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Catherine StraightUnited States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
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Neither Nate or I have really posted much of anything in here for a while. Me because I've never been very good at writing what I want to say and Nate because he's been so busy.
I was wanting to let all you crafters (knitting, crocheting mainly) and bggers know that I have started a vcast/blog thing about my knitting and crocheting and just recently added a small gaming section at the end. So if anyone thought that might interest them and can withstand my crazyness and rambling here's the link with the first episode with gaming in it.
Cat's Corner
Straight Talk on Strategy Gaming
Often Lumbering No-Nonsense Ludological Observations
Archive for Cat
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Fellow BGGers, I have the pleasure of introducing you to:
Linus Sherman Straight:strip_icc()/pic1278440.jpg)
Born March 27th, weighing 8 lbs 10 ozs, and measuring 20" long.
Mama and baby are doing fine::strip_icc()/pic1278433.jpg)
He even likes Daddy a little::strip_icc()/pic1278432.jpg)
His big sister finds him boring::strip_icc()/pic1278434.jpg)
All in all, one big happy family::strip_icc()/pic1278430.jpg)
We're getting him off on the right foot::strip_icc()/pic1278438.jpg)
But mostly he just likes to sleep::strip_icc()/pic1278436.jpg)
Though he doesn't seem to mind baths::strip_icc()/pic1278435.jpg)
And is pretty happy in his new home::strip_icc()/pic1258641.jpg)
Linus: "Ta-ta for now, BGG! I'll be seeing you!":strip_icc()/pic1278431.jpg)
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Catherine StraightUnited States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
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- From the Straight family.
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Catherine StraightUnited States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
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I'm sure Nate will come in later and give a more detailed account of what all went on and talk about a couple of games in paticular.
EDIT: Here is said more detailed account: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/74922/what-i-played-at...
I wanted to thank everyone we got to meet and game with. We had a lot of fun and are talking about going again sometime. Nate of course got in more gaming than I as I like my sleep and will get as much as I can now before I won't be able to.
These are the games (that I have not played before) that stood out to me the most in no paticular order:
Vintage
MIL (1049)
Poseidon
The New Era
Mecanisburgo
Urban Sprawl
Greentown
New games we bought from essen preorders, virtual flea market, and flea market:
Hunting Party
1835
König von Siam
Cannes: Stars, Scripts and Screens
Bus
Rise of Empires
Dungeon Petz
Upon a Salty Ocean
Dakota
Hermagor
Oraklos
Thanks to everyone who made this a memorable trip. We had fun.
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Catherine StraightUnited States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
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Like this.
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Catherine StraightUnited States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
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Nate + Cat = Little Straight
Edit: Just found out due date is April 2nd.
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Catherine StraightUnited States
Lacombe
Louisiana
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
La la la la la la. La la la la la ...
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So Nate took off Thursday and Friday for our 4 year wedding anniversary and 9 year anniversary of just being "more than friends". Thursday just so happens to be the day of our anniversary and our FLGS weekly board game night. So ... Can you guess what we are doing?
We are meeting up with two fellow gamer brothers, Jacob and Jerry, shortly after lunch to begin gaming. After everyone else gets off work and such, the rest of our game group will be showing up. How better to begin year 5 than by gaming?
It is a great joy to have such a loving and caring husband who enjoys so many of the same hobbies and interests.
Stay tuned for when I update with our fun filled gamiversary.
Edit: Update
The gamiversary is almost over. We will probably finish up the rest of the day/night with some M*A*S*H.
Nate cooked a yummy Indian lunch in which we got the recipe from this geeklist entry and I made some Naan from one of the following comments yesterday. After lunch we headed over to +1, our FLGS to met with several of our gaming buddies. Here is a run down of what we played and who won.
Return of the Heroes: Cat
Dungeon Lords: Jacob
Race for the Galaxyx2: Simon x2
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization: Nate
Alien Frontiers: Cat
There were some other games going on that neither Nate or I were playing so I didn't see what was played nor who won.
We had a blast and want to thank everyone who shared today with us and sent us warm wishes!
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If you're going to be at BGG.CON and want to meet the Straights and play some games, here's the place to start setting such things up.
It's also the place where we'll keep track of what games we'd like to get played at BGG.CON. We're new at this con thing, so bear with us.
Here are my biggest want-to-plays. Most are things we don't / won't get a chance to play often / otherwise.
Antiquity: A big Splotter game we haven't played, and I know we should.
Bus: Another Splotter game we've never played, and I think we'd enjoy.
Ur: 1830 BC: A less-known Splotter we own, but doesn't work well for 2.
Duck Dealer, Greed Inc, Indonesia, or any other Splotter game really.
1830, or any other Series: 18xx: We really like 18xx, but are still n00bs for want of local players up for this sort of thing.
Magic Realm: I wouldn't be averse to playing a high player-count game of this, either teaching n00bs or with experienced players who do PvP.
Merchant of Venus: My remake copy! I'd like opponents who wouldn't mind some variants [mining colonies, crew, etc] and/or my Rastur rewrite.
Age of Steam: We've enjoyed the [multi-player] game the few times we've played, but don't play it enough 'cause it's a little too long for most of our group play. Would like some experienced opponents in a larger group!
Civilization and/or Advanced Civilization: This is one of the other classics that's right up our alley that we likely won't ever play elsewhere [though apparently one guy we play with at our FLGS has a copy... hmmmmmmm...].
Here I Stand with an experienced group [read: knows the rules] that doesn't mind 2 n00bs at the table [and teaching / refreshing them a bit].
Friedrich, Maria, Struggle of Empires, Revolution: The Dutch Revolt, or any other big multi-player war-game cross-overs that seem interesting.
Medieval Merchant, Vino, San Marco, Löwenherz, Stephenson's Rocket, MarraCash, Rheinländer, Medina, Big City, Tigris & Euphrates or any other rarer and/or old-school [or new, but old-style!] Euros in our [or in your!] collection.
First Train to Nuremberg, London, Dominant Species, or any other of the big new-school Euros that are in our general play-style / area of interest. You'd all probably know better than me; I don't really track the hot new games.
I'm sure there are others I'll add to the list later, and I'm sure Cat probably can come up with some of her own to add, too.
I will, of course, have my Decktet with me at all times, and more than likely my Icehouse pieces at most times.
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This blog post will be a work-in-progress / "living" post.
It would be a Geeklist, but most of the Icehouse games in existence aren't on BGG.
I recently picked up my "electric yellow" pyramids, which necessitated me thinking about what I would label my "top ten" Icehouse games [requisite for becoming part of thesecret society"Starship Captains" list that the electric yellow pyramids were exclusively offered to].
It was difficult to come up with more than five or so that I really liked. There are two Icehouse games that I like more than any other game I've ever played, and as much as the Decktet [Magnate is a fine game, but it's a 10 for other reasons]. They are Alien City and Zendo.
Alien City's strategy just strikes a chord with me, so it's a purely personal choice.
Zendo is a perfect game, and a perfect Icehouse game.
It is the only Icehouse game I know of that makes full use of every aspect of the wonderful pieces.
In fact, it makes use of things you wouldn't even suspect to be aspects of the pieces. One clever rule Catherine used recently [that toed the line--is this a legitimate phrase?--of the endogeneity rule] had to do with the number of letters in the names of the pyramids' colors.
This works so well [in English] because those numbers are all different [3, 4, 5, and 6] and relate to other properties of the pieces [there is a piece that is a "3" piece; a full tree or nest is "6" all together; it inherently relates to the colors; etc]. It had us guessing for a long time.
The rule was: "AKHTBN IFF it has a grounded large piece and the pip count of the large piece's color is equal to the number of letters in that color's name". She built a GL-GM-YS tree and a RM 1-piece construction [that she had intended to have be a RM-RS stack, but forgot] for her initial koans.
We got very confused when we built other trees that either did or did not have the Buddha nature in no discernible pattern [GL-GM-GS did not; BL-BM-YS did not; but RL-GM-YS did; etc]. Our guesses ran the gamut from focusing on color to stacking / nesting to orientation / pointing.
And that was with us having discussed this property of the pyramids in the immediately prior round!
This is why I have no desire ever to play Zendo without the pyramids.
Their construction and inherent constructability is intuitive and flexible. There are "trade-offs" in it.
Stacked pieces imply certain pip counts, while leaving color untouched. A rule which talks about pointing at certain colors will first be approached from the less complex angles of "pointing" or "color" alone. A simpler rule will tend to be approached from more complex angles.
I started the night off with the rule "AKHTBN IFF it has exactly three pieces". This led [and these type of simple rules typically lead] to a wide variety of koans being marked correct. Trying to justify the variety in the white koans, more complex guesses were made rather than simpler ones.
Everything just comes together perfectly and "fits". There are no superfluous attributes of the pyramids.
Anyone interested in Zendo should read Kory Heath's page on the game.
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So, we do love each other... but we're both pretty competitive... more than competitive enough to handle a "war" game.
Twilight Struggle was supposed to be our most recent foray into the war-game territory, but while it's certainly war-ish, it feels more abstract to me. It's fun, and I'm sure we'll be playing it for awhile, but perhaps we should seek a better entry point.
We've played Wizard Kings quite a bit and have attempted the 2p version of Here I Stand a couple of times, but that's about the extent of our war-game knowledge and experience. Based on what we've played, here's what I'd like in our next one:
I really liked the concept of Wizard Kings [modular, fantasy theme / non-historical, customizable armies, etc], but never really felt any spark of dynamism or element of subtlety in the game. It was fun to move the pieces around the board and roll the dice, I guess, but there didn't seem to be any point to it. A GeekBuddy puts it this way:Quote:Outside of buying units (which is really where the fun of Wizard Kings is), I never felt I was doing anything particularly clever. The movement and ways to attack are severly limited by landscape and unit capability and any exceptions are limited by the dice you have (Pegasus). While not as static as Liberty, this game really fails to excite.We tried a number of stock scenarios, a number of the more complex resource-based scenarios [the ones where you have to support farmers, or where you have to fend off neutral armies, etc], but the central problem of the game just being uninteresting, static, and luck-driven persisted and we eventually sold our WK collection as a giant lot.
Then even with all of those things there is a serious problem with the rich getting richer, and likewise the poor losing their capability to react.
I'd like something with a resource sub-game that is more interesting than WK's. In WK, the way you get more armies and the way you win is the same: control cities. This isn't interesting. There's no trade-offs to deal with.
We bought Here I Stand for the theme [we are members of the Reformed faith], but the 2p version was really rather awkward the few times we played. Maybe we need to revisit it, but I suspect even with a better grasp of the troop movement and combat rules, the game just doesn't shine without the multi-player diplomacy that is its raison d'etre.
After Twilight Struggle, I don't think I'd be looking for any more point-to-point war-games for awhile. I enjoy such topologies in things like Medieval Merchant or Magic Realm, but I think I prefer the wide-open-ness of a typical grid-based map [even something as finely granulated as Empire Builder]. Additionally, and probably related, I think I'd like a smaller operational scale.
I'd like something where positioning--tweaking relative qualitative placement--is more important than posturing--tweaking relative quantitative strength--and where terrain is a more interesting feature.
We picked up Twilight Struggle on a whim. Honestly, with talk about the "multiple paths to victory" and the replayability of the game, I was expecting more different things to do, for each action to actually be distinguishable based on end-result rather than based on method. I didn't expect a political movement to look exactly the same as a combat or a religious one.
I'd like a war-game with distinctly different activities [within distinctly different economies] to pursue, leading to distinctly different outcomes. Here I Stand with its religious / political dichotomy is a great example.
Other things:
I am mostly ambivalent toward historicity, perhaps even bordering on dislike [I have little interest in outright simulating any actual wars].
I prefer modularity rather than scripted starts. A high number of good scenarios would be of interest, however [something WK did not have].
I would prefer to be moving around something other than little tiny chits. I have quite enough of this in Roads & Boats, thank you very much.
Some systems / games I've looked into:
Bonaparte at Marengo / Napoleon's Triumph
Memoir '44 / Commands & Colors: Ancients / BattleLore [in roughly descending order of interest]
Gettysburg / Waterloo [I'll admit, this is exactly the look and feel I'm after... no numerical information, no cards]
Hammer of the Scots / Crusader Rex / Julius Caesar: Caesar, Pompey, and the Roman Civil War [neither theme appeals to me at all, but the idea of a better version of WK's block system does hold some appeal]
Maria / Friedrich [the idea of playing cards for a card-driven game appeals to me a lot, but these seem built for 3]
Wings of War: Miniatures [maybe a miniatures game is the way to go? and well.... there's also this:]/pic284495.jpg)
What, dear reader, of these games or systems or other games or systems can you recommend, knowing what[ever] you know of our tastes?
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