More Kids Games

On Valentine's Day my wife and I went out to dinner and a movie, and her friend brought her son over the house and watched our kids. I thought it was pretty cool when we got back that my son Gabriel (on the right) was teaching her son how to play Heroscape. They totally did this all by themselves. They played the simple version of the game and Gabriel's villains eventually lost to Brinley's heroes. I was quite proud of him for doing this on his own.

Another picture.

Changes

Changed some stuff on the left over there, since I haven't been doing any painting I added lists of what I have been doing.

As for games, Cosmic Encounter seems to be a big hit. Pretty chaotic and lots of fun.

Unhappy King Charles

We finished our game with the Royalists (me) winning an auto victory. The Royalists auto win by capturing London and controlling it and at least 3 territories for two turns. Parliament can auto win by capturing the king. Marshall tried to do this and I was worried since I left him pretty exposed, but then I remembered the evasion rule and was able to slip away. Marshall complained in our podcast (http://messygameroom.libsyn.com/) about the king slipping away, but it's in the rules and from what I've read a big part of warfare in the ECW (and other conflicts too).

This pleased me both because I won and because I believe in the divine right of kings.

I really liked the game and I think I will like it even more playing it again since we were getting some of the rules wrong.

More Updates

Since I haven't been updating this blog very much, I'm going to start thinking about it differently. Right now I'm treating each entry as if it were an essay, wherein I try to have some sort of topic and I put some amount of labor into the crafting of the sentences.

Now I'm going to treat it more like a diary.

With that in mind...

My buddy Marshall and I started playing Unhappy King Charles tonight. This was the first game I ever pre-ordered on a manufacturer's web site. The English Civil War (the subject of the game) is one of my favorite historical periods, so I told him that I liked this game before I even played it. Having played two turns so far I like it for the game it is as well. The game has this feeling where there is no "front" that the fighting occurs at, rather there's armies moving around England either looking to cause trouble for the other side or respond to threats. More on this game after we finish playing tomorrow.

The game after the Campaign Phase of the second turn.

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.