of crazed American shoppers line up to get the best deals in the cold, dark, wee hours of the morning outside of stores and malls that open as early as 5am. Heck, we had stores here opening as early as midnight. Insane! We chose not to partake in this consumer-driven madness and spent the day playing games instead as part of National Games Week. With the holidays, turnout was light but we had seven gamers which was enough for two tables.

Right away, the carnivores went off to play their meaty game, Reef Encounter, with Mike's new, pricey expansion. Reef Encounter is a design that I admire for all those important things in a game - unique theme, unique and clever mechanisms, pretty art, etc, but I have to knock off points for lack of fun. I've played the game several times now and still haven't quite wrapped my head around it and haven't really enjoyed the process of trying. So, I opted to play at the other table and boy, am I ever glad I did. We completed three games to their one. Heck, we finished our first game before they were even done explaining the rules. And oh, what bickering ensued over those expansion rules! At one point, I shouted over there to see if they needed to check BGG about a rule and John, without pause, shouted back in an utterly disgusted voice, "No, we'll just continue to play it wrong." Priceless. :-)

Great Wall of China

Here is yet another new game that reminds me of older games but is put together and packaged differently enough to please me. I've been saying that a lot lately and will no doubt continue repeating myself like a broken record because this seems to be either a designing trend and/or an indication that I've played too many different games over the years. Like Knizia's earlier game Taj Mahal, Great Wall of China has players battling over something (points tokens in this case) with cards of various values and special powers. Whether you win a token or not, you eventually lose all the cards you played in trying. This is a rather painful aspect that I do not enjoy in Taj Mahal, but in this game players fight several different battles at the same time, making it more likely that you'll win something. Also, players each have the exact same set of cards to play during the game. They draw from their personal deck randomly, but at least they aren't at the mercy of random draws from a common deck. The identical sets of cards, the special card actions, and the effects of obtaining tokens create intriguing nuances to the game. Ed and I both liked the game enough to purchase it.

Jon, Susan, Paul and Ed start off National Games Week gaming with Great Wall of China.

Palermo

Ed has been trying to dust off this oldie and get it to the table but he has been met with resistance, no doubt because it is neither meaty nor new. Since most of the resistance was still engaged in Reef Encounter, this time he was successful. Palermo is an older style game that is not going to "wow" today's experienced eurogamer but it represents a sort of "comfort food" of games for me. These are the sort of games that I played and enjoyed the most when I first discovered German games around 1999. These older comfort games usually involve some sort of tile-laying and a clever way of moving pieces. The decisions during the game are often fairly easy and tactical, but back when my gaming experience consisted of games like Monopoly and Life, these simple decisions seemed quite clever. Besides Palermo, other games filed away in my mind under this category are Café International, Viva Pamplona!, Volle Hütte!, and Marracash. Two recent games that fall into this category are California and The Downfall of Pompeii. (The latter I've been playing and enjoying quite a bit. I plan to write a review soon.) Anyway, despite the fact that most of these games feel a bit dated and only get around a 6/10 rating on BGG, I find that I still enjoy them as long fillers or family games. They may even qualify as Super Fillers, as defined by Mike Siggins.

Anyhow, back to Palermo in particular. Each player is the head of a Sicilian family whose goal is to collect the most income from the family's businesses. The game is played in two distinct parts (very similar to Pompeii mentioned above). In the first part, players take turns choosing and laying down tiles representing businesses onto the board. When a player places a tile, which must follow certain placement rules, he places a marker on it to indicate his ownership. After the tiles and all the player markers have been placed, the second part of the game begins. Players now take turns moving their pawn in a race to visit each of their businesses to collect income and return to the starting area. Players all start with a fixed number of spaces they can move their pawn each turn, but it increases with each business visited. The clever bit is that movement stops when the pawn reaches one of its businesses and the income collected is equal to the unused movement points. You'll want to dawdle at times to get more income. However, once a player has finished and reached the starting area, other players incur penalties each round until they finish as well. So, there is pressure to hurry and plan efficiently. There are also police tokens that can be used to slow down other players or protect you from the same. All-in-all, this is a fun little game although the components and art aren't quite up to today's lofty standards.

Palermo Up close. Paul's yellow meeple is hemmed in by the police.

Blue Moon City

I've already written some thoughts on this game in a previous post. I'm starting to suspect that it isn't going to have a whole lot of longevity but I'll enjoy it while it lasts. This was another close race with us all within striking distance of the win.

Paul, Jon, Ed and Susan stay with the city building theme and move on to Blue Moon City.

Himalaya

After playing three light games, I was ready for something a bit more think-y. Himalaya is a pick-up and deliver game in which players move their yaks around the board, picking up goods at different locations and fulfilling various orders at other locations. The goal of the game is to have the majority in the three different types of influence - religious, political and economic - although the victory condition differs for different numbers of players. At the start of each round, players program their moves and actions for the round, RoboRally-style, which are then revealed and executed one-by-one in turn order. Goods at a location are taken in order from least valuable to most and player turn order is strictly observed when picking up goods or fulfilling an order at a location. Therefore, it is possible to get hosed. When you fulfill an order, you get to do two out of three possible actions (one affecting each type of influence) at that location. The particular order, type of village, and location on the board will affect which of the actions is most valuable to you.

I found playing with just three players to be a bit easier than and not quite as tense as playing with four. In a four-player game, the players with the lowest influence in religion and politics are automatically eliminated and the winner is the player remaining with the most economical influence. So, you have to worry about all the influences. The winner of the three-player game is simply the player with a majority in two of the influences. So, you can ignore one influence which makes the game a bit easier. The board is less crowded as well. Still, I enjoy the game with both numbers of players. While simultaneous action selection games such as this make some gamers cringe, there is enough information in Himalaya to make the choices tough and meaningful.

Settlers of Catan with Event Cards

I prefer playing Settlers with fewer than six players, but I was willing to suffer this time as it gave me a chance to try the new Catan Event Cards. This is essentially a "deck of dice" with some of the cards also having an event that takes place when the card is drawn. Mark has always pushed for trying the game with a dice deck to ensure that the numbers come up in a statistically correct fashion. While this would in theory squelch the inevitable whining over bad dice rolls, this particular deck did not due to the New Year card. The deck is shuffled and then this card is placed on top of the bottom five cards. The deck is reshuffled when the New Year is drawn. During the first time through the deck, guess where most of the eights were located? Yep, at the bottom under the New Year card! So there was plenty of whining anyways. I'll take my dice back, thank you very much. I like the fact that with a dice rolls, anything can happen in the game, including strings of twos and twelves which almost always help me with my inevitable poor choice of settlement locations. But, we do need to be generous to the less fortunate. Since we were playing with a new element, the Event Cards, we chose not to play with the food stamp variant. What a dumb, dumb decision. Every time I play Settlers without this variant I regret it. Bring back the welfare! Jon steamrolled over us with Mark finally getting close enough to be a threat before Jon won. Without charity, I was stuck, often going three turns without new resources. Also, I had hoped that the events would spice up the game but they were not very frequent. I was glad to get to try this deck but I'll take my chances with the dice in the future.

We finished off the night with a six-player game of basic Settlers of Catan with the new Event Cards.

For more pictures from this gaming session and others, see our Gaming Picture Gallery.