Another New Year's Resolution

I have another gaming resolution to add for this year. I'm going to try to have at least five nickels and one dime when I tally my games played at the end of the year for Mark Jackson's "Five & Dime" data. This year I only had one nickel - To Court the King. Pathetic. I don't count online games and I did have several at four plays so maybe I shouldn't feel so badly. Still, I get sucked in too easily to my group's "Cult of the New." There are so many good, forgotten older games that get pushed aside for the new and shiny ones. A few weeks ago, Ed, Mark and I played Attika and I really, really enjoyed it just as I always have. Maybe I will try to make that game my first nickel of the year.

Speaking of resolutions, Ed and I broke out the two-player games last night and I got two off my unplayed list:

Lightning: Midway

This was a huge disappointment. I liked the D-Day game in the series but this one bombed with me (pun intended). I played the U.S. and Ed played Japan. The goal of the game is to defeat the other side's four objectives. This is done by attacking an objective with force cards. The defender also defends with their forces and whoever has the highest total value wins the battle. Each player also gets to play several types of action cards to boost their forces. Each side commits their forces and then play goes back and forth playing action cards until both sides pass. The Japanese side has superior forces and the U.S. side has stronger actions. The problem is the fact that there can only be one type of a given action on the table at a time. So, if you play a leader card to boost your forces, your opponent has to discard his leader card if he has one. Since I depended on these action cards to beat Ed's forces, I felt that I needed to fill my hand with them before attacking. This also gave Ed time to fill his as well. Then, when I attacked, we'd go back and forth playing out the action cards in our hand with him usually able to boot mine off the table. I just didn't see a way to beat his initial forces. I ended up just conceding after he destroyed one of my objectives. The game was going way too long and I didn't see how I was going to win.

This game gets a lot of high ratings. Did we just miss something? We both went over the rules and FAQ and I think we played the game correctly. I did see several comments online by other people having difficulty playing the U.S. but there weren't any satisfactory answers.

Rat Hot
This game is by a favorite designer of mine, Michael Schacht, and was originally published as a free download online. It's a simple tile placement game with rectangular planks, each depicting a mix of three goods, rats or blanks. You draw two tiles on your turn and try to place them such that you form groups of goods in your color. Tiles can be stacked on top of each other as long as gaps are not left underneath. You score as you go along, getting points as you place the tiles but your opponent also gets points if your placements form groups of his goods. The game ends when all the tiles are placed and there is a final scoring of all groups currently displayed. The tension in the game comes from the fact that if there are ever three of your rats showing at the end of your turn, the game ends immediately and you lose. This is a nice, easy game that is perfect for playing while watching TV. (We were watching mindless TV - The World's Biggest Loser from this past week).

G.I.T.H.O.T 2008

As I write this, the 1st annual G.I.T.H.O.T. gaming convention is winding down in Round Rock, Texas. One of our local gaming friends, John Gravitt, organized it as a sort of 40th birthday present to himself. Kudos to him for coming up with a unique way to celebrate his birthday and letting 60+ gamers share in the fun. We are hoping that his 41st birthday is important enough to do this again next year!

G.I.T.H.O.T. is patterned after the many invitational game conventions but is open to the public like BGG.con. Its focus is on open gaming, but there were also a few tournaments - Wits & Wagers, Poker, and Tichu. Besides those events, there was also a drawing for door prizes and a flea market where attendees could bring games to sell. Many attendees brought games from their collections for everyone to play and we had a wide selection to choose from that included many of the newer games. Yes, we even had copies of Agricola and Through the Ages. Surprisingly, I saw each get played only once. (Alas, I played neither.)

The generosity of Great Hall Games and Time Well Spent provided some excellent games for door prizes and North Star Games provided four copies of Wits& Wagers for the winning team of the W&W tournament. Thank you sponsors!

Ed and I had a great time. The gaming space was very comfortable and not too crowded. John's wife, Gina, provided us all with a variety of snacks and drinks all weekend. We got to meet a lot of area gamers that we didn't know and there were a few out-of-towners as well.

So on to the games I played:

Race for the Galaxy

I got to play this twice. Friday night was my very first playing. Marty and Mark did an excellent job describing the icons, but I still played the game in kind of a fog. By the end though, I had at least a pretty good idea of the flow of the game, but I hadn't seen enough of the cards to anticipate what I could get. My score was embarrassing - 16 points. Ed, in third place, scored twice as many!

The next day, I played my second game and I rocked! I started with a military planet and that strategy seemed a little easier to me. I got down a few more cheap military planets as well as a card that gave me a big one-time bonus to conquer another military planet. I fished through the deck and found a big one that also produced a good that I was able to sell for 5 cards. I continued to fish for more military planets and also snagged a card that gave me a hefty bonus for all those planets. I think that card ended up being worth twelve points! In the end, I tied for first with 39 points. We had to leave, or I would've wanted to play again immediately. I must have this game!

Icon overload!

Chang Cheng

I was worried that this would be Just Another Area Majority Game but it had a few neat twists. Players are placing wall segments to build the Great Wall of China. The wall is divided into regions and players get points for having the majority of wall segments in a region. After the wall is built, Mongol hordes attack from regions on the other side, giving negative points to the majority leader in a Mongol region. The neat bit is that you don't know how many points this will be (unless you've played a particular action card that allows you to peek) and the Mongol regions are slightly shifted along the wall which means that they overlap but don't quite match up to the positive scoring regions. This makes for some tricky placement decisions. I liked it.

Building the Great Wall of China in Chang Cheng.

Vegas Showdown

This game is excellent for coaxing the non/casual gamer deeper into the hobby. It has a lot of mechanisms found in heavier eurogames - auctions, tile placement, money management, multiple ways to score, and a building tree - but all in light, easy-to-digest versions. Plus, it's got a grownup theme. What it lacks is quality components and good art.

Thank goodness Vegas Showdown plays better than it looks.

Galaxy Trucker

You scramble to assemble a ship with parts tiles and then you race through space and watch your creation get blown up bit by bit from meteor hits and nasty pirate attacks. If you are lucky, you pick up some cargo along the way and stay intact to finish the race. I had a lot of fun with the puzzle of assembling my ships and the races were a hoot. If it didn't have such a high price tag, I'd be trying to find a copy. Hopefully, a domestic company will pick this one up. Pretty please?

Ed (taking picture), Tim and I build fragile spaceships in Galaxy Trucker.

Wits & Wagers

The Wit's & Wagers tournament was a nice, rowdy break on Saturday afternoon. Teams of four competed to win four new copies of the game, generously donated by Dominic Crapuchettes of North Star Games. He also provided seven new questions that aren't in the box. Our team didn't do so well, but we did have fun. There are a few changes to the new edition that I really like. You start out with just two bidding tokens that you can never lose. You can bet as many chips as you want on any question and aren't required to go "all in" on the last one.

We had a blast in the Wits & Wagers tournament. The questions were hard!

Hamburgum

Wow, this is one gorgeous game when it's all set up. It uses the rondel mechanism of Antike and Imperial, but this time it is to produce and sell goods and to build buildings, churches and ships in Hamburg. The most interesting bit is to be efficient with your laps around the rondel and time your actions well. Like Antike (I haven't played Imperial yet) turns are short and sweet and you are impatient for it to come around to you again because you already know exactly what you want to do. On the negative side, even though the board is double-sided with different maps, I'm a little concerned with replayability. There is no luck in the game and optimal strategies may become obvious.

The Last Night on Earth

I had to get my Ameritrash fix and was only too happy to try out a new game about zombies. For some reason I thought that this game had a lot of negative buzz but after looking the game's page on BGG, I think that I had caught snippets of another "fanboy" vs. "anti-shill" skirmish. It actually has garnered pretty decent ratings and I'd have to agree with most of them. For a game of its type, it's pretty darn fun. One person controls the zombies and everyone else is a "hero." Each side has their own deck of cards from which to draw. The hero deck had various items, weapons and events. You get to draw a card if you choose to search on your turn rather than move. Movement and combat rely on dice throws, but there is some strategy on how and when to use cards and formulating a plan with your fellow players. The game comes with a variable board and different scenarios. In the one we played, the heroes had to collect 3 weapons and first aid kit and hole up in the diner. We actually won although things looked grim for a while. This was game was a great closer for the day. It was fast and fun. Do I need to replace our copy of Zombies! and expansions with this? At least after one play, LNoE is definitely superior. I like the cooperative play between heroes a lot.

Jim's zombies almost get to feast on the brains of Dennis, Joe and Susan in Last Night on Earth.

Traders of Genoa

Early Sunday afternoon, we arrived at the game room and I immediately sat down to this game of wheeling and dealing. It has been on my unplayed list for years and even though I'm not a huge fan of negotiation games, I've always wanted to give it a try. It is an Alea game after all. A few local gamers had recently discovered this game and it is enjoying a little popularity. I had tried to read the rules recently but they were pretty confusing. It was nice to have somebody teach them instead. We played a few things incorrectly but given those rules, I'm not surprised.

And lo and behold - I actually enjoyed this game a lot, even with all the trading. It did take a little too long to play. The problem is that there is so much negotiating, even on other players' turns that you never get any downtime to rest. How's that for a different problem? A game without enough downtime! I actually had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do after the game got going and since money is hidden, the trading is not as cutthroat as it could be. I'm looking forward to trying it again with all the correct rules although it worked perfectly fine with our unintentional variants.

We weren't able to stay for Sunday night but I that was fine with me. I got to play plenty of games and I liked everything that I played. John did a fabulous job setting this up and I really can't thank him enough! I hope he does it again next year.

Big Box of Eye Candy

Don't you just love that little "rush or "high" that you get when the UPS guy drops off a box of games on your doorstop? I guess this is what drives a shopping addiction for some people.

Yesterday's box of gaming goodness contained more wow!ness than usual buried in the pile of annoying styrofoam peanuts that I managed to spill all over the floor unpacking it.

First up were several new Wings of War minis, including the popular and hard-to-get Red Baron. This is Ed's addiction. I like the game but don't feel the need to shell out for minis. That's okay though; I just file purchases like this in the back of my mind to use to my advantage later.

Next, I pulled out the new Air Pack for Memoir '44. It comes in a nice box of the same dimensions as the base game except not nearly as deep. Inside is a fancy plastic insert with a lid and places for the cards, planes, stands and everything. Bit of overkill, there. I had trouble figuring out how to open the dang thing. (Hint: it's taped shut, stupid) There are eight little painted planes. Cute. I'd have been more impressed if I hadn't just fondled the much larger and detailed WoW minis, but these are still nice. There's a big, colorful book of scenarios. Mmmm. Smell the new paper and ink. A few sheets of terrain and obstacles to punch out and some cards complete the expansion. Most of the cards appear to be summaries of the various rules in the game which can be pulled out and used as needed like in Battlelore. This alone makes the expansion worth getting.

Zooloretto was the next game out with its big, content panda face looking at me. This is a game that I enjoy but am not crazy about. However, it's great with newbies and continues our collection of Spiel des Jahres winners.

And lastly, at the bottom, was the big monster, StarCraft. Good grief, this one is heavy. It had to be lugged to the larger dining room table for a closer look. Surrounded by our eager kids, the coffin lid was removed to reveal piles of colorful, plastic figures (alas, a few broken from their stands), stacks of tiles to be punched and oodles of cards. I grabbed the thick rulebook and confirmed my worse fears. This game is chock full of space geekiness to be endured and we are going have to slog through 48 pages of rules before we can play it. Ah, well. This was the price for Ed and me getting away for a weekend by ourselves. Yes, this game was a bribe for our disappointed son who wanted to go to Lone Star Fest just to try it. He'd seen it at BGG.con. We figured that the savings from not having to feed his voracious appetite at restaurants at the con would more than cover the cost of this game. We weren't planning on getting it yet, but a fabulous sale price at Boulder triggered this whole order. We'll see how I like it. I'm not crazy about space themes.

Tonight we are going to GITHOT. Session report with pictures to follow. (Hee, hee. Sorry to disappoint, but it's not what it sounds like!)

Lone Star Fest

Well, I had time to write a long post today so here we go.

Ed and I got a rare treat over the holidays. We escaped for a weekend without kids to attend Lone Star Fest, a small (57 people), private gaming convention in Houston. This crowd of gamers seemed to more of a serious nature, with longer, meatier games being the norm although some fluff was floating around as well.

I totally fried my brain on Saturday playing:

Neuland

There's nothing like learning a new game with a steep learning curve first thing in the morning after staying up too late the night before. This game always sounded like my type of game but the scarcity and high price had always kept me away. It's to be republished this year so I wanted to give a go.

Verdict- I liked it, even as I struggled to learn it. It's one of those efficiency races with a building tree like Roads & Boats. There's a lot of competition with a small board and the fact that anything built or produced is up for grabs by everyone. People claim that it scratches the Roads & Boats itch but in a much shorter time. Heresy! The only thing that scratches that itch is Roads & Boats, which is a much more detailed simulation and very close to total gaming nirvana. But, there was a lot to like in Neuland and we definitely now plan to purchase the new edition. The guy seemingly in last place made a spectacular gain at the end for the win which was exciting.

After fortifying myself with lunch, it was time for:

Through the Ages

This was the hard-to-get game that was generating more buzz than a hive of bees before it got shoved off its pedestal by Agricola. Since I had the time, it was the perfect chance to finally try it and see if it's worth the whopping price of the new edition coming out soon.

Verdict - Well, it took about 7 hours so that wasn't good. Ouch! With a newbie (me) and a semi-newbie, it took a bit to get through the rules and some of the turns. We played the full, advanced, super-duper version of the game so there was a lot to figure out. Mark and Marty had to take a break to play in the Texas 42 tournament and that took some time as well. I have to admit, I was happily absorbed the whole game with feeding my people, making them happy with cultural advancement and making scientific progress. About halfway through the game, I realized that revving up the victory point engine was the actual goal and with the help of William Shakespeare and some libraries and theaters, I did just that. This was all a very enjoyable process. So far, so good.

My aggravation with the game was with the military aspect. I took care of it nicely in the beginning of the game. Joan of Arc was my leader and with some temples for bonus strength and the fact that she gave me VP's whenever anyone messed with me pretty much meant everyone left me alone. Alas, she got booted when the Era I leaders had to go. My military strength plummeted. Since I had some nice libraries, William Shakespeare was a juicy leader to pluck out of the lineup. After snagging a few theaters, I was quickly up to generating a hefty 18 or 20 points per turn. This is where it all started to unravel. I was getting a huge lead on everyone so Marty and Mark started pounding me with wars. I didn't have time to build my military back up and was pummeled from a huge lead all the way down to a last place finish. I guess I learned my lesson! I had no idea how punishing those war cards could be to my final score. Now I know. I realize the war aspect is thematic and probably needed for game balance but it seemed like one thing too many to have to worry about. Still, what an engrossing and clever game! I can see why many are singing its praises.

Now the question is whether we should fork over $70 and buy it when it comes out. Ed is totally not into long games right now, especially if they require heavy concentration the whole time. The smackdown part would have totally ruined the game for him if he had been in my place. So, I'm undecided at this point as there may be better games to spend our gaming budget on that we both enjoy. I always think if I let a great game go by I'll forever lose a chance to own it, but these days even if it doesn't get republished there is a continuous stream of other games coming out to take its place.

Is it 2008 already?

A Happy New Year to everyone! January is, of course, a time to make resolutions and map a plan for the coming year. I did pretty well with achieving last year's resolutions as far as gaming goes. I knocked quite a few games off my unplayed list and we reorganized our games with the help of IKEA.

My only real gaming resolutions are to continue to go after my unplayed list with dogged determination and to catch up on writing reviews of games that I've received for that purpose. Oh, and there's one more. I'd like to be a little more active on online forums as well as take the time to make comments on other blogs. I feel like I've kind of dropped out over the past year.

Here is part of our game collection on the new "Billy" IKEA shelves on a balcony overlooking our living room. The rest are on a wall of shelves in the living room and a downstairs hall closet. You can also see part of a big Heroscape setup built by our son Shea.

As far as this blog goes, I will probably be experimenting a bit. I often don't feel like I have the time to compose a post because I tend to write way too much once I get started. I'm also always struggling with trying to make my writing read as "professional" as possible which takes me even more time as my scientific education and subsequent career did not do much to develop writing skills. So, I might try writing shorter posts of a more chatty nature although I still will be doing occasional full reviews of games. Instead of trying to write a comprehensive game day report, I might just write about the game I found most interesting. This will mean that I post more but the quantity may be at the expense of quality. However, I do hope to try and develop a skill that other writers do much better than me - that of distilling their thoughts on a game into just a few lines. I've been trying already to start doing this in the past few months of posting. We'll see how it goes.

Games for Sale

In preparation for the GITHOT Flea Market this coming weekend, I have prepared a list of the games Susan and I have for sale or trade. I have posted our list here: Games for Sale. I'll be adding a permanent link to the side menu soon.

Contact me if you see something you want to reserve before this weekend.