Every 100 Games Series - Qwirkle

My 3,100th game played was Qwirkle. Well, to be exact it was something like 3,098, but since I’d already reviewed Invasion, I went with Qwirkle. A couple thoughts I’ve just had. First, I should really finish my Geeklist that shows all these “Every 100 Games Series” reviews. Second, I should come up with a standard starting paragraph, now that I’m 31 reviews in.

Picture taken by toulouse on BoardGameGeek.com

My First Experience

My first and only play of Qwirkle came at the end of the 2012 Regional Warhammer: Invasion tournament. We were waiting on the tourney to end and so a few of us who had been eliminated, picked the game up, learned the rules and played. Since then I’ve downloaded Mind Feud on the iOS, which is essentially Qwirkle plus some double & triple scoring similar to Scrabble. So my plays of the game are somewhere closer to 12 or 13 if you count Mind Feud.

Picture taken by GeoSmores on BoardGameGeek.com.

The Components

The game comes in a smaller white box, with a bag, and nice chunky wooden black pieces. There is no board, which I really like, so you just lay your tiles out on the table. These tiles probably should be called blocks instead of tiles. They are really thick, so thick in fact you can just set them on edge and display them in front of you, so that you do not even need a tile display that might come in a game like Scrabble or Rummikub. Each of these tiles has 1 of 6 different types of images that are in 1 of 6 colors. I believe there are three of each tile, so you have 108 different tiles. 

Picture taken by Angry Duck on BoardGameGeek.com

The Game Play

On their turn a player can do one of 2 things. They can trade out any number of tiles from their hand (which consists of 6 tiles) for that many tiles from the bag or they can play tiles. When a player plays tiles they have to be the played so they attach to a column or row that is already in play (think Scrabble here). They can play as many tiles as they’d like, but they all have to share either the same color or same shape.  When adding to the board, you cannot ever have the same shape & color appear twice in a row or column of six. So in other words, there cannot be two green circles in a single row or column. Players then score 1 point for each tile in a row or column they added to. If, they put the 6th tile in a row, then they get a “Qwirkle” which is worth an additional 6 points. At the end of their turn, the player draws back up to 6 tiles in their hand. The game ends when 1 person runs out of tiles and can’t draw anymore. That person gets a bonus 6 points.

What I Think

I was pleasantly surprised by this game. I knew that it had recently won the German Game of the Year award, despite being an American designed game from 2006. I also had some friends that had recommended to me. I figured I wouldn’t like it so much, with it being so much like Scrabble, if you hadn’t already gathered that from this review. However, I DO like it. The reason I like it much more than I like Scrabble are two fold. First, as I already mentioned, there is no board. You just build how you see fit. The added “board” in the iOS version actually is a detriment I think. The second reason and the biggest is that I don’t have to know some crazy, unheard of, and unique word that uses a “Q” & “Z” that lands on a triple score. I just make plays and try not to set my opponent up to make plays. But if I do set them up, at least they aren’t score a bajillion more points that I will be able to my next turn. I heartily recommend Qwirkle to any person, gamer or non-gamer, because I think it’ll go over well with family with young kids, gamers looking for a 30 minute experience, or old Aunt Milly who you can’t ever beat at Scrabble because she knew the word “quixotry”. I don’t even know what that means or want too.

Okay, if you look it up and want to tell me, I’d listen.

Geekway to the West - 2012

Each year I go to three different conventions. IndyCon in March, Geekway to the West in May, and GenCon in August. All three are great fun, but for different reasons. IndyCon is great, because I'm so involved in putting it on. I feel like I "own" a part of it and enjoy seeing other people having a great time thanks in a small part to the work that I do in helping Dave organize the convention. GenCon is great, because of just the huge spectacle that it is. Crazy people walking around as zombies and Storm Troopers, with new release games, and a huge party of gamers. Then there is Geekway, where I get more gaming in over a four day stretch than any other time of the year.

I first started to go to Geekway in 2009, I knew absolutely nobody there, and had a great time. I've been coming back ever since. This year was the last year I'll have a place to stay in St. Louis, so next year I will have to make the decision if I should get a hotel room or not. I'm leaning towards, "YES!" If you enjoy board gaming, want to play a lot of games for cheap, and live withing a days drive of St. Louis I suggest you attend this event. 

Also, this event reminds me again of how awesome my wife is, since she lets me basically disappear for 4 days,  and never complains about it at all. She is awesome like that.

I put up a Geeklist about my Top 5 experiences at Geekway here: Geekway to the West #3 - With Pictures!

Here is the conventions website if you want to check it out: http://geekway2west.com/

Guild of Thieves Update #4

It's been about 4 months since I last updated you on Guild of Thieves, the game I'm designing, or at this point I should say have designed! The game rules are pretty much in their final format, though I'm still open for suggestions and tweaks, and still have a prototype copy loaned out to a new blind play-tester. Well, he can see, it's just that he never has played before and I won't be there to explain.

The last time you saw me, I was trying to figure out if I'd leave the Jewels in the game, but now I know. The answer is yes, but not really. I'm changing the Feast to Jewels, because to me it seems much more likely for a thief to steal some jewels than a feast, unless of course it is a really fat thief, which means he is likely not the best thief. You see my conundrum. I'm then getting rid of the old "Jewels" which is the item that is worth more points the more of them you have. That will be part of the expansion "Prince Ali Goes Bad" coming in December 2012! I'm joking...or am I?

I was hoping to take a completed game to Geekway to the West next week for their design contest, but with the busy schedule of life, it just won't happen. However, I still might take a prototype that I have, even though it doesn't look very good. Jeremy, the artist and graphic design guy on this project, who has willingly given up his own time free of charge to complete this project is closer than ever with being done. He sent me some sent me some of the final version of the cards or almost final versions! Personally, my favorite is the Magic Carpet (though I think I just realized I probably should change the name to Flying Carpet, since all these items are supposed to be magical). I'll post them below, but please don't get so excited you wet yourself, this is just a game folks. A game that hopefully will be available for sale in June of 2012 through the Game Crafter.

 

 
 

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: