December, 2007 | Luis' Illustrated Blog

The Settlers of Catan vs Carcassonne

December 29, 2007 in ANSWERING COMMENTS, BOARD GAMES, MY WEEK, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

Before I begin, I would like to say one thing,

THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Hasn’t failed yet, every time I’m ready to go home, I’m given a scene that has to be done right away. I’ve been coming in at 6:00 am everyday for the last week or so (to avoid traffic). This means that I can leave work at 3:00 pm. Which is awesome. It makes me feel like I’m skipping out on work early. Well, without fail, around 2:45 or so, when I’m looking forward to going home, I always get, either a call, or someone comes by my desk with news about an emergency scene.

“Hey Luis, what are you working on right now?”
“I’m working on Scene 1, Sequence D4 05A.”
“Well you’re going to need to put that aside right now because we just found out that this scene has a big mistake in it and it needs to be fixed right away. It needs to be done by tonight because it’s going to be shipped tomorrow.”
“Oh…okay…”

Then I end up working for the next four hours, as fast as I can trying to get the scene done. It really stinks. At least it means I get overtime which is good. At least I have a job.

So far, as far as I can tell, the ride stuff is really funny. I’ve been working on the little animated vignettes that will be on monitors while you wait in line for the ride.

We got the twenty fourth off this month, so I got to relax. We also get the thirty first off so I’m looking forward to a little more rest.

MY WEEK
Merry Christmas! I had a great Christmas. It was fun. I really enjoyed watching my daughter play with her new toys. It’s great that she got them because it makes my wife’s job a lot easier now that the Munchkin is playing with toys more and not bother her so much. She got this toy vacuum that she walks all over the house with. I wish it was a real vacuum because she would have had the place sparkling clean.

Christmas eve was a great day for me because my wife and I got to play Dungeon Twister while the Munchkin slept (no it’s not Dungeons and Dragons Twister). Dungeon Twister is a two player strategy game where you try to be the first person to get five points. It’s kinda hard to explain so I’ll just put the description of the game from Board game geek:

Dungeon Twister is a 2-player high level strategy game where 2 teams of adventurers with various powers are trapped in a dungeon. The board is composed of 8 rooms that can be moved and rotated by the players. Each turn, a player is able to spend actions to move around the dungeon, pick up and use items, battle with the opponents team, or turn and move the rooms of the dungeon.

The goal is to reach 5 victory points. Points are collected by moving adventurers out of the dungeon or by killing an opponent’s adventurer. Treasures are disseminated across the whole dungeon and will bring the adventurers well-needed powers.

Each player has the same characters, each with different powers. Some run fast, some fight or disarm traps. The cleric heals, magician burns everything in sight and the goblin is so weak that the simple fact of getting him out will bring you two victory points.

Combat and actions are managed via cards. To move, fight, heal or turn a room, you must manage action points obtained by playing cards. Those cards are not drawn but selected from a set of cards by both players. Both players have access to the same panel of cards at the beginning of the game so the game is really about managing the resources and adapting to the changing environment.

Dungeon Twister is the original game in the Dungeon Twister series

Home Page: http://www.dungeontwister.com/us/ (English)

It’s very unique. I’d played it three times before and didn’t understand why people liked it so much. Then I realized I was playing some rules wrong. After playing with the correct rules, I discovered how great the game was. It’s so much fun. It definitely flexes the same brain muscles that chess does. Highly recommend it. Read more about it at board game geek.

ANSWERING COMMENTS

Maria wrote:

I think I’m going to give some of these games a shot. I just can’t decide between Settlers of Catan and Carcassone. I’m leaning towards Carcassone because I’ve been to that area, but frankly, they strike as rather complex. which do you recommend to a beginner that really enjoys the traditional old parlor games and board games because of the structure, but also enjoys the competitive ruthlessness of Risk and Monopoly.

The games seem really complicated only because the mechanics are unfamiliar but they actually aren’t any more complicated than any of the classic games. When I was younger, my brother and I used to play Risk, but we never actually read the rules, we had been taught the game by some other kids we knew. Later in life, I discovered that we were playing the game wrong. About a year or two back I decided to read the rules and found them to be as complicated as any other board game rules. Like I usually do with new board games, I sat down with the game and played a “test game” by myself in order to understand the flow of the game and how it worked. Even having done that, when I actually played the game with someone, I still had the rules out and I referred to them in order to remind me how something was done. Most people don’t have to do this anymore because they played the game so often, it’s ingrained in their brain now. We often forget the first time we were introduced to the classic games and how much effort we had to put into them in order to learn to play them. I’ve found that, usually, the first time playing a new board game is the trickiest time. Especially when the game is at the level of complexity as a game like Risk. The first time I play, since I don’t know the rules, I make mistakes, I’m trying to understand how to best achieve the game objective and it usually takes longer than the game should. The second time, I make far less mistakes and the game flows faster, not only that but I start picking up on strategies to use. By the third time, the game feels like a game I’ve played all my life.

Okay, so Carcassonne vs Settlers. To be honest, Carcassonne is by far the easier of the two games to learn. It’s almost like learning a slightly more involved game of dominos. I could usually teach the game in about five minutes or so. In fact, click on the following link to get the Carcassonne rules so you can see them for yourself:

Carcassonne PDF rules download

You’ll find them less intimidating if you can read them, although it’s trickier to understand the game if you don’t have the game itself to try the rules out with. If you want to play a game of Carcassonne for free on the web, go to asobrain.com you have to register to the site but all you need is a nickname and a password. You don’t even need to put in an e-mail address or your real name. The game is called Toulouse on that site. You can play against an actual person and ask them to show you how to play or, if you don’t feel comfortable doing that, you can create a game and play against computer controlled “bots”. When you make a game, make sure to uncheck the expansion boxes (you don’t need them. You just want regular Carcassonne) On your turn, in order to get a tile, grab and drag the tile from the right hand corner of the screen. In order to rotate the tile press the ALT key down and click the left mouse button. To place a tile you just drag it to were you want it and press the left mouse button. In order to place a Meeple, grab and drag a Meeple from your group of Meeples above the “table” on the screen. The computer does all the calculating for you. This is how I learned Carcassonne before I bought it. If you have an Xbox 360 you can download the game for about five bucks.

Out of the all the “modern” board games I own, Carcassonne has seen the most play time. Not because it’s the best game in my collection, but because it plays just as good with two as with five players, it’s easy to teach, it’s fun and it can be played in about fourty to fourty five minutes (sometimes less).

This isn’t to say that Settlers isn’t an easy game to learn. It’s just that the mechanics are so unfamiliar that it may seem more complicated than it is. The last time I played Settlers, I taught that game in about ten to fifteen minutes. I asked my wife to compare Settlers to a more classic board game to see how complicated she thought Settlers was. She told me she thought the game was as easy to pick up as any of the classic board games and my wife is not a “gamer”.

The majority of people who’ve gotten into playing “modern” board games have done so because they where blown away by how much fun they had playing Settlers. The last two times I played the game was with people who hadn’t played the game before and they caught on to it really quick . They had a really good time. It was a big hit.

Settlers is a really easy game to understand. The point of the game is very simple. The first player to ten points wins.

How do you gets points?
You get points by adding up the value of the things you own on the board (Think Monopoly properties, houses, hotels, and cards).

For every settlement you’ve built (think Monopoly house) you get 1victory point (vp).
For every City you’ve built (think Monopoly hotel) you get 2 vps.
For every Development card you own that gives you a Victory point (think get out jail free card) you get 1 vp.
If you built the longest road in the game (think owning the most Monopoly properties in a row without a break) you get 2 pts.
If you built the biggest army (think holding the most get out of jail free cards) you get 2 pts.

How do you build things and obtain Development Cards?
You build things with resources (think Monopoly money) in the form of cards with pictures of said resources. The resources are: Lumber, Brick, Wool, Wheat, and Stone. Every player gets a “cheat sheet” that tells you what combination of resources you need to make things. For example: One Lumber and One Brick makes a road; two Wheat, and three Stone upgrades a settlement to a city; one Wheat, one Wool and one Stone allows you to pick up a Development card…etc. In the last “phase” of your turn, you can trade any combination of cards that you want into the “bank” in order to build what you want on the board (in accordance to rules limitations).

How do you get resources?
This is the very heart of the game. This is what the game is mostly about. Getting the resources is what makes the game fun. You get resources by:

The roll of two dice.
Trading and bargaining with other players at the table.
Stealing other players resources.

In other words, it’s almost like a party game. It has just about as much player interaction as a Cranium game. If the above three things sound like good, clean, goofy fun (and they are), then you’ll love this game. Settlers is almost a strange combination of a Monopoly game and a party game except that it has a lot more strategy in it.

The first time you play Settlers it might feel a bit long. Have no fear though, the more you play it, the shorter it will get because strategies will begin to develop and players will find ways to be more efficient, and a lot sneakier, in their resource gathering and building.

That’s Settlers in a nutshell. I’m not gonna go into the details of how you roll up resources or how you steal resources from other player here. If you want to try out the game for free on the web, you can download a demo version at:

Yahoo games
MSN games

The rules for the game are on the download page. If you own an Xbox 360, you can download Settlers for about five bucks or so.

A word of caution. These board games are not nearly as fun on the computer as they are around the table. I’d only use these free versions of Settlers and Carcassonne to familiarize myself with the games and decide what game would be best to get. Eventually you’re gonna want to have both.

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Universal Studios Simpsons ride

December 21, 2007 in ANSWERING COMMENTS, BOARD GAMES, FAMILY, MY WEEK, PODCASTS, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS
Okay so, it turns out that I got laid off the Simpsons show but I’m still not out of a job just yet. Wednesday, the day after I got laid off, I went back to work because I got put on the Simpsons’ Universal Studios Ride. As it happens, the Simpsons’ writers have discovered that the ride is something that they can actually write for because it’s not a movie or a t.v. show. This means that all the writers have set their eyes on the ride and have begun re-writing the heck out it, seemingly, just because it gives them something to do. Everyone that was working on the ride until now was having a hard time of it but it was getting done and it was going to meet it’s deadline. Not anymore. Now, because of all the re-writes, it’s in huge trouble. How much trouble? I wasn’t even laid off yet, nor was I done with my work, when they called me and asked me to pick up ride stuff so I could start working on it as soon as I was done with the show. On the one hand this is good because it gives me a little more work to do. On the other hand, it’s only for about two more weeks and it’s been as chaotic and stressful as working on the Simpsons movie. If a fact, I feel like I’m on the movie all over again. Speaking of the movie, The Simpsons Movie DVD is out now. (See how I did that?)

Meanwhile the scenes I worked on for Lance’s crew were just insane. I hadn’t worked on so many complicated scenes in a row EVER. They were driving me crazy. They were just so hard. I’m really tired. I need a break. I’m almost looking forward to being laid off…almost.

MY WEEK
So, there is nothing worse then Internet trouble. Our Internet connection wasn’t working for a couple of days this week. We got it fixed but our router isn’t working right now and switching computers is a big pain. Mostly because every time we switch computers, the modem stops working. We have to unplug the modem for a minute and make sure the computer is turned off for it to work with the new computer we plug it up to. At least it’s better than not having Internet at all.

FAMILY
I would like to say a big Happy Birthday to my niece Carolinita. She celebrated her birthday this weekend with a fun little party. My baby girl had a really good time at the party. We ended up having to leave a little early (even though I didn’t really want to) because we needed to see a sick friend (it took us two and a half hours to get to our sick friend’s place that day. That really stunk). I got Carolinita Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers. I own regular Carcassonne and it’s a big hit. It’s a simple game where you score points by laying down little tiles that, by end of the game, makes up a big map of Carcassonne that you created yourself and is different every time you play. I got her Hunters and Gatherers instead of regular Carcassonne because I’ve been hearing, a lot lately, that Hunters and Gatherers is a better game. I also heard it’s an even easier game to understand. I hope she likes it. She’s really into Cranium games right now and may not be too into anything else. Especially since the last present I got her was Hey! That’s My Fish!, which I think intimidated her because of it’s abstract, tactical nature. Luckily, even though Carcassonne can be played very competitively, you can’t really tell when you first start playing it and therefore it’s easier and much more fun to get into.

PODCAST
So I was listening to the Rosary Army Podcast #199 and Greg was talking about comics and video games and I just couldn’t help myself, I went on their forums and started a Comics and Games folder. I’ve been writing in that thing all week. For a while, there were only a handful of posts in it that weren’t mine. I was just having a conversation with myself most of the time hogging up the folder. I guess I just like to read my own writing. I must have the biggest ego ever. Pretty pathetic. At least I’ve discovered that there are other people, who listen to Rosary Army out there that play some of the board games that I write about. Also, the people that have written about the comics they read, have made me want to pick those specific comics up (which is bad because I can’t afford to). In any case, little by little other people are making comments in the folder. Hope it keeps up. Don’t want the folder to become my next blog.

Meanwhile Rosary Army podcast #200 is just NUTS! It’s a musical. They did a really great job with it. Go check it out.

Congratulations on 200 episodes guy!

BOARD GAMES
Just thought I’d throw this out there in case you wanted a twenty minute modern board game 101 class. I got this from Board games with Scott. Enjoy:

ANSWERING COMMENTS

Mike wrote:

Sorry to hear you are without income soon Luis. That’s not something that could easily happen here, as you probably know we live in a ‘welfare state’ and are pretty well protected against things like these. Trust me, it has its downsides as well. Of course if you are self employed like I am, then you just have to make sure you have money in the bank to cover for lesser times. Being without (enough) money has its upsides though: when it returns, you appreciate it a lot more 🙂 Board games are easily to get here. We have this Dutch factory called Jumbo that no doubt is part of the reason for the popularity of board games. Cultural heritage must be another one. It’s just fun to do something that involves the whole family, whether you’re 7 or 77.

I agree that being without money helps you appreciate it a lot more once you have some again. Another thing it helps you do is prioritize what’s important and what’s not. Also, it helps you enjoy the good things you already have instead of looking around for the next big thing. Personally, all I really need is enough money for the mortgage, the bills, and food. My wife and I have been talking and planning about this and we’ve actually discovered that we might be able to get by with enough money for this stuff without losing too much from our savings for a few months. Hopefully the strike won’t last that long.

Your board game cultural heritage is has been getting “exported” to the U.S. since Settlers of Catan came over here. European board games have a different flavor to the traditional U.S. Games. 90% of the board games I own are translated European games. The European games have become so popular that there are many new American games that have begun adopting their game mechanics. There is even a new Monopoly game that has done this called Monopoly – Tropical Tycoon DVD Game. Tom Vasel from The Dice Tower podcast (one of the best board game podcasts out there and I highly recommend it) thinks that it’s the best Monopoly game out there.

My sister Elsie wrote:

Hi my brother! I heard about the Christmas decorating little get together. Bummed I wasn’t there 🙁 So happy that the Munchkin is feeling better. Goodness me! It took her forever to get her little teeth, I guess they waited to come out until her head and body could kinda catch up with the enormity of her teeth 😉 I so looooove the pics! especially the booger one. Boogers have never looked so good, tee hee. Oh, and those hidden ornaments…*sigh* poor little guys, they are now officially affected for life. I hope that the writer’s strike clears up sooner than later. I hope that everyone gets what they deserve. What an terrible time to be left jobless! I’m just starting my new job and I haven’t worked for 3 weeks, and won’t really get paid until next year, so I kinda know….it totally sucks! I know that it will be hard to keep up your blog, with all the different transitions and the like but hey, I’m sure we all would love to hear what’s up with you 😉 I love you!!!! your sister li.

We really missed you at the party Li, but of course Juan and Deborah didn’t make it either so you shouldn’t feel too sad.

As far as everyone getting what they deserve from the writer’s strike…to quote Shakespeare in my favorite play, Hamlet:

“God’s bodykins, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?”

I’m very happy about you new job. I wish you all the best with it and I hope you enjoy it very much.

Even after I get laid off I will still continue to blog. I’m just going to have to come up with a special time to do it. Hopefully I can get my scanner to work, but if I can’t I’ll think of something.

I love you and I miss you.

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Writer’s strike got me! Decorating trees, Board gaming comments

December 14, 2007 in ANSWERING COMMENTS, BLOGS, BOARD GAMES, FAMILY, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

The writer’s strike, strikes again! On Tuesday we found out that an entire crew was sent off into the limbo that is hiatus. That is to say, they got laid off that day. Director Bob Anderson didn’t have any more work to give them and they had finished all they could. So the studio didn’t have any other choice but to put them on temporary hiatus until the strike is over.

Funny thing is, I found this out in a crew meeting that was called to tell us that our crew was going on hiatus next Tuesday when we finish our animatic. That right, you read right, after Tuesday of next week, I no longer have a job until the writer’s strike is over. I feel very helpless. I don’t know how long the strike is going to last. I was hoping this wouldn’t happen. I was sort of anticipating this but now that it’s happened, it’s really messed up. We were told we would be able to come back a week after the strike was over but when will that be? How will I be able to pay the bills? There is a lot of things going through my head about what I might be able to do about this. I’ll keep you posted. By next week, depending on what happens with Bongo comics, I may or may not make a few additions to this site. I’m definitely going to add a Pay Pal donations button as soon as I can. One thing that would help is, if you buy a board game or book or something that you see at this site, please do so through this site. Amazon will give me four percent of the purchase for being the “middle man” . In fact, one of the things I was thinking of doing is adding an Amazon store to the site. There, you would be able to buy some of the comics I’ve worked on as well as other things. What do you think? Do you have any ideas?

Please pray for us and pray the strike ends soon. Thanks and Pax Christi.

FAMILY

My wife and I decided to put up an Advent/Christmas tree up this weekend (I called it “Advent/Christmas” since it’s the Advent season right now, not the Christmas season. Technically, Christmas season doesn’t start until the twenty fifth of December and ends on the Feast of the Epiphany, January sixth) I wasn’t really going to put up a tree. I haven’t put up a tree since I moved out of my parents place, but now that I have a one year old daughter (The Munchkin), I thought it would be nice to do something big and visual for her for the Holidays. That way, she could see that there was something different going on this time of year. Then, maybe next year she will recognize that it’s happening again (my Nativity scene, besides being tiny, is packed up somewhere and I can’t seem to find it). I told my wife my idea and she agreed. We then thought it would be nice to invite people over to help do it so the baby saw it as an event. Problem was that it was a bit last minute so everyone had prior engagements. We didn’t even bother asking my brother and his wife because we knew they had their own thing going on since it was their wedding anniversary weekend. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY GUYS!

Another problem came up when The Munchkin came down with a crazy fever early in the week because of her teething. She was miserable. I don’t know why but she’s getting the biggest teeth I’ve ever seen on a baby. They’re huge! They’re bigger than her FACE!

Once they start coming out, she’s in crazy pain and her body reacts with a heavy fever. I mean she gets so hot you could fry an egg on her forehead.

To make matters worse, she also caught a cold. So she was coughing and sneezing and she had boogers all over her face.

It was awful. She didn’t want to eat or anything. We took care of her all week and I adjusted my work schedule to make sure I was able to do so. She had some really bad moments, poor baby.

By the time the tree decorating day came, the worst of the sickness had passed and she was almost her old happy self again. She still had a cold but the fever was gone and she began eating again. My parents were able to show up and some other friends told us they would be coming over also. Since they would not be able to arrive until later, we began the decorating. I put on some Christmas music (since I didn’t have any Advent music) and we began to decorate the tree. We had a fantastic time. There was only the five of us. It was a very intimate family moment. The Munchkin helped put up tree ornaments along with everyone else (And by helping “put up tree ornaments” I mean, The Munchkin would get a ornament and shove it into the tree as deep as she could so you couldn’t even see it anymore. She did this with quite a few and all of them in the same spot. They are now officially “lost” deep inside the tree.)

We had a great time. Later, it turned out that everyone we invited was actually able to come. We had a good little party for The Munchkin and she had a good time, the way I wanted her too. I consider the night a great successes.

By the way, my parents, also celebrated an Anniversary this week. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM ON POP!

ANSWERING COMMENTS

Wow, I got quite a few long comments last post. I like it.Keep them coming.

Mike wrote:

Thanks Luis. No wonders involved, just hard work. I am sure you will say the same about your excellent work. Coincidentally, just yesterday I heard on the news that board games sales went up again here in Holland.

Hi Mike , that’s interesting that you heard on the news that board game sales went up over there in Holland. The fact that you heard anything at all about board games on any news channel or radio station is amazing to me. Here in the U.S., we have a very limited selection of board games to choose from at our large chain stores. The old classics (Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, etc…) that have been around for the last 30 to 40 years (usually themed around the latest hot movie of the month) are pretty much the only things we can get unless you count the handful of new party games here and there. We actually have to go out to specialty board game stores (which I only know of three in all of Los Angeles) in order to get something different. The only other way is to order online. How is it in Holland?

Maria wrote:

I have to respond to the person who thinks board games are for kids. There’s really nothing to be done about that. There are just people who get it, and people who don’t, and the ones who don’t get board games probably never will.

I grew up playing all the classics, and I am glad to say that my kids love board games, too, and that’s really fun now that they are in college and finishing high school. Every once in a while I’ll hear one of them say they have a really cool friend, but they don’t like board games (like it’s a character flaw, LOL–well, it is!)

We are currently conducting a family experiment to see who can make the best “team” when playing games requiring some kind of intuitve communication (we really enjoy Cranium-type games). We’re actually trying to collect empirical data about our skills and how they complement each other. Maybe that’s going a bit too far, but hey, we’re having fun.

Maria, thank you for the response. Your family experiment sounds fascinating and fun. If anything, if just sounds like a darn good excuse to play games with the family. You’ve made gaming a “Meta game”.

I agree that it’s a character flaw when someone doesn’t like board games. It’s almost like their saying, “I’m too grown up for that kind of silly thing” Where’s your sense of good, clean, light hearted fun?!

Of course it’s possible that when someone brings up the topic of board games, they immediately think of Monopoly or Scrabble or some other classic. To be honest, if I was to be asked to play any of these games, I wouldn’t want to play them either. I’m not much on words and spelling, so I wouldn’t want to play Scrabble, even though it’s a fun game (I’d play Qwirkle though. Similar mechanics but with shapes and colors instead of letters), and Monopoly feels like work and it goes on forever. In fact any “Roll and Move ” game that doesn’t provide some sort of tricky decision making (Careers did this pretty well) is just plain dull. It’s like the game plays itself and your just there to roll the dice. Where is the fun in that? Monopoly is only fun when you actually start wheeling and dealing and if I want that kind of game, The Settlers of Catan pretty much provides that kind of interaction and fun from turn one. In the same way as the Cranium games have taken Parlor games , Party Games and board games and evolved them to a more wacky, crazy, fun experience. The other modern board games have taken board games and made them into something completely new.

I think that some people might be able to “get” board games, if only they were presented with the right one for them. Of course there are always the other kind of people who just refuse period but that’s their problem. I don’t know what kind of game your kids have presented to their cool friends but I know that the games that tend to really work well for me are The Settlers of Catan , Ticket to Ride , and Carcassonne . I don’t know if you own any of these. If you don’t, I highly recommend them, if you do, have your kids tried them on their friends? Did they still not like them? If they didn’t, maybe they are wargamers.

In any case I’m going to provide some links that might help anyone learn and familiarize themselves with some of these games:

How to play Settlers of Catan– this link goes to an interactive tutorial that explains how to play The Settlers of Catan .

Other Catan games– This link take you to the main page where you can click on other interactive tutorial of other Catan games.

How to play Ticket to Ride– This link take you to a six minute video at the Days of Wonder site that shows you how to play Ticket to Ride .

Carcassonne: The Discovery review and explanation– This link takes you to a video from “Board games with Scott” (It’s a really geeky video cast that explains some of the modern board games out there). This video explains Carcassonne: The Discovery , which is a Carcassonne variant. It will give you an idea of what the Carcassonne games are like.

By the way, if you don’t own these already, I highly recommend, Lord of the Rings by Reiner Knizia and Shadows over Camelot by Serge Laget and Bruno Cathala . They are both cooperative games (like Cranium Hoopla ). The Lord of the Rings game plays 2-5 players (6 with the Sauron expansion) and Shadows over Camelot plays 3-7 players. They are great games to play if everyone wants to be in one team a fight a common enemy, (namely the game). Maybe I’ll write more about these games some other time. For now I recommend you look them up on Board Game Geek . (By the way, love your blog).

Tao wrote:

Hi Luis,

Amusingly enough, Starlit Citadel is one of the few board game store sponsors to his site. I completely agree with you about his blog, I find it really interesting though sadly don’t have a huge amount of time to read it.

As for board games being for kids, I think in North America, there’s been a trend for board games to become more main stream. Certainly it seems that way especially when you compare it to 10 years ago or even 5.

I’ve never tried Civ the board game myself, though I hear a good translation of computer to video game is Age of Empire III. Definitely one I have to play soon.

Tao , Yehuda’s blog can be addicting once you start reading it. I’m glad you’re one of his sponsors.

As to the board games sales increasing, well, that sounds pretty cool. I wonder if word of mouth is getting around.

Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery board game ROCKS! A while ago, my wife gave me most of the money to go get the game because the first Age of Empire games were some of her favorites and I sure wasn’t going to argue. I loved the game. This is strange of me to say because our first game wasn’t all that great. The game has a really steep learning curve, it’s rather long, and we got rules wrong. I didn’t necessarily have a fantastic time, yet thirty minutes after we finished I became completely obsessed with it. All I could do was think about it and what I would try doing next time I played. In fact, I wanted to play it again that night but it was way to late to play. I still want to play it again. I can’t wait to do so. I will put one disclaimer though. It doesn’t play like a real time strategy game at all. I haven’t played the Age of Empires III video game but I doubt it plays like the board game. Also I wouldn’t recommend it for the newbie board gamer since it’s a bit complicated for people not used to some of these game play mechanics. It throws a lot of them at you at once. It’s similar in complexity to Pillars of the Earth. Still, Age of Empires board game rocks!

Bill wrote:

Funny, I never thought the board game called “chess” was just for kids.

Hey Bill , Yehuda’s blog post took that into account. He wrote:

Board and card games used to be for adults; today, mainstream board games require no more brain than the average 3-6 year old can wield. Games like Sorry. Trouble. Monopoly. Most “games” are not even games but “activities”, such as Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, etc… meant for breaking the ice at parties.

Mystifyingly enough, ask the same person if Chess or Bridge or Go are for children, and he will admit that they are for adults, but that he never thought to group them under the term “board game”. But Bridge and Chess require so much time to learn to play well, and who has that much time?

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Do you think board games are just for kids?

December 7, 2007 in ANSWERING COMMENTS, BLOGS, BOARD GAMES, BOOKS, THE SIMPSONS NEWS

THE SIMPSONS NEWS

So, some of us are really starting to feel the effects of the strike. I, thankfully, am not. At least not yet. I was talking to a fellow co-worker and he told me that the crew he’s on has been told to take their time on their scenes. Once they are done they won’t have any more work and might have to go on hiatus. Yikes!

Meanwhile, the show I’m on still has a lot of work to be done on it. As far as making quota…uh…we’re suppose to finish ten scenes a week. I managed to finish four. They were heavy acting scenes. Still, it looks bad. The next scenes I have to do are riot scenes so I don’t think I’m gonna make quota again. Maybe they won’t mind because of the strike. Guess I better make the scenes look good anyway, just in case. Hope the strike is over soon. Our animatic is due the week before Christmas and without writers, who will give us notes on what to revise? Without revisions I don’t have a job next month.

BLOGS/BOARD GAMES

Do you think board games are just for kids!? You know, it never occurred to me that someone would actually think that way. All this time I’ve been writing about board games and I bet a lot of people just skipped that part of my post because they probably thought I was talking about kids stuff. I bet if I was to talk about animated movies or shows they would probably think the same thing.

The reason I came to realize that people might think this way was because I read a blog article called 60 second primer on modern board games, at Yehuda Berlinger’s blog which I really liked and highly recommend because it gives you a quick over view on modern board games and how people might view them.

This is a really great professional blog. (Boy, I’d love to live off my blog. Bet it takes a lot of work though. I think it’s sooo cool that he’s sponsored by board game stores). I found out about this blog because he had linked to me. The strange thing is, the day I found out about the blog. I was listening to a board game podcast called Into the Gamescape – Show 22. It’s a British based podcast with three guys who generally just talk about the games they play and review them. Well, in the episode I was listening to, the Gamescape guys were talking about a game they played called, “It’s Alive!” (this was about 50:23 minutes into the show). It’s basically a card game about putting together a monster out of body parts a la Frankenstein. I remember because the Gamescape guys forced the winner to yell out “It’s Alive!” in order to win the game because it was in the rules. If he hadn’t done it, they were not going to count his win as a win and they were just going to keep playing. Anyway, I listened to that podcast on the way home in my car and when I got home and thought nothing else about it. Once home, I got on the computer and discovered Yehuda’s site. I went into the “About me” page and found that he was also a board game designer. I clicked to see what game he designed and wouldn’t you know it, it was “It’s Alive!”. That was just the weirdest thing.

In any case, I recommend the blog. The other article I really liked was 100+ Ways to Rejuvenate the Games You Already Own. It’s very cool. Lots of ideas as to how to make an old game new. I own a book called “New Rules for Classic games” but this blog article may very well be better than that book.

BOOKS

Speaking of books, my friend Aimee has a book coming out this month. It’s called “Japan Ai: A tall girls adventure in Japan“. In this book she recounts the story of her trip to Japan. It’s done in a similar way as my “Illustrated trip to Italy” but it’s mostly in color, longer, in book form and, of course, in her own personal style. In fact she told me she got the idea after looking at what I did with my trip to Italy (the same way I got the idea from someone else). It took me a week to do mine but it took her quite a bit longer to do hers, and it shows. Click here to go to the official site for a preview. From what I’ve seen, it looks darn funny and lots of fun. I’m gonna pick it up, I think you should too. It looks like a lot of fun.

PODCAST

Rosary Army has got their “That Catholic Show” DVDs out. Now you can take the show and watch it in really good quality on your TV. They make good Christmas gifts too. Go pick one up at the official “That Catholic Show” site and help support them. Yay!

BOARD GAMES

As I’ve stated before in “Comparing the pros and cons of Video games and Board games” one of my all time favorite video games is Sid Meier’s Civilizations II (I haven’t played the new version, Civilizations IV because the game is too big and my computers can’t handle it). I like the game so much that, about four or five years ago when I discovered that there was a board game made based on the computer game, I bought it. In fact, trying to discover more information about the game before I bought it was the way I discovered Board Game Geek (BGG). Back then, I wasn’t into board games as much as I am now. Anyway, once I got the game, I was very surprised at how many bits came in the game. Well over a hundred different bits and things. The other thing that was crazy was the size of the board, 36” by 46”. The rule book had two sets of rules the Standard Rules and the Advanced Rules. The Standard Rule was a very simplified way to play the game it almost seemed like a game of Risk, which if I wanted to play, I’d just play Risk. The Advanced Rule on the other had was a little more like the computer game. The game gives you the option to play three different games at different lengths. The shortest game lasts two to three hours, the medium length lasts three to four and the longest lasts four to six. Those are really long! At the time that I had bought the game though, I had no one to play it with, so it just sat there collecting dust, even though I really wanted to try it out.

The first time I played the game was with my wife Alesha (at the time, she was just my girlfriend). We played the Standard Version and I wasn’t very impressed, we ended up thinking that the next time we’d play the game, we would play the Advanced game. This happened almost three years later after I married Alesha, and we played the game with my brother-in-law. We made a few mistakes that night:

We played it late at night when everyone was really tired.
Since I hadn’t read the rules in a long time, I was reading them as we went along (This is the worst way to play a board game).
I got quite a few rules wrong.

In any case, the game was taking a really long time and the game required a lot of up keeping that we weren’t prepared for. Not only that, but my brother-in-law decided to play a very militant game which slowed the game down even more because the battle rules of the game aren’t very good and because production of technologies slows down so much the game doesn’t move ahead. Needless to say, we didn’t finish the game and it left me with a bad impression. I didn’t touch the game again.

An e-mail conversation I recently had with a friend of mine has lead me to take another look at the game. After having played the Pocket Civ game (as mentioned in Playing too much, sleeping too little) I thought that maybe I could use some of the rules of that game and maybe “plug” them into the Sid Meier’s Civ board game . I thought that if I did that it might play more like the video game. Thinking about it some more I started thinking up a lot of other things I might be able to add to the rule of the game to make if feel more like the video game.

Now, you may be wondering, why bother making the board game play more like the video game if I could just get up and play the video game. The answer is a very much like what I wrote in “Comparing the pros and cons of Video games and Board games” . I want to play the game on a table in the company of family and friends but still enjoy the Sid Meier’s Civ experience. I don’t want to sit in front of a computer screen by myself clicking on the spacebar.

In any case, I took out the game again for the first time in years, opened it up and re-read the rules. (Which I later discovered have been revised for the better. I download the new revised rules from the Sid Meier’s Civ board game website.) After I read them I realized that the game wasn’t as bad as I remembered and it really did seem like the video game. I tested out my house rules anyway and I discovered that they actually made the game move faster. I also found different battle rules on BGG that are better than the ones that come with the game so I’m now going to use those.

All this has actually gotten me exited about playing the game again (both the board game and the video game). It’s really too bad that the game takes so long and the board is so huge. Unless the people I play the game with are big Civ fans, it will be very tricky to get anyone to play it with me. Who knows, maybe with the new house rules, I might be able to convince some people. Now, if only I can find a way to automate the up keeping parts of the game like the computer does. Getting a board game to play like a computer game is very tricky.

ANSWERING COMMENTS

Greg: Glad you liked the cartoon. I’m glad you used it on as the podcast picture for the show. I was really flattered.

Mike : Thank you, for the compliment about my cartoons. I’ve heard wonders about your podcasting programs.

Tony Scarfone : I agree with your opinion on the Samus’ translation of Beowulf. That’s the one I read. That’s why I put it on the site. It’s really good. I also noticed you have a podcast. I’m make sure to check it out.

If you like what you read, please consider signing up to my rss feed.

Comments are appreciated as well.

I also have a store. Click Here and check it out.

If you would like to have a text ad on my site, click on the red BUY LINKS button under the Archives list.

And while you’re at it, please Digg me too.

Writing this blog is almost a part time job for me. Tips are most welcome.

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Luis' Illustrated Blog

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