The main event for me on Sunday of Game Storm 2005 was family gaming from 9-noon.  With Jay's help I was able to run over 8 different game sessions with a wide range of folks (over 20).  Unfortunately we didn't get many families with kids to show up, but given that I didn't see many kids at the con (other than at the Yu-Gi-Oh tournament) this wasn't very surprising.

We started with a game of Can't Stop, the classic Sid Sackson press-your-luck game.

.Jacob, Brandon, Ken, and Jay play Can't Stop.

There were some exciting moments that I observed...

With 10, 11, and 12 blocked out Jay rolls 6/6/6/4 on his initial roll on his turn.  Hard to press your luck on a turn like this!

With Can't Stop rolling, I offered to teach another group Ticket to Ride, one of the better games from 2004.  I sat in and played for a few turns until a fifth showed up to take my seat.

Aaron (head of Game Storm, center), Lennart (right), and unknown gamer (left) setup for a game of Ticket to Ride.

This allowed me to move on to teach Carcassonne...

Finally another kid shows up!  He helped me teach Carcassonne to another two adults.

I recommended to Aaron and a few other gamers that Carcassonne: the City would be a great game to try.  This one is a bit harder to teach as it has two very distinct phases (tile-laying, followed by city building and tile laying).  If you try and teach the rules for walls and guards at the start, players are overwhelmed with information they won't use for a while.  Fortunately there are few choices early in the game that affect how well you do during wall building (other than keeping meeples in reserve), so I think it works fine to teach it once the first stack of tiles is cleared.

Carcassonne: the City early in the game.

While babysitting the Carcassonne: the City game, I roped in a few more gamers to give Take it Easy a try.  I'm a sucker for this (essentially) solitaire puzzle game.  None of the three others (that's Wes in the middle.  You may remember him from previous Game Storms) had played before and enjoyed the short time it takes to play the game.

Wes was the victor, with me a close second place.

The final game played during the family gaming event was Saga, one of the small-box games produced by Uberplay.  This game is easy to teach, has nice graphics, and is quite fun to play.  Works great with 3 or 4 players.

Ken, Brandon, Jacob, and I dropped down two floors to try and get into the final RPGA session.   The coordinator was very accomodating and found a judge for us.  He did a nice job running it cold (he hadn't reviewed the material before) and we had a good time.  This was by far our most challenging adventure of the weekend, having to deal with a number of were-creatures.

Our final RPGA event.

Next I'll post a photo journal of the other games I witnessed at the convention, many of which I had hoped to play but missed out on.  I'm still itching to play Manifest Destiny, which I saw played at least three times over the weekend with favorable reviews.

As I mentioned before Jacob and I spent last weekend at Game Storm, the annual gaming convention on the north side of Portland.  The newly renamed Thunderbird Hotel is a fine venue for this event, a bit dated but very affordable with decent amenities.  This year we spent quite a bit of time in the RPGA section, but more on that in a bit.

I'll post day 3 later, then review the sights and sounds of the con (mostly games I watched other people play) in a final post.

Jacob and I arrived Friday evening around 5:15pm.  After checking into the hotel, my first task was to deliver a stack of two-player games (some of them mine, some Eric's) to KC and Jay for their annual two-player tournament.  I had planned to enter the tournament, but Jacob and I ran into Ken and Brandon in the lobby (they shared a room with us) and learned that they were going to try a Living Greyhawk RPGA adventure.  Jacob, Matthew, and I played in a Living Greyhawk adventure last year at GenCon, so this sounded like a fun way to continue with characters we had already made.  One problem: I left all of the materials at home.  Fortunately, we had an accomodating DM that allowed us to mock up our characters for one adventure (we made them as similar to the originals as we could, based on memory).

Our first adventure was a Living Greyhawk intro module.

The party did a great job killing all the bad monsters and stuff and we all survived, with Jacob and I advancing to second level (woo hoo).  The next morning I drove home very early to check on the cats and retrieve our RPGA materials, allowing us to transfer the information from Friday night's adventure to our "real" characters.

Our final game Friday evening was Colossal Arena, which Ken had not yet played.  I'm always happy to bring this game, and I think Ken and the boys enjoyed it as well.  If memory serves me, Jacob came out on top in this battle.

Like I said before, Saturday morning started out for me with a 90 minute round-trip to home.  Jacob stayed at the convention and joined a group playing Car Wars card game and Battle Cattle (combined).

Jacob enjoying Car Wars and Battle Cattle.

Jacob apparently had a blast playing these games, but I don't think they would be my cup of tea.  I probably shouldn't be too quick to judge but will definitely want to try before I buy.

I signed up to play Gettysburg: Badges of Courage, one of the newest Columbia Games block wargames.  I recently picked up this game (along with Eastfront and Rommel in the Desert) largely based on the high praise of Chris Farrell.  Jay and Ken were excellent teachers, setting up a day 2 scenario that played well as a 3v3 scenario.

Ken Crangle, on the right, was our teacher as well as the Union field general (our Meade, I suppose).

While this game shares many similarities with other Columbia block games, it has a very unique command / control and leadership influence system.  Columbia excels at adding twists like this to a base system that helps bring new flair to what could be a tedious model (new setting, same game).

Love those blocks.

Unfortunately we only had 2 hours to play, including instruction, so we barely made it through 2 turns.  I can't wait to play out an entire scneario.

While I was playing Gettysburg, Jacob sat through a 2 hour (!) panel discussion on how to be a great dungeon master. I checked in on him about every 15-20 minutes, and every time I looked in the room he was sitting attentively and very engaged.

Jacob sits enthralled in the dungeon master panel discussion.

Apparently he learned some solid tips that he hopes to apply soon as a DM, including:

• Make the rewards match the effort
• Don't play a PC as the DM
• It is about the fun of the players, not the fun of the DM
• Keep the focus on the story and the players.  Don't get wrapped up in the rules.

Next up was a Havoc playtesting session that KC and I ran.  I bet over 10 games of Havoc were played throughout the convention and we continue to hear excellent feedback on the game.  Perhaps you'll see it published before too long...

KC teaches another group how to play Havoc.

We were all ready for some lighter fare, so KC and Jay brought their collection of knick knacks (I'm not sure how it is spelled).  These are little robot-looking guys that you can play a stacking game with, trying to mimic the player to your right.  We had quite a bit of fun playing the game initially.

Jay tries to outdo us in knick knack.

Then we just started to try and make crazy or unusual stacking patterns.

This was my favorite of the day.  Nice work Ken.

While I finished putting stickers on my Gettysburg wooden blocks, KC teaches Ken, Jay, and Jacob the square version of NW Trek.

Jay ran a friendly session of the leaky lifeboat game.  Jacob loved this game.

Ken, KC, and I then decided to try and tackle Antiquity, the limited print run game published by Splotter Spellen last year.  I had only heard bits and pieces of this game but the scope and detail looked very appealing.  This is a tough game to play straight from the rules - we were an hour into it before we felt comfortable starting our first turn, and that first turn went slowly as we started to figure out the key mechanics (e.g., how do you build a farm if you need seed, when seed is produced by a farm.  Oh, you can explore to find seed.  Got it.).  The best analogy I can give for this game is that of an empire-building RTS computer game like Civilization or Age of Empires.  Each player begins spread out from the others, so there's little to no player interaction early on so we were mostly playing solitaire.  I had to leave after the fourth turn for an RPGA event and Jay took my place.

KC and Ken try and figure out Antiquity.

I came back about 3 hours later and they were still going at it.  I was enjoying it very much when I left and would like to play through an entire game.  I can see how it could be fiddly and slow, but something about it appealed to me.  I just need to find a full Saturday to devote to it (and get down to Albany to play Ken's copy).

I left the Antiquity game for another RPGA Living Greyhawk adventure. This one was a bit more challenging as we had to defeat some dervishes and an Ogre (hey, that's a big deal for 1-2 level characters!) but we all survived to fight another day.

Ken makes an attack roll for his half-orc barbarian.

I had this brilliant idea to teach RoboRally to Ken and Brandon at 10:30pm after about 15 straight ours of gaming action.  Nothing like a light game to close out the evening.  If there was ever a brain-burner game, this is it. Not only do you need to have great geometric spatial awareness, you need to think like a programmer and anticipate what the other robots will do.  I think everyone enjoyed it but it was certainly frustrating when robots got mis-programmed due to fatigue and newness to the game.  We'll give it another try when we are all fresh.

Ken, Jacob, Brandon and I trying out RoboRally.

All in all, a great start to the convention.  More to come soon on the Sunday action.

A couple of weekends ago (on the front-end of the Jacob and Matthew's spring break), we spent the weekend at the coast and had some long-time friends as guests.  Martin Danner, an old friend and former co-worker (he runs Arrowrock Software), along with son Greg joined us at the beach house for one night.  The weather was spectacular - high winds and driving rain (this was the same day the barge ran aground at Cape Disappointment) - but that didn't stop us from taking a beach hike around the north end of Salishan spit.

The fuzziness you see around the ground is the blowing sand.  The wind was gusting in the 40mph range.

This is always a great time to hike the beach, but only if you prepare yourself with raingear to stay somewhat dry and warm.  The harbor seals were very active at the point and we saw around 40 of them.

Jacob posing with two seals.

Sorry about the outage today.  Sometimes with dasBlog (my weblog software) a big clump of entry files will show up with zero content and a weird datestamp, causing the engine to fail (though quite gracefully) to render my pages.  Fixed now.

Jacob and I returned from GameStorm (all of 30 minutes from our house) about 6pm tonight.  Didn't get much sleep over the weekend, so I'm tired and will not write anything up tonight.  I'm off for some more business travel tomorrow night but hope to get things written up tomorrow night.

My friend Dave and wife Melanie just returned from China with a new adopted daughter.  Congrats Dave; you'll be busy and tired for quite a while but it will all be worth it.

I periodically do bulk game orders for my local group through Boards and Bits, my favorite online retailer.  This works reasonably well, though with my work and travel schedule lately it has been a challenge to deliver all of the games to my group.  Chuck and I arranged for him to stop by on his way home from work in Wilsonville tonight, and as long as he is stopping by why not play some games?

Originally we had planned on 2p games as I was expecting Julie and the boys to stay out at the coast all week.  They came back mid day and Matthew was around, so we let Matthew choose a game off the shelf.  His all-time favorite is the Lord of the Rings boardgame, a cooperative game.

The stars were aligned tonight (read: somebody must have stacked the event tile deck) because we sailed through Moria, Helms Deep, Shelob's Lair, and Mordor in an almost effortless fashion.  Our family's previous high score was 79 (60 for destroying the ring plus 19 shield points) and we blew that record away tonight with a score of 88.

We had about an hour left and Chuck had never played St. Petersburg, so that was a logical choice.  This game is still top shelf for me - plays quickly, is easy to teach, and plenty of tension.

Chuck picked up on the mechanics and strategy quickly, made great choices and pulled out the victory in the end.

I'm the Cubmaster for Cub Scout Pack 710 - been doing it for 2 years now and will likely do it for one more until Jacob moves on to Boy Scouts.  My favorite event each year is the pinewood derby.

This year we held a workshop at Sherwood High School, hosted by the most excellent technical education teacher John Neibergall.  The high school has an outstanding shop for woodworking, metal work, and computer-aided design.  John is very involved with scouts in the area and had some Boy Scouts from a local troop there to help coach the Cubs.

John makes some cuts for Nick, Jacob, and Matthew at the wood shop.

One of my goals in running the derby is to keep it somewhat competitive but to allow the kids to race as much as possible.  We impound the cars after final weigh-in and assign each car a unique number.  I use the outstanding spreadsheet from Chris Sutton to divide the kids into groups and automatically generate heats.  This allows each car to race 5 or 6 times across different lanes to help neutralize any lane advantages.

The freshly painted track setup in front of the PA and projection system.

I project the spreadsheet for all to see and we keep the action going non-stop.  One challenge in previous years was judging placement in each race.  I would assign four adults to watch the finish line, each one assigned to a lane.  This was problematic at times, especially when we had photo finishes.  This year we decided to purchase a Microwizard K2 LED timer and it worked like a charm.  It has a tolerance down to 1/1000 of a second and we still had a tie during one of our races.

Our shiny new timer.

I'm past due for some postings, so expect to see a bunch over the coming week.  Work and travel have been exceptionally heavy recently so there hasn't been much gaming activity.

From October through spring break I run the chess program at Jacob and Matthew's elementary school, Archer Glen.  This year I taught two classes before school, a beginner class with 1-3 graders and an advanced class with 2-5 graders.  Jacob and Matthew are both in the advanced class and helped me with the beginner class when they could manage to wake up early enough.  Julie was kind enough to cover for me when travel kept me from teaching.

This year we only entered the team in a single tournament, the Chess for Success regional tournament.  This is a great program in the state of Oregon that fosters chess at all levels.  This was going to be a rebuilding year for the team (no strong 5th graders and only three 4th graders that I thought were competitive) so I mixed the team up a bit to give some strong 2-3 graders the opportunity to play.

The 2004-2005 Archer Glen chess team.

The kids had a great time; unfortunately Jacob was sick so the team was left without one of its top 3 players.  They finished near the bottom of the region but I'm confident we'll have a much stronger showing next year.