JUST GAMING AROUND - More Yucata PLUS Trying out Vassal with 'Inspector Moss 2' - PnP solitaire game design winner (aka Am I Gaming Online Again? 1-Player even?)

YUCATA REPRISED
I'd stated before that online gaming isn't so much my thing. And then I tried out Yucata back in March and found that I enjoyed it. I played a few games then got busy at the end of the school year and during the summer and didn't revisit online gaming.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I had some friends over and we ALMOST played Hacienda (which I got to play at the Gaming Olympics early last month and wanted to play again), but it was a split decision and we played some other games instead.

My friend garygarison really wanted to try it though so we agreed to give it a go online. I invited him to a game of it, along with 4 or 5 other games (Stone Age and St. Petersburg) with some other online buddies. I haven't had a lot of FTF gaming the last couple of months so it has been a nice way to get in some gaming.

Since that first game we played a couple more times, then moved on to Oregon where he is KING OF OREGON (as he says - he's top ranked on it). We have played several games and finally got to where I only lost by 1 point on a couple of games! And yesterday I finally defeated the King of Oregon!

Anyhow, what's been great about Oregon in particular is that it plays very fast and has a lot of interesting little things going on and every game is different. One game we literally filled up one entire corner of the board and almost nothing else on the board. Other times we've been all over the place. I'm learning to love it's subtleties and fickleness with the card draws (and points draws on the Coal and Gold - which have been KILLING me in the end game, hence losing by 1 point at least twice as a result). I literally cannot stop playing it now. It's been a great way to unwind in the evenings and even get a quick game in during lunch.

I've also been learning to love the tightness and subtleties of St. Petersburg as well. I had never played it before playing online and it's been great online as I can take my time planning out my moves, reviewing what each card's benefits are, etc. The ability to take notes as reminders for myself between turns has been invaluable as well.

I'm really starting to enjoy online play. Who knew!?

VASSAL AND INSPECTOR MOSS
I must digress a bit though - what REALLY spurred me to actually plugging in again was a geek mail I got from one of the designers of the game Inspector Moss 2: House Arrest, Jonathan Warren he apparently reads my blog and thought I should check it out. It recently won a recent Print and Play contest: Solitaire Print and Play Contest which is pretty cool.

The other designer is Rebekah B.

Well, I looked at it and, honestly, I thought the artwork was a little strange with heads stuck on pawns as bodies.

The Detective you play - Inspector Moss

The dead guy - John Dough

One of the suspects - Sue Phlaye

And, it's a solitaire game. I don't typically play solitaire games (almost never) - if I have time for myself I'm usually writing about games, pimping games, building my own copies of games, or opening, punching or learning new games. If I'm going to play a game I usually prefer to play with someone else.

Hence, my willingness to play games on Yucata recently - at least it's with SOMEONE. I like the competition against with other players, particularly 2-player games with head-to-head action.

I admitted to Jonathan that I wasn't likely to print it out and make a copy just to play it, but I noticed that it was available on Vassal and might be willing to try it there.

HOT BOX - WHAT'S IN THE BOX? - Z-Man 'Factory Fun' vs. Cwali 'Factory Fun'

Factory Fun is one of my favorite games of all time. In this game you are trying to maximize profits by fitting machines into your factory and connecting them in such a way as to generate more profits than what it costs to place each machine. This may sound a little dull but if you like puzzle sorts of games the fun factor cannot be beat!

I was introduced to it early in my gaming resurgence in 2008 by my friend Chris (it's one of his all-time favorites as well) and immediately fell in love with it. I loved the puzzle aspect to it. I loved the components. I loved the artwork. I loved that it played quickly but still was a lot of fun.

I soon was looking for my own copy and ended up purchasing it directly from the designer, Corné van Moorsel, straight from the Netherlands along with a few of his other games. This was a little before the incredible price increases started occurring.

Then, when I heard there was going to be a reprint by Z-Man I was somewhat interested but figured I wouldn't bother since I had it already. I also saw some of the artwork and I wasn't sure - I loved the hand-drawn artwork of my original version and didn't know if the slicker artwork was an improvement or not.

Then I started reading more information that came out about it and they mentioned that it had pieces for 5 players instead of 4 (cool!), the pipes were done as tiles instead of shaped pieces (hmm, not sure about that), and the player boards were double-sided for standard and expert play (awesome!)

Well, I finally caved and decided to get it. And it arrived. And...it sat on my shelf. I can't even remember how long now. Since earlier this year I think. Yes, definitely earlier this year. *sigh*

Perhaps I just wasn't ready to give up on my older copy of the game...

Then Chris got his own copy of the game recently. And opened it right away! Gah! It was time to open mine. He posted a pic of the neat containers he used to put the game pieces in.

He said the containers were for 'spices'. Apparently they had 'spice' labels on them and and he was complaining about it. I suggested he make his own labels and he promptly did! Very cool!



Ok, I'm motivated! I've actually been planning on opening it for the last month or so with the intention of doing a comparison of the old and new versions but hadn't 'gotten around to it'. Well, it is finally time...to see WHAT IS IN THE BOX! Then, further down, I do a comparison of the components of the two versions.

So, here's the box, ready to be opened!



I have to admit I like the box art quite a bit. I'm ok with the people on it, but I REALLY like the factory - the look of the machines and most especially the lights on the ceiling. I don't know why I like them so much, but I do...

STATE OF THE BACK ROOM - An update on why no new posts here....

Last night I attended a local gaming group that some of my friends frequent and host. My blog came up for some reason and my friend Chris said he hadn't seen anything in over a month. I mentioned that I'd only been posting my blog entries to BGG recently ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/blog/22 ). Apparently he wasn't subscribed to me there, just here. My friend Robert said the same thing - apparently both are using the RSS feeds here. Now, BGG has RSS feeds as well, BUT, I much prefer some of the OTHER features here on blogger, in particular the statistics that tell me how many people are visiting.

Well, I admit it, I have been neglecting my blog HERE for the past few weeks. I haven't even been checking the stats or anything.

Here's what you've missed from July:

• STATE OF THE BACK ROOM - The Tour + Mess on the Table!
• THE CREATIVE GAMER - Making Ticket to Ride: Northern Egypt (Part 1)
• STATE OF THE BACK ROOM - What's on the Table? (Dominion storage solution, Risk Express and some creative pics)
• THE CREATIVE GAMER - Making Ticket to Ride: Northern Egypt (Part 2 / 2) 
• STATE OF THE BACK ROOM - The Oregon Cup, Thrifting Nirvana, and TtR: Northern Egypt results!

After the discussion last night I was feeling kind of guilty when driving home. And torn. I definitely wasn't getting much traffic here until I started plugging my posts into BGG using the new blogging feature that was added there in February. The thing is, I was only posting the first couple of paragraphs of each entry and then linking here. Some people did NOT like that. And, I admit, it seemed a bit....unsavory to me.

SO, I then tried posting the full posts to BOTH locations. The problem with that is that it took a lot of extra time to reformat everything to look good in both locations. And, I already take too much time writing things up as it is as I am a perfectionist and want to 'get it right' so I tend to write and re-write until I'm happy, then add the re-formatting on top and it was almost too much.

I eventually caved and went JUST with posting on BGG. I actually held a contest there for everyone that thumbed my posts. The reason I did that was because it was very difficult to tell how many people were actually reading my posts - there just aren't stats for that other than the thumbs really. I found that when I did the short posts that pointed to my blog here my hits here would be fairly sizeable but I wouldn't get any thumbs on BGG. So, posts that were actually popular didn't show as popular on BGG. Also, full posts that I only posted to BGG didn't get that many thumbs. But I KNEW people had to be reading them...at least I was pretty sure....well, I just wasn't sure at all.

With the thumbing contest my thumbs went way up. So, at least I knew I was getting people reading it (the contest was always posted innocuously at the bottom of the post). But, I was then neglecting the site here.

Why is this all important to me? Well, here's why: I want to know what I write about that interests people so that I can do more posts in the same vein. If I keep writing stuff that no one cares about then it does a disservice to those that WANT to read.

Of course, I'll still write stuff no one cares about, but it's nice to know what people find interesting and what people don't find interesting.

MOST interesting to me is the month that I didn't post one single item here, I got over 1200 hits! (EDIT: Just realized that's not true, I posted an article about Navegador, but it only accounts for part of the hits) That's just to stuff I already posted. Granted, a good number of hits were still coming from BGG, but many are coming from google searches. I've been getting some good hits from Iran for instance! I would never have known this if I didn't have the stats that I can get from blogger and from statcounter (which doesn't work well with BGG)

I suppose it's perhaps a little selfish to want these stats - knowing that people are reading what I'm writing and apparently liking it enough to keep coming back keeps me motivated to try to write more (I had 114 return visitors in July, even without new postings). Not that I NEED the motivation because I really do enjoy the writing by itself, but it certainly helps keep me WANTING to.

Well, I discussed some of this with another of my friends today and he thinks I should still post to both locations. And, that it what I WANT to do and have all along. But the extra work is sometimes unbearable because the formatting is not straight copy and paste - it requires a bunch of work to get it to come across. He suggested finding/writing some sort of tool that will convert one post into the other. Well, duh, I'm a programmer! Except, now I have to spend some time doing that. I think what I'll need to do is come up with a semi-manual method first then try to re-create that method with code to hopefully cut the time down and minimize manual conversion.

So, that's where I'm at now. I'm not going to abandon this site - it has a lot of posts that I've been very happy with and seem to get some interest from others out there as well. But I also like being tied to the BGG community since I spend so much time there as it is.

Hopefully I can come up with a solution in the near future.

Well, thanks for listening - I needed to clear my head of what I've been thinking. I'm interested to hear what you have to say about all of this if you so desire. You don't have to sign up to post or anything so don't be afraid to tell me what you think!

I hope to see you back here soon!

HOT BOX - 'Navegador' (What's in the Box?)

Hello! Glad you could stop by again today! I want to show you one of my new games that I'm really excited about!

I had the opportunity to try Navegador on my last day @ Gamestorm 2011 earlier this year. I really enjoyed it. There seemed to be many different paths to victory and the score came out very close in the end (I squeaked out a victory although I think the experience players let me backtrack on one turn where I bought a spice factory a little too early on and they suggested I shouldn't).

I love the rondel! I love the achievement multipliers! I love the exploration aspect! I love how the market works!

I loved it enough to pick up my own copy of the game. Last weekend I finally got around to getting it punched and then played (well, we didn't quite finish the game but we 'saved' it with pictures so we can finish the next gaming session).

Anyhow, I took some pics while opening it. Here's the process of opening and punching it:

Box cover - Henry the Navigator, um, navigating...

Back of the box (there he is again!)

Why Henry the Navigator? Well, according to the booklet inside the box: "The explorations along the African coast guided by Henry heralded the Age of Discovery."

 

You know the drill - 2 cuts at the corner, then peel the plastic!

The moment of truth.... (alas, no box fart :( )

There's something weird that I pay attention to that not everyone does. No, not box farts! Everyone loves those! It's how well the box top and bottom fit together. Some fit really tightly. Some come off easily. Some are JUST tight enough to cause a box fart. But, it seems to require a certain box HEIGHT to actually cause a box fart. The right combination of tightness and height brings you the joy. And, sometimes you don't get a fart when pulling it OPEN but when you go to CLOSE it....fttttt....ahhhhh. :laugh:

TIMELY TOPICS - Time to Game, Time to NOT game

I was looking at my most recent posts and realized I've only posted twice this month! I've come to the realization that I probably will only be able to post once per week writing to the depth I've been writing in the past. This month has been particularly bad as I've been particularly busy.

And, I have a hard time just writing shorter posts in a quick manner as normal blogs tend to be written. However, I've seen other blogs with fairly short posts and they can still be interesting.

So, I'm going to try to fill in shorter posts about topics of interest without going into to much detail.

I can already see this is going to be tough for me.

So, my topic today is TIME. More specifically NO TIME to play games because life has just been too busy. I know this happens to many people and that's why I wanted to talk about it.

May and June are traditionally busy for our family due to birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc. This year it was PARTICULARLY busy as the kids were also doing softball/baseball plus dance classes. So, I decided to look back at the calendar and give the breakdown since June 13th (my last post):

• Ceremony where my daughter 'graduated' from Elementary school to Middle school
• 8 kids' baseball or softball practices
• 10 kids' baseball or softball games
• 4 kids' dance performance dress rehearsals
• 2 kids' dance performances
• 2 birthday parties for my son (one for 10 kids, one for family)
• 1 additional birthday party for my daughter to attend
• clean the house
• grocery shopping
• mow the lawns - twice (and it desperately needs it again now but will have to wait a bit longer)
• kids' field day on last day of school
• parents visiting in town
• cook full barbecue for 10 family members
• Father's Day
• 12th Wedding Anniversary
• Trip to the Oregon coast (had to cut this short to only 1-1/2 days
• Dinner out for my son on his actual birthday
• Birthday pictures @ JCPenny
• Son's baseball pictures
• Scouts awards/crossover ceremony and potluck

I think there was some other stuff too. And yes, that really was all crammed into 16 days! A couple of the days were absolutely non-stop.

Yes, I did manage to get a couple of games in this past weekend, mostly with my son and a couple of great games with my friend Bob on Sunday.

Unfortunately I missed the EGG Game Day on Saturday due to 2 baseball/softball games that exactly broke up the day enough that I couldn't fit in the EGG day.

I definitely work to try to find time to get some gaming in (I want to get all my games played as much as I can, right?), but I also work to balance that with regular life. My wife feels that I have been spending too much time on gaming related activities. It may definitely be the case that I spend a lot of time thinking about games, playing games, making game player aids and custom pieces, playing games, reading about games, buying games, taking pictures about games, writing about games, and playing games.

But I also feel like I'm not shirking my other duties to my family. I could just as easily spend all my time around TV or movies or rebuilding cars or whatever. It's the hobby I enjoy most so I can't help spending a lot of time on it.

I think the key is finding the right balance - when to game, and when to NOT game.

My wife has pointed out that conventions can be a problem. Gone all day for 2-5 days, maybe a couple of times per year. I admit that taking time off from work to go to the Gamestorm convention each spring is somewhat of a problem. No, a rather big problem really. I definitely feel guilty being gone for that amount of time, and it really irks me that it happens during Spring Break when the kids are off from school. I love going but it costs money and takes away from family time. Next year will likely be a break away from Gamestorm for me as a result.

Beyond conventions is the weekly gaming. If I could I'd be playing games every day, but that's just not happening. I've been very lucky to find lots of different gamers available in my area. I can usually coordinate gaming with someone on my own schedule. The important thing is to find an appropriate time.

In the past, I would have someone over when my wife would go out and do something with one of her friends or her mom. However, this became a problem because sometimes the kids needed managing (showers, homework, dinner, etc) and this conflicted with focusing on gaming and being a good host to my guests. Ok, mostly the gaming for me as most of my friends are understanding that I have kids to deal with. Anyhow, I would get frustrated and sometimes didn't give the kids the attention they deserved. But, I've been learning how to better balance that and take the time needed to get them going without being frustrated...as I said my friends are understanding. I still don't like leaving them sitting alone for extended periods though.

But, we are making a shift now so that either my wife or I will be available to make sure the kids get the attention they need. I also need to cut back a bit on how often gaming occurs. Or, at least try to keep gaming with friends to once a week or every 2 weeks, with maybe an extra day here or there, and then squeeze in gaming as appropriate with the kids. My son in particular seems to really enjoy gaming and has been getting into it more and more, although my daughter loves certain games like Dominion, Thunderstone and Stone Age.

I used to be able to get my wife to play games, but she seems to have backed off more and more lately. I even put together a Ticket to Ride based on her design idea that we entered into the TtR design contest, but I think she only played it twice total. Of course, I only played it a handful of times as well.

It's just not her thing so I don't try to push it on her anymore and encourage her to partake in activities she prefers instead.

Well, that's all I've got. I'm sure if I came back tomorrow I could write a ton more, but I'm trying to keep it shorter, right? Well, that failed I guess...

I'm curious as to how others manage their game time versus personal time. I suspect single people and people without kids will likely have more time to fit gaming into their lives, but whether that's true or not I have no idea.


BTW, check back for my next post. I'm going to start offering a monthly prize drawing to everyone that thumbs my blog posts in a month on BGG and thumbs to this post (click the link to go to BGG to add a thumb) will count as entries for the prize I offer in July. And, yes, it will be game related! You'll have to wait for my next post to find out what it is!

Now, go find some time and play a game. I know you've got a few milliseconds in your schedule for at least a filler!

10+4 BG Questions with Antoine Bauza about '7 Wonders'

This is only my second 10+4 interview with a game designer about a specific game they have designed - I've been hoping to do more but haven't been on the ball about pursuing more. My first one was with Sean Ross about his game 'Haggis' and I got some really great responses from him. 


The concept of the 10+4 interview is to ask 10 questions, then after receiving the responses, ask 4 follow-up questions.

For this 'interview' I asked Antoine Bauza if he would answer some questions about his game '7 Wonders' and he graciously agreed to do it - well, he said he'd try to when he had a bit of time. My initial timing of asking him was just a couple of days before the Spiel de Jahres announcements. And, once I saw that 7 Wonders had been nominated I knew the chances were low that he would have the time to get back to me - surely he would be swamped with more important inquiries.

Much to my surprise I got responses back - first asking me to send my questions to his email address (rather than via BGG) then he let me know what timeframe he would respond in.

Now, my 'method' for the 10+4 interview is to send 10 questions then 4 follow-up questions after receiving the responses. However, it seemed to me that based on his schedule, getting a response for the 4 follow-up questions might be inconvenient to expect those back anytime in the near future - completely understandable considering the circumstances. So, a week after I sent the 10 questions I sent the +4 in hopes he might be able to respond to them all at once.

And, yesterday, I was pleasantly surprised to get his response! With all 10+4 questions answered! Well, I didn't get DIRECT answers on the first 4 questions (see below for details) but I was still very happy to have gotten his response at all. I was truly impressed that he made the effort for little ol' me and my blog.

Anyhow, here's are the questions and answers with some of my commentary interjected for explanation and more detail.

FRESH BAKED - 'Qwirkle' by Susan McKinley Ross (Review) - Lucky Charms the game, or Brain Food for the Avid Gamer?

Ok, here goes. I don't want to hear any complaining that I'm looking to get a bunch of attention due to my writing reviews of first '7 Wonders' and now 'Qwirkle', recent Spiel de Jahres nominees (well, Kennerspiel de Jahres for 7 Wonders).

Qwirkle box cover

 Honestly, it's purely coincidence. I will freely admit that I did the 7 Wonders review and timed it with the nominee announcements only because I'd just opened and played the game and it worked out well that way. HOWEVER, I did not also intend to open, play and review Qwirkle just because it was nominated as well.

As fate would have it, several days prior to the announcements, I literally opened and took pictures of BOTH games on the EXACT same day. Seriously! When I saw Qwirkle was on the SdJ list I was astounded, not only because of the openings foreshadowing the announcements, but I was also thinking "Hasn't Qwirkle been out for a while?!" Who would have guessed (well, here in the US at least) that it would be nominated or even considered? I mean, it was first released in 2006! Well, apparently it was just released in Germany in 2010, thus qualifying it for the SdJ.

Anyhow, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! And, in case you don't believe me, I can show you the timestamps on the pictures. Actually, here they are:

File properties as proof...

After the announcements, I considered sending Susan McKinley Ross (Qwirkle's designer) an interview request but then I heard Garrett's Games podcast from Kublacon over the Memorial Day Weekend (which included her, Richard Borg, and Aldie) and knew that it was pointless then as I wasn't going to top that...there might be a few interesting questions to ask, but I don't think I'll pursue it at this point.

But, I can still do a review, right? Ok, now that I've gotten that out of the way, here's my review.

THE REVIEW
Qwirkle is a very simple game in terms of rules and it sounds a bit like Scrabble (the similarities here are undeniable, although there are definite differences as well):

• On your turn, play tiles of various colored symbols from your hand to form 'words' (the rules call them 'lines' but 'words' makes more sense when describing it, especially for Scrabblers)
• All the tiles you play must legally create or extend ONE existing word.
• It's possible to also create/extend branching words, just like in Scrabble.
• Score points based on the word(s) you create. 
• You get 1 point for every tile in the word you create or extend, even if you only added 1 tile.
• If you create/extend additional words branching off of that word you also get 1 point per tile for those words (thus, some tiles might be scored twice, once per word they are in)
• You can also earn an additional 6 bonus points for completing a 'Qwirkle' which is a 6 symbol word (the maximum length)
• There are no other bonuses.

That's it!

Ok, sorry, there's a bit more info that's important to know:

• The tiles have 6 possible symbols consisting of 6 possible colors on them. 
• There are 3 sets of these tiles. 
• Thus: 6 symbols x 6 colors x 3 sets = 108 tiles, so 3 of each color of each symbol. 
• This is important to remember, especially as the game draws close to the end as you know what tiles haven't been played yet and, conversely, you can determine if ALL tiles of a particular symbol and color are out.

The sealed block of tiles you get (3 layers of the same set of tiles)

• A WORD consists of one of two things:
• x different symbols, all of the same color (where x = 2 to 6)
• x of the same symbol, all of different colors (where x = 2 to 6)
• NOTE: x different symbols of x different colors is NOT a legal word - each word has one and ONLY one similar attribute - symbols OR colors.

Thus, the smallest word you will create is of length 2 and the longest word you will create is of length 6, making a range of 2-6 points per word PLUS 6 more points in the case of a 6 tile word. Of course, creating branching words will give you additional points although getting huge scores in 1 play doesn't happen very often - I think the biggest score I saw was 15 --> 12 for completing a Qwirkle (6 tile word w/ bonus) + 3 for also extending a 2 symbol word by 1 tile.

The only other thing to know is that there is no board and there are no doubling or tripling bonuses outside of the Qwirkle bonus (which is effectively a doubling bonus).

Example end of a 2-player game