BGTG 25 - July 18, 2005 - SoCal Games Day 22 (with Sam)
Over a week between podcasts, rats! Well, sometimes our lives get busy, right? Between a crunch at work . . . and a literal crunch at home (car crash--everyone's ok), there wasn't a chance to record anything recently. Hopefully I'll catch up soon.
First up is another in-between show. I guess it's mostly an audio session report, but since it talks about SoCal Games Day, and especially dads playing games with their sons, I think it has a theme, too.
Here on the website you can see that the logo has been decided--it's the pawn-on-wheels design. Thanks to everyone who voted in my web poll. And thanks most of all to Greg Wilzbach who designed them both!
-Mark
Games
Mechwarrior: Dark Age
Heroscape
Attacktix
Pirate's Cove
posted by Mark Johnson at 12:19 PM
10 Comments:
"Dork on a thing, huh?" :-) No offense taken, I've heard far worse before. Betcha wouldn't say that if you tried using one, though :-)
Have you tried the card game Set? (http://www.setgame.com/)
Hee-hee! That didn't take long, Chris! :-)
Yeah, Set was a game I tried quite a long time ago. Probably heard good things about it in Games Magazine or something. I like it ok, but speed-recognition games aren't really my thing. I traded away Bongo. I like Tohuwabohu, though.
I can't believe the stupid pawn logo won! LLLLLLLLLL!!
When you played Heroscape, did you roll for initiative (the 20 side die) after revealing each order marker?
The rules read that you roll for initiative once per round to determine turn order for that round. When doing your turn you reveal your order marker for that turn. (The round has three turns as indicated by the order markers 1, 2 and 3.)
It doesn't sound like it would break the game. After all it is a fairly light game. However, it may be easier to eliminate the figure a player is planning on moving this turn making the initiative roll more important than it is.
No, we played it correctly. I heard Sam explain that initiative roll incorrectly in the podcast, but figured it wasn't important enough to correct. I keep telling him we don't need to explain the mechanics so much, but he has his own ideas. :-)
I reckon I've worked out why Attacktix has sold out everywhere - it's with you and Sam talking it up! I bought a starter and a booster and I'm really looking forward to playing it. It certainly wins my vote for the game most likely to take your eye out. :-)
Excellent podcast. Kudos to Sam: i wish there were more articulate young people like him.
Careful where you use that "dork on a thing" comment. There are "police dorks on things" roaming around Millenium Park in Chicago.
Heh.
My take on explaining mechanics:
Generally it's not necessary, but if you're talking about a particularly nice move in the game, it may be useful to cover the portion of the rules/mechanics that this nice move counteracts/exploits/whatever. For example: "Now, in Puerto Rico, if the three ships already have commodities, then if you need to ship a fourth, you can't, and so must dump them all. So when Charlene took Captain and put her sugar on that third ship, neither Bill nor Ken had any place to put all their corn! Corn chowder, as it was all dumped into the water! Woo hoo!"
If you go through all the rules, you'll lose listeners' attention; but if you never explain any rules, you might just lose listeners' comprehension.
I agree with Dave Wilson's comments in the above (Re: Explanation).
As a listener, I always appreciated the short-spiel about mechanics of a game. Sam's explanation of Pirate's Cove was nice. I've never played Pirates Cove and if you had just talked about the game, I wouldn't be listening.
I guess it depends on what you want your target audience to be. Normal Joe Blow who's only played less than 25% of the games you've played or a uber geek that's played all the games that you've mentioned.
-Anson
Definitely not uber geek.
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