Overdue update

It's been almost 2 weeks since I posted anything! Not terribly much has been going on. Here's a brief summary of what's going on with my various endeavors:

Tasty Minstrel Games
The question on everybody's mind is probably "how's the publication coming?" Or if I'm lucky it's more like "When will Terra Prime and Homesteaders be in stores?"

Well, I'm currently working on rulebooks while Michael is soliciting quotes from manufacturers. Research is leading toward some good news for both price and schedule, so that's good. If everything goes as planned, the games should be out in plenty of time for BGG.con (see below)

Another thing that's new is that we received some submissions:
* a space themed worker placement/area control game,
* a colonization game,
* and a railroad game

I've had a chance to play each of those, one of which we've decided we're not going to pursue now, though we may be interested next year, one we're fairly interested in, but it needs some work, and one we can't really consider yet because another publisher has first dibs - if they decide they're not interested then we will decide if we are :)

I got an email about a submission as well, and we will be receiving yet another from someone we met at the GAMA trade show. I'm looking forward to the latter, because I liked it a lot when I played it before.

Game design
Nothing doing on the game design front at the moment. Concentrating on TP and HS publication, and notes on the prototypes I've been playing.

On a plane recently I read through some of my design notebook, and put a little thought into an old Pirate game idea. Actually, it's a game about trade where you can pursue victory by being a merchant (facilitating trade with pickup/deliver trips around the board), a pirate (attacking merchant ships and ports), or privateering (attacking pirates, and interdicting trade). It occurred to me that some of the mechanisms from Terra Prime could be used here - some of the bookkeeping and mechanical actions I mean. It would be an entirely different game with different decisions and different motivations, but some of the mechanisms could be similar to Terra Prime.

Gaming
Lately I've played a lot of Glory to Rome. John came over and we played 8 or 9 2p games - I won all but one of them. I even beat Tyler 2 out of three yesterday.

I've started going to a new friend's game night once a week, and I've tried some new games there: Municipium, Giants, Castle for all Seasons, and Jet Set, among other games like Space Alert, Goa, Princes of Florence, and Yspahan.

I'm playing in an online In the Shadow of the Emperor tournament, and I'm doing terribly. I also lost an online game of In the year of the Dragon - by 2 freaking points!

Conventions
Kublacon is coming up in about 2 weeks, and I fully expect to go to that. I seem to have slacked on buying a plane ticket, so I might have to pay too much to get there. Also, Southwest.com hasn't been working the last couple times I tried it, which is getting pretty annoying. I'm sure I'll also go to Strategicon's Gateway event in September, and of course BGG.con in November.

In fact, Tasty Minstrel Games has plans for BGG.con! We will have a booth, and we will be having a sort of launch party for our 2 games. We call it the Tasty Minstrel's Winner Cleans Up event - participants will gather for a presentation style rules explanation, then random groups of 4 people will be given a copy of the game to play in the open gaming area. The winner gets to keep the copy of the game! We plan to run one of these events for each game. I'll be posting on BGG about it, and I'll probably put up a sign-up sheet so we can get an idea of how many people will want to participate.

New Games!

It's unusual for me to buy new games, or new books, or new clothes for that matter. But last week was a rare exception. There are some games I've been wanting to play, and even though I know people who own them, I want to play them at home with other friends, and/or more often then once a week at my game club so I put an order in at Thoughthammer.

Thoughthammer is an online retailer of board games. I'd prefer to support my local game stores, since it's nice to go in there and browse around, have free gaming space, etc. However I was in Game Daze the other day and looked at some of the titles I was interested in... 50 bucks for a board game seems like quite a bit of money - especially when the online retailers sell the same thing for less than $30. The other store I frequent (Hat's Games), can order things, and gives us a discount, but the club makes these group orders only once every so often and Hat's distributor can't always get what I want. It's all just too inconvenient to deal with. Thoughthammer is quick, cheap, and easy. I put in my order on Monday, and the games arrived on Saturday.

Admittedly though, this wasn't quite fast enough in some respects. There's something to be said about the convenience of deciding that I want to play a game, and then walking out of the store with that game in hand the same day so I can play it that evening. While waiting for my order to arrive, I did pay retail for ANOTHER game last Thursday so I could play it that night at Hat's. Of course, for that kind of convenience I had to pay full price.

Wow, I didn't know this post was going to turn into a treatise on buying online vs supporting your FLGS (that's "Friendly Local Game Store"). I thought I was just going to list all the cool new stuff I got. So here's what I got:

Bison: Thunder on the Prairie
I read some discussion of this new game on BGG and decided the game sounded interesting. I was unsure if it was available yet, but I thought I had seen it at Game Daze a few days earlier. So at lunch I stopped by the store to see, and I was telling myself not to buy an unplayed game for $50 just to see if I like it. Well, it turned out to be only $30, so I went ahead and bought it so I could play it that night at Hat's.

As it turns out, I only played 1/2 a game of Bison at Hat's (the second half), and then I played another 1/2-game afterwards at Denny's (but people had to leave). Finally I played a full game the next night at home. each time was with an entirely different group of people, so each game was a learning game.

I wrote a review of the game based on my experience thus far. In short, I'd like to play it more, but I fear it will get old real quick. In that respect it probably wasn't worth the $30 price tag, I could have just waited until someone else bought it and played their copy a couple times.

TempusI played Tempus twice at BGG.con last November, as it was one of the eagerly anticipated games from Essen. I liked it, but the hype had built up my expectations a little too much. Now that it's finally available, I played the game again at a game day event and enjoyed it even more than I remember from last year. I played it again a few nights later at Hat's, and liked it again. Since then I've wanted to play more Tempus, but I only know one guy who has it, and I don't see him very often. So I decided to buy it myself. I am finding that I like it, but there are some other games (like Goa) that I'm currently liking a bit better.

GoaAbout a year and a half ago, a friend got Goa and was very interested in playing it. I remember having read some things on the 'net that led me to believe I wouldn't like the game much - that it was formulaic and sort of tedious. So, disinterested, I never gave Goa a try. A couple weeks ago, I finally did give Goa a try, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was nothing like I expected it to be. I enjoyed Goa a great deal and wanted to play it more immediately. This was the kind of heavy game I thought I could get my other friends to play, so I decided to add it to the order as well.

Rum & PiratesBefore seeing Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man's Chest, my friends and I stopped by a game store called Uncles Games (this is in Seattle) for their weekly open game night. We saw a new title from Alea called Rum & Pirates. I thought it was odd I hadn't heard anything about the game, but it WAS about pirates, and that was the theme of the evening. The store owners let us open up a copy and try it out, mostly because they were curious themselves. They also let my friends buy the "open" copy for 30% off afterwards.

I wrote a review of the game after a few plays. I like it and I wanted to play it with some specific friends that don't go to Hat's, so I added it to the order.

In the Shadow of the EmperorI have played ItSotE once, and it was pretty good. I've also read some good things about it being a deep/heavy game, and in such a small package (and price tag) I've been interested in actually buying it - I just never got around to it. As it turns out that's probably a good thing, because I ended up trading a game to my friend, who's just recently into gaming, and he ordered this for me (instead of ordering the game I owned for himself). So now I have it, I just need to find time and people to play against. On the down side, I'm pretty sure that even if it's good, it won't be AS good as some of my other games and therefore won't get played much. On the up side, the game I traded for was never going to hit the table again anyway, so it's almost like getting something for nothing.

Citadels (with Dark City expansion)I have Citadels already, and my friend Jeremy really likes it. I often give him a board game for Christmas, and of course he gives me a Playstation game for Hanukkah in return. I've been meaning to get him Citadels because I know he likes it, but I had trouble getting it at the right time for whatever reason. So finally, here it is. Merry Christmas, Jeremy!

BANG! - Dodge City expansion
I have BANG! though I don't play it often. Last December I had some non-gamer friends in from out of town. They're Ultimate Frisbee players who came for a tournament, and they're "gamer types" for the most part, they just don't play a lot of games. Well, long story short: We played BANG! for about 6 hours straight, and had a blast the whole time! So I decided I'd like the expansion in case that kind of thing ever happens again. Also, the expansion allows for an 8th player, which could be handy. I've never played the game with a second Renegade, but it could make things interesting.