Unfortunately the picture I took does not do the brush justice. I highly recommend checking out their website.
As for diplomacy, I spent a fair amount of time on that today at work. When one has spent any time in the corporate world, you quickly realize that the same situation or problem needs to be couched in different ways, depending on one's audience. Managers get less detail and more careful hand holding than do technical engineers. One also must take into account in the audience is a member of your group, or a member of another (potentially competing) group where agendas may be different.
All told, it was a successful endeavor today. I got both my group and another group to agree to do things the way I think is best, as opposed to the over-complicated mess that they usually do. Less work, less bureaucracy, I win.
Game Report Day 6:
A significant portion of my game collection was purchased second-hand at less than retail prices. Even while we were living there, I came to appreciate that the Greater Portland Metro was one of the great meccas of board game thrifting. I knew that my prospects down under were not going to be as good. I did not expect them to be this bad. Patience does however eventually yield fruit. My wife on her wanderings did find one interesting item at a Salvo Store (Salvation Army for the non-Aussies).
Knights of Charlemagne is a newer (2006) printing of a reasonably old Reiner Knizia classic. For those of you who don't know that name, look it up. If you are anything resembling a serious hobby gamer, this is a name you should know. Knizia is one of, if not the most prolific game designer in the modern age. His stock in trade is taking simple mathematical concepts, and turning them into fascinating little games. Lost Cities is one of his best known and most popular games. In this game, players assign knights to cities and estates. The player with the most knights on a city or estate at the end of the game collects the points. The catch is that not all tiles are worth the same number of points. If you over commit to one area, you can very easily lose the entire game. I like this one quite a lot, especially with three players. It forces you to look in multiple directions and make contingency plans. The first game was a relatively close one with me winning, my son close behind, and my wife in third.
After that, whilst trying to get the other two children to avoid tearing up the apartment, we decided to play another quick game of Minecraft Card Game. This was our closest game yet, with my son coming out on top. My wife and I were, as she put it, tied for loser. She then informed my son that he would no longer be getting any coaching in that game from her. I wish she had figured that out sooner. I would have won that game.
Evolution is a game that I have been talking about a lot lately, mostly owing to the active playtesting that I am doing. In my perusal of the game forums on BGG, I came across a reference to a rule that was unfamiliar to me. This was more than a little disturbing. I have played the game a lot, and taught it to a log of people. The thought that I had taught and played the game incorrectly was unpleasant to say the least. Upon further reflection I reminded myself that everyone that I had played with recently still had fun, so I did not ruin anyone's day with my mistake. Even so, I now want to make sure I get around to the people that I had previously introduced to Evolution and play again, correctly this time.
The rule that I missed seems minor, but I believe it will in practice have a significant impact on game play. One of the drivers in the game are Trait Cards designating traits that can be then assigned to species making them more powerful, more durable, etc. Each player has a limited number of these cards at any one time, so great care is typically taken in deciding how they are best used. Inevitably, some species go extinct, and the traits that were assigned to that species get discarded. This is where I wend wrong. My original reading said that this was all that happened. If you were unlucky enough to have a species die with 3-4 trait cards, those cards were just gone. It turns out that players get some compensation for highly evolved species that go extinct in that they draw a new card for each trait that was assigned. Having cards being more plentiful is going to speed up the game (not necessarily a good thing, with the new expansion it is too fast already), but it will open up a lot more strategic options.
Options are always a good thing. Basic rule to game and life success: whenever possible, keep your options open and ready for use.
It was fun to score an interesting game today :-) Also it was unplayed with the cards still in their wrappings.
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