Well, it’s just over a year from that post. In the past year, I have not played a single new Euro game that I’ve been excited about. They always seem so meh. Now, I still enjoy some games. Recently a game of Power Grid was really fun, also a recent game of Princes of Florence with the expansion, and a game of Reef Encounter have definitely been entertaining times. But if you asked me right now what I wanted to play, I’d probably say Twilight Struggle or Age of Steam. Depending upon the number of players. (Although if we had five, A Game of Thrones, or Republic of Rome would be quite tempting )

But like I said, I haven’t played anything new, that excited me at all. Until Saturday… I played Hammer of the Scots. I LOVED IT! I’m seeking the game out currently, and will probably add Crusader Rex to the order whenever I am able to get to it. I haven’t been this excited about a game in a long time. I’m probably going to order some of these with the money from selling off all of my Formula De.

I should clarify a little bit though. I believe I’m a ‘light’ wargamer. I don’t mind a few pages of rules, but I’m not going to go through the 300 page field manual that ASL requires! And, I have no interest in using tweezers to move chits around a map the size of my dining room.

One barrier I have to wargaming though, is finding people for two player games. You’d think it should be easy, but we have a small game group currently. A lot of times on our game nights only three or four players show up (We need to work on some growth). And breaking off to play a two player game is hard to do. And on non game nights, I’ve got one friend who is a socialite and is busy most other nights, and the other friend just had a baby like six weeks ago. Sarah’s getting pretty close though. A couple more years now and she’ll be ready!!!

Oh well, Game night is tonight. It looks like we’ve got Pandemic on the Agenda. I might take Power Grid over there too.

The biggest offense was picking up a copy of Titan from Tanga. I can’t believe I did that. I’m not even that big a fan of the game. But it was like $30 bucks. Oh well, maybe I’ll give it a couple of plays and unload it at a flea market.

Most of the others were circumstances. I picked up a couple of titles at Goodwill, simply because they were insanely cheap. Hisss, Conspiracy, and Sorry Sliders are the main ones that come to mind.

As far as game orders, I can only think of one that I made, and that was for a copy of Glory to Rome, which should come back in to stock basically any day now. I’m about to order the historical versions of Battleground Fantasy Warfare and the Expansion. I kind of thought Arcane Legions might satisfy my historical want for a mini like wargame. But I think it has some flaws people are talking about. I’ve decided that Battleground is sufficiently tiny, and gets sufficiently good reviews for me to give it a shot.

Anyway, I digress. So in order to curb the recent trend, I decided to try to reign in my growth a little this week, and looked to cull some more stuff out of the collection. I’ve decided to finally let go of some oldies but goodies that I’ve been hanging on to.

I’m getting out of the Formula De business. The game just takes way to long for the amount of fun contained, and I’d much much rather play Snow Tails nearly every time, or even Turfmaster. So I just had to finally give up on it, especially since the tracks are worth so much. In an effort to speed this up, I’m sending my Spa Francorchamps, USA Track Pack 1, and USA Track Pack 2 to Troll and Toad. For these three Track sets, they have offered me $220 bucks, and I can’t keep them sitting on the shelf unplayed when they are worth that and somebody will get them that wants them. They only offered me $15 for the base game though, and I could get that at a Flea Market without going through Troll & Toad for them. Plus I really think I might be able to get $20 or so at a flea market anyway, since I have painted pewter cars and stuff in mine.

I also posted some old Martin Wallace Treefrog things on BGG, one has sold this week. My copy of Tinners’ Trail Signed & Numbered 1128 of 1500 has already sold. Hopefully I’ll get an offer on my signed and numbered copy of Steel Driver sometime soon as well.

I liked both of these games well enough, but can’t keep them around when I’d rather play Chicago Express over both of them, despite my love for Martin Wallace and his games and designs. I still can’t get rid of Perikles though, I haven’t gotten to try it yet, I need to get that one to the table to see if it makes the cut or not.

I read the rules real quick, it’s interesting one of those double bluff type things that isn’t very deep or anything, but hey, it’s free.

Operation BP: ****Censored**** Plug Name not safe for my blog!

I thought it was interesting enough and appropriate to pass along.

What was it that made it so interesting. Well, let’s see.

Tennessee Game Days were held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville Tennessee. This is an amazing hotel, beautiful, and TGD was able to secure an unbelievable room rate for the convention. Those that booked early enough got a wonderful rate of about $79 a night, plus a resort fee, etc. They ended up being about $110 a night after all was said and done. However, this hotel had amazing amount of value for that amount of money.

It happens to be the largest hotel in America, (That is not a casino). TGD Was just a small part of the festivities and amenities available at the hotel. Because of this, my wife and family decided that they would come along with me.

So, I booked the family rate of the TGD Convention online and booked the room. TGD is very family friendly. The individual rate for three days pre registered was $40. The family rate, (adding my wife and two daughters) was only $50. It was a no brainer to bump up even if they didn’t want to play anything at TGD just in case. It would have been a no brainer for me at even $60, I might have thought about it for a few minutes if it was $70.

So we arrive in Nashville on Friday Morning and it is a beautiful day. We find free parking in the Opry Mills Parking lot and walk to our hotel on a short walkway which also just happened to used to be the Grizzly River Rampage ride at Opryland. It brought back a few memories back from when I was younger. It was quite interesting.

We check in at the TGD Registration Desk fairly early Friday Morning. Chat with some old friends I only see once a year or so, and get our badges. Olivia (5) and Sarah (10) are quite enthusiastic about the cool passport badges that they have…

Oh, yeah, so the theme of TGD is that it’s like a traveling theme. The badges are ‘passports’ and you can get stamps for playing certain games which gives you more chances to win from a quite generous supply of prizes from their sponsors.

Anyway, the kids love the theme, we sit around and chat for a bit with new and old friends.

Hotel Registration. Not wanting to wait to terribly long, and also wanting to explore the hotel which we were in awe of while looking around (It really is amazing.) We decided to head toward the front and see just how early we could check in.

So, after checking in, and wandering around an amazing hotel, we meandered back to the TGD Ballroom and started playing some games, Me and the kids played some Crokinole on the TGD Logo Crokinole Board. There is a local Woodworker making some amazing Crokinole Boards in Nashville, You may remember the Jupiter Board. There was also the TGD Logo board, and a Death Star which was quite amazing looking too.

After Crokinole, the wife and kids decided to check out the hotel swimming pool, while I stayed and played some games. Got into a game of Ghost Stories, where we were doing alright, but then all of a sudden about 4 cards before the Wu Feng came out, it all fell apart, and we started dying left and right. Finally succumbing to the ghost threat before we could make it to the Wu Feng.

I also played a game of In the Year of the Dragon, and Chinatown in fairly quick succession.

I played the only new to me game of the weekend (alright, maybe there was one other coming shortly, but not sure it counts) Finca.

I liked it a lot. Didn’t really see it coming, but the lightness and the quickness and ease of possibly being a nice family game and gateway quickly have put it on my want list. I’ll keep an eye out for that one and get it as soon as I can track a copy down, or make an order. I wanted my wife to try it out before the weekend was up, but unfortunately that didn’t happen.

I stuck around for the Friday night drawing playing a game of Loot, While we were playing my younger daughter was called out as a winner, unfortunately, she was already asleep and since you had to be present to win, I felt a little disappointed for her.

On Saturday I woke up pretty early to get my flea market stuff ready, and set up in the game room.

I set up for the flea market trying to get rid of some unplayed stuff in my collection, and did fairly well, striking up a few deals just to get some stuff out.

I browsed others, but I really am trying very hard to restrict my game purchases and did a very good job, I was tempted by several things, I finally ended up picking up an in shrink Quiddler for $2 and a copy of Neuroshima Hex, with the expansion, and a deftly prepared (by Verkisto) DIY Expansion as well for $35, but I still came out ahead in the flea market by about $40 bucks or so.

The most interesting item sold at the flea market was the cursed copy of Fact or Crap, which was sold for -$2 (Yes, that’s a negative two dollars)

My family came in sometime during the flea market while I was manning my area and started playing some games over in the corner. I walked over finally when I gave up on the last few stragglers and me and the family headed out to Dinner and rode the shuttle bus over to the Opryland Mall (we would have walked, but it was pouring down rain all day Saturday.)

Walked around Opry Mills for a good while, and had a nice time, but made it back in time to play a few games with the kids before our scheduled matches of the Crokinole Tournament.

I played a game of Pickomino, A couple of games of Crokinole, and a game of Hula Hippos with the Family and some others that had kids there as well. Hula Hippos I guess was the other, new to me game of the weekend.

Then we set up for our rounds of the Crokinole Tournament. My wife and daughter made it through to the second round of doubles, I was eliminated in the first round in singles, but regai and I managed to make it to the third round in doubles.

I let my kids stay up during this, because I felt bad about Olivia missing her chance to ‘win’ from the prize table. So I took the kids and wife over to the prize table to discuss strategy. Talked about the five games we really wanted off the Saturday table, (Warlords of Europe, Mystery Express, Genoa, a new Tigris & Euphrates, and something else, can’t remember) and Sarah (My older daughter) said if she won she was going to pick up the copy of 7 ate 9 first.

Wouldn’t you know it, she won and took the copy of 7 ate 9 that she wanted, I don’t know what was left when she went up there, but I was happy for her. I actually read the rules, it looks fun, I’m sure it will get a lot of good play in our family!

Went to bed shortly afterwards on Saturday Night.

Woke up early Sunday morning and walked down to go to the Take it Easy Tournament, My favorite time of the TGD Weekend. Unfortunately, I didn’t do so hot when the inept caller never called the numbers he should have, and instead kept calling stuff that kept messing up my board even more.

Finished with a 76.

After that, picked up my games and was going to pack up the car and get them out so It would be easier to check out and come back to play games that afternoon. Went to go out in the pouring rain to get my car out of the Opry Mills parking lot (It was still raining!!!) When I noticed the Mills parking lot was a lake, I decided hmm, maybe it’s not such a good idea to stay here after all. I was listening to the radio, and according to it, I40 was still open, so I got the car around and took it to the hotel lobby and we loaded it up. Deciding to get out instead of staying around. I left kind of suddenly, but tried to go say bye to people real quick before I left. The room was pretty sparse though.

Anyway, Started going west on I40, got directed by officers through standing water on I40 at Exit 201, and then it was clear, for two more miles, where it was gridlock somewhere near Exit 199.

http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/category.asp?C=125220&aut…=

We finally after a couple of hours, got off at 199, and were stuck in the Bellvue area of nashville for several hours trying various little roads going west seeing if we could find a way home. Finally, after giving up and deciding to sleep in the car in a parking lot of a Target Store, we went into the store to kill time and met a couple saying they were trying to get to St. Louis, but couldn’t get West or North, but told us I65 south was open. So we got back in our car and drove around trying to make it that way without using I40. Although we got through some roads which were at or very near flooding, we never got stuck and finally found a way to hit I65 fairly far south of Nashville and managed to get home via Birmingham and Tupelo.

It took a lot longer than we expected, but I’m glad we made it out safely. I hope that everyone else at TGD 2010 is able to get home safely too!

It is absolutely 100% the perfect device for what I use it for. I don’t think it’s perfect of course, but it doesn’t matter. It is seriously awesome for what I need.

I purchased this device to replace a Macbook which was going on 4 years old. I kept the Macbook in my bedroom, and would use it sparingly at night before bed to check email, read facebook, and in general, goof off.

Well, this does all of that. And actually does it even a little better than my Macbook. One of the things I always wanted to do, was to watch movies and stuff that I had on my desktop computer in iTunes. Macbook never really could do that because it never registered the play. iPad syncs with iTunes, and now when I watch on there, next time it syncs with the desktop registers the play. If I listen to Music or Podcasts on my iPad, it registers those plays as well. This is important to me because I use a lot of Smart Playlists that keep track of these things to figure out what to put on my devices.

It’s lighter than my Macbook was. So it will be great on trips. On Trips 99% of my use was email, facebook, twitter, light web surfing. And you know what else. BATTERY LIFE IS AMAZING! Really Really good. It claims 10 hours for uninterrupted video. Well, under normal use, you can probably count on more like 12 hours. I ran it out by doing stuff solid for two days before it finally shut off.

If I want to do a little work, the on screen keyboard is a little blah, when you turn it sideways, the keyboard is a little small still for my hands. That coupled with the fact that I am a touch typist makes it a little difficult to use as I have to hover my hands over instead of resting my fingers on the display. But they fixed all that. iPad will sync with a bluetooth keyboard. So Bam. I’ll just keep one in the bedroom and take it on trips etc. just in case.

I’ve goofed off with a few of the games. Some of them are better on iPad. Some are a little worse. the bigger screen is nice, but sometimes with having to touch the screen, you obscure the graphics and can’t see what’s going on sometimes. It’s really not that big a deal when the games are well written.

One of the coolest uses was the ‘Small World‘ game. It’s a port of Days of Wonder’s boardgame of the same name. It works awesome on the iPad, and though it’s two player only. Playing a boardgame without any bits is pretty neat, especially when it’s doing all the calculations and everything for you.

Really Really great little device they’ve got here. Oh, and Sarah loves her ‘new’ macbook as well!

* This post was completely written on my iPad!!!

I had made reference to my collection numbers and it was asked why I care. GW wanted to tell me that his philosophy was that if he liked a game, he would get it, and later if that changed, he would purge it, without regard to the actual number.

My response at the time was that the collection number was sort of like a temperature gauge. Not something I’m overly concerned with, but I like to look at it to see a numerical analysis of the situation at one time or another. Over time the number can show me trends etc.

But that got me thinking about the number. And I wanted to elaborate on that number and the way it is used. Personally, for my own personal game thinning, I was using the Boardgamegeek ‘Owned’ number on each members profile page. At the time I began, I felt like my game collection was running rampant (coincidentally when it outgrew the current two shelves and started being added to dining room and piles around the game room) I was using this number to reign in my collection and try to minimally keep it to the two shelves plus a little bit of spillover on certain occasions or situations. (90% of my collection currently exists on those shelves. But I do have a trade pile as well and a pile of party games in the Kitchen. These are the spillover situations that I am referring too. )

But as we were chatting about this number I admitted a few things.

First. I list some games that everyone can list. Chess, Backgammon, Bridge, Euchre, Hearts, Spades, Cribbage, maybe a couple of others. I do not list Checkers, Tic Tac Toe, Bingo, and a bunch of others by choice.

My idea behind these philosophies is that the first set, I would happily play and have the means to be able to play them should anyone want to. There is no specific box on the shelf that has these up there, but If I printed out a sheet of all the games I could play, they would be on the list.

As far as the ones that I don’t list, I would rather they not show up on said printout, because I would hope that nobody would pick it.

There are a few other items I do not list on BGG. I only list Zendo and Icetowers (I think) as Icehouse games even though I have a lot of Icehouse pieces and can play essentially any Icehouse game. I also own a piece pack, but do not list any of the Piecepack games. I do this because I don’t want these games inflating the numbers I display on BGG. The main reason I don’t want this artificial inflation… Because I’ve been using this as my metric for game purges over the last couple of years.

The second thing I had to admit regarding this number, is that I cheat on the number a little bit with expansions.

I do not list things like the Chuck No-Rice Card from Ghost Stories, Certain Agricola Decks, Bang Expansions, or even the new Cosmic Encounter Expansion, simply because I don’t want these inflating my metric as well. I have these things. But when I log a play, I typically don’t want to log play expansions and not listing them in BGG won’t throw off my play statistics. Especially with the Friendless Stats.

Some Expansions I do log. Mostly Age of Steam and Power Grid Expansions, which I want to track different games of on different expansions. I typically do not list expansions if every time I play that game, it’s probably going to be with the expansion, usually because the expansion doesn’t really change any game rules. If it does change the game or rules, then the expansion typically gets listed. Unfortunately, this is not a hard and fast rule.

What this entire post is alluding to though, is that I think using the BGG Owned number as my purge metric may be fundamentally flawed. I feel like a lot of these things, for completeness sake should be listed. But it would blow my number out of the water completely so I refrain.

Recently I’ve created my own Boardgame Database, I haven’t completely populated it yet, and mostly it contains data imported from BGG. I can enter a play in the database and push a button to have it duplicate that entry into BGG’s database now (For global statistics) but If I didn’t care personally about being able to work with others BGG Data, I could happily stick with my own Database Design at this time. It fits my profile of a game database much better, and I’m about to begin throwing Piecepack, playing card games, and Icehouse games into it as well.

But I can’t bring myself to use it as my purge metric yet. It needs a little bit more work I think, but eventually, I’ll probably want to switch to it. I think I need to add some sort of indicator about game systems so that Piecepack, Icehouse, Playing Card games will not show up in the collection numbers, because these would not be things I trade, but that they will show up when I print out ‘Decide what to play’ sheets.

I went to the con, but didn’t really have much interest in playing many games. I’ve been kind of meh on new games lately and haven’t really been interested in anything. And the games I’m really interested in getting played. (Age of Steam/Power Grid/Tigris & Euphrates) It seems like nobody wants to play those anymore. At least, in my area and at this con.

I didn’t even see a single game of Battlestar Galactica get played this year.

So, what did I play… Well let’s see.

Friday, I played one game of Race for the Galaxy. A game I really like but hardly ever play here in Oxford, I believe mainly because I don’t have it in the box, and when I go to look for what to play, I don’t see it. (I really need to print some game sheets with my new database of games).

I played one game of Cosmic Encounter with the new Races and Tech Cards. It was a full six player game, which can kinda make Cosmic Encounter drag a little, and basically makes the tech cards worthless anyway, since it takes to many turns to get around to you.

And I played one game of Werewolf. Then I went to bed around 12:00. (I actually went to bed quite early both nights, if you can call 12:00 early)

Saturday, I woke up having to run one of my only two scheduled games for the Con. I ran Dungeon Lords, a game I have been quite enamored with lately. It’s a really good game, one of the few new games I’m actually interested in playing. I don’t know how long it will stay that way, but it’s still going strong for now.

After that, I wandered the dealer room for a little while and goofed off looking at people, popping in to the art room, etc. I picked up a copy of Are you the Traitor? in the dealer room because I had been wanting to try it as it had some roots in Covert Action, a game I enjoyed but kind of thought got broken by the fact that there was no known information at all in the game before you played.

I wandered back into the Boardgame room and found a few people that were willing to give it a shot with me. After one small restart when we discovered we were playing one rule wrong that broke the game, we started again and I had a pretty nice time with the game. I’ll give it a few more plays, but I still am not sure it’s worth the $15 bucks that this game will cost you. It will probably end up on my trade pile eventually, but alas, so having problems finding that ‘small group’ werewolf style game. If only I had liked Shadow Hunters… Maybe I should give that game another shot.

After this the same group of players decided to play a game of Small World. It’s an alright game, I tend to play it quite a bit, and bought a copy because of circumstances, but I’ve never been all that thrilled with the game. I have a nice time playing it, but the game always feels to samey to me, and there are no tactics at all with map locations and the like. I really want to print out that variable map, I want to bring location strategies and bottlenecks etc into this game, which doesn’t exist out of the box.

I had wanted to get in on a game of Stronghold which was being demoed later on Saturday, but got caught up after Small World wandering the halls and such instead of in the boardgame room. By the time I went back, it was time for me to run my last scheduled game of the Con: Last Night on Earth.

We ran the ‘Get in the Truck’ Scenario. I actually didn’t play the game, I only moderated because five people showed up to play and the game is better with five than with six. So I gave up my seat (as a good con GM should) and ran the game with the better player number. The game ended up being a pretty tough one for the Humans. They went through at least half the deck but could never seem to find the keys to the truck. In the end, the Zombies got to the third human one turn before the end anyway.

I played a quick game of Bang before heading down to the Masquerade which was so fun last year I wanted to see it again. This years Masquerade had some nice costumes, but I think last years was a little bit stronger.

After the Masquerade I went down and Moderated about two or three games of Werewolf before going to bed sometime around 2:00 I think.

On Sunday, I woke up kinda tired, wandered down to the boardgame room which was dead, and mostly played a game of Medici. We had to call it a tad bit early because some scheduled games that players were in were starting up and some players had to check out of the hotel. But I was in a solid third out of four places after the second boat and wasn’t to broken up about having to stop the game.

I played another game of Race for the Galaxy then to kill a little bit of time before wandering back down to the dealer room to try to see if anything was there or pick up any games I wanted. It was a futile effort because I just don’t see any games out there that I really want. New or Old. I’m becoming jaded with my purchases… So Jaded.

I went back up to Boardgame room where a friend taught me Ninja vs Ninja. A game I needed to learn because I’m teaching it at OMGA Gameday pretty soon. It was a quite nice little filler game, would work quite well with children. We’re giving a copy away at OMGA Gameday if you’re interested.

After that, we pulled out the Library copy of Polarity and gave that a whirl. I’ve seen the game before and it always seemed so gimmicky but I rather enjoyed the game and the owner of the library copy said he wanted to sell it and gave me a really good price, so I bought it from him on the spot. I still owe him two dollars too, because I didn’t happen to have all of his asking price in my wallet, thankfully he knows I’m good for it. I’m kind of excited to try it out with Val or Sarah and see what they think. Or even KF or CA.

After this, I sat around and talked for a bit before heading home.

So in the whole con, I only picked up two games. Polarity, and Are you the traitor?
Oh well, it was a pretty fun con, a little light on the gaming, and nil on the pictures as I didn’t take any. I took a little bit of video at the ‘Great Luke Ski’ Concert but that was essentially it. I’ll try to grab some stills of whatever I did take and maybe some other friends pictures and get at least a couple of things on here later. But for right now this will have to do.

I really like Descent. I rate it an 8, still do, and we actually still play it a lot. However, we always play KF’s copy. And he has a few expansions too. I don’t have any expansions. If you’ve never played the game, it’s soft of Dungeons & Dragons without the roleplaying. It’s the tactical Miniature monster fight portion of the game.

I actually got the game in a trade a couple of years ago. In that time. I don’t think we’ve played my copy of the game a single time. Maybe once.

Union Pacific has a little bit of promise though. It’s sort of a precursor to Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride with a stock element. Maybe a step up from Ticket to Ride, but a step down from Age of Steam. Eh, I don’t know it sounded interesting. It might only be a temporary addition to the game library.

In any case, Volumewise, I’m gaining some shelf space. Descent is in one of the Fantasy Flight Games Coffin sized boxes. Union Pacific is in a box similar to the size of Samurai, and Downfall of Pompeii I think.

General Comments. I really diversified this year it looks like. Which I hope to do less of in the future. I really wish that I would play games I love more than playing a game I’ve never played. This year, that didn’t happen much, except with those games that others in my group love that I like as well, and usually am quite happy to play.

Dimes
Werewolf 30 – I don’t see werewolf not making my dime list any year for probably the rest of my life. I love this game, and whenever I get enough people together for a game, I tend to be interested in getting it played and pushing it onto people.

Cities 10 – I played this one for the first time in March of this year at Tennessee Games Day. I loved it, and immediately purchased a copy of the game. It’s got a lot going for it for the insanely quick play time. Most of the plays of this game happen back to back as well, as usually since it’s over in about 15 minutes, people tend to want to try it again. Couple that with three totally different scoring methods, and you have a really great filler that will probably show up for a long time to come.

Nickels
Battlestar Galactica 8 – Love this game, not so sure about the expansion yet, bu this game is really good, with an awesome theme. This one will likely be somewhere on this list next year too, as nearly everyone I know loves it too.

Ghost Stories 8 – I really liked this game a lot when I first started playing it, and we played it several times, but it is starting to feel samey to me now, and I don’t know that it will get very many plays over the next year. I tend to think that Pandemic, BSG, and Shadows will steal back my Coop game plays away from this one.

No Thanks! 8 – Really love this filler, but sometimes forget it’s in the shelf since the box is so small, I need to do like my friend MA and just keep up with lists for different numbers of players of everything that I have available. I need to set up a database before I can do that though, as I doubt I’ll want to update the lists that much.

Race for the Galaxy 8 – Love this game too, and it got a lot of play at the beginning of the year, but suffers from the same problem as some of the other fillers in that I have this one in a small box for space reasons, and I tend to forget about it when we’re looking for something to play.

Zendo 7 – This one has some lovers and some haters in our group, but I tend to find when I’m at a convention, there’s always a little time for at least a few rules to get done.

Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game 6 – This game is so much fun, although it has a lot of luck and stuff, but makes up for it with theme, and with the story you get to tell everyone about how your game went when you are finished.

Manila 6 – Manila is a great little gambling game, that I consciously tried to get played more this year. Glad to see it made the list. I tend to speed this one up a tad by starting them on the 0′s rather than the bottom level. I think that makes it a little more tolerable, by cutting at least 20 minutes off the game.

Bang! 5 – Played a lot at the beginning of the year, when we were still going to the OMGA Group, but this one waned late in the year when we had a core group that met every week. This one will always get some play, just not sure how much among the weekly game group. Probably none.

FITS 5 – Found this one and bought it at the same time I bought Cities. This one has replaced Ubongo as my puzzle game introducer to new people. As this one is puzzly like Ubongo, but has much better and easier scoring.

Manoeuvre 5 – Glad this one made it onto the list too. I don’t tend to play a lot of two player only games, but this is one of the first ones that I have liked to grab when it was appropriate. I really like the different aspects of the armies, and how they interact with each other.

Small World 5 – And finally Small World. Days of wonder game from this year, and not one that I would have picked up if it wasn’t for an insanely good deal. But I’m glad I did, everyone likes it, I like it enough to play it, and my problems with always having the same board can be addressed with a variant online. This one is a good one for introducing Axis & Allies/Risk players to New style board gaming as well.

Conclusion
So, that’s all I’ve got for this year, there are a few that just barely missed the cut, but I’ve decided not to talk about them at all out of respect for the format. Hopefully it will give me incentive to try to get one or two of the honorable mentions into the fray next year.

As of the end of 2009 I officially stand at 258 games listed in my collection in BGG. Many of those are Expansions (Nearly 20 in Age of Steam and Power Grid Expansions alone) So I think that’s a pretty good number. I wish it was actually under 200, but with the expansions I’ve put in, and hardly take any shelf space at all when I put them in the main games boxes, it’s kind of hard to trim it much more.

I fudge those numbers a little bit. Some expansions I fail to list due to principle, like the Agricola Z deck, or the Chuck No-Rice card in Ghost Stories. This was a change sometime this year due to some changes in the way BGG split out games when they add RPG Geek. Whether or not an expansion gets listed depends upon a few factors, but either way, if I list them, they count to the total, if I don’t they don’t.

I also have one game coming ‘Republic of Rome’ which I received as a Christmas Present from Val, but as of yet, has been deemed dangerous by the US government and has not left customs inspections.

So, let’s see how I’ve done. After I get Republic of Rome, that will put me at 259 games.

End of 2007, 270
End of 2008, 262

Well, I guess I’m not going very quickly at this am I? I do okay, I don’t add very much during the year at least, and I get rid of at least a couple of more games than I actually add. Which is a good thing, but still, I’ve really technically only dropped 11 games in two years. Which is horrible, but at least it’s better than when they were shooting way up in 2005 and 2006.

Goal for this year. Drop to below 250 BGG Listed games. Using my principles of listing. Unfortunately, this means some games will be impossible to get rid of (Chess, Euchre, Poker, etc.) Just means I’ll have to take the axe to at least 9 more games at some point during the year. And possibly to more depending upon if there’s any that I want to add or subtract.

I’d also like to clean up the game room shelves a little bit. I suppose that’s sort of this same resolution, but I mean, I’d like to get everything into one place sometime. Tired of having to go looking for something if I want to find it, they should all be contained on my two shelves.

I’m working on a Five and Dime post too, but that will probably be a couple of days.

Well, KF’s a much better macro photographer than I am, and my pics in the previous post weren’t so good, so KF took some and sent them to me, I put them in the gallery, but here they are.

Can’t wait to get these to the table. I like how they turned out. Photos again, aren’t to great. I really need to get either a lightbox, or that Canon S90IS which is supposed to have great low light performance.

Next up, I think I’m going to do the Mini’s from my copy of Shadows over Camelot. Then maybe take a break for a while. Although my output is pretty slow right now anyway.

I finally played with my Space Hulk game the other night. It really did feel cooler with the painted minis. And it’s easy enough to do.

Laters.
Chris.

I glossed over my goals for the convention the last post. But mainly, in general, I wanted to play a little less werewolf, actually go to sleep at decent hours, so that I enjoyed the games I played more during the day (And actually played more games too).

WEDNESDAY
Arrival on Wednesday evening. I spent more time chatting and greeting old friends than playing games. Finally managed to play a couple of games of Werewolf, before turning in at around midnight. Had to get up early to go to registration the next day.

THURSDAY
After Registration I played Castle Panic. I’d been wanting to try this for a while. It was a pretty good game, definitely a light game, very random. We didn’t have any trouble beating the game though. I’m only luke warm on it right now, I think there are better coop games out there, but I would play it again.

After that, I hooked up with some friends I had went to dinner with the night we arrived. They were about to play Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas and asked if I wanted to join. This one was a thinky brain burner puzzle type game where you moved your monks over an abyss to try to collect your books, not a bad game, but I don’t think it will ever be in the collection.

Since I’m a horse racing fan, I wanted to try Long Shot, so I went over to the Z-man area to give that a shot. I liked it a lot. I may end up picking it up. It’s random for sure, and not a lot going on, but it’s fun, and handles lots of players.

After that, got into a game of Dungeon Lords, it was the only Essen game I was interested in trying at the Con, I had a lot of fun with this one, this will never be a gateway game though. But I really like the theme, and the mechanics fit pretty well.

After wondering a bit, The friends I had hooked up with earlier wanted to play Goa, so I did. Always love this game, though it was a high scoring game, and I ended up getting creamed despite scoring a pretty nice 38 points.

Then I found TG and he taught me the game Campaign Manager 2008, this is a quick and very clever little two player game, that plays quite fast, and is interesting. Not sure how much variety there will be, but when you start playing the full game, I think it will get many descent plays. I played Obama, and seemed to draw the cards I needed whenever I needed them, but squeaked out a very close victory.

I ended the night with a little bit of Werewolf, seriously, just a little bit, only one game.

FRIDAY
Started off the morning with Amun-Re with five friends. Great game, Always like to play that one. Had another good time with it, and it always seems to go over well.

Went from Amun-Re to teaching Campaign Manager to CL. She seemed to enjoy it as well. I played McCain this time, and only managed about 220 Votes before CL and Obama sowed up the election.

After this, CO wanted to teach me Clash of the Gladiators, I had never heard of the game before. Though it doesn’t have the best reputation on the Geek, it is a pretty fun little game, not sure I ever need to own it, but I probably wouldn’t turn down a game or two.

Found someone to play Daytona 500 with me and KF too, I got some good cards, and drafted well, and managed to win it despite a bad third race, ended up with 1.4 mil or so.

Then it was time for the Poker Tournament. Last year, (I know you can go back and read my BGG.con report from last year to verify) I had wanted to get out of the Poker Tournament as quickly as possible, because in 2006, I had spent till midnight in there, in the tournament, and finished 11th, just before the final table. Well, with taking things a little more easy, I felt better going into this tournament, and managed to ride that feeling all the way to a ninth place finish this year, finishing just shortly after midnight. Since ninth also happens to be the final table, I also won a very nice prize. Some Copag Cards. I just bought four decks of these a little over a month ago, but these cards are wonderful, and I was excited by this prize. Perhaps I’ll win those BGG Chips next year *sigh*

After Poker, I played 2 games of Werewolf and went to bed again. (Still doing great on the sleeping thing)

SATURDAY
I woke up early to set up for the flea market, had to get rid of some games, and wanted to scout out and see if there were any grails that I had to have, when I discovered one. I got the Hans im Gluck version of Tigris and Euphrates. I’ve wanted that version for years.

After the flea market me and friends played a little bit of Manila. This is a fun game, can get kind of loud, and I always have a great time playing it. With two people teaching rules, it kind of screwed up some things, but it still played fine.

I had to pause the con a bit now, because Ole Miss was playing LSU, so I went up to the room to watch that. All I’ll say about that one is, What a game!!!!

After that, I came downstairs to playing a game of Tichu with JM, CM, and a new friend named Adrian, I don’t know his last name, so I feel alright with putting his first name on here. But we called it a little bit early.

I started wandering again, when CO found me again and asked me to come by and play Battling Gladiators. All I can say is Wow, this was the hit of the Con!!! I know, it’s just a retheming of Battling Tops, but cheering on Brawlin’ Brutus is much more fun than cheering on your Green Top. It really got interesting when the cash started hitting the table. We were playing with the Albuquerque variant, at first, but quickly switched between the ‘F*** Dungeon Lords’ Variant, and finished the night playing the ‘F*** Dominion’ Variant.

I ended the night by completely failing at my goal of going to bed early, playing about 4 games of werewolf before finally crawling back to the room at 5am.

SUNDAY
Sunday, was mainly just walking around and saying bye to everyone. I was only there for about 30 min or so, before KF and I headed back.

It was a fun Con again. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able not to go, but it gets harder and harder every year to make it down to Dallas.

I’m a big fan of the base Battlestar Galactica game. I am really liking that one, in my mind it is now the premiere semi-cooperative game available. We just got a copy in November, and we already got over the dime mark. I think I had played it five times just in 2008 in the last two months we had it for the year. That’s saying a lot, especially when the game takes 2.5 to 3.5 hours to play.

Anyway. So back to expansions. Since I love BSG so much, it seems like a no brainer to get the expansion right. Well I did, but I’m not sure it was a good thing. My favorite thing about the expansion… The plastic Basestars that replace the cardboard ones.

Some of the rules change BSG so drastically. For instance, the whole Cylon Leader thing. Don’t think I like that play at all, maybe it’s better in a five player game, but I think half the fun of the game is trying to figure out who the cylons are. and I don’t think I like the idea of airlocking someone (sending them out the airlock) at all. I’ll give it some more plays.

But that got me to thinking about expansions more and more. Sometimes, it seems like I don’t mind them. Sometimes, I hate the idea of them. What’s the difference?

I believe for me, it amounts to this, if the expansion is just extra cards, etc. But doesn’t change the base game at all, (maybe added cards balances play a little more, or varies it up if not all the cards are available in every game), then I don’t mind the expansions at all, and will usually play with them. The Ghost stories expansion comes to mind here, maybe the Bohnanza expansions as well. Power Grid Expansions fit this too, and sort of the Age of Steam Expansions, though those are different altogether.

When an expansion fundamentally changes rules to the game, I’m not nearly as interested in it. Kind of how I’m lukewarm on Pegasus right now. Sure I can leave the Cylon Leaders out, or not play with the New Caprica phase and boards, maybe that will be what happens. Like I said, the jury is still out.

Other examples like this. Chicago Express, the base game is perfect. Why would you potentially upset the balance with Erie or the Narrow Gauge. I have to admit I haven’t played them or read the rules, but the idea of expanding Chicago Express sort of offends me since I thought that game was so great. (exactly how I sort of feel about BSG. You can probably add El Grande and Settlers to this list as well.)

The Descent Expansions are also a different beast, as are things like the Commands & Colors Expansions, being that they don’t change game rules, merely give you more options for play. I tend to buy expansions like this, though I probably shouldn’t since I usually don’t play one game enough to exhaust my options in the base games.

I’d like to hear more about what expansions other people thing are critical, what people wish had never come out, etc. This topic is way to broad to be covered in one blog post. (ooh, Mark Johnson, it would be a good topic for Boardgamestogo!

I really just wanted to submit my opinion on the Battlestar Galactica Expansion, as well as, my general opinion of expansions for some context. With only one play, you’ll have to wait on the final verdicts though. But I can see leaving the Pegasus stuff permanently in, and just not using the Cylon Leaders or New Caprica boards most of the time. But that pegasus board, how do you drop it. I assume it requires removing all the expansion cards completely right.