Game List

I really like that idea. Of course to really implement, I would have to set up a second blog (which is easy peasy) that everyone could post to whenever they play a game, and we could log them. If there is enough interest, I will do it. And even if not, I might get the wild hair sometime. Interest?

Strategicon Update

Leslie, Wylie and I hit the con on Saturday and it was fair to middling in attendance and excitement. There was a great Star Wars miniatures game going on with TONS of stormtroopers in a huge custom Death Star board. Really cool. A homebrew WWII game that was squad vs. squad in scale, and evolved around small scenarios (rescue the pilot, torch the toilet, capture german officer, etc.) Looked fun, didn't play it though. Fair amount of Hordes/Warmachine going on, Axis and Allies up the ass, Ticket to Ride, etc.

It was neat because during the Beverly Hills Dr. visits, we listened to The Dice Tower, and I bought some games that they talked about. So this time at the con, Leslie actually recognized quite a few games in the dealer room from either hearing about, or playing. So that was fun!

Then Denis and I hit it on sunday for a few hours, and it was less exciting, very dark and empty feeling. Still more gamers that you could shake a stick at, but it was not GenCon/Kublacon.

Picked up Polarity, which is a neato magnetic game of dexterity (sort of), a few OOP WFRP items (Castle Drachenfels, two Doomstones books), Zero (a wwii PTO card game about air combat), and the crowning achievement: Twilight Struggle by GMT Games.

TS is a game about the Cold War played out in roughly 5-8 year "chunks" of time. The USSR and US vie for control over countries using influence, coups and something else I can't remember the name of, but it is basically a weak coup. Anyhoo, the game is driven by cards and each card is either a scoring card, or an event/operations card. The cards are either USSR or US events, and if the USSR uses a USSR card, he can use it either for operations points or the event, but noth both. If the USSR uses a US card, the US gets the event and the USSR gets the operations points. Herein lies the fun of the game. There is a space race part of the board which is used for discards, and of course the DefCon level.

Cool mechanic: Each turn, you must perform military actions (start wars, coups, etc.) equal to the current DefCon level, or give your opponent the difference in VP's. So, the more at peace the world is, the more capacity for aggression there is, and if you are not aggressive, you in effect lose face and control to your opponent.

Ryan and I played 5 (of 10) turns last night, and after the first few turns, it started making sense and was a lot of fun. The learning curve is pretty minimal, but how the best play the game might take longer.

It is expensive, but go get it! OR not!

More on the Game List

If I were smarter, I would figure out how to do a very minor database web interaction that would allow anyone to enter their game into the database that we could then search and look at. Game * Players * Date * Results * Notes. Hmm, could be cool. Enron, DO IT! Here is my most recent entry:

5.28.2006 Polarity - Denis vs. Eric - Winner Denis - Fun first game!
5.28.2006 Polartiy - Denis vs. Eric - Winner Denis - Better second game!
5.28.2006 Battle Line - Leslie vs. Eric - Winner Leslie - This chick ROCKS at Battle Line.
5.29.2006 Carcassonne - Leslie v. Ryan v. Eric - Winner Ryan - Always the new guy wins cause everyone else helps explain farming to the point of personal detriment.

Good times! Long ass post!