I didn’t expect to get any gaming in this weekend.  Some work pressures plus an upcoming trip to Alabama were going to steal away most of the hours.  I thought perhaps 2 hours would free up on Sunday, and I politely informed Jacob that he would be playing Command and Colors: Ancients with me.  He didn’t exactly look happy at the prospect – he’s been having too much fun with his gravity gun playing Half Life 2 – but I knew once we got started he would enjoy the game.  He’s played Memoir ‘44 and Battle Cry quite a bit; in fact he was the Memoir ‘44 demo monkey at GenCon for Days of Wonder.

Fortunately, Ken called around 1pm asking if he could help knock out another of my unplayed games.  I of course invited him (and Brandon) over to join me in a first try of the introductory scenario (Akragas).  This is a nice intro choice as it doesn’t use the elephants and thereby avoids some special rules (Stampy… He tried to kill me!).

The game is easy to pick up for those familiar with M44, with the most difficult rules being combat-specifics for the different units and the effects of leaders.  We kept getting tripped up on the benefits of being next to a leader vs. in the same hex.  The rules are well down and I’m sure it will become second nature.

I’ve read that it is tough for the Carthaginians to win this scenario.  I think if I had played them, I would have won because my dice rolling was unstoppable.  Case in point: I’m up four victory banners to none, needing one more to win.  I play a Darken the Sky command card and fire with 3+1 dice against a full-strength foot unit.  I roll four green circles on four dice.  I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to calculate the changes of that happening.

That roll, while an extreme example, was representative of the rest of my dice rolling in the game.  Ken was very aggressive with his cavalry, trying to dart in on my flank and take out a unit, only to evade on my counter-attack the next turn.  He did a lot of damage, but left four of my units at single strength, unable to finish the job.

We had about an hour left, so Ken suggested Carcassonne: the City.  This is by far my favorite of the series, offering a nice mix of tactical and strategic play.  It plays quickly with 2 players – about 50 minutes – and Ken pulled out a decisive victory.  He got down some great farmers (or stewards or whatever they are called in this version) and 2 exceptional guards.

I feel like I could give away the rest of the series and just keep this one.  The box is real nice too.

I had a business trip to Brussels last week, with meetings scheduled for Tuesday-Thursday.  Erich and I arrived around 6:30am on Tuesday morning, and knowing that we should do our best to stay awake throughout the day and not having our first meeting until 3:00pm, we grabbed John after breakfast and cabbed it down to the central plaza.

Brussels has a lot going for it, mostly in the way of food and beer.  And chocolate.  The city itself – my opinions haven’t changed much since the last time I was there in 1990.  Too urbanized, modernized, and spread out for my taste.  I think the idea is to escape into the countryside during the day if you are a tourist, then return in the evening for the outstanding food.  We did manage to spend some time at the ancient and modern art museum, taking in the Belgian masters and a number of outstanding impressionist, surrealist, and abstract works.

I was amazed at the number of school groups there getting very in-depth instruction.  We heard lessons in at least three languages – Dutch, French, and German.

There was a chance we would have meetings on Friday, but the day opened up and John and I decided to spend the day in Amsterdam before our flight back on Saturday.

We boarded the Thalys train late Thursday night, arriving in Amsterdam about 2:45 later at 11pm.

We packed a lot into our Friday, visiting the Anne Frank Museum first thing.  The museum has undergone significant changes since my last visit 16 years ago.  This is a must-see visit if you ever go to Amsterdam.  It also reminded me that it is time for Jacob to read the book.

The Rijksmuseum is one of the art museums to see in Europe.  While it is undergoing significant renovation right now, they’ve concentrated the masterpieces in a central area that remains open.  This greatly increases the enjoyment factor as you get an extreme concentration of some of the best art you’ll find anywhere in the world, including all of the Rembrandts in a single room.

Some consider Rembrandt one the greatest artists of all time, and when you see his works up close you are likely to agree.  Night Watch, perhaps his most famous work, stands 14 ft tall and looks as if you can walk into the scene.

We finished the day with a short visit to the Van Gogh Museum.  While this is a great museum, I prefer a variety of artists.  A great place to go if you want to see the time transition of his works and learn about his short life as an artist.

There’s been a dearth of game playing in my life for the past two weeks.  Mucho travel (I guess I should post some pictures of Brussels and Amsterdam), some late hours working, and other extracurricular commitments have pushed gaming to the background.

Last Sunday I managed to convince Jacob and Matthew to join me in a game of Torres.  Now technically I’ve played this before on Boite Jeux (against Mark I think), but I was so lost that I decided not to give myself credit for a play.  I picked up a German copy at last year’s Essen Spiel fair.  In hindsight, I wish I’d spent a bit more and purchased an English language copy.  The cards are pretty language dependent (albeit iconic), making it a bit challenging for the boys.

We didn’t have a reasonable grasp on the strategic concepts of the game until we were half-way through the second round.  We also missed the rule about passing through castles through doorways, but we figured that out by the third round.  Jacob set me up a few times for big turns, allowing me to win by a healthy margin.  A good game that I think I’ll enjoy more with continued play, but not one I think the boys will ask for very often.

Tonight the four of us played Yahtzee Deluxe Poker, a game I picked up at a KB Toys close-out for about $3.  Bidding, betting, and dice rolling sounded like a good combination, and I’m glad I picked this one up.  The downside is that there’s a decent likelihood of player elimination, but the game is short enough for that to not be a big deal.

The basic idea in the game: seven bid cards are drawn randomly from a set of about 30 total.  These are placed face-down in a stack, and the first card is drawn.  Each card depicts an objective (e.g., roll a straight [1..5] with five dice in three rounds) and a payoff.  Players bid in an open auction for the right to attempt the challenge.  The highest bidder takes on the challenge, and the other players are allowed to place side bets on success/fail.  The game was quick, exciting, had plenty of laughter and cheering, and was a solid exercise in calculating odds.  Very much recommended, especially at that price point.

I finally managed to have a Friday in the office today, meaning I could attend a lunchtime gaming session.  Four of us played Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, a game I had only played with two players.  This isn’t a trivial game to teach, but we were underway within about 15 minutes or so.  Michael jumped out to a big early lead and ended up with the victory, though Arron made a hard charge in the final hand to make it closer than anyone thought possible.  I think the game’s a bit too chaotic with four, and I understand the 2–player recommendation on the game box.  I think Wyatt Earp would be a better choice next time with four players.

Mike hosted another great day of Superbowl gaming last weekend and posted a detailed session report.

I finally got around to editing some photos that you can see here in my flickr set.  I don’t have much to add other than a few more details about the game of Tigris and Euphrates that Julie managed to join.  After agreeing to play, she wandered over to my Pizza Box football game to ask “is this the sort of game I’ll like?”  I grimaced and expressed my surprise that she volunteered to play, but quickly put on a happy face and indicated that she just might like it.

As so often happens in situations like this, Julie managed to win it what turned out to be an oddly short and low-scoring game (I think she won with 6 or 7 points).  I think the game was shorter due to an usual number of tile discard and re-draws.

Saturday was the regional tournament for Chess for Success, the Oregon-wide organizational body for scholastic chess.  Laurie and I chose our team from the top performers in the advanced and intermediate classes we teach at school (we also teach a beginner class with K-3).  I knew we had a strong team this year and held out some hope that we could qualify for state (like we did two years ago), but knew the competition would be fierce.

Our team was very well balanced and scored 14 points, good enough to secure a tie for 3rd place (out of 13 teams).  No player scored below 2 points, and Jacob led the way with 4 points (out of a total possible of 5).  Matthew continued his track of improvement, scoring 3 points.  He’s got two more years at this level and given how much he enjoys the game, I hope he’ll be one of the 4–5 point players in the next two years.  I was particularly proud that after losing his first two games he came back and won his final three.

It was great having Jacob back this year after his illness last year.  He suffered a loss in his third round but came back strong to finish as one of the top 10 players in the tournament (out of about 120).  Next year he’ll move on to middle school where things will get quite a bit more competitive.

After Jacob’s Game Maker class two Saturdays ago (January 21) we drove up to northwest Portland to attend the GameStorm game day.  I was pretty amazed at the number of people attending – I counted at least 30 people there by the time we left in the early evening.  There was quite a variety of gaming going on, including Caylus, World of Warcraft, Liberté, and Ticket to Ride.

Eager to knock a game off my burndown list, I brought out Ark of the Covenant and snagged a few players to join me.  This is just another Carcassonne variant, but it combines several aspects of other expansions that I like.  Now I should have read the rules a bit more carefully ahead of time, because there are a few easy-to-miss scoring rules (scrolls in cities, oasis by the road) and you ALWAYS have to check how unfinished roads and cities are scored.  Nonetheless, this is a fun variant and we had fun moving the ark around.  Jacob one handily if I recall.

One of my main reasons for attending (I skipped a Roads and Boats session, after all) was to get in another play of one of KC’s classic prototypes, Isla Nova (aka New Eden 2 aka Edenborough).  Ken and Carey joined Jacob and I and it was as fun as I remember – definitely one of our short-list games to try out in an upcoming playtest day.

This is a tile-laying game and is quite abstract, but it is rooted in a colonization theme where different communities or tribes are establishing competing industries.  The game played in just about an hour and felt very rewarding.

Next, Jacob and I played a 2–player prototype of Carey Grayson’s new game 24/7.  This is a light abstract designed primarily for 2 players and it involves laying down domino-shaped tiles on a 7x7 grid.  You score points when you lay a tile that creates a sequence of tiles (in any direction) that add up to 24, 7, form a sequence, create 3 or more of kind, etc.

The game was quite fun and had Jacob and I captivated – plenty of tension, easy to teach, and great potential.  I hope Carey can get this into mass production.

Turns out I'm the Geek of the Week over on Boardgamegeek.  Check it out and feel free to ask some questions.

Time to catch up on some session reports.  Two weekends ago, the boys and I broke out Pizza Box Football to play during the conference championship games (Tivo’d, of course).  We played a simulated playoff (Steelers vs. Broncos, Seahawks vs. Panthers) and Superbowl using the expansion rules and teams.

This is a great little game – one of the best football simulations I’ve played.  I’m not sure the expansion rules add much other than confusing extra cross-references, though the choices of more offensive plays (play action, screen, draw) and higher risk defenses (blitzes) are a nice touch.  Some may say simulation is too strong a word for this game as it doesn’t even try to simulate individual player actions.  What the game does simulate is the play-calling of football.

Yes, there’s a decent amount of luck in the game.  I was reminded of this repeatedly in my game with Matthew.

Yesterday the boys and I tried out scenario 2 of Doom: the Boardgame.  This game hasn’t seen very much action, partly because it is a bit longish and partly because it seems pretty hard for the heroes to win.  I’ve also been seriously thinking about trying to trade it for Descent, a game I think would come out more frequently.

It was rough going for the marines this time around; perhaps I was too hard on them but I just can’t hold back.  They made it to section 2 but were soon overwhelmed and I accumulated 6 frags to end the game.  It was a fun experience and I don’t want to sound too harsh on the game.

It has been almost a year since I posted anything about the chess program I run at Archer Glen elementary here in Sherwood.  We just kicked off tournament season and had a warm-up session last week during school with the two other Sherwood elementary schools at the local YMCA.  Chess is a big deal in Sherwood, largely through the efforts of Jack Weeks, retired school counselor who initiated the chess programs in the local schools.  It therefore seemed appropriate to award the Jack Weeks Challenge Cup to the school that wins the tournament each year.

I ran the tournament team swiss style and we managed to squeeze in seven rounds between 9am and 2am.  I was only able to attend until about 10:45am, but we had more than ample adult support on hand to keep things running smoothly.  Jacob and Matthew both had solid days, scoring in the 3–4.5 point range.  One of Jacob’s best games was a match against Hopkins Elementary’s best player – you can see the endgame below where they squared off with K/R and two pawns each.  Jacob got his rook lured into a trap in the back corner and lost it, leading to a loss in a well-spirited game.

Matthew did very well and finished in the top 3 for third graders.  This is his third year playing in the tournament circuit and should be a powerhouse by the time he hits the fifth grade.

Archer Glen pulled out the team victory as well as the top 2 individual players.  This coming Saturday is the big regional Chess for Success tournament.  If we can pull out a 1st or 2nd place at regionals then we’ll advance to the state championship.

Julie and I attended a SimplyFun party last Friday night at Eric’s house, with Mike Deans providing the consulting power.   I didn’t expect to see much new but I did want Julie to experience one of these parties (she missed mine).  Plus, well, it was an excuse to hang out with friends and play games.

We started out with a game of Handy.  I’m generally a big fan of dexterity games, but this one just doesn’t do it for me.  It is the type of game you play through a round and say “Oh, I get it.  Can we play something else now?”

While half the group played a game of Walk the Dogs (you can clearly see one the players employing the infamous poodle strategy)…

we gave the new(er) game Texas Roll’em a try.  This is a Richard Borg design and derivative of the classic Liar’s Dice (which is itself derived from Perudo).  The theme and bits are cool, but the game fell flat for me.  What’s different from the original?

• There’s more open information in the form of a “flop” of three dice that are use in conjunction with the rest of the hidden dice.  I suspect that the net effect of these additional dice is nill, but I’m not a statistician and I might be missing something.
• Anyone can call “bluff” (or “liar”) on a bet, not just the next player in sequence.  This isn’t a bad variant.
• After a bluff has been called, two more dice (the river I guess) are rolled and are added to the total.  This adds a level of randomness to the game that, in my opinion, takes away from the elegance of the original design.  Especially as the total number of dice decreases and these two become more impactful.

The final game of the night for us was the new Darryl Hannah design Liebrary.  This is a derivation from the classic parlor game “dictionary”, aka Balderdash.  The difference here is that players are given the title and author of a literary work (in one of several categories, including classics, kids, horror/sci-fi/fantasy, and a few others) and must come up with the first line of the work.  The judge player takes all the submissions and reads each one aloud along with the actual first line.  As expected, you get a point for guessing correctly and for each other player that chooses your fake answer.

I found the game to be more challenging than Balderdash as you need to try and mimic the voice of the author.  It won’t be right for everyone, but I enjoyed it enough to make it my only purchase of the evening.  The components for the game are very cool – the box looks like a giant book that folds out to reveal the card holders and the game board.

I showed Julie the game Ido tonight, recommending that she use it as a combination art literacy / gaming session at the school.  As we were fiddling with the pieces, admiring the cool abstract art aspect of the game, we decided to go ahead and give it a try.  Strike one game off my list!  Woot!

Ido is a an abstract game with very simple mechanics – start a new piece, move pieces on the board, or shift a black square frame one segment on the board.  The goal is to move four of your pieces off the diagonal edge of the board.

There are some surprises and challenges in the game – we were both a bit baffled at times about the impact shifting the frame would have on the shape of the board.  The game played quickly, about 15 minutes, but we both agreed it would be more interesting with 4 players.