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I haven't had a chance to do much gaming lately but last night I was able to get the Village and Basari in play.

I like to give a punt to anything that wins an award.  I think the Village was interesting but to be honest I am kind of getting sick of worker placement and generic cube pushing as of late.  It is a decent game, however and it made me think of a lot of do differents next time which is typically a good sign.

Basari - hate the yellow box newer version (ugly).  I am so glad I have my pretty FX Schmidt german edition still.   For such a simple game it sure packs a lot of punch.

PS - Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is fantastic... thanks for posting that - i have to get it back to the table again soon.

Michael

For me it has been 100% Blood Bowl lately.  7 league games so far and about another 10 where I was teaching/moderating. 

Our league is really moving along quite well (imo).  www.reginaflatland.bloodbowlleague.com

Check us out and let me know what you think!!

Michael

Matt, Supremacy definitely gives me nostalgic feelings as well.  What we found, however, was the market would take wild swings.  It would go from a bull to a bear market constantly.  I recall we put in a few things to fix it but to be honest I cannot remember what they were.  Other than that the game was definitely fun - even if 80% of the games for us ended with nuclear winter...

Michael

lol Matt... I wasn't implying you were one... (and you know that).  

Smyth was far from the best player on his team.  There were a bunch of players who could outskate and out handle the puck.  One player on his team, Stacey Roost, should have made the NHL in a heartbeat.  He led the league in assists and goals year after year...  Two of us were assigned to shadow him every game.  Nobody shadowed Smyth... lol

Smyths size (he is tall) was his (imo) only asset.  But good for him for perservering and getting to the big leagues.  He is still an asshole though... butt ends are dirty and should have severe consequences in hockey.

Michael

BTW... Ryan Smyth broke my wrist with a butt end in bantam... FWIW I think he is an asshole.

Michael

Matt/Mac - the link to the video isn't showing up in my browser - perhaps it is something to do with the permissions I have at work?  My work uses IE explorer (unfortunately).

Michael

Was able to make it over for Games Day this past Saturday for a few hours.

We started off with a game of Escape, The Curse of the Temple.  It was my first time playing it.  A few things - the base game without the curses or treasures is a bit too easy of course.  Your group must stick together to likely have a chance of success.  The downloads, however, are not great.  You have ten minutes to get out of the Temple before it collapses.  Every three minutes you have to go back to the starting area to be safe (otherwise you lose a die and that would make things crazy difficult).  On the full speaker settings on the phone we still found it very difficult to make out the gong and door slamming sounds.  These sounds are critical to the game and should be not only loud but also very distinct.  They are neither.

With this being said I still am excited to try out the more difficult versions.

Next we played UP.  I used to have a pretty amazing win record in this game.  My last two attempts have been nothing short of disasters.  Failure to get a majority in anything for most of the rounds left me in a sold last place.  Oh well - I still enjoy the game very much; it is one of my top 30 for sure.

Finally we ended the night with a game of Sticheln.  This game flips trick taking on its head.  Experienced players of the genre will usually make a few critical mistakes.  But the game is genius.

And finally I have been playing a lot of Blood Bowl.  I am going to be setting up a fixed group league to try some stuff out.  If it is successful I will launch it to the greater population.  Our tentative website is here: www.reginaflatland.bloodbowlleague.com 

Please ignore the top log - it is just a placeholder until I get something firmed up.  Check it out and let me know your thoughts.

Michael

Managed to play two more games last night - Kingdom Builder and LOTR (Knizia co-op).

I think Kingdom Builder is fantastic.  It is a wonderful puzzle.

I forgot how much fun LOTR co-op is... It has been a while since this hit the table.  It is abstract in exactly the correct way.  We played with the Friends/Foes expansion and got absolutely hammered in Bree and Moria.  This led to a full party demise by Shelob's Lair.  Michael Barnes on Fortress Ameritrash calls it a brilliant masterpiece (although most of us will agree War of the Ring is the defacto Tolkien game).  I couldn't agree more.  It is extremely clever.

Michael

Shari and I played Mondo as well (not sure if you have a master list)...

Michael

Over the past few days I have been playing a few games of Backgammon with my nine year old.  It is a wonderful way for kids to learn to count (although of course he knows this already).  There is so much depth in this game - way more than most people will ever discover.

At the German Club i managed to play two games of King of Siam.  The end game is somewhat fiddly at times and it may be a bit luckier than I would like but overall this was a pretty neat three player experience.  I love games which have alternate end game scoring.

Finally I managed to play a few hands of Gang of Four.  It was much better than I last remember and I could see myself playing this more often moving forward as an alternate to Tichu or Wizard.

Michael