Here's a summary of some of the new and relatively new designs at Uberbadger.com. It's been awhile since I'd posted anything even though new designs are getting published on a regular basis. Click the image for a larger view or better yet, jump out to Uberbadger and browse the designs directly in the store.

As many of you know, we don't have a television in the house. We watch a lot of DVD movies and once in a great while, I'll hook up the USB/Tuner to watch March Madness or the Olympics or something like that. But in general, we just don't watch television. However, there are those times when I hear about something that I get the urge to see and I get hooked.

It happened with Band of Brothers, The Lost Room, and now Heroes.

I've been wanting to watch but 1) didn't think I could stand waiting the months and months to get them from the library reserve queue (in order mind you) and 2) didn't want to pay an outlandish amount to rent them individually. However, last week I saw that our neighborhood Family Video rental had a 7-DVD set for a single rental that covered the entire first season. So, for $3.50 and five sleepless nights I've been trying to watch the entire first season and I just can't stop watching. I finished the sixth disk this morning at 3:30am and I honestly thought about popping in the seventh DVD just to finish it out. Thank goodness we have a Starbucks inside the building where I'm currently working.

Tonight was the last home game for the Columbus Clippers and it was also the last game to be played in Cooper Stadium. Next year the Clippers will be playing in the new stadium in the Arena District downtown and will feature field sunken much lower than the surrounding area.

After the game we got to run the bases and make our mark on home plate.

I finished the restoration project and we brought it up into the eat-in area of our kitchen today.

For years, the table served as Lisa's grandparent's kitchen table and it served a short portion of its life in Lisa's kitchen while she was growing up. For the most of her life she remembers it sitting in the basement serving years as a utility table for crafts, reloading shotgun shells, making Christmas decorations for her parent's Christmas tree farm, and as a general workbench for clamping materials to while sawing, hammering, etc.

When Lisa's parents moved out of their farm house in '94 the top was removed and it was stored at their new house. We took possession of the table several years ago and it sat in our unheated and damp garage until Lisa started stripping it. I pulled it into the woodshop and began the arduous process of repairing veneer and structural damage as well as the circular saw cut in the edge.

We're going to try it out as our kitchen table and give it a few more years of service.

We took the afternoon and went down to Canopy Tours Zipline Adventure in Hocking Hills Ohio. The tour takes you across 10 ziplines high in the trees of Hocking Hills along the Hocking River, across 4 suspension bridges, and a rappelling to the ground after the final zip.

Over a year ago I got my first look, via the web, of a game called Jamaica. The artwork was outstanding and when coupled with the board, the themed rules, and the treasure chest-like box it made for some eye-popping gaming goodness. Unfortunately, the game was a special order given to GameWorks SàRL by ASSURA SA, a Swiss insurance company. From what I understand, the game was to become a gift to some of their special insurance clients.

Designed by Sébastien Pauchon, Bruno Cathala & Malcolm Braff, Jamaica followed Pauchon's success in 2006 with Yspahan and a relatively unknown game named Animalia. ASSURA SA had a hand in Animalia, contracting the game's production to be used as a promotional tool for their line of pet insurance products. ASSURA SA controlled the entire print run and unfortunately, few have had hands on experience with the game; a shame because the artwork, by Mathieu Leyssenne, is fantastically rendered.

Roll forward a year and a half and Asmodée Editions secured the rights to reprint Jamaica for the US market. When I heard the news I started waiting...and waiting...and waiting for someone to list it for sale. It was supposed to be available this month but I have yet to see anyone have any copies. However, last night Pozy.com was listing a few copies for only $37.99 in their "steal of the day" section and I managed to secure one before the "you're too late" button showed up.

So, I'll be home swabbin' the deck getting ready to play.

Images provided through BoardGameGeek.com - click each to view them in context

On BGG today, the board game Agricola usurped the highest rated game position from Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has held the esteemed position since 2002 so it's a big deal. Or is it? I've never played Agricola and frankly I have no desire to play it. Tons of cards, tons of bits, two hours + playing time, and people going nuts with Fimo making their own unique "animeeples" sort of creeps me out.

I suspect Puerto Rico will rise back to #1 once the Agricola hype settles down. I'm not sure that I care that much either way though. My gaming tastes must have changed somewhat since my copy of Puerto Rico hasn't seen the table in years and I quite honestly don't miss it.

I started going through the rules of Amyitis last night and frankly, it's a train wreck. Few games trigger such a visceral reaction while reading the rules but this one wins a prize hands down. I normally research games relatively thoroughly and if possible, I read through the rules online. Unfortunately, I threw the game in with an existing order, on a whim, due to it's high praise and some good reviews. However, this thing has already made the short list onto the trade pile.

The game's theme, using the term lightly, requires the players (Babylonian nobles) to compete for prestige (victory points) to build plants in the gardens in an attempt to please the king of Medes who is trying to build the Great Hanging Gardens of Babylon for his daughter Amyitis. It seems like an acceptable theme but unfortunately, the mechanics just don't play it out.

The Rule Book

First off, the rules are a complete mess. But to give credit where credit is due, they created a game that was difficult to express in written form. The confusing order of presentation and awkward sentence structure doesn't help comprehension.

The Components

The components are well made but I do have some concerns about the quality of the cards. They feel rather thin and I suspect the ink will wear rather quickly.

My biggest complaint is with the sheer number of ill-named and disconnected items. Making sense of court cards, caravaner tokens, craft cards, gardener cards, talents, resource tokens, irrigation cubes, plants, temples, camels, merchants, peasants, priests, engineers, the Babylonian board, and the Mesopotamia board is a chore. I can deal with a lot of bits but when what you do with them doesn't work in conjunction with their names and/or function, it turns fun into work.

The Mechanics

Okay, I lied above. The components aren't my biggest complaint. It seems that somewhere, at the core of this game, is a real game and they found some flaws with it during playtesting. Rather than reworking the core and simplifying, they threw in some more mechanics. Was there a dominant strategy that triggered the addition of the secondary board. Was the game uninteresting so they threw in the temple "tracks" to spice it up a bit. Regardless, what they've ended up with is a complete mishmash of various mechanics, several mini-games if you will that 1) don't fit the theme, 2) don't work well together, and 3) are difficult to remember and difficult to understand the relationships.

Teachability

I'm not even going to attempt teaching it to my standard group. There are just too many good games out there that I'd rather play than to slog through the rules amid glazed eyes. It can't be that fun.

I've had the print from my 2-player Nile Variant board for Tigris & Euphrates for some time now along with the materials to create and mount it on a quad-fold board. I've just been too chicken to actually mount it.

Following the guidelines for a non-guttered quad-fold board from the Board Game Design Forum, I cut the chipboard into four rectangles and got down to business.

It didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped it would (I can tell it won't last as long as a "real" board) but I did learn from the experience and feel good that I took a shot at it and, most of all, the materials aren't setting in the closet mocking me every time I open the door.

"Thumbs" are BGG-speak for, well, thumbs. Every time you post a comment, thread, upload an image, file, etc... okay, pretty much any time you touch the site people have the ability to "thumb" content originating from your user id. On your profile page you can see your total thumb count and track back what items have been thumbed and by whom. They're given for pretty much whatever reason the thumber desired: made-me-laugh, good-image, good-point, I-like-your-answer, bump-this-item-up-so-it-gets-noticed-by-others, etc.

The feature has gone through many iterations from allowing thumbs down to only allowing thumbs up, etc. but in the end, I've reached a personal milestone of 10,000 thumbs. I'm not the first by any means but it felt good in a strange, geeky, nerdy way and I thought I'd share.