My Gaming History
Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Since everyone is doing it.... Actually, I've been wanting to make one of these lists for quite some time. It's a little difficult, though, to remember the exact path I took. I know I've been playing games of one sort or another for a long time, but the specifics (especially about these "eurogames") are a little fuzzy. This list is the closest that I can come to figuring out my gaming history.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Monopoly
Growing up, we owned only a few games. This was probably the oldest. I'm not sure where I learned the rules - I'm pretty sure we'd play with money on free parking, and simple roll-move-buy (no auctions). I have no idea how much we played this, although the box was in terrible shape when I looked at it as an adult (and finally threw it out). In college, I visited a friend at MIT and we and his hallmates played several games of this with a different ("Beyond Park Place"?) ruleset - it was a lot of fun, actually! However, I haven't played it since.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Life
This was an old one, too. I remember having fun with it as a kid, although I wouldn't play it these days. It isn't a great game, but for a kid I think it works just fine - there was something oddly fascinating about spinning the spinner and hoping to get the right number to come up.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Trippples
This was also quite an old possession. In fact, the first 3 could probably have been arranged in any order. I vaguely remember playing this with my brother and sister, although if we did play it I am certain we didn't play it very much. I doubt we even got the rules totally right! For some reason, I later wrote letters on the backs of the tiles (home-made Scrabble? missing tile replacements?).
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Stratego
In elementary school, 4th grade (I think), our teachers set up sort of a business model in class. I think my business was renting games. Or maybe, I just spent my money renting games. Anyway, one of the games was Stratego - I used to be pretty good . I don't remember playing this since those days. I would love to give the new version a try some time, although I doubt my group would be into it.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Checkers
This was a gift, I think. It was one of those 2-in-1 games, with a reversible board. I had fun with this, but got bored with it after a while. Boy, was I good !
I recently read an article about a version of this called Pool Checkers (or Spanish Pool Checkers, I think). This is supposed to be similar but very different, and much more competitive. An old-timer's game, with gaming groups and game halls specifically for this game. It's an old game that's dying out, though - the groups are aging (few young folks get into it) and closing. I would like to learn how to play (ftf - I've read the rules on the web somewhere or other).
On the other side of our copy of the game was ...
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Backgammon
The B-side! My siblings and I didn't play many games together - I seem to remember mostly playing when we had guests. I doubt we played anything much, and certainly not this: the game and box are still in great shape, when I last looked at them (November 2004), sitting in one of my parents' closets.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Chinese Checkers (this pic is the same as my set!)
This must also have been a gift. I liked it, but have never been good at it. More recently, I've tried a Palm OS version, and gotten my butt kicked handily. Just not my cup of tea.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Scrabble
I'm not sure if we had this growing up or not. I tend to think no, at least not initially: I wrote all the letters (and point values, I think) on the back of the Trippples tiles! I play this very rarely now - I'm really not very good. It's a good game, but I just don't have all the words in the scrabble dictionary memorized!
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Rich Uncle
We never actually owned this one, but the 2 daughters of a close family friend did. I remember wanting to play this whenever we went there. I don't remember anything about the game now, except that you needed money. Reading the brief game desription here on the 'geek, I wonder why I ever liked it!
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Dungeons and Dragons
I'm talking about the ROLE-PLAYING game, not this game.
All the previous games were from my childhood, which I remember very poorly. During middle school (6th-8th grades; 1979-82; I was 10-13 years old) I had a small group of close friends. We had a LOT of fun with this, although we did little role playing - it was mostly running around killing everything. But the hours upon hours spent on weekends and overnight parties, creating characters and going through adventures, was well worth it. When my best friend's (the one who was our Dungeon Master) Baptist mother saw the cover of one of the books (Player's Handbook, I think), she concluded that this game was in some way related to the DEVIL  , and forbade him from playing any more. Of course, he continued to sneak in a few games, but really that was the end of our obsessive D&D playing.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Traveller
Again, the ROLE-PLAYING game, not the one shown here.
One of my friends was really into science fiction, and found this game. We played a bit, with him as DM (or GM, I think they called it), but not really very much - I guess we were starting to tire of the roleplaying system. He also had an Atari (2600?), and that took up some of our time!
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Amoeba Wars
In high school, I think, we started playing this - a lot! My baptist friend owned it, and it was clearly not related to the devil (what harm is there in killing huge space amoebas?), so this was OK by mom. The game took so long that we would rarely finish - we would record all of our pieces and positions, and resume play later! I usually did fairly well and you got to roll dice the whole time, so it was loads of fun! One of our friends, however, would be willing to settle for 2nd - which was actually kind of annoying 'cause it let him mess with other people!
When I got back into gaming, I bought this. And now it sits on my shelf, likely never to be played again! I got my wife to play it with me once, but she did not like it at all. She thinks the dice hate her (they do). Well ... there's a variant rule set here (which I included in my HTML-formatted submission) so I'm hoping to get my game group to try at least once some day.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Star Fleet Battles
The rich kid of our group (Mike - the one who'd settle for 2nd) had bought this game, and also the next 3, below. I can't remember how many of the expansions he owned, although I know we played with a ruleset including transporter bombs, armed (and exploding?) shuttles, missles, torpedoes (photon and plasma), side-slipping movement, some kind of emergency stop rule, and a variety of races. My friends and I had lots of fun with this game, and it was one of my early purchases later when my wife and I went game shopping. We bought the Captain's Edition, which includes several previously released expansions packaged together. We played a few games with only the very basic rules - basic movement, phasers/disruptors and torpedoes. That was ... maybe 5-10% of the rulebook? We haven't played it in years, and I am certain I will never read the rule book in its entirety - want to trade me for it?
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14.
Board Game: C.V.
[Average Rating:7.20 Overall Rank:3189]
Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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CV
A naval battle game. I remember playing this a few times, although I don't know if we ever actually finished. TOO MANY CHITS!
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Panzer Leader
Another gazillion-chit game. I think Mike also had Squad Leader. I only vaguely remember these games - I wasn't very good, they took for ever, and they had way too many little chits. At the time, that was actually kind of cool. Now, though, I doubt I will ever play this sort of game again!
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Conquest of the Empire
I think this was one of Mike's later purchases. This, too, was played only a few times. I don't remember if we found any problems with the catapults. I do think I was routinely routed, but again I'm not so sure. Mike used to talk about getting Axis and Allies, too (maybe he had it?) but I don't think I ever played that game.
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17.
Board Game: Euchre
[Average Rating:6.78 Overall Rank:737]
Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Euchre
I grew up in the midwest - MI - but my family wasn't really into gaming. I'd played some pinocle, but not very much. I may have played some euchre earlier, too; but I really started playing this game in my senior year of high school. There were four of us who played almost every day during Spanish class: the class was easy, we all were caught up or ahead, we were seniors, and we had a cool teacher! Had lots of fun playing this, and played a bit more in college, too. Not much, though - only 1 of these guys went to UM, and we didn't really hang out together. Still, this was an almost mindless, fun way to pass the time!
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18.
Board Game: Chess
[Average Rating:7.09 Overall Rank:245]
Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Archon
In college, I really got into computer games. My roommate brought an old Atari in, and we spent countless hours playing something, mostly Archon (see #77 http://top100.ign.com/2005/071-080.html ). I dropped my GPA almost an entire point, losing a small scholarship I'd won - I blame my roomie . I think he had similar problems, and we cut WAY back on the games after that!
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Civilization
The university (of MI) had Mac labs all over the place. A year or two later, I really got into computer (vs. console) games. My friends (including my future wife) and I played a lot of Risk and Spaceward Ho! on those networked computers. I was also playing an awful lot of Sid Meier's Civilization - which my wife enjoyed, also. Civ, the boardgame, was one of our earlier purchases. We tried it a few times, but it was way too long and complex for us at the time and I think we only tried it as a 2er and 3er game. It wasn't until MUCH later (2005) that we tried it again with the full complement of 7 players, and we had a blast! We didn't finish the game, of course, but I did like it enough to set up a pretty nice player aid (if I do say so myself ): http://www.bggfiles.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=9037
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Magic
My wife and I started with the Revised edition, pictured here. We got into a lot of arguments trying to figure out the rules, and put it away for a while. Later, we went back to it and went gaga for it - just like many others, we spent way too much time and money on this game! At one point, we bought an entire case (not box ... CASE) of cards! We would have semi-regular sealed deck tournaments at our house - we'd buy a box of cards and everyone would pay us for some; play round-robin or something like that depending on time; winner(s) split left-over packs as prizes. That was a LOT of fun, although I tended to win much of the time. I was devising some sort of handicapping system, but by then it was too late - people were moving away, or just not playing as much any more. These days, I hardly play at all. I am somewhat put off by the regular release schedule, too. Still, this is a great game.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Settlers
This was another early purchase, probably near the same time as the last 2 games. I don't remember exactly when we started playing this, or if it was our gateway game. But, like many others, I played this many many times. I continued to rate it quite highly, finally dropping my rating some this year (2005) because I just don't feel like playing it all the time (like I used to). This is still a very good game, although I don't think it makes a good gateway game unless everyone is at the same level of gameplay, or the experienced player is willing to provide some advice (and the newbies are willing to listen).
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22.
Board Game: Ra
[Average Rating:7.60 Overall Rank:48]
Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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Ra
We bought this as we were starting to get into the hobby. It was rated highly (not sure where we looked for ratings, though), but I didn't like it at all! I had no feel for the auction mechanism, and the whole thing felt random to me. I finally went back to the game in 2004, and started to really appreciate the elegance of the design and mechanisms.
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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The rest, as they say, is history. I think I found this site somewhere around 2001, and signed up around 2002 (under a different name - wouldn't select my nom-de-internet until much later). I went head-over-heels gaga for gaming around that time, too. We joined a local gaming group August 2002 (although we didn't actually start playing with them very much until around 2003). We also have semi-regular game days at our house ("Potluck Gamers" session reports), as well as smaller gaming gatherings. We started going to game conventions, too - I think Dragon Con was our first big con, and we've since been to several others (and Essen in '05!). I found BSW near the end of 2003 and spent way too much time playing there, esp. in 2004 . It's good to have BSW available, but not nearly as much fun as playing face-to-face. I've become addicted to this site, and feel the need to constantly visit (gosh darn you Aldie
 !). Ah well ... they say obsessions can be healthy things. Don't they?
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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2005
I've decided to add an entry at the end of each year – sort of an ongoing history.
This year, I tried to spend less time on BSW (and succeeded reasonably well). Our game group changed a bit, with G deciding to leave and David taking over as official head. We also started meeting more at our houses (much nicer than that crappy coffee house!), and my wife and I managed to make it to most sessions. I think we probably bought more games this year than ever before, partly because we went to several conventions:
- Origins http://tinyurl.com/cevdt
- DragonCon http://tinyurl.com/eyrl4
- That Boardgaming Thing (a local event)
- Essen! http://tinyurl.com/d9hl7
I also got into auctions this year. I earned some money writing a HanDbase applet, which was paid to my PayPal account. Well, what to do with the money except spend it? I bought some games on eBay: Princes of the Renaissance, Kremlin, Dune, Vegas Showdown, and several AoS expansions (Moon, Reunion Island, China/South America, NE USA/South Africa). I also bought stuff on GeekBay: Smear, Industria, Obsidian Lords, and Cluzzle. I still have cash to burn for 2006!
Anyway, without further ado, my top 10 list for the year:
1. Shadows Over Camelot – many plays. A great game that just happens to be cooperative. Fun to play and pretty easy to teach, too.
2. Caylus – 1 play. A heavier game with a lot going on … definitely needs more play.
3. Ticket to Ride Europe – many plays. I prefer it to the original (better ticket distribution, interesting board changes – tunnels, ferries).
4. Indonesia – 1 play. Good game, but would need to play more (and with more than just 2); I think I’m going to like it!
5. Antike – 2 plays. An empire game with SOME civilization elements. Good mechanism (the Rondel) for choosing your action each turn.
6. Ark – several plays. Very well-themed game where all the rules make sense but it still takes a while to really understand them.
7. China – several plays. I’d played Web of Power only once or twice before. This is a nice fast-playing area-influence game.
8. Vegas Showdown – 1 play. Surprisingly good mainstream game sharing similarities with Princes of Florence.
9. Palazzo – several plays. I think this is a nice blend of different mechanisms: auctioning/tile selection from Alhambra + building from Clocktowers/Capitol. Plays quickly, too!
10. Tower of Babel – 1 play. An area-influence game with an innovative auction mechanism. Pretty good game, not great – I guess 2005 wasn’t such a hot year for me if this makes the list!
Highly-ranked games I've not yet played:
• Bonaparte at Marengo – suspect it’s too wargamey for me
• Conquest of the Empire – would almost rank this if only for my love of Struggle of Empires!
• Crusader Rex – suspect it’s too wargamey for me
• Deflexion – abstract, unlikely to rate highly for me
• Descent: Journeys in the Dark – own it but haven’t played it yet … looks fun, though!
• Ende des Triumvirats, Das
• Hacienda – thinly themed tile-laying game (from my reading of the rules)
• Il Principe – seems OK, but not great (from my demo of it at Essen)
• Mesopotamia – couldn’t get into a demo at Essen because of the constant lines!
• Nexus Ops – own it but haven’t played it yet
• Pizza Box Football – a sports game? Probably not for me, although I do like Harry’s Grand Slam Baseball
• PÜNCT – another abstract
• Railroad Tycoon – another one that almost automatically rates highly from my feelings about Age of Steam
• Siena – read the rules; they make sense, but there are a LOT of them and they are intertwined a great deal!
• World of Warcraft
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Snooze Festival
United States
Hillsborough
North Carolina
We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
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2006
This year's gaming was notable for 2 things: lots of conventions, and lots of playing online. Also, a change in our local face-to-face gaming.
1. Conventions
We traveled a LOT this year, mostly for gaming but also for work. We traveled so often, in fact, that it was a welcome relief when we finished the last con and saw that we could stay home the rest of the year! In chronological order, here's a summary of my trips (non-gaming trips in parentheses) this year:
(- Jan: San Diego ... week-long work meeting)
(- Jan/Feb: LA area, one week later! ... vacation)
(- Mar: Washington, DC ... weekend karate trip)
- Apr: Gathering of Friends ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/14098
What can I say? First time there, and it was fantabulous! Days and days of gaming, cool people, prototypes ... we preregistered for next year as soon as we could!
- Jun: Oasis of Fun ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/18322
Close by, and lots of fun! Will hopefully make it back in the future. I’d initially forgotten to put a geeklist up for this trip. But this year I worked on a cool Excel + HanDBase Game Log ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/fileinfo.php?fileid=20632), and used it to create a report of my games played !
- Jun/Jul: Origins ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/15267
Again, this was a lot of fun even though I didn't really take as much advantage of the Boardroom as I should have! We did get to go out for dinner with some old friends, and we also met a lot of cool gaming-type people!
(- Jul: back to LA area for another karate weekend thing)
(- Aug: AGAIN back to LA for a different karate thing)
- Sep: DragonCon ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/16265
This wasn't as good this year as in the past, because gaming was relegated to a basement of a hotel. The space was OK, but it was just too far from the rest of the events of the con ... didn't get to see nearly as much of the non-gaming stuff that is so cool at this freakshow-of-a-con! On the plus side, we met a really cool couple that we gamed with several times, as well as a cool tattooed twin.
- Sep (1 week later!): That Boardgaming Thing ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/16424
A local gaming weekend, getting bigger and better every year!
(- Oct: work trip to Chicago, IL)
- Nov: Lobster Trap ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/17438
This was our first time here. We met a lot of nice people, and gaming was a lot of fun, too. I'm not sure if we'll go back very often, though: it's a bit far to travel for a relatively short weekend of gaming. I guess it will depend on how much other travelling we're doing!
- Nov (1 week later!): BGG.con ... http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/17475
Fantastic! This was probably one of my best experiences EVER!
Phew! WAAAY too much travelling this past year! But the convention-gaming overall was really good!
2. Online Gaming
The online gaming this time around was not BSW – I spent very little time there this year. Instead, I played a LOT of play-by-web games. There seemed to be more and more sites and games popping up on the web this past year. I spent the most time on Spielbyweb (Amun-Re, Bus, Hacienda, Hoity Toity, Reef Encounter, Santiago, Tikal, Wallenstein), Mabiweb (Hansa, Richelieu, Samurai) and Ludoholic (Capitol, Urland); also, a few games at Ludagora (Vinci), Boite a jeux (Alhambra), and BGG (Tigris and Euphrates). Here’s a summary of my online gaming for the year:
- San Juan… BSW: 33
- Richelieu… PBW: 32
- Hansa… PBW: 26
- Hacienda… PBW: 20
- Euphrat & Tigris… PBW: 9
- Tikal… PBW: 9
- Wallenstein… PBW: 9
- Vinci… PBW: 8
- Amun-Re… PBW: 5
- Samurai… PBW: 5
- Urland… PBW: 5
- Alhambra… PBW: 3
- Bus… PBW: 3
- Hoity Toity… PBW: 3
- Kingdoms… PBW: 3
- Puerto Rico… BSW: 3
- Ra… BSW: 3
- Reef Encounter… PBW: 3
- Santiago… PBW: 3
- TransAmerica… BSW: 3
- Café International… BSW: 2
- Capitol… PBW: 2
- Caylus… BSW: 2
- Hey! That's My Fish!… BSW: 2
- Lost Cities… BSW: 2
- Power Grid - France… BSW: 2
- Settlers of Catan, The… BSW: 2
- Diamant… BSW: 1
- That's Life!… BSW: 1
- Verräter… BSW: 1
3. Face-to-face Gaming
Again, our schedule changed in August so we had to stop going to our usual Monday night gaming sessions. We did, however, continue meeting at our house fairly often so the overall numbers for FTF games aren’t too bad, I think. Here's the FTF summary:
Game FTF Comments
TOTAL 563 vs. 562 last year - woot!
- Magic: the Gathering 24 For a long time, my only BGG '10'! I hadn't realized I'd actually played it so many times. Of course, games can be pretty quick!
- Crokinole 15 It's so quick that it's not surprising. But I'm just so talented, it's not as much fun  !
- Memoir '44 15 Another surprise, especially
- Liar's Dice 14 Still a great closer for when you're too tired but just want to play a bit more!
- Battle Line 9 So close to a 10! I almost got a play in on 12/30, but then our 3rd finally showed up!
- Carabande 8 Plays come in spurts; too much of a hassel setting up and tearing down, but once it's up you can play many games quickly.
- Unpublished Prototype 8 Always fun playing new stuff! This count includes FF's dungeon crawl, AoS Mississippi Boats, and a bunch of other no-info-out-yet games.
- Ticket to Ride Märklin 7 I like it less than TTR Europe, but it got played because of the newness factor mostly. We don't pull any of the TTR games out a lot, even though we do enjoy them.
- Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper 6 Mostly 2-player with my wife; fun rummy variant and the best of the series we've tried so far.
- Age of Steam 6 This is the count for the base game only. If expansions are included, it would be up to 11 (England, Ireland x 2, NE USA, Scandinavia). Now my second BGG '10'! I just wish I could get people to play it more!
- Fairy Tale 6 A nice filler, although I don't find it as much fun as I did at first.
- Hey! That's My Fish! 5 Great abstract filler, but we ended up not buying it -- don't need yet another one of those, I guess!
- Flowerpower 5 Simple area-control game; good, not great.
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark 5 Great game! It's just so long to play that it's difficult to get it to the table. We bought the expansion (still unplayed) even though we've barely gone through the basic scenarios! Looking forward to playing this more this year!
- Nacht der Magier 5 Blech! I knew I didn't like it the first time I played it, yet I played it 4 more times! It's OK -- "Blech!" may be too strong -- but it's just not that great a game.
- Dragons of Kir 5 Lots of fun; actually, most plays were probably Darter (the version we own).
Just missing the cut:
- Caylus 4 Not bad, but not my favorite game; takes somewhat too long.
- Loopin' Louie 4 Gathering game.
- Circus Flohcati 4 Tired of this one, but my wife seems to love it!
- Quoridor 4 New to us; played it several times 'cause it's so fast, but not likely to play very often -- don't get into abstracts much.
- Middle Earth CCG 4 Good game, but it's just so involved that I never feel like actually learning it!
- Shadows over Camelot 4 Not enough play! My wife is apparently getting tired of the game -- she always vetoes it. Of course, she pretty much vetoes any of my choices (my choices do, of course, tend to be the same game OVER AND OVER)!
- Pickomino 4 It's light, it's cute … even if it is about 5min too long.
- Ubongo 4 We don't own it so numbers may not get much higher.
- Shear Panic 4 No one around here seems to like it much so this will likely drop off next year, too.
- GemBlo 4 We have the Light (i.e., mini) version -- it's not nearly as pretty as it's big brother! Decent game, as long as you don't play someone who wants to analyze every last possible play.
- Take Stock 4 Pretty good game, but not one we'll play much more than this, I imagine.
- Nottingham 4 An OK filler; gets played more because it can handle 7 than because it's particularly fun, I think.
4. The Nickels and Dimes
Game BSW FTF PBW 2006 Total Comments
- TOTAL 57 563 148 768 Last year, it was a total of 1039 (405 BSW, 562 FTF, 69 PBW). I've hardly been on BSW at all this year -- it's just so much better playing FTF! FTF numbers held pretty darn steady! There were a few new PBW sites this year, and several good games are now available online so PBW more than doubled this year!
- San Juan 33 1 0 34 Mostly BSW -- it's just so quick (averages about 7 min for 2er game) that it's easy to get games in when I have a bit of time.
- Richelieu 0 0 32 32 All PBW -- I really like it, although the shine is starting to wear.
- Hansa 0 1 26 27 An OK game, but it's available PBW so it got played a lot.
- Magic: the Gathering 0 24 0 24
- Hacienda 0 1 20 21 Really good implementation on spielbyweb! I really like the game!
- Crokinole 0 15 0 15
- Memoir '44 0 15 0 15
- Liar's Dice 0 14 0 14
- Tikal 0 1 9 10
- Vinci 0 2 8 10 Getting tired of this one … probably won't play much any more, except occasionally PBW 'cause it's there.
- Wallenstein 0 1 9 10 It's just OK; I much prefer Struggle of Empires. If I could get people to play SoE, or if SoE were available online, I'd probably stop playing Wallenstein altogether.
- Battle Line 0 9 0 9
- Euphrat & Tigris 0 0 9 9 I still don't see what's so great about this one -- likely won't ever play it very much.
- Carabande 0 8 0 8
- Unpublished Prototype 0 8 0 8
- Hey! That's My Fish! 2 5 0 7
- Ticket to Ride Märklin 0 7 0 7
- Age of Steam 0 6 0 6
- Amun-Re 0 1 5 6 Another nice online implementation.
- Caylus 2 4 0 6
- Fairy Tale 0 6 0 6
- Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper 0 6 0 6
- Descent: Journeys in the Dark 0 5 0 5
- Dragons of Kir 0 5 0 5
- Flowerpower 0 5 0 5
- Nacht der Magier 0 5 0 5
- Puerto Rico 3 2 0 5
- Ra 3 2 0 5
- Samurai 0 0 5 5
- Urland 0 0 5 5 Played at ludoholic.com. Getting tired of it a bit, though -- seems so arbitrary, although I do still enjoy it.
5. A few final comments.
- Podcast: I continued recording game reviews, although I took a LONG break. Finally started recording again in December.
- Game Aids: I spent the latter part of the year fiddling with my HanDBase game log applet, and finally added some key features to the Excel counterpart. These allowed me to (at last) log all my games played to BGG. I spent a fair bit of time on this project, but it was fun, resulted in a cool end product, and generated a few  too
- Gaming Time: I think I'm getting way too obsessed with this stuff. I'm glad to see the BSW count has fallen off. I expect I'll continue PBW for a while, but that will fall off, too: it's just so much better playing face-to-face! But while I think I'll continue to play as much as I can this year, I hope I'll spend less time on the METAgame -- i.e., less time reading about games, less time on BGG, etc ... it's just getting to be too much of a time drain!
Anyway, without any further ado, my Top Games of 2006:
Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization
Imperial
Commands & Colors: Ancients
Mykerinos
Struggle for Rome
Yspahan
The Pillars of the Earth
Mr. Jack
BattleLore (only played 1 game so far)
Gheos
Canal Mania? Good, but I don't feel the need to own it; if I want AoS light I'll just play Railroad Tycoon!
Terra Nova? I like it, but only if played fast and loose; no deep thinking!
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We love our pups!! Misu, RIP 28 Nov 2010. Tikka, RIP 11 Aug 2011.
Littleton
CO
I think I've even played a game of CV or two, back in the day. Our favorite of those old wargames was "88," a tank/infantry squad-level game with cool terrain features, for cardboard hexes.