First, Happy New Year!  We’ve had a great day of gaming at the coast, including some 3–on–3 basketball action down at the outdoor half-court.

Highlights for today: Byzantium, Oltremare, Electronic Catchphrase, and a sealed deck Magic: the Gathering / Ravnica tournament.

The kids took it on themselves to play a five-player game of Shadows Over Camelot with the traitor, with Jacob explaining the rules.  Chelsea turned out to be the traitor but the boys assured me the knights reigned victorious.

One of my as-yet-unplayed titles from Essen was the Martin Wallace title Byzantium.  It is 2:30am on Sunday morning here and hard to go into too much depth here, but rest assured that there’s a lot going on in this game.  There are also some very creative characteristics to the game that I haven’t seen before, but that might just be my limited exposure.  KC, Ken, Justin, and I played a four-player game that lasted close to four hours.

Each player has the ability to control factions of Arab and Byzantine forces in conflict in the middle-east and Asia minor.  Progress you make for Arabia and Byzantium are tracked on independent scoring tracks, and there are some constraints that encourage balancing VP generation between the two.  Typical of Wallace games, there are many choices players can select, causing initial confusion / dilemma as players learn the various moving parts and basic strategies.  The first turn (there are three in all) took close to two hours as we figured the basics out.

Each player controls an Arab and a Byzantine army and (usually) has a pawn on the board representing the current location of the army.  The essence of the game is using your armies to attack cities controlled by the other side (Arab armies attack Byzantine cities) to gain victory points, though there are exceptions that include civil wars against your own kind and an inability to attack yourself (remember you are on both sides!).

Actions are short enough that downtime was limited, a big bonus in my book (that’s why I like Antike so much).  In our game it looked like KC was in the running for the win for most of the game, but Justin surprised us all with an Arab mad dash across the north of Turkey to take a shot at Constantinople.  While the attack failed, the damage he did along the way was enough to secure a tie with me in VPs at the end of the game, with Justin winning the first tie-breaker.  The game was tight overall, with KC finishing a single point behind and Ken only about 5 behind him.

I think I’m more inclined to play this again than the others, as I think much of our frustration was from first-play confusion rather than any problems with the game itself.  This is a deep Wallace game after all and you need to get in 2–3 plays before it starts to sink in.  I’m rating it a 7 right now but that might increase.

We all took a break 6 of us walked the half mile to the basketball courts for some 3–on–3 fun and exercise.  I mention this to make it clear that we do get outside from time to time.

Most of the kids decided to go for a swim after dinner, so Ken, Brandon, KC, Rita, and I played my new copy of Oltremare from Essen.  I’m a big fan of this game, though after my first play with five I wonder if it is much better with 3 or 4.  I felt that the game ended too quickly (i.e., with too few turns) and exaggerated some of the luck of the draw differences.  Case in point: I never drew a card with more than 2 cargo markers and was unable to trade for anything better.  This made it very difficult to get enough cards down to make long sets.

Still, it was fun and I think Rita and Brandon (first time players) enjoyed it very much.  The bits in the new version are largely gratuitous and hardly helpful.  As you can see in the photo above we replaced the ships with color-coded bits (wooden trucks in this case) so we could actually see what color was where; those ships are completely worthless.  KC pulled out the big victory; Brandon and I tied for last.

While I organized the start of our Magic tournament, all of the women gathered around the Mystery of the Abbey board for some deduction goodness.

For our Magic tournament, I provided a tournament pack plus three boosters from the Ravnica set.  We were all completely ignorant of the set, adding to the excitement of exploring a new set of cards and mechanics.  I’m not a big CCG fan, but this is still one of the best games ever made.  And it keeps on going…

I was hoping to try something different this year, perhaps involving blue or black as I tend to lean towards creature decks (green) or direct damage (red).  The cards spoke for themselves though, and it was fairly obvious that I should play green/white given some of the guild combos and hybrids in my set.  Ravnica introduces cards that can use either/or of two different mana types (green/white, white/red, blue/black, etc.).

I did well in the swiss-style tournament, going undefeated and claiming the victory crown from Ken (he won last year).  Ken and Brandon finished tied for second and will have a playoff match in the morning to see who claims second place.  The games were a blast and everyone enjoyed the new set.

While we finished the tournament the rest of the crowd started a game of Electronic Catch phrase that lasted from 10:30pm until 1:30am.  This was a blast and by 12:30 we had almost the whole crew engaged.

If you’ve never played this, run to Target or Toys R Us tomorrow and pick up a copy – just about any group will enjoy this game.  It was especially nice to see different generations deeply engaged, laughing, and enjoying such a great party game.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring – maybe another play of Indonesia or some prototypes.  You’ll know soon enough…

Friday was the kickoff day for our weekend gaming at Salishan with the Rude and Humphrey families.  That makes 13 bodies in all, so there are plenty of opportunities for a wide range of gaming.  Our goal is usually to bring out games we haven’t played yet or rarely get played in our normal sessions.  Here’s an example of the games with the potential of coming out this weekend.

I picked up Ra at BGG.Con in a trade with Keith Blume.  My first play of this was less than favorable, but given how popular the game is I figured I was missing something and took a chance on getting my own copy.  KC, Rita, Ken, and I sat down to play it as our first official game of the weekend.

KC and Rita have played this game quite a lot, but Ken and I were essentially playing for the first time so we took some time to learn/explain the rules.  I must admit the mechanics are very simple, the game is streamlined and easy to learn, and I quite enjoyed playing.  The fact that I edged out KC for the victory 44–42 might have something to do with it.  I really did enjoy the push-your-luck element combined with the auctions.  There’s a decent amount of luck in the game but that’s OK as you can take steps to mitigate this effect through the bidding process.

Julie and Justin committed themselves to resuming their speed duels. Justin tells me he’s up by three games now.

After our game of Ra, I suggested we try out the Sid Sackson classic Venture.  This is a copy I purchased on eBay from Sid’s personal collection.  Not a bad little game – there are some similarities to Acquire in that players build out corporations, there are takeover mechanics, etc., but the game certainly does stand on its own.  There were a few oddities in the rules that don’t make much sense – money from proxy battles goes to the bank, not the player you steal the corporation from.  Shouldn’t the money go to the player?  Also, as you run low in cards you get penalized even further, because if you can’t afford to buy anything you must discard a card.  I realize this is a mechanic intended to force players to keep cards in their hands, but it seems a bit harsh.  The game went on a bit longer than we would have liked, but it was enjoyable and might be worth trying again with some rules tweaks.

Justin, Josh, Rita, Julie, and I then played the SimplyFun game Plext, an interesting little word game that was challenging and fun.  You shuffle a set of 14 dice and reveal them arranged in a linear sequence.  Players are then challenged to come up with a series of words that use all of the letters in sequence order, inserting as many letters as needed.  For example, if the sequence was “EQRPI” then you might write down “EQuestRian PIe”.  As soon as a player thinks he has a competitive (small) number of words that use up all the letters, he can call out his bid (the number of words), puts down his pencil, then starts the timer.  The other players then have that much time to come up with their own bid, which can be any number of words.  When the timer runs out, whoever had the first lowest bid gets the first shot at solving.  If his solution was correct (valid words, used all the letters), he wins victory points totaling 10 minus the number of words.  Repeat for eight rounds to determine the winner.

While we were playing Plext, KC and Ken played a game of Jambo.  I think KC won.

We gave Barbarossa as a gift to the Rudes, so Julie, Jenna, Chelsea, and Brandon decided to give it a try.  Brandon says he enjoyed it very much, possibly influenced by the fact that he won.

KC was eager to pull out McMulti, one of those hard-to-find holy grail games that often goes for $200+ on eBay.  The game took us close to 3 hours to play and while it was enjoyable, it is a bit too much of a luckfest for my tastes, especially for a game that long.

There are some creative mechanics in the game, especially for a game from 1974.  My favorite is the cross-referenced die rolls that give production to the players on the right and left of the active player.  The economic system is pretty cool as well, though we played with a variant that throttles the economic cycle a bit.  KC, Ken, and I were all pretty close to each other, all surpassing the $1MM mark by the end of the game.  KC ended up the victor with Ken a close second.

Our last game of the night was partnership Tichu, Ken/Chris vs. KC/Rita.  This was my first time through a whole game of this, so it was nice to get the rules and basic strategy ingrained.  I’m ready to try again, especially to get a chance to avenge our loss to KC and Rita.  It was a close match with both teams close to 600, but they shut us down two hands in a row pulling out the victory.

 

My grandmother Brooks passed away earlier this week.  While she was my father’s step-mother (his mother passed away at age 11), she was always my grandma Brooks and she will be missed.  This is her obituary; services were held earlier this morning.

Meta Jane Brooks, 91, of Shelbyville, died Monday, Dec. 26, 2005, at Morristown Manor, in Morristown.

Born Oct. 8, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, she was the daughter of the late George and Imogene (Virden) Masters. She married Louis Brooks Dec. 8, 1951, and he preceded her in death Dec. 25, 1981.

Survivors include four sons, Michael (wife, Lynne) Brooks of Shelbyville, Tom (wife, Linda) Brooks of Cedar Falls, Iowa, John (wife, Ann) Brooks of Green Valley, Ariz., and Dan (friend, Jeri) Brooks of LaSalle, Ill.; five grandchildren; two stepgrandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; and two stepgreat-grandchildren.

Mrs. Brooks graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College, where she received a bachelor of science degree in home economics. She was later awarded an honorary doctorate degree from that school for her work in developing the science building on campus.

She was a home economics teacher, retiring in 1985 after 16 years in education.

Mrs. Brooks also was employed as a county home Extension director in Iowa; as director of home economics for Borg Warner Corp.; as a home economics teacher in LaSalle, Ill., where she founded the food service vocational program; and as a school bus attendant in Melbourne, Fla.

She was a member of the PEO and Alpha Xi Delta sorority.

Mrs. Brooks moved to Shelbyville in 1999 and was a resident of McKay Manor until she moved to Morristown Manor two years ago.

Friends and family may gather at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Carmony-Ewing Harrison Street Chapel, Freeman Family Funeral Homes, 819 S. Harrison St.

A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Friday at the funeral home, with the Rev. Dr. Mary Lundgren and the Rev. Corlis Dees officiating.

Interment will be in Forest Home Cemetery, in Mount Pleasant.

Memorial contributions may be donated to Hospice of Shelby County, 110 South Harrison St., Shelbyville, IN 46176.

Scott Hanselman indirectly reminded me of the cool DasBlog feature showing the year of posts in calendar view.  I found it helpful, maybe you will too…

Last week before Christmas a group of us drove up 101 past Cascade Head (we hiked there earlier this year) to try out the Harts Cove Trail.

Karen woke up wanting to take a “mad hike”, whatever that is.  We came to learn this means running as much of the trail as possible.  The entire crew included, left to right, Karen, Mike, Powell, Julie, Dave, Lisa, and me (taking the picture).

The first 3/4 of a mile or so is straight down via switchbacks, about a 900 foot drop in all.  We started the trail with a brisk walk, but soon Karen turned it into a jog and Mike and I joined her.  We ran for about the first 1.5 miles or so, slowing down as we started to encounter a lot of tree fall.  The trail closes down on January 1, and I see why as the trail will soon be impassable.  The trail passes through beautiful stands of giant sitka spruce and groves of the ferns all too common on the Oregon coast.

After about 2.5 miles, the trail opens into the final meadow revealing the coast and Harts Cove.  Karen and I continued down to the volcanic rocks bordering the rough coastline.

You can see the stream flowing into the cove in the background of the picture below – this cascading stream is how Cascade Head got its name (Harts Cove is on the northern side of Cascade Head).

On the way back we walked for about a mile then Mike and I resumed our jogging.  I fell twice, bruising my knees, and twisted my right ankle something fierce (it swelled up into a baseball sized lump later that night) but managed to run about a mile or so and walked the final death march back up the car. A fun but difficult hike and highly recommended.

 

I continually tweak my podcast subscription list based on interests, quality, word of mouth, and time budget.  I posted previously giving an assessment of the boardgame-related podcasts, but the landscape has changed quite a bit and my subscriptions have expanded.  One of my favorites has disappeared completely… will it return?

Gaming Related

This remains my favorite category and occupies most of my car listening time.

• The Dice Tower – Somewhat begrudgingly, this is my favorite podcast.  Tom and Joe grow on me and I believe they are just genuinely good guys and fun to be around.  They are diligent about their production schedule and I like their top 10 lists.  If you can get past the mispronunciations, there’s a lot to like about this show.
• Boardgames-to-Go – Mark has tailed off during the holiday season but I’m confident he’ll sustain a good production schedule in 2006.  I like his intelligent, self-deprecating approach and meeting him at BGG.Con only confirmed that he’s such a nice guy with interesting things to say about games.
• Have Games Will Travel – I’m glad I discovered this one, as I get more out of Paul’s RPG reviews and commentary than boardgames.  His reviews are encouraging me to consider leaving the D20 realm with my RPG gaming group as soon as the kids are old enough to explore some more advanced themes and systems.
• Pulp Gamer – A bit too much of a beer-and-pretzels game focus, but I love the interviews they’ve landed (James Ernest, Margaret Weis) and the show continues to improve.
• Geek Fu Action Grip – On the fence here, as Mur is a bit too much on the comic / sci-fi fringe for me.  She’s an outstanding writer though and her essays keep me coming back.  I wish she would do more game reviews.
• Board Game Speak – Where art thou?

Digital Photography

I’ve committed to myself to increase my photography skills dramatically in 2006, both on the shooting front and digital dark-room post-processing front.  These podcasts along with some reading study are helping me along the way.

• Tips from the Top Floor – Still my favorite photography podcast, somewhat reinforced by the fact that I got to meet Chris in Germany last December.  I am concerned that Chris spends too much time on meta-speak about the podcast itself – he needs to stay focused on photography and his tips, perhaps putting meta-speak at the end of the show.
• Secrets of Digital Imaging – This one got off to a rough start, with Dennis having similar meta-speak issues, but this one gets better and better.  I especially enjoyed Dennis’ workflow series and I even bought his Photoshop Elements workflow reference card.  Keep up the good work!
• Two Minute Photoshop Tricks – A nice podcast focused on Photoshop, it would be better if I would listen to it while at a computer instead of in the car.

Technology

• Ruby on Rails – Whoa, this one had a rough start in terms of audio quality and content, but Geoffrey Grosenbach continues to improve with each show.  I especially appreciate the recent post on Smalltalk / Seaside, a nice change from the “cult of Rails” insularism that may be imminent.

Comedy

• Ricky Gervais – I’ve listened to  a few of the shows and give it about a B.  I’ll likely unsubscribe to this as I just got… an XM radio for my birthday!  Woot!

If there’s anything else I should be listening to based on what you see here, post it in the comments!

 

Alfred’s Best of the Blogosphere is moving to a new location – Best of Boardgames.  Subscribed.

Greetings from the Oregon coast, again.  I’m back here for New Years weekend so expect to see some more posts with gaming goodness.

Last night I had the opportunity to try out Mesopotamia at Mike’s annual between Christmas and New Years game day.  I arrived about 3pm and joined Carey and George in this new Mayfair / Phalanx release while others played Medici.  Sorry, no pics for this session.

Mesopotamia is at its heart an exploration and pick up and deliver game.  The initial setup has a temple in the center of a set of six interlocking tiles that form a ring around the temple.  The players start with villagers and a hut on a tile adjacent to the center.  Tiles are forests, quarries (or some other stone producing land), volcanoes, and plains.  The objective of the game is deliver four offerings to the temple, with each offering requiring a different “mana” level for the offering (2, 4, 6, and 7).  Players start with a mana cap of 3 so must increase that cap through the game by helping to build the center temple with stones, presumably increasing their favor with the gods.

On your turn you get to move villagers a total of five spaces, divided up as you choose amongst your villagers.  This is how you explore new tiles (by moving off the map), pick up wood, stone, or offerings, and deliver offerings or stone to the temple at the center.  You are not allowed to carry resources through the temple, which causes some interesting movement restrictions to the game effectively dividing the board space in half.  This is because the initial setup involves impassable volcanoes on opposite sides of the temple (I didn’t know there was such an abundance of volcanoes in Mesopotamia, but whatever).

After movement is complete you can choose from any of four actions:

• Build a new hut on a plains tile with 0 or 1 huts on it.  When you build a hut, you secretly choose one of your offering counters and place it under the hut.  This is what you’ll need to pick up and deliver to the center temple.
• Build a holy place – if you have two villagers on an empty plains space and one of them is carrying stone, you can build a holy place there.  Holy places are one of the ways you produce mana.
• Reproduce new villagers – if you have two villagers at a hut (presumably for the privacy), you can spawn a new villager at that hex.  You can do this as many times as you want as long as you have enough villagers to reproduce.  You can only do this if huts on the space have no offering counters under them.
• Draw a card.  There are a number of cards that grant special actions or opportunities to screw the other players (such as relocating a hut).  You can only draw one card per turn, and then only if you do no other actions.

We played the first half of the game completely wrong – we didn’t realize you had to choose from one of these four actions, so we started off by doing a number on the same turn.  This sped up the game considerably and made game decisions very straightforward.  Once we realized the error, things slowed down quite a bit and decisions became quite difficult.

I managed to draw a few cards that helped me slow down George considerably, and he was my closest competitor.  I managed to finish my offerings first, about 1–2 turns ahead of George, giving me the win in this initial game that we played incorrectly.  Still, this is a decent game and I hope to try it again soon.  It feels similar to Lost Valley, but this game is quite a bit lighter and easier to explain.  It is MUCH more abstract though – the theme didn’t really do much for me.  The components are first rate and the rules are quite well written despite our problems – that was operator error and not a reflection on Phalanx or Mayfair.

If you are a fan of light, fairly abstract euros and like exploration mechanics then you should try this game.  It plays in about an hour and had some nice mechanics and I had fun.  I’m a bit worried that the cards are too strong (and unbalanced) and that victory might just come down to who draws the better cards, but I very well could be wrong.

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.