WOOHOO!

Great news for lovers of the Block-based wargames! Columbia has finally passed 500 pre-orders for Hellas, so we should be seeing that game before too-too much longer.

Also, the newcomer to the block games fold, Worthington, is taking pre-orders for its new projects. Two of them look particularly interesting to me--Clash for a Continent and Cowboys. I'm a sucker for modular games that allow for new scenarios, and I'm a sucker for Wild West shootout games in general. Worthington's previous effort was Victoria Cross, which I've not played but has been well-received.

QUICK COLLEGE FOOTBALL NOTE

It was almost the perfect Saturday for college football. Texas won, which made up for Mizzou getting pounded like cheap veal in Lincoln...but best of all: All three Florida teams lost!! Go 'heels! Go Bulldogs! Go Terps!

ON THE TABLE

I've been playing over a couple of interesting games recently, Navia Dratp and Camelot Legends.

The former is, I have to say, the best anime-themed Shogi variant on the market today. The biggest hurdle to get over is the idiot terminology it uses, as one might imagine from the first made-up, unpronouncable word in the title.

Like Chess and Shogi, there's a King/General ("Navia" here--and they're all female, and tend to have very old-fashioned names like "Estelle"), pieces (called "Maseitai") and pawns (called "gulled," which is both a singular and plural noun, but not a past participle). In a new twist, there's a currency in the game called "gyullas." "Navia" is an easy term, so I'm going to keep using that--but the rest I'm calling "pieces," "pawns," and "crystals," since that's what they are in any normal universe.

The game is played on a seven-by-seven board. On the back row, you start with your Navia in the middle along with two red pawns, and in the row immediately ahead are seven black pawns. Black pawns may move and capture one space straight ahead, and red pawns may move forward one space ahead or diagonally. Navias move like Chess kings. Your pieces (and you get seven of them) start off-board and are "summoned" onto the board to summoning spaces indicated on the board (mostly on the back row).

Each piece has its own special way of moving, and helpfully there's a diagram on each one showing how it moves. Again like Shogi, it's hard to get pieces to move backwards--and when you get a piece that can retreat as needed, it's a very nice and powerful thing to have.

Also like Shogi, pieces can promote and gain new powers. This is accomplished by spending crystals--which one gains by moving pawns (1 crystal per black pawn, 3 per red), and for capturing pieces. Each piece has a promotion cost printed on it--which you gain if you capture that piece, or you spend to promote it. When promoted, most pieces gain freer movement, but some get some sort of special power--they detonate, killing everything one space around them, say, or they switch the places of two pieces, or what have you. There are a lot of special powers. They can be hard to keep straight, and to help remedy this there is a card for each piece showing what they promote to, which are kept out for reference.

You win by either promoting your Navia (which costs a lot of crystals), capturing your opponent's Navia, or moving your Navia past the seventh rank and off the board.

There's a lot going on in this game. With a seven-by-seven board, it sometimes feels cramped and it can be difficult to open lines of attack. When they do open, though, stuff starts happening very quickly. When looking down the tree of variations, not only is there movement to think of, but also promotions to take into account. Your pieces can disappear from the board--and reappear!--in a twinkling, as special powers proliferate as more and more pieces get promoted.

Of course, the thing is collectible, so army-buildiing is part of the strategy as well. You can build an army designed to accumulate crystals--aiming towards victory by promotion--or one with a lot of "heavy" pieces designed to sweep away the opponent and weave a mating net. There aren't too many pieces to collect, which is good and bad: Good, because you don't need that many...but bad, because that increases the odds of getting duplicates in one's boosters. You can't have an army with two of the same piece--unless one of them is a super-rare painted version. I'm not entirely sure how much I plan on plowing into this, but it'd be nice to have a lot of variety for games.

I must say, too, that the quality of the sculptures is exceptional. Most of the pieces are extremely well sculpted, but they're usually of hideously ugly monsters...not too many lissome anime babes, except for the Navia themselves. (There's not a hell of a lot of point to collecting Navia, since they're all the same. I think.) The're made out of a soft, rubbery plastic that seems almost indestructible, and they're nice and heavy. The paint jobs are excellent, far beyond WizKids.

RECOMMENDED to fans of two-player games of perfect information and no luck.

Camelot Legends is a very different game. The Arthurian Legend has, for some reason, been a very difficult subject to "game." Even Reiner Knizia tried his hand at it, and produced one of his rare turkeys. SPI back in the seventies tried to do a wargame of the battle of Camlann--the cataclysmic final battle between Arthur and Mordred--but for some reason known only to God set it at Stonehenge, and this is considered to be one of SPI's lesser efforts.

Camelot Legends, though, is a very good game, and certainly the best Arthurian-themed game I've ever run across.

This is one of those games where you represent an ever-changing faction of characters. This is reasonably Arthurian--the literature is full of infighting and squabbles, if perhaps not at this level. There is a card for basically any Arthurian character you can think of, at least from the "classic" Arthurian canon. You play them to locations--Camelot, Cornwall, and the Perilous Forest--where they cooperate (on your behalf) to fulfill various events (which, again, represent everything in the Canon short of the Knights who say "Nih!" and the Killer Rabbit--although a Monty Python expansion would be more than welcome).

(I've tried writing a paragraph on the basic mechanics five different ways. The game's easy to play, but hard to explain--I think--without the stuff in front of you. Tom Vasel has a full review hitting the high points.)

It's hard to point to any particular parts of the mechanics that work particularly well, or are particularly effective. What makes the game a winner is that all the mechanics--pedestrian as they may be--get across the sense that one is, in fact, reliving some part of the Arthurian legend; this is a game where the theme works particularly well and is particularly important.

What helps the theme is the game's production values. Each card has flavor text from one or another retelling of the legend, and artists--whom we are assured are top names in the field--provided nice art for each character. The Arthurian legend geek (hi!) has a lot to like here, recognizing some obscure characters and scenes in the card decks.

If you don't have an interest in the legend, I think this game will only be moderately entertaining, but if you've been lookng for a good Arthurian-themed game, and have a background knowledge of the source material, then this game makes an excellent addition to one's collection.

CURSED FRANCHISES

ESPN recently ranked the top 55 (why 55?) cursed teams in sports. Well, some sports, anyway--the major North American leagues. There are plenty of colorful cursed soccer teams, for example, that would have made the cut easily.

They do make one error, with the St. Louis Blues entry. (They make the cut because while they've made the postseason every season almost since I was born, they've never won the Cup. Still: They've made the playoffs every season for the past twenty-five years. How cursed can you be?) They call it "The Curse With No Name," which is incorrect. Every Blues fan knows the name of this curse well: The Curse of Scotty Bowman.

Bowman, very possibly the finest coach in hockey history (there are many such contenders, to be sure), was fired by the Blues after leading the team to three straight Cup Finals...and we haven't been back since. Firing Bowman was, of course, the most idiotic move in Blues management history...right up there with firing Al Arbour. And I'm betting firing Joel Quenneville will end up being a similar gaffe. Basically, if the Blues fire a coach, your favorite team's best move is to immediately hire him.

VACATIONFEST '04 UPDATE

Well, I'll be coming down to Austin for about nine days, and taking Jeff up on his gracious housing offer. I'll be in town from the fifth through the thirteenth. What clinched the deal for coming to Austin was remembering that Russ owes me a couple of games...

With any luck, I'll be able to blog on the road.

I'll be bringing games down, as necessary. Any requests? Roads and Boats, Navia Dratp, Railroad Dice...

THAT'S THAT, THEN (WARNING! BASEBALL CONTENT!)

Wow. The Cardinals just threw down some powerful suck these past four games. Can we make the Red Sox play a few games against the Astros, just to make sure they're for real?

I don't remember 1982, sadly, and my memories of 1985 and 1987 are relatively dim, but quite there. 2004 I'm going to try to forget as soon as possible...

Well done, though, to the Red Sox, who outplayed the Cardinals in every facet of the game (except possibly for fielding). A long time coming, to say the least.

Now, though, the most compelling Long-Suffering Series would also be a crosstown matchup: Cubs vs White Sox. (Of course, that would actually have been the Long-Suffering Series even before this year: The White Sox haven't won a World Series since 1917. Of course, there's the Whole 1919 Thing to be considered. Since then, though, the Palehose won only one pennant. Nobody remembers that tale of woe, though...)

QUICK MUSIC ADVISORY

On the off chance I'm not the only zydeco fan out there, I'd just like to point out that I'm enjoying the latest album from Beausoleil, Gitane Cajun (Cajun Gypsy), immensely. And there's a gaming reference! Track Three: La Femme qui Jouait aux Cartes--The Woman Who Played Cards. If you want to tell yourself that she was playing Tichu, that's your business.

(And for the purist who happened upon this site: Yes, I know Beausoleil isn't pure zydeco. They're still great, though.)

GAMES IN THE NEWS

Well, if we consider ESPN news. It's a nice article about MLB SportsClix, which I also quite like. Truest words in the article: "Note to Topps: When you start making vintage Clix, like J.R. Richard and Jim Rice, well, let's just say, 'People will come, Topps. People will come.'"

This needs to happen. That and whole-team sets...

VACATION TIME

In an odd situation, I am being obliged to take a vacation! Only so much vacation time can be built up from year to year, and as it stands right now I have two weeks' worth about to evaporate unless I take some after next week. I'm not entirely certain what I'm going to do with it yet...

HOO BOY

Well, it looks like the 2004 Cardinals are about to become the answer to a very easy baseball trivia question.

Unless, of course, the whole four-in-a-row thing can be pulled off twice...

RARE ENTRIES III

For the third week in a row, I'm giving away fifteen Geek Gold in exchange for you Thinking Different. I'm an OS X user, what can I say?

I added one rule to remove some of the wierdness from the previous installments: I'm not allowing someone to give as their answer to a question the example game for that question. Iain was right to suggest that weeks ago...

Anyhoo. Behold its might.

GEEKLIST RARE ENTRIES

We have a winner! Full results are available here.

(Pleasepleaseplease let that be formatted correctly...)

UPDATE: If that formatting doesn't work (it does OK in Netscape for me, but I just let Excel do the HTML for it), there's a PDF file that may work slightly better.

EDUCATIONAL POST OF THE WEEK

I'm not the only one who's wondered how LEGOs are made, am I?

(Beats watching the Red Sox shell Woody Williams, anyway.)

ANYBODY HEARD OF THIS?

I spent a few minutes, among my other errands today, in the game store (imagine!) and the most intiguing game I hadn't heard of, and am not entirely certain how to pronounce, is Navia Dratp. "Dratp," from what I could tell from the back of the box, is a verb. I know squat about anime, but I'm intrigued by the idea of a collectible Shogi variant. Most of the reviews on BGG are fairly luminous.

UPDATE: This is some excellent stuff. Fuller report later.

ONE MORE THING

Just remembered a great quote about the perils of not giving the "real thing" to a first-time audience. One of my favorite Peanuts comic strips has Charlie Brown sitting in an easy chair, reading a book. Violet comes up, and asks Charlie Brown what he's reading. "This is an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes." "Adapted?" asks Violet. "Yes, it's been 'adapted' for children. It's not unlike drinking diluted root beer!" Charlie Brown replies, tossing the book over his shoulder.

BOARDGAMEGEEK CONTESTS

Just a reminder that I have another BGG Rare Entries contest going--details can be found here. I have also inspired a fellow Boardgame Geek to create a contest--the Singularity Contest. Be sure to check them out! I've only gotten fifty-odd entries this time around, so your chances of winning cannot but improve from last week...

(Sorry this thing posted five times originally. Blogger + Safari = Bad Times.)

GATEWAYS

"You may not think you like jazz," I read somewhere several years ago, "but don't say that until you hear 'Kind of Blue.'"

I had, in fact, not been very much exposed to jazz, and while I harbored no particular antipathy to the genre I couldn't say I liked it, either. Intrigued, I poked around a little more and gradually it became clear that this was the jazz album that jazz "initiates" wanted everyone else to at least try.

The initiates are quite right. It was the first, of many-many, jazz albums in my collection. I've just about memorized it; I can hear almost all forty-odd minutes of it in my head. I've since read about jazz (and Miles Davis in particular), watched documentaries about jazz, and--passing it along--have encouraged those who don't think jazz is "for them" to listen to this onnnnee little record, "Kind of Blue," and tell me what they think of it.

A lot of people have experiences like this, and certain things--artistic and otherwise--that they want to bring to a wider audience, one that may be either hostile to, or just ignorant of, one of our passions. Anyone who thinks ill of comic books would do well to read Watchmen. I think anyone who says they don't like classical music should listen to Mozart's "Requiem" just once, just for me. Terry Teachout is forever dragging first-time ballet-goers to Balanchine dances, secure in the belief that this is a transformative experience. Many people evangelize on behalf of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha , and I'm a better man for someone doing that for me, too.

One important thing about all these examples is that they are excellent exemplars of their respective genres. "Kind of Blue" isn't famous because it introduces people to jazz; it's famous because it's excellent. They draw in the non-initiated not because they're dumbed-down, or designed to not have sharp corners, but because it's almost impossible for a great many people--initiates or not--to ignore their power and virtuosity.

I bring this up, because I think in the little world of gamers we have a different approach sometimes, and it's a counterproductive way to bring more gamers into the fold.

Gamers are forever looking for "Gateway Games," games they can spring on non-gamers to get them interested. There are at least six GeekLists on BGG of these; the usual suspicion is that a good Gateway Game would be simple, fast, and has a fair bit of luck thrown in. Usual suspects are TransAmerica and Apples to Apples. Sometimes a review will conclude with something like (to exaggerate): "While this game isn't much for a Real Gamer, with any luck you'll be able to get some of the unwashed to play it with you." I freely admit that I have games like this--games I intend to play only with non-gamers.

I wonder if this is like saying, "Well, here's a game--you know, one of those things I have hundreds of. Well, let's give this one a shot...it's not so great, but it's a start."

I think that if non-gamers are going to become gamers in any kind of numbers, it's not going to be because we start playing second-rate games with them. It's going to be because we play great games with them, games that show off what games are capable of--mechanics-wise, theme-wise, interaction-wise.

Now, that's not to say that any great game will do. "Kind of Blue" makes a great gateway jazz album--but I wouldn't say that of "Blowin' Session" or, God forbid, "Change of the Century"--which are also great albums, but perhaps not the best choices for someone who hasn't heard a lot of jazz yet.

Die Macher and Roads and Boats are great games, but I'm not sure I'd sit down with someone new and play them. I think familiarity with games is part of what makes those games so great--especially with Roads and Boats. You need to know what they're doing to "get" them--just like you need to know the "rules" of jazz before you can really appreciate how Ornette Coleman breaks them on "Change of the Century." Otherwise it's just weird and difficult...

If I were to start someone off with, say, wargaming, I'd probably start with one of the smaller Columbia games--Hammer of the Scots, say, or Quebec 1759--or maybe one of the "Card-Driven" games like We the People, Hannibal, or Wilderness War. Yeah, with a second's more thought it'd probably be one of the block games. The best of them are like polished gems. They have a lot to think about, too, both from a strategic standpoint as well as a "That's kinda neat" standpoint. If I were to start someone off in "Euro" games, I'd probably go with one of Knizia's middleweight games, like Through the Desert or Samurai.

And if someone were completely new to games, I'd start off with Go. I think the biggest impediment to bringing people to gaming is the notion--common not just in the US--that games are for kids. Some games are pure "kid-stuff fluff," kind of like sugary breakfast cereal, that one is best off outgrowing (except for irony value) when you turn about sixteen. Other games--by which I mean Chess almost exclusively--are Good For Buidling Character, and hold the same role as soccer, dance, and the violin: someting you take your kids to organized practices for. The notion of adults playing games is kind of weird to a lot of people.

Go, I think, can bring people back to earth. Go can be serious business, an obvious step up from Parcheesi on the evolutionary ladder. There can be dozens of things going on about which the new (and, sometimes, the longtime) player is only dimly aware, but it keeps drawing you back. Go has a way of making new players say "What just happened? I want to try that again" that I haven't seen in many other games. And after a game or three, you can lean back and say "See, this is why I like games."

And the conversation can progress from there. Moving from Go, one can try Through the Desert or We the People and find some familiar mechanics at work...at which point the initiate can learn that a "mechanic" can be something other than the guy who works on your car.

The point is that Go and some of these other games are terrific games, for both experienced and inexperienced players--just as jazz enthusiasts and people who have never heard of Miles Davis can appreciate "Kind of Blue." These games aren't dumbed-down (the Kenny G's of the game world?), or designed to bring new players in, or anything like that. They're games that can make people excited about games. There may be better ideas than the ones I came up with, but a "good first game" should also be a truly good game, not just a mere "first game."

I'm reminded of someone I met who designed a "first game." He works at (owns?) a local store. I was in there, poking around and reading the then-latest issue of Undefeated. He walked up to me and points to my magazine.

"You know," he says, "I got my game reviewed in there."
"Hey, great!"
He leans in. "They hated it."
"Um...oh. Sorry about that..."
He snaps back up. "And every word they said was true! Let me see here...Ah yes. 'The game is absurdly simple and depends almost entirely on the luck of the draw.' True! 'In many of its features it is a bad rip-off of all the many "rummy" games that have appeared over the years.' True again! 'The only people this game may appeal to are people who have never seen, let alone played, a game before in their lives.'" He closes the magazine and rolls it up and points it at me. "And that, my friend, was exactly the point."
"It was?"
"Sure. This is a game for people who don't like games very much, if they know about them at all. It's all about having a deck of cards with some neat fantasy art on them that they can play at a restaurant. It's not a very good game, because it's not supposed to be a very good game. I should write them a letter..."
"So I shouldn't buy this game?"
"Heck no. Why would you want to?"

This game is on BGG, and has received an appropriately-low score from the appropriately-few people who have reviewed it. If he had designed a good game, he might not only have achieved his goal, but might also be selling it in stores other than his own.

WOW (WARNING! BASEBALL CONTENT!)

It's always good when one's genuine pessimism the past week-plus turns out to be unfounded after all.

This has been an absolute blast of a season thus far for baseball fans for many reasons--not least of which has been the stunning late-season surge by the Astros, the NL team that, more than any other, worried Cardinals fans (not just me). And all without two of their best pitchers in Pettite and Miller...if they can somehow keep the band together in the offseason--a tricky proposition--this should be a hell of a team again next year.

There are, in this World Series, two board/card gamers in the starting rotations: Curt Schilling--of course; he owns his own game company--and also Jason Marquis of the Cardinals, who plays a mean game of Cribbage among other games (as I read in the Post-Dispatch a while ago). (I think Marquis is the only gamer on the team. The Braves, supposedly, have a gaming "scene" in the clubhouse, and Marquis brought it with him.) It's not entirely out of the question that they'll face each other, which may well be the first time two of "us" square off in postseason action.

CROSSOVER HIT?

This is intriguing. DG Associates is coming out with a card game of Escape Velocity: Nova, one of my favorite computer games--and a shareware game, at that. Usually when a computer game comes to the Analog World, it's some flashy top-shelf title--Warcraft, Doom, Anno 1503 or the like. (Then there's the Sid Meier's Civilization boardgame--which I tend to call a photocopy of a fax.)

DGA's most famous product is Battlecards: WW2 which singlehandedly redefined "Eh" for our time as a descriptive adjective. It's nothing special, but I kinda like it. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to resist picking up some EV:N cards, though, just to see how it works...

THE GAMES 100

Well, the 2005 Games Magazine Top 100 Games list is out, and whenever it does I like to see how well my preferences--as judged by my purchasing behavior--match that of Games Magazine. On this year's list, I own:

1. Tahuantinsuyu
2. Memoir '44
3. Hansa
4. Wings of War
5. Railroad Dice
6. Magna Gr(a)ecia
7. Carcassonne: the Castle
8. Hoity Toity (in its Adel Verpflichtet guise)
9. Cronberg
10. War and Sheep (which really shouldn't be on this list: It's not one of the top 100 games, and I shouldn't have bought it)
11. Canal Grande
12. Pirate's Cove
13. Attika (a mere nominee; earlier this year everyone seemed to think it was the bestest game ever)
14. New England, and finally
15. Axis and Allies: D-Day

Fifteen, which seems like a lot to me somehow. I wonder how many more of these I'll get before the next list comes out. Yinsh looks like a worthy addition to the series, Die Fugger has a theme that can't lose with me (medieval merchants), Princes of the Renaissance has excellent press from a favorite designer. Is there anyone who doesn't like Ticket to Ride? Of the remaining wargames, Gringo has some neat battles in it. A lot of these have no interest for me at all, though--of course, I think there are few gamers who would feel inclined to have all the games on this list, or even half of them. I have a certain attraction for about a quarter of them.

Meanwhile, I have 32 of the top fifty games on BGG, which is possibly a worse sign.

(Why, oh why didn't I take War and Sheep to the game auction drop-off last weekend? My theory is that I blocked out that I even had it. Next time I gotta really clear the cupboard of the dross. Where's that copy of Knights I had sitting around?)

GAME SIX (WARNING! BASEBALL CONTENT!)

When I saw Brandon Backe hit for Brad Lidge, I thought back to a wise man's statement: The Mongols go home; the Poles declare victory.

Game Seven, though, is not an encouraging pitching matchup.

QUICK NOTE

For the person who came here an hour or so ago looking for

Brad Lidge and romance

I just can't help you.

RARE ENTRIES: TAKE TWO

Anyone who missed the first contest--or wants to improve their score--can take a look at the second contest, with all new categories! My suspicion is that the high score will be above 40 this time, but who can say for sure...

ON THE TABLE

I have to do something to take my mind off the recent Redbird debacles...[sob]...luckily, boardgames tend to take my mind off just about anything.

I mentioned an odd customer in the game store earlier. The Japanese-theme game he was sold was Samurai and Katana, and that reminded me that I had this one sitting around in the basement for far too long.

One of my favorite historical, and game, themes is the Sengoku Jidai, the string of civil wars in Japan from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. Vastly complicated times, with great changes in warfare and government. Fun stuff, now that it's three centuries later and I'm not personally involved. There have been many-many games on the period, some good, some not-so-good. This one is, I think, "decidedly OK."

It's a game for up to six players, each of whom takes a faction. You start the game with samurai counters (representing armies, some on the map and some in reserve), three castles in reserve, and a starting position of three cities--one major and two minor. You also get a hand of cards.

(That guy's not going to like seeing those cards, I just noticed.)

The goal is to accumulate honor points. You get honor by winning battles, holding provinces (each of which is composed of a certain number of territories), holding Kyoto, and by playing particular cards. The first to N points wins. (You can set N depending on how long or short a game you want.)

Territories provide you with money, with which you purchase and place samurai and castles on the board and move your units. A "plains" territory gives you two koku a turn, and a "mountain" territory gives you one. Holding cities lets you draw more cards every turn.

An important thing to notice in the game is that no player has enough manpower to take over the map. This is a game of consolidating and holding limited gains: A province gives you points every turn, so if you hold one tight you'll march to victory. Obviously, everyone else wants to prevent this: Much like the historical period itself, there's a lot of back-and-forth squabbling, diplomacy, backstabbing, and much, much more. I think the game will have a fair bit of whack-the-leader, but--again--this is all very historical.

The cards are neat. Every card can be used in combat, and some can be used as special events. The special event cards are very powerful in combat, but then again they are also powerful as events. Some cards can only be used in combat, as "auxiliary" cards. These can either be counted for their normal combat value, or for a particular special effect. Some cards have little katana icons that represent losses against one's foes in battle.

When you move a bunch of your guys into an occupied territory, there's combat. (Duh.) Each side plays two cards and, optionally, an auxiliary, all face-down. You then turn everything face-up, and count it up. You get one point for each samurai figurine in the territory, points for the combat value of the cards, one point for defending a mountain area, and if you have a castle in the territory you get to double the value of your weakest card. Auxiliary special effects are applied, as necessary. The higher total wins. Each side loses a number of units equal to the number of katana icons on their opponent's cards, and then the loser gets dispersed. If the defender lost, his survivors are distributed to any other territories that player controls. If the attacker lost, then the units retreat back from whence they came. The winning player gets one honor point.

Another neat feature is the Emperor and Shogun roles. The Emperor is controlled by the player currently in last place, and that player has the power to set the turn order for each phase of the game. This tends to even things out a little bit. The Shogun is controlled by the leader--but this tends to just pin an even bigger target on his back. The Shogun gets one free move a turn, but if he loses a battle he loses one honor point, which increases the incentive to attack him.

It's a neat game, which is let down primarily by its rules, at least in the English version. The English rules are pretty terrible, which I ascribe primarily to a poor translation. The translation is in fluent English, it's just incorrect. Also, the rules tend to have gaps, which the players are presumably intended to fill with their common sense. A little work on the internet clears up most of the problems, but this shouldn't be necessary.

The game is clever and tense, but I suspect it has a tendency to be either too short (there's a runaway leader, and the Honor Point target is too low) or too long (everybody's squabbling and nobody can get the HP needed to win). I think most of the time, though, this should work out reasonably well. It is certainly the best Tilsit game I have ever tried--which, granted, isn't the highest praise in the world, but this is a keeper nonetheless. There's a lot going on, with careful resource management (where to put one's limited armies? which cards to use?) and diplomacy to work out.

RARE ENTRIES CONTEST

Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ. That was the lesson from the first Boardgamegeek Rare Entries Contest. Scores ranged from 40 to 94,348,800. The winner sounds enthusiastic to come up with his own categories, so there should be a second contest up in no time...

HEARD AT THE GAME STORE

A local game store/comic book chain is having their quarterly auction, so I decided to drop off some of my less eBay-worthy games. Good games seem to go for less than what they draw on eBay at these auctions, while bad games seem to draw more. It's weird. Anyway, I was waiting my turn behind a guy who was, believe it or not, looking for a game:

"I'm looking for a game."
"Sure thing. What kind of game are you looking for?"
"Well, it needs to be really complicated, take several weeks to play, and needs to be about Japan."
"Um."
"And it can't use cards in any way, shape, or form. I hate cards in games."
"Well...There just aren't a lot of games like that these days..."

In a heroic bit of salesmanship, the shopkeeper managed to sell one game that was really compicated, another that was really long, and another on Japan. And none used cards!

GLASS-HALF-EMPTY REPORT (WARNING! BASEBALL CONTENT!)

Well, the home team took game two. This'll be all tied up in no time, though, as they face Clemens and Oswalt at Minute Maid. The ballclub has looked Not Good against Backe and Munro, and the chances of them inducing Garner to pull Clemens and Oswalt in the fifth in place of Qualls and Harville are not good. There's a lot of life left in this one...

In other baseball news, it looks like a whole new pitch will be coming to America in 2005. (In the description of this pitch, I'm still not sure how you hold a ball so it's "between your hand and your ear". Unless you use your other hand, which would be very different, indeed.)

AHHH, SPAM

I must get two dozen emails just like this a day. Eventually I should take one of them up on it, just to see what a mortgage on my former Austin residence would be:

Dear Alfred Wallace Wallace ,

Mortgage rates are at their lowest in 40 years. However, you should arm yourself with some important information when looking to refinance your home.

The Wallace family residence at Dobie Dormitory, Austin, TX 78705 has been pre-Qualified .

Simply fill out the 1 minute form. You will then be directed to a page containing the reports.

I don't think you can get a mortgage on a dorm room, so presumably this is for the entire dorm. Does this include the mall?

(In the picture, my room was the on top floor on the left. Terrific view. And a game store a mere twenty-eight floors below!)

MORE EBAY ADVENTURES

[I've decided that most of this post was ill-advised and have redacted it. Short form: Of my eight buyers on eBay, I have thus far received money from six of them, it being D+7 or so since most of the auctions ended. Which I find to be kind of a disappointing ratio, even with the recent technical troubles/apocalypse at PayPal.]

NLCS PREVIEW (WARNING! BASEBALL CONTENT)

Whenever the Cardinals are in the postseason, I always have a bit of dread mixed in. This is odd, since the Cardinals have a long and storied history of October success, but all the same I find it hard to watch most of the time. Too much tension. (Of course, I have trouble with that sort of thing generally, but that's neither here nor there.) Still, I'm a baseball fan more than I'm a fan of any other sport, and I get sucked in one way or another.

This year, of course, they're playing the Houston Astros, much to the dismay of most St. Louis-area baseball watchers. The Cardinals really did not play well against the Astros, and would have much preferred to play the Braves, what with their shaky starting rotation.

The teams match up well, though, and this series should be entertaining, if nothing else. Here's how I see them matching up:

In the starting rotation, the Astros have a decided advantage in that they have clearly the two best starters among both teams, in Clemens and Oswalt. Nobody on either team really gets that close to them. The Cardinals, furthermore, are without their best pitcher--Chris Carpenter, out with...some weird nerve/muscle thing--and seem grimly determined to throw Matt Morris out there in important games. In one sense, it'll partly depend on how the rotations face off. I figure the Cardinals will lose whichever games Roger Clemens pitches, unless he goes twice on short rest. I also think the Cardinals will lose whichever games Morris pitches, so clearly everything needs to be done to ensure that these coincide so as to minimize the damage.

In the bullpen, Cardinals Nation is mightily impressed by its relief corps, mostly because last year's was cover-your-eyes horrible, whereas this year it's basically pretty good. Still, they have nobody like Brad Lidge--certainly not Jason Isringhausen, who has shown pronounced gas can tendencies in recent weeks. Still, Kiko Calero and Ray King have been pretty excellent, and Danny Haren has been excellent in long relief...to the point where many of us wonder if he should be starting in Morris' place. Not to harp on that, or anything. Both teams have good bullpens, and it's been bruited about that Scrap Iron and The Genius should give serious thought to a starter-by-committee assignment at some point in the first few games to give the starters some rest. I call this one a draw, unless the 'Stros leave Russ Springer off the roster...in which case I gotta give this one to the Astros.

The success of the Cardinals all year long has been in the lineup. Again: Larry Walker, batting second. Tony Womack has reinvented himself--or fallen into a fluke season, whichever--and there aren't any weaknesses until you get to catcher, where Yadier Molina isn't very good, but still loads better than Matheny. Albert Pujols: Stud. Rolen, though, seems to be quite injured and, looking beyond how well he will or won't do the rest of the postseason, I worry about how long he'll miss next year. The Astros started off slow but have picked up steam as the season progressed. Berkman has been stellar, Bagwell has found his stroke again. Beltran has been playing like the Centerfielder From Outer Space lately. Biggio has lost some of his skills but still brings some power to the plate along with a sturdy upper arm to get himself to first base if he has to. Kent remains great. The rest of the lineup, though, could stand some improvement. Mike Lamb's been OK, but...

These are excellent lineups. I think it'll depend on how injured Rolen and Pujols are. If they're healthy, the Cardinals have the best lineup in the National League. If they're not healthy, the Astros will have closed the gap in a big hurry. I give this one to the Cardinals, tentatively.

I like the Cardinals' bench. There are a lot of useful spare parts on the bench. John Mabry can fill in for Rolen or (God help us) Pujols if need be, and takes his turn in the left field rotation. All kinds of infielders to plug in, along with useful defensive replacements. The Astros don't have a lot to work with here.

Of course, when your manager is Tony LaRussa, you need a deep bench. Tony likes to tinker, for good or ill. Of course, this year we won 104 games so either he's been tinkering less, been tinkering better, or it just hasn't made any difference. On the other hand, in the NLDS he had Jim Edmonds try to steal, so the Id is still struggling to emerge. Phil Garner, for his part, has guided this squad, hobbled by injuries, to a furious finish. Not so long ago the Astros were tied with the Mets for the wildcard, and here they are trying to get into the World Series. Gotta give this one to the Astros.

All in all, I think the Astros can, and will, win this thing if they can get three good starts out of Clemens and Oswalt and the Cardinals aren't at 100% health-wise. I think that's a fairly likely scenario. My prediction: Astros in six.

HOW TO BE A MUSIC SNOB

Work, and Wash U generally, is full of Indier-Than-Thou rock/pop snobs. "What kind of music do you like?" is a common ritual to establish the pecking order. There are several possible answers, any one of which will mark you for your entire academic or work career. "I like U2" won't get you anywhere. Everyone likes U2, even if some of them won't admit it. That said, there's certainly a place for the MSM (MainStream Music) fan out there, it's just not with that cuffed-jeans, black-rimmed glasses, and "old" t-shirt set that looks so cool standing outside muttering. Saying "Neil Sedaka is pretty awesome" will at least get you some Irony Cred, which is more precious than gold in many circles.

The danger, though, comes when you say something like "I was listening to the Trail of Dead the other day," or "I'm loving that new Interpol album," or "I just completed my Flaming Lips b-sides collection." Answers like that are guaranteed to get you the Eyeroll of Death. Those bands tour, and they get reviewed in daily newspapers. You can buy their CDs in frickin' ordinary music stores, for crying out loud. It's the kind of answer that makes people think you think you're an Indie, and that you want them to think you're an Indie, but you're really not. (Diagram that sentence if you need to.)

The real secret is to be able to realistically fake being an expert in the minutiae of the underground/Indie scene. And ready to help, as always, is the irrepressible Dr. David Thorpe of SomethingAwful.com. (Some parts of SA are not precisely work-safe, although that page--depending on what ads you get--should be OK, barring a bit of rough language.)

Suffice it to say that he hits his mark perfectly:

Nothing is as good as it used to be. Remember: You preferred their first album. They totally sold out. They were better before the original guitarist left. They’re just a rip-off of Big Star anyway. Keep in mind that rock and roll has been in a continuous state of decline for the past 30 years or so. Every band just gets worse and worse until they collapse under the weight of their own failure. Every band is essentially an inferior version of an older band. Even if a band used to be good, they suck now. They’ve sucked for years. They’ll never get their old spark back. You might as well give up on them, because they’re just a grotesque parody of their former selves. Does this mean you should start liking older rock? Certainly not! Everything made before 1978 is primitive, uncool, and culturally irrelevant.

It's late, but I'm still saying that this is one of the better things I've read on the internet.

JUST A REMINDER

I'm giving away Geek Gold in a GeekList contest. Many thanks to everyone who's entered!

The most difficult part is checking for the same game using different titles, rethemings, etc.

ON THE NIGHTSTAND

I came home the other day to find one of my more long-awaited packages: Comic books from Singapore!

Not just any comics, though. These are English translations of some of the not-published-in-the-States works of Tsai Chih Chung. He had a mild hit about six years ago with his Zhuangzi Speaks, a comic book version of (most of) the Zhuangzi, one of the important volumes in Daoism. This was followed by translations of his renditions of The Art of War, The Dao of Zhuangzi, the Daodejing, the Analects, and two volumes on Zen. CC Tsai has a nice niche for himself of portraying the sometimes-obscure Asian classics into more accessible comic book form without losing any of the sense.

The latter volumes didn't sell so well in the West, and English translations of them were never picked up by major western publishers. In stepped in Asiapac, a Singaporean publisher. I grabbed everything I could find of his on there that I didn't already have or else aren't classics adaptations.

I got six books. What you think of them depends mostly on what you think of his style, and what you think of the subject under consideration. I like his style, personally. It's somehow both soft and bold at the same time; the only drawback is that he doesn't seem to have the widest range of faces and body types. If you've read them all, the figure he uses for Zhuangzi appears in various other books representing all manner of personages. That said, it has a certain theatrical touch--that these are repertory actors playing the roles on a stage. But then again that could be rationalizing.

As to the philosophers (usually) being treated, I recommend reading everyone if you haven't already (particularly Zhuangzi), and there's quite the range. Probably Confucius and Han Fei Zi are the hardest for westerners to come to grips with; far too rigid. (Han Fei Zi was the leading Legalist philosopher--a true believer in carrots and sticks to get the People where you want them to go. The individual doesn't come out too well, but at the same time Han Fei Zi's reputation as "philosopher to the dicator" is undeserved...give him a read.)

I find the Zen and Daoist philosophers to be more fun to read, in any case. In this shipment, I got Han Fei Zi, Lie Zi (a possibly-apocryphal Daoist sage), the sayings of Buddha, the Heart Sutra, the Dharma Sutra, and (a break from philosophy and spirituality) the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or at least excerpts therefrom). The weakest of the lot is Romance. The others are written like books, whereas Romance is done as a series of four-panel comic strips, each with a corny punchline. At some point I'll have to get this fuller treatment of the novel (ten volumes!), which looks more "serious."

After this, I think I'm only missing two of his books: Mencius and Mo Zi, which seem to be out of print...I'm sure I'll stumble upon them sometime or other, though.

FINE, FINE

First, a quick sports note: Would it be OK if there was never another Red River Shootout? It'd be OK with me, anyway.

Now then.

Here's the "For Parents" message from Pop Culture Games:

Hi All,
Dean here, I always get in trouble when I write things on here, and I doubt this will be any different. If you read our about us area, you will see more about our mission and what we hope to achieve not only for ourselves, but for the community.

Here I hope to go into what a parent can expect from us and why you should spend your gaming dollars with us rather than any of the other shops or department stoires in our area.

First and formost, we are a shop, by parents, for kids. We were the first to have age segregated tournaments anywhere in the St. Louis area. This is as much as it is about fair play as it is about child safety.

We actually CARE about the kids that come in here, we make sure that they not only are safe, but stay safe during thier time with us. Ask any of the parents that leave thier kids here. The simple fact is, we are parents and understand the concerns that all parents share. Let's face it, the state of card shops like ours in this area is dismal at best for the younger crowd. Rude sales people, questionable agendas, high prices.

There is even a card shop in town that practically invites molesters into it's store. On thier website they even boast that "We don't turn away people because they are too young or too old." [Dragon King--ed.] Well, we do turn them away. We would rather lose a sale than endanger a child. We have a problem with grown men that want to play games with 8 year olds. Apparently the store that has that posted doesn't share our concern.

I am not saying everyone sucks but us. I am saying everyone sucks as it pertains to how they treat kids but us. I wish instead of just ripping off our ideas and trying to steal customers, these shops might take a few minutes and look at how they treat younger kids. Listen up DK, NZ and CS, [the initials of competitor stores--ed] put down the candy and let the little boy go.

It is shameful.

The worst part is, that SOME manufacturers (who shall remain nameless but the initials are WizKids and Pokemon USA) not only know about it and do nothing, but they encourage what is tantamount to child abuse. (see, i told you i was going to get into trouble.) Trust me, you will be hearing a lot more about that later.

The point I am trying to make is that we like you and your kids, even when you don't spend money here(although you COULD stop shopping at Walmart), even when your child calls 5 times a night for advice about a deck. We still like you and your kids. We are a community store and we are happy to help.

Spelling and grammar errors are as in the original. Emphasis added. I suppose the strategically placed "practically" and "tantamount" are intended to save these folks from a libel action, but this is just pretty far beyond the pale, in my opinion. I mean, there's no damn actual evidence here, no demonstrated threat, just plain ol' trading on fear, foundations be damned.

Interestingly, they're opening a new location in the same mall as two other game stores. I'm sure they'll bring their own brand of sunshine to their new digs.

LCR, by the way, is generally considered to be the stupidest game ever made, but remains a hot seller. It's the current #4 on Gamefest, for example...

Running my own game store...oddly enough, last year around this time I was contacted about running a game store, but turned it down. I know a lot about games, I know a lot about customer service...it's the whole Other Stuff that's the hang-up. Hiring people, bookkeeping, figuring out taxes...no thanks.

Anybody want some Geek Gold on BGG? I can help.

THE GAME MARKET, HERE AND ABROAD

German Amazon sells board games! Who knew? It seems obvious in retrospect, but I never checked it. Most of the games on there, of course, are available (in one form or another) overseas, and there's no reason to order stuff here to ship across the ocean, but it's interesting to look in anyway--especially for the sales figure information.

Such as: The sales rank on Amazon.de for Settlers (the basic set): Fourth. Mercy! That's gotta be a lot of games.

You can also look at the rankings of which games are the best-sellers. More Monopoly and Risk variants there than I expected, and (of course) the big Settlers variants are high up. Babel seems to be the top Kosmos two-player game, which is interesting. It's been out for a while--it seems to have serious staying power, at least in Germany. The Number Two game--Geistertreppe, a kids game I don't recognize--is the #42 seller on Amazon.de, which would seem to indicate a reasonably substantial drop-off after Settlers.

"Life" is number fifteen, just above Dos Rios. (How is that one, anyway?)

The lowest-seller--that still had copies available--is Twixt (of all things). Twixt seems like one of those games that has aged well, but is stuck in a niche-within-a-niche market.

In St. Louis-area game store news, one of the local merchants has taken the classy step of accusing one of its competitors of encouraging child molestation. (I choose not to provide a link here, lest I get drawn into the maelstrom somehow.) Yep. The accused store allows adults and children to play games against each other. That's the only evidence adduced. This seems to me to be something of a serious overreaction. It's also by far the most strident of one of the downsides of the STL gaming scene (such as it is): A lot, a lot, of infighting amongst the stores that goes substantially beyond anything that could possibly help consumers, such as (say) price and service competition. Or carrying a few damn new games. One store's owner has begun spreading rumors that another store is about to go out of business (demonstrably not true), and that its patrons had might as well stop going to tournaments there. It seems like every time I go in a store, the owner pulls me aside and says something like "You know about _______, right?" There seems to be one or two major Problem Children, who have created a climate of suspicion generally. I try to stick to the Good Citizen stores as much as I can.

Or I could be totally wrong. It's not clear what can be done to improve the St. Louis scene. There's a Meetup.com group, but it's pretty desultory and meets in a bar, which just screams "LCR" to me. There are only two kinds of store in town: Wargame stores (well, store, anyway), and "Card shops that occasionally have something else. Very occasionally." Meanwhile, a hundred miles away, there's a fantastic store in Columbia, a vastly smaller urban area. Sure it's a college town, but I doubt it has that many more students/grad students/techies than the St. Louis area, especially if we give MU a "party school" adjustment. Anyway, is there no gaming scene in STL because there isn't a good store--or no good stores because there's no scene? We had a good store, but it was mismanaged into oblivion..."Let's move into a smaller space with higher rent" just isn't the way to go in low-margin retail.

The big boardgames in town are Cranium and the Munchkin series. As I mentioned long ago, I have a weakness for a good party game once in a while, and I stand by my assertion that Cranium is a fantastic idea, but...it's like trying to survive on Twinkies. Whenever I try to introduce a Euro game into the fray, it's usually treated as a one-off and as entirely too hardcore. And this is Through the Desert or TransAmerica!

So I have no answers.

GAME NOTES

Been a little while. Does anyone out there want a copy of Das letzte Paradies? Because (ahem) there's one on eBay, you know. Not the best box in the world, but hey. And right now it's sitting at $5.55. What a deal! I say every game should go for more than its BGG rating.

It's the beginning of the month, which of course means a new edition of The Games Journal. Prominent this month is Dan Boseley with a new Misadventures in Gaming, which is always good to read, even when it's physically painful to do so, and a review of a rather interesting game. I say it's rather interesting because--as the review points out--Bruno Faidutti designed it and it has no random elements whatsoever. In fact, it's combinatorial, and reminds me of Nim. It does sound solvable, or at least a mine for mathematical analysis. It seems like it could be generalized--n pieces of each of c colors, to start with--and some sort of theory worked out from there. It's late, though, and I have to go back over Winning Ways and On Numbers and Games to make sure what I just said made any nontrivial sense. My suspicion is that it does not. I also have this odd intuition that I've seen Babylone somewhere before...

Speaking of the latter, I'm always intrigued by the range of prices that one brings on the market. Who in their right mind would pay (or charge) $100+ for a book that is in print and available from Amazon for $30? 'Course, I paid $14.50 so I say the heck with 'em.

I've never been to Essen, but that doesn't mean I can't pretend that I have, right? To that end, I recently added to my Winsome/Wallace train game collection the Special Boxed Essen 2000 Edition (#48 of 60 numbered copies!) of New England Railways. This would seem to be my last (non-subscription/pre-order) game purchase for some time, unless my eBay auctions do better than I think they will. I got this game for about twenty bucks, or just about what Winsome tube games cost--and this one comes without a rolled-up map! Folds flat with no tape, baby. And everything's already cut out! Even the play money! This is definitely the way to fly with Winsome games. My sense is that, for Eurogames, that eBay is a buyer's market. Wargames do OK--well, some do--but the euros seem to not fetch as many bids. There's good stuff out there, too...San Marco's going for $11.50, Java for $10.50...but then there's Ra, which is being re-released in two different formats, going for $65, so what do I know?

Back to the cave...

HERE GOES

To my great shame, I found myself in a mild financial predicament (don't ask), and as such have begun to put 40-50 games on eBay. Nothing too exciting yet for most of the readership; it's mostly going to be wargames, with only a few euros (but there will be some). I went through the collection, and asked myself: What are the odds I'll ever play this? Is there anything particularly unique about this game? I tended to pass over any game if it was the only one I had on a particular subject. But--War in Europe? Begone! I'm either too old or too young for a game with nine maps and over 4000 counters. I'm also getting rid of the new Third Reich game from Avalanche, but keeping my other six (!) WW2 in Europe games. Most of what I'm putting up are, at some basic level, good games--some of them I'll have discussed and praised in this very space--just not ones I can see playing anytime soon.

So this isn't that much of a sacrifice. I am, though, hoping I can get some $$$ out of this. Of course, it'll be less money than I spent on these games, in most cases, but that's sunk costs for you...