Today Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools blog included a Desktop printer that cuts and engraves solids, which would be perfect for creating games. It’s $10,000, but it could
revolutionise making board games.
Apparently, Nick Danger makes the Dice Boot from something similar.
Five of us played that old standby, Settlers of Catan. As usual, I only brought it out after pressure from the others. I like Settlers but I have played it more than any other game I own and I have too many new-to-me games waiting to play.
We finally played one of the scenarios from the Settlers Book. I randomly picked The Atoll. It was OK, but I would have preferred something more exotic. It’s nothing more than a standard Seafarers scenario, although it is well designed and balanced. It’s played over two concentric rings of land with the pirate randomly circulating around the separating ring of sea. The central ring of land is rich, but has no ports; the outer ring is poor, but has ports. You get victory points for connecting the rings by sea.
Playing with five was a slight mistake. It slows down the game too much, although at least it’s not as bad as it is with six. I now regret buying the 5-6 player expansions, especially considering the price. Having said that, the game was enjoyably tense. I haven’t won a game for a while, so it was nice to break a bad habit.
I accidentally discovered that this blog looked awful in IE. I don’t know what happened to the stylesheet, or when. Please let me know in future if this blog looks weird. I’m a Firefox user and I get lazy about cross-browser testing.
Movable Style helped me out nicely. I opted for the Modern Lines style, but Plain Blue is tempting.
We had a short games night with my regular group. We only managed to fit in one game of New Word, one of the rulesets in the Alpha Playing Cards box. It was good to try a word game with my midweek gaming group, as we have never played a word game before.
New Word is simple, but hard. To start the game six letter cards are put down. Each player in turn makes a word out of the letters on the table and the six letter cards in their hand. After the word scores, the next player uses it to create a new word, with the help of the six cards in their hand. You get multiplier bonuses for longer words. The highest score was wrangler, 20 points, for the letters, x 4, for the 7+ letters in the word multiplier.
More complexity is added when someone makes a questionable word, as challenging it results in the player who is wrong losing a turn. I lost the game, but it was fun be unsuccessfully challenged over quin, when I was not sure if it was a valid word in the first place.
New Word is exciting and very tough, but there is little to do when it is not your turn, as it’s difficult to plan until you know what letters are going to be available. We should have used a timer to cut down turn length. Unfortunately all the scoring time and challenging time make using a timer difficult. For our group, scoring time would have been reduced by increasing the threshold for words. 5 letters minimum word length would have been a better place to start.
I am a big fan of David Parlett’s card games. He has redesigned his original card games page and has included a new game called Parity. Parity looks interesting, it’s on a similar level to my favourite two-player card game Schnapsen. Just from reading, Parity resembles Drahtseilakt.
Last Friday some friends came over for dinner and we played games afterwards. Julian is an lapsed old-school gamer used to D&D and the 80’s Games Workshop boardgames. Kirsty, on the other hand is a total non-gamer, who dislikes direct competition and aggression. A tough audience to cater for!
Linie 1
This was much more successful with these guys, rather than my midweek gaming group. It was interesting enough for Julian and peaceful and simple enough for Kirsty. Ness enjoyed it very much too. We played with three stops and with the dice rules for tram movement. Three stops is a must with adults, but I am not sure about the dice. I’ll try the Streetcar no-dice rules once more before passing judgement. I won, although my tram started last, because I only visited three stops. Ness was very annoyed as she started way before me and was only one tile away from victory.
Alpha Playing Cards
I bought these a while ago, after reading about them in Ron Hale-Evan’s Games Systems articles. We adapted a currently available commercial word game to use with the cards and it worked brilliantly. It’s a bit unfair to divulge the name of the game, but I will say that it was real-time and fiendishly difficult. I was far too tired to play a hectic speed game, so I was crushed. Ness was on fire and got revenge with interest for her previous loss.
I am very encouraged after using these cards and will definitely try some more games for them. Every serious gamer should have a copy. They are only $9, or free if you print them from the website. The cards are flexible and portable, so I’ll definitely add them to my travelling games pack, along with my piecepack and regular playing cards. It’s a shame there are so many alphabet card decks on the market, as it dilutes the buzz that might generate some demand.
DBA
On Saturday morning Julian and I played a quick game with his armies in my gloriously sunny garden. Miniatures certainly work well outdoors, because they don’t blow away too easily. We were babysitting and it was easy to keep the gremlins entertained while the other player took his move. I got pulverised but quite enjoyed it. Some armies are definitely more fun to play than others. The Romans are solid, but dull. I think I’m going to try it online to improve my skills. It’s free, so why not?
