The 2011 Dice Tower Awards

One of the podcasts I listen to is called The Dice Tower, it is basically a weekly variety show on board games and the board game industry. With the demise of my favorite podcast recently, the Dice Tower currently holds the #1 position for a good gaming cast to listen while working or relaxing. One of my favorite things the Dice Tower does is a yearly award for a different games in different categories with the goal of becoming the Spiel des Jahres for the United States. I think this is a very admiral goal and one that I would like to support, so when they asked for bloggers to mention the Dice Tower Awards on their blogs, I thought it would make a good blog post to give my thoughts on their 2011 nominees. Also, as an extra mention, I really like that they give the games 6 months before they announce the winners, so that those games coming out late in the year aren't missed and they can see what games have staying power. So here we go with my thoughts on each category and there are a lot of categories!:

Best Game of the Year: I've played 7 of these 10 games that were nominated and overall I think the crew did a good job of nominating a variety of Best Games from 2011. If you read my 2011 favorite game list, you'll know that Eclipse was on there with one play even, so you won't be surprised that I think it will be the winner and should win. However, I'd also give a vote for King of Tokyo, which is a great filler game! Between the two, I'll likely purchase King of Tokyo, just because of it's play time and number of players, but either one deserve the game of the year.

Best Family Game: I'm afraid, I'm again going with King of Tokyo here. Why? Because I haven't played any of the others, except for Quarriors, and I was sorely disappointed with it.

Best New Designer: Jay Little, for Blood Bowl: Team Manager, not because I like the game (it's okay), but because I've played games with Jay and he is a really great guy. We played some Ascension last year at Geekway to the West. Also, because even though I'm not personally a big fan of the game, it does have a lot of fans in our game group and seems to have drawn a few straight Euro players over to it.

Best Game Reprint: Well, since Puerto Rico is my #2 game of all time, of course I'm going to say it. I've seen all but the Can't Stop & Evo reprint in real life and I still think that the Puerto Rico is the best. It has metal coins! Metal coins! It is on my would like to buy list, despite owning a copy already, because it just looks that good!

Best Production Values: I've not played any of these, though I have seen a few at conventions and game days. I'll go with either one of the D&D games, simply because I know Mansions of Madness had a few problems with the cards and the writing of the rules, which I consider part of production.

Best Small Publisher: I've only played two of the five games here. One was Rallyman, which I absolutely despised. I'd only suggest it to a hardcore rally race fan, because personally as a gamer only, it just didn't do it for me. I've also played Bears and I've got to say, it reminds me of playing Spoons with dice. I liked it and I can see getting two sets and having a great party game time. Also, Travis who is the owner of Indie Boards & Cards is a great guy, IndyCon sponsor, and makes quality games so Flashpoint is on my list of games I want to play. This is a tough choice category for me.

Best Party Game: I'm not much of a party gamer, but if I was choosing here, I'd choose...Bears! Yeah, I know it isn't from this category, but it should be. These are all games I'm not interested in (besides Dixit Odyssey should almost be in the reprint category). I've never spelled Odyssey before, sorta tough.

Best Expansion: I'm going with Small World: Underground here. For a couple reasons, first it is an expansion and a stand-alone game! Second, it does everything Smallworld does and makes it just better by adding even more variety to an already ever changing game. I've not been a huge fan of the Leaders expansion for 7 Wonders, though it's one redeeming quality is to make money more valuable in the game.

Most Innovative Game: I've played 2 of these games (Ascending Empires & Quarriors). AE was in my hands to purchase at GenCon, but I didn't. Almost, just didn't. It is innovative, with movement of your spaceships happening by flicking them across the board! Quarriors, is slightly innovative but it is mostly just a deck building game and not a great one at that. However, my vote goes towards Risk: Legacy, a game I've not even played, because in this game you actually permanently change your copy of the game by writing on the board, tearing up cards, and generally altering the game forever! How cool is that? I'd absolutely love to get a dedicated group of 5 people to play this with me once a month, so we could see our world change.

Best Artwork: I was disappointed that the Lord of the Rings card game was co-op, thus I didn't enjoy it as much as I would've liked, but the art on it is absolutely great! In true Fantasy Flight fashion, they really get the feel of the theme to come through in the game, which because it is LotR gets my vote over the other 2 FFG games in the category.

Best War Game: I've only played one and that is the only one I'm ever likely to play, so A Few Acres of Snow gets my vote. It is a very solid game and honestly is a "wargame" that I think just about any gamer can get behind.

Best Theme: Dungeon Petz wins this for me. I already am a fan of the universe because of Dungeon Lords and I like how they've taken a cartoony, funny approach to exactly how those horrible monsters the dungeon lords hires come about, by being raised and sold at market.

Best Digital Game: Ascension wins this hands down for me. As of writing this I've played nearly 60 games of it on my phone and will continue to do so. As matter of fact, I liked the iPhone version so much, I traded my physical copy of the game. The app is just perfect and works just like it should. I need to buy the expansion.

So that is it, my thoughts on the 2011 Dice Tower Awards, which have a LOT of categories and thus made for huge post. We'll see how it turns out, but I think they did a pretty good job with the nominees this year and hope this continues to do well as an award and maybe someday it'll mean similar sales & success figures as the SdJ does in Germany.

Best of Five

Krista and I have listened through Mark Driscoll's sermon's on marriage recently and now we're listening to them again with our community group. The second sermon in the series is all about being friends and so I thought I'd share how my wife and I have been using gaming to be friends. If you've never listened to the sermons, you should, but specifically the one titled "Friend with Benefits."

Back in the fall, while in the midst of playing through every board game in my collection, I asked Krista if she'd like to do a Best of Five series for a particular game. I was really being burnt out on playing a game once, then not playing it again for another year, and wanted a chance to play them more and get to learn the game more. So we began playing games, first person to 3 wins takes the series, and then the loser selects the next game in the series. This has been a great way for us to be friends, as we have some competition and fun to look forward to in an evening, and at the same time get better at our games.

I realize that this is more "shoulder to shoulder" friendship, which lines up with my friendship style more than Krista's, but at the same time it is good for us to spend time just the two of us and interacting, in this case over a game, rather than just sitting and watching a movie or reading in the same room together.

As for the games that we've played, we just finished our 15th series, which has included 14 unique games. We played Castles of Burgundy twice. The only game that we'd not suggest as a two-player game anymore, after playing it 5 times, is Tobago. It's an okay two player game, but really shines more with 3 or 4 players. I'm looking forward to our series continuing, though I'm currently on top, so Krista gets to pick the next game.

I'll leave you with a quick list of the games we've played (feel free to guess who won what series), which you might enjoy with your spouse or kids in a one on one situation, and also a quick fact about my wonderful wife who is my friend. Krista is really particular (read anal here) about how the frosting is spread on cinnamon rolls. I love her for that.

The Games (You'll notice, these names tend to be places in the world, which is weird):
The Castles of Burgundy
Agricola
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries
Jaipur
Macao
Carcassonne
Warhammer: Invasion
Sid Meier's Civilization (2010)
Traders of Carthage
Le Havre
Santiago de Cuba
Dominion
Tobago
San Juan

Jesus and March Madness

So I have had a blog half written for several weeks now, but can't seem to finish it.  It's about how much of the future did Christ know. This whole thought process came about when I was enjoying some BW3's hamburgers and watching March Madness with some friends. At first, I thought I could do it justice in a written blog, but after doing more and more research I'm not sure I can. I'm not some huge systematic theology professor that can analyze ever angle of it and write with the expression and precision that is needed to breach such a subject. Maybe someday that blog will be written, but for now it'll remain as a draft on my computer, until I can bring it the full research I need to do.

However, I still did want to write about Jesus and knowing the future. I've been reading in the gospels recently and see many times where Christ really does know the future. I'm not going to approach whether or not he knew while he was on Earth that Adam Daulton would be born in 1983 or that I would eat Lucky Charms and drink a Chai Tea this morning, but I do want to point out he knew what was coming for himself and what he had to face.

Let's take just one example from scripture in Mark 8:31, "And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again." Jesus was teaching the disciples about what had to happen, he would be rejected by the spiritual leaders of the day, a pretty big thing for a Jew whose religion is so tied up into his ethnicity, and then be killed! He knew that he would suffer, he even asked the Lord for a different way in Gethsemane to go about saving the world. He knew that a sacrifice had to be made, in order for you and I to have the opportunity to be saved, and not only did he know that, but he had the choice to not go through with it. The good news is this though, he knew he would conquer death, he would rise again, and thus defeating death allow us that same opportunity of a new life in him!

So, Christ did exactly what he knew had to be done, and at the same time, he did exactly what he knew would be done. Did Jesus know that March Madness 2012 would happen? I still am not sure one way or the other. However, I'm glad that question came up on that Friday afternoon. It's given me a lot to think about. Sometimes our lunch conversations are stupid and ridiculous, but sometimes they are deep and important. Now to begin work on my presentation about marshmallows and their role in the Spanish Inquisition....

GeoCaching!

I've got a new hobby. I hear you already, "Another hobby, Adam?! You already have a gazillion." You are correct in thinking that I have a gazillion hobbies, after all throughout the years I've golfed, played paintball, collected stamps, the 4 major sports cards, pogs, Louis L'Amour books, enjoy LotR, reading, basketball, fishing, hunting, board games, movies, even this blogging thing. Now we can add one more to the list: geocaching.

Randy, my father in law, has been doing it for several years and I've gone out with him about half a dozen times over that time to find these caches. He would go online to www.geocaching.com  and print off the different caches close by, would enter the coordinates into his GPS device, and then we'd go find them. Seemed like a lot of work for me to do all that, but now that I have an iPhone I'm set. I just be sitting on the picnic table and decide I want to find a geocache and look up the closest one and find it. Just like that, no printing, no entering coordinates, just finding the cache which is the best part. I then can take a note, log that I found it, put a picture up, all from my phone. So this hobby can be a hobby of mine that I can do anywhere and anytime that doesn't take a lot of pre-planning to carry out. I can have fun adventures with whoever I'm with.

What is a geocache you ask? It can be a lot of things, but most commonly it is a small container that contains a log book for you to sign your name and the date you found it. Also, if the container is big enough, you can "trade" items with the other geocachers that find it. These items can be just about anything, a book, a penny, a couple dice, old toys, even numbered coins and tags so you can follow the item one it's trip around the world!

So far, with the help of others, I've discovered 17 different caches here in central Indiana. I'm going to St. Louis in May and Kansas City in June, so I'm hoping to be able to find more out there as well. It's been fun getting to learn the jargon of the hobby and taking my family and friends out on the adventures to find the items. So far I've have 2 caches that are my favorite. One is in Fort Ben Harrison State Park and right next to Fall Creek in an old Army ammo container. It's a real quiet spot, with a nice view, and you have to cross the creek to get to it. The other was in some boulders in Shelby County, though I liked it more I think because I took Kaylee, Nathan, and Landon out to find that one and they had a blast. So, if you have a smart phone, I suggest you look at goecaching, create and account, and have some adventures!

Here are a couple pictures from the geocaching I did over Easter Weekend with the kids holding up the thigns they found:

Warhammer: Invasion Review

My 3,000 logged play was Warhammer: Invasion, which had to happen, since I've played it over a 150 times in the past year. It's crazy to think that I've played it that much, obviously I like it, let me tell you why you might too. This is a continuation of my Every 100 Plays Series, in which I review whatever game happens to be my multiple of 100 plays. Eventually, I'll get a webpage or blog or something to hold them all.

It's a Living Card Game
Yes, this is a collectible game, but it isn't a CCG in similar way that say Magic: The Gathering is, rather you know exactly what cards you get when you buy battle packs and (except for the first cycle) you get 3 copies of each card so your deck can be complete. I like this for several reasons. First, not only do games like this take quite a bit of money (less so I believe with the LCG format), but they take a lot of time looking at cards, building decks, play-testing decks, and understanding the game better. Since you don't have to worry about trading cards, there is essentially no secondary market, you can spend your time actually building and playing your decks.

It's Got Tough Decisions
As a board gamer I think the big reason that this game appeals to me, is the decisions that have to be made. Not just playing a card from your hand, there is that same decision in every card game, but it is the decision of where to play the card that makes this game different and enticing. There are three different zones in Invasion and according to where you play a card and how you play that card changes what that card does for you. If you play it to your kingdom, then you'll get more resources to buy things. If you play it to your quest, you can draw more cards. If you play it to your battlefield, then you can use it to attack with. Then add to that decision, the opportunity to play cards face down as developments (makes it more difficult to destroy that zone) and you have some great decisions to be made throughout the game.

It's Quick
More and more this becomes a reason for me to like a game. When I'm playing with my friend, who knows the game through and through, we can get about 6-8 games in over 2ish hour period while sitting in McDonald's and sipping some sweet tea. There is the occasional game that happens, when both players are playing with control decks that might take 30-45 minutes, but for the most part every game is 15-30 minutes long. Why is this good? Well, for a game like this, where there is more of a learning curve, it is better to be able to beat a new player and then quickly start over, rather have him or her have to invest in a 1-hour card game and not have time for redemption.

It's Competitive
I'm not exactly a collectible card game guru. For tow or three years in the early 2000s I did play Lord of the Rings: TCG a whole bunch and I loved it! I loved it for the theme, but I really think I enjoyed it for building my decks and competing against the other players. Not only competing against them in the actual game, but trying to know and understand what deck types I can expect to see and how to best build my deck to beat all those types. Invasion gives me that same feel that I had then and I'm glad I got into it.

Final Thoughts
If you aren't into deck-building, I think you could get the Core Set and Assault on Ulthuan and enjoy the game a whole lot, just playing with the pre-built decks and changing things up by drafting or using different neutral cards. I'd suggest this game for a more serious gamer though, if you are wanting to get into the deck-building competition scene, even if you just want to build decks that your friends can play against you. Warhammer: Invasion scratches that CCG itch for me, without being completely a CCG. I've found it to be popular among board gamers and with the way it plays and the decision you have to make where to physically place a card, I can see why!

3,014

That number (3,014) is the number of logged plays that I’ve had since March 2006 on the BoardGameGeek website. I’m not sure why I started logging my plays back then, we’d been playing Puerto Rico, Tigris Euphrates, Citadels and other games quite frequently and as far as I remember I just wanted to know how frequently. So I logged a play in March. Then a few days later logged another play. Then I just kept going for 6 years. Now it is very interesting for me to look back on all these plays and see not only what games I’ve played a lot of, but also for the tightwad that I am, what games I’ve gotten my money worth from. I, of course, can't stop now since I've got so much invested in logging the plays. Also, despite my Top Games of All Time lists, it is interesting to see what games I actually play that I would put on that list. So here are what we in the game world call my five & dimes, which is a list of all the games I’ve played 5+ and 10+ and more times:

The bolded games appeared on my Top 25 of All Time – 2012 list, so you can get an idea of where my favorite rank to my actual plays. Also, just some extra information for you. If I'd been keeping track of plays before March 2006, then Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, Risk, Axis & Allies, Acquire, Tikal, Lord of the Rings: TCG, and Unpublished Prototype would have many more plays.


100+ Plays
Dominion 240
Warhammer: Invasion 162


50+ Plays
Carcassonne 74
High Society 74
7 Wonders 66
Bang! 64
Agricola 63
Hive 63
Small World 51
Werewolf 51

25+ Plays
Tichu 47
Railroad Tycoon 45
Fairy Tale 42
Puerto Rico 42
Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer 40
No Thanks! 40
Traders of Carthage 39
Taktika 29
In the Year of the Dragon 27
R-Eco 27
Ra 27
Thurn and Taxis 27
Endeavor 26
El Grande 26
The Bottle Imp 25
Euchre 25
Shear Panic 25
Unpublished Prototype 25

10+ Plays
Jericho 24
Blokus 22
Crokinole 22
Wits & Wagers 22
1960: The Making of the President 21
Citadels 21
Notre Dame 21
Power Grid 21
Galaxy Trucker 20
The Pillars of the Earth 20
Manila 19
Masons 19
Guillotine 18
Lifeboats 16
Patrician 16
Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game 16
Clans 15
Dream Factory 15
Jaipur 15
Oregon 15
Say Anything 15
Founding Fathers 14
Gheos 14
Macao 14
Taj Mahal 14
Fury of Dracula 13
Keythedral 13
Robotory 13
Snorta! 13
Acquire 12
Archaeology: The Card Game 12
For Sale 12
On the Underground 12
War of the Ring 12
Amyitis 11
The Castles of Burgundy 11
Cyclades 11
The Princes of Florence 11
San Marco 11
Shogun 11
Tikal 11
Candy Land 10
Hansa Teutonica 10
Lord of the Rings 10
Pecking Order 10


5+ Plays
Battle Cry 9
Bohnanza 9
Chinatown 9
The Newlywed Game 9
Pass the Pigs 9
Risk 9
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries 9
Yahtzee 9
Caylus 8
Dungeon Lords 8
Hamburgum 8
Hey, That's My Fish! 8
Leonardo da Vinci 8
Lost Cities 8
Major League Baseball 2K10 8
Ninjato 8
Saint Petersburg 8
San Juan 8
Taboo 8
Tigris & Euphrates 8
Tomb 8
Forbidden Island 7
The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game 7
Mexica 7
Nottingham 7
Tutankhamen 7
Au Backe! 6
Catch Phrase 6
Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix 6
Domaine 6
Double or Nothing 6
Drakon (first edition) 6
Java 6
Mission: Red Planet 6
Perikles 6
Poker 6
The Settlers of Catan 6
Tumblin-Dice 6
Vineta 6
Bootleggers 5
Campaign Manager 2008 5
Cuba 5
Fifth Avenue 5
Goa 5
Imperial 5
Key Harvest 5
Mammoth Hunters 5
Rum & Pirates 5
Samarkand: Routes to Riches 5
Ticket to Ride: Europe 5
Tobago 5
World of Warcraft Trading Card Game 5

War of the Ring Painted!

I've recently finished painting my 204 miniatures for the War of the Ring board game I own. I traded for the game back in August and decided I would paint it. I didn't get started painting it until October when I convinced my buddy Juan (who paints for 40k) to help me. In exchange I've played a few Warhammer: 40k games with him. So one Sunday night I went over to his house, with my Sauron Orcs in tow, and he showed me how to paint them. It takes a lot of work, priming, doing the main colors, doing the accent colors, putting sand on the bases, "washing" them in water mixed with black paint to give them shadows, and finally putting a clear coat on them to keep the paint from coming off.

As I was doing it, I wanted my color scheme to be as close to the real thing as possible, but at the same time try to follow the color scheme of the game as best I could to make the game playable as well. I am very satisfied with the results and though I'm not the best painter, I think the pieces look 100 times better than they looked before. A big thanks goes out to Juan who helped me a lot, even painting the Gondor Army for me so I could play the game at IndyCon and Krista for helping me paint a couple evenings. It took 6 months, a lot of patience, and I'll never do it again.

Here is what they looked like before hand:

Picture by Craig Rose

Picture by Gordan Wong

Here are my pictures and paint job, now if I could only be better at taking pictures:

Isengard

Sauron

Easterlings & Southrons

Ringwraiths

Dwarves

Gondor

Rohan

Men of the North

Elves

Game in Progress