Race for the Galaxy Night

Games last night for me turned into 7 games of 2 player Race for the Galaxy with Melissa which was quite fun and I won 4-3. Think I am getting better at the 2p game lately and in several of the games did manage a full-on produce-consume strategy which I am generally not good at.

Anyway, what caused me to mention the games was one amazing game where Melissa beat me 63-62 (and I would have had the tiebreaker). Huge scores and massively different strategies. Melissa had all the VP chits plus a bunch more (like 31 total) and two excellent 6s including the one with a bonus on VP chits. I had a Military/Trade League strategy with 4 6s, 3 of them scoring 10+ points (Military one, Rebel Military one, 6s one). I had absolutely no consume ability (if I had I would have won by consuming my 1 Alien production world good) but huge points for the Rebel worlds and 6 developments and lots of cards from the Trade League and Alien world. Melissa was also getting lots of cards during the Produce phase so both of us were just cruising on the points. So, anyway, 125 vps combined in a 2p game I thought pretty impressive.

ps. I know some of the names for the 6s but not all of them so not bothering to use the names - think they are clearer anyway with the functionality description than the names.

Time's Up Question - Board2Pieces

I really like Ted Alspach's Board2Pieces strip but the one this week brought up an interesting question. Leo is trying to clue "Jean-luc Picard"'s name to his partner but when he doesn't know it he tries to get him to get the name "Gene". This is such a mispronunciation of the actual name that I am not sure I would accept it. On the other hand, the game is meant to be playable by people who don't know the names and if Leo doesn't know his name either (although in the strip he does know of the person) it would be a completely reasonable mistake so I guess one would have to take it. Still I would never think to clue Picard's name using "Gene" at all.

BGG.Con 2007

I'll talk about the games I played below - other stuff first.

I went to the first BGG.Con in 2005 but missed last year's event due to work craziness. It is quite amazing the growth in the event in two years. In 2005 I think there were like 150-200 people while this year there were over 600! In some ways this was of course good, but the event didn't feel as 'intimate' to me and many people seemed a bit more cliqueish this year, playing again and again with mostly the same opponents. Still, was a great event and Aldie and Vickie and Derk and all the others did a great job (and this event was a ton more work to run I think than most other gaming events I've gone to for a variety of reasons) - I in fact almost never saw Derk or Aldie play a game, which is unfortunate.

My only suggestions for the future would be to have a central meeting spot for people looking for a game and also a different meeting spot for people to go out to meals. A spot where people meet on the hour to form groups to go out in (like 6, 7, 8pm and maybe 12 and 1 for lunch) was suggested on BGG and I think that an excellent idea, particularly since there were almost no places to eat other than the hotel itself and a Denny's within walking distance. There wouldn't need to be any coordination from the organizers for this other than just designating spots and letting people know about them.

Thanks to all the people I played with, new (Chris, Yehuda, Jonathan, Jim, Snowden) and old (David, Peter, Dave, Greg, Anthony, Joe, Kathy and Geoff, Ted) and lots of others I am forgetting or just only got like a single game in with. I had fun at every single game I played, even the few poor ones or which we had the rules to somewhat wrong.

I also ended up losing my carryon bag on the way back on the hotel shuttle to the airport which was an annoyance (and thanks very much David for your help with trying to deal with it) but nothing irreplacable in it and not really a huge deal in the end, just basically makes the trip somewhat more expensive. I HIGHLY recommend to everyone that when getting on a shuttle or whatever to make sure to actually see your bad loaded, regardless of what the driver says. I have always hated not doing this but from now on I am just not going to put up with it.

One last thing before I talk about the games I played: Tichu. I was simply amazed at the Tichu presence. Tons of people (not including me) were wearing Tichu shirts and even more Tichu games were played (I at points wandering around saw 5 simultaneous games being played). It might have even been THE most played game at the event, despite being 16 years old (although not really known of in the US since I and others discovered it in 2000)! Maybe Agricola or Galaxy Trucker was played more but I am not at all sure of that. I would absolutely bet that Tichu was played at least five times as much as any other game at least a year old. Just incredible. Like at BGG 05 there was a lot of Tichu played but mostly at night and I knew like 75% of the people playing. This year there was a ton more played all the time and I probably only knew like 10-20% of the people playing. I think given this I will have to offer (if nobody else does) to run a tournament next year although worry about how long it will take for those who do well during a fairly short event.

For the new games played, I've stolen category names directly from Chris's event report since seem pretty perfect.

Games to Purchase (or Games I'm Thrilled I Already Purchased!)

Aaron and Dave's Treasure Hunt - well I can't buy it but was absolutely excellent and our team (admittedly kind of overloaded) managed to solve all 26 puzzles with 3 minutes left which seems just the epitome of perfect timing on the part of Aaron and Dave. All excellent puzzles and the running around having to find/borrow/beg/whatever the objects was a nice gimmick. Thanks to Snowden for joining us at the last minute and doing so much running back and forth to his 11th floor room to get stuff. I also very much enjoyed the poker tournament even though I went out pretty early, calling a hand that was exactly what I thought it might be and dominated me but that is one problem with playing against some very inexperienced players, in that it is hard to really know what they would play.

Neuroshima Hex - excellent light wargame that was somehow totally off my radar, even though I think I actually did read Frank Branham's Boardgamenews review a while back. Just great, especially as a 4p partnership game. By far the most wonderful surprise game for me.

Galaxy Trucker - talked about this a bit ago but continued to really like it. Games at BGG were mostly played with a very generous timing rule (and the game I had played before was played with a really MEAN timing rule) which changes the game quite a bit but fun either way (I preferred the MEAN rule). The actual timing rule in the box is in between these two. I do think players who are only a little bit better will end up winning a lot more but even when your ship is getting blown apart, the game feels fun I think. Wouldn't want to play this every week but great for every few months.

Race for the Galaxy - preordered a while ago and also talked about before but remains excellent. I have now played or watched like 5 games of the released game and never saw more than like 10-15 TOTAL VP chips given out. Does it need the expansion cards to build a serious VP chip engine? My natural strategy is a settle/develop one anyway but surprised nobody managed an at all successful consume strategy.

Games I Hope To Play Again But Will Not Purchase

Kingsburg - Interesting dice/economic game. However, rolling low is just plain bad and I do wish the balance of positions was a bit better - having people 90% of the time just put all their dice together on the biggest spot they could is less interesting than spreading them out.

Through the Ages - This took a very long time as David is generally slow and I also kept rethinking my moves as this is a very complex game with a lot to consider. I would prefer it in a way if it went much faster but that might also lead to major mistakes which I wouldn't like so not sure quite how to deal with this. I made a major memory mistake at the end to let David beat me by a lot but I think he would have won by a small amount regardless so no big deal and probably therefore I was right to take the chance. David immediately after played another guy 1.5 more games which I was quite impressed by - something like 14 hours straight of TtA!

Brass - Thanks to Jim for an excellent job teaching and a generous offer (which we refused) to restart when he got way ahead early. I actually almost caught up once I had a better handle on the game and definitely enjoyed it.

Agricola - I didn't like this as much as many others. Good game but a bit too solitaire and the sets of cards people start with are bound to be not very well balanced, which is an excellent means of getting variety but somewhat unfair and unlike in a game like Cosmic Encounter the other players really can't react to a good card set to balance it.

Palce Gefluster - A cool hand management game but marred by the fact that most hands someone loses rather than wins and a poor scoring system. Peter actually liked the game better when got towards the end and people had asymmetric positions but I liked it worse as it seemed to very much limit my options and require me to take poor chances. Still, very cool mechanisms.

Kakerlakensalat - A fun game where you have to not say the wrong words. Two of us tied as we both made no mistakes while the other two piled up cards but was fun for all of us. Wouldn't have much staying power at all though.

It's Alive - Basically an auction version of Zirkus Flohcatti and (re)themed around building Frankenstein-like monsters. Works fine and nice mechanics although the luck of the draw is pretty important. One player won with ease and I was honestly not quite sure how though. He seemed to have both more and generally better pieces than anyone else and I am not sure how he managed it.

Felix Filou - Kind of a Geschenkt style light game. A bit too random but fun. I was sorry I didn't get to play any games with Friedemann.

Chicago Poker - Finally got in a game with Greg who grabbed me for this. Fun game of fighting a bunch of simultaneous fights via poker hands and some bluffing (cards are sometimes placed up and sometimes down, much like the bluffing in Sternen Himmel) and nice and quick.

Games I Don't Expect To Play Again

Before the Wind - We had the rules wrong but I don't think I would like it that much even played correctly.

Medievalia - I again think we had the rules somewhat wrong but regardless I think the game has problems.

Also played but not at all new

Tichu, Black Vienna, PitchCar, Yinsh, Knockabout, On the Underground

Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage - Valley Games edition

Well, my friend's copy of the new Hannibal edition finally arrived and I watched them play parts of a game yesterday and looked it over. It honestly looks incredibly similar to the original version with a few minor graphical changes (for the better for the most part) but the rules are apparently straight 2nd edition and really the whole game feels almost like a straight re-release.

The puzzle board seemed to work fine. Locations on the map now have their name on both sides of the hex, so readable from either side of the table. There is a minor typo on the mountain attrition roll modifiers on the board (should be an unmodified roll for Alps and -2 for normal mountains) but not a big deal.

Anyway, I am very happy to see this - it is too bad (to me at least) that they are making more significant, at least graphical, changes to Titan. I don't really need a new copy of Hannibal but might decide to buy one just to support them doing re-releases the way I like.

Essen 07 Releases

Got to play a number of the Essen 07 Releases over the weekend and enjoyed almost all of them.

The one I had been most looking forward to was Tom Lehmann's Race for the Galaxy which I had played and really enjoyed a couple of times in prototype with Tom at David's house. The released version looks great and was really fun to play and all three of us quite enjoyed it. Still, the learning curve for the icons is definitely going to be a factor for brand new players and I hope people stick with it because I expect they will be easy to remember after a couple of games. I still really like San Juan and don't think this will replace it for me although will probably play this one more. Both are 8+ and definite buys for me.

The game I was most surprised by how much I enjoyed was Galaxy Trucker, which is kind of a timed puzzle game of ship building (similar to Factory Fun in this phase but major differences too) followed by a semi-random adventure game, where you will do better in the second part based on how well you did the puzzle aspect. I thought the whole thing quite cool and will likely buy this. My only concern is that the person with a ship that is only a small amount better may end up doing significantly better in the adventure phase as the other person takes more damage in an escalating way. Anyway, fun and pretty and my kind of game.

Gipsy King is an area placement game where one is constantly making the choice of putting down more pieces vs. important pieces (quantity or quality) and works quite well but I just didn't find it that exciting.

Cash & Guns: Yakuza without the special powers felt pretty much just like the regular game, although I was one of the Yakuza and they seem just plain weaker than the regular characters so kind of think one should use the special powers to try to balance this back a bit. Despite this, our Yakuza team won. Its a good party game but just not really my thing. The team aspect of Yakuza (we had 3 teams of 3) did help some for me and made decisions a bit more interesting.

Amyitis is the new Ystari game (makers of Caylus) and feels like it will appeal to the people who like Caylus. The fact that you can do a fair amount with only 2 different action types I found impressive and good. However, this feels like it is a style of game which I don't like very much (Caylus is also in this category) where the game often feels more painful than fun as you have a plan and then the guy in front of you takes the thing you need (not in a 'take that' way - just that he also wants it) and so you are constantly having to adjust to bad things happening. So the game certainly works very well and may be popular but just isn't my thing.

Cheeky Monkey is an animal-themed game similar to Zirkus Flohcatti but with tons of stealing of animals from the other players. I thought the level of stealing, at least with 6 players, was just too much and almost totally random but still enjoyed the one play.

Master of the Rules feels like a trick-taking game but isn't. Has a lot in common with Was Sticht? in that people on each round are going for different goals and that you can, if your memory is a lot better than mine, know the cards in other players hands. I would happily play this again but probably won't try to buy it, although I think Matt and some others in his group would like it so might try to pick up a copy for him.

There was one abstract game vaguely similar to Ricochet Robot that we played that I didn't like but I think maybe we had a rule or two wrong and I am not sure of the exact name but was only dud of the day.

Oh, I also played the new 1960: Making of the President last week with David and quite enjoyed it. Does feel much like Twilight Struggle but somewhat simpler and significantly shorter. I like both and would play either but probably won't buy either so rating around 7.

BGG.con next month

Anyone going to BoardgameGeek.Con next month? Also, if you are going and don't happen to have a roommate set (and don't smoke/snore), want to share a room? I have a room reserved for Thurs-Sat nights at the con rate. I'll find someone on the site if nobody reading here is applicable but figured might as well mention it here first and also curious if anyone reading this is going.

Hunting Party - Interesting game

I played the recent game Hunting Party on Tuesday which I liked pretty well although it is certainly not for everyone. A bizarre thing, though, happened in the game. A situation came up which seemed to completely knock me out of a game where players do NOT get eliminated. I had put myself intentionally in a bad situation because it seemed worth the gain and I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to get out of after I took advantage of the good points it had. However, I hadn't been paying close enough attention and Doug had a power (and could not possibly lose it) where he could negate anything I did to try to get out of this situation. As such, I actually walked away from the game to watch another game thinking I was just in a completely stuck situation. The others offered to do something to fix it but I was ok with being out of the game, given the chance I had taken and that I hadn't paid enough attention to Doug's hero's power. Oddly enough, after going away for like 10 minutes I came back and more closely looked at my cards and discovered that amazingly I had a card that worked together with one of my characters to give me a way out of my problem. I therefore rejoined the game and actually pretty quickly won. Totally bizarre and I am sure first time such a thing ever happened to me in any game.

Doug and I then played a couple of games of the great Knockabout.

Games: Notre Dame

Played Notre Dame last night for the first time and actually played a 3 and a 5 player game. Have to say that I was quite surprised at how much I liked it. This may not actually be so true but it seemed like there really were a bunch of viable paths to at least do well, and hopefully win. I won both games doing quite different things in each. I am intentionally not going to read any strategies for the game as am worried it might ruin the 'lots of reasonable strategies' I see right now in the game. Initial rating (which could definitely change): 8. If this holds up, I'll buy it later.

Also played Vikings (Wikinger) and If Wishes Were Fishes for the first time recently and reasonably liked both of them. Vikings of course has more strategy to it and is probably just below my buying threshold. Kind of felt in Fishes that was bound by the card draws. Winner won by a lot and certainly can't say I think he did anything particularly brilliant to deserve it - however, also didn't do anything bad. Free boat as start player certainly didn't hurt him. Worms are cute and I even more liked the art for each fish (Swordfish holding a sword and such). Probably a buy for more casual gamers or if playing with kids a lot.

Still haven't played the released version of Phoenicia (played a prototype many years ago). There were copies at WBC but selling for $50 and figured I could get it for like 30-35 (just checked - Boulder has it for $30) online if willing to wait a bit. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play it this weekend.

Flash Game

This Flash game/puzzle, Desktop Tower Defense, is excellent and immediately addictive. If you don't have a bunch of time on your hands, I recommend you NOT check it out. Link from Kottke.

Gingerbread Carcassonne

Played last week on Cthulhia's wonderful baked gingerbread Carcassonne set. Since I lost, a few of my Meeples had to pay the price - Yum!

Indonesia

Went to DougO's birthday gaming party Friday and Saturday and played a bunch of games and had a really good time.

Played Indonesia again and it just continues to hold up as a great game to me. All three of the other players were new and I think they all quite liked it too, despite my leading pretty much the whole time, particularly in the midgame. I generally prefer to be a goods producer in this game rather than a shipper, primarily because I dislike the element that often happens where a producer gets to choose which shipping player to give his money to (particularly as I am often doing well so am unlikely to get chosen very much). However, in this game I got a shipping line as the last available company in Era A and then someone merged it and I ended up buying the combined line, but pretty inexpensively. The interesting part, however, was on a later turn a player proposed a merger of a 2 ship line and a 1 ship line. I didn't own either of these but realized that buying them would give me a basic monopoly on shipping (6th/last line actually wasn't even owned yet) and I had the most money at the time so decided to seriously bid for it and ended up winning it. With this monopoly (which I had never seen before to this extent), I was able to really screw around with things and force people to do a large amount of long-distance shipping, and yet still often not be able to expand their companies. The other players should have done a SiapFaji merger to diversify the goods (and reduce their number) but didn't for an extra turn or so and I ended up making quite a mint off the ships. I had also forgot to mention to the other players (until the last turn which is the only time I have ever seen it done) the ability to upgrade someone else's hull capacity (I was keeping mine at 1). Not sure it really would have been in anyone's interest to do this at the cost of their own R&D (it would have helped them but also helped me and I think it wouldn't have been worth it for them - I was close to doing it myself and seems like if it is nearly worth it for me almost can't be worth it for them) but one player said he would have done it so I certainly am sorry for forgetting to mention it. I did at the end of the game misjudge the ending (ended a turn earlier than I expected due to tons of slots being opened by mergers) which cost me a ton of potential last turn money but I still won pretty comfortably.

As I mentioned in my post about Leonardo last week, this capacity in a game for drastic change (here going from a goods producer and minor shipper to having no goods and being a monopoly shipper) I just love, as long as it is not done in a chaotic fashion. The Merger rule in Indonesia, whether it happens a lot (as in this game) or only a little, is certainly the best rule in the game and turns what could be a pretty dry economic game into a bit of a roller coaster, in a great way.

Essential German Games

At games last night, David & Melissa had just bought St Petersburg and I was surprised at David not having it already, given how complete his collection is. I noted that I thought it would probably make the top 10 of my list of Essential German Games and Melissa asked what else would be on my list.

So, today, I decided to actually make that list and see where it ended up and such. This list of course has some similarities to The One Hundred although I only went back and looked at that after I made my list. There is a pretty big difference in methodology of the two lists, however. That list was a composite of subjective preferences of a bunch of people really knowledgable about German games. This list is meant to be my as objective as I can opinion of the zeitgeist of the German games players. Also my list is meant to be more about starting assembling a "collection" of games and not about individually particularly liking game A or game B.

Anyway, here it is. The gaps indicate I think there is a bigger distance between the two games above and below than in instances without gaps. List ended up somewhat randomly being 23 games.

The Essential German Games to start a games collection
Settlers
Carcassonne
Ticket to Ride

Euphrat & Tigris
Puerto Rico
Lost Cities

St Petersburg
Ingenious
Bohnanza

Tichu

Caylus
Ra
Princes of Florence
El Grande
Power Grid
Battle Cry
Modern Art
Lord of the Rings
Acquire
Cosmic Encounter

Crokinole
Age of Steam
Magic: the Gathering

The ones I am least sure of on this list, for different reasons, are Tichu (hard to distance my subjective love of it), Caylus, and Ingenious (too new, particularly Caylus).

Games: Diamant and Leonardo

Diamant was interesting last night. Played two games, one 4 player and one 7. I was in the mine till the end all 10 rounds, mostly having horrible luck and in fact only coming out with gems once in the whole time. However, the one time I came out I came out with 50 which was enough to win - by far the biggest payout from a single run I have seen. In the second game, not only did I score 0 but two other players did as well and the winning score was like 14, by far the lowest winning score I have ever seen.

Also played the new Leonardo da Vinci for the first time last night and probably played the worst game of any German style game I have played in like 5 years. I made horrendous mistake after horrendous mistake, some bad play, some forgetting rules I knew, some just not paying enough attention. Amazingly, after all that I somehow ended up 2nd. Anyway, the game definitely is much more interesting than most German games, and is going to require at least one more play to really judge. It has been compared a bunch to Caylus but I really don't know why - it has much more in common with Aladdin's Dragons. I also do think it has some pretty innovative mechanisms, particularly the favors at the beginning of the game which make nearly as much difference as initial placements in Settlers, and the way workers are either working in the lab or going out and acquiring resources. However, I also have some troubles with the game. I think many of the decisions you make may end up being more frustrating than fun, as is pretty common in area majority games. Secondly, tracking the materials and therefore what inventions other people are aiming for is quite imporant and also quite difficult to do. I think I would prefer playing with open resources, but closed invention plans - for example giving players cards from 1-5 which they put under their workshop, instead of the actual resources, that indicate they are working on the invention in that slot on the board. Finally, I think the game is massively prone to opening move analysis and I am sure this is going to be done very soon, and is important because it is also a standard ramping up economic game with no leader penalties so getting off to a good start is vital. So, a very interesting new game (the most interesting I've played since Indonesia last November), but I am not sure whether it will be a fun game in the long run. Check it out for yourself. Given my questions about the game, I am holding off on rating it.

Thinking about this game in bed last night (always a very good sign), I realized that one of the things it really lacks (as does Caylus and in truth most German games), and that I think is really important to me in games but only consciously realized this last night, is it has no room for the dramatic play, a play that majorly changes the overall game dynamic. Euphrat & Tigris, for example, is the ultimate German game in this respect with their constantly being the possibilities for internal conflicts, disasters, and the huge impacts sometimes of external conflicts. Even if these don't actually happen all that often, the game is made vastly more exciting to me because of their potential. My favorite standard war game, Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage has the same constant dramatic potential in campaign sea moves and daring moves like crossing the mountains. Tichu, my favorite game of all, hugely has this as well mainly because of the breadth of different card groups one can play - allowing one to do things like calling Tichu when an opponent has only 1 card left and such. I think in fact almost all of my very favorite games have this element. Maybe I'll go through the whole list of my top 10-20 looking for the dramatic at some point.

International Gamers Awards announced

The International Gamers Awards were announced today and went to Caylus (multi-player) and Twilight Struggle (2-player), the latter of which I need to play. What was exciting, however, was that Caylus (the 3rd ranked game overall on BoardGameGeek) barely won in a tiebreaker over the very small release Jenseits von Theben, which some of the IGA committee had not even had a chance to play or it might have won. I'm not a fan of either game, honestly, thinking Caylus feels long and procedural and analyzable in a bad way and Jenseits has too much luck and not interesting enough choices to make up for it, but think it would have been really cool if Jenseits/David had beated Caylus/Goliath. I personally was of course rooting for Indonesia which did get 2 of the 18 first place votes but went no further.

Oh, I also have played a bunch of new games in the last couple of weeks. The best of them were Blokus Trigon (triangular version of Blokus which makes it much harder to figure spatially), Aton (neat and quick 2 player), and Canal Mania (which is a very well done game but probably too much control of what other player in the game to help when you have to help someone else to help yourself). Only Blokus merits the 8+ rating which is my normal buy threshold although the others are close.

Trivia Question

At trivia last week, they had one really great question which our team missed but hit ourselves over the head afterwards as in retrospect it was sort of obvious (but hard to think of). Maybe my favorite pub trivia question ever asked. Here it is (modified slightly after some research to be more correct).

Sweden won its first Olympic Gold medal in 1900. What sport was it in? This sport was only in the Olympics up until 1920 and to win, Sweden had to go backwards.

Answer

Games: Tempus

This is the new civ-lite Martin Wallace game and I have to say it actually did feel kind of like Civilization, but with a bunch of stuff taken out that I think is what makes Civilization good. After the rules were explained, the entire game seemed pretty clear to me how it would go and it really did do just that - the only time I was at all surprised was when boats were introduced and the options they give for expansion particuarly to the first person to have them. There just didn't seem much of real interest to me in this game, however. In addition, if everyone were playing as fast as me I am sure the game could have been half the time. Many turns I knew exactly what I would do for the whole turn from the very start unless someone did something to change that plan which rarely happened. The other major problem I had with the game was the usual multi-player war game issue of "let you and him fight". I basically entirely tried to avoid combat except on the 2nd to last turn when my neighbor had no cards and I had a hand full of military leaders so could with impunity attack three different places of his on the same action phase, which really screwed him and helped me a bit but can't say I really liked doing it and would have hated to be on his end of it (although really by then it was a 2player game anyway between David and I which David ended up winning by 1 point [and he was readily able to calculate in advance that would be the result]). Just not enough going on or enough interesting decisions to want to play again. Rating 6/10.

World Boardgaming Championships

Took my usual vacation to the WBC in Lancaster, PA. Had better luck with the hotel room, partly because Rick came down early for the pre-con and was abel to grab us a better room. Michael and I did a horrible job navigating both ways, missing a total of 3 major turns, one of them by almost 2 hours. Probably didn't cost us a ton of time but felt pretty dumb.

I played fewer non-Titan tournament games than usual. A lot of the Euro games really feel so much the same and so luck dominated that even if I were to win the tournament, I'd barely feel much of an accomplishment so don't bother with too much of an effort to make or play in semis. Battle Line was the only one I played at all seriously and got to the semifinal, only to lose to an incredibly lucky player who I am pretty certain I was significantly better than. He got 6 straight flushes (5 of them natural) and I think the other 3 were Trips which was the best board I've ever seen. I with perfect play could only possibly have gotten 1 straight flush. Even so, it seemed I had a shot until the very end when he seemed to go on a run of "play perfect card, draw perfect card" to win 3-4 fights.

In the Titan tournament, I got to the semis in multiplayer pretty easily but then had no luck at all and basically just hung around to take 2nd but never with any real shot at winning. Was still a strange and interesting game, however, with Kyle probably leading initially until he caused a couple of really bad battles for him and then David P. leading for most of the game until Kevin also got 'port and had the better Titan stack and won the game (and went on to win the final). In the 2p tournament I got to the quarterfinals relatively easily and then had a game where I was totally dominant on the masterboard but had horrible luck in the two battles and lost my Titan and the game to two Cyclops swings (6 6s in 18 dice) but I could have avoided this 6% possibility and really should have, my only major mistake of the week.

Over the years, I have been training up a bunch of the Titan players in Tichu and this year it has really started to pay off. Didn't need to teach a single person from scratch and yet had 8 or so people happy to play a bunch and played at least 7 full games and a bunch of partial games and had a really fun time with it. I am thinking next year of making an announcment on Consim in advance of a semi-regular Tichu game in the nights as there are lots of other Tichu players at the convention who might like to have a regular place to congregate and play.

World Poker Tour Season 4 Final

The best player almost certainly won in Joe, but I was unbelievably impressed by the poise and generally excellent play of amateur David Matthew. He seemed barely intimated by the moment and the competition at all. He did do pretty well at hitting flops and did make a few colossal blunders (the all-in before Joe specified his raise amount of course being the worst of them [although would be interesting to try that as a bluff of incredible strength]) but still, he overall just played amazingly well.

Google's Da Vinci Code puzzle Quest

I also while travelling finished the Da Vinci Code puzzle Quest which Google and Sony are doing to promote the movie and which is headed up by Wei-Hwa Huang. The puzzles were all very easy but I found it fun and worth doing. However, it seems like there was a pretty major screwup yesterday at just after 1pm as tons of people suddenly (but 100% predictable of course) bashed on their (Sony's I think for the final thing) servers and I am not 100% certain my entry (finished puzzle at about 1:05) got timestamped correctly. This was a pretty major mistake to make and I hope they are able to reconstruct things fairly.

I am actually even quite looking forward to the movie as the cast of it is an unbelievably strong one. Tom Hanks (Castaway), Audrey Tauto (Amelie) and Jean Reno (The Professional) have probably given three of the top 20 performances I've seen in a decade, not to mention Ian McKellan, Alfred Molina and Paul Bettany, and director Ron Howard certainly knows how to put together a good movie. The book was certainly mediocre but the movie may be much better.

Board2Pieces Boardgame Comic

Almost all of these have been quite funny, but I found today's one to be particularly good, but you will only get it if you have played the boardgame Ra by Reiner Knizia.

A Tale of Aces

For Greg Nikolic's probable last night at David and Melissa's game night, we played Poker and had 16 players at two tables to start ($1 entry per person split 10-4-2 among top 3 players). I for the most part had terrible cards and was down to 130 (people started with 200) with only 5 players left and blinds at 15-30 in the big blind. Would seem a good time to make a stand until the betting went 100-call-call-smallblindfold-me. With this large a bet AND two calls, I would need a monster to call and joked about being a great time for Aces when I looked down to find AA and made the obvious all-in 30 raise which all 3 called. The Aces held up so I more than quadrupled up from 130 to 535 and moved from short stack to comfortable 3rd where I ended up.

On the night Jeremy was mister aces, getting AA I think 5 times! I actully got them twice and they were two of only 3 pairs I had the entire night (third pair was TT). Not only did Aces play a huge part in my one big hand, I think they were involved in at least 3 hands where players were knocked out (including me by one of Jeremy's string). Another interesting thing that happened was after we got down to 10 players and 1 table, the next 4 people went out in pairs - so straight from 10 to 8 and then 8 to 6.

We also presented Greg with a card letting him know we were buying him a nice Crokinole board so he can play in Florida. This was my idea but tons of people contributed (ended up with 20 people in on it) after just one email to the group. Coordinating it went amazingly easily and I think its a great (and incredibly deserved) gift for Greg.

Fury of Dracula (long)

In the long running debate on whether one can review or rate a game effectively after a single play, I am strongly in the affirmative. This comes from long experience of rating a game after one play and very rarely having that rating ever move more than 1 point away and uncommonly even that much. Fury of Dracula seems to be a rare exception. I have played the new version twice in the last week or so. The first time I really liked the game, finding it to have lots of luck but also interesting decisions and of course tons of atmosphere and probably would have given the game an 8. This week I played again and the game just dragged on and on such that I was no longer even really caring about whether we won and just wanting it to end. Greg finally suggested we resign and I heartily seconded the proposal. By this time, David did have a big lead and probably would have won but certainly not a sure thing but I just didn't care anymore - probably would now rate around a 6 although I, on the good side, found myself continuing to think about strategy in the game long after the game (although more Dracula's strategy than the hunters who seem largely bound to just follow the tides of luck).

In addition to the length and extreme randomness, the game also has the trouble that the Hunters MUST be extremely coordinated to stand a chance and this requires group-decision making on moves and results in the most experienced player (me in this case) controlling the game too much. In this particular instance of the game, this was made even worse as two people had not played before and David started the game without explaining almost any of the rules to them, figuring they could pick them up from us as they went. This sort of works but leaves them a bit in the dark about being able to sensibly contribute to some discussions cause they don't know how everything works and don't know the deck composition.

David, as Dracula, has also in both cases made illegal moves. The first game we enforced the very harsh penalty in the game for this and it really hurt him. The second game we let him switch cards around so it was legal, as it was a mistake that didn't really affect anything. My character also almost died as I (and others too) didn't understand the rest rule and thought doing it necessitated staying in place and decided this wasn't worth it. Since it just necessitates giving up getting cards, it is much less costly and I should have been doing it much more (I was taking 1 damage almost every single turn of the game from David's ally - always directed against me).

Oh, finally, on BGG there is a combat chart which the game really should have come with and I highly recommend printing at least two copies to have available when playing. Without it, combat is almost shooting in the dark.

St Petersburg Mistress Revisited

Discussed this before but have been playing this a number of times again recently due to the expansion. Also, I had planned to try to not play again with possible Mistresses (of Ceremonies) on turn 1 but the expansion has changed my mind a bit on it. Some of the expansion cards are also very unbalanced so tweaks for better balance seem less sensible when playing with them. I would still prefer to change the rule but don't feel as strongly about it when using the expansion.

However, I played two games on Thursday and in both games there were first turn Mistresses and the player who got it won. In the first game, there were 3 experienced players and a a newbie (call them ABCD with B being the newbie and A had first Orange choice in round 1). Only two blues were taken as C decided not to open a space for himself and so I as D had to follow suit. Thus only two orange cards came out - an advantage for A but as long as they weren't great not too big a deal. However, a Mistress and a Black Market came out so it turned out that not only did A get a Mistress but he was the ONLY player to get an Orange at all in round 1 - an incredible start and one I don't think I have ever seen before. He made a significant mistake on the last turn that made the game close but still won, leading the whole way.

In the second game, I not only got a Mistress on T1 but an Observatory on T2 (only one that came up) and won the game running away, ending up ahead by like 25 points. Also had a funny moment on the last turn. We were in the Green phase and someone asked about the go 1st card (expansion card in Upgrades deck) and Matt said it hadn't come up yet and was thus useless. I commented that no, that wasn't necessarily true. I in theory could use my Obs to take an upgrade card in the Blue phase, get this card, and then use it in the Upgrade phase (was already going first in Orange phase). Amazingly, this is exactly what I did and what happened and let me get an 8th noble using a Black Market and upgrade it by being able to go first and grab the only Orange upgrade. Would have won easily without it but was pretty amusing.

Games: Indonesia

Finally got my own copy of Indonesia ($75 ordered from Germany) and played it again last night. I continue to really like it but I don't think any of the other four players were fans unfortunately which made it somewhat less fun for me, too. The very poor graphic design of the board got somewhat in the way for some people; I also really don't like it but don't find it interferes with either my play or enjoyment of the game. People were even talking about calling an end to the game a turn or two early which would have totally ruined it and felt like a total waste of several hours. Fortunately we did finish the game and was a very close finish too. I may try again at David's with a different set of players or else figure I'll get to play once in a while at Joe's or at a con. It really is a great game for the right set of people.

We also had a couple of rules questions which I sent off to the designer and will hopefully get an answer. The game really does need a FAQ which has been promised but not yet delivered.

World of Warcraft - Nefarion Defeated!

My guild downed Nefarion last night, two weeks after we first got to him. With him down, we have now beaten all the main content (still haven't killed a couple of the outdoor dragons) the game has to offer. Oh, make that had as literally today on our server a new set of major raid dungeons open.

First kills of all the main guys has been my primary goal in the game for a very long time. With the main part of it done, I'm not sure whether or not my interest will stay at the same level - will partly depend on how AQ is. For some gearing up is a major goal but not so much for me as Mages are just not that gear dependent and it just won't make that big a difference. If I were a Warrior (and do have a 60 Warrior who I am trying to play more but he has only blues), I'd want gear much more as for them it makes a MUCH larger differnce in their effectiveness. A blue'd 60 Mage is probably like 60% as effective as a Mage with almost all Epics but a similar Warrior (MainTanking a 40 man raid) is probably only like 25% as effective and against top-end content just won't be able to cut it.

Interestingly, although this was only our first Nef kill, I expect that he will now be going down every week. Except for a week over the holidays maybe (when I wasn't playing so am not really sure), I believe every single week our guild has always gotten at least as far as we did the previous week, which I actually find kind of amazing and a real accomplishment - once we have beaten a guy once people start really believing it can be done and it is.

Now that I've fought all the main bosses, I do think Vael is the toughest. Not really at all sure what is second. Razorgore took forever to learn but now we beat him easily. Broodlord also took a while until we learned a trick that made him much easier. Ragnaros was always pretty much all about gear and fire resist (gear and potions) so was quite hard for a while but once we were geared up enough was not a problem. Majordomo is a tricky encounter too which I actually learned with my old guild and then brought over our strategy to this guild and thus really helped them along. Chromagnus has been a chump so far but we haven't yet had a bad set of breaths.

I think my first Onyxia kill remains my raiding highlight in the game and that fight I still really love, followed by Broodlord's Gauntlet and now the Nefarion fight.

The One Hundred is Complete

The One Hundred list is complete and I think serves as a great German games recommendation list. Turned out that 12 of my 15 entries made the list (although I only voted for 2 of the top 10 - Tichu and E&T) which is about average (unlike what I said in my previous post - just wasn't thinking straight). The only game I voted for which I am surprised didn't make the list is Black Vienna which of course isn't that well known but among those who do know it is highly regarded and I would definitely have thought it would be on the list. Was I the only one who voted for it? Did Joe and others let me down? He's going to release some more stats later so I'll probably get to see. I'm of course particularly happy with Tichu's #10 slot (on my list and the BGG list it is around #40), helped along of course by my first place vote. Probably will encourage a bunch more people to learn it.

The highest rated game I have not played is #51 Go and I also haven't played #65 History of the World, #68 Ave Caesar (have played the similar auto racing game), and #90 Dune. I kind of have no interest in History of the World but would be happy to fill in the other holes at some point.

Thanks to Mark and Snoop for the list!

The One Hundred

The combination of Stephen Glenn and Mark Jackson are posting The One Hundred, another Top 100 games list, but this one fairly different. First, ratings only come from a set of 65 'experts' (me included) and each person only submitted a top 15 list so every game is in somebody's (and hopefully several somebodies) top 15. I'm enjoying it and the comments are interesting. As of today, 41-100 have been posted.

You can also read snarky comments on the list at Brian Bankler's Tao of Gaming. Having contributed, I'll avoid those but have been pretty happy with the list so far. I wonder how many of my 15 will make the full list (apparently 300 games were named by somebody so the average person will only get 5 but I think I'll be much higher). San Marco and Capitol are probably the only two so far that I really think don't deserve to be on there. For me personally, my 100th favorite game is rated a 7.5 I note which makes sense since I own only a little more than 100 games and my general rating number at which I want to buy a game is 8.

My own comments I probably would have written a bit differently for this format but had mostly already written for something else and didn't bother to change. With this format, I would have been more inclined to only note the positives - after all every game I listed I do think is a great game.

BGG.Con Games Played

New games to me played (in order of rating) at BoardGameGeek.Con this past week. Surprisingly, I played no actually bad games (or at least don't remember them - lost my list and had to reconstruct it). Games are listed by highest rated first. The only two I am inclined to buy are the first two, which are unfortunately 60 Euros and immediately sold out at Essen, respectively, so I'll see. If anyone has a suggestion on getting either, let me know.

Indonesia - 8.5 - This is the newest release from Splotter (Roads & Boats, Antiquity, etc...) and I think by far the best so far. It is still a bit fiddly but not nearly so much as their other games and the elements left are all important - it really feels like they put a lot of effort into removing unnecessary complexity. The upgrade track, merger mechanism and forced shipping rule are all absolutely excellent. The only thing really lacking in this game is the graphic design of the board, where the artist went too far with script and curvy lines, but we found it didn't really detract from the actual game. Also, on the plus side was the very smart decision to use both cardboard chits (for 1s and 5s) and paper money (for higher denominations) as the 5 counters make shipping payments much easier to track and the paper money makes the larger sums hidden and more space efficient. Kudos again to the upgrade track where all the different upgrades seem really well balanced and the track rewards neither specialization nor diversity, allowing players to pursue very different strategies and hopefully all be competitive. This game is quite long (say 3 hours) but with lots of interesting decisions and I was never bored. One of the players in our game was already in another game of this the next day I saw him and I was kind of envying him. 60 Euros is outrageously expensive (although the components are nice) but I will still probably buy it. Definitely the game I am most looking forward to playing again. Still it is long and complex enough that I can see my rating shifting up or down by a full point depending on how future plays go. As with other Splotter games, this is a game for the analytical types - one player in a game of this I watched just didn't get the game at all and was just frustrated the entire time and wanting the game to end so definitely not for everybody.

Shear Panic - 8 - The pieces in this are unbelievably cute and absolutely do seem to come straight out of Aardman Animation (the Wallace & Gromit studio). Looking at them, one expects a very light game but that isn't at all what one gets. This is in reality a multi-player abstract with intricate and changing scoring systems throughout and a lot to think about as you try to guess what other players will do and carefully look at their boards to see what they can do. I really enjoyed this and the sheep really are the best bits in any game I have seen in years. Surprisingly, the other elements of the game (score track and player action sheets) seem to be just laminated laser prints or something but who cares with these amazing sheep?! Apparently this was only like $15-20 at Essen and if I was there I would have bought a bunch of copies but no surprise at all it sold out - hopefully it will be reprinted or I can get a copy some other way.

E&T cardgame - 7.5 - The rules are very similar to the boardgame but the play isn't nearly as much and I don't think there is room for nearly as interesting plays to happen. Also, the scores both times I played were too low and too close such that very small changes could have had any other player win - I don't think this one has nearly as much room for skillful play. Also, of course it doesn't look nearly as nice as the gorgeous Doris board.

Caylus - 7 - This game got played a ton, due to the early hype and that there was one woman at the convention actually being paid to teach it to people (apparently taught it to 12 groups and this is a 2-3 hour game). Many really liked it but I wasn't one of them. It is slow, actions are too unbalanced, going first is too much of an advantage, the provost moves are too powerful and unpredictable (and how much negotiation you play with will make a big
difference) and there are endgame kingmaker problems. In our game, 3 different people could have won depending on if the game had ended when it did or a turn earlier or later and this was largely in the control of the uninvolved players. There is no way I can see this keeping its current BGG rank. I'll play again I'm sure but will not be suggesting this one.

Havoc - 6.5 - I was taught this by KC Humphrey, the designer, and we played a short version of it and I enjoyed it a fair bit. However, I must admit to being quite annoyed at the very unintuitive second tiebreaker, particularly after pretty nicely playing a very risky strategy of having to win both final battles and succeeding to get into the tie. The second tiebreaker, however, turned out to be fewest cards (troops) in hand which makes absolutely no sense to me (KC said it was to reward "efficiency"). If at the end of a war, two kings remain and one has significantly greater troop strength, which do you think would get better terms in a peace deal? This also led to the ridiculous situation of the other player throwing away troops in a totally losing battle just to get them out of his hand for the tiebreaker - utterly ridiculous IMO. Reverse this tiebreaker, KC.

Lucca Citta - 6 - Reminded me quite a bit of Palazzo. The mechanism of using the shields to determine turn order but then spending them to build the building works quite well but basically the result seems like it will be pretty random.

Ark - 6 - New Doris & Frank game. Cute as usual but not as cute as many of their other games. The luck of the draw/flip of the player before you may play a bit too much of a role as does the advantage gained by the player on your left using lots of action chips. In our game, I also found the Shy animals exceedingly difficult to play and got stuck with 3 of them in my hand at the end.

A bunch of new games

Played a bunch of games new to me over the weekend and several were good or interesting enough to mention.

The best game I played was the new release in the Kosmos 2-player series Jambo, which I only played once but might be my favorite 2-player game (caveat needed because I really like Rosenkonig played with the not-included Texas rules for a 4-player partnership game) in the series. The decisions in the game are very interesting and really nice artwork to go along with that. A couple of people there have already played it in the short time its been released like 40-50 times and it is not a super-short game. Definite buy and initial rating of 8.5.

Second best was Ars Mysteriorum which is the first Alan Ernstein game I've liked. It is basically an economic game with players as alchemists learning alchemical recipes. It uses a blind card placement mechanic to acquire resources similar to that in Aladdin's Dragons but somehow here it seemed to work better and rarely did one get an amount significantly different than one expected to. The recipes chart was also interesting where some recipes pay out much better early while others pay out poorly in the early game (but are also a bit cheaper to acquire) but can give a big bonus at the end. I ended up going for the latter group and amazingly won the endgame bonus in the top 3 of 5 categories in a 4 player game to let me run away with the game at the end. I probably won't make an effort to get this one (and it is rare) but would definitely happily play again - 7.5.

The only other of the new games that I'd have any interest in playing again is the new Hasbro Avalon Hill game Nexus Ops which is a light wargame. Players get income to buy units which they use to take over more income-producing spaces and to kill other players and gain victory points. Has some of the usual multi-player wargame problems but the reward for winning battles helps. In our game Brian got a lucky turn order enabling him to take the Monolith first and then got lucky (as well as taking advantage of the Energize cards rewarded for being first to the Monolith) to beat me when I attacked. This basically took me out of the game and then Matt decided to fight with the 4th player in the game rather than attacking Brian, basically letting Brian just cruise to victory by controlling the monolith the whole game. Rating 6. The components of this one are very nice and apparently it is currently available for $16 somewhere online which is an excellent deal but I don't want to own it.

On the poor side of games were Bedlam, a mediocre Pit variant, and the very random and just not very interesting die-rolling game Lucky Loop. Neither are worth playing again.

The final game which I hadn't played before was the very odd dexterity game Polarity which involves placing magnetic pieces on a board in a manner so that, because of magnetic repulsion a piece is leaning but not touching into another piece (follow the link to see a picture - hard to explain). I not at all surprisingly was terrible at this game and got absolutely crushed by Brian who I don't think made any mistakes.

Ended the night with the excellent The Great Dalmutti and quite good old Dirk Henn game Spekulation

WBC 2005

Quick entry that I should have written a while back. Played lots of games, particularly Titan and did great in the early rounds of almost every game I played, making the Semis in I think every game I played except for Atlantic Storm (well and didn't really make it in Euphrat & Tigris but qualified anyway as an alternate) but then had terrible luck in the semis, losing every single one of them except for the 2-Player Titan one where I lost in the finals. Since this was my team game and my best result, that part was nice.

I thus won no overall events despite there being a full two days of Wednesday and Thursday where I won every single game I played (including 4 games of 2P Titan and 2 of 4P Titan and several initial rounds of things). David desJardins ended up winning both Titan events, the first time anyone has done that in the same year, although his getting into and then winning in the multiplayer event was quite strange (won a random rolloff after a mutual in the semi and then was adjudicated the best position in the final and won a roll based on that adjudication - there were still 3 players in the final but in a major first they requested that we adjudicate the result as it was 1:30 AM and people needed to catch flights, not to mention that 2 of the 3 people had been playing Titan for more than 16 hours straight).

In our 2player game final game, we ended up in a major battle early that somewhat favored me (we think) but was very difficult as it was my Titan and his Angel and had a number of tricky points to it. The first engagement round went poorly for me as I rolled low and, even more significantly, David rolled a bit high killing a piece I really hoped would survive the round. He then went on to kill my Unicorn with just rangestrikes (was 2 wounded from 1st round - 2/3 of a hit high) in a devastating 1 in 16 shot, forcing me to engage in a really risky fashion with my Titan. I did this but made a mistake that might have been costly (hard to tell) and rolled well now but still got killed.

Oh, I have also decided that the Mistress of Ceremonies in St Petersburg _needs_ to be fixed or at least not availble on the 1st turn. I have for a long time contended that a good player who gets a 1st turn Mistress would have an incredibly hard time losing and this tournament confirmed this. In one opening game, I got a T1 Mistress and ran away with the game, including beating a strong player who won her other two heats. In the semifinal, Tom (the GM) got a T1 Mistress and we kept it close but just too much of an advantage and then Arthur won the tournament with a T1 Mistress in the final. I think either the cost must be changed or, if one comes up on turn 1, it should just be put back in the deck and reshuffled.

I didn't like the new hotel very much but it is a bit closer, has some more space, and food options are improved. May stay at a neighboring hotel next year depending on things.

It was really nice to see everyone, particularly Bruno, Alan, David and David, Michael, Rich, Marty and others and very sad that Dave couldn't make it due to a medical issue at the last minute.

Interview with Richard Garfield

The latest in Tom Vasel's interview series is an absolutely excellent one with Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic and RoboRally among others. I found his comments extremely interesting and sense something of a kindred soul gaming wise in him.

World Poker Tour - Bay 101 Shooting Stars

I was really annoyed with this episode as I thought the very worst player at the table won as he got lucky time after time, the most notable being the hand where he could only win on runner-runner 7s and got them - a 249:1 shot against. Gus I thought played by far the best and made some absolutely amazing (and correct) calls only to have the odds go against him several times. Danny Nguyen, the winner, has to be given credit for aggressive play but it was basically uncontrolled aggression and only worked for him due to his wild luck.

Gaming interview of me

Tom Vasel, prolific game reviewer and interviewer, interviewed me by email a couple of weeks ago and posted the result this week. He interviewed me mainly because of my efforst on the Internet Top 100 Games List and we talked about that but also about a number of other things, some of them expected by me and others surprising but led to by his questions. Pretty interesting experience and I'm happy with the result.

Games: Cranium

The other game we played last night was Cranium, the very popular modern party game sold at Starbucks and other mass-market chains. I had never played and was interested to give it a shot. The game is a team-based party game where clues are divided into four categories and each team sometimes has a choice of category and sometimes is forced into a particular one. The categories are 1) Trivia/General Knowledge 2) Word knowledge/Word Puzzles 3) Performance (charades/singing/humming) and 4) Creativity (drawing, clay sculpting). One thing that is different than most party games is that someone on a team that is bad at a particular thing like drawing never has to do it as, while the category is often forced upon the team, the person on the team doing the action is always a choice of the team. I could therefore avoid ever having to do the Performance clues which I am terrible at and focus on the Word clues. I actually thought the game was quite fun and a really nice mix of different types of questions/activities so you would never get bored of doing a particular activity as can happen in most party games. The only real negative I found was the randomness of the die-rolling movement system where in theory one team could have to answer something like 9 times as many questions as the other team. Realistically, this level of discrepancy would never happen but I don't think it that unlikely that a team, at least till they got into the final phase of the game, could have to answer twice as many questions as another team. The final phase, which I liked much better, is more like Trivial Pursuit where you have to answer one question in each of the four categories and then a final question in the category the other teams think will be hardest for you.

Recommended and because of the ability to choose which teammate performs which action, I think this game will go over well with a wider variety of people than pretty much any other party game I can think of, particularly if each team has 3 or more people. This allows one person to give and one to guess in a category where the third person on the team doesn't know a single thing about it (and of course that person will still be a guesser in case he surprises himself with an answer).

Games: Return of the Heroes

This is a pretty interesting game where players take the role of Fantasy characters wandering around a board fighting monsters, completing quests, and gaining experience and treasure until one is strong enough to defeat the 'big bad' and, if able to do so, win the game. I thought the game was pretty fun and actually had some real decisions to be made and I would definitely play it again. However, it has a couple of major negatives. First, the characters seem very unbalanced. The Wizard has so little health as to be almost unplayable (and Magic combat isn't a very good specialty). The Dwarf is so slow that his health/money advantage just really can't compensate unless a market comes out early and he can significantly up his speed. Of the other three characters, I have the feeling that the Fighter has a significant advantage. Melee combat seemed to me to be applicable to far more enemies than was Magic or Ranged combat and so he had a big edge. The second problem is that the game has a very large 'rich get richer' issue with basically nothing at all to penalize the leader. I am often opposed to leader-penalization rules but this game I think needs at least a mild one.

In our game, the Fighter was way ahead almost throughout but he decided to make himself basically invincible before going for the win rather than going for it a bit sooner with a 95%+ chance to win. This unwisely gave me a shot to go after the win at a much lower strength level but still with a real chance (probably like 25% overall but it got to the point where I had about an 80% chance to win but blew the rolls). When I failed, he waltzed in the next turn and made mincemeat of the boss for the win. Fun game and very strong theme but with issues.

Poker - Too much luck?

The luck factor in poker, particularly small No-Limit Hold' Em tournaments, has really gotten to me of late. I am not by any means a great player but the last two little (like $1-5 entry) tournaments I've played in, I've made great reads and put in my money in both cases with a significant advantage only to have the cards kill me. Last night, the big bet was on the turn with only 1 card to come and I was a bit more than a 2-1 favorite and would have knocked out two people and had a massive chip lead, and instead was running on fumes when the odds went wrong. Given that this is one's whole tournament, it just seems so harsh. I play a lot of games and they all have luck, but in most it either isn't nearly as strong, much more spread out, or it at least is at better odds. In Poker, 2-1 is _excellent_ odds while in Titan you can often manage to get 9-1 or even better odds.

Hillarious Session Report

This Amun-Re session report is hillarious, probably funny even if you haven't played the game.

World of Warcraft MMORPG

On Thursday I somewhat impulse bought World of Warcraft, the new MMORPG from Blizzard who put out Warcraft, Starcraft and the Diablos all of which I have really liked. DII is my favorite computer game of all time. This one also had some great reviews and I decided to give it a try, my first MMORPG, despite being leery of monthly fees (game costs $50 and the monthly fee after the first month is $13-$15 depending on how many months at a time you buy).

The graphics are gorgeous (4 gigs of data to install it) and, surprisingly, the game is totally playable over my dialup connection. I have immediately gotten addicted but I am not sure that will last. The gameplay, quests, items, etc... all seem very well done although there are almost too many commands, skills, etc... Money is also incredibly tight. Having a more experienced player help out by sending cash would definitely be a big help to a newbie. Anyway, I may be playing this a lot over the next weeks and will see if it holds up. If anyone who reads this is playing WoW, let me know.

Holiday Games

Went over to Cthulhia's yesterday, taking advantage of the day off, and chatted about games and puzzles before playing a few games, including two new to me, with her and DougO who was also there. While we chatted, Cthulhia worked on her Pysansky project (very pretty wax painted egg shells).

The first game we played was Snap which really should be called Snap Dragon as the game is all about connecting domino like tiles (2x1 shape that is) with Dragon graphics of body segments, tails and heads in three colors. The tiles are neat in that they only snap together when the colors of the dragons match correctly so the physical game components nicely enforce the rule of keeping dragon colors matching. The game is somewhat too tactical and defensive so not too many big dragons are made but it is pretty enough that I may still buy a copy and try to think of variants to improve the gameplay a bit.

Later, we played the newly released Sid Sackson game Buy Word which is basically a multiplayer solitaire version of Scrabble. Despite the solitaire aspect, I still quite enjoyed it. The only real negative was the downtime while others were trying to make words but you weren't ready to yet, but we managed to parallelize this a bit more than the game called for, which was good. This game really encourages making very long words (and also using lots of rare letters), which can be as long as 14 letters in the most extreme case. I drew a lot of the high-scoring letters and made the word "Muzzles" to score a very large number of points and carry me to the win.

We finished with a game of Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers which is a fine game but I significantly prefer the basic game with the two main early expansions (Expansion and Builders & Traders).

Games Weekend at Matt's

Went Friday and Saturday to Matt's semiannual TrashCon gaming weekend and had a very good time. Played tons of Tichu (and I think won every game except the one where my partner was a relative newbie [and he did quite well given his experience - thought for a long time on several obvious plays but then did the right thing]) and Crokinole (where Rob and I lost like 4 of 5 against Greg and Bill on Matt's cheap Amazon board which was surprising but Bill has gotten much better than he used to be - also every game was pretty close except our one win which was a one round 110-0 drubbing).

I also ran a small $5 buy-in poker tournament using my new chips from CostCo (excellent buy at $60 for 500 chips [12 cents a chip] and a pretty nice aluminum case with a couple of Bicycle decks and some Craps dice). Lost half my stack on like the 3rd hand of the game to Alex's pocket aces when I had top pair - I had a bad feeling about this hand but couldn't bring myself to fold it. I then staged a pretty incredible recovery from down to 65 (out of a starting 1000) by tripling up twice. Unfortunately, I was then knocked out on a hand when I had top pair of Aces with a bad kicker and called Alec down to the river, worried he had an Ace and a better kicker. Turned out he only had KJ and I was way ahead the whole way until he hit a 10 on the river to make Broadway and knock me out but the great majority of the money went in while I had a huge lead and he had only 4 outs so I certainly didn't do anything wrong here. Brian and Kim ended up splitting at the end.

The final major event was Rob's Haste Worte trivia game which my team finally won for the first time, after being second many times. We had a strong team with everyone heavily contributing answers and me being mainly responsible for the bidding. I think I did a nice job, until the very last bid where I misjudged the leading team and thought they would bid at least 8 and make it and we were 4 behind so I thought we had to bid 12. Unfortunately, they only bid 4 and the team in 2nd only bid 5 so we only needed to have bid 9 to win which would have been easy. Also, the 4th team made the worst possible spoiler bid for us of 12 and I was sure we were screwed. However, amazingly we were able to make our 12 reading last, but down to the dregs of our answers - great job guys on thinking of obscure breakfast cereals. Of course, for the first time, there was no prize for the winning team ;( (not that I actually care but others on the team might have). I thought the categories this time were pretty good, with no nightmare issues like the Olympics one last year. No categories I was personally really good at but thats ok. My personal favorite category was the '"Fictional Drinks" one which turned out to be surprisingly large but we couldn't think of that many and probably also underbid it by 1 due to a misunderstanding I had with Rob over the handicap he was imposing that round on the leading teams. The game was slow as always but I at least still found it quite enjoyable. As it is the reading of the lists that takes forever, I think a wise thing would be for many people to play a game on the side or read or something while only the team readers (and anyone else interested) is there for the reading - this would also probably speed things up as the peanut gallery effect would be reduced.

Thanks, Matt, and Happy Brithday!

Small NYT puzzle hunt

There is a small and not too difficult puzzle hunt by the New York Times online. Ten puzzles and then a final Meta.

World Boardgaming Championships AAR

Its something of a tradition after the WBC to write an After Action Report (AAR) so I figured I would do one here. There is going to be some gaming minutiae that will only be understood by those who know the games so apologies about that (and the extreme length) in advance for those who don't know the games or care.

I drove down on Tuesday with Marty and Mark (who I was rooming with since Michael couldn't make it again this year) who were kind enough to pick me up at my place on their way down from New Hampshire. We took Michael's western route and both ways the trip from/to my house was about 8.5 hours, including a lunch and gas stop. We then checked in to the hotel and I watched a game of Tichu and said hello to lots of people there until the events started in the evening. Unfortunately, nothing I really cared about was going on that evening but I played in a runaway (not by me) game of Atlantic Storm and I think later Ra which I won.

The Titan tournaments started Wednesday morning and I began trying to defend my 2 Player win of last year. I got of to a great start beating Sean McCulloch on great dice on turn 3 (after going first) with Wlo Wlo attack. Nothing he could have done about it and obviously not an interesting game but an easy advance. My 2nd round game ended up getting delayed a bunch until David dJ and I played after dinner (which he was nice enough to treat me to at the expensive hotel restaurant). I made a memory mistake leading to a bad attack and then also rolled poorly to leave him strong enough to kill my Titan stack on a 6 which he promptly did - a major mistake on my part which I was made to pay for in the worst way and David went on to win the tournament. I am not nearly as good at the memory part of this game as most of the other top players but this was a horrible error early in a 2p game where there just isn't that much to track.

In other events I managed to qualify for the later rounds of Star Wars: Queen's Gambit (in an excellent game with Phil Rennert that was by far the closest of this I have ever played), Ra and Medici but ended up not playing in any of them due to time constraints (mostly from the very long Titan events). In Alhambra, I qualifed for the semis and played in them but got very unlucky with a horrible initial money deal of 7-8-9 Yellow (and never even got to use any of these in an exact purchase the whole game). However, despite this I was fully in contention until I made a massive blunder, effectively costing me two entire turns later in the game. Two properties with no walls were available for exact cost but unfortunately they couldn't fit in my palace. However, I was in a position to overpay for another property which I could then place first and afterwards (but on the same turn) fit in the others and really open up my palace again. Unfortunately, I made an idiotic blunder and overpaid for the Fourth property (a better color but the wrong wall configuration to allow in the exact buys) so I had to put the exact buys in my Reserve - a total disaster. I still managed a solid second but would have had an excellent change to win if not for this blunder. This 4player game also featured an incredible number of ties at the end including 2 3-way ties - many more ties than I have ever seen.

Other interesting games were the late night Liar's Dice tournament which I just made it into and went against Chuck (thanks for the delicious cherries that were all I ate this day) and Rick among others. Despite carefully not sitting next to him, Chuck made a bluff early on that painfully cost me 3 dice. Rick was greatly favored by having a newbie on his left who seemed unwilling to challenge almost anything, and by rolling incredibly lucky dice at the end. Despite my early loss of dice, it came down to Rick with 3 and Chuck and I each with 1 but for his last 3 rolls Rick rolled 3s of a kind and won easily. I went out last with a challenge I knew would lose but no possible raise.

In the Battle Line tournament, I drew the co-GM (and excellent player and all-time AvalonCon/WBC plaque winner) Bruce Reiff in my 4 player pod. Not surprisingly, we both won breakthroughs against our first two opponents (me despite terrible cards and Bruce in one game with so good cards at the start that he had basically won after the opening deal) and faced each other for the chance to advance. In this game, I had much better cards than before (although probably only a little better than Bruce's this game) and quickly won two neighboring central flags. I then decided to play an early Traitor for the win unless Bruce had the right Tactics card (one of two possible saves) to respond. Unfortunately, he did and from that point things went badly for me. First off, I didn't pay enough attention and let him draw the last Tactics card giving him a big edge. I also twice had difficult decisions over where to play a certain card and after making a choice immediately drew a card to make it the wrong choice - Doh! I perhaps should have played Scout at one of these points but I find the card weak and didn't want to be in a position of not being able to play a Tactics. Still, with Bruce's advantage in # of Tactics cards, this was probably a very bad decision and I should have overcome my anti-Scout prejudice. Anyway, with all of these things and Bruce drawing a bunch of important Troop cards, he won at the end with a 5-4 win even without needing to utilize his Tactics card advantage.

The multi-player Titan tournament, which is the tournament I care most about and which I haven't won in all 8 tries here (and 3 elsewhere) became something of a comedy of the absurd for me. I started off the tournament in a game where I was by far the most experienced player and ended up being in a significantly leading position (only due to one player not taking advantage of absolutely incredible rolls to run away with the game as he 100% should have) but then made an attack of Ttn13 Angx2 Ran Cycx3 (Archangel call) against Giax2 Ang Wbex2 in the Tundra. I (and all the experienced players I talked to later) thought this attack was a slam dunk but somehow (absolutely shockingly to me) he managed to get a mutual out of it (did require some lucky dice from him but nothing really outrageous). After the battle, I decided it had just been a terrible mistake but before the battle I just couldn't fathom it being so bad. Anyway, after this incredibly painful loss, I managed to do horrible in the preliminary round (which allows you to play 6 games and then takes the 16 best overall finishers) with a mere 2nd and three 3rds and two 4ths. This was massively worse than my results in any other Titan tournament where usually I will get 2 wins in 4 games or so. Amazinlgy, the attendance this year for Titan was very poor and this horrible showing put me 18th in the ordering. In most events, this would give me a good chance to advance as some people don't show up but that is rarely the case in Titan. The event takes enough effort that usually all 16 players always show up. However, this year there were two people who Bruno thought might not show up so I decided to show up in the morning and hope. By the 9 AM start time, unfortunately for me both of these people had showed up but one other (the eventual winner of the game I blew earlier, as it happened) and the 17th player (first alternate before me) had not. However, I thought at least one of them would so when Eric came down to get me for the Ra semi-final which I was also in I decided to bail on my chance at Titan and play Ra. Unfortunately (at the time), when I arried for Ra, the GM gruffly told me I was out (which I thought really mean and inappropriate given the situation but didn't want to debate so simply left). When I returned to the Titan room (now expecting to miss both semis) however, nobody else had shown up so I began to hope again. At 9:13 (with Bruno calling things at 9:15), incredibly Eric returned to tell me the Ra GM had screwed up and I was back in but by this point I decided to stay and hope and watched the clock till 9:15 when I finally sat down to play (turned out the missing person had gotten some sort of short-term stomach thing but was fine by later in the evening).

I got lucky to score a bunch of early points in my semi-final when quite new and very young player Teddy made an unwise split and bad roll and I caught him for almost 200 points. The game then to a degree turned Kyle's way as he killed Phil but he then made a (IMO unwise) attack on me that just barely resulted in giving me 2 Angels and Teleport at 401 points (he had mistakenly thought it was a few less points) despite his rolling much better than me in the battle but not quite good enough. This attack also opened up a 1 in 3 attack on his Titan and I immediately rolled a 6 and made the 4 on 3 attack (with Angel call). I managed to find an acceptable setup but Kyle moved in and rolled an amazing 15 hits (all on skill 4) when he rated for about 10 giving him a serious chance in the battle. However, I rolled average (just enough to get my Angel in) when I needed it and engaged him and took him out (with very good rolls at this point) without my Titan even being involved to take the win. I was very glad to be past Kyle's lucky dice (and excellent batteboard play).

In fact my semi-final game ended hours before the others but in the end it would be my friend and teammate Dave Finberg (for whom this was his team game), Russ (from Seattle) and Joe in the final after an excellent (and reviving) steak dinner with Bruno, Chuck and the Seattle guys. The game was in flux when Russ's Titan stack made an optional attack on Dave's Angel stack. Unfortunately, Russ fought the battle (which he should win but at significant cost) in an incredibly too risky fashion and Dave won the battle with ease and his stack was actually better than it started and with a ton of points. This move really should have virtually ended the game in Dave's favor and I was pretty much demoralized. However, Dave then a few turns later attacked 7 on 5 with his Titan stack against Joe's Angel stack in the Marsh. Joe took maximum advantage of the terrain and a bunch of one-off rolls by Dave to completely strip Dave's Titan to Ttn10 (Ang for the battle). Two turns later, he then caught Dave's Titan with his Titan stack and won the battle comfortably at the loss of one of his two Behemoths. I thought this attack was a good move but the end result did leave Joe somewhat behind me in stacks and recruiting, both of us with about 200 points. I then focused almost all my efforts on trapping Joe and did succeed at preventing him recruiting but he managed to get upstairs and seemed likely to escape. However, after he rolled a 2 I rolled a great 6 enabling me to block his Titan's only route down in the Hills with a 7 stack he likely couldn't beat and my Titan stack in the perfect spot 2 behind to kill him if he came down on a 1 or managed to beat my 7 stack (which wasn't likely). He rolled a 5 or so on his next turn and decided (wisely I think) to come down and make the Hills attack (after miraculously _winning_ an irrelevant Gar Gar against Gar Cyc in the Woods attack). He was Ttn8 Ang Beh Ranx2 Tro (no Ang call) attacking Angx2 Beh Gua Cycx3 and definitely needed to get lucky to win and didn't. Luck was pretty average and this definitely favored me and I finally took the multiplayer Titan plaque. There also turned out to be a reporter for the Towson Times there who had been talking to Don, Bruno and Jay and then interviewed Dave, Joe and I at the end of the game and promised me a copy of the article. He was a very nice guy and Bruno did a great job of taking him around and explaining things. The funny thing about this tournament is that I won no more than my share of games (two out of the eight I played) and so despite winning the tournament, my rating in the game (which is very high) will assuredly drop by quite a bit (not that I care).

I also probably played at least as many open-gaming games as I did tournament games throughout the week, mostly with the Titan crew and had a great time with these. I played liked 10 Tichu games (with some 15 different players, none of whom I had to teach from scratch amazingly) with the Titan group but also with Rich Z, Snoop, Chuck, Bob, Tom and others. Also taught and/or played St Petersburg, San Juan and Power Grid in open gaming. I thought I was pretty good at San Juan but got my butt kicked (despite no obvious mistakes I am sure of) in the heat of this I played, coming in last (two players did have opening Prefactures). Either I am not as good as I think or I got an unlucky draw of opponents or there really is more luck in this than I thought (like I couldn't draw any building above a 4 for the second half of the game).

The game dominating open gaming this year was Texas Hold 'em no-limit tournament poker. I didn't manage to play at all myself but it was getting played every night, at least in one case in a 3+ table tournament of like 30 people. I think the standard scheme was a $5 buy-in and I heard no objections to this. Other very popular open games were St Petersburg, Tichu (even when I wasn't in it), and Power Grid.

In the course of the week, I also had an early political discussion (it seemed the vast majority of attendees were anti-Bush) and a Lord of the Rings movies discussion. Not surprisingly, these strategy gamers agreed with me that the military maneuvers in Return of the King were utterly idiotic in the movie.

Thanks to David, Alan, Chuck, Bruno and the Seattle Titan guys (missed you, Andy) for excellent dinners and conversation. Thanks to Mark and Marty for driving (with out of the way door to door service for me) and conversation. Thanks to Eric with his very generous help over the Ra semi fiasco. Thanks to all the GMs but particularly the incredibly generous Bruno for time out to run their games, teach players, spread the word of the con and so much more.

Tichu last night

Played a couple of games of Tichu last night at Matt's and the second one was pretty crazy and painful. After winning the first game (different players), the second game ended up being Nate and I against Kim and Pete. Unfortunately, lots of crazy things happened and decisions which might have been a normally good choice kept going wrong for us. Early on I stopped Pete's Grand but probably should have overcalled it and didn't and then soon after I conservatively didn't call a Tichu I would probably make. I also stopped a Tichu of Kim's when I noticed a straight flush bomb in my hand halfway through the hand and after, without paying attention, playing a Queen that was luckily not the Red one I needed for the bomb. I can't remember how long its been since I had a bomb and didn't notice it but I guess I was very tired and out of it last night.

Shortly thereafter was a crazy hand where Kim called Tichu and Nate overcalled her and yet I had TWO chances to go out first with nothing either of them could do about it. Unfortunately, I decided to hope Nate was right to overcall and passed up both my chances to give him a shot and the end result was that Kim made HER Tichu. The key problem point on this hand was when Kim led a 9 card straight (leaving her with 2 cards) and Nate was playing next and agonized for forever before playing a 9 card straight which included a bomb in it (which Nate hadn't noticed - Doh!) and the Phoenix. This was extremely painful as I could have beaten the straight with ease (it was in fact a perfect lead into my hand) and that Kim didn't have a pair anyway so Nate could have just passed and probably gone out when she led a single even if I didn't beat the straight.

A couple of hands later Kim called Grand and I went into the pass with 4666999QQQKKKA (FOUR Triples) and decided to pass 49A with the idea that I'd be more likely to get passed a 6 to me and that with the Queens and Kings the height of the other Trips wasn't that imporant. Amazingly, though, Kim and Pete had Full Houses of 8s over AND 7s over respectively and I would have ended up stopping the Grand if I had just kept the 9 and passed the 6. I also made a questionable decision to with KKK3 play a King and then Kim immediately after led TTT and I couldn't beat it.

Finally, on the last hand of the game I called a risky Grand but then ended up with enough that I should be able to make it. Pete then even led a perfect-length for me 7 card straight right into me. However, he turned out to have a pat hand of AA Full House (incl. the Phoenix) for his remaining cards and there was nothing I could do about him going out when I led a a second single. Worst of all, Kim then turned out to have a bomb and to go out 2nd to end the game with a blast. Very painful game but also shows whats so good about Tichu - many, many interesting non-obvious decisions even after over 500 games lifetime.

Bluff and Crokinole

Ended up playing only two different games last night but had a really good time with both of them. We started off with Bluff and it came down to 3 of us all with 1 die left (largely due to a bunch of exact bids) before I and then Matt exited giving Greg the win. I exited in a situation where no move I could make could save me as the highest possible bid had already been made when it came to me. We also had a case at the start where a 19 bid was challenged (obviously after much showing and rerolling) and there ended up being like 21 (of 30) I think.

Greg, Alex, Matt and I then switched to Crokinole with the plan being to play 1 game and then see. However, for various reasons we ended up playing FOUR straight games with Greg (with whom I had my regular $1 wager on each game) and Alex taking the 1st and 4th and Matt and I taking the middle two games. Greg and I then decided to play a final mano-a-mano game to end the night which turned out to be an epic battle and probably my favorite playing ever. Both of us were consistently shooting well with only a couple big blunders over the entire course of the contest which went something like 15 rounds (or 180 discs shot each) as neither of us could gain a big edge ever and so only like 5 or 10 points were scored most rounds. Finally, in the last game with the score 80 to 80 and me having a puck off (scoring 20) I had a final free shot. If I sank it, I would guarantee the win but if I didn't I would probably only end up scoring like 5 points as Greg would boot it and score 15. The pressure was on but I dropped it in and Greg conceded as his last shot couldn't do enough to save him. Great game!

Link: Origins Review

Very interesting Origins review by Greg Costikyan, who's often interesting blog I read. Some things were making me think I should have gone to Origins but this report certainly doesn't encourage me. It really is amazing just how badly the Origins Awards are handled - mostly bad games nominated in bad and nonsensical categories and apparently they don't even credit the game designers - lame and tacky in the extreme. If I had known that Knizia would be there, however, it definitely would have helped encourage me to go. I'll see how I feel about things next year. Apparently CABS runs a Titan tournament too which is at least a bit of incentive although I doubt the level of play is anywhere near that at WBC.

TrashCon

Matt's regular TrashCon party was over the weekend and I made it on Friday evening and Saturday. I had a nice time with the board games and a bunch of close Tichu games with comeback wins but the party games (Celebrities on Friday evening and Rob's Haste Worte game on Saturday) I didn't think went great. This turns out to be a quite long commentary about why; sorry about that.

For Celebrities, the same problems as usual come up: 1) The game result is almost completely determined by the random team selction - I got two partners who knew very little and we did poorly every round as expected. 2) The 'theme decks' people put in do NOT help the game. Jerry put in 6 baseball players and it isn't much fun trying to distinguish between them. People also put in obscure people that almost nobody has ever heard of (and not uncommonly make it worse by getting their names wrong) so that drawing these people is a disaster and hugely benefits the person who put it in since he is the only person in the game with any real chance of guessing it. 3) The crowd at this event has a few people who really want to engage in petty rule arguments that drive 90% of the people absolutely crazy and unfortunately as I know the game best I often get drawn into these arguments despite my hate for them. This time I at least avoided that. I think with this group a moderator with total authority is the only solution to this. The difference between the quick, laid back, no rules arguments game of this (well, Time's Up) the prior week in Atlanta and this was like night and day - the Atlanata play I'd rate a 9 and this one like a 4.

Rob's Haste Worte game unfortunately also had some issues, some of which were problems Rob could avoid and others probably not. First off, for every category Rob needs to be really clear about the rules, particularly the IMHO stupid rule about shared words between answers eliminating ALL of those answers. I would suggest just tossing this rule but Rob does the worst thing of all and sometimes applies it and sometimes doesn't. I understand why he does this but if he is going to do this, he needs to be incredibly clear when announcing the category what the ruling on this issue for this category will be. He also needs to be incredibly clear how specific answers must be and then consistently apply that ruling; both of these things turned out to be a huge issue for the Olympic Events category. Another issue is that he needs to have arranged all the possible answers into a listing where he can check answers incredibly quickly as the answering part of the game massively slows the game down. For the Olympics question, he claimed at first the USA didn't win a medal in Sydney in the Decathlon which I knew was wrong but despite an objection, he didn't find this and fix it until several teams later. Eliminating the duplicate word rule would also speed this up. He also needs to accept answers not on his list if a large group of people on multiple teams agree they are a legitimate answer - with a good category this shouldn't be any issue as he should have a definitive list. In a 150+ minute game, teams spent like 24 minutes thinking of answers and this just won't do.

I was personally also pretty annoyed with my team over the bidding. On the very first answer I, who was definitely the most experienced at the game and who best understood the bidding scheme, told them that we should go 4 as we would definitely get it but 5 would be quite risky (and this is an all or nothing game). They decided to go 5 and we got only 4 (and would have trivially gotten 4 if we had bid that as would have gone much earlier). However, having messed this one up, they then wanted to be conservative which is the wrong approach as we are now in last place and need to catch up. I was fortunately able to convince enough people to make a reasonable bid most times although sometimes had to guarantee in advance we would make it (which was always correct, although sometimes very close). However, when it came to the WorldCon Guests of Honor question, a question which I was almost certainly the most knowledgable person in the room about, a majority of the team refused to bid more than 3 when I had no doubts whatever about 4 and felt we could go 5 with little risk. We of course made our 3. However, after ALL teams had scored their points, I looked at Rob's list and it turned out we had 5 more answers nobody had said so we could have gone 8, not that even I wanted to do that.

Games: Attika

Played Attika for the first time face-to-face 2 player and as I expected I really enjoyed it that way (I had played a few times on BrettSpielWelt and enjoyed it but the inability to see the gestalt of the game at once I found really annoying and made me make quite a few mistakes). The multiplayer game, although it hasn't happened yet in my plays, has too much potential for problems due to one player threatening a connection victory and then the other players doing a mix of not noticing, not reasonably being able to respond, choosing not to respond either to let the person have a chance to win or hope someone else does something about it. Even the possibility of this happening hurts the game. With 2 players, there's none of that. If your opponent threatens a connection, you either do something about it or give him a chance to win.

However, I am also convinced that with the basic rules, in a 2 player game the first player has a significant advantage. I think the 2nd player needs to get at least one more extra card (start with 6) and possibly even two more extra cards. We played last night with one more extra and I felt I had the advantage going first and the disadvantage second. Jung was just learning the game and played well but I still had a fair advantage in the first game. The second game was much closer and also much more vicious (as I expect the 2 player game generally will be with good players) with lots of blocking plays but I managed the win in the end. Jung would have been one or two turns behind if he hadn't tried (unsuccessfully) to block me on his last move.

The extra viciousness of the game in 2 player is probably a small negative for me but not as negative as the multi-player aspects of that version. With multiple players, you will generally not want to make a move which hurts someone else if it also hurts you. In 2 player, that move is a good one as long as it hurts you less and this leads to a much more aggressive style of play with tiles constantly next to each other over a long border.

Anyway, excellent game which as a 2 player game I can recommend to the right people unreservedly. The multiple player game is also very good but only if played with a certain style of play where players see connection threats and try to block them in a rational way, not forcing another player to fall on his sword to stop a connection (an action which such a player should in no way feel obligated to do even if the person will 100% win the game if he thinks he will almost certainly lose even if he makes the block, given the very high cost).

Goa to St Petersburg and Pounce

Played three games which were new to me last night and all of them were excellent.