The ChiZo Rising site is finally up.  There’s some great content there… hopefully the game will hit distributors and retailers soon so I can pick up a few more starters.

Apparently the Indianapolis Star reported yesterday (can’t find the story online) that GenCon is leaving Indianapolis.  Peter Adkison, CEO of Gen Con LLC, posted this to the GPA mailing list:

Yesterday in the Indy Star it was reported that Gen Con is leaving Indianapolis.

Consider this rumor control: no such decision has been made.

What is true is that our contract is up after 2006 and we are examing our options. I'll be conducting a four-city tour next week of possible venues throughout the midwest.

My preference would be to stay in Indianapolis as I know first hand how risky it is to move a convention of this magnitude. But I do think it only prudent to compare alternatives and make sure I'm getting a good deal.

If GenCon moves, I doubt I’ll find my way there.  There are other conventions I would rather go to, and the only reason this one makes the cut is that we both have a lot of family there.

Maybe these pictures have made the circulation already, but my friend Ken pointed me to them and figured maybe some of you haven’t seen them either.

After returning from the coast this afternoon, Ken and Brandon joined Jacob and me for a four-player game of Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean.  Here’s a combined session report and review about a game I hope to play quite a bit more in the coming weeks.

Parthenon, published by Siren Bridge Publishing and marketed by Z-Man Games, caught me by surprise when I first encountered the game at GenCon 2005 – it wasn’t on my “check it out” list because I had no forewarning of its publication.  My experience playing a few turns with Rick Thornquist, Valerie Putman, and co-designer Jason Hawkins was strong enough to warrant an immediate purchase.

Most of the components in this game are cards – 440 of them to be exact.  Each player takes the part of an island in the Aegean Sea struggling to take an important role in the Greek empire.  Each island has a custom play mat showing the buildings that player needs to build in order to win the game – no two islands are exactly the same, differing primarily in the basic and rare commodities produced on that island but also in some of the optional buildings that can be built.  The central game board is used only as a guide to the different islands to which players can travel – most of the action happens in front of each player around his respective play mat.

   (from BoardGameGeek)

Each island has its own build deck with cards representing all of the buildings and fleets that can be constructed by that island, as well as a quick reference card and Archon card (more on that later).  The islands specialize in the sorts of commodities that can be produced there, resulting in some interesting balance mechanisms when played with different numbers of players.  There are three core islands used for any number of players, with a fourth player we chose randomly from the remaining three.  Because the addition of the fourth island adds some overlapping commodity production, the fourth island plus the other two players that match up commodity-wise with the fourth island get some bonuses at the start to compensate for the reduced value of their commodities (increased supply —> reduced value, economics y’know).

The mechanic for building out the card is as expected – you produce commodities yourself, but not the right types to do everything you need to do.  Trading is required, and players trade with each other as well as by traveling to nearby and distant lands.  Better deals can be found in the foreign lands, but trips across the Med are fraught with risk.  Players can mitigate these risks in a number of ways, including bringing along armies or warships, pleasing the gods, and building wonders or adopting philosophies that grant special powers.

The game lasts for three years of four seasons each or until the end of a season when a player has built all of his required buildings, whichever comes first.  Our game lasted exactly three hours including instruction and finished after the 1st season in the third year.  We played with the optional forgiving beginner variant that takes away some of the bad event cards that can hamper early development.

The core mechanic in this game is trading, but to be successful a player must plan for a wide range of risks that can often distract the player from achieving the ultimate goal of completing all of his buildings.  There are also opportunities to exploit the current economic situation on the board – we found the commodity shortages in certain ports to be extremely lucrative for players that produced those commodities, especially if they came out early in the year.  We did not find this to be un-balancing though, as there seems to be a decent mix of events and harbor effects that distribute well across each of the islands.

There has been some criticism of this game, claiming that it is yet another multi-player solitaire game.  We didn’t find that at all, with frequent trading, plenty of strategy discussion and positioning, and some interesting application of the Archon mechanic.  At the end of each season, all of the players vote for a player to become the new Archon (you can’t vote for yourself).  The Archon resolves all order-of-play issues, which includes the order in which seasonal events take place as well as the order in which players reveal their actions.  This is important because in each of the 10 phases of the seasons, players act simultaneously.  In most phases order doesn’t matter, but in a few it can make a difference so the Archon role is meaningful.  In one case, the Archon had decide the order of several season events where the order could make the difference between a couple of players keeping most or losing all of their commodities.  A well-placed tribute to the Archon helped the events to be resolved in a beneficial order (though he was under no obligation to do so, even after the “tribute”).

Why does this game work?  I’ll give a few reasons why we all gave it high marks after our first complete play:

• Very little, almost zero downtime.  For a game that lasts 2–3 hours, this is a huge benefit.
• Minimal direct confrontation between players.  This won’t be a positive attribute for everyone, but in games with mixed adults and kids this can be a good thing.
• Civilization / RTS feel.  We love playing real-time strategy games on the computer, and this game shares a lot with that genre, especially Age of Mythology (but without the combat of course).  Players build wonders that grant special powers, adopt philosophies, harvest commodities to construct buildings, etc.
• Tension.  There’s plenty of it in this game.  What event will come up next season?  Am I prepared for it?  Do I take a shot at traveling to Egypt this season to get that much-needed Papyrus, or do I wait a season until I build a warship to provide some extra protection?
• Balanced assymetry.  This isn’t unique to this game, but I think the designers did a nice job of balancing the different islands and providing handicapping when playing with four or five players.  This helps force trading even between players competing for the lead.

There are some similarities between Parthenon and the limited release Antiquity from Splotter Spellen.  If that sort of game interests you, you owe it to yourself to try this one out.  Plus, you can finish a game of Parthenon in less than three hours (try that with Antiquity…)!  I’ll be sure to revise my thoughts on the game if my feelings change after subsequent plays, but for now it is safe for me to say that this is my favorite game so far in 2005.

These game sessions were spread out over the past two weekends.  Last Saturday while Julie finished up her Hood to Coast run, the boys and I decided to bring out Attack! and the Attack! Expansion.  This came out once before and we had wanted to try a full game with the expansion.

The expansion adds a more robust naval combat system, deeper economics, and (optionally) an extra board introducing the Pacific theater.  We played for about 3 hours total before we had to clean up, but this time we were able to take a snapshot of the board and we should be able to resume next weekend.  The game is currently perched on the edge of player vs. player conflict – so far we’ve been spending most of our time conquering neutral areas.  I’m looking good in the far east and have a decent position in the western US (which, by the way, was virtually all communist by the start of the game!). Jacob controls most of Europe while Matthew is holding down Australia and South America.

The economic system of using oil reserves as action points gives a nice throttle on player activity and keeps downtime to a minimum.  I can see why some have claimed that the expansion plays better with some variants, such as limiting political action card plays in a turn and using threaded turns to prevent the “I get to wait through 9 individual turns until my next turn” issue with the rotating start player.  With three I don’t think there are problems and we are having a blast.  I’ll follow up after we play it through to completion.

We’ve spent the holiday weekend here at Salishan with Jan and David and got in a healthy dose of gaming, mixed in with some beach campfires, hiking, and a day trip down to Newport.  Friday afternoon Jacob, Matthew, and I taught David how to play Manila, a game we learned and picked up recently at GenCon.

I re-read the rules as we sat down to play to refresh my brain, and realized that we had been taught wrong.  At GenCon we were taught to place all of the accomplices before movement into harbor began; it turns out that after the first accomplice is placed, a single die roll and movement occurs, followed by the second accomplice round.  This continues until the third movement roll and final disposition of the wagers.

This made the game a little less chaotic and, I think, even more enjoyable.  I’m surprised Manila isn’t rated higher on the geek – I suppose it gets dinged for the gambling / randomness of the game.  Any game this short and fun with decent strategic choices is a winner for me.  Definitely pick this one up or try it with a friend.  I eeked out a win in this game, with Jacob placing a close second.  Bidding for harbor master was much more aggressive in this game, with the bids sometime surpassing 20 pesos.

Sunday morning Jacob and I tried a full game of ChiZo Rising, the collectible Chinese zodiac game that I reported about earlier.  I opened the remaining two boosters from GenCon and incorporated any relevant tiles into the appropriate decks based on creature affinity.  I need to qualify my comments here by saying that I’ve spent no time building tile decks other than filtering out useless tiles.

This game started out with me holding the upper hand and Jacob getting a bit resigned to defeat.  At one point I was up 7 or 8 capture points to 4, but I realized I was in a poor position regarding my creature layout on the board.  I captured four of my own creatures by building a 2x2 square and left myself very vulnerable with isolated creatures on the corners of the play area (this game could really use a play mat with square grids to keep track of tile locations).  Jacob took the initiative back from me (initiative looks like it will be a big part of winning this game… if you can keep your opponent reacting you can go far) and the game came down to whether or not he would have the tile in hand to complete his own 2x2 square and get to 12 points.  He did and beat me 12–8.  We aren’t wild about this game yet – Jacob rates it about a 6, while I’m a bit more generous with a 7 or maybe even an 8.  The scary thing is that I think I need to buy more tiles to decide, as I need to explore the deck building meta-game to see how much depth there is.  I’m also anxiously awaiting the launch of their web site – when is it coming??

This afternoon we brought out one of my recent Goodwill finds – a senior citizen version of the classic betting game Tripoley.  This is a fun diversion, and we play the more strategic variant where you can only claim the hearts bets when you play those cards during the “Michigan Rummy” phase.  Even with this, the game is mostly random with a tiny bit of bluffing during the poker phase.  The kids love it and I’m sure it will come out frequently.

The last game tonight was a two player game of Agora, the hip pocket game from CheapAss Games.  This is a tile-laying, market-building game that I picked up mostly because of a positive recommendation by Joe Steadman on the Dice Tower.  I had to bribe Matthew to play it with me, but he had a blast and hopefully will ask for it in the future.

 

The idea in this game is to build and buy markets that have the most valuable street facing, which is calculated by looking at the number of open segments facing the outside of the market (not enclosed sections, aka alleys).  Each player turn happens in four phases: income, draw a tile (and possibly, special effects), place the tile, and buy a market.  The fun part of the game is tile placement, which is not strictly orthogonal or even constrained by a square grid.  We discovered some interesting ways to place tiles to cut off opponent markets while expanding our own – I’m sure we’ve just hit the tip of the iceberg in this game.  It played quickly (about 30 minutes) and is a fun, short diversion.

Nearly two years ago I had the pleasure of joining the Westbank Gamers for a night of gaming while on a business trip to New Orleans.  Greg Schloesser was kind enough to extend the invitation to me – I found Greg and his group to be incredibly warm and gracious.  Today Greg posted a note from fellow Westbank Gamer (Greg isn’t technically a Westbank Gamer any more as he moved to Tennessee, but clearly his heart still belongs in New Orleans) giving a personal account of what’s happening in New Orleans right now.

Dear Lord, help us for others have not. What is going on? Where are you? I'm at a loss for words. Please help us! Louisiana is one of the most generous states per capital income in the United States. After the World Trade Center bombing in New York, members of New Orleans went to New York and cooked for the workers and we also donated fire equipment to New York. Most people in New Orleans would give the shirt off their back if you just asked them.

There are now people dying of dehydration in and around the city of New Orleans. The News Media has found it entertaining to show people stealing TV and stereo equipment and other valuables (which are actually very few). The News Media seems to enjoy watching people beg for help as they fly by. News Media if you're not part of the solution then your part of the problem. The actual truth is people are breaking into homes and stealing to get food and water for their children and not for valuables. People are dying of dehydration and are starving right here in America It is true about people trying to rush to your vehicle and take it, but when you're left with no option you too would do what it took to save you family.

We are being told that no one is in charge. The Jefferson Parish Officials are stuck on the West Bank of New Orleans at West Jefferson Medical Center with minimal resources for the only functioning emergency room in the New Orleans area. The officials are begging and pleading for the military or Red Cross to come and help but no one is listening to them. You ask how I know this. My sister-in-law is stuck there also (she is an RN) and she has been communicating with us. You would not believe the horror stories she is telling us. One poor woman went into labor in 4 ½ feet of water with numerous dead bodies floating around her. Someone miraculously got her to West Jefferson Medical Center where she had to have an emergency C-section. Yesterday, Sept 1, 2005, I snuck back in to the Westbank of New Orleans to check on my property and my tenants. Knowing my tenants and their finances, my greatest fears were realized when I pulled up to my partially roofless fourplex and saw Miss Martha standing at the top of the steps. The first words out of her mouth were "Mr. Moore I don't have your rent money right now, but I will get it to you as soon as I can. Obviously I do not rent to wealthy people, but I do rent to good people. I almost started to cry seeing how she was living. My tenants downstairs were in a much worse position. Their apartment had received two feet of water during the hurricane. Even though the second floor was missing part of the roof, they asked me if it would be alright to break into the upstairs apartment to get food and water and a some what dry place to stay. I now ask you how you would answer that question. I must ask where is the Red Cross; the Westbank of New Orleans is now dry. (Please help us). If I could get there, so could they. I was able to give her and the others all of the water I had.

You may have seen our largest mall on the Westbank burned to the ground. Why was it burned? People were misinformed – they were told to gather at the mall to receive food and water. After two days of waiting, a riot escalated to the burning of the mall.

Why can't the simple necessities be brought to these people. People who have evacuated would love to return to bring in water and food, but they are not letting anyone in.

My brother-in-law is now taking my hurricane-damaged truck back to the city to see if he can pick up his brother-in-law in St. Bernard Parish. He has been working the last four days in a makeshift morgue stacking bodies. He asked us if we could please come get him since they too are low on water and food. I don't believe they will get there, but it is at least worth the try. My personal home was also flooded with about 1 to 2 feet of water in Algiers (the West Bank of New Orleans). My father's home in Harvey was flooded and severely damaged. I was unsuccessful at getting to my Help-U-Sell office on Clearview Parkway, so I'm unsure of its condition. I do not know what the future holds for my family, but I'm sure with God's help we will survive. I do feel blessed because numerous have lost their lives and everyone in my family is safe.

The latest thing we are hearing is that some national politicians are saying that the country should not rebuild the city of New Orleans. I realize that the country got a bad view of the city with all of the looting and unrest after the storm. That was only a handful of people. Most of our people are good, hardworking, and honest and what was seen on the tv is not representative of the majority. The people of our good state will survive and rise. New Orleans is made up of people of Cajun and Creole descent who have been faced with adversity in the past. New Orleans will be rebuilt regardless of what the national politicians wish.

This went under my radar, but a recent post in the BGG forums brought it to my attention.  Check out this crayon rails implementation for Windows XP courtesy of Bret Mulvey.  This looks very well done, but I haven’t had a chance to play a whole game yet.

As announced on the GameWire, the finalists for 2005 are out.

Nobody asked for my opinion, but here goes.  In the General Strategy category, I’ve played 6 of the games.  I’ve observed Around the World in 80 Days and Louis XIV so have a decent idea about the play in each of those.  I know very little about Ubongo or Ys, but have heard great things about Reef Encounter.

Of the games I have played, I would vote for Ticket to Ride – Europe or Shadows Over Camelot.  My opinion might change after I get a chance to play Reef Encounter.  Ticket to Ride – Europe improves substantially on what was already a solid game (better ticket distribution, tighter board, big cards), and Shadows Over Camelot is my family’s new favorite cooperative game (surpassing Lord of the Rings: the Boardgame).  I’m not a big fan of Keythedral, and I think Antiquity and Struggle of Empires might be a bit too big / long to win.  Carcassonne: the City is a great game but might suffer from excessive sequel-itis.

I can’t say much about the two player category.  I own War of the Ring and Dungeon Twister but haven’t played either.  I gave Oceania as a gift to a friend but haven’t played it, though I understand the mechanics well – I suspect it is too thin to win.  Jambo, the only game in the category that I have played, is a very solid two player game that I would love to own. I bet it has a decent chance of winning.

There’s a new group gaming weblog on the block ( feed ).  Yeah, it is a bit “me too” but I still think it will be worthwhile and fun.

SimplyFun is a relatively new game company with a novel business model – direct sales of games through SimplyFun independent consultants (similar to Tupperware and others) that come to your home for a party to demonstrate and play their games.  SimplyFun has a recognizable leadership team and since their launch I’ve been curious to see both the business model and games in action.  So, back in July I went to the website and expressed an interest in hosting a party.  Within a few days Amy Ellis was in touch with me to schedule the event, also providing some good tips on planning and preparing a guest list.  Amy (and her husband Steve) are also part owners of the local game shop Rainy Day Games.  I used the handy eVite online service to invite friends and track attendance.

Last night was the night for the party, and I had 10 people confirmed to attend (some game group regulars, work friends, and local friends).  Knowing that the games from SimplyFun were of the, ahem, lighter sort I wasn’t very confident any of the die-hards would show up from the RipCity group – Mike Deans and Ken Rude both accommodated though and at least one of them had a good time.

Most of you are probably interested in the games, so I’ll dive in and share my experiences with each. The event went well, people had fun and bought product (I think a total of over $400 worth), and at least a few expressed an interest in hosting their own event in the future.

Amy started us off with Linkity, a word association game.  Each player is dealt a hand of cards with single letters on them, and the start player lays down a card and says a word that starts with the letter on that card.  The hand then proceeds in real-time, with players laying down cards by free associating with the prior word.  An example might be “Leg”, “Foot”, “Meter”, “Water”.

If at any point a player feels that an association is inappropriate or too much of a stretch, the player can challenge and call for a vote.  If the challenge is upheld, the offending player takes back the card and draws two more.  If the other players disagree with the challenger, then the challenger must draw two more cards.  The hand is over when a player runs out of cards, with each other player scoring points equal to the number of cards left in her hand.  I rate the game “OK”, probably about a 6 or so – a fun party game but not much in the box to make it a compelling purchase.  I could probably just use my set of Alpha Cards to play the game.

Next up was Handy, a dexterity game described as “Twister for your hands”.  The game comes with a set of 30 different balls that players try to suspend between pairs fingers from adjacent players based on cards that are drawn.  I didn’t play this one, but after observation I decided it wouldn’t make my purchase list.  Again, too little to the game to grab my interest.

Next up was Walk the Dogs, a cute little set collection game with some creative mechanics.  The game comes with 63 dogs of about 7–8 different types that get randomly put into a chain (head to tail) of dogs in the center of the table.  Players alternatively collect dogs from this central chain by playing cards that allow them to take dogs from the front, back or both ends of the chain and put them into their own personal chain.  The goal is to build contiguous sets of the same types of dogs in your personal chain – these sets score the square of the length of the set.  There’s risk in keeping these sets open on your chain, however, as there are cards that force players to discard their longest exposed set on the end of a chain.

This game was the first hit of the party, I think because of a combination of the cute little doggies and a more interesting game.  This one went right onto my purchase list.

I surprised Amy by requesting (several times) that she bring and we play TuneBaya, a lyrics and singing party game.  This one is designed by Peter Sarrett and Michael Adams and, while it won’t be at the top of everyone’s list, for groups that enjoy singing and music this is a great party game.

The game is played over eight rounds, each round starting with a card draw where a player chooses one of two song topics.  Players then write down the title of a song that includes the topic word or category in its lyrics, followed by grabbing a small microphone from the middle of the table (there is one fewer microphone than the number of players, like when playing spoons).  Once each of the microphones is taken, the player who first took a microphone sings his song.  Other players join in the song if they know it as well, but at least 10 words of the song must be sung in order to score points.  If one or more other players wrote down the same song title, each of those players gets a five point bonus.  Each player that joins in the song also gets a bonus point, and the player that wrote down the song title gets a point for each other player that joined in.  So if there were five players in the game, and another player wrote down the same song title as I, and four players in total sang along, I would score the five point bonus plus four points for a total of 9 points.  The other player that wrote down the same song would also score 9 points.  Obscurity does not pay off in this game, a key point that will likely keep me from ever winning this game.  It was great fun though and jumped right onto my purchase list.

Those that were not interested in singing played the word game Plext over in the kitchen. I still don’t know much about the game, but comments were favorable from those that tried it.  The goal seems to be to build the shortest possible words that use a sequence of letters in succession, where you are allowed to plug in your own letters in between the letters shown on the board.

Our last SimplyFun game of the night was Eye to Eye.  This is a game of categories where you try and come up with specific examples within a category (like “Soap Brands”, or “Shades of Red”) that you think other people will come up with as well.  Again, obscurity does not pay in this game.  The scoring mechanism is quite cool but a bit gratuitous – there are wooden cubes that you collect when you score points (points are bad) and you build them into a pyramid.  When your pyramid is complete, or if all of the scoring blocks are gone, the game is over.

This is a great light party game that should be popular for family gatherings.  I’m purchasing it and it should find some decent amount of play out at the coast.

Thanks to Amy and all my friends for making this party a success.  I wish SimplyFun lots of success – it looks to be a solid business model and hopefully they and their consultants can make some money while spreading the word about family gaming.