Games

I've been reading Yehuda's blog lately, subtitle, "Gaming and Blogging in the Holy Land." I found him via Flak Mag (there's a new podcast on Flak Radio today), and have been enjoying his commentary and enthusiasm for some of the same board games I enjoy. I did find this link in his post today disturbing, but only because Adam and I had the exact same discussion with a gamer last weekend who was telling us all about the new D&D rules, while we reminisced about playing with 3x5" cards and very loose DM-ing to keep the players happy. MtG/D&D humor...ouch.

I've been playing some of Kloonigames ten less-than-a-week games again (see the sidebar). Crayon Physics frustrates the hell out of me. I find some satisfaction playing a mini-George Bush in Oval Office, but emasculating him so thoroughly deprives me of the joy of finding all that crayon-rendered WMD evidence. I think he needs super powers, like misdirection and lying.

I was jealous of the XBox360 folks who could play Settlers of Catan, but I found this 2004 version I can play on my PC. But it doesn't have a competing AI. And I can't play it versus the web (just hot seat and local network). And I can't hotseat versus my wife, because two-player Settlers is lame, and if I had three or four other people here, I'd just play the board version. Argh! They have a number of links to other games you can play on line, including Tikal, which I think is extremely fun. An aside for Sean - I know you listed the reasons Ticket to Ride Europe is superior to plain old Ticket to Ride, and I agree with all of them. But apparently, Ticket to Ride (not Europe) comes with young, pink-shorted groupies.

Finally, I received my first birthday present 2.5 months early. Pooteewheet and Eryn went shopping at Phoenix Games because they were having a moving sale and selling off a bunch of their stock, so they were able to pick up a game I'd been after for 40% off the normal price (it was an $80 game, so that's $32 off - sort of like a double present, because one of the only things I like almost as much as gaming is game thriftiness). I think Tide of Iron (by Fantasy Flight Games, right here in the Twin Cities) could rightly be considered Squad Leader for gamers who are a.) too lazy to read all the rules for Squad Leader (or have friends who won't read them, and are left to find their way on their own and don't want to play with strangers on the internets [that's for you, Povert]), b.) think Squad Leader is just too much work for a short game (Tide of Iron supposedly takes 1-2 hours), and c.) like little plastic pieces more than cardboard squares - i.e. Axis and Allies Syndrome. So I own it, and I've read the rules - but I have no one to play with this week and it's driving me crazy. I know if I start a game, my pager is going to go off.