Well, I'm only about 2 weeks late in posting this one.  We hosted a mystery party for Jacob and a few friends two Saturdays ago - sort of like a "How to Host a Murder" game but for kids.  The theme was western, and we asked the party goers to dress the part.  Jacob only invited boys, and there were a few girl parts, so we had to improvise.  Part of the improvisation was having Matthew dress up as a girl - and Grandma was more than happy to help out.  Check out the results for yourself; should make for some great blackmail material somewhere down the road.

The party went very well - we mixed in some games with the mystery puzzle, and everyone played their parts. Jacob is nine now, and thought it seems cliche to say that I can't believe how fast he is growing up, well, I can't believe how fast he is growing up!

Yesterday, Jacob played in his last football game of the season, and his team finished 8-0.  Not a bad season!  Jacob played out the year as the starting center, and was getting much more playing time on defense as well.  Julie and I are sold on the value of this program for Jacob, and we are eager to sign up Matthew as soon as he is old enough.

I found a good price on a used iBook here in town, so Jacob and I went to check it out on Saturday morning before his football game.  There were a few reasons for picking this up:

• A good platform for experimenting with Rotor and Mono.
• OSX / Panther / Jaguar just seemed too cool to miss out on.
• I think it will be a better home for my iPod link and iTunes.
• I wanted a personal laptop for travel, especially for important tasks like playing DVDs for the boys on road trips.

So far I love it.  I'm playing with some different software configurations (browser, office tools, etc.) to see what works best.  One disappointment - OpenOffice supposedly works, but isn't a native Mac OSX application (it runs under X11).  It also didn't work in a turnkey maner, probably because I'm not using Darwin as my X11 server.

Funagain has posted a copy of the Games Magazine top 100 games.  I can't argue too much with their pick for Game of the Year - New England - I've only played it once but it is a very solid game.

Check it out!

This has been the lowest volume of posting I've had in a while - sorry for those of you who check here frequently for gaming-related posts.  I've been on the road way too much lately, and things will not be letting up for another month or so.  I do have a backlog of things to talk about, including:

• Jacob celebrated his 9th birthday last weekend, and I've got some pics from the party
• The Cubs.  On second thought, I don't want to talk about it.
• The fantastic work Mikael Sheikh has been doing on his Wallenstein implementation, which he should be making publicly available before too long.
• More Chess teaching information.  Classes start next week.

I mentioned a few days ago that I will be teaching chess classes at Archer Glen elementary school where Jacob and Matthew are in 3rd and 1st grade, respectively.  I helped out with the beginner class (1st - 3rd grade) last year - Jack Weeks was the instructor, and he was a great role model.  I will teach two classes a week: the beginner class on Tuesday mornings and the advanced class on Wednesdays.

I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the beginner class; partly because I was involved last year, and partly because I'm comfortable with my ability to teach at that level.  I will focus on basic rules, how pieces move, checkmates, stalemates, etc.  I small amount of strategy and a bit of tactics. I will introduce the tactics of pins, forks, as well as walk through some simple endgame approaches.  Strategies focus on pawn structure, control of the center, and material / position advantages.

I'm a bit more concerned about the advanced class, mostly because of my own abilities.  I've played sense since I was a child, but I've never played competitively and I don't consider myself a very strong player.  The theory makes sense to me, but I just don't have the pragmatic experience. So I'm trying to ramp up quickly by playing as much Chessmaster as possible and by reading some good texts on opening theory.  I'll keep posting reports here as things progress.

Wow, it sure has been a while since I posted an entry.  I was in Chicago all of last week at our customer conference and got a bit behind.  Matthew had a bye week in soccer this weekend, but I have some pictures from last Saturday where he score eight goals in his game.  We can't help but think it is mostly due to his size and speed, but for his first year playing we are certainly amazed.

One of the parents from the other team jokingly exclaimed "get that 12 year old off the field".  We'll enjoy it while we can.  It sure is doing a lot to boost his confidence which can only help him in the future.

A few other random notes:

• Jacob's football team continued its undefeated streak, winning over Wilsonville this Saturday.  Jacob had another solid game - no fumbled snaps, and he made three tackles on defense.
• I volunteer to teach chess at Archer Glen elementary this year.  I'll be teaching two classes a week until spring break - one for grades 1-3, and another for grades 4-5.  This will be fun, though I really need to improve my skills.
• I'm sitting here watching the Chicago Cubs play in game 5 of the NLDS.  They are up 4-0, and the collective world of Cub fans are crossing their fingers.  It has been waaay too long!

My backordered copy of Wallenstein finally arrived from Funagain last week.  I played this for the first time during a trip to New York City last July, and I was anxious to play again.  I'm pretty sure this game is out of print, so I think I'm fortunate to have landed a copy of this game.

My routine when a new game arrives is to dismantle the bits and divide into little plastic baggies.  One of the coolest features of Wallenstein is the combat tower, which is used to resolve combat between two players.  Little wooden cubes are dropped into the top, some get stuck in the tower, and some roll out into the tray.  The player with the most cubes rolling out wins the battle.  It is actually a bit more complicated than that (native farmers might fight on the side of one of the players, for example), but that's the basic idea.  Jacob suddenly became very interested in the game as I showed him the tower and the gameboard and I talked him into trying a two player game.  We used the variant rules posted on the 'geek.  One other note on the rules - make sure you grab the most recent translation from the 'geek!  The version sent with the game from Funagain was almost worthless.

Jacob picked up the game very quickly, but was a bit too aggressive in his attacks.  Rather than focus on expansion first and then picking battles where he had an advantage, he tried to fight me one too many times where I had equal opposition.  The luck of the tower was leaning towards me in these battles and I came out ahead.  He was also slow to understand the victory conditions and didn't get enough strength in his buildings across the region, so I won pretty handily.

Man, it has been a long time!  95 years in fact - 1908 was the last time the Cubs managed to win a post-season series.  In my lifetime, it has been one heartbreak after another.  There was the collapse in 1969, the disaster in San Diego in 1984, and the letdowns in 1989 and 1998.  Not to mention the multitude of losing seasons.  Up until this year, I think I was one of about 120,000 people in the world that had ever seen the Cubs win a postseason game - I was at their only victory in 1989 at Wrigley against the Giants.

Tonight, the Cubs won their division series against the Braves.  Onto the NLCS!

Ken and Brandon came over Sunday afternoon for a few hours of gaming.  We decided to take a break from our D&D campaign and bring out the boardgames.

Volldampf

After playing this game a while back at Kevin's, I purchased my own copy and did a paste-up job on the cards with the English translation available at the 'geek.  Ken and I both enjoy Age of Steam (that was my birthday gift for him last spring), so I thought he would enjoy this predecessor.  Jacob, Brandon, and Matthew joined us for a five-player game.

There are some key differences in the 5 player version relative to the 4 player version.  One is that only 2 track cards per group are drawn each turn.  For some reason I didn't like this - I enjoyed having to find the best set of 3 cards in the 4 player version, and the choices in this game seemed too obvious.  Of course if it really were obvious (or simple), I wouldn't have scored so poorly.

Have I ever mentioned the good fortune that my son Matthew appears to have?  Quick tangent here.  Some of you may have read the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series.  One of the main characters is Mat, and because of some strange magic he is endowed with extremely good fortune.  Julie and I really are starting to wonder about this kid... I wonder if he hears dice tumbling in his head?  Should we take him to Vegas?

Back to the game - I try and coach Matthew on some strategies for acquiring track sections, explaining how goods will be shipped, and overall feeling pretty smug about my own understanding of the game.  This is of course my second playing, and I won my first game largely because of some very fortunate merchandise card drawings.  We start laying track, and I get a few good sections and jump out to the front early on.  Matthew doesn't manage to get much on his first turn, and Ken is stuck with some poor choices (he finished 5th in the auction) and was unable to break even and suffers a small setback on the income track.

One cool thing about these train games is the ability for a player to require others to use his track sections to ship goods, sharing in the produced income.  In the second turn, Matthew started to collect a dividend from just about everybody.  Through luck or sheer brilliance, his track happens to e placed in 2 or 3 of the most strategic junctions, encouraging most of us to use him.  The pattern went like this - I want to score 3 of my own sections on this shipment, but I'll have to use one of Matthew's - sounds like a good deal!  So 3 out of 4 of us do this, plus Matthew ships his own goods, and next thing you know Matthew is racing into the lead.  Ken also made some good use of action cards gained from his poor early turns and was neck and neck with Matthew.

The endgame wasn't very satisfying - there were some serious kingmaking opportunities for anyone that wanted to take some time to do a bit of calculation.  In the end Matthew won the game in a tiebreaker (over Jacob I think), with Ken very close behind.

I'm the Boss

We ended the afternoon with this game of negotiations and deal making.  This is any easy one to teach, and everybody got right into it.  This is a game I need to play with adults - the negotiations could be a bit frustrating at times, though I could certainly afford to be more patient and tolerant.  It did get to be a bit annoying to hear a negotiation dialog like this:

Chris: Let's see... I need Cashman to finish this deal.  Can anyone bring Cashman into the deal?  I would cut you in for $5 million.

Matthew: Well, I'll bring Sacks into the deal for $6 million.

Chris: I don't need Sacks, I need Cashman.

Matthew: How about if I bring Sacks in for $8 million then?

So maybe you'll understand my point.  It was still fun, and Brandon did very well.  I think he finished with around $43 million, and I was a distant third.