Gameguy thinks…

The Zen of Game Prep

Gamers do a number of things that non-gamers just don’t understand.

Last night I spent at least 116 minutes separating the 345 small wooden blocks that come with Command and Colors: Ancients. I know this because my wife and I were watching The Bourne Ultimatum while I was doing it.

My wife couldn’t understand why it didn’t bother me that I had to do so much preparation in order to play the game. We gamers are an odd lot about things like that. It relaxing to me to go through a game and apply stickers or to spend a few evenings painting miniatures. There is something very relaxing about that kind of careful work.

I got to play Command and Colors: Ancients for the first time about a month ago, and I really enjoyed it. My friend Mike from our weekly gaming group did a great job of teaching me how to play. It’s a great wargame with enough depth to make it really enjoyable, but with a nice mix of luck and streamlined game mechanics to make a scenario playable within an hour or so.

Command and Colors: Ancients is available from Funagain Games.

Posted in Relaxation, Reviews | No Comments »

School Boardgame Project

One of the last assignments my daughter brought home this year was to design a board game based on a recently read book. The game was to feature player markers that would relate to some of the important objects or characters in the book, and it was obvious from the instructions that the teacher expected some type of roll and move game.

My daughter suggested making like Candyland, where players would draw cards to determine how far to advance. I suggested using a die that had colored faces that would correspond to the color on the board space. I bought some colored stickers at an office supply store in two sizes, one size for the board and a smaller size for the faces of the dice. My daughter made a path with the various colors and even put in some bridges and hazards.

My daughter wanted a way to interact with other players on the board, so we came up with a new rule that said if you land on an opponent’s space, you may roll the die and send them back to that color space. It was tempting to add some interesting mechanics to the flow of play, but this needed to be shared and scored by a teacher who obviously had never gone very far beyond Monopoly.

I used some inexpensive lamination film to cover the game board, and it ending up looking pretty good. My daughter had decorated the board with images of some of the most important events in the book.

We made the player pawns by using small flat wooden discs and then printing out some basic images on large labels, which we then mounted to the discs and trimmed away the excess.

My daughter got an A+ on the project and was very happy with how everything worked out.

Posted in Play | 1 Comment »

Red Bull Discovered

Last Friday, I was at a barbecue with my family and the host had this huge ice chest filled with Red Bull energy drinks. I had never tried one, because they are pretty expensive, and I’m just not an energy drink sort of guy, or so I thought.

I tried one and really liked it, so I had another immediately afterward.

I was so jazzed it was just silly, and I mean jazzed in a good way, not in an overly caffeinated jittery soon-to-be bitter and tired kind of way. I was just energized and ready to have some fun.

I don’t have any substance vices of any kind, unless you count Dr. Pepper, but this little can could seriously get me in trouble. Luckily, the price tag is still too high for such a little can.

I had stuck a copy of Family Fluxx in my pocket before we left the house. The Fluxx card game is a quick little filler game that easy to play and great to bring into gatherings where people come and go. The rules of the game and the win conditions are determined by the cards as they are played, and some rules and all goals will replace previously played conditions. It’s a very fluffy little card game, but for the price, I think it’s a great deal. I highly recommend that you grab a Red Bull and a copy of Fluxx and go party.

Posted in Play, Relaxation | 1 Comment »