Julie and I spent the weekend in St. Louis visiting our alma mater, Washington University.  The last time I visited was in 1995 at a five year class reunion, but Julie and I decided it was time to return and join a special celebration.  I was a member of Thurtene, the junior honorary, a group of thirteen students chartered each year with putting on the Thurtene Carnival.  This is presumably the oldest and largest student-run carnival in the United States.  Members are selected early in their junior year and spend the next 4–6 months doing the prep work for the carnival.  It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my college years.

The campus has changed significantly for the better since my time there, with the most dramatic changes being the residential area, aka the “South 40”.  What used to be a collection of boring 60s and 70s-style cement buildings has turned into a terraced landscape of classic brick buildings and winding pathways.  Gone are the ugly skyscrapers (and firetraps) and one-by-one they are taking down the older dormitories and replacing them with buildings much more in step with the architecture of the campus.  Some things never change though, making our visit an exciting blend of revisiting old familiar spaces and discovering new aspects of this beautiful university.  Thankfully, student groups still paint the underpass with event advertisements – losing that would have been a hard pill to swallow.

Our reason for coming this weekend went beyond just attending the carnival – the faculty advisor for Thurtene, Coach Jim Burmeister, is stepping down from his role after serving in that capacity for 35 years.  I swear he hasn’t aged a day since serving as our advisor in 1989, and members from his 1st years back in the 70s affirmed that their view was consistent with mine.

We had a spectacular turnout from our year, with seven members making the trip from all corners of the US (Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Oregon, and St. Louis).  There’s something special about a group charged with a single monumental task each year (putting on a carnival to raise funds for a children’s charity) that maintains a level of continuity that far surpasses most institutions we encounter in our lives.  While the names change every year (as does the makeup of the organization – it went from all men to co-ed in 1992), the traditions stay the same largely due to the adept guidance of an individual like Coach.

Thanks Coach for your loyalty and dedication to Thurtene these past 35 years.  Thanks to my fellow Thurtene 1989 for creating and sharing one of my most memorable college experiences.  Finally, thanks to those current and future members of Thurtene that will carry the tradition forward.

It has been too long since I’ve played some online PBW games.  So, join me in a game of Wallenstein, Bus, or Amun Re over at Spielbyweb.  Look for the games with the prefix “RipCity”, password is “sunriver”.

My (other, last) grandmother passed away this week.

Madge Meredith Gardiner, 97, of Morristown Manor in Morristown, Ind., formerly of Carmel, Ind., and Shelbyville, Ind., died Wednesday, April 5, 2006.

Born Feb. 14, 1909, in Chanute, Kan., she was the daughter of E.T. and Mabel Alice Robertson Blackwood. On June 2, 1934, she married George Gardiner. He preceded her in death.

Mrs. Gardiner taught first grade at Perkins Elementary School for 21 years.

She was a graduate of Parsons College in Fairfield and did graduate work at Drake University, Northeast Missouri State College and Western Illinois University. She was a member of DAR, a charter member of Abidah Circle of King's Daughters, Alpha Kappa and a longtime member of Grace United Methodist Church in Burlington.

Survivors include one daughter, Lynne Brooks of Shelbyville; two sons, Larry Gardiner of Lincoln, Calif., and Don Gardiner of Bloomington, Ind.; eight grandchildren; and six great–grandchildren.

Besides her husband, she was preceded in death by her parents, one sister and one brother.

Her body has been donated to the Indiana School of Medicine.

A memorial service for Mrs. Gardiner will be at Grace United Methodist Church on Saturday, Aug. 5.

A memorial has been established for Grace United Methodist Church.

The Hawk Eye Newspaper.

Read this GeekList.

I’ll be posting photos as much as possible to my Flickr photo stream.

Friend and co-worker Scott Hanselman is trying to raise at least $10,000 in the Walk for Diabetes.  Odds are you know someone living with this disease – why not show some support and help Scott reach his goal?

Matthew and I sat down to for a first playing of the Eastern Front expansion to Memoir ‘44.  I’ve read elsewhere that people have been able to pack all of the expansions into the original box, but I don’t see how that’s possible.  To be precise, I suppose they fit but the lid definitely doesn’t close down all the way creating an unsightly bulge when on the shelf.

We somewhat arbitrarily chose Breakout at Klin as the scenario, but it was a good choice as it used the Blitz and Russian Command rules.  Memoir is the sort of game that for some reason is tough for me to get out with Matthew, but once we start setting up his excitement grows and grows.  The pieces, the map, and the anticipation all add up to some nice pre-game excitement.

The Russians need to take a very defensive stance to win this scenario, I think, and I was a bit too slow in setting up my defense of Golyadi on the left flank.  I managed to pull back my infantry there, but did not provide enough support and that proved to be my demise.  I scanned the message boards on the Days of Wonder site a bit to see if we played the victory medals correctly.  There are two towns of two hexes each, and the scenario rules say that you place a victory medal on each hex in the towns, for four total.  It seemed odd that the German player could get two medals for just capturing the town of Golyadi, especially given how crippled the Russians are with the weak command structure.  Richard Borg himself answered in the forums that this is indeed correct and that it is very hard for the Russians to win.

The Blitz Rules give the Germans two key advantages:

• They can use any Recon 1 card as an Air Power tactic card.  Note to Russian player: don’t cluster your troops into handy groups of four to take out with an airstrike!
• Allied armor is a bit crippled and can only move 2 hexes and battle.

To make it even worse on the Russian player, the Russian Command rules introduce the Political Commissar to simulate the political command structure in the Russian army.  This forces the Russian player to play their command card a turn in advance of when it will activate, placing it under a poker chip.

The only exception is that the Russian player can still play Recon 1 cards at will from his hand, and can reply with Counter-Attacks and Ambush cards.

I like this rule.  It makes the game a bit more strategic for the Russian player and is an appropriate way to simulate the inefficient command structure.

In the end, Matthew and the Germans won the scenario 6–4.  Matthew took much pleasure in showing me how he could win three different ways in his last turn.  That’s OK – him winning likely brings him back for more, which is just fine in my book.

I joined a few folks at the Starbucks near Washington Square last night for a brief evening of gaming.  Joining some of the regular Rip City folks was Ben Harris, early supporter of Havoc and brother of a co-worker at Corillian.  I arrived a bit late and the crew was just getting started with a prototype under development for Sunriver Games.  Hopefully I’ll be able to talk about it more in a short while.

Mike was very eager to get out Pirate’s Cove, the Days of Wonder remake of Piratenbucht.  I’ve played Piratenbucht quite a bit but had never managed to play this version, despite the fact that I’ve done demos for Days of Wonder at the last two GenCons.  This is partly because they rarely demo this game at their booth, reserving it for scheduled sessions in the gaming hall.

The rules are very close to the original with a few twists, so we were under way without much delay.  The most discussion (of course) was about how to move the pirate.  Of course, we settled on our home-grown semi-random Blackbeard variant, documented by our very own Dave and KC.

Despite getting beat up (by me) a few times early in the game, KC managed to end the game as the most famous pirate, finishing well ahead of the rest of us.  I think I finished second-to-last.

Last weekend presented a solid mixed bag of gaming, including two more check-marks off my unplayed list.

Matthew had a birthday party to attend on Sunday afternoon for one of his fellow classmates and chess team members.  As of Friday afternoon we hadn’t yet chosen a present, so Julie asked me to pick up something from Rainy Day Games on the way home from work.  I had a few choices in mind (Pickomino, some lighter card games) but decided to pick up my favorite “simple” Carcassone game – Hunters and Gatherers.  The city is my favorite in the series, but a bit much for new gamers to learn from the box.

Matthew and I figured we better play it again so that Matthew could teach his friend how to play. The game wasn’t very close – Matthew was pretty tired by the time we started Friday night and I had to remind him of the rules a few times – he had the hardest time scoring the fishermen.

Saturday evening Jacob and I broke out my copy of Zero!, volume 3 in the Down in Flames series.  I picked this up along with Corsairs and Hellcats in a GMT sale a year or two ago.  This is a card-driven WWII air combat game that feels a lot like a CCG without the collecting.  We played a simple element (figher & wingman) vs. element dogfight to get a feel for the rules.  There’s a lot more in the box than just the cards for the air combat, including bombers and a well packaged campaign game covering the early part of the Pacific war (Corsairs and Hellcats covering the later part).

The game was very easy to learn and Jacob (playing Japan) managed to shoot me down without taking any damage.  I just couldn’t get into any sort of advantaged position, and it seems to be tought to come from behind once you start to lose it.  I suspect the game is much more interesting with multiple elements where other pilots can come to the aid of one in danger and force an attacker to back off.  Jacob had a great time and looked very interested in trying the campaign game.

Sunday morning we all ran in the Shamrock Run in downtown Portland.  Julie and I were signed up for the 8k, the boys the 5k, but once we looked at the race schedule we decided to all do the 5k rather than keep the boys waiting for an hour after they finished.  Jacob and I planned to play a full game of War of the Ring that afternoon, but I got a call from Ken late morning and we agreed to play.  That allowed Jacob and Brandon to play some XBox 360 and PC games.

I had the game setup by late morning.  Ken arrived around 1:45 and we started our game at 2:15, with Ken playing the Free Peoples and me playing the Shadow Armies.  Like any game of this depth and complexity, things were a bit slow at the start as we worked out the rules.  Of particular help was a player aid / turn summary from BGG – I strongly recommend using this one for each player as it is much better than the aids that come with the game.

This is a very well designed game – I’m anxious enough to play it again that I’m willing to defer playing some other big games on my list for a few more chances to play it while the rules are still fresh in my head. We both fumbled around quite a bit with strategy as the choices often are pretty non-obvious.  It also hurt not knowing what the cards had to offer (we didn’t even scan them ahead of time).  Ken managed to kill of Saruman within 2 turns of his entry into the game, and I managed to steal 6 VPs from strongholds that he left unoccupied.  The tension was great as I moved to 9 VPs (needing just one more to win), with Ken at 2 VPs (needing 2 more for a military victory), and the fellowship on the doorstep of Mordor.

This is where I made a critical mistake, leaving Moria unoccupied as I raced up to Rivendell to capture the stronghold.  I even had a chance to muster a unit into there, instead opting for a Nazgul (useless by himself) and counting on another muster the following turn.  Well, I rolled three “eyes” and three “palantirs” on my next roll, and had no way to get any troops into Moria. Ken got the movement dice he needed and proceeded to walk into Moria unmolested, resulting in a military victory for the good guys.  I ended with 8 VPs.  Overall one of the best gaming experiences in recent memory – I’m glad I finally took the time to get this one played.