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brosiuse | 1 Mar 2009 20:44
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[SR] MVGA Holliston 2009-01-29

MVGA meets Thursday nights at 7pm in the
Masonic Hall in Holliston, on Route 16 just
east of the center of town. Turn north on
Church Place (which is more a driveway than
a street) to find parking.

We welcome visitors.

Roll call:
Steve, Anton, Eric, Walt, Dan, Paul H., Rich

SAINT PETERSBURG EXPANSION
(Steve, Anton, Eric)

We've played a lot of Saint Petersburg since
it came out in 2004.  I've recorded 36 games
myself, and there must have been other games
on weeks when I wasn't there to keep track.
Our rate of play has dropped off sharply,
though:  we played 24 times in 2004, 4 times
in 2005, 4 times in 2006 and none at all
in 2007.  We had a rebound in 2008, with a
total of 3 games, but it was a lot less than
I would have liked, because Saint Petersburg
is one of my favorite games (my avatar on BGG
comes from a Saint Petersburg card!)  Some of
the drop-off is due to the fact that Evan no
longer comes---Evan was nigh unstoppable in
the early days at MVGA with his "buy what I
need and don't buy what I don't need" idiot
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brosiuse | 2 Mar 2009 00:54
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[SR] MVGA Holliston 2009-02-05

MVGA meets Thursday nights at 7pm in the
Masonic Hall in Holliston, on Route 16 just
east of the center of town. Turn north on
Church Place (which is more a driveway than
a street) to find parking.

We welcome visitors.

Roll call:
Eric, Rich, Dan, Paul H., Walt

SAN JUAN
(Eric, Rich, Dan, Paul)

San Juan has been a popular game at MVGA
ever since it came out in 2004, but that
changed late in 2007 with the release of
Race of the Galaxy, a similar game that
offers more options and the lure of the
"new."  We didn't play a single game of
San Juan from September 2007 (just prior
to the release of Race for the Galaxy at
Essen) until January 2009.  Race for the
Galaxy has even been played more often
at MVGA by a margin of 48 to 33, at
least based on my records, even though
it has been available for a much shorter
period of time.  This week we started
with San Juan rather than Race for the
Galaxy, as we were in the mood for
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W. Eric Martin | 2 Mar 2009 04:13
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Re: [SR] MVGA Holliston 2009-01-29

On Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 2:44 PM, brosiuse <public.brosius@...> wrote:

>
> Le Havre is a game that's been getting significant buzz recently, even
> though
> no US or UK version has been released (I suspect it has something to do
> with
> licensing rights.) There is an Australian version, though, and after I
> played
> a game or two with Joe Huber, I purchased a copy from Funagain, the only
> place
> I could find it for sale in the US.
>

Eric, as I noted recently on Boardgame News, Lookout Games is handling the
English language of Le Havre instead of using a separate publishing partner
as it did for Agricola. The game will be distributed in the U.S. by
Alliance, and is estimated by the distributor to be an April-May release,
although this date isn't firm. Funagain had copies because it purchased them
in Essen from Lookout and shipped them to the U.S.

Eric

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-- 
W. Eric Martin
Editor – http://BoardgameNews.com
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brosiuse | 3 Mar 2009 01:34
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[SR] MVGA Holliston 2009-02-26

MVGA meets Thursday nights at 7pm in the
Masonic Hall in Holliston, on Route 16 just
east of the center of town. Turn north on
Church Place (which is more a driveway than
a street) to find parking.

We welcome visitors.

Roll call:  Paul H., Eric, Anton, Rich,
Steve, Charles, Walt

JET SET
(Paul H., Eric, Anton, Rich)

It took us a little while to get started
this week.  People kept showing up as we
were planning what to play.  Before long
we had 7 people, so we had to split up
into two games.  Eric had two new games
in his tub o' games:  Snow Tails and Jet
Set.  Snow Tails is a clever dogsled racing
game from the Fragor Brothers, Gordon and
Fraser Lamont.  The MVGA crew has been fond
of racing games in the past, and this one
is likely to go over well, but we decided
to start with Jet Set instead.

Jet Set is a network connection and
economic game designed by Kris Gould, who
saw a number of games released in 2008.
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Todd Jensen | 3 Mar 2009 04:04
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Re: [SR] MVGA Holliston 2009-02-26

On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:34 PM, brosiuse <public.brosius@...> wrote:

>
>
> CHICAGO EXPRESS
> (Steve, Charles, Walt)
>
> Harry Wu designed Wabash Cannonball, an innovative railroad game with a
> clear
> resemblance to Martin Wallace's Early Railways Series games, but with some
> unique innovations as well, back in 2007. The game has since been re-issued
> in a far more splendid physical form under the title "Chicago Express" (a
> title that's not as evocative for rail fans, but which may be more
> acceptable
> to the general gaming populace.)
>

Actually, I heard somewhere that Queen changed the name because Europeans
have actually heard of Chicago, while they might not be Boxcar Willie fans.

--

-- 
Todd Jensen
Home:  (608) 241-4689
Cell:  (608) 438-4097

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Greg J. Schloesser | 5 Mar 2009 14:33
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ETG 01/22/09 Gaming Report

*ON THE TABLE:  Timber Tom and the Lost Pouches of Gold, Journey to the
Center of the Earth, Prototype, Scripts and Scribes, Dominion*

* *

*ROLL CALL:  Jim McDanold, Astra Cope, Alison Blake, Sheila Morton, Kevin
Bender, Rhonda Bender, Greg Schloesser*

* *

*TIMBER TOM AND THE LOST POUCHES OF GOLD*

*NOTE:  My full review of Timber Tom will appear in the next issue of
Counter magazine.  What follows is a brief overview.*

Couple absolutely gorgeous production qualities with a theme that simulates
one of my favorite outdoor activities – hiking – and the result should be a
game that I adore.  Well, it takes more than theme and gorgeous components
to make a good game – it takes engaging mechanisms that generate excitement,
tension and fun.  Sadly, at least from a gamer's perspective, this is where
*Timber Tom* and the *Lost Pouches of Gold* falls short.

To be fair, designer *Marco Bing* emphatically states that *Timber Tom* is a
"*family race game*."  As a family game, *Timber Tom* is just fine.  It is
reasonably easy to learn and play for all but the youngest of children, and
is certainly more engaging and requires more thought than most games found
on the shelves of mainstream game and toy stores.  However, there is little
here to keep strategy gamers engaged.

Each turn, a player moves his explorer across the three-dimensional board an
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chriskovac2000 | 5 Mar 2009 15:01
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What happend to CCG's ?


  Do you remember the years when Magic was King, CCG's took over game stores and you invested almost a down
payment on a house to buy that one rare Magic card which would give you the key to Tournament Domination?  I
still have a binder of Middle Earth cards gathering dust on my shelves and sometimes wonder what all the
fuss was about.  The CCG's are still there but have definetly become more of the background in gaming.  Yuri
GO-GO (?) and Magic are still fairly common but a lot of the other games seemed to have vanished.  Personally
I think the collectibility and the ever changing rules for a lot of these games helped to there decline.  A
number of there ideas have been incorporated into conventional boardgames (Dominion in some ways is a
distant descendant of those games).  So what do y
 ou think contributed to the decline of CCG's and where are they now ?

Chris Kovac
Toronto, Canada

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David Brain | 5 Mar 2009 15:40
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Re: What happend to CCG's ?

chriskovac2000 wrote:
>   So what do you think contributed to the decline of CCG's and where are they now ?

That's easy.  They're so [censored] hard to design properly.  Even Magic 
took several iterations before the "foundations" worked properly - and 
it was pretty much the only one that had that luxury.

Almost every CCG I saw had at least a couple of genuinely great ideas. 
Unfortunately, they also all suffered from the same problem - which is 
that you must never actually produce the first set of your game since it 
won't work - or, rather, it won't work as well as it should.  So at best 
you get an interesting system with some broken cards that then end up 
polluting the future card pool.

If the 'net had been as powerful a presence back when Magic first 
appeared* then I suspect that the production route would have been 
"electronic prototype - electronic beta release - print release", thus 
avoiding the ludicrous initial print expense.  And this expense is 
probably why most of the subsequent games ended up being "licensed 
products", so that they could at least guarantee sales to collectors.
If the electronic testing route had been available, then I think that 
many more games would have survived and prospered.

*yes, I know the 'net and even the Web were well-established in 1994. 
But it was still pretty much a hobbyist/academic domain then.

(And I shall avoid the perilous quagmire of criticising Dominion!)

--

-- 
David Brain
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Greg J. Schloesser | 5 Mar 2009 16:26
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ETG website UPDATE

Check out the latest update of the East Tennessee Gamers website, which
includes:

Gaming Session Reports:  01/22/09 Report, including Timber Tom and Journey
to the Center of the Earth.

Game Reviews:  Die Saulon von Venedig

Mountain Market:  Lots of new games listed on the "For Sale" list.

Stop by for a visit!

--

-- 
Greg J. Schloesser
"Love talked about is easily turned aside; love demonstrated is
irresistible." -- Stan Mooneyham

East Tennessee Gamers:  www.easttennesseegamers.com
International Gamers Awards:  www.internationalgamersawards.net

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JDL | 5 Mar 2009 17:34
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Re: What happend to CCG's ?

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 8:40 AM, David Brain <games@...> wrote:
> chriskovac2000 wrote:
>
> Almost every CCG I saw had at least a couple of genuinely great ideas.
> Unfortunately, they also all suffered from the same problem - which is
> that you must never actually produce the first set of your game since it
> won't work - or, rather, it won't work as well as it should.  So at best
> you get an interesting system with some broken cards that then end up
> polluting the future card pool.

Or you do produce a great game, like Legend of the Burning Sands, that
doesn't grab enough people to reach the critical mass needed to
sustain the game.

-- JDL

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