In any case, here they are, presented with comment.

Dimes

Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball — Will likely always be a dime, as I probably play this game more than anyone else on the planet due to it being our lunchtime staple at work.

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization — All plays probably completely online (Maybe one of those is F2F). But this is a great game, and one I’m glad is on the list. I need to get that same crew into Reef Encounter online too so it will hit this list every year. Can you play Age of Steam online anywhere?

Risk Legacy — Of course all of these plays are due to the world changing. I actually have a post in the works about the game, but I’ve never hit the publish button, because I wanted a bit of time to refine it.

Fives

Jungle Speed — Most of these plays are with the kids, or visitors. It’s a quick game, can be entertaining to play, but can also wear out its welcome. I only think it’s okay, but the kids love it, and I got it for insane cheap on clearance.

7 Wonders — Hard to see this not hitting at least the fives for several years to come, quick to play, easy to teach.

Scrabble — Likely every one of these plays is a Words with Friends play that I log as scrabble, I kind of dropped out of playing WWF though since it takes up so much time deceptively if you have a lot of games going, plus it’s pissing me off lately with the always wanting to log in to facebook, can’t I just say no once and leave it, do you have to ask me every time I open the app?

The Resistance — A favorite game of mine, this one is werewolf like but in a small package. It is also playable with less players, and although I like werewolf with a small number of players, it requires some skill to play in those smaller games. And the big games are hard to get together sometimes. This is the solution to all those problems.

Werewolf — And Werewolf, didn’t get to play it all that much in 2012 because I tended to sleep at decent times at the conventions I did go to, and skipped a few that I like. But it did make the five list, and is probably my favorite game ever due to the infinite re playability and complexity levels that are enormously tweak-able.

And there you have it. I’ll send these to Mark Jackson as soon as he’s ready.

So, I decided to follow the MO I’ve been using for cons lately, the one that lets you only take the days of the con off, but still get a good bit of gaming on that first day. So I took off work Thursday & Friday, and was going to get up at 2:00 to head out the Dallas, TX.

Woke up right at about 2:00, and was on the road by 2:30. It was also my first road trip with the Stang. So I was kind of stoked about that. But I’ve discovered at least on the way there, I might want some sort of Lumbar support, as the seat started hurting my back after a while.

After arriving in Dallas around 10:30, I used my phone to try to find the new hotel. After being unsuccessful until noon, I called the hotel, and figured out it was on Airport grounds. Should have paid closer attention to that before I left.

THURSDAY
First of all I want to state I had no gameplay goals for the con at all. I am more interested in socializing with old friends, than making sure I play certain games. As such, my playlist is kind of sparse.

I had intended to get in and settle for a bit, maybe take a short nap from all the driving and little sleep the night before so that I could be fresh before my first scheduled game of the con. Because of the delay finding the hotel, this was not possible, and right off the bat, ended up sitting down and teaching a game of Die Macher. If you know me at all you know I love this game. I had a little trouble teaching (Thanks to the players for being understanding) and my rules were kind of sporadic mainly due to drowsiness. I didn’t do so hot and actually ended up in third or fourth, but it was a 40 pt swing from first to fifth, and only a 4 point swing from third to fifth. I think everyone enjoyed it.

We went to dinner with most of the other werewolf crew shortly after that. We spent a lot of time socializing and talking. And when returning to the hotel, I mainly wandered around looking at the layout etc. I went back to ‘Werewolf Hollow’ and played a game there before getting up and wandering a bit more and turning a few games down because of sleepiness. I went to bed at midnight.

FRIDAY
Woke up fairly early Friday morning and decided to hit the gym for a run. Not too long, only about 3.5 miles, but enough to help me feel refreshed for my first full day at the con.

After showering and cleaning up, and heading out to find some breakfast, I came back and found some of the werewolfers also with an early start to the day. I rounded up five and managed to get them into a game of my hybrid copy of Battlestar Galactica. (I don’t like the expansions, but I do add a couple of minor things from the Pegasus expansion.

Now again, that’s not a new game, so no real thoughts on it. I enjoyed it and I think the others did too, there were a couple of new players. The game was really close and came down to the wire, and in the end, we (I was a human) ended up having to take a 50/50 die roll shot to win the game, otherwise we were going to lose to JV and KS on the next turn. Unfortunately, we lost, and conceded the game to the toasters because we had no population left.

I had to work my library shift on Friday afternoon, and so, after BSG I wandered around the dealer room a bit but couldn’t commit to any games. Went to the library at 3:00 to begin my 2hr library shift. It’s always a fun time, you get to meet new people, and have fun chatting and joking about the games people are checking in and out, and in general figure out what people are playing or are interested in.

It’s also how I found myself in my first new game of the con. After our shift someone checked in Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar Game. It was an interesting worker placement game where the board had these gears where you could place your workers and they would move on the gears to later areas. The timing was important, because you could pay money to put them close to the powerful spaces early, or you could put them on the cheap spaces, and let the gears move them to the powerful spaces, but it took longer. It was an interesting idea, and was executed very well. But in the end, still typical worker placement translated into victory points.

After the Mayan Calendar game thing, it was time to renew my bid to become BGG.con poker champion. I’ve played in this tournament every year I’ve been to BGG.con, which I just figured out is all but the first year, and last year. I have a decent track record.

• 2006 – 11th (I was the final bust out before the final table, got nothing for it)
• 2007 – Out in 1st hour (I was upset from the year before because I played for four hours and got nothing out of it, I decided to go all in or bust in 2007 to ensure I ended early.)
• 2008 – Out in 3nd hour (After a misguided idea about the poker tournament in the first two years, I decided to try my best again, I made it over halfway, but was still out sometime in the third hour)
• 2009 – Final Table (9th) (Played some pretty good poker, but was short stacked most of the tournament, rode the short stack and played smart into the Final table, but didn’t have many bullets to do anything and busted out in 9th.
• 2010 – Out in 2nd Hour (Again, decided I would play hard, but sometimes the cards don’t cooperate with you, busted out literally just before the first break.)
• 2011 – Missed BGG.con
• 2012 – Ahh, so 2012, I decided to play hard, but started on a pretty tough table where nobody played poorly and busted out and chips were tough to come by. By the time of the first break, I was on a short stack and wasn’t sure I’d make it very long after that. After the break, some people finally started busting out of our table, and bringing some fresh chips in, a couple of good hands, and a couple of good betting moves with not so good hands let me build my stack up a little bit and I worked my stack hard trying to make good decisions as the field dwindled to about 20. I had about 17,000 chips when I got an AJ and put in a bet of 3k (with 500, 1k blinds), and got one caller behind me going to the flop, The flop dropped KK2 and I pushed and was Instacalled, which I knew meant I was doomed as the caller had KQ. I had him covered though and survived with about 7k in chips. I built that 7k back up to about 20k carefully and slowly and with one double up (I pushed with AT caller behind had A4, and my hand held) and rode a short stack into the final table. I played conservatively on the final table, but was short stacked and waited for cards, got an AT and pushed, but was up against a caller with AA which spelled my final doom. I finished in 7th. I got another set of Copag cards just like I got in 2009.

I ended Friday with a game of werewolf before going to bed, as it was around 1:30 when I busted out of poker anyway.

SATURDAY
I woke up early Saturday morning as I had scheduled to be a seller in the Flea Market. I found a table spot and managed to move almost all of the stuff I had brought. I held my self though and didn’t really pick up anything except one I had kind of been looking for.

Surburbia was interesting, but I was kind of zonked out, and we were in the darkest corner of the hot games room. I zoned out a bit during the rules explanation, but it seemed fairly straightforward. It is a tile ‘auction’ type game where you are building a city competing with the others on the table a la ‘Simcity’ computer game. But it’s not really solitaire, because you have these goals you are working towards and things your opponent places in his city can affect the income and reputation levels of your city. It was interesting, but I’m not sure if I liked it or not, thinking back, I think I did. I definitely liked it better than the Mayan calendar thing.

After Suburbia, I took about 5 hours to go up to the room and relax a bit and watch the Ole Miss vs LSU game. This isn’t a football blog post, but the Rebels almost pulled off an amazing upset. Two bad turnovers and a horrible breakdown in punt coverage sealed their fate though.

After the game I went down to the werewolf rooms where some friends were setting up A Game of Thrones, it had been years since I played the game, and they said they were going to learn and had someone coming to teach them and needed a fifth, so I joined. When their teacher came, I recognized him as someone I had played with in 2007 when he ran over the whole board with his army which he called the ’8th Panzer Division’ I was Tyrell, with my AM and RK playing Lannister and Greyjoy respectively. The 8th panzer guy was Stark, and his friend was Baratheon. My play started out being biased against Stark for the first part of the game, although trying to set up a truce line with Baratheon didn’t gain any traction and I was chased from my starting area and down to a hurt level early. After that I used my limited resources to work with my werewolf friends in any way to ensure that one of them would win rather than the person that pushed me to the edge of defeat. In the end Lannister one in Turn 6 with 7 castles.

I ended Saturday playing several games of werewolf and a couple of games of Telestrations, before heading to bed at around 4:00.

SUNDAY
I didn’t intend to do much Sunday, I woke up and packed and was going to head out fairly early, but wanted to pick something up in the Dealer room before I left. It didn’t open till 10 so I hung out until around that time and went in.

While making a last swing, I decided to sit down and try Escape: The Curse of the Temple as I heard it was very fun and only took 10 minutes to play. After a brief rules explanation, we gave it a shot, and sure enough, I had a good time playing it. It’s very light, and very luck based with only a few decisions, but it’s frantic, played by everyone simultaneously, and requires pretty good teamwork to overcome the games obstacles. I’m not sure if the game has any lasting power, but I was entertained in my one game of it.

After that I headed out, and headed home.

Then I went to bed.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Chris

So I have quick updates on three different fronts.
RUNNING
I’m running in my second half marathon toward the end of this month. And to be quite honest, I’m not in very good shape right now. Not nearly as good a shape as my first half marathon a year ago, and way worse shape than my first full marathon in December.

I’m still running of course, about five days a week right now, it amounts to somewhere between 25-30 miles per week at this time. This is more than I was running last year at this time before my half marathon, but the times are slower, it seems harder to run, etc. I don’t know. We’ll see.

I only have one goal for the half, and that is to beat my previous half marathon time of 2:22:35 (I think). I feel like this is still doable, but it will be close looking at my running times lately. I won’t even be close to the 2:12 ish that I ran the first half of my full marathon in December though, and that’s dissappointing. I’ve got to get in race shape sometime soon. Maybe for the fall races.

Speaking of Fall races, I had a pipe dream about maybe running the Marine Corps Marathon in October, but the darn thing sold out in like 2 hours. Oh well. Maybe I’ll just do St. Jude again. It was a nice fun marathon. And it would be the same course.

BOARDGAMES
I have been playing games a little bit more. Mostly due to starting up a Risk Legacy Group. I’m liking Risk Legacy so far. But it does still feel very risk like, albeit, it plays completely differently because of the missions instead of the world conquest goal.

I auctioned off several games in order to help pay for a trip to Geekway to the West in May. I’m looking forward to that. But I did get rid of some good stuff. I was extremely sad to be letting go of my painted copy of Space Hulk, and my copy of Star Wars: The queen’s Gambit, but honestly, neither really got played, and if I’m playing a two player game, there are many others I would tend to gravitate towards before those anyway. Some others that left were Titan, Aladdin’s Dragons, Antike, Pandemic, Havoc: The Hundred Years War, Ghost Stories, Wok Star, and a few others I can’t think of anymore. The coop purge was long overdue. I only want to keep a couple of those around, and Battlestar Galactica is mine, Shadows over Camelot is Val’s and I’ve also got Lord of the Rings still, but that’s just for theme.

I don’t know if Geekway to the West has a flea market, but I might take some stuff up to that if it does. This can help me tame my overrun shelves.

GUITAR
Still goofing off with trying to learn guitar, it’s been a couple of months now, but I still don’t know a single song. I go through a few exercises each night but nothing that resembles music yet.

I was going to take a class at the community learning center, but unfortunately it didn’t make. I was so bummed out. So I ended up signing up to take lessons at Austin’s Music for a little while. I’ve had a couple of lessons so far, and picked up a few things as well, but it’s helping me focus more on what to practice, and it gives me somewhere to ask dumb questions too.

That’s pretty much it, each of those could be gone into in more depth, but I don’t really have time right now. I suppose I’ll get back in a blogging mood someday soon and fill in some of the gaps of our life. Easter was fun. I should get Val to post some pictures here.

That partly affected my purging ability. As I tend to take a lot of stuff to those flea markets to cycle my collection properly. Because I missed out at BGG.con (And this weekends Atlanta Game Fest) I am not able to unload some of my stuff that is sitting on my shelf not getting played.

Anyway. So here I look back at the State of my Boardgame Collection.

Alright so let’s see, first, some historical data:
End of 2007, 270
End of 2008, 262
End of 2009, 259
End of 2010, 254

I’ve always had an arbitrary goal of trying to one day get things down to 250 as I label them. As it stands right now. I have 287.

287.

Yeah. I told you, gaming hasn’t really been my focus, and because I haven’t been playing games as much in the last year. I haven’t been cycling through them either. Another hindrance to my collection numbers is the fact that I instituted a family game night on Wednesday nights this year. We haven’t played every Wednesday night, but have for many. But because of that, I’ve held onto some family friendly type of things that I really probably wouldn’t have, as well as picked up a few new ones.

Now, I should get a little bit of a reprive. 17 of the above are actually just expansions to Age of Steam. Another 5 are expansions to Power Grid. That being said, those were mostly counted in the historical numbers above, although I did add a couple of Age of Steam expansions this year.

Another problem is I picked up a few solitaire games in the last year as well. Because our game group has been wishy washy lately. Partly due to me being unwilling to game past about 9PM or so. I thought that Solitaire games might be a fine pickup. But I find I just goof off and play iPad or something instead of playing these Solitaire games. But I want to try them before getting rid of them.

The real concern with the growing numbers is that I’ve split off onto an extra shelf as well as a short stack in my Bedroom, and a small table in our dining room. I really need to focus this year and get these back onto two or three shelves at most.

The new hobbies are killing my gaming life. I guarantee that no matter what other hobbies I pick up (I’ve decided to teach myself how to play guitar) and continue with this year (I’m still going to be running in the next year). Gaming will be a priority, either with friends or family. And the number of games I have on my shelves will go down in the coming year.

We call these lists our Five & Dimes. Those games which have gotten at least five plays or ten plays by myself during the past year.

I haven’t looked at the list yet, so I’m going to be shooting from the hip on this one.

So here we go:

DIMES

Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball.
No surprise here. I play this one at work with a lunchtime gaming friend at least once per day, usually twice a day. It’s a great little 10 minute game that does a pretty good job of feeling like baseball.

Scrabble
Also no surprises, as most of these plays are actually ‘Words with Friends’ games on the iPhone not really face to face scrabble games. I count and log all games played against humans. I don’t care what Hasbro says. They are basically the same thing. If they hadn’t screwed up their whole facebook thing, they could have been king of this territory, as it is now, a nice simple clone holds the crown.

Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer
It sucks that this game makes my dime list. But again it’s understandable. It has great asynchronous multiplayer on iPhone, and thus, nearly all the plays are on that platform. (I’ve only played this once in real life.) The kicker is I think this is a pretty weak game and I don’t think I’d ever play it face to face again. And surely would never buy a copy of it. The expansion does add a little bit to it, and makes the gameplay a bit more interesting though. I just started playing it though.

FIVES

Thunderstone
The bulk of these plays were from the OMGA gameday. AEG was nice enough to donate a copy for us to give away in a ‘play to win’ promotion. This game, Monkey Lab, and abandon ship got the bulk of the plays on this day. I liked all of these games, a friend ended up buying a copy of Thunderstone shortly after the gameday based on the fun we had with it, and a couple of the plays came from that. I really need to try the epic variant. I think I would enjoy the game way more with that variant as it is described.

Werewolf
I’m sure most of these plays were from Midsouthcon. I did not go to BGG.con this year, which is usually the one that puts this one on the top of the list. Which is likely why this one made it to the fives list but not the dimes list. Ultimate Werewolf box is shown as that’s actually the set I use, but the werewolf link goes back to the main game as I log my plays as that. It’s stupid that they are separated in the database, but oh well.

Poker
Well, the bulk of these plays were two or three tournaments I entered while I was in Las Vegas early in the year for a convention. Plus I tend to play this at night before bed sometimes using the Zynga app. I’ve played this way more than five times, but I often forget to log these plays. But obviously I did a couple of times.

Blokus
Most of these plays were either two player with my daughter, and a few were at the OMGA gameday teaching new people.

Unpublished Prototype
A personal game that I’ve worked on the rules for. It’s a very light game, but after a couple of initial plays I stuck it in the box with some notes and updated a few cards, but haven’t gotten around to trying those new cards again yet. No link on this one, as the game doesn’t exist in the database, and likely never will.

There you have it. That’s it. My gaming really took a bit of a hit this year. All my running and those goals I had for that this year made it difficult to play games late into the night and still be able to get up early the next morning for that 5:00 am run. Also, My group is very fluid, not managing to get the same game to the table very often, or many times in a row. There were a few games that came close, and many many that got two or three plays. But didn’t quite make the final cuts.

In a day or so I’ll take a look at the Game collection and check out the how I’m doing on my purge. (Foreshadowing, it isn’t good).

Place info
Overall: 2115 out of 2357
Gender: 1207 out of 1284
Age: 243 out of 256

Official Results
Results by Place
Age Group Results

Official Splits

My Mile Splits

As most of the people reading this already know; Yesterday I ran the St. Jude Memphis Marathon. I’ve been training for this for months. If you count the time building up a solid running base, training has actually been almost two years. After my first half marathon in April, I felt good afterwards and figured I had it in me to try the full distance. I wanted the feeling of not being sure I could finish the race. The Half Marathon never made me feel like that. I was told the Marathon would deliver. I was told correctly.

It was not an easy task, it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But, as a friend of mine put it. “Hey, it was a learning game right?” It might be a game I never play again.

This is a race recap, it is long. It is written just as much for my benefit as it is yours.

The first part of this post is a recap of my situation. At the end of the post I’ll sum up the lessons I learned, perhaps so I won’t make the same mistakes if I do this again.

FRIDAY
I took off work on Friday in order to have a relaxed day before the race to go up and pick up my race bib, maybe walk around the expo for a bit. I left fairly early on Friday and got to the expo at around 11:30. It went quickly, and I perused the vendors for about 30-45 minutes or so before leaving to go get some lunch.

Afterwards, I went to go check into my hotel and just laid down for a bit randomly napping, and watching Spongebob on the TV. At around 4:30 or so, I dropped by Target to pick up a gift for a friend CO who wanted me to come over to visit for dinner. (Qwirkle)

Afterwards I headed out to Midtown to CO’s house. Sat down to chat with CO and his family for a bit, and then we headed to Cooper Young to some italian restaurant. (I do not know the name). I chose a sensible dinner. Not too heavy, just some pasta, with tomato sauce and a piece of grilled chicken. It was excellent, a little large. I ate a good bit of it, but left a lot on the plate.

We sat and chatted for a bit, before we left, he drove me around the Marathon Course for the next day a good bit and we chatted some about the race, and where the hills are, and thinking about what I would feel like when I got to this point, etc. After a bit of wonderful chat I went back to the hotel to try to call it an early night.

I got back to the hotel at about 9:00 to get ready for bed. First, I had to prepare everything for the race though.

PRE RACE
FRIDAY NIGHT
I started getting all my stuff laid out and ready for the race. I had spent a week prior constantly checking on the weather over and over, and I had brought two different running attire to wear on Saturday depending upon the weather. At the beginning of the week, it was supposed to be quite cold. By the end of the week, the forecast had changed. 40 at the time of the start, moving up to 60 by the time I finished. I laid out both longsleeve tee and tights, as well as shortsleeve tee and shorts.

I tossed and turned all night, waking up, going back to sleep, etc. Not a very good nights sleep, nerves, turning on tv to look at weather, etc.

SATURDAY
PRE-RACE
I finally woke up at 5:00 am and took a shower and ate a Clif Bar. I decided to go with the shorts and shortsleeve tee. I had a throwaway sweatshirt that I put on as well to stay warm till the start.

Around 5:45 I headed in. Even though the race is not till 8:00 I was nervous about parking, etc. I got to the start line at about 6:00. I packed a bag with some clothes for after the race, as well as a towel and soap for the after race showers that they provide. I went over to bag check, and stuck my phone and keys in the bag and checked it. Then I went and sat in the bleachers of Autozone for about 40 minutes or so bored. I was thinking now I should have kept my keys so I could go sit in my warm car for a while waiting for the start. That would have been better.

I’m more of a wake up and run kind of guy, waiting around for the start was a little bit brutal. Finally I walked over to the start line and sat around there for a bit. I was walking around the corrals and noticed the 4:25 pace group.

For your first Marathon, they say your only goal is to finish. Well, I still thought I could do it in 4:30ish because my long run paces were all at 10:20-11:00 or so per mile. So, I jumped into the corral with this group and waited for the start.

I spent mostly 20-30 minutes standing in a corral shivering in tight shorts and a shortsleeve tee with a lightish sweatshirt on. It was not enough. I was freezing, shivering, etc. I still thought once I started running I would be okay.

RACE
Finally, the Race started. I was in Corral #9, and each wave was 2 minutes or so, so I wasn’t going to be going off for a little bit. It was at this time I dropped my sweatshirt (The instructions said that the pad could not read my chip if I had my sweatshirt on. I question this and wish I would have tried to keep it a bit longer).

MILE 1-5
Finally our corral moved up and I started. I kept with the 4:25 pace group about 150 yards ahead of me or so at the start. But the starting miles were pretty crowded, and there was a lot of starting and stopping as people would cut across or back and forth etc to toss clothes and stuff.

I tried to keep my focus and run. I figured because of my long run paces that the 4:25 pace was doable the whole way. I finally started to feel okay and warm up a little bit at about 4 miles or so. I saw a friend at Mile 4 on the sidelines and waved (SA) She waved back and issued some encouragement.

Around this time I grabbed one packet of Sport Beans and ate it. I didn’t particularly feel all that hungry, but it’s a marathon right. I need to replace nutrients and carbs, etc. I also drank from my bottle filled with water and a Nunn tablet pretty liberally.

Mile 4-5 also ran through the St. Jude Campus. This was a neat portion of the race, with lots of kids tougher than me battling their own situations. It was also a fairly crowded portion of the race. A lot of the kids come out to watch and high five the runners. I and a lot of people were lining up down the sides of the streets to give a few of these high fives. They really help us along. (I could have used some more)

MILE 6-10
So after going through the campus at St. Jude, the course turned out toward midtown and Overton Park. This whole time I tried to keep steady, although with the crowds there was still a lot of start/stop etc. Especially around the Water Stops. Still I kept pretty steady and felt pretty good.

As we headed out toward and passed the Zoo at Mile 7 or so. I kept looking up at the 4:25 pace group which was still about 150-200 yards ahead of me, which meant I was still doing alright. A few times prior to this, I would get stuck behind some people or groups and see the pace group going away, I would kick the pace in gear a bit to catch back up over time.

Finally at the Mile 8 Water Stop, I noticed that I had caught up with the pace group again. I figured if I stayed in front of it, I wouldn’t get caught behind a crowd and have to make pace changes to keep them in sight like I had too a couple of times early. I actually at this point still felt really good and decided to go on ahead of them a bit.

I grabbed another pack of Sport Beans and ate them between Mile 8 and 9. I also drank some Powerade at the Mile 9 water stop. Up to this point I had only used my bottle, but fairly liberally. It was nearly empty at this point.

Still, I found myself pretty strong going into Mile 10.

MILE 10-12
I started feeling a little bit fatigued here, I figured this was not a good place to start feeling fatigued as I still had 16 more miles to run, so I decided I’d try to slow up a bit. It was about then that I saw the 4:25 pace group coming up behind me again and decided to just stick with them the rest of the way as best I could.

At Mile 12, the Half Marathoners split off, I looked at them all happy as they turned toward the finish. Sorta jealous, but I didn’t come here to run a half. I continued on. With the 4:25 pace group up ahead a bit, I tried to stay even, and conserve my energy best I could.

MILE 13-14
The course came back around onto Beale Street. It wasn’t as crowded through there this time as a full 2/3 of the field peeled off for their half marathon finishes. Although there were still lots of people around, it was a lot more sparse on the course at this time. This was both good, and bad. There was more room and less chances of getting cut off, but here is also where I started to feel and notice the wind a lot more. It was pretty heavy as the crowd thinned.

MILE 14-16
My friend CO from the Night before had warned me about this stretch the night before while driving the course. He said that it’s doesn’t have fans, the half marathoners are gone, it’s basically all uphill, and it’s through a fairly boring part of town. Couple this with the fact that my mind was beginning to tell me that I thought I might have run the first half too fast, as well as drinking and eating way to much. It was cool, and I was less dressed than my typical runs, yet I was drinking more fluids and had eaten two packs of jelly beans all before the half as well as taken Powerade at Mile 9 and I don’t think that was a good idea.

You see, I trained with the water/nuun. I drink Powerade, but it was always after my run was over, or I was in a cooldown walk on the way home stopping by the gas station. I had never drank it on the run before. It was not sitting well and I began to feel a bit nauseated at the 14-15 mile area.

At this point, I could no longer see the 4:25 pace group guy. I didn’t care, I had given up that dream. I was thinking 5 hours would still be respectable.

I kept steady though. My friend CO said he was going to be around the Mile 16 mark and would run with me for a bit. I was looking forward to it, though my pace was starting to slow some because of my stomach.

MILE 16-18
Uh oh. I felt a twinge in my left hamstring. I’ve never had this pain before while running. It was cramping up. Was this from a lack of fluids despite the fact that fluids were pretty heavy in my stomach. I can’t possibly force myself to drink more if that’s the problem (Can you get cramps from having too many fluids?)

As I hit the Mile 16 Water stop, with the twinge in my hamstring not letting up, I decided to walk for the first time, only through the water stop. So I stopped grab some water, and walked through. Afterwards, I started to trot again, but still had the cramp, when I saw CO and his family.

It felt really good to see a familiar face, but I felt bad walking toward him. He came up to me and greeted me, and said he’d run a few miles with me. I think he saw the concern on my face, and wanted to help me work through it.

He had his phone with him, and was reading emails and text messages from some of my friends who were watching my progress online. This gave me some motivation, but it still hurt. CO kept after me, got me started running again, but I’d only be able to go a quarter or half a mile before my hamstring would start complaining again. The run intervals kept getting slower and slower. Also any uphills were killer at this point.

As I crossed the 18 mile mark entering the Cooper Young Neighborhood I told CO that I only wanted this to be over. At this point. I thought that this was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

CO kept after me though. This second loop was brutal, and unfortunately, we were still going away from downtown, that did not help the motivation much. It was also at this point I felt a lot of shame. I had run 16-20 mile long runs at home and didn’t walk those at all with no problems, what was the difference here? (Obviously it was hydration, a later part of the day, and too much food, but I couldn’t do anything about that now, and I still had over six miles to go.)

MILE 19-21
This portion of the course went down Parkway, the farthest distance you get from downtown, but it runs parallel the whole time, so you don’t feel like you’re making any progress back toward the finish. CO was still with me at this point, he knew I was in a bad way, and his encouragement at this point was very helpful. I told him I had to stop and stretch my hamstring out. We did so for a half a minute or so, and continued on.

He would issue orders to me, Let’s run to the light, then we can take a walk break, etc. Over and over. Trying to keep me running, if only for a little bit. I would feel alright and run for a bit, then my hamstring would twinge and I’d have to start walking. We continued this up to the 21 mile mark, where we finally turned for downtown.

MILE 21-24
This is a long stretch of road that runs straight toward downtown, It’s actually the same stretch that we ran going out in Mile 5, 6, and 7, needless to say, it took a lot longer coming back. I stopped again to stretch out the hamstring at Mile 21. This time for a bit longer. CO was right there with me. He has run a couple of marathons, and new the place I was in. He was helping me through it, I will be forever grateful for that.

Sometime in Mile 21, I noticed the 4:55 pace group pass me. It was at this point, my 5 hour goal was out the window and I knew it. In my heart at this point, time goals were completely out, finishing was really my only goal.

So Mile 21-24 began a slow walk/run toward the finish. Coming in at 24, I could begin to see the Pyramid, and knew that it had to be getting close. CO kept shouting at me encouragement, telling me I’ve run 2 miles lots of times, I don’t even think about 2 miles as a real run usually, a quick warmup. Why was this 2 sound so hard both mentally and physically. It made no sense.

MILE 24-25
At this point not a whole lot was going through my mind except the task at hand. We came around the St. Jude campus again, but it was much more sparse at this point Mile 23-24 was probably the hardest part. It was a lot of uphill at a very late portion of the race, You couldn’t really see the downtown landmarks that let you know you were close, it was brutal.

I noticed in Mile 25 the 5:40 pace guy passing me. I didn’t care about the time at this point, but I had not realized how far I had fallen off. CO was wishing me encouragement and trying to get me to run a bit more. Wanting me to finish strong. I was really giving him the best I could. But every part of my body hurt.

Finally seeing Autozone Park, CO and I set forward toward the longest mile I’d ever run.

MILE 26
Comes back around on itself down a bit of a big road, and parallel to the stadium you are going to finish in. I was discouraged a bit running parallel to it instead of toward it. That’s when CO (Still running with me to help me out) started pushing me harder. I was a hot mess at that point, and didn’t have much in me, but I mustered up what I could and walked up an overpass and up the road that would take me toward the stadium finish. When we hit the Mile 26 mark, he told me I could run the last quarter mile into the finish. So I did, went down the side street and into the outfield entrance of the stadium. I heard them calling my name on the PA system, but honestly, I was a bit delirious and only had finishing on my mind. I came across the finish and immediately looked for a blanket as they gave me a medal.

The blanket was more important to me than the medal. Most of the last 5-6 miles I had been very cold, so cold I almost felt ill, at least, I think that’s part of it. At least I hope it is. I think I typically like to be warmer than others on my runs. I wear fairly warm clothes when I run usually, though I do run very early in the morning. But I grabbed the blanket and did my best to try to warm up.

CONCLUSION
CO was awesome, he knew I was in a bad way when he saw me, and decided to help me out by working me all the way through the finish. Always saying something positive, and having some good conversation about different subjects as well. He also took a couple of pictures of me, which I’ll link to.

Although I do feel some disappointment in myself for the difference in my performance in the long runs as opposed to this race, I know I made some mistakes with eating and drinking too much, as well as I believe being underdressed for the race. Not to mention running a first half that was probably way too ambitious. I am pleased I could finish no matter the time. I’m not so sure I could have done so without support and encouragement from my friend.

WHAT I LEARNED (in no particular order)
• Marathons are hard. Contrary to the way you might think they are not twice as Hard as Half Marathons, they are 10 times as hard as Half Marathons. Why in the hell would anybody ever do this twice or more?
• Race the way you practiced. I drank way more than I ever did on any long run, and my stomach paid for it, starting at around mile 14. Also those long runs that I ran at a slow pace, I started off properly worried about the distance and ran slow on purpose. Because of this, I never felt too bad or had problems on my long runs. I didn’t start this marathon with the same mindset. I started it with the 4:25 pace group mindset. Clearly way harder than I had the skills for despite my average paces.
• My nano’s battery is a lot better when you listen to music rather than the radio. Don’t be worried about listening early while waiting. I was pretty bored sitting around for a couple of hours before it started but didn’t want to listen to podcasts or music because I was afraid my nano might die from battery in the last couple of miles
• Don’t go so early. Stay at a Start Line hotel. It’s worth the cost I think. I’m a wake up and run kind of guy. I think if I want to run my best, I need to make it more like when I wake up at home and walk out of the house and start my long run first thing in the morning.
• I shouldn’t worry about my watch battery. As long as it’s full before I start, it will last the whole time. I guess they are made for marathons at least.
• For your first Marathon. Finishing is a perfectly good goal. They don’t tell you this because they are trying to hold you back. They tell you this so that you can respect the distance and start off slow and conserve your energy. No running pain has ever compared to my feelings in those last few miles. I have a new respect for the distance and anybody that traverses it.
• More long runs and more miles per week. I peaked at only about 35 miles per week training for this one. I also really only had three ‘really long runs’ one 16, one 18, and one 20. I would like to have a couple more at each of those, plus perhaps a 22, and maybe 24 miler as well.
• I need to learn to run in a crowd a little better. There are no crowded Races in my home town. Most races are lucky to have 200 people at them at most. The biggest race of the year here might be 500 people max. Doing these marathons with 16,000 at St. Jude (and 35,000 at Country Music Marathon) crowds is a whole different beast. Even with the wave start. I am surprised at how much energy gets wasted adjusting my pace. I get frustrated and weave or look for holes and sprint through them. I need to have more patience, let the holes come to me and take them then.
• I like to be warmer than most people when I run. I guess it’s the Mississippi Heat I’ve been conditioned to endure. A nice day for some is cold for me.
• I think I could do this better. Had I done fairly well I’m not sure I would do another. But I feel like I could minimize those mistakes, and now I have a more healthy respect. Amnesia is starting to set in already.


The album links to a few of the pictures that CO took of me. I’ll update it later with some official Marathon photos if I end up buying any of them. I like them, but they are always so expensive, and I’m pretty sure I look pretty bad in most of em

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1385 5 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1344 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1344#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:29:40 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1344 Yeah. The Game order is here. And it’s got 100% more Star Trek than the last order!



]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1344 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1304 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1304#comments Mon, 22 Aug 2011 20:28:53 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1304 So here’s the rundown of my playlist at Gamefest South and what I thought about those games I played.

FRIDAY
So I took off work so that I could leave the house insane early on Friday morning. I was hoping to make it to Chattanooga early enough on Friday to have a full day with it. I got to the Choo Choo a little after 11 local time and got settled into the hotel before heading to the game room.


After checking in to Gamefest South and getting my badge, I was immediately invited into a game of Egizia of which I accepted. I have never played it before, hadn’t really heard of it much (I knew of its existence but not much about it beyond that). In Egizia you are laborers in some ancient civilization building up monuments and buildings. It essentially boiled down to a worker placement game to get victory points. Your workers could either move slowly down the river and do more work, or you could move swiftly down the river and pick better spots than would be available for the people moving slowly. It was interesting, not anything I hadn’t really seen before, and not one I’ll be seeking to play again, but would probably play again if asked.


After Egizia, LH grabbed a copy of Sun, Sea, & Sand to teach to us. I suppose someone was interested in learning it, again, I was there to play games with good people, not really caring what games those were, so I joined in as well.

In Sun, Sea, & Sand you are a family on a resort island destination, you build up your hotel and resort, and try to attract tourists to your hotel rather than competing (read: other players) hotels. It ended up being another worker placement with a twist game. The twist being that your workers could be used to do different things, such as build an attraction, or booking clients, or advertising, etc. Different things took different amounts of time, so you might not get all your workers back for each round.

It was a fun game, very quick, easy to learn with a cute theme. That goes a long way toward me enjoying the game. I liked it alright, and would be happy to play it again, but again, it was a typical worker placement to get victory points game, and there are only so many of those that a person needs to have on their shelf. I’m pretty sure that this one won’t make mine.


Then LH grabbed his copy of Asara and offered to teach it. I wanted to try it because it looked pretty, and was just an SDJ nominee. At least this one wasn’t another worker placement.

It ended up being a card/hand management sort of thing, where by playing cards to certain locations you could get various pieces with which to construct towers of differing materials. Depending upon where you played, how much money you had, how many cards you had and how well you played them, you could optimize building towers to make taller towers, or towers in different more valuable materials than your opponents. I didn’t think all that highly of this game. It was okay, but there wasn’t anything astounding, and the nature of the game assures that everyone will build pretty towers, and be fairly close on victory points. A light family style game with no tense decisions to be made. Of course, playing this after two other light family style games might have been its downfall in my mind. I’d try it again, but I don’t see anything here that is compelling or interesting, and your decisions on your turn are fairly obvious from what’s available on your turn.


I then mixed it up and broke groups when RT was looking for a fourth for Spectral Rails and offered to teach it to me. It was described to me as a quick pick up & deliver train game. Being a big Age of Steam fan, I thought I’d try this one too.

In Spectral Rails, the players represent ghost trains traveling around the old southwest picking up souls to deliver them to their final destinations. Ghost trains tend to drop ether when they travel, and ghost ether is toxic to its own ghost, but turbocharges the other ghost trains, so you can’t backtrack your train along track you’ve been on, and you make it faster for other players to travel along your footsteps.

Movement was limited by the number of cards you play representing sections of the track, but movement along other peoples vapor trails did not count against your movement points.

The game played insanely fast, (actually too fast, but I was told our game was an anomaly), and was really fun. Card & Hand Management combined with pick up & deliver is not something I’ve experienced before, and it was a pleasant game. I’d like to give it a few more plays, but it doesn’t seem like something I need to pick up. I’ll have to play it at some conventions in the future.

After a lengthy discussion of the error in Spectral Rails in that the U.S. Gold Eagles in it were dated 1848, but the map clearly showed the US post Gadsden Purchase, the group grabbed two others and WB Taught us the game Union Pacific.


I’ve had Union Pacific for a couple of years, but never managed to get it to the table. I needed to play it, as I hate to have something on the shelf I’ve never played, and especially now that the release of the retheme Airlines Europe has recently come out. After being taught the rules and comparisons to the game Acquire, we began.

The comparison to Acquire ended up being right on. It was mostly about hand management and laying down stocks in the more valuable companies, paying considerable attention to what your opponents are laying their stocks in, because when the payout cards come out, you want to be majority shareholder or at least 2nd in the bigger companies on the board. I loved the game, I think although it shares similarities with acquire, it has some interest on its own in that the payouts are strictly vp’s and you don’t have to spend vp’s to get more. As in Acquire. It’s more hand management and get the jump on the other players in a rummy style before the scoring rounds, with the bulding trains added on on top of it.

We played a fun variant, it was a six player game and the player opposite you was actually on the same team, so you and they shared stocks. It added a layer onto the game, but didn’t change it significantly and I think the game is fine either way. Their explanation is that it makes the six player game better because it’s half the time before your team can react to the situation as opposed to having to wait 5 turns. I can see that, and will likely use that for trying the game in the future.

I took a break after that, and chatted with friends and went to dinner before coming back and teaching a game of Dominant Species to some friends.


Dominant Species is a fun game that came out late last year. After playing it more and more, it has really grown on me. I know it’s really long, and seems complicated, but really it’s lots of little pieces that fit together to make a complex machine, and a little effect in one area can have make different things happen.

It is really a worker placement game in Age of Empires III style, but while the worker placement was the main focus of AOE3, the worker placement in Dominant Species is of equal importance as the area control portion on the map side of earth. It’s a little hard to teach and learn as you have to go through the entire thing before people can understand what’s going on, but each thing is very easy to learn.

After this, I decided to go to bed, it was already past 1am, and I had a busy day planned for Saturday.

SATURDAY
I had promised CD that I would play Disc Golf with him on Saturday Morning at The Sinks. This meant that I had to do my long run before 7am. So I got up at 5:10, (not easy to do after only going to bed at 1:30) to get in six miles. Then I changed clothes and met CD and headed over to the course.

It was a fun course, and it was nice playing a new different course with a friend. I think I’ll try to add a disc golf outing to every convention or travel area I go to going forward, there is just so much variety.


After getting back and cleaned up, I got down in time for my scheduled game of Die Macher. A true ’10′ for me, I always will enjoy a game of this. This particular game ran quite long, and was very tight the whole way. With the game ramping up toward the end, we started with 35-40 point regions, followed by the 15, and 22 in rnd 4 and 5, and ended with the 80, then the 50. Needless to say, there was a lot of posturing throughout the mid game which pushed the time a bit, I’m sure my sleep depravity from a short night’s rest didn’t help matters. I ended up coming in third with CDU taking over the German Parliament. FDP will have their revenge in the future.

We actually took a break from the Die Macher game above for the flea market. I brought a few titles and did okay with getting rid of some stuff. I did end up picking up a copy of Duck, Duck, Go for us to try in our weekly family game night, and I picked up a copy of Isla Dorada as well.

After Die Macher, I was kinda brain drained, and tired from lack of sleep, so I sort of walked around and chatted for a while, and just mingled. Went and picked up some dinner, and came back and fell into a game of Blue Moon City.


I’ve played Blue Moon City a few times before. It’s very light easy hand management game, but it was about all I wanted at the time. It’s alright, not great of course, but interesting enough to play a time or two every once in a while.

I mingled a bit more and was finally starting to feel better when I saw some friends huddled around chatting. I asked if this was game discussion or dinner discussion trying to find something to play. CR was saying that he wanted to learn Merkator, a game I had not heard of before. JN grabbed a copy and invited a group to play.


Merkator was an interesting game. Again, typical Euro, get cubes and trade them in for victory points. The time management in the game was different than anything I’d seen before, in that the game length was determined by the locations with which the players go. Plus the ability to do actions based on others turns, added a layer to the game that prevented you from playing with tunnel vision focusing only on your actions. I enjoyed the game and had fun playing it, but these days, these aren’t the kind of games I get excited to play any more. I would be happy to play it again any time, but wouldn’t seek it out, or suggest it I don’t believe.


Lastly, while walking around, a group was starting a game of Age of Empires III. It’s been a couple of years since I played it, and playing so much Dominant Species lately had this game in the back of my mind, so I wanted to play it again. Honestly, I believe I’m done with the game now. It had it’s day, but playing it one night after Dominant Species, I can’t see myself ever sitting down to this game again. Sure it’s faster, but the meat that DS has just isn’t there with AOE3. I finished in a close second behind GA, He played with lots of resources and building points, while I concentrated on the area majority.


And I lied, because just before heading up to bed, I also ended up teaching CD and his group of his friends from Mississippi State the game of Felix: The Cat in the Sack. This is a pretty fun, light, quick filler game that is always worth the time and effort. Some late night hijinks proved entertaining during this game, and it was a fun game. We’ve played it in the past in our group, and I always have a lot of fun with it.

SUNDAY
I slept a little later on Sunday morning, but woke up about 8 to get an easy 3 mi recovery run in before cleaning up and grabbing some breakfast. I met TW down in the breakfast room and he offered to teach me Antiquity


Antiquity has been sitting on my shelf for the better part of two years. I have never really made an effort to read the rules or get it played because of it’s reputation, length, and opening the box to find thousands of little chits.

After being taught the rules, it turns out it’s actually pretty much a city optimization engine building type game. You’ve got to build a city and man it with workers to stay ahead of the curve on food while working toward your victory condition, which you get to pick yourself. And the paths are wildly different.

Of course, staying ahead of the curve is pretty tough to do in and of itself, let alone working toward your victory condition. Me and MS the other new player were locked in a slow death spiral as our city slowly filled with dead bodies due to famine with no visible to us way to prevent it, while TW made some progress toward victory. We ended up calling the game as it was going to take about 4 more turns for TW to win, and there wasn’t really much we could do about it, plus the both of us needed to get on the road. I’m looking forward to trying this one again soon.

Really I think the game could be quite polarizing. It’s essentially multiplayer solitaire for a good portion of the game. At least, at this stage in my playing the game it is, and because there is little to no luck involved in the board setup or available actions, it really seems like you could develop your strategy and just execute that each time going forward.

The game is deep, and I’ll have some fun exploring some of its depths. But I’m not so positive that it has lasting staying power. Its strengthened by the fact that it takes a good while to play and looks daunting, which will keep it from hitting the table, and keep you from optimizing your strategy.

And after Antiquity, thus ended my time at the Choo Choo as I packed up the car and headed home. I had a great time at my ‘BGG.con’ since I won’t be able to attend this year.

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1304 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1299 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1299#comments Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:10:17 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1299 Tomorrow Morning I’ll be on my way to a weekend of Gaming Goodness. Gamefest South in Chattanooga! Since I’m not going to BGG.con and most of September, October, and November will leave me focused on SEC Football and Marathon Training. This will likely be it for me in the Fall Con Schedule.

I had small dreams of hitting a regional type con on the west coast in the Fall this year, I like regional cons for the size and mingling that happen more than the big BGG.con, Origins, Gen Con, etc type gaming cons. Perhaps it’s just me: but the people I’m playing with are just as important as the games I play (heh, actually probably more important) and at the local cons it seems a bit easier to control that. Although hitting a regional con on the west coast would probably leave me friendless as I wouldn’t know many people there and that might not be a great experience either.

Actually, as far as this weekend goes, I probably won’t play that many games, just some long ones that don’t get played enough. Hope to play some Age of Steam, Dominant Species, High Frontier, Die Macher, etc. I’ll just go with the flow.

And I’ll hit the flea market and get rid of some stuff, I’ve not purged very much in the past year and my collection has slowly ballooned out of control. I think I’m at 285 right now. I hope to find at least 15 or so to cull. But as I look at my shelf, I just don’t see where they will come from. I’m sure I’ll find some tonight, when I hit the shelf hard for the last time.

Also while there I’m hoping to play some Disc Golf at the Sinks. It looks like a neat course, and CD and I were planning to hit it fairly early on Saturday Morning I think. Going to be a busy Saturday Morning though: 3 easy miles, Disc Golf, then Die Macher at 10am I think.

I’ll post a basic synopsis when I get back.

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1299 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1209 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1209#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:51:19 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1209 Another Eat Poop You Cat Game, I think this one was one of my favorites to read ever…

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Starting Sentence by fatetwister64

“Looks like it’s time to oil up!”

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Drawing by spearjr


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Sentence by remus

“The tin man was cautious of Dorothy. She just wasn’t the same. He had suspicions that the wicked witch had turned her into some kind of a neandrethal.”

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Drawing my swmabie


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Sentence by Reish Galuta

“Tin man was perplexed with the choice of casting Steve Oksienik as Dorothy. “

*** A bit of an inside joke, Steve Oksienik is a user on BGG who has a fairly disturbing avatar


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Drawing by xofour


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Sentence by Garou

“When Dorothy (now called Donny, after the operation) returned to Oz, the sight of his muscular figure in a blue dress was enough to short-circuit tin-man’s positronic brain. “

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Drawing by kan_d


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Sentence by Tickmanfan

“They were about two hours from the city when Tin Man’s mind was blown. After hours of hitting on Dorthy he finally to realize that she was a he.”

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Drawing by Kodeir


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Finally ending up with the Sentence by Rubric

“The Wizard gave you a heart, Tin Man. He gave the Scarecrow a brain, and the Lion finally got his courage. But you know what? He gave me a little something too. And no, that’s not Toto in my pocket…. “

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]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1209 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1204 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1204#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 02:21:47 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1204 I’m kinda bored tonight. And I figured lately this blog has become nothing more than race reports and the occasional rant about my boardgame collection.

So for some entertainment, I’m going to draw upon the talents of some of my friends. I’ve decided that I’m going to post an ‘Eat Poop You Cat‘ chain. We play this game in Chit Chat at BGG every once in a while. We played a lot a year ago, but we just recently ran a couple more games.

It’s sort of like telephone which we all played as a kid; You start the game with a sentence, any sentence, doesn’t matter much. Then the next person draws a picture, then the next person writes a sentence after only seeing the previous picture, etc. Until you get all the way back around and have your own sentence again. We typically play in Odd numbers so it always ends in a sentence. Every once in a while there are chains that are hilarious. I’m going to post a few of those here. Each gets a separate post, I may or may not have been a part of each particular chain, but some are so good I feel like I want to revisit them, or highlight them, etc. They can sometimes be hard to find or see or follow if you don’t know where to look. I apologize to those of you reading that may have played these games and are seeing duplicate material, but perhaps you’ll forgive me.

There is a commercial game called Telestrations which is very similar, but uses a phrase rather than a sentence.

So, the first EPYC Chain for your enjoyment: Game 27 Chain A

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Sentence by amwiles

“A single man in possession of good fortune must be in want of a wife”

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Drawing by JoshBot


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Sentence by purplewurple

“A wealthy diaper-fetishist, swimming in piles of gold coins, looks for a wife online”

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Drawing my SybotCB (me)


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Sentence by Chanfan

“The man, oblivious to the fact that he’s melting into a pile of gold coins, watches the woman online – while diapered human-pig babies (and other oddities apparently too horrible not to be covered in censored bars) roam freely about. “

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Drawing by jeffwiles


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Sentence by tscook

“Body swaps now available with animate and inanimate objects. Call *** *** **** for details! “

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Drawing by puckhead


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Sentence by Kodeir

“The prospect says if I mix these two potions everyone will love me but I won’t be able to sit down. “

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Drawing by kuhrusty


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Finally ending up with the Sentence by mylittlepwny

“The chemist dreamed of creating twin girls – one for him, and one for the boy growing out of his ass.”

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I’ll post particularly awesome EPYC Chains whenever one strikes my fancy and I’m bored. There might be three or four coming over the next day or two.

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1204 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1190 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1190#comments Sat, 18 Jun 2011 02:29:22 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1190 Umm, yeah. I thought I was purging my boardgames on the eternal goal to get it under 250. I stood at 254 at the beginning of this year.

But honestly, I haven’t really thought about it all that much this year. I’ve been focused on other things, and I haven’t been able to get to any of the conventions with flea markets, plus circumstances early this year caused me to ‘seal up’ some of the game collection because I wasn’t sure what we were doing or where we end up.

So without having been to any game conventions this year, I’m not going to BGG.con in November (A huge source of purging games every year as there flea market is just chock full of people looking for older more obscure stuff, unlike most of the local cons)

So where does that put me currently? Umm, 284…

Wow. I almost couldn’t believe it myself. I know I picked up a few hard to find titles here or there. There is a couple of grail games I managed to get a hold of in the early half of this year too. I also picked up quite a few Solitaire games to play over the summer and two player stuff to play with the Sarah since she’s getting older. I also picked up a couple of kids games here or there. I guess it all added up to a gain of 30 games over the first half of this year already! Wow.

I look at my shelves now though, and I can’t really see anything I truly want to get rid of. There are a few things that really should be culled, but I need them to go to a good home, otherwise, I’m quite content to keep them. But we’re only meeting for gaming twice a month currently, and we actually aren’t meeting at my house anymore, so really there isn’t much point in having some of the stuff I do have.

I still have things like Titan on the shelf, is it too much to hope that Sarah will play that with me soon? I need to seriously look at what I’ve got and what I really need to keep over the second half of the year, however, I don’t see a whole lot of opportunity for getting rid of anything. I’ll probably go to Gamefest South in August maybe. That’s an opportunity perhaps, but other than that. I don’t see anything else happening anytime soon.

I intend to speak about some of those solitaire games on the blog over the summer. Sort of like I did a couple of years ago when I was playing some lame solitaire games. If I get a few of those played, they are probably the kind of things I can get rid of later as well.

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1190 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1166 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1166#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:20:06 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1166 Okay, well, not really, but I’ve built my first prototype. Which is much farther than I’ve ever gotten with my other designs (before this writing down a few notes is the farthest I’ve ever gotten).

As far as this game; It’s a shorter filler type card game. It actually came to me in a dream about a week ago. I liked it so much when I woke up at 4:00 am I reached for a notebook and wrote down everything I could remember. I spent another hour or two figuring out basic rules and card mix.

At this point all I needed then was to build a prototype. I went the cheapy card sleeves route. I had a few, but I needed card sleeves of different colors. I hit our Wal-Mart but apparently they don’t sell them anymore. So, my dad came to visit this weekend and we went up to Memphis. I stopped at Target, and found out that they also don’t sell sleeves! (What is this world coming to?). Anyway, just before leaving Memphis, I made dad stop by Gamerz Depot. If anybody had them, they would. Of course they did, in 4 different colors. So I managed to pick up what I needed and we headed home.

I spent the next couple of hours printing cards and cutting them out and inserting them into the sleeves. I grabbed some wooden meeples from meeplepeople.com and voila! I had finished my first prototype. I had no idea how it would play, I thought it would be alright as written. At this point, I actually talked my dad and Val into trying it with me. My dad hates games. His words after we were done; “It didn’t suck, most of the games you teach me suck.” I’m pretty sure that the fact that the game is only about 30 min to play in it’s current form is why he thought this!

My prototype is quite crude and all. But I think what I have is sort of compelling, allows for some strategy, with a little luck. And is easy to learn and accessible. Of course what the world really needed was another short filler middle weight card game right?

Next thing though is that I really need to try it with some gamers. One thing I did get out of the first play. I already made one rule tweak, it might need to be tweaked again. But the scores were mostly close, though I did not differentiate who did what strategies. I’d be interested in looking at this data over time. It’s going to need several more plays to flesh out the card mix I think.

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1166 1 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1108 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1108#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 18:08:31 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1108 At this point, I feel like I’ve done the work I have to do. If I fail at this point it would have been because of something out of my control. I leave tomorrow morning for the beautiful city of Nashville, TN for the Country Music Half Marathon. I’ve basically been working toward this for the last year of my life. What seemed to be so hard a year ago, kinda seems like it’s quite achievable now. To the point I’m almost ashamed to be placing so much emphasis in my life on it.

I essentially followed my training plan. Not exactly, but mostly. It was only a run here or there that I shortened, or lengthened, or ran early or late, or switched out one long run for another, etc.

I ran my 12 miler two weeks ago now, but I’m going a little insane now because last Saturday I only ran 8 miles, and only two miles each on Monday and Wednesday Morning. I know I’m supposed to taper and be well rested for Saturday’s half marathon, but it still makes me nervous that I’ve really only run 4 miles this week, with zero cross training as well.

I came close to a disaster last Saturday though. After I ran my 8 miles, Val, the Kids, and I volunteered some time at the Ole Miss Track Meet. I ended up working the Hammer throw being the ‘marker’. This meant that after the hammers were thrown I ran out to the hammer, and stuck a stick in the ground where it first hit the ground so they could pull the tape and measure the distance. Well, the ground was a little wet, coupled with multiple sprints out to the hammers every minute or two and I did start to develop a blister on my left foot. I stuck it out and finished the hammer throw, but when asked to do the same thing for the discus I had to chicken out and switch jobs to something more stats based. It was a good thing, I didn’t pop the blister and it’s pretty much healed completely now. I hardly felt it on Monday, and it was basically unnoticeable for my run on Wednesday.

I think I’ll have a bunch of fun on Saturday. I have no time goals at all. Only hope to finish, although I secretly hope to be able to do it in 2:30 or so. I know I’m not supposed to do that, but it is kinda in the back of my mind as a secondary goal.

I would like to extend a sincere thank you to RK and his family for putting me up for a couple of nights as well. With Val and the Kids unable to attend, it really saved me a bunch of money and time not having to find a race hotel close to the start or finish line. Not only that, but built in tired-runner-friendly entertainment as well! (Well, as long as they don’t make me play dancing eggs…) I think we’re going to try to play a board game or two on Saturday Evening after I’ve finished… hopefully I’ve finished…

]]> http://www.boothenet.com/?feed=rss2&p=1108 0 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1072 http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1072#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:39:53 +0000 Chris http://www.boothenet.com/?p=1072

I came home from work and my favorite board game from BGG.con 2009 and 2010, was on my doorstep.

It’s been impossible for me to get a copy, but I finally managed to secure one!

Battling Tops now officially resides on my shelf! It’s missing one puller though, so the epic 4 player battles will have to wait ’til I can find another one for parts.

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