Was HackMaster the Dork Tower people? Like the fake game they played in the comic!? That's rad if it is. I'm all for checking out and trying other systems. At first Jon's collection of forgotten RPGs was super depressing, but now it doesn't bother me as much, hahah. Dusty and cobweb filled pdfs.

I don't remember the AoW videos too well other than it seemed to blend match-3 gameplay with sort of olden times battle line type fighting. I'm probably way off, but what stuck with me was images that looked like tiles with different soliders on them and combining them to make different attacks.

I've been thinking about how important cool components are to a game. I think that might be why some of these recent dice games have seemingly done pretty well. Good gameplay obviously matters too, but fun pieces go a long way to bolstering a games image, least for me. That's why I was thinking of rummi tiles/dominoes as a component. Don't think I've really seen that. Puzzle Strike used poker chips which is different. I suspect a lot of games go for cards because they're probably much cheaper to produce and players like card games. (Thinking about it, cards are probably a billion times cheaper than dice/tiles, and can accomplish the same shit, gah!)

Rummikub is fun because you're working with a communal playing field. Everyone starts with 14 random tiles and the goal is to be the first person to get rid of yours. You play tiles in either straights of the same color or groups of the same number, different color. You need 3 or more tiles to make a legal set. The awesome twist is that other players can play off of the sets you've put out there, or they can even tear them apart and make new sets, as long as everything in the play area is still "legal" in the end. It's so good!

I don't know what theme could fit with that style of play. War game wouldn't really make sense, but maybe something that revolved around "influence" or like "assimilation"  - competing Borg cubes :) - Speaking of Star Trek, I hear that new game Fleet Captains is a blast. Not a big enough Trekker to drop $100 bucks on it, but hopefully I'll see it at the next con.

Baconlube, fuck.