Author: matt

Lisa and I got together with a few friends from around the neighborhood for some good company, good food, and light games. We managed to struggle through our first playing of Nuns on the Run on odd deduction game where one player plays the role of the two guards and everybody else is running around the nunnery trying to obtain a secret key to the room holding a hidden treasure. If you can obtain your treasure and make it back to your room without the guards catching you, you win.

Nuns on the Run is a bit long for what it’s worth and I think we were playing a bit wrong in how we become visible for short periods of time during our moves when we cross the guards line of sight. It’s not a game I would buy but worth a play just to see what it’s all about.

We also played Medici with six which was quite fun. Medici is a relatively dry (not much theme) game of purchasing goods at auction to fill your ship. Once everyone has a full ship (or the tiles run out) everyone unloads their various goods for points. Everyone is trying to gather goods that when delivered push their tokens higher on the goods tracks but sometimes you must fight others for those goods at the auction. Medici is a short (about 45 minutes) game and with only a few turns in each of the three rounds it’s over before you know it.

My preorder for American Rails arrived today. The game is one of 200 (oops!) I mean 130 copies (thanks for the correction Tim) designed by Tim Harrison and produced by his own company Games on the Brain. I’m not a “train” gamer but I’ve always thought I could be one if I thought about it long enough.

From BGG: This luckless game was inspired by John Bohrer’s development of Chicago Express and the Historic Railroads System from Winsome Games. Set in the United States east of the Mississipi, American Rails features player-controlled variable turn order, “city dilution,” and variable setups, giving this cutthroat train game an unprecedented level of replayability.

I’ve posted an entry in the “Games for Geekgold” lottery for my copy of Wasabi. The lottery will close at May 31st and I will pick a winner using the Original Awesome Tool – BGG Geekgold Lottery Picker created by jeromier.Each 1 geek gold tip given to the geek list entry for Wasabi gives you one chance to win. As a bonus, every 5 geek gold grants you a free 6th entry. Shipping is on the winner unless the list reaches 200 geek gold. At that point, I’ll cover the first $12 in shipping. International entrants are welcome. Good luck.

Getting in some programming time on my commissioned implementation of Callisto. Honing in on the core bot logic for the computer players. The logic was proving relatively complex but I think I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Still working on some mid/late game tactical decisions but it doesn’t feel insurmountable. There’s still a significant amount of work left but progress is going well.

We met at my house for April’s installment of Analog Game Night. Man, is it April already?! I’ve been totally focused on a couple of side projects that have me, as my wife can attest, relatively unresponsive to much short of a whack to the head. April snuck up on me and, although at one point I had a list of 4 or 5 games I wanted to get to the table, I never managed to get up to speed on them well enough to teach them.

While we waited for our sixth to arrive, we sat down for a few rounds of Dixit. Just when we got set up and I began teaching it, our sixth arrived. Although we only played one full round it was, I thought, a nice way to ease into the game night.

After much hemming and hawing about what to play next, we decided to play a game of Bang!. Bang! is a game I’ve owned for years and although it was a very early addition to my collection, I’ve never actually played it. As a group, we normally don’t like games with player elimination but in this case we were trying to use it to our advantage. Our plan was to use the first three players eliminated as the selection process for a “split off” group to play a meatier game for three. Unfortunately, it turned out the first three people eliminated were the people who would be the most effective at teaching games so we ended up waiting for the game to end anyway. However, while we waited I did get in a game of Crazy Chicken with one of my fellow dead guys from Bang!

After splitting into two groups of three, the far end of the table set up Mystery Express and my end of the table set up Notre Dame. I had great difficulty in teaching the game. Firstly, it’s been a few months since I’ve played (and I’ve only played a couple of times over the years) and secondly, my brain is so shot from staying up too many late nights coding that when I opened the box I almost didn’t recognize what it was. After about 5 minutes of struggling I was able to perceive some clarity of explanation. My two opponents didn’t seem overly phased by my stumbling around but I felt like I was out in left field.

I think the far end of the table enjoyed their playing of Mystery Express and I enjoyed Notre Dame. I rarely do well at Notre Dame but I greatly enjoy the pacing of the game and next to zero down time. It’s almost always time for you to do something. Speaking of that, I need to go take a nap…or get out the MacBook and get down to some more coding..z..zz.z.zz.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Enjoyed a couple games of Ra – The Dice Game today. Lisa and I played it with only two and it wasn’t bad but I enjoyed it more with a third. I suspect 4 is best. It’s a bit odd without the auction of the standard game but I do like it. It plays fast with little to no down time. Once you get the hang of what dice to keep and how your rolls and the epoch scoring affect your position you can get the turns cranking pretty darn quickly. Watch out for those 4 & 5 sun disasters…killer! Looking forward to more plays.

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.

Following in the footsteps of the successful deployment of a multi-language and sanctioned implementation of Ingenious, I’ve recently been in a dialog with the marketing department at Sophisticated Games concerning an online implementation of Reiner Knizia’s Callisto. I’ve recently finalized the details of the commissioned work and would like to announce the effort. I’m excited to bring this game to the online “try before you buy” community and hope you enjoy the game as much as I do.

I’ll be posting updates over the course of the next several weeks and as the design and implementation progresses I encourage your feedback. Also, if you’re interested in being a playtester for the online game, please feel free to drop me an email and maybe we can work something out.

I’ve wanted a copy of Big City for years but was not willing to pay the premium prices for the out of print (OOP) game. Valley Games announced that they were printing another version but that was well over a year ago and I was getting tired of waiting. As luck would have it, I saw a “Like New” copy go up in the BGG marketplace for only $30 so after exchanging some emails with the owner I jumped at the chance.

The copy arrived today and it looks freshly punched and the rules feel like they’ve never been opened. I inventoried the bits tonight and got started on learning the rules. This time, at least, it paid off to wait for the right moment to jump.

Whipped up a homemade wooden (white oak) copy of Micropul today. It didn’t turn out as nice as I’d hoped (I rushed) but it is playable. I think I’ll take another shot at using some of the print and play designs for another attempt.