Tuesday night I hosted “south Tuesday”, my monthly turn with the RipCity gaming group.  I was eager to try out Antike again, and as I was expecting about 4–5 people total it seemed likely if the others were willing.  Joining me were Mike, Doug, and Carey Grayson, guest of the group and owner of New Classic Games.  Carey is a designer in his on right and purchased New Classic earlier this year.  They produce Abagio and he has a few other games in the works for publication.

We played four players on the English side of the board, which is the “zoomed in” map focusing on the eastern Mediterranean and middle-east.  Teaching Antike is a breeze – the game is very streamlined, combat couldn’t be simpler, and the game board and reference cards are extremely well designed providing all of the key information for quick reference.

I focused on gold and know-how initially, advancing to Monarchy quickly to get some strong defense.  Doug and Mike began to intrude on my precious territory, forcing me (!) to attack from Athens to push them back and give me some buffer.  I didn’t stop there, taking advantage of some numerical superiority and my sailing improvements to wreak some more havoc near Greece.  I was able to cross the 15 territory threshold, giving me a total of 8 victory points (3 five territory, 1 seven seas, 4 first know-how advancement) and one shy of victory.

Meanwhile, Carey kept Doug and Mike occupied in the middle east, threatening some temples and forcing them to worry about two fronts.  Mike quickly advanced to Democracy giving his cities plenty of defensive strength and discouraging conquest.  The game was starting to drag on a bit, approaching the three hour mark (surprising as my first game lasted on 2 hours) and I was able to do a double advance from wheel to road and win the game snagging my fifth first advancement victory point.  This was not quite fair as I had mistakenly indicated to Mike earlier in the game that you couldn’t double-advance on a turn (there’s no limit to the amount of advancement you can do when selecting know-how).  I corrected myself and we all agreed that we’d rather just see the game end than restrain my advancement.

Great game still in my book and one I look forward to seeing come out frequently as long as we can get it done in the 2–2.5 hours time-frame.  Three hours is too long for this game in my book.

The Christmas holiday out at Salishan vastly exceeded my gaming expectations – almost everything I brought was played!  Dave/Lisa, Mike, and Geoff were particularly eager to gobble up just about everything I suggested.  Now we didn’t spend all of our time indoors playing games – I’ll post soon about a fabulous hike we took and a grueling “game” of pushups that I somehow got cajoled into.  I’ll do a quick rundown of the games we played.

Julie’s high school friend Karen is a firefighter for US Forest Service – she’s been a member of the hot shots crew and now works at an engine station in Mammoth, CA.  She joined us up through Christmas eve but returned to Reno to join her family for the holiday.  She asked for suggestions of games to purchase her 13 year-old nephew, and after some questions about his likes/dislikes I suggested Settlers of Catan.  I picked up a copy at Rainy Day Games and hauled out my copy so that we could get some plays in to teach Karen.  It was a big hit – the most popular game of the weekend.  Turns out Geoff is the reigning champion in his lab group up at the University of Washington so he was already very familiar with the game.  Settlers came out three times, and I played once.  I wish I had brought out Seafarers and the Das Buch expansion as I think they would have enjoyed some other scenarios.

Of course we had to have a session of Havoc: the Hundred Years War.  I didn’t play but we had a nice crowd of 5 join in, with Jacob providing most of the instruction.

Matthew’s big Christmas present this year was a Carabande set with the Action Set.  These were long on my list of to-buy and fortunately KC came back with them from Essen.  We had a team tournament over two races, including one with a figure-eight jump.

 Not gaming related per-se, but another gift for Matthew was one of those air gun blasters.  Here you see the effectiveness of the weapon at close range.

Having played and enjoyed Settlers, Union Pacific, and a few other heavier games, I thought Power Grid would be a good choice for this crowd.  Mike took to it extremely well, challenging me for the lead throughout the game and winning on a tie-breaker with the most money (we each powered 16 cities).  Power Grid is the kind of game that takes a full play to grasp the strategies, so the others were favorable but a bit confused on how to best play it.  Would have been nice to give it another try.

This was the game of Settlers that I managed to join.  I made a sub-optimal opening placement that caused trouble throughout the game, though I had a fighting chance of finishing a close second (but didn’t).  Geoff played well and pulled off a relatively easy victory with Dave/Lisa finishing second.

We also managed to get in some lighter games, such as Tunebaya.  Tunebaya is similar to Wits and Wagers in that nobody is really all that interested in keeping score – the process of playing is the enjoyment.  My obscure knowledge of music and lyrics continued to haunt me in this playing.

Matthew requested and the group delivered with a fine showing of Bang!, including the Dodge City expansion.  I was an outlaw and was killed first (but not after hurting sheriff Jacob) but still managed to end up on the winning side.

We also played a hand or two of 6 Nimmt…

 and two games of For Sale.

One of the highlights for me was finally getting a chance to play the Knizia classic Traumfabrik, the auction game about producing movies.  The game has very simple mechanics, but is a bit dry and long for what you get.  I enjoyed it but the group felt it was the least of the Settlers / Power Grid / Traumfabrik triad.  Mike jumped out to an early lead, grabbing one of the first genre completed awards and two quarterly best picture awards.  I managed to pull out a victory in the end by grabbing the best in genre and best director awards in the end.  Scores were 30–25–15–10 (I think).

All in all, a great weekend of fun, family, and lots of games.  Mike has been hosting a game group at his home in KC and I turned him onto the SimplyFun scene – he already put in a request for a party at home.

We had a special event this afternoon – a surgery session by our two resident doctors, Dave and Lisa.  They removed a sebaceous cyst from Karen’s head.  I’m serious… they performed surgery right on our kitchen table here.  And Karen is sitting next to me as I write this so I guess she turned out ok.

I’m going to spare you all from seeing all of the photos UNLESS you want to follow the link below.  I caution you – this is not for the faint of heart so you’ve been warned.

You can check out all of the surgery photos here.

Thursday evening was the official start of Christmas vacation for me.  I made the 2 hour drive out the coast yesterday afternoon and arrived to find a houseful of family and friends.

This is a great crowd to try out some gaming with, and folks jumped at the chance to play Union Pacific.  I had to refresh myself on the rules but we were in full swing within about 15 minutes. Geoff took a strategy of diversified ownership of about 6–7 lines and managed to finish 1st or 2nd in all of his holdings throughout the first two scorings, putting him squarely in the lead with me in second place.  Karen and I shared / alternated ownership of a few lines and held our own, but in the end Geoff pulled off the victory.

Next it was time to bring out some of my ancient Magic: the Gathering decks and have a three-way match with Jacob and Matthew.  Jacob played a green growth / enchantment / regeneration deck that was too slow to get started – he was shy creatures throughout the game.  Matthew played our favorite deck, a black/white denial deck with a healthy dose of Hypnotic Specters, Mindtwists, and some big flying creatures like the Serra Angel and Sengir Vampire.  I played a white weenie deck with a bunch of banding / first strike white creatures, and a small dose of red for direct damage. 

Matthew played his deck well and managed to get out the angel and vampire, making short work of Jacob and me.

We then got a group of six to play some Time’s Up, easily my favorite party game right now.  Teams were Julie/Karen, Dave/Mike, and Chris/Geoff.  Geoff and I had a good thing going, maintaining a solid lead into the final round.  We slowed down a bit as we played the final no-words round but held off the charge from Julie and Karen to pull out the victory.

Finally, we rounded up the whole crowd for a game of Wits and Wagers, the new party game from Eagle and North Star Games.  I plan to post a complete review next week, but suffice it to say that everyone had a blast and there was much laughter and groaning.  Average rating from everyone was about 7–8.  A good sign was everyone asking to play a second game immediately after the first.

I took advantage of a free evening without the family here to invite over the crew for an unscheduled game night at my house.  George and Mike responded and we dove into a game of Railroad Tycoon at about 7:40pm.

The game started with Mike concentrating in the northeast with a small bit of competition from me to the south, and George going it alone in the midwest around Chicago.  I managed to pick up some early card bonuses that put me in good shape income-wise, allowing me to only take out three shares in the game.  Mike got some similar early payouts from deliveries and remained close behind me for the remainder of the game.  George’s choice to work out of Chicago may have cost him too much in debt, but he certainly faced no competition there.

Things got very interesting around mid-game as I tried to ensure I would get my 6 point bonus for the greatest number of links.  Mike was going for the longest single route which indirectly put him in competition with me and put my bonus in jeopardy.  I managed to get some breathing room allowing me to build out enough links to surpass him by one.  In the end I pulled out the victory with Mike about 5–7 points behind and George a distant third.

I remain bullish on this game but wonder if the board is too spacious as is for three players.  There always seems to be one player out on his own and it is easy to avoid conflict.  Still, it was fun and we finished in about 1 hour 20 minutes – an excellent time/fun ratio.

George only had about 30 minutes after tycoon, so we decided to try out 10 Days in the USA.  This is a fun, light little game designed by Moon and Weissblum that should come out more frequently at home and at school.  Maybe too light for serious gamers, but there’s a nice bit of tension as players try to complete their routes.

Given the choice I would still rather play Transamerica, a similar game but with a bit more player interaction and strategy.

Little did we know as we spent the first half of the day up on Mt Hood skiing that we would return to a winter storm that started with high winds and freezing rain and turned into a mild snowstorm.  I suspect about half an inch fell but it is pretty slick and nasty out there.

Skiing was good but coooold.  The northeast winds were brutal up on top and conditions were icy but on the groomed slopes things weren’t too bad.  It was nice to get back up on the mountain but by 1pm we were done and drove back home.  Good thing we did as the storm was hitting greater Portland by then and traffic started to get a bit snarled.

Surprisingly, despite complaining about the cold today both boys went outside to play in the snow.  No, that’s not Matthew with Jacob in the picture below – that’s our neighbor boy Michael.

Looks like the weather will not improve tonight, with a winter storm warning through the night with a promise of frozen rain.  Looks like the boys might be staying home from school tomorrow.

We are going to head up to Mt Hood Meadows tomorrow early for our first ski of the season.  We missed all of last year, probably for the first time since Julie and I got married.  The only problem is that it is exceptionally cold here (for Oregon), and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see temperatures in the teens tomorrow morning when we start.

Given that it’s been about 2 years since we last went, Jacob has of course outgrown his equipment and Matthew has moved into Jacob’s.  That meant a drive over to GI Joes tonight to rent equipment for Jacob.  At $14 a pop, we’ll probably stick to that for this year as I doubt we’ll go more than 3–4 times given our other commitments.

Don’t expect anything too earth shattering here, but it is an important lesson about the power of simplicity.

I volunteered to coach a Lego Robotics team for Jacob’s school back in September, with Jacob on the team along with 5 other 4th and 5th graders.  The team has been meeting weekly ever since, working on their solution to the Challenge 2005 – Ocean Odyssey.  I took a very hands-off approach with the team, focusing on facilitating their own design and decision-making process by giving them some basic tools.  We started with simple exercises to get familiar with programming and controlling the robot and gradually worked into the mission challenges.  Eventually they settled on four of the missions after prioritizing based on points and complexity.

Last Sunday was the big day – the competition where they joined 23 other teams (elementary and middle school) at Mentor Graphics HQ for the challenge.  While the team had to give a presentation on some challenge we face with our oceans, the focus was definitely on the mission challenges with the robot.  They had three chance to get their best score – each chance is a 2.5 minute trial where they attempt to complete as many missions as possible.

Given that the team only prepared to do 4 of the missions, their maximum possible score was going to be 156.  The highest score for the day was about 310, with most teams scoring 125 or below.  Their first trial saw them getting two of their four missions completed, scoring 89 points.  The second trial was the highlight, with the robot completing all four missions and the only downside being a 2 point penalty for retrieving the robot away from base (this was to rescue it from doing something that would have cost them one of their missions – a great reaction).  Their score was 154.  You should have seen the looks on their faces!

So what did I learn from the team?  They reaffirmed my belief in the power of simplicity, the elegance of design for function without clutter.  Their robot as designed likely could not have solved all of the mission challenges, but for the four they achieved it performed magnificently.  There were no moving parts other than the wheels and they designed their solutions with a high degree of fault tolerance.  They also built in an approach to running the robot that greatly increased the odds of success.  If any of these kids participate next year I think they will likely move to more complex solutions designed to address more of the challenges (hinging arms, retractable hooks, etc.) but I’m thrilled with how they approached the challenge this year.

Just observed this while cleaning out my gmail spam folder.

Tom Vasel’s review of Havoc: the Hundred Years War is up on Boardgamenews.  Very favorable – nice to keep the buzz going.  You can buy it at Funagain.