You know it's bad when the simple act of reading a news article reminds me of certain things.
Real life Indiana Jones!
Real life game mechanics!
Real life round treasure pieces!
Game nerd needs to get a real life after reading this!
Blah. Here I am, up late at night, unable to sleep, taking aspirin and drinking water in some vain hope that I'll be able to follow through on my fatigue and actually go to sleep.
Tonight was a fun game night, even if my wonderful wife had to leave early to put a frustrated and very tired little boy to bed.
2 games of Ticket to Ride, and that was it.
But what made it so much fun is that it made an addict out of one person (she might be invited to my birthday party, where Vim and Minnie can fully indoctrinate her into the dark world of Settlers obsession), and a couple others at least got curious about other games in the Nerd/Euro category. First one's free, kid. None of them had ever been exposed to games beyond the Scattergories/Monopoly/Careers side of things (although another small group that went and played The Barbie Game looked like they had an awesome time -- as the two-time winner said when he was crowned prom queen again, "the secret is to settle!") Not that there's anything wrong with Scattergories at all, but Monopoly is definitely a dentist's drill of a game.
The first game of TtR was with 3 players, and I lost by a big margin to the newbies. The second game was a huge 5-player free-for-all, with lots of cursing, shouting, and back-and-forth (I shared a tie). 5-player TtR may be complete chaos, but man does it bring out the essence of people.
The bad part, though, is that I got quizzed on how many games I actually do have, where I keep them, the rate at which I accumulate them, the size of various wishlists, and uncomfortable questions like that. Yeah, the numbers are pretty scary and definitely extremely embarrassingly nerdy. I also got asked whether I played D&D. It was surmised that I had large numbers of dice with more than 6 sides.
(Answer key: a few times back in junior high school, not really since I don't normally like dice games, and I fully own my dorkitude, thank you very much.)
However, I've made a pact with myself: the collection will never grow beyond what the Dork Closet can actually hold. This will certainly come as a great relief to my wife. I can certainly trade away or sell some to get more, or I can put in maybe 1 extra shelf in the thing, but the collection is slowing up, and that's a good thing. LM is getting more fun by the day, and he'll need all sorts of cool books read to him, and all sorts of fun activities.
Well, that and his own Dork Closet.
So recently, as some may know, both Mammamer and myself spent a bunch of money... just 'cause, really. (I like to think it was to keep sane, but we may be too far gone.)
She spent hers on some shoes; I spent mine on a couple games from Europe.
One, Eiertanz, which comes in a real egg carton with rubber eggs, one wooden egg and colorful dice, is essentially a children's party game where there's lots of hiding eggs in armpits and under chins, chicken noises, stealing eggs and running around the table. Looks fairly brilliant.
The other one (and the whole reason for the order in the first place), Chinatown, is a vastly out-of-print, vastly expensive collector's item. It's supposed to be a negotiation game, where you're trying to build runs of the same kinds of businesses on New York city blocks. There are occasional payout rounds where you see how financially successful your business empire gets, but the whole crux of the game centers around your ability to negotiate with other players about location and type of business.
As the game is supposed to be set in New York's Chinatown in the 30s, I was slightly disquieted but eventually OK with the fact that there was a guy with a giant coolie hat on the side of the box.
The order arrived last night, and yes, I had another episode of "game porn": tearing the shrink off the box and punching out pieces and looking at currency.
And then the shock of discovering that some of the pieces are, um, culturally insensitive. I don't think the game rises to out-and-out overt racism -- it's not as if the guy in the coolie hat on the cover is done in some racist caricature with glasses and buck teeth -- but the small business tiles go from innocuous ("Ming's Antinques") to a bit shocking ("Hop Sing's Fine Chinese Food") with the tin-eared design. Then there are others somewhat in between, such as a detective agency ("Charlie Chan's") or a chain of sporting goods stores ("Ping and Pong's"). I think I'm on the point of discovering why the game is so long out of print.
Those wacky Germans. And of course they have no history of intolerance to draw from.
The reason I don't think it rises to overt racism is subtle, but I think it helps (albeit only by the tiniest amount) that the game is set in 30s New York, where to my knowledge there were actual Chinese laundries, fireworks shops, garment factories and antique dealers. If I had to guess, I'd also say people wore coolie hats back then too. Another reason I'd point to would be that present-day Germany (board game Mecca that it is) is fairly conscious as a society of presenting the face of tolerance -- its Turkish guest worker issues and neo-Nazi embarrassments notwithstanding.
I also have Samurai, which while being a brilliant game and one of my favorites ever for its simplicity and depth, uses a ching-chongy typeface for its tiles, the same kind of typeface used in advertising sushi restaurants in the 70s. I would never give up Samurai, as the game is too brilliant for that. A visiting friend of friends, just off the plane from living in Japan, alluded to the slight obnoxiousness in the design but was quickly seduced by the game itself.
There's also Puerto Rico (as yet unplayed), which has a lot of tiny brown wooden discs representing what the rulebook calls "colonists" arriving on ships to tend the fields and man the factories, but anyone with half a brain and a passing knowledge of history can figure out what those counters are really supposed to represent.
Chinatown is more direct about its tin ear, I guess.
I'm hoping that Chinatown will provide similar gaming jollies that will rise above its disquieting components. I'm not sure I'm willing to sell or trade it regardless, just because it comes from a line of games that are extremely well-regarded, as Samurai is. It may also just skate by, by virtue of the time period it's set in.
As you can see, however, my white liberal guilt is pegged, redlining, and ready to break the meter.
Some people just love themselves some hot Catan action.
Vim & Minnie seem to have an unhealthy obsession with it -- this, coming from someone with a large obese elephant in his living room -- but it's comforting to know, somehow, that some people just take it that one step further.
(Now I've no doubt given Minnie some ideas.)
Mmmmm -- Catan where the island is slowly being eaten!
Over time, I've gotten a few games that are geared toward a niche audience. While of differing complexity and covering different time periods, they're all geared toward pushing units around on a board to simulate different conflicts. And therefore I'm going to need some opponents willing to learn some slightly more detailed rules.
Hmmm.
I still don't think I'll ever play games where you're moving tiny square cardboard counters on a big hexfield, and you need to consult a 500-page manual just to see what you're allowed to do. However, I'm willing to trade off a little complexity in exchange for a little bit more accessibility. I need like-minded geeks to learn these with me, especially the latter two. Badger? Drinknerd? Rook? Michaela?
Pull quotes out of this article that are instantly depressing:
Last night we played Jambo again. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be anything notable -- I've improved my batting average so now it's equally likely either of us will win -- but this time, however, my lovely bride Mammamer was so invested in the game that the following things happened:
1) There was a significant amount of trash-talking before the game.
2) I got called a son of a bitch -- twice!
3) When I stole a ware from her that she needed, and promptly sold it: "I hate you so much right now."
4) "If you ever want to have sex again with anything other than your hand, don't do what you're about to do." (I went ahead and played the card anyway.)
5) Icy glares when I forced her to take a couple of worthless wares (they were even trinkets!) when all she wanted to do was clear out her stall.
6) When I successfully guarded against her crocodile card: "Dammit! I was planning on this working! Aaaaaaaa!"
And even after all this, she still won and shook my hand afterwards.
It is all as I have foreseen...
...well, maybe except for the whole not-getting-any thing.
Holy friggin' crap. One of the best uses of vacation time EVER... It was good for the soul, and E even said it was one of the best days of her life (brought a little tear to my eye to hear her say that). (Needless to say, math teacher E and her boyfriend may surely be invited to future events with effusive commentary like that. Not only is stuff like that good for the soul, but it's good for the ego!)
Board Game Hooky Day, as it was called, was something special. It can probably only be done once or maybe twice a year in its current form -- us parental types need the time in case of sick child, or family vacation time -- but it can easily be done on a weekend with the appropriate planning and forethought.
I basically had 12+ hours of playing nothing but board games, and my life is better for it.
I even learned three new ones: 2 positively great games, and 1 that was sorta meh. No, I didn't get to learn Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Wallenstein, or the copy of Hammer of the Scots that was given to me as a particularly generous Secret Santa present. But I was still ecstatically happy.
The great:
Opportunities for future game nights will include the two expansions I have, and that others may also be set on collecting now: Bang! - Dodge City and Bang! - A Fistful of Cards.
I will also have to invest in the soundtrack for this movie. Because, really, what's a Western without a male choir behind you as you're killin' people up on Boot Hill?
Something else to invest in: an expansion game board for Power Grid -- France and Italy. (The original game board shows the US on one side and Germany on the other.)
Note to self: start in the densely populated areas -- for example, the East Coast or the South.
The meh: Betrayal at House on the Hill.
Fiddly fiddly fiddly. The saving grace for this game is that the game will be different every time, and for some unexplained reason I still like games where there's a traitor in the midst of the players (yes, like my much-maligned Shadows Over Camelot). However, with a game this fiddly -- with eleven bajillion pieces to manage once the traitor is revealed -- it kinda destroys the horror theme it attempts to create.
All the more reason to trade this one away, if I can, and get Mall of Horror. From what I've read about it, there is no traitor in this game but it's a game that's explicitly based on betrayal: the zombie hordes are advancing on every position, and you're going to have to betray and abandon someone to get eaten, but whom? And are they going to betray you first? And will you even survive? (That sort of game.) Anyway, I've been looking for a horror game that does the chilling atmosphere a bit better; while good old Fearsome Floors has a certain goofy twisted charm with its constructible monster and blood slicks, it's still not the full-on atmospheric horror experience I'm looking for. (Note to zombiegrrrl: know this guy anywhere?)
Profuse loving thanks go to my wife, mammamer, for putting up with my predilections and allowing me the time. I appreciate her more than she knows, and some more after that.
Many, many thanks to minnie and Vim for hosting and managing the nerd onslaught.
And, as usual in these impossibly nerdy situations, I had to document it:
In any case, I think I know what I want to do for my birthday now. (And my indulgent, loving wife lets out a prolonged sigh.)
Turkish draughts (i.e. checkers) played by a seemingly inept player, and a man who's being led into a very, very carefully constructed trap.
Recently we added 4 more plays of Jambo to the tally, which we split 2-2. As it is, this is a major victory for yours truly.
However, we also started playing a new one -- Hive, which I got on sale a while back.
The closest analog I can think of to Hive is actually chess, although Hive is obviously far, far less complex. This is also one of the only games I can think of where there is truth in advertising on the box: each game is extremely quick, taking anywhere from 10-20 minutes. (For almost any other game in the collection, you have to add maybe 30 minutes to an hour to what the box copy says.)
The other interesting thing is that Hive looks like its own sculptural modern art piece; you create the board as you go, and the thick wooden pieces are a nice change from the usual cardboard and plastic you usually see around a game table. The object is to surround your opponent's queen (the blue queen bee in the middle), while avoiding the same thing yourself.
Both of the 2 games we've had so far have involved one person seizing on the other's grave mistake (usually involving the powerful soldier ant pieces), pressing on to victory.
As we were drifting on to sleep that night, my beloved rolls over and dreamily says to me: "I think Hive is one of those games you'll win all the time. Now, don't get me wrong -- you can't win Jambo to save your life -- but I can't think 6 moves ahead like you do in Hive." And, having said her piece, she drifted off to sleep, knowing that she'd set my gamer mind a-tizzy.
She's just mean, that one.
The air smells cleaner.
People seem happier.
I hear music on the wind.
Latest Jambo update:
Mer 15, last shred of dignity 1.
God bless you, debt industry!
Round about Christmastime, we had a large number of rewards points on our Amex card. (Just shows how deeply in debt we are.)
Mer wanted shoes, and I of course wanted all the eurogames I could get my little grubby paws on. We split up the points, and I got a couple of 2-player games: Odin's Ravens and Jambo.
Turns out Mer's chosen pair of shoes wasn't available, so she just applied the points back to our next bill. That's fair, isn't it?
Anyway, recently we set about learning Jambo, with its theme of pre-colonial African market stalls. And this is where karma caught up with me.
You see, back when Mer was pregnant with L, she was on bed rest -- which made every day sort of a challenge to find interesting entertainment. Out of desperation, and disgust with the TV, we turned to a couple of shrinkwrapped board games given to us as wedding presents, from old college buddies of mine. (And holy crap, are they brilliant and wonderful people. Their blog is password-protected. Bah.) These games sat unmolested in our closet for over a year, but desperate times called for desperate measures, and we opened the first one, which looked like something simple about archaeological expeditions or some shit. That game ended up saving us -- we played game, after game, after game.
And Mer ended up humiliating me at it, time after time.
Jambo is a return to that time -- where no matter what I do, I always lose in the end. It's been 7 or 8 games of it now, and each time is an exercise in how Mer can very much buy and sell my ass 6 times before dinner. (I suppose the first warning signs should have been that we picked up on 99% of the rules on the first try, as well as the satanic glow Mer gets in her eyes when she sells a lot of goods at once.) This is irksome because it's a great game too -- you gotta plan ahead to get the right kinds of merchandise on your market stall, and play the right cards in sequence to get the highest price for what you have, and be able to mess with your opponent's plans. (My preferred strategies are the most annoying to Mer: corner the market on a certain good, or steal the good she needs from her market stall. These, so far, have not worked.)
What's most humiliating is that after the 6th straight loss, I was dumb enough to place a wager: loser feeds the baby the next morning.
So as I sit here in my underwear, formula stains on the floor, Mer's victory song replaying in my head, I'm reflecting on how like a moth to the flame I am. At least I'm not dumb enough to wager on games of Jambo again. Well, maybe not anytime soon, anyway.
Just because it's Monday night and I'm bored...
In addition to board games, I collect odd decks of cards.
For Christmas, my sister (who is a business journalist in Vegas and reports on issues largely affecting the casinos there, although I prefer her witty -- and fittingly somewhat gonzo -- human interest stories) gave me a deck to add to my collection from a Vegas uniform supply company. This company supplies uniforms to a few casinos in town, and, well, it's not pretty.
First of all, there's the lady on the Jack of spades, and the less said about her outfit the better.
Then, of course, there's this dork on the six of diamonds. His sultry expression is completely out of place for what he's wearing (I'd guess he's a busboy at the Mirage).
And then we have the confused soul on the eight of diamonds... I think he's wondering how much slot machine money he can get for that shirt.
Then, needless to say, there's the poor call girl on the Ace of spades.
This is a worthy effort, but it still doesn't surpass the deck given to me for my birthday one year. My own lovely wife gave me a replica deck that featured interracial ass-buggery with medical implements, in addition to other weirdness. And no, I'm not exaggerating, and no, I didn't ask for it specifically. That, still, is the all-time greatest feat of oddity in the collection; sure, I have what's probably a valuable WWII airplane spotter deck, or there's the beautiful transformation deck, or the miniscule deck from Japan; who knew the French in the 19th century were lecherous and pervy enough to put it all on flowery playing cards, just like every present-day mechanic?
...well, a vampire Santa at any rate. Or a pusher Santa.
See, one of my Engineering coworkers upstairs (a manager) has come back from maternity leave. She used to be a club kid of sorts, and now she's obviously had to make some drastic changes in her lifestyle. Out of some desperation over what to do for New Year's, she knew I was a board game addict and asked what games I thought were good either for 2 players alone or with a group of people.
What followed was a very long series of emails, followed by an AIM conversation, which basically ended with me picking up a game for her -- for which she'll pay me back tomorrow -- and letting her borrow a couple games over the Christmas weekend, since they don't have anything other than the word games that nobody likes to play except her.
I'm going to let her borrow a few games over Christmas, and I'm going to pick up Caesar and Cleopatra for her today.
And I may also have someone to play games with at lunch for the foreseeable future. And I brightened up someone's Christmas. However...
Yes, my pretties... join my vast army of the undead...
1. Being all done with my work for the week by midday.
2. Eating lunch and having nothing to do, but having to keep up the appearance of actually doing work, rather than actually going home or doing some last-minute Christmas shopping before the rush.
3. Having a friend offer to play Ticket to Ride online with you, but you have to decline because the charade must be maintained at all costs.
4. Nobody else seems to be working either. Even my manager, who seems to be looking at URLs for his hobby -- racing cars.
5. End-of-year reviews are coming in January, so the charade has to be maintained to the nth degree these days.
(By the way, the online version of TtR is pretty sweet as far as online versions go. You owe it to yourself to check it out and play, either against bots or the thousands of Germans that seem to frequent the site.)
So I got a new one. Tikal. It's marginally a game about exploring Mayan ruins and bringing back treasures -- sort of an Indiana Jones kind of feel within a Eurogame setting. It also came in handy to play it before watching Survivor.
It's a game where each turn is spent uncovering the jungle and getting 10 action points to spend on various things to do during your turn, and the game ends once all of the jungle is uncovered. As you might expect, it's also a game where there are many things you can do to increase your score but you don't have enough time or points to do everything you want to. It's also fairly easy to learn, the English portion of the rules being 3 or 4 pages of a small booklet.
There are certain kinds of players I could never, ever, ever play this with: the kinds of people who will min/max each turn to death, taking an hour to suss out each possible move with chess-like precision until the other players set fire to the board and their hair. Along with hyper-competitive disorder (HCD), analysis paralysis (AP) is a malady that afflicts a surprisingly large number of people and is quite serious. Ask your doctor today.
However, the game is fucking gorgeous to look at. And the Mayan temples you explore get larger on the board as more levels are uncovered. And also, with the right mix of people -- read, casual players -- I think it would be a hell of a lot of fun. (Plus there are cool volcano tiles and treasure pieces too.) Mer was by far the better treasure-hunter during our first game; she might've lapped me in the end.
Another game we've had a lot of fun with is Caesar and Cleopatra, a 2-player card game. I got it in Greenfield, MA over Thanksgiving -- support local businesses! -- because I was interested to begin with, and completely dorked out at Greenfield's game store. (Like that's any great surprise, but still.) We were initially somewhat skeptical about it but have warmed up to it a lot, mostly because it has intriguing things like slaves, orgies (although that particular orgy card is more annoying than the rest, and I can't believe I just strung those particular words together), and gigolos (not pictured).
The main thing we've liked about it is that at its heart it's a bluffing game, where any advantage in face-up card strength ebbs away over time, but face-down card strength is a little easier to defend, and also gives you the advantage of stealth, and encourages bluffing. It's very hard to explain here but is very clever in practice -- and the schadenfreude bluffing aspect is a big hit with sick fucks like me and the divine Miss M.
This post will now implode under its own weight, causing a singularity of dorkitude. Save yourselves.
Toys R Us is having a sale: buy 1 get 1 free on Hasbro, Milton Bradley, or Parker Brothers games. (Avalon Hill was also a decent publisher that got snapped up by Hasbro a few years ago.) The sale lasts until the 15th. Yeah, it's offered online -- free shipping too -- but I think I want to try my chances in a brick-and-mortar store...
When M's 'rents visited us last, we decided to spring Ticket to Ride on them; however, this was a dicey proposition. They aren't gamers at all, and M's dad hates complexity in a lot of things (after all, it's not just him -- I'm unsure about how my mom would do with it, for example).
The little plastic trains, however, are irresistible.
M's mom was a convert and wanted to play a game most nights they were there. Another upside is that M's parents, who are two of the hardest people to buy for, now have a definite Hanukkah present.
Hence this sale. The troublesome thing is that Ticket to Ride is not made by any of the listed companies -- I'm hoping that I can show up at a Toys R Us that carries TtR (itself a dicey issue... I don't think many do, if at all), act confused, and walk out with TtR and a free copy of this game. True, it's a massive dicefest. But if you know you're getting into a lot of dice beforehand and you realize that there isn't a lot of strategy involved... I just really need a game where I can destroy the entire Eastern Seaboard with a giant frickin' eyeball, OK?
Furthermore: every kid needs a copy of this classic. I was mildly surprised when Mer said she'd never had it as a kid. I think this and either Hungry Hungry Hippos or Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots... hmmm...
(And yes, I need help. Eventually.)
Everybody has hobbies and weird... predilections. Some collect all things Superman. Some run around in Civil War garb. Some run around as Elvis. All eccentric, to be sure, but definitely within the realm of sanity.
With Mer and myself, however, the prospect gets weird.
For example, Mer is a nut for autumn. It's only understandable since she's from New England and a Masshole to boot. Absolutely nuts for fall. It gets a little weird, however, once we go to pumpkin festivals or when Halloween rolls around.
She fondles the pumpkins. It starts even before we hit the patch. I'm not exaggerating: her eyes get really big once we come within 5 blocks in the car. Her breathing gets quicker. She'll jump out of the car, walk deliberately to the patch, and spend some time picking out the perfect pumpkin. You might think she'd go to the largest one in the patch, but her pumpkin senses tingle for the smaller-sized, round ones free from warts and blemishes.
My tastes run to the grotesque. I'll pick out something huge and lopsided, with many warts and deformities -- nothing rotting, but definitely something odd. (When I was growing up, my dad introduced me to Makita saws and how many cool things could be done with power tools, gourds, and stencils.) I'll have mine picked out, I'll walk over to where she is, and she's repeatedly hugging one of them, saying:
"Look at it, Brian. Isn't it so wonderfully ORANGE? Isn't it ROUND? FEEL it... mmmmmmmmm...."
At this point I'm just wondering how many people drank the Kool-Aid.
Thing is, my wife's the sane one.
Acting may have grown into a passion with me -- and one that I hope will turn into a bona-fide career with the gargantuan amount of work I'm putting into it -- but I still have an odd hobby. Yes, playing card collecting. I don't know how I got started with it or when it started, but I have this weird virus in my system.
This is an excerpt of a recent email to my wife -- when I discovered this site today:
> There are so many. So beautiful... remember how you get when you're in a > pumpkin patch? I'm like that now. I just wish I could touch them. Wish I > could look at all the kings, and aces.Ok, this is definitely creepier than my pumpkin fetish!!!
;-)
She's right, though. Is it sane to look at cards from Hawaii, India, Italy, Mongolia, Norway, and Trinidad with abject lust? Harbor a greedy acquisitive desire to own a reproduction set of a UK deck from 1676? Gaze way too longingly at some obscure US set -- from a 1962 Time magazine?
Yes, I need help. But I need the cards first. And I'm even easier to buy for now.
Seems a Russian newspaper has issued its own set of "most wanted" playing cards. They're selling out around Moscow.
Definitely something to add to the playing card collection.