http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/ Ed & Susan's home for boardgame related information. en-us 2008-06-29T17:43:46-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000327.html Dear Diary, It is a glorious day. After many long days of research and a couple of, shall we say, "educational" efforts, I have been successful in summoning and controlling the Demon Prince. This was the last piece I needed to start the overthrow, I mean, conversion of the land of Terrinoth. The signs in the heavens continue to guide my path. The great comet is coming and I must prepare the land for the changes to come. Just this morning I sent my faithful servant, Sir Alric, to the nearby town of Nerekhall. There he will begin educating the... edroz 2008-06-29T17:43:46-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000326.html The next few days are packed with gaming. Tonight we are planning to give Mark's new copy of Tinners' Trail a whirl. Our own copy is still somewhere between Texas and England. Given that I've recently played Brass and I'm about post a review of Toledo after several plays, Martin Wallace seems to be a popular guy around here lately. What I'm really excited about, though, is all the dungeon-crawly goodness planned. Tomorrow night a few of us are trying the new Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition with Mike Chapel at the helm as the DM. I'm not quite as... susanroz 2008-06-26T12:11:36-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000324.html Well, our Memorial Day was not exactly the gaming bonanza that I was expecting. We had a huge crowd and it was fun, but I only played two games! They both ran a little long and I also got caught up in cooking duties. Still, I'd have thought I could manage more gaming in ten hours. Also, for some reason, Ed neglected (forgot?) to take pictures. Fortunately, those hours that I did spend playing were definitely of the highest quality gaming time - Brass and the new Pillars of the Earth expansion. I'm just going to talk about Brass in... susanroz 2008-06-16T15:56:23-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000323.html I was mindlessly surfing Craigslist and noticed someone with a bunch of old games from the 1970s and early 80s for sale at almost thrift store prices. Most of them were old kiddie roll-and-move games, but we managed to score some MB classics - King Oil (a childhood favorite of Ed's), Domination, Conspiracy, and Pathfinder. Domination (Focus) fills one of two holes in our Spiel des Jahres collection so that was a nice find. Despite the huge collection of glitzy German games, I still get a thrill from finding treasures in old battered boxes. Now to find people willing to... susanroz 2008-05-25T21:51:01-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000322.html I twisted my brain into knot this past week learning King of Siam. The rules are quite simple. Trying to foresee the ramifications of your moves is not. I sat down to play this expecting another dull, dry exercise of pushing cubes around to achieve area majorities and instead was fully engaged and intrigued for about an hour. Given my propensities for dice-laden games full of plastic these days, it is quite a feat for a game of this type to captivate me like this. Is it ever D-R-Y. What I like: - Nobody owns the various factions vying for... susanroz 2008-05-22T17:16:19-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000321.html We've been going "retro" lately and pulling out some of the lunchtime golden oldies from our collection. How do these light-to-middleweight games that play in under an hour hold up now? Fairly well, actually, although that may be nostalgia talking. All four of these games were popular in my group around the year 2000 and 2001, when we were overtaken with the eurogaming craze. They have all come out sporadically since then, but not much (if at all) in recent years. Today's offering was Rheinlander, a Knizia game from 1999. We were happy when Face2Face Games decided to republish this... susanroz 2008-05-12T09:40:56-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000320.html Due to the previously mentioned burnout and springtime demands on my time, this poor blog has been very quiet. It's time to wake it up again, perhaps with smaller postings more in line with my busy lifestyle. (edit: This did not turn out to be a "smaller" posting but I couldn't stop once I started to the detriment of the chores that I should be doing instead. Oh, well) In News of the Blogosphere, let me say that I'm glad that I'm lazy and don't clean up things like out-of-date subscriptions in my newsreader. If I did, I would have... susanroz 2008-05-08T19:57:30-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000319.html I guess I've been experiencing a bit of burnout writing about games. Every time I sit down to write, I feel like a third grader writing an essay. "I like Pandemic because it is a really fun game." It doesn't make for very interesting reading, that's for sure. I need to shake it and get busy on reviews as I've got a pile to do thanks to the prolific Mayfair publishing schedule. I've almost completed a review of Chicago Poker. (It was fun; I liked it. Review done :-)) Actually, it isn't a bad little game but it doesn't really... susanroz 2008-04-12T20:15:45-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000318.html Ed added a two-player card game that had flown completely under my radar, quite possibly because of the very boring Cold War theme, to a recent game order. The game is Cold War: CIA vs. KGB and it is published by Fantasy Flight of all companies. It's such an itty bitty little game compared to the monster boxes full of plastic that I've come to expect from them. It's by two designers with no other published games in the BGG database. Note that it has an astonishing 7.1/10 rating with over 400 raters. How the heck did I miss this... susanroz 2008-03-23T11:56:23-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000317.html Today I made my weekly Friday foray into town to catch up with old friends and run my errands. After a boring week of trying to ignore revival attempts of discussions flogging dead horses on BGG*, I'm unplugged from the internet on the day that the real interesting news is announced. Both are from companies that already receive a steady steam of our gaming dollars. Shoot, they probably should have their own categories in our budget software. Anyway, here is the news that you've probably already read about: Exciting, earth-shattering Good News: Fantasy Flight Games has gotten the rights to... susanroz 2008-02-22T17:39:52-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000316.html Ed and I had planned far in advance to spend Saturday attending games at one of our local stores (Great Hall Games) for the first time. Alas, the weather did not cooperate. The cold and the rain were bad enough, but the possibility of severe thunderstorms and tornados was the deal breaker and deciding factor to stay closer to home. Of course, the dire predictions never materialized, but we spent an enjoyable late afternoon and evening giving our new copy of Through the Ages a go in spite of our failed plans. I had played my first game (a full... susanroz 2008-02-20T19:49:54-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000315.html You may have come across Universal Head's excellent game rule summaries and player aides on BGG but did you know that they are all in one place on a website, Headless Hollow? I stumbled across the link when I was looking at StarCraft files. I went crazy and have been printing, cutting and laminating all weekend. Too bad I have no interest in applying these skills to a proper woman's hobby, scrapbooking. Some of my friends would be thrilled to find out that I was normal after all. :-) Anyway, these summaries are great for quick rule refreshers when you... susanroz 2008-02-10T23:32:02-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000314.html This was quite the productive game day for me. I played a game that has been sitting on our shelves, unplayed by me, for six years. I got to try a game that I've been curious about for over 20 years, and I got to play a game twice that I wanted to review. Dampfross This game won the Spiel des Jahres in 1984 while I was in college and long before I knew or cared anything about German game awards. It's been sitting on our shelves unloved for about six years although Ed managed to take it for spin... susanroz 2008-02-08T16:33:16-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000313.html Since webmaster Ed is swamped at work, I haven't had anyone to take my latest reviews and "do them up" all nice and pretty to post here. I'm too lazy to figure it out myself. So for now, they'll only be posted over at BGG. The recent ones are Lascaux and Kragmortha. Lascaux has a shot at overtaking R-Eco as my current favorite filler. It gets a big thumbs-up from me. If I ever see Kragmortha being pulled out again, I'm going to run and hide.... susanroz 2008-02-07T15:12:54-06:00 http://www.rozmiarek.info/games/archive/000312.html I'm usually thrilled when my son's soccer practice gets canceled because it means I get an unexpected free night at home. However, I'm not too pleased with tonight's cancellation. Our FLGS called and our copies of Through the Ages and Rails of Europe are in. Yes, the "price floor" (or whatever it's called) scheme is working with us. Without the online discount, we decided to give our local store the business. With all the talk about TtA being sold out, I was wondering if they had managed to secure us a copy. The store is right by the soccer fields... susanroz 2008-02-06T18:11:46-06:00