Forgot to mention - Jacob's baseball team took second place out of 8 teams at last week's Oregon City baseball tournament.  Congrats team!

Jacob's team posing for the camera after taking second place.

Quick session report this time - I'm in Sun River with the RipCity group and got a bit behind.  Gotta catch up so that I can start posting photos from the weekend!

Last Sunday morning, before the finale of Jacob's tournament, he and I sat down to play a couple of new games for us: O Zoo Le Mio and Alexandros.

O Zoo Le Mio came out first and was our favorite.  A fairly light game, it is reminscent of Carcassonne and other tile laying games.  Players are in charge of building out their own zoo by laying tiles and trying to make attractive exhibits to steal visitors away from opponents.

Jacob examining his zoo.

Exhibits become attractive by having adjacency with others of the same type.  This isn't always easy because of tile placement rules.  When your attraction has the most stars, you attract two visitors.  Second place attracts a single visitor.  These visitors, along with adornments like park benches (created when you enclose an area with a path) and trees (awarded to the players with the most and second-most shrubs), score points at the end of five separate scoring rounds.

Beautiful bits in this game.

Jacob got off to a strong start, but by the final rounds I was ahead.  Given that each round successively scores a multiplier (first round 1x, second 2x, etc.), I finished pretty far ahead.  This game was a blast and would probably be even better with three or four players.

Alexandros, on the other hand, will take a few more plays for me to decide if it is a keeper (I got both of these games for 50% off so I figured it was worth the risk).  Jacob and I both found it a bit dry and abstract.  Players try to wall off and control regions delimitted by Alexander's wanderings.  The bits are certainly nice enough, especially for a small-box game.

If you still haven't taken the plunge and picked up an RSS reader, maybe all you need is a nice tutorial on what it is and how to use.  Ole wrote a great RSS cookbook for just this purpose.

Mark wrote a very insightful post about his recent experiences at the Gathering.  Even though I've lobbied for an invite, it would take some serious thought before I would attend due to the time (opportunity) cost.  My vacation time is precious and losing 5 days that could be spent with the family would be tough. Oh, and Mark: I would have watched the basketball playoff game with you!

United Airlines has been doing a lot of things right lately.  I spend a lot of time on this airline, and am already half-way to 1K status this year (missed it by about 8,000 miles last year, booking a total of 92,000 qualifying miles, and over 200,000 actual miles).  I'm not talking about Ted, though I did hear an interesting theory on why they started that brand (maybe I'll discuss that later).  United has rolled out fairly ubiquitous T-Mobile wireless broadband in their terminals (PDX, O'Hare, Denver, SFO, and probably others).  I buy blocks of day passes and make pretty good use of the connectivity.  Right now I'm sitting in the Red Carpet Club at PDX getting ready for my flight to O'Hare.

So, why is this day significant?

1. Julie and I were married 13 years ago today in St. Louis, May 18 1991.  What an amazing 13 years!  We were married the day after she graduated from Washington University; I had graduated the year before and was half-way through my graduate program at UC Santa Barbara.  Since getting married we've lived in Culver City CA, Dayton OH, Boise ID, and Sherwood OR.  We also managed to bring into the world a couple of pretty cool boys.
2. I was commissioned into the US Air Force on May 18, 1990.
3. Mount St. Helens erupted on May 18, 1980.  Even though I was fairly young (12) living far away (Indianapolis, IN), I have very vivid memories following this story line.

I just created a game of Wallenstein over at SpielByWeb.  Title: WallyBlog, Password: ripcity.

This is where I test to see if my blog can be used to ping someone about their tardiness in an online game.

Friday evening Jacob and I started our first game of Axis & Allies: D-Day, a game that we managed to finish tonight after his baseball game.  Jacob played the Allies (USA and UK) while I took on the role of the Axis.

Jacob looking at the initial board setup.

The game starts furiously with Allied paratroopers dropping in to start the game, followed by shore bombardments and the first amphibious assault.  Action is non-stop with little opportunity to avoid combat given the 10 turn time limit on the Allies.

Thank you Hasbro for not making me take all of these pieces off the plastic trees.  The game comes ready to play, though like most I was missing a few pieces (1 German tank, 1 UK infantry, 1 extra German infantry).

The order of the each turn is managed through Order Cards, which are turned over in succession each turn to call out the phases.  This is a nice system if a bit tedious at times, though by removing cards that are no longer relevant as the game moves things start moving very quickly.  Our first game lasted about 2 - 2.5 hours, but I suspect we will get it down to 90 minutes pretty easily.

These Americans look ready to storm the beach.

This game is not for those who prefer to avoid dice rolling - as with any A&A game, dice rolling is a major part of the game and can unwind even the greatest of plans.  For my kids this is considered a bonus because it can also be a great equalizer.

One great component of this game is the use of patrol fighter aircraft that the Allied player can position on the board.  These units do not attack like ground units, but rather wait for Axis ground units to move into our out of thier region.  When they do, the aircraft get a shot at each unit moving, rolling a single d6 and eliminating that unit on a 1.  At one point Jacob rolled 4 consecutive 1's, eliminating 4 of my tanks.

As I found in my playtesting, this game appears to be very well balanced with tons of tension throughout the game.  The Allied player needs to capture three towns and hold them for a complete turn before the 10th turn ends, meaning they must capture by the 9th.  While Jacob was routinely destroying my forces, he lost track of time and around turn 7 he realized his time crunch and starting getting more determined to achieve his victory conditions.  Unfortunately for him St. Lo was too hotly contested and he was unable to extinguish my troops there in time to claim victory.  After the game I gave him some advice on how to slow down my troops, use his tanks more effectively (the can move two regions per turn), and concentrate his forces a bit more effectively.

Final battle at St. Lo - the Axis are victorious.

This game will come out frequently, and will be a perfect 3-player light wargame to play with Matthew and Jacob.  If you are a fan of the A&A series but don't often have time for a full game, consider picking this one up.

Time for a few more family photos.  Julie and Matthew are in Reno for the weekend, so I'm spending each day shuttling Jacob to his baseball tournament out in Oregon City.  So far things are going great - Jacob's team went 3-0 in their pool play and play tomorrow afternoon for the tournament championship.

Last Thursday evening Jacob had his annual school music program, so I'll post a few photos of that as well.

Part of Jacob's program was a bit of traditional folk/square dancing.

The boy is focused on his recorder play.

Not exactly an action baseball shot, but it underscores the fact that much of the time at these tourneys is spent waiting for the next game.