On Entropy and White Night

Entropy is a dangerous thing.  Entropy is the enemy of organization.  Entropy is the enemy of nice, pretty game shelves.  Having nice, pretty, well organized game storage is key is keeping said games in good condition for years to come.

I have always said that I have no expectation of my game collection remaining in as-new condition.  I say this of even the vintage titles that may (some day) hold some value to collectors.  That said, some of the game boxes were showing more than an acceptable level of wear and damage.  I resolved to do something about this, and that something was a re-org.

On off the unfortunate realities of my current living situation is that I do not have space for proper game shelving.  As such, most of the games occupy the hall closet, where one would normally store coats and other warm outerwear.  This is not a problem as cold does not exist in this country.  Another unfortunate reality is that my varied taste in games, along with a lack of consensus among game publishers, has produced a myriad of box sizes and dimensions.  This means that game organization and storage is something that requires careful planning, attention to detail, and years of practice playing Tetris.

To make a long(ish) story short(er),  that is how I spent my Saturday.  The entire contents of the closet were emptied and re-stacked so as to minimize or eliminate box crushing and dishing.  With that task done, I played some games with the kids and took a short nap.  White Night was calling.

This would be the second time I had experienced this event, and I can still safely say that I don't really know how to describe it in anything resembling concise terms.  For twelve hours starting at 7:00 PM on Saturday, the entire central business district of Melbourne shuts down to everything except pedestrian traffic.  This sets up a massive canvas for the expression of various arts and music.  Several large stages have rotations or musicians and dancers, while smaller acts and street performers fill in the space between.  You can see artists actively painting, while in the next glance see an entire building facade being used as a projection screen.

Unfortunately I did not get to see white as much this year as I did the year previous. (Darn those familial responsibilities!) Even so, it was still an amazing sight and I encourage people to look it up. (Google Melbourne White Night) I am sure that pictures and video from this year's event are starting to hit the interwebs.

Game report day 44 - Spot It!

Blue Orange Games has one of those libraries that makes a successful bridge between games exclusively for kids (i.e. parents can't stand playing them) and games for adults (i.e. kids don't get them).  Spot It! is exactly what the title makes it sound like.  It is a game about spotting matching symbols on different cards.  The rulebook contains several variations that can be further modified for the ages participating, but in general, if you see it first, you win.  Pattern recognition games are something that I am typically quite good at.  On this particular evening, my wife was easily holding her own, and I am told that this is another game to add to the list of games my eldest son does not need coaching or assistance.

Game report day 45 - Evolution: Climate

I received the long awaited e-mail from North Star Games that with the beta playtest files for Climate about a week ago.  Initially, I was not going to be in any great hurry to finish the build, as I thought that the weekly Meetup had a big Catan event scheduled.  Upon closer inspection of the calendar, that Catan event was next week.  So, off to the print shop I went.  Later that evening once the build was complete, I sat down with my wife to give it a run.  The results were somewhat less than surprising.  I won the game handily, but as my wife was quick to point out, I was already far more familiar with the new game content then she was.  That and she says that I have a better sense for game combinations and their usefulness.  She is probably right.  My time spent playing Magic had to have had some benefit.  Her other complaint is that there was still not enough climate events being triggered throwing chaos and uncertainty into the game.  Personally, I like that the chaos that the climate track can deliver is manageable.  I think with a few more plays, she will come to recognize and use some of the new strategic possibilities.

Game report day 46 - Evolution: Climate

Meetup time again and this was my chance to get more full table play testing done for Evolution: Climate.  The Meetup was fully booked, so the table filled quickly.  The first game started a little slow, as it always does with new players, but soon everyone settled down in to different combinations and strategies.  Myself and another player started on similar aggressive paths early on, and predictable annihilated each other's chances of victory.  That pretty much left the winner to be the one what could successfully fly under the radar and stay out of everyone's way.  Fun was had by all.  The one complaint in that game was from the one other player that had experience with Evolution before. He did not really care for the new Climate content.  His preference was for the base game, where your only opponent was the other players.  He liked that it was basically like a biology themed poker game.  To each their own, I guess.  He still had fun and that is what is important.

The second game of the night, with the same players, kicked off very quickly and smoothly.  Everyone was ready with different strategies to try.  Some of those quickly fell flat, and others would have been interesting had the climate not intervened.  This time the climate track was a major factor in the game, initiating two, nearly three events and multiple mass extinctions.  The differing play flavors is precisely why I like this game.

Game report day 47 - Rack-O

This evening I had a request to pick something less strategic.  This is code for "I am tired and don't have the energy to think about anything".  That's okay, I can handle that.  I was tired too.  Fortunately there is not a lot of thought required to put numbers in order.  Serious fans of this classic will say that there is a lot of thought involved since you need to think about probability and arrangement and they are probably right.  It does not change the fact that Rack-O is also just fun to play and a very light, low stress filler.  We played a few hands, not really keeping score.  If memory serves, hand wins were split about 50/50.

Game report day 48 - Zombie Dice, Zombie Dice 2 Double Feature, Zombie Dice 3 School Bus

Thursday was another rough day for both of us, so another light filler came out.  As light as Zombie Dice is, I always find it interesting to see how engaged players always get.  Part of that is just the inherent nature of press-your-luck style games. This game also has enough goofy elements added to make it just that much more interesting.  For example, the expansions add the following.

• The Hero and the Bimbo - White and pink dice respectively.  They each can rescue each other.  The hero can do more damage, while the bimbo is better at running away (all legs, no brains).
• Santa Claus - The holiday feature.  In addition to his tasty brains, Santa can deliver presents, making your zombie tougher or faster.
• The Bus - There is something that I find endlessly amusing about the image of a school bus full of shogun wielding children.

I won the round, but fun had by all.

Game report day 49 - We Didn't Playtest This At All, We Didn't Playtest This Either

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Friday was pretty much like the previous two days, so in celebration I got out the single most unstructured, random game I own.  Once I played this with a group of eight friends.  It took three games just to get all the way around the table.  If you are not familiar with the franchise, this is a card game that is in all things random and crazy.  It is like Flux, only more random.  There is no way to predict how one will win or lose, and that is why, in the right setting, it can be a hell of a lot of fun.

Game report day 51 - Coo Coo The Rocking Clown, Snail's Pace Race

As I mentioned earlier, much of Saturday was spent organizing the game closet.  Once this was done, I wanted to get the kids involved.  First I got out Coo Coo.  This is another Blue Orange title that is all about dexterity and balance.  Players take turns placing pieces on Coo Coo, the Rocking Clown.  First to upset the balance and knock pieces off loses.  Played with both boys.  The younger son is starting to get enough motor control to be able to play the game reliably.  The elder son is starting to figure out that you can place pieces to almost upset the balance thus setting up the next player for defeat.

Not wanting to leave out my youngest, I got out one of the Ravensburger titles that is geared for that age.  As she is soon to be three, she does know how to take turns and roll dice.  In this particular instance, she was more inclined to just place the dice on the color she wanted to move.  No winners in Snail's Pace Race, it is all just a cooperative effort to get the colored snails to the yummy leaves.

Game report day 52 - Between Two Cities, Go Away Monster

Go away Monster has become my nearly three-year-old's standby game.  The game it simple enough.  You pull shapes out of a bag.  If it is a piece of your bedroom, you add it to your card in the appropriate spot.  If it is a monster, you shout "Go Away Monster!" and toss the piece in the box.  As tedious as this may sound to adults, the cuteness of your little girl (in a cold-induced hoarse voice) croak "Go Away Monster" is just something you don't say no to.

Having largely recovered from the work week and White Night, I wanted to get out something that required a little more thought.  Unfortunately it was still a busy day with some critical shopping errands that needed done.  Thus a faster game was called for.  Enter Between Two Cities, the latest product in the Stonemaier Games library.  In this game you are city planners using a tile drafting mechanic to create the best 4x4 city grid.  In a two player game (as we were playing), you have full control over both cities, and score the combination of the two.  With more players, you share each city with your neighbor, with both of you contributing.  Your final score is the lower scoring of the two cities.  The result of this scoring is that each player cannot afford to neglect either of his cities, forcing you to negotiate with both partners in good faith.  I won this round, but my wife declared that this needed to hit the table more often, as she wants to get better at it.

Ask and ye shall receive.

It had to happen...

It is said that the only certainties are death and taxes.  The third is that resolutions and predictions will be interrupted by life.  Given that large portions of my life at this stage are governed by a multi-million dollar corporate project (for a government client at that) I should be thankful and more than a little surprised that I was able to go this long.

On the positive side a long awaited Kickstarter arrived today (details below) and I am gearing up to do some quality game prototyping and play testing. Eduardo Baraf, the designer behind Lift Off: Get Me Off This Planet! just put out the call for expansion play testers, and the beta files for the Evolution: Climate playtest have been recently released.  Needless to say, I have some work to do this weekend.

Now, on to the report.

Game report Day 37 - Swish
This is a fun little abstract card game that I would probably get out more often if it did not live in the kit of travel games.  As a travel game is it nearly ideal.  Simple setup (you just lay out 16 cards), durable (cards are plastic), and short (game lasts 20 minutes tops).  The plastic cards in particular make it perfect for venturing out into the wild, game destroying world.  I have personally been very lucky with my games.  I take them out of the safety of the home relatively frequently, and while there have been a number of occasions where someone decided that the game and a glass of wine wanted to be friends, all of these occasions have been with games that consist of plastic cards.

This particular session was at home, with just my wife and I.  The whole point of the game is pattern recognition.  Each card has a colored ball and a colored hoop.  The goal is to spot combinations of cards that, when stacked, line up such that each ball rests in a matching colored hoop.  Easy, right?  Not so fast.  Orientation matters here, and you are not allowed to test combinations.  Everything has to be done in one's head.  This is something I happen to be relatively good at.  My wife, not so much, or at least not right before bed.  I won handily, and fun was had by all.

Game report Day 38 - Pagoda
As we had spent the day out and about celebrating the imminent Lunar New Year, this seemed appropriate.  I might have chosen something like Go instead, but I was stupid and put all of my Go sets in storage.  In contrast to the last session of this game, I pulled out to a quick lead and stayed there.  The game actually felt like it was over unusually quickly with a low score.  I did win, but both scores were well under 100.  To my knowledge, that is the first time that has happened for us.

Game report Day 39 - Museé
I was feeling indecisive (a common problem amongst game collectors) so my wife picked the the evening game.  We played two rounds, and it ended up being a split decision.  The scores were relatively close in both cases.  In addition, we both seemed to have similarly timed luck (or lack of it) with our card draws.  Often times in games like this where one has to take a gamble with most of the cards placements (Rack-O being another), you can look back at one or two plays that would have changed the game.  I can't say that with these two rounds, and that is more than a little frustrating.  It is often taken as a sign of poor game design when one makes the best plays possible and still loses.  I can't say that I subscribe to that opinion, at least not completely.  I do enjoy some luck in a game, but the perception of being defeated by it alone is still frustrating.

Game report Day 40 - Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia, Takenoko
It was meetup night again, and as I knew the event was fully booked, I brought along one of my favorite 6 player games.  Euphoria was the beginning of the Kickstarter obsession for me.  This was also the game that truly sealed the reputation of Stonemaier Games for game and component quality.  We did not quite get a full table, but 5 plays nearly as well as 6, if not just a little better.  The whole table (save myself) was new to the dystopia, so I did have to spend some time teaching, but everyone got into the flow pretty quickly.  We started out with a even mix of revealed factions, so the player's attention was evenly distributed throughout the board.  At one point I noticed that people were starting to accumulate resources, so I started the market race.  Before I knew it, all six markets were built, and two of the players were down to three stars remaining.  This is when some earlier decisions on the ethical dilemma started to bear fruit, and ultimately it was another player who got to play kingmaker.  Fortunately for me, I was the beneficiary.  It was one of the closer games I had played recently, and a hell of a lot of fun.

After that experience and the departure of one of the players, we decided to get out something lighter.  With Takenoko, fate had apparently decided that I had seen enough good luck for the day.  While I was the first one to complete objectives, there was really nothing else that went well that game for me.  The aforementioned kingmaker had a glorious game.  In that sense, I guess things worked out in a karmically appropriate way.  Even having recognized this, I was still ready to strangle both the panda and the gardner who always seemed to be in the one spot on the board that was completely useless to me.  Ahh well.  Can't win them all.

Game report Day 41 - The Game of Life
This is where life, or more appropriately work, has interfered with my gaming goals.  I new well in advance that I was having a work dinner at a German restaurant in Chinatown (I know that sounds like a joke, but I am not kidding).  Had a known ahead of time that we would spend over an hour at the restaurant eating for people to show up, I would have had something small with me.  I used to have a couple things in my backpack at all times anyway for just that purpose.  But then I made the mistake of cleaning out my bag.  At least I got to eat good German food and drink good German beer on the company tab.

Game report Day 42 - Labyrinth
Having played the pocket version of this a couple weeks ago, I wanted to get out the original.  In this Ravensburger classic, your pawns are on tiles forming a shifting maze.  You need to wanter around this maze finding specific treasures.  The control that you have over the maze is limited, but with some careful planning and a little luck, you can collect your treasures before your opponent.  I, unfortunately, came up a turn short and my wife picked up her last item just before I did.  As exhilarating as the close wins are, the close losses can me equally frustrating.  Goes to show you, physics is the law everywhere.

Game report Day 43 - Wombat Rescue, Exploding Kittens
This was the new arrival.  Did you know that wombats poop cubes (so they don't roll away), and use these smelly cubes to navigate their environment?  It's true, and you use these skills as you play mother wombats searching the countryside looking for her baby wombats.

Unfortunately, fate did not want us to play this tonight.  We had the game all set up, and then the dinner we had ordered in showed up nearly 40 minutes ahead of schedule.  Then after dinner, the children were being particularly clingy which diverted my wife's attention until it was far to late to play anything but the lightest of games.  Maybe tomorrow.

So we decide to blow up some kittens in the most non-pc way possible, with Exploding Kittens, the NSFW Edition.  Once again, I can say that fate hates me and I lost in spectacular fashion.

Here's to hoping that tomorrow's anticipated play of Wombat Rescue favors me more.  Though, to be honest, there is not much hope of that.  My wife has significantly more experience with poop than I do.

On the Old and the New and Milestones

Often the coolest innovations are ones that are, on their surface, very simple.  The thing I am referring to is Google Cardboard.

This is something that I delayed getting for quite a while, simply because I did not relish the idea of paying money for a piece of folded cardboard that was basically a cheap Viewmaster.  Then I read an article about a pediatric surgeon who used the technology to prepare for an extremely delicate heart operation.  This got me curious enough to spend the money.

Now that I have one, I can say with confidence that this is FREAKIN AWESOME!!!  The combination of the simplicity of the headset itself, with the capabilities of the required smartphones and the app design come together to make for a surreal experience.  One note of warning for people who are no considering this.  The standard Google Cardboard is not sized for the current generation of ginormous smartphones.  I do recall that there are variants available online that are sized for the iPhone6 series and their (evil) Android counterparts.

A couple of milestones to mention.  At some point shortly after the last post, this journal hit 500 views.  WHEE!  Keep reading people and pass it along.  I hope you enjoy it.

Also this week is the one year anniversary of my initial arrival in Australia.  I have enjoyed every minute of it and it continues to be one wild ride.  Looking forward to the next year with great anticipation.

Now to the game play updates -

Game report day 28 - Sequence
This is one of those simple, classic games that has a depth of thought and strategy that is not immediately obvious.  What is a little different about this game is the kind of passionate following that it seems to generate.  Much as people purchase fancy chess, backgammon, and go sets for display and easy play, game stores have large format Sequence boards and playmats.  I can't say that I understand the fervor that Sequence generates, but to each their own.  One thing I can say is that I would like to see how this game plays with a larger number of people.  I can imagine things could get pretty crazy, and that is usually a good thing.

Game report day 29 - Australian Menagerie
There are times when I worry that my board game obsession, at least the collection end of it, has bled onto my wife.  This was one of those times.  Beginning almost with the instant that I received confirmation of my adventure down under, she has been on the lookout for Aussie themed or produced games.  We now have more Aussie themed games that American themed games.  To be fair, this is not necessarily a bad thing.

One of the more recent acquisitions was this Australia Menagerie game, a card game focused on Australian wildlife and their associated habitats.  This hit two buttons for my wife.  Not only for the Aussie theme, but it has an educational bent as well.  The play is relatively simple.  In each round, cards representing animals are drawn.  As populations of critters are assembled, they are placed into their appropriate habitat on the player play mat.  The round is over when someone can no longer play or draw more cards.  At his time, points are totaled and the next round commences.  In addition to the animals, there are threats the native species (fire, invasive critters, etc) and management policies that can defend against those threats.  From a thematic standpoint, this is something that I quite liked.  In reality, you can almost never remove an environmental threat.  You can only manage it.  Three of us played and fun was had by all.  Afterwards, my wife did express some regret in the purchase.  There are five expansions with more animals.  The completionist tendencies in both of us are going to very nearly force the purchase of all five.

Game report day 30 - Pandemic
This is seen as one of the greatest and most enduring of the cooperative games, and a must-have on every gamer's shelf.  The players are acting as a reaction team, operating out of Atlanta, in an organization that for whatever reason is not named as the CDC.  Four diseases had reached epidemic status and it is the job of the players to use their unique skills and teamwork to treat and cure these diseases before an apocalyptic Pandemic is reached.

This is one of my favorite games for a number of reasons.  First, it was one go my greatest thrifting successes.  I found my first edition copy at Goodwill for a measly five bucks.  Second, it is a classic coop game that has excellent replay value.  Third, the difficulty level strikes a good balance.  With two players, you will the majority of the time.  With four, your odds decrease substantially, but it is not impossible (unlike a particular Reiner Knizia coop that I could mention).  The wife and I played through and won, though not by a lot.  We were just one outbreak away from disaster, making this the closest two player session that I have played ever.  It did not help that we were playing with the Dispatcher and Researcher roles.  This has to be the worst combo I have ever drawn.

Game report day 31 - 6 nimmit!
This was another Goodwill find a number of years ago, and illustrates one of the problems that thrifters face when collecting board games.  Many of the great games of this era are made and designed in other countries, most notably Germany.  As such it is not uncommon to find games that have instructions that require translation.  Thankfully, there is the wonderful community at Boardgamegeek that has most of these on demand.

6 nimmit!, also marketed as Take5, or Take 6, is a press your luck style card game.  Numbered cards are played into a series of rows on the table.  The specific row is determined by comparing the number of the card to the last number in the row.  If a player plays, or is forced to play, the sixth card in the row, they take the previous five cards and the sixth becomes the new start of the row.  Taking cards is a bad thing, as each card has one or more cow heads that become points.  When someone reaches 66 points, the game is over and the low score wins.

The doublethink involved in this game is not something I am particularly good at.  I am reminded of this every time I attempt to play this game online.  Thankfully for me, at least on this evening, I was better at it than my wife.  Either way, the predominant opinion is that the game would be much more fun with a larger group.  At the very least it would be more unpredictable.

Game report day 32 - Khet /w Eye of Horus expansion
I received this quite a long time ago, and it has consistently remained one of my favorites. (Yes, I know I say that I lot, but with a collection like mine, I can't help it.)  What can I say, it is like Egyptian chess, but with LASERS!  The goal is to maneuver your pieces such that when your (or your opponent's) laser is fired it hits your opponents Pharaoh piece.  Many of the pieces are mirrored to assist with this, though most are mirrored on only one side.  This means that they themselves are vulnerable to the laser.  The addition of the Eye of Horus expansion added an additional twist, a beam splitter for each player.  Now you have to worry about not one laser path, but potentially more.   This game has the value of teaching people to think spatially and plan ahead, thinking carefully about the consequences of their next move.  More than once I have seen an opponent make a move just to find that they have just offed their own piece, or worse, their own Pharaoh.

Khet has also been, until recently, the source of one of my greatest gaming regrets (follwed shortly by that same Knizia coop that was alluded to earlier).  There is a third expansion to the original edition of the game called the Tower of Kadesh.  This took what was essentially a two dimensional game into the third dimension.  As the name suggests, a tower is added to the board and pieces and the laser can move up to and down from the elevated platform.  The tower itself is even mobile.  Unfortunately, this expansion has been long out of production and is nearly impossible to find for anything less than a hundred bucks, if you can find one at all.  You can imagine my happiness when I tripped over one on Ebay for roughly fifty bucks.  Now there is just the pain of waiting for shipping.  I had to have it shipped stateside first owing to exorbitant international shipping costs.  Stay tuned for another session as soon as it lands down under.

Game report day 33 - King of Tokyo, Kill Doctor Lucky, Entropy, Yardmaster Express
The weekly game meetup resumed after the Australia Day holiday, and it was back with a celebration of its own.  This was the meetup's two year anniversary.  One of the organizers had the quote of the night when thanking the large group of regulars saying, "We would not be here two years on, if you were all assholes!"  I need to remember that one.

Now for this occasion I had brought with me The Agents and Yardmaster Express.  For whatever reason there was not a lot of interest in the Agents, and we had a table of six to entertain (Agents will only play to 5).  So we got out King of Tokyo first.  Modern classic of a press-your-luck style dice game.  As Kaiju monsters trying to flatten the "Matchstick City" the six players eagerly dove into their task.  I jumped to an early lead, quickly running up to within 5 points of the win.  Unfortunately, I pressed my luck just a little to hard and was the the first monster dispatched.  I did not have long to wait, as one of the other players, in a massive flurry of monster activity, finished up the game with a 20 point win.

With the monsters boxed up, the players were apparently still in a destructive mood as Kill Doctor Lucky was the next box to hit the table.  This is a game that has been around for a long time, originally (and now again) published by Cheapass Games.  On this occasion we were playing the board game edition.  The goal of the game is to maneuver yourself and the good doctor so you are out of sight and then try to send him to meet the choir eternal using any one of a series of weapon cards.  The other players will do what they can to stop this, usually by playing one or more amusing Failure cards up to the value of the weapon you used.  This continues until someone finally manages to off Doctor Lucky.  Very fun game and fun was had by all.  My one complaint is that this is one of those games where players are often put into the position of being kingmaker.  I generally dislike this, as it forces someone to make a decision to give advantage to someone else and get no benefit to themselves.  Games that have this tendency definitely go into the stack of games not to play with people that take games personally.

Quick break and then we dove into Entropy.  This is a game that I picked up at PAX AUS.  The idea is that time and reality have fractured, and it is your task to put your own reality back together.  This is an action selection game. All player actions are selected simultaneously from the same list, revealed, and then resolved.  Players that select the same action clash and do nothing, so there is quite a bit of multiplayer doublethink going on.  Players that clash too often do get a bit of compensation from the game, just so they are not left too far behind.  I found myself in that position a lot, and the compensation of drawing additional cards periodically did not keep me from losing, but it was fun nonetheless.  I can also say that it was much more fun with four than with two.

Final game of the night, Yardmaster Express.  This little drafting game has become one of my standby fillers.  It plays very quickly (10 min. with explanation) and is easy to teach and understand.  Just like its larger cousin, you are adding cargo cars to your train, matching color or number, in an effort to get the highest point total.  We played three rounds with me winning two and another player taking the third.  Much fun had by all.

Game report day 34 - Trivia Night
Ok, I might be cheating a bit here.  Sometimes when you are in the corporate game, you have to make sacrifices.  This particular evening, the Australia services team at work was gathering for drinks, socializing, and a trivia game.  This was your typical ad-hoc trivia game designed for a large group, but in the spirit of the event, fun was had by all.  That and we learned some useless facts, which is always useful.

Game report day 35 - Tiki Topple
If you look at the condition of this game, you might be fooled into thinking that it has been played constantly for the last couple years.  As much as I like this game, that is not true.  The damage was caused my one or more particularly attentive toddlers.  Let this serve as a warning.  If you have small children, invest in secure storage for your hobby, as small children are the universes most powerful sources of entropy.

Anyhoo, this is another action selection game where each player has the same set of action cards to choose from.  The goal is to figure out how to optimize your actions without telegraphing them.  At the beginning of each round, players are given a secret set of three tikis.  The goal is to maneuver the stack so that the tikis indicated on your card are at the top, in the designated order.  The better job you do, the more points you get.  Even with two players, rounds go very quickly and even if one round goes poorly, one can quickly make up the ground the following round.  Very fun, very colorful (hence the attraction of the toddler), very well made (hence its survival) game.

Game report day 36 - Marrying Mr. Darcy /w Emma Expansion
My wife and I were introduced to this game some time ago by friends that backed the first Kickstarter campaign.  Great fun was had, enhanced by the fact that my wife is a certifiable Jane Austen nut.  When the Kickstarter campaign for the expansion was announced, we quickly backed it.  After what seemed to be an unusually long wait, the game arrived yesterday.  As players, you are the heroines of Pride and Prejudice, doing everything that they can to marry to their greatest advantage.  To that end, they enhance their character (necessary for even attracting the suitor's attention) attend parties, and avoid fumbles that may damage their chances.  In the end, a roll of the die determines whether they get a proposal from their preferred suitor, or then end up and an old maid.  This element, for the record is my one complaint about the game.  I never like the idea that an entire game of skilled preparation can be defeated by one or two bad die rolls.  After playing the base game, which my wife won handily, we swapped in the Emma expansion.  This is less of an expansion and more of a re-skin.  The base mechanics of the game are the same, and the goal is largely the same.  What differs are the characters and the associated player abilities.  As with the base game, the designers kept to the theme of the book well.  There were more blunders and matchmaking in the world of Emma.  This time I emerged as the victor, much to my wife's irritation, as I intentionally pursued her intended suitor.
Speaking of my wife's irritation, I could not convince her to play with the included Undead expansion.  Not really sure why.  ;)

On Cheating

The act of cheating is one that comes with a variety of assumed consequences depending on the scenario.  In the relationship sphere, the consequences are dire and generally keep most intelligent people from even considering the act.  In gaming, too, cheating is generally regards as taboo, unless the game specifically allows it (Thank you Munchkin).  There are also scenarios in games where a participant either through annoyance or ignorance makes cheating so tempting that the gamers who notice may not fully condone the act, they do understand.  In realm of new year resolutions however, cheating is often regards as an inevitability.  The only question is how long will they last before willpower fails them.

Fortunately I have not had to resort to this yet, although I can say that it has been close.  There was the discussion on whether playing the iOS version of Exploding Kittens with other people in the room counted (no), or whether the afternoon spent online playing 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons with the group back stateside counted (also no).  I am taking as an early warning sign that the gap between my log entries seems to be increasing.  I will endeavor in the future to keep no more than 2-3 days between posts.

Now, for the last week of games.

Game report day 22 - Coin Age
Perhaps the most micro of the microgames in the modern era, Coin Age fits quite a lot of fun into a small package.  The game itself is a pretty basic area control game.  The more territories you control, the more points you get.  The coin mechanic that has smaller coins being able to take over larger coins makes things marginally more complicated.  The fact that endgame is triggered when all territories are occupied is a strategic component as well.  I used to be able to carry this around and play with pocket change as the designer intended.  Now it is more difficult as I have to keep a selection of American coins around just for the purpose of this game.  Aussie coins just don't work right.  While I still have the cardboard coins that shipped with the game, I never use them.  I get far more enjoyment using real coins, even if I have to keep special ones around just for this game.

Game report day 23 - Viticulture plus Tuscany
Viticulture, along with the Tuscany expansion, remains one of my favorite worker placement games.  The theme is fantastic, the mechanics smooth, and the play consistently enjoyable, regardless on the player count.  I have played everything from solo games up to full Meetup tables of six.

When Tuscany was released, it was the designer's intent to have players add the additional content modules slowly and incrementally.  I was like may players that played along, and then just got impatient and added the set of 6-7 modules that have proven to be the most popular.  My standby setup now includes the following: Mamas and Papas, New Visitors, Advanced Visitors, Extended Board, Properties, Structures, and Patronage.  Leading up to this last play, I decided to go crazy.  Basically I wanted to add everything that I could that made any sort of sense.  As such, I added the special workers (Professore and Oracle came up) and the Formaggio Tier 3 expansion.  Mafia was still left out as it really does not make any sense with two players.

What followed was a seriously epic game.  My wife took advantage of early structures and visitors to take a 10 point lead.  My engine was slower to get going, but ultimately proved more profitable.  The addition of cheese production did garner a noticeable amount of points, though if memory serves, I likely would have won anyway.  Final score 35 to 21.

Game report day 24 - Labyrinth the Card Game
Pocket version of the Ravensburger classic.  Despite the fact that tiles do not slide around to shift the maze, the feel is very similar.  In this version the maze shifts as tiles are picked up and replaced.  When a player plays a tile, he checks to see if a treasure on the played tile connects with a treasure on the field.  If it does, and the player can demonstrate the path, the destination tile is picked up and scored.  Play continues until the draw pile is exhausted.  I won a close game by one tile.

Game report day 25 - Tsuro and Qwirkle
Tsuro is another game that can be added to the list of games for which my eldest son needs no coaching.  Three of us played an enjoyable game, with my son strategically dispatching both mom and dad.  Definitely no more kid gloves against this boy.

When Qwirkle came out, there was understandably more coaching.  With this one there are just too many things to look at for the 8 year old brain to process.  In the initial play, he rarely played more than one or two tiles at a time, and usually on the first location he saw.  Perhaps after a few more plays he will get to see some of the possibilities.  My wife on the other hand, spent much of the game annoyed as I had one tile turns getting one Qwirkle after another.  Needless to say, I won handily.

Game report day 26 - Australia Map Game
Happy Australia Day!  This city knows how to party!  This public holiday was spent watching a fantastic international parade followed by some decent food, classic cars, good music, and an excellent fireworks show.  In the middle of all of this was a Designer Faire.  One of the stalls housed an artist that had created a simple roll and move game highlighting the interesting locations throughout Australia.  While the game itself was pretty simple, the execution was beautiful.  The board was screen printed on canvas and the game tokens were etched and printed on to nice hardwood discs.  The playing pieces were even sized correctly for the spots on the game board

(something an irritating number of professional publishers mess up).  The whole family got a round in while we were waiting for the fireworks to begin.  Fun had by all.  And I won again.

Game report day 27 - Pagoda
I am getting increasingly attached to this wonderful little two player game.  I wavered more than a little before picking this one up at PAX AUS and I am glad that I let the impulse win out.  This particular round the cards were not nice to me.  I always seemed to be one card short on any given turn to be able to accomplish anything useful and establish a lead.  As it was the game was close until the very end. We each had topped one pagoda and were consistently within a point or two of each other.  Then I drew a had full of cards that I could do nothing with.  This was the opportunity my wife needed to open a small lead and end the game.  Well played.

Kinda makes me wish I had cheated...  ;)

On Confusion and Delay

Anyone who has had young children in the last 20 years or so will recognize the titular phrase and immediately start expecting something involving trains.

Patience, grashopper.  For the moment I am going to be slightly more literal.

Confusion and delay seem to be the preferred modus operandi lately at work.  What makes it even more so is that the confusion and delay comes from a fear of confusion.  The operations people have such a morbid fear of the unknown that they can't possibly move forward with anything that has not been documented in triplicate, tested at least twice, deployed, rolled-back, and otherwise spoon fed to them from a silver platter.  I have never seen a more risk averse bunch of technical people in my life.

In my professional career I have now experienced both ends of the operational spectrum.  A tech shop full of cowboys is fun for a while, but is ultimately erratic to the point of being irritating.  The other extreme is, of course, the shop full of risk averse semi-trained monkeys.  Comfortable, predictable, but changes direction slower than the Titanic and takes far longer than you think it should to get something useful accomplished.  Try to push it faster, disaster ensues.

At this point I have done what I can to avert the disaster.  Now I just have to sit back and accept the fact that disasters can also be entertaining to one who has job security.

Now to the trains.

My oldest son recently turned 8.  One of the activities for his birthday involved a trek out to a local miniature railway yard.  The Altona Miniature Railway is a hobby club of train enthusiasts who build and maintain garden scale miniature railway engines and track.  I have generally found it fascinating how trains can have an enduring ability to turn people of any age into little kids.  Watching the club members drive and direct their trains around the tracks was no different than watching little boys huddled over a model train set. This is an experience I hope to someday get more of, as I have the beginnings of a model train set and hope to be able to spend some quality time with the boys getting it to be something spectacular.

***Some may have noticed how I gave up and dropped all pretense of gender neutrality about halfway though the previous paragraph.  Part of me wants to take the rest of it out.  So far my last little rant for the day.  Gender stereotypes exist for a reason, folks.  It is because, in general, they are true.  While my wife and I have presented a nearly identical set of toys and media to both my sons and my daughter, the differences in toy preference and behavior is as amazing as it is predictable.  While my daughter still gets excited about cars and trains, the boys are orders of magnitude more so.

The moral of this story?  While you should not force children into a pre-defined mold, you should also not be upset or surprised when the mold fits.

Now I believe I have a few days of gaming to catch up on.

Game report day 17: Yardmaster Express
When the original Yardmaster game went through Kickstarter, it was obvious that it was going to be a short, solid filler game.  Each game takes 20 minutes at the high end.  Then the same designer proposed a shorter, lighter game along the same lines.  The thought amongst the backers and reviewers was the same.  How do you take an already short game and make it shorter, without being uninteresting?  Well, they pulled it off.  Yardmaster Express is a fun little drafting game that plays in about 5 minutes.  As with its longer namesake, the goal is to build a length of cargo cars, with each join having a number or color in common.  In the Express version, you draw a card, add it to your hand, choose one card to add to your train, then pass the remaining cards to the next player.  For a short game with limited decisions, this can get pretty intense and quite a lot of fun.  Every time I get this out, we end up playing multiple rounds.

Game report day 18: Stationmaster
What can I say.  I have a lot of train games.  I blame the aforementioned children.

This particular train game is a Mayfair title from 2004.  In this card game you are not only building a train of various types of cars, but you are populating that train with a secret number of passengers.  The secret aspect of the passengers gives a bit of a bluff game feel to this game.  While all players have the same passengers to assign to trains, how they do it is secret, and and definitely have a huge impact on scoring.  There is also the possibility of tricking (or forcing) your opponent to put passengers on what amounts to a negative value train.  High class passengers apparently don't like sharing a train with cargo cards full of fish.

Game report day 19: Tiny Epic Galaxies and Tiny Epic Kingdoms

It was Tuesday once again and there was the usual morning decision of what I was going to haul to the meetup.  This particular Tuesday I was in no mood to carry a lot, given that the high temp was supposed to be north of 30C.  So I packed up the Tiny Epics.  After the initial experience of playing Tiny Epic Galaxies with my wife, I wanted to see what a full five player experience was like.  I also wanted to see how the Superweapon add-on played.  Both were as excellent as I had hoped.  The players trickled in but eventually we got a full table of five.  After a full explanation to four newbies, we got started.  Predictably enough, the game was much slower with five players simply because there were more cards to read.  If I had one complaint, the planet cards should be bigger.  With five players at a large table, it is rather difficult for players on the fringes to read the critical text.  It was a close game with the top three players separated by just a few points.  I did manage to pull out the win, but just barely.
Following that game, most of the players dispersed, but two returned for a game of Tiny Epic Kingdoms.  The first installment in the Tiny Epic series is a reasonably typical 4x game (expand, explore, exploit, exterminate).  This round it was the Merfolk vs. Centaurs vs. The Order of Gamelyn.  This was a close game too.  The Centaurs quickly learned that war is an expensive proposition and not always a good idea, even if you do win.  The Order (me) learned that they need to do a much better job of actually using all of their available magic abilities.  Then, just maybe, they would not have lost to the silly tower-building Merfolk in a tiebreaker.  Grrr.

Game report day 20: Zombie Dice
One of the wonderful things about Steve Jackson Games in general is that you don't have to think very hard to play.  Zombies don't have brains, they eat brains.  On this particular evening, both my wife and I were tired zombies ourselves, so the game seemed appropriate.  That and it kept the streak alive.  Two rounds were played and I lost both in spectacular fashion.  In particular Santa Claus was good to her and less so to me.  Neither of us chose to step onto the School Bus of shotgun wielding children. (I love that image)

Game report day 21 - Yardmaster Express and Dragon Kings

If any one game has convinced my wife that my now eight year old does not need help on most simple games, this is it.  He and I played two rounds this evening, splitting victories.  The first game he definitely recognized and took advantage of a mistake I made.  Definitely not helping this goon on Yardmaster strategy ever again.

The second game of the night was a new one for me, as in it just arrived in the mail today.  This was a game that I tripped over on Kickstarter.  The project intrigued me for a few reasons.  First, the art looked interesting.  I like dragon art, and this looked reasonably well done.  Second it was a short campaign at just a couple weeks.  Third, it claimed to be a complete deck builder game in a 52 card deck of cards.  While I already have a few deck builders in the collection, a more portable one seemed just a little interesting.  Finally, they were predicting delivery of the finished product to backers in less than a month.  This is what really caught my attention.  As anyone with any Kickstarter experience knows, the wait for the final product often takes months, sometimes years, if it ever arrives at all.  Having a project predict delivery in just a few weeks is unheard of.  So I bought two.  This was the option of combining two decks to allow for 3-4 players.  I like to have the option in games if it allows.

The game arrived as predicted, in less than three weeks.

After just one play, I do have some observations and complaints.  In general, this is an interesting, simple, deck builder.  Think Dominion Ultra-light.  The lack of variability in the cards does seem to limit the replay value, but after one game, I think it has more legs than initially thought.  I can see a tightly run game running very fast, allowing very little time to develop strategy.  This means that you will have to play multiple games to try out different paths to victory.  Not a bad thing.  The cards themselves are of decent quality and the artwork is pretty good.  My primary complaint is that I wish there was more of it.  Most of the cards could have been designed with less border and more dragon art.  The other major complaint is the instruction sheet.  This looks like an afterthought as it likely was run off on a black and white laser printer, then folded eight ways and stuffed into the card box.  Was there really not enough room on the card sheets to print off a couple double sided instruction cards.  Or even faded paper that was fixed for the tuck box?  Anyway, this will be worth playing more, and almost certainly will be a permanent resident of my travel game set.

I can stop any time I want to. Really.

I have referred to my gaming activities in the past as an obsession.  In reality that term is probably a little strong for the actual situation.  As my collection has grown I have seen myself become far more particular about which games I will buy or which projects in Kickstarter I will back.  Even with that in mind, I realize that I own and play far more games that the average person and from that vantage point I could be seen as addicted to the hobby.

The terms that are often used seem to come with a level of negative baggage that is unwarranted.  Can one be addicted to a particular activity if there are no, or minimal negative side effects of the activity?  Can one be obsessed if one is still able to function as a regular member of society?  One might use the term dedicated, but even that does not seem to fit in my mind.  Probably the best term that I can come up with right now is committed.  It describes the level of attention to the activity and has just enough historical connotation to justify the level of insanity to which some non-gamers think I must suffer.

Game report day 16: Can't Stop

Today's musings were not exactly random.  When games and entertainment are involved, some people predictably lose all sense of probability and statistics.  This phenomenon is the only reason that institutions like Powerball remain financially viable.  On a smaller (and more responsible) scale there is the class of board games termed "press your luck" games.

One of the oldest of these (setting casino games aside) is a game called Can't Stop, formerly of Parker Brothers.  In this game you roll dice in an effort to claim spots atop columns representing possible outcomes on those dice.  On every roll, you must advance at least one marker.  If you cannot, you bust and lose all progress made that turn.  You can, of course, always stop voluntarily.  Some time ago I purchased an additional add-on to the game called Rollin down the Highway.  This complicates the game slightly, making the path up each column unknown and potentially not straight.  I quite like the additional material.  It makes the game ever so slightly less than just an exercise in probability and taunting of the opponents.  I try not to taunt my wife too much when we play.  She won this round, 3-2.

Now should I stop?

Nah.

On the importance of theme, and the power of suggestion

The importance of theme is something that causes a modicum of disagreement within the gamer community.  Some consider the theme of the game to be mostly superfluous, a nice to have feature.  Many consider a solid, integrated, interesting theme to be essential to all but the most abstract of games.

I fall somewhere in between the two.  While I can appreciate strategy and mechanics on their own, having a solid theme can greatly enhance the enjoyment of the other excellent features of a game.  In addition, a week, pasted on theme can detract from what would otherwise be an interesting game.

I also find game themes useful in the more social aspect of gaming.  When constructing a gaming event, it can be helpful to group games together with similar theme.  This can allow you to create something that binds the overall event together, potentially creating more interest and attracting more players to your endeavor.

In smaller groups, carefully chosen themes or or constructed groups of themes can be used to send (not so) subtle messages to the other player.

Game report - day 15: Munchkin Booty

I could have been less subtle with the suggestion here, but most of those games are in storage.

Munchkin is an oft derided game in the gamer community.  While most own one or more copies of the series, few will admit to playing it anymore.  The reason behind this is in my opinion, twofold.  First, it has been around awhile, and like many familiar names in hobby gaming, is considered passé. Secondly, some serious hobby gamers like to ignore Munchkin (and a lot of Steve Jackson Games in general) as being too silly and random.  Serious gamers sometimes like to flaunt their skill, knowledge, or strategic prowess and try to avoid games that come down to random chance.

For those not in the know, Munchkin is a parody card game from Steve Jackson Games that makes fun of pretty much every other adventuring game in history.  The tagline of the game is "Kill the monster, take the treasure, stab your buddy", and that pretty much explains all of it.  There is a lot of "take that" mechanisms in the game (which is another thing serious gamers don't particularly care for).  Munchkin Booty is the pirate themed edition of the franchise.  Where as in the base game you have different races (human, elf, dwarf) and classes (cleric, fighter, wizard), in Munchkin Booty you have accents (French, Dutch, Brit) and classes (pirate, navy, merchant).

Personally I think the whole series is quite fun.  That said, I do have to be careful with whom I play this game.  This is not a game to play with angry people who take deception and changes in loyalty seriously.  Serious gamers can be put off as well if you try to pass it off as something it is not.  However, if you use the available themes wisely and present the game as the fun filler that it is, then fun will be had by all.

That is the point after all.