Friday was the kickoff day for our weekend gaming at Salishan with the Rude and Humphrey families.  That makes 13 bodies in all, so there are plenty of opportunities for a wide range of gaming.  Our goal is usually to bring out games we haven’t played yet or rarely get played in our normal sessions.  Here’s an example of the games with the potential of coming out this weekend.

I picked up Ra at BGG.Con in a trade with Keith Blume.  My first play of this was less than favorable, but given how popular the game is I figured I was missing something and took a chance on getting my own copy.  KC, Rita, Ken, and I sat down to play it as our first official game of the weekend.

KC and Rita have played this game quite a lot, but Ken and I were essentially playing for the first time so we took some time to learn/explain the rules.  I must admit the mechanics are very simple, the game is streamlined and easy to learn, and I quite enjoyed playing.  The fact that I edged out KC for the victory 44–42 might have something to do with it.  I really did enjoy the push-your-luck element combined with the auctions.  There’s a decent amount of luck in the game but that’s OK as you can take steps to mitigate this effect through the bidding process.

Julie and Justin committed themselves to resuming their speed duels. Justin tells me he’s up by three games now.

After our game of Ra, I suggested we try out the Sid Sackson classic Venture.  This is a copy I purchased on eBay from Sid’s personal collection.  Not a bad little game – there are some similarities to Acquire in that players build out corporations, there are takeover mechanics, etc., but the game certainly does stand on its own.  There were a few oddities in the rules that don’t make much sense – money from proxy battles goes to the bank, not the player you steal the corporation from.  Shouldn’t the money go to the player?  Also, as you run low in cards you get penalized even further, because if you can’t afford to buy anything you must discard a card.  I realize this is a mechanic intended to force players to keep cards in their hands, but it seems a bit harsh.  The game went on a bit longer than we would have liked, but it was enjoyable and might be worth trying again with some rules tweaks.

Justin, Josh, Rita, Julie, and I then played the SimplyFun game Plext, an interesting little word game that was challenging and fun.  You shuffle a set of 14 dice and reveal them arranged in a linear sequence.  Players are then challenged to come up with a series of words that use all of the letters in sequence order, inserting as many letters as needed.  For example, if the sequence was “EQRPI” then you might write down “EQuestRian PIe”.  As soon as a player thinks he has a competitive (small) number of words that use up all the letters, he can call out his bid (the number of words), puts down his pencil, then starts the timer.  The other players then have that much time to come up with their own bid, which can be any number of words.  When the timer runs out, whoever had the first lowest bid gets the first shot at solving.  If his solution was correct (valid words, used all the letters), he wins victory points totaling 10 minus the number of words.  Repeat for eight rounds to determine the winner.

While we were playing Plext, KC and Ken played a game of Jambo.  I think KC won.

We gave Barbarossa as a gift to the Rudes, so Julie, Jenna, Chelsea, and Brandon decided to give it a try.  Brandon says he enjoyed it very much, possibly influenced by the fact that he won.

KC was eager to pull out McMulti, one of those hard-to-find holy grail games that often goes for $200+ on eBay.  The game took us close to 3 hours to play and while it was enjoyable, it is a bit too much of a luckfest for my tastes, especially for a game that long.

There are some creative mechanics in the game, especially for a game from 1974.  My favorite is the cross-referenced die rolls that give production to the players on the right and left of the active player.  The economic system is pretty cool as well, though we played with a variant that throttles the economic cycle a bit.  KC, Ken, and I were all pretty close to each other, all surpassing the $1MM mark by the end of the game.  KC ended up the victor with Ken a close second.

Our last game of the night was partnership Tichu, Ken/Chris vs. KC/Rita.  This was my first time through a whole game of this, so it was nice to get the rules and basic strategy ingrained.  I’m ready to try again, especially to get a chance to avenge our loss to KC and Rita.  It was a close match with both teams close to 600, but they shut us down two hands in a row pulling out the victory.

My grandmother Brooks passed away earlier this week.  While she was my father’s step-mother (his mother passed away at age 11), she was always my grandma Brooks and she will be missed.  This is her obituary; services were held earlier this morning.

Meta Jane Brooks, 91, of Shelbyville, died Monday, Dec. 26, 2005, at Morristown Manor, in Morristown.

Born Oct. 8, 1914, in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, she was the daughter of the late George and Imogene (Virden) Masters. She married Louis Brooks Dec. 8, 1951, and he preceded her in death Dec. 25, 1981.

Survivors include four sons, Michael (wife, Lynne) Brooks of Shelbyville, Tom (wife, Linda) Brooks of Cedar Falls, Iowa, John (wife, Ann) Brooks of Green Valley, Ariz., and Dan (friend, Jeri) Brooks of LaSalle, Ill.; five grandchildren; two stepgrandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; and two stepgreat-grandchildren.

Mrs. Brooks graduated from Iowa Wesleyan College, where she received a bachelor of science degree in home economics. She was later awarded an honorary doctorate degree from that school for her work in developing the science building on campus.

She was a home economics teacher, retiring in 1985 after 16 years in education.

Mrs. Brooks also was employed as a county home Extension director in Iowa; as director of home economics for Borg Warner Corp.; as a home economics teacher in LaSalle, Ill., where she founded the food service vocational program; and as a school bus attendant in Melbourne, Fla.

She was a member of the PEO and Alpha Xi Delta sorority.

Mrs. Brooks moved to Shelbyville in 1999 and was a resident of McKay Manor until she moved to Morristown Manor two years ago.

Friends and family may gather at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Carmony-Ewing Harrison Street Chapel, Freeman Family Funeral Homes, 819 S. Harrison St.

A memorial service will be at 11 a.m. Friday at the funeral home, with the Rev. Dr. Mary Lundgren and the Rev. Corlis Dees officiating.

Interment will be in Forest Home Cemetery, in Mount Pleasant.

Memorial contributions may be donated to Hospice of Shelby County, 110 South Harrison St., Shelbyville, IN 46176.

Last week before Christmas a group of us drove up 101 past Cascade Head (we hiked there earlier this year) to try out the Harts Cove Trail.

Karen woke up wanting to take a “mad hike”, whatever that is.  We came to learn this means running as much of the trail as possible.  The entire crew included, left to right, Karen, Mike, Powell, Julie, Dave, Lisa, and me (taking the picture).

The first 3/4 of a mile or so is straight down via switchbacks, about a 900 foot drop in all.  We started the trail with a brisk walk, but soon Karen turned it into a jog and Mike and I joined her.  We ran for about the first 1.5 miles or so, slowing down as we started to encounter a lot of tree fall.  The trail closes down on January 1, and I see why as the trail will soon be impassable.  The trail passes through beautiful stands of giant sitka spruce and groves of the ferns all too common on the Oregon coast.

After about 2.5 miles, the trail opens into the final meadow revealing the coast and Harts Cove.  Karen and I continued down to the volcanic rocks bordering the rough coastline.

You can see the stream flowing into the cove in the background of the picture below – this cascading stream is how Cascade Head got its name (Harts Cove is on the northern side of Cascade Head).

On the way back we walked for about a mile then Mike and I resumed our jogging.  I fell twice, bruising my knees, and twisted my right ankle something fierce (it swelled up into a baseball sized lump later that night) but managed to run about a mile or so and walked the final death march back up the car. A fun but difficult hike and highly recommended.

I continually tweak my podcast subscription list based on interests, quality, word of mouth, and time budget.  I posted previously giving an assessment of the boardgame-related podcasts, but the landscape has changed quite a bit and my subscriptions have expanded.  One of my favorites has disappeared completely… will it return?

Gaming Related

This remains my favorite category and occupies most of my car listening time.

• The Dice Tower – Somewhat begrudgingly, this is my favorite podcast.  Tom and Joe grow on me and I believe they are just genuinely good guys and fun to be around.  They are diligent about their production schedule and I like their top 10 lists.  If you can get past the mispronunciations, there’s a lot to like about this show.
• Boardgames-to-Go – Mark has tailed off during the holiday season but I’m confident he’ll sustain a good production schedule in 2006.  I like his intelligent, self-deprecating approach and meeting him at BGG.Con only confirmed that he’s such a nice guy with interesting things to say about games.
• Have Games Will Travel – I’m glad I discovered this one, as I get more out of Paul’s RPG reviews and commentary than boardgames.  His reviews are encouraging me to consider leaving the D20 realm with my RPG gaming group as soon as the kids are old enough to explore some more advanced themes and systems.
• Pulp Gamer – A bit too much of a beer-and-pretzels game focus, but I love the interviews they’ve landed (James Ernest, Margaret Weis) and the show continues to improve.
• Geek Fu Action Grip – On the fence here, as Mur is a bit too much on the comic / sci-fi fringe for me.  She’s an outstanding writer though and her essays keep me coming back.  I wish she would do more game reviews.
• Board Game Speak – Where art thou?

Digital Photography

I’ve committed to myself to increase my photography skills dramatically in 2006, both on the shooting front and digital dark-room post-processing front.  These podcasts along with some reading study are helping me along the way.

• Tips from the Top Floor – Still my favorite photography podcast, somewhat reinforced by the fact that I got to meet Chris in Germany last December.  I am concerned that Chris spends too much time on meta-speak about the podcast itself – he needs to stay focused on photography and his tips, perhaps putting meta-speak at the end of the show.
• Secrets of Digital Imaging – This one got off to a rough start, with Dennis having similar meta-speak issues, but this one gets better and better.  I especially enjoyed Dennis’ workflow series and I even bought his Photoshop Elements workflow reference card.  Keep up the good work!
• Two Minute Photoshop Tricks – A nice podcast focused on Photoshop, it would be better if I would listen to it while at a computer instead of in the car.

Technology

• Ruby on Rails – Whoa, this one had a rough start in terms of audio quality and content, but Geoffrey Grosenbach continues to improve with each show.  I especially appreciate the recent post on Smalltalk / Seaside, a nice change from the “cult of Rails” insularism that may be imminent.

Comedy

• Ricky Gervais – I’ve listened to  a few of the shows and give it about a B.  I’ll likely unsubscribe to this as I just got… an XM radio for my birthday!  Woot!

If there’s anything else I should be listening to based on what you see here, post it in the comments!

Greetings from the Oregon coast, again.  I’m back here for New Years weekend so expect to see some more posts with gaming goodness.

Last night I had the opportunity to try out Mesopotamia at Mike’s annual between Christmas and New Years game day.  I arrived about 3pm and joined Carey and George in this new Mayfair / Phalanx release while others played Medici.  Sorry, no pics for this session.

Mesopotamia is at its heart an exploration and pick up and deliver game.  The initial setup has a temple in the center of a set of six interlocking tiles that form a ring around the temple.  The players start with villagers and a hut on a tile adjacent to the center.  Tiles are forests, quarries (or some other stone producing land), volcanoes, and plains.  The objective of the game is deliver four offerings to the temple, with each offering requiring a different “mana” level for the offering (2, 4, 6, and 7).  Players start with a mana cap of 3 so must increase that cap through the game by helping to build the center temple with stones, presumably increasing their favor with the gods.

On your turn you get to move villagers a total of five spaces, divided up as you choose amongst your villagers.  This is how you explore new tiles (by moving off the map), pick up wood, stone, or offerings, and deliver offerings or stone to the temple at the center.  You are not allowed to carry resources through the temple, which causes some interesting movement restrictions to the game effectively dividing the board space in half.  This is because the initial setup involves impassable volcanoes on opposite sides of the temple (I didn’t know there was such an abundance of volcanoes in Mesopotamia, but whatever).

After movement is complete you can choose from any of four actions:

• Build a new hut on a plains tile with 0 or 1 huts on it.  When you build a hut, you secretly choose one of your offering counters and place it under the hut.  This is what you’ll need to pick up and deliver to the center temple.
• Build a holy place – if you have two villagers on an empty plains space and one of them is carrying stone, you can build a holy place there.  Holy places are one of the ways you produce mana.
• Reproduce new villagers – if you have two villagers at a hut (presumably for the privacy), you can spawn a new villager at that hex.  You can do this as many times as you want as long as you have enough villagers to reproduce.  You can only do this if huts on the space have no offering counters under them.
• Draw a card.  There are a number of cards that grant special actions or opportunities to screw the other players (such as relocating a hut).  You can only draw one card per turn, and then only if you do no other actions.

We played the first half of the game completely wrong – we didn’t realize you had to choose from one of these four actions, so we started off by doing a number on the same turn.  This sped up the game considerably and made game decisions very straightforward.  Once we realized the error, things slowed down quite a bit and decisions became quite difficult.

I managed to draw a few cards that helped me slow down George considerably, and he was my closest competitor.  I managed to finish my offerings first, about 1–2 turns ahead of George, giving me the win in this initial game that we played incorrectly.  Still, this is a decent game and I hope to try it again soon.  It feels similar to Lost Valley, but this game is quite a bit lighter and easier to explain.  It is MUCH more abstract though – the theme didn’t really do much for me.  The components are first rate and the rules are quite well written despite our problems – that was operator error and not a reflection on Phalanx or Mayfair.

If you are a fan of light, fairly abstract euros and like exploration mechanics then you should try this game.  It plays in about an hour and had some nice mechanics and I had fun.  I’m a bit worried that the cards are too strong (and unbalanced) and that victory might just come down to who draws the better cards, but I very well could be wrong.

Tuesday night I hosted “south Tuesday”, my monthly turn with the RipCity gaming group.  I was eager to try out Antike again, and as I was expecting about 4–5 people total it seemed likely if the others were willing.  Joining me were Mike, Doug, and Carey Grayson, guest of the group and owner of New Classic Games.  Carey is a designer in his on right and purchased New Classic earlier this year.  They produce Abagio and he has a few other games in the works for publication.

We played four players on the English side of the board, which is the “zoomed in” map focusing on the eastern Mediterranean and middle-east.  Teaching Antike is a breeze – the game is very streamlined, combat couldn’t be simpler, and the game board and reference cards are extremely well designed providing all of the key information for quick reference.

I focused on gold and know-how initially, advancing to Monarchy quickly to get some strong defense.  Doug and Mike began to intrude on my precious territory, forcing me (!) to attack from Athens to push them back and give me some buffer.  I didn’t stop there, taking advantage of some numerical superiority and my sailing improvements to wreak some more havoc near Greece.  I was able to cross the 15 territory threshold, giving me a total of 8 victory points (3 five territory, 1 seven seas, 4 first know-how advancement) and one shy of victory.

Meanwhile, Carey kept Doug and Mike occupied in the middle east, threatening some temples and forcing them to worry about two fronts.  Mike quickly advanced to Democracy giving his cities plenty of defensive strength and discouraging conquest.  The game was starting to drag on a bit, approaching the three hour mark (surprising as my first game lasted on 2 hours) and I was able to do a double advance from wheel to road and win the game snagging my fifth first advancement victory point.  This was not quite fair as I had mistakenly indicated to Mike earlier in the game that you couldn’t double-advance on a turn (there’s no limit to the amount of advancement you can do when selecting know-how).  I corrected myself and we all agreed that we’d rather just see the game end than restrain my advancement.

Great game still in my book and one I look forward to seeing come out frequently as long as we can get it done in the 2–2.5 hours time-frame.  Three hours is too long for this game in my book.

The Christmas holiday out at Salishan vastly exceeded my gaming expectations – almost everything I brought was played!  Dave/Lisa, Mike, and Geoff were particularly eager to gobble up just about everything I suggested.  Now we didn’t spend all of our time indoors playing games – I’ll post soon about a fabulous hike we took and a grueling “game” of pushups that I somehow got cajoled into.  I’ll do a quick rundown of the games we played.

Julie’s high school friend Karen is a firefighter for US Forest Service – she’s been a member of the hot shots crew and now works at an engine station in Mammoth, CA.  She joined us up through Christmas eve but returned to Reno to join her family for the holiday.  She asked for suggestions of games to purchase her 13 year-old nephew, and after some questions about his likes/dislikes I suggested Settlers of Catan.  I picked up a copy at Rainy Day Games and hauled out my copy so that we could get some plays in to teach Karen.  It was a big hit – the most popular game of the weekend.  Turns out Geoff is the reigning champion in his lab group up at the University of Washington so he was already very familiar with the game.  Settlers came out three times, and I played once.  I wish I had brought out Seafarers and the Das Buch expansion as I think they would have enjoyed some other scenarios.

Of course we had to have a session of Havoc: the Hundred Years War.  I didn’t play but we had a nice crowd of 5 join in, with Jacob providing most of the instruction.

Matthew’s big Christmas present this year was a Carabande set with the Action Set.  These were long on my list of to-buy and fortunately KC came back with them from Essen.  We had a team tournament over two races, including one with a figure-eight jump.

 Not gaming related per-se, but another gift for Matthew was one of those air gun blasters.  Here you see the effectiveness of the weapon at close range.

Having played and enjoyed Settlers, Union Pacific, and a few other heavier games, I thought Power Grid would be a good choice for this crowd.  Mike took to it extremely well, challenging me for the lead throughout the game and winning on a tie-breaker with the most money (we each powered 16 cities).  Power Grid is the kind of game that takes a full play to grasp the strategies, so the others were favorable but a bit confused on how to best play it.  Would have been nice to give it another try.

This was the game of Settlers that I managed to join.  I made a sub-optimal opening placement that caused trouble throughout the game, though I had a fighting chance of finishing a close second (but didn’t).  Geoff played well and pulled off a relatively easy victory with Dave/Lisa finishing second.

We also managed to get in some lighter games, such as Tunebaya.  Tunebaya is similar to Wits and Wagers in that nobody is really all that interested in keeping score – the process of playing is the enjoyment.  My obscure knowledge of music and lyrics continued to haunt me in this playing.

Matthew requested and the group delivered with a fine showing of Bang!, including the Dodge City expansion.  I was an outlaw and was killed first (but not after hurting sheriff Jacob) but still managed to end up on the winning side.

We also played a hand or two of 6 Nimmt…

 and two games of For Sale.

One of the highlights for me was finally getting a chance to play the Knizia classic Traumfabrik, the auction game about producing movies.  The game has very simple mechanics, but is a bit dry and long for what you get.  I enjoyed it but the group felt it was the least of the Settlers / Power Grid / Traumfabrik triad.  Mike jumped out to an early lead, grabbing one of the first genre completed awards and two quarterly best picture awards.  I managed to pull out a victory in the end by grabbing the best in genre and best director awards in the end.  Scores were 30–25–15–10 (I think).

We had a special event this afternoon – a surgery session by our two resident doctors, Dave and Lisa.  They removed a sebaceous cyst from Karen’s head.  I’m serious… they performed surgery right on our kitchen table here.  And Karen is sitting next to me as I write this so I guess she turned out ok.

I’m going to spare you all from seeing all of the photos UNLESS you want to follow the link below.  I caution you – this is not for the faint of heart so you’ve been warned.

You can check out all of the surgery photos here.

Thursday evening was the official start of Christmas vacation for me.  I made the 2 hour drive out the coast yesterday afternoon and arrived to find a houseful of family and friends.

This is a great crowd to try out some gaming with, and folks jumped at the chance to play Union Pacific.  I had to refresh myself on the rules but we were in full swing within about 15 minutes. Geoff took a strategy of diversified ownership of about 6–7 lines and managed to finish 1st or 2nd in all of his holdings throughout the first two scorings, putting him squarely in the lead with me in second place.  Karen and I shared / alternated ownership of a few lines and held our own, but in the end Geoff pulled off the victory.

Next it was time to bring out some of my ancient Magic: the Gathering decks and have a three-way match with Jacob and Matthew.  Jacob played a green growth / enchantment / regeneration deck that was too slow to get started – he was shy creatures throughout the game.  Matthew played our favorite deck, a black/white denial deck with a healthy dose of Hypnotic Specters, Mindtwists, and some big flying creatures like the Serra Angel and Sengir Vampire.  I played a white weenie deck with a bunch of banding / first strike white creatures, and a small dose of red for direct damage. 

Matthew played his deck well and managed to get out the angel and vampire, making short work of Jacob and me.

We then got a group of six to play some Time’s Up, easily my favorite party game right now.  Teams were Julie/Karen, Dave/Mike, and Chris/Geoff.  Geoff and I had a good thing going, maintaining a solid lead into the final round.  We slowed down a bit as we played the final no-words round but held off the charge from Julie and Karen to pull out the victory.

Finally, we rounded up the whole crowd for a game of Wits and Wagers, the new party game from Eagle and North Star Games.  I plan to post a complete review next week, but suffice it to say that everyone had a blast and there was much laughter and groaning.  Average rating from everyone was about 7–8.  A good sign was everyone asking to play a second game immediately after the first.

I took advantage of a free evening without the family here to invite over the crew for an unscheduled game night at my house.  George and Mike responded and we dove into a game of Railroad Tycoon at about 7:40pm.

The game started with Mike concentrating in the northeast with a small bit of competition from me to the south, and George going it alone in the midwest around Chicago.  I managed to pick up some early card bonuses that put me in good shape income-wise, allowing me to only take out three shares in the game.  Mike got some similar early payouts from deliveries and remained close behind me for the remainder of the game.  George’s choice to work out of Chicago may have cost him too much in debt, but he certainly faced no competition there.

Things got very interesting around mid-game as I tried to ensure I would get my 6 point bonus for the greatest number of links.  Mike was going for the longest single route which indirectly put him in competition with me and put my bonus in jeopardy.  I managed to get some breathing room allowing me to build out enough links to surpass him by one.  In the end I pulled out the victory with Mike about 5–7 points behind and George a distant third.

I remain bullish on this game but wonder if the board is too spacious as is for three players.  There always seems to be one player out on his own and it is easy to avoid conflict.  Still, it was fun and we finished in about 1 hour 20 minutes – an excellent time/fun ratio.

George only had about 30 minutes after tycoon, so we decided to try out 10 Days in the USA.  This is a fun, light little game designed by Moon and Weissblum that should come out more frequently at home and at school.  Maybe too light for serious gamers, but there’s a nice bit of tension as players try to complete their routes.

Given the choice I would still rather play Transamerica, a similar game but with a bit more player interaction and strategy.

Little did we know as we spent the first half of the day up on Mt Hood skiing that we would return to a winter storm that started with high winds and freezing rain and turned into a mild snowstorm.  I suspect about half an inch fell but it is pretty slick and nasty out there.

Skiing was good but coooold.  The northeast winds were brutal up on top and conditions were icy but on the groomed slopes things weren’t too bad.  It was nice to get back up on the mountain but by 1pm we were done and drove back home.  Good thing we did as the storm was hitting greater Portland by then and traffic started to get a bit snarled.

Surprisingly, despite complaining about the cold today both boys went outside to play in the snow.  No, that’s not Matthew with Jacob in the picture below – that’s our neighbor boy Michael.

Looks like the weather will not improve tonight, with a winter storm warning through the night with a promise of frozen rain.  Looks like the boys might be staying home from school tomorrow.

We are going to head up to Mt Hood Meadows tomorrow early for our first ski of the season.  We missed all of last year, probably for the first time since Julie and I got married.  The only problem is that it is exceptionally cold here (for Oregon), and I wouldn’t be surprised if we see temperatures in the teens tomorrow morning when we start.

Given that it’s been about 2 years since we last went, Jacob has of course outgrown his equipment and Matthew has moved into Jacob’s.  That meant a drive over to GI Joes tonight to rent equipment for Jacob.  At $14 a pop, we’ll probably stick to that for this year as I doubt we’ll go more than 3–4 times given our other commitments.

Don’t expect anything too earth shattering here, but it is an important lesson about the power of simplicity.

I volunteered to coach a Lego Robotics team for Jacob’s school back in September, with Jacob on the team along with 5 other 4th and 5th graders.  The team has been meeting weekly ever since, working on their solution to the Challenge 2005 – Ocean Odyssey.  I took a very hands-off approach with the team, focusing on facilitating their own design and decision-making process by giving them some basic tools.  We started with simple exercises to get familiar with programming and controlling the robot and gradually worked into the mission challenges.  Eventually they settled on four of the missions after prioritizing based on points and complexity.

Last Sunday was the big day – the competition where they joined 23 other teams (elementary and middle school) at Mentor Graphics HQ for the challenge.  While the team had to give a presentation on some challenge we face with our oceans, the focus was definitely on the mission challenges with the robot.  They had three chance to get their best score – each chance is a 2.5 minute trial where they attempt to complete as many missions as possible.

Given that the team only prepared to do 4 of the missions, their maximum possible score was going to be 156.  The highest score for the day was about 310, with most teams scoring 125 or below.  Their first trial saw them getting two of their four missions completed, scoring 89 points.  The second trial was the highlight, with the robot completing all four missions and the only downside being a 2 point penalty for retrieving the robot away from base (this was to rescue it from doing something that would have cost them one of their missions – a great reaction).  Their score was 154.  You should have seen the looks on their faces!

So what did I learn from the team?  They reaffirmed my belief in the power of simplicity, the elegance of design for function without clutter.  Their robot as designed likely could not have solved all of the mission challenges, but for the four they achieved it performed magnificently.  There were no moving parts other than the wheels and they designed their solutions with a high degree of fault tolerance.  They also built in an approach to running the robot that greatly increased the odds of success.  If any of these kids participate next year I think they will likely move to more complex solutions designed to address more of the challenges (hinging arms, retractable hooks, etc.) but I’m thrilled with how they approached the challenge this year.

Just observed this while cleaning out my gmail spam folder.

We are heading down to Autzen Stadium down at the University of Oregon in Eugene to watch Sherwood High School play in the state 3A football championship.  They are undefeated this year and we’ve managed to catch most of their games.

Ever wonder what an income and expense graph looks like for a startup, mono-game company that releases a product at Essen?  Here you go.  Scale removed to protect the innocent, though you could probably apply some basic integral (area) analysis to see if we are profitable.

With Brandon spending the night tonight, I wanted to make sure we sat down to play a boardgame and not let the kids be completely consumed in computer games.  They requested Age of Mythology – a solid choice given that the kids have been playing the computer game lately.  Surprisingly, it has been almost two years since this one hit the table.

Brandon and Matthew played the Norse, Jacob the Greeks, and I played the Egyptians.  As expected, fighting was early and furious, and by getting an early myth creature that was strong against mortals I was able to stave off any attacks and let them beat each other up.  And they did.  Over and over.

We cut the game short by about 3–4 turns.  It was good fun but I was far ahead and the game was dragging on.  I’m not sure this is good with four players – I think we should have played partners instead to balance things out.  There’s also far too much downtime in this when other players are fighting.

(or, how I could have saved a lot of lives had I been commanding the Germans on the east front).

I had planned to do a session report on my game of Eastfront with Mike last week, but he did such a nice job reporting that I’ll just refer you there.  I did snap some photos which I’ll share here, along with a few annotations.

We used Caylus blocks to demark the front line for the Summer ‘42 scenario.  Hah!  So many of you are still waiting to get your hands on this game and here we are already recycling parts for other uses.  Sorry, couldn’t resist.

 I attacked broadly on all fronts, figuring that’s what the Germans should do.  I made a critical mistake however.

The first mistake was moving units outside of the command range resulting in unsupported combat.  I guess I assumed that if they were in command range pre-move that they would be in range for combat, which was a bit idiotic.

The result was some very unsuccessful unsupported combat and, even worse, a hole in my line allowing the Soviets to engage one of my precious HQ and cut off two major groups from supply.  I knew it was game over at this point but we continued to play.  My goal at this point was to explore as many of the mechanics as I could.

We ended up playing three months (out of a six month scenario) in about 4 hours.  By the end we were getting a full month completed in about 45 minutes.  Could probably get it down to 30 with effort and familiarity.

I’d like to play again, soon, while the mechanics and rules are fresh in my head.

I like posting about music I’m listening to because I usually get good pointers to other artists that I’ll enjoy.  So keep the recommendations coming!

An automatic purchase for me recently was Son Volt’s Okemah and the Melody of Riot.  I’ve long been a fan of Uncle Tupelo (going back to my late college years in St. Louis where they were a local band) and while I’ve generally agreed with critics that Wilco was the better of the two bands formed from the Uncle Tupelo bifurcation (Son Volt being the other), I find myself listening to Jay Farrar and Son Volt a lot more than I do Jeff Tweedy and Wilco.  Julie and I caught Son Volt’s live show here in Portland earlier this year and I think she has turned into a genuine fan as well; at least I catch her listening to the CD at home from time to time.  So if you are a fan of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, and other singer-songwriters with some country influence, check this one out.

Julie had me pick up a few CDs from Amazon recently, namely Coldplay’s X&Y, Green Day’s American Idiot, and Weezer’s Make Believe.  I also added Beck’s Guero to the order.  So, I expected to like American Idiot and Guero quite a bit, was skeptical about Make Believe, and had no clue what to expect with X&Y.  I rarely listen to music on the radio and Coldplay has never even been on my radar.  I think I remember hearing comparisons to U2 and the Beatles and that they are perhaps the best band so far of the 21st century, which drastically reduced my interest in seeking them out.  I had visions of the Oasis hype back in the mid 90s.  Boy, was I surprised – this album is as good as anything I’ve heard from U2 (and I’m a huge Joshua Tree fan) and now I understand the hype.  They are also very different than just about everything I’ve been listening to for the past few years, which is a pleasant change.  Some times talent does lead to extreme popular success.

My final mention is of Fall Out Boy.  BMG Music recently acquired the music club part of Columbia House, and I had a lingering membership that was transfered over.  Somewhere in the shuffle they think I failed to decline one of the monthly selections (I’m certain I did) and I was going to return it, but instead opened it to give it a listen and rip into iTunes.  I’m glad I did – From Under the Cork Tree is a fine album that I’m enjoying.  This is mild punk rock with some good pop harmonies – reminds me of Green Day and The Clash.

I really enjoy reading The Escapist – very relevant an insightful information on video gaming, often with ties into tabletop gaming.  This month they have a focus on wargames, with the highlight being Les Grognards.  Check it out.

Julie just wrapped a redecorating project in the game room (formerly the play room – the boys informed me that they are too old to have one of those).  The project started a while back as Julie and I discussed a way to introduce board game box covers into the decorations.  I had seen a similar decorating approach in Greg Schloesser’s game room down in New Orleans and quite liked it.

Our approach was to do color copies of the box covers and have a friend of a friend do a high quality vacuum mounting job on foam core followed by lamination and a precise cut job around the outside.  The results were fantastic – in many cases the art looks better than the original.  The cost per piece was $10, but that was a discounted price that I don’t think we’ll be able to get again.

Julie brought in a friend who specializes in interior design and did some brainstorming and decided that using the Power Grid style for the room would work best.  Think 1950s government green, brushed metal, industrial look.  She found some cool storage cabinets at Home Depot, some great lighting fixtures to replace the boring dome lights on the ceiling, and some wire frame shelves for game overflow (heh heh).  She painted our two wooden computer desks (we have three computers in the room for LAN gaming goodness) glossy black and bought 4 black/chrome chairs and 4 brushed aluminum chairs.

We arranged the game art mostly by theme.  Note that we chose the games to mount for their style and graphical quality, not necessarily the quality of the game!

The Memoir ‘44 box was a bit of a challenge to scan, but we found that we could clip the bottom a bit and it would still look fine.

The most expensive part of the process was the set of built-in shelves we added earlier this year to house my game collection.  Amazingly, this vast array of shelves filled up easily and I’m forced to use the closet (where the games used to live) and the wire shelves for overflow.

Overall I love the results and want to publicly thank Julie for her efforts bringing this to fruition.