Today was the regional Chess for Success scholastic tournament, and I coached 10 boys from Archer Glen to compete for the right to compete in the state tournament in March.  There were 11 teams competing and we needed to finish 1st or 2nd to advance.  I knew we had a strong team, but I had no expectations of advancing and just wanted the boys to have fun and try their hardest.

They did amazingly well!  This is a team competition in five rounds, swiss-style.  Of the 10 players we send to the tournament, we count the scores for the top four players on the team.  Players get 1 point for a win, 1/2 point for a draw, and 0 for a loss.  So the maximum team score over five rounds is 20 points.

Our team got off to a great start with a perfect score of 8 after the first two rounds.  Things got tough then, with a couple of our heavy hitters taking losses in the third round, where we score 2.5 points.  By the time the final round came up, we were tied for second place with 12 points, with two other teams knocking on the door with 11.5.  We needed some key final round victories to secure a second place finish and a trip to the state championship.

Our hero of the day, Justin Davis, carried us with a perfect 5-0 record, winning the individual championship.  Jacob and Conner Hendryx had critical final round victories to give the team a final score of 14.5, tying them for second place and a trip to the state championship!  Jacob finished the day with 3 points, making him one of the top 4 players on the Archer Glen team.

Matthew had a great day as well - he held the team's 10th position, and was the only first grader playing in the tournament.  He finished the day with 2 points and felt great about his achievements.

On my way home to Portland from Seattle on Thursday, I stopped by the Uberplay Entertainment headquarters in Issaquah.  Almost a year ago Jeremy Young, invited me to come see his crew and some of the great things they were getting ready to ship.  That certainly turned out to be a prophetic statement, since they had a banner year.  New England won the Games Magazine “Game of the Year 2004” award and Wildlife won “Advanced Strategy Game of the Year 2004” so they are clearly on a roll.

I love visiting game manufacturers - there is such a spirit of entrepreneurism at this companies.  Many do it as a labor of love and are fortunate to break even or take a small profit.  I get the clear sense that Uberplay has loftier goals, and given the talent they have at the helm (Jeremy, Matt Molen, and Guido Teuber) they have a great shot at achieving their goals.  Ultimately their business will succeed or fail based not only on the quality of the games they produce, but also the quality of their marketing strategy.  I think their approach of marketing to the broad religious sector and narrower (but still huge) Mormon market (Inspiration Games) is brilliant.  Believe me, they are selling many more copies of The Settlers of Zarahemla than they are New England.  That's fine by me - though I have no interest in playing the Mormon-themed games, if those sales can underwrite new mass appeal boardgames then we all win.

I asked Jeremy if I could show them KC Humphrey's New Eden prototype to solicit feedback, and he gracefully obliged.  Guido, Jeremy, and I sat down for a partial game so that I could explain the theme and mechanics.  I am grateful for their time and attention and they were able to provide some very valuable feedback that I am taking to KC.

Unfortunately I was unable to get my hands on any of their upcoming new releases (Oasis and Tongiaki in particular) - they needed all of their available copies for the upcoming Toy Fair in NYC.  I did get a nice consolation prize though - Jeremy donated a slightly damaged copy of Ark of the Covenant, a nice variant of Carcassonne.

I travelled to the Seattle/Redmond area this week for business, and managed to squeeze in some late-night gaming on Wednesday evening.  Tom Powers from Boards & Bits was kind enough to invite me to join his group, a collection of mostly Microsofties.

Alhambra

I requested this before my arrival, having played it once on BSW I was eager to see it in real life.  It certainly is a pretty game, and has some interesting purchasing mechanics.  The goal of the game is to build a courtyard out of tiles and gain majorities in as many different colors/styles of buildings as possible.  There are walls on the tiles which also factor into scoring, as players get points for the number of connected outer wall segments.  Walls also constrain the building of tiles, since every open space must be connected to the center of the courtyard (i.e., no walling off).

On a player's turn they may either pick up some money (there are four different types of currency) or purchase a building.  To purchase a building, you must pay at least the value of the building in the specified currency.  If you are able to pay the exact amount, you get to take another action.  If you are forced to pay over the amount, you don't get change and your turn is ended.  One of the key strategies of the game is accumulating the best set of currency that will give you flexibility when purchasing.

This game is fun, but for a few reasons I doubt I'll purchase it.  First, there are some human factors issues - too many colors at play, with color schemes for both building types and the different currencies.  I found myself checking and rechecking my hand and the buildings for sale to see if I could purchase them.  Others in the group shared similar concerns.  Second, the luck factor is a bit too high for me.  The game can swing greatly in one player's favor depending on both currency and building draws.  This is true of many games, but for some reason it bothered me more in this game.

Tichu

I didn't play Tichu, but one group of four played for a few hours and seemed to be having a lot of fun.  I haven' played this game, but I do enjoy trick taking games and have played a few that are similar to this (like Gang of Four).

Penny Stock

Dave then brought out his prototype of a simple stock trading game.  Tom, Nick, Sharry, Dave, and I played.

This is a fun little game.  The game plays in four trading days.  At the start of each day, each player decides whether to sell short (hope the stocks go down) or long (stocks go up) for the day.  Within the trading day, players accumulate stock cards for 1 of 8 companies in 4 different sectors.  Each player in turn plays action cards which affect the market, sending stocks up or down.  The action cards are designed to be balanced (i.e., net zero change if you sum them together), but since they often give players choices of which stocks to send up or down, each game will play differently.  At the end of the trading day, players earn money based on how far their stocks climbed or fell, multiplied by the number of shares held of those stocks.

I enjoyed the game, though there was some discussion afterwards about some ways to make the scoring less linear.  It seems to easy for one player to pull very far ahead if the stock goes up a 5 or 6 notches.  A few ideas were shared, including income reduction (ala Age of Steam), a progressive daily tax (i.e., the more you make the more % tax you pay), or a non-linear trading scale (similar to Acquire).  Hopefully I'll get a chance to play this again after he tweaks it.

Attika

A few of us diehards stayed to play Attika, the game of city-state building on the Greek peninsula.  The game is gorgeous and was my favorite of the night.  There are two ways to win - build all of your buildings, or build a contiguous string of buildings between two temples.  Buildings are built using a typical resource model (like Settlers of Catan), but there are some interesting tweaks that make this game much more interesting:

1. There are resources on the board that can be used by placing a building on top of or adjacent to the resource.  For example, if a building costs three mountains and one hill, and it gets built on a mountain adjacent to another mountain and hill, then the player only needs to play one landscape card from his hand.
2. There are tech trees for the different groups of buildings, and if you build in the right sequence, chaining buildings together, then buildings can be placed for free.

I didn't do too well in this first playing.  Tom made a comment at the start of the game that it is rare to connect two temples unless playing with newbies.  I suppose he was right, because he ended up winning in this manner!  He was closing in on his second temple from two different directions, and I was scrambling to cut him off.  In doing so, I also cut off Nick, preventing him from supporting me.

I liked this game so much I purchased it the next day from Boards & Bits.  Julie and I played a two-player game Friday evening - the rules are very simple and easy to teach.

The latest Piecepack design contest was announced today, and this time they are looking for group submissions from no less than two co-authors.  You can read the original announcement on the Yahoo group posting.

Jason Sato (aka Magic Rat), with whom I had the pleasure of gaming in Arizona last year, has a new weblog.

Every once in a while I get asked what chess books for kids would I recommend.  I haven't read too many, but here are a few recommendations:

• Starting Chess, by Harriet Castor.
• Checkmate at Chess City, by Piers Harper. This one is especially good if your child enjoys puzzles.
• Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess, by Bobby Fischer.  This is not a good book to learn chess from, but a great way to improve skills.  Jacob just read this cover to cover and enjoyed working through the puzzles.

Jacob and I traveled across town to the Rude household for some Sunday afternoon gaming yesterday.  Matthew had a birthday party to attend, so it was a good chance to play some heavier four-player games.

New Eden

I've written about New Eden before - this is the prototype developed by KC Humphrey.  I'm going to be demonstrating the game for some folks later this week, so I wanted to brush up on my knowledge of the rules and practice teaching it to a group.  Ken, Brandon, and Jacob had not played yet, so this was a perfect opportunity.  I have described the mechanics of the game before, so I won't repeat any of those details here.

We had limited time for this game, so we only played one season (a normal game has two seasons, with a scoring round after each).  I found that I had remembered the rules well and didn't have to reference the rulebook very frequuently.  We used the small board configuration for four players, and started with half the fuel supply (21, though after talking with KC it should have been only 20).

The group enjoyed the game very much.  The end of the game found everyone thinking about strategies, how to take advantage of certain card combinations, etc. which is a very good sign.  I mostly avoided conflict and got three uncontested farms near a lake, but Brandon turned out to be the smarter player and finished with three more points than I, taking first place.

Amun Re

Ken was eager to bring out Amun Re, as was I, so that was our next choice.  Every time I play this game I enjoy it more.  Unfortunately, this time I had a similar result as the last time I played this game - very strong start in the old age, poor finish in the new age.

I exhausted my funds at the end of the old age via sacrifice, trying to maximize the scoring of my two temples.  I also drew no bonus power cards in the new age (I was able to score two of them in the old age, so I guess it evened out).

Brandon played a very strong game again, quietly gaining two temples, one bonus power card, and a temple majority on one side of the Nile.  He finished far out in front, beating me out by seven points.

El Grande

There wasn't much time left, but I was eager to teach the group how to play El Grande and at least get in a few rounds before taking Jacob home.  I really love this game (I've only played it 1.5 times though).  Very easy to teach and learn, beautiful components (perhaps the nicest I've ever seen in a board game), but challenging to play well.

We only played through the first scoring round, but Brandon completed his trifecta, showing up the adults one more time with a victory.  His victory was sealed when Jacob, Ken, and I all chose the same province for our Castille caballeros!

I can't believe I forgot to post this.  A while back I mentioned the latest PiecePack design contest, Solitary Confinement.  I even submitted a (very lightweight) entry, PieceGaps.  Earlier this month the contest results were posted, and Piece Packing Pirates is the winner.  I haven't played it yet, but I do hope to soon.

Jacob and I had some spare time this afternoon while Julie and Matthew went shopping for a birthday present.  Looking into the game closet for a two-player game, I pulled out Senjutsu, a two-player game we purchased at GenCon Indy last summer.  This game didn't receive broad distribution, but I have seen it locally at Rainy Day Games. I strongly recommend this game if you are a fan of chess or stratego - you can order it online directly from the manufacturer.

Each player has 10 warriors, 3 of which are officers.  Warriors can move orthogonally while officers can also move diagonally - officers also pay a better reward when eliminated.  At the start of the game, players arm each of their warriors with three weapons, resulting in a highly customizable setup (learn more at the Senjutsu home page).  Similar to Stratego, one of these weapons is a scroll that, if captured, results in an immediate victory for the capturing player.  There are three ranged weapons - swords, spears, and bows, each with their own abilities (bows are by far the most powerful but are also scarce).  You can also equip your warriors with armor (absorbs an attack), a counter-attack (used to win hand-to-hand combats), and a special Ninja that, when abandoned, acts as a bomb and will destroy a capturing warrior.  The arms are stackable blocks that are only visible to the owning player.

Players alternate taking turns where they can attack (optional), move 1 space (required), attack again (optional), move 1 space (optional), and attack (optional).  The board has a few obstacles - a palace in the center which blocks line of site and cannot be entered, and four forests that block line of site but can be traveled through (though you cannot attack from a forest nor end your turn there).

When a warrior is eliminated, he leaves behind all of his arms - either player may then recover these by moving a warrior to that space.  A warrior can only carry four arms at a time, though there are no stacking limits.

Finally, each player has a stack of clan cards that give special abilities.  Clan cards are awarded every time you eliminate an enemy warrior (only 1 per turn though).  If you eliminate an enemy officer, you also get to draw a replacement arm block and place it on one of your warriors.

Jacob and I had a fun match.  We both started defensively, firing long-range bow shots to try and pick off enemy units, though we had both put adequate armor on our front lines.  As we moved out to confront each other, warriors started to be eliminated - Jacob was ahead 1 or 2 warriors at one point.  I was able to penetrate deeply into his lines though, killing off a warrior and capturing his stack, then using that stack to eliminate two more close by and withstand a counter-attack.  This was the turning point in the game, as it was only a short while until I captured the scroll.

This is a very fun, quick two-player game that I highly recommend.  The parts are very high quality and it plays in less than an hour (15-20 minutes of that is setup time).

I checked out Greg Aleknevicus' Games for Sale list and found a few things I wanted for a reasonable price - plus he was having a buy 2 get 1 free sale!  So this is what I ordered; they arrived yesterday and I hope to play at least two of them over the weekend:

• Amazing Labyrinth - this sounded like a great, light kids game that the family would enjoy.
• Quebec 1759 - I'm becoming a sucker for those Columbia Games block games. I'm fairly certain this was the first block game published - this guy apparently agrees.  This one came out in 1972, and the version I got is the original.  Chris Farrell put together a nice “best of“ geeklist for Columbia Games.
• Tally Ho - Another of the Kosmos two-player small box games.  This was effectively my “free“ game.  Haven't tried it yet, but reviews are mostly favorable.

We had a fun weekend of gaming.  Julie and a friend made a date to go night skiing at Skibowl Friday night, so it was just the boys and me for some gaming fun.  Saturday evening, Ken and Brandon came over, with Brandon spending the night with Jacob and Matthew.  Sunday, while Jacob was at a baseball clinic, Matthew and I played a few two-player games.

Crokinole

My wonderful mother was kind enough to give me a $50 gift certificate at Amazon.  I have a huge backlog of books to read, so I immediately went to the Toys R Us section to see if there were any good deals on games.  I strongly encourage folks to periodically check out the Toys Outlet section - there are often very good deals to be found.  I recently mentioned the deal I found on Roller Coaster Tycoon, but I was also able to purchase a Crokinole board ($9.99 plus shipping) and the Attack! boardgame ($19.99).

OK, so why did I purchase a $10 Crokinole board?  Sure, it is no substitute for a “real” solid wood board, but all we currently had was a beat up square Carom board.  I figured this would be a great, low-risk way to see if the family enjoys the game before forking over $200+ for a good board.

This board is nice!  Sure, it isn't nearly as friction-free as a good board, but it works great for the kids and it has come out every day this weekend.  I taught the boys how to play Friday evening and we had some fun 3-player matches.  I recommend this board highly if you want to give this dexterity game a try.

Ricochet Robot

I borrowed this game from a co-worker, so Jacob and Matthew wanted to give it a try before returning it.  This is a puzzle game with very little interaction - you can see what the puzzles are like at the online site.  I enjoy the game, but would be just as happy playing solo as I would with a group.  I'm glad a tried this before buying it, since I doubt it would come out much at our house.  We stopped after 5 rounds (the pizza showed up!).

Attack!

After having some pizza, Jacob, Matthew and I dove into a game of Attack!, a pseudo-WWII game.  I place this squarely between Risk and Axis and Allies in terms of complexity.

One thing I like about this game (vs. Risk) is that it can be slower to develop, since the players (at least in the three-player game) can start to build up some buffer.  There are interesting choices every turn (moving, building, deploying a navy) and it was very easy for the kids to learn.  Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to finish this game, but I think it will come back out soon.

Crokinole

On Saturday night when Ken and Brandon joined us around 4pm, we brought out Crokinole first.

This was followed by a no-limit hold'em tournament that Ken won (the tourney finished with me heads up against Ken but with over a 4:1 chip lead, so I conceded).

Liberty

The kids went upstairs for some three-player computer action (mostly Age of Mythology, but a bit of Call of Duty as well), so Ken and I took advantage of the quiet to play a heavier two-player wargame called Liberty.  This is also a Columbia Games block game, and the more I play in this system the more I like it.

Liberty is a wide-scale American revolutionary war game, where one player plays the part of the British (and American Indians) and the other plays the Americans (and friendly French).  I seem to recall that the Americans won this war, and the game may be tilted to produce this outcome as well.

This game is rough going for the British (similar to the position the Scots have in Hammer of the Scots) - they need to capture a good part of the eastern seaboard to win, and it can be extremely difficult to eliminate the opponent given the flexible retreat rules.  My strategy of running away from most of the fights unless I had a clear advantage worked well, and I was gradually able to eat away at Ken's cities, nearly getting a decisive victory myself.  It became clear though (after 4+ hours of playing, but this was a learning game) that the game would most likely end in an American victory so we stopped early.  We both enjoyed it very much though and look forward to another play where we switch sides.

Crokinole

Matthew and I had a few hours together alone on Sunday, so we tried a two-player game of Crokinole to 200.  Matthew is improving rapidly, but I managed to beat him by about 50 points in this game.

Magic: the Gathering

Around New Years I picked up two starter decks for the Mirrodin Expansion, a cool set of cards centered around artifacts.  Using pre-constructed starter decks is a great way to continue to enjoy this wonderful game system without shelling out $100s to build competitive decks.  We played two hands, with the black-red deck winning both times (we traded decks between games.

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

This has been sitting on my shelf for quite a while without a play, so we broke it out to see how it compares to the original.  This is a fun expansion (actually an entirely new game) that I highly recommend.  The scoring is much simpler and the artwork is beautiful.  Matthew claims that he likes this better than the original Carcassonne.

Jacob and Matthew have been practicing with the Sherwood youth wrestling team a couple of times a week.  This is a low-key affair, and they are doing it primarily to stay in shape for other sports.  Plus, you never know what might stick and what they might take too, so Julie and I feel strongly about exposing them to as many different sports and activities as is reasonably possible.

On Saturday there was an open youth wrestling tournament in Tualatin, and the coaches indicated that this was a good even for first-timers.  Jacob and Matthew decided they wanted to enter, so we got over there around 7:30am for weigh-in and registration.  Their first matches were at about 10am.  The event was run very efficiently considering how many kids there were.  It was set up as a double-elimination event, which was perfect since we didn't expect them to do very well and it would be over quickly in that case.

Jacob fought hard in his matches, but had a hard time getting any advantage on his opponents - Jacob is very strong but needs to work on his quickness.  In his first match he held off his opponent for most of the match and was only down 2-0 near the end of the third round when he was finally pinned.  He was pinned pretty quickly in his second match.

Matthew isn't as strong as Jacob but is more agile - his matches had more chasing, spinning, and athletics.  In his first match he spent most of his time getting thrown down and was quickly behind 8-0, ultimately getting pinned.  His second match was better - he lost on points but score three himself, getting a take-down and escape.  I uploaded a short Quicktime movie of Matthew that you can watch.

The boys are not sure if they'll try another tournament, but they will definitely continue to practice and work on their technique.

Our new friend Kevin McKenzie was still in town on business (we gamed with him last week), so we invited a few folks over for some gaming at our home on Wednesday night.  Attendees were Ken and Brandon Rude, Mike Deans, Kevin Graham, KC Humphrey, and Kevin McKenzie.

Domaine

KevinM, Julie, and I played this last week, and Kevin was eager to give it another try.  I was of a similar mind, but Bus sounded even more interesting to me so I passed and Mike Deans joined in.

I don't have a lot of detail on how the game went, but it sounded like a struggle between Kevin and Julie.  Julie discounted her chances as the game drew to a close, but apparently a mine monopoly belonging to Julie that they had forgotten to score turned out to be the clincher - Julie won the game.

You may have noticed the poker chips in the photos.  When we were in Vegas recently for Christmas, I was hell-bent on picking up some high quality poker chips.  After some research and advice, we discovered the Gamblers General Store and found a great set of chips (these aren't cheap!).  Besides using them for card games (mostly Texas Hold'em), we also use them as replacement money for games that have cheap currency (paper or cardboard money usually).

Bus

This was on my must-play list, mostly because it is so highly regarded by Mikael Sheikh, with whom I gamed in New York City last summer.  He even implemented an online version of the game that I am now ready to try.  KC has had this game on loan for quite a while and he offered to teach Ken, KevinG, and I how to play.

This is similar to some of the other transportation-oriented games I've played, and it reminds me the most of Paris Paris (though Bus is a bit deeper with more choices).  It has some very interesting mechanics.  The basic idea of the game is to provide bus transportation for folks in the city by building routes that connect to buildings (homes, offices, and pubs).  Depending on the time of day, all of the people on the board will desire to go to one building type (morning - work, evening - pub, night - home).  There is a great description of the mechanics of the game over at Funagain (read Ben Baldanza's review from Counter), so I won't go into much more detail here.  I like games with an economy of difficult choices and the opportunity to look ahead a bit and strategize.  Bus certainly has this, and I liked it very much.  I found myself trying to predict what moves the other players would make and trying to optimize my moves.

I got off to a decent start and was in the lead or close to it the entire game.  I made some bad building choices towards the end, and on my last move I really needed to move 3 people to their homes to guarantee at least a tie.  Unfortunately I could only move 2 of them, and my efforts to disrupt Ken's last move didn't pan out because he had a solid backup plan.

I'd like to pick up this game, but I'm very frustrated with the production quality (I'm having similar reservations about the game boards in Columbia Games' block games).  The boards were very warped, hardly stayed together, and were difficult to read.  Have the newer printings of the game improved on this at all?  Leave me a comment if you have opinions either way.

Pizza!

KC (man this guy is prolific!) introduced another one of his game prototypes - presumably he dreamed this game over just in the past week.  I didn't play it, but it looked fun and on the surface seemed to have some similarities to Mamma Mia!.

From the comments I heard during and after the game, this sounds like a good one and will be worth a try in the future.

Scream Machine

I read some favorable reviews of Scream Machine in the recent issue of Counter so I requested that this come out.  KevinG owns the game and offered to teach Julie, KevinM, and I.  The theme is building a theme park that will attract the most visitors - that's how the scoring track goes.  This is a card game that has some interesting mechanics, but unfortunately the card design makes it very difficult to keep track of ride types and scoring.  The designers could have spent some more time thinking about the human factors.  A fun little game though, but probably not one I'll be interested in purchasing.  I actually prefer Roller Coaster Tycoon to this game, and I know the kids would as well.

Board games have been coming out a lot at home so far this year.  Last weekend, we brought out Age of Mythology again.  One of my goals in playing the bigger wargame-like board games with the boys is to get them to start comprehending strategy.  Not specific strategies, but rather just the notion of having some long-term goals, and devising some short-term plans to achieve those goals.  All too often in these games they just start attacking without thinking about the consequences.  In three player games this can be a major weakness, because often the player who avoids conflict will come out on top.

Jacob, at least, is starting to grasp the concept.  There was much less fighting in this game, and he set out to try and build the wonder by the end of the game.  I opted for my usual strategy of building the most buildings and largest army (mostly by not fighting very much).  This was the closest game to date - Jacob finished with the largest army and came close to building the wonder at the end.  If I hadn't converted favor into victory points late in the game, forcing it to end a bit earlier, Jacob would have caught me and won the game.

We were given Metro by some friends for Christmas and it quickly became a favorite of Julie and Jacob.  This is the sort of game they will bring out after school when I'm not even around - that's how I know it's a favorite!

This is a fun, quick, light game that I simply have not figured out.  I've come in last or second to last every time I've played, and have never been in contention.  Maybe I just think too much.  Jacob's strategy of ignoring all but 1 or 2 of his lines, and striving to maximize those seems to work pretty well.

If all goes well today, there will be a barrage of postings as I clear out the backlog.  It was a busy week and I just didn't have time to touch up and post some photos from various events:

• The chess tournament last weekend
• Some informal game playing with the family
• A game night we held last Wednesday
• A wrestling tournament yesterday
• Some more game playing this weekend

Let's get things started with the chess tournament.

Just read on the Gamewire that Fantasy Flight will be re-releasing Titan: the Arena and will call it Colossal Arena.  I haven't played the original Avalon Hill version before, but I've heard great things about this game.

I took three Archer Glen chess teams to the Chess Odyssey Winter Olympics on Saturday.  This was a big deal for everyone involved - all but one of us (coach included) had absolutely zero competitive chess experience!  The three teams played in the Warrior division, which consists of unrated players.  This doesn't mean the competition wasn't tough though.

There were three other teams playing in this division - two from Cooper Mountain, and one from the Portland Chess club.  Our strongest team did very well, finishing third overall and winning the bronze medal.  The player on the first board on our best team won a trophy for best player on his board!  Overall I'm very proud of all of these kids for showing up and competing against other kids that clearly spend a lot more time practicing than we do.  It was a long day (8am - 5pm) but they hung in there till the end.

I'm experimenting with a tool called Womcat, referred to me by my friend Greg.  This is a decent way to organize bookmarks, and I have provided some brief notes on each.  There are a few cool features about this tool, which is why I am trying it instead of just making my own HTML page of links:

• It automatically provides an RSS feed to my bookmarks.  You can subscribe to this if you like and receive updates as I edit the list.  If you are bold enough to run Womcat yourself, you can aggregate my bookmarks into your own.
• It has the ability to maintain what are called “weak subscriptions” - pages I don't necessarily read, but are likely to contain links to interesting spots.  Womcat will check these weak subscriptions for me and tell me what outbound links they have in common.  Good way to find new content.

Anyway, I've added it to my nav links on the right.

There have been many shut-in hours over the past 5 days - a perfect opportunity for some family gaming!  These reports span several days, starting last Friday evening and ending this evening with our out-of-town gaming guest Kevin McKenzie from Dallas, TX.

Lord of the Rings Risk: Trilogy Edition

This is quickly becoming a family favorite, or at least a favorite of Jacob and Matthew. As I've mentioned before, this version is very playable if for no other reason than the countdown mechanism that limits game length.

This time we squared off using the standard 3-player rules, with Jacob and I playing the evil forces and Matthew playing good.  Every man for himself though - Jacob and I were competing with each other.

I started conservatively, trying to consolidate at least one region and waiting until I had territory cards to turn in to rapidly grow my forces.  I also used my leader to take a few sites of power, granting me additional action cards.  My patience paid off and I was able to keep Jacob and Matthew from consolidating regions.  Risk has a runaway leader problem, and that was certainly the case in this game.  I won based on victory points when the ring came to Mordor.

A Game of Thrones Boardgame

Around 11am on Sunday Ken Rude called me to see if we were up for some gaming in the afternoon - a perfect opportunity to bring out A Game of Thrones!  This game is meant to be played with five players.  I was a bit concerned about Matthew's ability to comprehend the rules for this game - this is the hardest one he has tried so far.  He did fine understanding the basic mechanics if not the overall strategy.

This is a game I've been wanting to try since seeing it first at GenCon, and it didn't disappoint.  Some of the things I like about this game:

• The theme is fantastic, especially if you have read the great books by George R. R. Martin.
• It is a light wargame with a number of interesting mechanics and very little randomness.
• The Westeros cards, which represent global events that affect all players, create a very interesting dynamic and potentially giving each game a very different flavor.  For example, in our game we went about 6 straight turns without mustering (new military force production), which made it very challenging to expand and forced a strict economy on military.
• Great production value.  The cards, game board, and wooden pieces are brightly colored and very high quality.

Jacob started the game very aggressively, attacking my navy in the first turn.  He paid the price though, since I was able to counter-attack and control the seas near his home, effectively creating a naval blockade.  Matthew was scattered in his strategy and had a difficult time keeping focused on short-term goals.  Brandon played passively and, as house Stark, didn't make the necessary push southward to gain victory points (there are few cities in the north).  So it was essentially a battle between Ken and me.

Ken had a bit of an advantage starting in the south - as house Lannister I was caught in the middle and had to fend off all of the players.  It was still a very close game, with Ken winning (score 9) and me a close second (score 8).

Lord of the Rings Boardgame - Sauron Expansion

Monday evening Matthew requested a game of Lord of the Rings the boardgame.  This was the first Reiner Knizia game I ever played, and arguably the game that brought me back to boardgames two years ago.  The original game is somewhat unique in that it is a cooperative game - players work together to try and defeat Sauron and destroy the one ring.  Jacob volunteered to join us if he could play Sauron, a feature provided by a solid expansion to the game.  Not to be left out, Julie joined us to play the role of Merry (Matthew was Frodo, I played Sam).

The base game is challenging enough to win, but with the Sauron expansion it is extremely difficult for the fellowship to succeed.  Jacob enjoyed playing the evil role and worked hard to thwart us at every turn.  We did better than any prior try though, getting into Mordor for the final race to Mt Doom.  Actually, only Frodo (Matthew) made it that far - Sam and Merry spent too much time carrying the ring and were destroyed by Sauron at Shelob's Lair.  Frodo didn't make it to Mt Doom, and our final score was 52.

Roller Coaster Tycoon

This is on the bargain shelf at Toys R Us and Amazon these days, and for $5.97 I figured we couldn't go wrong.  My mom was nice enough to get me an Amazon gift certificate for my b-day, and this was one of the games I ordered.

We were all thrilled with the quality of this game.  It is light fare, but much more than a typical roll-and-move mass market game.  This is an auction game at heart, and has some decent economic decisions (value of capital in hand vs. investing in a ride that may not procude enough visitors by game end).  My only criticisms are:

• While visually appealing, the board is very hard to navigate.  Finding where certain attractions are can be tough.
• The end-game was abrupt - we turned over month-end cards in 7 or 8 consecutive or near consecutive draws.  I'm going to look for some variants that bring a slightly more measured approach to game end.

Overall this is a solid game and easily worth the $6 investment.

New England

I greatly enjoyed my two prior playings of this game, but had been hesitant to bring out with the family.  New England is a pretty abstract game and is light on theme.  There was a discussion on spielfrieks recently about this game, and I shared my thoughts on this topic, arguing that it probably isn't a great family game.

I think I was wrong in my comments - this could be (and probably is) a great family game.  Some reasons why:

• It plays pretty quickly - I taught the game and we played it through in about an hour.
• I coached Julie and Jacob to not spend too much time trying to stop other players, and to instead focus on their own goals. New England can be a vicious game if you work hard to thwart your opponents' plans.  This doesn't mean you have to play that way.
• The theme was appealing to Julie (pilgrims settling in New England in the 17th century).
• Scoring always seems to be close, keeping everyone in the game.  In the three games I've played, I would guess that the average scoring differential from first to last has been about 4-5 victory points.
• There is very little downtime or turn angst - play moves along quickly, and there's always something to do on your turn.

I think this one will come out again soon with Julie and Jacob.  I'm not sure Matthew is ready for it yet, but I'll give him the choice of joining in our next play.

I'm the Boss

Before the holidays I got an email from Kevin McKenzie, from Dallas TX, telling me that he would be in the area doing some work.  He found me through his gaming group, one of the groups I contacted when I traveled to Dallas earlier this year.  Kevin wanted to find some gaming action, so I hooked him up with a few local groups and invited him to our home.  We were hoping for a few more people, but the ice and snow kept everyone else away.  No problem - with the built-in gamers right here in the house we were in good shape.

We started with a 5-player game of I'm the Boss, a family favorite negotiating game.  This can also be a vicious game, but we kept it light-hearted and had a good time.  I lingered near last place most of the game - it seemed like everytime I was close to finishing a deal, Jacob would send away one of my associates on a business trip. Julie played a strong game and came out on top.  The game ended quickly when we rolled a 1 on the first possible end-game deal tile.

Balloon Cup

While Julie helped Jacob and Matthew to bed, Kevin and I squared off on a game of Balloon Cup, a great two player card game that Kevin had never played.  Kevin picked up the gist of the game very quickly, and grabbed the first two trophies in the game.  The final three were hard fought, with both of us in striking distance of victory.  I managed to win a race that gave me enough prizes to win the final three trophies in one play.

Domaine

Kevin requested this as our "heavier" game of the night - he had never played it, and I had only tried it once at Kevin Graham's recently.  This was a Christmas gift from the Rude family.  Julie joined us for a three-player game.

The competition was much stiffer this time!  Kevin is a quick study of strategy, and immediately decided that income would be important and sought to build a domain with mines as quickly as possible.  I wasn't as focused in my strategy, and lost out on some early opportunities to get some income.  Julie got some knights out early in a key domain as well, setting her up well for expansion and completing her domain.

In the end it was a two horse race, and I wasn't in it.  I'll write this off as a learning game.  Similar to Settlers, I think it is very important in the opening to get more production.  At mid-game, Julie and Kevin were taking actions 2 out of 3 turns, while I was at best taking actions every other turn due to poor cash flow.  Kevin pulled out a 40 point victory shortly after the card deck expired.  He played a solid game, but Julie deserves credit for a very strong first game.

That's all for this report - Kevin should return next week and we hope to get the right mix of people for a playing of A Game of Thrones.

The weather here has been nothing short of remarkable.  The schools still haven't re-opened, and I didn't even attempt to get into work today.  The warmup predicted yesterday never came, and the temperatures hovered around freezing all day.  Around 6pm I finally ventured outside to clear the sidewalk.  Looks like schools will be closed again tomorrow - my trip to Denver was called off.  Should start to warmup by mid-day tomorrow.

Another good list reflecting on 2003, this time from Rick Thornquist of “gone cardboard” and “gamewire” fame.  I agree with his list, though there were several that I didn't play (Mammoth Hunters, Yellowstone Park, Fish Eat Fish).  Fortunately, the ones I didn't play were generally on his “worst of” list.

Family and friends were kind enough to support my gaming habit, and here's what my take was this holiday season.  I still haven't played Metro or A Game of Thrones but hopefully that will change over the next week or so.

• Acquire - true, I had never played this game before.  After two plays with the family, I can't believe I had missed out on this one for so long!  And, surprisingly, Jacob and Matthew both requested the second play of this game, and proceeded to teach two of their friends on New Years eve. 
• Diplomacy - haven't played this in 20 years, but felt like I should have it on my game shelf. 
• A Game of Thrones (boardgame) - I've heard great things about this and can't wait to play. 
• Hammer of the Scots - A bit expensive for what you get, but it looks fun.  Jacob and I played last night, but I made the mistake of letting him play the Scots and I crushed him pretty easily.  Next time we'll switch sides and see how things go. 
• Metro - A gift from a co-worker.  I haven't played yet, but Julie was excited to see this one turn up since she enjoyed playing it at our recent gameday.  Any board game the wife likes is OK by me . 
• Domaine - A gift from a friend.  Jacob and I enjoyed playing this earlier in December and I look forward to more plays. 
• El Grande - Got to play this while in Arizona earlier in the year and liked it, so Julie picked it up for me.

Many folks who play board games will provide a year-end report of games they played, often in a form known as a “5 & 10” or “five and dime” report.  This is because the report will list all games played 10 or more times and those played 5-9 times - this is obviously an indicator of what people are playing frequently.  It does tend to skew results towards lighter fare since longer games don't come out as often.

I didn't keep terribly accurate data on my gaming this year.  I was pretty good at keeping things up to date in my GameTracker software, but fell off in the July timeframe.  Fortunately this weblog provides a decent log of what I played with groups outside the home; unfortunately many of the games that get brought out casually at my home are missing.  Therefore I will estimate some of the numbers.

I will also include online games that I played with other human beings, some in real-time, some via email or play-by-web.  In case you are interested, this is what I played online last year:

• Tigris and Euphrates (at the boardgamegeek)
• Settlers of Catan (using Settlers 3D)
• Carcassonne (at BSW, but only because I haven't tried playing some other games like Puerto Rico there)
• 7th Sea (using Apprentice for 7th Sea)
• Magic (just a few games using Magic: the Gathering online)
• Wallenstein (using Mikael Sheik's great PBW version, still in beta)

So here goes the list:

Total Games Played: 309

Total Unique Games Played: 98

Games Played 10 or More Times

• Settlers of Catan (16) - About half of these were played online.
• Euphrat und Tigris (15) - All but two of these were played online.
• Fluxx (15) - Many plays while sitting in a restaurant with the family.
• 7th Sea CCG (14) - I got back into this after getting some deals on eBay.  I also played in a couple of online, casual tournaments.
• Apples to Apples (14) - Very popular with extended family and non-gamer friends.
• Carcassonne (14) - Popular intro game, plus I played online 5 or 6 times.
• Can't Stop (12) - A favorite to bring out just before bed for Matthew and Jacob.
• Magic: the Gathering (11) - Still one of my all-time favorite games.  I still just play with decks I built 8 years ago or pre-constructed decks for new expansions.
• Liar's Dice (10) - Another family favorite.

Games Played 5-9 Times

• Balloon Cup (8) - Matthew's favorite 2-player game.  He beats me at least half the time.
• Puerto Rico (7) - This would definitely be in the top 10 if I would learn to play it on BSW.  Any volunteers to mentor me?
• Wyatt Earp (7) - My favorite rummy game.
• Alpha Playing Cards (6) - Didn't get played very much in the second half of the year.
• Fresh Fish (6) - I wish my family enjoyed playing this more.
• Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation (6) - This has been played 3 more times in the past 2 days in our household.  Great 2-player game.
• Piratenbucht (6) - Probably our favorite heavier family game.
• Samurai (6)
• Battlecards (6)
• Chrononauts (5) - One of Jacob's favorite games.  Very creative.
• Dragon Delta (5)
• King of the Elves (5)
• Mystery Rummy 4 (5)
• Wallenstein (5)
• Zendo (5)

Commentary

I rediscovered board games about exactly one year ago.  The fun I've had this year is immeasurable - and I can't stress enough how good this has been for our family.  I want to thank a number of people who welcomed me into their gaming groups and homes over the past year:

• Kevin Graham
• Doug and Mimi Walker
• Ken Rude and family
• Andy Christensen in Redmond
• Angela Gaalema in Colorado Springs
• The Card Benders in Dallas, TX
• Mikael and Jonathan in Brooklyn, NY
• The Arizona Boardgamers
• Scott Alan Woodward in Burbank, CA
• Greg Schloesser and the Westbank Gamers
• The RipCityGamers

Stay tuned for some of my awards and top “n” lists for 2003.

Our good friends the Rudes joined us for our second annual New Year's Eve game night.  Last year was mostly CCGs - in fact, I held a sealed deck Magic tournament for all the boys (including Ken and me).  This year was mostly lighter fare.  Julie, Jacob, Matthew, and I started by playing a few games of Liar's Dice while we waited for the Rudes to arrive.

Ken then brought the Bucket King while we waited for Tracey to arrive.  This was a fun, light, family card game and I wish we had played more than one hand.  I look forward to trying it again.

One of our favorite games to play at Keuka Lake when we travel there in the summer is Hand & Foot, a Canasta variant.  Everyone we've met plays this a bit differently, and one of these days I'll post our rules for reference.  Ken and Tracey have played their own version as well, so we decided to play some four-hand team Hand and Foot.  The men got off to a great start, catching both Julie and Tracey in their footsies in the first hand.  It was all downhill from there though, and we ended up losing by about 1000 points.

While we played this game, Jacob taught Brandon and Chelsea how to play Acquire, a new game (for us) that I was given for my birthday.  This game has already seen 3 plays in just a few days, and it has quickly become a family favorite.  We'll see if it sticks.

The adults then played Target, an interesting card game that is a mix of poker and rummy.  I wasn't wild about this game - most of it was spent drawing and discarding while chasing elusive goals that would disappear just as I drew the wrong card.  Maybe I just didn't play it well...

We had a healthy dose of snow on New Year's day - woke up to about 4 inches another 2-3 fell during the day.  The bad (good?) weather here has had great timing - I've been off work both days, so I haven't had to make the difficult decision of trying to get into the office.

While I took care of the driveway and sidewalks, Julie and the boys walked up the street to the biggest hill in the area to join our friends for some sledding.  It was very cool - at least 20 families out there sledding, riding their snowmobiles and four-wheel ATVs, and even a few cross-country skiers.  Sherwood is a great place to live.

After returning to the house, the boys took advantage of the huge pile of snow I made shoveling to build a snow fort.

Unfortunately it warmed up quite a bit last night and today, so the fort collapsed.  Forecast calls for more snow tonight and tomorrow though - could be as much snow coming as we got yesterday.