On Monday, Jacob and I ventured across town (about as far across town as you can imagine) to KC and Rita's home in Gresham.  KC, Rita, and I are planning a playtest day in November to further develop some of his game designs.  While we drilled down into the details, Jacob joined their kids for some HeroScape.

We combined our two sets, and the kids went crazy with their own design and scenario.  Half the fun with this game is the setup and playing with the minis.

Jacob designed an overhang ambush.  I wish I had focused on the guy inside to give a clearer view.

Jenna and her army.

Just in case you forgot how to fit your minis back into the plastic, here's your guide.

Taj Mahal has been on my must play list for quite some time based on reputation.  I knew next to nothing about the game, but found it easy to learn and very enjoyable to play.  I like it when I can think of a rational plan and execute against it, feeling at least a bit in control of my destiny.  Taj Mahal certainly offers that and more.  I managed to win, but I think they everyone was being kind.

Yesterday was the first day of school for Jacob (4th grade) and Matthew (2nd grade).  Jacob was a bit stressed for most of the weekend, and Matthew in typical second-born nature queried the night before “I wonder if I'll remember when I wake up in the morning that it's the first day of school?”  They both have great teachers and we're looking forward to more success inside and outside the classroom this school year.

We managed to spend Fri-Sun this weekend at Salishan.  We mixed in a bit of housework with some fun - best of all, Jan and David (Julie's mom and step-dad) were there to share some quality time with us.

I did some running and swimming Saturday morning, then took care of the boys while Jan, David, and Julie attended the annual Salishan leaseholder meeting.  The boys and I played a quick game of St. Petersburg, with Jacob giving a much better show this time around.  He's starting to get the sense of transition from cash flow to VP generation.  I think this is a great game to teach kids about cashflow (probably much better than Cashflow for Kids) and the time value of money.  I won the game easily, but I've also played quite a few training games on my PC.  After the game, we spent about 90 minutes practicing golf over at the Salishan course.  Golf isn't cheap there, so we reserve that as a luxury but they have a decent practice facility.  We spent about 30 minutes hitting balls and about an hour working on chipping by playing some games.  If you are spending time with a child teaching golf, I have a recommendation: focus on the short game! I guess the same applies for the adults as well...

I wanted to check out the outlet stores in Lincoln City for some clothes for the boys and, of course, see what's on hand at the KB Toy Outlet game section.  We scored a number of copies of the Mission Command series, which were buy 1 / second half price.  This worked out to about $11 for the entire series of three games.  Not bad, so I picked up 14 individual games for friends and family.

I'll talk about the rest of the weekend with photos below.

While Jacob, Matthew, and Jan explored the beach, David and I cracked open Mission Command Sea.  David grew up on some of the Avalon Hill classics, so was comfortable with the basic elements of a light wargame like this.  This was a close battle and ultimately came down to some unlikely dice rolls on his part; I think he played the better game.

Jan, Jacob, and Matthew took a nice hike south our access point, and managed to drag a good sized log back to our campfire spot.

Jan and David enjoying our campfire and a great meal on the beach.

I rarely get a chance to post photos of Julie and me, so here we are!

The sunset was dramatic Saturday evening.  At one point, the sun was shining through an eye-shaped slit in the clouds, which looked frighteningly like the Eye of Sauron.

On Sunday morning, we did some cleanup and housework and discussed plans for the next 2 months (flooring, furniture, etc.).  Jan and David left around noon, and Julie wanted to do some cleanup and prep work for next weekend's floor work, so I took the boys again. 

Matthew sporting his new sweatshirt from, you guessed it, the Old Navy outlet store.

The boys tried out the Mission Command Sea game in the morning and were quite impressed - this game is right up their alley.

In the afternoon, we gave the Mission Command Air game a try.  I thought this would be a rehash of the sea game, but the two are quite different.  This is a card driven game where you try to maneuver your airplane behind and in firing position to eliminate your enemies.  The planes wrap around the board, turning this into an somewhat abstract positional game.  There's a strong element of hand management as well.  The game is good, but not great - the endgame was a bit tedious, as it can be very difficult to get a firing solution and if both players are out of missiles it can drag on.

Got my latest issue of Counter magazine last week, and there was a nice article by Derek Carver about a trick taking card game he designed.  What made the article interesting was the narrative about how the game has evolved (primarily due to publisher guidance and pressure).  The game started as FÜNF, then became Chinkway (a play on the Italian Cinque), and now is published by daVinci as Farfalia.  The rules look very interesting and should be worth a play - you can find the rules for the 5-player-only game Chinkway at Pagat.

Thanks to Aaron Haag and his post over at BGG, I've just learned that there's a PC version of St. Petersburg available for download.  If you are an English speaker, be sure to download the English resource file and save it to the top level install directory for the application (not the Hilfe subdirectory).

Jacob and I went over to Ken & Brandon's house this weekend to try out a two-board game of Memoir '44 Overlord.  Days of Wonder was kind enough to give me another copy of the game for my work at GenCon, and I gave this to the Rudes knowing how much they've enjoyed the game (and likely will enjoy it in the future).

Overlord is a style of play whereby one player on each team plays the role of commander-in-chief, governing the distribution of command cards to one or more field generals who are responsible for certain sections of the board.  Ideally this version is played with 3 or 4 players on a side to allow for separate individual control of the left, center, and right sections.  We decided to wing it a bit with 2 vs. 2, with decent results.

Ken setting up the Omaha Beach - Overlord scenario.

There is only one officially published overlord scenario - Omaha Beach - so that's what we played.  Setup takes a while, around 15 minutes, but cleanup is even longer considering the co-mingling of the parts.

Final setup before starting the Omaha beach scenario.

We adopted the overlord rules a bit for 2-player.  We had one player take the role of commander-in-chief, deciding how to dole out the command cards.  Jacob and Brandon wanted to team up, so in the first game they played the allies invading, while Ken and I played the Germans defending.  Jacob and I were the respective commanders-in-chief.  Brandon was in charge of the right flank and half of the center, Ken in charge of the left flank and half of the center (i.e., Ken and Brandon were facing off).

Each team starts with 8 command cards, and with certain restrictions up to three can be played in a given turn.  The CIC decides what card(s) to give to his field general, and that field general is required to take what he is given.  We were a bit lenient with Brandon and Jacob and allowed them to discuss cards, strategy, etc.  Ken and I assumed there was very little direct conversation so our communication was mostly in the form of card distribution.  This is a fairly tactical, reactive game in most cases so there isn't much room for discussion of grand strategy.

One flaw we believe there is in the overlord rules is the ability to use Recon command cards as if they were barrages.  In both of our games (we played then switched sides), recon/barrage was used over 5 times to eliminate the allied armor and weakened infantry units.

Jacob and Brandon celebrate their axis victory in game 2, winning 8-1.

In both games, the axis player was able to successfully defend Normandy.  The first game, where Ken and I played the axis, was very close, ending in an 8-5 score.  We were ahead 7-2 for a while, but the allies came storming back and made it a close game.  The second game wasn't even close, partly due to poor die rolls and partly due to the use of recon/barrage by the axis on the first 5 turns of the game.

In future games we'll likely take out that rule, or only allow it to be used once in the game.

Overall this was very satisfying - we completed 2 games and managed to complete setup and takedown in about 3 hours.  I think the overlord scenarios will play best with at least 3v3, with the CIC playing the center section.

I'm starting to think that anyone who wants a gmail account has one by now, but just in case, I have 6 invites available.  Leave a comment here if you'd like one.

I managed to get in a few games this week, both at home with Matthew and at Die Hard Thursday with the RipCity gamers.

Wednesday night, Matthew and I had some 1:1 time during Jacob's football practice, so we decided to give St. Petersburg a try - a first play for both of us.  I was a bit concerned that the complexity might be too high for Matthew, but the mechanics of this game are exceedingly simple (even if the strategy isn't).  Matthew had no problems at all with the game, even rating it a 10 out of 10 (not quite as high as he rates HeroScape though, which gets a 100 out of 100).

I read the rules several times prior to playing so I had a decent understanding of gameplay, but it was particularly hard for me to understand how the game would play out, how many turns it would last, what cards would get discarded, etc.  As it turns out, I was in for quite a schooling by Matthew as he took a very basic strategy and ended up beating me pretty soundly.

Matthew trying to explain to me that it really is a simple game and that I shouldn't have to work so hard to beat him.

First, let me explain the basic mechanics of the game in case you aren't familiar.  There are four types of cards that you can buy in the game, and these card types also match up with the four phases of each turn: workers, buildings, aristocrats, and trading cards.  In general, workers generate income, buildings generate victory points, aristocrats generate both, and trading cards are basically upgrades to workers, buildings, and aristocrats.  As you go through the four phases, you score the corresponding card types under your control at the end of the phase.  So if I purchase two workers in the worker phase, they will immediately produce income for me at the end of that phase.

There are two rows where cards go - the first row is where new cards are brought in at the beginning of the phase.  Except at the start of the game for less than 4 players, you always refresh the board so that there are a total of 8 cards available for purchase.  So at the beginning of the worker phase, if there are four cards on the board (which would automatically be moved to the second row), four worker cards would be drawn and placed in the first row.  It is possible that no cards will be drawn if there were still 8 cards on the board, which would happen if nobody took a card the prior phase.  There are tokens to mark who goes first in each of the four phases, and these rotate to the left at the end of each turn.  The first player takes an action, either draw a card into his hand (to a max of 3 cards), purchase a card, or play a card from his hand.  Cards that are drawn into the hand are not purchased - they are being held for future purchase.  This is a good way to grab a card that you'll want to play later but can't afford to purchase immediately.  Play rotates to the left and continues until everyone passes in succession.

The game ends at the end a complete turn when one of the stacks of cards is exhausted.  At this time, additional victory points are attained by the number of unique aristocrats that a player holds - this is a key path to victory so part of any player's strategy will likely be to obtain at least 7, and probably all 10, unique aristocrats.

I figured this out early, but I didn't have a sense for how many aristocrats were left in the draw pile.  I also didn't realize until too late that several had already been discarded. So on the last turn, while Matthew is just buying whatever he could afford (which included some very large and profitable buildings), I was holding some cash in the hope of picking up 2 more aristocrats, and the only ones that came up were ones I already owned!  So I ended the game with 49 rubles and lost by about 10 points to Matthew.  I'll know better next time.

Last night I played Puerto Rico and Princes of Florence (finally - my first play!).  George puts it best:

First up by my request was Puerto Rico. Dave was insisting on not
sitting to my left, so Mike took one for the team. Dave and I
started to build the same small market, but our strategies soon parted
thereafter. While I tried to make lots of points off my corn glut and
wharf, Dave kept up with his factory and harbor. Mike's harbor brought
him back in the later part of the game. Chris was following an
Office/Factory strategy that resulted in building three large
buildings in the end.

Final scores: Dave 55, Chris 51, George 38, Mike 37

Dave remembered that Chris had requested Princes of Florence for a
while now so I pulled out my translated German copy. Not much to say
here as Dave pulled his Jester/Most Works strategy out again to show
us how the game is supposed to be played.

Final scores: Dave, George, Mike (good comeback), Chris.

I enjoyed Princes of Florence - it has quite a few moving parts and I'm still burning some cycles thinking about the game.  I wonder if there's a clearer path to victory that stands up over multiple games/opponents than Puerto Rico.

So my kids, particularly Matthew, love Anime movies.  They haven't seen very many, but they've really enjoyed classics like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service, and My Neighbor Totoro.

At GenCon last week there were a number of Anime DVD vendors present, but I never got a chance to talk to someone about recommendations for kids.  Any help out there?  Are there good sites out there that provide reviews and content recommendations for Anime?  Any recommendations of specific titles?

GenCon is now over, it's hard not to be a little saddened by how quickly it wrapped up and how much I hoped to do/see but didn't have time to.  No worries; there's always next year and we have plenty of good memories from GenCon 2004.

Scheduled Gaming

I figured some folks might like to see an outside view of the convention center.  There's no way to depict the entire size of the place, but trust me it is rather large.  We never even made it to the CCG hall, which is supposed to be almost as large as the exhibit hall.

Our only scheduled event of the day was a Living Greyhawk adventure, hosted by the RPGA.  It is a bit difficult to describe what these living campaigns are about, but if you are interested I encourage you to head to the Living Greyhawk home page and explore a bit.  Think of it as a massively multiplayer RPG without the computers.

Our adventure was Castle Greyhawk, a module that is designed to handle a wide range of player levels.  We created our characters over the weekend, so we were very inexperienced.  We joined up with three other characters of similar level to try the ruins of Castle Greyhawk.  We had one problem though - our party was cleric-less!  How can you have a D&D party without a cleric!?  So, using the magical abilities of a pencil and eraser, I changed my character from a monk to a cleric in less than 10 minutes.  Even though the difficulty of this adventure was tunable to our average player level (APL), it was still quite difficult and we didn't get very far.  But we survived and gained some good experience and gold and are ready for our next Living Greyhawk adventure!  Matthew was a bit disappointed - he had fun, but in comparison to the awesome time we had playing BESM / Groundhog Recess, this was a bit of a letdown.

Demos

Jacob, Matthew, and I sat down for a demo of the Neopets TCG.  I wasn't impressed at all, but I suppose it could be a solid entry-level game for young children who you'd like to get adicted to money-sucking hobbies like CCG.  Is this a good thing?  I think Pokemon and Harry Potter are much better intro CCGs, and play very well with starter decks.

One hit for the three of us was MLB Showdown 2004.  I grew up playing tons of APBA Baseball, so this game was right up my alley; we are all baseball fans as well.  They've done a nice job simplifying the learning process, with a very simple intro game with little strategy leading to the advanced game where meaningful decisions can be made (stealing, advancing for an extra base, relief pitching, etc.).

For some reason I had a hard time convincing Jacob and Matthew to try out Heroscape, the miniatures game from Hasbro with configurable terrain.  The game is very easy to learn and has a number of scenarios included.  Most of the game is combat with miniatures, but the quality of the components and the variability of the different figures is very appealing.  This was too big to purchase and carry home, but this is a likely acquisition for us.  Perhaps a birthday present for Jacob?

As the convention drew to a close, we had about an hour of free time before driving to the north side for dinner with family.  I decided to break out Havoc, the new prototype card game designed by KC and teach it to the boys.  We had another boy join us and got through about 1.5 games.  Everyone enjoyed this poker/rummy style game very much.

Sites and Sounds

Here's a shot of the Face2Face games booth.  They have some interesting new titles out that I haven't yet had a chance to play.  They should make their booth more demo-friendly!

Here's Jacob getting ready to roll a giant d20.

This is a cool dragon that was built during the show starting from the ground up.  Sort of a paper mache thing with chicken wire.