ALFRED'S BEST OF THE BLOGOSPHERE

Greetings, one and all! Here's hoping everyone's having a wonderful holiday season. Mine's shaping up nicely, thanks; I got some toothbrushes and a thorough ear-cleaning. (Kinda gross holiday-time medical procedures will recur in this post.)

Some folks seem to be taking the week off--understandable--but we never sleep here at MR&TLU Industries, so we have another batch of links to round out the year. This week's episode is dedicated to Tom and Joe, who are giving away a Hyundai container's worth of games through their latest podcast. Next step for Alfred: Figure out how to enter, since podcast listening's at a premium at home, and get an entry together. I only have one of them (Havoc)!

On to the links...

Brian Bankler has arrived as a Real Gameblogger: He got his first comped game from a publisher to review. Sounds...interesting, anyway. He also pushed some counters around for Flying Colors, which is one of my pleasant surprises in recent years. When I get back, I'll have to try one of the new scenarios, not included in the DTP version.

There are a lot of "best of the year"-type roundups. Among them: Matthew Gray, Gone Gaming's resident South Dakotan, and Many from the Gathering of Engineers, done in "Award Format" so if I have to get that 151st award I know where to go.

Also in Oregon: Not every family/gaming gathering includes surgery, but some do. As I say in the comments, my favorite part of that picture is how you can tell which two are the doctors just from the facial expressions. Sounds like Chris Brooks et al have had a bang-up time over the holidays; check out the last several posts. (That link's just to the main blog page.) He also has a brief review of Mesopotamia, which is a game that's definitely caught my eye.

Mr. Ekted has an interesting idea about Weight vs. Weight, but something seems "off," somehow. Not sure what it is. Partly it's what constitutes "rules," as with Bridge and Go. Do you need conventions to play Bridge? I mean need-need. It doesn't seem like it to me, but then I'm the worst Bridge player the world has ever seen. (Worse than my chess, even. I think I like playing new games since nobody really knows how to play, so I have a shot.) Interesting idea, though. "Weight" in games is a fuzzy concept, and could use clarification.

I'm fascinated by Yehuda's Food Ingredients Game. It's a great post generally, too--check it out.

Next time I'm in Austin, I want to go to a game group with Michael Chapel and grouse about trick-taking games. That, and play Lexio. Some of my favorite gaming experiences come from sitting in the original Great Hall in Austin with Adam, Rob (the co-owner), and some random person and playing a raucous (but not truly authentically raucous) game of Mah-Jongg. I had fun. Lexio sounds more "gamer-y" than Mah-Jongg, which definitely has its place. And it's pretty good-looking...I like the black tiles. Black is underused in games, I think, as a dominant color.

Best recent blog discovery: Boardgamers' Pastime. This is some fine stuff--long(ish), in-depth look at gaming. And not game reviews (at least not yet), but things like take-backs, in-game strategy discussions, and much else. Great posts; keep an eye on this one.

Once again: designing Christian-themed games is frought with peril, the major peril being the temptation to strap Christianity (or--again, once again--any other theme) to a less-than-inspiring "engine." Although...let me say this. I played Candyland as a kid, and I think I turned out basically OK as a person and as a gamer. I played Candyland, Hi-Hi Cherry-O, all the maligned kids' games out there. And here I am, none the worse for wear, gamer-wise. And I'm not sure I'd have turned out any smarter (or dumber) or less of a "real gamer" if I'd had all these newfangled Learning and Cognitive Experience games that are coming out. My parents didn't play these games too much with me, I don't think--from what I've been told, what I liked to do was play them against my stuffed animals. I guess I could spin that as "exercising my imagination." I had lots of other Learning and Cognitive Experiences--I grew up with French instructional tapes in the background, I was taught to read extremely early, and had plenty of other stuff to do. Maybe my gaming was just getting my daily minimum allowance of Stupid, I dunno. Maybe, if I ever have kids, I'll decide that they're too good for Candyland. Or not. I'm not sure where this was going, but here it is.

(One thing I'm not saying is that, if a kid doesn't like Candyland, that they should play it anyway--mostly just that, in and of itself, Candyland isn't a bad thing and doesn't deserve its status in many quarters as Worst Game Ever.)

That's the links for this week. And now for something of an announcement.

Best of the Blogosphere is, starting Real Soon Now, changing and moving to a new home. Mikko Saari, one of the original (?) gamebloggers, started up Best of Board Games, which will provide links (collected by Mikko, myself, and probably a few others as time goes by) to news sites, BGG, blogs, podcasts, and Lord knows what else. I considered keeping up BotB: I could collect all the stuff on the other blog, says me, which is basically a digest with commentary of the best links, and then digest and comment on that. Wait, that's insane. So I'm not doing that. The beauty of this new system is that it's more immediate--I'm not going through various post-its, pieces of scrap paper, and ill-remembered data to create this thing anymore.

Bookmark and/or subscribe to BoBG, then, and follow along! MR&TLU will be returning to the usual folderol: half-baked game reviews based on one solo playing, self-indulgent two-word sports commentary, zingers from the library, and now and again a Real Post just to keep everyone on their toes. If there's an article I want to give more than a three-sentence comment on, I'll probably put a post here, and link both the original story (which is somewhere else) and my commentary (which is over here) over there. Over here (keeping this straight?), I'll probably be upping the Folderol content. I'm thrilled by the increased readership that BotB has attracted, and I'd like to keep everyone coming with some Actual Content. I've got some ideas percolating, which will probably not come to fruition but who knows?

So I'd like to say Thanks! to everyone who discovered this site for BotB; I hope y'all will keep your subscriptions and keep checking in. I'll try to make it worth the effort. And, again, for all your gameblog-monitoring needs, check out Best of Board Games.