IN OTHER LITERARY NEWS

This is excellent reading for anyone who has had to slog through contemporary literary or social theory--or, I should say, Theory.

Poking around the internet from that website, I found this. Random internet crackpot, or respected philosopher? You make the call. Be sure to go here and read some of the excerpts.

On a related note, the second volume of the Fantagraphics series putting out all of the Peanuts strips has come out, covering 1953-1954. The strip has not yet hit its stride, characters are still defining themselves, and there aren't many continuity series yet, but the destinctive Peanuts voice--the neuroses and petty inhumanities of existence through the prism of childhood--is really starting to come through. Also, this is when Pig-Pen appears.

It's interesting the timeline we apply to Peanuts. Four years in, and people describe this period as still not being the "mature" Peanuts of its golden age--which is of course correct, but I wonder how many comics have gotten so long to find themselves? Calvin and Hobbes was over and done with in ten years, after all--and in Peanuts, Peppermint Patty (who most people would call an important character) didn't appear until almost 14 years into the strip's history. Dilbert has been around for 14 years and there's talk of it being past its prime. (And maybe it is.)

I'm not sure we'll ever see a fifty-year run again, and that's a shame.

ON THE NIGHTSTAND

(Gosh, how long has it been since I've had one of these?)

I've recently been reading Look Away!, a book on the history of the Confederate States of America by William C Davis, a history professor at Virginia Tech. There are relatively few books that approach the CSA as a political entity, which is mostly because the Confederate government existed primarily to control a major war, and the other functions of government tended to get short shrift even at the time. By the same token, one rarely finds books about Lincoln's policies that do not connect with the war somehow.

If this book has a problem, it's that it doesn't have a particularly coherent narrative. Each chapter is essentially self-contained: A chapter on founding the CSA and drafting its constitution, a chapter on CSA policy towards the salt mines, a chapter on bushwhackers (Union "tories" in the South), and so on, with the links between them remaining largely implicit. The central theme of the book is the origins, growth, and nature of dissent within the Confederacy. Dissent came from all sides: Unionist bushwhackers, ultraradical slaveowning elites, state governors determined to thwart any attempt by Richmond to interfere in the affairs of their states, and on and on. I think the book would have been improved if it had been centered squarely on Confederate internal dissent; when it tries to become a book on Confederate history more broadly speaking, it tends to lose its way.

Professor Davis has won the Jefferson Davis Medal from the United Daughters of the Confederacy a few times, which is interesting since his vision of the Confederacy can hardly be described as "positive." Not to say that all his Confederate subjects are monsters--although a few are--but he is by no means out to defend the Confederacy. (I've also been reading a book that sets out to defend the CSA as a haven of libertarianism, which I find...odd.)

This is a good book for anyone interested in the internal crises of the Confederacy, but those looking for a thorough investigation into the CSA's political history need to look further afield.

CIVIL WARGAMES

What with my recently-enflamed interest in the US Civil War, I thought I'd revisit some of my favorite books and games on the subject. Some of the posts in the near term may be a tad Rebellion-Themed, but I'll try to keep it varied as best I can...

I've always been interested in the Civil War--deciding to become a professional historian on the subject isn't some harebrained cynical ploy to get me into academia. (I don't think that even makes sense.) The first book I ever read cover-to-cover, aside from The Cat in the Hat and suchlike, was on the Civil War (it's still around here, somewhere...I still have a firm mental image of the illustration for Pickett's Charge, with a Confederate officer climbing a wall, his hat stuck on his sword as he urged his soldiers on). I've been consuming books, games, and courses on the ACW at a fairly steady clip since then--to the point where, this weekend, I thought holy cow I have a lot of games on the Civil War. I'm not totally sure how many--I'll have to count 'em up at some point. In the next few weeks, I plan on playing over games I've enjoyed in the past, and games I've had for eons and never played.

The one I set up tonight was an old favorite--Battle Cry, the instant classic from the first "class" of Avalon Hill games of the Hasbro era. This is one of the games I have more than one set of: One's still in Austin (with Jeff), and I have another one so I can (one day!) play multi-board scenarios.

I've always liked this game, and this system. When Memoir '44 came out, I was one of the earliest people to pre-order it. I have Vive l'Empereur on my holiday wish list, despite the brouhaha over whether they used the system "fairly." I'm on tenterhooks waiting for GMT's Ancients version of the game.

Basically, I like it because it's simple, fast, great fun, and provides a winning narrative flow while while not being divorced from history. It's not a "historical simulation," in the sense that it's not too detailed. Terrain is fairly impressionistic, units are basically all the same, and who knows what scale it all is. And what do cards represent, anyway?

Nevertheless, it's hard (for me, at least) to play or watch this game and not get wrapped up in the action. You have cavalry charges, cannonades, reinforcements trying to get where they're supposed to go, generals being brought down by sharpshooters, the works. With the cards, each side is fairly constrained as far as what it can do--which on the face of it sounds ridiculous historically, but then again McClellan never could get Burnside to do anything useful on his flank of Antietam, so who knows? As a game mechanic, it works quite nicely for making a simple command rule that effectively forces the players to make often-difficult choices.

It's not a perfect game--one notes the "fixes" made by the time Mem44 came out--but between house rules and a dollop of common sense, one can tweak this game if one so desires without doing major damage to the base structure, which is basically sound (the most common house rule deals with retreating units off the board edge--in the original rules they're eliminated, but most people play where you lose one guy per flag you can't retreat).

I played the Pea Ridge scenario solitaire. Pea Ridge is an interesting one--the Confederates have the numbers, but the Union holds all the terrain. I tried to get the Confederate left flank to split off the Union right flank while the Confederate right did its best scaling the ridge...but it didn't work out so hot. The Union bent but didn't break, and managed to wipe out the Confederate left and staved off a last-ditch assault on the hills to claim a decisive victory. The actual battle was a little more tense than this one, but I'll take my gaming drama where I can get it. The CSA almost evened this one up on the Union left flank, but couldn't quite get there.

Pea Ridge is an important battle--it kept Missouri out of the Confederacy for good--but there aren't too many games on it. I can think of only three off the top of my head, and that's counting the Battle Cry scenario and the scenario from Across 5 Aprils, another well-regarded lighter Civil War battle system. I think the only stand-alone product that's come out on it has been the old SPI game, which is p'raps a shade complicated for my current gaming tastes. Well, I suppose there's this thing, but that's the game where the publisher told the reviewers to not bother since the game was unplayable! This could stand some sort of up-to-date, modern design with a little more detail than Battle Cry can provide.

Next up: Probably a strategic-level game.

EINFACH GENIAL

In the "Good News" department, Einfach Genial is to be released (as "Ingenious") in North America by Fantasy Flight. FFG has become a sometimes-overlooked distributor of games in the US; I think there's still a sense that they're too RPG-oriented to be "real gamers," and sometimes seem unwilling to release a game without a fantasy-related theme (although there are certainly exceptions). They've put out some great games, though--Game of Thrones, Twilight Imperium, and have cranked out umpteen Knizia games in the US.

As someone who loves Einfach Genial, it's good to not have to worry about tracking down a Kosmos copy...

MY FIRST BIT OF CIVIL WAR "SCHOLARSHIP"

I've recently been poring over the various bits of Civil War ephemera that my family has accumulated. The most important and interesting are the various letters sent home by the various members of the Walters clan (ancestors of mine on my father's mother's side of the family) posted with various Union units. At least one (Alfred, oddly enough) was a Captain, and recruited one of the earliest Missouri State Militia cavalry companies. The rest, though, were quite lowly indeed.

This is an odd letter (I'll explain why in a moment) from William Walters, to his family back home. I'll present it here more or less as it appears on paper--I'm not changing any spelling or adding any punctuation or fixing any grammar. It's written, as are all of his letters, on both sides of a single piece of paper folded into columns to fit into the envelope. This one has printed on it a rooster crowing "Have you heard the news from S.O?" The grammar and spelling has some...issues, but the handwriting is immaculate:

January the 2nd 1862

Bardstown Ky

Dear Brother
with feelings of gratitude I seate my self to write a few lines to you to let you know that mose and I are wel at present and all the rest of the boys and a doing fine I like the soldiers life about as usual have some pretty hard times of cours but but we hafto endure it the grub comes hard sometimes hard crackers and coffee and sometimes rotten meat its not at mams house Newyear past away it was a very nice day but did knot get any roasted turkey as at mams house

Now I will try and tel you something of our journey when we arrived at Louisville we camped there just one week then broke for here we was four days on the road had a pretty hard tramp of it some of the boys forged out and had to ride it was about fifty miles there is plenty of rebbles there but they hollow hurraw for the union but they dont mean it there is now and then some of our union men poisened by putting poisen into pies and sold to the soldiers they had a fight down at Bolling green yesterday they routed old Buckner out of that killing about four hundred and wounding sixteen hundred thats on both sides the union run him away and took the dead and wounded where he is now is unknowing to me Buckners force is about forty thousan and was wel fortified but he had to come out of that forthwith I think we wil do it to them yet there was about 18000 soldiers around here in this vicinity when we come here and three regiments yesterday and to day there was six regiments there is any amount of soldiers in old ky now

Cass I wish I was there to take supper with you for I would like to have some sausage and smashed potatoe and butter and have a good time generaly
Wash I should like to here from you all it appears that folks does not want to write to me for we have knot had any news since we left ohio and I have wrote considerable
tel dad to write and all the rest of the folks tel dad to send me one dollars worth of letter stamps for there is non here and letters wont go without
I wil close hopeing to here from you immediately

your brother WWalters
Direct to Bardstown Ky
64th ohio regiment
Co C in Care of Cap
RC Brown

yours truly

Like all Civil War letters, it's quite touching (at least to my mind), with its mix of war news and thoughts of home--particularly of food. It can be tough sledding reading these letters, what with the complete lack of punctuation and capitalization, but I wanted to get that accross. (As you might expect, the letters home from Captain Alfred Walters are quite different. They're longer, and much more correctly written.)

Now, I mentioned that this was an odd letter. He mentions one fairly major battle--routing the Confederates under General Buckner out of Bowling Green, KY. This did happen, and the 64th Ohio did participate...but that didn't happen until six weeks after this letter was written! A detailed chronology of the 64th can be found here. Now, it's not that unusual to be writing a letter over a long period of time, and posting it whenever you get the chance, but the writing in this letter is very uniform and the address at the end is for where the regiment was on January 2, not later in the spring, after Buckner fled Bowling Green. Bowling Green is about 150 miles away, so it seems unlikely that this was some incidental skirmish. He could just be lying, but I have a hard time imagining such a precise lie--with casualty figures--from this sort of correspondent. Another possibility is that Buckner for some reason went north in late 1861 to meet the Union columns coming from Louisville, but I can't find a record of that, either (which doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen).

So I'm not sure what this could be. Interesting, though...

William (and Alfred) Walters died in Kansas; their obituaries can be found here.

RARE ENTRIES CONTESTS

My last two Rare Entries contests are now up! 30 GG and a gmail account could be yours. Enter today!

The Penultimate Contest and...
The Ultimate Rare Entries Contest.

Many thanks to everyone who has entered any of my contests!

CIVIL WAR

What the heck. I'm doing it. I'm turning myself into a Civil War historian instead of a medieval historian. Why? Because it's easier for me, with something of a crater in my academic record, to get into Civil War history than medieval history. The world is wierd that way.

Anyway, poking around the internet, one of the interesting Civil War-related phenomena is the proliferation of Rehabilitation Societies. Certain generals, on both sides, left the conflict with...well, with reputations kind of like my undergraduate transcript. In steps the internet to help! Rehabilitation Societies have adopted one of these wayward souls, and the members of the societies try to rehabilitate the reputations of their champions. These exist for Longstreet, McClellan, and (somehow) John Bell Hood, among many others. I couldn't find one for Burnside, Fremont, or Nathaniel Banks--the Iron Triangle of Union Incompetence. I'll have to start one.

On the Confederate side, I found this website...but it wasn't exactly what I was expecting!

(On the front page of the McClellan Society, note the first general who endorsed McClellan. That's who I want on my side! Also, have there ever been two generals as different in temperament as McClellan and his apologist there?)

OUT OF THE WRAPPER

You'd think that, being on vacation, I'd be able to post more. It's been a wierd week, though, far more hectic than the Austin part of Vacationfest '04. (Side note: Someone actually came here looking for "vacationfest texas".) For one thing, my primary computer went blooie. Luckily, I was raised by engineers, and I have a backup system in place (i.e., the laptop I brought with me to Austin). Now I'm in the midst of something of a thirdlife crisis: Should I become a Civil War historian, and pitch the medieval thing to the winds? Strange times.

Luckily, there are games to comfort me.

I've been looking forward to 7 Ages for some time. I pre-ordered it eons ago, when it was first announced. What that meant, among other things, is that my price was locked-in over all the subsequent price hikes! I'm a complete sucker for empire-building games, and this was certainly one of the more ambitious projects in the genre.

The Australian Design Group (ADG) is, for all intents and purposes, Harry Rowland's self-publishing outlet. They have a few non-Rowland games, but they all sank without a bubble. That said, Rowland is one of those designers who doesn't come out with a new game all that often, but the ones he does come out with make a big splash. He has designed what is for many the premier Napoleonics game (Empires in Arms), and the definitive WW2 game (the enormous, sprawling World in Flames). He declares 7 Ages to be his masterpiece, which is saying a lot.

The idea in the game is to propel one's empires along the arc of civilizational progress (like in Civilization), to amass glory from them via conquest and trade (kind of like Britannia), and to correctly time when to start up a new empire and when to shut an old one down (like in Vinci).

There are 110 different "Empires" in the game, and in a full game you can control two or three of them. (Usually two.) Darn near every civilization you can think of is in here. Every civilization has several characteristics: Starting money, trade capability, special benefits and negatives (the Egyptians pay less for chariots, for example), whichever special leaders they get (leaders have a multitude of various benefits), and so on. Each empire is on a card--and each player has a hand of said cards. Each card also has a particular advance--Renaissance, Democracy, Printing, etc etc--and a special event. I like cards that have various uses you have to trade off. Each advance and empire can only be played if the world has reached a particular Age (there are, natcherly, seven of them), so cards need to be played in a timely fashion.

A neat thing about the game is how you have each empire behave in a given turn. You have a set of Action Chits for each of your Empires, and at the beginning of the turn you assign one to the appropriate empire. These bring in or disband an empire, have them move, harvest glory (Glory Points is how you win the game), and so on. You can only do one thing per empire per turn. My sense--and the sense of others--is that being able to time your actions and card play is the primary activity being tested in the game. There's a lot you want to do, but relatively little you can do. Which is a good thing, in games.

As the game, and your empire, progresses, new things can be built--Galleys to sailing ships to battlecruisers to battleships; spearmen to swordsmen to rifles to motorized infantry, and so on. Naturally, these tend to be more powerful; being able to build (and maintain!) an advanced military unit gives one a substantial advantage over one's adversaries.

A few odd things in the game jumped out at me, but I think they're mostly harmless. I could stand for the seventh age to not be called "The Age of Aquarius," for instance, if only to avoid having that #$*(#$! song go through my head. Also curious is one of the ways the game can end: If someone's empire develops the internet, to quote the rulebook, "History ends." The game is over, the the empire with the interweb gets seven glory points (which is a lot, I think). Sure, there are a fair number of prerequisits for building (?) the Internet, but still. I could also have done without pictures of the friends and family of the ADG staff, sometimes making faces, on the anonymous leader counters.

I haven't had a chance to play through this one, but I really want to. The wealth of chrome in the game, for one thing, suggests a meaty experience for the historically-minded. It also uses a lot of mechanics I like: Multipurpose cards, rising and falling civilizations Vinci-style, etc. It's worth a look just to see if it can all hang together--and, of course, to see if it was worth the quite substantial wait.

THINGS YOU LEARN FROM REFERRAL LOGS

Somewhere at Iowa State, there's a paper due on the short story "Bigfoot Stole My Wife." Fair number of hits lately from iastate.edu addresses looking for "example" essays on it...

Reminds me of one class I took at UT. Papers were being handed back, and two people had to share a paper: Their submitted essays were stapled together, since they were the exact same essay. One of the students actually did claim it was a coincidence...

"NEW" "GAME STORES"

As Christmas shopping season approaches, a phenomenon is sweeping American shopping malls: The seasonal game store. When I contemplated running a game store a year ago, this is what I meant. These stores are generally around for only two or three months (although they can last longer, if the owner buys out the franchise), and generally sell crap. Go! The Game Store is probably the best of them; they at least have Puerto Rico and Settlers. (The one near my house sells the expansion to Starfarers of Catan, but not the actual game.) Another entrant is Games Express, which I wandered into today. There was only one "Euro" game in evidence: Villa Paletti, of all things. I missed the news that this game was being distributed in the US by University Games, which is almost certainly the worst game producer on earth. Their whole plan is to get some license or other and produce a horrible quickie game on it. Their "masterpiece" in this genre is undoubtedly Quidditch: the Game.

So getting a Spiel des Jahres winner, even a controversial one, seems like a stretch to me. It must have to UG, too, since nowhere on the box do they say that this game ever won an award, was ever released previously, or much of anything. It's not listed on their website, either, but then again their website hasn't been updated in well over a year.

They do, though, list what makes a great game. To quote:

1. People want to play right away. Our games are easy to learn. Start playing in five minutes!
2. People hate to wait. Our games keep all players involved, even when it's not their turn.
3. People love a challenge. Our games are different every time you play.
4. People want to win. Our games combine luck and skill, so every player has a chance to win.
5. Parents want educational activities for their kids. Our games make learning fun.

The phrasing is interesting. People hating to wait makes a game great? Some of these would be echoed by most players. I mean, who says "I really like my games with a lot of downtime"? Let's see how my three favorite games--Go, Taj Mahal, and Up Front--score on these five:

1. EASY TO LEARN: You have to start playing in under five minutes to score here. You might--might--be able to pull this off with Go. You could certainly get the game started. Taj Mahal would be pretty hard to get everyone going in five minutes. Up Front would be impossible.
2. NO DOWNTIME: I'm not quite sure what this means. In most games, the players who are waiting to go are presumably "involved in the game" by thinking about what they should be doing next. (A true "Downtime" game gives you less to think about than the time provided for your turn to come up again.) Up Front probably gives you the most to do when it's not your turn--the non-phasing player has to react to stuff--but none of the three, I'd say, has significant downtime. Everyone gets a point here.
3. DIFFERENT EVERY TIME YOU PLAY: How many different possible games of Go are there? Isn't it like more than the number of subatomic particles in the universe or something? Up Front is also very variable, with the terrain being different every time. Taj Mahal is probably the least-variable game of my three.
4. LUCK AND SKILL: Go is a game of no chance, so it's a loser here. Up Front probably has the largest luck element of the three. No dice in any of 'em, though. All three of them, though, have vastly less luck than do most University Games products.
5. EDUCATIONAL: Hrm. Maybe Up Front would qualify here. You can learn all about the small arms of the world's militaries in WW2! I could give some blather about games being Good for the Brain, exercising the mind, etc etc etc, but none of the three is really "educational" in the sense that I think UG means it. Of course, neither is Quidditch.

So there we have it, none of my favorite games are truly Greatness Approved by University Games. In fact, they are only 3/5 great. If you speed-read the scoring rules for Carcassonne, that might get 4/5. I can't think of a 5/5 off the top of my head. Ahh, greatness: So elusive.

I've never really seen University Games products much outside of these seasonal stores. Every now and then you see one in a "real" store, but most stores figure out pretty quick that the games are terrible and precious shelf space is better spent elsewhere.

With the seasonal store phenomenon, I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it's good that there's (apparently) a market for games at all, at least around the holidays. On the other hand, can the demand really be for facile kids' games and fatuous adult party games? Part of me wants to believe that, in the world of games, Say's law (in its collquial sense) is right: Supply better games, and the better games will get bought. Of course, then there's the Gamer's Corrolary to Gresham's Law: Bad games drive out good. Why put out Memoir '44 when this year's 47 Monopoly clones are clamoring for attention? Who can tell...

CARCASSONNE

On my last evening in Austin, I played Carcassonne for the first time in ages. When it first came out, the Austin gamers played it until every last person got burnout--go to any local game night, and you might see four or five games of it over the course of the evening. It was crazy, and after a few months of this nobody could take it anymore; it was like going on an all-fudge diet. After a long layoff, though, I found that I quite liked the game. You're building a nice board with all the tiles, there are a lot of different scoring opportunities, and it never overstays its welcome. There are enough decisions to be made over the course of half an hour or forty minutes, but not an hour.

It's not the perfect game, but it's not bad. I'm wondering if it meets my criteria for a "good first game." It can be taught to almost anyone, shows a lot of the elements gamers like in games (such as the multiple ways to score, meeple management, etc), but I wonder if the luck element is just too strong to make this transcendent in the way I want games to be to introduce non-gamers to the hobby. That may be the burnout-phase talking, there. After all, I must have played the game dozens of times over the years, so there's something good about it, right?

Another question: Has anyone ever played a game with all the expansions? It'd be a six-player game, of course, with the River, Inns, Cathedrals, King, Count, Merchants, Builders, and Cathars. (And pigs. Gotta have the pigs.) Sure the game could take an hour and a half but these are the sacrifices you have to make if you want to play Carcassonne: Extreme. You could have side games of the City and the Castle.

INTRIGUING GAME

Has anyone out there played NeuLand, which seems to be a new release at Essen? It looks like the kind of game I enjoy--civilization-building, economics, resource-management--but it's kind of pricey (especially with my preorder of Antiquity looming), the graphics are notso-hotso, and I've never heard of this publisher or designer.

BACK!

Finally made it back from Austin, after a longer-than-expected drive. There was a terrible accident just inside the Missouri state line, and the detour the highway patrol set up sent us down a dead-end street. But enough of that. It's time to catch up on game news!

On Wednesday, I made it to Russ's place for a game night. In my previous post, I discussed how I do not-so-hot at new games, and that I wanted to play a game of Taj Mahal to get my footing back.

Well.

First up, I played my first game of Stephenson's Rocket, known to all as the finest of all Knizia train games. It's a fairly complicated one, on the heavy end of Knizia's oeuvre. Needless to say I laid down a heavy beating on my more-experienced adversaries. I should have known this would be a harbinger of strange times for the night. Later I played another Knizia game--Vampire, one of my favorite Knizia card games. I finished second--a mere point behind Russ--and, for my pains, got $10. Really. Russ did not get money. Why that happened is kind of wierd so I'll skip it. I closed out the night with, yes, Taj Mahal. I got slaughtered. I got into a few fights for resources that didn't work out so hot. It was kind of a strange game. Still, it's always good to play one's favorite game again.

So that's one perfectly good hypothesis under attack. Fun times, though, as always.

Over the week, I managed to play several two-player Kosmos games I hadn't played before. They were a mixed bag. I'm quite taken with Flowerpower, which is a very simple game with some nice touches, as discussed earlier. (Similar mechanics are at work in O Zoo le Mio (ZooSim), which Adam and I played as a two-player game. I'm not sure it's an interesting two-player game, but could work nicely as a four-player contest.) Balloon Cup was kind of intriguing. In one playing, I had a lot of interesting decisions to make, but I can see how these decisions might become somewhat trivial with experienced players. I'm not sure there are deeper levels of strategy in this one. I also played Jambo, the latest in the series. The rules--which seem to be a little too wordy for the simplicity of the game--warn novices that the first few games will seem a tad random. That's certainly the way it seemed to me, although I might be a shade biased because Adam beat me pretty bad. It has some interesting mechanics, though, and I certainly wouldn't mind playing it again.

I also managed to play Keythedral. It's an interesting game; It took a little while for me to figure out what on earth was going on, and missed coming second (in a three-player game) due to not paying any attention in the last round. I think this particular game had some wierdness in it, though. I liked it, but somehow I'm not completely sold. I'm not sure I have a good explanation for that.

Of the new games I played, I liked Einfach Genial and St. Petersburg the most, followed by Stephenson's Rocket, then either Keythedral or Flowerpower, depending on my mood. There's another new game I played--Russian Rails--that I'm not going to officially rate just yet (although I gave it a tentative 7 on BGG). I need to play it once where the Fall of Communisim event happens, which is the Major Variation in this game.

When I came home tonight, there was a game waiting on the doorstep: 7 Ages, one of the longer-awaited games in recent memory. I'll have to give this one a closer look later.

A great vacation! I have a few projects for this week, which with any luck will find their way online, too.

YAY GAMES

I got to play a few more new games today. Since no one of these games have I played more than once before, I don't feel so bad about...well...losing every single time. At least that's my take on it. (I need to play Taj Mahal or some other game where I can defend myself, though.)

Jeff and I played a couple of two-player games. We had a Yinsh rematch, where Jeff snuck out the win. It was substantially more tense than the previous time, but the game is still somewhat impenetrable. Once the game gets going, I can see a few moves ahead (usually...), but starting out is pretty opaque. Time will tell with this one; it took a while for "proper" Zertz strategy to become apparent to me, after all.

Flowerpower was the second one. This is one of the more obscure Kosmos two-player games, I think, but I quite liked it. It's a very simple tile-laying game, but with some neat twists to it. Also, at the end of the game you have a very attractive board to admire while you're scoring it. Jeff beat me by one lousy point...

San Juan was the third. Jeff ran away from me in this one, but it's a clever game. I like games where cards have multiple uses--in San Juan's case, they're buildings, goods, and money. So help me but I was reminded of Up Front. Neat game.

Later in the evening, we were joined by Adam and played a couple of three-player games of Age of Steam, once with the standard map and then with the Ireland map. I defended myself pretty well in the standard game, but was crushed horribly in Ireland. Awesome game, though. I get in trouble in games, I think, not because I make a long series of small errors that accumulate, but because I play a long string of good (or certainly not bad) moves, punctuated by indescribably hideous ones. In the Ireland game, I had a few moves that just sucked, and had to spend the rest of the time toeing the abyss. Once I start identifying the terrible moves, and avoid the potholes, that's when I start doing OK. And then I can start picking up the more subtle moves. Games I've played a lot--Samurai, Through the Desert, Taj Mahal ,Lost Cities, Web of Power--I've managed to "learn." I don't win every time, but I can play well, which is about all I can ask for. In AoS, I was able to identify--if only in hindsight--the terrible moves I made, which at least gives me hope that I can avoid them later.

Ireland's still a heck of a strain, though.

A good day: Played several games I'd all welcome the chance to play again.

GREETINGS FROM BEAUTIFUL AUSTIN, TEXAS

Welcome to this update from VacationFest '04!

This vacation has been all kinds of fun thus far. Beyond the obvious pleasures of catching back up with old friends, I also managed to fill a rather large hole in my movie-watching career, finally getting to see Mac and Me. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of not having seen that movie before, but no longer. If you ever find yourself in Austin, be sure to catch a Mr. Sinus show.

Of course, I've also managed to play a fair number of games.

First up, and within something like five minutes after my arrival, I finally got to play St Petersburg. What a great game! I played a two-player game against my gracious host. I got crushed, as I underestimated the importance of money in the early game. I can see why this game is so popular, and that the English version needs some new card translations. I really enjoyed this one.

Then Jeff and I played one of my favorites, LotR: The Confrontation. This is probably my favorite Stratego variant--it uses special powers much more effectively than does Stratego Legends, and it packs a lot of game into a small package. I got killed here, too. I had a fifty-fifty proposition early in the game, and I blew that; it went all downhill from there.

Then there was a Game Night, where I played a few games, too. First up was two rounds of Werewolf, and I wound up on the winning team both times. The first game I was the seer, and managed to survive the whole game. I thought I was sunk, as I was lobbying pretty hard against the last werewolf in the penultimate round (but couldn't get the vote going my way), but somehow I wasn't eaten. The next game, I was eaten early (as a normal villager), but my fellow non-lycanthropists managed to wipe the village clean of the werewolf menace in time.

Another new-to-me game I got to play was Einfach Genial, the game where Reiner Knizia didn't even try to paste a theme on. This was another game I really, really liked. We played it as a 2x2 partnership, and while I lost (I sense a theme brewing), we held 'em close the whole game and I managed a terrific run of three Genials in a single turn. There's a lot going on in this game, and I never felt like luck was overplaying its hand--there was always something to do, and the hand-flushing rule keeps you from getting screwed. This and St. Petersburg are on my "to buy" list.

Then came Union Pacific, another long-time favorite. It's as good as I remembered it. I overspecialized; I only got Big Points from one railroad, and never managed to pillage enough from other people's railroads. (It's interesting that in UP nobody has "their own" railroad, but nevertheless each railroad becomes the psychological, if not actual, property of a player.) I did OK in this one, but I was pushing too hard.

Web of Power...When I first started playing this game, I got killed--just killed--every single game. Then something clicked, and I've been pretty good thereafter, even winning a few games. It's a great game, even if I still go "bonk" against it from time to time. I could have won this game, but I lost my nerve in the last round. It was a dumb play on my part. I had two rational choices for where to play: With one, I would either win or lose badly. With the other, I'd almost certainly lose, but just barely. Why, oh why, did I not go for the shot at the win? Sometimes you need a "there are no points for second" mentality with games, which I usually lack. I went for maximizing my expected value of points, rather than maximizing my chances of winning.

With the last game of the night, Tichu, I once again demonstrated that I am, without serious competition, the worst trick-taking card game player on earth. I could see how Tichu was a good game of its kind, but I had absolutely no idea what I was looking at in my hand. Good cards? Bad cards? What should I dole out to everybody else? Once I gave, in all ignorance, the opposing partnership the cards to make a Tichu. It was like I was a masochistic Santa Claus.

Of all the games I've played so far, Tichu is the only one I'd be happy to not play again. It's not bad, it's just testing something I haven't studied for.

It's interesting how different the Game Scene is in Austin now, compared to even when I visited just over a year ago. Every single game store (almost) has moved to bigger and better locations--or more locations, as the case may be. I think every St. Louis game store, put together, would fit in the combined main stores of Great Hall Games and Dragon's Lair. (I could be wrong, but not far wrong.) I've spent the past couple of days driving around, checking out the stores. They're great! Lots of room, lots of games, salespeople who know what they're doing...great stuff.

More news later, but now my housemates--the cats--are squabbling again, and I'm going to try to break this up with the aid of my new remote-control tanks.

PUERTO RICO GRAPHICS

Discovered via Mikko Saari's gameblog, these awesome graphics for Puerto Rico. All I've done so far is download the desktop wallpaper for it. On my best days, I could probably whomp up a set of these...but goodness it'd take a while and who knows how many times I'd screw it up before I got it all right? If I had who-knows-how-much money, I'd get one of the Limited Edition Designer's Edition copies, especially because of the Alfred Buidling that would be included. In the meantime, I think I'll stick to marvelling at what I can download. Somebody needs to get Michael Doyle involved in designing game graphics from the start.

Which reminds me that I need to try to get at least one game of PR in this week.

TANKS UPDATE

If you have cats around that need distraction, you need those little tanks. Trust me. Morpheus isn't sure what this Sherman tank is doing, but By Golly he's going to find out. I've managed to drive them just out of his paw range so far.

VACATIONFEST '04 UPDATE

Well, on Thursday afternoon I head off, due to arrive in Austin sometime Friday afternoon. I have a bin full of games (including a few relatively unpronouncable ones), a box full of books to sell at Half-Price to help subsidize the trip, and a further bag of tricks to keep myself occupied in off-hours.

Hope to see everyone in Austin this coming week! And with any luck at all I'll remember my camera, and post pictures...

RARE ENTRIES THREE RESULTS

...can be found here.

UPDATE: Man, I screwed this up. I forgot to check my own rules! The original winner--the one posted on the website--gave an invalid game (as did, I think, a few others in other categories), which I completely forgot about. So we really have two winners...

WEBSITES OF NOTE

Two updates in the gaming website world...

First, as noted (with great acclaim) on the Gamefest Gamewire (and elsewhere), Game Central Station is back online. I must say that I haven't had a whole lot of previous exposure to this place, but there's neat stuff herein. My favorite part is Alan Moon on Games and Such, editorials from his short-lived White Wind company newsletter. War at Sea 2 is always the oddest entry in the Moon ludography, in my opinion...and invaluable for the War at Sea fan like me.

In other news, there's a new Games Journal up. Nothing there grabbed my fancy except for the new puzzle, Spot the Component, a development of their dice-identification game. To my shame I only know eight of the thirty-two.