My Very Own Board Game Blog

2007 Retrospective

2008-01-11T10:39:00.000-06:00

2007 was a year of many games. In honor of Peter King, the only sportswriter that I read even semi-regularly, here are ten things I think I think:
1. I think I really enjoy trick-taking games. Bridge is my all time favorite. aBridged is basically "bridge-lite" and fun when you don't have people around who have already learned bridge. I like Wizard because you can play with 3 to 6 people.
2. I think Ingenious is clever, fun, and doesn't last too long.
3. I think Lost Cities is one of the best two-player only games I've played.
4. I think auction games often have potential for greatness, but I often don't want to teach them because they can take several plays to really understand. New players can destroy themselves with one or two bad auction decisions, which doesn't make for a fun learning experience.
5. I think I'm constantly surprised by how many people play Settlers of Catan for the first time and just love it. I should probably just expect that reaction by now.
6. I think I would buy a copy of Nobody But Us Chickens if it were still in print.
7. I think Puerto Rico is still my favorite board game (as opposed to card game) and I should try to play it more often in 2008. Too bad it's no longer available on BSW.
8. I think I need to play Enemy Chocolatier again.
9. I think that despite all the good things I've heard about 18xx, it may be difficult to convince me to play a 3 hour plus game.
10. I think I need to seriously consider trading out some of the stuff in my collection that has very little chance of hitting the table.

Full Year Stats for 2007:

Individual Game Sessions: 139
New Titles Played: 26

School of Games

2007-12-29T09:24:00.000-06:00

On Thursday, I reacquainted my uncle with Tigris & Euphrates. (I borrowed Todd's German edition with English translation for the holidays.)

On Friday, I taught several games to RK and a couple of his friends. RK and I started out with two-player Tigris & Euphrates, followed by a quick round of Lost Cities. Then, his two buddies arrived and we played Ingenious, Can't Stop, Nobody But Us Chickens, and Give Me the Brain. Finally, RK and I got in another round of Lost Cities before dinner.

Tigris & Euphrates is pretty good, but I don't think it will make it into my top tier of games. I'm definitely interested in playing more Lost Cities, which is fairly easy given that it's on BSW. Ingenious has been popular with everyone I've taught it to, and I think it makes a great 3-4 player game. Nobody But Us Chickens seems to improve as you add more people. Can't Stop is a good quick game that doesn't require too much thinking. Give Me the Brain is amusing at times, but altogether too random for my taste.

Stats as of December 28th:

Individual Game Sessions: 138
New Titles Played: 26
Days elapsed/remaining: 362 / 3

On the Second Day of Christmas...

2007-12-27T07:01:00.000-06:00

... my gaming count shall be
Lost Cities played online,
Can't Stop with the family,
and Ingenious with four players, won by me.

Stats as of December 26th:

Individual Game Sessions: 130
New Titles Played: 26
Days elapsed/remaining: 360 / 5

Three Month Summary

2007-09-02T07:15:00.000-05:00

In corporate accounting, a quarterly summary of activity is very normal and reasonable. In blogging, it tends to imply that I have more important things to do than post. What can I say? It's been a very busy three months.

So here are the games I've played in the past 3 months:

TransAmerica (x2)
Puerto Rico
Attika
Qwirkle (new)
aBridged (x4) (new)
Prototype Space Game (x2) (new) (playtest)
Ingenious
Fische Fluppen Frikadellen
Euchre (new)
Cities and Knights of Catan

Stats as of September 2nd:

Individual Game Sessions: 80
New Titles Played: 19
Days elapsed/remaining: 245 / 120

Christmas Day Gaming

2007-12-26T06:46:00.001-06:00

What better way to start Christmas morning than by logging in to BSW and playing some Can't Stop and Lost Cities? Ok, so I'm sure you can think of some better ideas, but since I was waiting for breakfast to be served, I thought I'd get some light gaming in. Later in the afternoon, I went over to my aunt and uncle's house for more gaming. We started off with a tight game of Ingenious and then I showed them how to play Nobody But Us Chickens. Late last night, I suffered a crushing defeat at Lost Cities on BSW. We played to 300, and I only scored 225. I closed out the night by trying out WBridge5, a free standalone bridge program. All in all, it was a good day for games.

Stats as of December 25th:

Individual Game Sessions: 127
New Titles Played: 26
Days elapsed/remaining: 359 / 6

The End (of 2007) Is Near!

2007-12-21T17:16:00.000-06:00

...and again I have not posted in months. Since my last major summary post, I've played these games:

Rheinlander (new)
Wizard (x6) (new)
Phoenicia (new)
RA (x2)
Attika (x2)
Memoir '44 (x2) (new)
Bridge (x7)
Ingenious
Lost Cities
Medici
Alhambra
Race for the Galaxy (x4) (new)
6 Nimmt
Can't Stop
Word Game Prototype (x2) (new) (playtest)

Also, on September 29th, I had a game party, which Todd has already posted about. More than 20 people stopped by throughout the day and a good time was had by all. At the party, I played:

There's still some holiday gaming yet to go this year,
but here are the stats as of December 21st:

Individual Game Sessions: 121
New Titles Played: 26
Days elapsed/remaining: 355 / 10

Goodbye 2006. Hello 2007!

2007-01-04T15:35:00.000-06:00

Well, my attempt to track statistics on my game playing activities in 2006 didn't succeed very well. However, I did play quite a few games since my last post, including:

Cities and Knights of Catan (new)
Puerto Rico
Guillotine
Lost Cities
Mah-jong
Can't Stop
Jacob Marley Esq.
Metro
Settlers of Catan
Nertz
Enemy Chocolatier (new)
Tim's Prototype (new)
Power Grid (new)
Tower of Babel (new)
Fearsome Floors (new)
Hoity Toity (new)
Settlers of Catan - Great River Expansion (new)
Attika
Warrior Knights (new)
Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
Burn Rate (new)
Lord of the Fries (new)
Girl Genius: The Works (new)
Bohnanza

I don't have time to discuss my thoughts on the above mentioned games, but some were definitely keepers.

As of this posting, I have played zero games in 2007, but that should change tonight at Todd's house. We'll just see how well I do keeping stats on 2007.

Lots of gaming, not much posting

2007-06-01T15:23:00.000-05:00

Another massive summary of the past 6 weeks.
April 26th - RA and RoboRally (new) - Some days, I can grind out a mean game of RA, other days, like 4/26/07, I just get ground into the sand. RoboRally is pretty cool, but a bit too time-consuming for my taste.
April 28th - I ran a playtesting session. It was pretty fun, but a very tiring day.
May 3rd - Fluxx and PowerGrid (Benelux) - I still need some help figuring out how to not lose badly at PowerGrid.
May 10th - 6 Nimmt, Fairy Tale (new), Bohnanza - My 6 Nimmt game was off that night, I took lots of points. Fairy Tale needs more than one play for me to get a clue.
May 17th - Another playtesting session. It ran a bit late for a Thursday night.
May 24th - Beowulf (new) - Epic adventure in the style of an auction game. Every epic adventure has casualties, and I was one of them.
May 27th - Rummikub (new) - Some of my friends that I don't usually game with introduced me to this classic game. They were impressed that they could introduce me, the gamer, to a new game. We only played one round, and I was the big loser. We are definitely using the 2 minute time limit per turn next time. There's a reason for that rule.
May 28th - Puerto Rico and Wyatt Earp - A small group at my house on Memorial Day.

Stats as of June 1st:

Individual Game Sessions: 65
New Titles Played: 15
Days elapsed/remaining: 152 / 213

51 Days Later...

2007-04-22T06:29:00.000-05:00

Wow, 51 days without a post. Since I'm so far behind, the best I can manage is a big summary post.
March 3rd - Bridge for the first time in roughly forever. We played 24 hands and since I played with 3 different partners, that going into the stats as 3 "sessions."
March 9th - Taught Attika to a friend. We played 3 two-player games in a row.
March 10th - Wyatt Earp
March 15th - Power Grid - Benelux
March 22nd - Two games of Tsuro (new), which I prefer to call "LightCycles," followed by Alhambra and Puerto Rico. I gave a clinic on how to lose at Alhambra, but I did manage to grind out a win at PR.
March 23rd - Taught Family Business and Attika (two 4-player games.)
March 24th - Playtesting day - 3 playtests plus a game of Hare and Tortoise (or Hedgehog.)
March 29th - Hacienda (new) - I need to try that one again sometime, now that I know what's going on.
April 5th - Tigris and Euphrat followed by Fische Fluppen Frikadellen (new)
April 12th - Puerto Rico, followed by two short games of Family Fluxx (new). I prefer regular Fluxx to "Fluxx Lite." We finished the evening with Can't Stop.
April 19th - Fearsome Floors and Medici. I like both and am not particularly good at either.

Stats as of April 22nd:

Individual Game Sessions: 52
New Titles Played: 11
Days elapsed/remaining: 112 / 253

Money, Fame, Power ... and Camels

2007-03-02T16:24:00.000-06:00

On 2/22, at Todd's house I played two games for the very first time. We started out with Yspahan, which is hard to describe, but it involves lots of dice and placing markers on a map and also features camels as an important asset. We then proceeded to play Princes of Florence, which I've been interested in for a long time given its high ranking on the Geek and the internet games 100 list. As with many games, I think it will take a few plays to really "get it" but I enjoyed my first experience with it.

Last night, at Todd's house, we played Power Grid with the Italy map.

Stats as of March 2nd:

Individual Game Sessions: 24
New Titles Played: 7
Days elapsed/remaining: 61 / 304

Three weeks in review

2007-02-22T18:29:00.000-06:00

Since last we saw our heroes...
Feb 1st - The night at Todd's house started out with Blue Moon City, which I somehow managed to win. We went on to play a round of Reiner Knizia's Money (new) and then a game of Can't Stop.
Feb 3rd - I played a 6 player game of Metro and game of Category 5 with an ever-changing cast of participants. That's what makes Cat 5 such a great party game. People can join and leave and it doesn't really matter.
Feb 8th - (At Todd's house) We played Tim's prototype, followed by Blue Moon City. I'm evidently much better at racing around and collecting money than racing around and collecting crystals.
Feb 15th - (At Todd's house) We taught Bobby and Emily how to play San Juan and then played a quick game of Wyatt Earp.
On Friday night (2/16), I taught 4 people how to play Puerto Rico. It was fun, but it was definitely not fast.
Stats as of February 22nd:

Individual Game Sessions: 21
New Titles Played: 5
Days elapsed/remaining: 53 / 312

Dr. Caylus or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Provost

2007-01-28T10:02:00.000-06:00

We learned how to play Caylus at Todd's house on Thursday. It was long, and by "long," I mean about 4 hours, at which point I was well beyond my scheduled bedtime and had a 8:00 meeting scheduled for the next morning... but I digress. The length was partially due to the fact that 4 of the 5 people had never played before, and that after 10:30 pm, some of us were having difficulty focusing; so I am optimistic that my next game will be speedier. That said, it's a complex game, thus the award, and I spent the first part rather paranoid that the provost would nullify my placement of precious workers. I eventually realized that timid worker placement could destroy my chances of winning and that due to the incentives for other players to move the provost forward instead of backward, placing workers near the provost was not as risky as it had originally seemed. I'm certainly intrigued enough to play it again, but if most games take 2 hours or more, I'm unlikely to add it to my collection. (The upper limit of my playing time "sweet spot" is about 90 minutes.)

Also, Saturday afternoon I taught a couple people how the play Ticket to Ride, and lost pretty badly as the other two experienced players blew us off the map. Due to a strategic miscalculation at the beginning of the game, I failed to complete one of my original destination cards, which was a 34 point swing.

Stats as of January 28th:

Individual Game Sessions: 11
New Titles Played: 4
Days elapsed/remaining: 28 / 337

Starting Off With a Bang

2007-01-06T20:40:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a busy week of gaming.
Thursday at Todd's house, we started off with a filler game of Treehouse (new). It was short and intriguing. I think I would try it again. The main event for the evening was a 4 player game of RA, which ended up being a pretty close race between the three experienced RA players at the table. Todd, Lee, and I capped off the night with a hand of Lord of the Fries, using the Montezuma's Mexican Deli menu. It definitely felt different from playing with the standard Friedey's menu, and Lee crushed us mercilessly.
Today, I taught DL and EM how to play Attika by beating them four games in a row. There were definite points where one good or bad draw could have given someone else the win, but in the end I managed to grind out a win. Despite their string of losses, they both liked the game; so I'll be getting my own copy of Attika soon.

Stats as of January 6th:

Individual Game Sessions: 7
New Titles Played:1
Days elapsed/remaining: 6 / 359

Pizzaro and Company Explore Blue Moon City

2007-01-19T11:52:00.000-06:00

Last Thursday night at Todd's house, we broke out Pizzaro and Co. for the first time. It's an auction game, which means a bit of a learning curve. I think I won't overpay quite so much the next time we play. Todd and Lee then introduced me to Blue Moon City, a game of racing around a city to rebuild pieces of it. Of course, rebuilding the city is just a means to an end. The real goal is to collect crystals and convert them into victory points. I'll have to try that one again too.

Stats as of January 19th:

Individual Game Sessions: 9
New Titles Played: 3
Days elapsed/remaining: 19 / 346

Two Week Summary

2006-06-25T09:10:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick summary of my gaming activities over the last couple weeks:
Thursday, June 15th
Todd's house
Citadels and Bohnanza (new)

Sunday, June 18th
DL and EM
Puerto Rico and RA (x2)

Saturday, June 24th
DL and EM
Amun-Re (new) and RA (x2)

Stats as of June 24th:

Individual Game Sessions: 26
New Titles Played: 7
Days elapsed / remaining: 55 / 190

Trading and Economic Development with a Side Order of Mob Vengence

2006-06-10T16:32:00.000-05:00

Thursday night at Todd's house, we started out with a six-player round of Family Business, the game of mob vengence. At the conclusion of the bloodbath, a couple of guys started a game of chess, which drew in a small audience, while Todd and I played Jambo (new), which is an African-themed trading game. Our Jambo session was prematurely ended due to a confluence of factors.

A game of San Juan was starting at the other table.
Our enthusiam for Jambo had waned to just about nil.

I finished the night with a closely contested game of San Juan, which I lost by one point.

Stats as of June 8th:

Individual Game Sessions: 18
New Titles Played: 5
Days elapsed / remaining: 39 / 206

Teaching Games on a Friday Night

2006-05-27T14:57:00.000-05:00

I taught some friends four new games last night:

Metro - placing tiles to build the Paris subway system.
Category 5 (a.k.a. 6 Nimmt) - Hurricane-themed card game with simultaneous play. Just don't play the 6th card on a pile.
Whoonu - all about guessing people's favorite things.
TransAmerica - an easy game to learn about building railroads across the United States.

Stats as of May 26th:

Individual Game Sessions: 13
New Titles Played: 3
Days elapsed / remaining: 26 / 219

Colonial Economics and Ancient Auctions

2006-05-26T16:52:00.000-05:00

It was another Thursday night at Todd's house with lots of people, and we played two great games.

San Juan - the card game spin-off of Puerto Rico. It plays a bit differently with four than three, which is the number I usually play with. It was tightly contested, with Todd managing to build an early lead in buildings. In the end, Todd won on the tie-breaker, almost upset by M's massive chapel accumulation. I finished 4 points behind the leaders. I like this game; it's already in my collection.
RA - a complex auction game set in ancient Egypt. This game can definitely burn up your brain if you let it. I hadn't played in over a year; so I stumbled through this one, not particularly confident in any of my decisions. I must have done something right, because I won this one, on the tie-breaker. What are the odds of that, two games, both decided by the tie-breakers in one night? I'm glad RJ brought this one, because now that I remember just how cool RA is, I'm going to get my very own copy.

Stats as of May 25th:

Individual Game Sessions: 9
New Titles Played: 3
Days elapsed / remaining: 25 / 220

Dragons and Treasures and Artifacts, Oh My!

2006-05-19T17:07:00.000-05:00

Thursday night at Todd's house, we played Aladdin's Dragons with five people. I was pleasantly surprised at how well it went. The game involves lots of blind bidding, which is not necessarily my favorite mechanic. Fortunately, the group played at a good pace with little analysis paralysis. I finished in the middle of the pack with an even par score of 6 artifacts.
We played with the simple non-magic rules. I think adding in the magic rules would slow the game down signficantly, because there would be much more for the players to think about, more decisions to be considered. I might try it sometime, just to see.

Stats as of May 18th:

Individual Game Sessions: 7
New Titles Played: 3
Days elapsed / remaining: 18 / 227

Memorial Day Gaming

2006-06-02T21:13:00.000-05:00

I managed to play a couple of games on Memorial Day

Star Traders from Steve Jackson Games (new) - vying to become the preeminent trader of the empire. Watch out for those pesky "Trader's Luck" cards that can totally hose you if played at the right time.
Settlers of Catan - The extremely popular settlement building and trading game.

Stats as of May 29th:

Individual Game Sessions: 15
New Titles Played: 4
Days elapsed / remaining: 29 / 216

The Story So Far . . .

2006-05-14T10:14:00.000-05:00

Here's a summary of my game activities since May 1st.

May 4th - Todd's House -

Medici - A card-flipping auction game. It was close but I did manage to win this one. I recommend giving it a try.
Twitch (new) - A fast card game, a bit like a card-slapping game without actual slapping.

May 6th - Ursuppe (new) and San Juan with DL and EM.

Ursuppe (aka Primordial Soup) (new) - Gangs of amoebas struggling for total soup domination via genetic advancement and sheer force of numbers. It was everyone's first time to play, and I lost badly.
San Juan - Card based spin-off of Puerto Rico. I won this time. Thank you, Guild Hall.

May 11th, Lunchtime - Whoonu with co-workers - A simple game about trying to figure out what other people's favorite things are. The important thing is that there was much laughter and a good time was had by all.

May 11th, Todd's House - Played Attika (new) with Todd and MW, which is to say that Todd taught us how to play by beating us soundly. It's a complicated "stone-placing" game, and I'm sure I haven't a clue about just how complex it is, yet. Must try it again sometime.

Stats as of May 14th:

Individual Game Sessions: 6
New Titles Played: 3
Days elapsed / remaining: 14 / 221

Hello, World

2006-05-13T18:02:00.000-05:00

This foray into the world of blogging was inspired by my friend Todd, and his blog Board Game Madness. Like Todd, I'll be keeping a record of individual game sessions played over the course of the year, and possibly new titles played as well. I'll start my count for this year as of May 1st, which is about as far back as I can reliably recall all my gaming activites. This gives me 245 potential days of gaming for 2006. We'll see if I can manage to play more games per day than Todd, but let's not think of this as a competition. Let's just consider it an experiment.