The chess season for me is officially over for school year 2006-2007.  It was a fun year and a first chance for me to start getting involved with the program at Sherwood Middle School (where Jacob goes now).  I took a break from teaching a morning chess class at Archer Glen Elementary to focus on the Game On! games class Julie and I taught twice per week, but still managed to run an after school chess club that was the nucleus of our tournament team.

Our tournament season kicked off with our own Sherwood elementary friendly competition - the Jack Weeks Cup, named in honor of the man who really got chess started in Sherwood (he recently moved to central Oregon).  Archer Glen managed to retain the cup this year, but it wasn't easy - we had to go to seven rounds to find a team winner.  Our team was very balanced with all but one of the 10 team members scoring four points or more.  This photo shows all three teams from Sherwood:

I also helped out with Jacob's middle school regional event where the team managed to tie for first and qualify for state.  Jacob just barely missed the qualifying cut to join the team at state (they can only take five players to state) but as a 6th grader he'll have two more years to qualify.

Archer Glen did decently well at the regional tournament (posts for 2006, 2005, 2004) finishing just above the middle of the pack in what is probably the biggest and strongest region in the state.

While the team didn't qualify for state, Matthew had an outstanding regional and went into the fifth and final round with a perfect score of 4 points.  He faced off against what is one of the 2 strongest players in his age group in the state (he has about a 1300 USCF rating, Matthew is unrated).  Matthew lost the game but qualified for state and had a blast competing there.

Our last event of the year was a local chess tournament, the Whitford CMCC tournament.  The kids had a great showing, finishing second overall.  One of the middle schoolers I brought, Brogan, finished with 4 points and took home a top 10 trophy.

I used a pretty heavy hand with Jacob last weekend in an attempt to get him to try out an 18xx game with me.  After witnessing my marathon game of 1825 at GameStorm he was convinced this was a game he would not like and that would be way too long.  I did my homework with my local group of resident 18xx experts and settled on 1889 as a nice intro 2-player game that could show him the true light of the 18xx gaming world.  Eric was nice enough to loan me his copy, another high-quality production from Deep Thought Games.

1889 takes place on Shikoku Island in Japan.  Plenty of challenging terrain, but a small board size and simplified rules made it perfect for a first game with Jacob.

The game was very easy to teach despite this being the first game I've played without a more experienced player at the table.  Other than some of the quirky rules around laying tiles, I think the game system just makes sense if you have a basic understand of markets, banking, and business.  And if you don't know those basic concepts, what a great way to learn them.  Jacob caught on very quickly to the basics and even started to see some of the benefits of "synergistic" operation of his two companies.  With only two players involved there wasn't a significant amount of cross-company benefit.  Of course we also played a few rules wrong - significant rules that altered the course of the game but in the end didn't matter in terms of enjoyment and desire to play again.

What did we screw up?

• We blew past the certificate limit one turn because we just weren't paying attention.  We knew the rule, had discussed it, but we just forgot.  Fixed it with a sell-off the next turn.
• The bigger issue: we missed the 60% maximum individual ownership in a company rule.  I should have known this but missed it and this had a pretty big impact on the game.  You can see from the picture below how missing this affected company ownership.

This caused some companies to be fully sold out when they probably would have stayed with a few shares in the bank, pushing their stock up artificially.  Maybe it was a net no-effect on the two players, but it was still a pretty big mistake that we'll fix next time.

Speaking of which, there will definitely be a next time for Jacob as he loved the game and has brought it up a few times since we played.  I'm going to buy 18FL as I think it is similar scale with more familiar terrain and he's looking forward to getting into another game soon.

I decided to turn this post into a tutorial as well as a report on running a Kniziathon.  I suppose the idea could be transferable to any game designer with a significant library of games (Moonathon, Teuberathon, etc.), but it certainly helps having not on a large number of games in the collection but a wide range of lengths and depths of games.

The first thing you need to do if running a Kniziathon is to check out Kevin Jacklin's Kniziathon guide over at the Convivium.  This is where I learned everything I needed to know, and we were lucky enough to have Kevin in town to provide some friendly guidance along the way.

Most of my preparation work involved preparing materials to provide on-site as well as for publication online and in the GameStorm program.  I'm including these materials online, so feel free to copy / revise /extend as you see fit.

• Kniziathon Player Guide
• Kniziathon Scoresheet
• Kniziathon Placard
• Kniziathon HQ Sign

I thought it was important to have an HQ area - somewhere to learn more about the Kniziathon, turn in scoresheets, and look for pickup games.  Jacob and I set this area up early on Friday morning, including a set of about 25 Knizia games from my personal collection.  I took a risk and allowed folks to use my games for pickup sessions without any sort of formal checkout process.  I put mailing return address labels in each box and didn't have any wander away.  Hopefully they are all still complete!

I recruited a set of willing volunteers to man the HQ with me from 8am - midnight on Friday and 8am to 4pm on Saturday.  Despite several no-shows, this worked out fine and people were able to get the information they needed, play ad-hoc games, and turn in scoresheets with or without my personal presence.  Having Kevin around to teach and play games certainly helped.

KC and I ran the two-player all-Knizia tournament Friday night - a great way to increase participation in both the tournament and Kniziathon.  Having 20 participants over 3 rounds produced around 25-30 scoresheets. After the tournament it was time for tabulation of the first day's results, a process that took about 3-4 hours and kept me up until 2am Saturday morning.  I used a custom database implemented in DabbleDB which made the process mostly easier - I say mostly, because the responsiveness of a web-based application can sometimes slow down the rapid data entry process I'm comfortable with.  Still, the app made tabulation and final scoring a snap.

Saturday was much easier - not as many scoresheet turn-ins, plus most of the players were already in the system so data entry only involved entering game scores and not new players.  Final tabulation took place from about 3:30pm to 4:30pm, giving me plenty of time to prepare for the awards ceremony with Reiner.

GameStorm donated a 2008 registration, Maginor, Atlanteon, and Dragon Parade.  Reiner and Kevin showed up with three nicely designed trophies.  We didn't have a prize or trophy explicitly for the youth winner (my own Jacob!), so it was nice having four available so that Jacob could choose first.  He chose Dragon parade.  It was a huge highlight for him to shake hands with Reiner and get a dollar bill signed by him.  The dollar bill was handed out to the players that tied for fourth overall after I said they "didn't finish in the money" - Reiner quickly interrupted, reached into his wallet, and handed each player a dollar bill that he proceeded to autograph.

The winners were Tim Shippert, Tom Powers, and Zontziry Johnson (results are also posted over at the Convivium).  I was proud to be a part of this event.  Thanks to all of the volunteers that helped me out: KC, Ken, Doug, Jacob, George, Mike, Kevin, the GameStorm staff, and of course Reiner Knizia.

Rita informs me that the City of Gresham is holding a Family Game Day to celebrate TV-Turnoff Week.  Mike Deans, Rita, KC, and others will be there running a wide range of family and kids games.  Details:

Parks & Recreation is hosting the City's first TV-Turnoff Week Family Game Day from 2 to 8 p.m. Saturday, April 28, at Gresham City Hall in the Conference Center, 1333 N.W. Eastman Parkway.

It had been far too long since we had been family camping, so back in January Julie and I decided to book some time in a Yurt in one of the Oregon State Parks.  Ever the crafty planner, I chose the Bandon area knowing that I could probably squeeze in 18 holes of golf at one of the world reknowned courses at Bandon Dunes.  Bullards Beach is about as convenient to Bandon Dunes as you can get without staying at the resort, so we stayed there (great article on Bullards Beach here).

Yurts in Oregon are ideal for off-season camping.  Weather on the Oregon coast is unpredictable at best, and for extended camping (we went for four nights) a tent can turn into a somewhat miserable experience when dealing with high winds, sleet, and hail.  All of the cooking is still down outdoors and you can experience campfires, hiking, etc.

Bandon is a bit of a long drive from Portland - around 4 hours or so.  We weren't in a hurry leaving Saturday and departed around 11am, stopping for lunch in Albany.  This was my first experience locating a restaurant with my new Blackberry 8800 / GPS / TeleNav and it worked like a charm, finding us a cozy Mexican restaurant with outstanding service.

On Sunday we visited the West Coast Game Park, a smallish zoo with an expansive petting area that exceeded our expectations.  I don't think I've ever seen a better big cat exhibit - they had three lions, 3-4 tigers, 5-6 black panthers, and other assorted smaller cats.  Matthew is in heaven when he can get up close and pet the animals and had a blast directing the deer herd.

On Sunday afternoon we took a horseback ride on the beaches south of Bandon.  This was probably the highlight of the entire trip for all of us - beautiful horses, beautiful scenery, and an excellent guide resulted in a ride to remember.  My horse was the most eager of the bunch and was always quick to trot and race ahead, an event that Jacob and Matthew always anticipated as their horses would often accelerate to keep up with me.

Monday morning brought my golfing adventure and an early 8:30am tee time at Bandon Dunes.  The weather started off spectacularly clear but cool, but after four holes things went sideways quickly.  Literally: the winds picked up to 25-30 mph and the hail and sleet came in.  This lasted about 3 holes and I was very thankful to have good raingear handy (a must for Oregon golfing).  My caddy was excellent, and I recommend getting one for your first visit to the course unless you are there with experienced Bandon golfers.  He really helped me through a few of the holes and had me putting from off the green whenever I had a clear line to the whole and was within 15 yards of the fringe.  I stayed within myself and shot an 89, not bad for my first time on the course with some bad weather.

We ate entirely too well on the trip, trying out many new dutch oven recipes that I suspect will start turning up on Jacob's menus with his patrol in Boy Scouts.  The menu included fresh baked biscuits and sausage gravy, Mexican casserole, homemade beef stew, and cherry dump cake.

The trip closed out with a driving tour south of Bandon.  I would have liked to have made it all the way to Gold Beach, but the rest of the family wasn't too keen to spend that much time in the car.  We hit some fabulously intense weather along the way, getting gusts in the 50mph range when stopping to check out another lighthouse.

My goal was for day 3 to be a day of rest for me - no events to run, ideally playing a longer thoughtful game.  Downtime wasn't a big concern as I knew I'd have a few errands to run (like checking out of the hotel and gathering my crates of games).  Sounds like a great day to play an 18xx game, which was exactly what happened.

Nate Sandal hosted 1825, with the idea that he could scale the game up or down depending on how many players joined.   We had 4: Nate, Matt Riley, Kenny, and me.  Nate chose to play unit 1 and unit 2.  We started at 8am and hoped to be done by noon. How foolish of us.

Kenny was brand new to 18xx, Matt had a small amount of experience (1 game, I think).  I've got 3 games under my belt, and Nate has played a bit more than that.  The rules in this game are pretty straightforward, but we may have played with way too much money in the bank thus prolonging the game.  With the combined units, we had quite a few companies operating - 2-3 for each player.  This resulted in quite a bit of downtime, which wasn't a problem for me this day but in normal circumstances might have been a detractor.

Side note: Playing 1825 made me appreciate the amazingly good quality of the Deep Thought Games productions.  So much thought goes into the human factors in those productions, ranging from the tokens to the company cards to the on-board hints.  The quality is even more striking when you play an 18xx game that isn't produced by Deep Thought (like 1825).  Knowing that Deep Thought can't be making much money and that it is mostly a labor of love, I'm compelled to pick up a few more games while they are still available.  I get the feeling that at some point they'll just decide that their time is worth more.

The biggest challenge for me in 1825 was understanding the tile upgrade paths.  I tend to play these games intuitively without a lot of route planning beyond the next turn or so, but the restriction in tiles and upgrades makes advanced planning a bit more critical in 1825.

Matt brought out his PowerBook to start tracking money during operating rounds and to calculate the final scores.  This is a huge help, especially given that we were using paper money which I think slows down the game (relative to chips).  Final scores:

• Chris 11130
• Nate 9938
• Kenny 9286
• Matt 8458

I somehow continue my streak of solid 18xx showings.  I've won 3 out of the first 4 games I've played, and I'm not sure how.  Jacob and I plan to play 1889 this Sunday morning (well, at least *I* plan to, I haven't told him yet) as I think he might really latch onto this game system with a shorter, smaller introductory game.

Speaking of Jacob, after we left the convention we drove over to Flying Pie pizza to meet one of my oldest friends - the Smiths, who were my next-door neighbors in Indianapolis from 1978 - 1982.  Debra (check out her husband Chris Hornbecker's photo gallery) lives in town here and just had a baby 3-4 weeks ago, so my old best friend Robert and father Jerome were in town.  Great to see old friends like this, and Jacob and I managed to get in a game of Knizia's new Dragon Parade while waiting for them to arrive.  Jacob quite likes it and I agree - this would have been a great game for my games class this year.  I think it is less interesting with 2 players than with more, but could get quite chaotic with 5.

Tim Shippert put together a nice geeklist describing how he won the Kniziathon at the recent GameStorm convention.

I just learned today that a friend and fellow gamer, Jason Sato, passed away this afternoon after suffering a stroke while gaming last night at the Game Depot inTempe, AZ.  Jason was not a close friend of mine, but I did experience several spectacular gaming sessions with him during visits do Arizona.  I always found him to be warm, welcoming, and highly intelligent.  My condolences to his close friends and family.

After too little sleep, Jacob and I swung over to the "other side" to play a roleplaying game starting at 9am on Saturday.  The game: Spirit of the Century, the adventure: Aces Harrington vs. the Snow Monster. Paul Tevis has talked up this RPG and it has been on my maybe-buy list for a while, and I was frankly surprised to see it show up on the GameStorm agenda.  I had a lot of fun, Jacob less so - I think it speaks to the audience for the game and its reliance upon player creativity and maturity.

Spirit of the Century uses the fudge system for resolution, a system I was familiar with but had never played.  Fudge uses six-sided dice with two minuses, two blanks, and two plusses.  You roll four dice, sum the dice, then add to the base ability (generally zero to seven).  The game setting is pulp in the 20s/30s (think Indiana Jones), and I played an Inuit Hero from Canada. The six adventurers were snowed in at a lodge in Canada and squared off against New York mobsters and a German mad scientist working on mind control for grizzly bears.

Back to my comment on player creativity and maturity: this system relies on collaborative story telling where players can alter or contribute to the story line by bringing forward aspects of their character using fate points.  Two of the aspects for my character included "respect for authority" and "lover of nature".  At various plot or action points in the narrative, it behooves the players to invoke these aspects to try and alter the tide of events.  The challenge is (in a well-run game, in my opinion) that the player needs to creatively introduce this aspect as part of the narrative.  For example, I wouldn't say "I'm a lover of nature so I'll use a fate point to reroll my attempt to release the bears".  Instead, I might say "I'm furious that the scientist has violated the order of nature with these dastardly mine control devices!  I must scare this bear away so that he flees the scene, so I rely on my hard-earned knowledge of grizzly bear intimidation forms to frighten him."  Jacob had a hard time getting into the rhthym of this game - his experience (and preference, I think) is the D&D style of tactical problem solving and combat.  These are both different forms of roleplaying - Jacob does get into his character when playing D&D.  It's just that the emphasis on narrative in Spirit made it difficult for him to enjoy the game.  That's OK - he'll likely get there at some point.  I know I had a blast.

The rest of the afternoon was spent playing Knizia games and running the Kniziathon.  Like I said, more on that in another post.

Saturday night was a marathon, semi-engaged game of Arkham Horror.  There were two big sessions going on, and I'm glad (for a number of reasons, mostly the company) that I ended up with Doug's group.

Still, this was a huge group (8 players) with plenty of down-time.  OK given that I had some other errands to run while playing, but it definitely pushed the game later into the evening and under normal circumstances I would prefer 4-5 players.

The game is fun, and reminds me of a mix between the board-RPG games from Fantasy Flight (like Doom and Descent) and Betrayal at House on the Hill.  I think it was too late and we were all too green to collaborate like we should have, and I suspect that's where the game really shines.  I know most of the time I was just doing my own thing, and doing it rather poorly at that.  The base mechanics are easy to understand, though I suspect the learning curve would be steep if you learned the game from the box.  The game wasn't great enough for me to consider running out and purchasing it, but I definitely want to try another game with fewer players.  Would be nice to swing a trade for this for my copy of Doom.

(You can see all of my GameStorm photos on my Flickr photoset.)

I'm coming back to this blogging thing with a flurry.  I expect to make no fewer than 5 posts over the next week, so strap on your seatbelts, I'm back!

I spent a lot of time preparing for this GameStorm - I ran the Kniziathon and co-ran the two player tournament.  I'll talk more about the Kniziathon in a separate post and stick to the other stuff that happened on day 1 of the convention.  I consider day 1 to be Friday (making Thursday day 0 of course, because there were a few events that happened Thursday night).

The GameStorm staff selected the Sheraton PDX Airport hotel for the convention this year, by far the best venue they've had and I made it clear to the organizers (Aaron, Aaron, and Beverly) that a return to the same hotel next year would be most appreciated, even at a price premium.  Jacob and I shared a two-queen room with Ken and Brandon for $100/night, and this is one of the recently upgraded Sheratons with improved beds and showers.  Plenty of space and comfortable accomodations combined with nice gaming digs made me a happy gamer.

Jacob and I arrived about 8:15am on Friday to set up the Kniziathon HQ booth.  Most of the daytime hours were spent playing various pickup Knizia games, plus a scheduled session of Amun Re that I ran for 8 people from noon to 2pm.  Even with a new player we played the game in about 90 minutes.  This game is definitely in my top 2 or 3 games list and packs a lot of punch for its short playing time.  I also played Ra, Through the Desert, Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation, and Pickomino during the day.

After a quick trip to Subway for dinner with a small group, KC and I kicked off the annual Friday night 2-player tournament.  Last year we had a dismal turnout - only about 6 people participating.  This year we made it part of the Kniziathon and made it an all-Knizia affair and ended up having 20 gamers participate.  We ran the tournament for three rounds, Swiss-style, in three hours.  The first round we played Lost Cities, then did a player's choice for subsequent rounds with the "white" (vs. black in chess terms) player choosing the game.  We saw Battle Line, Carcassonne: the Castle, Through the Desert, Ingenious, and Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation played multiple times.  After three rounds Chris Ballowe and Jeff Ganong were tied with three points each.  They agreed to a fourth playoff round, with Chris coming out on top after a game of Battle Line.

Starting around 10pm, I spent the next 3-4 hours tabulating interim results for the Kniziathon.  More on that later.

This is a review of the party game GiftTRAP.  I received a complimentary review copy and am way past due in posting my review. Julie, Jacob, Matthew, and I sat down to play this and had quite a good time.

The components for the game are first-rate - right up there with the best party games I've seen lately (Liebrary, Wits and Wagers for example).  The game comes in a gift box with a nicely designed packing approach on the inside where the board provides some structure for storage.  The player bits come in individual mesh gift baggies.  The cards are solid, full color, and the text is high contrast and easy to read.  This is a nice package and you won't be disappointed with the physical design.

GiftTRAP is a game about knowing your fellow gamers and their preferences, a common mechanic also seen in games like Apples to Apples and Attribute.  Each round consists of a number of possible gifts being put on display equal to the number of players plus one.  The players in turn places markers on the gifts that indicate what the player would like vs. not like, with a few shades of gray in between.  They also indicate what gift they think each other player would most want to receive.  Players score points on a giving track and a receiving track based on how well they give to others and how well others give to them.

The scoring and tracking mechanics are my only complaint.  It was confusing to everyone how to track points on both scales given the reflexive nature of give/receive.  I'm sure we'd become pros at it after a while, but I can't help but think it would be an obstacle to casual gamers.  This is similar to my complaint about Wits & Wagers: the game itself is a blast, but the scoring and winner determination almost seem to be an afterthought.  Still, it is a party game and the journey is more important than the final destination.

The game is light and fun and leads to interesting conversations, even in our intimate family setting.  I think it would work well as an icebreaker as long as folks aren't too wrapped up in winning.  The game is at its best when you've got one gift that is perfect for multiple individuals, and others that aren't good for anyone.  How do you decide?  How will you explain it after the results are revealed?  The banter and laughter that result from these dilemmas are what the game is all about.