East India Company: Two-player playtest holds up well

 

"East India Company" two-player session.  The prototype
board might be too "busy" and need some toning down
for clarity.

My current game design work-in-progress, "East India Company," is intended for two to five players.  My very earliest solo playtests were set for two players, and many of the coarse physical mechanics that I developed came directly from those very early sessions.  Since then, however, nearly every playtest has been with three or more players, and over time I worried that I had neglected the two-player case and that perhaps EIC would come up short in that smaller format.

Midway: The brown shoe is on the other foot

My father was a naval aviator, and for whatever reason, whereas the rest of the Navy wore black shoes with their khaki uniforms, aviators always wore brown shoes.  This "brown shoe" image has a great deal of history and pride associated with it.  Well, today after work, Frank Hodge did well by that tradition in our game of Midway (designers Larry Pinsky and Lindsley Schutz, publisher Avalon Hill).  Unlike so many of our previous games, Frank assumed the role of commander of the U.S. Navy forces, while I took those of the Imperial Japanese Navy with the goal of invading Midway Island.

Reflecting on the symmetry of abstracts

(c) Queen Games
Used by permission

My good friend Grant Greffey recently gave me a copy of Sparta (designer Yannick Holtkamp, artist Claus Stephan, publisher Queen), a rather clever abstract in the category of perfect-information zero-luck two-player games.  My wife Kathy and I tried it out last night, and we confirmed something that we've observed with other games in this category:  There are many games in which Kathy and I go toe-to-toe, and a few in which she can wipe the floor with me, but I pretty much have the advantage in these pure two-player abstracts.  She's good at them, but I usually win, which makes them imperfect candidates for our cocktail hour gaming.

Farmers and hoplites

Two quick game accounts: 

(c) Z-man Games. Used by permission

Farmers of the Moor

Last evening, Kathy and I played Agricola: Farmers of the Moor (designer Uwe Rosenberg, artist Klemens Franz, publisher Z-Man Games).  We used the "Advanced (F)" deck of minor improvements.  We took completely different approaches to our farms.  Kathy was immediately disgusted with her hand and dismissed the idea of pursuing any of her minor improvements.  In fact, the only major improvement she paid for was a fireplace, which she later upgraded to a cooking hearth.  She was the first to build an extra room and grow her family.  She built fences like crazy and had quite the sheep/boar farm going before long.

Spring game photos

I've been gaming, and photographing, but not posting so much over the last month, so I thought I'd do a little catch-up with a sampling of the things my wife and I have been playing.

Pinot grigio, Anchor Steam, and Traders of Carthage

Traders of Carthage
I've mentioned this obscure favorite a few times and actually posted about this game, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to include my photographic effort to incorporate the juxtaposition of the drinks, the game, and my lovely opponent across the table.

Unplayed games coming out of the closet

The more I read of Chris "GamerChris" Norwood's blog and the more I hear of his podcast, the more I appreciate his thoughtful take on boardgaming.  Most recently, he posted an admission of his "secret shame" - a list of unplayed games.  I recognized a number of games on his list, and was just about to chastise him for having neglected some particularly good ones ... and then I thought that perhaps I ought to see just how much glass there was in my own house before casting stones in his direction.

Showdown at Guadalcanal

My good friend Frank Hodge and I sat down after work for the last scenario in our "Pacific Theatre via Midway" series - the Battle of Guadalcanal - or more correctly perhaps, the Battle Around Guadalcanal (since we didn't worry too much about how the troops in the mud on the island itself fared - with apologies to my brother Pete the Marine).  This scenario for the first time presents the U.S. player with the same problem that faces the Japanese player in almost every other scenario - having to land transports on an objective.  In this case, both the Japanese and the Americans are trying to land forces on Guadalcanal to reinforce troops already there so as to secure control of the island.

Diana Jones Award nominees - dubious recognition

A Wil Wheaton tweet called my attention to the nomination of the YouTube Geek and Sundry show Table Top for the 2013 Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming.

The what?

War and Peace in an afternoon

(c) Worthington Publishing
Used by permission

After work today, my friends Frank Hodge and Grant Greffey and I got together to break in Grant's new copy of War & Peace (designer Grant Wylie, publisher Worthington Games).  This game covers the campaign of Napoleon in Europe in an Axis and Allies format with some interesting rules to handle shifting alliances of some of the second-tier powers of the war.  Normally a two-player game, we used the optional rule for a three-player game, so that Grant played the French as Napoleon Bonaparte, Frank played the English, and I played the Russians.

Backyard 24/7

Just a picture this time:  As the weather improves, the backyard boardgaming becomes more frequent.  Friday after work it was 24/7: The Game (designer Carey Grayson, publisher Sunriver Games).
 

Undiscovered Carthage?

(c) Z-man.  Used by permission

Last Friday, I wrote about the underappreciated game Alexandros.  I remarked that I never run across any mention of it in blogs, podcasts, or anywhere else outside its boardgamegeek entry.  This evening, Kathy and I played another game only slightly more recognizable, Traders of Carthage (designer Susumu Kawasaki, artists Peter Gifford and You Satouchi, publisher Z-man).  The whole time we were playing, I kept remarking on the tight, agonizing decisions, turn by turn.  Nothing is obvious in this game; every choice has two sides - risk and opportunity, benefit and consequence.  I wondered whether ToC, like Alexandros, might qualify as a little-known gem that deserves more recognition.

Birthday dinner gaming

Yesterday was my beautiful wife Kathy's birthday, and we celebrated by having our good friends Glenn, Jeff, and Rebecca over for dinner and boardgames.  We customarily get together every few months or so to socialize, most recently in November when we played Tsuro and Settlers of Catan at Jeff's house.

Who loves you, Alexandros?

Today, Kathy and I played Alexandros (designer Leo Colovini, art by Grafik Studio Krüger, publisher Rio

Kathy's green generals govern some
high tax-earning provinces in the west

Grande).  I'd blogged some time ago speculating that this game might have a runaway leader problem, but that was not in evidence in our game today.  Although I jumped to an early lead and tried to continually levy taxes to open my advantage, Kathy gamely and gradually caught up to me.  She accumulated cards to knock me out of my high-earning provinces, one by one.  She timed it perfectly, so that she passed me on the high end of the scoring track and maintained the tax-collecting momentum to win by a substantial 120 to 97 points.

Romance on the train: Love Letter and Ticket to Ride

Sunday afternoon, Kathy and I played Love Letter (designer Seiji Kanai, artists Andrew Hepworth and Jeffrey Himmelman, publisher Alderac Entertainment Group) for the first time.  This microgame poses some neat little logic challenges and opportunities for second-guessing, although in our first play, we didn't find it quite as "brain-bending" as Citadels, our favorite hidden-role game for getting inside each others' heads.  As it happens, we played two rules incorrectly.  First, in the two-player game, we failed to turn three cards face up at the start of each round to reduce the size of the playing deck and gain early insight into which cards were already out of play.  Second, we thought (incorrectly) that the Guard could target another Guard in an attempt to eliminate an opponent.  Since there are five Guards in the deck (as opposed to one or two of any other character), that made the Guard extraordinarily powerful in our game.  I've written before about my propensity for getting the rules wrong the first time I play a game, but fortunately, we still had fun, and the game was over in less than half an hour.  LL is a quick little diversion that I expect will get more play - and that I hope will become more intricate in the tactics and counter-tactics of anticipating each others' cards.

Love Letter arrives in the mail

Love Letter: A good thing in
a small package

Kathy recently placed an order with Amazon that, by itself, would not have qualified for free super saver shipping.  So she asked if there was anything I'd like to add to the order.  I went straight to my boardgamegeek wishlist and picked out Love Letter (designer Seiji Kanai, artists Andrew Hepworth and Jeffrey Himmelman, publisher Alderac Entertainment Group). I'd heard some very interesting hype about this little 16-card microgame.  Not every review was positive, but many were enthusiastic or at least intriguing.  I am most fascinated by the concept of a game of so few components that carries so much player interaction, logic, and second-guessing.  Coup falls into this category and, in some respects, Citadels.

Getting serious about East India Company

I've had some time over the last few days to start really stepping out on my plan for "East India Company."  I've completed a survey of candidate publishers.  I've decided that I should have a second prototype in hand ready to ship in the event that I get a positive response from a submission letter.  So my current effort is geared toward making a second prototype that reflects the lessons I've learned from my first printing foray and from the playtesting I've done with it.

Sunday afternoon Probe

This afternoon we had a family game of Probe (Parker Brothers, 1964), an old stand-by that we played way back when we were kids and that we have since passed down to the next generation.  I managed to guess Kathy's diaphragm under the "Interruptive Rule" with five letters unexposed, which gave me a 100-point bonus.  The 17-year-old's fax lasted a long time, until his having to expose blanks made obvious just how short his word was.  The 12-year-old's toxicity lasted the longest; Kathy managed to guess it at her very last opportunity before the end of the game.  My wishful was guessed the earliest in the game, but I ended up with the high score and the win.

Hive at work, and the Top Ten Lunch Break Games

Today my friend Glenn Weeks and I got together during our lunch break at work, and we took advantage of the opportunity to play a game of Hive (designer and artist John Yianni, publisher Gen42).  This turned out to be the perfect lunch break game for two.  It occupies very little table real estate, takes less than five minutes to teach, and has a playing time of about 15 or 20 minutes.

"For the Win" on the deck

For the Win final position

This evening I got home from work late, so we only had time for a quick game out on the back deck before Kathy made dinner.  So we played For The Win (designer Michael Eskue, artist Eric J. Carter, publisher Tasty Minstrel), a nice little open-information zero-luck abstract that I picked up in the first Kickstarter I ever backed.  We hadn't played since last July, when I wrote about my initial impression of the game in some detail, so it was fun to come back to this one with fresh eyes.  We just had time for one game, but it was a nice satisfying diversion while the chicken marinaded until it was time to put it on the grill.

Signs of spring: The first backyard boardgame of 2013

Spring has made its long-awaited appearance here in northern Virginia. The birds are singing, the Washington Nationals are winning (or at least they were before they went to Cincinnati), and the boardgames have finally started to come outside.

Back to Midway

On Wednesday, Frank Hodge and I returned to fight the battle of Midway (designers Larry Pinsky and Lindsley Schutz, publisher Avalon Hill).  Frank has spent considerable time refining his variable order of battle to the AH classic, and this time we had quite  a lot of fun beefing up both fleets to fight the battle in grand style.  A significant change that we prefer is that the Japanese invasion force is represented by five AP transports, rather than abstractly handled with the cruiser Atago according the rules.  The only other variation we added was the submarine optional rule from Alan R. Moon's "Pacific Theatre via Midway" article.  We didn't use B-17's in this game, and we didn't miss them.

Boats, coffee, and gladiators: Gaming after work

Yesterday after work, a bunch of us gathered for games at our Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) Game Parlor Chantilly.

(c) Calliope Games
Used by persmission

Tsuro of the Seas
Not all of us had arrived before five of us (Keith Ferguson, Carson, Brian, Grant Greffey, and myself) got impatient enough to start a quick game of Tsuro of the Seas (designers Tom McMurchie and Jordan Weisman; artists Ilonka Sauciuc and Dawne Weisman; publisher Calliope Games).  In our limited experience with this game, the dragons that were added to the original Tsuro only serve to prolong the game and randomize the outcome, so we elected to play with just the original rules and no dragons.  I didn't realize until at least halfway into the game that the TotS board is actually larger than the original - I think seven-by-seven squares rather than six-by-six.  Regardless, the game play is largely the same, and with five players, it unfolds much as you would expect.  Four of us made something of a beeline for the center, while Grant meandered in looking for a good opening.  Of course, once the wakes start to meet and players find themselves facing the same empty tile space, the real strategy comes in.  Tom and Traci M. arrived just as things were getting frantic, and it wasn't five minutes before players started falling off the map one by one until I had the last boat left facing the last empty tile space on the board to win the game.

Could 1955 go on forever?

For Christmas, my friend Paul R. gave me 1955: The War of Espionage (designer Kevin Nunn, artist Haley Ross, publisher APE Games).  I had it very high on my wishlist after some positive mention on DiceHateMe's "State of Games" podcast (starting at 42:45) as a nice tight two-player game.  Kathy and I played it once before a few weeks ago (which she won by securing my home country), and tonight we thought we'd bring it out and try it again.

Numerical analysis of "East India Company"

At UnPub 3, during the three-player playtest of "East India Company," Ben Rosset expressed concern that in the game, the dividend track wasn't rewarding enough to justify the cost.  He felt that in general, money can be better spent on ships and goods that will yield a better return on investment than declaring dividends.  It was an observation that I took very seriously; I hadn't had a playtest in which anybody completely ignored the dividend track before.  I wondered if it was a weakness that would emerge with extensive play and end up being a superfluous element of the game.

Dice Hate Me trifecta!

(c) Dice Hate Me Games
Used by permission

In just the last few years (as anyone who has followed Man OverBoard already knows), I've had the pleasure of getting to know Chris and Cherilyn Kirkman of Dice Hate Me Games.  Dice Hate Me was one of the first blogs I ever started following, and it was great to meet them at WBC 2011.  That's where they introduced me to T.C. Petty III, with whom they were playtesting VivaJava: The Coffee Game.  I've since had the opportunity to hang out with Chris and T.C. at multiple conventions over the last couple of years.  They also introduced me to Ben Rosset at PrezCon 2012 when he was playtesting "Stranded."  Last summer I got to try out Ben's Mars Needs Mechanics at WBC and have since had a number of great conversations with him about our thoughts on game design.

Stalemate at Santa Cruz

In our "Pacific Theatre via Midway" campaign series, my friend Frank Hodge and I clashed once more in the Coral Sea, this time in the Santa Cruz scenario of Alan R. Moon's expansion to the Avalon Hill classic Midway (designers Larry Pinsky and Lindsley Schutz, publisher Avalon Hill).  Once more, I assumed command of the U.S. Navy forces while Frank controlled the fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Mr. Jack makes a first impression

One of my PrezCon auction store acquisitions was Mr. Jack (designers Bruno Cathala and Ludovic

(c) Hurrican Games
Used by permission

Maublanc, artist Pierô, publisher Hurrican).  I'd run across it in a number of people's list of favorite two-player games, and reviews really impressed me.  The only reason I'd hesitated in the past to pick it up was its association with Jack the Ripper.  I've written a couple of times about the ethical implications of game theme, and I was concerned that, like Letters from Whitechapel, this game would cross a line for me.  But I recently read a review that indicated that Mr.J does not have the "Jack" player trying to perpetrate murder (as does LfW) but instead attempting to escape apprehension for an unspecified (if tacitly understood) crime.  In this respect, Mr.J is strictly a cat-and-mouse deduction game, and with that understanding, I thought I would pick it up and give it a try.

Excellence in Game Design - Leslie Scott

I received the January issue of the "Business of Play Inventor Newsletter" recently.  This newsletter covers the events surrounding the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, an annual occasion in November that includes a series of multiple of events, to include the International Toy and Game Innovation Conference (T&GCon), the International Summit for Professional Inventors (I-SPI), and the Toy and Game Inventor of the Year (TAGIE) Awards.

PrezCon 2013 - Sunday

The final day of PrezCon saw me sleeping in just a little too late to make the final heat of Settlers of Catan.  So this year was the first time missing the SoC tournament since I first came to PrezCon some six years ago. It was SoC that first attracted me to the Winter Nationals, with the prospect of winning the regional qualifier and going to the national championship.  But that's okay.  Because later that morning, another game that I like just as much as SoC started up.

PrezCon 2013 - Saturday

Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery
On Friday, during my walk-through of the vendor area, I'd seen Spartacus (designers Aaron Dill, John Kovaleski, and Sean Sweigart; artist Charles Woods; publisher Gale Force 9) laid out at the Gale Force 9 booth.  In fact, it was the only game that GF9 was selling at PrezCon.  The demo at the booth had given me a mistaken first impression:  The rep behind the table started talking about the combat mechanics, which seemed good but not great as skirmish mechanics go.  He kept saying, "There's a whole lot of other stuff with influence and bribery that's really important, too," but the impression that I left with was that the combat was central and that there was some kind of wagering that went on around it.  I just wasn't impressed.  That is, until Saturday...

PrezCon 2013 - Friday

(c) Meridae Games
Used by permission

Garden Dice
Glenn and I met Doug Bass of Meridae Games for a demo of Garden Dice (designer Doug Bass, artist Joshua Cappel, publisher Meridae), which I'd seen on Kickstarter and which is now available.  Garden Dice is an interesting game of dice allocation in which players use a roll of four dice to acquire seeds of various values, plant them in a garden based on grid coordinates from two of the dice, and subsequently water and harvest them for points.  There are run and set-collection bonus scores at the end of the game.  The most interesting part is the geographic element.  Watering higher-value plants benefits adjacent lower-value plants, regardless of who owns them, so there is an opportunity to take advantage of an opponent's placement to get watering and harvesting actions for free.  Players also can add a sundial to the garden to modify the grid coordinate dice rolls or a garden gnome to improve rolls for acquiring seed, watering plants, and harvesting vegetables.  Players can further introduce a bird to the garden to eat other players' seed or a rabbit to eat vegetables before they are harvested, although seed can be protected by an upgrade of the sundial to a scarecrow.

PrezCon 2013 - Thursday

It's good to be at PrezCon. It's always good to be here.  These posts are going to be quick and messy....

Countdown to PrezCon

Okay, it's that time of year when my favorite convention, PrezCon, happens in Charlottesville, Virginia, the week of President's Day.  I've got a preliminary schedule laid out, which is pretty much carved in sand - except, that is, for Pillars of the Earth, which stands like an immense cathedral, a great pillar, on the landscape of my convention plan.  (I'm running the PotE tournament, so I'm pretty committed to it.)

Multi-player games for two players

Ryan Metzler recently posted a top-ten video of his favorite multi-player games for two players - that is, games made for two or more players but that are his favorites as two-player games.  His video is both quick and informative, and I bumped up a number of games on my wishlist as a result.

Eastern Solomons campaign

About a month ago, my serial Midway opponent Frank H. and I got together for another scenario from the Alan R. Moon variant, "Pacific Theatre via Midway."  We returned to the Coral Sea, this time to fight the "Battle of the Eastern Solomons" (Midway designers Larry Pinsky and Lindsley Schutz, publisher Avalon Hill).

Sunrise Serenade

So, now that I've taken a breath from four consecutive blog posts on my two-day experience at UnPub two weeks ago, I can settle into the pleasant task of cracking open a new game and exploring a published, finished product.  At Dan Yarrington's recommendation (or was it prodding? goading?), I bought Sunrise City (designer Isaias Vallejo, artists Sarah "Chip" Nixon and Chris Kirkman, publisher Clever Mojo via GameSalute) from Our Game Table.

UnPub 3 Part IV: Brewing beer and getting GIPF

Brewmasters

Chris Kirkman (left) fermenting a concoction in
"Brewmasters" by Ben Rosset (right)

In the last prototype game that I played at UnPub 3, I joined Chris Kirkman and Ben Rosset in a three-player round of Ben's "Brewmasters."  I have to say, this game is neck-and-neck with "Post Position" for my favorite game of all of those that I played at UnPub.  Players represent presidents of microbreweries, and the goal is to score the most points by producing beer.  Beer options include basic, tried-and-true recipes like porter, stout, and ale, while other more exotic concoctions like "pumpkin spice ale" score more points per unit brewed.  Players need to manage not only the acquisition of ingredients but the throughput of the brewing operation, from storage to fermenting to bottling to shipping.

UnPub 3 Part III: Three players, four publishers, and plenty of pancakes

East India Company - Three-player playtest

Ben Rosset (left) and Stephen Craig clearly enjoying the
game playing excitement that is "East India Company"

Late on the first day of UnPub 3, designers Ben Rosset and Stephen Craig joined me for a three-player game of EIC.  This game unfolded in a couple of unusual ways.  Ben gradually built up his fleet until he had four ships - two small, two medium - and fell into a pattern in which his four ships went to four different colonies, bought four different goods, and returned to Europe to unload all four ships in the same turn.  It was kind of an odd cycle, but it worked, because the diversification of commodities meant that he wasn't competing with himself.  Stephen tried a couple of different things before he eventually invested in a big ship and started making the long China spice run.  I think he might have made that trip twice by the end of the game.  I decided to try the "chaining markets" strategy of buying tobacco in one place, bringing it to another colony that bought tobacco and sold ivory, buying ivory to bring it somewhere else that bought ivory, and so on.  My method must have worked, because I ended up winning in a pretty narrow range of scores.  Although the game ran 150 minutes (a little on the long side for a three-player game), I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

UnPub 3 Part II: Pig Pen, Playtesting, and Post Position

Kevin Kulp (left) explains Pig Pen to Jesse
Catron (right) and another gamer at UnPub3

Pig Pen
I first met designer Kevin Kulp at Congress of Gamers last October, when he playtested "East India Company."  He'd mentioned his set-building card game Pig Pen, but I never got to try it out at CoG.  So I was glad to find him and learn the game in a three-player session.  Pig Pen is just a fun, crazy draw-one-play-one game of assembling a pig pen consisting of four fences or walls, a gate, and a feed card.  Once those pieces are in place, a player can draw a pig and keep it in the pen - at least until something bad happens, such as an opponent taking a chainsaw to your wooden fence or detonating dynamite on your brick wall.  Then you've got one turn to repair the damage, or your pig runs away, potentially into the waiting arms of another player.  Oh, the betrayal!

UnPub3 Part I: Power Playtesting

I have begun to catch up on my sleep, and now I will begin to catch up on my blogging with a series of posts on last weekend's UnPub 3 event in Magnolia, Delaware, where 45 designers plus other gamers convened to playtest unpublished games in an open forum over two days.

New Year's Renaissance

The last several years, I've hosted a big game at my house on New Year's Day.  In January 2009, we played a Wooden Ships and Iron Men fleet action.  On New Years in 2011 was a multi-player game of PanzerBlitz.  Last year we played History of the World.  This year, Keith F., Brian G., Glenn W., and W.J.G. joined me to advance the civilization and develop the markets of Europe with the epic game Age of Renaissance (designers Don Greenwood and Jared Scarborough, artists Stephen Langmead and Kurt Miller, publisher Avalon Hill).

Family playtest of East India Company

My mother-in-law Agnes enjoys the occasional boardgame, and she is not afraid to try out something new.  She was even one of my early playtesters of East India Company in its most rudimentary form.  Sunday afternoon, she agreed to revisit the game in its latest rendition, along with my wife Kathy and son Patrick.  I am grateful to get this shakedown of the current form of rules about three weeks prior to the Unpub 3 event in Dover on Martin Luther King weekend.

Shadows and Assassins

Last Tuesday night my friends and I played an "after school special," a gaming get-together after work at Game Parlor in Chantilly, Virginia.  There's one almost every week, but I usually only get to about one a month, so I always enjoy the opportunity to get with a larger group and play something different.

Wiping out Pandemic

It has been a long time since Kathy and I have beaten Pandemic (designer Matt Leacock, artists Josh Cappel and Régis Moulun, publisher Z-Man Games).  We usually don't play it in a two-player setting, but today I got a hankering to pull it out again, and I'm glad we did.  Since we had such early success with the game in "easy" mode, we've been playing in "normal" mode for quite some time but somehow never managed to beat it at that level of difficulty.  We've run out of cubes of a color, we've reached the end of the Outbreak track, we've run out of player cards ... basically we've lost every way there is to lose.

WBC: Thinking about August in December

I'll preface my remarks by stipulating that I am a relatively new member of the Boardgame Players Association, and all I know is based on what I read in the newsletter and elsewhere online.  None of this represents any kind of official news or information from the BPA.  Caveat lector.

Clash on the Coral Sea

My friend and colleague Frank H. and I met again over the game table.  Over the last few months we've played three rounds of Midway (designers Larry Pinsky and Lindsley Schutz, publisher Avalon Hill) with a number of optional rules attached.  This time, Frank broke out his copy of the "Coral Sea" expansion, and we set our clocks back to May 1942 to determine the fate of Port Moresby, New Guinea.

Bellwether interview

About once a month, Bellwether Games interviews a game designer on their blog.  Over the last year and a half, they've asked some illuminating questions of designers in the field.  This month, they were gracious enough to ask me to take a turn in the barrel, and I took full advantage of the opportunity to espouse my thoughts on games and game design.

Oh, and by the way, I happened to notice (no, they didn't ask me to mention) that Bellwether is selling Drop Site (designer Dennis Hoyle, artists Guray Emen and Paolo Vallerga) at 30% off, plus free shipping.  I first heard of this game when it won the Carta Mundi prize for Best Card Game in the 2010 Premio Archimede game design competition.  I haven't played it myself, but from what I've read, it looks like an excellent candidate for a stocking stuffer.

Go forth and see last month's answers

Tom Gurganus posed a provocative "Question of the Month" for October:  "Where are the new game mechanisms?"  He received a fascinating variety of answers from a number of thoughtful designers.  Worth a perusal.

Coming up:  An interview with Bellwether Games

Holiday gift guide

(c) boardgamegeek.com
Used by permission

Occasionally I'll get requests from friends for boardgame recommendations, and I've posted some targeted lists for specific demographics and situations (see links below).  But today I'm going to tip my hat to the folks at boardgamegeek.com, who have assembled a terrific holiday gift guide.  The recommendations on their list are uniformly excellent.  I could certainly come up with my own holiday list as well, but if anyone asks me for recommendations for boardgames as gifts, boardgamegeek is the first place I will send them.

The boardgamegeek holiday list has but two shortcomings.  First, it does not include my own Trains Planes and Automobiles, which is appropriate for any family with kids ages eight and up.  (Okay, shameless self-promotion complete.  Moving on.)

A game of "A Game of Thrones"

(c) Fantasy Flight Games
Used by permission

Last night my friend Brian G. had five of us over for a six-player game of A Game of Thrones (designer Christian T. Petersen, artists Tomasz Marek Jedruszek and Henning Ludvigsen, publisher Fantasy Flight).  I'd played this once before, at Grant G.'s house, and really liked it.  This time I played as the House of Lannister.  I started quick and moved out into the front of the pack in number of castles and supplies and expanded out into the center of the board, in direct violation of my two general rules for multi-player every-man-for-himself wargames:  Don't peak too early (and make yourself a target for everybody else) and don't be in the middle of the map (and make yourself a target for everybody else).