BootheNet.com

Alright, so it’s out a little later than I would like, but here you go. My Five & Dimes lists and what I think about them.

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.

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, Play Statistics, playlists

I am beginning to think that I take No. of Players recommendations for a board game too seriously sometimes.

I’ve often felt that sometimes when a game is optimized for number of players. I will only play with that Number of Players. And the game won’t even cross my mind if it isn’t that optimal number of players. What’s wrong with wanting to play a game only when the right number of players exists?

Well. I thought that until this weekend. I went to Memphis Gameday this weekend, and walked in, and there were three other people. The only game I had taken up was Zauberschwert & Drachenei and Wabash Cannonball, both of which work great with four people. But didn’t really feel like playing either of them on Saturday. (Actually I felt like playing, just didn’t feel like teaching).

But, they were starting a game of Antike, a game I very much have enjoyed. Even though I am a little put off by the combat mechanic. (I’d still like to try the Mare Nostrum mechanic, but that is the subject for another blog) They were starting the game with three people. But I walked in the door and asked if I wanted to play. Now, I’ve never played this game with anything other than the full complement of six players. And never thought to try it with anything other than that number. But four players worked quite well.

That’s one thing. But after that, we were deciding what to play, and someone suggested El Grande. To which I totally thought… “No Way!! El Grande with less than five? Why would we do that?” But to be honest. I hadn’t taken much. And none of the other stuff there interested me. So I agreed and we played.

It was quite fun. It’s a little less strict, and the bidding isn’t quite as brutal. But I wouldn’t say it was any less “fun”. And that is the reason we are playing games in the first place.

Granted. I probably wouldn’t want to try El Grande with three, even though it says that on the box. But I might actually think about playing that if that is the mood I’m in and there are four players, whereas before, I never would have…

But that got me thinking? What other games might I want to open my mind up about a bit more. There are several games I’ve got where I won’t consider playing them without the “perfect” number of players. But maybe I should relax my standards a bit.

Die Macher, Princes of Florence, San Marco, Struggle of Empires, Taj Mahal, and Santiago, are just a few of what come to my mind immediately when I think about not wanting to play except with the optimal number. I’m going to look into possibly relaxing my optimal no of players standards more in the future.

written by Chris \\ tags: playlists, rant

Yesterday I went up to Memphis to play a few things at Gamesday East. The MSBGC hosts two public gamedays each month at two different restaurants in the Memphis Area.

I don’t normally go up to them. But I felt like gaming yesterday and packed a few things in the car and made the hour drive up to San Francisco Bread Co.

First up was a game of Bang! NG brought the Bang! the Bullet set in and wanted to give it a go. We were all standing around trying to decide what to play and finally settled on just playing one big game with all eight of us to start off. Bang! is a pretty good game. It can be a little long sometimes, but it is always fun. We mixed in the Dodge City Stuff and passed out the roles. Well, I drew the sheriff, and started off the game. It was a close game. Outlaws eliminated early, and came down to two deputies, me, and one renegade. The renegade eliminated my deputies, and I ended up one on one with the renegade. It was two or three turns into the duel when I dropped a jail card on the renegade. But he got lucky, drew a heart to escape from jail, and managed to bang me for my last life, ending the game as a win for the renegade.

Next I showed a couple of people how to play Pandemic. Because it was three players, with two new players, I set it up with only four epidemic cards in the deck. A very nice mix of infections to start the game made for a fairly easy game without a whole lot of trouble. I managed to pick up only my second win. This was the first time I’ve played the game on easy mode though. That makes me like 2-7 so far, with one win on easy, one on medium, and the rest losses on medium with one loss on hard.

After Pandemic, JP showed us Red Dragon Inn. This was kind of a fun little game, it’s kind of cheezy with a lot of luck, and humor in the cards. But the theme was darling, us group of adventurers back at the Inn getting drunk trying to drink others under the table. Last adventurer standing wins. I had fun with it, and the theme works with the crew I typically am trying to get interested in gaming here in Oxford. But I’d hate to buy a game like Red Dragon Inn when I honestly don’t really want to play it, and just want to use it to suck in other players to trying my stuff. The game worked decently enough and the different card decks made each character stand out for sure. I managed to win as the priestess. My healing spells keeping my fortitude up high enough so that despite having a high Blood Alcohol content, my body didn’t shut down and I didn’t pass out.

A game of Race for the Galaxy ended the evening as I showed a couple of people how to play it. I drew Epsilon Erdani but had cards that said to go military in my first hand, I pretty much dropped a couple of those, and went half military and tried to speed the game through developments and a couple of military settlements. Unfortunately, I was relying on the other players to play settle while I did develop. But they kept not cooperating and instead doing consume, while I had little to nothing to consume. This made the game go on two long, and I ended up not doing so well (coming in last.) JP had 24 points, MM had 22, and I had 20.

Had fun. Hopefully a couple of those guys can make it next weekend to my party and we can have another good time.

written by Chris \\ tags: Memphis, MSBGC, playlists

This past weekend was the aforementioned Tennessee Game Days that I had mentioned earlier.

I packed up the Girls on Friday afternoon and headed that way. It’s not to far. I was meeting Judy (Val’s Mom) in Mt. Juliet in order to drop the girls off for the weekend with Nana. Plus it left All of us out of Mom’s hair for the weekend while she set up for a Yard Sale.

I mainly went to hopefully go a long way toward helping me on a board game purge. I think it’s safe to say I accomplished my mission there. I sold almost everything I took. Ended up making enough money to pay for the hotel and any food I ate. As well as the gas there and back. Also had a few extra bucks to put into the bank account and pay off a few bills. But the main goal. I dropped about 40 games off of my shelves and closets. This was the key.

I had some problems. Alot of the stuff I had put higher prices on, in order to have them not sell so that I would have to bring them home, ended up being the first things to go. That was a little bit disappointing. But of course, I didn’t take anything “mission critical” or the like. Everything I took that I was interested in. I have some ability to be able to play should I really want to. Either here, or in Memphis or the like.

As far as the games. I had a great weekend filled with lots of games.

Race for the Galaxy got played a couple of times. I really like Race more and more. But it is getting played alot, just because it fills an almost perfect niche. I still don’t have a copy for myself. That’s one of the things I am looking for eventually.

I tried a couple of notable new games. Through the Ages, Brass, and Wabash Cannonball.

Through the Ages was really good, albeit a long game. I really liked it though, and it did feel like a nice build your engine civ style game. But again, still took a long time, and the pieces are quite fiddly with all the tiny bits of wood and stuff you have to use to acknowledge your people and advances.

Brass was kind of meh to me. I didn’t think it was all that great. I had not really been wanting to play it all that much. But I love Martin Wallace games typically and it was being played, so I figured why not. Well the card draw kind of felt limiting to me. And it had a lot of similar feeling that Canal Mania did. A game which I did not enjoy at all. It was only okay. I would play it again, but beyond another time or two, I’m not sure this one will be a clear staple that a couple of the other Martin Wallace Games have become (*cough* Age of Steam *cough*).

Wabash Cannonball on the other hand. Was a 45 minute melding of a game concept that I absolutely enjoyed. A train themed economic game, you buy and sell shares in railroad companies in the coal area of the U.S. during the industrial age. Streamlined to the nth degree. What you are left with is pure economic maneuvering and gameplay with complex diplomatic set ups which make a person your friend one turn, and your enemy the next. This game is sparse on the components, only a paper map, a few wooden cubes, and some cut out pieces of paper. But the design of this one is great, and one I could see becoming a truly fast filler with all kinds of meat behind it. However, Replayability with the same people over time might suffer because of the lack of random elements in the game.

A few other things got to the table as well. I love these game weekends, because though I slow down and like to chat and talk to people, and friends I haven’t seen since the last convention. You still get way more gaming in than you hoped or even cared too. I got to play Breaking Away, Medici, Survive, Crokinole, Um Reifenbrite, Attika, Java, Pandemic, Ra, and a couple others here or there. Had a blast, I hope circumstances will allow me to make it back again next year.

written by Chris \\ tags: Game Collection, Kids, Play Statistics, playlists, Purge, Tennessee Game Days

As you might have remembered from my last post on the subject, this past Saturday the Ole Miss Gamers Association (of which I am a small part) had a gameday to try to promote their club to a wider audience, as well as possibly raising a few funds and in general, have a good time.

It was a full day of Gaming and Prizes. There was a couple of Video Game Tournaments, some RPG One-shots of various systems, a couple of CCG tournaments, and of course, I was in charge of the Board Games.

I also mingled in some of the other games. I wasn’t about to get into an RPG or CCG or anything, but I did play in the Guitar Hero III tournament. Mostly I signed up for Comedic Effect though. Some of those people are insane in their skills. I lost the first round, got sent to the losers bracket, where I managed to win my second match, but quickly lost my third. About two matches away from possibly making it to a final. I can also come to terms with the fact that I will never be able to play this game on any level harder than Medium.

Anyway, the bulk of the day was spent playing and teaching Board Games. I had set up a game library mostly out of my own games. I spent alot of the day just manning the library and explaining some games that others would ‘check out’.

As far as me playing some games, I didn’t really want to make any of the gaming about me. So I tried to avoid picking any of the games that would be played that day. As you can probably tell from my play list, I was mostly successful.

I began the day teaching/playing Boomtown. It’s a nice little game, however, it is extremely luck driven. Granted, you can play to give yourself the best chance of winning, but the dice just don’t get rolled frequently enough to make it an even distribution on which mines would be good or bad to occupy. I did end up winning this game by a fairly large margin. Mostly through huge payouts on two of my mines, and grabbing an early governor card which turned out to net some big mayor bonuses. I like Boomtown, but it’s much better set as a quick game, while you’re having some drinks. But as a serious game goes. I just don’t think it can cut the mustard. It is too luck driven.

After that, I played a game of Apples to Apples. Apples to Apples is a game I used to love, although I haven’t played this one in at least two years. It has been eclipsed in my mind by Attribute. But Apples to Apples is still fun, and surprisingly, despite its being widely (read: walmart) available, alot of people still don’t know much about it. If you’re reading this and are new to games. It’s a decent game to pick up. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and give it a shot.

On a side note, I prefer Apples to Apples with a variant where we throw in a random card that nobody threw in as well. Nobody at the table playing Apples to Apples had ever heard of that, but it’s always fun when the random card gets picked.

After A2A I then sat down and taught and played a couple of games of Qwirkle. Twice with the same group. They came in wanting to learn some Board Games specifically. They asked about Qwirkle. (It is a pretty game) I told them it was basically scrabble without words. And they wanted to try it. They liked it so much they demanded to play it again. I have to agree it is a pretty good game, with a couple of different ways to play it. I’ve only played it about four times, and I do think it suffers a bit from the same problem as Puerto Rico. You can totally be set up by the person to your right. That can skew the game, but if everyone is paying attention, and understands the tile mix, and rules, then it does make for a really good game.

The same group playing Qwirkle then asked about Crokinole, I had set up the board early in the morning and left it set up all day. Of course, with the foot traffic, alot of people asked about it, and I made it a point to always sit someone down and have them play a bit if they asked. Crokinole is one of those games I’ll always have a copy of somewhere in my life from now on. The group playing Qwirkle was just one of several different people that sat down at one time or another and played a quick game of Crokinole.

When then grabbed a few more players and played a couple of games of Liar’s Dice. With the Pirates of the Caribbean movie cameo of this game. More people know how to play it (or at least, aren’t totally unfamiliar with it). The new players found out just how much fun this game can be with the right crowd. I won the first game, but the second, I got knocked out early on a bad call when three people in a row lied about what they had. (Alright, I wasn’t knocked out, but I think I lost 3 dice in the exchange, which severely hampered me for the remainder of my game.)

Mingled into a different crowd and ended up playing a couple more games of Apples to Apples. I really think I should have brought Attribute. With as big a hit Apples to Apples was, I wish I could have shown them the better version of it, or at least, what I think is the better version of it. They would have had a good time with it, but it was all good, they liked A2A.

Around this time, the Super Smash Brothers Brawl Tournament was going on. I’m not really into that game, and I was sitting around chatting with some of the other people who were not playing it. We ended up chatting about Video games, and one of them Mentioned liking Tetris. Well, I jumped at the chance to introduce them to a new boardgame. So I went and grabbed Ubongo.

I don’t really like Ubongo. I like the tetrisy aspect of it, but the dexterity quickly grab the tiny gems before the timer runs out is not nearly as fun to me, but I live with it to introduce it to people that like puzzles. Well, this one was also a hit. After a quick rules explanation, we ended up playing two games. One of them on the hard side of the board (That’s the first time I’ve ever played the hard side).

I kind of feel like this is one I should probably replace the sand timer with a digital timer, we aren’t very strict usually. If someone finishes before the sand goes out, we’ll typically let them move and grab gems for a second or two after (but we don’t let them sit and think long about which gems to grab.) But in hard mode, we had a different problem. There were a couple of times where we were looking at our boards solving the puzzle and for a while, nobody looked at the timer, and finally someone would look up and say, we’re out of time, with nobody having solved the puzzle. No telling how long we were like that…

And finally we finished off the night with a half a game of Descent. We started a bit to late to have any hope of getting this one finished. But we did get it introduced to two new players. (One being one of the Ubongo players who was an RPGer at heart and she had never tried one of our boardgames.) As far as the boardgaming goes, I’m glad we got some new people to at least try a couple of the boardgames. The RPGers and the CCGers and the Boardgamers sometimes don’t really mingle when we have our regular meetings, but with a whole day to play, everyone found time to at the very least go and look at some of the other games being played. And maybe it will help us to talk to each other a little bit more at our meetings as well.

As far as the club as a whole and how everything went, I think that it was a pretty good day. They ended up with about 45 paying customers. So I think they were calling that a hit.

On another side note, I was in the prize drawing, hoping to win one of those Video iPod Nano’s that look so cool. But alas, it wasn’t to be. And then I ended up winning a computer case with the Ole Miss Logo on it. Which was great, it was a nice case, however, I really like my Macbook case I currently have, (It fits it so perfectly and is so small and easy to carry). But looking at the nice case, (which I almost told them I didn’t want and to give it away to someone else) I instead thought Val might like it. Turns out, I forgot, she can’t use the dang thing. It has the Colonel Rebel Ole Miss Logo on it. Which she is not allowed to portray. I completely forgot about that. So now I have a fairly nice computer bag, and nothing to do with it…

written by Chris \\ tags: Boardgames, computer, Ole Miss, OMGA, playlists, Video Games