KIDS!

What'll they think of next?

I thought it was irritating when my drunken, obnoxious suitemates at UT one summer coated the door to my room with butter. Lucky for me they never turned to chemical warfare.

BLOGGING AWAY FRIDAY NIGHT

What better way to spend Friday night than watching the latest episode of Board Games with Scott?

That sounded facetious, and I suppose it slightly is (I'm feeling kinda rotten, for some odd reason, and I might edit this intro away in the morning), but I'll say right at the outset that I enjoyed myself. I'd actually not seen any of the previous episodes--most of them were games that I'd already made up my mind about, and so didn't feel the need to download them. Indonesia, though, is a game I've had my eye on for a while. I'm a biggish Splotter fan--I really like Roads and Boats and Antiquity (wouldn't that be a fun game! "Roads and Boats and Antiquity." Anyway).

Having watched the vlogcast (?), I'm even more interested. One of my many vaporware game ideas concerns building up trading companies in medieval Europe during the Commercial Revolution, which also would involve the development of the economy generally--urbanization, expansion of farmland, technological change, and so on. I'd been pondering how to do that, and Indonesia actually seems to have handled many of those issues nicely--or, at least, in an interesting fashion. I love Splotter games--at least the big ones--since they depict a complex system, and have lots of gears and conveyor belts, in the ludic sense.

The problem, though, is that I'm not buying any games for a while--or, better said, not spending very much money on games for a while. I probably won't get more than two the rest of the year, and I'll tell you right now one of 'em's El Grande--and that may be my only big box. I'm at carrying capacity, and I have better uses for money now that I'm not making nearly as much of it (and that's compared to part-time retail).

Anyone got a copy to trade?

A couple of production notes...

Scott's a great presenter (he's also well-known for his occasional TV spots--and advice to young ref. desk assistants), and I never felt distracted from the game and the review except for two things: when pieces would slip down the (kind of steep) slope the game was set up on, and there was a lot of hands. I'd have almost preferred a wider angle sometimes, to give the hands a bit of context (i.e., arms). These are both minor points, though, and I learned a lot about Indonesia and will definitely keep an eye out for future episodes (and, maybe, even go back and see some of the older ones).

QUICK NOTE TO MR. NIZZ

(Which I always pronounce as though it's a vaudeville villain's name: Meestairrr Neeezzz with a nice rolled "r" at the end of "Mister." But that may just be me.)

You are, indeed, "hotspur" on youplay.it, correct? Is my challenge not in your pending challenge list on your Blue Max page? Something seems to have gone haywire in arranging this aerial fight to the death, here. The one you challenged me with evaporated, and then I created one of my own, which languishes. Check again, and/or challenge me again, if you would be so kind.

In other Blue Max news, I welcome with open arms the chance to meet Mr. White in open combat.

I'm alfredhw in case anyone else feels the need to get an easy kill under their belt. (When you challenge someone, don't bother with the password.)

MORE ON CAYLUS, PUERTO RICO, AND GAMING WITH EXPERTS

Brian took the time to respond to my Missing the Boat post both in the comments section there and on Tao of Gaming, so a considered re-response, and elaboration, is in order. I'm not out to "refute" what Brian has said, but I've had further thoughts, many of which were inspired by his post.

I enjoyed my game of Caylus, and would like to play more often. I can't get BSW to work right, though, and I've been averaging one game night every two months or so here in Springfield, without even a two-player game of anything, so I figure I might get to play again, I dunno, maybe this summer.

(I'm assured BSW works fine on Macs, so I have no trouble believing my problem with BSW is my own.)

I hadn't considered that Puerto Rico could be particularly vulnerable to seating-order problems (i.e., sitting next to the New Guy makes you essentially 100% likely to win via a poor play on the n00b's part). I can see that. There's something to be said for variable turn order. Caylus has enough going on, I can visualize, that while a newbie (how many more entries are left in the thesaurus for this?) is presumably toast, he won't be as disruptive to the game as a whole.

I can't speak to the online/offline rudeness dichotomy. I've never played in a tournament--I'm not that stupid--so I've spared myself a lot of the most competitive environments. I've played against some seriously poor sports offline, though. I remember once, at the Austin Go Club, playing against this other guy (about as inexperienced as I) and--far into the middle game--I discovered that I had an big, ugly "dragon" of stones in atari, and they'd been in atari for who knows how long. I rescued them, and he entered into a discussion as to whether I should take my move back, since he "deserved" to capture all those stones, since I had played so poorly as to create the dragon in the first place. I countered that he had obviously played even worse, since I at least noticed the dragon before he did. He said "I'm not resigning, but I'm not going to play this any more," and walked off. I never did get the game adjudicated, so I'm calling it a jigo.

Anyway!

I'm sure there's a lot of rudeness online (No!), but I've been spared it for the most part. Most of the people playing Blue Max, making me their 847th victim or whatever, just like fresh meat, I think, and welcome anyone wandering into the skies. It helps, too, that nobody in their right mind would claim that Blue Max is the ultimate test of cerebral fitness. Caylus and Puerto Rico--as evidenced by this breathless discussion on BGG--often get claims that they do ehibit Baikal-like depth and a supreme strategic challenge. This, I think, raises the stakes for the players (I must do well! and I would have won if it weren't for you meddling newbies!).

(It's not often you get both a Murray Head and a Scooby Doo reference in the same post, let alone the same paragraph. Dave Shapiro, eat your heart out. Back to the matter at hand.)

Brian also makes an interesting post about giving handicaps. Certainly it's well-attested in Go--I've given and (especially) received many nine-stone handicaps in my day--and I'm surprised to not see it very often in "our" games. Partly, I suppose, that's because most Euros have enough of a luck element to throw the outcomes of most games into at least some doubt. Still, you could easily do it in many games: Have the other guy need to capture n fewer flags in Memoir '44, say. Or, heck, just give people a head start in VP. (At least in games where VP aren't also money.)

Part of the problem is that we're a niche hobby. How many copies of Caylus were printed? How many will ever be printed? We talk about how there are, what, ten million copies of Settlers worldwide? That's gotta be number one for "our" games--even if Mr. Ekted would disapprove of calling Settlers a "Euro"--but, honestly, that's the cube root of damn-all (to quote one of my favorite professors) compared to how many Chess and Go sets get created every year, never mind ever. If, like Chess, any Eurogame becomes "a sea where an elephant may bathe and a gnat may drink," there's going to have to be a wide range of players out there, at all skill levels. People can always find an interesting game, or someone better to play against or a new person to teach it to. I'm not persuaded Caylus, or anything else, will ever reach that point.

Some games get grooves worn into them--not "solved," exactly, but "everyone" knows what you're supposed to do throughout the whole game. Supposedly Britannia has that problem--all the pros know exactly what to do, and the game comes down to dierolls. That's going to open up something of a gap between the adepts and the...clumsy, I suppose.

I retract my semiofficial "giving up" on Caylus, although it'll be interesting to see if a snob effect develops over time.

MISSING THE BOAT

I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever play Caylus again.

I've played it once, months ago. In the interim, there have been various dissertations in progress about Caylus strategy and theory, and God-knows-how-many games have been played on SBW and in-person.

I saw this happen with Puerto Rico. I played my first game a few months into the PR Phenomenon, and I think I've played the game maybe five times, total. Thus, I can no longer play PR against other experienced PR players, since I'm going to hopelessly screw up the game. My play is an insult to it. I don't want to play against newbies, though, since those games always take longer than Russian war movies. It's entirely possible I'll never play Puerto Rico again.

By the time I get another chance to play Caylus, it'll probably be with people who have become Caylus adepts, who look at me trying to play the game in my clumsy, ham-handed way with the same kind of indulgent, patronizing gaze people give small children playing with toy power tools. I cannot possibly imagine playing Caylus against, say, Brian Bankler any more than I can imagine playing Go against, say, Takemiya Masaki.

This is part of a larger issue, which I mentioned earlier, which is that compared to the "big gamers," I actually play games against other people extremely rarely. I was looking at Jim Ginn's nickel-and-dime list the other day...holy moly. I played 112 games, total, all of last year, and that includes games from the 2005 Gathering of One (which has managed to fill to capacity for the third year in a row for 2006), so we're probably looking at something like 100 actual player-vs-player games, which is about how many times Jim played Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper (which I like) and Ticket to Ride (which I like not so much). The game I played the most often was Santiago, with five entire plays.

I think I gotta stick with obscure games, and leave Caylus on the shelf for good...

NEW CONSIMWORLD FEATURE

I'm a big fan of Lines of Communication, a new daily(ish) feature on Consimworld where John Kranz (with, presumably, some help) amasses some of the notable posts out there. They're not all gripping--many are to games I don't own, and don't care to own--but there are some neat ones, like this link to discussion about playing Flying Colors with miniatures. (More pics here.)

The reason people like Consimworld is also its biggest flaw: It's an enormous, freewheeling conversation kept only slightly in bounds by the topic headers. It drives the hierarchically-minded insane. That said, it models the hobby shop bull session nicely, which is a major draw for many out there.

There was brief discussion a while ago about how BGG might carve out a bigger chunk of wargamers' online time--the implication being that this would be "away from Consimworld." The two are so different...I would, however, love to see more companies (including wargame companies) putting in their input on the 'Geek. The shill-paranoia is probably too strong, though, for designers and publishers to be as active on BGG as they are on Consimworld, but that's just a guess. It's certainly possible to support and promote one's product on the 'Geek and not be a jerk, but the examples of those who didn't make the effort have kind of spoiled it.

IT'S PRESIDENTS' DAY!

And we all know what that means: I get to pull a six-hour shift (the longest students can work) at the reference desk, since most of the "real" librarians have the day off. We student workers are kind of staff, but also kind of not, so we get to pull the load--what little load there is. It's cold, the buses aren't running, there's no school...it's pretty quiet. Anyway, I'm acting in loco librarianis today, so it's a fun six hours of surfing the internet and reading. All this, and I get paid, too...

Anyway, on this day I'd like to give a shout-out to Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, whithout whom I might not have had this intellectually fascinating masters thesis to work on or quite as many neat games to play.

(And, yes, I'm aware that I just elided a whole bunch of historical research into the causes of the ACW, and I'm not even sure I agree with the statement I just made. Just thought I'd be a little snarky.)

ON THE TO-DO LIST

I am going to do what it takes to see the Tristram Shandy movie. Love the website, too--very in-character.

THE GESTALT OF GAMING

Playing so many games online or on the computer--recently: Torres, Alhambra, Blue Max, San Juan, Tikal, Adel Verpflichtet, Bus, Amun-Re, Reef Encounter, Wallenstein, and Euphrat & Tigris--I'm struck by how in some games, I perceive the online game as being "the same" as the physical game, and in others as being "different." I mentioned this earlier as a matter of "seeing the board." In Wallenstein, I had a lot of trouble in the two online games visualizing the board--even though it was right there in front of me, I couldn't perceive what was going on the way I could in my in-person games. In Blue Max, I'm visualizing what's going on just fine (I'm just not, you know, executing).

It's not just a matter of how closely the online version matches the art of the original--I'm having much the same cognitive experience playing E&T online as I do over a real board.

It's early on in the game, but I'm getting odd vibes from the SBW implementation of Tikal. This leads me to wonder if there's an aspect of "dimensionality" at work here. In Blue Max, Alhambra, San Juan, and E&T things happen essentially on one plane--things aren't piled on top of other things, like in Tikal. Something I didn't like in SBW Wallenstein was how armies are represented as numbers in a box, rather than as a little pile of blocks. Now, obviously, having umpteen squares in each territory on the screen would be impossibly cluttered, so this is the only solution.

On the other hand, the "flattening" of Torres--one of the ultimate "3-D" games--on Boiteajeux doesn't bother me at all, so who knows? I think I almost see the board better online.

I learn games--and almost everything else--through repetition and identifying patterns, developing an intuition about the subject. Once I perceive (what I think is) an important pattern, I almost play without thought, reacting to the visual stimuli on the board. (There are exceptions--I try to count cards in Taj Mahal and watering hole points in Durch die Wüste, for instance.) I don't really abstract what's going on in the game, and this leads to odd results. For instance: I play through Go games on this "Chinese" set--the ones with flat-bottomed stones you can flip over for examining variations, and I play them out on this plastic, bright! blue board. Incredibly, I play better on the blue board than on my nice wood board with "real" stones, or my magnetic travel set. The patternns in my head are broken up without that wrinkly blue board and the different-feeling stones. (Disclaimer: "Better" in this sense means "badly," rather than "hideously." I make only a dozen game-breaking mistakes, rather than fifteen. That's a big deal for me, though.)

I'm not saying my losses aren't my own--you can't finish DFL in five out of five games (I think?) on SBW because the online interface interferes with your board visualization. I'm just intrigued by my reaction to them, how in some games I feel like I know what's going on (even if I react suboptimally), and in others the board looks like gibberish even though I've played the game several times.

Given my game learning style, it's of course true that my habit of wanting to buy, and play, every new game under the sun would lead to a lot--a lot--of grisly losses. I mean, what I should do is pick a few games, perfect my play at them, and concentrate on playing those. (Like the guys with 1700 Blue Max games.) There's evidence that it works. I mean, I must have played Web of Power two dozen times--losing horribly each time--before it finally "clicked," and ever since I've had a pretty decent winning record. This is true, but there's another factor at work: I lose horribly at New Game A, which leads me to flee to New Game B to see if I'm magically naturally good at it.

The other odd thing is that I'm pretty good at math and logic stuff--I got a 780 math, 800 analytical score on the GRE, which doesn't suck--but I apply those skills to games only when all else fails.

I think I just like playing intuitively, and would rather go through a game intuitively with a sense of wonder about what's going on than break it down like a math problem or logic puzzle. Why that is, is an interesting question not even I feel like yammering about right now.

OK, WHO'S IN?

Over on Spielbyweb, I've just started a four-player game of Tikal (the latest addition!) called "MR&TLU Field School." Password (as always): tajmahalfred.

CLEARLY I'M DOING SOMETHING WRONG

This has not been my month-to-six-weeks for gaming success. Earlier today, I discovered that I came in Dead Frickin' Last in MR&TLU Experiences I and II (Congrats to Firestone and Hibikir, respectively). I just started up a new Blue Max game--me in a Sopwith Triplane vs. a Fokker D. VII. It's got the guns, I have the maneuverability. My idea was to have him shoot past me, and then I'd have the turn on him. We passed, though, directly in front of each other, which meant that we each had a chance to get a shot off. I landed an unknown amount of damage to his wings...he, for his part, took out my gun. My only gun. And we're not talking "damaged," we're talking "fell off the plane."

Aaaaaand off we go, exit stage left, persued by a Fokker. Another well-played game by Alfred.

ALFRED GO "BOOM"

Six turns. Six! Six lousy turns! That's all it took for me to get shot down by Joe Steadman. I credit lucky shooting. Two hits, both on the tail, off it comes.

'Course, turning right in front of Joe's Immelmann didn't help.

It was me in a Fokker DrI versus Joe in a Sopwith Triplane. I wanted to see how that would work; Joe commented that it was kind of a weird fight, and it was. They almost maneuver too well. Having said that, obviously I didn't exactly set the world on fire out there--just a little patch of no-man's-land in France. I need to find my mojo--fast...

I'm digging the simultaneous-movement play-by-web. Somebody needs to do Gunslinger...

TALK ABOUT "FIVE AND DIME"

Got shot up again in Blue Max. Those Sopwith Triplanes are a pain in the butt--man, can they maneuver.

That's my second game on Youplay.it. I've previously played, I dunno, a total of about fifty or so games of either the physical version of Blue Max or Canvas Eagles, the (free!) new miniatures version.

In the various games I'm involved with now, the least-experienced person besides me has ninety-eight games under their belt. I signed on to this nine-plane furball where three of the pilots have well over a thousand games played. 5759 games played, total, among us eight. My two throw the whole thing out of symmetry.

In the game that just wrapped up, I was my opponent's 702nd victim in his 1456th game. Jeepers.

The game's fun, but I see myself getting shot to ribbons in my first twenty games. Will I still go for a twenty-first? We shall see...

ON A ROLL. OH YEAH

My first online Blue Max game just came to a conclusion. I was facing off against one of the most experienced YouPlay Blue Maxers, in my Spad VII against his Siemens-Schuckert D1. I lost, 50 points to 38. I was winning until the very end--I was tailing him, and got greedy, and ended up flying past him--whereupon my wings and fuselage took a beating. If only I had just moved one hex instead of two...Luckily for my pride, it was a TKO instead of getting shot down.

Time to drown my sorrows in a root beer.

PIZZA BOX FOOTBALL: SUPERBOWL PREDICTION

I just received word from the Pizza Box Football folks concerning the Superbowl Prediction dingamabobber. I think it did pretty well, all things considered. There were "hundreds" of submissions, and Pittsburgh won 58% of the time--fairly dominant, actually. The average margin of victory was 2.5 points for the Steelers, taking all games into consideration (12 points just among the Steeler victories--tracking nicely with the 11 point real margin). I'm curious if there were differences between the various modes of the game--if you played with all the expansion/pro rules, was the outcome different from that using the Backyard Brawl rules? (Assuming there's enough data to really tell.)

Again, a neat experiment, and I'm looking forward to future ones.

I WANT TO LOSE AT SOMETHING ELSE NOW

Any chance three of you are up for some Tigris & Euphrates? Over at the 'Geek, "MR&TLU in Mesopotamia," password "tajmahalfred," awaits.

....aaaannnd we're full. Thanks, everyone!

I've found MR&TLU readers to be--but of course!--excellent online game partners. If anyone wants to start a passworded game aimed at one's fellow discerning gameblog readers and have me post the details, let me know.

I also just signed up for Youplay.it. Right now I'm just in a Blue Max game--Ahh, the memories it brings back. One of my old favorites. I was inspired by Joe Steadman mentioning it in the latest Dice Tower. Any other Blue Max hands lurking about?

ALWAYS THE GRACIOUS HOST

MR&TLU Experience III, the Wallenstein game, has wrapped up. Jorge took first place walking away, followed by a fine second-place showing from Adam in his first-ever game of Wallenstein. I, on the other hand, received such a paddling that I expect to be typing standing up for the near future.

I have high hopes for MR&TLU Experiences I and II. Gotta be optimistic in this business...

NOT SURE ABOUT THE PROTOCOL

A patron just received a call on her cell phone. Her ringtone: Various voices shouting "YOU HAVE A PHONE CALL!!!" in decided non-unison. I've checked the Policy Handbook twice, and it appears that they left out the part about that kind of behavior leading to an immediate beheading. I'll ask that that be included in the next version.

In other news...

Finished one game of Wallenstein on SBW, the other (MR&TLU Experience III) is wrapping up soon. I discovered two things. First, you throw all the armies in the cup back in the tower whenever there's a battle, not just the armies of the players involved. (Who knew?) Second, for whatever reason the online implementation is screwing me up. Not sure why that would be, since the art is scanned right in. (Or whatever.) I'm just not "seeing the board." At least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

I mentioned a while back, in passing, that DBA had horrible rules, and a few souls stepped up to testify. I just came across an "Unofficial Guide to DBA," and it runs to seventy-two pages. This was a simple game, people! Sure, it's better than the original rules, but so is a Tajiki newspaper. I like the illustrations. Definitely one to print out for DBA fans who haven't yet given up on 2.x.

Snow's really coming down...December was cold, January was warm, are we back to cold for February? This is the sort of thing you think about on winter Saturdays working the Reference Desk.

ANY GCACW FANS OUT THERE?

I'm feeling the urge to take down one of my various Great Campaigns of the American Civil War games and solo out a scenario or three. Anyone have any preference for good ones to solitaire? I have Stonewall in the Valley, Stonewall's Last Battle, Stonewall Jackson's Way, Here Come the Rebels, and Grant Takes Command (along with both issues of The Skirmisher, if that makes any difference). Still haven't found a copy of On to Richmond! or Roads to Gettysburg hiding under a rock, so I don't have those.

With any luck, they'll have enough meat on the bones to do a good after-action report.

RANDOM SPIELBYWEB SUGGESTION

This just occurred to me. One of my biggest problems, juggling all my games, is that in every one I'm a different color. I'm in two Wallenstein games--in one, I'm yellow; in the other, I'm purple. Screws me up every time. Why not let every player choose a color for themselves, and then whenever you view your own game--no matter what game--that's your color? I realize it's probably easier to code it so everyone sees the same instantiation of the same board, but still. Just thinkin' out loud here.

And think--that way, you'll never have to fight for your favorite color!

OW

Well, the first MR&TLU Experience game wrapped up: Reef Encounter. I got turned into ham, of course, with Jorge storming out to a big (?) win. I think by the end of the game I had basically come to understand about 80% of the rules, way up from the beginning of the game. I kind of could have done without the biological terminology in the rules. In fact, I'm willing to say that there's maybe a little too much theme here.

Definitely an interesting game. I feel like I'd have a better grasp of it in a F2F game, where I could see everyone's turns as they happened and I wouldn't have time to forget what was going on.

I'm certainly not bitter or anything about the loss--I'm vaguely surprised I scored at all--and am looking forward to my next game. Thanks go out to my first two opponents!

QUICK HITS

Just got, in the mail, a copy of Euphrat & Tigris--the German version! I'd wanted one of these for a while. The only problem: It's missing about a dozen little VP cubes. Granted, the eBay seller did not, in fact, advertise it as "complete," although I think I was reasonable in assuming it was all there from its description as "NM" and "very gently played." Ah well. No reason I can't use a few cubes from my Tub o' Cubes I bought a while ago, even though they're plastic and a shade larger. All the tiles, monuments, and player markers are there, which is the really important part.

From the library:

"Where are your magazines?"
"Well, the bound periodicals are downstairs. Was there a particular one you were looking for?"
"Not really. I'll find it. Thanks!"

Not surprisingly, she was back upstairs in about three minutes, to use the online catalog.

We're not a huge library--UT spoiled me for life, I think--but we're vastly larger than many people think. "Where's the non-fiction section?" is one of my favorite questions ever.

ONE SEAT REMAINING

We're up to four players in the MR&TLU Wallenstein game--which means that if we get one more, we're ready to go. Sign up now on Spielbyweb! MR&TLU Experience III, password tajmahalfred.

UPDATE: And we're full. Thanks everyone! Have fun, and best of luck, to everyone who signed up...

THICK

Woke up with The Crud today. Not the flu--I'm not sore, I'm not puffy or anything...I'm just more sluggish than usual and every now and then I notice that I've been staring at...something, and almost fell asleep. Every now and then I cough unpleasantly. Or sneeze. So I'm taking it easy, cutting through the fog as best I can with some homemade jambalaya and Key Lime pie. And clear liquids.

I'm neither emotionally nor financially invested in the Super Bowl, so I'm mostly skipping that (although I must say I'm curious as to whether my 16-6 prediction holds up--at the half, it's still got a shot). I'm really catching up on my reading.

For whatever reason, about seven years ago my attention span faded a little. It's hard for me, now, to read for longer than about forty minutes at a time--which is why I'm blogging right now, having spent a tedious half-hour reading a critique of Wallerstein's world-system thesis. I thought Wallerstein was nuts when I read him five years ago; I think he's nuts now. The author I'm currently reading also considers him nuts, but for subtly different reasons. It's less than gripping. Wallerstein I can engage with; reading someone agreeing with me, using very poor rhetoric to boot, is just tiring. I don't need to be convinced, and I don't respond well to these kinds of intellectual pep-talks.

The other "school" book I'm reading is American Slavery--American Freedom about slavery, race relations, and the ideology of freedom in colonial Virginia. Much better written, and there's a story, which helps. Edmund Morgan, the author, has a bit of wit to him, too. Recommended to anyone curious about the early colonial experience.

The problem both books have is that, to mix things up, I'm also reading William Shirer's Collapse of the Third Republic. Shirer isn't a "real" historian--he was a journalist--but he has a better chance of surviving into the year 3000 than many of his PhD'ed rivals. He writes exceptionally well, and he has a passion for his subject (whether it's the decline of his beloved France, or the path Europe took into chaos in the twenties and thirties via Hitler--and, obviously, the two are connnected) that you just don't often see.

Turning from Shirer to a lesser writer is kind of a letdown.

MORE QUICK HITS

Blogspot's being a little @$#! today. I'll post while I have a chance of it being read...

I am, on Spielbyweb, in the process of playing at least one of every game they currently offer. This includes two games--Reef Encounter and Bus--I've never played before in my life. This kind of behavior is frowned upon in real gamer circles:

"You OK there?"
"Yeah, I'm great. Don't worry about it."
"Do you know how to play?"
"I got a rulebook."
"Have you read it?"
"In the process. Listen, it'll be fine. Whose turn is it?"
"Yours."
"Ah! Right. Let's see...that's a pretty color...aaaannnd...that's a pretty color. Next!"

(That's the way you always play! --ed. Oh, go bother Kaus.)

Reading the rules--having previously taken my first (setup) turn--Bus looks fairly promising, although the scorn heaped on it by Mikko and Iain gives me pause. We shall see.

In other news...

I own Republic of Rome. I've never actually played Republic of Rome. The rules, frankly, frighten me just a little bit. Do I sell it? It has a split corner and it's punched. I suppose I could give it the ol' college try one more time.

Most geeks on BGG who have a decent number of games ranked have a ratings distribution that looks vaguely bell-ish, such as the curve of this gentleman. You play a few stinkers, a few totem objects, but most games are basically OK--sixes, sevens, somewhere in there.

Then there are distributions like this one. Not sure what's going on there...

Over on the Musings On... list, we're discussing the oft-played games of the past year. It occurs to me: I play very few games. It's actually kind of strange. Most of my games are online or solo, which part of me doesn't really want to count. That doesn't stop me from bloviating about games at a pretty fair clip, but what ever has? My "five and dime" list (of F2F games) came to precisely one game: Santiago, with five plays. That's it. Heck, even if we include online games that only adds Alhambra (with about twenty) and Amun-Re (with about seven). If we include solo games...that probably doesn't add anything, except maybe Fette Autos (another game whose English name I refuse to utter), and that's only if we count each race as a game (which is discouraged in the rules).

Ah well. There may be another game night for me opening up; we shall see.

I've been looking at Iberos, the game I won the other day for $1.50. I must say, it's a very attractive physical specimen (the map aside). One of the nicest rulebooks I've come across in the gaming world, lots of nice pictures and historical commentary. We'll see how she plays soon, hopefully.

PLASTIC TO METAL

I should get back into my Memoir '44 conversion project. It kind of got derailed between moving, school, etc etc etc. I find painting to be relaxing, though, in the good way: Focuses the mind, you know.

I bring this up since right now GHQ is having a website special on T34/76 OBR 1943 models. No, they won't look right in Barbarossa scenarios, but hey. I love that they have two variants...

You can tell I'm a real miniaturist, since I have more bare metal than painted.

YOUR FINAL SCORE...

16-6, Steelers. The second half was a defensive tussle.

As many have said--Joe Steadman immediately comes to mind, but I think there are others--the score looks "real." None of this 45-32 stuff. (At least not this game.) I had fun, certainly.

ANYBODY WANT TO PLAY BUS?

OK, I just started a three-player game of Reef Encounter. MR&TLU Exp. IV, you know the drill.

Bus is kind of the "one of these is not like the others" of SBW. All the others are relatively well-known, relatively-big-publisher games with followings. Bus...not so much.

Still one seat open for Adel Verpflichtet, three for Wallenstein.

QUICK HITS

The Amun-Re game has begun! There's still one seat left for Adel Verphlichtet, and three for Wallenstein. I didn't start a Reef Encounter game because...well, because I don't know how to play. I suppose that's not a huge barrier, eh? If three of you don't mind playing with someone who doesn't know what he's doing, I don't see why I couldn't start MR&TLU Experience IV. Leave a comment...

In other news...

I had my eye on a particular wargame, but the price ($45 from Boulder) was a bit steep. Solution: Discover, on eBay, someone (namely, the former "The Gamers" operation) liquidating a game store that had fifty of the things and was selling them all at once. The way that works, everyone who wants a copy bids, and everyone pays what the 50th-highest (or, if fewer than fifty, the lowest) bid was. (Essentially.) In this case, I think twelve people ended up bidding...so we all paid $1.50. Which works for me.

Still haven't gotten around to the second half in my "Superbowl." I should play it through once as the Steelers versus the AI-led Seahawks, and once as the Seahawks against the AI-led Steelers. Any experienced solo-Pizza Box Football players out there? Any thoughts on the best AI choice ("Coach Die," the "official" beta version, etc)? I have some ideas for a scheme of my own, but we'll see.

THE COMPANY WE KEEP

Someone recently happened upon MR&TLU by searching for:

"australian" "psychiatrist" "aggression" "human drive"

I'm the first hit on the list. You'll note all the others. That's just great.

(For those of you unfamiliar with him...)

WANT...TO...PLAY...A...GAME?

I've fired up two five-player games on Spielbyweb (which seems to be back up and running after a mishap yesterday). One game of Amun-Re, one game of Adel Verphlichtet. Password: tajmahalfred. Sans period. Join one, or both, or cheer us on in spirit. They're labeled "The MR&TLU Experience" I and II.

If you don't "get" the tagline, don't worry about it. It's a BGG reference (slightly paraphrased) that scrolled off the page. If you're wondering if you count as "elite," or the "better kind of gamer," rest assured that hey: Anyone who reads this drivel is A-OK in my book.

ALMOST INSTANTANEOUS UPDATE: What the heck, I started a third game. MR&TLU Experience III is ready to go--with Wallenstein ("advanced" province selection, which isn't really that hard). Same password.

ALWAYS A GOOD SIGN

I had a Boulder Games gift certificate lying around, so the other day I ordered a copy of Pizza Box Football and its expansion--which, since it adds Actual Teams, is basically a necessity, in my book. It came yesterday, and I managed to sign up just in the nick of time to get the special Superbowl team cards (i.e., team cards for Seattle and Pittsburgh that are updated to reflect the '05 season). Sadly, I did this before discerning that I kind of didn't have anyone handy to do the experiment with--play out the game, report the score, and see how close everyone gets to the actual score. It's a really cool idea.

(It'd be even cooler if someone did this with all the various real-team-based football games: What's a better predictor, Strat-O-Matic or PBF? I think that'd be a fascinating project.)

Anyway, I've been playing as Pittsburgh against the solitaire "AI." It does better than I'd expect, but it has a certain predictability. I've taken to throwing long on first down, since that's the least likely defense for it to pick; obviously, a human opponent wouldn't let me get away with this. After all that, though, it's not like I'm totally running roughshod against it. The score's 13-3, Pittsburgh, at the half; it'd be 10-3 but with seconds to go, Roethlisberger completed a 55-yard pass to get to the Seattle 16. When I rolled that 17 (on 3d6) to get that result, I actually gave a cheer.

That, friends, is the mark of a good sports game.

Frankly, I do kinda miss penalties, injuries, and the like, but not having them (or, rather, abstracting them into the rest of the game) certainly makes it move faster.

When I registered at the website, it asked me what my favorite college team was. If there's a college expansion...that'd be awesome. It'd spare me the need to create my own bootleg team cards, at any rate. Although I might just do the Rose Bowl matchup anyway...

(It occurs to me. Should I have really said that Texas was my favorite college football team? I mean honestly: Any collegiate pack would have UT in it. I ought to have voted strategically. Should I have said Mizzou? Rutgers? Missouri State? (You have no idea how much I'd like to see a Div. 1-AA expansion. No. Idea.) Dang it...)

For next year, will I get the new expansion, with the updated NFL teams? Maybe, maybe not. I'm not a huge NFL fan--I love watching almost any kind of football, but I'm really more of a college football fan than an NFL fan. I'd probably buy a new college expansion (or at least a new Big 12 expansion, plus a couple of other conferences and bowl teams) every year.

A THOUGHT: Wouldn't it be neat, for the college teams, if they had a system where you downloaded the teams you wanted, say for 75 cents apiece or a flat $6-7 per conference? (And an option to buy a "real," physical, set--say of the big names/conferences.) My guess (guess) is that there's a spreadsheet that creates all the various offense and defense rankings for each team and sets up the card, so the marginal cost of adding one more team would be minimal. I mean, I'm probably one of about four people in the whole country who would like to see the Gateway Football Conference represented. There's no way they could sell physical copies of Northern Iowa and MO State, but electronically they'd get some sales for less risk.

ANOTHER THOUGHT: It also asks for our favorite Arena League team. (Not that I've ever seen the Wranglers play, or could name one of their players, or anything like that.) Why not CFL? Heck: Why not historical teams? I'd like to see this year's Pittsburgh team square off against the Steel Curtain. All kinds of possibilities...

I think I'm starting to like this game. It's not! a supreme intellectual exercise, and I'm not sure anyone who doesn't like football would enjoy it, but...if you do like football, definitely give this one a look.