Gifts Ungiven

Apparently, board gaming is gaining popularity in Korea. This is a link from Boardgamegeek posted by the first foreigner to open a boardgame cafe in that country:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listid=2436

Interesting. I hope to make it to Korea sometime in the near future, though not because of this. It's neat, tho'.

War of the Ring is looking enticing to me. It models a lot of the situations and possible situations from The Lord of the Rings, with two victory conditions for each side, one based on territory gain, the other based on Frodo successfully or unsuccessfully making his way to Mordor with the Ring.

I've played LotR Risk, which was fun -- definitely more so than regular risk -- but still relatively disconnected from the theme on which it is based.

Then, of course, there's Lord of the Rings, which moves very quickly and can be a lot of fun. "Hey, I was killing Shelob!"

Here are my session reports to date, posted on Boardgamegeek:

War of the Ring
Wings of War
Attack!
War of the Ring
Star Wars Miniatures Death Star Infiltration mission

The two War of the Ring session reports were exercises in thorough game documentation which I won't be repeating anytime soon, as they take hours to put together, and make the game take longer.

There's another Star Wars MIniatures report in the stack as well.

On Saturday, I attended my first Bay Area Games Day, a bimonthly gathering of silicon valley gamers at the Los Altos public library. I was there a little after the start time of 10am, and quite a few games had already started.

I sat around and wrote for a bit, then played my first of two games, Power Grid. In it, players represent power companies attempting to power the most cities in the United States. The game features market manipulation and a decent catch-up mechanic, such that the player in last place buys resources (coal, oil, trash and nuclear fuel) first, and can thus bump up market prices -- because resources of a given type become progressively more expensive as they are bought. I'd be interested in playing again.

The second game, after SSO showed up, was Arkham Horror, this year's remake of the classic 1987 original. I recall trying to play the original with Cataptromancer way back when and not doing so well. Arkham Horror is a collaborative game set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft's horror writings, in which players work together to keep a Great Old One from devouring the town of Arkham. In our game, we drew Ithaqua as the big bad. At first, it seemed as if things might be dicey, with gates appearing all over. However, we turned things around quickly -- perhaps too quickly for the genre. I might want to handicap the game to make it harder with large groups. Still, I am now tempted to put Arkham Horror on a wishlist somewhere -- it really did carry the flavor well and has much prettier are than the original.

On Sunday, I went to a Bullshido throwdown, organized by folks from bullshido.com and held at Modern Combatives in Berkeley. Tim was cool and came along with me, so someone would have my back in case I got hurt or people were fools. I went once on the ground, then again from the stand with the same dude, who was strong but wasn't doing well on getting me. I did discover, however, that I am out of shape. Damn. That's what happens when there's no substantial exercise for a year. It's also been three years or so since I trained any Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Later I rolled with a much cooler guy who didn't have anything to prove. I managed to pull off a sweep when he was standing over me, and was pretty happy about that.

I think BJJ is still my thing, but I am definitely out of shape.

From the Star Wars Minis message boards:

The best custom Star Wars minis ever

Also, from Boardgamegeek:

A list of game reviews from the early days of White Dwarf magazine featuring more than one name that's become familiar to me in the last five years or so.

Wings of War, my favorite little card-based "miniature" game of air combat is moving ahead to World War II with the upcoming Dawn of War set, which promises to "support a simulation which must encompass planes with very different flight capabilities and firepower, while still keeping the flow of the combat simple as it is in the WW1 series."

Space Hulk is a clever boardgame of nasty, quick aliens versus slower Space Marines in the confines of a floating, derelict spacecraft. The original game, which I own, is a substantial, well-produced affair with glossy card tiles that interlock to make maps of the hulk's tunnels, as well as a set of plastic Space Marines and a double handful of plastic Genestealers -- the aliens.

This is a big game.

However, several people have had the idea of using GW's 6mm epic-scale miniatures and magnets to make a "travel" version of Space Hulk.

Andy Skinner's Travel Space Hulk
Leon Samadi's take with images of tiles
A complete set stuck to a refrigerator

I do have unbased epic Space Marines I could use, but no free Tyranids. I think, however, that I'd like to try making this with counters instead of miniatures -- I'd just print a counter sheet, back it with a magnetic sheet, and holepunch the counters. This means I wouldn't have to sacrifice any of my epic minis and I could have more visual variety. I'd also probably just produce the maps by scanning the maps as shown in the scenarios, then reducing them and reprinting them.

Last year, I sold off some Magic: the Gathering "power cards" that were (1) worth a lot of money and (2) not so fun for friendly play, which is all I'm likely to ever do again with my Magic collection. Recently, I did a survey of some of my other game-related items to decide which ones are likely to never, ever be used. Decisions I made:

1) I'm keeping Space Hulk. It's a great game that I will introduce to y'all who haven't played it at some point in the future.

2) I'm keeping the Space Marines I've put together, pretty much for use with Space Hulk (there's an issue of White Dwarf Magazine with rules for normal Marines in Space Hulk).

3) I'm keeping all my Epic stuff. I will put together the things I have not yet assembled, Krylon coat all the metal pieces to keep them from oxidizing away, and try playing with the new Epic Armageddon rules set.

4) I'm really not going to do anything with other unused or partially used miniatures, so a whole chunk of nostalgia is going on the ebay auction block. We have:

The old Space Marines boxed set, fit to produce three squads (30 marines). This is a second one that I never assembled.

A bunch of old Chaos Space marines.

32 Eldar Harlequins. These actually saw a reasonable amount of play time, back in the day.

Some other random Eldar.

Marneus Calgar, a Space Marine diorama. So far, this is the only one not selling.

36 Melniboneans, including one or maybe two Elrics. Bought when I thought I was going to participate in a fantasy wargame campaign -- they were packaged as Elves, but they're Melniboneans.

The Last Starfighter Tunnel Chase game. Seriously.

As I wrote earlier, I was selling some old minis and other stuff off on ebay last week. Here are the final selling prices:

The Last Starfighter Tunnel Chase game came in the lowest, at $1.25. I guess that 1984 bad-SF-movie nostalgia isn't strong enough.

Random Eldar came in at $3.50, and the Space Marine diorama at $4.28.

The Chaos Space Marine collection hit $42.75, while the now-rare Melniboneans came in at $52.00.

The Imperial Space Marine boxed set that I bought way back when for $20 sold for $88.78. What's sad about this is that it would run a person about $110 to field an equivalent number of plastic Space Marines these days, so even though I made a massive profit, it's still a great deal for the buyer.

Finally, my old Harlequins sold for $97.77, which surprised me until I realized I was offering a complete set -- unlike the little groups of Harlequins I'd seen sold on ebay previously.

I hope everyone enjoys their new toys.

Back in the day, FASA released the Star Trek: Starship Tactical Combat Simulator, a wargame depicting ship-to-ship combat in the Star Trek universe. Cataptromancer owned a copy, which I coveted purely for the cool counters. As it happens, it seems to have been a decent, if record-intensive game.

Fortunately, Jason Robinson has converted ST:STCS into a free, downloadable computer game. Now, all the calculations are done "under the hood," leaving you to allocate power and then maneuver your ship and fire your weapons. It's a sweet little game, even if I can't manage to beat an L42B with a Chandley.

It should not shock anyone I know that a computer game that appeals to me is a port of a board game.

A game of Arkham Horror as captured in 205 pictures over three hours, with snappy music:

Since I keep mentioning this and then forgetting to provide a link:

Non-comprehensive list of games whose themes were changed between design and publishing, compiled by Bruno Faidutti, himself a designer of many games. Some of the interesting rethemings include:

Medieval Japan --> Aborigines (because war-themed games aren't popular in Germany)
Trojan War --> Renaissance Spain (because there was a competing Trojan War game already released that year)
Medieval War --> Trojan war (because the Trojan war was more "original"...that year)
Mississippi cotton shipping --> Loire wine shipping (because there was already a successful Mississippi shipping game)
Space empire building --> Polynesian island exploration (because SF games aren't popular in Germany)

The short version often amounts to "game publishers are as twitchy as movie producers when it comes to guessing what will or won't sell."

Click here to see a beautifully done custom retheming of "A Game of Thrones" (based on the Martin novels) into "Battle for Dune." It's a thorough job, with a new board, new pieces, new cards, the whole deal. I've never played AGoT out of a lack of interest in the setting, but this looks like an amazing reworking.

Actually, the relevant quote is "I'd sooner write free verse as play tennis with the net down."

In the most recent episode (15) of their Magic podcast DeckConstruct, hosts Alex and Dan go to a local Magic scene and ask people what they think of casual play, as well as how they'd define it. The consensus understanding of "casual" is "not tournament play," as embodied in the phrase "It doesn't matter if you win or lose."

There is, of course, nothing wrong with this. If every game were about qualifying for a Pro Tour and a $25 entry fee, I'd be a pretty grumpy camper.

But even in casual play, there must be structure. A lot of the interviewees said that they liked how they could bring "any old deck" to a casual game, no problem. But there is a problem, inasmuch as without any particular rules, it's hard to say what you can bring. Or, to put it another way, "Sure I can make a deck that sucks, but how do I make sure mine sucks as much as yours?"

In competitive Magic, this is easy. Format? Standard. What can I play? Anything in Standard. Put in the best cards, optimize your deck, try to win. Everyone's on the same page.

In default casual, it's unclear. This is social contract territory, because the "rule" really is "try to win, sort of, but not too hard." If you go into the "tournament practice" area in Magic Online, you will occasionally run into people who haven't made the best possible deck. You will run over them, and that's okay. If you go into the "casual play" area, it's entirely rockier. Hit someone up with a Stone Rain and you may find them complaining publicly that you suck for playing land destruction. Or perhaps not. Who knows? There are no hard-and-fast rules, and this kind of casual play often amounts to "whatever I don't feel put off by."

That's a vague, vague rule to follow.

My preference is for structured play. Rather than the fuzzy implied social contract, set an actual contract. Play Standard. Play Extended. Play Highlander, Pauper, or anything else with defined rules. I want to be on the same page with my friends, whatever that page happens to be. The fundamental problem with the implied contract is that you're trying to play suboptimally, and there's no good way for everyone to accurately be equally bad. Someone may well accidentally bring an overly good card to the dance, and then they just keep winning over and over again, which isn't fun for anyone.

Back when I played Mechwarrior a great deal, we had an explicit agreement across the tournament players to play "faction pure" forces (that is, forces derived all from one faction within the game, a situation not required by the game rules). We did this because pure forces looked better, and because pure forces came with inherent strengths and weakness that mixed-faction forces smoothed out. Had we not formalized this, the one person who didn't care as much and showed up with a mixed force might well have walked all over the others -- whether they really wanted to or not!

In gaming, as in the rest of life, I like my social contracts to be explicit. When everyone's on the same page, it's just that much easier to have a good time.

I haven't played this game, but "Oh My God! There's An Axe In My Head." The Game of International Diplomacy has a great premise:

GENEVA, 1920.

The remaining Great Powers use the confusion to pass the gavel between themselves, conduct international business amidst the chaos, and generally try to shift the balance of world power while escaping a bunch of armed psychopaths.

Brought to you by the folks who also brought you the classic Yamara strip in Dragon magazine. Looking back, Yamara is in many ways a sort of ancestor to the current hilarity of The Order of the Stick.

People were wigging out over on RPGnet at the announcement that Games Workshop was going to reorient the output of its imprint, Black Library, canceling the nascent Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying line and canceling Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. This was particularly irritating to people who'd been hoping for a Warhammer 40,000 roleplaying game for two decades only to see the game canceled after a lone book saw print.

Well, as it happens, GW wasn't killing the line. Instead, they've just signed an agreement with Fantasy Flight Games, publishers of Arkham Horror, World of Warcraft: the Boardgame, Tide of Iron, and a personal favorite of mine, War of the Ring, to be the exclusive publisher of board games, card games, and roleplaying games based on Games Workshop's properties.

"We are just so thrilled to partner with Games Workshop in such an encompassing deal," said Christian T. Petersen, CEO and founder of FFG. "Not only will we be able to continue the publication of some phenomenal roleplaying, card, and board games currently on the market, but we look forward to creating new games for the popular GW universes!"

This is exciting news, as FFG has a good track record for publishing fun, high quality games. I especially like that they're not just going to be a reprint house, but will be able to generate new games based on the licensed material.

You can read the original press release, in PDF form, here.

If you're on Facebook, you've indubitably been spammed at some point with ads for Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad line of lectures and products. Starting with the release of its eponymous book in the 90s, the Rich Dad, Poor Dad empire has expanded to include a host of follow-up books, in-person events, recorded lectures, and, bringing us in line with the point of this site, games.

The back story behind the book is actually that Robert started out with a game. He'd designed the game to try and impart his ideas about the philosophy of wealth and how to achieve it in a palatable form that people would enjoy playing. An acquaintance who played the game then suggested that he write a book as well, and the book eventually took the lead in spawning the afore-mentioned empire.

I recently tried Kiyosaki's game, Cash Flow 101. Click through to the extended entry for some commentary and a review.