Memoirs of a Board Gamer

I've been in backorder hell at Game Surplus. My copy of Rails of Europe (a Railroad Tycoon expansion) and Galaxy Trucker won't be restocked until some time in July at the earliest. These copies were holding up my copy of Oasis, an Uberplay title that I wanted to obtain before they became scarce (Uberplay recently ceased operation) and Amyitis.

So after waiting a month, I decided to have them split the order and since my 43'rd birthday recently passed I threw in a copy of Inkognito and El Capitan. I played Inkognito at CABS and always desired a copy because it's a completely different kind of game than I have in my collection. It's a deduction game where two players (eventually deducing that they are partners) either win or lose to the other set of partners. Plus, it's got the Nunzilla piece. Who can pass that up?!

El Capitan was a title that wasn't particularly on my list until I saw it was in stock at Game Surplus, I recognized it had had an artistic face lift by Mike Doyle, it has some neat mechanics, a great theme, and was rated highly at BGG.

Looks like another awesome haul David. Rails of Europe is on my short list. My son loves Rumis and is quite adept at kicking our collective family butts. I'm waiting a bit on Mr. Jack. I've found I don't get to play strictly 2-player games all that much so I think I'll just wait and see if it can sustain it's currently high ranking. I've only heard good things about it though. And finally Mission: Red Planet. My group has played it a few times and I've had fun every time. I'd be interested in hearing how all of these turn out for you. Thanks for sharing!

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Matthew,

No real gimmick behind this ThoughtHammer order, other than 
1) Ticket to Ride: Switzerland "won" the TH "March Madness" 
    Tournament and was available for $10.50 (I got a copy for a friend, 
    not shown) and 
2) I had recently sold my Mayfair Cosmic Encounter (redundant 
    w/the completion of my Eon set) and 3) I had some 'mad 
    money' lying around.

the details:

2 x Ticket to Ride: Switzerland (Swiss Map Expansion) $21.00
1 x (Ding & Dent) Mission: Red Planet  $26.99
1 x (Ding & Dent) Mr. Jack  $22.19
1 x (Ding & Dent) Rumis  $20.09
1 x (Ding & Dent) Poison (Reiner Knizia)  $9.00
1 x Rails of Europe: A Railroad Tycoon Expansion
$29.99
1 x Boomtown  $16.25
1 x Incan Gold (a.k.a. Diamant)  $19.99 

Total (w/ the obligatory Free Shipping): $165.50

Latent 'themes': railroad expansions, ding & dent, fun, family games etc. 
should keep me, my family, and my game group busy for a while. At least until the 
next order.

Regards,

DavidO

John writes:

This is cheating, but three game orders arrived in the same week and they make a pretty picture. The total cost of the orders (including Hey! That's My Fish! which wasn't for me and so is not pictured) was about $A400 which is an absolute bargain. Thanks to DrAnnalog for bringing the Tanga items back from the U.S. for me, and to CyberKev for the gift of Relationship Tightrope.

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John, your latest shipment looks fantastic! I really like playing Mexica and Hansa. I've got La Citta on my wish list but I keep hearing there's going to be a reprint. Thebes is another great game. The excitement of digging in the bag and having your opponents drag up dirt makes for great fun. Key Harvest is one I've had my eye on but I'm not much of a fan of auction games. I'd be curious to know how much of a role that plays in the game. Tongiaki and Vikings are yet two more I've thought hard about getting. I'm extremely jealous. It looks great. Enjoy.

I finally broke down and ordered a copy of Railroad Tycoon and a copy of Formula Motor Racing (FMR) from Game Surplus.

FMR is a light, quick, filler designed by Reiner Knizia known more for his more heady, lightly themed, simple yet elegant designs. FMR feels like something he would have designed in five minutes while taking his morning shower. The game supports up to six players so it's a great opener or closer. It consists of six pairs of cars in six colors, a deck of cards, and a 12d. All twelve cars are played regardless of the number of players. In the game above, each player was playing two different pairs of cars. The cars are always kept in a line on the table and players play cards which adjusts the order of the cars in the line and then draw a card. The goal is to be have your cars in one or more of the top six spots garnering points at game end. An official game lasts multiple sub-games determined before play begins. The cards consist of actions that advance a pair of cars, cause crashes, loss of position, etc.

The game has great moments of Schadenfreude when players suffer the consequences of well timed card play. The kids seemed to relish the 'oh yeah...well take that' aspect of the game and after a quick round we set up for round two after a resounding "lets play again!".

I don't have much to say about Railroad Tycoon yet. I opened the huge box, punched the bits, and set up the board to just see how big the thing really is.

In the image above, the board has been placed on my dining room table and as you can see, the board is large enough that playing the game would be difficult with such a small amount of edge space.

However, the neat thing about this table is that the entire top pivots towards one end of the legs and then the double thickness top opens up using hinges along the long edge (now in the center of the table). In its open state, the playing area is effectively doubled making a great space for playing this game. I'm really looking forward to tearing into this one.

Thanks again for the shipment image David.

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David C. of our Sacramento Boardgame Meetup group had the bright idea of 'coop buying' to save on S&H (e.g. free) and to take advantage of promotional pricings. So this is again, from multiple sources, but David C. delivered 'em all to game night in one haul, so I guess this can once again stretch the definition of 'shipment' as I got 'em all in one fell swoop. Most of these are for my daughter with a couple of goodies for Daddy :D

Dawn Under (TH-ding n dent) $25.72
Rat-a-tat-cat (TH) $7
Sleeping Queens (TH) $7
Queen's Necklace (Funagain promo) $10
Monkeys on the Moon (Funagain promo) $8
Power Grid power plant deck 2 (Funagain) $9.50
Hey That's My Fish! (Cardhaus) $17.50

total: c. $85 which includes paypal fees to reimburse David C.

regards, and happy Holiday Gaming
David O.

David has mastered aligning several shipments to arrive on the same day. Great set of orders David and thanks for the great backstory.

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Matthew,

I've sent pix of shipments, I've sent pix of different games/shipments arriving a the same time, but this may push the envelope. Different games, different arrival times, but stemming from a common funding source. Short story long: last year we bought our house (yeah!) and the bank besides mortgage offered to automatically deduct insurance, taxes, etc. as "impoundments". Oooooookay. We otherwise pay ourselves (vs. autodeduction) Home Owners Association (upkeep of common grounds and front yards) and Mello-Roos (a tax on the development homeowners for county infrastructure such as lights, street paving, etc.). Well, we get our annual summary and the Mello-Roos is an impoundment. So the roughly $150 I had budgeted for that was no longer necessary (e.g. it was part of the impoundments. Well, that in the magical symmetry of the universe spells THOUGHTHAMMER ORDER, except that the holidays are coming up and I really wanted Zooloretto (then out of stock at TH).

Well, Zooloretto shows up on Tanga and the slide down the slippery slope begins.... Then came PowerGrid + both expansion maps, then Ticket to Ride + 1910 + Switzerland. To top it off, TimeWellSpent was unloading Vampire: Prince of the City (Yeah, the Noferastu Nightmare may be unbalanced, but for 12 bucks its a decent game that goes over well w/ my group).

Examining the bottom line, perhaps I *should* have gone TH and eked out an extra game and the free shipping. Still, for $150 of "found money" this is a nice little haul of gaming goodness, no? (all prices include S&H)

$32.98 Zooloretto
$47.98 Power Grid + Benelux/Central Europe + France/Italy
$56.98 Ticket to Ride + 1910 + Switzerland
$17.86 Vampire: Prince of the CIty
-----------
$155.80

regards,
DavidO

Here are two images and some background information for a recent order sent from John Farrell/Friendless. Wow there's some good stuff in there. Kreta is one of my favorites. Tsuro is another game I have on my wishlist. Congrats on the great shipment and thanks for the images.

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It was from Magnus Spiele in Germany. I invited a few guys in Brisbane to go in with me to share costs, and together we spent $A989. The $A was about $US0.85 at the time. Of the $989, $226 was postage for two big parcels (that's why there's two pictures). Nevertheless, the games were much cheaper than we could get them (if we ever could) in Australia. These prices are in Australian dollars and are including a share of postage.

Cartagena 2 - $26
Ricochet Robots - $29
Schwarzarbeit - $15
Spinnentwist - $28
Tsuro - $37
Verrater - $9
Waldschattenspiel Luxus - $37
Weisst du eigentlich ... - $28
Popeln - $13
Akaba - $46
Fragile - $81
Razzia - $8
Konig der Elfen - $8
Helden & Zauberspruche - $9
Helden in der Unterwelt - $40
Ruckkehr der Helen - $22
Rumis+ - $37
Take It Easy - $24
Zauberschwert & Drachenei - $9
Burg Appenzell - $46
Der Scwarz Pirat - $46
Von 0 auf 100 - $26
Diamant - $27
Arbos - $50
Meuterer - $9
Tichu in a tin - $13
Kupferkessel - $20
Mamma Mia! - $9
Kreta - $37
Saboteur - $9

Here's an image for ekted's (Mr. Ekted) latest shipment. Portobello Market, Vikings and Khronos are on my radar too. I'm jealous! Nice shipment and thanks for the image!

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1960: The Making of the President  $32
Arkham Horror                      $35
Il Principe                        $24
Khronos                            $35
Lord Of The Rings: Battlefields    $21
Portobello Market                  $24
Shazamm!                           $17
Vikings                            $23

- Jim

Here's fsumarc's latest shipment. Thanks for the image!

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Feeling bummed looking at all the Essen piles people were getting I decided to place a thoughthammer order. It arrived at the same time as a BGG trade so here is the pile I got to open and am now playing through.

fsumarc

ps. the bottom right is Tempus Draconis. That game does not have it's name anywhere on the edges. It's the BGG trade I received.