- Yet More Gaming!January 5
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Mike's holiday all-day game session was so much fun, I decided to keep the party going - especially for those who couldn't make it last Tuesday. A lot of people showed up - Mike, George, Pradeep (a friend of George's), Alex, Chris, Ken, JD, Matt R, Jeff, and myself. That's a houseful, and we managed to stick to (mostly) two tables. We also got through more than three pizzas and a lot of snacks.
First on the table was a quick round of Mamma Mia!, one of my favorite light games of all time, and one that Dave claims he won't play with me because I'm too good at it. Not today, as I sucked mightily with only two orders filled by game end. George was in the same boat, Matt and Mike did somewhat better, but first-timer Pradeep got seven of his eight orders filled. Clearly we'll need to watch him closely. Jeff, who got my address from our group database (which I did not know existed, and had information from more than six years ago in it), had showed up at my old house about 20 minutes away, but we waited for him to arrive before starting our next game.
Which was Power Grid, using the US map and excluding the NW part. We weren't sure which of the two western areas to exclude, and so we diced for it and the Great Northwest lost out. I will not lie - I consider myself a pretty good Power Grid player, and feel I do well in estimating how much money I will need during the course of a turn, even if I'm placing cit
- The End of Cable TelevisionDecember 31 2008
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I'm saying it now - cable and satellite television will be the surprise casualties of the economic downturn.
Local stations are starting to require higher fees in their contracts, which the cable and satellite companies are refusing to pay. In my area, Dish Network no longer carries the ABC affiliate, which will make things interesting when Lost starts airing in a few weeks. Why? Fischer, who owns the affiliates in Yakima, Seattle, and Portland, wants to get as big a piece of the pie as all of the other cable stations, claiming that the downturn has resulted in considerably less advertising revenue (all of those car dealerships going under, for example), and they can only cut staff so much. That means they have to make up the difference somewhere, and if Dish starts charging more for locals people will cut back on their other choices. Belo (which owns several NBC stations around the country, including my local affiliate) had a similar contract dispute with Cox Cable last year, just in time for the Super Bowl.
Of course, the real issue comes down to advertising as a revenue stream for media in the US, and a huge piece of the pie it is. 26,000 journalists have lost jobs since October, and my local newspaper, The Oregonian, has already tried to cut costs by combining the business, main, and local sections into one section on Mondays, and I fully expect them to do it for the rest of the week within a couple of months as advertis
- Tuesday Gaming At Mike'sDecember 31 2008
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Snow, a rather stubborn case of cellulitis, the holidays, a new granddaughter, and Chris' gaming retreat at the start of the month all conspired to kill Tuesday gaming in December for me. As of yesterday, I had missed all four sessions (which includes those cancelled because of all the snow we got this month - Portland is not a town that deals with snow in what anyone would term an "effective" way). Thank goodness Mike held an all-day session at his place, which I was so excited about I showed up before anyone else!
While we waited, Mike and I pulled out Dominion (which may be our new "summoning" game while we wait for more people to show up, you can even drop people into an ongoing game without too much trouble, although they'll be behind), picking random action card decks. A quick perusal on my part and it was pretty clear that by far the best strategy was going to be trying to pick up Mine cards and a couple of Cellars and just try to get those Copper cards upgraded as quickly as possible. At least, that was the strategy that looked like it would work to me, and boy howdy did it ever work. I ended with six of the eight Province cards, a good half of the Duchies, and a stack of Estates. Mike never had a chance. I may be getting this game down...
Greg showed up just in time for us to try out the new Lost Cities boardgame, and Mike had explained about half of the game (not much time at all) when Jim arrived as well. The game has
- Christmas BonusDecember 25 2008
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I know there haven't been a lot of reports on gaming sessions recently, partly because of weather, but that should change very soon. I will say that I spent quite a bit of the last 10 days trying desperately to figure out all of the rules holes in Fields of Fire. Once I get some time to myself (in the next few days) I plan to give it a good try now that I've gotten my BGG group game over with (or at least as far as I was willing to continue with it). I'm also running through the rules for Unhappy King Charles!, which looks like a winner in many ways. It's so funny to read rules for games that came on the same day, and see one that makes perfect sense and the other, well, doesn't much of the time. It's frustrating, but if you are at all interested in the concepts that FoF presents (command structure which contains almost all of the decision points, combat and enemy action are all done more or less by the AI), it's worth the work. If you can't tolerate very loose and conceptually poor rules, you may want to wait a few weeks until there's a FAQ out to fill in the gaps. Man, there are a lot of gaps.
It appears that we may actually melt out of this sloppy snowy mess we have here in Portland in the next few days. I can't imagine how many retail stores will go out of business as a result of what was essentially a weekend and a half of dangerous road conditions, and another afternoon of perhaps the worst traffic snarl in Portland histo
- I'll Be Busy For ChristmasDecember 17 2008
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In addition to my new favorite game, "Will My Grandchild Be Born During A Severe Weather Event?" I've been getting a lot of new stuff in the mail lately. Here are my *very* early and initial thoughts on them...
1) Fields of Fire - This is a solitaire game, a rarity these days outside of play on a computer. You play a Battalion commander focusing on a single company of soldiers who have a very specific mission (there are 21 in the game) from three different eras - 1944 Normandy, Korea, and the Vietnam lowlands. That's quite a trick to pull off, as the core of the game is the command net and getting the forces you need to where you want them, as once they get there they'll start shooting like crazy. You actually have to issue orders to them to stop, or to shoot at something more dangerous. It's a little like Burning Blue, where you set up a plan as the Luftwaffe, then send the boys off to do it. Of course, you have a little more control as you can issue orders to reflect the changing nature of the battle as it evolves, but there's no question that planning is the kernel of this game that all else revolves around. Unfortunately, a really badly organized and nearly exampleless ruleset makes learning the game much more difficult than it needs to be, and since it's a solitaire game, you're learning it in a vacuum. See my previous post for how I'm trying to both learn and teach others the system, which I think is about as well conceived as I've seen. As Lee Brin
