These are the last 10 games I've played.



I'm a gamer in Wichita, KS. You can learn about my game group here. If you're ever in town and want a session with the locals drop me a line, we'll set something up.

My Geek of the Week thread is here.

My Hot 10 is the games I'm interested in acquiring. Nowadays, however, I'm only picking up two or three games a year so some of these games will never find themselves in my collection.

I love playing new games, but I hate buying games I haven't played. The answer? BGG.con. That's where I like to scout out my purchases for the upcoming year. I've gone to BGG.con every year and I can't recommend it highly enough.

I'm mainly a eurogamer with a preference for economic games, and games which reward efficiency. I'm a little burned out on the abstract medium weight euro (I say that and then a game like Taluva comes along and impresses me) so I'm being drawn to games where theme and mechanics are better integrated (think Power Grid, Imperial, Thebes). I'd like to dabble in wargames but I don't really have the time right now, maybe in the future. I'm not very interested in the thematic immersion games though.

Basically, I believe a game has to justify the time it takes to play by offering increasingly more crucial decisions and interesting situations. A very brief game can be forgiven for flaws in the game play (such as excessive randomness, chaos, or lack of control). As a game becomes longer it grows increasingly hard for the gameplay to support the play time, in my opinion. A two hour game is about the longest I've ever been satisfied with in terms of "experience to time ratio". An hour to ninety minutes is about the sweet spot for me. Thus I tend to play games at a faster pace, and use my gut more than brute analysis. AP is to be avoided.

I prefer my games to have some random component, and also hidden information (which stays hidden, even if it's trackable). I also like mixing open scoring with secret victory conditions.

Here are some pictures:

This is me and my wife playing Tower of Babel at BGG.con_1



Here I am with Agnespoodle playing Yspahan at BGG.con_2



And here I am at BGG.con_3 playing T&E with Caylott, Katelyn, and Redneon.



These are the boys, Will and Jack