Ten Years

So it's that time of year again when we start thinking about our local game convention, Nuke Con, coming up Sept. 30-Oct. 2. 
And the call for GMs came out, and I want to GM again, but what should it be?
And then it hit me. Since this is the ten year anniversary of my favorite game, I will GM Carcassonne. Maybe there are gamers who still haven't played it (I know that's hard to believe, but I've still never actually played regular Catan with real live people, so it's possible), and it's a great intro game for anyone that might be coming to the con just to check things out.
So that's a great excuse for me to add a couple things to my Carcassonne collection. I did pick up the ten year anniversary edition shown above, not my own photo. It has clear meeples!! So cool. And the box is shaped like a freakin' meeple! How could I pass that up? And I picked up the catapult expansion too. It seems so silly and fun. And hopefully also intriguing to new gamers.
Our personal family game day is tomorrow, I wonder if I can get anyone to go a'catapulting with me?

Odds'R

The box

The game is Odds'R, a party game for up to four players or teams. And my choice for game of the day for Thanksaturgiving this year.
Put out by Eagle Games in 2002, no longer in print. So if it's no longer in print, how did I even find out about it??
Well, I do loves me The Spiel, as I've mentioned before, and their back-shelf spotlight a few episodes shined on this game, including letting me know that there were some for sale through the BGG marketplace.
I tried out the BGG marketplace for the first time, to much luck, and got the game still in shrink, for a decent price, and dealt with another BGG user for the sale, which makes me feel better than giving money to some random eBay user. (Like I know a BGG user will buy more games, an eBay user might only be in it for the money)

The board

It's a trivia game at it's base. But it has a lot of other elements.
There's a lottery to start, and each time you ask a question, you first read the winning lottery number. You have three opportunities to buy lottery tickets, so it seems like it's a small chance of winning, but still an interesting addition.
After the lottery, the trivia question, in one of 15 categories is read, and the multiple choice answers are shown to all of the non-answering players or teams. And everyone bets on if the answering player or team will get the answer right.
The winning of the game is who has the most money, not who's answered the most questions, so the lottery and the betting are key. Game ends when one player gets to the center, and they get a bonus for getting there, but they are still not necessarily the winner. I like that element a lot, no wedgie hogging.

The grab bag tokens and cow chip

Other fun twists are different odd spots you might land on.
There are grab bag spaces, where you'll pull one of 15 tokens out of the velvet bag. The "GrabBag is full of goodies-and gotchas!" according to the box. Since I like being as surprised with a new game as my guests, I try not to read too much of the specifics, so we'll see how that plays out.
There's a cow chip to flip, and it's just a heads-or-tails win-some-money or get nothin' space.
And there's a space where you get to use a special die in addition to the moving dice. The special die will let you know if you are going ahead or backwards on the moving dice. This was one of the gotta-have-it things about this game, I love specialty dice! And bonus that you only use the extra die if you land on the space, not all the time.

The pawns

And then there's the pawns. Another gotta-have-it part of this game. Your pawn starts off as a candle stick looking kind of thing, with rings you add for each answer you get wrong.
If you get too many wrong, you get the dunce cap placed on top.
There are spaces where you could sell your ding-rings for cash, so it's not that bad to get a few rings, as long as you're going to land on the right space to have them removed.
This seems like fun, I only hope that no one feels bad for having too many rings. But I think playing in teams will help that. I love the colors, nice and bright. I'm thinking of how to incorporate these fun pawns into other games too. Or they could even be used as a counter in some games. It would be easy to see from across the table how many rings your opponent has.

The Meeples playing with the colors

So if you listened to the same Spiel episode, you already knew all of this. ;p
I don't have any actual play experience yet, since we'll be playing Saturday. But I do hope to do mini-reviews with any/all who play. And take more photos.
I hope you and yours are having a great Thanksgiving, whether you're celebrating today or Thanksaturgiving like we do.
What games will you be playing while you digest?

GEW9

The BFF twittered* this week: "Declaring '09 "Games Every Weekend 09." CoC CCG, Gametap, Zombie RPG's, party games, L4D, game convos, and other sorts of extreme nerditry." To which I whole heartedly agreed! Being this is only the fourth weekend of the year, I think I/we have successfully gamed every weekend so far, especially since he's adding computer games in there. With also the added bonus, that since he only works four days a week, Monday is still officially 'the weekend'. ;p
So thanks to a couple '$10 off a purchase of $30 or more' coupons, we each purchased a game yesterday at our local Big Box Hobby and Gaming store. (I don't need to give them extra advertising by mentioning their name, I do prefer to support local shops, but you can't turn down a free $10) The BFF picked up World of Warcraft minis, and I bought Humans!!! in my never ending quest to own all games Zombie related!
We plan to game this afternoon, or as he put it, play a game during the stupid-bowl, so we'll have to see whose game gets played first!


*Yes, I twitter too, but not as well as he. Feel free to follow either of us if you are in the twitterverse.

X-mas Game

A few weeks back, before Thanksgiving even, I had a notion to make up a game for the family to play on Christmas day. The idea started also as an excuse to make gingerbread people (meeple?) or houses. Maybe points would be counted with M&Ms, and at the end of the game everyone should have a pile of candy, and then I'd bring out the cookie making stuff. And after we baked the cookie people, we could use them in the second part of the game, where we would take damage by eating our cookie (that part completely stolen from Run for Your Life, Candyman!).
But that game plan was a bit too big, and as most ideas do, it went through many various incarnations, and ended up being an idea about asking questions. Maybe Christmassy/Holiday type questions, maybe family trivia, maybe a combination, but I really didn’t want to ask family members “what was your best (or worst) gift you received” that could cause unnecessary hurt feelings, so I started thinking of maybe a more generic question answering type game.
And then I listened to The Speil holiday podcast, where they talked about Say Anything, and Good Question, and I realized that I didn’t need to make up my own game, one of these party games was going to be just what I was looking for, and much less work on my part.
I had already heard some buzz about Say Anything, we’ve played Wits-n-Wagers many times, and Cluzzle once, all three designed and sold by North Star Games, but I really wanted to get Good Question for Christmas gaming. (I figured we'd buy Say Anything later, too) So I started looking, and realized it wasn't one I was likely to find in town. Of course, I waited until almost the last minute to realize this, and more importantly, what this meant, which is that if I wanted it, I would have to order it online!
The big online stores didn't have it, and the game stores I checked out (sponsors of my favorite gaming podcasts) didn't ship quick enough. I told you I waited until the last minute! Then I saw an ad on BGG for Boards & Bits, and it appeared that their shipping would get the game to me in time, but fed'ex disagreed. (I think in my haste, I misread their shipping times)
So finishing the last minute shopping Monday night (I was really behind on everything this year!), we found Say Anything, and since I figured I'd eventually buy it anyway, I picked it up for our Christmas game. It was great fun, and was easy to teach, just like the box said. Plus, my parents got us Imaginiff, which we also played. The two went well together, both party games, both with some crazy questions or answers.
And Good Question came today! So now my Christmas game is three!

Other gifty-goodness: my kids each got D&D 4.0 books and minis, which they loved; they also got some Hero Clix, and my little munchkin got The Good, The Bad, and The Munchkin; we got my folks Family Fluxx, which I hear they've already played; and I got a very cool old book called The Boardgame Book, which appears to be part history, part rules.