February 05, 2008

• You trying to get me fired?
• yes. You can join me on the unemployment line :)
• I'll be excited if they can get Arkham Horror online.
• Also available online: Shut the Box. Yarrr.
• I just learned to play Carcassone last month! Turned out I didn't care for it, but it was a gateway drug and now I'm playing Ticket to Ride and San Juan and a couple of pirate-themed board games whenever I get the chance. And I just started a board game group that will meet for the first time this weekend. Yay board games!
• Just had an epic Cities and Knights of Catan game at our anti-Superbowl party on Sunday. Fucking great game. Am I the only Albuquerque monkey these days? If not, maybe we can get something going...
• When I had friends staying over a few weeks ago, we got the "retro" Risk™ set that was sold as a tie-in to Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium on clearance. It was tons of fun.
• Forgot to add: My Grandma had a set of bookshelves in the upstairs hallway crammed with puzzles and board games. It looked like the closet in The Royal Tenenbaums. Some of the games were original 1950's-60's versions. We spent a lot of evenings there with full houses of uncles, aunts, and cousins, and it was such a treat when Grandma would say we could go up and pick out a game. There was a lot of squabbling over the game play, but it was all in good fun. Board games make me miss her, but with a smile.
• I just got Settlers of Catan for Christmas, after wanting it for years... but of course, nobody I live with actually likes board games. Best friend does, so we played about a month ago with her family. After playing, the two things that seem like they'd be the most helpful are the lucite board frames sold on eBay (which come in interlocking pieces for easy storage, and help you keep your little hex-shapes together, a big Catan problem), and the decks of cards that replace the dice (there's too much going on all over the board to want to roll dice onto it). The former is an unofficial product, the latter official. With regard to the former, it's helpful to know how much you plan to expand your game, because there's a larger and more expensive frame set to use with expansions... no point in buying the cheaper one if you're just going to go buy "Cities and Knights" a few months later. We all just played Talisman this weekend. I also got that for Christmas, and the one I have (the new 4th) is much nicer than the 2nd edition, but we played someone's 2nd. It was groovy because they had the City expansion. Talisman expansions are interesting because they tend to replace places on the game board: you set the corner or edge of the board on that space. Timescape is a notable (and unpopular) exception, an attempt to bring the Warhammer 40K universe into the game. It was also available to us the other night, but we skipped it. (Probably a good thing: we aren't as young as we used to be, and all threw in the towel after about four hours or so of gaming.) I've been semi-aware of Catan and Risk online but I haven't got around to playing them. I think there's also a newer console version of Catan that came out in the past year. Re what TUM said, my cousins' step-grandparents (no relation to me at all, but nice people) had a ton of old board games in their basement rec room. I was close to my cousins and tended to visit these step-grandparents with them on holidays when I was around 7-10 years old... we always played their old copies of Don't Break The Ice, Sorry, Parcheesi, games like that. Mostly from the 1960s. Our shared grandparents never really had kid-friendly games... they had a lot of kids and had been poor when their kids were young, so all the games around the house were mysterious, un-fun-seeming things like Tripoly and Rummikub, and cards were played a lot. But if we brought a game with us, it was always played. This is practically an update to my comment on the last board game thread! (sometime last year?)
• I bought Chromino over the weekend. Is good, esp. for solitaire. Weekend before that, I crushed the spirits of some little girls by snatching the store's last copy of the fifth Carcassonne expansion set. You snooze, you lose, kids. Eye of the tiger.
• After playing, the two things that seem like they'd be the most helpful are the lucite board frames FYI Cities and Knights comes with a cardboard frame for the board. Probably not worth buying if that's all you're after, but a nice extra with a pretty great expansion. I *think* I heard that the new edition of Settlers of Catan will come with the frame as well, but don't hold me to it. Random game thoughts: Cities and Knights changes Settlers of Catan into a whole different game. A good game, but quite different. Try before you buy, certainly. Arkham Horror is a great theme but a mess of a game. A lot of fun from time to time, but doesn't really hold up with a lot of consecutive plays. Also, it takes 6 hours. The Kosmos line of two player games is awesome, awesome, awesome. If you've only got one steady gaming partner, invest in these, particularly Dracula, Odin's Ravens and Lost Cities.
• How does Cities and Knights work? I'm finally learning Settlers - tried before with humans, but they were all so good they creamed me, and I never really got to learn. But now I can just sit and play against bots until I figure out the basic strategies. Carcasonne against bots is getting boring, though. They are bold or unpredictable or evil, the way humans can be.
• Cities and Knights is what you play when you're sick of plain Settlers. Basically, it chucks the development cards (army, monopoly, harvest etc) in favor of a technology tree. So, instead of just buying a card from the same grab-bag stack, you invest in city improvements that a) give you benefits (like drawing a resource of your choice on turns when none of your squares produce) and b) allow you to draw cards that are specifically geared toward the type of improvement that you've built (building a fortress gives you military cards, for instance). Turns out that this affects the game pretty considerably, players who wisely invest in improvement can do some very nasty things to their competitors and, in my experience, Cities and Knights games become very confrontational. Also, as I indicated before, all the new bells and whistles can really up the game time. Sometimes I think that's a good thing, sometimes I want to kill myself. I've never played any of these online, I just enjoy the interaction element so much, I'm not sure I'd really be able to get into a game against bots or even far away humans.
• I've just found out my sister-in-law has gotten into Settlers, so I'm envisioning many games in our future. I made #2 buy it for me but he's not into it and so it sits, lonely.