Shamelessly Tooting My Horn

(Written in order to cheer myself up)

My brother called me with his and his children's assessment of last Saturday night's gaming.

They thought St Pete was deeply flawed. The mechanics seemed ok, but the blue cards were not worth anything, the luck of the draw and too powerful cards swung the game, and the game was too short. They suggested doubling the value of blue buildings, eliminating some cards, and finding a way to make the game longer.

They thought Torres was ok and would like to try again, but they suspected that the game will tend to drag as people think about what to do (this was their first experience with an "action point" game).

The game they liked most was my Menorah game; they said it was short, easy to teach, but still involved some nice thought. However, they had some suggestions: the person who ends up getting a lot of low cards has a strong chance of winning, which is too luck driven - maybe I can change the card distribution to a bell curve? Also that they don't see that people will buy cards from the discard pile often. Also that maybe the soldiers could all be valued 6 but can be used to draw any card from a discard pile (i.e. even a higher valued one). And wouldn't it be nice to combine cards so that you don't end up buying useless cards.

As for his first complaint, the simple answer is to play with the advanced scoring rules. As for the last complaint, I pointed out that the possibility of useless cards is one of the central mechanisms to the decision making process in a good auction and changing that would wreck the game. As for the others, I'm willing to let him try them out and report back to me ;-) .

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FWIW, I'm still number one on PR game.com (formerly www.puertoricogame.net). If I don't play any more games, I may stay there for a while, but others are creeping up in ratings and likely to overtake me soon enough.

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Hey, you! I would be much obliged if all those of you to whom I link would be kind enough to link back to me, assuming you like my blog. We love eyeballs.

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"Hey, Jon. Let's watch a movie."

Time to go ...

Yehuda

Session Report Up

Games played: Dvonn, Lo Ra (Ra), Havoc, Puerto Rico, Alhambra.

Yehuda

My ABC's

I haven't played enough games to make a top 100 list like everyone else; if I did, the last fifty or so would already be hitting the mediocre games.

I can come close to making my ABC list, however:

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Non-alphabetic
4000 A.D.: I already covered this one in an earlier post.

Runner up: none worth recommending.

A
Age of Steam: Played only once. I like a good train game, so long as the pick up and deliver mechanism is at least as important as the stock holding mechanism.

Runner ups: Anagrams and Amun Re

B
Bridge: The acme of card games, but likely to make you feel stupid.

Runner up: Boggle

C
Cosmic Encounter: Mayfair or Eon editions. 30 years old and still delightful, as long as your edition has at least 75 alien races and flares.

Runner up: Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

D
Dvonn: A deceptively chaotic abstract from the GIPF series, gets better each time I play.

Runner up: Die Macher

E
Euphrat & Tigris: Awesome game, and classic Knizia.

Runner up: El Grande

F
None worth recommending.

G
Go: 4000 years of gameplay. Like bridge, can make you feel stupid, but comes with a built-in handicap system so that any two people can play, regardless of their skill level.

Runner up: Geschenkt

H
Hearts: Works best as a partnership game, and can be very tense.

Runner up: Havoc: the Hundred Years War

I
None worth recommending.

J
None worth recommending.

K
None worth recommending.

L
Louis XIV: A nice area control game from Alea.

Runner up: none worth recommending.

M
Magic: the Gathering: Since I NEVER played in a tournament, the "money drain" doesn't affect me. As a card-drafting/deck-building/dueling game it is excellent.

Runner up: Modern Art

N
None worth recommending.

O
Othello: I would like to try this on a larger board, say 12 x 12.

Runner up: Oh Hell

P
Puerto Rico: You've heard enough about this on my blog, already. The tortuously controlled picking order is pure genius.

Runner ups: Princes of Florence and Power Grid

Q
None worth recommending.

R
Robo Rally: Belongs to the same category of loopiness and tactics as Cosmic Encounter. Only, can be too long.

Runner up: Ra

S
Settlers of Catan: Still great after 1000 plays, and still hooking in the newbies.

Runner ups: San Juan and Scrabble

T
Taj Mahal: Very tense game of connections, collections, and losing battles. Play with evenly matched players.

Runner ups: Tikal and Torres

U
None worth recommending.

V
None worth recommending.

W
Wallenstein: The closest I will ever get to liking a war game.

Web of Power

X
None worth recommending.

Y
Yinsh: Excellent GIPF game, like Othello crossed with Pente, but better than both.

Runner up: none worth recommending.

Z
None worth recommending.

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16 out of 26 letters. There are games on my want list that would allow me to replace a few of those "None worth recommending."'s, but alas, I haven't yet played them. For instance, Ursuppe is still unplayed on my shelf (although now it is called Primordial Soup). Some day.

Yehuda

It's that time of year ...

... when all the little gamers who don't live in game store friendly countries wonder how they are going to get games from these countries in time for "the holidays". The smart ones ordered three months ago and had the games sent surface mail. I, having just picked up a slew of games at BGG.con, decided to forgo ordering any more games.

I forgot that all of my friends and relations were counting on me to do this so that we could combine the order and save shipping costs. Actually, I did bring a few games back for some people, but not enough.

Now I'm racing against time to find some games to ship to some people who may be coming to Israel, and will they bring them for us? How many can they carry? How many is too many to ask them to carry?

We are looking for: Power Grid, Louis XIV, Torres, Risk Godstorm, Puerto Rico + expansion, Cities & Knights of Catan, Seafarers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Runebound: second edition. And that's just for a start.

Big news: if you're a game company, I'll put an ad for your site on the side of my blog for two months if you send me one of these games, or any game on my want list, or, in fact, any game at all. Everyone has a price at which they will sell out, and mine is shockingly low.

I also still have a few copies of the prototypes of The Hanukkah Game left. The best Hanukkah game, ever. Actually, let's face it - the ONLY good Hanukkah game, ever.

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Tonight: Game night at the JSGC! More new people expected to come.

Yehuda

And I promised not to turn this blog into a bunch of link posts

But in case anyone ever wanted to know why I don't post about Israel politics, news, etc on this blog, here's why. And in case anyone wanted to know why I link to treppenwitz, here's why.

Yehuda

As long as we're linking 2

Having posted my initial As long as we're linking a scant two weeks ago, I already have a number of changes to make to the list.

You know that after posting a list of something that you will find a whole lot more of it right afterwards. This usually happens because other people point out all the stuff you missed the first time, such as this post by Coldfoot.

First off, goodbye to all GameWire links, as well as the old Dice Tower link. These have been replaced with the link to Rick Thornquist's new game site: Board Game News. It is already one of the best sites for games on the Internet, and will stay that way as long as Rick and company can continue to make it happen. It also includes all of the Dice Towers, as well as the continuation of my favorite humor series on board games, Misadventures in Boardgames by Dan Bosley.

I also added the following sites:

Board Game Madness - Todd D, another Texas blog from Houston.

Game Guts - Inside Hobby Gaming - Adam Conus, Washington (the state, not the district). Formerly of Wizards of the Coast, now "Organized Play Manager" for Hidden City Games.

The Game Shelf - Doctor J in Canada. He started the blog, but hasn't posted anything since mid-November. Also, being a Microsoft site, you have to be a Passport victimmember to post comments.

GamerDad Unplugged - Dr. Matt J. Carlson, California. The board game podcast companion to a computer game site. I haven't listened to this, yet.

RPGnet Reviews - Various reviews of gaming products, mainly RPGs, of course. Tom Vasel, Shannon Appelcline, and others.

San Antonio Board Gamers - Another multi-blogger blog.

Steve's HFoG Blog - Steve Blanding, Washington (state). Blog is hosted on Bloglines, which doesn't seem to allow comments.

Yehuda

Naphtali Berlinger

My great-grandfather. Rabbi and teacher in Buttenhausen, southern Germany, and for all children in a thirty mile radius thereof. Killed/died in Theresienstadt in 1943.

Some of his children and family and about half of the town of Buttenhausen also were killed or did not survive the war. One daughter, Berta and her husband and children were transported from Amsterdam to Sobibor where they died. Others of his children escaped to England, Switzerland, Palestine, or the US.

His son, Jacob, managed to get to England with my grandmother Martha, my father Eli, and aunt Hannah in June, 1939, by leaving almost everything. My aunt Hannah was born the day they were supposed to leave (April 1939), but they managed to get another chance. Jacob was interred as a P.O.W. in England for 2 years before being allowed to reach New York. My father was 2 when he came to England and 4 before he saw his father again. They would have gone to Palestine except that Palestine (read: the British) wouldn't let them in. The U.S. wouldn't have let them in either except that my great-aunt Margeret (Grete) was their "sponsor".

My aunt Hannah finally moved to Israel in 1976 along with her entire family. My brother David came in 1986, my brother Ben and I came in 1991. My father and mother came in 1995.

Yehuda