I'm obsessed with Fields of Fire, and I've only played 1/5 of a full scenario. When I say obsessed, I mean I keep thinking about how much I want to play this game. Finding the time to play it is another matter...

Adding to the obsession was the past week re-watching the Band of Brothers series with the family. That was my fourth or fifth time through the series and it never gets old. Did you know that The Pacific is due out later this year?

After two failed starts trying to learn the game on my own, I coaxed Doug into a visit to teach a few of us how to play. Mike and Jesse joined me to learn the game with two concurrent solitaire sessions. Doug did a great detailed write-up on the teaching session, and you should also check out his 3-part series in ramping up with the game:

• Components
• Preparation
• Sequence of Play

Allow me to walk you through some photos and some of the basics of the game. The initial setup or a scenario is randomized primarily through the map configuration, which consists of a 2D array of terrain cards. In the initial WWII scenario you have three platoons (along with company-level assets) charged with taking primary and secondary objectives. You choose the objectives based on the scenario guidelines.

The game sequence is complex, and made no easier due to the much maligned ruleset for the game. Read Doug's overviews if you want to go deeper, but I'll provide a brief abstract here:

• This is a command-point driven game, where the most effective use of commands are those handed down from on high. This is generally randomized through card draw.
• Units and lower-ranking leaders can often act of their own initiative.
• Lines of communication are key to make effective use of your command structure.
• Firing just happens, and effects result from the presence of fire.

I didn't get far enough into the game to really grok smoke signals, pyrotechnics, and casualty collection. I did get far enough into it to see the elegance and creativity in this game. Kudos to the designer, and shame on the developer (and designer) for the poor rules - get this fixed! This is too good a game to be left on the shelf.

Thanks so much to Doug for helping a few of us get over the initial learning curve. I hope to bring this out to Salishan over spring break and get a few scenarios into it, maybe with Jacob's help.

The boys are working hard preparing for a talent show at school later this spring. I convinced them to allow me to record an early take before they became proficient with the song (Enter Sandman). This is the result.

Enter Sandman - Original Take from Chris Brooks on Vimeo.

JD, Jacob and I played 18AL yesterday morning and had a fantastic time of it. This is my 3rd play in about 3 months and we seem to have managed the game well and got all of the rules right. I sketched out an additional player aid that I'll post to the 'geek soon as we found it useful to track company income, par values, and to have a phase summary that includes the train limits (a rule we messed up in Salishan in December).

This was one of the first games I've played where I did something borderline nasty in the game, but I think quite within the spirit of 18xx games. In the second to last operating round of the game (we knew the end was approaching quickly as the bank was nearly cleaned out), I bought the only train (a 6) from a company where I was president but owned the same number of shares (4) as JD. Jacob had priority deal and I knew I would take the next stock action after him. I then dumped my four shares to the open market in the stock round, making JD the president and forcing him to hold onto his shares. This meant that the company was guaranteed to not operate in the final operating round, thereby devaluing his shares even more.

The finish was very tight, with Jacob playing a solid game operating only one company throughout (the L&N). Final scores: Chris - $5309, Jacob - $5101, JD - $4918.

Time to catch up on some recent gaming. As you may have read in Mike's blog, we had a very wacky game of 1850 a few weeks ago. Not knowing the exact number of players that would be playing, we opted for a (likely) five-player game of 1850, an 18xx game set in the midwest. Matt had a trip cancelled so joined us as well, bringing the total to six. An ideal number for an 18xx game? I think not...

Continuing my tradition of being unable to play a game of any reasonable complexity properly by the rules, we messed up the certificate limit rules in this game. While Mike will claim that this was the primary reason for the game being wacky, I think it was a contributor but not the key. The key to me was the large number of players and the need to cooperate on initial capital investments to get the game rolling. My recollection is that for the first few turns we were stalled because of lack of money in the companies, not because people hit their share limits. We were only off by one on the cert limit rule, though in a few cases it definitely hindered the start of companies or caused some dumping to occur that may not have otherwise. Lesson for me: stick to 3 or 4 player 18xx games.

I hosted our group gaming session last week and we brought out the Wallace classic Volldampf. The game holds up well even in light of successors like Age of Steam and Steel Driver, though the randomness of goods generation is a turnoff for some. JD played very insightfully for a first play - he didn't get suckered into the turn order bid and focused on leaching off of other's routes. The game was fairly close throughout but JD managed to get and maintain a sizeable enough lead to give him the win.

The Days of Wonder announcement about their new game Smallworld, a re-envisioning of Phillipe Keyaerts' Vinci encouraged me to get this out with the boys over the weekend. This is a Risk-style conquer and control-the-world style game with a very light combat system with specialized civilizations. Because each civilization begins with a fixed pool of assets (pawns for conquering), the lifecycle of a civilization is constrained and one of the key player decisions that recurs throughout the game is when to go into decline and start a new civ.

Jacob got off to an early lead but stalled out as he approached the 100 point mark, with Matthew gradually catching up to him. I had a good mid-game (including a civ that allowed me to decline at the end of my turn rather than beginning) and Jacob and Matthew probably weren't aggressive enough at attacking the leader. Always more fun to attack the brother, right? Great game, played in under 2 hours.

Last weekend I helped host a regional Chess for Success tournament at Sherwood Middle School. With a very strong 6th grade class joining our club of about 40 members I liked our chances of qualifying for the state tournament. The team is comprised of up to 10 players and the tournament is a swiss style individual team tournament. This means that each player is competing as an individual over 5 rounds of play, trying to accumulate as many points as possible (1 for a win, 0.5 for a draw), and will generally not play someone from their own team. Swiss style means that a player is paired with another player with approximately the same score each round - the better you do, the more difficult the tournament becomes. Both Matthew (6th grade) and Jacob (8th grade) qualified for the team.

We had a great first round with 8 out 10 players getting wins. This put us in a tie for first place as only the top 4 individual scores are counted and it is fairly routine for many teams to accumulate the maximum four points in the initial round. The second round was brutal - of the 8 players that won in the initial round, only 2 managed a win in the second. This put us at 6 points and we dropped to 5th place.

The team regrouped and played strongly the next two rounds, accumulating 3 or 4 points in each round to put us in second place going into the final round. The top 2 teams qualify for state so we were carefully watching the point spread between us and third place (1.5 points). This was also the spread between us and the first place team.

We had 6 players with 3 points after 4 rounds (this means they had won 3 out of 4 games). I've coached teams in tournaments like this about 15 times and getting even 2 team points in a final round like this can be tough. The kids were well aware of the point situation and eagerly awaited each player as they exited the tournament room so that they could tabulate results. 3 out of the 6 quickly got their wins, giving us 3 points and a guaranteed second place. Matthew was one of the final remaining players going for his 4th point and was well ahead, getting to a queen/pawn vs no pieces against his opponent - generally an easy win. Unfortunately he rushed things and fell into a stalemate trap. Still, that gave us 3.5 additional points and, by our calculations, a tournament victory.

It was a great team effort with three of our players finishing in second place in the individual category, and everyone pulling strongly for the team. We compete in the state championship in March in a true "team" tournament - 4 players competing against 4 from the opposing team.

Despite the lack of blogging on my part, games have been played and enjoyed recently. Let's start with the winter holidays.

We spent the holidays around Christmas in Las Vegas with the grandparents and had plenty of fun playing poker, bridge, and... Verräter! This was my first time playing my personal copy - I played it one time before with Mark Johnson at the first BGG.CON. As others have said before, there's a lot of game inside this tiny box and I hope to see it played more.

The boys were on a Monopoly kick while there and I felt obliged to join them for a couple of sessions. They played by the "real rules" - auctions for un-purchased properties and no free parking windfalls. As a results the games played were fairly well bound in time though it clearly still suffers from a runaway leader problem. Low-light for me: Jacob trading away a property to Uncle Mike that allowed him to get an immediate monopoly and only getting a single railroad in return. The nerve! I'm sure they were colluding against Matthew and me.

Over the New Years weekend we played a family game of Battlestar Galactica, the exciting new cooperative game from Fantasy Flight. I'm really enjoying the game but it is long enough to be a daunting task to get out with the family. Jacob turned out to be our sole Cylon and was frustrated with his inability to really hurt the good guys - he learned that in this case it would probably have been best to reveal himself earlier.

Jacob and I played a shortened game of Warriors of God - shortened because I resigned in turn 3 as I had no hope of coming back as the French. The ghost of Mike Deans must have been present as I rolled over 50 consecutive dice without seeing a single 6 - this poor luck resulted in an incredible poor second turn for me and put me so far out of things that recovery was near impossible. It was nice to play and get a handle on the core mechanisms - this is a decent game that we hope to try again soon. The French seem very underpowered but I'm sure that's because I don't fully grasp how to play them effectively. I likely should have been more deliberate about avoiding battle and offering siege (in fact, when he stormed Paris I even forgot that was an option).

A couple of weeks ago I went to Doug's to play a repeat game of Indonesia - let's play by the correct rules this time, darn it! Almost, but not quite - we made a crucial error and allowed a siap faji merger in the first era - a devastating mistake as it stunts city growth in the opening and limits options later in the game (my opinion, also shared by Mike I think). Maybe we'll give ourselves another shot soon to get this one done properly - it truly is a fine game when played correctly.

I hosted our weekly Tuesday night gaming earlier this month and we played Tinner's Trail and Die Sieben Siegel. Only my second play of Tinner's Trail and it revealed quite a bit more depth this time around. The auctions for mining rights were much higher in this game than in my first "friendly" game - amazing how valuation approaches can drastically alter a game's feel and limit capital. Die Sieben Siegel was as perfect as ever - easily one of my all-time favorite card games.

Finally, Jacob and I started in on Command & Colors: Ancients and the related expansions. We only played one scenario but were reminded of how much we enjoy the game and we've committed to working through as many scenarios in expansions 1, 2, and 3 as we can in the coming year.

Jacob's:

Jacob's Christmas Card 2008 from Chris Brooks on Vimeo.

Matthew's:

Matthew's Christmas Card - 2008 from Chris Brooks on Vimeo.

We are getting no relief here. We thought Sunday was crazy - about 10" of snow followed by a hard crunchy shell of ice about 1" thick. This is a photo of our composter on Sunday morning.

We received about another 6" overnight - here's our composter this morning:

And the snow is still coming down...

I hosted what has become an annual gaming event at our Salishan home earlier this month (read about 2005, early 2007, and late 2007) earlier this month. Doug (part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4) and Mike (report 1, report 2, wrap-up) already did excellent writeups on the details - read below for photos and some color commentary.

The weather was spectacular with the usual variety of quiet sunny day to raging rainstorms. Doug, JD, and I took some time out to walk on the beach and get some nice sunset photos.

The weekend kicked off with a game of After the Flood where I taught and schooled Doug and Mike. One of my favorites from 2008 but I suspect it will be difficult to get this out more than 1-2 times per year given the nature of the game.

Ironically enough (you know why I say ironically if you know the story behind Martin Wallace and John Bohrer's falling out) we played Age of Scheme (read Lorna's commentary about our play). Decent game that feels a bit like Wabash Cannonball but has enough distinct about it to make it interesting. Don't think I need to add it to my collection though, especially if I get my hands on a copy of Chicago Express.

Ken, Ben, and Doug played a very long game of Starcraft: the Boardgame. I need to get this on the table again - Jacob even asked for this last night.

One of the longer games scheduled for the weekend was FAB:Bulge with Mike and Eric. Turned out to not take as long as expected - I think this gave them time to play Le Havre (pictured below).

I taught Lorna, Ben, and Matt how to play After the Flood on Friday (the report on Age of Scheme above by Lorna also includes comments on this game).

While After the Flood happened, I played Le Havre with Ken and KC. We played the short game but messed up the start, not giving us any of the required starting materials. Talk about a slow, incredibly constrained game! We were barely able to keep up with food production, let along build out our cities.

One of the highlights for everyone was playing Battlestar Galactica. This is a game I can't wait to introduce to my family (Julie is a big BSG fan) - tense cooperative gameplay at its best. Could this surpass Lord of the Rings as our favorite co-op game? We'll see...

Ken Crangle made it for Saturday only but maximized his gaming experience, walking through several of the Conflict of Heroes scenarios with Doug and joining me for a great game of Battlestar Galactica on Saturday evening.

Things wound down on Sunday and Ben took the opportunity to teach his new prototype to KC and Rita. Looked big and fun - wish I knew more about it.

I spent the morning doing laundry, cleaning, and playing Indonesia! Despite messing up a critical rule (we somehow forgot that adjacent crops to cities still need to be transported via ship) we had a blast. I'm convinced this is a game that can and should be played on standard Tuesday night gaming session.

That's it - heavy on photos, light on the writing but Doug and Mike covered the details better than I could have. Thanks to all of my wonderful guests and I look forward to a repeat in 2009.

I'm back at Salishan this weekend - three trips in less than a month after not visiting for over two months! We had a great Thanksgiving weekend here with the grandparents. Julie and I spent Tuesday night before Thanksgiving in Newport using a free hotel night that was soon to expire. We had a nice dinner, a great run in the morning around the bay, and a nice walk through old town.

The weather was great on Wednesday so Jacob, Matthew, and David played 9 holes of golf in Agate Beach (Matthew won our game of Lone Wolf) and were treated to a beautiful sunset on the drive back to Salishan.

I also snapped a nice shot of the boys with grandpa.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was a burrowing owl sighting on the main road of Salishan spit. The owl was very welcoming to me, allowing me to get within about 10 feet as I GI-crawled towards it.

We had some great gaming as well, including a game of 18AL that was David's indoctrination to 18XX. He also managed to win by about $40. He wasn't so fond of Agricola, which we played on Saturday morning before driving back to Sherwood. David wasn't quite so fond of Agricola. It can be a brutal game for newcomers and he never quite got control of the engine. Maybe I'll talk him into another play some day...