A warning to all those that game in South Carolina

You are only allowed to play a few games there, Ingenious or Bonaparte at Marengo to name two. The reason, playing games with cards or dice is against the law!

Yeah, I don't get it either.

Hungry like the Wolf

We had our monthly gaming session last night, and it was definitely a hairy one. The night started with me asking what game everyone would like to play and Tim Lupus suggested Werewolf. I thought some and built a werewolf deck out of some playing cards (black cards were villagers, red jacks were werewolves, the ace of hearts was the seer and later the two of hearts was the little girl).

The game was exceedingly popular, the beauty of it is that it can include any number of players, and we played with 10, plus a moderator. The first two games were run by me and were victories for the werewolves (Brenda/Tracey and Shawn/Amanda). Amanda ran the third game which was won by the villagers led by Brenda the Seer. Games four and five were run by Tim and were both werewolf victories as well, (John/Brett, John/Brenda). We added the Little Girl for the last two games, mainly for others to learn how the role works. The Little Girl was lynched early in both games (Ken and Brendan) and when Ken was the Seer in the first game he was lynched early as well.

We broke into two groups after that with one table playing Bang! which was won by the Outlaw Amanda and her two sidekicks (whose names I did not catch). The other table played Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix . TIm made up for his awful showing last month by turning in a win, beating Ken by 20,000 dollars.

The game night group broke up at about 11:30, with plans to do this again next month.

I am thinking about a heavy game night, one game that will take 3-5 hours that I will do one day a month as well. Some of my choices are: Power Grid, Antike, Imperial, Friedrich or if we have a group of wargamers, maybe Sword of Rome, which has an expansion for a 5th player (Carthage), or Pax Romana.

Next weekend is MayDay in Edmonton, a gaming convention with an emphasis on wargames and miniatures.

Local company announces new game

Valley Games has announced reprints of Hannibal:Rome vs Carthage, Republic of Rome and Titan. These three games are giants in the old Avalon Hill world and sell on ebay for 150+.

I have played all three games, and although I don't care much for Titan, I do like the other two (I have ordered Hannibal) and I can't wait to get my greasy little hands on them.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night!

Games night is this weekend, Saturday night 7 PM, my place.

I was thinking we could try Fearsome Floors with a timer, and maybe Power Grid.

Does anyone have any preferences?

Commands & Colors Day, a recap

Well Commands & Colors Day has come and gone, I judge it a success. We had 9 people playing the assorted C&C games for almost 7 hours. The amount of each game played was very close, with a total of 15 games played. Battle Cry was played 4 times, with Greg collecting the most points with 12. Commands & Colors: Ancients was also played 4 times, Ken getting 11 points in his two games led the pack,. Memoir ’44 was played 4 times but three of them were Overlord! scenarios, and Orin, played in every one, racking up a high total of 27. Battle Lore was played the least, 3 times and Jay racked up a total of 8 points over two games to garner the most points in that category.

The high point of the day was the Overlord! game, it was loud, raucous and exactly the way you should end a game night.

The trash talking was a perfect way to end the game, and the Kursk tank battle was great.

Here, C-in-C Jay ordered his fellow commanders into action in the Kursk scenario.



The amazing dice rolling that Corey had, destroying the right flank of the Russians in one round simply had to be seen to be believed. This was before Corey started his attacks.


This was after...

Everyone had a good time, and although not everyone showed up, it was a success.

And another piece of my past slips away

When you were younger, how often did you read Dragon magazine? Well, if you want to recapture that youth, you better do it soon. I remember purchasing it back in Yorkton at the hobby store, or the rush I would get the day it came out at the store.

The end of an era...

Battle Lore, a slice of a review

Battle Lore, what can I say about Battle Lore? If you are already familiar with the Commands & Colors System, you already know the game, if you are not, then maybe this will help you understand it.

The Commands & Colors System, by Richard Borg was developed back in the ‘90s as a card activated wargame. Many of the hard core wargame concepts have been abstracted out, such as weakening of your firepower as your unit gets smaller. What is left is a clean, fast playing game that uses miniatures, or in the Commands & Colors: Ancients game, wooden blocks. The games in the series are Battle Cry, Memoir ’44, Commands & Colors: Ancients and Battle Lore.

The basics of the game are: you and your opponent select a scenario, set up your armies on the board and get the command cards as determined by the system. You activate your unit or units by playing cards that allow you to move and attack. There are specialized dice that determine the hit based on the type of unit you are attacking. For example, in Battle Lore, if you are attacking a green (meaning inexperienced or irregulars) you would remove one part of the unit for every hit you made. There are modifiers to this as well: some units can hit with a crossed swords roll and you can force a unit to retreat as well (roll a flag).

Jay and I played the first two scenarios of Battle Lore, which is a middle ages game, but with a twist. After the first two scenarios fantasy creatures can appear, like goblins and dwarves. The learning scenarios are Agincourt and Chevauchee, and do not have any of the fantasy touches.

What happened was a stunning series of French victories, I won the first game 4-3 as the French and Jay won the second 4-2 as the French, meaning he won the first scenario 7-6. The second scenario was called Chevauchee, and Jay hammered me while playing the French 5-1 and I squeaked out a victory in the second 5-3. Jay won that game 8-6.

We both liked the game, and do both have experience playing the system, I have played all the Battle Cry scenarios and most of the Memoir ’44 scenarios and about 15 games of Commands & Colors. Jay has played less then me but still understands the system. The game is a pretty game, it has many attractive miniatures and a nice looking board. There are reference cards for each player to use as well, you can hand them out and you know what you will need.

I hesitate to rate this game, as I have not delved into the magic (hence the Lore) so I will leave a total evaluation until I can actually play some magic scenarios. I should be able to do that next week, during the first ever Commands & Colors day.

This is for the teachers out there

Games for Thinkers

This is a line of games that were created to help with learning. I must admit that WFF `N PROOF: The Game of Modern Logic strikes a little chord in me. One of the ratings states this:

There is only one thing wrong with this game: it is about propositional calculus, while I think first order logic is much more interesting.


There are other games in the line, including Language Arts, and Science Reasoning. I may have to buy one or two just to see what they are like.

Friday night gaming

I went to the Tuscany group last night, and we played three games, all of which I had played before. The first was Dragon’s Gold, the second Bohnanza and the final one was Formula De’. I am going to talk a little about each one.

I like Dragon’s Gold, I think it can be a fun game for the right group of people. Bruno Faidutti (the designer) always believes in creating a little bit of chaos in the games he makes. One of the other games he makes, that more of you will be familiar with, is Citadels. We had a pretty quiet game of it; I believe part of the reason for that is due to no one knew each other so there was not as much cutthroat bargaining. Two of the group had never even gone to a games night before, so they were new to it all. Everyone seemed anxious to deal and only one treasure trove was not resolved. I finished last, I angled for the black diamond bit did not get it, but I think everyone liked it and if any of them played it again, we would see a different style of game.

The same group, less one, played Bohnanza and 3 of us had played it before, I taught everyone the rules and we settled down to play. In this game the trades were truly marvelous as the goal was usually to improve the fields rather than extract the most from the person looking for the card. I think the first game seemed to loosen up the group and since there is forced player interaction in this game, there was a better feeling amongst everyone by the end of it. I won, by two points, but I never built the third field whereas all my opponents had purchased it.

The final game for the night was Formula De’, we played a ten player version of that. One of the things I found out is that there is too much downtime in a ten player game, so the other players would get distracted. I think I prefer to play it with 6 or less. Since there were 10 of us, the game took about ninety minutes and featured a little too much downtime. There were 5 new people to a games night there, and I think that game may have been wrong for them. We played only one lap, and since we did that, the people that started 7-10th never really had a chance in the race. The players that started at the back, (with the exception of me) finished in the last half of the pack. Of the top three starters, one won and one finished third, the second place finisher blew out her tires and lost control, finishing 8th. There was far more collisions in this race then usual, every turn had at least one, and usually two collision checks. I did not finished, having my car eliminated on the second last turn.

One interesting group I did meet at the Tuscany game night was a couple that was always willing to play Twilight Imperium III

No time like the present

I have some thoughts I would like to share about the three games I played last week, Friedrich, Battle Lore and Imperial, but I have not had time to fully ponder these.

Brenda and I have been redoing the main floor bathroom, so every night after I get off work I am painting or prepping.

Look for my thoughts probably Sunday.

Early Sunday Morning

And I just found out the Fantasy Flight Games has announced it's 2007 release schedule, Drool over the new releases. I am particularly interested in the Civil War game and The Lake Woebegon Horror.

Another revolution that seems to have happened is that Puerto Rico is no longer the number one game on BGG, it has been overtaken by Monkey Auto Races. You can see the current rankings here.

I plan today to get some Battle Lore in and a game on Antike. Look for a full report as well as a review of the first play of Friedrich I had.