Last week before my trip to DC we worked in a game of Pueblo before bedtime.  This was an Essen pickup for me, and as an abstract, one I thought might really appeal to Julie.  This is a tough game to visualize and pick up quickly – Matthew had a hard time visualizing what the chief would see as he walked around the pueblo.

By all accounts I had a strong lead going into the final pass around the town, but Julie did such a nice job hiding her blocks from view towards the end that she quickly caught up with me (or, rather, I quickly caught up with her in penalty points).  We ended up in a tie for first.  A solid abstract that I’d like to try again soon.

Today was a free Sunday afternoon and a chance to try out Descent: Journeys in the Dark. I picked this up at Rainy Day Games after collecting my auction proceeds of about $55.  We played the introductory scenario with five players total.

Gameplay is very similar to Doom, but with many more chits, cards, and miniatures.  The first 3/4 of the game appeared to be much too easy for the heroes.  None of the monsters I could summon up seemed to be a challenge to these guys, and about the only way I was able to do damage was through traps.  They accumulated a ton of quest tokens and magic items along the way, and it looked like it would be a very one-sided affair.

Things changed dramatically in the final boss room when I had the giant jump stand over the pit for a raged sweep attack, killing all four characters with a single blow.  They were all a bit weakened, but this was devastating to the team and made the game much closer as a result.  They were clinging to just 6 tokens (with my deck running down to the last two cards as well) when they managed to finish off the giant and win the game.  I think it was a big hit for everyone.

George and Sean stopped by for a while to hang out and play some kiddy games.  Sean had a lot of fun with the cats and it was great having him around for a while.  Very social, bright kid.

We had about an hour left after the Descent game finished, so Ken and I tried out my new copy of Roma.  What a nifty little two-player game (make sure you check out Dave’s Roma on Roma post) – very easy to learn and play, and we finished two games in about 50 minutes.  This is the kind of game you’ll want to play again right away after playing.  There is a decent amount of luck to the game, but I suspect good strategy will dominate over time.

Cool – twice in two weeks I’m able to hook up with a local gaming group while away on business.  Last Thursday I joined David Fair and a group of his gaming friends at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, VA, a short 10 minute drive from my hotel near Dulles airport.

The Game Parlor is an outstanding game store, both in terms of selection and gaming facilities.  There were easily over 15 tables available for gaming – there was a CCG tournament going on, folks playing miniatures, a game of Ticket to Ride, two wargames, and we didn’t feel squeezed at all.

David did his homework and new I was a fan of For Sale, so he offered that up as an opener.  As straightforward as the game rules appear to be, I quickly learned that this group plays the game much differently than I have.  You can check out these two threads on BGG for an example of the confusion.  I’ve always played that you lose have your bid in value to the bank when you don’t win the auction.  These guys play that you lose half your chips to the bank, making the use of the $2 chips meaningful in more ways than just the increase bidding.

I’d like to blame confusion over this rule on my poor play (I finished dead last), but alas I just played poorly in the first round of auctions, making it very difficult to have any kind of strong showing in the blind bidding phase.

David recommended San Francisco for our next play – apparently this is a solid game for five players.  To learn more about the mechanics of the game, check out this review by Brian Bankler. While I greatly enjoyed the other players and some aspects of the game, a few of the mechanics left me cold.  The human factors in the game are also a big challenge (this was also called out in Brian’s review), causing mistakes by several of the players at different times during the game.

My primary complaints were about the bidding mechanics.  On some of the auctions, you are trying to choose a type of building type that the others won’t choose (residential, recreational, or business).  While there’s some information on the board to help guide a player’s choice, this felt very much like Hoity Toity to me – and most of you know my feelings on Hoity Toity.  The other mechanic that was annoying as hell was the influence auctions.  Players each choose an influence card ranging from 0 to 9 points.  The auction might give the prize to the top 2 bidders that don’t tie.  So if three players each bid 9, one bid 1, and the other 0, the players who bid 1 and 0 would win the auction.  This leads to similar attempts to out-think your opponents and left me cold.

I think I finished in last again on this one, but the game was a bit closer and given one more turn I might have moved up to third or fourth place.

We wrapped up our evening with a game of Formula Motor Racing after adding a 6th player.  I had seen this played over at Doug & Mimi’s but had not played it before.  This is a great little game and a solid choice for six players – one I might consider adding to my collection.

Adding to the appeal was the nice little track accompanying this game (don’t expect to find this in the box – this was fan made and I don’t even see a file on the geek for it).

We spent some time chatting after gaming about travel, Essen, and the Gathering.  I also picked up a copy of Roma from the store – I felt obligated to pick something up after taking advantage of such a fine gaming facility.  A good purchase as I’ll illustrate soon.  Thanks to David & co. for your hospitality and company.  I’ll check in again next time I’m in the area.

I’m hooked on not-too-obscure musical references.  Or maybe it was too obscure – you tell me.

Anyway, I spent last week in Birmingham, Alabama on business.  Knowing that I would finally have a night free on the road to get in some gaming, I reached out to spielfrieks and got a positive response from Chris Comeaux.  He was kind enough to grab a few of his friends and invited me to his place on the southeast side of town.

Chris has a very cool collection of assembled lego figures from Star Wars.  Darth Maul sporting the Rio Grande Games hat was certainly the highlight.

We had the usual rumblings and indecisiveness about what to play with four players.  Someone mentioned Torres, and while I really wanted to knock something off my not-yet-played list, I agreed that this was a perfect choice.  I had just learned to play it the weekend before and was eager to try it again and refine my understanding of the rules.  Good thing, because I had missed a few key ones in my first playing.  Only Chris and I had played before (and not much at that), so this was very much a learning game for everyone.  We ended up with a small concentration of very large, very tall (and flat) castles neutralizing much of the scoring opportunities (or at least differentiation opportunities).  Interestingly, nobody scored the king bonus in the 2nd or 3rd round.

I managed to pull ahead of the others by getting in the mix in all of the castles and getting to the top of the biggie.

Next up was Domaine, again a game that only Chris and I played.  This was my fourth or fifth play, and I’ve never won the game.  My winless streak continued, with Chris crushing the rest of and getting to (I think) the magical 30 points forcing the end of the game.

One reason Chris won by such a large margin: the three losers had too much in-fighting in one corner.  I got a bit snippy with Christian when he stole a knight from me, taking away any opportunity to defend myself against Chris (yes, there was a Chris, a Chris, and a Christian at the table) without gaining much for himself.  At that point, though, the game was already lost and it made sense for him to jockey for some position against me.  I probably could have more effectively used some diplomacy to unite our forces a bit.

Overall, two great four-player games and it was a great way to spend a Monday night out on the road.  Thanks Chris for hosting and I’ll look you up again when I’m in town.

Wow, only four posts so far this month.  Getting this post in before midnight puts me at five, tying my record low of five in Feburary 2005.  I’ve got a decent backlog of stuff to talk about, so hopefully March will start on strong footing.

Back in 1989 I attended GenCon in Milwaukee, playing mostly RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons and Star Wars.  I attended with a good friend from high school that I’ve since lost touch with (Mike Tavel).  We also lived together in Aspen for a summer after our freshman years in college.

So on a lark we entered the ZEF IV RPG tournament, a wacky contest where you roleplay characters who are roleplaying other characters.  We hooked up with two singles and hit it off.  We roleplayed well and efficiently worked through all of the puzzles – sometimes through skill, sometimes through pure luck.  There was very little combat in the adventure, and much of the judging was subjective.

I guess we did pretty well, because we won the tournament (over 500 people entered).  Here’s a scan of our victory photo from the convention.  I think I won about $200 worth of games and gaming supplies. 

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.