Matt's Blog

Plain View #82 - February 21, 2008

snow day

bread machine

tet

Sliding Doors

Spiderman 3

Burn Notice

Lost Cities

Jojo's visit

religion

Tumblr

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Plain View #60 - January 19, 2007

Sorry, we recorded this one with the furnace blowing the whole time.

Top movie of 2007

Little Miss Sunshine (what Card has to say)

Books, too close to call

Weather - ice

Tet supplies

Games

T.V.

Kid Quotes

Bonus: Mare's Top 10 Games

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Plain View #57 - November 30, 2006

Snow Day

Carcassonne (Maly)

Driving Students Crazy

Dirty Pictures

You shouldn't call him Lifesaver! You should call him . . .

Mean Girls

Studio 60

Product Placement

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Plain View #52 - 9/13/06

Will's birthday

Adrian Board Game Association

United 93

9-11

Weekly Radio Address

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Squeezed in some gaming this weekend. Here's how it all fell out.

Got some playing done over the holidays. Here's my list on the Geek about the Minnesota gaming experience.

Bufe at church mentioned to me the other Sunday, Christmas I think, that the blog had been inactive recently. Very inactive. It's true. One of my New Year's resolutions is, as always, to keep up better with the blog. I'm looking to put up a post a day, on average. So some of them will obviously be lame. Take this one for example.

One thing I hope to do on this blog this year is to document one of my other resolutions, the great purge. Our life is cluttered. Too much stuff! I am made aware of this daily, but the Christmas season brings this into even clearer focus for me. So this year, room by room, closet by closet, drawer by drawer, things are going to go. What's the adage? If it's not useful (and used), beautiful (and looked at/listened to), or meaningful, it's going out. Well that's the plan.

I started with my game collection. I decided that I would get it under 100 games. I know that sounds like a ridiculously high number to most, but I'm a bit of a game geek, and it's all I really collect. And it turns out, this part of the purge was actually pretty easy. I took the kids games off my list--doesn't seem fair that those should count against me--and that was that. My collection is now at 98, even with the new games acquired this Christmas. And that includes games that are in Mare and my classrooms, which really shouldn't be on the list at all as far as I'm concerned.

Here's the list: Click here for Matt's big list o' games.

A number of these are on the trade pile, although I don't know too many people that want them. But even counting those and the classroom games, I've still got a little wiggle room to pick something up at the thrift store if I see it.

Did a lot of gaming over Thanksgiving week, but so did the whole family (and friends). Here's a list of what came out.

Visited Theresa in Springfield this weekend. The dogs got along smashingly. Weather was great. And some games were played. Here's the report.

Was only able to stay at this week's game night for a couple hours as I spent most of the weekend sick. Danny put up a report. If any local is interested in attending, let me know.

Mike and I held our own little game fest this weekend. You can read all about it here.

Gaming this weekend with the kids.

This week's game report at the Geek.

Had some folks over for a little gaming a few nights ago. You can read all about it at the Geek.

One of my new school year's resolutions is to post more regularly (read: at all) to the blog. Since we started the podcast, the blog has pretty much been a place to pick up the cast and maybe some show notes. At first I think our fear was that we would cover the same material in both the show and the blogs. I don't know if that will happen or not, but writing is different that speaking, and I need an outlet for writing, even if it's just bits and pieces of my day to day life. So let's go.

Had a game night last night. Most of the people that Danny and I play games with are college students and this will be the last session before they all head off to school, god bless 'em.

We started the night out with two games of Cosmic Encounter, a five man game and then a six man game with double powers. Danny won the first one. And Caleb took me along for the ride for a shared victory in the second game, but I don't think he really had to. A number of comments were made last night about how geeky this game is, and I guess there's some truth to day, but the game is so dang fun! It's a silly space war game with crazy alien powers, negotiation, smack talking, and pretty coolers. And because of the huge number of alien powers, no game is ever going to be the same unless you play it 9-billion times. Now that the boys have gone off to school, this is one that Danny and I are going to have to teach our wives to love.

After that I played two games of Battleball with Gerold. I picked this up at the goodwill yesterday, and was pleased to read good reviews on the boardgame geek when I got home (unlike the Quidditch game I purchased and then found on the "Worst Games I've Ever Played" list. Anyway, Battleball is a futuristic robot (I guess they're robots, maybe they're some sort of cyborg) football game. It's kind of what the XFL wanted to be. It's a bit of a dice rolling fest (reminded me of Risk this way) and at first Gerold and I thought it was just ok. But by the overtime of our first game, we were screaming and cheering just like the goofy kids on the bottom of the box. It's a silly but fun game and well worth the 2-bucks I paid for it (unlike the Quidditch game . . . ) I'm going to check out the extra rules and variants for this one on the geek.

Had an all man game night last week. Five of us, Collin, Casey, David, Danny, and myself broke out the Cosmic Encounter for an intergalactic free for all. Cosmic Encounter is a crazy game; the rules are pretty simple-- card driven warfare with a bit of negotiation. But because of the many different alien races, each with a different alien power (way to break the rules), its fun to see the way the different races interact.


Anyway, I played Filch which allowed me to take used cards out of the discard pile. Not a great power, but for some reason I was able to start out strong. I was winning battles, keeping my fleets out of the warp. Everyone else was losing and going to the warp. Things were looking good for me. Then everyone else realized that I was looking strong. They wouldnt let me in on their attacks and began to gang up on me. Soon I was in as bad shape as everyone else. Casey, playing Megalon (or something like that), was sitting pretty, and could have teamed up for a shared victory a number of times. But he refused, looking to take it alone.


I really should write these sooner after the game takes place, as I cant remember who won. I know I didnt. Probably the winner will comment, claiming victory. At any rate, it was a good night. I look forward to doing it again real soon.


If you're interested, you can check out pics of many of the various Cosmic Encounter editions here.

Had a game night last week with the Fergusons. Started out with an old Avalon Hill bookcase game, Word Power. This is a weird game. It's basically a vocabulary contest, but with a lot of strange theme added in about becoming writers, publishing books and collecting royalties. It was all a bit too much for us. We adjusted the end game in order to finish quicker. Danny nearly won, but MaryEllen slipped by him at the last second winning, and thankfully ending, the game.





Next was Medici by Reiner Knizia. The most recent Geekspeak was a two hour interview with Knizia, inventor or many many great games. So I was inspired to pull this one out. Haven't played it in years. It's a pretty light auction game, some say a precursor to his classic, Modern Art. It was a lot of fun, my favorite of the night and I think Sara's too. Danny won this one as well. I think I finished last.





Finally, the party classic Beyond Balderdash. We didn't finish this one either, quit and midnight. Danny was ahead when we quit this one too. This game's always good for some giggles. And I learned about the famous Boston Molasses Flood of 1919.


So looks like the final score was Danny - 2, MaryEllen - 1, everyone else (Sara and me) - 0. But it was a nice evening, and as always, I look forward to the next.

I'd better do a quick gaming report. Cuz if I don't do it, nobody will. Danny received his new copy of Ticket to Ride in the mail yesterday. He brought it over last night and he, Mare, and I gave it a go. Anyone who is a gamer knows this game. It won Game of the Year in Germany last year (Spiel des Jahres) and is being called "the perfect game" by some in the gamer press. Well I don't know about it being the perfect game, but it was pretty fun. And if you're not a gamer, this might be the perfect game to introduce yourself or family into the wild wild world of German gaming.

Anyway, I'm getting off track here. In brief, the object of the game is to complete rail routes across the United State in order to score the most points. I was the winner of last night's three-man maiden Speil. I don't remember the score exactly, but I pretty much clobbered them.

Well, Danny, swell guy that he is, left his new game with us as he wouldn't be able to play for a couple days. (Don't worry buddy, you can hardly see the beer stain on the board.) So tonight Mare and I tried it 2-handed. It's a much more relaxed game two handed. You have more of the board to yourself and the players can mostly play their game without getting into each other's way. I can definitely see how a full contention of 5 players could result in some cut-throat play and heart-breaking play. I look forward to trying that sometime.

Oh yeah, and I beat the pants off her both games. I'm not sure what she was doing wrong, or if she was doing anything wrong. We kind of tried to figure that out post game, but didn't come up with anything. I do know that that makes me 3 and 0, baby! I just don't know if I'm lucky or good.

To Mare's credit, she did stage an impressive come-from-behind victory the other night during a game of Wyatt Earp.

And just to plug one more game, Danny borrowed Bohnanza to play with his family. It's another great family game that we play just about every get together with Mare's family.

Had a S & D over from a little gaming last weekend. Started out with Times to Remember. A nice little trivia game, but a bit dated. I like deciding which little bracket to use depending on how sure you are of the answer. However, the fact the most recent questions are 10 years old, is a bit of a drag. Anyway, it was a close game. Sara and I tied agains Danny and Mare. We had a play off and got beat on a close one.

After that we played Elfenland. Elfenland is a very cool game, very pretty to look at, much to think about, plans to me made, screwed up and hopefully rebuilt. As I remember, I took out to a quick lead. But of course I forgot one of the key parts of the game and as a result ended up losing by a point or two. I seem to be pretty good at enjoying the socializing, or the storyline of a game, or the pretty bits, to the extent that I forget to pay that close attention to actually trying to win. Ah well, it was fun anyway.

Danny has ordered Ticket to Ride, one of the hot new German Games. I haven't played a new game in quite a while. I'm looking forward to that.

Havent had any real gaming sessions lately, but I'm trying to schedule one. One cool new game discovery is not actually a board game, but a podcast about board gaming. It's at the board game geek site. The game geek site is just that, a collection of review, lists, statistics, etc. dealing with gaming.

So in the tradition of the game geek, I'm going to post a list of the favorite games of those gamers I most frequently play with.

Maly's List:
1) Sequence for Kids (Not a bad game, the kids haven't really got the hang of how to win.)
2) Go Fish (First game Maly learned, I think. Don't play this with her for money.)
3) Goosebumps Story Game (Found some scary Goosebumps cards and the thrift store and made up the rules.)
4) Max (Non-competitive, but actually fun. Keep the cat from eating the bird, squirel and mouse.)
5) Arthur Memory Game (We have several memory games. This is probably my favorite, not counting Enchanted Forest, which the kids have only played a couple time.)

Will's List:
1) Go Fish
2) Fire Figher Game (Thrift store find. All luck, but still not too bad. They have to learn how to move a marker the right number of spaces around a board somehow.)
3) Arthur Memory Game
4) Sorry (Everyone has played this one sometime. We usually use just 2 pawns each or it take forfreakinever.)
5) Midnight Party (An actual gamer's game (albeit, a very light one).)

Not a bad couple of lists for tikes, I'd say. I'll see what I can do about getting up Mare and my list one of these days.

Had a nice gaming session Tuesday night. Danny and Mike Ferguson came over for some board games and, as they used to say at the pub, some good crack.

We started out with Settlers of Catan, Danny's current favorite. Unfortunately, it was an uphill battle for Danny all the way. Mike took an early lead, but I was able to fight my way ahead and take the win. It didnt' hurt that Mike and Danny got into a bit of a longest road contest (you know how brothers are), using up their resources some there. Mike asked me about a computer version of this game. I think I found a couple, here, (here), and here.

During the Settlers game, MaryEllen and the kids came home from a Christmas party. She was able to get the kids jammied and tucked in time to join us for game number 2, the Parker Brother's classic, Survive! (This link is to a much cooler version of the game than I have. Danny, check out this picture.) It was a brutal bloodfest, as most 4-man Survive! games are. I blew my chances early when three of my high point men where chewed up by a shark as I sat cluelessly with a kill a shark card in my hand. The other three duked it out until, as last two men were treading water helplessly, the island mercifully exploded. In the end, MaryEllen finished with the most points. Chalk up another to team Sears

We finished the night with a little Daytona 500. Danny was in position to win this one, but tried to get tricky during the second auction. Here he immortalized the phrase, "It won't be eatin' it to me." At the end of the second race, the car he paid $50,000 for, didn't finish the race. In the end I was able to eek out the victory by about 20k. Danny borrowed Daytona 500 to play some at home, so this will probably be the last time I beat him at this one.

Most people reading this will be wondering where I am getting these weird games. To those I say check out FunAgain some time, and in the meantime, come over and play one night. Let me know if you're interested.

Any real board gamers reading this will wonder at the antiquity of my collection. While I'd love to be able to get a new game or two every month, that's unlikely to happen for a while. I do have a couple young gamers coming up in the household, so there may be some opportunity for new games down the road. In the meantime, I'm thankful to have the opportunity to dust these babies off and play. I'm looking forward to the next session.