Acquire is coming

Acquire is coming back, in a new $30 edition from Avalon Hill. Thanks to Boardgamenews for the tip.

Acquire is the 5th game listed on BGG, it's from 1962 and from Sid Sackson. 'nuff said.

Here are what some of my "geekbuddies" on BGG have to say about this game:

"Nearly perfect in every regard. This should be owned/played by anyone serious about boardgames. Unlike many modern games, Acquire has unlimited replayability and always will. Pure genius."

"Deceptively simple to learn, and decidedly impossible to master. There is an element of luck (who draws the merger tiles)but a classic game with excellent replayability"

"A classic in every sense of the word. One of the few games which always seems to get table-time over and over."

"A masterpiece. Wonderful, wonderful game and the new edition is awesome. What I think I like most about this game is the way the board evolves. It is almost organic, but at the behest of the players, so if you study the players' moves, you can tell which way it is growing. The game rewards you for paying attention. Also, there is blocking by holding the tiles needed to merge until the company you have can be safe. It's a cool game."

Was a formative game for me, it being introduced to my brother and I by my cousin Bob back in the late 1985 or so, when it was already 25+ years old... His copy had been played probably a hundred times, and we played it steadily through the early 1990's. Little did we realize that this was an ORIGINAL "Euro" or "designer" or "German" style board game. It was of course made by an American, but from what I recall was actually sold by Sackson to a European publisher, and 3M brought it back across the pond later to the U.S.

Perhaps I will drag this out at our next game party...

Bobby Fischer, 1943-2008

Bobby Fischer, the 11th world chess champion is dead at 64. He died in Reykjavik, Iceland where he moved in 2005 after being released from prison in Japan. An article at Chessbase tells the story here.

Fischer beat Boris Spassky to take the crown as the first perhaps "world-famous" chess champion. At the height of the cold-war between the United States and the Soviet Union, I remember learning chess from my dad when I was 4-5 years old, right around the time Fischer was making newspaper headlines. My dad was in his early 20's, and was playing chess and listening to jazz with a lot of other young men.

Thanks to Dad for teaching me the great game, which turned out to be a big deal for me. I was the best player in my peer group perhaps till I reached high school, and I developed a love for gaming from my early encounters with Dad on our Sunday night sessions after our family study.

Games played in 2007...

I shocked myself when printing this list. It really seems like 2007 was an "off" year for gaming. Here's my list of games and played:

Travel Blokus, 9
Carcassonne, 6
Star Wars Miniatures Starship Battles, 5
Alhambra, 4
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, 3
Coloretto, 3
GIPF, 3
Puerto Rico, 3
TAMSK, 3
Great Space Race, The, 2
Hey! That's My Fish!, 2
Nexus Ops, 2
Pinochle, 2
Settlers of Catan, The, 2
Through the Desert, 2
Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery, 1
Antike, 1
Carcassonne: The City, 1
CATAN 3D Collector's Edition 1
Caylus 1
Caylus Magna Carta 1
Cities and Knights of Catan, The 1
Civilization, 1
Formula Dé, 1
Mare Nostrum, 1
Mykerinos, 1
Niagara, 1
Railroad Tycoon, 1
Saint Petersburg, 1
Star Wars Miniatures, 1
Ticket to Ride, 1
Traders of Genoa, The, 1
Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition, 1

That's 69 games played, and 32 different titles. Compare that to 140 games played in 2006, and 40 different titles.

Sorted by TIME, the list would look something like:

Twilight Imperium, 1 game, 9 hours
Caylus, 1 game, 4 hours
Pinocle, 2 games, 12 hours
Star Wars Miniature Starship Battles, 5 games, 10 hours
Puerto Rico, 3 games, 8 hours

Still... it was an off year for gaming. But the trend was obviously towards few, but longer games in 2007.

Nail-biter @ Northampton

Kevin won a real nail-biter of a Puerto Rico game last night. Final score in this five-player game was 50-49-47-42-39.

There were several interesting and remarkable things about this game; the number of players (we rarely play with 5), the high scoring (was the tightest score I can recall in a while), and some of the strategies used.

Starting with myself in 1st seat, I opened with Settler/Quarry, then I bought the Hospice for the first time as my first building after Indigo plant. This was unusual for me, I thought I would try to see if I could avoid pulling the Mayor in the game, and benefit from the extra colonist when Settler is pulled. Later I purchased the Haceinda, and with it's bonus plantation pull each round, was able to have 12 spaces full at the end of the game. I used the Harbor, and was able to get ahead of Kevin to my right with Corn, Indigo, Sugar for 30 points. But despite having 9-buildings, was only able to cough up 17 more and no Large building meant no bonus. I came in third with 47 points.

Dave in 2nd seat went with a simple coffee-sugar play, and as it was his new game played mostly obvious options, and benefited from some nice trader-pulls, and did a fair amount of shipping with his Wharf purchased @ mid-game. Dave finished a respectable 39 points.

Jared played third seat, and with Indigo, Coffee as his main-stays, tried a hard-core quarry strategy. He ultimately had 4 quarries, and 2 large buildings - but was limited due to seating position and following Dave to only shipping 9 points. He bought 2 Large buildings, and if the game had gone another turn might have been able to buy a third (!) if there had been one available.

Kyle played 4th, and he took advantage of the "right-hand" effect, being a move ahead of Kevin in 5th seat. He started with Sugar, then moved to Tobacco, Kevin's cash crop. He bought the Wharf after Kevin's Harbor, never got shut out of shipping, and managed 2 Large buildings due to some good trader play as well. But he finished with 49!

Kevin, amazingly, pulled out a 1-point victory after counting his one large-building bonus, and 29 shipping points. Shut out most of the second half of the game in a large tobacco boat, he could not get more goods after Craftsman, because Jared and Kyle taking it all before he could produce. Therefore he could not clear the boat to put more in play, and never got to do much with his Corn.

But by enabling his early harbor, and shipping like mad in the beginning of the game, he was able to squeak out one of the best games of PR I've ever played. A real nail-biter! Good game Kevin!

Carcassone on 360 for FREE

Just saw this post over at Boardgamenews.com, and I had to pass it along.

Carcassone is FREE on November 15th, and 16th.

Check it out here.

New Catan on the way

New version of Settlers of Catan on the way... Here's the box cover:


There some interesting information on the Mayfair Games website about the new version. Check it out here.

One very interesting rule change (from Mayfair site):

Q) Are there any rules changes?
A) "No" is the short answer. We have cleaned some text up in the rules for Cities & Knights, and we have changed a rule for The Settlers of Catan to match the new international standard. The changed rule affects the robber: "The robber may now return to the desert even after moving out. Thus, a player may choose to move the robber back to the desert rather than to an opponent's hex, if the player chooses to do so."

Your thoughts on this change?

Mom wins Catan

Played my fancy new "collectors" Catan, the monster hand-painted "treasure-chest" edition, in Toledo this weekend. And Mom won!

My parents have been played the Xbox 360 edition on-line, and have logged over 100 plays. I could tell in our 3-player game, both parents played a very solid game. Dad and I battled it out for longest road, he with brick-port and a nice 13-segment road. I had triple-ore (with city and settlement) on a "5"-spot, and an 11-segment road with Sheep and Brick port. The Longest Road bonus traveled back and forth between us until Dad finally yanked it permanetly away.

But Mom landed spaces on both 8's, both 9's and drew enough sheep and wheat that using her 3-1 port she was able to get to "7" and had 3 "1-point" development cards for the win.

It was a lot of fun playing on the 3-d board, and it did enhance the experience to for although my folks said that the poor visibility on the numbers made it a little difficult for them.

Funagain.com still has copies of the 3-d game of Catan, check it out before this hand-painted beauty is gone for good!

Chess: touch and go

Love this article about a guy who makes $200 / day with a portable chess setup.

Too many games?

Great article over on boardgamenews.com about the subject of "too many games." As a person with 140+ games in his collection, I've asked myself this many times. W. Eric Martin tackles it here, with the intro quoted below.

"W. Eric Martin: Too Much Is Never Enough

Occasional BGN columnist Ryan Bretsch took on the role of firestarter recently in an online mailing list about games and posed the following questions:

1. Are there too many boardgame companies out there today?
2. Are there too many game releases coming out each year?
3. Do you feel the games hobby industry can support the number of new game releases that are now appearing each year?
4. Do you feel that newly released games are labeled as “hot,” then quickly supplanted by the “next big thing”?

My short answers to these questions: No, No, No, and No. My long answers to these questions are more nuanced..."

Want list...

Boardgamegeek has a great "wishlist" feature that allows you to rank (1-5) your interest in any game on the site. As I become aware of new titles (usually through Boardgamenews or by surfing Thoughthammer) I'll head over to the 'geek, check them out, and rank them.

Here's some games that I am tracking and would like to own:

1. St. Petersburg Expansion
Expansion to the excellent St. Petersburg card game. Haven't played this face-to-face much, but I love the game on Brettspielcafe, probably have played it more than any other game than Settlers on-line. This inexpensive expansion is a must have, although not released yet from Rio Grande.

2. Roads and Boats
I was all pumped to get this when it was re-released last year. It's a monster game, that I've heard compared to SimCity, without the computer managing all the tiny details. I have too many complex games that never get played, but some day I have to get this nuts-and-bolts game and try to play it.

3. China - Das Duel
This two-player conversion of the 3-5 player China (Michael Shacht, developer of Hansa and Spiel de Jahre Zooloreto) is a must-have. I have an extra copy of China's pieces mounted in a shadow box in my game room along with the map in a frame.

4. Gipf Project - set 1
I love the Gipf series of abstract games. They are elegantly designed, beautifully constructed games that play in under 20 minutes. They can be connected together to form one large game by the use of "potentials", pieces that stack and connect various moves from other games in the series. There are three small expansions, and although I am not sure I'll get to play with them often (until Grayson gets a little older perhaps) they are inexpensive and easy to integrate.


5. Space Dealer
This game sounds wacky. Uses sand timers to control turns in some type of space-ship assembly game? I'm in!

6. Pitchcar
Racing game where you "flick" the cards around the track, and the bounce around off of rubber-band "walls". A dexterity game that has a couple of expansions (including a loop, and jumps), and sounds like a hoot! Would be a great ice-breaker for our Gathering of Friends.

7. Sid Meier's Civilization: the Card Game
Can only get this game inside a deluxe edition of the latest computer game. Someday perhaps it will be sold off the shelf, or I can grab it on closeout somewhere. I love Civilization, have played all it's versions on the computer, have the Avalon Hill edition, the Eagle Games edition... why not a card game?