Mike Doyle

Thanks again to BGN for this link to a cool interview with Mike Doyle on his thoughts about boardgame design.

Boardgamenews

Boardgamenews.com has done a fantastic job of keeping me up-to-date on the latest in the world of "brett spieling". When I started the Cafe back in... 2004? there were a few sites with board gaming information, but they were spread all over and even Boardgamegeek was perfecting it's content.

Anyway, looks like Lost Cities is making it's appearance on the Xbox, and there's no way I'd ever have know about this without it being pointed out by BGN. Thanks guys!

Giveaway... of the day!

This site was giving away a free copy of Ingenious (by Knizia), and see other cool stuff on here now.

Play Catan?

Play Catan is Klaus Teuber's answer to Catanonline and Catan Xbox, and is launching in English sometime this spring.

There are many ways to play Settlers of Catan online for free right now, so I am not sure hope popular this will be ultimately, but they claim to have 12,000+ players, and 1500+ paying members.

The one that catches my eye is the ability to play Seafarers and Cities and Knights, which can be done if you are a member of Play Catan apparently. Perhaps Teuber cleverly withheld these expansions from Microsoft and Brettspielcafe to create interest and addiction in the series.

Ultimately, I am glad to see Catan in the mainstream of gaming. The more the merrier, and the better for all of us boardgamers!

Gathering of Friends 6

GOF 6 POSTPONED due to illness.

-----------------------------------

Previous GOF winners:

GOF 1: Michael S., March 21st, 2004
GOF 2: Doug F., December 24th, 2004
GOF 3: Taber O., Novermber 11th, 2005
GOF 4: Caleb O., March 4th, 2006
GOF 5: Kevin F., November 11th, 2006
GOF 6: ???, ???, 2008

The activities are tentatively:

Gathering of Friends 6 Tournament

Grand Prize: Choice of Age of Empires Deluxe PC game or Louis XIV (board game)
Second Prize: Louis the XIV or AoE PC

Three rounds, winners advance to more complex games in 2nd and 3rd round.


Round 1, 3:00 PM
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Settlers of Catan, 4 player, 3 tables

Winners from round 1 not play at the same table with each other in Round 2.

Round 2, 5:00 PM
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Power Grid (1-2 tables)
Puerto Rico (?)
Acquire / Vinci / Antike (depending on who he can talk into playing, Dave will run one of these)


Dinner @ 6:00 PM


Round 3, 7:30 PM
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GOF 6 championship

Age of Empires (5 player) -

Winner of this game wins a copy of AoE for the PC Deluxe Edition, or Louis XIV
Second place wins a copy of Louis XIV or AoE PC.

5 players for the championship determined by players who have won 2 games, plus player(s) who have won at least 1 game and come in 2nd in another.


Depending on who's left, remaining players will play for enjoyment:

Power Grid, Railroad Tycoon, Tigris & Euphrates, Risk 2210, Alhambra, St. Petersburg, Ticket to Ride, Scrabble.

==========

Thoughts, comments, etc. are welcome! Click "comments" to post!

Toledo - the board game

You've been waiting for it. A game to celebrate the great city of Toledo, Ohio.

Well, you'll have to wait a little longer, but you will get a game about Toledo, Spain.

From one of my favorite designers also, the great Martin Wallace.

Martin is responsible for Age of Steam, Conquest of the Empire (new edition), Railroad Tycoon, Struggle of Empires, and Tempus.

No release date yet, this one has been just added to the 'Geek.

Thanks to Boardgamenews for the heads up on this title.

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!