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Music Contest Results
Thanks to Out of the Box Publishing, Gorilla Games, Pat, Johan, Dave, Dan, Christopher

Donald's review theme is Clockwork 3
Scott's review theme is Chris Suburban
Erik's review theme is Chris Cheese
Ben's review theme is Chris's Baby
Giles's review theme is Dan's Durak60 1,
Guest Review themes are Pat 3 or Chris's Atlantis


Round Table

Donald Scott and Erik revisit classic American board games from their youth.

Scrabble Lawsuit
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25836583/


Wandering Geek Promo

Reviews

* Risk Black Ops reviewed by Scott
* Scrabble reviewed by Erik
* Battleship reviewed by Ben
* Crossbows & Catapults reviewed by Giles & Donald
* Sorry! reviewed by Donald


Outro

* Send questions, comments, or snide remarks, to onboardgames.net@gmail.com in the form of emails or mp3 files
* Join us for further discussions, musings and occasional rants on our forums at the Guild on BGG: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/guild/325
* On Board Games is covered under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License

The episode is not available for download on your site. I prefer to listen on Winamp where I have better playback controls.

You can find it at: http://onboardgames.libsyn.com/

Thanks Todd! Todd's correct, we have our main site, and our Libsyn page. I think you'll be able to get what you need from http://onboardgames.libsyn.com/

Thanks, I used that page to download once I messed up and searched a game while listening from this thread.

First I wanna say that the new music sounds really good when used in the show, even the ones I didn't like so much does well in this format

I like Battleship myself, maybe not the board game version as much as some of the computerized versions. There's some skill involved in the placing of ships as well as in trying to locate the opponents ships. Me and my dad played Battleship on my Amiga 500 where you had 4 shots per ship and you got to see a cannon firing on the opponents ships witch made it more exciting too see if you made a hit.

I wonder, isn't Sorry! very much like Ludo (and other similar games)?

Oh, and the book is pretty good so far, I read like 20+ pages earlier today. If I have the time I'll email my thoughts on it after reading some more.

Excellent episode guys.
It is good to revisit the classics every now and then. Your approval of Tropical Tycoon along with Tom's is encouraging. I was very surprise by Scott's review of Indiana Jones Life. As you mentioned most people assumed licensed properties are no good. Thanks for that.
tomg

Thanks! I thought we might receive some grief from this episode, but, because it is as much about our exploration of gaming as it is for the amusement/approval of our listeners, we decided it was a worthwhile discussion to have. I'm glad it came out alright.

Does anyone out there have a classic American game they'd like to show some appreciation to at this point? Let us know!

Yeah, I agree, it's another good topic I thought you were going to talk a bit about TP, I've never actually played the game myself.

One game I've played a lot when I were younger was Finans but apparently it was never released outside the Nordic countries. Me and my cousin played it many times but we never got anyone else to try it. When they first played it, it took them days. I think they missed the part where the goal was to earn a set amount of cash, no one wanted to touch the game afterwards.

TP? Maybe I'm still asleep, but I don't understand TP.

That looks like it has some interesting elements in it, I'd try it at least once. But I understand your pain. The number of games I have that I couldn't really talk anyone else into playing is epic.

TP as in Trivial Pursuit, at least here in Sweden it is more known under its abbreviation.

Among my cousins and their friends there's only one that would play anything besides Scrabble and regular card games. I taught him Carcassonne this summer, first without farmers and then with farmers. Due to a lack of things to do we played it 9 times in 6 days, we both ended up pretty good at it (and a bit sick of it).

The best part of Finans, compared to Monopoly, is that you don't buy what you land on, instead you pick and choose as long as you are inside the bank. Still a whole lot of luck involved. For example you can take loans to buy the most expensive stock early, if you are lucky this will generate tons of money which helps you win the game if not it might ruin you. You can also buy out all competitors to get a complete set, once all the companies and stock of the set have been bought.

Great cast, guys. It was great to hear your thoughts on the those games, considering how honest and open-minded they were. Eric has inspired me to maybe give Monopoly another shot. I never knew the auction rule.

The review geeklist has been updated. Feel free to share your comments on the games we reviewed there.

Thanks Adam! I learned a bit about old games in preping for this episode as well. It's neat to learn the primitives were not that primitive.



Woohoo! I really appreciate you keeping up this blog. Did you include Scott's round table review of Indiana Jones Life?

I'll post it, but Scott needs to pop in and tell me whether he thinks it's yellow or green light (obviously he thought it was better than red.)

Donald:
What's the deadline to email you some comments on "Hobby Games - The 100 best"?

I'll go yellow with that, as it's not for everyone.

This coming Sunday. Mail to onboardgames.net@gmail.com

I'll read about a few more games before I write something down.

Shouldn't the link to the list be on the guild's front page?

As always, a great episode.

But here's my thing: isn't Sorry!/Ludo a derivative of Pachisi/Parcheesi? I can stretch to see backgammon...but then I hear this snapping noise and get shooting pains down my spine. I'll send the bill.

What's worse is that Sorry!'s a rather weak derivative at that. Pachisi seems to offer a lot more choices and options for strategy, though still not very much.

OK, last note: Crossbows and Catapults just seems like an excuse to crawl around with kids and not worry about being adults for a while. And that sounds fantastic!

Thanks!

You are correct Sorry is a sweatshop knock-off of Pachisi. However I still see the connection between backgammon and Parcheesi as well. I was remiss in mentioning that, but I was not near my computer when recording so I didn't have my notes to work from. My bad.

Indeed it is!

According to BGG, Pachisi and Ludo are the same game It's called "Fia med knuff" ("Fia with push" in English) or just Fia for short here in Sweden. Sorry! adds in the slopes.

I should at least try Backgammon once, even Fire Fox can correct my spelling on the name

Yes indeed, good idea. It's there now!

Oh, yeah, backgammon's a great game!

Thanks for the respectful and honest reviews of some classic games. It made me miss one of my favorite podcasters, James Van Verth of The Vintage Gamer (which unfortunately seems to be on hiatus while Jim attends to more important tasks).

Here's a future episode idea related to this one: a show honoring classic game designers, such as Sid Sackson? I enjoy my copy of Sackson's Buried Treasure pirate-themed card game, and I'd bet a review of it by Donald Dennis would be a fun listen.