As I mentioned earlier, Jacob and I spent the weekend in Corvallis at the Oregon Destination Imagination state tournament.  This is Jacob's second year in the contest.  He is on a team with six of his classmates at Archer Glen elementary here in Sherwood.

Destination Imagination (or DI, as it is called) is a spinoff of Odyssey of the Mind and is a team competition that focuses on creative problem solving.  Teams choose one specific challenge from a set offered each year (learn more here), and in the competition they perform their solution to that challenge and are appraised and ranked against the other teams.  They are also given an Instant Challenge, which is a problem they must solve extemporaneously.  Emphasis is on creativity, and the kids must do the work themselves.

Nick, Parker, Jacob, Hannah, Ellen, and Keatley at Reeser Stadium before their performance.

Their team (the Katzen Dawgs) one their regional competition and were given an invitation to the state championship.  They did extremely well, finishing in fourth place out of thirteen teams in their category.

The team during their cartoon challenge.

Jacob and I spent most of the weekend in Corvallis at the Oregon Destination Imagination state tournament (more on that later).  I brought along three of the new games I picked up last week at Boards & Bits that would be good with two players: San Juan, Dracula, and Blue Moon.

We didn't arrive until about 7:30pm on Friday and had a quick dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.  Back in the room by about 8:30pm so we decided to try out Dracula.

Jacob and I playing Dracula Friday night after our arrival in Corvallis.

Dracula is a nice two-player small box game in the Kosmos / Rio Grande series.  Very much a gothic theme, with Dr. Van Helsing and Dracula duking it out on the streets of London. This is a memory game, combined with a bit of bluffing and card management.  We enjoyed the game - I think Matthew will like it quite a bit.

Close-up of the game.  The artwork and bits are first-rate.

On Saturday while waiting for the awards ceremony in Gill Coliseum, Jacob and I played a shortened game of San Juan.  This is the card game based on the fantastic board game Puerto Rico, and I think it is a winner.  We played a shortened game (about 9 buildings built instead of 12) and Jacob won pretty easily.

Jacob playing San Juan in the bleachers at Gill Coliseum.

I probably don't need this.

George asked this question:

So how does this coincide with Hasbro's Axis&Allies D-Day release?

I believe they will both be released about the same time - in June to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landing.  I think the games will be quite different though.  I was fortunate enough to playtest A&A D-Day (strategy articles available), and I think it is quite good.  It is very similar to the large-scale A&A but simpler - smaller scale, no economy, and less playing time.  But the basic ideas are similar (movement, combat system).  And it is just D-Day.

Looking at Memoir 44, you will see a more generic game system with a variety of scenarios (ala Battle Cry).  So you'll have less geographic detail, the scale will be smaller, but you'll get more flexibility. 

Will it be possible to not purchase this game?

Julie and I are cat people.  Dogs are cool, we love them, but they are way too restrictive and high maintenance for us.  So here are our cats.

Wrigley (left) is about 13 years old.  Julie and I bought her about 1 month after getting married.  Sammi is half bengal and going on 2 years old.

Finally some gaming! I was in Seattle/Redmond today on business, so I drove up last night for some late-night gaming with the Microsoft (and Boards & Bits) folks.  This was the first time I sat down for some face-to-face gaming since before my Asia trip.  Thanks to Tom Powers and crew for inviting me, and thanks to Microsoft for providing the space.

Manga Manga

Two word review on this game: crap crap.  I like manga art as much as the next guy, but believe me this game is in no way related to the theme.  Quick summary of rule mechanics: real-time game, slap down the right card so that the color in the little circle in the upper left-hand part of the card matches the color of the shield on the card at the top of the discard pile.  Think speed or slap-jack.  The first player to get rid of his hand wins a prize token; whoever has the most cards in his hand gets a consolation token.

There are serious human factors issues with this game.  I'm starting to notice this more and more with games I play, mostly related to color choices and the inclusion of distracting elements that make it difficult to quickly determine type information about game pieces.  Every game designer should study Edward Tufte.  In the case of Manga Manga there are a few major design flaws:

• The Manga artwork on the cards only distracts from the game play by making it difficult to determine the colors (top-left and shield).
• Some of the colors (namely blue and purple) are too close and hard to distinguish.  Or maybe it is just my adult onset color blindness.
• (I could get used to this) When looking at the top of the discard pile, it can be difficult to focus on the shield as the target color and not the circle.

Even without these issues, I wouldn't enjoy this game.  Too light, too reflexive for my tastes.

Ticket to Ride

There has been quite a bit of hype about this game, so I was eager to try it out.  I opened my own copy (we made a bulk order of about $500 worth of games with Boards & Bits and this was one of my purchases) and we started laying our track.

It is easy to make initial comparisons with Transamerica, and there are certainly some similarities.  The primary way you score points is by building track segments between cities to connect more distant cities.  Since its an Alan Moon game, you might also think there would be similarities to Union Pacific.  Other than the train theme, there really aren't any similarities to that game, other than the mechanic used to draw cards.

I think this might be a really good game.  The components are nice, though it would be cool if the trains weren't plastic.  Then again, they are cool detailed little locomotives so I can live with them.

The game includes a number of different mechanics - hidden goals, set collection, and connectivity and route management.  They play together well, and there was a ton of tension while playing the game, mostly relating to the tough choice of drawing more cards or laying down track now before somebody blocks you.

I hope to play again this weekend and I'll give another report.  Tom thrashed us all, scoring in the 130s.

Ali Baba

I ran to get some dinner so the rest of the crew played Ali Baba, an interesting memory game that looks like it might be fun for kids.

Schrille Stille

For our last game of the night, I opened my new copy of Schrille Stille to teach the crowd.  This is basically a party game, but I love it for the fun and the coolest mechanical gadget I've seen in a game since Mouse Trap.

Each player owns a record label and works to influence the popularity of artists on their (and others') labels.  This is done using a secret voting and tabulation mechanism that looks like a turntable.  This is not a strategic game - it is pretty random but players that are good at tracking group-think can do well in this game.  I highly recommend this game for gamers and non-gamers as a light party game.

Amazon currently has some good deals on a few Mayfair games, particularly the crayon rail games.  There were a few that had been on my list, so at 50% off they were impossible to resist.  Just purchased:

• Empire Builder [Amazon link]
• Silverton [Amazon link]
• Iron Dragon [Amazon link]

I finally got around to posting some photos from my recent trip to Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.  Now that I'm using the Digital Rebel, the photos files are quite large.  Rather than trim them down and post them here, I'm going to try out the Ofoto service for a while.  When you click through the album links below, Ofoto will ask if you'd like to join.  You are not required to join to see the albums, so feel free to opt out.

• Photos from Kuala Lumpur
• Photos from Beijing, including the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City.

This is mostly just an entry for me to remember where to find the stuff, but here is the best place to find the list of Tivo hacks for modifying default settings.  Every once in a while we reset the Tivo and I need to reset some things to my desired state.  Most usefule is the 30 second advance feature (Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select).