Settlers of Combinatorics

And it's still the case that nobody will want your damn sheep!

Want to play every possible game configuration in (Settlers of) Catan? It will take a while. According to Austin, Kronenthal, and Miller's "Settlers of 'Catanbinatorics,'" that's 20,369,419,560 games. https://t.co/LMF8P9Gpfi pic.twitter.com/nzqiPUshVn

— Dave Richeson (@divbyzero) June 25, 2019

Some Really Old Boardgames

Take a look at this article about some really old boardgames (and one from 1940), including one from the 17th century, that are in a collection in the Houghton Library.

I like the cover of "The Magic Ring". :)

Board game aficionados! We dug through @HoughtonLib's archives to find the oldest games in their collections — some created over 300 years ago https://t.co/jbg55aHuyM

— Harvard University (@Harvard) March 17, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Gabrielle Birkman.)

Honesty in Board-Game Boxes

Yup.

I don't agree with all of these, but they're damn funny—especially the one for Connect 4.

I Moved the Sheriff (But I Didn't Move the Depute)

Today I tried the game Colt Express. Gratuitous "I shot the sheriff." jokes are an integral part of this game.

This game is fun. One can induce a bit of Robot Turtles-style 'off by one' screwage of one's opponents. And other screwage.

Although we didn't get to play with it, one of the Thirsty Meeples employees told us about this sweet expansion.

Colt Express is pretty simple to learn and is fun — and appropriate players can add the right type of humor — so it has my recommendation.

"Awesome" Old Board Games

Here is a list of some "awesome" (and, in many ways, justifiably forgotten) board games. I remember some of them!

Several of these are "awesome", and some of them (like number four...) go directly into the "What were they thinking?" category.

(And as some of you will remember, I saw a used copy of the "Where's the Beef?" game in Columbus a few months ago.)

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts for Duran Duran on Facebook.)

"Eldritch Horror" (Tabletop Game)

I tried the game Eldritch Horror last night. It came out in 2013 and was "inspired by" Arkham Horror, which I bought all the way back in 2005 when it first came out and have enjoyed immensely. (I also own the Dunwich Horror expansion to Arkham Horror.)

Yesterday's game was eventful. My first investigator got turned into a Deep One (and was DEVOURED), and we all — including my second character — died horribly when Azathoth awoke, and the world got DEVOURED. (I love the name of the event — which involved DEVOURING by name — and the front of the card describes flipping it over to resolve the event. And then you flip over the card, and everybody just dies horribly, with the world along with it.) But I feel fine.

And getting Innsmouth Look on the back of the Curse card when I was expecting the karmic reversal of the Curse going away that someone else got previously — oh, right, the backs of the cards might be different... I missed that part — and then turning into a Deep One and being DEVOURED instead of merely taking a lot of sanity damage if I were not near the sea was a rather unexpected turn of events.

In so many ways, the dice were simply not on my side last night.

All in all, it was a rather enjoyable first game of Eldritch Horror.

Note: Eldritch Horror was inspired by Arkham Horror (as stated explicitly on the box), but there are substantive differences. It plays a bit like a streamlined Arkham Horror, and it too is a cooperative game, but the authors also took innovations from some AH expansions and added their own. The authors of Eldritch Horror are also different from those of Arkham Horror, but there are enough similarities that it is necessary to cite AH explicitly as inspiration. Once one gets through setup (which was annoying, though I'm sure I'll become better with practice), it is a more streamlined game overall. There were eight years of experience and feedback to use to help with that. There are some innovations that I think are particularly good, though some of them appeared in some (probably very different) form in various Arkham Horror expansions.

Lab Wars

The science-themed game Lab Wars sounds very amusing, though possibly a bit too close to home.

On a similar note, Dreaming Spires is a board game that allows one to take control of an Oxford College's governing body and drive the College into the ground. Oh wait...

Kickin' it Old School: "Where's the Beef?" Board Game

I was at a store with random old geek and gaming stuff, and one of their display cases contained a used copy of the Where's the Beef? board game (which I forgot existed).

There were also things like wax packs of Topps Three's Company collectible cards. (I had seen those before.)

Ars Technica: "The Best New Board Games We Played in 2015"

Ars Technica has posted an article about their favorite new board games they played in 2015.

I am posting this for a specific reason: take a look at the designers of the game Roll for the Galaxy by Rio Grande Games! It's Caltech's very own Wei-Hwa Huang (from my era). Very cool!

(Tip of the cap to Nevin Liber.)

Pandemic: Legacy

I just read part of a blurb about Pandemic: Legacy.

Pandemic is a really good choice to try something like this out on a game. (Note that I stopped reading the article in the middle because of spoilers. I wanted to read enough to be intrigued, so I suggest browsing through the beginning to see why I think this is interesting and then stop reading.)

I did once play Risk: Legacy, and this happened. (The person who was running the game as a facilitator noticed exactly what I was doing. I was playing the false peaceful person the whole game, and then I cashed in all my cards and blitzed over the entire world in one turn while annihilating everything and everyone in my path --- and winning, of course.)

Monopoly Streets in Real Life

Here are what the streets in Monopoly (in the Atlantic City version, which is the original distributed version) look like in real life.

(Tip of the cap to Shahram Shokrian.)

New 'Board Game Cafe' in Oxford!

I walked a few minutes away from home to get some food, and it turns out that a 'board game cafe' called Thirsty Meeples just opened up last week. It's only about a 7-minute walk from home and right near one of my coffee places! (Though I managed not to notice it the past several days when I went to get coffee...) Sweet!!

On a similar note, I am going to a board-game group meetup today. The group is called 'Oxford on Board'. I found out about this from my postdocs right before my trip to Korea, and I really ought to have found out about this group before (considering that it has existing for a few years). Tonight is the first time that I am going to one of their events. Better late than never, I suppose.

Anyway, it looks like my board-game options have expanded a decent amount, so I'm very much looking forward to more gaming! Of course, there is still the issue of my lack of time when term is in session (and lots of travelling when it isn't --- and, often, I suppose even when it is), but it's really great to see my board-game options expanding. More gaming for me!!

2007: The Year in Gaming

How's this for a belated blog entry. I should have written this one in December.

Now it's time to discuss the year in gaming. First of all, here is what I wrote in 2006.

Let's break this down by category:


Board (and card) games:

For one thing, I played Ticket to Ride correctly for the first time. I enjoyed the game both with the correct way of playing and with the incorrect one, and I was even still able to apply graph theory intuition when playing it correctly. I'd like to get a UK edition of the game because I've been on several of the routes now.

I also played the British Isles Edition of Apples to Apples, which contains a mixture of cards that could be in any version of the game and some that are specialized for this one. Among the latter, I now understand a few things but most of them are still almost completely lost on me. Obviously, this game is awesome.

Another expansion I tried is the Dunwich Horror Expansion to Arkham Horror, which makes the game even more complicated/involved than it was before. One new featured that I very much appreciated was the opportunity to develop psychological problems when one runs out of brains unless automatically going to Arkham Asylum. Mmmmm... braaaaaaaains.

Speaking of braaaaaaains, I also played the non-zombie version of Fluxx. One way to describe this---who was the person who described it this way? It wasn't me...---is as 1000 Blank White Cards with rules. It was extremely fun, even without the zombies.

Another card game I played is Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot, which is an expandable card game. It is like the game Nuclear War, except with bunnies. The game dragged on the couple of times I played it, and I wonder if some of the expansions help.

I also tried Blokus this year. That was pretty fun.

I'm sure there are other board/card games I tried for the first time this year. Some of them that I have tried pretty recently are coming to mind, but I'm pretty sure that all of those date from 2006 or earlier.


Role-playing games:

Let's see... I played in two one-shots in March when we visited Mylanda in Florida. I played a somewhat monkly kobold (though he actually had one level each in three different classes) in a D & D game. I'd really like to spend a lot more time playing as this character (which I was really getting into), but given the game's one-shot nature, that probably won't happen. My die rolls when creating the stats for this character were just about the best rolls I've ever seen. The other one-shot was a Serenity game that Zifnab ran. (Mike)^2 was able to participate via video iChat, and this was done in quite a clever manner. (We were the field team and he was back at the ship. It worked quite well, though I think my feet occasionally got in the way of my laptop's camera.)

After I got to Oxford, I played in a Vampire game without vampires. We used the psychic powers expansion book, and my character specialized in seeing and interacting with dead people. The setting was contemporary Oxford and it was interesting to play in a world that was basically my current world with a fantastical twist. I believe that there will be a sequel to this minicampaign at some point.


Console games:

I played Guitar Hero II for the first time in January when I visited Travis and worked up my skill level from needing to play even the early songs at easy to being able to pass Freebird at medium. (I had seen the game before but hadn't played it, and I had played a total of one or two songs on the original Guitar Hero.) I also spent a bunch of time playing this in Pasadena and its environs at various times throughout the rest of the year. When I visited Travis again in August, we worked our way through Guitar Hero: Rock the 80s, although only a few of the songs were ones I really liked. (Unfortunately, they didn't include too many new wave songs. I did, however, find out just how much knowing a song really well helps one with this game.)

More recently, I played a lot of Rock Band when I visited the gang in December and January. The guitar stuff was more of the same (though it was cool to play using the spiffy perky goth guitarist who I designed), and I was trying to make the transition from medium to hard (which I am finding to be extremely difficult!). I can do some songs on hard with effort, and I can now actually get 100% on some songs in medium, which is quite a far cry from where I was in January 2007. The rest of the gang is much better than I am, but I'm happy with improving my ability compared to what I was before. It doesn't matter how I compare with other people. Playing the drums was really fun, and I am currently making headway through the songs on medium level. As I wrote in a separate blog entry a while back, the thing that makes Rock Band special is rocking out with ones friends. That's what I liked best about the game. I wouldn't get close to as much out of it playing on my own.

I got my Wii in 2007, so I've spent some time with a few of those games. I did some Wii sports, which is basically a tech demo. It serves it's purpose, however. My favorite game on it is tennis, and the boxing game is quite exhausting (especially when one is punching madly before the game actually starts! Oops...). Making a Mii is pretty cool as well. Mine actually resembles me quite a bit, and my collection now includes Miis that several of my students (and a few of my colleagues) have made. I tried Rayman Raving Rabids, which has lots of minigames. There was one that I just couldn't handle at all (sometimes, one has to just recognize that something isn't working), but watching others play the game and the associated sense of humor was a pretty fun diversion. But there were only a couple of minigames that was interested in actually playing.

I have now beaten the boss in Super Paper Mario, though I still want to do the pipe of 100 battles (or whatever its called) and the 100 consecutive battles against the Samar people (I died at the 90th battle yesterday... bloody Hell!). As with prior games in the series, this one has an excellent sense of humor. Also, Mario's special 3D ability is awesome and the allusions to things like Flatland (the first world is called "Lineland" and, for instance, has fake mathematical equations in the background), nerd culture (Francis is awesome), and more were really great! I'm also almost done with Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'm on the final boss battle (which I tried once and failed), and I plan to do the Cave of Ordeals after that. It's not a huge jump over recent Zelda games, but there were some very clever additions (like Spiderlink and the ball-and-chain weapon). My copy of Super Mario Galaxy arrived, but I haven't technically tried it yet. I will soon. Also on the docket (finally!) is Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which will arrive pretty soon after its layover in Pasadena.

I tried a bunch of console games and a couple of card games at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). (See my old blog entry on that.) It's not really worth getting into the various details because there would be too much to write to cover all the things I tried. I beat one of the designers at an incomplete version ('You can't play as that monster yet.') of a Godzilla game for the Wii. That game wasn't very good, but I pretty much just tried it because it was there. Another of the many games I tried was a Wii version of ping pong, which I had previously tried for the XBOX 360. I prefer playing in real life.


Portable games:

I also played a couple of Nintendo DS games, and I am eagerly anticipating playing the DS version of N+, which I tried at PAX for a different system and which was most recently slated to come out two days ago. (I plan to pick it up while I'm in LA, assuming it's actually come out.) I have done a bit of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, although I have lately been concentrating on my console games. I also played some Puyo Pop Fever (Did I actually buy this in 2006? I don't remember anymore.), whose computer players are ludicrously challenging in the player-versus-player mode! (Somebody should have playtested that better, because it reached ridiculous levels.) Of course, I am quite pleased to have a DS version of Puyo Puyo. "Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!" Also, I think I spent some time playing New Super Mario Brothers last year, but that was more of a 2006 thing. I ought to finish that game at some point...


Computer games:

I played some Civilization IV and decided that I really like cultural victories. That's about it. (Does Scrabulous count?)



I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing, but this entry is already way too long, and I should have written it in December anyway...

Ice cream and games night with my Somerville students

Today I hosted my first ice cream and games night with my students in Somerville. The term starts tomorrow, so the timing was good (for example, there are no problem sheets due tomorrow). I wanted to do this last term, but I needed my stuff to arrive and for me to unpack first. By then, we were at the end of the term and the only possible day would have conflicted with a Somerville party. That obviously wasn't going to happen.

The inspiration for this is twofold: (1) The basic idea comes from the good old 'pie and ice cream' nights the RAs use to host in Lloyd; (2) I want to get to know my students better in a different environment---especially the students that I haven't had in tutorial sessions---and it's also good for them to get to know me in a different environment (seeing what music I listen to, what games I play, discussing non-academic stuff, etc.); (3) I remember the stories of Richard Feynman getting to know students, that's something I would like to bring to Oxford, and living in residence at Somerville gives me a mechanism to actually be able to do this.

Oxford prides itself on having a history of close interactions between students and faculty/tutors. I see some of this, and it's certainly much more common to see students and faculty hanging out than it is in the States but much of it seems to have lapsed a bit from how I have heard it was in the days of yore. (Maybe it wasn't really that way, but some of the whispers from yesteryear that have made it into books and movies suggest that it sometimes has been.) Thus, I am hoping that we can have some more social gatherings like this among the Somerville math crowd during my tenure here. Faculty and students are definitely much closer here than they are at the other places I've been---it's basically along the lines of what I have seen at several of the liberal arts schools in the States.

In addition to the ice cream (from the really awesome local place across the street), we had juice and some other junk food. We also played some Monopoly (the Dodger's edition, so I could wax poetic about my favorite team just a little bit as well) and took advantage of the fact that I now have four Wii controllers by playing some Wii Sports. Several of my students made Miis; a few of them were good resemblances and a couple of them were absolutely hilarious. (I can copy these directly onto my computer with a USB stick, right? I want to post them if it isn't too annoying to do so.) I encouraged them to make Wiis of "Somerville personalities" (though I didn't mention any names).

Overall, I think the night was a great success and I very much look forward to having more of them.

First Oxford games night

This evening, I had my first games night at Oxford. It took forever and a day to get my stuff and it also took additional time to unpack stuff, so it took me a while to have my first games night at Oxford. The turn-out included only a few people, which isn't that surprising considering it's the first day after the end of the term and I think some people wanted to just chill out at home quietly (and others may have already had plans, because I only gave a few days warning without checking availability and it is Saturday night). But we had fun --- we played Wii Sports (mostly tennis), the British Isles version of Apples to Apples, and Trivial Pursuit (where I finally sealed my team's victory with an answer of Three Mo' Tenors). Oh, and yes, my Wii is set up. Then I'll get my two new controllers when I'm home. (They've supposedly arrived at Lemming's place now, though he hadn't seen them, so I may have to go bust some Amazon kneecaps to see what's up.) And maybe I'll even have Super Smash Bros to play with the various people who have expressed a desire to come here and play. Mah Jongg games are also in the works, and I haven't had a chance to play that since I was at Cornell.

Games!

Continuing my pattern of saying what happens somewhere stays somewhere and then proceeding to describe aspects of my trip...

Gazebo and I went to the baseball game between the A's and Angels today. The game was fast-paced and low-scoring, with the A's winning 2-1. There was some entertainment at the end with some Oakland A's fans (especially a kid) getting into it a bit with some Angel fans who had come to the game. Of course, this doesn't even hold a candle to the heckling we Dodger fans received in San Fransisco's home ballpark a few years back. (Also, Gazebo didn't have to use any pepper spray on this particular trip to the ballpark. Well, he hasn't used on at other times either, but there's one time that I bet he wished he had some...) Alas, Gazebo's old blog entry doesn't describe the loud Giants-fan child and the react he got from a certain visiting Dodgers fan (which was a truly spectacular example of fans interacting with each other)...

We also went to Games of Berkeley today. I bought the expected prize, which is the Dunwich Horror expansion to Arkham Horror. (The King in Yellow expansions didn't sound appealing, and I definitely don't want the Pharoah expansion...) One guy behind the counter asked me how long Arkham Horror games take for me. I answered that, and then I felt compelled to tell him about a certain game of Munchkin. I also considered buying Apples to Apples: Jewish Edition because I know so many of the private jokes in there. (The sample nouns on the cover included "Jewish mother" and "bris" and the sample adjectives included "misunderstood". They had the usual irreverant humor, and I was pleased to see the expected inside jokes. I approve!) However, the box also gave me the impression that the product included an element of proselytizing, so I decided not to buy it for now. However, I think it would make a great gift for certain friends and relatives, and I would very much like to play the game with other people who would appreciate the inside jokes. (I'd play it with non-MOTs as well, but I'm not sure how much they'd get out of it because some things might get too specific.)

Gazebo also picked up Guitar Hero: Rock the 80s. Unsurprisingly, the fraction of songs I know well on this version of the game is much higher than on other versions. (Plus, I like more of the songs!) Also, I get to have more Comic Book Guy moments: The sound-alike for the Scorpions lead singer kind of fails and the version of the song "Radar Love" is inspired by the White Lion cover of the much better original version, which Golden Earing recorded in the 70s.

In the meantime, my personal life is still leaving me in a general state of anger/bitterness and with an increased cynicism that I used to think was all but impossible for me (hadn't I already reached the "pinnacle" of that?). It's a good thing that I'm good at putting my game face on and working/hanging out with friends to get things out of my mind. "Hooray" for iron will and practice from my rotten childhood...

Killer Bunnies (and the Quest for the Magic Carrot)

I played one of my new games, Killer Bunnies (and the Quest for the Magic Carrot) with Gazebo and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The game is for 2-8 players, and I'm really looking forward to trying it with more players. It should be a lot more fun with several people. The game is a non-collectable expandable card game, and I definitely want to get the expansions, some cards of which are referenced in the cards I have.

I'm hoping to have a game night soon (hopefully next weekend).

New games + upcoming podcast

I browsed through Games of Berkeley today and bought a new frisbee and two new games: 25 Words or Less (which I had tried to find previously for a while but failed and didn't buy at Games of Berkeley on one previous occasion because I didn't want to add stuff to my luggage---then I couldn't even find it online for a couple of years before eventually forgetting about it) and Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. The latter seems to have a sense of humor very much along my lines, but we'll see when I play it. (Of course, this does mean I'm going to have another games night soon.) They had the Dunwich Horror expansion set and I briefly considered getting that, but I decided I was spending enough there for one day and I would rather get completely new stuff. (And this will take up some room in my suitcase...) They also had a new 80s edition of Trivial Pursuit, which would be very fun for me but I'm not currently surrounded by people who like to play Trivial Pursuit, so that didn't seem like a worthwhile purchase. I could have spent quite a bit longer in the story if I really wanted to be thorough: I didn't look through the entire stock of games carefully and I basically didn't look at the RPGs at all. Another time...

Gazebo and I were also last-minute guests on an episode of Berkeley Groks that was recorded today. I'll let you know when the podcast is available. (The podcast for each episode goes online right around when the episode airs.) To say our session needs heavy editing would be kind.

2006: The Year in Gaming

Hmmm... I just updated the title of my reading year-end review to reflect the fact that it's for 2006 rather than 2005.

So, let's get to the gaming. I don't actually play a huge number of games, so this won't take took long. My Wii games will be discussed in my 2007 year-end review (and perhaps in individual reviews as well). I have Wii Zelda sitting on my table, but I don't currently have a way to play it at home.

Let's break this down by category:

RPGs: This has been on hiatus for a while, but I look forward to both campaigns and one-shots. I'm thinking of starting a Dragonlance campaign once I'm in Oxford, but first I will need to find people with whom to game. I still need to fully design and run a version of the Cheesegrinder. (Additionally, I am tempted to see if I can stay with a friend around labor day and then fly off to Atlanta and participate in DragonCon. Or I could go to a more local convention. But I haven't been to a Con since Labor Day 2004 and I want to go to one.)

Board (and card) games: Well, I spent a bunch of time playing old favorites and I also had a chance to try some new ones. 1000 Blank White Cards is nice quick fun -- maybe I can convince people at conferences to play that -- and You've Been Sentenced is also really good (though our rule modifications improved a couple aspects of the game quite nontrivially). The D & D board game is another new one from 06, and the card games I've tried (in 05 and 06) that others own are also going strong. (There's the Uno on crack and that bean game.) Ticket to Ride was very fun, though I have yet to play it correctly, so I'll reserve judgement on the correct way of playing the game. We played a block game at Jorian's on Newton's b-day that I enjoyed quite a bit, and I've tried some other new games as well over the past year. Oh, I should definitely mention Lemming's game with paper dice. I can't remember what it's called, but that's another standout. As for individual gaming "moment" of the year, that's got to be the marathon game of Munchkin with the end game scenario that lasted almost an hour (or about 50 minutes after I first promised we'd be done soon because the end game had started). That was an amazing achievement.

Video (and computer) games: There aren't too many to mention. (As I wrote, I have to reserve the Wii ones for next year.) Civ IV is providing the expected addiction, and New Super Mario Brothers (I really need to get back to this...) and Puyo Pop Fever ("Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!") are also very cool. The AI in Puyo Pop Fever kicked the living crap out of all of us in multiplayer even though I think we adjusted the difficulty to maximize our benefit. That was a little ridiculous. The 6-player battle Tetris at Doug's graduation ceremony was extremely memorable, and I seriously need to buy Tetris so we can do some more multiplayer Tetris. Hell, even just with the few of us and no new people, I would still really like to do this because it was that damn fun. I tried a few other games, but none of them really did much for me. I wouldn't mind giving some of them more chances, however. (It's not like I played them for a long time.)


The 2007 outlook is obviously filled with Wii games, starting with Zelda. Additionally, I hope that Super Smash Brothers Brawl, currently slated for a Fall release, comes out before I leave Pasadena because I'd really like to play multiplayer with the gang in person. (I find in-person multiplayer to be much more enjoyable than multiplayer over the internet, even with the exact same people involved in each case. While I'll still have with Smash Bros with the latter situation, fewer bars will be increasing on my end of things.)

Grabaduccia!

Quote of the Day

Well, this was really yesterday's quote of the day, but I was too busy doing numerical simulations of bead chains (damn boundary conditions... though at least I feel less stupid because I found out today it took 6 months for the UCSD people to get the particular boundary condition straight that's been confounding me --- it better take me much less than that amount of time), so I'm presenting it today.

This comes from Electronic Gaming Monthly's review of "Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2" and it wasn't exactly a glowing endorsement, though it amused me: "But once the novelty of a zero-gravity tit simulator wears off---which, for me, was about 30 seconds in---it all gets very unexciting." (Apparently, among the game's numerous problems are its extremely shaky physics.)

On the opposite page is a review of a game of which I had heard that sounds really cool: "Viva Piñata".

In the same issue, the new Zelda was lauded by multiple reviewers as the best Zelda ever. While I'm obviously going to reserve judgement on that, it makes me want a Wii even more. Sigh. (Of course, I have been getting some work done at night, so I guess this has been good for my productivity. Granted, some of this has been because a certain problem is bugging me, so I'm not sure if even Zelda would be able to counteract this serious a case of OCD. I have a new toy in Civ IV and it couldn't draw me away from the work that was getting under my skin.)