Christmas Games

Here's a picture of me teaching Gabriel how to play chess. He liked it ok until I started capturing his pieces with my knight. He yelled at me to stop using the horse.





We played Rhino Rampage before that, and he actually won that game legitimately.

End of the Year

With Christmas and New Years behind me, I was thinking back on the year that's just ended. The one constant in the universe is change, and a lot has changed since this time last year. So much so that I'm thinking that maybe I'm remembering things incorrectly. The biggest change is that I have 3 kids now instead of 2. That I'm pretty sure of.

It's hard to believe that at this time last year I had only played maybe 5 or 6 boardgames in the previous couple of years. Now, it's my primary gaming outlet, even more so than video/computer games (with the noble exception of Worldwide Soccer Manager). A quick count at BoardGameGeek has me having played 71 games in 2008. Maybe 5 of them were miniatures, the rest being boardgames. And it was probably more since I didn't start using that site until June.

I'm not necessarily singing the praises of boardgames though. I'm not saying that since I've discovered boardgames I've decided to give up miniatures, because I haven't. I think the main reasons I've been playing so many boardgames is that the people I live near now play them they don't require as big of a commitment as miniature gaming does.

Boardgames also look cool, as I've stated before.

Soccer (Football)

Recently the call went out to the Army of Central Maryland's Yahoo group for people to run games at Cold Wars 2009. I said I would run a game.

So I'm sitting here thinking that it's very easy to say you're going to run a game, something else entirely to actually do it. But it shouldn't be a big deal, since I'm going to put on a modern African game and I won't have to paint anything new. That doesn't mean that I won't paint anything new, but since I've got a fair amount of miniatures and scenery already I won't have to stress about it.

I'm also sitting here playing Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009. This is the US version of Football Manager 2009, a very popular computer game in England and my favorite computer game of all time. When I say game I mean all of the versions that I have played, which right now is probably around 5 or 6. Anyhow, in these games you manage a professional soccer team. Originally the game was all text-based. When your team played a game, the only feedback you got on how things were going came from text that flashed along the bottom of the screen. Later versions introduced a 2D representation of the game, with your players appearing as little circles on the field. This latest version has a 3D match engine, though it is pretty rudimentary and pales in comparison to video games like EA's Fifa series. But, looks are not what this game is all about. It's got a lot of depth and really makes you feel like your running the team.

That's all for now. Steven Gerrard just rang a shot off the post in the first minute against Manchester United. Gotta watch the game.

Too Many Games?

My cup runneth over. I expanded my recently played list to 10 games.

Anyhow, thought I'd post the 5 games that I haven't played that I want to play the most:

The Devil's Cauldron
Here I Stand
Twilight Imperium
Descent
The Napoleonic Wars

There's certainly no guarantee that I'll play any of these games in the near future. I'd guess that the game that is the farthest out would be The Devil's Cauldron, since it seems pretty complicated and there's a lot of counters to punch out. I imagine of the above games Twilight Imperium is the most likely to be played next, but we'll see.

My 5 most anticipated games that haven't come out yet:

Burger Joint
Unhappy King Charles
Le Havre
Republic of Rome (Valley Games reprint)
Wars of the Roses

Of these Republic of Rome has to be the furthest away from being played, since it might not be released in this decade, if at all.

And, my list for out of print games that I really want to play:

Kremlin
Kingmaker
Raid on St. Nazaire
This Accursed Civil War

Finally, my list of games that I only want because they look pretty:

War of the Ring Collector's Edition
Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition
Samurai
Race the Wind (I also think this game looks like it would be fun to play

Kids' Games

On Tuesdays and Thursdays my wife works and my younger children are at the babysitter's so in the afternoon it's just me and my 7 year old, Gabriel. After homework (boring) we play (fun). He beat me in checkers and we tied in Hey That's My Fish!, but I did get a win in NHL 08.






Maybe I can get him to try Battlelore again next week. This time I'm going to set the game up before I even ask him. Last time he was all set to play but by the time I was done setting up the game he'd lost interest.

And he has pajamas on because it was wear pajama day at school.

Too Many Eurogames?

I was checking my blog to see if there were any new comments (there werent') and I noticed my boardgamegeek game tracking thingy was filled with what I would call "Eurogames." And, the answer to the question in this post's title is yes.

The Great Board Game Crash of..?

On recommendation from my buddy Marshall, I checked out the Fortress Ameritrash site today.

Read the article about how the hobby game industry may crash like the video game one did long ago. I found this fascinating. For starters, the "video game crash" reminds me of the Reagan presidency. When Reagan was elected I was 9 years old and when he finished his second term I was 17, so I did a lot of growing up during that time. What I remember of those times was people making fun of him because he was an actor/old/Republican/etc... There were scandals like the Iran-Contra thing. But he talked a good game, had buckets of charisma, and everyone loved him.

Fast forward to the beginning of this century, and airports are being named after him. All of a sudden he's remembered as being one of the greatest presidents ever. Not how I remembered it at all.

Now, I'm not saying Reagan wasn't a great president, that's not my point. What I'm trying to say is that how history has looked back on those times is very different from what I remember experiencing during those times.

Just like the video game crash. People talk about that now and I'm like, "What video game crash?" I remember having the Atari 2600 and loving it. I remember really wanting a computer to play games on but my parents wouldn't buy one ("Them computers are a fad!"). I remember playing the Nintendo Entertainment System when I was in 11th or 12th grade. Somewhere in between the Atari and the NES was the fabled video game crash. I didn't notice.

Granted, if the hobby board game industry goes belly-up, I'll probably notice since I'm a lot older than I was back in the early 80's. But it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I'll just watch tv and play Dungeons and Dragons like I did back in those dark days between 1983 and 1987.