Board Game Madness 1/3

Happy New Year everyone!

This is the time of resolutions, so of course as people set goals to lose weight (check), clean their house (check), pay more attention to their family (er… um… check?), I of course want to log a couple of gaming resolutions:

1. Economy being what it is, the pace of game purchasing has slowed down to a trickle. So, my goal is to play more of the games that really have hit it in either my or my friends collections. I’ve even started with an awesome game of Power Grid on New Year’s Day!

2. Get a few new people into the hobby. Or at least into more of the “designer games”. Got friends into Ticket to Ride and talked up Space Alert to budding gamer who will buy it immediately.

3. Let other people pick games more often. Sometimes in bringing games over to people’s houses, I determine the direction of what games are played. Other people’s games are just as good as… well maybe they aren’t [insert smiley here], but it’s still the nice thing to do.

Anyway, here’s the regular sections of the weekly blog with a new section of what I played this week.

Fun:

• Today’s the day we start out the presidential race with the Caucuses going on in Iowa. Apparently, 30 years ago a journalist tried to capture this pillar of Democracy in a board game
• For good reads, BGG has put forth their top 2011 content: Strategy articles, videos, files, images, session reports, reviews, forum posts and geeklists.
• Now I’ve heard of snuggling up with what makes you feel comfortable to get that warm cozy sensation when you sleep. But I don’t believe that these would suffice. No, this is gamer angst waiting to happen.
• It’s Christmas in Meepleland!
• Do not taunt the cat. At least not when she can kick your can at games.
• Oh, tell me this wouldn’t be the most awesome way to pimp out Hey That’s My Fish! Now to only figure out how to do the fish…
• Great Power Grid holiday card
• Good eats: Memoir ’44 cake
• So I’m beginning to believe that game designers are beginning to cheap out and just using make-up on their friends and family. But who would do this to their own kid??? (Yes, I know it’s a custom card – that just makes it worse!)
• Cool geeklist on BGG where you can post that you have spare parts or need them for different games
• Funny geeklist where someone goes off on the top 20 games on BGG

New Games:

• 7 Wonders: Cities Expansion: Antoine Bauza and Repos have announced a new expansion for their mega-hit 7 Wonders. This brings in the concept of teams, black cards for city ruins and more of the same fun in the original set. Team rules actually expand the game to a whopping 8 players. Just announced, but Bauza said himself on BGG that he’s expecting it sometime in Spring 2012.
• Recent releases: 011, Eaten by Zombies, Objective: Odessa, Sparta, Warriors & Traders, Ascension: Storm of Souls, Dungeon Petz, Carnival, Kingdom Builder, Puerto Rico: Anniversary Edition, Castelli
• Strain: Competitive bioengineering. Need I say more? Oh yeah, it supports up to 7 players.

iOS:

• The app store has been closed for the last couple of weeks so about all that’s happened is some price shifting. I picked up Medici for .99 which some friends and I went nuts on on New Year’s Day.

News:

• So after my “tirade” about Kickstarter a few weeks ago, they released that they’ve funded $2mm in game-related projects this year. According to Purple Pawn, “110 board game, card game, dice game and [Role Playing Game] projects were successfully funded in 2011.” Of course, there’s much more than games on Kickstarter, but this is quite an accomplishment.
• Also from my friends at Purple Pawn, the Top 10 Game News Stories of 2011

Gaming log:

• Lots of games on a trip to VA. Invasion from Outer Space: The Martian Game was the biggest hit. Also Pastiche, Tichu, Setback/Pitch and I’m sure I’m missing a few…

• A friend of mine brought over his holiday present this year: The Ares Project. Considering I had a hand in the recommendation (uninformed though), I was interested. We played the basic and it was interesting. I’d definitely give it another play, but I found the card design extremely confusing

• New Year’s party was awesome, played the beginning of a Pandemic game (had to vacate due to hosting duties), Ticket to Ride, Dominion, and Elder Sign. Then played Rock Band for the rest of the night – always fun!

• Power Grid on New Year’s Day. Would have won too, if it weren’t for those pesky kids… er… $4 short for that 18^th city to light up.

References: Board Game Geek, GameSalute, Purple Pawn, Google News

Happy New Year and Happy Gaming!