Boardgames To-Go

Games on ebay

After the last couple big game orders, I've just got to sell off some games that aren't getting to the table enough. Right now I've got several up on ebay: Exxtra, Carcassonne (with all of the expansions), Marracash, Formel Fun, High Society, Yellowstone Park, My Word!, Rockets, and Touchdown-a-Minute Football.

In charge no more!

I'm at the tail end of a business trip, stuck in a hotel room one more night, which is why there's been a burst of activity on the weblog. I even managed to finish a game review (of Die Fugger) for the next Gamenotes. (Not yet posted.)

In my previous entry I listed a number of games I played at our most recent SoCal Games Day. What I didn't mention is that I'm no longer in charge of this event. Yahoo! Actually, it was never just me, not by a longshot. I was part of a team of volunteers. Probably since I like to blather on in email and other online messages, I was only perceived to be the guy in charge.

Anyway, I'd decided a while back that I'd prefer to back off and just be an attendee, no longer concerned about organizing the event or feeling compelled to show up. (Even with a great team of friends covering every need, I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to be there much of the time.)

Now a couple of us originals have faded away, leaving two or three others still actively running the show. Very important: two more guys have joined the team, bringing some new energy and able assistance. It was through them that SoCal Games Day found its new venue, the Burbank Moose Lodge.

It's very nice to just sit back and attend the Games Days now. At this last one I stayed at home until about 2pm, spending time with my kids' basketball practice, setting up a lemonade stand, giving my wife time to go to the gym, even getting a little exercise myself in the backyard pool. Wonderful!

Thanks to Dave, Scott, Fen, Devon, and Patrick for giving me this graceful exit. I really appreciate it.

Still having fun

The counterpoint to my previous entry about the Gathering of Friends is to talk about the fun I've had with some local gaming. Also, one of the comments made about that previous entry made me realize something: part of the reason I can live without the Gathering is because I have such good game opportunities at home. Namely, weekly Santa Clarita Boardgamer sessions and occasional SoCal Games Days. I've made it to two SCB sessions and one Games Day since back from the GoF.

Since I missed almost all of April for the Santa Clarita group due to the Gathering, I very nearly missed out on New England as Game of the Month. I'd only played NE once before, and was pretty unimpressed by it. But I heard that it's notably better with the free, not fixed setup, and wanted to try that. I finally got my chance, and was pleased to find my opinion of the game rise considerably. Not so much that I want my own copy, but at least I won't head for the other table when someone suggests it.

Let's see, what else have we played? Well, Wurmeln, one of the very few Alex Randolph games I enjoy. Although I respect the man's accomplishments a great deal, I just haven't enjoyed many of his games. Oddly enough, I used to say they're too abstract for me. Now that I'm getting into abstracts, though, can that still be the reason? Hmm, better check into that. Anyway, Wurmeln is a blind-bidding game about worm racing, with simple but delightful components. Uberplay should've licensed this for one of their new small-box games.

Another week at SCB we almost went overboard on push-your-luck dice games. Nur Peanuts is our Game of the Month for May, which we followed up with Lucky Loop and Exxtra. I think they all have their place, especially if you're a little tired of Can't Stop. We finally tried Die Sieben Siegel in there, too. Trick-taking card games are a struggle at SCB, between some players who don't care for them and another who feels most fall short of the familiar classics (e.g. Whist, Hearts). I like trying just about all of them for the novelty alone, and some of them I'd be happy to play semi-regularly (Mu, David & Goliath, Auf Falscher Fahrte, Canyon).

At Games Day I got to try Dos Rios again. It had about the same outcome--half the players were disappointed by the endgame, but I was surprised to enjoy it all the way through. It really does need everyone to try to keep the game moving, though. There's a real danger of analysis-paralysis here. And I still need to try it with only three players (probably its best number). On a similar note, I got to play the same designer's Big City, which also plays best with three due to the changing game-state. My astonishing win-loss record with the game continued (I'm not much of a winner at anything), helped undoubtedly by the fact that I was up against three newbies. At least I didn't forget any rules to tell them this time.

Blokus is a game that had managed to elude me so far. No one in my circle of friends owned it, and I wasn't so sure that I was going to order one myself. I'm into attractive abstracts, but that mostly means wood. Blokus is plastic, and big. It probably wouldn't live on any coffee table at my house. But I'd played some games on the downloadable Palm version (free trial), and more important my son had, too. He kind of liked it, so I wanted to see what it was like in person (and up against a human opponent). It liked up to its reputation, and I bet I could lure my kids with the color pieces and snap-in grid. This will be in a future game order, I expect.

Rounding out the evening were another try at Exxtra, one last farewell to Volle Hutte, and a first try for Flusspiraten. Exxtra went over notably better, probably because a big game party is the right setting (it helps to have cheers, taunting & boos). Some other folks tried my copy later, and that also was popular. I heard some people saying they were going to look for a copy. Too bad it's kind of hard to find.

Volle Hutte was part of a 3-game sale I was making, so this was my last chance to try it. I'd heard good things from people I trust, but the game really disappointed the two times I'd played it before. It did this time, too. The theme is so fun, and the mechanics sound like they'd work well, but it's less than the sum of its parts. Our opinion, anyway. Clearly some people like it quite a bit, so maybe I'm missing something. Though we looked through the rules closely to make sure I wasn't screwing something up. (Er, I have a history of doing that.)

That other game, Flusspiraten, is a new kids' game from designer Gunter Baars. This designer often works the box itself into the components of the game, which for some reason I find charming. This is sort of the boardgame version of that amusement arcade game where you shelves littered with coins are continually pushed forward by mechanical doohickies, and you try to plop another coin where it will cause a cascade of other coins that you collect. The components work just like they're supposed to, it's a clever little package (inexpensive, too--at least from Germany), but the scoring and strategy is too simple for adults. That doesn't bother me, as I'm happy to play around with it, kids or no kids. But it probably won't make it out with an adult-only crowd again.

Introspective Tripe

I told you this was coming, right? Last month I finally went to the Gathering of Friends, the event many would call the pinnacle of hobby boardgaming. While I had a good time meeting a number of folks, especially ones I'd "known" via email for years, I didn't have quite the thrilling time I was hoping for. I thought about it a lot afterward, and have figured out that this has a lot more to do with me than the event itself.

Let me emphasize that point: This is something very few get to even attend, you need to be invited, people have a great time, and Alan Moon clearly puts in a ton of effort to make it all work. You won't catch me bad-mouthing the event or the people, let alone my host. Still, as long as I've got this personal weblog I wanted to write something about my experience, especially when I learned that I may not be the only one that feels this way.

The most striking feeling was that I didn't fit in. Oh, I fit in enough, finding people to play games with and a number of folks I spent most of my time with. But I didn't just click with the group as a whole. I've got this weird introvert/extrovert thing where I naturally take center stage among people I know (even a big group), but in a room of mere acquaintances I clam up. This happens at conventions or conferences I've attended for work, and it happened here, too. That surprised me, but perhaps I could've anticipated it.

It's not just due to my own personality, however. Some of it is the character of the Gathering itself. I've heard it called "cliquish" even from people that attend. Perhaps that's only natural. Our niche hobby builds up around circles of friends. The Gathering even has that notion built into its name. It's just a combination of an ever-widening circle and a bunch of overlapping circles. Most folks are in one circle--some are in more than one. I guess I think of myself as being on the edge of a circle or two.

I've also got Geek Anxiety. Or maybe I'm a Geek In Denial. Some sort of pyschobabble could describe my condition. When I described the Gathering to my friend at work, I called it Geeks in Paradise. There's some truth to that, you know. Although the boardgaming crowd isn't as socially-challenged as the usual costumed characters you find at a game convention, these are still geeks. Most of them, anyway. Make no mistake about it, I'm a geek, too. I still devote lots of time to boardgames, my profession is engineering, and I could use a little more exercise & sunshine. However, at least I feel guilty about it. :-) And I'm trying to change. I think more of the folks at the Gathering don't feel that guilt. At least they don't when they're at the Gathering itself. Good for them! They're certainly entitled to feel welcome in that crowd. For me, though, I'm still self-conscious about it. This is another area where I'm not passing judgement on the folks at the Gathering, just noting the differences I felt. No one else seemed to want to watch the Lakers-Rockets game on Saturday night, for example. :-) I went up to my room to watch.

The biggest concern of mine about attending the Gathering is the cost. I don't mean the financial cost. These days I can handle that. But it still takes several days of vacation time, a lot of marital brownie points, and it blew a hole in my normal gaming schedule with my local friends. I hadn't anticipated that last part, nor how much that disappointed me. Even though I see those friends several times a month, and the Gathering crowd once in a blue moon, I still missed the regular game sessions. At home I get to have a weekly gathering of MY friends.

In summary, I was honored to be invited, very happy to meet (and re-meet) lots of email friends, and of course I got in some good boardgaming. But now I think I would've been just as happy to stay home, play some favorite games with my local friends, and not spend the vacation time, brownie points, and so on. Or more accurately, now that I've done it once to meet those folks, I'm not sure I could justify the trip again.

P.S. I trust that the people I played games with at the Gathering (including several in this photo) will understand that I had a good time meeting and playing with them. I tried to hang out with more of the folks who were married with kids, like myself. It seemed like we had more in common, even if they weren't feeling the same things I was.