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What's New
United States
Bozeman
MT
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No doubt many before me have ranted about what I'm about to rant about, but I can refrain no longer. I have an itching, burning, festering, boiling dislike of the "weight" ratings.
What is this "weight"? Is it rules complexity? Is it depth of play? Who knows! These are two totally different things. I loath complex rules and I love deep play, and the weight ratings offer zero help to me in looking for games with simple rules and deep play, even though the word "weight" suggests that the measure is designed to help me.
This measure seems consistent with many BGGers' misled belief that complex rules = complex strategy, and that therefore "gamer's games" shouldn't be too light on rules. Maybe that's why there's only one measure where there should be two.
I got fired up over this issue while researching Finca, which I have now bought and played a bunch. In the forums and comments it's as described is "light", and many people seem to think it's not a "gamer's game", apparently because its rules are minimal. I overlooked this game for a long time because of this. It turns out though that, at least when played with 2 players, you can strategize and calculate intensely. It's deep, deeper than many other games which are usually considered "gamer's games", but the weird ways in which we quantify and discuss weight confuse the issue.
There's a ton of open information and the mechanism on which the outcome depends most, the Rondel, is completely deterministic. You can mind grind hard and never get anywhere near the bottom.
But too many of us miss the depth here because we operate under the assumption that simple rules = light game. And then it gets misrepresented on the site, and then I overlook it, and then I get frustrated, and then I write this frustrated post.
I think we should either separate "weight" into "rules complexity" and "depth of play" or somehow we should all stop equating the one with the other. Ideally both.
One more related rant thing: when someone uses the word "meaty" to describe a game I want to light my eyeballs on fire and I don't know why. Please don't hold this against me.
[/soapbox]
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Niels Kjær
Denmark
Malling
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After much work, I have now finished doing the first pass of the landscape.
It will be a good idea to wait for canned air to get rid of the free leaves, before I take up further gluing/painting, as the flock is everywhere and in all cracks.
After claning it up, my plan is to go over the small spots that need a second touch, and then varnish it with a spray before I start putting on trees.
It turned out that I did not like the fields too much, they have a 'clunky' feel to them, at least for me.
Next time I will need to find another way that gives me a better feeling.
The arrows make the track look a lot more finished than anything else in this update. With them, and the finishing line, the track is now playable.
I am not sure about the finishing line, perhaps it needs another row of checkers on each side before I am happy with it.
As it is, I do not feel they look 'right' in the outer lanes.
Before I do that, I want to paint white dots in the cracks between the outer spaces, though, to see how that will turn out.
A funny effect of the grass is that the landscape seems to have lost the elevation changes that I put some work into creating.
Apart from the 'valley' in the lower left, I may only be able to see the other changes because I know they are there.
I look forward to seeing how it turns out with trees.
Regarding trees, then I will begin construction of those soon. I have some trees at home, but not enough, and after realising how many I need, I decided to start making them myself.
That will likely be the theme of the next update.
Enough talk, pictures!
A nice side effect of the landscape work is that the glare is now gone from the pictures, yeaij  (where is he flagwaving smiley, when I need it?)
Still debating with myself if I want to make a new pit building for this track or go with one of the two I have already.
Perhaps something without a top floor, to mirror the status as a short, regional track.
The barren rectangle in the lower left is for the track name and weather stats. I am not sure how to do it yet, but that is where it is going.
Thanks for reading, comments, as always, are most welcome.
If nothing else, they tell me that somebody has read this far 
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Richard Hutnik
United States
Poughkeepsie
New York
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I was able to try a 3 player game with a variant of the pie rule for role selection, and also turn order.
It went well for the most part. Still will need to try more. See prior blog posts for more info on this ongoing project for applying a version of the pie rule to more than two players.
Concerns out of it that may need to be look into is maybe too much money is getting into the game, due to delays in getting plantations producing, means there is some cash floating about before production begins. Also, there is a concern about play taking longer. The former with money can be tweaked. The second though stems from players being able to rig turn order. Greater concern than the 3 player game is the two player version. Still, I will need to keep an eye on it.
What I will be looking at for two player version is to have the governor player select 6 roles, then slot them in turn order, and then divide into two piles, with the Governor marker placed into either of the two piles. The other player then selects the pile. My hope is that it will shorten game length from prior attempts I was doing, while still providing interesting decision making. I am basing this on an idea peakhope had in this thread, with the idea of varying the turn order some:
http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/10485/and-playtesting-of-t...
Well, here's hoping it works well. It goes well, I will look to reuse it for an original design.
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simon cogan
United Kingdom
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UK weather is just great isn't it. We have rain for months on end and temperatures in April that would freeze a badger's bum, and now we're basking in a heat wave!
It's baking hot here at the moment, and since I do a lot of my writing in my attic...The attic is like a furnace - even with the window open and the fan on full power.
So I haven't felt like doing much this week and have really forced myself to the keyboard at times.
The good news is that 'Gallifrey' is now alll but done with just the last page to go. I'm hoping to finish that this weekend and then it's just the cover to add.
It'll soon be time to start thinking about 'Storylines II'. This will add new Plots and other elements to the 11th Doctor expansions (and 'The End of Time' too) and should hopefully be out in August.
Of course, Episode 8 of 'New Dimensions' - Without Honour - will also be out tomorrow.
I've had another good week of Who viewing this week with the third Doctor classic from Season 8 - 'The Daemons'.
Once seen as the 'best Who story ever' in the early 80's, certainly the best Pertwee story, this one has seen a little fall from grace in recent years and it's failings under a a harsh scrutiny.
True, the ending is both naff and twee - but leading upto that is 4 fantstic episodes - with the first 2 being standout brilliant. I really enjoyed the story, thought the atmosphere was charming and evocative and the initial build up of tension was terrific.
The cast are superlative throughout - Miss Hawthorne a particular delight - and all the regualrs having a whale of a time and some good character setpieces.
The last episode is a bit of a letdown with Jo's sacrifice, but that doesn't ruin, IMHO, a great story. 9/10 from me.
And this week's question: Which Who semi-regular is trying to balance the Post office books in Devil's End?
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Ryan Moses
United States
Toledo
Ohio
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Just wanted to add that if any of you out there are playing Diablo 3 to leave your tag and I will add you! Could always use more friends on Steam too if you want to leave those tags!
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Ryan Moses
United States
Toledo
Ohio
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Man for someone that does not have a job I have been working a lot recently! The reviews, interviews, helping people get ready for graduation parties for their kids and play testing on my own game Nom Nom Nom! There is just not time for all of it....and then of course there is Diablo 3 as well
 !
I cant wait for Amanda to finish up college in the next few weeks so she has more time to help with the play testing! As it is I think im going to miss taking my game to Protospiel 
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Dork Fest
Canada
Newmarket
Ontario
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Privateer Press just unveiled the Card for the Cygnar Colossal! Check it out:
Looks Pretty Beefy
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A.J. Porfirio
United States
Thompsons Station
Tennessee
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Ok so this may not appeal to the core audience of this blog, and then again, maybe it will. It is still about games afterall (but not Kickstarter really).
I want to talk about board gaming apps. First and foremost I want to offer up some disclaimers and info on my app playing experience. What follows is my opinion and based on and drawn from my own experiences. You aren't going to see any data to back up what I am saying. Basically, I could easily be 100% completely wrong. But this is what makes this discussion fun. I get to see if you all agree, disagree, or it is split down the middle.
Ok so to give you a point of reference, I play on iOS using an iPod Touch.
Here is a list of some, but not all games I have and play in order from Most Played (Top) to least played (bottom). This is all time and doesn't necessarily reflect what I am playing currently.
1. Ascension (and it isn't even close)
2. Dominion (unofficial)
3. Catan
4. Kingsburg
5. Elder Sign: Omens
6. Loot and Scoot (mostly cause my son likes it)
7. Tikal
8. Hive
9. Ticket to Ride
10. Nightfall
11. Caylus
12. Bohnanza
With the exception of Dominion and Nightfall, which I only recently acquired, I do not own any of the physical copies There are more, but I either haven't played yet or rarely played them.
So I'm not going to talk about how they work or anything like that. I want to talk about some of the impacts boardgaming apps may or may not have on the hobby or even their own physical board game.
Does having a board game app increase sales of the physical game?
So you don't have to read a lot of blogs or listen to a lot of podcasts to know that those with apps are claiming that it increases the sales of the physical game. When I look at my own activity, I don't find this to be the case at all. Totally anecdotal, but it got me thinking and contemplating, if what they are saying is true, why?
First, where I am coming from and why I don't feel the need to purchase the physical copy...
Of all the games I play on iOS, Ascension is by far my favorite. I have played over 400 games and play it daily. It is in my opinion the undisputed king of iOS board game apps. As much as I love it, I do not feel any compulsion to buy the physical copy of this, or the other iOS app games for a number of reasons:
1. I do not see any scenario in which the physical game can top or even meet what the app does in terms of experience. No shuffling, no drawing, automatically plays cards at the touch of a button. Asynch play, the list goes on and on. Having experienced the app, I am afraid the physical version would seem impossibly slow by comparison. (I confess I've never played the physical copy). Exceptions would be games with heavy player interaction.
2. Expense. It is hard to get past paying 20-50x as much for the same game in whatever form. Not saying never, but it will be rare for me. Typically if I want the physical game, I wanted it before I played the app. Or if the implementation of the app does not do the game justice perhaps that is a reason.
3. Try before buy. If there is an app coming up for a game I want, I will actually hold off on buying the physical copy until I try the app. Currently, Summoner Wars is the best example. I REALLY want this game. But I am just going to wait for the app, and I probably won't even need the physical copy if the app is good. Nightfall is the game to thank for this (more on that later).
So all of this adds up to essentially making it LESS (even FAR LESS) likely that I will purchase the physical copy of a game that I can play on iPod. Maybe I am weird, but actually I think there are more of you like me out there. But I also think that there are two other types of people out there as well. And one of those groups provides the key to why 'supposedly' (I have never seen data confirming what the publishers tell us) having a board game app results in more sales of the physical copy.
1. Hobby Gamer 1 (does not own game) - this is me. The guy who behaves as above. Not likely to purchase the physical game when the app can be had cheaper and perhaps be a better experience than the physical game.
2. Hobby Gamer 2 (owns the game) - there are those out there that own the game and/or have played the game and love it. I suspect these folks jump on the app in a heartbeat. A new medium, a new implementation of a game they really enjoy. Certainly they help app sales, but given they already own the game I think we can safely say they aren't driving any incremental sales of the physical copy.
3. Non-Hobby Gamer - and this could be broken down further, but for simplicity sake lets keep them in the same bucket. Maybe they are a video gamer of just an app gamer. At any rate they likely aren't aware of the hobby gaming world and what it has to offer. These are I think where additional sales of the physical copy would be coming from and it is a great thing as it is a contributor to growing and expanding our hobby. These players may ask themselves "This is a board game? Wow this could be a lot of fun to play with my friends. Maybe I should pick it up?" And so they do. And then they discover our world. Any of you reading this fit that bill?
So that is how I see it, I still struggle with how large is group 3 and for most apps if they are really that big. I am still leery of and unconvinced that, generally speaking, sales of the physical copies improve based on the app.
And this is probably REALLY a reach, but technically with a little wordsmithing you can say, "We have sold a lot more physical copies of the game since the app came out" and it could easily be tha you have sold more copies, not that you are selling more than you were before. Again, I don't think this is an industry where folks would be this deceptive to try to get sales, but this is a comment that could be misconstrued as to its actual meaning. Anyway, I digress...
So for me and those others in group 1 there is the potential that the app actually hurts the physical sales of a game. Enter Nightfall, Elder Sign, and others. These are games that fit my wheelhouse, at least at a glance. But having played the apps I now know they aren't my cup of tea. Not only will I now never purchase them, but I don't even really want to play them. Now don't get me wrong, Elder Signs is decent and the graphics are incredible. Nightfall is a bit of a cluster, and I know from some of the friends I play ascension with that this got deleted and rarely is played by MANY. It sadly just doesn't work Asynch at all.
But wait A.J., didn't you say you own Nightfall? Yes, I do actually. I bought it and Martial law 2nd hand at a local convention. RIGHT BEFORE THE APP CAME OUT. It is a mistake I won't make again. And sure I could try the physical game before I buy too, but I am not one of those people that won't ever buy anything unless they've played it, actually I do that quite a bit. But if there is an app around the corner, I will just wait as whether I like it or not, I probably won't need to get the physical game. Anyway, if you want to trade for Nightfall and Martial law, hit me up 
Now I probably seem like a real downer on iOS games right now, but trust me I love what is happening and that options are expanding. I also DON'T think that because apps may not result in incremental sales of the physical game that they aren't worth pursuing for the publishers. I suspect they make some money on their own. I would be more careful if I was a small publisher though, where the impact of mistakes is magnified. Be careful not to misjudge your resources and brand recognition when it comes to your App business strategy. I certainly would never recommend releasing an app and the physical copy of the sane game in tandem.
This is the app world as I see it, now feel free to blow me up and point out just how wrong I am on the subject.
Discuss.
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Weird Fox
United States
Finger Lakes
United States
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Note: this post began life as a reply to one of Patrick Carroll's recent blog posts, but it soon spiraled out of control, and rather than dump a few hundred words into a reply there (I broke up with Brevity a long time ago), I thought I'd place it here instead. Specifically, it was riffing on this:
Patrick Carroll wrote: I guess it's a sort of feng-shui thing with me. A cluttered room feels like a cluttered mind, and those unplayed games stand as daily reminders that something is amiss in my life. I don't think they're telling me to get rich and retire so I can play games all day every day. I think they're saying, "Why did you buy me, and what are you getting out of owning me?"
That said, I modified the wording of my post/reply here hoping that the "you" is not read as "Patrick." It was never directly addressing him.
--
There's some evidence that suggests when you have something on your To Do list (and it can be anything from "paint the shed" to "trim toenails" to "prepare presentation for project status meeting") your brain just logs it as a thing to be done (i.e., a "project"), and it's given equal status as everything else. In other words, your brain doesn't know or care that there's a hierarchy to the unfinished things on your To Do list (you have to do that work consciously), and it simply treats them all equally. Deliberately keeping 85 unplayed games on hand would then be identical, mentally, to having 85 presentations to prepare. Ditto unread books. The more unread books, unplayed games, unwatched things on your TiVo, unpaid bills, unfinished blog posts, etc that you have, the more stress is created by the mere presence of something unfinished in your life that your brain knows about.
The coolest thing about that idea is that gaming is supposed to be a relaxing, fun, enjoyable hobby, except if the above is true, that means there's an excellent chance the hobby actually introduces more stress into your life than it alleviates. I think about that every time I'm tempted to make a detailed, long-term plan for a hobby that involves more than one step. I'm also reminded of the Schopenhauer quotation "Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents."
I do not have a definitive answer or position on any of the points raised here. I just like thinking about them. I suspect there's more truth here than non-truth, though, at least in my N of 1 experimenting. The easiest way to clean up my mental clutter has been to not encourage mental clutter in the first place. I try very hard to not keep unread books around (at one point, I had more than two years of reading in my house, assuming I was able to read 200 pages a day) and I try hard not to keep unplayed games around (I think I have 6 at the moment). It is a lot easier to get rid of games and books than you might think, and after you've gotten rid of them, they no longer compete for your attention; sitting in a room surrounded by your unplayed games is different than sitting in a room surrounded by the games you like and actually play. Performing this task also makes it easier to not acquire the games to begin with; I highly recommend Product Abstinence as a policy.
(I've even given some thought to zeroing out my Previously Owned list here. Unless I deliberately consult that list, I couldn't recall everything I've gotten rid of anyway, and I'm not sure what the purpose of that record-keeping is except to allow for regret at a later date; I certainly have no practical use for the information.)
Most people think they have above-average control over their impulses and faculties ("I can lose weight anytime I want," "advertising doesn't work on me," etc) but that's simply not true. We're subject to all sorts of common chemical firings and misfirings. While people might think (hope?) they exert total conscious control over themselves, the reality is that they do not, and so a huge unplayed or underplayed game collection isn't "out of sight, out of mind" at all; it chips away at you, mentally. It certainly did for me.
My commitment to a small game collection didn't happen in a vacuum, as I was overhauling a lot in my life at the time: useless kitchen gadgets, excess unread books, cable TV, unwatched DVDs; I'd never argue that merely halving a game collection by itself led to instant Buddha-like inner peace or anything. But a large (for the size of my living space) game collection was a symptom of something else, and addressing it was an important part of eliminating a source of stress that was going ignored.
It's hard to talk about the Small Game Collection without seeming elitist, or condescending, and that's not why I'm sharing this at all. Loads of users here talk about reducing their collections, wanting to get away from the Cult of the New, etc. This tells me that this is on a lot of people's minds, even if the specifics of the plan might differ (such as how many games constitutes a Small Collection, how frequently something ought to be played, etc). But in the same way that no one on their death bed says "I wish I watched more TV," no one will ever say "I should have made more plans I had neither the ability nor the desire to follow through with." I guess I'm sharing this mostly to say that clutter was not healthy for me, that it took some effort to identify what needed to go, that it got progressively easier to carry the plan out the more momentum I gained, and that the results have been truly worth it.
Ultimately, it took a while, but I eventually did learn that maybe missing out on something great is just about the emptiest threat an inanimate object can come at me with.
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Dork Fest
Canada
Newmarket
Ontario
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Originally posted on our little blog: www.boardgamesminisandmore.blogspot.com
Twilight Imperium is a game that has a TON of rules that are well laid out in the rulebook, but not accessible quickly for players. I have found a lot of useful quick reference sheets on www.boardgamegeek.com and have just created an artscow deck for the Leaders Variant.
The cards were created by Tony Cimino (Diogenis)
Leader Card Artscow Album: http://www.artscow.com/ShareAlbum.aspx?Key=ime9t1y9
I have put together a deck that includes 7 copies of each of the Leaders cards as well as the custom Pirate Characters for Merchants and Marauders (Created by pere cobo (alonsi)) and the Terrors in the Deep Variant (Created by Scott Lewis).
Artscow 54 Card Deck: http://www.artscow.com/gallery/card/ti3-leaders-and-hxm38oyz...
HOW TO PRINT AN ARTSCOW DECK: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/395699/artscow-pictorial-how...
Enjoy!
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