Board Game Madness 10/24

Fun:

• For those of you who want to get into the holiday spirit a little early, The Dice Tower is starting up their new Secret Santa. I’ve done this the last two years and had an absolute blast. I wrote a novella to give the gift to one person and a few modified Christmas carols to give to the next. And yes, we performed the carols at their front door (two friends of mine volunteered quite resistantly, but we had a blast). Anyway, if you are interested, go listen to Dice Tower 277 and get the details. Entry by November 11^th if you want in.
• Destination gaming: Battle at Normundy
• I’ve heard of dogs playing poker, but this is a bit much
• Crossover – music meets gaming. From the gent who brought you the Tour De Geek (without doping), comes his delve into the greatest rock song of all time
• If you are interested in what other collections board game geeks might have, here’s a geeklist. Some of these are very interesting. I don’t think I collect anything, other than when I was younger I had a bunch of baseball caps.
• So here’s a lot of hate about Essen I’m reading, the major board gaming convention that just took place in Europe.
• Want to kick your opponents around in a game of Ticket to Ride? Well Game Knight has published a free strategy guide. I guess this is the next untapped resource for the board game industry. Just wait until they release the FITS one.

New Games:

• Recently released: The Ladies of Troyes, Expedition: Congo River 1884, La Loire, Pyramidion, Rattus Cartus, DrachenSchatten, Hochste Eisenbahn

iOS:

• Kingdom Builder in development
• Santiago de Cuba in development
• A Brief History of the World due in March 2013
• El Grande due in June 2013
• Age of Industry due in September 2013
• Spectacle (aka Colosseum) due in December 2013

News:

• The Canadian Game Design award went to Paul Saxberg for Coven
• Staying in the cold regions, what do they do to fight boredom in Fairbanks Alaska? Play board games of course! OK, there’s only 5 members, but they should be able to up that once the weather turns cold. Oh wait, it did already…
• A great look at the upcoming election from the point of view of board games. My favorite is: “Settlers of Catan: The game is fun, sure, but only a certain group of people are absolutely obsessed with it and insist on bringing it out at parties.”

Recently Played:

• The Blood Bowl season continued for LIBBL. My Death Rockers won two games this week, 2-1 over the Undead Presidents and 2-1 over the Bree Bashers. We’re 3-0 and at the top of the division for now.
• At a birthday party for one of the members of our gaming group, there was a lot of gaming going on. Unfortunately that was a short time for me as I had to be up before dawn on Sunday morning. But I played Founding Fathers and Sushizock im Gockelwock. That last one was a nice little fun game that took about 10 minutes.

Happy Gaming!

Credits: Board Game Geek, Game Salute, Google News

Board Game Madness 10/17

Fun:

• The biggest board gaming convention in the world, Spiel 2012, is going on in Essen right now. You can get a live stream of Board Game Geek’s booth if you are into that right on the front page of their site.
• I haven’t mentioned the show Tabletop in a while, but Wil Wheaton just took on Pandemic.

New Games:

• Keyflower: Bid for tiles to add to your home tile and expand your kingdom over 4 seasons. At the end of each season, boats arrive with more workers allowing you to get more tiles which give resources or victory points. Release October 2012.
• Snowdonia: Excavate the mountain and build your train line with your work gang in the snowy peaks of Snowdonia (isn’t that redundant?). Use your works and contracts to build more of the line than anyone else. Release October 2012.
• Nothing Personal: Tom Vasel of The Dice Tower fame is releasing his second game. This is mob-themed as you try to get the most respect to be given the position as the new Capo. Very much a “take that” game it seems. Release later this year/early 2013.
• Recent Releases: Banditos: Hippies and an Armored Truck, Casa Grande, Indigo, Saint Malo, Urbania, Giftzwerge, Shadows over Camelot: The Card Game

iOS:

• Dominant Species released
• Can’t Stop released
• Lexatron, Scrabble meets Tron, released
• Monopoly Millionaire released
• Qin (Reiner Knizia) releasing on iOS at same time as board game in the next week
• Elder Sign updated and now has a new campaign “Trail of Ithaqua”
• Phantom Leader ready to submit
• For the Win going to beta soon

News:

• This weekend is Extra Life, a charity which supports children’s hospitals. 24 hours of gaming, are you up to it?
• The board gaming blog I Slay the Dragon is building an FLGS database. Register your local store.
• The guys at Days of Wonder gave an interview at VentureBeat and explained their rather morbid exit strategy in case the gaming thing doesn’t work out.
• The Boston Globe interviews the designer of a board game about the Salem Witch Trials, now on Kickstarter
• Roxio and CERN (the guys with the supercollider) are creating a bunch of games and content aimed at teaching kids about particle and quantum physics. This actually scares me a little bit…

Recently Played:

• My son has been fantastic lately in and out of school, so I decided to put together a bunch of miniatures for him to finally have his Lizardmen Blood Bowl team. Then we played. We still have to work on his strategy. I also brought one of the new players in our league up to speed with a scrimmage where he soundly beat me.
• My wife said, “Can I go out tonight?” I said, “On one condition, when you come back, we play a game of Dominion.” Actually we played three. And for you haters out there, she knows could have gone without “my permission”. But I might as well get something out of it, right?
• My wife took my older son to a First Lego League training session so my 4 and a half year old son asked if we could play some games. Of course! We played Zombie Dice, I taught him out to play Othello and we played one of his favorites: Incan Gold. On that last one, we even have this funny thing we do when the treasures are shown before they get mixed in the deck, we get a nice “ooooooh aaaaaaah” in unison.

Happy Gaming!

Credits: Board Game Geek, Game Salute, Google News

Board Game Madness 10/9

Fun:

• It’s nice to see the men and women of our armed forces getting R&R with some deck building action
• Destination gaming: King Philip’s War
• Accessibility is always an option in gaming. This group added braille to their pieces in a game.
• Some gorgeous shots of backgrounds for the new X-Wing miniatures game: Here and here

New Games:

• Power Grid: Northern Europe/United Kingdom & Ireland: I just can’t get enough Power Grid. Love the new board! Release October 2012.
• Recent releases: Okiya, Winter, Darkest Night, Mythic Battles

iOS:

• Alien Frontiers released
• Can’t Stop release imminent
• Marvel War of Heroes release imminent
• Cadwallon: Citi of Thieves due in November
• Dominant Species still in development, DS:The Card Game has also started development
• Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization still in development but progressing
• Da Vinci’s Art of War (based on Magnifico) in development
• Playdek will be developing Looney Labs titles, first will be Fluxx

News:

• How many points for the word “cheater” in Scrabble? BTW, read the article, it’s very interesting. It talks about some of the history of cheating in Scrabble.
• A woman in South Carolina killed her fiancée over a dice game. That’s just sick.
• Game Salute, a partnership of FLGSes banded together to promote the game industry and improve distribution channels, has now acquired Clever Mojo Games (most known for publishing Alien Frontiers). This strikes me as interesting. I imagine they’ll be a little less objective in their reviews now.
• A Staten Island paper touts that it’s time to start playing board games with the family instead of letting the kids play video games. 

Recently Played:

• We had some friends over the other day and played Squint, Dominion and No Thanks.
• We started season 3 of the Long Island Blood Bowl League (LIBBL) and my Necromantic team, the Death Rockers, kicked off with a 4-0 win.

Happy Gaming!

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

Board Game Madness 10/2

A few weeks off due to increased demand at work.

Oh by the way, 79 days until the end of the world. Make sure you get your gaming in…

Fun:

• There’s a line that some cross. This is someone who has an obsession.
• Multi-level RoboRally
• Funky “chess by sea”
• Great collection of Meeplepics
• If you’re looking for a central list of gaming conventions, A-Game Magazine has a pretty comprehensive one. Bookmark it!

New Games:

• The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game: Wiz Kids expands the Quarriors! Brand over to Tolkien’s world. Same game engine, now with literary connections. Release in January 2013.
• The Cave: Explore a newly discovered cave. As the cave develops in this tile laying game, you’ll refill your backpacks with the right tools. The goal is to explore the cave with “the biggest effort in the most spectacular way”. I’m not sure exactly how that’s measured, but the game is due out at some point later this year.
• Tzolk'in: The Mayan Calendar: This game takes the worker placement mechanic and adds a dynamic element based on the worker’s current position on a gear where you draft them from. The goal is to pay homage to the Mayan gods with actions by the workers. Release in October 2012.
• Legendary: Cooperative deck builder in the… wait for it… Marvel Universe (does anyone get that joke???). Decks draft from hero decks from Spider-man to The Hulk. But there’s a mastermind villain that gets modified by the villain’s strategy. The goal is to enlist heroes and pump up their fighting ability and defeat the villains. Release in November 2012.
• Oddville: Become a city planner by placing workers to get resources, money or projects. Build the city for points. Release in October 2012.
• Ticket to Ride: The Heart of Africa: The third map collection has been released for Ticket to Ride and it goes right through the continent largely ignored by gaming with the exception of the multitude of games designed for ancient Egypt. Now there are different terrain types and the colors you play have to match the terrain. There’s also terrain-specific locomotives which can increase your score in some circumstances. Release in December 2012 (hopefully before the end of the world).
• Recent releases: Seasons, Circus Grandioso, Andantino, Equinox, Mage Wars, Level 7 (Escape), Spooky Spells, Star Wars: X-Wing, Phantom, Heptalion

iOS:

• Alien Frontiers has been submitted – release imminent
• Talisman in development, but broken into multiple games. PC coming this year. Phones and tablets afterwards.
• Stone Age for iPhone in beta, release by end of 2012
• Dominion has been released after the debacle last month. It’s HTML5, so it requires a connection to the Internet, but is therefore platform-independent. Unfortunately it’s buggy as hell. I get disconnected regularly via iPad and get very frustrated.
• Ironically, Thunderstone came under similar fire in that people were very disappointed with how it was developed as non-iOS native and requiring a connection. However they seem to have fixed most (not all) of the issues that were plaguing players and I’m actually really enjoying my T-stone experience.
• Dominant Species close to release
• Summoner Wars tournament has been announced. Signups.

News:

• The 2012 Deutscher Speile Pries gaming awards were given and the reason why I mention it is because an entire family swept the two big awards. Village, designed by Inka and Markus Brand won for game of the year. Meanwhile their children Emely and Lukas won the kids game of the year for Mogel Motte. That’s quite amazing!
• Days of Wonder has released a Halloween themed add-on for Ticket to Ride called Halloween Freighter. It comes with pumpkin trains and Halloween stations (for TtR:Europe). Sells for $12.
• Games Magazine, one of my favorites for a very long time, releases a usually dubious awards at the end of the year. I believe it is just the gaming writer’s picks for the year, so there’s no “jury” involved. Anyway, their game of the year is Trajan. Matter (by Simply Fun) won best abstract, Village won advanced strategy, Decktet took card game (actually released in 2008???), Takenoko for family game, Pluckin’ Pairs for party game and Kerflip! for word game.
• With Zynga’s stock falling like a brick, they’re teaming up with Hasbro to release board game versions of their online games FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends.
• It seems that a Swedish airport found a suspicious package in a garbage bin. When they examined the package, it turns out the package was in fact a board game called Sundsvallsspelet.
• Fun Again Games is partially sponsoring a spaghetti game night in their local area. That sounds so cool!

Recently Played:

• At our game night recently I got in on a fun game of Telestrations. Then we had a knockdown/drag-out Agricola fight.
• Played a few games of Quarriors Quarmageddon with my sons
• Some No Thanks with some friends

Happy Gaming!

Credits: BGG, Game Salute, Google News

Board Game Madness 9/4

On vacation last week, so no entry.

Fun:

• Babywear!
• Can’t get the minis done in time? Indenture the kidlets.
• Destination gaming: San Juan
• A really interesting read on what BGG has seen over the last 10 years and how the board game industry has reacted
• For those who went to GenCon this year, you’ll be happy to know that you were one of over 41,000 unique attendees, more than 12% over last year according to the largest gaming convention in the United States
• If you are interested in getting your favorite games nominated for the “Golden Geek Awards”, Board Game Geek’s annual game awards, get your nominations in now!

New Games:

• Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island: Another new story game, a la Tales of the Arabian Nights and Mice and Mystics. This one is by the designer of Stronghold. You’ve been shipwrecked on a deserted island and you need to build a settlement. There’s exploration on the island which adds to the story line. Will it be Lost or Gilligan’s Island? Cooperative game, due to release in October 2012.
• 1984: Animal Farm: Board gaming has gone Orwellian on us. Instead of growing sheep and pigs on our farm, the animals have now taken over in this area control/negotiation game. Machiavelli would be proud of this game apparently. Scheduled for European release at Spiel 2012, but US release my guess will be some time later.
• Saqqara: Another auction/build euro hitting the markets sometime in Q4 2012. This one has you building an Egyption province. Use merchants to get goods, recruit workers and build your province better than the next guy at the table.
• Shadows Over Camelot: The Card Game: Days of Wonder is releasing a smaller version of their megahit semi-cooperative game. The knights have had children and have to deal with solving quests similarly to the board game, but this is a more compact game mechanic. Release in October 2012.
• Recently released: Leviathans, Action R.P.S., Essence: Archetypes & Emotions, Wind Runner, Ali, Slavika

iOS:

• Thunderstone Gateway still having market problems (stay away for now!)
• Nightfall Martial Law ready soon
• Civil War: 1863 Released

News:

• The International Gamers Awards, a more heavy-game-centric version of the Spiel des Jahres has announced it’s nominees for 2012 games of the year:
• Multi-player: Dungeon Petz, Eclipse, Hawaii, Helvetia, Kingdom Builder (won Spiel des Jahres), Last Will, Mage Knight: Board Game, Ora et Labora, Prêt-à-Porter, Risk: Legacy, Trajan, Village
• Two-player: Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, Star Trek: Fleet Captains, Summoner Wars: Master Set, Targi
• Apparently AEG and their Thunderstone deck building game are teaming up with Monte Cook (Dungeons and Dragons) and his new Numenera world. They will be coming up with a world-specific implementation of Thunderstone.

Recently Played:

• Li’l Zuk and I played some Blood Bowl. I’m no longer dumbing down the rules of this complex game. He’ll come around. He loves the lizardmen team.
• We got a nice delivery from Amazon from some gift certificates that I got from family members. So in came Dominion: Dark Ages and Hinterlands and Quarriors: Quarmageddon. Dark Ages plays very well as it is all about trashing cards. My favorite mechanic. Hinterlands has some mechanics that happen when you gain cards, but I didn’t get as much feel for these cards yet. I did not get to play Quarmageddon yet.
• We took a trip to my in-laws and taught them Ticket to Ride: Europe. They enjoyed it somewhat, but I think it overwhelmed my wife’s step mother. She watched the rest of us play.
• My wife and I got some cards in and played some Spades after we put the kids to bed one night on vacation. Nice to go old school every once in a while.
• Also on vacation we taught my father No Thanks. He liked the simplicity of it, but called it quits after two hands.
• Another game of Core Worlds with my wife. We can’t wait for the expansion.
• One of the things I love to do is tell the kids stories. We usually make them up from scratch and every once in a while we use Rory’s Story Cubes. They’re a blast and the kids love rolling the dice before the bedtime yarn.
• Our monthly game group met this past Friday night and lots to play: No Thanks, Agricola, Cards Against Humanity and a Tichu game until 3:30 in the morning!
• More Dominion with the Mrs. over Labor Day weekend

Happy Gaming!

Credits: Board Game Geek, Purple Pawn, Game Salute

Board Game Madness 8/21

Fun:

• What a Merchants and Marauders player does when he’s bored
• Pimp My Game: Pandemic meets Legos!
• GenCon cosplay

New Games:

• Recently released: Dominion: Dark Ages, Essence: Archetypes & Emotions, Legacy: Gears of Time, Mythic Battles, Carole

iOS:

• The big news this week was the release of both Dominion (kind of) and Thunderstone. Both are free but charge you for expanding the basic set
• Dominion was released on HTML5 platform by Goko, but the launch was first on the Internet and at the time of this sending is still not through the iTunes store. Also the launch did NOT go well. Inaccessible sites tormented the fledgling company. The latest news as of yesterday though is that Goko has taken their game back into beta explaining that “it wasn’t able to scale fast enough to support the load.”
• Thunderstone Gateway’s release also didn’t go well. The market is inaccessible until a released update hopefully this week so you have only the subset of the original cards. In addition, there was a lot of backlash from the board game community because it’s tied into the Facebook Thunderstone app. If you have the cards on Facebook, you have them on the iPad. But Facebook is a very controversial app for some and they avoid it at all costs. With Playdek having such success with Ascension, players wanted a similarly self-contained app for Thunderstone and that didn’t happen. The gameplay is really good, but I’m getting bored with the cards I’ve got. Also, there’s no pass and play which is upsetting. And there’s no option for playing the “Epic” mode that is available on Board Game Geek (although that’s not official, it would have been nice to see it).
• LeHavre is 99c!
• All Playdek games reduced in price through 8/23
• Stone Age in development
• Catan update has been submitted to the iTunes store and it contains the Cities & Knights expansion
• Ascension: Immortal Heroes expansion later this year

News:

• Pandemic is going to be released to Toys ‘R Us stores for a wider distribution starting in September

Recently Played:

• Friday night gaming with my wife was nice. We played some Core Worlds, Race for the Galaxy and the card game Casino
• The next day we got together with friends and played Puerto Rico, Kingdom Builder and another game of Race for the Galaxy

Happy Gaming!

Credits: Board Game Geek, Google News

Board Game Madness 8/14

Fun:

• New expansion: Ticket to Ride: Olympic edition?
• This is a street I’d avoid in that part of town
• Setters of Catan dice frequency chart. Pretty cool actually…
• OK, this is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen
• Run away!!
• Stained glass dice – you can use it to decorate your house!

New Games:

• P.I.: Martin Wallace is coming out with a pure deduction game. Over three cases, the winner is the best at solving their crimes. You manage the details for the player next to you. Players investigate locations on a map by narrowing dow the choices available based on evidence cards and use of investigators (workers). Release Q4 2012.
• Jungle Ascent: Build a path up the infamous Cliff of Frab in the jungle of the Oobydoobies (yes, that’s really the name). Grab all the treasure and stick it to the other adventurers. Action points a la The Adventurers. Release Fall 2012.
• Recently released: Montana, Plato 3000, Quills

iOS:

• Dominion (the official Donald X version) due out approx. August 16^th. The old one has been pulled from the store.
• Cutthroat Caverns will be demoed at GenCon
• Smash Up! in development
• Can’t Stop in development
• Lost Cities due 8/23

News:

• Target will exclusively be carrying a dumbed down version of Fluxx. The more “difficult” version as well as the expansions will still be carried by game stores.
• Days of Wonder (Ticket to Ride, Memoir ’44, Shadows Over Camelot, etc.) CEO Eric Hautemont was interviewed by GigaOM on how his company can flourish in the era of video games when big firms like Zynga are falling apart.

Recently Played:

• My family made a trip to some friends in New Jersey and it unexpectedly turned into an overnight gaming party. They all fell in love with Jungle Speed. We must have played that at least a dozen times. We also played Eye to Eye and Curses, the latter of which may be the single silliest game I’ve ever played. At one point, it had me barking out orders at the top of my lungs, swatting at imaginary mosquitos, and clucking like a chicken all at the same time; much to the amusement of the rest of the table.

Happy gaming!

Credits: BGG, Purple Pawn; Google News