2.10: Scrabble and more - Word games

Alas, I have missed my first post of the year. This was due almost entirely to my family being sick—first the girls, then my wife and I, and then the girls again. Regardless, we’ve had the opportunity to play a number of games I the past couple of weeks; we also had a small get-together for my wife’s birthday, during which even more games were played. We also barbecued some carne asada, but if you want to hear about that, you have to read my other blog, “Asada Quest.”

I don’t know how it happened, looking back over the last month or two, I realized we had played a large number of word games.  Most people are familiar with Scrabble—this is an excellent game, and an excellent example of many of the mechanics in a word game.  You get a random assortment of letters, and must arrange them to form a word—in Scrabble you often want the longest word or the word that uses the rarer letters (those letters worth more points--), but you also have to watch board position. A common mechanic among the games covered today, words are built upon each other in a crossword type fashion, interlocked by a single shared letter. 

One of the biggest drawbacks to playing word games is that they favor people with large vocabularies and people that spell well.  While I'm no slouch in either of these areas, I've played people that put me to horrible shame.  Did you know that Ibex is a word?  Did you know it scores ten-gazillion points if placed on the correct spot on a Scrabble board.

2.9: Game Review: Ruin

I haven't done a simple game review in a while, sure, why not.  

Ruin is listed as being designed by "Terry Miller Associates;" it was published by Buffalo Games, Inc. in 2008.  It supports 2-4 players, and takes 45 minutes to play (though I suspect it could be much, much longer).  Retail price is $25, but if you recently visited Borders, you may have been able to pick this up for a whole dollar.  That's right, $1.  So we'll pose a question, "Was this game worth $1?"

First we'll talk about the components.  Ruin comes with a board, eight pawns in 4 colors (two for each player), a deck of cards, a large d20 (that's a 20-sided die) specific to this game, and two interlocking clear plastic...things.  These two plastic pieces cover all but the corners of the board, and create the most interesting part of the game's mechanic.

Gameplay is simple, and reminiscent of many games you've probably played in your youth--on your turn you roll the die and move a pawn clockwise around the board, ultimately hoping to get to the "safe area" (in this game, the center of the board) first to win the game.  The clever part of this game is the modular path--along each edge of the board (under the plastic cover) there is a slot for three cards; if you roll a number with a red background, you can replace one of the cards along the board edge, replacing it with one from your hand.  These cards have a 3x3 grid of brick spaces or black "hole" spaces, and some of the cards have an assortment of colored masks that match the pawn colors.

Replacing the card changes the path, possibly separating one part of the path from another, or as we discovered this weekend, could also move a pawn (like your opponent's pawns) from a brick space to a hole space, causing that pawn to fall back along the path.  Here's where the colored masks come into play--when you fall in a hole (or a player ends their turn by stepping on you), you fall back to the closest mask space in your pawn color.  If you've passed the halfway point, there is an Ah Kinchil mask in your color; since the corner spaces can't be changed, it becomes important to pass the halfway point. This is actually an excellent design choice, since this alone does a lot to keep this game from going on forever.

Jackie, D, Danny and I played this over the weekend on a lark--it was on the table and the rules were short.  Despite it's simple roll and move mechanic, the game was hilarious.  Eventually Jackie and Danny were within a few turns of victory, and spent every opportunity thwarting each other.  I was horribly behind, so D and I were locked in mortal combat one card away from my start area.  Ultimately it was Jackie who won, distracting us with Danny's misfortune (he'd been separated from his stair area by a card which had no path to them, and repeatedly failed to roll a red-background number).

Overall I was surprised and pleased by this game--while I'm probably not going to insist on playing it, in instances where I'd play a traditional game, such as Sorry!, this will be high on the list of candidates.  My concerns about the game potentially taking forever still stand, though this was assuaged by the placement of the Ah Kinchil masks at the halfway point of each player's path.  The game was only slightly longer than the stated 45 minutes.  Of course my opinion of the game was largely influenced by the group I was playing with--everyone realized this game had a good bit of randomness, and took it as a simple and funny experience, not a challenge to be won.

Final verdict?  "I'll buy that for a dollar!"

Sorry, I had to do it.

If anyone didn't get that joke, you need to spend less time doing important things, and more time watching crappy 80's robot cop movies.

2.8: Know your Gamer - Gamer OCD

A little late on this post, as work is keeping me rather busy--at least they're feeding me well.  

Got some gaming in this week, playing Puerto Rico, Ingenious, and Agricola with D and Danny.  I managed to walk away with a victory in all three, largely because it was D and Danny's first games of Ingenious and Puerto Rico; still, I only won each game by a very few points.   Agricola was great fun but awful; we all seemed to be doing poorly the entire game, and it was only because of a large number of bonus points I gained at the end (and a large amount of baby-making) that won me the game.  In my opinion Danny did the best, especially considering he only had two family members (and thus only two actions) the entire game. 

I'm still doing a little work in the loft, aka my game room, so hopefully I'll have pictures of that in the near future.



This is our hobby, so it makes sense to take care of one's games; there is also a collecting aspect to the hobby, so one may want to display their games; games are also for playing, so making that easier and more enjoyable is reconcilable.  However, we gamers may sometimes take it a bit too far. 

I don't know where or how this has developed into an aspect of the gaming hobby; perhaps people drawn to gaming are naturally inclined toward categorization and order, just as they must don black t-shirts.  Perhaps it is a behavioral remnant of our long-ago gaming ancestors, who had to have the shiniest pebbles organized in the best woven basket.  Whatever the reason, many a gamer exhibits some form of Gamer OCD.

Being bored isn't safe for me...or my family

THIS...IS...AGRICOLA!

Something additional, and strange for this week--I realized this week's post was short, so I figured I'd throw this up here.  No comments about sloppiness, I can do better, but did this in about ten minutes; the enlarged jaw on Danny was intentional.  I almost thought about going bigger.

Jackie and I did play a game of Agricola with D and Danny (our second, their first)--the game was longer than expected, partly because we were trying to remember the rules and partly because the game was new to all of us.  I won by a large margin, but don't doubt that the next game will be closer.  Best moment of the game, about half-way through D looks at the board and her cards, and suddenly shouts out, "I just got the game!"

Looking at this, I'm tempted to do a "good" one, print it at Kinkos and hang it on the wall of our loft.

2.7: Congrats to my sister...

Who won the Ticket to Ride Regional Championship this past weekend.  She was given a gold-plated scoring marker, and will be traveling to The Gathering of Friends in beautiful Columbus, Ohio this April to participate in the National Championships.


Color me jealous.

At my excited declaration that my sister was now invited to the GoF, she initially asked "What's the Gathering of Friends?"--a question that almost resulted in her murder.  I am aware of a number of people that entered the tournament simply for this opportunity.

For those of you who aren't familiar, the Gathering of Friends is a invitation-only convention, attended by less than 500 people.  Many of the regular attendees are industry professionals, be they game designers, publishers, or whatnot.  The event is held by Alan Moon, the designer of the Ticket to Ride series of games--hence why the championships are being held there.  In addition to the general gaming that occurs over the week-plus long event, there are special events, tournaments, a flea market, the opportunity to play game prototypes and games before their official release.  Invitation to this event is sought after; every year a number of people on BGG ask "How do I get invited to the GoF?  PLEEEEEESE!"  However, it's not something you can just ask for, as stated before it is invitation only, though regular attendees can sometimes bring a guest.

Now my sister is training and thankfully has looked into the GoF, and is now excited.  She's been looking online and seen video taken by Rick Thornquist of the 2006 event, and I believe now is beginning to understand the significance of this invitation.

So, once again, congratulations to my sister.  And, if she gets to take a guest, she better take me.  I think Danny (her husband) has something to do that day, and he probably wouldn't enjoy himself there anyway.

2.6: You guessed it, Dexterity Games!

Does anyone out there have children?  I have two daughters, and this week my oldest has decided that she's going to take her naps at the end of the day, and then keep us up until midnight.  The end of the day is when I usually write, so that has caused me a few difficulties--beyond the fact that I've been perpetually tired for the last week.  I'm not complaining, but...okay, I am complaining.  I can't wait until my daughter is a teenager, I really need to keep a log I'll call "What you did," and as she complains about whatever horrible parent-thing I do, I'll allow her to check off one comparable item.  I'm certain I'll still owe her after she's moved out.

***

As I mentioned in my last post, while I do enjoy many types of games, Speed games and Dexterity games have a special draw for me.  A dexterity game is a game in which play requires some kind of physical manipulation of the pieces.  This can be stacking blocks, flicking pieces, etc.  This can be turn-based, which is what I'd call a pure-dexterity game (such as the mass market classic, Jenga), and can include a more real-time manipulation of the pieces, which we'll call an Action-dexterity game (something along the lines of Foosball would fit in this category).

You might be surprised to hear that a dexterity game was made into an epic war game.  It's a personal favorite of mine, a game of heroes, daring attacks, sabotage, and willing sacrifice for your cause.  A game who's deep theme and elaborate conflict resolution system can be pared down to two sentences. 

Insects.  And Tiddly-winks.

2.5: Simultanous action speed Games

Down to the wire, but it's here and on time.  Not much gaming this week, but I did do a little work in the loft, aka My Game Room.  See if you can guess what next week's topic is.

Also, you may have noticed that the posts include a number, for instance, this post is "2.5".  This simply means this is the 5th post of the second year of this blog, and I hope this serves as a way to keep track of each post.  I'll probably spend a little time in the near future numbering all the old posts as 1.whatever. 


Most games require that players take turns--Player A rolls the dice and moves his pieces, Player B rolls the dice and moves her pieces, Player C, Player D...  The type of games I'll talk about today are Simultaneous action speed games, sometimes simply called "Speed Games" or "Real Time" games.

These function exactly as they sound--all players act at the same time, and attempt to do so quickly.  Many may be familiar with a card game using a standard deck of cards, I learned it as "Speed;" in this game the deck of cards is dealt between two players, and players attempt to get rid of their cards by playing to a common pile, playing numbers in sequence.  This game is frenzied, fast and fun (sorry, that alliteration was unintended), and perhaps best of all it takes only a few minutes to set up and  play--this is a general trend in these types of games.

Interestingly, both games I'm covering today are by the same company, Cheapass Games. A quick note on Cheapass Games--they have an interesting concept for their games, that is, you can get dice, pawns, money, and other stuff that makes a game expensive from your other games.  As such, if you purchase one of their games, you are basically buying rules, cards and a board (printed in black and white on cardstock).  The games are  clever and quite humorous, and usually run $6 or less.  That said, they did have a line of games that were printed in color, as are the two games presented here.