Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Board Game Madness 7/17

Thanks:
This past weekend I celebrated my 500 month birthday. Do the math if you like, but it was done because I thought that 40th birthday celebrations were too much the norm. So I decided to do something a little different and celebrated it with my own 2-day board gaming convention. I thank all of my guests and hope that they had a great time. I know I did!

I also need to thank Dave V., the owner of The Game Table in Mineola, NY. I am a firm believer in establishing a relationship with your local game store. While I do pepper my support around to the different game stores in the area as well as some online, I am very excited by what The Game Table has done for the local community and therefore they are my go-to store. We host our Blood Bowl league there and one of these days my son will probably have his birthday party there. Dave came to the party and told me he wasn’t giving me a gift (which I told everyone not to do), but thanking me for being involved in the community and of course for bringing him business. It is not often that a retail owner establishes a personal relationship with his customers, but he and his staff really make the store accessible and are strengthening the gaming community on Long Island. The game of Kingdom Builder that he brought was played and covered below. Thank you Dave and please keep up the great work you are doing for Long Island gamers!


Fun:

New Games:

iOS:
  • Nightfall expansion Martial Law due in August
  • San Juan coming soon
  • Medieval Merchants (straight to iPad) due end of summer 2012
  • Lost Cities coming in late July/early August

News:

Recently Played:
  • Whoa, 500 months old! At the party we played quite a few games:
    • On day one I learned Merchant of Venus (original edition). Pick up and deliver game that is a little more accessible than Age of Steam. It was a bit fiddly and there was a decent amount of downtime, but all the players kept the game moving for the most part. I’m interested in what the new print will look like.
    • Pandemic was next on the list and we taught a new player but still won with 5 virulent strain epidemics and the purple mutation cards.
    • We didn’t get enough of Pandemic, so we decided to play Forbidden Island afterwards
    • After dinner, we decided to play Core Worlds and I badly misplayed it, although I still got 33 points.
    • Day two started with an attempt at Wok Star, but unfortunately a couple of friends of mine had a son that wasn’t really letting them play and this game requires full attention. We eventually abandoned it and went for Qwirkle which is a bit easier to play under those circumstances
    • The next game that came out was Kingdom Builder, the recent Spiel des Jahres winner, courtesy of The Game Table. Everyone commented on how much it looked like Hacienda, a game I’m not particularly fond of. However this game was very intriguing. It’s got tons of replay potential and while I only rated it a 6 on BGG, I believe that this is because we played with 3 players and there wasn’t nearly the amount of competition for resources that I thought it would be. I am very eager to play with 4 players, where that contention will be more pronounced and there is where I believe the game will shine and likely raise my rating.
    • We finished off the party with an epic game of Power Grid on the Korea map with the expansion power deck. I haven’t won this game in quite some time, but two of us built to 18 cities and I came out with more money and took the game. It was very exciting and everyone played really well.

Happy Gaming!

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