Graham’s London Landmarks–’Playin’ Games’

Dire news! One of London’s best board games shops, Playin’ Games, has been suffering recently, what with the tanking economy, computer games, online shopping and so on. It’s a brilliant shop,  and the idea of it closing chills me to the core. If you’re in London, drop by and show them some love (the best stuff is downstairs).

If you’re new to the whole thing, I would recommend ‘Ticket to Ride’, ‘Modern Art’, ‘Settlers Of Catan’, ‘Alhambra’, ‘Riddles and Riches’ and ‘Memoir 44′ as good entry points.

Deep Strategy

This is a really interesting concept. Three-way chess. It’s not one of those Vulcan chess variations, but simply chess for three players. The game gets a thoughtful little rundown here, but the reason I post it is because of the comment with the heading “My friend has this, we play”, the contents of which made me laugh so much I had to have a little rest afterwards.

(Don’t bother looking for it–the guy said  “My friend had this, we play all the time. It is ball-deep awesome.”)

RIP Gary Gygax

The inventor of ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ has crossed the Styx.

Thanks, Gary! While other kids were smoking, having sex and drinking, I was poring over books like this one. It took the edge off.

Gorey’s grave plundered

I like the sound of Gloom, a card game in which you try to heap tragedies on the luckless family members under your control, but I’m annoyed by the illustrations, which are, at best, crummy approximations of the style of the late, great Edward Gorey, and, at worst, direct swipes.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paying tribute to the man, and the game mechanics certainly seem to do that, but after searching designer Keith Baker’s website, I can’t find any reference to Gorey whatsoever. Not even an ‘Inspired by the work of’ credit.

It ain’t right.

Chrononauts– terrific-sounding time travel game

Chrononauts a card-based game of time travel, alternate history and paradoxes, sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.

“You begin the game by laying out the 32 historical event cards, in
temporal order; they begin in 1865 (Lincoln Assassinated), and end in
1999 (Columbine High School Massacre). Each card has two sides;
initially, all are placed with the historical (in our world) event as
it happened. During the game, events can be flipped by the play of
Inverter cards; thus, “Lincoln Assassinated” can be flipped to the
reverse side, which reads “Lincoln Wounded.” Some cards have “Ripples”
which result in other cards being flipped–thus if Lincoln was merely
wounded, the 1868 and 1974 cards are also flipped — Andrew Johnson
isn’t impeached (presumably he wasn’t President in 1868), and Nixon
didn’t resign (possibly because no president had been previously
impeached).”

This is the kind of game I like–heavy on concept and strategy, light on mechanics. For anyone interested in dipping a toe in the waters of hobby gaming, Modern Art, Settlers of Catan and Memoir 44 are also very good places to start.

Sigh. When I think of all the people playing dutifully playing Monopoly on Christmas Day as if it’s the only game ever invented…breaks my heart, it does.