Time to catch up on a couple of session reports.

Last Saturday KC and Rita came over to discuss some planning for the upcoming playtest days we are running in November to further develop four of KC's games.  We also managed to sneak in a few games.

Ken joined us for a game of Keythedral, a game KC recently picked up that I had been wanting to try for some time.  We played the Pro Ludo remake, which apparently has better components than the original.  I certainly have few complaints about the bits - this is a nice looking game.  I do wish they would have used numbers and letters for the order and phase pieces - it was always confusing to me what was happening when.

Rita, Ken, KC and playing Keythedral.  KC made some great player aid screens to use in this game.

I'm going to reserve judgment on this game until I play it again as my first experience wasn't too great.  Similar to Settlers, I think that if you make poor choices at the beginning you might be out of running for the rest of the game.  That's the situation I found myself in, but it was still fun along the way.  Ken edged out KC in the end, with Rita and a distant 3rd and 4th.

Ken had to leave so I suggested we play St. Petersburg, which plays nicely with three players.  KC was an old hand at this game but Rita hadn't played yet.  KC got off to a great start with a first round Mistress, which can make it real tough for the other players to keep up.  Some even consider this card broken. 

Rita and KC about mid-way through St. Pete.

I tried my hardest, but made a crucial mistake of not buying some victory points with my market the penultimate turn (I had plenty of cash leftover), which allowed KC to pull out the victory by less than 10 points.  Close game, lots of tension.  I still like this game.

Julie and Matthew took off for Salishan on Saturday afternoon after Jacob's football game.  Jacob and I strategically planned out the next 24 hours:

• Rent a DVD or 2 from Blockbuster using Jacob's gift card (thanks Brandon!).  We picked up The League of Extraordinary Gentleman (watched it) and Willow (will watch sometime this week).
• Pick up a pizza at Papa Murphy's.
• Play a longer two-player boardgame that we hadn't tried yet
• Get in some multi-player computer game action.  We ended up playing some FarCry.
• Head out to a park somewhere to play with a new slingshot rocket toy he got for his birthday

We elected to play Empire Builder, the classic crayon rail game re-published by Mayfair Games. I picked it up on the cheap from Toys R Us / Amazon.  The rules are exceedingly simple so we were off and running in no time.  Fortunately I had already taken the time to apply the multitude of stickers on the load counters.

Jacob and I played very cooperatively - it took a while for him to grasp the importance of not running out of money and maximizing his load and payoff potentials.  Well, not too long, because within about 10 turns he was starting to take the lead and had set up a strong network.

I let Jacob take the picture this time (obviously).  We use our handy dandy poker chips for money instead of the monopoly money.  We prefer to play with open cash.

I opted for a primarily north-south route from the start, originating my line in Mexico City.  Jacob was east-west and had a good network from NYC to Seattle early on.  In the end Jacob was able to capture the victory, surpassing $250MM while I was at about $230MM.  Close game with some real tension at the end.

This game won't appeal to a lot of people - it is a thinking game that requires serious planning and can be a brain burner at times.  It is also a mostly solitaire game - very little player interaction with the published rules.  I think it would be interesting to try out the more competitive public-locking rules that introduces some competition for contracts.

Jacob is looking forward to playing the more complex but thematic Iron Dragon, so expect to see a report on that sometime in the near future.

Saturday marked the end of fall sports for Jacob and Matthew.  Matthew finished the season with a strong win against a Tigard team, while Jacob's team suffered a 20-0 loss against a Tigard team in their medal game.  They both improved dramatically over the season, had a great time, and learned much from their outstanding coaches.  They'll take the winter off for sports, and we'll use that time to start early on baseball prep so they have strong tryouts in the spring.

Matthew's specialty this year was his clearing kicks.

Jacob with his pal and co-lineman Nick Rowlands.  They'll both move up to 5th/6th football next year, most certainly as linemen.

For your viewing pleasure, here are a few costume photos from the weekend.  Julie and I are big fans of Shaun of the Dead in case you don't know what you are looking at.

Julie definitely did the most work here - don't miss the album protruding from her belly. Bonus points if you guess the album I'm holding.

Jacob and Matthew were able to pull it off as well.  Jacob wouldn't let me paint a beard on his face though.

Boy, this could be enough to push me back towards cable and Windows Media Center.  I don't know if they'll push this patch down to DirectTivo (which isn't officially a Tivo device, though of course DirecTV licenses their software from Tivo), but this would have a pretty big impact on us.  We commonly record pay-per-view shows and keep them for months (mostly because of Matthew).

While watching the Cardinals look ever more futile this evening, I managed to try out a few solitaire Piecepack games.

First up was Tula (ppwiki), which feels like a solitaire card game.  This is an enjoyable puzzle game where you try to deconstruct a tower (temple) of tiles by matching either the suit or the rank with the last piece removed.  There's some pathmaking and memory involved and it was a fine diversion.

Next up was One Man: Thrag! (ppwiki).  A fun diversion, but too luck driven for my taste.  There isn't much strategy involved - mostly a figure-the-odds and decide if you want to roll the dice to kill a monster.

Looks like Yourself!Fitness, the XBox-based personal fitness trainer, shipped this month.  This is a product of responDESIGN, a company founded by Corillian founder (and my former boss) Ted Spooner.  The reviews don't look so bad - good luck folks!

While this game is a smash hit with the family, I should warn those of you contemplating playing this with younger children: consider toning down some of the narrative in the haunts.  A week after our playing, Matthew tolds Julie at night that he couldn't stop thinking about the mummy that breathed into the girls mouth, whose eyes then turned red.  OK, now I'm freaking out myself. 

We finally celebrated Jacob and Matthew's respective birthdays with their friends on Sunday afternoon.  The opted for a joint gameday, with each inviting 4-5 of their friends.  It worked out pretty well.  In case you care, here's how we scheduled out the afternoon:

• 2pm - 2:30 - Welcome kids, start a big game of Liar's Dice.  This is an easy game for players to join mid-stream.  We didn't come close to finishing, but the kids had a blast.
• 2:30 - 3:30 - First game session.  The older kids played Finstere Flure while the younger ones played Can't Stop.
• 3:30 - 3:45 - Outside game to burn off some steam.  We played with balloons and finished with a balloon-popping relay race.
• 3:30 - 4:15 - Cake and gifts
• 4:15 - 5:00 - Second game session.  The older kids played 3 rounds of Colossal Arena and the younger ones played Quicksand.

All of the older kids were very much into the games and had a blast.  There were 6 of them so I had to choose games with very little downtime to keep everyone interested.  Matthew's group was hit and miss - two of the kids are still lacking some of the attention span required to play games like this, but one of them was a surprise and latched right onto them (and will likely get an invite back from Matthew real soon).

Liar's Dice for the opening.

The young uns playing Can't Stop.  This would be a great game to bring into the classroom for math labs.

Some Finstere Flure action.  Evan escaped the dungeon first with two of his characters.

Jacob and the mandatory Costo cake.

Matthew wanted a birthday apple pie this year.

Gratuitous shot of our cool cat Sammi.

Time to catch up on some session reports.  I had some good gaming activity over the weekend, starting with a Friday lunchtime session at work.  Side note: I'm sitting here in a hotel in California (Huntington Beach) and it looks like I'm on the edge of hurricane here.  There's some serious wind blowing, driving rains, and the palm trees are leaning to the north about 10 deg.  Can't wait to get back to Oregon, land of everlasting sunshine and blue skies.

Back to gaming: Eric, Arron, Paul, Jason, and I sat down for a game of Acquire.  I love this game and it was on my short list of games to suggest for five players that could be played in about 90 minutes (the other was Through the Desert, which I'm sure we'll get to soon).  Funny enough, only Eric had even heard of Acquire before.

Acquire is a game of corporate acquisition and, in the paraphrased words of Eric Landes, “just might be the best game ever from an American designer.”  He's speaking, of course, of Sid Sackson.  Alan Moon, though, is certainly giving him a run for his money.  The game is easy to learn, just makes sense when you are playing it, is a decent lesson in cash flow and investments, and is a must-have for serious and casual gamers alike.

I had the benefit of sitting to the left of the three newbies, with Eric sitting to my left (I suspect Eric has played the game quite a bit more than I have; this was probably my 6th playing).  Somehow I managed to participate as the major or minor leading shareholder in every single acquisition that happened, leading to a fairly lopsided game:

Last week I participated in a four-way discussion on the pros and cons of the card game St. Petersburg.  Obviously I like this game.

This is where I am today.

You can find the Games Magazine 100 list, along with the awards for 2005, over at Funagain.

Thankfully, Ole has returned to the blog posting world.  Welcome back, and stay for a while!

I've got a bit of gaming to write up.  If BGG is back online by the time I finish this, you'll find links to the games.  If not, well, I guess you'll know why there aren't any links.

On Friday I was able to participate in some lunchtime gaming at work.  This was the first Friday I'd been in the office for three weeks and it was nice to take a break during what was otherwise a very busy week.  Jason, Paul, and I got in two games: La Strada and Metro.

La Strada is a great game to play over lunch - short duration, easy to teach, and the decisions are never too difficult (hence little downtime).  This game was tight - Paul looked like he was in the lead, but on my last turn I took a gamble and connected to one of Jason's markets.  This turned out to be the right move, as he and I ended up tied for the lead with me winning by a tiebreaker (5 resources vs. 4).  Don't know the exact final scores as we didn't count markets where all three of us reached.

Next I taught Metro (though Jason recalled that he had played once before). Another enjoyable, light game with short playtime but enough depth to be interesting.  I believe Paul was the victor in this game.

Friday night the boys and I were home alone, so we took a look at the game closet and decided to pick out an unplayed game - Cosmic Encounter.

Matthew, Jacob, and I playing Cosmic Encounter.  Note the authentic Australian Football jerseys.

Now most of you reading this have probably played Cosmic before - it has been around for a long time.  We weren't disappointed, though we did spend most of the game wading through the rules.  I suspect this game will play much differently with adults, especialy when it comes to negotiating outcomes.  Both Jacob and Matthew are eager to play again, which is a good sign.  They even asked if it was possible to play with more than 4 players.

On Saturday afternoon we drove out to Salishan to do some work on the house and take delivery of some furniture.  The weather wasn't very pleasant so on Sunday we got in a decent amount of gaming.  Matthew and I played Battle Line a few times; this was a recent acquisition from Boards and Bits.  I'm glad this was reprinted, because it appears to be a winner.

Matthew facing off in Battle Line.

Battle Line has similarities to a number of games I've played recently, including Lost Cities and KC's Havoc prototype.  Lots of tension - do I play this card and start a battle?  Will I draw the third card I need to complete this wedge?  The tactics cards add an additional (but enjoyable) complexity, though in the first game we played we didn't realize you couldn't play another tactics card if you've already played more than your opponent.  Matthew enjoyed our plays, though the strategy is a bit much for him (I won both games easily).

Finally, on Sunday morning all four us decided to give Betrayal at House on the Hill.  I agree with Chris Farrell's confusion about the name of this game, but I (mostly) disagree with his assessment of the quality of the game.  We had a blast! I think our family is definitely in the target market for this game - it is heavy on theme, light on strategy, and there are plenty of opportunities for role playing and general silliness.

Cool minis in this game.  This is near the end of the game - our haunt was #1 - The Mummy.  Julie's character and the mummy are chasing Matthew's character, who is escorting the girl.  Unfortunately, the good guys weren't able to save the girl-bride from the mummy.

Players choose, or randomly draw, a character play.  The game happens in two phases: pre-haunt and post-haunt.  Pre-haunt, everyone is hanging out, exploring the house, gathering items, and waiting for really bad stuff to start happening.  As more omens are uncovered (cards drawn at particular rooms discovered randomly), the odds of the haunt starting increase.

When the haunt starts, the triggering player consults a table to determine which haunt scenario will play out (keyed off of the room and omen).  I like this mechanic in that it ties the theme of the haunt into something that happened in the game.  Eventually we'll run out of these (or hit a duplicate), but it should have good replayability for a while.  Post-haunt, one player is the traitor and all of the others are trying to stop the traitor from achieving her (secret) objective.  This is also when the monsters get unleashed, which are under the control of the traitor.  The heroes also have a secret objective, and team together to defeat the traitor.

I found there to be a decent amount of strategy and tactics - I certainly didn't feel like the game was playing itself, or that I wasn't able to control any of the outcome.  It was disappointing to lose the game to Julie because of a dice roll (I rolled a 5 instead the required 6 to banish the mummy), but we all came away excited to play another one.

I've never really been a fan of popular country music.  I don't take it seriously, consider it worse than top 40 pop, and have spent most of my life befuddled by the attraction of country to so many Americans.

Briefly at Washington University, then again in 1992, I discovered a band called Uncle Tupelo. This was an odd experience for me.  Is this country or rock?  Or something else?  Little did I know, they were ushering in what many consider an entirely new genre called Alternative Country (or alt country or americana music).  Since then I've learned to enjoy listening to bands like Wilco and Sun Volt (both offshoots of Tupelo, but very different bands today), Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams, the Bottlerockets, Lyle Lovett, and The Jayhawks.  I even like much of the works of the Dixie Chicks, as they are not afraid to break away from the mainstream of popular country music.  They even wrote a song at least partially about their frustrations with this mainstream.  And of course there's the unclassifiable Beck who put out one of my favorite alt country albums last year.

Seeing my taste in music evolve over the past 10 years has given me cause to trace back to some original sources.  My guide on this tour has been a book I picked up at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, South by Southwest: A Roadmap to Alternative Country, by Brian Hinton.  He makes some odd linkages and stretches relationships a bit (I'm not sure what Tom Waits is really doing in this book), but it was extremely revealing to me to see how much of an intersection the bands I like today have with the bands I like from the 60s and 70s.  In hindsight I shouldn't have been surprised, but it was revealing nonetheless.  Key influencers include Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Carl Perkins, and Gram Parsons.  Reading this reminded me to pick up the Byrds album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, their sometimes tongue-in-cheek homage to roots country music and gospel.  Fantastic stuff.

So, now you know a bit more about my musical tastes.

I spent last weekend in Nashville at my good friend Russ Waitman's wedding.  Russ and I were roommates in college, sharing an engineering suite our sophomore year and an apartment offsite our junior year.  After college, we both ended up serving our active duty officer assignments in the US Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.  Russ entered the medical service working in hospital administration while I helped develop software for cockpit simulations at Wright Laboratory.

Russ and I hadn't seen each other since I left the Air Force in 1996.  Russ went on to Vanderbilt to get his MS and PhD in Biomedical engineering, an amazing accomplishment.  We've stayed in touch over the phone and through email over the years, and I was thrilled to learn earlier this year that he was getting married.  I was also honored to stand with him as a groomsman.  On Saturday evening, Russ married Jessica Preston, a lovely, beautiful, and clearly intelligent woman that he met at school.  They are away on honeymoon right now in the Pacific northwest enjoying their first week of married life.

I took a few photos during my stay there, so here goes.

Hatch Show Print is a still in operation letterpress print famous for their posters promoting country music concerts in Nashville.

On Friday evening I ventured downtown to some of the country bars to hear some live music.  Highlight of the evening was the rockabilly band Twistin Tarantulas.

On Saturday morning before the wedding, I spent some time at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.  Highly recommended - more on that later.

Russ and I just before the wedding.

The beautiful bridal party.

Russ and the other groomsman.  We're all engineers; funny that.  At the reception we preceded our toast with a telling of the top 10 reasons to marry an engineer.

You can beta-test Ticket to Ride online over at Days of Wonder.  I played a 2-player game with Eric H tonight - well done implementation.

Thanks to Scott, I just discovered Google SMS.  I'm sitting here in Nashville right now and need to find a bookstore.  I send this SMS to GOOGL (46645):

37203 borders

and get this response:

(1of2)Google Local:
Borders Books Music & Cafe 
2525 West End Ave 
Nashville TN (615) 327-9656

Tonight I had the fortune of spending a few hours gaming with the Billabong Boardgamers of the greater Melbourne (Australia) area. Alan Stewart was kind enough to extend an invitation to me, and with the Amaroo Neighbourhood Centre only a short train ride away I couldn't resist.

As usual, after meeting several of the members face-to-face, I was reminded of how small the board gaming world is.  One of the regulars, Craig Macbride, has gamed with Tom Powers and the other Microsofties (Tom runs Boards & Bits and I've gamed with them a few times) while visiting Seattle. Julian Clarke, owner of Unhalfbricking Games, is acquainted with owners of several American publishers that I know (Jeremy Young of Uberplay and Eric Hautemont of Days of Wonder).

There were 10 of us in total at the centre, so we initially divided into three groups 3/3/4.  I opted to play St. Petersburg with Duncan and Julian.  Duncan was clearly an experienced player, having read quite a bit of the commentary on BGG and knowing key strategies.  I've been playing the fine PC version quite a bit while traveling so I think I've got a pretty good grasp as well.  So Duncan and I quickly taught Julian the rules and helped him along with strategy as we played.  Not that he needed much help - he quickly grasped the rules and was leaping to good strategy early on.

Duncan and Julian about half way through our game of St. Petersburg.

Julian maintained the VP lead most of the game, with me close behind.  Duncan trailed most of the game by 20-30 VPs, but I kept a close eye on his accumulation of aristrocrats.  Fortunately (for me) in the final round I was able to grab the only aristocrat upgrade, giving me 7 distinct aristocrats and enough the squeeze out a narrow victory over Duncan, who finished with 10.  Julian managed to get 5 (I think), finishing about 10 points behind me.  I still enjoy this game quite a bit, though as some have complained there seems to be somewhat narrow paths to victory.

While I was playing St. Petersburg, another group played Attika.

It was a tough choice opting out of Goa and playing St. Pete.  I've played this only once but can't wait to try it again.  Apparently this was a close game, coming down to a tiebreaker at 41 points.

While waiting for the other games to wrap up, Duncan, Julian, and I played a hand of Coloretto.  This is a fun little card game that I haven't played in a while; not sure why because it really is a lot of fun.

Duncan showing off his rainbow spectrum of cards in Coloretto.  He still managed to win.

I thought I was doing OK, but Duncan managed to win the hand despite a rather diverse collection of colors.

This game is called Extinction.  Doesn't get very good ratings on BGG.

Next up for me was Einfach Genial with Craig and Brian.  This game just didn't appeal to me based on what I'd read, but I was anxious to try it anyway.  I know Dave has had some nice things to say about the game (he is a huge Knizia fan, after all).  This is an abstract game of hex-tile laying (the pieces are actually two hex tiles) where points are scored based on the number of other connecting hexes of the same color as the piece you played.  Players score across 6 different colors, with the winner being the player with highest low score (just like the scoring in Tigris and Euphrates).

Craig and Brian setting up Einfach Genial.

I found the game to be engaging, quick, and very fun.  Our game was tight and could have gone to anyone.  Craig made a good blocking double-move at the end that took away any possibility for me scoring in my weak color at the end.  This ended the game with a tie at 10 for Craig and Brian, Brian winning the tiebreaker.  I finished at 9.

The other crowd plays Auf Heller und Pfennig.

Alan (left) and two others play Flaschenteufel.

While waiting for some other games to wrap up, I was able to teach and play a couple of hands of Tres Amigos, one of KC's card game prototypes.  We played with the three-player rules and opinions were fairly neutral.  It is likely the rules I was playing with were a bit out of date, as there were too many cards in the undrawn stack (under the face-up trump card) adding quite a bit of chaos into the system.  I need to check with KC on this.

Finally, Duncan and I taught Craig and Brian the fine Uberplay game Saga.  This is a light card game that I first played at GenCon with Jacob this year.  It has some subtleties to it that I don't quite have handle on yet, though in this case I must have been doing something right as I won 56 / 36 / 30 / 5.  I can't figure out if this game is too chaotic / luck driven, or if it really is possible to control the pace and end of game.

Thanks again to the Billabong Boardgamers for hosting me.  Let me know if you ever make it out to the Portland area!

I awoke this morning at about 4:30am local time.  Not too bad in all - that's about 7.5 hours of sleep and I'm on may way towards adjustment.  I wanted to go for a run along the river, but it was still dark so I decided to play some Middle Earth: the Wizards solitaire.  I've owned this game since 1995 but never got a chance to play it and it has sat on my shelf all this time (next to my stash of Magic cards).  Back in 1996 I also purchased the book Middle-Earth: The Wizards Companion.  This is a better (i.e., more readable) version of the rules than you find with the starter decks, and also has some solitaire rules and interesting scenarios.

Last week a box of preconstructed challenge decks arrived at home, so I was eager to give this game a try. Part of my inspiration to give it a go was Chris Farrell's high opinion of the game, particularly before some of the later expansions were shipped.  Oh, and this is why I picked up some D6 yesterday.

The cards sitting on my ottoman in my hotel room.

There are quite a few similarities to the Lord of the Rings TCG, which I have played quite a bit.  Or, should I say, the LOTR TCG bears a lot of similarity to METW.  There is a movement mechanic to both games, and conflict is created by opponents challenging you while you move your group(s).  Thematically I think METW is much better, primarily because a big part of deck construction involves matching characters, items, and sites they will travel to.  If you want to recruit Treebeard as an ally, you must travel to Wellinghall to get him.  The rules for moving in METW are extremely confusing at first though; this is one game where it really would be best to be taught by someone in the know.  Hey, maybe I can become that person now.

Here's a summary of the solitaire rules from the book:

• Getting Started: Separate hazard cards into a separate shuffled deck.  I used the Saruman challenge deck and just took out the challenge cards from that precon.  Your hand size is 5 cards.
• Play normally with the following exceptions:
  • There is no opponent's player turn.
  • Whenever you would draw or discard to get a hand of 8 cards, you now draw or discard to get a hand of 5 cards.
• Playing hazards: During the movement/hazard phase, for each company, you draw hazard cards equal to 2 plus twice the number of hazard cards normally drawn for that site (oops, I just realized I missed the twice in that statement).  Then you must play as many of those hazard cards as you can within the hazard limit for the company.  You should play the hazard cards in the fashion that is most disadvantageous for your companies.
• Object of the game: Accumulate as many marshalling points as you can by the time you exhaust your play deck for the second time.

I only got through my deck once, and as I mentioned I wasn't drawing enough hazard cards (though I was playing the right amount).  It was a slow process of referring to the rules, playing a little, double-checking the rules, etc.  I do think I'm getting a grasp of the game and look forward to playing it face to face.

I arrived in Melbourne about 10am Saturday morning after about 18 hours total flying time.  Things sure have changed since the last time I was here: I had to rent a phone for the week to be able to affordably stay in contact with folks at home.  Now, my Blackberry works: phone, email, browser and all.  I was able to call Julie within 5 minutes of landing here as if it were a local call.

One key to recovering from jetlag when traveling to Australia (and arriving in the morning) is to stay awake the first day and switch to a local timetable.  I made a mistake last time I was in Sydney and took a nap in the afternoon - this lead to repeated awakenings in the night and another day of recovery.  So, my colleague and friend Mike and I set out to explore downtown north of the Yarra River.  What follows is a short photo journal of our day.

We started the day with a short walk to Flinders Street Railway Station.  We had lunch and a beer across the street at Young and Jackson's.

Next we hiked west and rode to the top of Rialto Tower to check out the Melbourne observation deck.  The views were stunning - clear, beautiful day with plenty of visibility.  Here you can see (upper left) the Melbourne Cricket Ground and (middle right) the National Tennis Centre, home of the Australian Open.

Ahhh, a little slice of home.

So we're wandering down Swanston St when I happen to gaze across the street - lo and behold, a game store!  Mind Games is a nice store - emphasis on family board games with a HUGE selection.  I probably would have bought something if the prices had been more reasonable.  I suspect they were 20% higher than retail in the US.  I did buy 5 wooden d6.

While walking back to the hotel, we happened by a wedding at the Scots Church.  Very cool bagpipes - how can you resist stopping and having a listen?