Oh, the joys of Photoshop...

Thanks to my sister for pointing out this awesome post. My personal favourites: the Settlers remake and the Diplomacy remake at the bottom of the list. Both very appropriate.

Moving sucks....

Sorry for the lack of meaningful posts lately (if my posts ever were meaningful...) In the middle of a move to a new home amongst many other things and haven't had time for much typing.

On Friday I picked up Jet Set and Dominion: Seaside and received Tobago as a borthday gift from my bro who is visiting. And I haven't played any of them yet due to time. But oh when I do, expect many a comment. ESPECIALLY about Tobago which excites me to no end!

Yeah, yeah, yeah.... Have fun in Essen...

I'm getting tired of reading all these board game blog reports (especially on BGN) gloating about their upcoming trips to Essen, arriving in Essen, and all the great games they'll buy while they are there. Whatever. *insert jealous, annoyed face here*

Complete set of Dominion: Seaside cards available!

Rio Grande Games has posted the complete set of rules for Dominion: Seaside here. On page 3, there are images of all 26 of the new Kingdom cards. Exciting.

The kingdom cards from Intrigue have not had as much play by us as it seems to increase play time in our group. These ones look like they will not have that issue.







My copy is on reserve and I pick it up Friday. Can't wait!

Middle Earth Quest FAIL....

So my brother's in town for a visit and I gave him his birthday gift: Middle Earth Quest from Fantasy Flight Games. Last night we cracked 'er open for a try. The board is so massive that it didn't fit completely on our table but we set it up somehow anyways and my bro started plodding through the 40 pages of rules. About 2 hours into gameplay (plus an hour of setup), I was still only about one space away from my starting space and not even close to finishing my starting quest. I was swearing to him that the game was broken. So we go back to the rulesbook. Oh. Moving from location to location only costs ONE card of that symbol type, NOT the printed number on that symbol. The printed number indicates the number of ANY cards you can play to use that path. Sigh. So we aborted the game 3.5 hours in. Try again tomorrow....

Glad I'm not the only one who messes up explaining fundamental rules (yeah, I'm talking about you, Chicago Express!)

Dominion: Seaside cards!

The first two have been posted.....

The Island

Cost: 4, Action-Victory

Set aside this and another card from your hand. Return them to your deck at the end of the game.

Offshore havens for your victory points? Love it...

The Ambassador

Cost: 3, Action-Attack

Reveal a card from your hand. Return up to 2 copies of it from your hand to the supply. Then each other player gains a copy of it.

Hmmm... I don't like these curse cards. Maybe I'll just put them back and YOU can have them.






Of course the geek is alive with comments here and here.......

Games Magazine Game of The Year.....

I remember as a teenager looking forward to the December issue of Games Magazine every year. They'd publish their list of the 'Top 100 Board Games of The Year' and I'd drool over all the games that seemed unavailable in northern BC. I don't have a subscription anymore (although I really should get one again) mostly because of my broke student status for the last 3 years.

Well, according to BGN this year's list is up and I'm looking forward to picking up the December issue at the local magazine rack. The winner: Small World by Phillipe Keyaert, published by Days of Wonder. This remake of Vinci is supposed to play like a shorter version of History of The World, a personal fave. Add another one to the wish-list...

(My birthday is Oct. 27th, by the way.... ) ;)

Great article on teaching games...

Chris Norwood at GamerChris just posted a great article on how to teach games. Really worth checking out if you're the one who always seems to be doing the rules explanations.

Dominion: Seaside kept under wraps...

Before Intrigue came out, there was pictures of the complete images of all the action cards available. But according to the OTHER Eric Martin, Rio Grande is keeping this one a big surprise until it's international release on Oct. 19th. Sigh. I guess no early drool-worthy previews. But I suppose I'll be buying it either way....

Deck-building - the new worker-placement!

You remember when Caylus came out? And it was such a new and exciting idea, the whole worker placement thing. It combined resource management, planning, and timing into one simple and elegant mechanic. Next thing you know Pillars of the Earth shows up, then Stone Age and Cuba and Tribune and so on and so on....

Well, skip ahead a few years and Dominion has now swept the gaming world. Now the idea of deck-building isn't original - that credit goes to Magic: The Gathering from way back when. However, building the deck as the game progresses is wholly original and has changed game play altogether. Well, guess what? There's some card games on the way which have started to incorporate this very mechanism. Here's a few, all of which I have yet to play:

Arctic Scavengers
This one came out last year and has been getting some really good press. You start with a small "tribe" of cards and slowly add tools and resources. One of the main differences compared to Dominion is that you have skirmishes at the end of each round with the cards in your deck and rare resources are won in this way. Sounds like it will play quite differently and, much like Dominion, there are already two expansions in the works...

Thunderstone

This game from Alderac Entertainment Group seems to be a combination of Dungeons and Dragons meets Dominion. There are over 500 cards which make up the characters you can hire and the monsters you fight with. Like Dominion a random subset of characters and baddies is available each game, making replayability quite high (hopefully). The website says:

Thunderstone is a new and exciting fantasy deck-building game from Alderac Entertainment Group. Fight the evils of the dungeon to prove your worth. Gain powerful weaponry and level into new and mighty hero classes. Claim the best cards and survive to take the Thunderstone.

It'll be interesting to see if this one is a hit or a miss. The babble online is saying it's a lotta fun...

Arcana

This game is also from AEG which makes one wonder if they are just trying to cash in on a trend or if they are actually putting out some decent gaming. The description from the website:

As the game is played, various stacks of “Stake” cards are revealed. Using the cards in your hand from your Main Deck, you will play agents to the various Stake cards, and you will use other cards to augment your agents. The player whose agent wins the Stake will claim it, placing it in his Resource Deck. Any card from your main deck that has been played also goes to the resource deck. When the main deck runs out, you reshuffle your resource deck into a new main deck. The more powerful the Stake card you win, the better it will make your deck as the game progresses. However, should you win a stake for a card that does not directly help your strategies, you can put the card under your Guild card, and still score at the end though not have to reshuffle that card into your deck, maintaining focus. Every card has a point value and at the end of the game the total point value of all the cards in your possession determines the winner.

Sounds like Dominion, although there are some other bells and whistles not mentioned here. I think the big difference here is that the deck-building isn't the main function. You have to fight for the cards to add your deck and certain cards will be worth more thanks to some secret objectives handed out at the beginning. I think this will be the lighter of the two from AEG but definitely something to look out for...

The Mysterious Creator of "Dominion"...

In my excitement at the upcoming release of Dominion: Seaside, I thought I'd mention a little Dominion trivia floating around the geek....

Officially, the creator of Dominion is a guy by the name of Donald X. Vaccarino. Yet only a small picture has ever surfaced of the man and he hasn't really been seen at a lot of conventions (so I've heard). He didn't even show for the Spiel des Jahres award ceremony this year which was quite the big deal. In fact, his BGG Designer profile states:

"Donald X. was born in 1969, after years of not existing. Of his life, little is known. Donald X. is like something you've forgotten that no-one wants you to remember. He's everything and nothing, but not at the same time. If you rotate Donald X. 360 degrees, he'll only be standing upside down. You have to rotate him 720 degrees to get him back where he started. You know how if you hook tons and tons of computers together, maybe they'll develop some kind of bizarre mass sentience? That's Donald X. in a nutshell. In fact Donald X. is nothing more than a corrupt, profane monument to a slightly earlier version of himself."

Weird. Some still say Valerie Putman and Dale Yu, the main developers of Dominion, are really the people behind the curtain and that Vaccarino doesn't really exist (although Rio Grande's Jay Tummelson convincingly denies it).

Dominion intrigue, indeed!