Memoirs of a Board Gamer

My backordered games finally got flushed to my doorstep. I'm keeping Hansa Teutonica, Dice Town, Dixit, and Ra - The Dice Game. The other copies of Dicetown and Dixit as well as the three copies of Sushi are for friends.

Matthew,
this is another one of my patented 'multiple shipments arriving on the same day' :D

The main shipment was a Coolstuff Inc. order to celebrate the release of Cosmic Incursion. Since I didn't have enough to make a full 'free shipping order', I merely tacked on some expansions I'd been eyeballing for a while.

Cosmic Incursion
Power Grid Iberia/Brazil
Hive-Mosquito
Primordial Soup-Freshly Spiced

Also arriving the same day:

Atlantic Star-very fair value on BGG marketplace-this is a nice set collection game with several push your luck elements (when to take a tile for free or pay, or take to hose someone else, where to place on the completed track-max points or safer payout, etc.).
Kingsburg-arrived via trade. This die roller/worker placement game is very popular in our group and an easy sell to get to the table.

JUST missing the cut: I won Mare Nostrum + expansion in a recent Geeklist Auction. I had arranged for my sister to pick up the game from the seller, since she was flying out to visit Thursday 2/11. So I would have added Mare Nostrum to the photo EXCEPT that she got caught in the horrid blizzard hitting the east coast and won't be able to fly out until the weekend. So I have that coming in a few days, but not to make the photo :D

davido

It's been awhile since any one sent me a shipment picture but here's davido's recent haul and his note:

Matthew,

I had some extra holiday money and when Coolstuff, Inc. offered a 5% off promo (alas, NOT piggybackable w/ my regular 2.5% loyalty bonus) I snagged some odds n ends. I missed the Haiti relief fund promo by a day, though. Anyways, the good stuff:

Ticket to Ride: Europa 1912 expansion. TTR:E is my fave of the TTR series, so more tickets plus warehouses/depots can only be more of a good thing.
Jungle Speed: always on the lookout for fun fillers
No Thanks: about time I owned this classic filler.
Railways of England and Wales. Railroad Tycoon is a '10' for me. I didn't like Rails of Europe, but LOVED my initial plays of RoEW-especially with 3-4 players.
Hive: my 7yo daughter is my main gaming partner, so I'm on the lookout for accessible 2p games. that and Bakelite is cool :D
Stone Age: I've enjoyed my plays of this, so time to add it to the collection
Stone Age Token Set: 'coz the bits matter :D
Small World: Another game that I enjoy everytime out. The expansions will be in the next order.
Baker's Dozen: I had Poison, but my wife didn't like the 'theme' for the 7yo-so here's hoping the Moldy Doughnuts make to the table more often.

Eligible for Free Shipping and after the 5% promo, total was $155

Jared found a "garage sale" of games on BGG and wanted to take a road trip to Cincinnati to buy 6 or 7 of them. He offered to pick up games for others in our group and when all was said and done, I think he bought a dozen games. I managed to pick up Primordial Soup and the Freshly Spiced expansion for 5-6 players and Container. Both Primordial Soup and the expansion are still in shrink and the cards in Container are still in shrink so all three are basically new games. The whole lot only set me back $55 so I was pretty happy about that.

Primordial Soup pits players controlling amoebas against one another in a struggle of life. Amoebas need to gain genetic advancements to outwit other players in their quest for life in the Primordial Soup. The games contains an often joked feature of requiring amoebas to eat the ejected poo of other amoebas during the game. Of course, you can only eat the other amoebas poo 'cause eating your own is...well that's just nasty.

Container is a game of determining what to produce and what products to ship to maximize profits. The game contains some pretty cool looking container ships and some cool shipping containers to load onto them.

They're not all mine but they all came today:

Dominion Intrigue (1 for me, 1 for Jared)
Caylus Magna Carta
Catagena (I)
Medici
Chicago Express (Bob's copy)
Puerto Rico (Jared's copy)
Keythedral (an in-shrink, Pro Ludo edition, from BGG Trade)

Here's a shipment sent in by davido with some notes he sent describing the shipments. Nice haul!

While I've had the odd trade going on, it's been a few months since my last "big order". I'm a rabid Cosmic Encounter fan, and tried to 'get back into the game' via Mayfair's version. Well, I HATED Mayfair's art and nerfing of flares, etc. so I sold that (see a previous entry that was paid for by the sale) and proceeded to accumlate the original Eon version plus expansions, including all 8 color token sets. As you know, Fantasy Flight has reissued the game, and while Eon remains the best, I've seen enough to know that Kevin Wilson have "done it right".

Thus it was time to let go and put the Eon product on the marketplace. It took a few months, but I got my price. I spent half on games and half will go to funding household supplies and a camp session for my daughter. I'll miss my Eon set, but as the attached picture shows, 11 for 1 is a pretty sweet deal of gaming goodness. Of course, such a haul couldn't be contained by one order alone, so this is split amongst 3 online retailers (and yes, they all arrived w/in a day of each other) But you know me, I'll push the envelope of 'game order' to the limits :D The gory details:

Coolstuff, Inc.-the backbone of the orders due to low, low prices and $100 shipping minimum (which I nearly doubled) Cosmic Encounter (FFG)-you didn't think I'd go w/o Cosmic, did you? Downfall of Pompeii-a fun, fun game that I can play w/ daughter and gamers alike Win, Place, Show-a Klassic Knizia racing/auction game that's been on my radar for a while. TH has it 'out of print' so I gobbled it up here while I could. Gulo Gulo-a kid's classic that I'll love playing w/ my daughter and family Hamsterolle-a dexterity game par excellence accessible to all. Yeah, it's pricey for a bunch of wood, but man is it fun :D
total: $175

Boards and BIts-Here I indulge my Area Majority binky: King of Siam-a great area majority game that plays best w/ 3 Cave Troll-no it's not dungeon crawl-it's area majority Kahuna-a rare 2p game that has area majority elements
total: $75

Funagain-pricey, but they were the only ones to have the Dwarven Battalion in stock, which along w/ Goblin Marauders I needed for the Epic scenarios of Troll & Country.
Battlelore: Dwarven Battalion
Battlelore: Goblin Marauders
Fairy Tale: a fun, card drafting game that will fit the quick/filler niche nicely
Total: $48

Grand total: c. $290 (and yes, that's about 60% of what I got for my CE set).

Oh, and your eyes don't deceive you. That is Mykerinos: the Nile that I got in a Math Trade. It showed up the same delivery (UPS) as the Coolstuff order, so I'm putting it in the picture "just because" :D davido

John gave me a laugh yesterday by including "games" he bought for his dog beside games that had recently arrived. Looks like some interesting stuff I've never seen before. Maybe BGG needs to list the "tug-of-war" mechanic? :-) Here's John's comment that arrived with the photo. Thanks for sharing it with everyone.

Scrabblette's parcel from India arrived with a load of local games on the same day as my dog got a present from Cyberkev's family, so here's a photo of the two shipments combined. The Kreeda games are mostly roll and moves, except The Battle of Lanka which is a decent though simple card game. The Funskool games look like they might be interesting. Three of the dog toys are squeaky, which is one of my girl's favourite genres. She's not so much into the tug-of-war style. Luckily with dog toys, anything can be thrown and chased, and that's her all-time favourite game.

sroney submitted an addition to the Shipments page showing the spoils of three game orders being used to fill Christmas presents. A fourth order has yet to arrive. Steve added that only a few of the games are for himself. That's not surprising as I'd think it would cause a rift in the physical laws of nature for a gamer to order some games without throwing in a few more for good measure.

I wasn't actively looking to acquire any new games but a member of my game group contacted a BGG member about purchasing a couple of games from his collection so I looked through his collection and sent him an offer for New England and Santiago. He was coming to Columbus for the annual CABS gaming convention so I met up with him this morning to pick up the games. Both games are in excellent condition; I was flabbergasted that New England is still "unpunched" (meaning the cardboard bits are still attached to the sprues).

New England and Santiago are older games (2003) designed by Aaron Weissblum, Alan R. Moon and Claudia Hely, Roman Pelek respectively. New England is a tile laying game for 3-4 players and lasts about 90 minutes.

From BGG:

There are three types of land in the game, land for settlements, land for crops, and land for animals. Players each start with some of each land. Each round, players bid (using a new mechanic) to buy more land, to build cities, to plant crops, and to graze herds. There are also ships to buy and Pilgrims to entice to your land. Players always want to both acquire more land and to develop their land, but you can only do a limited number of things each turn, so there are tough choices to be made throughout. You need money for everything of course, and you never have enough!

Santiago, is also a tile laying game for 3 to 5 players and lasts about 75 minutes.

From BGG:

This game is about cultivating and watering fields. To accomplish this, a number of tiles denoting various plantation types come into the game each round. The tiles are auctioned off such that each player gets one, and the tiles are then placed onto the game board along with an ownership marker that also indicates how plentiful the tile’s yield will be. Whoever bid the lowest in each round gets to be the canal overseer and decides where a canal will be built that round. The other players may make suggestions to help the canal overseer decide, and back up their suggestions with money. The final decision is always wholly up to the overseer, though.

At the end of each round, players determine what the water supply situation looks like. Should a plantation not be sufficiently watered, its production drops dramatically; should it happen more than once, then that plantation may revert to fallow ground. At game’s end, naturally only the cultivated land counts. Each plantation is counted according to type – the bigger the better. But since the ownership markers play a role as well, the same plantation can give drastically different points for different players.

I initially shied away from both games because they both include an auction/bidding component that, in the past, was a turn off. However, as I play more games, an auction/bidding component doesn't drive me away like it used to. I'll hold back on describing my reasons as it would take an entire blog post to cover the topic. I'll save that for another time.