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I spent some time reorganizing my game shelves the other day. I was really trying to get stuff to fit onto two shelves. I’ve mostly succeeded, I’ve got a side shelf which mainly has stuff I’ve marked for trade or flea markets in the future, as well as harboring some party games and the small OSBG library. I was due for another collection picture. So here it is:
Remember last year when I posted that I thought I might be turning into a Wargamer.
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.
Uggh, I haven’t been very good lately. I’ve bought a couple of games I really shouldn’t have simply because I got a good deal on them or something.
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.
Terror Bull Games has cobbled together a quick Prisoner’s Dilemma style game based on the Oil Leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
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.
Alright, so I’ve only had it for five days, and despite having a rather unfortunate name. Of which I no longer think it is unfortunate, Apple is taking it back! I love this device.
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!!!