Gaming News and Notes

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for June & July! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for June are:

Military Grant (Community) Thomas Edgar
Lib. Tech, Unit 30401, Stuttgart, Germany

Military Grant 1st Lt. Benjamin Smith
Alpha Company, 72nd Expeditionary Signal Battalion, Mannheim, Germany

Library Grant Paula Cea
Young Adult Librarian, East Meadow Public Library, NY

School Grant Kevin Paprocki
8th Grade Science Teacher, Milwaukee Academy of Science, WI

The winners for July are:

Military Grant Capt. Kristopher Putnam
USAF, 79 ERQS, Camp Bastion, Afghanistan

Library Grant Lois Miller
Edgewater Brance, Anne Arundel County Public Library Foundation

School/University Grant Don Perini
Professor of Creativity, Cornerstone University, Grand Rapids, MI

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for April & May! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for April are:

Library Grant Vivienne Beckett
Librarian, Scenic Regional Library, Missouri

School Grant Rick Zeuner
In memory of John, Our Redeemer Lutheran School, Wisconsin

Library Grant Margie Cicerrella
Children's Librarian, Ashland Library, Oregon

The winners for May are:

School Grant Elizabeth Holloway,
Arrowhead Union High School, Wisconsin

Library Peg Noctor,
Librarian, George Watkins Elementary, Virginia

Community Grant Ethan Ham,
City College of New York

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for March! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for March are:

Military Grant Petty Officer Bradley Engstrom
USS Essex
& Ben Mongue, Sailor
USS Essex

Community Grant Roxanna Harlow
Higher Learning, Inc., Westminster, MD

School Grant Ann Tucker
Special Education (Elementary), IL

Library Grant Tiburcio Zapata
Gaming Coordinator, Rossford Public Library, OH

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for February! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for February are:

Community Grant Mary Gahagan
GED Instructor for Young Parents, Massachusetts

School Grant Eileen Pearlman
Speech/Language Pathologist, Illinois

Library Grant Sara Churchill
Library Media Specialist, Nebraska

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

It's time to clear out our ding and dent games! Sometimes games arrived damaged from the manufacturer, or sometimes we drop one on the floor, but no matter how they got that way they've got to leave the warehouse.

We're running a first-come first-served, no holds barred sale on our slightly damaged games. Everything in the warehouse that has some damage is on sale, and in many cases there is only 1 damaged copy up for grabs. Please note that these games are completely playable and there should be no damage to the game parts themselves. However, all sales are final and we will not accept returns on these damaged items for any reason.

If you like your games in pristine mint condition this sale is not for you, but if you like good prices on slightly corner-bashed, side-creased, box-cutter sliced games then be sure to check it out!

See the full list here!

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for January! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for January are:

Military Grant Petty Officer Shaun VanAsselberg
Deployed in Southern Afghanistan

School Grant Douglas Evans
Kellybrook Elementary, Missouri

Library Grant Amy Jo Southworth
Librarian, Bay Shore High School, New York

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for December! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for December are:

Community Grant Eric A. Johnson
Detective with Pima County Sheriff's Dept., Arizona

School Grant Kent Chapman
Grant Elementary, California

Library Grant Lynn Loftus
Librarian, Southbridge High School, Massachusetts

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

The December installment of Mike Siggins' Gamer's Notebook has just been posted. In this edition, Mike discusses some of his favorite shorter games from this year, as well as some other recent releases.

Read the full article here!

The November 2009 edition of Mike Siggins' Gamer's Notebook has just been posted! In this installment Mike discusses some recently played games and has guest writer Chris Payne evaluate the Essen 2009 releases.

Read the full article here!

Funagain Games is proud to announce the winners of our monthly game grants for October & November! All who are eligible are strongly encouraged to apply to keep the applicant pool filled. Instructions on how to apply can be found here.

The winners for October are:

School Grant Jeremy Pequignot
Creekview Intermediate School in Ohio

School Grant Chris & Abby McNamee
Hopkins Elementary in Oregon

Community Grant Dr. Elizabeth Gurnack
The Americus Board Gaming Society

The winners for November are:

Library Grant Joyce McPartland,
Josephine Community Libraries in Oregon

School/Library Grant Cynthia Ryman,
Dobyns-Bennett High School in Tennessee

School/Library Grant Gail Przeclawski,
Grand Ave. Primary Learning Center in Florida

Community Grant Veronica Livingston,
Whittier Community Center in Colorado

Congratulations to the winners, and thank you to everyone who is sending in applications! To apply for the grant please click here. Happy gaming!

Seven Springs, NC: 8 arrested at a high stakes poker game. (source)

Carson City, NV: Caesar’s Palace fined $250,000 for allowing a Baccarat player to dance on the table during a game. (source)

Ahmedabab, India: 14 arrested for gambling on cards. (source)

Memphis, TN: Man shot and robbed while playing dice. (source)

Srinagar, India: Police open fire on men playing a board game, killing an 11 year old boy. (source)

Ogema, MI: One man stabs another twice in the chest in an argument over a card game. (source)

Tahoma, WA: Detectives look into the possible connection between online D&D and murder, since the murderer indicated that he went to relax by playing online D&D after the murder. (source, via)

First the sales…

Geek Chic is running a virtual tent sale for orphaned orders, factory seconds, and show pieces. You can get their amazing furniture at significantly reduced prices. Unfortunately, the company is too busy to post the list of available pieces on the web site and I don’t have room for it here. If you’re interested, I suggest emailing them.

Mongoose is unloading out-of-print items from the warehouse at reduced prices, including RPG books and miniatures.

War games are on sale at GMT.

Also for the war gamers, the C4 Corner Cutter is on sale through Labor Day.

Now, the giveaways…

The NewbieDM blog is giving away a copy of the Red Box Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set. Standard comment-or-tweet requirements.

Myriad Games is giving away games to Facebook fans every Friday.

North Star Games is also giving away games on Facebook, monthly for meeple photo submissions.

Big Daddy’s Creations is running a contest for Neuroshima Hex on the iPhone/iPad. Ten people who solve the puzzle will get promotional codes for free downloads.

Aspiring game designer, Michael R. Keller, wants a logo for his venture, Visible Hand Games. He’ll give one prototype game now and one published game later to a selected designer.

Thomas McDonald’s State of Play blog has Bicycle Poker Playing Cards and Dice to give away.

Cincinnati Coupons is giving away Education Outdoors’ Camp Board Game Travel Edition and S’mores Card Game. Every method of following is another entry.

Family Game Mainstays

Because of a recent vacation, I haven't played any games in the last couple of weeks with anyone outside of my immediate family. And that means playing games that my elementary-school-age daughters enjoy, and that my wife and I can tolerate. Here are four of our mainstays:

Zooloretto (designed by Michael Schacht) – Zooloretto is too simple a game for the Appalachian Gamers to enjoy, but it is just fine for kids. Although my daughters are sometimes more interested in producing baby animals than in developing a winning score, this is a game in which the kids can sometimes beat the parents.

The mechanics of Zooloretto are quite simple. On his turn, a player can spend his cash to perform an action, or pick a random tile and place it on a truck, or claim a truck and the tiles on it. Once a player claims a truck, he is finished for that round. The goal of the game is for players to collect animal tiles, and fill zoo enclosures with animals of one species. Animals that can't be fitted into an enclosure will count against a player at the end of the game, but players can pay cash to get rid of unwanted animals.

Players can also buy an animal from another player's zoo, but we play a variant that ignores that rule (If I bought a baby panda from my daughter's zoo, the screams would be fierce and the tears copious). There is a strong luck element in the game, but it is not entirely brainless. You need to pay attention to what animals other players need so that you don't accidentally fill up a truck with tiles that will give them the game. Zooloretto plays in forty-five minutes or less, and we can sometimes play two games in an evening.

Small World (designed by Philippe Keyaerts) – This fantasy conquest game is another favorite. Players choose fantasy races with various abilities and then set out to conquer the world. The combination of colorful races, and random ability tiles means that the game never grows stale. My daughters like the Amazons because of the game's art work, but my wife likes choosing the right combination of race and abilities to get a maximum return. Small World takes the longest time to play of all the games mentioned here, but one of our games will seldom last much more than an hour.

Ghost Stories (designed by Antoine Bauza) – This cooperative fantasy/horror game is difficult to play well. But my daughters don't mind losing when we lose as a family and not as individuals. And they like examining the horrific artwork on the deck of ghost cards, and they enjoy it when they kill a particularly difficult ghost (or remember a rule or strategy that Daddy forgot). We tend to lose this game a lot (even when I don't make the game unnecessarily difficult by botching the rules) but we keep coming back for a rematch with Wu-Feng, the master of evil ghosts.

The Adventurers (designed by Fredric Henry and Guillaume Blossier) – I think of this game as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Competition. Each player is an explorer or mercenary trying to raid an ancient booby-trapped temple for all the treasure he or she can carry. If you are too slow or unlucky you will get crushed by a rolling boulder, or fall into a lava pit, or get washed over the falls of an underground river. But get out alive with the most treasure and you win.

The game is quite simple because players have two basic actions: move or pick up treasure. My daughters don't die very often in this game because they tend to play cautiously, and they run for the exit without bothering to collect too much treasure. That strategy can actually work when Mommy falls into the lava pit (quite often) or Daddy lags behind and gets smooshed by that boulder (once in a while). We can get through a game of The Adventurers in fifteen or twenty minutes, and it is easy to play a couple of games back to back.

Occasionally, I can get my daughters to try heavier fare, and my wife likes Agricola so much that she persuades our youngest daughter to try it. But these are the games that get pulled out the most when the gamer group includes people whose ages can be counted with a single digit.

Ystari Games plans to start taking reservations for its forthcoming Mousquetaires du Roy in September 2010 – check out this preview on BGN for details about the game – and as an incentive for buyers to purchase the game at Spiel 2010, Ystari's Cyril Demaegd says "we'll release the game in Essen with a special gift for our buyers. Each buyer will be given a special 'fifth Musketeer' (Treville) with his figurine and player sheet. With Treville, players will be able to play with six players (or to replace another musketeer, of course)."

In addition, says Demaegd, "We'll give away a really cool T-shirt of d'Artagnan. Stocks will be limited, so reservations will be mandatory."

(Obligatory disclosure: I was paid by Ystari Games to edit the English rules of Mousquetaires du Roy.)

The Sun News in Macon pimps the indirect educational values of mainstream board games. (source)

NPR pimps card games, mostly the classics, but also Too Many Cooks. (source)

The NY Times Tech Talk podcast pimps Scrabble Flash and MonopolyRevolution. (source)

The Jewish Chronicle pimps games, including Alfred’s Wyke, Age of Steam, Carcassonne, Power Grid, and The Settlers of Catan. (source)

Meanwhile, more parents diss the iPhone version of Scrabble, because its dictionary includes offensive terms. (source)

What's a good way to generate publicity for an upcoming game? Survey the gaming populace and invite their opinion on important topics. Stronghold Games did just that for its version of Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, asking people whether the game should include a whale (as in the original Parker Brothers version of Survive!) or a giant squid. (Did I say "important topics"? Never mind what I said...)

In the end, the whale reigned supreme, besting the giant squid in two matches out of three. The giant squid put up a good fight, though, and to honor its valiant effort to become immortalized in plastic, Stronghold Games has decided to offer the giant squid as a bonus for anyone who preorders Survive: Escape from Atlantis! Says Stronghold's Kevin Nesbitt, the piece will come "with special rules for inclusion in the game simultanously with or instead of the whale."

Under Stronghold's current preorder system, only 500 preorders will be taken and preorders can't be taken from outside the U.S. (Stronghold has not yet launched the preorder window for Survive.) To accommodate those outside the U.S. who want to see a giant squid destroying boats and chomping on helpless swimmers, Nesbitt says that "the Survive: Escape from Atlantis! – Giant Squid Expansion will be made available for purchase at Essen in limited quantity. This will be a separately bagged expansion from the base game. These will be made available on a first come, first served basis."

For a first look at Survive's whales and squid, check out the CGI rendering below:

Game name:  K2 Designer:  Adam Kałuża Publisher: Rebel.pl Publishing — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Polish game retailer Rebel.pl is making the leap into publishing, with Basilica (described here) being one of its releases and the board game K2 from Adam Kałuża being the other. Here's a lengthy description of K2 from the publisher:

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth as well as the second deadliest. It's known as the Savage Mountain, as it kills one person for every four who have reached the summit...

And K2 has never been climbed in winter.

Now your team stands in its shadow, ready to climb for fame and glory. You know the dangers of K2 all too well: Extreme weather with frequent and deadly storms; exposed, steep, tricky routes; and lack of oxygen await you on your way to the summit. You will test your climbing skills to the death, trying to outsmart the ever-changing weather and always worrying about the acclimatization of your two mountaineers. Also, there are the other teams ready to take the glory for themselves.

K2 is a board game in which each player controls a team of two mountaineers, trying to climb to the summit of K2 before the other players' teams, and descend before the mountain kills them. Every player uses the same deck of cards. Every turn, players simultaneously choose three of their six cards from hand to play. Cards let them move their climbers or give them always needed acclimatization points. You can also use movement points to set up a tent which helps with acclimatization, but naturally the tent stays in one place throughout the game.

Whoever played the most movement points on their cards takes one of three face-up risk tokens (which penalize players movement and/or acclimatization points by 0-2 this turn), then the players in order move and acclimatize their mountaineers. After that, every player adjusts the acclimatization level of his climbers, taking into account the weather for this day (turn) and the acclimatization penalty from the field a climber occupies. If acclimatization drops to 0, the mountaineer is considered dead and all the victory points he's won so far are lost.

At the end of a turn, you draw three cards from your deck and move the weather pawn to the next day on the weather tile. During the game, the decks will be gone through three times and all six weather tiles will be used. (There are three spaces with different weather on each of them.) Planning, hand management and risk analysis are important elements of K2 play. Another important thing is choosing the path for your climbers as the other mountaineers can block your way, which can be devastating if you are high or if bad weather comes.

K2 is a board game for 1-5 players, with strong interaction and a low luck factor that lasts up to 60 minutes. The theme is very well represented by the mechanisms, including such elements as changing weather, lack of oxygen and death of the mountaineers. The result is an exciting match for gamers and non-gamers alike. The game includes a double-sided game board with two different routes to the summit (easier and harder) and two sets of weather tiles (for summer and winter).

The easy side of the K2 game board

Game name:  Basilica Designer:  Łukasz M. Pogoda Publisher: Rebel.pl Publishing — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Polish retailer Rebel.pl has released localized versions of a number of games – including Dungeon Lords, Jungle Speed, Ghost Stories – but now Rebel.pl is making a move into publishing original game designs, with two titles on its release schedule for 2010. One of those two games is Basilica, a two-player design by Łukasz M. Pogoda, and here's a game description from the publisher:

Basilica presents the duel of two medieval master masons who are ordered to build a medieval cathedral together, plan its layout, and oversee work at the construction site in tandem.

Tiles placed on the table form the plan of the cathedral. These tiles, distinguished by four colors, represent different elements of the cathedral. Later, the players place pawns on the tiles – these pawns are the teams of builders: foremen, masons and carpenters, who will make the design a reality. The players strive to achieve two goals: to lay their cathedral tiles so as to create the largest possible areas representing a single architectural style, and to have more pawns in these areas than their opponent.

The passage of time in the game is represented by a special King pawn, which moves along the scoring track. Every few moves, the King pawn comes to a space indicating a royal visit to the cathedral. During each royal visit, the progress of work is assessed and Victory Points are assigned to the players. The number of VPs each player is awarded depends on the size and number of the areas controlled by their pawns. The more areas the player controls, and the bigger these are, the greater the reward for the player. At the end of the game, the winner is the player who has claimed more Victory Points.

Stronghold designer Ignacy Trzewiczek, who is part of Portal Publishing, posted a fun explanation on BoardGameGeek of how good the game is and why Portal finally decided not to publish the game while insisting that someone else should. I'll publish a more detailed preview of Basilica in the near future.

Game name:  Era of Inventions Designer:  Anthony Daamen Publisher: Quined Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

The only info on this title comes from coverage on Bordspel.com of the Chocolatl opening day events held by Quined Games. Erwin Broens mentions that Era of Inventions is a working title for this economic development game.

Update, Sep. 2, 2010: Quined Games has now posted more information about this release. Here's a brief game description from the publisher, part of which is translated from Dutch:

Explore the lives and minds of Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, the Wright brothers and other pioneers of invention and experience the thrill of the industrial revolution. Be there when the cash register, the sewing machine, the typewriter, the telephone, the gramophone, the camera, the car, the steam engine and the plane are all invented again in Era of Inventions. This time you will be the inventor who creates, patents and introduces these inventions to the markets and the world!

Factory card, back and front

The goal of Era of Inventions, which lasts 8-10 rounds, is to gain as much influence in the industrial revolution as possible. In each round players use several actions to drive their business forward and gain influence, such as building factories, buying or producing raw materials, or inventing devices and bringing them to market. Time is short, so your actions are limited. The player who best handles his action discs, money, materials and development will carry the most influence in the game and ultimately find himself the most influential inventor!

Game name:  Really Friendly Sharing Designer:  Ted Alspach Publisher: Bézier Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

As described on BGN, designer Ted Alspach previously announced a bonus Age of Steam / Steam map called Sharing for those who order the Essen 2010 Map Pack through his Bézier Games. But philanthropist that he is, Alspach has decided that mere Sharing is not good enough – after all, you share train lines with others, but the game still has only one winner. For those who frown on such things, you'll be delighted to know that you can flip over that nasty Sharing board and instead share a communal hug around the game board for Really Friendly Sharing. Here's Alspach's description of this sugary confection:

What if Steam / Age of Steam were a truly cooperative game, like Shadows over Camelot without a traitor? Or if no one had to die in Clue, so you could just mosey around that neat mansion talking to your friends? Or if there were no diseases in Pandemic, or no ghosts in Ghost Stories? Wouldn't that be fun? Sure, it would!

Ted Alspach's Really Friendly Sharing is for 2 to 10 players who don't have some horribly recessive competitive gene. In Ted Alspach's Really Friendly Sharing, you work as a team to build a railroad. Many of the aspects that cause unnecessary tension in Age of Steam have been removed, like money and the AoS auction, so you can focus on laying track, making deliveries, getting VPs and having fun!

Really Friendly Sharing is available only for Essen preorders of the Bezier Games 2010 Map Pack – which now consists of eight maps, six of them mounted! – and is a great way to wind down after a super-competitive gaming session. Put a win in your column by playing Really Friendly Sharing!