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Max Jamelli
United States
Chambersburg
Pennsylvania
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#17 in your scorebooks, - TC Tennis!
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hmmm, to use the official cover sheet or my own made up creation ....
why not both?
Yeah, I like the ladies.
I was introduced to TC Tennis during WBC week 2010. The GM of the March Madness tournament, Terry Coleman, was showing off a new game design to some people in the Cornwall room. I asked about it and later in the week he did a brief demo for me. Turns out, TC Tennis plays an awful lot like March Madness. It also stands on it's own as an original game. It's a neat design that plays very easily, despite perhaps an intimidating rulebook. You'll have to realize something about me -- I am awful at rulebooks. I had my brother in law teach me Carcassonne after I stared at the rulebook. I'm just bad with rules. TC Tennis' rulebook is laid out in a similar style as many old school Avalon Hill games, so it's a good thing Terry was around to help teach me.
Terry teaching TC Tennis
(how's that for alliteration?)
Another thing I should put out there is the fact that I'm not much of a tennis fan. I think over the last 33 years and some odd weeks of my life I've watched a grand total of 6 hours of tennis (and I was a sports reporter for 2 years). Tennis, as a sport, just isn't my bag. Good games, however, are my bag. TC Tennis certainly fit the bill. I was actually very pleasantly surprised at how good the game was. My initial fear about testing the game for a friend was ... "Man, what if this game really stinks?" Glad I didn't have to worry about that one for long.
I showed my dad the design and played through a set with him as well at WBC. I think he's watched less tennis than I have, yet he felt fairly similar to me. Overall a really fun game.
The first thing many people will notice about the game is the title. A title with the designer's initials? It is memorable. The thing that I noticed mainly was the amount of research and thought that went into the design. There are 24 (for now) players you can pick from, each has his own rating on one of four different playing surfaces. Coming up with ratings that are historically accurate must have been incredibly time consuming. Because of that though, this game's replayability is very high. You can create your own tournament and use different surfaces for each round, or the same surface for each round. If the birdies in my ear are telling me the truth, an expansion with all time great womens tennis players may also be in the works.
At it's core, TCT is a Dice game. I won't go into a long lamentation about my dice rolling and how awful it is. Suffice to say I am an awful die roller. My father is pretty bad too, so I get it honestly. Looking over my top 20, only four games use dice in some capacity. Thinking about that now, that is rather interesting. Maybe that's why I roll such lousy dice. I need to get more practice! 
Jen is usually weary about learning new games - even if I tell her she'll like them. I've only played TC Tennis with Jen once - and she really liked it. She likes March Madness as well, so I knew she'd pick this game up quickly. She's like me, she needs to play a game a few times before really getting it. She pretty much got TC Tennis after the first turn. As it turns out, she enjoyed it so much, she ranked it higher than March Madness on our combo ranking geeklist. It comes it at #6 there.
Review
I wrote a review about TC Tennis here. Check it out - it's the only review so far so you have to take my word for things. 
What's not to like?
In talking about the games in my top 20, I'm probably going to shy away from many negatives - but in the case of TC Tennis the one thing I'll note is something I talked about in my review as well. The VPG bag. The first time I tried to squeeze all of my components back into the bag I was afraid I was going to damage them. I said enough of that. I bought a $5 copy of Candyland ... yeah, I linked it, spraypainted it white and taped my cover art on it. That way, the game components can breathe a little. I also found it interesting that the game requires 4     , yet only comes with 2 (and they're the teeny tiny ones). It's not a major deal since most gamers have D6's lying around somewhere - but it's something I wanted to be sure I mentioned in case someone was looking at this post and considering buying the game. (By all means, buy the game. Buck up an additional $6 for Candyland and some dollar store dice, it's worth it I think).
Final Thoughts:
I always wondered if theme would help bring non-gamers into gaming. If there are non-gamers that really enjoy tennis, I would think they would really get into this game. It's got a lot of mechanics involving dice that they would probably be comfortable with and the back and forth action basically mirrors a tennis match (as it's supposed to).
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