Life Imitates Games

I bought a new bike for the kid today. The plan is that we can all go riding and not be so fat. Brisbane has a very nice bike path system, by the way.

On Order

Scrabblette is off to the U.S. on a taxpayer-funded junket, but she's bringing back games for this particular taxpayer so let's not bitch too much. Here's what's on its way to various locations around the U.S. for her to collect.

Taluva - I just can't get those sexy bits out of my mind, I must have that game! When I went to place my order last week it was out of stock at Boards and Bits. Then it came into stock but I had to wait for Scrabblette to decide whether she wanted to buy anything. Then it went out of stock again. I ended up ordering it from Amazon instead. I didn't want to.

Urland and its expansion - For some reason, I decided that because I couldn't get Taluva I had to order this from Boards and Bits instead. I have Primordial Soup and EVO, it would be silly to not get the second game in the trilogy, huh?

Runebound expansions - Yes, I do like Runebound and I intend to play some of it with myself while Scrabblette's away. I ordered the Sands of Al-Kalim and about 6 smaller expansions. I've avoided the class decks because they're not so useful if you play solitaire.

Fiji - My Friedemann fetish continues. My kid is starting to love him too.

Hey, That's My Fish! - Scrabblette likes abstracts, and this is the highest rated abstract I don't already own. Oh yeah, this and the next 3 games are coming direct to me from the FIGS in Melbourne. B&B didn't have this in stock the first time I looked, then unhalfbricking got it, and I decided that since Julian games with me and Tom doesn't make it over here so much, I'd get it from Julian.

Cave Troll - I'm not sure I'm going to like this one, but I'll see. I first tried to order it with Orcz and Arena Maximus, and they both turned out to be turkeys, so I'm scared.

Funny Friends - I need my own copy so CyberKev doesn't know when I'm holding my swingers' parties. Baby psychotic tornado sister liked it so much she'll demand we play it next time she visits. Which reminds me, I'd better order some food in for Pete.

On the Underground - Yes, it's another train game! I like Trans Europa a lot, so I thought I'd push my luck.

Portable Adventures: Lair of the Rat King - I have Battle of the Bands which is a very good silly card game that the kids like a lot. They LOVE Santa Claus becoming a junkie and the producer dying in a bus crash (game after game) and all the other nonsense. This and the next game are in the same series by the same designer, so I'm expecting good things. I ordered these from the publisher's on-line store.

Portable Adventures: 8th Grade - My nephew is in 1st Grade so he may not understand this one and may not be able to read the cards for a while yet, but my niece is in 7th Grade so this should be right up her alley.

Funny Family

On the weekend, Scrabblette, the kid and I went up to Bundaberg to visit baby psychotic tornado sister and Uncle Pete. The drive up consumed 6 hours of good gaming time, punctuated only by a visit to the kid's cousins where we played Make'n'Break. Baby Sister likes games but Uncle Pete is not so keen unless there's fighting in it... here's the story we made up about him.

"When Baby Sister met Pete he only knew three verbs. He could make sentences like PETE EAT (if he was eating, or hungry); PETE PUNCH (if he liked you) or PETE DECK! (if he didn't like you). Pete's Mum could tell Pete liked Baby Sister because she was allowed to take food off his plate. When you asked Pete to describe what he did at night when his eyes were closed he would either tell you PETE EAT! meaning he'd been dreaming about eating, or PETE NOT EAT! meaning he'd had a dream-free sleep."

There's more, about how when Pete was born he looked like a potato, and the visit to the bookshop on Sunday where Pete correctly identified books as "things Pete use to make table not rock", but that's not the point of the story. Pete was so worn out on Saturday night that he didn't even eat all of his dinner, and when I explained Funny Friends he didn't follow at all.

I wasn't sure how the kid would go with this game, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. When I was explaining the puberty cards and I showed "Parents Separate" (get a sadness and a money), he said "hey, just like real life! I got a bike and a TV in my room!" and I knew that he would get something out of it. Scrabblette had played before (less than a week after I met her), and when Baby Sister started trying to help Pete I knew she was getting it. So apart from Pete, we were off to a flying start.

It was very interesting playing this game with non-gamers... well that's a poor description... people who didn't care so much about winning. In many of the auctions the result was negotiated before the auction happened, resulting in the card being sold for 0. For example... you can take that and let me be your girlfriend because I need to get that... and then I'll take that because I need a broken relationship. Many times we were able to find a compromise which benefitted all parties. I'd say only about half of the auctions in the game involved time being spent.

An interesting development came when Baby Sister took "It was just one time" (you must be a virgin, you get a relationship, sex and a baby). At first she tried to make her partner Scrabblette until I pointed that homosexual relationships did not produce babies in this game (unless you get the card that does that). So the kid volunteered instead. He stayed happily married to his aunt for a long time, and they had 5 babies and 5 sexes together. We ran out of sex markers so Baby Sister started sharing hers around. When I asked the kid at the end why he needed so many babies he said "because it was funny". Oh, OK, games are meant to be fun, I've heard.

Apart from the productive relationship with his auntie, the kid also scored some anonymous sex. With a man. What have I raised here? However after a few more homosexual encounters the kid was able to play his "Coming Out" life goal. At least with that card, he didn't let the theme interfere with the pursuit of victory. I wonder if he'd spent less time making babies with his aunt would he have achieve more life goals?

After doing drugs, smoking, drinking, being fat, sad and wise, and so on, I'd achieved 4 of my life goals (Game Designer, Emotional Cripple, umm...). Baby Sister and Scrabblette were laying down life goals right behind me, clearly in pursuit of victory. I needed to achieve enlightenment which required drugs when there were none to be had. For the first time ever I chose to exchange goals and drew Celibacy instead. That was an easy one to achieve, and I won the game shortly afterwards.

We finished up about 11pm after laughing ourselves silly for about 3 hours. Funny Friends is a very fun game with the right crowd, and it turns out that crowd can contain even my 10 year old. And what happened to Uncle Pete? PETE NOT EAT.

Dimes for 2006, Except You Know I Wouldn't Do it the Normal Way

My nickel and dime list is on boardgamegeek. You can go look at it there if you want. What I'd like to talk about today is the designers for whom I scored at least 10 plays in 2006. There are actually 29 of them, so I won't even mention all of them, just the ones who made an impression on me.

Reiner Knizia (20 games, 68 plays) - Reiner is the king of designers, and it's almost impossible to avoid playinghis games. He was my #1 designer last year and probably will be this year as well. Having said that though, I'm becoming less enchanted with many of his games. Ingenious, Poison and Ra saw a lot of play this year, but I need a rest from them. Some of his other games such as E&T, Through the Desert, Battle Line and Rheinlander need to be played more this year. I'd like to play Amun-Re, but I don't mind if I miss out on Medici and Modern Art. In any case, RK has designed such a variety of games that there'll always be something for me to play.

Richard Borg (8 games, 32 plays) - I'm not sure it's fair that Borg gets credit for Bluff - did he really invent it? I heard it was a game played by pirates in the 17th century! Nevertheless, the Command & Colors system will keep him in my list of top designers and I still like playing Wyatt Earp.

Bruno Faidutti (10 games, 32 plays) - There are many of Bruno's games that I like a lot and would like to play more - Castle, Citadels, Mystery of the Abbey, China Moon for a start. There are also a few others I don't mind. With luck, he'll see more play this year.

Kris Burm (6 games, 32 plays) - I missed out on my ambition to get the whole GIPF Project onto my nickel list last year, but if I liked YINSH a bit more I might have tried harder. However I expect ZERTZ, GIPF, DVONN and PUNCT to be played quite a few times this year. Last year I bought ZERTZ on the exact day my wife told me she was leaving me (in March) and as a result didn't get to play it until about July or August. I expect I won't have that problem again this year!

Wolfgang Kramer (10 games, 22 plays) - As the numbers might suggest, Kramer has designed a lot of games but I don't come back to play them regularly. Of those that I've played I really only like Tikal, Torres and Celtica, so I'd struggle to call him one of my favourite designers. However I like Tikal and Torres A LOT, so I'd like to try Mexica and Java this year.

Doris & Frank (6 games, 17 plays) - Doris and Frank produce consistently good games, and although it took me a while to warm to Frank's Zoo I'm finally getting used to shedding games. This pair is almost on my automatic must-have list, if only to see what the hedgehogs are up to this time.

Klaus Teuber (7 games, 10 plays) - What this says to me is that I don't play Settlers of Catan enough. I'd also like to get Hoity Toity to the table more often, but I seem to be the only person who thinks that it's a game of skill.

The question that strikes me at the end of this list is: Where's Friedemann? I like Funny Friends and Fearsome Floors, so where is he? Fearsome Floors - 4 plays; Funny Friends - 3 plays; Fische Fluppen Frikadellen - 1 play. I don't much like Power Grid, and he's not a hugely prolific designer, so he misses out. This year I hope to acquire Fiji and Formidable Foes, so maybe they will pump his numbers up. And I really should play FFF some more, after I bought 3 copies of it.

That's all for now. I wonder what gems these guys will produce for me this year?

Send the Children to Transylvania!

I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I got home yesterday afternoon - my order from unhalfbricking.com had arrived. Woohoo, Hameln and Die Dolmengotter! I had no time to read the rules before leaving for CyberKev's place to play, but I did manage to print the rules to Die Dolmengotter from the publisher's site. We didn't get to play it, but we did play Hameln using the time-honoured but a bit boring technique of reading the rules at the table as we set up the game. Wow, this game has a lot of bits! And it's pretty! And it's complex! It reminds me somewhat of Power Grid (3 phases) and somewhat of Goa (many ways to score VPs) and not much of Shear Panic. There's a whole lot more game than I was expecting.

It's very cute - you have houses with men and women in them. The men produce goods such as meat and the women have babies. The babies can get married and move into houses, and the meat can be sold. There are rats everywhere. When enough rats take over the board, the Pied Piper comes along and may take unmarried babies to Transylvania with him (which costs you VPs). What a good idea that is! But it also means that it's a valid strategy to father children upon other players so they have babies to worry about. Also when the girl children get married they can choose a house and the boy player has to pay. This group had played Funny Friends together, so forcing each other to get married and have children was familiar territory for us and we had some fun.

We did play several rules wrong, but one of the Lamont brothers has a good article on BGG about rules that people get wrong. The one we figured out was that when you activate males or females you can do so in multiple houses. This would have made the game move a whole lot faster and there would have been more money to splash around on the optional actions. We agreed that would improve the game, and might give it another run tonight at Critical Mass.

I had read some disparaging comments about Hameln, and that and the steep price ($A100) almost convinced me not to buy it, but I wanted those mice. Now that I've played the game, I'm glad I got it. Where is my kid, anyway?