We are heading down to Autzen Stadium down at the University of Oregon in Eugene to watch Sherwood High School play in the state 3A football championship.  They are undefeated this year and we’ve managed to catch most of their games.

Ever wonder what an income and expense graph looks like for a startup, mono-game company that releases a product at Essen?  Here you go.  Scale removed to protect the innocent, though you could probably apply some basic integral (area) analysis to see if we are profitable.

With Brandon spending the night tonight, I wanted to make sure we sat down to play a boardgame and not let the kids be completely consumed in computer games.  They requested Age of Mythology – a solid choice given that the kids have been playing the computer game lately.  Surprisingly, it has been almost two years since this one hit the table.

Brandon and Matthew played the Norse, Jacob the Greeks, and I played the Egyptians.  As expected, fighting was early and furious, and by getting an early myth creature that was strong against mortals I was able to stave off any attacks and let them beat each other up.  And they did.  Over and over.

We cut the game short by about 3–4 turns.  It was good fun but I was far ahead and the game was dragging on.  I’m not sure this is good with four players – I think we should have played partners instead to balance things out.  There’s also far too much downtime in this when other players are fighting.

(or, how I could have saved a lot of lives had I been commanding the Germans on the east front).

I had planned to do a session report on my game of Eastfront with Mike last week, but he did such a nice job reporting that I’ll just refer you there.  I did snap some photos which I’ll share here, along with a few annotations.

We used Caylus blocks to demark the front line for the Summer ‘42 scenario.  Hah!  So many of you are still waiting to get your hands on this game and here we are already recycling parts for other uses.  Sorry, couldn’t resist.

 I attacked broadly on all fronts, figuring that’s what the Germans should do.  I made a critical mistake however.

The first mistake was moving units outside of the command range resulting in unsupported combat.  I guess I assumed that if they were in command range pre-move that they would be in range for combat, which was a bit idiotic.

The result was some very unsuccessful unsupported combat and, even worse, a hole in my line allowing the Soviets to engage one of my precious HQ and cut off two major groups from supply.  I knew it was game over at this point but we continued to play.  My goal at this point was to explore as many of the mechanics as I could.

We ended up playing three months (out of a six month scenario) in about 4 hours.  By the end we were getting a full month completed in about 45 minutes.  Could probably get it down to 30 with effort and familiarity.

I’d like to play again, soon, while the mechanics and rules are fresh in my head.

I like posting about music I’m listening to because I usually get good pointers to other artists that I’ll enjoy.  So keep the recommendations coming!

An automatic purchase for me recently was Son Volt’s Okemah and the Melody of Riot.  I’ve long been a fan of Uncle Tupelo (going back to my late college years in St. Louis where they were a local band) and while I’ve generally agreed with critics that Wilco was the better of the two bands formed from the Uncle Tupelo bifurcation (Son Volt being the other), I find myself listening to Jay Farrar and Son Volt a lot more than I do Jeff Tweedy and Wilco.  Julie and I caught Son Volt’s live show here in Portland earlier this year and I think she has turned into a genuine fan as well; at least I catch her listening to the CD at home from time to time.  So if you are a fan of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and other singer-songwriters with some country influence, check this one out.

Julie had me pick up a few CDs from Amazon recently, namely Coldplay’s X&Y, Green Day’s American Idiot, and Weezer’s Make Believe.  I also added Beck’s Guero to the order.  So, I expected to like American Idiot and Guero quite a bit, was skeptical about Make Believe, and had no clue what to expect with X&Y.  I rarely listen to music on the radio and Coldplay has never even been on my radar.  I think I remember hearing comparisons to U2 and the Beatles and that they are perhaps the best band so far of the 21st century, which drastically reduced my interest in seeking them out.  I had visions of the Oasis hype back in the mid 90s.  Boy, was I surprised – this album is as good as anything I’ve heard from U2 (and I’m a huge Joshua Tree fan) and now I understand the hype.  They are also very different than just about everything I’ve been listening to for the past few years, which is a pleasant change.  Some times talent does lead to extreme popular success.

My final mention is of Fall Out Boy.  BMG Music recently acquired the music club part of Columbia House, and I had a lingering membership that was transfered over.  Somewhere in the shuffle they think I failed to decline one of the monthly selections (I’m certain I did) and I was going to return it, but instead opened it to give it a listen and rip into iTunes.  I’m glad I did – From Under the Cork Tree is a fine album that I’m enjoying.  This is mild punk rock with some good pop harmonies – reminds me of Green Day and The Clash.

I really enjoy reading The Escapist – very relevant an insightful information on video gaming, often with ties into tabletop gaming.  This month they have a focus on wargames, with the highlight being Les Grognards.  Check it out.

Julie just wrapped a redecorating project in the game room (formerly the play room – the boys informed me that they are too old to have one of those).  The project started a while back as Julie and I discussed a way to introduce board game box covers into the decorations.  I had seen a similar decorating approach in Greg Schloesser’s game room down in New Orleans and quite liked it.

Our approach was to do color copies of the box covers and have a friend of a friend do a high quality vacuum mounting job on foam core followed by lamination and a precise cut job around the outside.  The results were fantastic – in many cases the art looks better than the original.  The cost per piece was $10, but that was a discounted price that I don’t think we’ll be able to get again.

Julie brought in a friend who specializes in interior design and did some brainstorming and decided that using the Power Grid style for the room would work best.  Think 1950s government green, brushed metal, industrial look.  She found some cool storage cabinets at Home Depot, some great lighting fixtures to replace the boring dome lights on the ceiling, and some wire frame shelves for game overflow (heh heh).  She painted our two wooden computer desks (we have three computers in the room for LAN gaming goodness) glossy black and bought 4 black/chrome chairs and 4 brushed aluminum chairs.

We arranged the game art mostly by theme.  Note that we chose the games to mount for their style and graphical quality, not necessarily the quality of the game!

The Memoir ‘44 box was a bit of a challenge to scan, but we found that we could clip the bottom a bit and it would still look fine.

The most expensive part of the process was the set of built-in shelves we added earlier this year to house my game collection.  Amazingly, this vast array of shelves filled up easily and I’m forced to use the closet (where the games used to live) and the wire shelves for overflow.

Overall I love the results and want to publicly thank Julie for her efforts bringing this to fruition.

That’s what we’ve been hoping for… a break from the rain.  Don’t get me wrong, I love winter storms on the coast but we’ve been itching to get outside to do some non-rainy activities.  Looks like things might get better today as we could actually see the sunrise and it is looking like we’ll see some scattered showers but no continuous rain.   The boys and I plan to play some basketball outdoors this morning after breakfast, and we have a low tide mid afternoon so it’s a perfect opportunity to drive down the coast and visit the Yaquina Head tide pools.

Yesterday was full of rain and wind so we stayed indoors most of the day.  We did see the latest Harry Potter movie and had quite a good time.  Very good effects and a good treatment of the story.  Now I feel caught up enough to read the latest two books.  One complaint – Emma Watson as Hermione.  Was she intentionally over-acting to portray the high drama of an adolescent teenage girl, or is she just having troubles acting?

Before dinner last night we got in a few games of For Sale (thanks Yehuda for the last-minute recommendation to bring this out).  David has spent a career in real estate so I thought this would be a good fit.  He and Jan picked up on the rules quickly and had fun playing I think – this is definitely my favorite filler and intro game.

We might also try and fit in a game of Railroad Tycoon today in between b-ball and the tide pools.  The boys are anxious to play Duel of Ages again but having lugged RR Tycoon out here I’d like to see it hit the table at least once.