F@#$ Sleater-Kinney ( and The Woods specifically)

"But Darren, Sleater-Kinney broke up 6 years ago!"
"I Blog about board games, of course I am out of touch."

so at J-Con Tim had his iPod playing, and I recognized Sleater-Kinney from my Pandora station.  My Pandora station is all kinds of messed up, I mean start with Peter Pan Speedrock, add Punk, Blues, Bluegrass, 80 college rock and Surf Rock; you get a pretty eclectic mix.

It was a good song, and I confirmed that it was in fact S-K.  Tim positively gushed about them.  Which got me to listen to them.  I found The Woods in its entirety on You Tube.  I now wonder what the hell took me so long to give S-K a try. 

So I am about to do something completely unfair, I am going to compare this band to a couple others.  I've said this to a couple people already, they are like The Pixies meet Sonic Youth but in each bands Punk Phase (TM).

It's unfair because they really have forged their own sound, but this is a compliment.  I really like the Pixies and Sonic Youth.

The guitar work sounds like the Pixies because it is abrupt, cornered and edgy.  I don't know the musical term and don't really care too.  But once you get into the Pixies, there is no mistaking the influence.

The guitar work sounds like Sonic Youth because Sleater-Kinney is absolutely fearless about inserting strange sounds into any part of the song and making them work.

The bass work sounds like nothing, because there isn't a bass player.  This might be the most amazing thing about this band.  I've heard bands without bass, mostly in garage bands where no one wanted to play bass.  In general the music sounds less full, some of the spectrum is missing.  Some songs can get away with that, but in general it misses something.    Don't take my word for it.  Pete Townshend in the documentary Amazing Journey: Story of the Who said this on John Entwistle (paraphrased)

"on the 1989 tour, I wanted to turn the sound down which just crippled John.  We had to bring in multiple guitarists, back up singers and a horn section.  All to make up the deficit of losing John's decibels"

Sleater-Kinney sounds amazingly rich over a broad spectrum as just a bass-less trio.

Oh yeah the vocals and drumming.  Really really good. Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein have similarly pitched voices and they are really creative at interposing who sings what part.  Janet Weiss is a human metronome.  She's just not good for a girl, she is just plain good and rocks harder then you.  Deal With It.


Off "The Woods" my favorite songs are Entertain and Rollcercoaster.  In fact the bridge during Entertain might be my favorite bit of new to me music I have heard in years.

So thanks Tim for getting me to take a closer listen.

F@#$ The Liberation Trilogy

A review of the so far uncompleted War in Europe Trilogy by Rick Atkinson.

First, this book is a chronological narrative of the various WW2 European land campaigns.  WTF is a narrative you may ask?  A narrative writer researches the various battles in depth, going so far as to routinely quote from letters of the participants.  The generals of course (bird’s eye view), but quite possibly the average soldier too (worm’s eye view).

Narratives are long; they read slow and show a tendency to get sucked into details.  Perhaps the most famous of these is Shelby Foote’s  The Civil War: A Narrative.  I read this too, but its 3000-4000 pages long and was my reading material for half a year. 

I mention that because before you rush to Barnes & Noble (damn Nobles and their screwing my family out of half the store…) to buy this, know what you are getting.  It might not be your cup of tea, and that’s fine.  But on the off chance you are still interested…

I really enjoyed both An Army at Dawn and The Day of Battle.

An Army at Dawn

Tells the story of the United States’ entry into WW2 and the subsequent operations in North Africa.  I found it a good read for a number of reasons.

1)      Big picture.  How did Operation Torch (the invasion of French North Africa) come about?  I found it a fascinating examination of the various American plans that were rejected by the British.  Us Yanks wanted to go cross channel as early as 1942, but the Limeys vetoed that.  The deferment to junior alliance partner status at this stage of the war was also interesting.

2)        The Players.  I have seen Patton.  So most of the lead generals are at least familiar.  A good military narrative really examines the players and how their strengths and weaknesses shape the campaign

3)      The nuggets.  Besides the big battle Army scale analysis, Atkinson also tells the story of individual companies and platoons.  Trying not to spoil anything, but what happened to units in the 34^th infantry was downright criminal.

Day of Battle

This is the story of the Sicily and Italian campaigns, culminating in the fall of Rome.  There is some chapters after Rome, but it is all falling action mirroring what an actual backwater Italy became for the Allies

This is more of the same as Army at Dawn but more so, because the Italian campaign simply doesn’t get as much historical mention except to say that it was long, hard and progress was slow.

So overall, I enjoyed the first two installments of this series and am looking forward to the D-Day campaign, and hope there’s plenty of pages on Operation Dragoon, the lesser known invasion of southern France that was just as instrumental for Germany’s defeat.

F$@& Agricola

Agricola

This going to be a partial review so far, because I started the game at midnight and was unable to hang in there till scoring.

Plot:  You are running a medieval farm.

Goal:  its a game about victory points.   Going by my very untrustworthy memory, you get them by filling in your tableau with fields and building additions and by also having a variety of resources at the end of the game.

Mechanics:  It's influence control and resource gathering.  You start with 2 influence doobers and you place them in one of about 10 spots.  The amount of spots increase as the game goes along.

A lot gather resources, some allow you to play an 'exception' style card, either called a occupation or a minor upgrade, and finally some allow you to upgrade your basic infrastructure.

The occupations and upgrades lead to some synergy on your action tokens.  For example, my first occupation allowed me to plow a field automatically when I picked the get a grain role, saving me an action.

A round consists of everyone playing every influence token they have, gathering resources and playing these actions.  At known times, a food upkeep is held.  This is very important, failure to feed your doobers leads to -3 VP, and JC, who taught the game, said that losing those VPs guarantees you will not win.


Review:  Another game I don't know if I like.  I sure hope it goes faster if/once people learn how to play.  4+ hours is unacceptable to me.  There were a lot of good decisions to be made but it was a struggle for me just to feed my people in game #1.

You draw 7 occupations and 7 minor upgrades from their respective decks.  Each of those decks contain 100+ cards, so there is quite a bit of replay.


Tips:  Are you F#@%ing kidding me?  I didn't last till it scored!  It seems like getting lots of the wood resource was important, and you really didn't want to add new guys until your infrastructure was well set up to feed them.  Other than that, no idea.

F$@& Goa

Goa

Plot:  Far East colonies and spice trading.  Completely slapped on theme, so ignore it.

Goal:  It's a game about victory points.

Mehcanics:  Combination of auction and and actions. 

In the auction you acquire things that help you, whether it is spice storage, a recurring resource, or something else that furthers your infrastructure/VP total.  The currency for the auction is ONLY used for the auction.

During the action phase, every player gets 3 actions (extra actions can be earned via auction buys or infrastructure upgrades.)  Actions can earn you resources for the auction, for infrastructure upgrades or the actual upgrading of your infrastructure.

Game ends after 8 rounds, most VPs win.  You earn VP's in several different ways

Upgrading your infrastructure.  You start at the 0 VP/level, and there are 4 upgrades tiers available for 5 different resources.  The VP levels are 0-1-3-6-10.  The lion's share of your points will come from this.  However, it looks like it's not too terribly difficult to be competitive with upgrades, the winner is going to be determined elsewhere.

Auction buys;  When you buy something at auction, it might give VPs at end game. 

Found a Colony.  This happens during auction phase.  A successful colony founding helps you store more resources and gives a VP.  There's quite a lot of luck involved here, although there are ways to minimize it.

Get Expedition Cards:  These cards give a 1 shot bonus OR sets of the same type of card give you VP's at the end.



Deeper into the auction:

The auction occurs on a 5X5 map of items.  The "Flag holder"  places the "Flag" by a auction tile that has a open border (in other words, tiles must have an exposed outer edge).  The Flag placer puts a "1" circular token marking his auction item.  The player to his left then selects something adjacent to the flag as his auction item, placing a "2" marker on it.  The player left of "2" drops a "3" marker onto a tile adjacent to the "1".  then so on down the line.  The "Flag" also gets to choose an item to auction, so he is selling 2 things, the flag and a tile.

The player that wins the flag goes first AND receives an additional action during the action phase.

It is a one pass auction.  The player to the left of the guy who played the numeric auction token makes a bid and that continues around till everyone has had a shot.  If no one bids, the player who laid the token gets it for free.

Some of things you can buy are increased storage (called plantations), a recurring resource add (ships, money, spices or colonists), a one shot resource bonus or VP tiles.

After the auction, proceed to the Action Phase.

During the action phase you can:

Grab resources.  This includes money for the auction, or ships and spice for infrastructure upgrades.

Upgrade your infrastructure:  This both helps your game play and is worth VPs, so it's kind of important.  This costs ships and spices.

Found a colony:  This will both increase  your spice storage capacity and earn you a VP, so not as important as upgrades, but still important.  It's also semi-random.  You can earn 'colonists' via upgrades and tile buys, but if you don't reach the minimum threshold to found the colony this action is nearly wasted. (you do earn a colonist to help you reach the threshold in the future).

Review:  The only thing remotely innovative about this game is the auction map.  It's a neat selection mechanism, but I really have no idea how to game that.  Seems to me that randomly choosing the auction items would work nearly as well.  Having said that, the tile picking doesn't take all that long and the rest of the game fits together well.    
This wasn't a game I fell in love with on my first playing but it's something that I can play again several more times.

Tips:

*Do not let the flag get bought too cheaply.  The extra action is worth at minimum 4$.  The flag itself is probably worth more than that because it also lets you sell 2 things next round.

*The recurring resource tiles went fast in the game I played, I did not buy any yet was still competitive.  That leads me to believe that in some ways they were over valued, but I don't actually remember what the final bid was.

F@#$ JCon

just spent parts of the last 4 days in CoMO playing board games with a group of 10-15 people and it was super fun.  I mixed in some new games with some I had to teach, and my thoughts on those will probably be the topic of 6 or 7 more posts.  This post will be my general experiences.

#1 high blood pressure sucks.  Whenever a group formed up to go get something to eat, I was left out.  Everybody knew I have high blood pressure because I reminded them every 15 minutes, kind of like the "I don't own a TV Guy" from this Onion Article.  So something to work on Darren, along with your low sodium diet.


#2 there was a lot of cats.  They weren't cuddle slut cats so it worked out great for my allergies, I didn't really have any kind of allergy miseries.  Having said that if JCon returns to CoMO, I will once again book a hotel room.

#3 I did not play hardly any games with Mike.  Maybe 4 hours worth out of 48 total gaming type hours.  This worked out great.  The reason at Gencon I don't like to fly solo is the increased likelihood that you will encounter Gamers.  That's Gamers with a capital G.  Players that are so socially retarded that any 4 hour session block becomes tainted, and no amount of natural 20s or board game wins can possibly redeem it.  I seemed to spend most of my time with Schmitty and Chi and they were both super nice and super friendly.


#4  I did not win JCon.  My final Tally was 6 stars, and 4 of those were from wins on games I taught and a win was after we realized we played Chaos in the Old World wrong and it probably was a huge advantage for me.

#5 A tip of the cap to Jason, Jeremy, Josh and Mike for sticking with Roll Through the Ages.  They started at 1:30 and ended around midnight.  Everyone said it was a great, fun game but yikes.

 So a great weekend, next year let me know if there is something else I can do/bring that would help.

F@#$ Previous Game Reviews

Crayon Train Games
Steam
Chaos in the Old World
Thebes
Space Alert - Darren's Take
Space Alert Mike's take
Settlers of Cataan
Bohnanza (the bean game)
Clash of the Gladiators
D&D 4th Edition
Carcassone
Automobiles
Last Night on Earth
Galaxy Trucker
Dixit
7 Wonders
Dominion
Hammer of the Scots
Ticket to Ride
Alhambra
Scrabble
Age o Empires: Age of Discovery
Samurai
Saint Petersburg
Lost Cities
Fresco
Notre Dame- Mike's take
Ra
Race for the Galaxy
Notre Dame - Darren's take
Olympos (not Olympus)
Brass
Smallworld
Stone Age
No Thanks!
Olympus

F$%^ Crayon Train Games

Crayon Train Games

This will incorporate NorAm rails, Eurorails et al.  The mechanics will be talked about in general since that stays the same from game to game while the game play will talk about some specific titles.

Objective:  This is not a game about victory points.  This is a race to $250 and a city connection threshold.

Mechanics:

 Everyone starts with $50 or $70 depending on if you are playing the long or short version.  With that you build track.  Base cost is $1 for building into a plain, $2 for a mountain, $5 for a rugged mountain (alp), $3 for a small or medium city or $5 for a major city.  This is further modified by building bridges.  Crossing a river adds +2 to the cost and a lake/ocean inlet costs +3.    After the initial track buy, all further track must be connected to your network.  You can use opponents track at $3/turn rental.

Your train has a movement.  It starts at 9 but can be upgraded to 12.  Each mile post/link connection is one move.

There is a large deck of cards with contracts.  Each card has 3 selections.   (kind of hard to see on the picture…but it’s the fan on top.)  Each window tells you what you need deliver, where to deliver it, and how much money you get.   You can only complete one contract per card, and once filling it you discard it drawing a replacement.  At this time events may happen like derailments or storms or whatever.  There are instructions for each one of them in the rules so consider having those handy.

Instead of moving, you may discard all your contracts and draw 3 new ones.  Events occur normally.

First one to get to $250 and all but one major city connection wins!

Tactics:  I am only intimately familiar with Eurorails, so that game will have specifics and I will generalize where I can.

1)      Get high value cargo runs going as soon as possible.  Spain is absolutely the best for this, it has great runs to and fro.  Italy is a great supplier but the demands stinks.   England has great demand but the supply stinks.

2)      Ferries are evil.  Sometimes they are a necessary evil, but in general all they do is slow you down.

3)      Think long term when laying down your initial track.  You will probably criss-cross the initial buy sever times so avoiding a city for a $3 savings just makes longer turns down the road.

Review:  these games used to be AWESOME before the explosion of designer board games.  Now it shows its age.  The long versions can take 6+ hours and that is just something I am not interesting in doing ever again.  The games also vary wildly in game play.  Eurorails is well balanced with contacts going all over the map, and NorAm rails is pretty good too.  Japan rails and British rails get dominated by Tokyo and London rendering those games uninteresting.   I think I have railed on the production quality of games in a tube before, so just summarizing, Mayfair get a clue.  If the game is well put together I am definitely willing to spend $20 more.

So my gaming group still has a copy of Eurorails and we bust it out once or twice a year to play the short version.  Within those limitations it still holds up pretty well.  It messes with the game balance (Spain becomes even more important because contracts to central Europe are now reachable with initial cash) but that’s a small price to play to be finished in 2 hours.

F$%^ a good game

What makes a good game?

I have had trouble writing this post because a good game has contradictory aspects.

A good game should have decent pacing.  I like it to be my turn lots.  Everyone else can F$%& right off.

A good game should have intriguing decisions to make:  both tactical and strategic.

A good game I am decent at.  I don’t have to win regularly, but I want to compete.

So the big contradiction:  the harder the decisions the worse the pacing (in general).  So it’s kind of a balancing act.   I don’t mind waiting for my opponents to think things through if there are things worth thinking about.

And a corollary:  If I feel a game fails at pacing and decisions, I am unlikely to like it enough to become decent at it.  So it kind of reinforces that.

I really don’t know how to continue except to give some examples of games that we have played within the past year or so.

Samurai

Pacing:  Good to exceptional.  It is your turn lots.

Decisions:  Lame to adequate.  The core mechanic is like playing dots with your sister on a long car ride to Oklahoma.  Of course that’s an oversimplification, but I feel it is well within the exaggeration for effect ballpark.

Darren’s ability:  Poor.  I suck at this game and am never ever never really competitive.

Notre Dame

Pacing:  Adequate to Good.   Definitely has some slow spots, especially when your opponents have two really good cards to pass.

Decisions:  Good.  It’s pretty standard fare, but the pieces fit together smoothly and there are multiple paths to victory.

Darren’s Ability:  Adequate to Good.  I don’t keep track of win percentages, but wild ass guessing, I would say I win 1 out of every 4 or 5 times.  Wins aren’t a big deal to me; the big factor is that I am competitive 9 out of 10 times.

Brass

Pacing: Poor to adequate.  Decisions take a long ass time.  Kicking this up to adequate because the decisions made are really really hard.

Decisions:  Superior.  Out of the NF extended clan, I am the only one still playing online.   I feel that might be part of my personality.  I didn’t play a dozen of games simultaneously like everyone else, I paced myself.  So as it stands, I am still learning things from this game, but I only participate in 1 or 2 games at once.

Darren’s Ability:  Good to superior.  That’s entirely because I am still in practice compared to everyone else.    I win online 30% of the time, but that factor in my early games.  Currently I probably win closer to 40% of the time and finish no worse than 2^nd 60-70% of the time.