BGTG 80 - Apr 29, 2008 - SR & Feedback (Galaxy Trucker & Key Harvest)

Finishing up my feedback backlog (my feedbacklog?), here's a show with audio comments from my listeners. Does that include Mr. Reliable for audio feedback, Mark Jackson? Sure does! He's here, along with a couple other guys that offer some good comments or questions related to some earlier episodes of BGTG.

Like all my feedback shows, that part is at the end, preceded by some game discussion. This time it's about two newer releases I've played a bit recently, Galaxy Trucker and Key Harvest. Both are releases from last fall's Essen, but that's where the similarity ends. GT is a realtime construction puzzle game with science fiction theming, while KH is a more deliberate and strategic contest themed around medieval farming. Very Richard Breese.

-Mark

P.S. I've enjoyed playing more play-by-web games with my listeners. Now Hansa has moved from Mabiweb to designer Michael Schacht's own website . . . where new PBW offering Patrician has now appeared. Look for me & my games over there, too.

BGTG 79 - SR & Feedback (Play By Web games)

Waaaaay back in show #3 I covered play-by-web boardgaming. I've touched on it since then, and for this show it's "where" my game session took place. That is, on the web, against a variety of friends, playing a variety of games. I spend the most time talking about Mykerinos on Mabiweb, mostly due to the excitement of having a new play-by-web game to try. But I also touch on several more, including new ones at new sites (Des Jeux sur Plateau, Ludoholic), and new ones at old sites (Yucata.de).

Then I round out the show with some feedback from recent and not-so-recent episodes.

I'll be working on another SR & Feedback show next, this one covering games played the normal way (face-to-face!), as well as audio feedback.

-Mark

P.S. In the very beginning of the show I also reflect on the games that debuted the one year I made it to the Gathering of Friends, back in 2004. It's always interesting for me to look back at early impressions to see which games have proved to be keepers. In this instance, I think it was a great year. From that introduction, I still own & play my copies of Ticket To Ride, Hansa, Einfach Genial, San Juan, and St. Petersburg. Goa and Power Grid are two heavier games I don't own (but should own PG!). Sunken City was the notable stinker, but that was clear from the first play (same with Oh Pharaoh and the rest of that small line). Dos Rios is the one I was & still am on the fence about. I guess I have to admit that it's not a keeper. In fact I've never owned it. But it's a good idea, interesting mechanics, and a game I "almost really enjoy."

BGTG 78 - Back in the saddle

I still need to do a feedback show to go through a backlog, but today I couldn't wait for that. You see, I've had a break in my busy schedule--or at least an attitude adjustment after a recent vacation--and just needed to record a podcast again. I'm playing some more games, catching up on some podcast listening, and wanted to share some thoughts about recent games. This particular show happened to have more talk about a couple wargames: Hammer of the Scots over email with Paul Tevis (of the Have Games, Will Travel podcast), and Duel In The Dark played face-to-face. I know the latter is marketed as more of a Euro game, published by Z-Man, but I think it's at least as much of a wargame, albeit a light one with flashy components. Really, I think it's a good example of a wargame/euro hybrid. Oh, I talk about some other games, too, such as another look at Kingsburg, and my first play of Take It To The Limit.

-Mark

BGTG 77 - Recent Game Rambling

No, I haven't disappeared again, and this little episode is meant to prove it. I have more to say about other games, my year in review, my new top ten list, and a backlog of feedback to work through. But this is what I could get out right now, and it'll have to do. In it, I talk about some older games I played with my son & other kids (and gamer-dad Dave Gullett) at a recent SoCal Games Day. Then I spend a little more time talking about some new games I've had a chance to try. For a guy that mostly plays recent & old favorites, I was a bit surprised that I had things to say about Kingsburg, Amyitis, Race for the Galaxy, and Cold War: CIA vs KGB

-Mark

BGTG 76 - Summertime Games

A quick, little podcast this time, one from my "archives." By that I mean this was one of those shows I recorded last summer, when I wasn't uploading any podcasts. At least one of those recordings was unceremoniously dumped, but this is one I still had lying around. It's another recording made in my car, but I learned from episode 74 that mostly leaving the audio alone is better than trying to get too fancy with the filtering and noise reduction.

I called this episode "Summertime Games" as a catch-all term for the rundown of several games I was playing, mostly with my own family, during this time. No real theme other than that--a pleasant reflection that I really am playing more games with them, and that they're games I enjoy, too. This is a show I could bang out quickly before the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US.

Speaking of Thanksgiving and family gaming, once again I've packed way too many games to bring to grandma's house for the holiday. Only this time I know my own kids may want to play a couple with me, and we're hoping to involve some of the other relatives, too. Plus, I think my selection of games is getting better suited for a family weekend than I used to bring. We'll see. Maybe that can be a future podcast episode, along with some overdue feedback.

-Mark

BGTG 75 - Decade+1 Retrospective (with Dave Arnott)

Last year, my buddy Dave Arnott and I talked on the phone about how we'd now been in the hobby for a decade. In that time the hobby was in many ways the same, but the interesting parts were the differences. Now we have Boardgamegeek, do a lot less overseas ordering, and I can't recall the last time I played a game with a separate page of card translations we all had to hand back & forth while playing. Seemed like a good idea for a podcast.

Then my podcast sort of went on hiatus, and so the decade has now become eleven years, or "decade+1." In our retrospective, we talked about a number of changes over the years, trying to talk about the hobby in general, but understandably drifting back to our own local experiences much of the time. We also tried to describe what we know about the hobby before we got into it. The earlier generation (of which my previous guest Mike Siggins was an important part).

This is one of my longest shows ever, but I decided to post the whole thing rather than two parts because some of you may need some boardgame material to listen to while on a long trip to BGG.con next week. Sadly, I won't be there, but Dave Arnott will! Be sure to tell him if you see him what you thought of the podcast.

-Mark

BGTG 74 - Post-Essen 2007 (with Mike Siggins)

Once again I'm pleased to bring Mike Siggins' boardgame commentary to podcasting with our annual show recapping his observations about Essen. Mike writes some of these in his column on Funagain.com, called The Gamer's Notebook, and that piece is a good companion to this BGTG episode.

At the end, I also have a brief review on the one Essen title I've managed to play so far, Wolfgang Kramer's Origo. I got to play this one even though I've never seen it in-person, thanks to the wonder of Brettspielwelt's online boardgame portal.

-Mark

BGTG 73 - Oct 15, 2007 - Pre-Essen 2007

I'm just squeezing this show in before the Spiel game fair starts in Essen later this week. If you're like me you've been reading the lists and rumors about new games with great anticipation . . . even though you aren't attending Essen in-person. This year, I took a closer look back at the previous year's Essen buzz before & after the show, confirming that I've only got about three "keepers" from an initial list of perhaps thirty games that caught my eye in some way. And three is a good year!

Does that mean there are only 2-3 that interest me this year? No, it just means that's what I'll have to hang onto in 2008. Right now I'm again interested in well over thirty titles, anxiously awaiting play reports, photos, and even a chance to check them out myself. The process of winnowing down to the few keepers is part of the fun, too.

-Mark

BGTG 72 - Oct 10, 2007 - Where are all the kids?

Here's one of those shows I recorded long ago, this one back in April. I went over to David Gullett's house, and we played some games with our kids. And that was also the subject of the podcast--playing games with kids. Over a year ago I posted an earlier podcast with Davebo about Gamer Dads, meaning the games we play with our own kids. This time, I tried to discuss a slightly different topic--playing games with other peoples' kids. Put another way, how come so few of the people I play games with are parents, and why don't we involve our kids in game parties & events?

The conversation meanders around that point, raising a few points that I'd love to receive some feedback about.

-Mark

BGTG 71 - Sept. 19, 2007 - SR & Feedback (Settlers Dice, Canal Mania, Dschungelschatz)

A chance to talk about some games I've played recently: one light game, one gamer game, and one kid game. I also talk about ordering overseas using Amazon.de, a new experience for me. Plus some recent feedback.

-Mark

Links

Settlers of Catan Dice Game
Canal Mania
Dschungelschatz

Help me save an audio interview?

The last time I asked for help here, a listener in Germany enabled me to get a copy of Saturn, the beautiful wooden balancing game by Theta. Thanks again, Olav!

Now I've got a different sort of plea. Recently you've heard me say that I actually have some recordings made earlier in the year that were never posted. One of them, an interview with art & graphics professional Mike Doyle, is great material that I'd really like to get out to all of you. There's a problem with the audio, however, and unless that can be cleaned up I don't think it's fair to Mike to post it. (A show I did early in this podcast's history never got the audience it deserved because of audio quality issues.)

I wasn't able to clean up the show sufficiently using my audio editing tool (Audacity). Maybe someone else has more powerful tools that could do the trick, however. If you've got those tools and are willing to help, drop me a line and I'll get you the audio file.

-Mark

BGTG 70 - Sep 9, 2007 - Light Wargames

Did ya miss me?

Sorry it's been so long! Doug Garrett smoked me out recently, interviewing me for his podcast, and giving me the little encouragement/kick to get podcasting again. I've got at least two more podcasts recorded from some time ago, but I wanted to record a fresh one tonight to lead-in with an explanation of where I've been for half a year.

As it happens, besides playing all of my usual eurogames and more games with my kids, I also managed to play several light wargames in the past month. That's worth a podcast. In this one I talk about We The People, Axis & Allies: Bulge, Quebec 1759, and Lightning: D-Day. In those four I get to talk about the original CDG (card-driven game, like Twilight Struggle), a plastic figure + hexmap semi-traditional wargame, the original block wargame (like Hammer of the Scots), and a very quick, almost euro-ized card game about a WW2 battle.

-Mark

Help from a German fan of BGTG?

I have a favor to ask of a fan of the show who happens to live in Germany. If that's you and you'd like to help me out, drop me an email. Thanks.

-Mark

Update: Got my help, thanks!

Carribean, Hacienda, Reef Encounter, game parts

Another missed game night with friends, but at least I got in a game with Candy. This was Caribbean, acquired in trade just this week in shrinkwrapped condition. It's a game with a decidedly middle-of-the-road (at best) reputation, a lukewarm 6.2 rating and ranking in the high 700s. I got to see this game undergoing final playtesting (I think) when I went to the Gathering back in 2004. It hadn't piqued my curiosity until I read about it as a good family game. So, I tried it. What did we think? Funny, Candy had the same opinion as was running through my head: the gameplay isn't bad, but just doesn't inspire. No great plays, no big laughs, no hidden depths (that we could see in one play, anyway). But the small production is so nice, with an attractive board, nice ships (that will be nicer with a touch of glue), and a fun theme. It's not actually piracy that either of us find very compelling, just the detailed and accurate geography of the Carribean itself. Makes us think of planning a vacation. :-)

So, for now it'll stick around. I think it will do better with another player or two causing more mayhem in the blind bidding, but even that won't change the game too much. I'll play it another couple times then move it along in trade or sale.

I guess those BGGers were right in their assessment. :-)

Besides that, the only other games I played last week were play-by-web. Another go at Hacienda, and again I just don't see the appeal. Of the game. In this particular outing, I think we made a believer in play-by-web of local friend David Gullett, so that's great. Now I just need to get him trying some of the other online offerings. A complication is that he still hasn't played so many of those games in-person yet. And though you can learn a game through online play--I'm doing that now with Kreta--it's definitely easier if you know what the face-to-face play of the game is like first.

Such as with Reef Encounter, my other pbw title this week. I can't imagine learning THAT game through online play alone, though surely people have done it. This time it was a 3-player game and I tried a sprint strategy. My opening tile draw let me come around to turn 2 with six polyps still intact. I gobbled them up immediately, cashing in just two tiles but getting a significant jump on the other players. I then gobbled one or two more tiles with my second shrimp on turn 3. I think there was one turn where I couldn't eat a shrimp, but the rest I ate tiles & locked down dominance/scoring through algae cylinders. In the end, one other player and I tied at 23 points in one of the quickest games of Reef Encounter I've ever played.

This sprint strategy appealed to me early when learning the game--I often gravitate toward strategies that let a player (me) dictate the tempo of the game, trying to foil the longterm strategists. But I don't often see it succeed in Reef Encounter. There's a nice balance in there where the player with the tempo of the game has to relinquish big chunks of the reef to other players who have built up more of a warchest of tiles. You just don't have the tiles or shrimp remaining to apply spatial pressure on those opponents while you're also pressuring the game clock. I love it.

Last, I think I mentioned in one of my podcasts how I went in with friends on a game parts order from Germany. Kind of ridiculously expensive, but I got a lot of fun parts. I've got big cardboard squares and plastic standup bases to use for permanent family members in I'm The Boss, lots of wooden disks to replace the cardboard counters in Kings & Castles, and other stuff intended for game designs that aren't much more than ideas right now. The only disappointment were some round disks intended to replace some poorly colored ones in Make Five, a pretty, wooden abstract. Turns out the replacements I got aren't quite the same size as the other disks in the game. And since they need to blindly drawn from a bag, that's a problem. Oh well, on balance I'm pleased with all of the goodies. Oh, the website we ordered from is www.spielmaterial.de .

-Mark

Spiel des Jahres thoughts

I wrote the following to my local game group, but it might be of general interest reading here, too. It's my quick, initial take on the Spiel des Jahres nominees.

Thief of Baghdad
Jenseits von Theben
Zooloretto
Baumeister von Arkadia
Yspahan

[I'm in the process of making an internal trade deal for Thief of Baghad now--no one around here seems to own it.]

I think I've played Jenseits a grand total of once, but I instantly liked it. Very glad to see the reprint, and with a nicer production, but I'm a little worried that the streamlining takes out some of what I liked about the game. One way to find out, of course--who owns it already? I need to play. Maybe I just need to buy.

Zooloretto is one I should like. I'm not over Coloretto, actually. I keep a copy at work, and even if it only gets played once or twice a year there, that's 1-2 times more than it was getting at home. I'm not sure if a bigger, cuter, less cut-throat boardgame version is what I want, but I'm willing to try. Especially if the theme helps the kid appeal. The description says it plays with 2 (some on BGG even say it works well with that number), something I never felt Coloretto did well. (Though now I see the latest rules, latest edition, have some special rules & cards for that. Maybe I should try again.)

Baumeister was perfectly good the one time I played. Definitely fun, but didn't knock my socks off. It's silly, but the little cardboard penant tokens bothered me, especially compared to the rest of the nice bits in the game.

And then there's Yspahan. I've played a few times in person, and a LOT of the downloadable computer game. It's right up my alley, I definitely like it. I'm curious to see how the QWG deluxe edition looks (and costs). However, about that thinness . . . I'm winning over 90% of the time against various AIs when I doggedly pursue one single strategy: build up the special abilities ASAP, then finally fill the city and caravan (often not until the 3rd week). I'll take gold or camels if there's a bunch of dice there, otherwise I take the best neighborhood dice out there . . . and use it for a card. Those cards are key. In the beginning they're powerful to make something out of nothing, and later they really help you fill out neighborhoods by being bonus dice. (I'd mistakenly played that they were bonus dice like extra gold, but they're much more powerful as bonus dice of a kind already rolled!) I hope that when I get to play against humans again that this one strategy won't be so dominant.

Do all local game groups having mailing lists? All the ones I've ever been part of do. Sometimes we have game discussion and strategy, but most of the time we use it for game night announcement and group ordering from webstores.

-Mark

Recent games: T&T, Tempus, Vinci, play by web

You might think that if I've got the ability to write a blog post, then I should be able to produce another podcast. Well, you'd be wrong. :-) Wasn't it about last year at this time that I got busy? More than that, it was six years ago that my gaming went on total hiatus for a few months. It just so happens that the main project at work is at the same stage the previous monumental effort was six years ago. Two years before launch of the next Mars lander/rover mission is crunch time for our mechanical engineers. And even if I'm not as hands-on as I used to be, the crunch spills over into my life, too. So, gaming is on a back burner, and podcasting is somewhere behind that. I still see no point in officially pulling the plug on BGTG, since things will return to normal someday, and I bet I'll want to shoot out another show then. In the meantime, I've got portions of three programs in various states of recording/editing, and another outlined with a guest.

My boardgaming hasn't gone completely into hibernation, but it's definitely slower than earlier in the year. At times like these, even the opportunity to play a single game is exciting & fun. I bet I'm not the only gamer-dad that thinks a game played with their kid is as good as any played on a game night . . . and one you play with your wife counts double. I just got to do that, playing good ol' (old?) Thurn & Taxis with Candy. She's on a winning streak, taking me down by six points this time. As it turned out, I needed only an elusive Innsbruck card to score a big route that would've tied me in the game. I pushed my luck as far as I dared, opting to flush the card display three times on three successive turns as I built my necessary route. A couple times I was risking the large route already on the table, as the cards in-hand could not be played to either end. Ultimately, I didn't find it, and she won. Then we looked at the next card on the face-down draw pile, and of course it was Innsbruck! But had I drawn that & found nothing useful I would've lost by much more. I'm going to get the expansion, even though we probably have no need for it. Just another map to look over, as far as I'm concerned.

On Thursday night we had time for one other. She asked for Flowerpower, but I'm a little burned out on that one, so she agreed to play TransEuropa instead. She was a little concerned about game length, but then proceeded to blow me out in two rounds! Oof! I have some sort of mental block with the Trans games, but it's fun nonetheless. Amazingly, I got my dad to play TransAmerica the last time my folks came down to visit. Maybe next time I'll suggest that again and we can get more players.

In between those two was an SCB session, my first in a while. I showed up after my kids' piano recital, arriving near the end of a 4-player game of Dragon Parade. Looked pretty fun to me. Definitely light, but that's why it appealed. In fact, Greg Wilzbach (who owns it) said it seemed like "my kind of game," so I guess it's obvious to others, too. :-) After that, we looked for a good 5-player, ending up with Tempus. We'd only played it once before, when it first game out, and had made a couple rules errors. My impression is that the game's reputation has suffered online, probably due to overinflated expectations (for which the production schedule & marketing is partially to blame). I, meanwhile, thought there were several things to really like in the game, and looked forward to another chance at it. That's how I continued to feel for the first 2/3rds, too, but then opinion started to drop off. Darn it all, it does have some good ideas in there. And there really isn't anything wrong I can point to . . . other than how the game just drags during the final few turns. Perhaps we were too slow, but I place the blame on the game itself. Some games cruise along to the end, some actually accelerate, but this one puts on the brakes. And it nearly kills the fun then. Thinking back on the whole game, it's still pretty interesting. In fact, I want to play it again! But I wish ended as strongly as it plays through the beginning & middle, or that the players could do something about that.

I can't help but think how it compares to Vinci, which I also played 5-player (first time in a long while) a few weeks ago when Mark Jackson was passing through. That game is just fun the whole way through, even at the very end when it can get more deterministic. (In fact, it's the determinism of much of the game that is one of its strengths, keeping things moving briskly, I've always felt.)

When there isn't much opportunity to play in-person, play-by-web is usually a good bet for me. I say usually because last month I had trouble even checking my personal email regularly! But in the past week I joined some games with friends, encouraged by reading reports of their recent plays. Now Kreta is in open testing on Mabiweb, a game I never got a chance to try in-person. Now let's see how it plays over the web. And Mabi also has the "changing winds" expansion map & alternate scoring bonuses for Hansa, so I tried that. I have to say I didn't care for it. The Mabi interface was fantastic, but the game "expansion" itself doesn't have much new to recommend it, and the endgame bonuses (which were given out as a postcard promotion years ago) feel like the skew the final too much. Glad to have had the chance to try it, but I'll stick with the original game from now on.

-Mark

BGTG 69 - Mar 21, 2007 - Adlung Spiele Games

Here's a solo show focusing on a particular publisher, Adlung Spiele. These are the guys (or maybe just one guy with some freelance authors & illustrators) that produce one of my favorites, Verräter, and other small card games. Most of them are only small in format, though--a single deck of cards in a tuckbox. Many of their games play much larger than they appear, feeling like more of a boardgame in a cardgame box. Verräter is certainly one of those--in fact it's the game that put Adlung on the map for having such titles, even though they'd been around a few years earlier. Although I covered Verräter in great detail on one of my earliest All About shows, the audio quality was limited by working with landline telephones, and I was never sure everyone got to hear what my guest Greg Aleknevicus and I had to say about the game. This was my chance to catch up a little. Though I don't go into nearly the same level of depth about the game, I do use it to start the show, then proceed to also discuss its thematic sequel Meuterer, as well as other notables like Vom Kap bis Kairo, Die Fugger, Canal Grande, and others.

Something I forgot to mention in the show is how Adlung has a franchise in their collection of card games, the Team Work series. I've never played them, as they're a party game and those are often difficult due to the language barrier. However, they sound very much like a more convenient, and probably easier version of Wat'n'Dat, a German party game I do happen to own. In all of these, it starts with the familar format of a cluegiver trying to get their partner to guess the correct word, often helped by knowing the category. Only here the cluegiver is a partnership, and these partners have to alternate words in the clue they give. No, they aren't allowed to converse privately beforehand. Hilarity ensues. Actually, the comments I've read online suggest it doesn't work as well as you'd like. That would match my experience with Wat'n'Dat, where you depict the answer by alternating placement of wooden sticks and glass beads with your partner. Trouble is, too often you're on a completely different page with the partner, leading to confusion. Worst of all is how that is no fun for the guessing players, who have a botched clue to try to untangle.

-Mark


Links
BGTG 36B - All About Verräter
My review of Die Fugger in Boulder Games' Gamenotes magazine (scroll down one third)

My wife's favorite type of boardgame

Wow, when I said my family gaming was starting to work, I wasn't kidding! Last night my wife & I played our new copy of On The Underground.

Not only that, but this was a game she requested, or at least she agreed that it sounded interesting after I described it to her the week before. That was after I'd played it for the first time at my local game group, and thought the mechanics and--especially--London theme would be a hit since we'd just made plans to take the family to London in April. I was confident enough that I ordered a copy for myself immediately. Most of that story is a fairly typical experience for me: think a game might be a good fit for Candy & I to play together, then order it. And though it does happen, it doesn't always work out that she likes it. (Paris Paris is an example of one that struck out.)

Yesterday she mentioned during the middle of the day that she might like to try On The Underground in the evening. We played it, she beat me handily without any handicapping or holding back (I don't do that), and she enjoyed the game. It took a bit over an hour, which was a longer than the games we usually play together (e.g. Thurn & Taxis), but she still liked it.

Not only that, but in talking about it afterward she observed that she liked "these sort" of games, in general. I asked, and we figured out that meant connection games like T&T, OTU, and Ticket To Ride. Holy cow! My wife has a favorite type of boardgame!

-Mark

P.S. Any tips on maximizing the sale of Deluxe/Limited edition of the Lord of the Rings? This is the same cooperative boardgame by Knizia, only published by Sophisticated Games, and comes with a metal ring, metal figures, and a numbered edition print. The game itself is a numbered edition, too, as I recall. I don't have any idea how to price the game for sale through the BGG marketplace, and there aren't even any recent games sold on ebay. Not this edition, anyway, just the more common one.

BGTG 68 - Feb 12, 2007 - Looking Back at 2006, Forward into 2007

A quick show with my thoughts on boardgaming over the past year, and what I anticipate for 2007. These retrospectives are a little harder to do without stats . . . but then what would stats tell me, anyway? For me, the real point is to talk about games that have become new favorites, especially ones I think will be keepers for the long haul. To be honest, I'm not sure how many of even the "hits" will keep getting played over the next five years, but I think Thurn & Taxis is a safe bet.

As for my look forward, I wonder my desire to physically produce a game of some kind--either my own prototype or an existing game component upgrade--makes sense to other people. Some of my local game friends have done this. For some it's a matter of art production (I think), of trying their hand at game graphics. That's not exactly my thing (i.e. I'm no good at it). Instead, what I hope to get out of it is an education in the struggles & successes with a game's functionality.

-Mark

P.S. According to my new stats on BGG, in the first six weeks of the year I've played 39 games a total of 61 times. If I keep that pace, I'll end up with over 500 total plays. Yep, I thinking my family focus is actually leading me to playing MORE games than ever before. Sure, there are those Pass the Pigs games with my daughter, but also Thurn & Taxis with my wife. And you know what? I had a great time playing Pass the Pigs with her! :-)

Some Essen titles (Yspahan, On the Underground, Elephant in a Porcelain Shop, and Null & Nichtig)

As of this writing, I've actually recorded two podcasts. One of them had to be scrapped for audio quality reasons, and I'm in the process of redoing it. That one is with a special guest, so I really hope I can get it redone sooner rather than later. The other is a more routine solo show, no technical problems, just needs a little more work (editing, test-listen). It's my retrospective on 2006, and a look forward to 2007. So, hopefully you'll be hearing me before long.

In the meantime, I can share a little bit of opinion here on the blog about some Essen titles. Unless you go to Essen or BGG.con, the lag from that huge event to a local game table can take this long. It's starting to happen for us, though. Greg & Ryan, who have both been on this podcast, tried Mr. Jack a few times last month. The whole group tried Marvel Heroes when I wasn't around. So I can't comment on those, other than to imagine that the Marvel game is too long for my finicky tastes.

When I finally made it back to game night, however, we played Yspahan. It was an immediate hit, and we played back-to-back games. (I don't know how many other groups do this, but we talk about back-to-back games a lot more than we actually do them.) And it leads to a confession of mine. I missed Ys, thought Mykerinos and Caylus were good (not great), and felt a rising contrarian emotion regarding Ystari. A little like the reaction to Days of Wonder or Fantasy Flight (or Fragor), it feels like everyone else in the hobby was acting like Ystari can do no wrong. And while I didn't find anything amiss with Ystari's offerings, neither did I understand the disproportionate outpouring of love. I mean, you don't read the same devotion to Hans im Gluck, Kosmos, or Abacus. I merely thought they had similar track records.

That's a longwinded way of saying I didn't expect Yspahan to be as good as it is! Lots of fun gameplay, tough choices, and a healthy dose of randomness, all in a one-hour page. Is this one of Siggin's superfillers? Maybe so. Maybe that's just the sort of game I like. Both times, it felt like the game ended just as I was getting my act (i.e. point-generating engine) into gear. In fact, you feel that three times in one game, at the end of each of the game's "weeks." However, I suspect if it really were any longer, the tough choices that drive the game would lose a lot of their punch. A real winner, and one I hope makes it to a play-by-web format soon. It's a natural for that.

By the way, I've been waiting for a game to make good use of the "die roll leftovers" mechanic I first saw in Groo. That game was fun, but ultimately too silly & chaotic to really shine. The mechanic isn't quite the same in Yspahan, but it's related, and works well.

Another Essen title tried was On The Underground. Originally I had looked past this one, too. I'm not sure why. I think it just looked a little too similar to Ticket To Ride (it's not very close, mechanically). Also, I was more drawn to the other Essen subway-themed game, Metromania. I'm still interested in that one, although opinion has started to coalesce on both of these games, with OTU definitely on top. Now I have plans for our family to visit London this spring, and my interest in OTU immediately jumped up. Add in Candy's continued interest in Thurn & Taxis, and I begin to hope that this could be another family game hit. Well, I haven't tried in that setting yet (which will be 2-player), but the 5-player game we played with the SCBers was encouraging. A little fiddly to figure out the scoring paths near the middle of the game, but I've heard that diminishes quickly with experience. That feels about right. Through travel books I'm getting more familiar with the map of the Underground system and its stations, and the game's "accuracy" is a strongly appealing factor. I immediately ordered a copy for myself after that one play.

Rounding out this Essen report are two little card games. One good, one not-so-good. The good one is Elephant in a Porcelain Shop. (The literal translation bugs me a little. Our idiom is 'bull in a china shop,' but the cards clearly show elephants all over the place. 'Porcelain shop' just doesn't have a ring to it. However, is Elephant in a China Shop any better? Probably not.) Elephant is by Michael Schacht, whose little card games will forever be compared to Coloretto. I do the same. And why not? I enjoy Coloretto so much, I keep hoping he'll have another gem like that. Uwe Rosenberg went through this after Bohnanza, right? Schacht's Diabolo was one of my stinkers for the year, but at the price & size of a card game, I've got no problem trying again.

Ok, I don't think Elephant is up there with Coloretto, but it's definitely good. We all liked it, even me. I say "even me" because I suffered a combination of bad luck and bad strategy that put me in a hole I never climbed out of. But it was still fun, and everyone else had a more competitive time. I'm a bit concerned that this will become one of those games where everyone has to be careful not to hand the game to the person on their left, balancing that against playing their own game. But we'll see, because we're definitely going to try this some more.

Last is Null & Nichtig. Oof. It's a new twist on the trick-taking game--at least one of these is published at every Essen. Five suits, but no need to follow suit, and no trump. The "clever twist" (they all try to have one) is that the cards you collect in tricks won are separated by suit, stacked in the order collected . . . and only the one on top counts for face value. The last bit reminds me of Loco/Quandary/Flinke Pinke, but the trick-taking mechanics give a lot less control than Knizia's simple placement mechanics. In a word, it tanked. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

-Mark

BGTG 67 - Jan 1, 2007 - Pretty, Wooden Abstracts

I've surprised myself by becoming more and more interested in abstract games over the years. However, as I discuss in this show, that's due to discovering a wide range of abstracts that don't make my head hurt. You see, I've never been a fan of chess, go, logic puzzles, or anything else that requires such hard thinking. It's just not fun for me. Even then, it's not the analysis that I find as bothersome as the need to look multiple moves ahead. In this podcast, I talk about some abstracts that are considerably lighter than those, either through a smaller strategic "game space," imperfect information, or multiple players.

-Mark

Links
Coffee Table Games
Furniture Games
BGG content tagged "Games as Art"
publisher Gigamic

End of the year games (part 2)

In addition to the games I've played with gamers to round out the year, I've continued to have more success with friends & family, too. Those are much lighter games, but that never bothered me in the first place, and of course those are much more approachable (and more fun) for people who don't enjoy learning new rules all the time. I had another chance to break out a few light games during some breaks at work. Those opportunities evaporate with the holidays, but I was happy for them while they lasted. In the past we've played good ol' Hearts, and what a great classic that is. But these coworkers know I play lots of other games, and expressed some curiosity about them. So I took that as in invitation to show them a few others, keeping them short & light. The games I had onhand were Elchfest, For Sale, Coloretto, and Dynasties.

Elchfest is one of the Kosmos/Mayfair 2-player series, a dexterity game where you try to flick disks across the table, into position as stepping stones for your wooden moose/elk piece. Your opponent takes turns doing the same, and the two of you try to reach the other side of the table (river) before the other. As simple as that, there are some subtleties around the fact that the three stepping stone disks you each have are neutral pieces--they don't belong to either player. So while it feels natural to flick just the stones on your side during your turn, before long you & your opponent are tempted--and well advised--to flick the other stones, too. Then it becomes more than a dexterity, finger-flicking face, it also adds some offensive & defensive play. But flicking games aren't for everyone, and this one didn't go over too well. I still enjoy it.

Then we had four players for For Sale, followed up by three for Coloretto, two little card games that really show some imaginative gameplay for someone only used to traditional card games. That was the whole idea with their selection! It's funny to compare how it turned out against my attempts with those same two games and my family. At work, For Sale was interesting but not especially compelling, while they suck their teeth into Coloretto. At home it was close to the opposite, having fun with For Sale but finding Coloretto a bit too dry and requiring more tracking (and direct confrontation). In both cases I'd call the experience an overall success, just to find one hit. I guess the difference comes from the audience, though I wonder if it's really that cliché--that the family enjoys the lighter game, and the engineers want something that can be studied?

The last one at work was Dynasties. You'll hear me mention this one as my faux sleeper of 2006 in the next Boardgame Roundtable podcast, hosted by Doug Garrett. (It's a faux sleeper because it really came out in 2005, I just didn't find it until this year--in a math trade!) This has been my biggest hit at work. It's an area-majority game, and a bidding game. I find those unusual qualities for a 2-player game. My buddy at work requested a game with "sneakiness," and this has fit the bill. In this case, that sneakiness comes from bluffing and double-think, not backstabbing or trick plays. It was such a hit with him that he borrowed it for the Thanksgiving weekend, and now closer to Christmas I got to introduce it to someone else at work. Another success.

On the homefront, it's been more light games with mostly my kids. Over on the Family Boardgaming Podcast they recommended Quicksand for parents & kids, so I snapped up a few from the recent Fantasy Flight sale to play at home and give as gifts to a cousin and the local Toys for Tots drive. Sure enough, it was a hit with my daughter. We've played with family, just the two of us, and--best of all--she wanted to teach her neighborhood friends all by herself. It's a very light game of hidden identity (as in Clans, which didn't impress the kids), a race game played with cards, themed around a jungle expedition. My favorite moment came when I helped one of Molly's friends who wasn't having as much fun as the rest of the girls. She had a hand full of cards that moved the blue pawn/explorer forward, but that wasn't her color. I whispered that she should play them all at once anyway, move the blue pawn as poorly as possible, and then get to refill her entire hand, hoping for better cards. "Ohhhhhh.....," she said, starting to get it. And then, "Good thinking!"

I packed games into other games to save space during our trips to see relatives over the past week. However, all we played was one more game of Quicksand, and once I got to play Harry's Grand Slam Baseball with my son. He liked it, and I hope we'll get to play more later. But nothing else, not even a game of Hearts with grandpa. What we did play was the Wii, Nintendo's new game system that features interactive, wireless controllers that you wave around instead of pressing a million buttons.

Ok, here I go again. I even mention it during that Boardgame Roundtable podcast. Yes, it's a video game. But I'm telling you, we got everyone into it, had lots of fun, and the social experience was right up there (or beyond) what I brought with my in my boxes of board & card games. My brother & his wife laughed through tennis, and she's pretty much opposed to all videogames. At my in-laws' we did even better, getting everyone into it. I couldn't believe how much fun my mother-in-law was having with the bowling game, cheered on by her grandkids. The golf game just about convinced my brother-in-law to go out and get a system for his family. The nieces played constantly. It's not unusual for kids to play videogames, of course, but even the littlest one found it easy and intuitive to play. We all got into it together, and that's what felt so special.

-Mark

End of the year games (part 1)

Like I said, no chance to do another podcast this year, but I can fill you in on some recent gaming via the blog. Last night I attended my last Santa Clarita game group session of the year, and we were joined by Greg Parker. He's a long way from home up in Redding, but has family down here so we see him once in a while during holidays. Podcast listeners should be familiar with Greg from his co-star status on Garrett's Games & Geekiness podcast. Although I'd like to have him on MY podcast, too, our time is too short to do that AND play games. So games it was.

I think of Greg Parker as one of the "new games guys," meaning someone that is always getting & playing new stuff. I know he has his older favorites, too, but whenever he's down here there are new games he's touting, and asking about what new ones we've tried. Should I tell him the game sessions at my place are often filled with old standbys like Ra and San Marco? No, I know it doesn't really matter. And we play new ones, too--including Space Dealer last week. (Which I thought was great fun, such an enjoyable gimmick/mechanism, and one I want to try more.)

Greg had a new copy of Die Baumeister von Arkadia with him, and that was a new one I wanted try. Especially since I knew no one in our group had picked it up yet. Just like everyone's been saying, it was good. It looks more involved than it really is, and in our 4-player game it also accelerated to the end more than we were expecting. Now knowing what to expect, I can see this moving right along in that 45-60 minute middleweight category I like. Count me among those who were turned off by nothing more than the Torres memories of those pieces, but hre's they're just game scoring equipment (and a game timer, in a clever combination). If it also plays well with 2 or 3, as I've heard, then it's one of the clear winners from Essen.

After that we tried Reef Encounters of the Second Kind. Turns out I was able to get one after all, due to my high-falutin' podcast connections. (I saw them available through Boulder Games later, too.) Hmmm... Now, I'm a big fan of Reef Encounter. You'll hear more about that in a future podcast or two. I don't typically pay top dollar for games, but this was one case where I splurged. That was for the base game. It was a double-splurge for the small expansion. Especially since I know my usual reaction to expansions: interesting new options, but clutters-up the original game and makes it only for die-hards. And that's almost my reaction here. I say "almost," because I want to try again using only some of the new elements. The rules don't suggest you can "pick & choose" the parts of the expansion you want, but I think it could work better for me that way. I like the special tiles most of all. They don't take much additional explanation, barely tweak the rules, and open up new tactical considerations and opportunities. Especially when drafting more tiles at the end of your turn. The predatory starfish tile is only slightly more involved, but pretty interesting and worth the (minor) effort.

It's the special, rule-bending cards I didn't care for. This is a game mechanism I'm not often happy with. Adds more chaos/unpredictability, and getting the balanced for power is so very critical. It's only one play so far, but in our game we all felt the cards were too powerful, changing the final scoring too significantly for a game that otherwise values clever moves and multi-turn strategy.

The remaining new element are the blue shrimps. I like their modest game effect. They're a collective pool of "bonus" shrimp that can protect more coral--only the tile they're on, not the orthogonal neighbors, but that's plenty to help out. Some of them are printed on the new tiles, and those are the easiest to use. The separate, wooden ones are fun, just like the original "shrimples," offer more opportunities for clever play, but as-is they require that same deck of cards to activate. If I can figure out some way to retain the blue shrimp but ditch the cards, that would be ideal. (Maybe discard a tile in front of the screen to place/move one blue shrimp?)

All in all, a good night of strategy games to complement the lighter fare I've been playing lately, which you'll read about in part 2.

-Mark

BGTG 66 - Dec. 8, 2006 - Thanksgiving Leftovers (Qwirkle, Winner's Circle, Harry's Grand Slam Baseball, Hyle7, Make Five) & Feedback

Whew! The show is now posted. You know that getting a podcast out during this part of the year is tricky for me (aren't we all busy with the holidays?), and with the backlog of material it has turned out to be a biggie. Good news, I hope. The last time I had a show larger than one audio CD, almost no one downloaded the split file--everyone downloaded the big sucker like usual. So either you've got MP3 players, listen on your computers, or manage your own splits as needed. Yea!

This show is mostly a compilation of older material that hadn't been broadcast yet for one reason or another. There's a session report and some general discussion from last August, and a backlog of audio feedback--half of it from Mark Jackson. (Remember, he's the preacher, I'm the rocket scientist . . . kind of.)

But I couldn't just splice in that feedback without responding to it, and I wanted to fill you in on some recent events, too. Mostly, that means when my folks came down for Thanksgiving. Did we all play games? Yeah, kind of, but not what you'd expect. And then I had the happy surprise of a thank-you gift for this podcast that turned out to be a fun game for the family, one I wanted to mention right away.

So, anyway, there you have it. All 85 minutes of it. Enjoy!

-Mark

P.S. Once again the good folks over at the Gone Gaming blog are calling attention to the best internet resources for our hobby. They call it the Board Game Internet Awards, and this is the second year they've done this. Sure, everyone knows to go to Boardgamegeek and Boardgamenews for news & information. But which are the best blogs, game club sites, even podcasts? Not only that, but they'll single out the best individual game reviews, session reports, and humorous articles. I'm very proud to be nominated again, and really appreciate the spotlight they're shining on quality online material, all of it by enthusiastic hobbyists.

P.P.S. I don't do full-blown shownotes with links to everything anymore, but in this recording I specifically mentioned a link to the Interview with an Optimist that Tom Vasel did with HSGB designer Harry Obst.

It's that time of year...

Remember how I said I planned on taking a planned hiatus from mid-November until after New Year's? Well, that was a good idea, because this is just a very busy time for me to work in some podcasting. Just the same, I wanted to catch up on some audio feedback, and my plan is still to put together kind of a "mash-up" show. Somewhere I've still got a recording made last August that was never released, and if I just carve that up with that feedback I think I've got something worth putting out there. At least to bridge the gap to January.