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 inhabitants of the heavenly signs. I have instructed him to start construction of the first of the needed new temples as soon as he can. I must look into sending him help when I find another trustworthy servant.

Dear Diary,

I have heard from my sources near Tamalir that there is a new group of foolish "heroes" causing trouble. The Lawlessness I have spread though out the land should slow these fools down if they wander around outside the city for long.

Dear Diary,

These adventurers have already started to cause trouble at the dungeon near the Starfall Forest. Legion, my skeleton master there, was able to send a report of these fools. They appear to be led by a large, goat like creature that goes by the name, now get this, "Steelhorns". There is a dwarf that went by the name of "Corbin" and another short hooded creature they called "Kirga". The last of the group was identified by Legion as Thorn, the Runemaster from northern Terrinoth.

The last message from Legion said he had the situation under control. He was able to take down the goat creature but needed the help of some Beastmasters and Kobolds. It seems the skeleton warriors that Legion was always bragging he could summon at will did not slow down these adventurers.

Dear Diary,

I have not heard from Legion since that final report, and I found out why. I have recently received a report from the staff of the Arena at Starfall that this same group was foolish enough to challenge the Ogre Champion. This means that Legion failed to stop them and they were able to figure out how to open the door to the portal. Ah, so long fools. Taking on the undefeated Champion. Fools indeed.

Dear Diary,

Two of my Dark Priests who were at the Arena were able report back on this new group of trouble makers. Although the priests did not see the beginning of the day's battle, they heard that the adventurers were able to quickly take out a couple of skeletons and a sorcerer. That roused the Ogre Champion who took matters into his own hands. The fools quickly learned why he was the Champion. The ogre was able to fling the goat creature and the dwarf around the arena at will, but they appeared to be tougher than they looked. But, they quickly found out that the Ogre Champion was tougher than he looked. Even after taking many hits and seeming to fall unconscious, he quickly got back up appearing fully fresh. Ah, how I love Undying creatures.

The keepers of the arena were able to bring up some Hell Hounds to guard the exit and then sent in a group of kobolds in the entrance. The kobolds were able to get through the dwarf's armor and sent him packing. The Dark Priests also got into the spirit of the battle even from the stands on the west side of the arena. They were able to take a few pot shots at the goat man and sent him to the Temple.

Little was seen of the wizard who apparently was running from bone heap to bone heap looking for treasure. He was able to find many potions that had been dropped by the previous combatants of the Arena. These adventures needed these potions to stay on their feet as long as they did.

Sadly, my priests ended their report with the fall of the Champion. With the door unlocked, the adventurers quickly ran to the exit. The revived goat man was able to remove one of the Hell Hounds. The other hound had the weakened dwarf in his sights but must have coughed up a hair ball because no flame ensued. Useless hounds. The priests jumped down from the stands and chased the adventurers toward the exit. They report that they were able to damage the "Kirga" character, but could not bring him down before they ran to the portal.

Dear Diary,

I have been thinking. This new group is becoming a distraction to my work. If they show up in the last part of the Starfall Forest dungeon, I will send some of my personal army down there to deal with them. I must be rid of these fools once and for all, for the comet is coming...

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 enthused about RPGs as the others, but it should be a fun evening and there's no way I'm going to turn down a chance to try it. The next day, Saturday, we will be kicking off our Descent: Road to Legend campaign. It will be interesting to play that right after D&D 4e and compare the two games. I just hope I can keep the rules separate in my head, which is in danger of exploding right now from reading up on all these different games.

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 this post.

Brass

Martin Wallace games were once automatic purchases for us, but we now proceed with caution, especially after Perikles which I did not enjoy at all. Even his much touted masterpiece, Age of Steam, is a design I admire but can't stand to play as its unforgiving economic system and brutal competition makes it feel like too much work. It's one of those games that practically reduces me to tears of frustration. Brass, however, fixes these problems for me yet remains highly competitive, boosting Martin Wallace back up on his pedestal for the time being.

Brass is about the Industrial Revolution in Lancashire, England. Players will be building industries like coal mines, iron works, and cotton mills in the various towns and building connections between them to move the resulting goods, either selling them at ports or using them to do more building. The game is played in two periods - a canal period and a rail period. Building is done through card play. The board shows which industries can be built in each town. Right here are two game attributes that I dearly love - route building and hand management.

There is a bit of a cooperative aspect that is really nice. When you build a coal mine or iron works, the resulting products can be used by anybody for free. The advantage for you is that once they are used up, the tile is flipped and you get an increase in income and the victory points. Thus, you'll want to build coal mines in towns that other players are connected to so they can use it. The same goes with the ports. Another player can use your port to sell their cotton, but it then flips and you'll get victory points and an income boost. A good strategy here is to not be cooperative and build your ports such that you use them yourself to ship cotton.

Victory points are awarded after each period for flipped industry tiles and connections between towns. Leftover money also earns VPs at the end of the second period.

There are several mechanisms that make Brass less painful and more enjoyable for me:

- It's much harder to get blocked in on the board as often happens in Age of Steam. You can play an industry card to build off your network, but you can also play a location card to build in a particular town even if you aren't connected to it. This allows you to jump to another part of the board and start building another network. There is a bit of luck here in drawing a location card that you want.

- If resources are scarce on the board, you can buy them for a price if you are connected to a port. Since this includes flipped (used) ports and ones that are fixed on the board, it is not that hard to do.

- Player order is determined in a very clever fashion. Players take turns based on how much money they spent in the previous turn from least spent to most. So, if you have a "big" turn, you will likely be going last in the next one and vice versus. This means that you have some control over the turn order which often drives your decisions on a given turn.

- Money is quite tight, but a loan can be taken as one of your actions on your turn. This causes a decrease in your income but can sometimes be timed so that there is less of an impact. Like Age of Steam, you get income every turn and are continually increasing how much you'll get. However, in Brass it seems easier to increase it due to these other things that I mention above.

There are a few other things in the game that I'm not going to describe but will just say that there is plenty to worry about and deal with in this game, making it quite strategic. I wasn't really sure what I was doing until I saw the scoring at the end of the first period. After that, things fell into place and I at least understood the flow of the game. The rules aren't that hard except for some niggly rules that are easy to forget. There appear to be several different strategies and I'm looking forward to exploring them.

My biggest worry is a comment from a player in our group who has played it a few times and seems to think that the few shipyards are too powerful and will determine the winner. I hope that this is not the case as this game has so many things in it that I like.

Before I wrap this up, I have to comment on the theme. I am really enjoying heavily themed games lately. Most games with a historical theme seem to be either Eurogames where the theme feels like it was merely tacked on for flavor or wargames, an entirely different beast. Brass breaks out of this mold with a strong non-war historical theme that plays like a heavier Eurogame. I'm hoping Wallace's new game, Tinners' Trail, is of the same type. I'm reminded of the Ragnar Brothers, also British, who have given us this same sort of game with Fire & Axe and Canal Mania. I'd definitely like to see more of these types of games.

One more bit of praise - I love the clean, attractive art and overall look of the game which is very evocative of the time period in which Brass takes place.

Speaking of the Spiel des Jahres, the nomination list is newly out and confirms how I'm not keeping up with the gaming world these days. I have played none on the nominees and I haven't even heard of one of them - Blox. Of the others, I only have a real interest in playing Stone Age and maybe Keltis. So, no prediction from me as to who will win. I do only slightly better with the recommended list, having played 3/12 with plans to play several of the others. It was nice to see Agricola given a special award. Yes, I've actually played it and it's even preordered.

One of those recommended games is Hanging Gardens, a recent impulse purchase from our FLGS. Ed and I gave it a whirl last night and quite liked it. It's a spatial, puzzle-type game of the sort we both enjoy. There's not much player interaction though, other than grabbing a card or scoring tile before the other player gets it. I have a hunch that this is going to be much more strategic with two. I can't see that there is going to be much looking ahead with more players.

Tomorrow is our big Memorial Day cookout and game day so I should have pictures and something to talk about here next week. I'm hoping to try out Brass and the new expansion to Pillars of the Earth.

Oh, one more thing - Monastery by the Ragnar Brothers is now up for preorder at Boulder Games. w00t! You can bet I was one of the first in line. I hope it arrives ashore soon.

What I like:

- Nobody owns the various factions vying for control for regions on the board. Instead, you are trying to manipulate them in your favor. I know there are other games like this (Imperial, which I haven't played yet) but this is a fresh and fascinating mechanism for me.

- Everyone has the exact same set of eight different actions to do in the game and there are eight rounds. You can do as many as you want in a given round but that's all you have for the entire game. So if you get sucked into a particular battle early on and spend too many actions, you'll find yourself short of things to do later. Figuring out when it's worth it makes for tough decisions. I found myself in a powerful position during the last few rounds because I had the most actions left.

- I said there are eight rounds but that is not exactly true. There is a sudden death condition that, if it occurs, ends the game immediately with a game winning condition that is contrary to the winning condition if it ends the normal way. It wasn't a threat in this one game but if it is in others, it'll be very interesting. I wonder if driving for this end is a viable strategy? If you were planning for it and it didn't happen, you might be hosed.

- The heart of the game is a clever, clever paradox. At the end of the game, you want to have the most influence of the faction that has won the most regions on the board. But in collecting this influence during the course of the game, you are weakening that faction's position on the board. This can be a tough balancing act.

I was pretty flummoxed with how the game progressed. Some of my actions became pretty useless and I didn't see it coming at all. It'll be interesting to play it again and see if I can get a handle on it. It sure packs a punch in under an hour and players who like games with no luck should love it. We played with three, but the four-player game is with partners. That might be pretty interesting as well.

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Dang. Apologies to Mark Gim. The spam filter snared your comment on the previous post and I only just noticed. Sorry! Thanks for your comment.

Today's offering was Rheinlander, a Knizia game from 1999. We were happy when Face2Face Games decided to republish this as we'd never managed to get a copy of the older Hasbro version. It's an area control game in which you play numbered cards to place knights in the corresponding regions along the Rhine River in order to form duchies. The game still holds up well today and I still like it quite a bit. It's very tactical in nature but you can do some planning and hope you get the right cards. Luck dependent to be sure, but the deck will most likely get shuffled a couple of times, making played cards possibly available again. A feature that I really like is that the rules for expanding allow you to use any card in your hand, often giving you something useful to do even if you don't pull the cards you really want.

Manhattan is another game with teeth that can be played in under an hour and proves that Andreas Seyfarth had at least one solid design in him long before Puerto Rico. This is also an area majority game but this time players are competing to own the most floors of individual skyscrapers and the most floors in an entire city. The board depicts several cities, each a 3X3 grid of building locations. Players have sets of building pieces that have differing numbers of floors. Before each round, they get to decide what pieces they are going to build that round. Cards are played to place the pieces, stacking them on the building site. The cards show on which building spot the piece must be placed, but the player gets to choose the city. This game can get pretty tense with a lot of direct head-butting. I can't believe that I once thought that this game was too mean. I rather enjoy it now. I still haven't played with the Godzilla variant.

Samarkand is a Sid Sackson game about traveling through the desert and buying and trading goods at nomad camps and oases. You are trying to collect sets of goods and then sell them at designated locations on the board. Movement is often determined by a dice roll, but you usually have a choice of direction. You'll have to do the action of the spot on which you land and this will require constant hand and money management. That and the route planning involved makes this still a rather fun, light game.

Café International is perhaps the weakest of this bunch. This is a tile-laying game of seating restaurant patrons at tables and scoring points as you do. Apparently, these people all prefer to sit at tables with others of their nationality and in equal numbers of each gender. This is purely a tactical game of drawing tiles and trying to spot your optimal moves. I loved this easy, gentle sort of game back when first discovering German games but it feels a bit lacking now. The art is quite a hoot though, with its stereotyping, and it is a pleasant game in which to socialize over lunch.

Looking over our shelves, we still have quite a number of older games to return to and see if they still have that spark. Hopefully, I'll have some more of these posts soon.

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 never seen the new post on Chris Farrell's long abandoned blog pointing people to his new one. Chris' critical game reviews are some of the best I've ever read. I don't always agree with him but he often sees a game in a totally different way than I do which makes for very entertaining and thought provoking reading.

My gaming time has also taken a hit lately as well, which I hope to rectify in the coming summer as things quiet down. Hopefully, Ed and I can start attending our old, regular Thursday group again. We have been going to the monthly, local Meetup group which continues to grow quite large and diverse. I am often torn between hand-holding the noobs through their first game of Ticket to Ride or getting up a game of what I really want to be playing with the seasoned gamers. Fortunately, I still adore Ticket to Ride so it's all good. This group is on hiatus through the summer but to fill its place there is now the.....

Settlers of Catan Meetup group. It seems that there is a wave of newbies here being sucked into the vortex of eurogaming through the magic of Settlers and they've organized a dedicated group. Does that game have some invisible aura around it that I just can't see? I'm simply amazed at its gateway powers. I will admit that the card game version is partially responsible for sucking me into the hobby, but by the time I got around to playing the basic game, I'd already cut my teeth on the likes of Euphrat & Tigris, Elfenland, and El Grande and they excited me a lot more. BUT, I do start to realize the magic of Settlers with the addition of new twists and chrome like those in the historical scenarios and major overhauls like in Settlers of the Stone Age. There are still so many that I haven't played yet and I'm hoping that with this group I'll be able to work my way through them. Shoot, I still have the entire Das Buch to explore. We also hope to introduce people to a few other games besides Settlers.

The first meeting of the Settlers group went well. There was a lot of interest but unfortunately, attendance was limited due to the small venue. There were two tables going and Ed and I played a basic game with the group's organizers. They had been trying to play the game with just two and were quite enthused to be playing it for the first time with more. We felt that it would be rude to foist our house rule on our host's first game so we did not play with the Food Stamp Variant. I have said over and over how I refuse to play Settlers without this variant and once again proved that I need to live by my convictions.

After a dismal, resource-scarce game, Ed abandoned Settlers and broke out our copy of Pandemic that we had smuggled in and taught it to our hosts. It went over very well. I joined the other table to play Cities & Knights at the urging of a seasoned Settlers player who insisted that this was the only way to play and that I would never go back. Well, I wouldn't say that, but I did like this expansion quite a bit. Believe it or not, I had never played it despite the fact it has been on our shelves for years. What I liked in particular was the city development and the way it is tied into city resource production. Development cards are now much more a part of the game. I could have done without some of the added bits but on the whole I though they all added more decisions and flavor to the game. I do have one big caveat, though. I had to leave early and we only played about half the game. One of the biggest criticisms I've heard leveled at Cities & Knights is the increased length and I didn't get to experience that to judge for myself.

The organizers have secured a bigger place and the second meeting is next weekend on a day we can actually make it. Will our interest in Settlers hold? Will we be able to introduce them to other games and expand our gaming opportunities? Stay tuned.

So far, nothing really excites me from the early reports out of the Gathering of Friends, which is going on right now. The hit of the show seems to be Stone Age but the descriptions just make it sound like a rehash of familiar mechanisms dressed up in a new theme. Yawn. A lot of the excitement seems to be coming from prototypes. From this side of the fence though, it's hard to get excited over a few teasers for games that may or may not be coming out months and months from now.

I continue to find more ways to waste time on the computer. I am now on Twitter (as SusanRoz) and Facebook. I am not sure if this makes me cooler or even more of a nerd. Perhaps I should ask my teenage son who always feels it is his duty to inform me in which direction I am heading. I need to fill out my profile on Facebook but I keep getting distracted looking at all the apps available. It all seems rather silly and yet here I've been, constantly fiddling with it for the past few days. However, let me just say this now - if this leads to a MySpace page complete with tacky wallpaper and an obnoxious soundtrack, just go ahead and shoot me!

Wow, this game might turn out to be a real gem. We played it tonight for the first time and I can already tell that it's going to keep me awake later thinking about it. It's got lots of things I love - bluffing, pushing-your-luck, hidden role selection and card interactions that make for clever tactical plays. The theme is actually far from boring because you get to play spies and the game really captures the theme with secretive, sneaky play. There's even an assassin and a double agent. Great, great stuff. I can hardly wait to play again.

We also played Quinamid which is sort of an advanced Pentago. It's yet another five-in-a-row placement game but on a four-leveled board with levels of increasing size from top to bottom. The levels can rotate and slide which gives the game a memory element since pieces can get covered and uncovered during the game. I can't believe Ed let me win one of our three games. He is so much better at spatial games than me.

The final game we played was Battleship Express, part of the line of new, little, dice games by Hasbro. Like Risk Express, this one is by Reiner Knizia. It even says so in teensy letters on the back of the packaging and rules which is amazing for a Hasbro game. The game isn't bad, although not as quite as good as Risk Express. Here you are trying to sink your opponent's ships which are lined up in front of him. You target one of the two ships in the front of his line and roll dice to hit by rolling that ship's color. You choose your attack ship from your lineup, each of which have a special ability and different number of attack dice. The twist is that the ship you attack with must be moved to the front of your line, making it vulnerable to attack on your opponent's turn. It had a few tactical decisions to make, but I didn't think it was as good as Risk Express. I still think Monopoly Express is the best of the lot so far. We also got a copy of Clue Express which we will try next.

Exciting, earth-shattering Good News: Fantasy Flight Games has gotten the rights to most of the old Games Workshop Games.

<beg>Please, please, puh-leeeeeeeese publish a new, gussied-up version Dungeonquest!!!!!!!</beg>

Enough said.

Not unexpected Bad News: Days of Wonder is increasing its prices. I think I read somewhere recently that Rio Grande raised some of their prices as well. Sigh. We all knew this was coming and combined with other companies' price floor policies we are really going to have to get even pickier with our purchases. Oh, well. We have plenty of games to play.

*Ah the first sign of Spring - a Gathering of Friends discussion posted to stir up controversy. Then there is the good, old standby - AT vs. Euros. Do people ever get tired of these topics? Fortunately, neither has spiraled out-of-control. Yet.

Well, Ed should be happy because he beat me by some outrageous number of points (40?) in his very first game. Not that I had any real clue what I was doing either, as I am still at the point where I am more concerned with keeping my people happy and fed than with figuring out how to actually win the game. In fact, that is one of my main problems - I get so engrossed with short term goals that I forget the long term one. In the beginning, I focused a little too much on getting farms up and going and overshot the amount of food I would need each round. I was scrambling to use up my food to avoid corruption but this meant increasing my population, forcing me to have to also deal quickly with happiness. I did manage to get a jump on Ed on the culture track, but that only lasted until he was able to get Michelangelo and start generating some nice culture bonuses. He quickly started leaving me in the dust on the score track. I was able to get Maximilien Robespierre early in Era II and I used him to upgrade my government to a Republic, giving me a generous seven civil actions each turn. I also got the Architecture technology which enabled me to quickly complete the Kremlin to boost my culture. I actually felt like I was in a pretty good position to start Era III as I was also was cranking out a good amount of iron. With the discount on building from Architecture, I was set to rapidly expand, I thought. Ed would also be losing Michelangelo and his culture output would plummet so maybe I could catch up. The problem was that we were only playing the advanced game and it ended at the end of Era II. So for me, it was all over just as I felt like I was cranking up.

I did like the fact that with the advanced game, several Era III event cards are turned up at the beginning to be resolved at the end of the game. This lets you know in advance what will get bonuses. Too bad I was too distracted during the game to pay much attention to them until it was mostly too late!

Neither one of us built up our military much. Ed got a little ahead of me, but I wasn't worried since I was holding some defensive cards in my hand. What he was able to do with his superior forces though, was win a few territories. Besides the immediately benefits, it also gave him some nice bonuses at the end.

Science was quite a limiting factor for both of us. I think I peaked at around 5 or 6 per turn and Ed's output was even less. There is just so darn much to do in this game!

This seems to be as excellent of a game for two as it is for more. Pacts will not come in to play, of course, and perhaps the military will not play as much of a role but that is fine with me. I like building things up more than tearing them down. I'm now looking forward to trying the full game with two. As long as the components hold up, this game should have a lot of replay value with all the possible card combinations.

Anyway, these summaries are great for quick rule refreshers when you decide to actually play a game that isn't new. There are some good player aides as well.

Besides all the crafty stuff, Ed and I also played a game, Kingsburg. It worked okay with just two, but there wasn't enough competition on the board even though the rules have you roll and place for two "dummy" players. Since they are automatically placed according to the total they roll, you don't have to consider how they could split their dice up as might a real player nor do they compete on the soldier track. Of course, that made it feel a little less frustrating and it eliminated a lot of the downtime that was present in the five player game that I played. I suspect that it will be best with three or four players. I really like the game. The clever dice mechanism makes it different from our 800 other games which is quite an achievement these days with all the new games being cranked out.

I must agree with the many of the posters on BGG that the component quality of the new edition of Through the Ages is very disappointing. The game ended up being $80 at the local store. It may be worth that price in game play, but the game itself looks like a $30 game. It's setting on a table right now next to StarCraft which has the same retail price and the difference between the two is appalling. Bland art, flimsy cards, and tiny wooden bits - they could have made this so much better. I think our next crafty game project will be making tuckboxes for the cards. The wells in the insert aren't deep enough and I'm afraid to use hair bands as they might damage the cards.

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 once. Since it involves drawing rails with crayons, I really, really needed to play it. Alas, I was a bit disappointed. It wasn't a bad game by any means. The first part involved everyone drawing their routes on the map and connecting cities. (Hint: ditch the crayons and use plexiglass and dry erase markers). We used a fix that had the start player roll the dice once with the result being everyone's building budget that round. I think the original rules have each player rolling for their own money and thus possibly getting hosed by a bad roll as compared to everyone else. This was the best part of the game. Once most of the cities are connected, this phase is over and the game gets rather odd. Players now race their trains. Two cities are drawn randomly and players race their trains between them by rolling the dice and moving along their routes. You can use other people's tracks but you have to pay them. The first and second place finishers get a payout. This is repeated over and over until all the cities have been in a race. You don't have to participate in each race if you don't want to and you can also join another player and race together. If you do that, you share your tracks and split any payout. While the racing was kind of fun, it dragged on way too long and was so very luck-based compared to the more strategic track building phase. The game was okay and I'd certainly play it again, but I would much rather play an Empire Builder game.

Apparently I'm taking so long to build my track that Mark and David have fallen asleep. Either that or they are blinded by the glare of the plexiglass.

Talisman

Back in college, I wasn't a gamer at all, but I skirted around the fringe due to my great love of fantasy fiction. Several fantasy games made their way into my possession due to their tantalizing theme and art. Most turned out to be duds with Dungeonquest being the only real gem from back then. Poor Talisman was the game that stayed on the store shelves, a victim of my meager student budget. To this day, I've wondered what I've missed. When this latest edition appeared, I was secretly longing to get it even though my gaming peers sneered at it in disgust. I would have gotten it too, but one of those peers was Ed who seemed to think we didn't need to waste our money. I thought I was going to have use some wily, female ways of persuasion to get my way, but new guy John brought it to our game day. So, I got to "try before I buy," a mantra that we've wisely taken up again.

Verdict: It's a fun check-you-brain-at-the-door beer and pretzels game for about an hour. Unfortunately, it drags on for more hours. I loved the art in this new edition although it was a little hard to see. It wove a great story although you had to be willing to accept the very unlucky bad things that happened. You've probably heard about the witch that turns players into a frog. Of course that had to happen to me. Thankfully, I managed to hop around unharmed until the spell wore off. It did come down to an exciting finish with all of us up on the last level. But, with all the other, better fantasy game we have, we really don't need this outdated, clunky one. Even so, little part of me still wants it for the collection. Sshhh. Don't tell Ed.

Jeff Jones and John's son look for a Talisman.

Lascaux
This is a neat set collecting game that is clever and plays quickly. I really, really liked it and would have gladly played it a third time after playing it twice. You can read my review, linked in the previous blog entry, if you want to know more about it. I'm too lazy to repeat again it here.

Paul, David, Lauren, Susan and Ed (taking picture) plays Lascaux.

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

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.

Speaking of buying games, Boulder Games is Pure Evil. They keep throwing up daily "lost leaders" on their front page. We usually buy online from our friends at Game Surplus but Kingsburg for less than $30 was too hard to resist. Plus, they had just gotten in some more Runebound crack, The Island of Dread expansion. We also got Race for the Galaxy and Felix: The Cat in the Sack. That last one is pure speculation as neither of us has tried it. It looks kinda cute.

And finally, we built up some credit at another FLGS by being frequent shoppers if you call being frequent making ten purchases over a four year period. They average every ten purchases and give you that in store credit. It's very nice that they do this but the store is pretty far away so we don't get down there often. I used the credit to buy Last Night on Earth which happens to be sold out everywhere online. So, I was very happy to get it and continue my descent into the dark side of Ameritrash. This game will be fun to play with the family.

Good grief. As you can see from every one of these purchases, our shopping habits are way too easily manipulated!