Archive for Glen Oberhauser
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Glen Oberhauser
United States
Golden
Colorado
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It started on Junk Day, 1982. Man, I loved Junk Day.
Twice a year, the city of Sea Girt, New Jersey, USA asked all of its citizens to unburden themselves of their unwanted items. Mattresses, tires, half empty paint cans, car parts. It was all to be dragged to the curb. Then the town arranged for the tons of trash to be hauled away. Naturally, Junk Day attracted all sorts of folks and their pick-up trucks rummaging through the piles of junk. It also attracted a lot twelve-year-old boys with bicycles looking for Legos or Matchbox cars or toys we never even knew existed. In 1982, my particular passion was baseball, and I was on the lookout for a derelict parent tossing out a neglected collection of baseball cards.
I didn't find any baseball cards, but I did discover a box of "Baseball Digest" magazines. I grabbed as many issues as I could carry while riding a bicycle and headed home to read. Lists, stats, articles. I was in heaven. Then I turned to a page that changed my life. Not an article about Rollie Fingers' mustache, it was an advertisement for the APBA baseball board game. Cards, dice, charts and numbers filled the page promising "a statistically accurate recreation of baseball on your table top".
I had to have it. I sent away for the free color brochure. I read and reread the glowing testimonials. I studied the two free sample player cards. I begged my mother to buy this game for me. She didn't. Instead, she got me a two-year-old copy of Avalon Hill's Statis-Pro Baseball that she probably found at the dingy game store in the mall. Good enough! Now, I was in heaven.
I played solitaire. I kept detailed scoresheets. I played with friends and winced when they wrinkled the cards. I replayed the World Series three times. I announced the games along with imaginary Bill White and imaginary Phil Rizzuto. I saved money to buy more seasons worth of cards. I carried that Avalon Hill games catalog around with me. (But, that leads to a different story.)
One of the cool things about Statis-Pro baseball is that they provided the algorithm for generating your own player cards. I made a team called the Sea Girt Gulls based on players I found in the Baseball Encyclopedia. I played a mini season between the Gulls and the rest of the American League. The Gulls won it all! (Ok, I cherry-picked from the encyclopedia.)
I credit this game for three things: my pursuit of a B.S. in mathematics and an M.S. in computer science; my now-defunct membership in the Society of American Baseball Research; and my lifelong love of any and all board games, but especially sports games.
To be continued...
Wed Feb 15, 2012 10:35 pm
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Glen Oberhauser
United States
Golden
Colorado
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Well, I'll be a Smoochum's uncle. Pokemon TCG is a really fun card game!
I'll play (and enjoy) most any table top game. Sports simulations? I wrote a computer program on the Atari 800 to generate Statis Pro baseball cards. Traditional card games? In college, the number of games of Hearts and Spades I played exceeds the number of cans of Milwaukee's Best I drank. War games? I dream about the Eastern Front except all the shivering Wehrmacht soldiers have movement factors printed across their chests. Euros? Knizia was a leading candidate for my dog's name. Miniatures? I'm rubbing super glue off of my fingers as I type. And, of course, if I'd invested in Apple stock instead of MTG cards, I could afford to buy a large part of Detroit.
I've tried my share of CCGs over the years. Wyvern. The X-Files. I still play Magic occasionally. Warhammer: Invasion is quite good, though The Spoils and L5R are my favorites. Yet, I never tried Pokemon. "Yuck," I thought, "a crappy game created to rob 9 year-old kids of their allowance money." Now, I have my own kids, and their inherent need to collect something reminds me of my own childhood. I cherished my baseball card collection. Friends collected comic books or beanie babies. My mom claims to have collected Pogs decades before their 1990's revival. Dad had enough toy soldiers to cause second-hand lead poisoning and still reminisces about his marble collection. My daughter has a drawer full of Silly Bandz, and my son paypals peddlers around the country seeking out-of-print Legos. The point is that kids will collect stuff - always have and always will. Some kids will go nuts and spend way too much money on Pokemon memorabilia, but I don't believe in laying blame on Pokemon Company.
Yet, I suppose I did just that. I actively avoided introducing the game to myself and then my son because I believed that Pokemon must be a third-rate game since its parent company spends so much money convincing kids that the Pokemon universe is cool. I have a natural distaste for stuff that is popular. Growing up in New Jersey in the 1970's, all the kids were Yankees fans. Me? I rooted for the Mets. Still, Pokemon was always lurking. The Spoils and L5R have rekindled my interest in CCG's, so I decided I had to try Pokemon.
I bought some theme decks. The latest release seems to be the Black & White: Noble Victories theme. Whatever. It means nothing to me. I cracked open my two theme decks, and my daughter and I looked through the cards. Cute art. Lots of primary colors. I read the rules. I taught her how to play. Now, it helps to know a bit about my daughter. She's not a gamer. She like some games. Flash Point is one her favorites because, and I mean this as a compliment, it's a lot like playing with dolls. She like games where she gets to be a character and where the game features other characters. In Flash Point, she is a firefighter who busts into the kitchen to rescue the cat. In Runebound (yeah, she likes this Martin Wallace game) she's a wizard who gets to go shopping with her friends. She doesn't like the fighting in Runebound. I didn't expect her to like Pokemon, but she does. I didn't expect to like Pokemon, but I do.
My daughter still doesn't like her Pokemon being defeated in battle, but she loves having a deck full of different characters and being able to evolve them into other characters. I like the trophy concept. You randomly lay down six cards from your deck at the start of the game. You can draw one of these cards into your hand if you defeat your opponent's Pokemon. It's a much better reward system than simply scoring (or losing) points.
My daughter loves the cute art, and it is really cute. I can understand why some kids simply buy these cards, stick them in an album, and never play the game. I love how the energy cards are used in the game. Instead of being a generic resource that you can use for all manner of tasks, energy is attached to a Pokemon, where it stays. With enough energy, the Pokemon might unleash a more vicious attack, but that same energy might best be spent in retreating your active Pokemon and replacing it with a character from your bench.
Finally, I like that, for now at least, I'll beat my daughter at this game most of the time. That may sound cruel, but my point is that Pokemon is a game that must be played well in order to win. This isn't just about creating a great deck, flipping cards, reading off text, and seeing which cute Pokemon defeats which other cute Pokemon. You need to think about when to retreat, which Pokemon makes for your best active Pokemon, how to populate your bench of Pokemon, when to play your Trainers, and where to place your Energy. Of course, like any CCG, Pokemon is also a game about deck design.
So, if you're like me and you've avoided Pokemon because you thought it was a mindless kids' amusement, give it a try. If you've avoided it because you're turned off by the collectible aspect, remember that kids will always find something to collect. There are far worse things to collect than cards from a fun, clever game. Silly Bandz come to mind.
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