Board Game Night(s) in Saskatoon

Wait, can it be, another post by John finally?

2010-09-03T18:18:00.001-07:00

I had someone I met on Saskgames.com over wednesday night to play some games. Brian is his name and Battle Cry was his game...

We started out with a three player game call Days of Steam by Valley Games. It is a light cross between a train game and Carcassonne. The basic premise of the game is to build a track and deliver goods on it. You build the track by laying down tiles from your hand of three. The tiles also have a steam number printed on them as well. This is how mych steam you build up (more on this later). After at least two tiles are laid down you can lie down a city tile as well (citys must be at least two tiles apart). When you complete a connection between two cities you get a circuit marker which is worth one VP (first person to 13 wins). The other thing city tiles do is get two random cubes which you can deliver to a matching city for more vp. The question I know you ahve all been asking is "John, John, how do I move?". Use your legs...

Trains in the game move by expending one steam per tile moved, plus an extra one for hils and another extra one for passing another train. These steam is generated by laying tiles (remember?) and you can only have a maximum of six at any one time.

When you deliver cubes to a city you get 2 vp for each cube you deliver plus you get bonus points for having multiple colours. The game ends immediately when someone gets 13 points or you run out of tiles and steam.

I won both games we played, the second only because Brenda rolled a one on a turn.

Brenda went off to do something else so Brian and I played some Battle Cry. Brian had never played it before so I chose to be nice to him. He crushed me as the Union 6-5 and as the Confederacy 6-4. So I guess I must have been too nice...

Saskatoon and Gaming

2010-06-03T09:19:00.000-07:00

If you look to the right you will find that my games played has not really changed in while. I will add one or two games on, but for the most part it stays fairly static.

There are several reasons for this: first is due to my playing a ton of Savage Worlds lately, one or two games a week, the second is that the only other games I play are at the Dragon's Den on Friday nights, which I only do every other week, third and last, Brenda and I have not purchased a new place yet so I cannot currently host game nights as my games are all in boxes upstairs (with two exceptions, Leaping Lemmings and Moongha Invaders.

I think Leaping Lemmings will be a nice quick game that I can add to my stable of racing games. It states that is takes 10-15 minutes per player to play, so with a full complement it may be up to 90 minutes long! This surprises me, but may actually be ok.

The other, looks like a wild and wacky Wallace game of monsters trashing towns. The rules are a little more confusing then that should be, but I cannot wait to get it on the table (if I could find the table!).

Gaming at the Dragon's Den

2010-05-30T18:51:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night I headed over to the Den to play some games. When I got there a couple of people were playing Dungeon Lords (a game I am not interested in). I watched them for a while and Keith showed up with his sun.

The three of us, and one other played a game of Chicago Express, a game I have played before but when it was called Wabash Cannonball.

The game lasted 6 turns before we ran out of shares. Keith finished with 2 red shares, one yellow and one green. I finished with one of each share. The other guy finished with 2 yellow and one green. Keith's son had one each of blue and black, plus 2 greens. The stock value ended with red at 33, yellow at 32, green at 25, blue at 25 and black at 20. The final scoring ended with me at 115, Keith at 98, the other guy at 56 and Keith's son at 39.

The other guy had to leave so the opther three of us joined up with a fourth to play a couple of games of Bang! Keith and I were the outlaws in the first game with his son as the Sheriff. Keith and I won handily...

The second game had Keith as the Sheriff with his son and I as the outlaws. His son bought the line that I was the renegade from the actual renegade player and was really surprised that I was not... Keith killed me and then his son, leaving a showdown between him and the renegade. He gunned the relic down winning his second game of the night.

Upheaval! Changes! Chaos! and Savage Worlds...

2010-05-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

So things have changed a little here. Brenda and I have moved to Saskatoon last month and I have started a new job. Since we are currently renting a place here I have not unpacked my games and will not until we are moved to our final destination in town (aka buy a house). If there is anyone in Calgary looking for a place, mine is up for sale...

All that being said, I have been playing games, just different ones than usual. Savage Timmy is a prolific painter and has started two different Savage Worlds campaigns that are part roleplaying part miniature skirmish rules. Plus I made it to a Dragon's Den Friday night and got some Brass and Race for the Galaxy in.

I like Savage Worlds, I find it a fun little game. Please remember I ran a Savage Worlds: Rippers game for awhile.

On to the games!

Tim's Cthulhu game is set in the 20's and I am playing an illiterate depressed Great War vet/farmboy from Saskatchewan living in the UK after the death of his wife... Our first adventure was set in Scotland and I was one of the diggers hired to help excavate a bog that was used in the past to sacrifice Celts to their god. (Jennifer Wraight) Amanda was the one running the show and she also hired a Ghurka named Shivanshu (Darrin) as a digger as well. Laurel Trebeau (Brenda) was hired as an aide while Höllenstadt-Fürchtberg tagged along as bait (always send the crippled one off alone!).

We were running around lost as three of the earlier crew were kidnapped and one "dead but not really dead" guy showed up with no tongue. We stumbled around blindly looking for clues when we were given a hint that I thought was a setup (which was, but not the way I thought) and we caught a break. We trailed the suspect out to the bog and caught the cultists trying to sacrifice some kidnapped surveyors and the church heretics.

We fought some zombies and the cultists and survived the ravenous bugblatter beast to return triumphantly back to town (except the German, who buggered off, I think he set us up).

Operation Barbarossa (Timmy's WWII one) is heavier on combat and lighter on Roleplaying. I play Yuri Gelakhov, a Cossack that was "recruited" into the army to shoot Germans. Gary, Rick, Dave and Patrick are all playing Russians as well trying to stem the German tide. In day one we faced German patrols and watched as the Polish "recruits" shot the heck out of the Germans.

On day two I was transferred to another unit where we had a defensive position that we had to defend to allow our troops to defend. As this was the next day, I was still carrying my wound. I was now reporting to Sergeant Trotsky (how did he survive the purge?) and had to provide stability to a group of Lithuanian "recruits". Trotsky and the Lithuanians held the centre and the right while LMG Satan and I held the left. We shot the heck out of the Germans causing them to break while only losing Satan (he was injured and unconcious) and one wounded Lithuanian.

Robo Dominion Rally (or something like that)

2010-02-01T14:10:00.000-08:00

Thursday is our usual Descent night but JC was unavailable so instead we played some other games. Those games being RoboRally and Dominion.

RoboRally is a game that I have had two different opinions on. When I first played it (4-5 years ago), I played it in a tournament with 10 other people in the game, and the next time was with 11 other people. Groups this size did not make it an enjoyable experience for me, but I ended up with it in a trade last year, and convinced Brenda to play. She likes the game and so we have played it a couple of times in the last 6 months. So, when Jay and Cory came over, I suggested this to start. Well, the game started, but my robot did not. In the time it took to pay, my robot fell into pits twice and shutdown once... I made it to the third (of four) flags in the time it took Jay to moonwalk backwards onto the final flag...

Since game one was so fast, we played a second one, and as we were setting up the phone rang so Brenda dropped out and we played three player. This time, the cards fell my way and Cory kept confusing his left from his right. I waltzed to victory, completing all four flags before Jay managed to get his first (Cory made it to the first and was just heading to the second). game two was even faster than game one!

We switched to Dominion as Brenda had just hung up the phone and we played with the rule that the ten cards were deal out and each player could reject one. I am thinking I may modify the rule and deal out fourteen and then each player rejects one...

On to the game!

I don't remember which cards we played with, except there was one duration card and the Witch was the only 5 card. I spent most of the game collecting witches and silver. I lost... by a long shot. Brenda won by 10 points or so.

So we played again, we had pirates and embargoes and barons oh my! I got crushed again as Jay narrowly squeaked out a victory over everyone else (I think I was ten points out again).

Commands & Colors

2010-02-01T12:31:00.000-08:00

Darren hosted the usual Tuesday night gaming and this week we got back to the basics, Commands & Colors: Ancients. The game I believe is Richard Borg's best iteration of the C&C series.

I am not going to rehash how to play C&C, but instead will give more of a session report for the nights gaming.

The first battle I played against John (no not me, the other one), was the battle of Ilipa from 206 BC, historically it was a victory for Scipio Africanus over Hannibal. I played Scipio in the first battle and it held true to form, with the Romans winning the battle 7-2. We switched sides and John played Scipio, and I was sure that there was going to be a beatdown, and there was... Hannibal (meaning me) crushed Scipio 7-4 setting the stage for Zama, which was the final battle of the 2nd Punic War. This time I started as Hannibal and my amazing streak continued as Hannibal laid the boots to the Romans, defeating Scipio 8-4 and changing the entire history.

I would like to claim that my superior generalship won the day, instead it was a combination of getting the cards, getting the dice rolls and knowing what to do with the cards. My elephants in these battles were tremendous, killing multiple units before dying and minimizing the damage to my forces.

Next week, Rise of Empires!

Rail Baron

2010-01-23T10:43:00.000-08:00

Last night, Robert and Lenora invited us over to Robert's place for supper and to watch Alice. Well the PVR was screwed up so instead we played Rail Baron, a game by Avalon Hill from 1977.

Rail Baron is a roll and move game to some extent, as you move your train from one randomly generated location to another. After completing your trip, you get paid and you get the opportunity to purchase either an upgraded train or a track.

Every turn you move along a track that is not owned by anyone except you, you must pay a usage rate of 1000/turn. If the track is owned by another player you must pay them 5,000/turn you are on their track.

End game is when there are no tracks to be purchased and the cost of travelling on someone else's track doubles to 10,000.

Well the way the game broke out Brenda and Robert both got big payouts (and half decent dice rolls) and I got poor rolls (Lenora ditched us for a better offer)... They were buying all the big tracks and I was left buying the 4-15K tracks. When the end game arrived I was in the worst position financially, but had the most tracks, and owned most of the cheap tracks in the SE.

When you reach 200,000 you have the option of "declaring", which allows you to race for home. When you get there, if you still have over 200K, you win the game. Robert declared first and raced for home, unfortunately, Brenda had the fastest train in the game and caught him (which cost him 50,000). I steadily built up my funds and was at 228,000 when I declared. I made it home on my next turn, winning the game.

Brenda was 20,000 short but was heading home to complete a trip, if she would have made it home (on her next turn) the turn after that would have given her the win. Robert was still making a delivery and then was planning on declaring.

I found the game interesting, but I am not sure how often I would play it.

Canal Mania

2010-01-21T16:00:00.000-08:00

Tuesday night Bruce was unable to make it, so instead of playing three player Commands & Colors, we played Canal Mania, a game where you build canals based on contracts you select. It is between Ticket to Ride and Steam with regards to complexity and decision making, and as such, I feel it is a fairly light game.

Darren and John were both new to the game, and I have a vast knowledge of 3 games, but we set at it with a will. I explained the rules, dealt out the engineers and away we went. I started with the oldest engineer so I went first, and drafted the contract for the lower left corner. I am unsure why, but I seem to select that corner every time. John selected a Manchester route so was in the upper left, with Darrren selecting the route right beside me.

One of my complaints of the game is that the areas selected are the left side of the board, so you are always on the left side of the board, if that makes sense.

One of the things I like about it is that you are always forced to make choices (do I change engineers or get contracts? Do I draw or build?). These are things I like, the constraints and the difficulty in building and the added feature of delivering goods as well, makes this a challenge.

It was a very close game for the most part, but in opne turn I finished two routes, scoring 22 points and putting me perilously close to 70 (game end score). Darren had to use my canal to deliver goods and I was one point away from starting the end game.

When I started it, I had no track to build, and quickly just delivered goods. The game took about 2 hours, including rules, and was enjoyed by everyone. The final scores were John - 88, Darren - 75 and John - 74

Steamin' Tuesday!

2010-01-13T06:41:00.001-08:00

or Steam on Tuesday...

Last night was the weekly Wednesday night game at Darren's place, except we have switched to Tuesdays. This week, following our new system of 2 player games one week (last week was Twilight Struggle) and Wallace games the next, we played the Mayfair train game Steam.

Steam is part of the Age of Steam game family because it does share certain elements with both Age of Steam and Railroad Tycoon. I consider Railroad Tycoon as the friendlier game and Age of Steam the game that wants to knife you in the alley...

Steam started off as close race with me pulling out to an early revenue lead and Bruce plummetting to -8 revenue deficit. This was not to last. I developed in the Southwest corner on the US map (the NE USA map), Bruce at the top with Ottawa, Darren was in the Boston - Hartford area and John was caught between Darren and I.

Darren took control of the game about turn 5 and never looked back, as John was forced to use Darren's tracks in places to ship goods. Darren's margin of victory was the amount of delivery John did on his tracks. We finished the game in about 2.5 hours, as we had two new players and John and I each had one play.

Final scores were: Darren 35, Bruce 32, John 30, the other John 27.

Whenever I play Steam or Age of Steam, I always finish the game smiling. I find this game so enjoyable that I could play it more often then I do.

A Day at the Races!

2010-01-10T11:01:00.000-08:00

Last night I hosted my annual January meetup group event A Day at the Races! I had a poor turnout this year with several last minute cancellations but I still had a total of 6 jockeys ready to put on their silks and race for the finish line! Except we did not play any horse racing games...

The first game on the agenda was Jamaica, a light hearted filler that we decided to play 4 player until the laggards showed up. This game is based on being a pirate and racing around Jamaica, and since we were already wearing silks, it seemed a natural fit.

Tom rocketed out to an early lead but was soon shot full of holes by the blackguards John and Bruce, losing his treasure and his food. John took over the lead shortly thereafter and never looked back, I lead from that point forward until the very end, being chased and shot at twice by the villainous Tom. The game took about 45 minutes and by then the final two players were there, so we decided to play a six player game. Everyone liked the game and they really liked the graphics as it is a very pretty game.

That game was Giro d'Italia: the Game, a bike racing game that is a branded reprint of Leader 1. This is David's game and he brought it along because he always wants to play it, not that I blame him, it is a good game.

The track had only one hill and several rises but was mostly flat so everyone, but David, who took a leader, took a rouleur, as they do better on flats than anyone else. The peloton went two rounds around the table before David decided to break away from the pack, a decision that would cost him later, as almost immediately he fell and was pulled back into the peloton.

Bruce, Brenda, Jay and Tom broke away next but they only stayed slightly ahead of the peloton for until the race was about 2/3rds over. Brenda decided to break away from the breakaway group and poured it on, this forced Bruce and Tom (who had been providing a wind break for everyone) to break with her, along with the rest. David and I decided to go along or risk being left behind. This meant I had to change bikes as the one I was using looked something like this:
We all gave chase and Jay and I caught Brenda on the last turn before the sprint to the finish, David ran out of energy and was pulled back into the peloton, while Tom and Bruce fell off the pace. Brenda, Jay and I all finished one turn ahead of Tom and Bruce and David finished in the Peloton. The final order of finish was: John, Jay, Brenda, Tom, Bruce and David. The commentary surrounding this game was "I really like this game" and "That was alot of fun".

The third and final game we played was that classic, Fearsome Floors. It was decided David looked most like the monster, so he went first. It is tough to describe the game as it is a series of ups and downs. First you fall down, then you get eaten up...

We raced around randomly, and everyone tried to hose each other (which is the way it should be played) and I was in position to win my third game in a row when Brenda and Jay teamed up to get two of my guys eaten by Furunkulus, knocking me out of the winners circle. Bruce squeezed out the win when Furunkulus's movement card was a Kill One which allowed two of Bruce's guys to waltz in. There was some discussion about whether this was a race game, but I think it is, so I include it.

We played three games last night and of the three, three had played Jamaica, two had played Giro d'Italia, and three had played Fearsome Floors. This means several players were taught new games (always a good thing) which means that there is a better chance of getting them out more often.

Wednesday Night Chaos!

2009-12-18T14:15:00.000-08:00

Wednesday night was John's turn to pick a game and he picked Chaos in the Old World, a new game from Fantasy Flight Games.

CitOW is a a theme heavy game in which you play a Chaos God trying to take over the Old World. The methods you use to win over the old world over the other Chaos Powers are corruption and good old warfare. This game is set in the Warhammer Fantasy universe from Games Workshop, and is appropriately dark.

There are three different ways to win CitOW and one way to lose. The methods of winning are: advance your dial to the winning position, have a point total of greater than 50 points at the end of a turn, or ruin five areas on the board, then whomever has the most points will win. The way to lose is to run out of Old World cards and have no one exceed 50 points or the dial advancement condition. I will talk about each winning method in turn.

Dial advancement occurs when you advance your dial (all four powers have a dial of their own) to the point where it states they win. The method to advance each powers dial, and the amount they have to advance it to win are all different. Khorne, the Blood God, gets one advancement token every time he kills one or more of his opponents in a region. Nurgle, the Lord of Pestilence gains a token every time he places two or more corruption tokens in one of the four Populous regions (The Empire, Bretonnia, Kislev and Estalia). Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways gets a counter token every time he places 2 corruption in an area that has 2 of either warpstone or magic symbols. Slaanesh, the God of Lust, gets a counter token whenever he adds two corruption into the areas with nobles.

You are probably wondering how to place corruption tokens, well you place one for every cultist you have on the board. Cultists, warriors and avatars are placed during the summoning phase. Cultists are the weakest of all, and initially none of the Chaos Powers have cultists that can fight.

Battles occur the phase after this, and this is when Khorne would be able to do his dial advances. Combat is a simple process, roll a d6 for every point of combat value you have (Bloodletter's have 2) and you hit on a 4-6 plus you explode when you roll a 6. What this means is that you get a hit and get the possiblity of an additional hit. You then take off opponents figures based on the wounds each character have (Bloodletters have 1, so one hit destroys them).

You score victory points in several ways; via dial advancement bonuses, ruining a region , and dominating a region. Dial advancements are obvious, so I won't go further into this. Each region has a conquest/resistance value (these are the same number) and you must exceed the resistance value to score the conquest value. I know what you are saying "John you fool! These are the exact same value!". These two values can be modified by Heroes (increase the resistance), skaven (decrease the resistance) or nobles (increase the conquest value). This means that 2 skaven and 2 nobles in Bretonnia (Value 4) would allow you to dominate the region with 3 or more points, and if you did dominate the area, you would score 6. A region is ruined when there are more corruption tokens in the region than the regions corruption value (usually 12, but can be reduced by warpstone). When a region is ruined the Chaos Powers that contributed to the corruption (aka the "ruiners") that turn, receive betwen 3 and 5 VP, then at the end of the turn, the largest number of corruption tokens gets more VP (between 6 and 10) and the second largest gets 3-5.

That is the game in a nutshell. It took us a little under two hours to play the game with Tzeentch winning on VP after we ruined 5 provinces. He scored 58 points to Slaanesh's 54.

This is probably the best game I have played so far and I include Smallworld in this category

It's a Small World after all!

2009-11-26T07:54:00.001-08:00

Last night was the regular Wednesday gaming at Darren's, this time a friend of Darren's was over so we had 5 players. She was late, so until she arrived we played 4 player Dominion with Seaside and Intrigue cards mixed in. One of the methods Brenda uses to beat me when the Duke is in play is to purchase Duchies and Dukes. Duchies are worth three points for 5 coins and Dukes give +1 to every Duchy you have. I finished the game with 5 Duchies and 2 Dukes (plus a Province and 2 Estates) for a total of 39 points, narrowly beating out Darren & Bruce (36 points each)., John (the other one) finished with 21.

The cards we had in play were the Chapel, Cellar, Pawn, Militia, Thief, Merchant Ship, Tactician, Duke, Trading Post and some other card that no one purchased. The first deck to be emptied was the Duchies as Bruce had two thieves so he was yanking everyone's money. I ended the game with 3 gold, 5 silver and 5 copper. I purchased a Militia and 2 Merchant Ships as well, plus Pawns (for their versatility) and 3 Cellars (which I never got to use). Bruce went into Thieves and Tacticians and was starting to rollup the points when John ended the game.

The second game we played was Small World, an area control game based on the old classic Vinci. An explanation for Small World was done here so I won't explain it further except to state we played a 5 player game.

Round One
Bruce took the Commando Skeletons and scored a 7 or so points. I followed my usually strategy of picking the race that cost me the least (in this case, Wealthy Halflings with an extra coin from Bruce). I scored 4 plus the 7 plus the 1 and already had 17 points compared to his 11. John took Hill Amazons and scored 10 points. Darren followed that up with Alchemical Giants and scored 5. Julie was last and she chose Berserk Wizards and scored about 10 as well.

Round Two
Bruce took a couple of more areas and converted more of the conquered tokens to skeletons, increasing his army from 10 to 14 since the start of the game. I took a couple of more areas and prevented Darren's Giants from rampaging in my backfield, and scored 6. John attacked Darren and took another hill, scoring 11. Darren was in pretty rough shape and scored 5. Julie expanded her area and scored double digits again.

Round Three
Bruce started rocking again and was up to 16 skeletons and scoring 12 points! I scored 7 with my halflings. John was hit by the undead and his score dropped to 2 when he went into decline. Darren followed with his Giants leaving 4 points per turn. Julie got tangled into a battle with the skeletons and scored 8 or so points.

Round Four
Bruce scored another pile of points, but he lost some of his skeletons and was now scoring 10 points. He controlled almost half the board at his peak. I scored another 7 points and decided to go into decline the next turn. John came on the board with Flying Trolls and attacked Bruce from behind, killing several of his undead and scoring 5 points. Darren took the Heroic Sorcerers and attacked from his side of the board, killing several wizards and converting a Halfling. Darren scored 9 points from all his movement, and looked to be in a strong place. Julie went into decline, scoring 5 points.

Round Five
Bruce had taken a beating with his skeletons and scored about 8 or so, going into the giants and wizards that surrounded him. I went into decline with my halflings, scoring 6 points. John continued flying around with his trolls, attacking anywhere someone was weak, and scoring 8 points. Darren, in a masterful plan, pulled all his guys up and went after Bruce, scoring 8 points again. Julie selected Diplomatic Ratmen, and hammered through the empty areas that Darren had just left scoring a massive 11 points.

Round Six
Bruce put what was left of his might undead horde into decline, scoring 7 points. I scored in double digits for the firts time, wiping more of of the undead from the board using the mighty Spirit Orcs, and scoring 11. John bounced around some more and scored 7 points, mainly at the expense of the undead again. Darren expanded further into the skeletons and scored 10 points as well. Julie killed more halflings and also scored in the double digits.

Round Seven
Bruce started up his Bivouacking Elves and marched into the area previously held by his undead and now held by trolls and sorcerers, he scored 5 points. I pulled up stakes and went after a new group on the other side of the board, killing some ratmen and wizards to score 14 points. John went into decline with the trolls. Darren enlarged his area and scored double digits again. Julie went hunting declining races and scored a further 10 points.

Round Eight (the last one)
Bruce's Elves (and only elves) scored 5 points as he had no skeletons left on the board. I expanded my control of the board on the backs of wizards and ratmen, scoring a further 14 points. John played Underworld Tritons and laid a serious beating on everyone on the board and scored his best result of the game, 11 points. Darren tried to maximise his points but everyone was on to the sorcerers and he only scored 7 points. Julie finished the game by taking a couple of spaces and scoring a final 7 points.

The final score had me beating Julie by 3, with Bruce 4 behind her and Darren 4 behind him, John was last trailing me by 17.

Please note, all the points I added here were guesses as I am pretty sure that is what they got but I am not 100% sure.

Betrayal at the House on the Hill

2009-11-22T15:27:00.000-08:00

Robert and Lenora came over last night to play Robert's copy of Betrayal at the House on the Hill.

Betrayal is a co-operative, exploration game until a certain point. After this, it is one player (the betrayer) against the rest of the players. In the first part of the game, all the players are exploring a mansion and collecting better stats and gear, while learning more about the mansion. The gear and the stats are improved by three different kinds of cards, Event cards (which could increase or decrease abilities), Item cards (revolvers, candles, dogs etc) or Omen cards (items like a madman, or a lost girl, or bad things). When an Omen card is drawn, you must roll 6 special dice and roll higher than the number of Omen cards in play, if you do not, the Haunt happens (which I will explain later).

The 6 dice you roll are special 6 sided dice. They have 3 different values on them, two each of blank, one or two pips. This means that you can generate any value from 0-12 on the Omen roll.

Once the Omen roll is made (number of Omen cards exceeds the dice roll), the player that started the Haunt looks in the scenario book to determine which haunt will happen. This determines who is the Betrayer and what the scenario is. Both sides take their books and determine what they have to do to win.

The game then changes, and the player to the left of the Betrayer goes first and play proceeds similar to before the Haunt, except both have different victory conditions. I don't want to give the scenario away, suffice to say, Brenda was the Betrayer and her victory conditions were to kill us all. Unfortunately, the person she was closest to was the strongest player so she tried to build up her Might so she could fight. The rest of us were not restricted by this (we had different victory conditions) , and we managed to fulfill ours before she could.

I like the game, it has 50 scenarios so there is some replayability in the game (how many board games have you played 50 times?) and the board setup changes every game, which makes it a fun experience.

After that we played a couple of other games before Lenora and Robert had to leave. The other games we played were: Zombie Fluxx, a fun little card game I introduced to them a couple of weeks ago. Lenora won, on her turn,, which is a rarity, as most of us win on someone elses' turn. The other was Dominion: Intrigue, which was won by Brenda in a close tight scoring game 39-35-35-34. I like Dominion, but I dislike the cards with Curses on them. This game had none, and Brenda won due to her Duchy/Duke strategy (6 duchies, 3 dukes) gave her the win.

Friday night we went out to a Meetup near us and taught a couple of games. First we taught some first time attendees Dominion (which Brenda won), then while I was helping a couple learn Carcassonne: The Discovery (she won and wanted to buy a copy of the game), while Brenda taught Small World to the couple we played Dominion with. Vivian won, in a roll and they both enjoyed it and discussed buying Dominion. Brenda and I finished the night teaching Canal Mania to a couple of other players. I won...

Two good nights of gaming, I got to play Canal Mania, a game that I quite like and Betrayal, not to mention Dominion...

Wilf Backhaus

2009-10-17T14:27:00.000-07:00

Wilf died Wednesday of cancer, he was a member of the SCA and one of the designers of Chivalry & Sorcery, a roleplaying game I used to play back in Saskatoon.

I saw him last at CalCon in spring and he looked frail then.

This is a loss to gaming and to the world, he was a gentleman as well as a gamer.

John

A little bit of Thanksgiving gaming

2009-10-12T11:10:00.000-07:00

I will start with the game I played at work this week. Tonny, Colin and I played Ticket to Ride on Friday at lunch. This time everyone was playing and not having to learn the rules and we wrapped the game up in less then 45 minutes. Tonny ended up crushing us definitively 129 - 98 - 91. I was the only one that did not complete all their tickets as I was two turns from getting my last ticket done, this cost me 26 points (the trip was worth 13) plus the longest track so I would have won. I guess that is what happens when you play games, you fall just short sometimes and other times you win convincingly.

Sunday rolled around and this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend in Canada so we invited some friends over, Jay and Cory for games and supper. Cory had just picked up a copy of Small World which he was eager to try, and since Brenda liked the game and Jay and I both wanted to play it, we broke out his copy and tried it.

A quick description of Small World, you set up the game with a series of races with special abilities, for example Commando Amazons or Pillaging Dwarfs and you can either take the top one in the row, or pay one buck/race and take one of the following ones. Each race has a special bonus (Amazons get four extra tokens to attack with, Dwarves get an extra coin every turn they control a mine) and each ability gives them a different bonus (Commando, which does not mean they play without underwear, but instead require one less token to attack with or Pillaging, which means they get a bonus coin every time they take over an area that was previously controlled).

After selecting your race you conquer territories on the board, expanding 2 tokens to conquer an area plus one for every other impediment (each token someone else put on there, mountain ranges etc). When you are done you collect points for the areas you control. A dwarf that conquered a mone controlled by either another player or a neutral race would get 1 coin for the area (standard) , 1 coin for the mine (Dwarf special ability) and 1 coin for conquering an area that was previously controlled (Pillaging) for a total of three coins for that area. Victory Points are money, so whomever has the most money at the end of the game wins.

When it is no longer feasible for your race to expand any further you can put that race into decline and start a new one. You will still score points for the declining race, but you will not be able to expand them (with certain exceptions) . This goes on for 9 turns (in a four player game) and the game ends and you count your money.

Cory started and paid 1 coin and picked the Pillaging Orcs (Orcs have the same advantage as Pillage so he scored three coins for every area he conquered with someone in it) and scored 12 points. I chose the top one, Wealthy Giants (Wealthy means 7 extra coins at the end of the turn and Giants take areas adjacent to mountains they control for 1 less counter), taking the free coin that Cory had put on it and scoring a total of 13 points. Jay took Underworld Ratmen (all caverns are one token cheaper to conquer as well as considered adjacent to each other, Ratmen start with more tokens, 8 then anyone else) and scored 8 coins. Brenda finished the turn by taking Mounted Sorcerers ( Mounted means you can take hills and plains for one cheaper, Sorcerers can conquer areas that are adjacent and have only one token in them by swapping out the other token for theirs.) and scored 7 points.

Round two was very similar except all of us scored around the same with my total going down to 8 and everyone else going up. Cory put his Orcs into decline around turn 4 and picked up Commando Amazons (see there they are again) and started scoring well again. On the same turn Jay declined his Ratmen and picked up Bivouacking Ghouls (Bivouacking means you get 5 encampments which give you an extra point of defence and Ghouls only sorta go into decline, instead they can continue to attack and take new territory), and scored well with them. Brenda had scored 17 in one round and 13 the next so she was perceived by Cory and Jay as the greatest threat (no I didn't help convince them....) So on turn 8 Brenda finally put her Sorcerers into decline.

I had placed my Giants into decline the turn after Jay so I picked up Swamp Tritons (bonus coin for swamps 1 less token needed to conquer areas that were adjacent to seas or lakes) and started scoring back in the teens again. On turn 9 Brenda took Alchmist Wizards (2 coins/turn they are on the board, and 1 coin bonus for magic areas) and she scored 7 points at the end of the game.

The final scores were John 107 (I got a ton of points every turn), Brenda 90, Jay 85 and C0ry 78. We all liked the game and will play it again. Small World is a retheming and slight redesign of Vinci and shares a lot of feel with the old Avalon Hill game, History of the World. Brenda, Cory and I all like HotW alot so I was not surprised thatwe all liked this.

I started supper about 5 so we broke up the gaming for awhile as I cooked and the others talked, we ate about 6:30 finishing about 8. Brenda napped from all the carbs (we ate vegan as Jay & Cory are) and about 8:30 we played a quick three player game of Coloretto, a quick filler. Jay won 183-142-137 over us and they left about 9 as Cory worked today.

Game night is Saturday!

El Grande at Darren's

2009-10-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

I have been gaming more and I thought I should give you a quick update to what I have been playing. Last night, at my regular gaming session at Darren's, we played El Grande, it was my second try (the last time was a year ago...) and Darren estimated he had played it 20 times, the other John twice and Bruce has probably played it more the Darren.
El Grande is a game of area control, nothing more nothing less. The beauty of the game is how you control the areas. Every turn, starting with the lowest player, you play a power card and this determines your turn order, with the highest number going first and the lowest number going last, with the added fact that the higher the number the less caballeros (not Guy, he never shows up) can move from the provinces (standby) to the court (readied). The first player then moves his caballeros to the court, and then choses his action card. Action cards do two things, they allow you to move caballeros from the court to the board and they have special actions, such as "Move the King" or "Score areas". The action cards allow you to move anywhere from one to five caballeros from the court to the board (the king allows 5). You score points on the board every three rounds (except for special scoring cards).

Point scoring works as this: Each area has a scoring tile, scoring between 4-7 points for first and 0-3 points for third (second ranges from 0-5, fourth and fifth range from 0-0). If there is a tie, the players get equal to the standing lower (2 players tied for first each score second, 2 players tie for third score fourth, AKA 0).

That is a good enough description of the game, I followed a strategy of this: caballeros in the court and in the provinces score 0, caballeros on the board have a chance of scoring. All four of us had all our caballeros on the board, so it seemed to be the prevalent base of everyone's strategy.

The game is not complex, it is just a hard game to win for new players. My first game I was crushed, finishing 30 points behind the winner, my second game was better, I finished 12 points out of first.

Today at work Tonny, Colin and I played Ticket to Ride, a game I am far more familiar with then El Grande. Tonny and Colin are both new to it. Tonny got an unfortunate set of cards and finished the game with 27 points as he completed no tickets. Colin completed his tickets and finished with 98 points, I completed 6 tickets and ended with 127. I am going to see if I can arrange for more people at work to play, maybe we can play some 4-5 polayer games.

FallCon 22

2009-09-22T20:04:00.000-07:00

WellFallCon 22 has come and gone, and to quote Tony the Tiger, it was grrrrreat!
Attendance was really good, I think there were more people there on Friday night then I have ever seen before. The place was cram packed! It was a little different then previous years, the auction filled up two hours after the auction opened...I started my FallCon adventure with a game called Glory to Rome, it won the People's Choice award and I was asked to moderate it. I really like the game, I just hate explaining it. There are so many things you have to explain for the game, and each one rests upon another one. I did manage to get through the explanation and then the game started. We played two games of it, and a winner emerged, a player that had never played it before. This was surprising because usually the winner has experience in the game. Glory to Rome went until 11 or so and I helped out around the booth and the game library until midnight, then I went home.

I arrived at 7:30 Saturday morning to help set up and ensure all the games were ready for the morning events. I had no games scheduled that day but just tried to helped things go smoothly.
I took over running the games library for awhile as well and played a game of Roll Through the Ages 2 player and lost badly. I like the game, so much so that I will probably purchase it. It is a unique filler and ends before the mechanism is wearing. The game is based on rolling dice to build your civilization. The downside for me is that it might as well be solitaire as there is no player intereaction except for the race to build wonders, you get more points for building a wonder first then your opponent.

I stayed at the games library for awhile and played some games with my friend Leah from Medicine Hat. She schooled me in Lost Cities and then she read the rules to Finca while I helped people check games out of the library. We played a game two player as we both learned the rules, she proved to be an excellent teacher by allowing me to beat her in the game. It is another interesting game that I will probably pick it. There is some depth to the game, and it plays in about 45 minutes.

My afternoon was spent helping pirates play Railroad Tycoon (Saturday was International Talk like a Pirate day) and then prepping for the auction.

The auction deserves special mention because of the games that were available this year. We had several people drop off large amounts (127 in one case) and the games were for the most part high quality. I would guess over a hundred were still in shrink and bidding for the games was fierce. One difference between this year and last was that there were far less miniatures (maybe 12-15 items) and magazines (2) then in previous years. This was due to the speed that the convention filled up. I saw several gamers haul their games back out to the vehicles because of the speed the auction filled. I purchased three games this year; Turbo Taxi, Fresh Fish and Android, and I missed out on Die Macher by a dollar!

I left at about 11:00 Saturday night, being too tired to stay longer and I wanted to finish my prep for my tournament the next day, BattleLore. I also used the Hundred Years War expansion for Battlelore as well. This expansion is great for tournaments because it removes the council and presets the Lore deck, which is great when you are teaching the game at the same time. There were an uneven number of players so I played as well. I won my first game 9-5 and had a shot at winning the tournament (which I don't like doing) but fate stepped in and gave me no centre cards in the second round, causing me to lose the game 10-4 (yes I was squished like a grape). The tournament was fun though and I really enjoyed playing it.

Afterwards we cleaned up and went for beer...
I had a really good time and everyone that was staying at my place for FallCon (there were 6 people) all agreed that it was great.
We have started planning for FallCon 23 already. So come on over for a weekend of gaming!
All the pictures were taken by The Bit, a real photographer.... for FallCon.

Hey look, John finally updated

2009-08-13T07:54:00.001-07:00

Yeah, yeah I know, it's been ages since I did an update.

I have been playing games, most noticeably Age of Steam twice, Descent a couple of times and a some games of Dominion (with Rob and then again with the nephews) and not to mention a bunch of C&C:A.

Today I am here to talk about the BattleLore I played at Darren's with John and Bruce. John was new to the game so he and I played the Wizard's Lore scenario from the first game while Bruce and Darren played the Battle of Crecy in the 100 Years War supplement.

John and I had a pretty close game, both of us seemed to be slightly crippled by cards in certain scenarios. I won the first scenario 6-4, while John won the rematch 6-4. We were tied at 4 in the second game when he used Creeping Doom to kill two of my units to win the game.

Tonight we played Descent!

C&C at Darren's

2009-06-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Well we had a new guy to Darren's weekly C&C night, that being John (no not me, the other one!). He was completely new to the whole system so I started out by teaching him the Battle Cry! and I must be a heckuva teacher. He whipped me soundly, winning the first four games by pretty large margins. Now I could use the excuse that I was taking it easy on him, but I wasn't. Although only having left flank cards for half the game really hurt me...

Darren and Bruce replayed Trebbia and River in Commands & Colors: Ancients

Roborally

2009-06-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

I received a copy of RoboRally in a math trade on BGG last week so I taught Brenda how to play and we played a couple of scenarios 2 player.

She won... everytime...

I am going to pull RoboRally out with more players and see how it goes.

Ancients! at Darrens

2009-06-11T15:03:00.001-07:00

Bruce and I played three games of Commands & Colors: Ancients on the 2nd of June, with Bruce winning everything. We played Trebbia and River

Steve and Darren played the first two scenarios as Steve was new to C&C:A but not the system.

Memoir ’44 at Darren’s

2009-05-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last night was the first night of what I hope will be a long running series of Commands and Colors games at Darren’s.

We played Memoir ’44, and since I was the only one of the four that had played it we played the first couple of scenarios. I am not sure who won the games on the other table as I was not paying attention to them other then to help with rules questions.

Darren and I were first to set up and played through the first three. Darren won Pegasus Bridge by a score of 6-5 in a close game. He won as the Germans 4-1 and then lost as the Allies 4-2. While we were finishing up the second half of the battle, Bruce and Steve arrived and set up Pegasus Bridge as well. They had finished their first battle by the time Darren and I set up and started the second battle, Sainte-Mere Eglise (I pointed out John Wayne on the board). I do think Bruce won both sides as I know he won as the Allies in Pegasus Bridge.

Sainte-Mere Eglise was a much closer battle. Darren won as the Germans 4-2 and I won as the Germans 4-2 resulting in a tie between the two of us 6-6. Darren still had the lead as he won the first scenario. Steve did comment that he had the best cards he had all night in the second scenario and if I recall correctly he won that session.

We set up the Sword Beach, the invasion by sea. I was extremely fortunate and managed to play three Assault Center cards which allowed me to advance a large portion of my force up and off the beach. All of Darren’s forces (three) on his left flank were destroyed which allowed a breakthrough for me. This netted me three medals and destroying a unit on his right flank got me my 4th. All that was left was for me to send tanks to the town for my fifth and final medal and I won 5-2. We switched sides and Darren did not have the same luck as me, getting his centre bogged down and only getting Probe cards for the centre. I ended up destroying his tanks (3 medals) as well as two infantry to win the side 5-2 again. This meant I won the scenario 10-4.

Next week, Commands and Colors: Ancients!

FallCon web site

2009-05-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

The newly revamped FallCon website is up and the games for this year's edition of FallCon are available to review.

You can also preregister now.

Why are you still here? Go register... NOW!

Last games night until fall

2009-05-25T14:58:00.001-07:00

I had 7 people show up and we played 6 games. The first people showed up at 7:30 and we set up for a game of Dominion, but by the time the explanation was done, the rest had shown up so I moved over to teach San Juan and Tim played Dominion with Lenora, Robert and Brenda. Brenda won a long game that took about an hour, with no one getting the revenue to buy the provinces.

Meanwhile, I taught San Juan to Brennan and Scott. San Juan being one of my favourite games. I took my time and explained it well and they caught on, with Scott finishing the game with 12 buildings about 25 minutes later. The final scores were John 30, Scott 24 and Brennan 21.

While we waited for the slow pokes, Brennan and I taught Ingenious to Scott. Ingenious is one of the best gateway games, it is simple to teach, easy to score and quick playing. I won in a very close game with Scott and Brennan blocking the yellow from scoring with that as their lowest colour. Final scores were John 11, Brennan 6 and Scott 5.

We switched tables around and Brenda, Lenora Robert and I played Poison with the others playing Ticket to Ride. I was leading Poison with 6 points until the (disastrous) last turn when I scored 16 to finish last, Lenora won with 11, Robert was second with 12 and Brenda finished third with 16.

I not not know the scores in Ticket to Ride but I do know that Brennan won.

Brennan had to leave by then (something about work) and we switched to a game of Bang! Scott was the sheriff, with Tim as the renegade, Lenora as the deputy and Robert and I as the outlaws. Robert and I managed to remove the deputy and the renegade which left us mano a mano with the sheriff, who mowed us down in quick order…

For our final game of the night we played Ca$h n Gun$ and the less said about that the better… Scott won again, and I died in the third round from lead poisoning.

The Gate to the North

2009-05-22T11:32:00.001-07:00

We finally got back to Descent after a month's hiatus and it really showed on the party. The group is heading up to the secret pass near frostgate and they took a little trip through the dungeon called The Gate to the North, another slay fest in three acts.

The first dungeon they had was Dargon's Lair, featuring a red dragon which I finally got to use after Tim's paint job and although he did not kill many, he did weaken the party for later adventures. Lord Hawthorne, played by Jay did not die but he did eat three burn tokens, causing him to lose three health every round until he finally extinguished them on the second level. I did kill both Red Scorpion and Laurel of Bloodmoon before they got me, allowing me to take an 8-5 lead in the Conquest tokens department.

The second battle was the King Janius (Bag of Bones), a master skeleton without Undying but he does get up after being killed. He also allows undead archers a bonus to their pierce. Once again the party triumphed but again after suffering a pair of deaths. While everyone was standing around admiring their handiwork I used Dark Shadows on Laurel of Bloodmoon and caused her to attack a weakened Hawthorne. Hawthorne lost his final burn token by falling over dead... I was now up 22-10! Heh heh heh, in the best Harvey Ronald style...

The third and final act was the Arena, led by the mighty Ogre. He had conveniently placed skeletons on as many high ledges as he could, allowing a wicked crossfire from them. Until the party killed them... When Hawthorne came forward and challenged the Ogre to a battle, mano a ogre, I summoned a party of beastmen and the commander of the beastmen charged forward (to give his command bonus) and whacked Laurel of Bloodmoon, causing a whopping 12 points of damage! conveniently killing her at the same time. The ogre stepped forward and swept both Red Scorpion and Hawthorne off their feet, killing her and grievously wounding him. Hawthorne retreated away from the action, allowing me to charge forward and attack both Red Scorpion and the Runewitch, I dealt 9 damage to both of them and used the knockback feature to knock them onto the ledge, knowing full well that they would take damage when they jumped off. My plan backfired as I could not completely get the Ogre away and the two of them teamed up to cover him with a layer of death magic... They did get distracted and decided to kill all the creatures in the dungeon, giving them no extra conquest but allowing me to get two more. I finished the night with 32 CT and they finished with 17.

I was now leading the CT race for the first time in the game, and they were in Frostgate now, after a brief sidetrip in an outdoor encounter to purchase potions, they were now behind in CT in the game, 101-110. It is now a Silver level campaign!

There is a series of dungeons that allow the players to catch up to the Overlord if they are behind in CT, and the silver level one is a short trip away. This dungeon allows them to get a skill, additional dice and the like if they complete it. So they are headed there for their next adventure, probably next week.

Calgary Entertainment Expo

2009-05-05T15:51:00.000-07:00

For the second year in a row, I taught games at the Calgary Entertainment Expo, this year was different though, Brent, who normally organises these, moved to Texas. This meant I was the one doing the organising. I ~~shanghaied~~ recruited Tim and Thushy to help me as well.

There was one other difference too, instead of FallCon getting the room to ourselves, they had a gaming organiser. This also meant we shared the room with a Games Workshop Outrider, Cal-Con and Strategem. Bryan, the organiser, also ran some games, particularly Space Hulk and Pandemic.

For Demos we typically focus on easy to teach, fast strategic games. So once again, we taught Settlers of Catan, Ingenious and Dominion. I would guess we taught Settlers to 20 people, Ingenious to about 15 and Dominion to about half a dozen. I would guess that we talked to 100-150 people and several expressed interest in FallCon. One even rhapsodized about a convention where all you did was play games (which is what FallCon is).

Sunday afternoon Thushy also ran a teaching session for Age of Steam which went over pretty well as well.

Game night!

2009-04-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

On April 11th I hosted my (more or less) biweekly game night and we had 10 players that played a total of 5 games. I had forgotten (or was too lazy, you decide) to do an update on what we played, so you will only get a barebones update!

Nicole, Bryan, Simon and I played Power Grid, on the French map. In an intensely close game, particularly surprising when you realise that Bryan and Nicole played for the first time and this was Simon's first game., Nicole won. I was disheartened...

David, Anthony, Lachlan and Tim played Primordial Soup with David, the only one with experience in the game pulling off a win.

Colin and Michelle played Ingenious twice, with Colin winning one and Michelle winning the other. Michelle and Colin are both new to the game group, with this being her first visit and his second.

David, Lachlann, Simon and Tim all left early so we finished with a game of Chrononauts. Everyone but Nicole and I were new to the game, and even then our "experience" (I had played once before) didn't help as Bryan won the turn before I could.

Gaming last week

2009-04-10T15:42:00.000-07:00

I played some games this week at Woody's on Wednesday and Jay's on Thursday of last week.

Woody, Norm and I played some three player Race for the Galaxy, with Norm winning the first game and Woody the second. Neither game seemed really close, as the winners in both games won by a fairly large margin.

We then switched to Dominion and I was crushed again, the less said about this night the better. Woody's daughter played as well, and she enjoyed it too.

I also loaned Woody my copy of Runebound so he could try it with his kids, his email response was that it was a really big hit.

I was over at Jay's Thursday night and Cory and his son came over to play and we went right back to Dominion. Cory's son proved to be the expert in a game he had never seen before and tied for first in both his first two plays of the game. He was bored after crushing everyone so he wandered off to play video games and we played some three player Dominion and then we switched to a game that I feel has had a poor reputation mainly because of it's colour scheme.

Our last game of the night was Nexus Ops, a light wargame that encourages aggression because you only get victory points by attacking. Jay commented about two turns into the game that "this is a better game then I expected". He won...

Finally, another game night update

2009-03-26T18:53:00.000-07:00

On March 21st I hosted only my third game night of the year. I missed most of Feb due to a trip to Mexico. We had ten total players and we played 6 different games.

First off, as new people were arriving, I set up Carcassonne: The Discovery for 5 players, Emily won by 15 points over a close packed bunch. As the game was finishing up, we had more players arrive so we broke into multiple groups.

David needed to refresh his memory of Arkham Horror so he roped 5 others in to play this along with the Dunwich Horror expansion, we had a 6 player, 4.5 hour game which culminated in Machine Gun McGlen killing Ithaqua with a sword. We were exhausted by the end, but also exhilarated.

Emily convinced Lenora, Brenda and Colin to play her latest addiction, Dominion. They managed to get two plays in, with Emily winning the first player game and Lenora winning Big Money.

Emily had to leave, and we were still on the track of Ithaqua so the three of them played Poison, the game of witches brews. Brenda won, but I am not sure of the scores.

The next game they played was Ingenious, still my favourite Knizia and Colin took home his first victory of the night.

Lastly, they played Formula Motor Racing (another Knizia, hmmm) and Colin started slow and won by the whole shebang by the end of the third race.

Next is my perspective of Cal-Con, the convention I was at over the weekend.

Gaming at Woody's, Parts I and II

2009-03-26T15:29:00.001-07:00

The last two Wednesdays I have been playing games at a friend of mine, Woody. The main games we have been playing are Race for the Galaxy and Dominion. Yesterday we added in a third game, Nexus Ops, just to add a little variety.
The first Wednesday we played RtfG twice, I was lucky in the first game to get a military strategy rolling and ended up with three 6 value developments, and easily won the first game. Game two was a slightly different matter as both Woody and Norm had better games. I used the "drown em in planets" strategy and had 2 alien planets by the end of the game, I barely eked out a win that time with both Woody and Norm scoring close to me.
The second game we played that night was Dominion. Woody and Norm had never played Dominion so we played using the first time deck and predictably enough, I won. The advantage I had was similar to the advantage a veteran player of any game has, they know and understand the roots to victory.

The next wednesday night Norm and Woody were playing Race again as I told them I would be late. Norm got his economic engine humming smoothly in the last three turns to score 40 points and Woody used the military to score 36.
We switched to Dominion (now there is a shock!) and played the Big Money deck. The deck may have been big money but the scores were not, Woody won by 2 points over me, with Norm trailing me by 3 and scoring 27 points total. Next up was the Interactive deck, where I used the thief to little effect but still managed to score a slight victory over the two contenders.

We finished the night with Nexus Ops, a light science fiction wargame, that is quick playing and is simple to teach and learn. Nexus Ops uses a board made of hexes and revenue mines are placed on them to use for purchase of troops. A turn begins with the player buying troops, playing any start of turn cards and then doing movement (1 space), fighting (one d6 roll per figure), collecting revenue and picking up secret mission cards (hidden victory points you can play).
The game is a fast game, and with my vast experience (two plays) and teaching Woody and Norm, we still managed to get a game played in 75 minutes from setup to teardown. Woody won by killing my dragon and taking the citadel on the same turn, generating 5 VP and reaching the required 12 before me. I had 10 at games end and Norm had 4.

This weekend, Cal-Con!

Wednesday night gaming

2009-03-13T15:48:00.000-07:00

Brenda and I headed over to Jay's place Wednesday night for some nosh and gaming. Jay fed us some Hungarian food and then Brenda fed us some losses...

First up was Dominion, we played with the first deck with the Witch & Thief in it. I tried a new experiment and went minimal cash and tons of Gardens and other purchases. There was no Moat so the game was low scoring. Brenda got her first victory of the night beating me by one point 18-17 with Jay pulling up the rear at -5.

I demanded a rematch and we went onto the next deck (Town Square?) and this game had no Witch or Thief so the scores were much higher. I got my engine rolling and managed to squeak out a victory with 52 points, Brenda finished second at 45 and Jay was third with 27.

We finished the night with Race for the Galaxy, a game very similar to San Juan, but certainly more complex. Jay commented at the end of the game "You need a full game just to understand the game, the symbols and turns, I never got it until the last turn." Needless to say, Jay played the perfect host, finishing 3rd with 18 points, a respectable total for a first time player, while Brenda laid down 15 points on the last hand to win 35-28 over me, I was crushed.

I have no gaming plans (currently) for the weekend, but I do have my Descent campaign for next Monday and Jay and I are going to try to get together again next week. Next weekend is my game night, with Cal-Con the week after that!

Descent again

2009-03-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Last Monday Jay, Brenda and JC were back to finish what they had started the previous week. So they started on the third level, which was populated by some undead and a few other nasty dudes... I managed to get a kill in before they totally wiped out the dungeon and the game ended with the party at 17 CT and me at 20. The plan was for the group to head to Tamalir, do their business and then head off to intercept Sir Alric Farrow (which they did), but not before he got his first roll to trash the town (he failed). We ended up in an outdoor battle with heavy snow, so no one was allowed to move faster then their speed. They battled all of his minions, destoying them and then managed to kill Farrow as he tried to flee the board, hampered by the heavy snow he was unable to get away.

The final result was 26 CT for me and 21 for the party, pretty close, but I finally had more CT then the party. I purchased a Treachery upgrade and a Traps upgrade in those two weeks and the total CT for the two groups is 156. I have 6 CT unspent.

Thursday night gaming

2009-03-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Jay came over Thursday and we played some games and had a beer (or two). Jay has not played many of the two player games outside the Commands & Colors line so we played a couple of new (to him) games.

First up was Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game, a game for 2-6 players that we played 2 player. Jay took the zombies and I took the humans. We played the first scenario, with me drawing the Drifter, the Nurse, The Sheriff and Billy, his son. All of them started in their respective starting positions except the drifter, who started in the centre of the board. Jay placed his zombies and awaaaay went shambled!
He used the shamble card immediately and attacked the nurse, causing a wound, and forcing her to flee for the protection of the drifter and the sheriff. All the rest of the humans searched and came away with a gun and a first aid kit. Jay milled around the board with his zombies...

Long story short (since I didn't enjoy the game) Jay jammed his zombie into the hospital and the church, and waited me out. I lost the game, and it is now up for trade...

The second game we played was Dominion, a game that you build your deck in, much like the pregame part of Magic: The Gathering or other CCgs. Since this was Jay's first game, we played a 2 player version of the first game. Since Jay was new, and I had played several/many times I won quite handily, but he did grasp the strategy of what was going on. So we played again.... This time we played the Big Money game and Jay lost but by a much narrower score, I beat him by only 8 so points. Jay had one beer left, so the obvious thing was to play another game of Dominion... We finished off the night with the interactive deck. Jame jumped out buying the first thief which made me decide to go with all + action and + gold coin cards. I never purchased another gold coin. Jay used his thief to trash one of my coppers dropping me to 6 copper coins. He ended up beating me 52-48 in a very close game.

We are planning on doing this more often, and quite possibly switching it to Wednesday nights so Brenda is not off playing WoW.

Descent Night

2009-03-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

We finally got on track again with the Road to Legend campaign for Descent last night. The party spent a week learnin' some a skill (Shadowsoul) and getting a shiny silver die. While they were getting all learned up, I spent 30 Conquest Tokens (CT) and upgraded all my creatures to Silver. They ventured off into the wilds of Terrinoth. They slipped by the first encounter in the wild of some beastmen, and headed off to the dungeon with their health intact.

Their first encounter in the dungeon was #2 The Alchemist's Lab. The players were cocky from their previous adventures, or maybe they forgot, but Red Scorpion went a little too far out in front and she was doubleteamed by the (now silver!) manticores. She died... The players did some quick thinking and decided that this was bad, so Laurel of Bloodwood and Runewitch Astarra teamed up and killed a manticore. Lord Hawthorne rushed forward to slay the other and promptly fell in a pit. The manticore took some pot shots at him, and then backed off, forcing the players to chase him, while Hawthorne climbed out of a pit. The manticore and his beastman sidekick died but Carolus lived on! Astarra and Laurel each battled him and both missed once, so he lived, with only one HP left, so he sauntered over to Laurel and laid the smack down, killing her. I was now at 9 CT and the players were at 3! Carolus died, giving them an additional three and they sauntered off to the next level, #31 Puppet Master.

Puppet Master is a neat level, with two red creatures but one is dependant on the other to live (not that the party knew this). I had only limited areas to set up and so the space was filled with Debilus, another Master Sorcerer, a red Beastman with two white sidekicks and Gragnath. On my first turn I summoned some kobolds and laid down the trapmaster card, making all my traps 3 cheaper. Hawthorne knew more spiky pits were coming... The group sauntered in, killing the white beastmen but not suffering any damage from all the X I rolled when attacking. When Hawthorne moved his shadowsoul into the area and switched places the next turn, I dropped a block on his head., forcing him back to his original starting spot. He managed to wound Gragnath with his battle, and no other creatures were killed in that round. On my turn I played Dark Charm on Astarra, who turned and unloaded her best attack on Laurel, which missed (sigh). I spent a couple of attacks on Red Scorpion, killing her again and running my total to 12 CT. The group finally managed to kill all the creatures on that level and we called it a night there. I left the party bent and bleeding, with Hawthorne and Laurel down on HP, and about to enter the third and final level. We will be wrapping up this dungeon this week and the party plans on heading back to Tamalir to buy walls upgrades and possibly attack Sir Alric Farrow, as they think they are at their peak of skills and if they wait too long it will be a silver level campaign, doubling his health and increasing his armour by 2. The current count for CT is Overlord 12 and the players 10.

Remember Cal-Con is on at the end of the month, be there or be a turkey!

The end of the world!

2009-01-25T10:35:00.000-08:00

And the power to do it...

Last night was my second games night of 2009, and it was a small but dedicated group. We had six players and we played two games.

The first was a six player game of Power Grid. We played the United States map, with the Northwest (purple area) out of play. Chris set up shop in the Southwest part of the map, Brenda along the Southeastern part of the US, Krista went into the Eastern seaboard, Brian was in the central north with Cory directly below him and I was in the Southern US. The game ended at 15 cities, rather then 14 because three players were able to build to 15. I beat Brenda by 8 Elektros (22-14) Cory finished third with 15 cities and no Elektros. It was a close tense game that lasted about 2 hours, which was surprising for a game with 2 new players, 1 player that had played once, one player with three plays and Brenda and I.

Cory had to leave to pick up someone from the airport, so we finished up with a 5 player game of Nuclear War. I have Nuclear Proliferation, Nuclear Escalation and the booster packs so the deck of cards is pretty big. The game played the way it usually does, with both Brian and I losing our first turns due to secrets played by Brenda. We traded propaganda until Krista dropped a Scud on Chris, she did no damage but the war was on! I had started the game with only 21 million people and Brian had taken 10 million from me in the propagaganda round, so I responded the best way, by using a Stealth Bomber to kill 16 million! He was surprised...
Chris played Super Vinny and he was the most dangerous of all, he whittled everyone down (except Chris who had a Super Serum) and he eventually wiped out Krista, Brenda, Brian and myself. Our final retaliations weakened Chris so Brian wiped him out as he lay dying from the plague. Once again, Nuke War shows no one is a winner when it comes to this.

I had a great time, and I think the others did too. The next game night should be in 2 weeks.

Grab your crash helmet and your racing silks

2009-01-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

Game night went racing!

January 10th I ran my first game night of 2009, I ran it with a racing theme. I had a pretty good turnout, with 11 players and we played 4 different games.

The first game of the night was Formula D. Chris had brought along his copy, so I got him to teach it to everyone else. There are some subtle differences between it and Formula De, the largest ones being cosmetic, but it does allow you the option of Street Racing as well. Chris won that game, a turn ahead of everyone else.

While people were showing up I played Formula Motor Racing with 2 other players. We played a 3 race series, with me winning 2 outright and winning the overall series 24-17-11.

The Really Nasty Horseracing Game was next on the list, I taught it to 5 other players, who seemed to grasp the game far better than I... Rick won by betting 55,000 pounds in a 12:1 longshot in the final race, beating Shawn by 15,000 pounds. Shawn also bet on the horse, but only bet 50,000... I wound up broke and having to sell my stable of nags... One of the highlights was Shawn's number 6 horse galloping home to win the 4th race at 50:1 odds, too bad no one bet on him.

While we were trashing each other's horse on the track, the other 5 players played Grand Prix: Detroit Cleveland. Lenora won this one.

The previous game was faster, so they wound up the night with a game of Formula Motor Racing. Brenda won this one.

I have been considering a Formula De constructor series of games. Here is a link to a condensed copy of the rules.

The Dominion of Morse

2009-01-11T20:38:00.000-08:00

We went to Morse, Saskatchewan for New Years this year, and is as typical of many get togethers with my friends, we played several different games, but the true champion of the week was Dominion. Once it was taught, everyone wanted to play it again, and again, and again... Dominion was played about 25 times in 4 days.

We did play other games as well, Formula De twice, on the USA Track Pack 2. I actually got lucky in the second game and won it on the last corner.

I finally got a chance to play Brass as well, and I do get why it is rated so highly. It is a tough game to get your brain around, but man it is good!

I taught Rob how to play Twilight Struggle, but this was an issue of the game beating Rob up, and me knowing the game better, so he never stood a chance. It is tough to be taught the game by someone that has played it several times, mainly because of the knowledge gap. I know when I play against players that are more experienced then me, I experience the same sort of beatdown.

The last game I played for 2008 was Cutthroat Caverns, which I did not win. I finished second...

Tune in, as next week I will also publish a rundown of the game night last night.

Recent Games

2008-12-18T21:11:00.000-08:00

In August (or September)I subscribed to the latest three games from Treefrog Games and in the last couple of days I received both Steel Driver and After the Flood.

My first impression of Steel Driver is that it is very similar to Wabash Cannonball but prevents the issue of the runaway leader that I have experienced in 2 of my games of Wabash. The similarities are there because both games come from the same lineage. Wabash is a cleaned up Prairie Railroads and Steel Driver is a cleaned up version of that. I have read the rules only and while it lacks the sudden ending of Wabash it does look good. I hope to play this over New Years.

After the Flood could be a more difficult game to play, it is 3 players for 3 hours. I have not cracked the plastic yet to read the rules so I am unsure of it.

Descent again!

2008-12-16T19:42:00.000-08:00

The second game session in my ongoing Descent Campaign was last night and it was a tough one for the players. They had two of the three levels of Starfall Forest to complete and they had a rough go.

The second level was two named Hellhounds, Frost and Blaze. I did a real number on them with Frost getting multiple kills in and the party losing a lot of heart before finally defeating the breathy bunch.

The last dungeon was with a Beastman and the Pools. They defeated the Beastman and the others with a lot of difficulty and ended up getting a copper treasure (their first!) and making out with only one more death. They drew two cursed items but elected to keep them, just for the firepower and protection.

They chose the third week to stay in Tamalir and train.

After three weeks it was Party 23 XP and Overlord 20.

John's Christmas Gift Guide for Casual Gamers 2008 edition

2008-12-14T11:35:00.001-08:00

I always think that purchasing games for gamers is tough, so I always focus on those that will play them once in awhile, or view them as party activities.

Last year I posted a gift guide focusing on players that don't play games, so this year I will change to my favourite games for those that are casual game players.

I think the top of my list will always be Ingenious, easy to play and easy to teach. My game group has sold 10-15 copies directly due to this game, and if the vendors at last years Calgary Entertainment Expo would have had copies in stock, I would have sold a few more! It has been called "advanced dominoes" but I think there is a larger strategy as you are trying to score points while stopping (or slowing) your opponents scoring.

The game that is second on my list is also by Reiner Knizia and it is Formula Motor Racing. It has a slight feel of auto racing but the theme is tied well into the game play. It also contains some "take that" in the game as well, and only takes a about thirty minutes to play 3 or 4 races.

The new darling on Boardgamegeek is a game called Dominion. This game came out of nowhere to be one of the top ranked games on the site. It will draw players that like Magic: the Gathering and other collectible card games. I taught three new players last night and all three enjoyed it, one asked the name of it because she "likes to track the games she wants to purchase". It has a deck building structure but everyone pulls from the same piles, allowing you to customise your deck.

What the heck, another Knizia game? Yes, here is another, Winner's Circle, a fast playing betting game for up to 6 players. The horse movement is kind of odd, but there is some strategy in the game and can be a riot.

This is a list for casual gamers so I am going to include a game I don't really care for, but revolutionised the boardgaming industry. Settlers of Catan in many ways has done exactly that. It has made a game accessible for those that have primarily played roll and move style games an dgiven them a little more to chew on with trading and the suspense of getting the dice rolls they need. I don't like this game because I find that if you don't get the dice rolls the game is less enjoyable. It does play fast (45 minutes or so) and has some player interaction, so it should be a good casual game.

Ticket to Ride is always going to make this list as well, it is easy to teach, fun to play and you can always talk while playing the game. This game bridges the social activity barrier and allows people to play a game and interact.

The last game on my list is Pandemic. This cooperative game encourages table talk and helping each other out. You either win together or lose together, but you should have a great time doing it. My only complaint is that sometimes you can get a dominant player that gets everyone to do what they want and it may be less of you playing the game as it is them playing it. This is a minor quibble because as you get more experience you can slowly understand the game better.

OK, that is it for this year, have fun and happy gaming!

My Descent campaign

2008-11-25T19:03:00.000-08:00

I have had an itch for awhile to start a Descent: Journeys in the Dark campaign using the Road to Legend system and a couple of weeks ago it finally started.

I currently have three players, Brenda (playing Runewitch Astarra), Jay (playing Lord Hawthorne) and JC (playing Laurel of Bloodwood) and the fourth character they are going to swap amongst themselves is the Red Scorpion.

I drew Obsidian Shackles as my plotline and the Demon Prince as my Avatar on the world.

I will update this more as we play, as we get more into the game.

FallCon 21! A ripe time to review

2008-10-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, for I have been a slacker in my updating.

I went to FallCon (my 5th year) but this year I also helped out as an organiser for the event so it was a significantly different (but still great) experience for me.

I only played 2 games, the first being Micro Mutants: Evolution, which is, at it's core, tiddly winks... the last one being Race for the Galaxy, a variation on San Juan. I think Race may be a better game, but it is more difficult to teach.

I also moderated the Battlelore tournament, but I had a significant drop in registrants, with only 8 this year compared to the 14 I had as players last year. Since the player group was so small, it was a less stressful time for me. The winner of the tourney was a return player, which was nice.

Lastly was the auction, I purchased only 2 items, both Mythos box sets as both Brenda and I like the game, but have been unable to get more for the game in a long time. I bid on many more items, but only got those two.

My brother in law and his kids came up this year as well, so, since I was working at FallCon I made his kids (both in their twenties) do work as well... The response I got back from both of them was that since they met the organisers of FallCon and they were around there, they had a better time than they would have just as players. It was a perspective I did not expect.

OK, that is enough for now, I have three other updates rattling around in my head currently that I will try to get to soon.

Battlelore to Fantasy Flight?

2008-08-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Days of Wonder finally admitted what seemed to be increasingly obvious to their fans, they are not capable of supporting 3 big franchises. They have sold their fantasy battle game, Battlelore, to Fantasy Flight Games.

Here are some of my quick (and probably wrong) thoughts...

This is a good thing, Battlelore and Memoir '44 both suffered for additional resources. Battlelore, after an initial flurry of expansions seems to have leveled off and both Memoir '44 and Commands & Colors:Ancients getting more posted plays on BGG.

A little over a year ago I gave my thoughts on Battlelore and how it could cause issues with Memoir '44.

The reason why this is a good deal is that it will allow DoW to further develop the Memoir '44 line, their previous two releases being the Air Pack and the Bag (neither of which I purchased) and the lone announced release for Battlelore (the troll with the paper map) which I did not really want either.

Fantasy Flight will have to really start to flog this game to start recapturing it's glory, they need the Heroes expansion to come out this year (just before Christmas would be smart) and they need to start promoting the game again.

Why it may be bad is for another reason, Days of Wonder has created a Battlelore Adventures editor (link to the right) that I am hopeful but not positive that they will port over all the information.

This also makes me wonder if DoW will be around in two years, have the owners gotten bored and will they sell off their other products? Time will tell.

Another day, another Descent...

2008-08-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

I got a couple of people together Friday to play Descent: Journeys in the Dark on Friday night and it did not go well for them at all...

The adventure chosen was "Spoiled Brat", the fourth in the book, and in hindsight, may have been too tough for a group of three with 2 new players. They did ok getting out of the entrance, and they cleaned out the hallway before encountering the red rune locked door, so they turned around and headed back up to the top of the map. This is where things went bad, real bad...

Everything in that room was undying, and undying they were. I was hot with the dice and kept one poor sorceror around for 8 straight kill shots. This hosed them as it took 3 or 4 rounds to get out of that room. It was four rounds I used to summon a variety of creatures including the kobolds from the expansion. It worked out that I was paying 3 less for all my traps (one less/ master kobold and one less for being trapmaster).

The group did use some interesting tactics, heading to town to use the portals to avoid the clusters of monsters, but the sheer number of creatures I had on the board weakened them enough so that they could not survive the dragon.

I'm not dead yet!

2008-08-10T00:47:00.000-07:00

I just have not had much to say. I am currently working on 2 things; first, my report on gaming at Waskesiu and lastly, playing Descent last night.

Gaming lately

2008-07-12T14:56:00.001-07:00

June was a slow month for me gaming with only 3 total games played, and one of them was played twice.

I previously discussed Descent so I won't get into it again, and the only other game I played last month was Combat Commander: Europe, a WWII Card Driven Wargame.

I still don't have my head completely around it so I won't talk about it, instead I will talk about the games I played this month. I have played 5 games this month and some of them are real beauties! First off, I got in two plays of Arkham Horror, with the group winning once against Shub-Niggurath, and losing once against Ithaqua. I really like Arkham Horror and I would love to get it on the table more often, maybe I will have to organise a FFG Games night, where we play some of their longer titles like AH, or Descent.

Another game we played was Wabash Cannonball, an economic train game. We played a three player game in about 75 minutes, including teaching rules. I like this game, I am just not sure if I will ever win it.

The last two I played this month were The End of the Triumvirate, a three player game set in the Roman era. It is a good solid game, I just am unsure if it is a great game, and Metropolys, a game of building towers, it was ok, but I found the board colours unsettling.

Our Descent into the pit

2008-06-22T20:54:00.000-07:00

I purchased a game called Descent: Journeys in the Dark about 3 weeks ago and I cracked it out for playing on a Saturday night. I had 3 players agree to play but only two showed up. Brenda and Rick each then played two characters, Brenda played Landrec the Wise (a magic character) and Ronan the Wild (Ranged and Melee). Rick played Trenloe the Strong (a melee character) and Lyssa (balanced amongst all three). In hindsight I should have only given them one character each as sometimes we forgot the special abilities of the characters. I think dropping the number of characters to one each would have speeded up the game as well.

We started setup/rules at about 7:30 and we were ready to go by about 8:30. The delay was due to my inexperience setting up the game and explaining rules. The scenario we played was the first one in the book, a fairly straightforward assault on a dungeon controlled by a Giant named Narthak.

Descent is a dungeon crawl game, and the way you play it is very typical of dungeon crawls. Each player runs 1 (or in this case 2) characters that move around fighting creatures. It puts me in mind of the old Games Workshop game called Advanced HeroQuest but a little lighter and contains fancier bits. Some of the differences between the two games are: less randomness in Descent, AHQ is a campaign game straight out of the box, whereas Descent is a one-off affair with some campaign rules tacked on (and a 3rd expansion that is for the campaign), the characters in Descent are pre-made with only some customization done by card draws.

The heart of any dungeon crawl game is the combat system, and Descent uses a similar one to Doom. You get attack dice based on the weapon and bonuses for your character and special abilities. E.g. Trenloe is a pure combat dude, so whenever he attacks in melee he gets the dice for the weapon plus three power dice. Then he gets extra damage based on the “surges” he rolls. The number of hearts rolled is compared to the armour of the opponent and if it exceeds the armour you will cause damage. Once you exceed the creature’s health, it dies.

When the players succeed at some tasks, such as activating a glyph or opening a chest, they get conquest tokens, and if they have tokens at the end of the game, they win. The way you lose tokens is to die, every character has a conquest rating between 2 and 4, and that is the count of tokens they lose when they die.

Brenda and Rick tore through the first two rooms without any problems killing beastmen, razorwings and hell hounds (plus one ogre). Their first real difficulty was the third room. It was stuffed with razorwings, bane spiders, beastmen, skeletons and a master sorcerer. They merrily chopped through this group, along with the great timing of Landrec using an item and stunning all creatures within 6 spaces of him. Rick commented “Well if we go through this room, the next room is a breeze! Then came room 4 (cue the ominous music)

Room 4 had 2 beastmen, 2 skeletons, 2 manticores and one named giant (Narthak), and a gold chest….

They entered the room with about 20 conquest tokens and killed one of my beastmen (the master, so he no longer gave extra dice) and then the missiles started flying. Now Trenloe had Armour 4, so he ignored the first three hits against him, but Manticores have Pierce 3, which reduces your armour by 3 so he had 1 armour. The missileers wiped him out in the first round, causing them to lose 4 conquest tokens and created a sense of despair.

Brenda used Landrec to open the gold chest at the entrance, so I played the only trap card I had, Curse of the Monkey God! And trapped him for one round (then I killed him).

I had them in a death loop, with one dying every round, and the cursing was fascinating…

I had them down to 4 conquest tokens when they finally killed Narthak, 5 hours after we started. I enjoyed it, and I think they did too. Next time I am going to make sure we have more players.

Commands & Colors Day 2008

2008-06-05T19:43:00.001-07:00

Well we wrapped up another C&C Day with a total of five players. The gaming started at 2 when Orin and Todd showed up. Todd had experience in Memoir '44, and Orin was a returnee from last year, so he was fairly comfortable with all the games. The two of them started on Commands & Colors, fighting the Battle of Akragas with Orin winning both sides. While they were starting out, Mark and Harry had shown up. I have known Mark for awhile and met Harry at the Fallcon BattleLore tourney. and having his email address, I sent him an invite. Harry was comfortable playing BattleLore but was new to the rest of the system. He and Mark played the same scenario in Commands & Colors: Ancients but splitting the battles. I use the variant victory conditions: If one player makes it to the winning number of flags, the other player gets his turn to try and tie.

Todd and Orin continued with C&C:A and played the second scenario, the Battle of Crimissos River, which they split, both winning 6-4 as Syracuse. This is late in the battle, with them tied at 3 blocks each.

Mark and Harry moved on to Memoir '44 and played the Sword Beach landing, with Harry winning as the Allies. Here they are with the landing barely in progress.

Todd had to leave, so I filled in for him and Orin and I played the first (and only) game of BattleLore. I don't remember which scenario we played but Orin felt crushed as he lost to the mighty goblins 6-4.

Harry and Mark wanted to learn Battle Cry, the American Civil War version, so I quickly taught them. They played the First Battle of Bull Run with Mark winning and then they refought Antietam and Harry was victorious.

Orin and I fought the battle of Luttich in Memoir, with both of us winning as the Germans, Orin crunching me 4-0. We wrapped up at that point almost 7 hours after we started, tired but happy.

Game night, what again, so soon?

2008-05-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I held a second consecutive weekend game night, mainly because I forget that the previous weekend was a long weekend. So I did it two weeks in a row.

I had seven players show up for gaming, and the only returnee was me (was it something I said?). We wanted everyone to get a chance to play, so we started with Bohnanza, a nice light bean trading game. I was wiped from walking in the relay for life the night before, and then I had two glasses of wine with supper, and 5 beer, so I was playing and not doing very well. I won... I finished with twelve dollars, Brenda and Thushy finished with 11, Tim had 10 and Laura had 9, the last two refused to tell me their scores.

One player had to leave after that so our second game was Frank's Zoo, a trick taking card game. This was ended short of a final victor but I was leading so I claimed victory again!

Two more had to leave (something about working at 6 AM) and we wrapped up the night with a 4 player game of For Sale. I must admit, I love playing this game, it is fast, has tension to it and is just plain fun to play! I didn't win, Brenda slayed us all, beating second place by 20,000.

I had a great time, and if there is anyone reading this blog that is interested in coming out, drop me an email at bgamegeekATgmailDOTcom, or leave a comment below. I am not sure when the next game night is, but I am guessing it is either the 14th or the 21st of June. Does anyone have a preference?

This saturday is Commands & Colors Day, I have 6 signed so I do have room for a couple more.

Still in the planning phases are: another big game day, and another Power Grid A Mania! If you have a preference for a game, let me know.

Myth Games, good and bad

2008-05-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

I have been dealing with Cory at Myth Games for the past year. I even ran my BattleLore league there.

Well Cory was broken into Sunday night and they stole a pile of stuff. Here is the text of the email he sent to registered users on his forum:
Myth Games was broken into Sunday night (around 12:30 AM). the cowards stole most of the electronics (DVD player, Sound system, Ipod, router and the modem) plus they took a lot of Magic the Gathering and WoW Cards. They stole pretty much the entire D&D minis RARE cabinet, some Warmachine (painted Cryx and Legion) plus some rare HeroClix.

If you hear of anyone suddenly selling a lot of Rare D&D minis (like the Undead Beholder, Raisltin the mage, The Githyanki Lich Queen etc. Contact the Calgary Police Services or Crime Stoppers.

We are currently doing inventory at the store so we will be closed until late Tuesday afternoon and we will be on Cash/Credit until we get our phone lines fixed (they actually YANKED the wires and broke them, then took the phone base.) so you cannot call the store until most likely Wednesday

So if you do hear of someone selling rare D&D minis do as Cory requested.

The good:
Myth Games is holding a launch party for AD&D 4th edition on June 7th, it is sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.

June 21st is Free RPG Day, and Myth Games are having a party for that. They is a whack of sponsors for it, including:
Wizards of the Coast
Goodman Games
Mongoose Publishing
White Wolf Publishing
Green Ronin
Paizo
Chessex
Q-Workshop
So if there is an RPG you are interested in trying out, maybe drop into Myth Games one of those two weekends.

If you are looking for some boardgames or RPG stuff, why not drop in and give Cory some business as well.

Gaming on the long weekend!

2008-05-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

I forgot this was a long weekend when I planned game night so we only had a small contingent show up. There were five of us and we played 6 games over the course of the night.

The first game we played was Ticket to Ride: Europe, the second in the famous Ticket to Ride series. I ended up winning it, by completing both the longest trip and by building the tunnel between Sweden and Russia for 21 points. The game was fairly close, with 4 players at 100 or more and last place missed 100 by only one point.

We played Vegas Showdown as our second game. I tried a new strategy. My previous strategy was to crank up my income and then outspend everyone. The object of Vegas Showdown is to amass the most fame, so I only purchased a couple of slot machines and always tried to purchase things that gave me fame. I won, but only by 4 points, I was always starved for cash and had a hard time purchasing anything but my strategy did work. I actually finished last in both income and population.

Will and Cory had to leave as Will was a little tired, but Al stayed and the three of us played cards (yes cards, like in normal none boardgames stuff). We played a couple of hands of 9-5-2, a game for three players. John (the other one) decided he did not want anyone winning so he deliberately lost it. Al had enough of this so for the second game he killed us both.

Al taught us a new three player bidding game he called Mexico. It uses the cards from 7-A of all suits. You deal out the cards to everyone except 2, which go to the side as kitty. The bidding starts at 5 and the dealer can call "My Five" and to outbid the dealer you must go to 6, the bidding is similar to Kaiser but instead of taking the bid you can still overbid the dealer. There are also Low (take no tricks, can be outbid by an 8 or higher bid) and Mexico (take all ten tricks, go down in score by 10, all others go up by 10).
Scoring goes as follows; everyone starts with 31 points and the goal is to get to -1. Every trick you take reduces your score, but if you fail to make your bid, you go up by that amount. If one of the players fails to take any of the tricks, they also go up by the amount bid. The Low bid is the exact opposite, if the Low bidder does not take any tricks, they go down seven and everyone else goes up by 7.
Ok, enough explanation! We played twice and I won twice. The final game I won by setting Al twice, once when he was at 0 and only needed to make one trick to win.

I enjoyed the games, and I am glad Al taught us Mexico.

Remember, game night is also this weekend, as many were gone for the long weekend.

Have a fun time!

Settler's of Catan National Championship

2008-05-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

Once again short notice, but next week is the Settler's of Catan National Championship. If you are interested you should head on over to the link and register. Myself, I am cheering for Dan Flaman of Saskatoon to repeat as the "King of the Catan"! It takes place in Edmonton, Alberta over the MayDay weekend. Winners head to someplace in the US for the World Championships.

This year I may even remember to post the results from the event.

Commands and Colors Day Update

2008-05-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

It looks like I have about 5 players for my 2nd Annual C&C Day and I am capping the registration at 10 players. If you are interested let me know!

You can either register with me via email at bgamegeekATgmailDOTcom or post here and let me know

Mayday

2008-05-04T21:14:00.000-07:00

So I went to Mayday on Saturday for some good old miniatures (and wargaming) fun. I left Calgary at 5 AM and made it to Edmonton by 7:40.

I was there to play Contemptible Little Armies, Will ran the Battle of Ypres using this system. I made some mistakes, and had some bad die rolls, and caused the Germans to win. The game was great and beautiful. Will did a great job and the players were fun.

Game two was my Commands & Colours: Ancients game, this was my third year running it, but my worst attendance, I only had three players show up so I filled in as the fourth. We played two scenarios, the first being the battle of Baecula and the latter being the battle of Telamon from the second expansion. My goal was to get the players interested in the game and teach it. I played against a new player and Cory played against someone else that was new. Cory's battle was even and close, my wasn't. I won both sides, once as the Barbarians and once as the Romans. My dice were hot, I mean smoking (I killed 5 barbarian units on the first turn). We switched games and Neal and I played Baecula. I won as Carthage by killing 2 units of medium troops with my heavy unit led by Hasdrubal and later following up with two more kills with them.

My final game was a Napoleonic battle using 54 mm miniatures and the Commands and Colors: Ancients system. We did well as the French, the moderator being surprised by the French winning by being so aggressive, as he had never seen that done before. France won 7-4 and we switched sides. I did some charges (even rolling 4 dice to kill one figure and failing) and we lost the battle 7-3, thus the other guys won the game 11-10, after stealing my brilliant strategy!

I really enjoyed the games, but I have to decide if I can afford to drive down for one day next year. The extra bonus for me was seeing some of my friends that I only see there, so chances are I will be back.

2nd Annual Commands and Colors Day

2008-05-01T20:11:00.001-07:00

May 31st is the date of the 2nd Annual Commands & Colors Day, my annual adventure into the world of Richard Borg.

It will be a full day (2pm to whenever people leave) of all the Commands & Colors line of games; this is to be a learning-friendly playing session. If you have never played before and have been interested, or you are a veteran, you are welcome.

There are 4 games in the Commands & Colors System and I have two of each game:

Battle Cry the first of the series and a game of the American Civil War, published by Hasbro in 2000. This is the simplest of the C&C system, but is still a lot of fun.

Memoir '44 the second, and the highly successful World War II game by Days of Wonder, I have all but one of the expansions, so the Russians and the Japanese are available to play. I have yet to purchase the Air Pack.

Commands & Colors: Ancients is GMT's block version of the series, featuring Rome, the Greeks and Carthage. This includes the all the expansions. It is the most complicated of the C&C system, but to me, is the best of them.

BattleLore the fourth and currently final installment. Battle Lore is unique in the series in that it starts out with historical battles it moves into the fantasy range. This is the only one if the C&C system that allows for Goblins, Dwarves and Hill Giants. I currently have all the expansions for the game.

Here is my commentary on last year's event. We had a ton of fun, and I would love to recreate that day again.

Since this is running out of my house, space is limited with only room for 10 people total. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me via email, bgamegeekATgmail.com

Calgary Entertainment Expo

2008-04-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

I was there for two days, primarily to promote Fallcon and teach new games. I think we suceeded on both counts.

I taught Settler's of Catan to approximately 25 people and organised about 20 games of it. The other games I taught were: Ticket to Ride, Ingenious, Carcassonne, Formula Motor Racing, Blokus, including Blokus Duo, and Ruk-Shuk.

The other games that were taught were Mah Jong, China, and Clans.

I am guessing we had 150 people and Brent and Thushy gave away 600 copies of the FallCon poster.

All in all, it was a successful weekend.

Next weekend, Mayday!

Post Cuba Game Night Review

2008-04-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

The attendance was low for, not surprising for a nice Saturday night. There were a total of four of us and we played two games.

The first game we played was new to two players, but one I have played about 25 times, Ticket to Ride. The game started out with Rick taking an early lead and me sitting at zero as I collected more and more cards. I took over the lead about halfway through the game and never looked back as I completed three trips and finished with 145 points, Brenda being second with 107. It was not to set the tone for the next game.

Game two was Grand Prix: Detroit - Cleveland, and I leapt out to an early last place by bidding high for my car and finishing 4th. Laura won the first race, and the second race but only through collusion of all the other players did she finish in sixth in the final race. Rick won the final race and with that finish plus doing well in the other two he beat Laura by 10,000 dollars, 570K to 560K. I barely broke 350K and finished well behind everyone else.

Don't forget, the Calgary Entertainment Expo is in two weeks!

Next game night will be May 17th.

Pre Cuban game night

2008-03-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

Well it was our last game night before we head to Cuba and we had a relatively small turnout with 7 people playing a total of three games.

The first game for the night was Mall of Horror, a game of negotiation and throwing people under the drooling teeth of the undead. Amanda "I won't eat your eyes" winning out over everyone else by keeping two of her people alive and whacking everyone else.

Game two was Ca$h n Gun$, a game that I won with 80,000 dollars compared to everyone else's 70K, well and the cooling corpses of Tim and Shawn...

Shawn, Amanda and Tim all left which meant we then broke out Railroad Tycoon, which Leah (aka Cornelius Vanderbilt) won in dominating fashion, hammering out an eight point win over 2nd place. Brenda finished in third, one point out of second place. The game was close until Leah completed both her Tycoon task and then got the card that allowed her to take five points for completing Washington and New York City. The game went in an odd direction, since there were only four players. Leah built in the NE starting out of New York City. Brenda built in the SE in the Raleigh area, Rob built in the NE as well, forcing competition between him and Leah. This allowed me to build in the Midwest (conveniently enough I had the Tycoon card that allowed me to get two points per Chicago link). Leah and Rob were both several small routes, with Leah's being the smallest and Rob having the most links, but less track. Brenda was from New Orleans to Richmond, Rob was in the NE and then added some tracks in the Ohio area. Rob and Leah were both first timers to the game and really enjoyed it. They are now prepared to play when they head back to Morse.

I don't know when the bext game night will be as I am away the weekend of the 19th of April and the Calgary Entertainment Expo is on the following weekend. This leaves me with only the 12th of April for a games night. I put a poll on the right side to see yeah or nay for that date.

Gaming over the weekend

2008-03-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

Jay and Cory came over Saturday night and we played the introductory scenario to Doom. I played the invaders and they played a marine each. The game took us about 3 ½ hours. We made a couple of mistakes but nothing major, well until I saw in the FAQ that range does not matter for melee weapons. The invaders won, but it was a close game. I got my 6th frag in the final room as they were about to win.

What I liked about this game:
The pieces are cool, and the game has a good feel to it. There is a certain tenseness with the players as they know they are trapped but fight hard to survive.
The card concept for frags for the invader is stolen directly from Descent, whose ties to Doom can be seen in the combat system and in the development of the characters vs the game.
Combat works as such, every weapon and creature has a set of attack dice and advantages.
The dice work by having a range number, the number of wounds and whether or not it uses ammo on it. If you want to hit something beside you a range of one or better must be on it. Two dice also have misses on them.
Here are a couple of examples; the chainsaw has a range of 1 and uses one red die. The saw also has the advantage of attacking every square around you (if you want) and deadly (which adds a hit). When Jay was attacking a zombie with the saw, he rolled one red dice, looking to geta couple of hits and since ammo does not count on chain saws, he was not concerned. If he rolled 3 hits and an ammo, he would do 4 damage. Now the way armour works is, if a zombie has 3 armour and 2 wounds, for every three hits you do in a round, you cause a wound. So, if Jay did 2 or less hits to the zombie he would do no damage, if he did 3,4 or 5 hits he would do 1, with six he does 2.

Cory was using the shotgun and it uses one red dice and one blue dice, it’s advantages are deadly (an extra hit) and blow through (allows him to attack an adjacent target if he drops a blue or green dice). Cory has two zombies charging at him and are currently 3 spaces away. Cory would pick his first target and roll his dice. He rolls 1 range, 2 hits on the red and 3 range and one hit on the blue. His total range (1+3) is greater then the range required (3) and he would add the damage from the two dice together (2+1+1) for a total of 4 (including the deadly bonus). This means he would do a total of one wound to the first zombie. He then decides to blow through onto the second one and rolls only the red dice. He gets a 3 range, 1 wound and a bullet. This means he had insufficient range to hit the zombie and it costs him his last bullet.

I also like how they scaled the game down when you do not have a full complement of players. The way it works is that the players are colour coded, with a blue, a red and a green player. The creatures are also in all three colours and if that colour of player is not in the game, anywhere the game shows a monster of that colour in the scenario, that creature does not appear. As an example, in the game I played with Cory and Jay, they chose red and blue, so any green creatures that appeared on the scenario map do not appear in the game.

What I didn’t like about the game:
The rules are not systematically set up, so there is some searching to determine what the exact rules are (read the error with melee weapons…)

Will I run another long game night?
Most definitely yes!

Sunday afternoon I hosted Power Grid a mania, a game (or two) of Power Grid. We had 6 people total show up, with 3 of them being newbies and 3 being “old hands”. We played two separate games with the rookies playing in one, and the other three in a separate game.
The new players game was the USA map form the base game. Since it was a three player game it went to 17 cities. Alex, Brenda and I explained the rules to Greg, Peter and Ed who only like mildly puzzled by the game. The initial board set up they used was the lower West Coast, Southern US and up the middle of the map excluding the mid west. This formed an L shape that was lying on it’s back. Ed set up first and started in the west coast, just far enough from the ocean to allow him to get the west coast and block off everyone else. Peter set up second and started in Duluth, which meant that Greg went to Dallas to avoid fighting for space with either. While they played we watched for the first 4 or 5 turns to see if they understood the order in which things were done and then we went on to the other game.

The other game played on the Italy map and used the Power Grid expansion cards. The Italy map is very constrained because it is so narrow and we picked the lower half of the boot.
The card auction was a little different in that the expansion deck has a 1 cost plant and a 2 cost plant. They were not purchased initially and disappeared after the first two cities were built. Power plants in the expansion appear to be a little more efficient then the ones in the original game as well. The 50 point plant is a 2 uranium powered plant that powers 8 cities.
The game was a close affair with Alex winning after powering 18 cities, Brenda finished second with 17 cities (and more money then me) and I pulled up in last place. It took us less then two hours, but all three of us are comfortable with the game and understand the rules and game mechanics.
One of the things I also found different was that we always had a surplus of coal in the game and not until the last two turns was the price of coal above 3. Garbage was similar in that respect and it stayed static at 5 until the later stages when it was dropping. We were almost entirely out of uranium by the end of the game, with only 2 pieces left in the market.
The new players’ game took a little longer then ours, after instructions were completed and they started in on the game, they took about two and a half hours. Peter won the game with 17 cities, Greg was second with 16 and Ed pulled up the rear with 15. Their game was different in that they were almost out of coal.

Battle Lore - Final week

2008-03-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

The final week of BattleLore has rolled around and there was an epic clash of wills as Bruce and I faced off in a series of Epic BattleLore adventures!

The first scenario we played was Raid on Al-Jazirah Al-Khadra from the official epic adventures. Bruce won the first half winning an 8-6 squeaker over me. In the second half it was a different story, my dice did a number on Bruce and I won 7-1, winning the combined event 13-9!

Round two was The Caliphate's Enforcer and it looked like it was going to happen again, as my dice smacked Bruce around and I won 7-3. The second half had Bruce looking worried when I took a shot with my eagle eyed crossbowmen and rolled 4 hits on 5 dice! destroying his heavy infantry. Alas, it was not meant to be, as my dice turned cold and Bruce laid a 7-3 whipping on me, tying the game at 10-10.

Final Standings

Name	Wins	Losses	Draws	+/-
Bruce	6	5	1	+16
Steve	4	1	1	+14
John	3	2	3	-4
Darren	2	7	1	-26

Saturday game night

2008-03-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

Saturday night was game night, and we had 11 players show up and we played 5 games total.

We started the night with 5 player Vegas Showdown on one table and Ingenious on the other. Brenda squeaked out a close win of 2 points in a low scoring game. She finished with 19 points and 5th finished with 14 in a tense low scoring game. Meanwhile, on the Ingenious table, Robert took everyone to school with a crushing display of abstractedness.

The final two players arrived as the games were ending and we switched to Puerto Rico at one table and Bohnanza at the other. I made a mistake late in the game which cost me certain victory (I blame the cold I have) and allowed Brenda to win by 6 points over me 59-53, third and fourth were both within two points of me as well, scoring 52 and 51 points. The less said about fifth place the better...

Bohnanza was another close affair with Rick squeaking out a win over Robert by holding more cards in his hand at the end of the game, as they were tied in coins.

Rick and Laura left and that meant the others played Grand Prix: Detroit - Cleveland, or at least a shortened version thereof. Lenora won it, by winning the only race that was run.

The next game night is March 22nd, the final game night before we head to Cuba!

There is still a week to vote on the game you would like to play on long game night, remember, if you vote and are planning on showing up, send me an email to bgamegeekATgmailDOTcom so I can send you a copy of the rules.

The poll over there on the right

2008-02-20T21:38:00.000-08:00

This poll is for the long game night I plan on holding March 15th (players willing). I thought that you may want to get an idea of what each of the games are before you voted so here is a quick summary and a link to each.

1856 is a 3-6 player train game. The review here will probably help you more then I can. 2 things you should know, 5-6 hours and a brain burner!

Power Grid, this is a classic economics game and realistically should not be on a new games night but, I really enjoy this game and always welcome the chance to play it. This is considered to be about a 2.5 hour game. There are several new maps as well, not to mention the new deck...

Doom, a science fiction based dungeon crawl based on the video game. One player takes the role of the bugs, up to three other players take the role of marines. This is considered a three hour game.

Soldier Kings, the only wargame of the group. It recreates the battles over the new world from 1756-1763. This looks to be fairly light.

I have closed the poll on Feb 8th, and if you vote, drop me an email stating you are coming. I will email a copy of the rules to you the following week so the explanations should be relatively short on the day we play.

In the future I will suggest games like Arkham Horror, Blackbeard, The Merchant of Venus and A Game of Thrones, depending on how turnout is.

If we have a pack of bloodthirsty bastards, I would always be willing for a game of Diplomacy

Gaming last week

2008-02-20T20:47:00.000-08:00

I was out of town in Saskatchewan last week so I had to cancel my regular gaming night. I did get a chance to play some games with my brother-in-law and his son. I even managed to convince Brenda to play a little.

The first game we played was Corsari. I finished last and I believe Brenda won. It is not a great game and I doubt I would buy it but it is ok. I play it as a light game and I am guessing I don't grasp the strategy behind it as I only went out once and Lenora still scored less then me!

The second game we played was Vegas Showdown, it isn't a great game, and it isn't an original game, but it is a fun game which is more important. I have only ever played it three times, but I have enjoyed every playing. I also won this time, so it makes it even better...

Game 3 in Indian Head was Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord. Dungeoneer is a light game that comes as a deck of cards, it requires dice and a few tokens, but nothing else. John and I played a 2 player game that John won in about 20 minutes. He smacked me around with a creature every round and I could do nothing about it. Game two added a thrid player, Pat and this changed the dynamics of the game. I won in a close battle, with Pat being one turn from winning and John eliminated about three-fourths of the way through the game.

Friday I visited ye olde Affinity's Antiques and talked to Trent Becker. Trent is always an enjoyable person to talk with. While I was there I picked up a copy of Double or Nothing, another Knizia game, it was a toss up between this and Can't Stop. John, Brenda, Pat and I played this three times, with Brenda winning twice and John )not me) winning the final game. It is a light push your luck style game, that I cannot seem to push my luck with...

I left the game with John, partly because I think he can get his mother and his wife to play it, the rules are simple and the game is pretty straightforward, and also as a present for putting up with us for a week while we were awaiting my mother-in-laws's heart surgery.

We got back to Calgary on Saturday and Jay came over on Monday for some Battle Lore goodness. We played the first two scenarios of The Hundred Years War scenario pack. I won the first round (Crecy) 9-8 with an incredible round with my cavalry units, killing 5 of Jay's units with three cavalry units in one turn. We drew the second round (Poitiers), both of us winning once 6-3.

This brings my count of unplayed games played this year to five, one third of the way to my goal.

I also stickered the Commands & Colors #2 Expansion as well as the third one, now to find a chance to play em! I also recieved my copy of FAB: The Bulge, what looks to be an entertaining WWII block game.

BattleLore League update... finally!

2008-02-20T20:29:00.000-08:00

Well week 5 came and went over a week ago and we seemed to have suffered some losses of players in the league. Steve never showed up for the second week in a row, so I am not sure what to do about that.

The first scenario was the battle of Crecy which Bruce and Darren fought as I had two new people drop in to learn the game so I spent my time with the mother and son. Bruce won the first game overall by a score of 10-8.

They then fought the battle of Poitiers and Darren's luck deserted him again as he lost 10-7 to lose both games that night.

The otehr group were completely new to the game so they played Agincourt (which they drew) and First Chevauchée which the son won by one at the end of the game. I missed last week due to being out of town and next week I will be at Tim's Wargaming Weekend.

I am thinking the weekend after this will be the final one, as there may only be two of us.

Name	Wins	Losses	Draws	+/-
Bruce	6	4	0	+20
Steve	4	1	1	+14
John	2	2	2	-8
Darren	2	7	1	-26

Darren has decided to withdraw from the league, which means it may only be Bruce and myself. If this is true, we will play Scottish Wars adventures

Battle Lore Week 4

2008-02-07T16:14:00.000-08:00

Week 4 had three regular players show up and one new one. I taught David how to play Battle Lore using the first two scenarios frm the BL rulebook while Bruce and Darren went head to head.

Bruce and Darren played Cavalry Advance first and in a tight contest Darren won his first game, 11-9! I fought David in the Battle of Agincourt to a draw 9-9.

Round two was another Bruce/Darren battle and another Darren win! He won this one 9-8, have the tides turned? David and I did A Burgundian Chevauchée and I won 9-6.

The standings are now

Name	Wins	Losses	Draws	+/-
Steve	4	1	1	+14
Bruce	4	4	0	+15
John	2	2	2	-8
Darren	2	5	1	-21

Next game session is Sunday at Myth Games. The battles are both from The Hundred Years War pack and are the Battle of Crecy and the Battle of Poitiers.

BattleLore League Week 3

2008-01-28T16:19:00.000-08:00

This week we played two of the official web scenarios, Goblin Gold and Dwarven Renegades.

The first scenario is an official Days of Wonder web published scenario for Goblin Skirmishers and as such, contained Goblins on both sides. We split up into two groups with Steve and I facing off and Bruce and Darren going head to head. Neither Darren nor I had much luck with this battle, with Bruce hammering Darren 12-5 (and winning his 4th game in a row) and Steve trouncing me 12-4 using the spell Chain Lightning to great effect.

The second was a web published scenario for Dwarven Battalions that pitted the basement dwellers (Darren and I) against each other and the top two players (Bruce and Steve). I squeaked out a 11-10 win by using my lone heavy cavalry and killing two units on the final turn to break a 4-4 deadlock. Steve managed to stop Bruce’s winning streak dead in it’s tracks with a similar 11-10 score.

The current standings are:

Name	Wins	Losses	Draws	+/-
Steve	4	1	1	+14
Bruce	4	2	0	+18
John	2	2	2	-8
Darren	0	5	1	-24

Next game session is Sunday Feb 3th at Myth Games at noon

Week 2 Battle Lore League

2008-01-23T21:59:00.000-08:00

There still being only four of us, we played two more scenarios and the league standings did change. Bruce took advantage of everyone and had a perfect day, winning all his battles and leaving the rest of us in his dust.

The first scenario was from the Goblin Skirmishers, and is called “Riding down the Spear Bearers”. I was pitted against Darren while Steve and Bruce battled. Darren won his first battle 6-5 over me, but I came back and caused a draw in the overall fight. Bruce won half his battle and beat Steve by 3.

The second scenario was Axe and Spear from the Dwarven Battalion pack. This one really showed me how much my dice (and Bruce’s dastardly plan) were hurting me as Bruce beat me by 3, winning both sides. Darren slipped back into his old ways, losing to Steve by 1.

The current standings are:

Name	Wins	Losses	Draws	+/-
Bruce	3	1	0	+12
Steve	2	1	1	+6
John	1	1	2	-2
Darren	0	3	1	-16

League play resumes on the 27th at Myth Games

Cause it's game night

2008-01-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

or at least a review

I didn't expect many to turn out for Saturday night games due to the weather but I was pleasantly surprised by because we had a total of nine show up and played 5 different games, with 5 different winners.

We started the night with two different tables, the first being Ingenious, won by that ingenious fellow Rick over three others. The other table had Formula Motor Racing which I won and Tim finished last with one point in three races (I will get back to Tim later).

We switched tables around and had a four player game of Carcassonne: The Discovery (Brenda's favourite) which she narrowly won by 18 points... The zombies in the group kept chanting "Brains!" and played Mall of Horror which Lenora won after Tim got all his people eaten.

We wrapped up the night with a nine player one lap race of Formula De' and we finished the race in about 2 hours with the the night's whipping boy Tim winning handily. He led wire to wire and finished a full turn ahead of the rest of us. The important thing is that we all finished.

My suggestion for next game night is the 16th of Feb, it is the Saturday of a long weekend and I am gone the weekend after that so the only choices are the 9th and the 16th. Any preferences?

Battle Lore League

2008-01-15T22:13:00.000-08:00

Week one has come and gone with 4 players playing in it. We played 2 scenarios each, one from the Call to Arms supplement and one from the Goblin Marauders supplement.

The first scenario (Muddy Waters) was played between Bruce and John with John winning 8-7. Both games were lopsided victories. Darren and Steve had a slightly different result with Steve winning both sides of the battle 14-6.

Scenario two pitted the winners of the previous games against each other in a Gobin Chevauchee. John and Steve drew the game 11-11 with both winning as the humans 6-5. Darren’s dice roll woes continued as he lost to Bruce 6-4 and 6-2.

Current standings are:

Name	Wins	Losses	Draws	+/-
Steve	1	0	1	+8
John	1	0	1	+1
Bruce	1	1	0	+6
Darren	0	2	0	-15

There are still 7 more weeks to play, so you can still come out and play. The cost is free, and you should bring your copy of Battle Lore (if you have one), otherwise we should be able to work around a shortage of units.

Next game time is 12 Noon January 20th, 2008 at Myth Games (#4 3434 34th AVE NE)

Game night, December

2007-12-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

The crowd was small due to extenuating circumstances, so we all gathered around one table to play some games.

The first game we played was the third in the Ticket to Ride series, Ticket to Ride: Marklin. The big differences between Marklin and the others are a) the cards are full size b) there are two separate stacks for long and short tickets (this allows you choice anytime over which kind of tickets you want) c) passengers d) +4 wildcards e) passenger cards f) no tunnels or ferries.

When you set up Marklin you place counters on each city varying from one 2 pointer to a stack of 4 with the numbers 4-7 on them. The game proceeds as normal but on your turn when you place a train, you can chose to place a passenger at either end of the freshly laid track. On a subsequent turn you are allowed to move the passenger along your tracks or along an opponent's track for every passenger card played. The only two restrictions are (and I never realised my rules were incorrect) that you cannot start a passenger in a foreign country (only in Germany) and you cannot pick up a token on your starting city.
The +4 wildcards are used as wildcards but only on routes that are 4 train lengths or longer. they act exactly like wild cards but you can pick up a second card when you pick one up (unlike regular wild cards).

The game was fairly close, Robert took off to an early lead but never managed to hold on as John "Train to Zone" won 179-175 over Lenora. The difference in the victory was that I managed to complete 7 trips and took home the +10 for most completed trips. The final scores were:
John 179
Lenora 175
Tim 171
Brenda 137
Robert 72

The winner picked the next game so I chose Formula Motor Racing, we did a three race game with John Prost managing to maintain a slim lead after three races over Brenda Schuhmacher. Tim Foyt managed to trash both of Lenora's cars in the first race and one each of Robert's over the next three that they spent a lot of time wrecking Tim's plans. The final scores were:
John 23
Brenda 15
Tim 13
Robert 12
Lenora 9

I was still picking so I picked Bohnanza, the bean trading game. This was a very close game with Robert "I have some chili, looking for some stink" coming out over Brenda and I by one point. Tim trailed us by 2 and Lenora was one point behind that. We played with all the beans in play, so there was coffee included. The final scores were:
Robert 17
Brenda 16
John 16
Tim 14
Lenora 13

Robert, as winner, got to pick the next game so he chose Poison. He didn't do very well at it, having more points at the end of the first round then Brenda did by the end of the game. One thing I do dislike about this game is the packaging, there is absolutely no reason to palce those cauldrons in the game except to raise the price. The final scores were:
Brenda 14
John 18
Tim 23
Lenora 33
Robert 44

Brenda won so she picked For Sale as our final game of the night. Lenora opted to sit this one out so we played 4 player. Robert the Real Estate Baron got the gold blazer in this one, eking out a 2,000 dollar win over Century Timmy One. Brenda and I brought up the rear. The final scores were:
Robert 63,000
Tim, 61,000
Brenda 52,000
John 52,000

The next game night will be in January, I am just not sure when yet.
Thanks to everyone that came out this year and I hope you all have a good Christmas and a gaming New Year!

HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest

2007-12-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

I miss playing these two classic games of dungeoncrawling and I would like to get back into playing them on a moderately regular basis. I have the basic game for Heroquest as well as the basic game (and every White Dwarf related to it) of Advanced Heroquest.

For the uninitiated, these are both miniatures based "light" role playing games. They use either a board (Heroquest) or tiles (Advanced Heroquest) that the players dungeoncrawl through. The game plays best with 4 explorers and one GM. I would like to run this maybe once or twice a month if there was any demand for it. Ideally what I am looking for is 3-4 peopple. If the demand is high enough I can run it for two separate groups. A game session is usually 2-3 hours so it will work for any evening.

Either post your interest here or drop me an email to my gmail account (bgamegeekATgmailDOTcom).

it's Game, night, November!

2007-11-29T20:52:00.000-08:00

There was a small crowd of us that night, only 6 people (including myself) and we played 5 different games.

The night started with four of us, we played Shear Panic, including teaching it to one other. The game was a close one, with Lenora "Ewe guys suck!" eliminated in the first shearing and both John "Panic Attack" and Tim "Ewe know ewe like it" each losing one. I eventually won the game by 4 points.

Brett and Robert showed up about a third of the way through so they played Ruk Shuk, the game of rock piling. Robert "Stoner" won, beating Brett.

We all combined into one large group and played a game that was supposed to be here for Hallowe'en but arrived the Monday after, Mall of Horror, a horror themed auction game. John "Zombie King" won by sacrificing Marked "for death"'s cheerleader on the last round to stay alive.

Gane four of the night was Munchkin Cthulhu, my favourite of the Munchkin clan. Lenora "Yog Shoggoth" won, by using the brilliant play of sacrifing her roommate to the Great Old Ones. One of the players comments about Munchkin Cthulhu is that he does not like the quick ending of the Cultists, instead he prefers the longer games because the game is not about winning or losing but instead is about the game itself.

Two players left so we finished up with three games of Formula Motor Racing. John Andretti won the first game, but Lenora "I can't drive 55" rocked the next two and finished with double the points of 2nd and 3rd. Mark "Roadkill" finished well out of the race.

The next game night is Decmeber 15th or 22nd. Let me know which date you prefer. I will send out an update email as of the 8th, so you have a week.

Christmas and gaming

2007-11-20T19:57:00.000-08:00

I know all of you here are anxiously trying to figure out what to get your non gaming family, or your friends that you want to get gaming. Many of these games will work for gamers as well.

The BGG Gift Guide lists quite a few games, some I have no knowledge of (Kids games) and others I like (Hive) or hate (Settlers of Catan).

One thing you have to understand about purchasing games for other people, particularly non gamers, is that your giftee may not like games, or you may have to teach them it. Don't be disheartened though, you will get someone that likes the game you purchase and will want to play it with you.

A second point you should understand is what kind of game you should purchase.

If they like group activities you should purchase party games like Apples to Apples, or Wits and Wagers. These are both games that scale well to larger groups and can involve gamers and non gamers.

If they are more of a small group person (just close friends and family), look at games like Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride (the original), or Ingenious. These will provide both an opportunity to play a game and still socialise.

If they are the sort of person that likes 2 player games, Lost Cities is ok (I prefer Battle Line) or Hive. If they have an interest in either war or fantasy, I would suggest something from the Commands & Colors series by Richard Borg, either Battle Lore or Memoir '44 would be a great 2 player game. These games are both fast playing (30-45 minutes perside) games that use miniatures that are graphically appealing and it is fun to play.

There is also a subset of games that seems to work well for groups of non gamers as well. These are the "racing" games. The more popular ones are Formula De', which simulates Formula One racing using dice and a gear system, this scales from 2-10. I find the game drags a little with 10 though and I think the sweetspot is 4-6. Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix, which is more of a card management system that still allows you to feel like you are racing, it scales from 2-6. This is a different game depending on how many players are in the game. Lastly, in the car category, there is Formula Motor Racing, a card driven racing game from GMT Games that is suited for 3-6, but using the optional rules you can play with 2.

There are some non automotive racing games as well. The first would be the Really Nasty Horseracing Game, in this game you own a horse in a series of steeplechase events and you are trying to collect the most money. You are allowed to bet on which horse finishes first and you are allowed to influence the end of the race using various cheat cards. The last race game I am going to mention is Fearsome Floors. This is a game in which I think the theme is wonderfully married to the game mechanics. You play a group of people trying to escape from a dungeon with a monster in it. The movement system is unique and this is a great game.

The whole point of this is to encourage others to learn and enjoy games, so you may want to get a game that you would be excited to teach and you think they would be excited to play. Who knows, in a couple of years you may be playing Power Grid with them

Game night in Tuscany

2007-11-16T22:37:00.000-08:00

I tend to bring light games to Tuscany as I never know who is going to show up, but most tend to be learning the game for the first time. This time we had a grand total of 12 show up, with 9 originally and 3 stragglers.

Mark took 4 over to one table to play Princes of Florence, a game I have never played, so I will not describe it.

I took the other 3 over to a different table and taught/learned Formula Motor Racing, a quick race game that is more about card control and light strategy then actual racing. I liked the game in my first play of it, and it looks like others did as well, as it showed up as a filler for the PoF group after they had finished. I was leading until the final round and then all my cars exploded and I finished last.

The second game we played, now with 7 players, was Bang! This game was new to 3 of the players as well, so it was another teaching session game. The game went well, with 4 of the players being new. The sherriff was in an enviable position, with the renegade to her left and the deputies both to her right. The Sherriff win, with only the Sherriff and a Deputy surviving until the end.

We switched to another card game, Bohnanza, with one player dropping out to join the other group. Something about his wife being in the other group... Bohnanza was a close fought game with the final scoring being 14-14-13-13-12-10.

Formula Motor Racing was the first game played by the PoF group, switching to Fiji, which made their brains bleed, and San Juan when they were down to four players.

Our table had a couple of more players leave, so Brenda and I taught Poison to Greg. He is not big on math games, but I think he enjoyed it just the same.

Planning for Mayday

2007-11-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

Mayday is in May, appropriately enough May 2nd and 3rd, and I have agreed to run a mini-tourney for Commands & Colors:Ancients. The current plan is to allow 6 people to play, with them rotating between boards and scenarios. When Mayday arrives I will have the Expansions 2 and 3 for it as well.

I am not really sure if this is a tourney with prizes or a tourney for fun, as I only agreed to do this as of today.

My current plan would be to run a tourney using one of two options; either a scenario from each expansion, or a string of linked scenarios. I created a series of linked scenarios for BattleLore at Fallcon, but I am not as interested in doing it for Commands & Colors. This is mainly due to my desire for it to be accurate and in a fantasy game like BattleLore, anything you do is accurate.

Tide of Iron

2007-11-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

Jay came over tonight and we played a game of Tide of ~~Plastic~~ Iron, a WWII game by Fantasy Flight. The game is less complex than serious wargames like Panzer Grenadier, or ASL, but it is more complex then the current crop of Card Drive Plastic (CDP) games like Memoir '44.

I had originally purchased ToI to game with my brother-in-law and his son, both of home are interested in the bigger style games. They were down in Sepember, but I was unable to play much due to work demands. I am glad I finally did get this played!

We played the first scenario as a learning game and boy did we ever learn! The second turn we learn that you should bunch your units together for concentrated fire, on later turns we both realised that for the Germans to win they need to rush the barriers. I had thought that I was doomed by the third turn, Jay was pounding my units everywhere. My strength was that I had 7 reinforcements by the end of the 7th turn and two more to play on the 8th. My total count of units at the end of the game was 6, which means Jay had killed all my units at least once! Jay's advantage was that he got 2 initiative markers/turn and always went first after the first turn.

Suppressive fire works well, Jay used the staggered approach. What he would do is use either his mortar or his tank to supress a block and then hit it piecemeal with other units. When you first supress a unit, the next unit to supress them disrupts it and a third unit will cause a rout. This means it takes a minimum of three hits to kill a unit using supression and a maximum of 5.

The reason I think Jay lost was because he was agressive in the first 4 turns and then got too defensive as he realised I kept pulling units out as reinforcements. I think if he had maintained his agression he could have won on the 8th turn.

I like this game, I think it has plenty of replayability and is good to look at, I will take a picture from the next time we play to show you the immenseness of the board. The time it took for Jay and I to play, from cracking the box and reading the rules to taking the game down in about 3 hours. I think when we are both comfortable with the rules we can play it in about 2.

The downside of the game is that the pieces are a little hard to click together, it is fiddly in that respect. On BGG it has been suggested that you should drill out the holes a little, but others state you only need to wait and play the game a few times and they will click in and out easily. I guess I can wait a while...

I would rate this game a 7.5 out of ten after the first play. Once I am comfortable building units and the pieces click together, it could go up. If you are ever interested in playing it, the rules can be downloaded here

National Games Week

2007-11-06T18:22:00.001-08:00

is the 18th-24th of November. I think we should get together to play some games... a lot of games.

I would like to have at least two days/nights/ periods of times where I (or any of you) game that week, plus the games night (which is the 24th).

Since the magazine that formerly was the major player behind Games day, I doubt there will be much in the way of emphasis put on it this year.

Is anyone interested in maybe a night (or two) of games? I would like to crank out some of the longer ones, maybe A Game of Thrones or one of the Soldier Kings games?

It was a dark and stormy night

2007-11-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

when the witches coven met.

No wait, it was the Hallowe'en gaming spectcular and we had a total group of thirteen people arrive. Yes that is correct, 13 people!

People arrived in a staggered format, so as I explained the rules to Werewolf to the first group even more arrived, so I explained them again.

We did play 4 games of Werewolf to start the night, and since the group was so much larger than normal we took longer then the usual 20 minutes, well except for the first game where the wolves mowed down the villagers like grass. The villagers pulled it together later and with some brilliant play by Brett as the seer they killed the werewolves in short order. I introduced the little girl, the witch and the sorceror over the course of the games. Brendan used the "I can't be the werewolf because I have a magic (candy) ring" defence which worked for him as the warlock, Brenda tried it as well, but the villagers didn't believe her. The games balanced out to two villager wins and two werewolf wins. I guess we should have had a tiebreaker but we didn't.

We split into two groups then, with the upstairs group playing Munchkin Cthulhu and the rest of us heading downstairs to play Fearsome Floors.

The Fearsome fivesome plus one played with Brenda "I am not sending Furunkulus after you" winning after Rick managed to get his man killed right at the exit. There was a fascinating flood of fleeing fugitives fighting for floor to freedom when the game ended. The game ended in the first round, so no one was permanently removed.

Munchkin Cthulhu went considerably longer and ended about an hour after the Fearsome fivesome (plus one) finished fleeing. Steve "Son of Shub-Niggurath" won after prolonging the agony of his competitors.

Then he ground their bones to paste and ate them...

Game night, a review

2007-10-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was our monthly game night and it was attended by 9 different players, who played 10 different games.

The first game of the night was one I had purchased earlier in the day, so I quickly read it and taught it to a group of five. Everyone seemd to enjoy Formula Motor Racing, a quick auto racing game by Reiner Knizia. Tim Andretti won over his four competitors.
The other table hosted a game called The Really Nasty Horseracing Game, and I am sure Brendan would agree, as his horses finished twice in 6 steeplechase events. The idea behind the game is to make the most money while crippling your opponent's chances of winning. Brenda "The Fixer" won this by easily outdistancing the rest of us.
The main table hosted For Sale which was won by Real Eastate Magnate, Robert. They then switched to a four player game of Munchkin Cthulhu, and by continuously shrieking:
"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die"
during the other player's turns, Brett "I wish I was in R'lyeh" won.
At the quieter, less cultist table we played a game of Fiji, a game where you use cheap beads to impress the natives into giving you head... Shrunken heads from other less successful visitors. Brenda "I used to be a fixer, now I just lop off their heads" won her second game of the night.
The Cultists were still chanting "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", so we started a game of Ticket to Ride: Europe, which Tracey had never played. She learned the hard way that Brenda "Train to zone!" was a master of it as she beat the second place finsher by over twenty points.
One of the problems that plagued us all night was that we could not cross people from table to table due to our disparate finish times, so our table opted to play Ingenous while we waited. Unfortunately I could not find it immediately so while I was searching Brendan and Tracy played a quick game of Le Passe-Trappe which Brendan won in about 3 minutes. It took me five to find my copy of Ingenious, and Brendan, following in the tradition of Brenda, schooled us in, it.
When we finished we noticed the chanting had stopped and they we playing a game of Mu und Mehr, won by Lenora "I don't mark the cards, now play that Ace you have!" over her three opponents. Now that Brenda and Brendan had gotten tired of beating on us, Traci and I played a game of Loco!, which I taught and subsequently beat her at.

Next game night is October 27th, close enough to Hallowe'en that we have a themed game night, horror games! So bring out your horror games (the word is HORROR, not WHORE!) and I hope to see you there.

Thanks to Tim as well, whose Sentry Box coupons were used to purchase the Cthluhu expansion Munchkin Cthulhu: Call of the Cowthulhu and Formula Motor Racing.

Fallcon 20, in words, no pictures

2007-09-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

Well Fallcon 20 was upon us already and I had a great time.

Tim from Saskatoon came down for some miniatures games at the tournament. You can read his report on his blog, so I will let him talk about the miniatures games that he played.

I was signed up for every session but one of the games got cancelled so I played an open game in it's place, but I get ahead of myself...

Friday night was the Railroad Tycoon tournament, and I was in the same group as my friend Alex. I told everyone at the table they should be prepared to lose (because he is very good) and he just laughed. The game was surprisingly high scoring for a five player game with the winner, neither Alex nor me, I did finish second though, which put me in the finals. The winner had a score of 101, whereas I had 94, but I made almost 40 points in the last two turns including completing my Tycoon Objective.
The finals was a tough game, at one point I commented that "I feel like a minnow." because I was probably the only person with less than ten games played. The map was a messed up one too, it had red cubes in Chicago, Charleston and New York and precious few outside it. The high score for the tournament was ~85, and I only scored 70, good enough for fourth only.

Saturday morning was RoboRally, a game I am not particularly fond of, and I was slightly surprised I had signed up for it. I did poorly, worse then the previous year, and scored only 12 points (last year I got 17). I ended up second last. It is an ok game, just not one I am good at, or enjoying playing too much. I find the game a little too mechanical.

Saturday afternoon I was invited to go play a pickup game of Roads & Boats, something I had played the previous year for the first time and loved. This time it was a four player game and I still finished last. The game is a tremendous logistics game, there is some screw you mentality, but very little. It is about being as efficient as possible.

Saturday evening was the auction, it was a bittersweet event for me, for one it was a chance to buy some new games, for the other it was the last of Ken's games being auctioned off.
I ended up purchasing 2 games, one was The Really, Nasty Horseracing Game for 6 bucks, the other was 221B Baker Street for another 2. Ken's games sold for over 700 dollars to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

I finished the night with a game of Savage Worlds a quasi rpg that uses miniatures rules. Tim was the ref for this game and we had 4 players that all worked together to find and recover the Golden Idol, Billy Idol is the silver one...
I ran Marcus Andres, fearless first mate of the SS Persephone as well as the crew. Will ran Jock MacDonald, the drunken brawler from Scotland, Jerry was Nathaniel Smith, a rugged adventure and the guy whose name I forgot played Professor Donald K Stephenson. Tim played the evil Nazis as our opponent. The crew found the idol and we had to slug our way out to the boats. Tim's blog will give a better explanation of the game (with pictures!) so all I will say is Marcus is still working on his plan to create the SBS... He never did anything outstanding, but he was calm cool and efficient at killing the Nazis, almost as if he enjoyed it...

Sunday was the BattleLore tournament that I was running. I had 18 players sign up for it, with 8 dropping out before the tournament (including me) with 4 more signing up for a total of 14 players. We played only two scenarios in the six hour time slot. The scoring went as I mentioned in an earlier post. The winner won both his games, his second by 7 points to finish at +9 and in first place. I was surprised that some of the players that played had never used Lore, really the biggest difference between it and Commands & Colors: Ancients. The game did have some interesting twists, with some players I expected to win, but did not. New players did ok, with them winning some games, losing others.

Preparing for Fallcon, in less than a week.

2007-09-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

I am running the BattleLore tournament at FallCon and I have been playtesting my scenarios, created using the BattleLore Scenario Editor and I must admit that the scenario editor is pretty cool.
My current plan is a set of five scenarios, with each player playing 4 (or 5) of them and the best record winning. I have 6 hours so I figure I might as well try to keep everyone entertained for the full 6 hours. The way I am planning on doing the tourney is you get points for winning and points for your margin of victory. As an example, if you win your first half 5-3 and lose the second half 5-1, your record is 0-1-0 and -2. If you win your second game 5-3 and 5-3 you are 1 win and +4 for that game, which makes your record 1-1-0 +2.

Gaming plans for the rest of 2007

2007-08-30T21:26:00.000-07:00

I still have several games I would like to play by the end of the year, otherwise they look like decorations, and not games. Since I have been working more this month than any other I have racked up less than ten games played for the first time since June 2005! This lack of gaming has made me think about games more, and I have a list that I want to play now.

The first on the list is Europe Engulfed (EE) and Asia Engulfed (AE). These are two different WWII block games that can be combined into one big game or played separately. EE takes about 12 hours to play the full game but there are later starts for the game that can be playable in about half that time. EE is designed for 2-3 players (Allies, Germans and Russians), and AE is a 2 player game.

Combat Commander: Europe is a two player Card Driven Game (CDG) that is not difficult to learn and also has the advantage it can be played in a single evening. The game comes with scenarios as well as the ability to create your own. I think there would be some interest in this in my wargaming friends, less so in my euro friends. I think they could enjoy it, but would have to get used to the direct combat aspect of the game.

Arkham Horror is a Fantasy Flight (FFG) game based on the writings of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. It is playable in an evening an can have from 1-8 players. I have two of the expansions for this as well. I love HPL’s stuff and I think this will be a smoking game for a Halloween themed game night in late October. We could combine it with some lighter games as well, like Torches and Pitchforks or Zombies!

A Game of Thrones is another FFG game that is a board game that has some roots in Diplomacy and some in the war game world. I have the first expansion for this as well. This game is based on the books by George R.R. Martin. AGoT is for 3-5 players, so I will need a group.

Merchants of Venus is a “train game” of sorts, it is more of a “pick up and deliver” game in the railroad style. It is an older game, about 20 years old, but it is quite fun. I have played this a lot with my wife and friends back in the late 80’s. I think it still translates well. MoV is for 1-5 players and I think it scales well up to 5.

Soldier Raj/Kings/Emperor, these are three similar style games that are all CDGs as well with some Diplomacy tossed in for fun. They look pretty light in style and they come with a variety of scenarios too. They can range from 2-8 players.

Panzer Grenadier Eastern Front is a traditional 2 player hex and counter war game that I purchased for a great price. It comes with 112 scenarios in the booklet, so it could be a source of enjoyment for years. I have a friend that plays this so I am going to get him to teach me the game.

Twilight Struggle, to me, the best game of 2006, it has a strong theme (the Cold War), tense play (I call this game two hours of painful decisions) and is downright fun as you get to screw over your opponent (it is 2 player) and yourself. There are times when you cannot help but screw yourself over, but you are trying to minimize the damage. The disadvantage that the new player has is due to the experienced player knowing the cards. It is usually better to have the new player be the USSR, as they are easier to play in the Early-Mid Game. I will teach two people this game this year or my name is not J Alfred Prufrock!

Tide of Iron, a WWII plastic game, it is a dream game to players that like Memoir ’44 but want a little more. I don’t have much to say about it yet as it just arrived today. This is for 2-4 players but I believe it is better suited to 2 than 4. This could have been called "Tide of Plastic".

If there is any interest on your part in playing any of these, reply here and we can try and get a game day going.

Remember Fallcon is in 3 weeks.

Game night August 11th in review

2007-08-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

The night started with four of us so we learned Fiji a quick 2-5 player filler. Shawn won in a game that was not difficult to learn but was difficult for all of us to wrap our heads around. It is an interesting game but I do not think it is for everyone.

Meanwhile at the other table the stragglers played a game of Fearsome Floors, Jay was the winner in a 6 player game. While we waited for them to finish we played Bohnanza, a five player game that was won by Brenda in a close scoring game over Lenora.

We swapped tables and the glass table had a game of Munchkin using the 2nd and 3rd expansions. Brett won using the Paul Rubens defence (he wore a raincoat). The kids table played Grand Prix: Detroit & Cleveland. I won by winning the first two races and finishing last in the final race. Grand Prix finished before Munchkin so I taught a few 2 player games to Tracy, Robert and Brenda.

First I did, then Brenda, then Tracy laid a whipping on Robert in Le Passe-Trappe, micro edition, Tracy and Robert played Deflexion, now called Khet: The Laser Game. Robert won 2 of the 3 games. Brenda and I played Hive, a game of insect tile laying. I mis-explained a rule and won on a technicality.

We had a total of 11 players and played 8 games a total of 12 times.

The next game night will be the 29th of September as I am probably working the weekend of the 15th

FallCon is on September 21st-23rd this year and I will be running the BattleLore tournament on Sunday. There are loads of games to be played and the players are low key and eager to teach new games. The fee for the entire weekend is 30 bucks, but you can play only Friday or Sunday for 10 bucks or all day Saturday for 20 dollars (this includes the auction...)

August 11th, 2007

2007-08-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

Anyone up for the 11th as the game night for this month? Normally I would schedule the game night for the weekend afterwards but I am most likely working that weekend.

Let me know.

It was a dark and stormy night...

2007-08-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It's a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the war to end all wars.

Yet a dark shadow grows in the city of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the gates between worlds. These gates have begun to open and must be closed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined domination.

Only a handful of investigators stand against the Arkham Horror.

Does anyone want to get in on an Arkham Horror game session? I have the game and I would love to give it a try. The first session would be a learning session as I have not played it, but I would love to try it! The game is said to take about 3 hours so I would add half an hour for the delay caused by new players.

Let me know if there is any interest. The game supports up to 8 people, so 7 others can play. If you want to be a keener, you can ever read the rules online.

Gamin' and Grillin'!

2007-07-27T15:15:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I invited the group over to game and grill. We started the BBQ about 5 and started the gaming about 7.

We had 11 people show up all told, but 2 left before gaming and one arrived about 7:45. We played 7 different games, with 3 of them being new to game night, and one of those being new to me.

While we had 8 players, we split into 2 groups. One group played Vegas Showdown, with Rob, the Ricky Rat Reject winning over three other Kenny Rogers wannabes.

The other table played Ticket to Ride: Europe. T2R:E has not hit the table nearly enough, with only one play a year since 2005, but it is a good solid evolution of the original. In the game I held a strong lead of 10 points throughout the game but not until the very end did I realise that I had confused Wilno and Wien, which caused me to lose 11 points and finish second behind Brenda.

The other table was still playing Vegas Showdown so we tried RukShuk, a game of rock balancing. This is where I really came to the fore (ok I beat 2 people and finished third). Brenda won this as well in a very convincing fashion. She was 30 points ahead of second place.

The Vegas Showdown game ended and we mixed the groups up, with table one playing Winds of Plunder and table two playing another game of RukShuk.

I won the Winds of Plunder game by 4 points over JC, and there were only 10 points between first and fourth. I like this game, there is some goofiness and there are some decisions you have to make. The only downside is the cannons, which can be combatted by card play. All in all, I find this an entertaining pirate game.

Rukchuk had 4 players in it, and this time it wsa won by Brendan, over a field of three others.

Several of the players left for the night so table two started a game of Munchkin while we were finishing up Winds of Plunder. This meant that there were groups of 4 and 2. The group of two played several different games. First we cracked out Le Passe-Trappe a light dexterity game that takes about 10 minutes to play. I was crushed by Tim. Our next game while we awaited was Acquire, a game of business. Tim crushed me again, so I kicked him out...

The Munchkin game finished about 30 minutes before Acquire with Brendan winning his second game of the night.

I am unsure if there will be a game night, I am hoping to schedule one for August 17th, but I don't know my availability yet.

I have not posted much lately

2007-07-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

I guess it has been too hot to sit in front of a computer, next week, or later this week, I will write about Cheapass-style games and the game night review.

A new "game store" opened up in Calgary, not really a game store, more of a teacher's store than a game store. It is named Scholar's Choice, and I had a coupon for 205 off, so it couldn't hurt to check things out. I ended up purchasing RukShuk and Blokus Duo and I was given a copy of Regatta. I have skimmed Rukshuk but have not looked at the other two games yet.

I did play a couple of new games last week as well, neither of them expensive but both seems to have a good value for the cost. The Very Clever Pipe Game, a tile laying game from Cheapass Games that plays in about 15 minutes, and Chrononauts a card game in which you are a time traveler. I liked both games, but I may have liked Chrononauts a little more (I won :)) but it may be a little too chaotic in a 6 player game. The Pipe game is 2 or 4 player, and I think it shines as a two player game, I think it would be less of a game with 4, I have not played it with that number yet, it is just a feeling.

I am still waiting for a review of Enemy Chocolatier from whomever got it at New Years.

Theme Game Days

2007-07-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking that I may want to have more theme nights; these would be outside regular game nights and would focus on one style (or company’s) game. The first theme night I did was the Commands & Colours Day, which attracted 9 people. My thoughts for a second theme night (or day) is an Avalon Hill Day, a Cheapass Day, or a Puffing Billy (or Train Game) Day as well..

The Avalon Hill Game-A-Thon would be all AH games from their heyday in the 80s (and some earlier). I have an assortment of AH games, including Merchants of Venus, Wrasslin’, Acquire, Blackbeard, Tyranno Ex, Kremlin, Wooden Ships and Iron Men, Gladiator, and Enemy in Sight. The longer games such as Diplomacy, Civilization, and History of the World would be skipped in favour of the shorter 1-3 hour games.

The Cheapass Game Day would include other small game companies as well, like Placebo Press and Green Ronin Publishing. The games would all be light and cheap. I am thinking this would be better named to “Trashy Game Day, Bring Beer.” and go from there. These games would primarily last 10 to 75 minutes and would be at the lower end of the complexity scale.

A Puffing Billy Day would involve an assortment of train games, from Ticket to Ride (all three versions) to Santa Fe Rails, Empire Builder and Railroad Tycoon. These are all games that last around 1-3 hours as well. If someone brought over a copy of Age of Steam or an 18XX game I would not be averse to playing it as well.

Let me know what you preference is, and I can get started planning these. My months of July & August are pretty full, so the earliest I can plan this for is September. Please reply here so I can track to see if there is any interest.

It has been a long time since I posted

2007-06-29T20:12:00.001-07:00

So I thought maybe I better talk about something I am doing. I purchased a copy of Panzer Grenadier: Eastern Front in the Avalanche Press Broken Promises sale. Rather then let this game go to waste (or at least sit unplayed), I decided to teach it to myself solitaire. I will give you a after action report of the game as it goes along. I started tonight and I am playing pretty casually, so expect it around Christmas time...

The scenario I am playing is #76 out of 112. Katasov Rides Again!

Proof you don't need to be a nerd to be a gamer....

2007-06-19T18:07:00.000-07:00

Backgammon anyone, or maybe some miniatures, or perhaps an RPG?

Game night review June 16th

2007-06-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

It was a dark and stormy night, and the huddled masses gathered for some gaming. There were eleven of us on that fateful Saturday, drawn as if by moths to a flame for the same cause, to play board games!

There were only four of us to begin, but we knew we had a mission, to shear some sheep. Brenda was found to be the best at it, winning in a close contest over 3 other barbers in a Shear Panic. While the sheep were being sheared, others arrived and soon the cries of “Avast ye Matey!”, “landlubbers ahoy” and “you sunk my battleship!” rang out as the others released their pirate inside. Barnacle Jay the Sailor proved to be the most seaworthy, winning over the others in a game of Pirate's Cove.

The four of us played a game of San Juan, building a newer better city and again Brenda proved to be the master craftsman, while the rest of us could only marvel. The others, and you know who you are, played Fearsome Floors, with Lucky Lenora leaving lesser lives to leak liquids in the lair.

Our game of San Juan ended and the last of the laggards arrived and we played a six player game of Bang! Sheriff John survived Gunslinger Amanda pretending to be Eric Clapton with the help of Dep’ty Meghan to ensure the forces of niceness and goodness would be victorious.

Some left, so we switched to a couple of games of Werewolf to end the night, and the werewolves were successful, winning three of five games. The villagers, to their credit, only lynched the Seer in the first two games, after that they switched back to actually hunting werewolves. winning the next two, before succumbing to the wolves in the final game.

I hope everyone had fun, the next game night will be July 14th.

If you are curious too see what games have been played and when, please click on the link on the right.

Rolemaster: PR Report

2007-06-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

This one is for you Darrin

Hi Folks

We put up a sample of the changes you will see in the Rolemaster Classic Creatures & Treasures on the front page.

www.ironcrown.com/SneakPeek/CTClassic.htm

The RMC Team has done a wonderful job re-organizing Creatures & Treasures. They have also expanded the special creature abilities rules, codifying them and making the rules easier to use. The individual monster descriptions have also been reorganized. Any abilities that can be considered to be a function of the form of the creature are now listed as being Natural Abilities. Other abilities, whose source may be magical or not depending upon the GM's setting, are now listed as Innate Abilities. We think these changes make the product better and a lot easier to use.

We have all the components for HARP: Battlemaster in house, but it will definitely not be released until early July. Our personal move and some other projects delayed it.

Rolemaster Mega Value Pack

We have gotten several requests for deal from people who want to upgrade their entire collection of RMFRP books to hardbounds. So here is the deal.

The package includes
5800 RMFRP
5802 Creatures & Monsters
5803 of Channeling
5804 of Essence
5805 of Mentalism
5806 Character Law
5807 Gamemaster Law
5810/5812 Arms Law and The Armory combined into one book
5811 Treasure Companion
5812 Fire & Ice
5814 Mentalism Companion
5815 Construct Companion
5816 Races & Cultures

Normally the hardbound versions of all of these books would cost a bit over $430, but this package is $300 for a limited amount of time. Later in June or July, I will up it to about $365 to reflect the usual 15% discount for Value Packs rather then the 30% this deal will reflect. The freight cost is for one product too. I will only ship there VPs via UPS Ground or Priority Mail International as they will weigh quite a bit.

You can order the Rolemaster Mega Value Pack from:
store.ironcrown.com/detail.jsp?itemId=3039163&category=194228

Additionally, ICE would like to congratulate Brent Knorr for his submission on the RM Essentials idea that we announced a short while back. Brent's suggestion of Rolemaster Express was exactly what we were looking for, so we ended the contest early. We also awarded a special prize to sunwolf for his hilarious suggestion of "Classic Lite Essential Rolemaster Intro Compendium or C.L.E.R.I.C for short."

Both individuals have been contacted and given instructions on how to claim their prizes.

As for the newly named, Rolemaster Express, we will be doing a Beta release for it on June 22nd. The Beta PDF will cost $5 (though the final price might increase to $6 once it is fully finalized), and will be available only through ICE's online store.

And that is all for now folks. Getting the printing going has been a huge relief and the entire backlog will be sorted out very shortly.

Best,

Bruce ICE

Battle Lore, my point of view

2007-06-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

Battle Lore is the fourth (and not final game) in the successful series of Commands & Colors line by Richard Borg. Battle Lore is unlike the rest of the series because it is the first that moves away from the strictly historical recreation and delves into fantasy. The previous games in the series recreate battles from; the American Civil War, World War II, and Ancients (Roman Era).

If you are unfamiliar with the system, here is a quick breakdown of the way the game works. The units are laid out as shown by the scenario with the correct numbers of figures per unit and both sides are dealt a hand of cards. The game goes in the igo-ugo system with one player laying down a card and activating the units as shown on the card. Combat results are determined by the rolling of dice, the number of dice is determined by the unit type. As an example, a red (veteran or heavy) unit rolls 4 dice in melee. The die does use numbers, instead it has, in Battle Lore, helmets representing the three colours of units (red, green and blue) , a sword, a lore symbol and a flag. When the veteran unit rolls it’s dice the results are compared to the unit it is fighting against. If you wanted to hit that unit you would need to roll a red helmet. This can be modified by the units you are attacking with and spells (hence the Lore). The game continues until one side destroys the number of units required by the scenario for the win. Battle Lore is the second most complex of the systems, falling behind Commands & Colors: Ancients and directly ahead of Memoir ’44 on the complexity scale.

Battle Lore adds two things that did not exist in previous versions; the first is the fantastical creatures (the game comes with goblins and dwarves), and the second is the Lore.

I think Days of Wonder has really tapped a good market here with the idea of fantasy in this game; there are more players willing to play Agincourt with goblins helping the French then just a French vs. English battle. Memoir ’44 was a big hit for them as well, but the collectable aspect of Battle Lore may propel their sales even higher. Days of Wonder has also scheduled a series of add-ons for the game that will give the players more options and monsters. Those that pre-ordered received a Hill Giant and some received an Earth Elemental as well. They have also created plans for releasing a Dwarven Battalion Specialist Pack plus a Goblin Skirmishers Specialist Pack this year. The first supplement for the game has already seen a release date and that is the Call to Arms expansion. Days of Wonder is planning on releasing 4 expansions in the first year alone.

This is both good and bad, for one, it allows the game to continually change and for another it causes players to continually purchase new packages for the game, almost like a CCG. I am not a big fan of this, but I can see why companies do it. I am wondering if there will be a backlash to this huge amount of updates because it may slow down updates to Memoir ’44 and the volume of the updates may turn people off.

The other new aspect, Lore adds another degree of randomness and strategy. Battle Lore also does not include leaders on the field like Battle Cry of C&C:A but does allow for off field leaders, the “War Council”. In its most basic sense, you add cards depending on the type of “War Council” you have, your choices are Commander, Wizard, Warrior, Rogue and Cleric. Each war council member has different abilities and lore cards they can use to “cast spells” on their opponents. The Lore cards can be played offensively (e.g. fireball) or defensively (dispel lore) with varying costs between them of 1-10 Lore points.

The way Lore points are collected and used is as follows: the player whose turn it is collects lore cards and/or lore tokens at the end of the turn, plus any Lore results on the dice allow them to be collected as well. This means that if you attack and subsequently get attacked back, your opponent could collect lore in the battle back. Each Lore card has a cost associated with it, and some are variables as well, the Fireball costs 10, while the Dispel Lore is equal to half the spell originally cast.

One other new feature to the game is the concept of “Battle Back”. This was first introduced in a different form in Commands & Colors: Ancients. In the Battle Lore version you are only allowed to battle back if you are bold. There are different ways of being bold, the first being supported by two other friendly units, another being dwarven. Battle Back is the ability to “battle back” when you are attacked and have not been forced to retreat or wiped out.

One of the fundamental differences between Battle Lore and the other games in this series is the way you set up your units. The preferred setup is in a triangle, this allows all the units to support each other (be bold) and move together. This is different from the others because Commands & Colors: Ancients uses lines (as they would then) and the other two do not have bonuses for grouping.

One thing I do not like, although I do understand the reasoning, is that all miniatures are the same colour. Battle Cry and Memoir ’44 both use different colours of miniatures to depict the two sides, Battle Lore uses grey for both. The logic behind this is the ability to design your own battles and be able to pick any units. The other two games use blue and grey (Battle Cry) and a different colour for every force in Memoir ’44, C&C:A uses different colour blocks.

My final opinion on Battle Lore is that it is not as good as C&C: A but is a good game nonetheless. It has slightly more complexity then Memoir ’44 but it may lack the legs that I think C&C: A will have. On a 1-10 scale I give this a 7 or an 8, not a perfect game but a very good game.

What are your thoughts?

Added URL to Days of Wonder, Battle Lore, Memoir '44 and C&C:A

Power Grid a Mania tomorrow at 2 PM!

2007-06-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have three copies of the game arriving, so we could have 18 people playing. You can sign up here. If you want to come and play as a learning experience you are more then welcome. If you don't know much about Power Grid, click it's name and read about it.

It is by the same designer as Fearsome Floors, but has nothing in common with it, except that it is fun!

More reasons to game

2007-06-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

Game playing can stave off Alzheimer's Disease

Can Brain Stimulating Games Help Slow Down Aging?

Mind Games May Trump Alzheimer's

So if it helps vs things like Alzheimer's I wonder if we should be promoting the health benefits of gaming?

According the the last one, you would get the most benefit from dancing and gaming...

Gaming at the SuperStore!

2007-06-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

When:
Sunday, June 17, 2007, 1:15 PM Where:
Coventry Hills Superstore
100 Country Village Road NE
Calgary , AB T3K5Z2
567-4247

Coventry Hills Superstore Community Room
100 Country Village Road NE
Time: 1:15pm to 5:45pm
Dates: June 17th and July 15th (both are Sundays)

The Community Room is on the second floor so people just have to find the stairs going up. The stairs are by the SW entrance.

The room also has a kitchen facility which is available to our members to prepare food and beverages. In compliance with Health Canada's food handling guidelines, all food and beverages consumed in the Community Room must be purchased within the store.

RSVP limit:
Only 20 members (including guests) can RSVP 'Yes' or 'Maybe' for this event. There's still room for 16 more.

To sign up for this, go to Calgary Meetup Group and sign up.

A change to my tracking

2007-06-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

I have put a new tab called All Time in the Games We Play spreadsheet. It shows how many times each game has been played since I started running game nights in 2005. The All Time list is sorted alphabetically instead of by games played mainly due to laziness on my part.

The Games We Play spreadsheet is just over to the right.

A possible change to Grand Prix: Detroit to Cleveland

2007-06-03T12:56:00.001-07:00

I found this on a review of GP and Top Race

Top Race uses completely different rules for these cards, allowing them to be played as "breakdowns" or "catchups." Suppose the red/blue switch is played and red is farther along the track than blue. If played as a breakdown, the red car is pulled to the side of the road. It doesn't move again until the blue car passes it. If played as a catchup, the blue car pulls alongside the red car (or moves as far forward as it can until it is blocked).

As you might imagine, these changes have a dramatic effect on gameplay. Catchups are rare, since the odds of the right switch card getting dealt to the right owner are relatively small. But anyone can benefit from slowing down a leader, hence the popularity of the breakdowns. And with betting thrown into the mix, there's an added incentive to muck about with other cars.

I like this, and I think next time we play we can try these rules.

Power Grid a Mania is on!

2007-06-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

The object of Power Grid is to supply the most cities with power when someone's network gains a predetermined size. In this edition, players mark pre-existing routes between cities for connection, and then vie against other players to purchase the power plants that you use to supply the power. However, as plants are purchased, newer more efficient plants become available so you're potentially allowing others to access to superior equipment merely by purchasing at all. Additionally, players must acquire the raw materials, like coal, oil, garbage, or uranium, to power said plants (except for the highly valuable 'renewable energy' wind/solar plants), making it a constant struggle to upgrade your plants for maximum efficiency while still retaining enough wealth to quickly expand your network to get the cheapest routes.

It is at my place Sunday, June 10th at 1 PM. Email me if you are interested, as I only have room for 4 more (unless another copy of Power Grid shows up).

Saturday gaming

2007-05-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Jay, Jordan and Mark came over yesterday and we played a few games. Jay arrived early in the day and we played some games of Battle Lore, we played the third and fourth scenarios. Jay won the first match 10-8 on the strength of his crushing of me 6-2 in the first game. The second round was much bloodier and much closer. We tied 11-11 with the winning kill being done the round before the opponent could. There was a lot of heavy fighting going on all over the board.

Jordan and Mark showed up at 7:30 and Jay left then, once again depriving Mark of his chance to play Azteca, instead we played Winds of Plunder, a pirate game from GMT Games. The game had a little more going on then either Jordan or I expected and Mark won in a game that was closer then I expected. The cards add a bit of a take that to the game and I like the effect of treasure maps.

We stood around and talked while trying to figure out the next game and we decided on Havoc: The Hundred Years War, a card game that uses poker hands to determine the winner of rounds of combat. It is a neat game, too bad the only way it seems to be available is from Funagain Games, and they don’t have any in stock. I won it by about 4 points.

Mark had only ever played one Friedeman Friese game so we taught him Fearsome Floors, which was won by absolutely no one as Jordan sacrificed two of my tokens and two of Mark’s and two of his to ensure the monster was fed well. I would guess I played games for about 8 hours yesterday, and had a really good time.