The started out on a low when I woke up with massive headache. The heat, humidity, and insufficient amounts of water finally got to me. Ever the genius, I skipped breakfast and popped around the corner to a convenience store to buy some painkillers. I popped the pills, then sat outside the main doors on Georgia Street.

Georgia Street has undergone a major overhaul in the last couple of years to turn it into an outdoor party venue for sporting events and the like. It runs from the Convention Centre through to the Conseco Fieldhouse, and is only a few minutes walk from the Lucas Oil Stadium, site of this year’s Super Bowl. While the space heaters installed at regular intervals aren’t much use in summer, the outdoor seating provides a nice way to get off your feet for a few minutes. It also provides convenient parking for food trucks, but more on them later.

Once the painkillers had kicked in I headed inside. By now the doors had already been opened and the crowd outside them was considerably thinned out. Remembering that most of the booths I wanted to visit would have lines around them for the first couple of hours, I headed to the far end of the Dealer Hall and worked my way back, aisle-by-aisle. I knew that if I didn’t go too quickly, the booths would be emptier by the time I got to them.

The first few booths I passed were the usual mix of third-party retailers selling long out of print games and costume stalls for everything from steampunk to anime. None of this caught my eye, but I did stop at a couple of booths. The first was for the Indie Game Developer Network, which was home to Magpie Games (makers of The Play’s The Thing) and the new card game ARC.

The ARC guys asked if I wanted to try the game and, following my on guide of things to do at GenCon, I said yes. The game is non-collectible and features five different groups of time travellers who are able to slip between different eras and battle each other. I ended up playing The Mercenary, while the demo guy played The Visionary. I was impressed at how easy the rules were to pick up. That, and a good starting hand allowed me to take an early lead. My opponent soon caught up and the game ended with him winning a very narrow victory. Even though I lost I was still very impressed with the game and may have to pop back later in the weekend to pick up some decks.

The second booth that caught my attention was demoing a board game called Banditos. In this game you play American bank robbers hopping the border to Mexico to rob their banks. The game is pretty straight-forward, with an amusing selection of characters for the players to choose from – including some homages to popular culture. While I wasn’t offered a demo (those were being held in a separate hall), they did run through the basics of the game and it seemed like a lot of fun. I may pop back and pick that up, time and luggage space depending.

From there I kept wandering the aisles. A few things stood out, but most was stuff that either didn’t draw my interest, or was too crowded with people for me to get a good look. I checked out Brushfire (an alt-history game featuring various species of rodents and other creatures instead of human nations. I was pleased to see the Shrew Hussars on display – basically, rodents riding kiwis into battle. I don’t know what possessed them to pick the kiwi as the mount, but they looked good.

Sharing booth space with Brushfire were Mantic Games, who had a good selection of Kings of War and Warpath miniatures on sale, as well as preview models for their  upcoming Enforcer models. Those were mighty-looking indeed. I saw that they had their full range of Dwarf Kings Hold games on sale and made a note to pop back at some point to pick them up.

Not far from Mantic were a company who haven’t been seen at GenCon in many years: Games Workshop. Tell the truth, calling it a GW booth is a bit of a misnomer as the space is mostly taken up by Forge World and Black Library, with only those products available for sale. Part of the reasoning for this might have been that GW’s booth was right next to The Warstore, which had a wide range of GW products on sale. GW were offering painting lessons at their booth, but from what I could tell it was more a quick run down of different painting techniques, not an actual lesson where you get to paint a miniature.

I skimmed most of the rest of the Dealer’s Hall in an effort to get to the Wyrd and Privateer Press booths around the time I had intended. There were a few things I wanted to go back and check out, but not many. Fantasy Flight was still busy getting through their line, so I decided to leave them till later in the weekend when the crowds had died down a bit.

I arrived at the Wyrd booth to find that they’d managed to get through almost all of their queue. They’d had a lot of problems last year with people filling up aisles and blocking off other booths, so this year their area was setup to accommodate the maximum number of rabid fans within the space available, and it seemed to have worked. There was also plenty of stock still on the shelves and I had a quick thumb through the newest book while looking at the new releases and painted figures. All looked great, but I was disappointed to see that there wasn’t a lot of the new book on offer for The Guild. They get a new character in the book who is best described as “Wolverine on a horse, weilding a whip and hand cannon,” but he isn’t available for a month or two, at least.

A little disappointed, I moved on to Privateer Press. It wasn’t until I was much nearer the booth that I spotted the queue. Apparently, the chance to pick up the new Iron Kingdoms RPG, along with two convention exclusive minis was enough to make so many people queue up that it took them 4-5 hours to serve everyone. Sadly, the stock numbers for these items were low, so only the first 350 (or so) people managed to get their hands on the book. In fact, most of the more popular items had sold out by the end of the first day. It’s fair to say that I was crestfallen. I had been looking forward to picking up the RPG, but now I have to wait till it releases in October. Gah.

It didn’t help that the first people I talked to near the booth had managed to pick up the book and were more than happy to explain that they were part of the lucky few, while intimating that, if I’d been waiting outside the Dealer Hall two hours before it opened, like they had, I’d probably have a copy too. There was a hint of snark in their voice that really grated with me, so I made my excuses and moved on. The line was so big that I couldn’t even check out the model cabinets. All in all, a very poor experience, and one exacerbated by their location within the Hall. I was about to find out it was even worse than that.

I headed over to the Studio 2 booth where Exile Games, Crafty Games, and Third Eye Games had set up shop. I went to say hi to the folks at Exile, but they were all busy talking to potential customers and running demos of Deadfellas, so I crossed the aisle to see the boys at the Crafty booth. We chatted for a bit and they told me more of the tale of the Privateer Press Queue of Doom. Apparently, the line was so long it had looped around the booth before heading off down the aisle between Exile and Crafty. The people in the queue had been perfectly pleasant, but the sheer mass of bodies did have the effect of blocking the Crafty booth off from passing traffic. Luckily, PP did cap the queue in the end and it only took a couple of hours before the booth was fully open again. In years past, PP was located closer to one of the walls, so people had been able to queue up along there, keeping disruption to a minimum. It will be interesting to see where they end up next time.

I moved on from the Crafty booth and popped up to see Eloy at Third Eye Games. He had said that the latest API book would be coming out at GenCon, but it had arrived a little late and wouldn’t be on sale till Friday. No biggie, I’ll just pick it up before playing in his Part-Time Gods game.

With my ‘quick’ tour of the Dealer Hall done I headed back outside to Georgia Street to find that the food trucks had arrived. Apparently, a couple of them had turned up last year and discovered that GenCon is home to a lot of hungry people. This year they were back in force, with 20 trucks serving up food in two shifts of 10. I perused the options available and eventually settled on the Cajun truck “Rollin wit da Roux”. My lack of breakfast was starting to catch up with me, so I ordered a serving of gumbo and demolished it in record time. It was my first time trying gumbo and the combination of shrimp, chicken, and sausage was the right level of spicy.

With my hunger satisfied, I headed back to my room to drop off a couple of things before heading back to the Convention Centre for the Crafty Games Declassified seminar. Alex and Pat talked for two hours about the development process for Spycraft 3, as well as a couple of other products that are in the pipeline. In short: Spycraft 3 is about to go into alpha testing, with some changes that should make the game more inclusive so that all players always have something to do. The whole thing was filmed, and should appear on YouTube in the next week or two.

After the seminar, a bunch of us went out to dinner with the Crafty guys. We ended up at Tavern on South, a restaurant just south of Lucas Oil Stadium. By this point the weather, which had been slowly getting worse all day, was in full on storm mode. The combination of wind, rain, and lightning was truly impressive, though we managed to avoid most with clever use of covered walkways and taxis.

Dinner was excellent. I had duck wings (like chicken legs in shape) and a buffalo burger and felt pretty full afterwards. Then it was back to the Crafty hotel room for drinks and a game of Cards Against Humanity – easily the game most likely to offend sensitive people. It’s basically mad-libs for people with sick senses of humour. After an hour or so of play I emerged victorious – though I’m not sure what that says about me.

And that, basically, was it. Tomorrow (Friday) sees me playing in a game of Part-Time Gods, followed with a two-hour demo/game of Privateer Press’ new board game, Level 7. Hopefully it’s a better time than today.

― P.T. Barnum, The Art of Money Getting

Maybe not the Greatest Show on Earth, but it will be close…

“Excelsior” inspires. A word that incited two of America’s greatest poets, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Walt Whitman, “excelsior,” translated from Latin, means simply, “ever upward.” P.T. Barnum’s take on the word, however avaricious, remains a fitting assessment of the “American condition.” We want without travail and consume without ratio. And to Barnum, this is America’s greatest opportunity for the few who are prepared to do what it takes to excel at some thing. In a sense, he is right. We do like easy answers and making quick work of chores. We richly reward innovators and creators that make things easier, prettier and better. But, with that, we also refuse to accept mediocrity, and so, despite there being a “sucker born every minute,” we will not patronize purveyors of poor quality games.

Speaking of “the art of money getting,” in just a few days you will see the machinery full on in the Indianapolis Convention Center at the 45th GenCon! The Best Four Days of Gaming celebrates those game makers and thinkers among us who excel at one thing: helping us all have fun. (And lightening us of a few shekels along the way…) My final piece on GenCon 2012 wraps up the previews of the bigger game manufacturers and also offers a few tips and suggestions for getting the most out of your visit to “the Con!”

Few companies are as prodigious as Mayfair Games. Their floor space will barely have room for their catalogue, but gives them just enough to show off new games like: Aeroplanes: Aviation Ascendant, which explores the dawn of commercial aviation. Gameplay consists of competing to purchase more efficient aeroplanes, building airports, and moving passengers. The winner maintains the most airports around the world and runs their airline the most profitably. Just don’t play the TWA stronghold.

Man I miss Kirk.

In a similar transport theme, Empire Express offers a jumping on point for players curious about the Empire Builder line, without all the muss. If you like the gameplay, then you might check out the more complex version. Of course everyone is familiar with the Catan line of games, and they will expand the brand this year with Star Trek: Catan, which promises to be “95% Settlers” in a Trek skin spiced with special powers related to Trek personalities.

Plaid Hat Games made a big splash last year with two titles that sold like hotcakes: Summoner Wars, which still is buzzing, and surely will be supported with a number of expansions this year, and Dungeon Run, a classic crawl. This time, an off-beat theme scurries in with Mice and Mystics, a cooperative adventure game where the players work together battling adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, spiders, and the castle’s housecat. Boasting an ever-changing, interactive environment, the game features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. It looks great, and I am adding it to my must see list.

Privateer Press expands its Infernal Contraption themed line with Heap, a seemingly deeper and more interesting game than its predecessors, described as a madcap game of vehicular mayhem where the player who cobbles together the most outrageous vehicle wins! They also add a title to the growing horror genre with Level 7 [Escape], a tile placement game which sounds a little like DungeonQuest in space (where no one hears you scream), as players fight to escape the horrors of the game before lockdown.

More cards that do bad stuff.

Along those lines, Repos Productions will show off its zombie horror survival game, City of Horror, with the goal to survive a zombie hoard’s assault on the city. Rio Grande Games will unleash the Dark Ages of the Dominion world on us. I am sure this will be on a lot of people’s lists. Check out their many other fun titles and Dominion expansions while you are buying this one.

Steve Jackson Games adds a trio of titles to its ever-popular Munchkin line, Apocalypse, Skullkickers and Zombies 3: Hideous Hideouts. Always good for a fun, quick game, these expansions will surely enhance your already overstuffed Munchkin collection. Explore the room!

Wizards of the Coast releases three huge looking D&D related properties in their Dungeon Command line; Heart of Cormyr, Sting of Lolth and Tyranny of Goblins. All three are interchangeable, and would make for a huge melee if played together. They will also showcase Dungeon!, a reboot of its 1975 classic, originally touted as similar to Dungeons & Dragons, “although much simplified and transformed into a board game.” Hmmmm. Will give it a look to see how much it has changed over the years.

Components look good. Now, where’s my elephant gun?

Last but certainly not least, Z-Man Games will have a cadre of new games including highly anticipated Africana, a card drafting and safari adventure game, Alcatraz, a prison scapegoat game, Atlantis Rising, where you play a denizen of the fabled city fighting to prevent its destruction, and Battle Beyond Space, a massive, multi-player free-for-all space battle where everyone slugs it out for total domination of space.

Whew, and that concludes my preview of games to come…But, before you head off for the Con, I wrap up with just a few suggestions for those of you who may not have been through the adventure before (I know at least one of our readers will be a first time attendee this year).

A few suggestions, in no particular order:

1. Play in an event. Come on. This is why you went, to play in a game. Playing in a sanctioned event of any game type is fun, exposes you to different strategies and play-styles and, heck, you might just make a friend for life.
2. Demo a bunch of games. Read my four articles. ‘Nuff said.
3. Buy some dice. Maybe it is just me, but I cannot walk by the Chessex tables, and there will be two of them, without picking up some colorful dice. In all shapes, sizes, colors and finishes. They are just fun to have.
4. See the art. Many of your favorite game’s artists will likely be there, selling prints and just talking shop. Often they will sign game cards, and shoot the breeze about your favorite pieces. How often do you get the chance to do that?
5. Bring some games. If you are on a budget, and only planning on picking up one or two games, might be a good idea to bring a few standbys just in case.
6. Bring a bag. While most vendors will give you something to carry your bounty in, it may not be the most comfortable to carry. A backpack or other carrying device may be in order.
7. Stock up on snacks. The lines, prices, selection and quality are all cons. Very few pros. A few granola bars might just save the day.
8. Beat the rush. On everything. Eat at off times. Get there at least one day first thing for the dealer room. Try to walk it on Thursday or Friday before the weekend crowd settles in. Demo games early. If you see a chance, take it. If there is a game you are wanting to get, buy it the first chance you get. Most manufacturers brought a limited supply of everything and the newest and most popular stuff will sell out quick.
9. Check out some new games. See #2 above. List of new stuff here. You really need to devote some time to just roaming the dealer hall, from end to end. It is amazing.
10. GenCon App. Very helpful.
11. #GenCon. Constant chatter and updates.

You cannot leave GenCon until you spot at least two chain-mail bikinis and the Leah slave outfit girl.

If you are coming, please let us know, we will be there looking out for new games to report on and there should be Twitter updates from Joe. I am sure we will both have a ton of stuff to say on the other side of the event. Talk more then.

- Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder), Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Substitute games for all the candy and its just like GenCon!

“Come with me and you’ll be, in a world of pure imagination…” My first GenCon was its last in Milwaukee. The year was 2002. My little brother and I flew in and met up with friends who had driven from St. Louis. The event was celebrating its 35th year, closing out its run in the Midwest Express Center, which was poorly equipped to handle the burgeoning size and scope of the Con. With no idea what to expect, we wanted to go to the convention just once in our lives. When we crossed the threshold of the dealer hall and gaming rooms, we stood agape at the grandeur of it all. Like pie-eyed children about to consume a crazed chocolatier’s confections. Nearly every year since we have returned to this world beyond our imaginations, for fun, frolic and friendship.

In Indianapolis, GenCon has become bigger and better than ever. When the Dealer Hall doors open promptly at 10:00 am every morning, there is a huge crowd impatiently waiting to rush in, see the sights and be dazzled by the magic of it all. Much of the wonder of the convention is manufactured by the largest of the gaming companies, who pull out all the stops, bells and whistles to show off their new games. With Part III of my GenCon preview series, I am turning all eyes on the larger game companies and how they plan to wow us once again.

Just like in Apples to Apples, whoever plays the “Ninja” Card wins.

Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) will send you home with some fun in a bag in the form of a trio of games in their new Tempest world setting; Courtier, Dominare and Mercante. An interesting approach to game design, (and one mastered by FFG), they are applying the same world setting to a whole line of different games, for consistency of character and flavor. The three games look more Euro than the company’s other lines, and focus on intrigue, strategy and planning versus open conflict. Their other big premier, Smash Up! mixes every nerd’s most awesomely favorite subjects, from ninjas to robots to pirates to dinosaurs to aliens, and shuffles them all together into a cohesive “shufflebuilding” game. Stop by their booth, and don’t miss their “Board Game Night Extravaganza” on Friday in their gaming area for an evening of events plus get some “legendary AEG swag!” You can demo all their games in the dealer hall, and undoubtedly will love one or more of them.

Ares Games, the current owner of the Wings of War line will have some of its newest WWI planes available, and will also be selling Aztlán, a game of conquest and civilization in the mythical world of the Aztecs. Maybe they will have some prototypes of their new game Sails of Glory, featuring, you guessed it, naval battles in the “Age of Sail.” They look better than the WizKids snap together version, (which was fun to play actually), but if Sails plays like Wings, and is near the same price point, it could be a solid game. Lovers of “what if?” scenarios will want to pick up War of the Ring: Lords of Middle Earth, which ponders how it would have gone down if the Keepers of the Elven Rings had donned the Rings of Power to challenge the might of the Dark Lord instead of wussing out and heading West, or what if the Balrog came top side for some Hobbiton ass-kickery? Epic stuff.

Keel haul this back home with you.

Asmodee will have a host of products it will be representing at the Con, not the least of which is the Cities expansion to 7 Wonders. This is on my “must buy” list. If you don’t have this game, you simply don’t know what you are missing. If I “parley”-ed better Français, I might have more to “rapportez” on an incredible looking game, Libertalia, by you guessed it, a French game maker Marabunta Games, a division of Asmodee. Gameplay is explained as “blind bidding with powers,” and promised to be a “gamers game.” The components look great and while I am not much of a pirate game person, I may just have to pick up a copy of this one.

Cryptozoic Entertainment have been busy farming up a ton of new material, from last year’s Food Fight, which may have an expansion to show off: Snack Attack!, to Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards: Duel at Mt. Skullfyre! (you have to admit a totally awesome game name)(plus: they will be hosting tournaments of the game all weekend), to a trio of huge offerings this year. First, they too have a weird post-apocalyptical Central American-esque entry called 3012, which takes place 1000 years after the Mayans apparently are right about the world ending. The art looks dynamite, and judging from their other games right now, this one will be a must see. They also jump into the big-brand superhero market with the DC Comics Deckbuilding Game. Looks promising, but I will remain skeptical until there is a Marvel expansion. They will also be racing in with Hot Rod Creeps, a fast paced race car game where each player crafts their own custom 20-card deck that will speed his hot rod around a “most devilish racetrack using puzzle-piece fittings and dozens of different track sections.” Sounds interesting, and heck, you are in Indy after all, makes sense to do some racing.

Days of Wonder always has a huge presence at the event. This year, they hit the beach with their Memoir ’44 Equipment Pack, a major expansion to the Memoir ’44 game system, with 180 new pieces and great expandability to all your WWII simulation games. I am sure they will have their huge catalogue of other games available from Ticket to Ride to Smallworld. Check them out.

Like this. Only smaller.

The biggest footprint in the hall is usually under the boot of industry giant, Fantasy Flight Games. I have already chimed in on the “reimagining” of Netrunner, and now the rules are available at the FFG website so you can get ready to play in the Icebreaker Tourrnament on Saturday! They will also be releasing the Second Edition of Descent, an incredible dungeon crawl that has great replayability and mechanics. In their Warhammer line, they will release a new board game, Relic, where players run missions, defeat enemies, gain rewards and experience, and crush what lies beyond the Warp Rift. Previewed last year at the Con, they have ready to release their first Star Wars product, Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game. I played it last year, and for the uber-SW fan, you are going to want to have this game. It plays similarly to Wings of War, but with some serious advances in technology, firepower and maneuvering. Duh!

I have got to make some time to see the folks at Flying Frog. I was next in line to demo a Last Night on Earth game a year or two ago, and just ran out of time. The games look great, are full of humor and I am told are great games to break out with friends. They add a number of expansions this year with Last Night on Earth: Timber Peak, an action-packed standalone game as well as expansion for Last Night on Earth, and A Touch of Evil: The Coast, which is only an expansion to the Touch of Evil line.

Ascension was the darling of the Con two years ago. A deck builder built by a former M:tG tour player with Gary Games, the game will see its fourth expansion release at this year’s event, Ascension: Immortal Heroes. If you play, make sure to stop by their booth and pick up some of the sets and promo cards they have on hand.

Lots of doohickies, symbols and traits….mmmmmmm….Oh, and Greek Gods!

Already reviewed by our very own Pete Sellers, iello Games will release King of Tokyo, and a game I am jacked up about: Mythic Battles, set in ancient Greece, where Hades and the Underworld battles Athena and the top-siders. The art looks sexy and the setting is my kind of game.

As you might expect, a write up on the big game companies can get, well, big. So, look for Part IV in this series very soon as I wrap up with a preview of the rest of the big game companies and share some final thoughts. I will also suggest a plan of attack and make top picks for those of you that will be time challenged.

As always, let us know below if you have comments, suggestions or questions, and if you are coming to the Con, introduce yourself, we would love to meet our tens of readers in person!

Right now, we’re 14 likes away from such a giveaway.

So, uh…yeah. What are you still doing here?

As children, we all have unique ideas and insights into what it is we want to be when we grow up. Several of the children I knew in kindergarten, for example, wanted to become police officers, especially after having a local policeman stop our class and explain what he did for a living. His tale of being on the force was one of high speed car chases, epic gunfights and other assorted stories that sound like they came out of an episode of “T.J. Hooker”. I can honestly say that his comments had nothing to do with sitting hidden behind billboards clocking speeders, tailing people who haven’t renewed their plates or passing out parking tickets, which I know now is pretty consistent with law enforcement where I live, but at the time, my friends and I only knew that his story kicked ass and almost every kid in the room, at that moment in time, decided that they, too, would join law enforcement and bust drug cartels on a daily basis…

At five years of age, however, that was not my true calling; nor was it my goal to “work” at McDonald’s, which is still the dream job of most children everywhere (seriously, ask any child what they want to be when they grow-up and McDonald’s is usually at the top of that list – scary, right, because when you get that job in high school, it sucks complete ass). No, my dreams were much greater than that and my goals far loftier.

You see, I wanted to be Godzilla.

The King and Cyber Bunny size each other up.

I’m not going to try and explain why, because if you know who Godzilla is, there should be no question as to why I would pursue this as field for a career. The perks alone made this job one of the greatest positions to ever exist – exotic travel, the ability to crush cities under your feet, and let’s not forget the fact that you can expel radioactive atomic rays from your mouth! Truly, this was a job worth applying for!

Of course, that dream was crushed when I was informed by my kindergarten teacher that:

Godzilla is a creature, not a job option, and it’s not his “job” to destroy cities and fight monsters

and the much worse:

Godzilla doesn’t actually exist

As I walked home from school that day, I stomped the living daylights out of a few anthills, as well as a couple of flowerbeds along the way, all the while upset and in tears. Yeah, my teacher was right, but come on – why did they have to be right? At that moment, as I walked in the house, I knew that my lifelong dream (of five whole years) was now a festering pile of memories that would help launch me into adulthood. Never again would I ever dream of being a giant lizard hellbent on destroying Tokyo and fighting along side my best friend Shannon, who dreamt of being Jet Jaguar (why, I’ll never know – I mean, really? That dude was LAME)… that is until NOW!

That’s right, fools! My dream has come true!

Erm, well… sort of.

You see, I’ve recently become  the “King of Tokyo”, though my name isn’t Godzilla anymore. You may refer to me by my new title – Cyber Bunny: RULER OF ALL HE SURVEYS! HAHAH! BOW DOWN BEFORE ME, BOW DOWN AND PRAY FOR MERCY FOR I AM THE BRINGER OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!

Again, sort of…

King of Tokyo, by iello Games, has given me the chance to live out my childhood dream of becoming a super-sized rampaging beast, complete with an assortment of bad-ass super-powers, all from within the comfort of my own home! Created by Richard Garfield, the madman who unleashed Magic: The Gathering on the unassuming masses, “King of Tokyo” is a dice-rolling game that pits your monster against other unique monsters in a free-for-all brawl of shame that will ultimately decide the fate of the world… but let’s talk about how this game is played before we wreak havoc on an unsuspecting Tokyo!

First and foremost, the board is placed in the center of the table. Now, this isn’t just any board, mind you, it’s easily the smallest, most simple playing space ever created for a board game and it features not one, but TWO WHOLE PLAYING SPACES – one for “Tokyo Bay” and the other for the actual city of “Tokyo”.  Of course, you don’t do a whole lot on the board, so it serves its purpose, but man – is it TINY!

Once the board has been laid out, it’s time for each person to choose a monster and claim it as their own. Here’s the thing  though – movie monsters don’t make the cut here, most likely due to licensing issues, so you have to deal with the blatant knock-off versions of these memorable characters. For example, good ol’ Godzilla has now become the rampaging “Gigazaur”, while King Kong has been renamed as simply “The King”. Of course, there are some original characters, such as the out-of-this-world “Alienoid”, as well as my new alter-ego, Cyber Bunny – who I might describe as a cute ‘n cuddly bundle of fuzz who just happens to be piloting a 50 story mecha-terror designed to obliterate all life as we know it. Seriously, it’s Peter Rabbit with an attitude – and this time, farmer McGregor won’t know WHAT hit him.

So, board has been placed on the table, each person has been provided with a monster AND a health/victory point dial associated with said creature, now it’s time to shuffle the deck of special cards (which provide players with an obscene assortment of powers) and start playing.

The game is played with dice – six black dice, to be exact.

On each turn, a player will roll the dice and observe the results of their roll. Each die is loaded with symbols, each designed to provide a specific resolution:

1 / 2 / 3 – These are victory points. If you roll three of a kind with ANY given number (1, 1, 1  or  2, 2, 2  or  3, 3, 3), you score THAT number of points (in the previous example, you would score 1, 2 or 3 victory points, NOT 3, 6, or 9). If you happen to roll MORE than three of a kind, each matching number AFTER the three is worth an additional 1 victory point.

Lightning Bolts – When lightning strikes, you score an energy cube. Energy cubes are used as currency in the game to buy special card and are also used as, well, energy to actually USE said cards if they require it.

Claws – A claw counts as an attack, which reduces the life points of monsters by 1 point. Multiple claws = multiple points of attack, so if you have 5 hit points remaining and I happen to throw  5 claws – I WILL STOMP YOU LIKE A GRAPE!

Hearts – Hearts are used to heal 1 point of energy for each heart you resolve! That is, unless you’re in Tokyo…

So, the first player rolls their dice and can choose to lock any of the results they received on their first roll. After they choose which dice they wish to keep, they may roll again – up to three times (think “Yahtzee”, but with results that may whoop some ass, instead of simply scoring a “Small Straight”). Once the third roll is completed, the player resolves the results of their roll  – in any order.

On the first turn, however, the first “Claw” result moves that monster INTO Tokyo, which is both good and bad.

Of course, Cyber Bunny is planning to keep all the energy for himself! That fluffy bastard!

It’s good in that you receive victory points every time your turn comes up and you’re still in Tokyo – 2 points, to be exact! It’s also good, because every attack roll you get is used to attack every other player outside Tokyo, or as I like to call them: PEONS. Seriously, it’s like a can of whoop ass that you can share with everyone! However there is a really, really bad side to this in that every other player outside Tokyo (previously referred to as “PEONS”) are now all attempting to drive your sorry ass out of Tokyo so that they might embarrass and replace you as the dominating force in Tokyo. This means that every player that resolves an attack die action, resolves it with a boot to your monstrous head – and you want to know the best part? You can’t heal using the dice rolls when in Tokyo! That’s right, any heart results don’t count, because hey, you’re the king, right? You can take it! YOU CAN DO IT!

But… what if you can’t?

Well, that’s when you retreat! There’s no shame in backing off if you’re a point or two from death. After all, you can’t be the “King of Tokyo” if you’re lying in a pool of your own blood and filth!

When you take too much damage, you can decided to leave Tokyo – leaving the person who LAST ATTACKED you to take your place! They don’t even get a choice, they HAVE to enter Tokyo and become the next punching bag for each monster thereafter! This will provide you with some time to heal and the chance to dish out your own special brand of vengeance!

Once the dice rolling has been resolved and all the action has taken place, you may, if you have enough energy, purchase a card. There are three cards face up on the table at the start of the game and you can swap them out with three new ones for a meager 2 energy cubes. If you see a card you like that features a power your creature simply can’t live with out, feel free to drop those energy cubes and buy, buy, buy! You won’t regret it! Card actions are widely varied – some allow you to heal without the need for a heart die roll, while others allow you to place shrink counters on other monsters and reduce their dice roll by the number of shrink counters they have (like I said, each person is allowed to roll all six of the black dice, but when you have a shrink token, you only get to roll five and so on and so forth). These cards lend a truly epic air to the game and allow for some absolutely ridiculous situations!

Play continues, with each player taking a turn, rolling the dice and kicking some butt until either ONE player reachers 20 victory points OR one monster is left standing.

That’s it!

I really can’t find any faults in the bits featured in King of Tokyo – as everything works together quite nicely. The dice are large and easy to read, with the numbers engraved and painted into the sides (as opposed to the first edition, which was apparently silk-screened and wore off after a few plays), the character cards are heavy stock cardboard and the artwork is simply fantastic. Colorful, cartoony – absolutely wonderful! The energy cubes are pretty slick, as well – transparent green cubes of energy! All in all, it’s an impressive package and I really dig the art – especially on the cards! The dial are also well constructed and the art mimics the playing pieces you’re using. Truthfully, I’d LOVE to see some plasticized pieces instead of the cardboard ones, but hey, the cardboard works well enough, so I can’t really complain. Actually, I just did, but whatever.

Cyber Bunny dances on the corpses of those who defied him. LONG LIVE CYBER BUNNY!

King of Tokyo is something I feared introducing to my friends and family – partially due to the fact that it doesn’t have a whole lot of depth to it. I mean, for all intents and purposes, the game is a very simple dice-roller that features some unique mechanics meant to keep things moving fast and furious – and surprisingly, when you put all those things together, it makes for a game my group simply ate up. It wasn’t hard for them to be sucked in by the art, but the initial groans about the simplicity of the game disappeared a few minutes into our sessions as people started clamoring for the title of “King of Tokyo”. Seriously, there’s something to be said for a group of people who have come together with one goal in mind – to destroy Tokyo and eventually the world, under the guise of a bunny controlled mech. It’s a game we’ve been playing repeatedly as both filler and as a feature title – and give that the game takes but 30 minutes to resolve, you can play it over and over again with very little downtime.

While some cards in the game are slightly overpowered, the fact of the matter is that King of Tokyo is simply an amazingly fun game that people of all ages can really get into  – I mean, my daughter is ten and she adores the game! The concept is brilliant, the simplicity of the game is fantastic and it takes only a few minutes for people to be introduced to the game mechanics – meaning that almost anyone can enjoy this game. However, where the game really manages to work is in terms of fun – its chock loaded with FUN. It’s silly as heck, I’ll give you that and the premise is completely off-the-wall, but it’s one of those games that you’ll walk away from laughing – win or lose. Of course, in the end it’s all about the dice rolling, so if you’re not a fan of dice or the fact that dice often equals luck, this might not be for you, but for the rest of us, King of Tokyo is just the kind of game that we want to play.

Especially me…

And though it may not be my job to be Godzilla, I can always make it my hobby!

Since moving to Boston I have been very fortunate to meet a number of friends. Most of them were big board game aficionados. And a few were avid game designers.

Two friends were named Rob. One was named “Fake Rob,” not because he was less corporeal than the other, but because he was one of the lead minds behind Cambridge Games Factory ,* a local company that helps board game designers develop and polish their games and sell them under the CGF label. He always brings play-test and beta versions to game gatherings, so he got the moniker “Fake Rob” for always playing “fake” games.

Here’s a logo.

There’s something special about play-testing a board game. Being a part of a developing product, contributing to what makes it work, what makes it fun, is at times a very fulfilling venture. I love playing games, but I also love the opportunity to teach them to new people, and I love being able to give a developer feedback on what I think works and doesn’t. I’ve never designed an original game, but I’ve tinkered with old ones, added rules I think make the game more interesting, or make them flow better. When they work you feel pretty good, and when they don’t you generally shrug them off and move on. But sometimes you don’t, you can’t.

When you design a game, commercially or for fun, or you help develop it in the beginning, or even if you paid a great deal for it, something happens. You become invested. You want the game to succeed, you fight to make it fun, you’re upset when it isn’t, and you’re elated when it works. Its success is your success, and its failings become yours. Such is the case for me, and the soon-to-be published card game Grimoire Shuffle from Level 99 Games.

Here’s another logo

I gave to the Kickstarter that’s funding this and several other games. I won’t write about Kickstarter itself, but I will say I gave to this company partly because it’s a worthwhile project I want to see succeed, and partly because I’m getting some cool games at discount prices. And as a backer I was given links to download a print-and-play version of Grimoire Shuffle. While I didn’t design the game, and my $50 was by no means the tipping point in a very successful KS project, I still felt kind of bad-ass printing the game, cutting the cards into the right size, placing them into sleeves, and assembling the components for a game that most people won’t get to see for several months.

The First Playthrough

My first chance to play the game was a Monday game night. Six people played; Me, Josh, Jess, Dan, Sukrit, and Katie. The game is a team relay race through an ever-shifting library. Players use magical books to move through the library in different ways. Some books allow you to blow players back, some shift rooms, others allow you to pass through walls, etc. The catch is you never get to choose your own book; the team leader, which rotates regularly, chooses his teammates’ books, and the opposing leader’s book. It’s on him to set the stage for the best strategic movement of his team. He will fail often.

And put them back when you’re done!

A first play through of any game can be difficult, and one where the rulebook isn’t totally finished can add issues. Some things we forgot; I made the board too small. Other things were misprinted; the special rooms were named differently than the cards that caused them to be played. Some rules were just frustrating; you could give the opposing leader a book, but the best books you always kept, and one team had the only books that allowed movement through walls, which was a huge factor.

If THIS guy hasn’t made it out yet how are WE supposed to?!

In the end, we called it after one point scored, which took about an hour. There was an air of frustration, and a bit of disappointment. But I wasn’t willing to give up on a game I felt invested in.

Feedback

Brad David Talton Jr. is a fairly accessible guy. His e-mail is out there, he recently did an “IAmA game designer for Reddit” post, and he’s currently asking backers for their feedback. So I wrote him. I mentioned a couple rulebook grammatical issues and oddities, and how the game itself was frustrating at times. And he responded. He suggested a rule that a book is discarded and replaced form a team each round.

It was a simple exchange, but it felt cool to play a game and give the creator direct feedback, and then have him reply and update the game based on it (the new rulebook has that rule, so the other play-testers must have been having similar issues).

The Second Playthrough

This time it was 4 people; me, Katie, Fraley and Melissa. The game played a lot more smoothly, and the act of discarding a book each turn added a very exciting element. Leaders now have this additional factor to consider. At least one book has to go to the opposing team, and if you want to save a certain book, you have to give it to a teammate, because there’s no hoarding now. You could give it to the opposing team and hope it makes its way back to you, but that’s very unlikely. It makes the decision a more interesting one, and when a game gives you that moment where you hem and haw and agonize over what decision is best, it’s doing a wonderful thing.

We played to 4 books. Both teams played well. This second game gave me a much better picture of how the game as a whole is supposed to feel. There are some good strategic moments in the game, but the majority of the game is set in madcap, back-and-forth tug-of-war antics on the board. Once everyone realized that we weren’t playing a game where you think ahead 3 to 5 moves it progressed much more quickly.

Melissa and I won, 4 to 2. Afterward I sent Talton an e-mail about the game, our thoughts, and my thanks for the opportunity to help with the game. He hasn’t replied, but I’m sure he appreciates the feedback.  He wrote back a week later, giving his thanks and actually changing a game component I suggested was too powerful.  Sweet.

I’ll save you some time; it isn’t really like this

Gaming is more fun when you’re invested.  I’m using that word very deliberately, and with many meanings.  One meaning is a person’s emotional investment in the game as an activity.  Games work best when you care deeply about the outcome, otherwise why play?  the immersion in the activity is what makes it great.  Johan Huizinga calls it the “magic circle.”  While the game happens, it’s the most important thing in the world, and when it finishes, you can walk away.  Investment also refers to one’s personal connection to the game itself, the product that makes the game possible.  Printing the sheets, cutting and shaving the cards to fit into sleeves, printing a nice rule-book, and prepping the game for play gives you a small sense of pride.  And while it’s not an “investment” per se, putting money into a project to help it succeed gives you the teeniest tiniest sense of ownership in the final product, and it’s good to see something you like enough to donate money to is coming along nicely.

Grimoire Shuffle is an amusing game. It isn’t perhaps as amazing as I was envisioning it, but it fits the bill of a game that fits in your pocket, is (fairly) easy to explain, and has a decent depth of strategy. I’m guessing that repeated plays with different people will result in varied games based on how people prefer to play. If everyone tacitly agrees that they’re playing a thought-provoking, in-depth strategy, we will play that. If everyone is set to play a fast-paced race through the swiftly shifting shelves we will play that. Either way, I’m looking forward to the final product, and the games we’ll have.

——————————————————————————————————————–

* The first board game I played when I came to Boston was a nearly finished version of Glory To Rome, published by CGF. It’s a very cool game, and I highly recommend it. The designer, Carl Chudyk, also made Innovation, which won BGG’s Best Card Game for 2010, and will certainly come up on the site at some point.

I had come prepared to offer up a lengthy etymology of the f-bomb and its usage in the gaming medium, but the less said of Babylonian Flesh Checkers, the better. Instead, in the spirit of bait and switch articles everywhere, the f-word I’m going to write about today is “fun.” Fun is peculiar burden shouldered by games and, I would argue, at the center of why critics of other mediums—Roger Ebert, for example—have a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that games can be art.

What f-word would make you smile like that?

If there’s one assumption both game designers and gamers tend to make about games, it’s that “games are fun.” When you think of a bad game, you’re probably imagining one whose mechanics or interface made for a frustrating or boring experience, one that’s flawed in its execution. But can there be a “good “game that fails to invoke a sense of fun?

Most games serve up a platter of “fun” by putting us in the role of a powerful person able to make do-or-die decisions using skills, powers or resources far beyond what we could muster in real life. Games have given me a taste of what it’s like to be a god, Roman general, vampire swordsman and anthropomorphic space jockey fox man.

The last one notwithstanding, it’s safe to say I will never be any of these awesome things in real life.

The horror genre serves as a good bellwether for just how ingrained the power fantasy has become as the metric for fun. More than any other genre, horror depends on the feeling of helplessness, of being up against odds far greater than the protagonist should be capable of handling. Some games have embraced this idea, notably the early offerings in the Resident Evil and Silent Hill video game series. Ammunition was limited, the characters slow and somewhat ponderous to control. The enemies were tougher, faster or stronger than you.

A funny thing happened when Resident Evil 4 came around: Leon Kennedy, the plodding police rookie had morphed into a kung fu prodigy with the mysterious ability to randomly spawn ammunition from possessed Spanish peasants. Meanwhile, at the weekly White Wolf game, I’m deciding whether my vampire should wield twin katanas or deal lethal damage with his boxing mastery. Even when we’re supposed to be scared, we still have to be extraordinary.

Power fantasies are the mainstay of gaming, the high concept hook that brings gamers back to the table time and time again. This is particularly true of video games, where we tend to play as testosterone-poisoned mayhem artists high on destiny, but the power fantasy is no stranger to the tabletop. We like them because being awesome is fun. And game developers know that fun sells.

But fun has become a burden we inflict upon games that we spare other media.

What kinds of movies come to mind when you think of a “fun” movie? Summer popcorn flicks? Light genre films? Crazy CGI effects and over-the-top martial arts? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that Schindler’s List, Chinatown, Citizen Kane or Muholland Drive aren’t the first things that come to mind. It’s unlikely that fun was a priority for the makers of these highly acclaimed movies and, unless human frailty is your particular methadone, you probably won’t walk away from these films feeling like you had a grand old time. The same is true of books and even music.

It’s assumed that these media will tackle heady, disturbing, or emotional topics. You know, the stuff that happens in real life. To suggest the creation of a game that eschews fun puts you way out in the dangerous and pretentious indie wilderness, where marauding bands of human interest story writers viciously cannibalize any novelty they can find into fuel for their war machines.

A typical This American Life editorial meeting.

Brenda Brathwaite made headlines a few years back with her board game, Train. At first glance, Train appears to be a simple draw/roll and go game featuring freight trains. As you play, your train picks up passengers and whisks them away to their final destination. The peculiarities of the game begin to add up: the broken window under the board, the freight cars filled to capacity with human beings.

The destination turns out to be Auschwitz. According to Brathwaite, the game’s end state tends to be a cathartic moment where players realize just what it is they’ve been doing and immediately stop playing. Train, for most of its players, is not a fun game. Reactions vary from shock, to anger, to feelings of violation and, yes, even apathy.

Of course, Train is not a commercial product and would be difficult to market outside of an educational setting. Commercial developers can’t be faulted for wanting to make money. We have to want games that make us think, make us feel small or help us empathize with people who may be weaker than us. So Leon “Combat Roll” Kennedy can kill a zombie. That’s not impressive. With his skills and arsenal, who couldn’t? But what does Jenny, the 13 year-old blind girl do when the dead walk?

The best movies and books make us work. Developers shouldn’t be afraid to make players work. In her book Reality is Broken, game designer Jane McGonigal describes games as a form of voluntary work, one which places obstacles in the form of rules, between players and a goal. She argues that play is not the antithesis of work (that would be despondency). The potential for fun, or more appropriately engagement, is written into the very DNA of games, with their cycle of observation, experimentation and feedback.

There are so many ways in which games, a uniquely interactive medium, can engage us. Why limit them to fun?

I’m coming back and reworking my review of Agricola for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s an absolutely terrific game. I don’t ever remember seeing it come off of the Hotness List on BGG, which says a lot. Secondly, I totally didn’t get it right the first time around. Not only have I experienced a great deal in terms of how I approach and write my reviews, but I’ve grown as a player of the game, and I feel some of my original statements are incorrect. Agricola is a game that totally deserves better treatment than it got way back when. Let’s jump in!

A few years ago, I picked up Agricola because it was consistently getting strong positive reviews on BGG, and have never disappeared from The Hotness List, which in my experience is a fairly reliable barometer for game quality if it manages to stay on there. It can also be fickle at times with a game landing there through hype and then disappearing a week later. If you go look at the Hotness List and see a game, come back two months later and it’s still there, odds are you’ve got a quality product. But that was the end of my reasoning. This game has been on the list for so long, it HAS to be good! Not the most sound argument, but there it was. Agricola was also my first step in Euro-games past Settlers of Catan (and varying expansions)

A look at THE FUTURE (relatively speaking)

Some sixty American dollars later, it was in my possession and I was a bit overwhelmed with all of the bits (remember that prior to this, Settlers had been my only Euro experience) and a rulebook filled with small type. I didn’t come into it with excitement/anticipation, just the assumption that it was going to be awesome. Sometimes things work out, and this one did, but at that particular point, I didn’t know that. Totally intimidated by the presentation, it got shelved for a while. Eventually, my curiosity (and desire to know I hadn’t thrown money down a hole) won out and I went back to it.

Man, that first game is rough. That’s something I warn new players about, odds are strong that your first time out you are going to fail spectacularly. If you don’t mind an element of masochism to your games (and most Euro fans don’t mind or even appreciate a little pain in their game) you’ll do fine. I was no exception to this. Like so many others before me, my first farm was an unmitigated disaster and told the harrowing (see what I did there?) (you see, in addition to meaning “distressing” a harrow is a farming tool used to break up soil.) (and this game is about farming) (It’s funny because…you know what? Nevermind.) tale of an impossibly inept family in the Middle Ages who were absolutely terrible at farming and would have starved to death had they not shamelessly begged for enough food to survive. So, I suppose it was a fairly accurate assessment of how it might have gone down had I actually been farming in the Middle Ages.

The game itself scales up to 5 players. The majority of my games have been one-on-one, and I think it makes an excellent two player game. Recently Z-Man Games released a simplified 2 player version called Agricola: All Creatures Big & Small. In this version, you don’t have to worry about feeding and/or expanding your family in that version, which removes much of the tension. I’ll try it out (Hello GenCon!) before casting final judgment, but I find Agricola to be pretty perfect as a 2 player game. Once the players understand the game, gameplay happens pretty quickly. The game can also be played solo, but as of yet I haven’t tried it.

Sheep are white cubes. Just like real life.

I was surprised that a game about farming could be so much fun. Each player is trying to build a successful farm over the course of 14 rounds. It’s competitive and cutthroat, sometimes indirectly. In the end, you’re trying to score more points than the other players, but there are often times when making a play that will cost someone else points can be just as effective. There are many possible strategies to adopt, which greatly lends to the replayability of the game. Strictly speaking, Agricola is a worker placement/resource management game where the most finite resource of all is time. Those 14 rounds fly by much faster than one expects.

Efficiency is your best friend in this game, and a savvy player who uses their actions to wring the most effect from them will conversely enjoy the most success. This isn’t as cut and dry an idea as it seems though. Getting the most from your actions requires some degree of forethought and planning.

Ironically, this game would probably melt the brain of the average Farmville enthusiast.

Each turn you can take various actions to improve your farm. Each action requires the placement of a family token, each player starts with 2. At base, this means that you have 28 actions to build your farm. These are punctuated with 5 Harvest turns where you must feed your workers or suffer HUGE penalties. Generating a reliable food engine is pretty critical to success. You can gain more Family Tokens (ultimately purchasing more actions) but doing so increases the amount of food you have to generate, and this is something you must balance with taking actions that get you points. Food is not worth any points at the end of the game, so focus too much on accumulating it and you’ll sacrifice point scoring opportunities.

Each way you choose *not* to develop your farm incurs a penalty, so it is often better to try to do a little bit of everything than a lot of one thing.

The actions available to the players are laid out on the game board, and each action may only be taken by one player per turn, so planning the order of your actions is also very important, as well as the flexibility to know how to make the best of a situation where your best options have already been taken. This is also where the blessedly rare spite moves come into play. It’s almost never a good idea to take actions specifically to block someone else’s progress without a plan for your own farm being helped, but clever play order can create situations where you can deny your opponents certain actions at critical times while still advancing your own game.

The random elements in the game are defined in a couple of ways. First are the actions available. The 14 rounds are divided into 4 Phases, and certain actions appear in certain phases. The order that they appear in is random though, so you can’t always plan out something perfectly. For example, you know that the “Build Fences” action will be available in Phase 1, but you don’t know when it will come available as Phase 1 lasts for 4 rounds, with one new action being revealed per round.

The second random element comes in the way of Occupation and Minor Improvement cards. Playing these cards is completely optional, and they will give you special rules to play with. Playing Berrypicker might let you take food tokens whenever you collect the wood resource, or an  Ox Team might let  you plow multiple fields in a single action if you have some Cattle Tokens. There are 3 different decks in the base set to play with that vary with complexity, and numerous deck mini-expansions to further extend replayability These help to keep each game unique and interesting, though you can easily play and win without using Occupations or Minor Improvements at all. This is actually one of my solitary complaints about the game, in that there are a number of Occupations and Minor Improvements that are auto-uses, and some that are very niche in their usefulness and will often not see play. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think a drafting mechanic would go a long way towards solving this.

If you’re mortally offended by plain wooden pieces, here are some shapes to satisfy your OCD. However, the shaped meeples for resources are probably better for colorblind players.

The materials are solid. It’s a Euro game, which means by law it has to include a bunch of colored wooden cubes. There are different meeples available online for people who want their vegetable tokens to be vegetable shaped and their boar tokens to look piggish.

One of the things I love best about this game is while it has an admittedly steep learning curve for that first game, the game is elegant in its simplicity and by your second game, you have a MUCH stronger idea of what to do. It’s also always a satisfying game win or lose. I’ve never played a game of Agricola that wasn’t followed by a discussion of events in the game and what the players thought they might have done differently in hindsight. I’ve never encountered a sore loser or a bored winner. Only once or twice have I seen blowout victories, most games are hard fought and end with a small score difference between the winner and last place.

Agricola is one of my favorite games, and one I see playing many times over the years. Interestingly, Lords of Waterdeep shares a LOT in common with Agricola, though my gaming group typically prefers the latter to the former. Lords of Waterdeep is a little more simple and certainly more forgiving, but in the end, I think it’s the theme that gives Lords of Waterdeep the edge in popularity among my group. In my estimation, both are wonderful games, but Agricola presents a higher degree of difficulty and ultimately a deeper, more rewarding experience.

Or maybe I just embrace my gamer masochism more than those sissies.

A look at my experiences with the deepest, most complex game I’ve ever played.

The Past.

“Nowadays, when you’re not a grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it.”  -  Viswanathan Anand

I started playing chess at the age of five. I began to compete in tournaments at six, winning my first tournament ever. I still have that trophy, made up of wood and marble. To win the tournament I defeated a slew of opponents older and bigger than me. I can only imagine how I must have looked, weighed down by that shiny object as I marched proudly out of that G.A.A hall accompanied by prouder parents.

I continued to play during those early years, competing in tournaments and picking up a fair few few medals and trophies. I won an all Ireland championship before I turned nine, and represented Ireland against Sussex in the under eight category. Chess wasn’t the be all end all in my life, but it was a big part.

“You can only get good at Chess if you love the game.”  -  Bobby Fischer

I was fortunate enough to attend a primary school with a thriving chess club. The woman in charge, Shirley, hooked countless children on the game by luring them in with bribes of lollipops and Tayto crisps. They all came for the sweets, but stayed long after the sugar wore off. I learned a lot in those classes on a Wednesday afternoon, mostly through playing, playing and more playing, but my parents taught me originally.

I loved that club, and being a member of their team because it meant I got to leave during school to play against other teams. Leave school! For a game no less. It was fabulous. Unfortunately is was fated to end.

The Present.

“We don’t really know how the game was invented, though there are suspicions. As soon as we discover the culprits, we’ll let you know.”  - Bruce Pandolfini

We moved when I turned ten. This in itself was not a bad thing. I made new friends, experienced new things, got a different perspective on life. However, there was something missing. No chess! No clubs, no tournaments, no nothing. I resorted to online play, and we made it to one tournie a year in Dublin if we were lucky. My passion for the game ebbed away as it withdrew abruptly from my life. The game that had taught me so much about focus, skill, determination, stamina and tactics was absent from my life.

“Chess can help a child develop logical thinking, decision making, reasoning, and pattern recognition skills, which in turn can help math and verbal skills.”  -  Susan Polgar

I found comfort in Bridge, the card game, but always preferred the solo aspect of chess, it’s slow and layered matches. I’ve grown to love Bridge almost as much as chess, but I continue to miss the 64-squared board and my two ranks of personal soldiers. Online chess felt too detached and robotic, not to mention agonizingly slow.

The Future.

“The biggest problem I see among people who want to excel in chess – and in business and in life in general – is not trusting their instincts enough.”  -  Garry Kasparov

Chess was such an important feature of my earlier years that I intend to return to it in later life. It’s such a huge sport all over the world that no matter where I end up, there’s a good chance I’ll find a club somewhere nearby. For all you video gamers out there, I urge you to try out this most magnificent of games. It truly is one of mankind’s greatest creations.

-Michael

- Benjamin Franklin, “The First American,” Founding Father, Manuscript on “Morals of Chess”, (1732)

Make sure to roll into GenCon with some Benjamins…

Truly an original American “renaissance man,” Benjamin Franklin was somewhat of an enigma. Although a prodigious innovator, he never patented any of his inventions; noting he was “glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.” Reputed to be fond of the drink and the ladies; but not as a woodpusher. Come on people. (Woodpusher: [noun] def. A weak chessplayer; connotes someone who moves pieces around without any plan.) One of the best Chess players on newly christened American soil, he authored a pamphlet on the “Morals of Chess.” His words above make clear Big Ben understood the importance of games in our everyday lives.

One of Franklin’s more famous witticisms was: “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” And thus, we pick up where Part I of this series left off, again emphasizing the importance of planning your upcoming trip to GenCon’s dealer room to maximize your enjoyment. This time I preview smaller game manufacturers from the letters M-Z.

Mesa Boardgames will descend upon the dealer room with their angels v. demons game Ragami. Reviewed before its release, it takes place in a city where “there are always people with problems,” (sounds like the one I live in). Angels compete to vanquish marauding demons in a conflict driven VP chase. Perhaps they will also be hauling their sea-borne discovery game, Caravelas, or a bottle or two of Vintage.

I for one am looking forward to the expansion Parmesan Breadsticks.

What, you ask, does “this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore [mean] in croaking “Nevermore [Games]?” Well, it croaks, or clucks: “Chicken Caesar!” no doubt! You like I will be kicking yourself for not thinking of this clever political roost based on a luncheon staple. Their recently successful Kickstarter project for the game has also guaranteed a forthcoming expansion. Game play promises to be full of politics, backstabbing and flavor. Nevermore Games will hopefully be demoing their other project, Mars Needs Mechanics, (obviously a Hoodoo Gurus reference), where players represent engineers and tinkerers competing for a chance at space flight. Show some emotion and strut by their booth.

Not all games have to be “theme related” to be fun, or featured at the Con. In fact, with kids of my own, I like to come home with a few “family games” we all can enjoy. While hiking around the hall, stop by Moosetache Games booth and make a game of it with their titles Hike and Rowboat. Both are quick family oriented award winning games at a great price-point. They promise cognitive learning from the gameplay, and have earned awards for being educational and fun. Wattsalpoag Games will showcase their dice rolling zoo and animal management game, A Fistful of Penguins.

No need to watch the re-runs, just play Furt.

When Cranium first came out, I thought it was genius, and provided a welcome break from boring family holiday get-together fare like Trivial Pursuit or Scrabble. Now Wiggity Bang! Games has taken that great idea, and made it more fun in Furt. With a huge splash of humor the interactive party game scene just got a lot more interesting. Perfect for teens of all ages, Furt just sounds funny to say for cripes sakes. The “Furt Junior” title, Magic Feather is great for your shorties 7 and up. My only question on these two is their sustainability and replayability after a few sessions.

North Star Games’ highly successful party games, Wits and Wagers and Say Anything, each get family versions. Speaking of family versions, Pajaggle will have its line of dexterity and brain-teaser puzzle games available, which look like fun, spacial recognition workouts for your brain. Looking to hook your kids into RPG-ing at an early age? Well, you might pick up Protagonist Games’ RAWR! The rules are easy to learn, kid friendly, and perfect for introductory, family RPG-gaming.

You can’t miss with any of these games, and if the kids are not coming, this is a great way to get them a “souvenir” that the whole family can enjoy.

If you are in the know, then you will stop by MYNDzei (pronounced “Mind’s Eye”) Games’ booth for Pirates of Gold Cove, a trick taking card game for kids of all ages. Wishing Tree Games invites you to curry the favor of the Seven Sisters, each named after one of the seven deadly sins, in a hand-management, worker-placement, Euro-style board/card game.

Methinks if they had one of these in Middle Earth, The Ring would still be around somewhere.

In the “name says it all” category, PM Games’ Biomechanic Dino Battles pits your, well, biomechanical dinosaurs against each other in, um, battles. Rather Dashing Games has one on their hands, Four Taverns, where every great adventure begins. Players compete to develop the best watering hole in the land by sponsoring the most dashing and successful plunderers. Polish off your best pick up lines and add chicken wings to the menu and you may just win it all.

Sirlin Games will be packing its trio of quick and easy games playable right out of their boxes, Yomi, Puzzle Strike and Flash Duel. The latter has seven different game modes and simulates a sparring match between two players getting ready for a big tournament. Studio 9 Games’ dual offerings Villagers & Villains and Treasures & Traps are relatively inexpensive card games that can be played in less than half an hour. Checking into the “this and that” game title category is Prolific Games’ “Flapjacks and Sasquatches.” Bring your took and back-bacon and be prepared to chop some wood.

Tasty Minstrel, capitalizing on a run of successful Kickstarter Campaigns, may have their newest game to show off, Ground Floor, a business building worker placement board game. They most certainly will be featuring Eminent Domain, a role selection space themed deck-building game that has received good reviews. [News Flash!!!] Just released on Boardgamegeek, they will also be demoing Kings of Air and Steam! Woot! End of the line buddy, I’m gonna be camping out for that one.

You have got to feel good about Two Lantern Games’ story. A husband and wife team, they set out to make interesting, replayable games for two. Their first title, Morels, while mushroom themed, plays like a walk in the woods, with many layers of strategy and yet, can be learned in minutes. Check out the designer, Brent Povis, tell you everything you need to know about playing, and look for much more to come from them in 2013.

No wonder that Nietzsche was a nihilist…its the Moosetache.

Save some time for Thornhenge Games’ Kickstarter project, Lyssan. The components and art look pretty good in an Arthurian/medieval style combat, board control game. And, as would be fitting, on your way out, take a few with you playing Van Ryder Games’ nihilistic zombiepocolypse “If I’m Going Down…” Van Ryder has taken all the suspense out of the gameplay as you are assured to lose your life in the end, but asks the question, “how many zombies can you take out before you breathe your last?”

The Game Crafter folks will be there, and anyone interested in the self-publishing craze should stop in and talk to them first hand about what makes a successful game.

DO NOT go to GenCon and be a Woodpusher! Of any definition. My next piece(s) will turn the bright lights on the larger game companies and their new products releasing at the Con. Again, let us know if you have any special requests or games you would like to see reviewed in future posts, and we will try to get a game or two in!

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Five Star General, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces WWII, 34th President of the USA

My boss is a taskmaster. Which is good, because sometimes I find it hard to stay on task. He learned it from his boss decades ago; a guy he affectionately refers to as “The Old Sarge,” who constantly drilled into him the following mantra: “Plan your work and work your plan!” My guess is that the Old Sarge heard it direct from General Eisenhower as they stormed the beaches of Normandy in “Operation Overlord.” Either way, the message is now passed on again, leaving you to wonder, what in the blue blazes does this have to do with my upcoming trip to GenCon? Well, let me assure you faithful readers, it has everything to do with it.

GenCon LLC, the entity behind the “Best Four Days in Gaming,” celebrating its 45th year this year, released the map of its “Exhibit Hall,” or vendor’s room, or, as I heretofore decree it shall ever-after be referred to as…. “Gamer Nerd-Vana” ® © ™ (Anyone seriously wanting to obtain the rights to use this catchy phrase for their nerd-related enterprise, please contact my agent.)

The big boys, corporate sponsors and perennial powerhouses are well represented. (An upcoming GenCon preview piece will address their wares). As you can see from the map, they have huge footprints near all the entrances and exits so they are hard to miss, even in a fire drill. However, the smaller, start-up and new game companies get pushed off to less trafficked space. If you are not looking pretty hard, you may just miss them. With a room full of over 40,000 people, some game companies and their products may be as hard to find as a renaissance faire reject dressed as a night elf playing harp music in Klingon. Well…maybe not the best example; it is GenCon after all.

On the outside: fearsome DeathMage. On the inside: Jimmy Buffett fan.

And so, in three short paragraphs we come full circle. In order to make the most of your GenCon trip, it is best to spend a little upfront time, yes, planning. (Ok, ok, “planning” for GenCon is a lot like knowing what all your Christmas presents are and the order in which you will open them, but go with me on this one). Planning is particularly acute when you are going with friends. You could literally spend all four days in the dealer hall and not see or do the same thing the whole trip. Probably you do not have that luxury. Likely, each of you will have different things on your to-do lists, so, best to coordinate, divide, then go all Eisenhower on its ass.

Looking through the list of dealers with space in the hall, there are a ton of interesting, small up-and-coming game companies making an appearance. This piece profiles a few of them (the letters A-L) with some interesting games.

5th Street Games will be featuring its newest title Castle Dash and a trio of animal games, from My Happy Farm, Farmageddon, to The Crow and the Pitcher. All four games are done in 30 minutes or less, and are apparently geared toward the Farmville addicts out there who can now try their farm-hand at real life agri-gaming. Castle Dash looks to be a quick and fun combat/thievery game, likely best for three to four players.

Ape Games, which had a real hit at the Con last year with 1955: The War of Espionage, looks to have another huge one its hands with Rolling Freight. When I first read the write up on it, I immediately thought: Ticket to Ride clone, but after watching the how-to-play video, I was immediately shamed back into my corner. With a great look and seemingly immersive game play this one could be really fun. While I have never been drawn to a “rails” game, this one may be my first. I promise more to come on this one.

¿Qué pasa? with Baksha Games’ new release Banditos? Attorney General Eric Holder may not find it too funny, but the concept of running “fast and furious” south of the border to rob the Banco de Mexico sounds dangerously delicious. Maybe its the 80’s theme or the handlebar mustachios; either way, color me interested. If there is a frickin’ El Camino card I am coming home with a box! Time to bust out the Refreshments, (and I don’t just mean chips and dip), pack your Jean-Luc Picard ID card, and lets roll!

“Four day badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ four day badges”

Blood & Cardstock’s card game, Showbiz Shuffle, puts you at the helm of a Hollywood hit making movie studio. But be careful, you could end up with bad ratings or a drinking problem! (Which you may have at the Con anyway…) If you like the idea of tabletop miniatures mixed with conventional board games, you may be drawn to Chaostle, by Chivalry Games. Yes, Chaos. TLE.

A couple that I will cheek out are Prince of the Dragon Throne from Clever Mojo Games, and one I am very excited about, Conquistador Games’ Road to Enlightenment, with players vying for world domination, (it never gets old), through control of scientists, artists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians and military leaders, to be recognized as the most prestigious monarch. Set in the 17th and early 18th centuries, you can bet your man-dresses this one will be a blast.

“I’m going to war. These shoes or the red ones?”

Fireside Games will be showing off their cooperative castle defense game, Castle Panic!, which got a little deeper this year with the addition of its first expansion The Wizard’s Tower. Both games have won some awards, and look to be fun for the whole family with simple concepts and card play. Floodgate Games opens them on Legacy: Gears of Time, and while the card art is a little basic, I am always curious how a time travel game counts down. Another such game, Timeline: Discoveries could prove interesting. Gamewick Games (where they are “Getting Lit…with Imagination!) shuffle into the con with their entry in the zombie craze, Pittsburgh 68, a “frenzied card-n-dice game” that promises to play like a zombie movie. Expect it to be heavy on brain eating and cardio.

Another primate purveyor, Gorilla Games swings in with its catalogue including World Conquerors and the expansion Revolutionaries. Another game of global domination with cards and dice, it also features historical figures who dramatically change the course of battle. Eisenhower anyone?

A midwestern boy myself, I would be remiss if I did not heap a copious measure of attention on Gut Bustin’ Games’ line of hillbilly themed diversions, Trailer Park Wars and Redneck Life. Perchance these campestral contests play as different as a tornado, or a redneck divorce, but, I’ll bet in either game, just like our dupal disasters, someone is going to lose a double-wide.Their newest offering, Oh Gnome You Don’t, seems to be less reality based and more pun, which according to the comedy experts, is the lowest form of humor.

Live the dream. ’Nuff said.

The guys from Level Zero Games (“because everyone starts at level zero”) should be back with their cyber-themed card game Node as well as The Depths, an interesting concept of eat or be eaten at the bottom of the sea.

My next post will focus on the smaller game makers from M-Z and after that, a couple final preview pieces on the big boys and girls of the Con! Let us know in the comments below if you are interested in any of these games (or others), and we will try to slot in a demo.

Having put that note forward, I would attest that I am still in disgust of this kind of play, and it did lead to heated discussions upon endgame.
(Which always happens, but this was more than the nerdy trashtalks that is usual).

Let me try to describe the situation, as it describes “The loser ruin” pretty well.
3 players play through a game until the final round. 2 players are deadlocked for the victory – 1 is left way behind (literally no chance to win).
So it happens, that upon the last move the player far behind has the option to play 1 of three special cards.
2 of these puts the player a slight bit further up the board (still no chance to win), but the remaining card seriously pulls back 1 other player.
This player is now actually able to determine the game, if he plays this card – as whoever gets it ends up second; the other one wins.

So do you play that card?

What is already quite clear, is that I was the one handed the card, ending up second – but still ending up ahead of the player who played it.
So what is the reason- besides personal grudges – for playing that card? I am still puzzled.

Would you chose to play it – or just admit defeat and let events unfold?
I am maybe old fashioned – but there is still a certain honor in admitting clear defeat; until you pull a stunt like that.

Of course there is valid arguments to play that ruining action, but if you are in no position to win the game either way, you are playing “The Loser Ruin”.

“The Loser ruin”:
The moment where you in clear defeat deliberately choose to ruin the game for another player, just for the fun of it.
And that is not losing like a Boss.

“Ok, so if we’re at downtown crossing, and we’re trying to get to the Aquarium…”

Sadly, I’ve had this experience recently in boardgame form. Let me explain:

Over the past two weeks when Brandon and I have gotten together to play board games, we expanded from the two of us to a small group of 4 or 5. And with the varying levels of skill and relative newness to board-gaming among the group (Brandon and I being huge nerds, John being an experienced player, Dan and G having played a few games but still relatively new to Euro style games) we decided to go with one of the classics: Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is one of my favorite intro games because it has a lot going on but has the relatively simple mechanic of role selection. In addition, it seats 5 and has very little in the way of directly screwing someone over for the sake of screwing someone over; these are all things that I think were beneficial knowing the personalities of all who were in attendance. And while I hadn’t played PR in years (2009 is my best guess, but it very well could have been 2008), I had a sense for the general flow of the game and only needed a quick refresher on the rules. After all, I had played a great deal of Race for the Galaxy in the interim, and Race is basically just Puerto Rico in Space… right?

Amusingly enough, what I had done was set myself up for the opposite scenario as to what I did so well in my Ticket To Ride post. Rather than re-examine the game with a fresh set of eyes, I tried to follow strategies I had floating around in the back of my head. Rather than focus on the tactics of what other people were doing, I focused on what I thought they should be doing based on my flawed strategy* based on vague recollections from years past.

Turns out, Puerto Rico is a game based on a strategy of getting money early to develop an engine that gets you victory point chips late (if you want to read waaayyyy too much on the strategy and tactics of a game of Puerto Rico, I highly recommend that link).** And while I did build an engine, it was clunky and slow and by the time it got going, I was easily outmaneuvered in the late game. My very first play of the game was builder so I could get a building that I remembered to be strong (everybody’s gonna be jealous that I got the hacienda!) was a poor one, and by the time I had gotten some goods worth trading, no one was trading anymore.

Relative newbies to the field of boardgaming had figured out the underlying pitfalls of focusing on shipping much faster than I did. I had knowledge from Race that not only did not serve me, but blinded me when it became clear to others. Knowledge is power, but having only a little bit of knowledge and making assumptions off of it is dangerous.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. – William Shakespeare

In sum: When playing a game, getting stuck in a routine rather than reexamining where you are won’t win you many games. And just like revisiting a foreign city, its best to double check the map before you go, and if you can’t find that favorite restaurant, you might be able to find a new path towards a good meal.

——————————————————————————————————————–

*Quick note on terminology here. I’m using strategy to mean a long term philosophy that can be followed over the length of the game. Tactics are individual moves based on the current (and a few upcoming) turns. So for example, both PR and Innovation are tactical games, but Innovation does not lend itself to much strategic planning.

**In doing a little reading on Puerto Rico for this post, I ran across this and have a lot to say about it. Its coming in another post.

Sometimes it sucks to be right.

(Today’s installment on Pretty Sneaky, Sis comes to us from new team member William “Stu” Thomas. I’ve known this upstanding gentleman for years and I’ve always called him Bill. Which is okay as a short for William, but this makes me think he goes more by Stu? Well, whatever. Welcome to the team, Bill! Enjoy reading! ~joe)

We stand nearly at the midpoint of summer, which means the year is half over. Yes, already. A sad acknowledgment that time moves quicker than we would like. But, on the good news front, it means GenCon is almost upon us. While I do not get the opportunity to go every year, I have been a regular for the last several, just getting over to Indy for a couple days to see the sights. If you have never gotten a pass to the “Best Four Days of Gaming,” as Ferris Bueller suggests, “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.” Any former attendee will tell you it is unlike any other gaming experience.

Right out of Jonathan Coulton’s nightmares.

One of my favorite things to do roaming the dealer room at the Con is lingering by the vendor I affectionately refer to as the “CCG Cryptkeeper.” (CCG is an acronym for “Collectible Card Game.”) It is truly a deep emotional experience. They haul out of the deepest recesses of their vaults, and sometimes dust off, their stock of old, out-of-print, discarded misfit CCGs cast off and shut down by their makers. It is a rogues gallery of seemingly irrelevant pop culture references at times, and at others a testament to the power of some pitch man somewhere who once convinced the powers-that-be that a card game based on Pez would move units. Yeah, Pez.

The crowds roaming the narrow aisles at the Con flow like the Mississippi River during flood stage, so get out of the way and pick your spot. If you are lucky, the Dead CCG Memorial has been erected in an off-the-strip location, thus allowing you to slow down and do the mental math on how much money you lost in the market. (“Lets see, I bought 10 boxes of Mythos at retail,” [clicka-cliaka-ching], “now, they are selling for $6.00 each,” [clicka-cliaka-cha-ching], “I just lost $10,000.00!!!”) I might need to reassess that whole “If you are lucky” statement.

For me, the hardest thing to do is to resist…the…urge…to keep my wallet in my pocket. I usually have to go by the table with a sponsor or someone more responsible, to check my feelings against. (“Look at that! They have boxes of Highlander for $6.00!! I need that! It would be totally awesome to get a bunch and play…” “Uh, no. No it wouldn’t.” [SMACK!] “Thanks, I needed that.”) But it also rejuvenates my interest in games that I actually did play, some not so long ago, allowing me to replenish my supply of booster packs and starter decks and feel the rush of serotonin and dopamine as I open pack after pack ogling the shiny new rares I amass; followed quickly by the crushing reality that no one else wants to play with me.

The only thing bringing visitors into the Gen Con 2003 Ophidian booth….Proof that sexy sells anything.

In nearly 20 years of the “CCG era,” the mainstream gaming industry spawned over 340 different, distinct and, in most cases, dead games. One thing is clear, natural selection eventually corrected an industry awash with product. There were games that should never have been printed, and others that were far too short lived. Only the strong survived, and in their current form are much more evolved and sophisticated. The king of the mountain and 800 lb. gorilla from day one, Magic: the Gathering, (M:tG) remains atop the leader board, as the number one selling, grossing and likely, played CCG ever. It may never be surpassed. Yu-gi-oh! and Pokémon persist in most top 10 sellers lists, along with other long-standing properties like Legend of the Five Rings. For some reason, (perhaps to be addressed in future missives), these games lasted the test of time as a “collectible” property.

Others did not fare so well.

A toast to all that might have been. Damn solo missions.

Take for example a personal letdown; Spycraft, a gem of a game which simply ceased to be. It had all the cool elements of a huge hit, spies, guns, ninjas, art, guns, a great bluffing mechanic. Yet, it did not have enough traction or players to maintain itself. Eventually it was cast aside and forgotten. Another personal favorite: Magi-nation Duel. Fun game, good art and terrific mechanic with a strict adherence to purpose and theme. But there were others out there, games attached to great properties that just did not have what it took: Dune, Vampire, ICE’s Middle Earth, Star Wars, Star Trek, the list goes on and on.

Then there were the games that fell into the “you have got to be kidding me” category. Absolute atrocities for one reason or another: Kult and Heresy: Kingdom Come (come on, gamers have a hard enough time as it is, but Satanists?)(…I bought some, BTW), Hecatomb (pentagonal cards that had you wondering, “What the heck is a Hecatomb?”), Spellfire (absolute mess, card art, mechanics, all of it miserable), and my all time favorite game to hold up as the ultimate pinnacle of questionable: Ophidian 2350. Space gladiators of the future, (the events took place in the year 2350, as noted in the catchy serpentine moniker), who keep “the Flow” fighting for “Cheer” to win. Sorry, I have a strict rule: Do not buy anything that takes place in the same century Duck Dodgers is keeping interstellar peace.

You’d have to be on ‘shrooms to understand this game. Or be able to enjoy it.

Some games, however, are either too interesting, or special, or heck, too convenient to die. Many game mechanics were “borrowed” and re-used in subsequent releases, or outright lifted (compare the rule set for Spycraft against Full Metal Alchemist, or most games to M:tG). 

Some properties with loyal, persistent fan bases continue to give life to their favorite games maintaining on-line resources, councils and fan created releases. Star Wars and Star Trek are prime examples of this level of commitment. Because of the power of the interwebs, players can keep in touch and get together at annual events like GenCon to play “World Championship” tournaments for no-longer active games.

7th Sea players still get together at GenCon to compete in the “Battle for Richebeau” event. Doomtown players will be hosting a 2012 “Doomtown “Harrowed” World Championship event with some pretty cool prize support for the winner. (Thursday night in the game hall – bring some generic tickets and your cards). Warlord will still see some action in the CCG hall. Who knows, maybe there will be some Legend of the Burning Sands or Star Wars games as well. Just walk through the card hall, and you will no doubt see all manner of old and new games alike getting played all day and night long. Bring some of your old favorite decks from your old favorite games, and I’ll bet you just might be able to jump into a tournament.

If I make it to GenCon this year, I will of course explore all the brand spanking new shiny games, bells and whistles the vendors will have to display. Better yet, I may just have Eager Young Space Cadet pick me up some of the “new” stuff at the CCG Memorial table in the twenty fourth and a half century!!!!!!! It’ll be cheaper then.

And our latest obsession is a game called The Resistance.

This terrific little card game takes everything that’s good about games like Battlestar Galactica, Werewolf, and Mafia and boils them down to a 20-minute gem.

Your team is part of the Resistance—a force that opposes the ruling government. If it’s easier, you can think of it as the Rebel Alliance fighting against the Empire. The problem is that the Empire has planted spies among your rebel forces. The spies know who each other are, but the Rebels have no idea who the spies are—just that they’re among the group.

The game is very abstracted. You’re going on five missions—they might be sabotaging facilities or infiltrating a base. It doesn’t matter and the game doesn’t specify. The point is that the Rebels want the missions to succeed, and the spies want the missions to fail. The first side to have three missions go their way wins.

At the start of the game you randomly choose someone to be Leader. That person will suggest a team to go on the first mission. People will convince and cajole, trying to get the Leader to put people they trust on the mission. But you don’t know if the Leader is a spy and seeding the team with a fellow spy!

Eventually the Leader proposes a team and everyone gets to vote on whether that team goes on the mission. If a majority of the players vote yes, the mission goes on. If a majority vote no—or the vote is tied—that’s a vote of No Confidence in the Leader. The leadership passes to the next player and he or she proposes a new team for the mission. It can happen that it takes a few times to finally land on a team that gets voted through. But the Rebels have to beware; if the vote fails five times on any one mission, the Spies automatically win because the Rebels aren’t organized enough to be effective.

So if the team passes, they go on the mission. This consists of handing out a set of cards to each person going on the mission. One card is a Pass, and the other is a Fail. Players secretly choose one and put it in the middle. Then the Leader shuffles all of the cards so no one knows who played what card, and they’re revealed.

As long as they’re all Passes, the mission succeeds, but if there’s even one Fail, the mission fails. (During the fourth of the five missions it takes two Fails for the mission to fail, but that’s the lone exception.)

Whether the mission fails or succeeds, you now have a bit more information. Those three people went on a mission that failed, so at least one of them must be a Spy. But who? That’s the vanilla game, and in the vanilla game the Spies win A LOT. SO the fine people at Indie Boards and Cards included some Plot Cards, which are meant to even things out a bit. Some of the plot cards force people to show another player their Role card (which reveals whether they’re a Spy or not). This creates great tension. Is the person a Spy? Did they show their card to another Spy so they wouldn’t be revealed?

The Spies are trying to sew seeds of confusion, throw people off the scent, or even (and this one of my favorite tricks), throw your fellow Spies under the bus after they’re served their purpose, which makes you seem trustworthy. Then you stab the Rebels in the back later. In my opinion, it’s much more fun to play as the Spies.

It’s definitely worth noting that the game involves lying. Keep an eye out for a short article where I discuss the role of lying, and the internal struggle I have with it. This is a fantastic game to play with a youth group, just be aware that you’re kind of encouraging deception.

This is easily my most-played game of all time. I can’t see it ever growing old.

We’re going to be giving away a copy of this great game, so stay tuned to see how you can get your own copy! And thanks for reading!

This past weekend was DieCon,  and being the helpful friendly nerd I am I was in attendance to help other nerds learn to nerd. For the most part, I was teaching people how to play Thunderstone  and Infinite City (I forgot how much I actually like that game and should do a write-up on it). I made some new nerd friends (hi guys!) and saw some old nerd friends (hi guys!), and also got my first Tarot deck (technically second, but the first one totally rubbed me the wrong way) The Steampunk Tarot  It also afforded me an opportunity to talk shop with Jeff of Steamfortress Victory  and to play a few other games like Wok Star  and Chaos in the Old World. I made arrangements to get a series of Battlestar Galactica games played. Woot! And how is it I haven’t written anything about one of the best games in the history of ever? *grumbleslackergrumble* Lastly, I brought myself back to the ring to take another shot at a game my last run-in with was a bit suspect.

7 Wonders is another game I picked up based on the hype surrounding it. It was all the rage over on BGG for a while, which more often than not is a reliable barometer for the quality of a game. Though I feel that should come with a disclaimer, in that if you don’t like certain types of games, even the best will fail to impress you. I have a friend who doesn’t like Battlestar Galactica (which in my opinion is an utterly ridiculous concept) because he doesn’t like games with a traitor mechanic. First-person shooter games are very popular among many video gamers and I can’t stand them. Modern Warfare, Call of Duty, all these games that get crazy good reviews? I wouldn’t touch ‘em. (Not even with a link) To each their own, but I digress.

Pretty. Oh so pretty.

My faithful reader may recall that I had an experience with 7 Wonders last October at Archon. It was not exactly what one would call helpful, and as a result, a pretty solid game returned to the shelf to collect dust for over half a year. That experience left me confused in regards to the point of the game and how to play it. I knew better than to give up on it completely, but not well enough to give it another try under different circumstances for a long time. UNTIL NOW. Which was pretty much by fortuitous chance.

Each player is assigned a Wonder tile at random at the beginning of the game (such as The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, The Colossus of Rhodes and the Great Pyramid of Giza). They are all unique and double-sided with different abilities. Ostensibly, this is to vary gameplay or difficulty (expanding replayability), but I haven’t played enough to really confirm this. Each of the Wonders also has some special “ability” that manifests as either bonus points or the ability to acquire more advancements at no cost, etc. I haven’t played it enough to determine if I feel they are balanced or if some Wonders are strictly better than others. It’s okay if you want to say “Hey Joe…maybe you should play some more before writing about it, huh?” I still feel I got a solid grasp on the game though, and I promised to write about this game close to a year ago. Time to get serious about gaming.

Game play is separated into three phases called Ages. Each Age has its own deck of cards.  During each age, each player is dealt 7 cards from the deck appropriate to the age. Each player will then select a card that they will play and pass the remaining cards to the player next to them (clockwise or counterclockwise pending what Age it is). Just in case there is someone here unfamiliar with this concept (and I question what you are doing reading this blog) this is called Drafting. Drafting continues until each player only has two cards left, where they choose one to play and the other is discarded. This marks the end of the Age. Cards drafted will generate various resources and some of them lead to higher scoring combinations. There are a number of different scoring mechanics, but only Military accrues points at the end of every Age, while the rest tally up at the end. The winner is the player who has accrued the most points at the end of the game. Shocker. I wonder how much more difficult and/or interesting it would make the game if it pulled an Abandon Ship and rewarded 2nd place as the winner.

I feel 7 Wonders earned most of the hype it’s been given. It’s a great game for a number of reasons.

1) Aesthetically speaking, the game is gorgeous. The art on the cards and the Wonders themselves is top notch. It’s always nice to have something pretty to look at in a game, and it does make an impact. There have been solid games before that didn’t do as well as they could because people just didn’t like the way it looked.

2) Drafting as a game genre is interesting. I’ve been in booster drafts for various CCGs like Legend of the Five Rings and Magic: The Gathering but in those scenarios it’s different because you’re trying to pull what is strongest for you with a lesser focus on denying the other players good cards (called “hate drafting”). You’re also creating a deck to play a game there. In this, the drafting *is* the game, so paying attention to what you are passing down the line is a lot more important. To the best of my knowledge, 7 Wonders is unique in using drafting as a game mechanic, and I won’t be surprised if it catches fire in the way that Dominion did for the deckbuilding genre. There is a fair amount of strategic depth to the game in that the complexity rises in each passing Age. 

3) It can support SEVEN people without really changing the length of the game dramatically. How often can you say that a game plays approximately the same speed with 3 as it does 7? That’s strictly a question of time though. The game plays a lot differently pending the number of players you have. Most of your interactions will be with the two players next to you, but in games with fewer players, you will have more opportunities to draw from your original hand, where with larger games, you are only ever going to get one opportunity to draw from any given hand.

4) Not a one trick pony! By its very nature, it can’t be. There are multiple routes to scoring, and many of them don’t particularly play well together. You can try to be a jack-of-all-trades, but I don’t think you’d be successful. Between the various methods of scoring (which even vary within themselves – easier point strategies yield smaller rewards, more complex ones are harder to pull off but with greater reward) you can go after different strategies and do pretty well with it.

As I’ve said before though, no game is perfect,  this one has a couple foibles, neither of which are dealbreakers in my estimation.

After playing the game, thinking about the cards and the various strategies/point scoring methods, I suspect that a lot of games will work out the same in terms of what decisions you’re making, with the largest impact to strategy coming from how many players are in the game. I could be wrong though, and I want to put in a lot more games before I officially stamp this as a foible. Right now, we’ll just label it a concern.

Crowded house. Not for the small-tabled.

The game is big. As in not table friendly. The cards are oversized and due to a lot of handling and shuffling will likely require sleeves, so you’ll want special sized sleeves. Mayday Games is a good place to look for them. Each player will have a fair number of these oversized cards in front of them and it eats table space really fast. This can be mitigated somewhat with some clever stacking, but it’s important for your neighbors to see what you have in play. The more you play and become familiar with the cards, the more you’ll be able to condense the required space, but even at its most efficient Tetrising, it’s going to take up a fair amount of space.

Lastly, for a game that’s pretty easy, it took a lot to get me through those first two games. Admittedly, the first teaching was just terrible, and the second was a little complex too, but it might just be a tricky game to explain. Once we played a game of it, I got it just fine.

Straddle shipping ports. LIKE A BOSS

In the end, I like 7 Wonders a lot. It’s a wonder-ful (see what I did there?) game that doesn’t take much time to play, so you can fit multiple games in a single night. This is my first experience with Antoine Bauza, the designer of the game. I also own Ghost Stories but haven’t tried it yet. Might have to change that. Work, work, work. 

Pretty Sneaky Sis is attracting some attention! We have a few people that plan to join me in making it so our faithful reader has more to read!  Stay tuned for more changes in where this whole thing is going.

What should I do next? Sound off in the comments.

Heh. Michele Bachmann quote. Who would have thought it?

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things. Like why you haven’t updated your dumb blog in so long when you actually have readers who have made specific requests. Lewis Carroll could stand to go back to rhyme school. Well, my faithful audience of four, the answer is multi-faceted.

It’s a harrowing tale of heartbreak, betrayal, revenge and redemption. Paradise lost, opportunities discovered, adventures embarked upon and lessons learned.

At one point I engaged in battle with my doppelganger (or perhaps the doppelganger is I?) on a mountaintop where my foe was defeated and plummeted to his uncertain doom, only to make a surprise appearance at a later hour inside an active volcano where a smaller but more intense battle took place to resolve our enmity once and for all.

But all that real life nonsense has little to do with gaming, so I’m guessing you want me to shut up and get on with the real reason you’re here.

Yep. It’s a big one. But oh so pretty.

Lords of Waterdeep is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. By which I mean a Euro game cleverly disguised as a D&D product.

Or as clever as you can be with the dead giveaway of colored wooden cubes, anyway. I picked up this game because it had a lot of buzz.

Hype is not normally something I go in for, but for whatever reason, this time was different. It was probably the D&D brand, to be honest.

Even though I wasn’t crazy about the 4E system, I found myself very intrigued by all of the adventure games Wrath of Ashardalon, or the Drizzt one (I couldn’t be bothered to look up the name, such is my contempt for Drizzt). I also was drunk with a huge amount of store credit at my local game store. It worked out well for me.

First, the materials. They’re solid. And they are many.

This is a double edged sword. Similar to many Fantasy Flight titles, there are a lot of chits and moving parts, but unlike those games, the game doesn’t lend itself well to bagging.

I discovered this, of course, right *after* I  finished punching and bagging everything.

There is actually a diagram in the back of the rulebook that shows how to put the game away. And it’s vital. Don’t drop or spill this game, you will cry. If this game is traveling, do yourself a huge favor and invest in some of those board game rubber bands.

Hitting one nasty pothole with this in the trunk will totally ruin your day. Here’s a few pro-tips though that have made my life much easier.

Replace the red jewel VP chits with a tower of small D6s. They fit perfectly under one of the decks of cards and you won’t have the frustration of  trying to get those chits back in the slot they are supposed to be in.

I may still replace the Gold Piece tokens with poker chips, because they are similarly infuriating to try to put away, but this can be mitigated considerably by spearing all of them onto a Q-Tip.

The box is a little weird, but really, that’s a small quibble. The cards are of decent quality. Not great, but they shouldn’t see too much handling, so they’ll be OK. The art and the board are all fantastic and flavorful.

Don’t be fooled by the simple appearance. This can be a monumental pain in the ass.

Component quality is nice, but really, you want to know about the game play. Game play is in a word: fun.

In two words: really fun.

It’s an elegant simple design that everyone grasps pretty quickly. The theme of the game isn’t exactly deep, it’s pretty much a D&D veneer on top of a Euro worker placement game, but it adds just enough to make it fun.

The theme is great in that it may help appeal to someone who might not have checked out this style of game.

At its heart, this is a simple game. Each player starts with some meeples (called Agents), a few Quests to complete, a few Intrigue cards to force player interaction and a Lord of Waterdeep, WHICH IS TOTALLY THE NAME OF THE GAME, I SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE!

Each Lord has two Quest types that they will score bonus points for at the end of the game. Whereas you can take Quests of any type (Warfare, Piety, Arcana, Commerce and Skullduggery) it benefits you most to keep to the types your Lord provides bonuses for. Given, this telegraphs who your secret Lord is, but typically the only people who are going to try to hamper you via Quest selection are people who need the same Quest types.

On each turn, you place an Agent (the number you have access to scales with the number of players), resolve the action on the space you placed your Agent, and if applicable, complete a Quest. Most of the spaces on the board collect various currencies to spend on Quest completion.

The other spaces allow you to acquire new Quests, or play your Intrigue cards. Also on the board are Building spaces, where a small assortment of new spaces/new abilities can be added. There are many more building options than there are building availabilities, which enhances replay value.

Intrigue cards are a mechanic to force more player interaction outside of worker placement order. For example, some might provide you with a certain Adventurer type, but force you to give someone else one too.

Universally reviled are Mandatory Quests, which are minor roadblocks you can stick on players to hamper their game. Mandatory Quests provide little reward but must be completed before you can complete other Quests with better rewards.

She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid.

A turn ends when all Agents have been placed. There’s a brief clean-up step and game continues to the next turn. Midway through the game, everyone gets an extra Agent, which is nice.

The game ends after 8 turns, at which point you tally up your Victory Points to determine a winner. Don’t be fooled though, those 8 turns fly quickly.

In many ways this game feels a lot like Agricola to me, but really, that’s a hell of a compliment as Agricola is one of my favorite games.

There aren’t a lot of really new concepts here, but the game still feels fresh and original. It is simple enough to appeal to casual gamers and deep enough to appeal to fans of other Euro worker placement games, which is a pretty difficult balance to strike.

In some ways, it is superior to Agricola in that A) the theme is more accessible than farm building under brutal conditions and B) with Agricola, you know what is going to happen in which phases of the game.

The randomized elements expand replay value better with Lords of Waterdeep, but honestly, it’s not like Agricola has a problem with replayability.

The game plays quick enough to be able to rock out several games in a single evening which is a huge point in its favor. Is it the best game in my collection? Probably not, but it’s definitely one that will see a lot of play.

Lords of Waterdeep marks the best drunk decision I’ve ever made.

Editor’s Note: Today’s installment is brought to you by Pretty Sneaky, Sis field correspondent Chris Hodges. Welcome to the team, Chris!

“For variety of mere nothings gives more pleasure than uniformity of something.”  – Jean Paul Richter

As a gamer and a parent, let me tell you that family games are tough. You always have access to those musty standbys

(Uno, SORRY, etc.) They vary wildly in inclusiveness, replay value, pace and strategic options. Not to bash them (I still think Monopoly is a solid enough game, in its way) but they indisputably lack a sheen and freshness, and I think that without that, analog gaming tends to pale in comparison to the digital alternatives available to families.

That’s one reason why I was heartened when Lego started releasing board games a few years back; there is a modern sensibility to them; a shininess that might make them seem relevant to my offspring. The other reason is that my son (Holden) is a Lego fanatic, so I knew they’d be an easy sell.

The games run the gamut from relatively simple roll and move games (on the low end of the line’s price range) to more complex strategy games (the Harry Potter Lego game is a fantastic game that could stand an article all of its own). The simpler games are fantastic for ease of play (it’s a rarity to have a game I can play with my 9 year old son and my 5 year old daughter and have them both be able to enjoy it and compete on a more or less even playing field) whereas the more complex games are a wonderfully insidious way to nurture my firstborn’s nascent gaming instincts.

So, you must imagine my excitement when I noticed their Heroica games. As a recovered roleplayer who had cut his teeth on D&D at a tender age, I was immediately smitten with a fantasy-themed adventure game using the trappings of Lego’s games. If you’re fortunate enough to remember Milton Bradley‘s HeroQuest board games, Heroica might be best described as, bearing a slight digression in complexity, ‘HeroQuest Lite’.

I really hope there is a skull shaped lair here, even if it has to be made of Legos.

The game is competitive, rather than collaborative; elegantly eliminating the need for a GM of any sort, while still retaining the core elements of a traditional “dungeon crawl” scenario. The game line is comprised of a number of distinct game sets, all of which can stand alone or be combined/revised to expand the game (in keeping with what it owes to its precursors, it offers rules for some continuity and [limited] character-customization between games). Each adventure is set in one of the various areas of the Heroica world (there’s even a big map. I love that shit.) and has its own options for what sort of hero to play (Knight, Wizard, Druid [hell yes, you read that right], Thief, etc) as well as different kinds of monsters and special items.

Each of the types of heroes has a either a unique melee or ranged ability (The Wizard has a ranged attack, whereas the Thief’s melee ability generates 1 gold [useful for either purchasing equipment between games or just for bragging rights] when defeating a monster.) Your heroes can also collect secondary weapons (there is a wand, for example, that essentially grants the wizard’s ranged attack, but with a smaller range), potions, magic items and torches.

The only thing missing is Link and the Master Sword.

So, there’s really a good bit of complexity to the game, but most of it’s intuitive enough that it doesn’t prevent the gameplay from being fairly fast-paced (the games usually run, not including some time for setup, 10-20 minutes at most).

Though my son and I usually favor custom-built courses (packed full of extra monsters and treasure, obviously) we elected to play the original scenario for the “Nathuz” set for our exhibition game. For “Nathuz”, your stalwart band is out to wrest control of the Scepter of Summoning from the Golem Lord of Nathuz (i.e. it’s a race to kill him and take his stuff. don’t underestimate the importance of setting such an example to children at a young age). To accomplish this perilous task you can choose to play as the Wizard, the Barbarian or the Thief.

Holden decided the Wizard (ranged: destroy a monster up to 4 squares away) was the best-suited hero to take on the numberless horde of golems (as well as the vicious bats that plague the area). I opted for the Barbarian (melee: defeat all adjacent enemies) because… well, sometimes you just have to play a barbarian.

Round One….FIGHT!

With our respective champions selected, we dove in. Holden came out swinging and took out a bat near the entrance, though it bloodied him (1 dmg, 3 hp remaining) in the process. I took a more cautious approach and stopped to pick up a torch (+1 movement, baby!). Soon, however, we found ourselves beset with foes made of sterner stuff. Well, really more Legos, but you get the point.

I encountered a golem and dispatched it, taking 2 dmg in the process (golems are stronger than bats, 2 hp remaining) and losing my torch. Holden, upon sighting the first golem to get in his way, killed it to claim some nearby gold though he also took 2 damage (only 1 hp remaining!) from the endeavor.

Thus bloodied, we achieved the inner sanctum of the Golem Lord at roughly the same time, with the Wizard a few steps ahead. Holden immediately charged  (who’s playing the barbarian here?) but the Golem Lord batted him aside as easily as he might a fly, taking the Wizard down to zero HP and into unconciousness (don’t despair- the game has a generous regeneration clause built-in for downed characters, allowing you to stay in the game in exchange for giving up a turn or two). Seeing my chance, the Barbarian strode forward to confront our puissant foe and (with the help of some lucky rolls) managed to vanquish him and claim the Scepter of Summoning.

In the end, it was the Barbarian, not the Wizard who defeated the Golem. Paper beats rock my ass.

In conclusion, the game is perhaps the ultimate “gateway” “gateway-game” a fantasy roleplayer could hope for. It has excellent replay value (between the hero options and near-limitless customization inherent with the form) and doesn’t eat up a ton of time while still being satisfying.

The Heroica series as of this point has six different settings (as well as a set of promotional cards) all of which can be played as stand alone or combined with each other for complete customization. Nothing less than what you would expect from a game based on Legos.

geek/gēk/

Noun:

An unfashionable or socially inept person. A person with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest: “a computer geek”

While many would not consider sports fans to be socially inept, they certainly fall under the second definition. Anyone who can give you a play-by-play of the 1977 FA Cup Final between Liverpool and Manchester United is certainly on the same level of eccentricity as someone who can recount the Battle of Yavin in more detail than is shown in Episode 4.

If you can name all of these pilots, you might be a geek.

Why is it, then, that sports geeks escape the derision normally heaped upon geeks. Is it because sports are considered to be more socially acceptable than more ‘traditional’ geek pursuits? It is commonly believed that partaking in sports is good for you, and it is… to a point. My Mum is a nurse and has treated so many rugby players who have torn their anterior cruciate ligament that she actively discouraged me from taking up the sport. It’s also worth remembering that sports fans aren’t always players themselves. Those who cannot play, ref, and those who cannot ref, sit on the couch claiming they can. And that’s not so say that other geeks are not lazy either. There are some forms of LARPing that can be just as exhausting as a game of rugby.

It’s not even a case of sports having been around longer than gaming. 5,000 year old dice have been found in Iran, and a D20 dating back to the Roman Empire sold at Christie’s Auction House in 2008. It is unlikely our distant ancestors used these dice for something other than gambling and board games, but it is fun to imagine the Epic of Gilgamesh as being the first Choose Your Own Adventure book, with a die required to determine how well the hero fared on his quest for immortality. It also doesn’t help that gaming tends to be a much smaller activity than your average sport. It’s hard to get a stadium full of people whooping and hollering when they can’t see what’s happening. At least, not in a good way.

There are a few games that seem to have made the transition, however. Poker is a prime example. Half a dozen people sitting around a table, each trying to keep the straightest face possible while scrutinising those of their opponents, doesn’t sound overly thrilling, does it? What about watching someone play a computer game? In South Korea there are two TV channels dedicated to online gaming. StarCraft has gone professional, with players competing for big money, as well as the chance to accept an oversized cheque from an actual female.

On the upside, you can use the cheque to hide your embarrassing erection.

I think there is room for a little expansion in this market. Computer gaming is doing well, but there are some board games that could be just as entertaining to watch. Fantasy Flight Games’ Battlestar Galactica board game could be shown in a similar way to poker. Instead of guessing who is sitting on a pair of Aces, the players would be trying to figure out the identity of the traitorous Cylon. It would take some clever camera work and judicious editing, but it has potential. Wil Wheaton is doing something similar with his YouTube series Tabletop, though in a more limited and educational fashion.

But I’m getting away from my original point. It seems that sports fans get to be called fans and not geeks because that’s what they’ve always been called. It’s likely not a deliberate choice, after all the term ‘geek’ didn’t really come into common use until the 1950′s. Up until then it referred to circus performers and derived from an older English work meaning ‘freak’ (making the TV show title Freaks and Geeks tautological). In the end, I guess it comes down to semantics. Sports geeks are ‘fans’, Star Trek geeks are ‘Trekkies’, and so on. Maybe coming up with terms for different types of geeks might be a way of removing some of the stigmas associated with our geekdom.

Tom Hanks has a lot to answer for.

Twilight Struggle is a simulation of the Cold War.  Players take command of either the United States or the Soviet Union and attempt to extend their spheres of influence across the world stage.  Successful game play seems to revolve around trying to hamper your opponent through staging coups, and expanding your own influence into areas that give you points.  All the while there is a DEFCON track that you need to keep an eye on – get to DEFCON 1 and you blow up the world (and lose).

I’m not going to spend a lot of time describing game play – there are lots of reviews out there on the game – it seems to be very popular at the moment.  Nor am I going to describe the game we played in detail.  Suffice to say that I played the Soviets and SW managed to blow up the world following a Soviet takeover of the Southeast Asia in the late 50′s.

Overall I really liked the game.  It was fast-paced and demanded a good deal of focus and forethought.  A complete campaign game takes around 4 hours to play, which means if you dedicate an evening to it you will get a complete experience and won’t need to leave the game set up somewhere at the mercy of household pets, nearby fault-lines, or your spouse.  Because each turn is a series of back-and-forth card plays between the players, there is never a time when you can zone out, stop paying attention, and just check back in on the game when your opponent is finished.  You need to be on top of what is happening at all times.  The cards (illustrated with period photographs) are all interesting, easy to read, and provide a good historical perspective of the events they represent (the rulebook has a paragraph or two on each card explaining its historical background).

I have tended to shy away from competitive gaming for the last decade or so, being more interested in cooperative board games and RPGs and the like.  But the game with SW really reminded me of how much fun board games can be, and I look forward to trying Twilight Struggle again in the near future.

For a more detailed discussion of Twilight Struggle, see the reviews at Board Game Geeks.

Jay Cheel: “Here’s a new short that I filmed with some friends over the past month. It’s a 10 minute documentary called “The Politics of Competitive Board Gaming Amongst Friends”; a title that pretty much sums up the content.

From a technical standpoint, I wanted to shoot this short as a sort of dry run for the recreations in my upcoming feature documentary, How to Build a Time Machine. Although the content and approach will be pretty different than what’s presented here, I just wanted to take on a small project that would allow me to play around with re-enactments. I shot this with the Panasonic AF100, using the following lenses: Nikon 50mm, Nikon 35mm, Panasonic Lumix 14mm. I didn’t do a whole lot for lighting aside from assisting some of the practical lights in Matt’s apartment (a 650 bounced off the ceiling), and stringing some coloured Christmas lights in the background for some visual points of interest. For the interviews, it was simply a single bulb cool light hung directly overhead the subjects.”