Board Game Madness 7/12

Fun:

• Pimp My Game: Don’t pull the wool over your friends’ eyes, but this implementation of Flash Point: Fire Rescue is really cool
• John-Michael Gariepy speculates what the top ten most desirable Magic: The Gathering Cards are.

New Games:

• 1969: The cold war hits again and it’s all about the race to the moon. Play the US, Russia or one of the European powers and sabotage your opponents and be the first to fly safely to the moon. Release October 2012.
• Recent releases: Scripts and Scribes: The Dice Game, Empire Express, Lock ‘n Load: Honneur & Patrie, Next War: Korea, World at War: Into the Breach, Thunderbolt Apache Leader

iOS:

• Haggis released (solo only for now)
• Summoner Wars released (free with four factions – extra factions can be bought in total for $7.99 or individually for less)
• Thunderstone nearing release
• Café International (1989 Spiel des Jahres winner) to be released later in July
• There’s a new iOS app for BGG

News:

• The Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s game of the year, has been announced. This is the Academy Award for Best Picture in board gaming. Kingdom Builder, from Dominion’s Donald X. Vaccarino, beat out Eselsbrucke and Vegas. Note that this award tends to move towards the family games. So it’s the equivalent of Disney/Pixar taking best picture every year.
• The Kennerspiel des Jahres is the strategy gamer’s version of the Spiel des Jahres and this year’s winner is Village, by Inka and Markus Brand who also designed A Castle for All Seasons. It beat out K2 and Targi.
• Interesting to note, according to Purple Pawn: Tom Felber, chairman of the SdJ jury, complained that “many of the games reviewed this year were ‘not fully developed in all areas’”. Some have wondered if the increase in releases and boom of game designers and introduction of Kickstarter as a funding source is diluting the market.
• Chicago has turned their streets into a giant Monopoly game
• According to Gizmodo, a computer is now capable of watching you play a game for only two minutes, learn from your strategies and beat you senselessly. It’s only done it with abstract games, so I’d like to see how it does with Agricola.
• Learning from Risk can help you run your small business

Recently played

• Some gaming on my vacation included a few games of 7 Wonders and Blokus (with the parents!)

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Purple Pawn, Game Salute, Google News

Board Game Madness 7/3

Independence Day edition! Happy July 4^th.

Fun:

• Massive PitchCar game takes up tons of table space and a large room unto itself
• Someone converted a bunch of beer coasters into a game of Carcassonne
• How about playing Castle Ravenloft with the Avengers heroes: Black Widow, Thor, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man
• Le Tour De Geek rolls on into stage 5 with the Intellectual Challenge. Chess has my vote on that one. Pandemic recently took over the Yellow Jersey from Ticket to Ride after stage 4’s thematic fit. I think that was more Settlers falling like a lead balloon on that rather than Pandemic soaring over the top. The next stage is memorability.
• A very interesting read on how copyright and trademark laws affect the gaming industry
• Want gaming t-shirts?
• Someone made a LEGO version of The Settlers of Catan!

New Games:

• Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar: What’s the point of playing this game if the world is ending this December? Get it??? Mayan calendar? Ugh. This game is touting a “new” mechanic of dynamic worker placement where what they do depends on where they are on the board, but that changes as the gears of the calendar turn through the game. Release October 2012.
• Goblins, Inc.: The gobbos of their big firm are looking for a new CEO. The corporation makes gigantic doomsday robots to destroy the world. This is a dice game where form partnerships, build your robots and battle it out trying to attain secret achievements. Release October 2012.
• Suburbia: It’s SimCity the board game. Lay down tiles to build up the town into a major metropolis. No Godzilla in this game though. Release October 2012.
• Recently released: For the Win, Red Winter, Four in a Square

iOS:

• Summoner Wars still imminent (already submitted)
• Haggis imminent (already submitted)
• Kickstarter campaign for Mage Knight

News:

• Fantasy Flight Games and Stronghold Games have resolved the whole Merchant of Venus debacle, where both got the rights to put out the same game. FFG will proceed with publishing, but Stronghold will be involved, as the board will be double-sided now. The classic game (Stronghold) on one side and the newly reimagined FFG version on the other. I assume Stronghold is getting a cut of some type.

Recently played:

• Well, my Death Rockers have been knocked out of the LIBBL Montauk Cup playoffs. I lost 1-0 in the semi-finals to the NY Knicknevins, the eventual champions. Sad day in Blood Bowl. However, I plan to bring the team back for their second season. I’m really enjoying them.
• Game night was this past week for our local group. I learned how to play Last Will, led a game of 7 Wonders and we broke open a new set of Cards Against Humanity, courtesy of one of our grateful regulars (thanks again!)
• Travelling to visit friends, some gaming has occurred. So far: Blood Bowl: Team Manager and 7 Wonders. The 7 Wonders game was with the new iPad companion app that was awesome! My wife played Cupertino on a day that the Apple stock went up. She came in second.

Happy Gaming!

Credits: Board Game Geek, Game Salute, Google News

Board Game Madness 6/26

Fun:

• Le Tour de Geek moves on to the third stage with Ticket to Ride holding on to the Yellow Jersey (overall leader). That’s because stage two was gateway games. Current round is for tension/excitement. Pandemic is leading, but Battlestar Galactica (my top vote) has the most “win” votes. This is really fun!
• Ridiculously good terrain with Heroscape
• Pimp My Game I: Quarriors playmats
• Pimp My Game II: Quarriors scoring pieces. These are phenomenal!
• Pimp My Game III: Tablecloth play mat for Race for the Galaxy
• Pimp My Game IV: Cool idea to paint meeples with images – in this case Romeo and Juliet
• Good Eats: Meeple Sugar Cookies
• Custom joke roles for Last Night on Earth: Kool-Aid, Chuck Norris and Snake Pliskin
• For those looking to catch up, there’s a geeklist of all of the Wil Wheaton TableTop episodes
• Funny geeklist of “Goofiest Game Covers”

New Games:

• Recently released: Ghost Pirates, Four Taverns

iOS:

• Le Havre released
• Magic 2013 released
• Summoner Wars submitted, release imminent

News:

• CBS is picking up Draw Something to air on television. For those not in the know (I barely am): This is a Zynga game that is playable on the Internet and is expected to be a high-tech version of Pictionary and Win Lose or Draw.

Recently Played:

• I’m looking forward to the summer so I can get more gaming in. Vacations are really good for that. Also there’s a monthly board game night coming up this week. Only thing I logged this week was a game of Core Worlds with my wife. And I had to take out the garbage to get that one!

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Purple Pawn

Board Game Madness 6/19

Fun:

• Want to have fun with your friends? Get one of these anti-gravity timers. I guarantee you they’ll be too busy paying attention to the hourglass and they’ll miss the objective, therefore handing you the game. Bank it.
• Destination Gaming: Play Pandemic away from the masses so that you might be able to avoid catching any contagions.
• For those who have played Tales of the Arabian Nights, there’s apparently an inside joke at the end of the book (I’ll have to check my copy). But even to an outsider it’s pretty funny. Apparently this continues a tradition in this game if you read the comments at the bottom.
• Pimp My Game: Custom dice bag for Zombie Dice. Niiiiiiiiice (Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains)
• Pimp My Game II: Someone made a custom water level tower for Forbidden Island that is amazing!
• Pimp My Game III: I’ve often thought of the lazy susan as a great gaming tool and my custom gaming table in my head has one. But someone gussied theirs up really nicely. It works really nicely with Core Worlds.
• Pimp My Game IV: Those that have played Quarriors! know how frustrating the scoring tokens are in that they are very close in color. Here’s some custom tokens that someone made.
• Possibly the most gorgeous set of Backgammon that I have ever seen
• Geek Love: Someone proposed in a game of Innovation.  Very cute idea!
• Someone decided to have some fun with backgrounds and created some beautiful pictures from the ships in Merchants and Marauders. It’s too bad they didn’t use custom painted ships if they went to all this trouble: 1 2 3 4
• “Whooa, there goes Tokyo, there goes Godzilla! Whoo-oooo-ooo.” (Name the group)
• Those who know me know I’m big into cycling. More doing than following. But BGG is doing their own “Le Tour de Geek” which is just getting started. It is a 14 stage race between games a la Geek Madness in March. But this one is actually comparing different aspects of a game including mechanics, value, player interaction, etc. The goal would be to name the most complete game. It sounds fascinating.

New Games:

• Tokaido: For those in need of serenity, a new game is coming out of Japan which has you travelling the “East Sea Road”. You meet other people, eat, collect items and visit interesting places. If you’ve done the most interesting things along the road, you win. They tout it as a zen game that is peaceful and easy to pick up.
• Princes of the Dragon Throne: Card game where you play a young dragon trying to take over the throne. Area control and resource management with a deck building/drafting mechanic from the company that brought you Alien Frontiers.
• Recent releases: Eclipse (2^nd Ed.), Skeleton Island, Samurai Battles

iOS:

• Hacienda released
• Neuroshima Hex released for Android
• Le Havre submitted (imminently available)
• MechWarrior: Tactical Command due this summer
• 7 Wonders companion that keeps score and gives card info among other things released this week. The most interesting thing though is the new wonder called “Cupertino”, after Apples proposed new headquarters. This wonder changes its abilities depending on the stock price for Apple. Crazy!
• Alien Frontiers has returned to Kick Starter, but for the iPad. They need 15K to finish programming.

News:

• More Settlers of Catan environmentalism: Some Yale students developed a variant called Settlers of a Green Future that will be used as part of the Rio+20 Earth Summit. You choose a political philosophy which give you access to green policy cards. You can also team up with other players to form eco-cooperatives.
• Violence in Myrtle Beach after one Taboo player punched another during an argument over rules. Oh yeah, the offender was an Elvis Impersonator too.
• Comicbookresources.com took an interesting look at what movies need to become board games (as opposed to the reverse trend we are seeing today. They chose Brewster’s Millions (great idea!!!!), Chinatown, Psycho (ok that’s going to be weird), Apocalypse Now and Battleship (wait, that’s a joke, right?)

Recently played:

• Another slow week for me. What am I doing? I was biking a ton and completed the Ride to Montauk this past weekend. Now that that is done, I fully plan on getting back to gaming. Hmmm… what to play, what to play?
• I did get a couple of games of Zombie Dice in with the kids

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Purple Pawn, Google News

Board Game Madness 6/12

Fun:

• Boy, miniature combat games have the most awesome looking tables. Here’s one from HeroScape.
• Jaws reboot starring meeples?
• Very funny geeklist predicting the future of board games. Some of the jokes are BGG insiders, but the bulk are very funny.

New Games:

• CO2: First there was Settlers of Catan Oil expansion. Now Stronghold Games puts out an area control game that’s friendly (or harmful) to the environment. Manage the tide of pollution in the 1970s as the government investing in private companies that have solutions. Go green, make money and manage resources like knowledge to obtain clean and sustainable energy. Release October 2012, and no I have no idea what the carbon footprint of this game is.
• Plato 3000: Card game for 2-4 where you use rummy rules to build a civilization. Release imminently 2012.
• Recently released: Pittsburgh 68, Dixit: Journey, FitzIt, Tournay, Uncharted: The Board Game, Divinare, Monster Chase

iOS:

• Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013 release June 20^th
• Quirkle later this summer
• iOS 6 to be released this fall, although unsure of feature set

News:

• To support the brick and mortar stores (aka FLGS), companies are now releasing their games earlier to the local shops and delaying to online retailers. That’s very interesting and I think a really good idea. Right now Queen Games (Fresco) and AEG (Thunderstone) are doing it. I wonder how it’ll effect the shops that also have heavy online presences.
• The world record for longest time playing a single game was broken on the 9^th. These guys were playing Stratomatic Baseball, a game I played incessantly in college.
• Top 100 games everyone should play, as per the Games for Change. This one is crowd sourced through June 20^th. Go ahead and vote!

Recently played:

• Another light week except for Blood Bowl, where my Necromantic team the Death Rockers pulled an upset in the opening round of the playoffs over the Warpstone Rejects (Skaven)and now vault into the semifinals of the Montauk Cup. Opponent still unknown.

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Purple Pawn

Board Game Madness 6/7

Fun:

• For anyone who’s interested in seeing the new base cards for the Dominion reissue, they’re here. I love the new curse card.
• Gaming décor: A Dominion table along with a picture log of how he made it
• Gaming décor II: Ooh… wall art!
• Pimp My Game: Someone geeked out Modern Art with comic themes. I did this for “Renaissance Art” to bring to Pennsic one year, although I didn’t print out the cards. They’re all mocked up though.
• Interesting geeklist for games that are out of print and copies are dwindling – endangered species if you will

New Games:

• Top This! A Pizza Flicking Game: Dexterity game where you have to flick the toppings onto the pizza. The better you do filling the order, the more money you make. Get tips by doing two pizzas at once! Release date unknown
• Recent Releases: Fortress America, Quarriors! Quarmageddon, Survive: Escape from Atlantis! 30^th Anniversary Edition, Pentalath, Edo, Empires of the Void, Sanitarium, Sunrise City, Lemonade Stand

iOS:

• Dominion (the real one) is in beta
• Hacienda HD submitted to the store this week, should be available imminently
• Lost Cities due in July
• Le Havre due in the next couple of weeks
• Summoner Wars confirmed for June
• Alien Frontiers still in development, but was shown at Origins

News:

• Origin awards have been released for the mega convention in Columbus. Many people are down on these awards as the ones nominated are often not what people would consider worthy. However the winners are:
• Best Board Game: Dungeons & Dragons: Conquest of Nerath Board Game
• Best Traditional Card Game: NUTS!
• Best Family, Party, or Children's Game: Get Bit!
• Best Historical Board Game: Strike of the Eagle
• There’s also backlash about Origins. I hear attendance was drastically down due to the change of dates to conflict with the school year for many.
• Dice Tower News will be moving to Game Salute as Tom Vasel is quitting his day job and going into gaming full time
• Geek.com has declared that every geek should have 5 games: Ticket to Ride, Arkham Horror, Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Memoir ‘44
• The city of Spartanburg, SC is putting on the play Clue: The Musical. The movie was awesome… I wonder how good the musical is.
• Another boardgame-turned-movie??? Wait! This one’s different! A 17-yr-old filmmaker in Martha’s Vineyard is screening a film based on Last Night on Earth.

Recently Played:

• Played the last game of my LIBBL season in Blood Bowl and lost, although won my division. Playoff time!
• Sadly, no other board gaming this last week.

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Dice Tower News, Google News

Board Game Madness 5/30

A day late, but now with a juicy nougat filling!

Fun:

• Spielbox, the world’s most read board game magazine, is now available for download from BGG. This is the English version! Unfortunately it’s $9 an issue and you’d have to print out the free goodies you get with the magazine on a regular printer.
• Dice towers are common, but a card tower, now THAT’s a cool idea!
• Go is a serene game. Now couple it with these surroundings and you may end up never returning to society.
• Pimp my Game: Sculpted Pandemic pawns. Nicely done!
• Pimp my Game II: Buzz Lightyear meets Martian captain. Why didn’t I think of this?!?!
• Pimp my Game III: Really cool score track/tile for Carcassonne. You build it into your map!
• Pimp my Game: Sculpted Cities and Knights of Catan pieces, also very nicely done
• Good Eats: Civilization cake. Mmmmmmmm – edible wonders [gurgle gurgle]
• Awesome looking Warhammer battle scene. Looks like something out of Saving Private Ryan.

New Games:

• Fantastiqa: New deck building adventure game from Gryphon games where you tour different landscapes, fight creatures and complete quests. Almost reminds me of the old Dungeoneer game. Release September 2012.
• Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game: Fantasy Flight’s early entry with their new Star Wars license brings you a short 20 minute mission-oriented space combat game of X-Wings vs. TIE fighters. Very customizable, but it looks like it’s going to be one of those games that may require a some number of expansions if you want to do some of the missions. Release July 2012.
• Dominion: Dark Ages: Yes, another set from Donald X. No release date yet, but this is a full expansion (500 cards) and a new type of card called a “Ruin”. They are also replacing Estates with Shelters (not sure why). This set seems to be all about the trashing and upgrading (ok, this may be a must buy for me then…)
• Doctor Who: The Card Game: Play the Doctor and his friends and defend the universe in this new Martin Wallace game coming in August 2012. Very few details available.
• Recent releases: Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, Richelieu, Web of Flies, BITS, Munchkin the Guild

iOS:

• LeHavre possibly late June
• Hacienda in testing

News:

• Thunderstone is now Print and Play and free. At least the original set is. The cards are redesigned too. My biggest issue is mixing with the other sets. I’ve done it with Dominion fan cards and you can tell if you have one of the homemade cards.
• Dominion is also rereleasing their basic set, but just the victory, treasure and curse cards. These will need to be purchased though. Great new artwork and they’ll replace your beat up cards if you don’t sleeve them.
• A joint venture between the Chicago Toy and Game Fair and Live Oak Games gives birth to the Games for Educators newsletter for anyone looking to use games in the classroom.

Recently Played:

• Played a bunch of Dominion with the Mrs. last week. We used a new iPad app called D-vault as a shuffler. It’s got the most current sets and also has some really nice features like card logs (no repeats!), minimum number of Alchemy cards, etc. 99c and well worth the price
• I took Friday off last week as a mental health day. I finally had a chance to play Mage Knight. I didn’t have the greatest play experience, but I’m more than willing to do it again as I’m a sucker for a good fantasy adventure game. I’ll hold off judgment until I play it again.
• Afterwards we played a 3p Haggis game which is always fun.z
• That night was also our monthly board game night and I got a chance to try The Castles of Burgundy. As a big fan of Kingsburg, Lords of Vegas and Alien Frontiers, this game was right up my alley. However it took a looooooooooooooooooooooong time to play.
• I needed something a bit quicker after Burgundy, so I taught Blood Bowl: Team Manager. Oy, another really long game. J Oh and I broke one of my own rules: Never win the game you’re teaching. Damn me.
• My sister-in-law is in town so we got some other gaming in including more Dominion, Ubongo: Duel and Lost Cities.

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Dice Tower News, Purple Pawn