Boardgame Geek Meets Jules Verne

I am not able to attend BoardgameGeek's BGG.Con in Texas, but I am pleased to see them using a steampunk theme for their ad. A Jules Verne fan like myself can really appreciate this Journey to the Center of the Earth poster, and I hope you will, too:

Posted by Whatsits Galore.

New Door Mats

Even more awesome welcome mat designs. I wish I had more doors.

Come On a-My House Door Mat
by whatsitsgalore

Choose Your Own Adventure Door Mat: You See A Door Doormat
by whatsitsgalore

Role Player D20 Door Mat: You See A Door Doormat
by whatsitsgalore

Game Review: Monopoly Ultimate

First, let me say that I hate Monopoly. It's light on strategy, it depends too much on trading (not my favorite game mechanic), and it benefits you after all the properties are bought to stay in jail as long as possible. But mostly because it's the game that never ends. I will only play if a time limit is set beforehand, player with the most money wins, game over.

All that changes with Monopoly Ultimate. It's your father's Monopoly, but with 3 added expansions that speed up the game and make it actually fun. Not my favourite game by any means, but fun. Here are some of the changes:

Every space is for sale, including Income Tax, Free Parking, and Go. Just Visiting now includes paying for the privilege.

The golden car (I forget the actual name and always call it the Cash Cab), which you can become temporarily, picks up properties it lands on for free.

As soon as every property is acquired, the game ends.

My favourite part: special power cards you can purchase or get for free create game chaos. With the right card, you can build houses without owning a full set of properties, or become the bank and pay fines with embezzled funds, or win the game by rolling three doubles in a row. These are powerful powers, but you lose them as quickly as you gain them to keep the game even. More or less.

The game I played still took two hours, and I didn't win, but it went by quickly because it was entertaining. And I no longer have to excuse myself when Monopoly is suggested, as long as it's the Ultimate.

Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of game play. This one was totally on me.

I'm not a big fan of the game Pit, but I will play if called upon. On this particular day, I started the hand with multiple barley cards. So, no surprise, I went for barley. The surprise came when I actually filled my hand and went out.

Instead of acclaim, I received criticism. "You can't go out with the bear," I was told.

I knew that. "I don't have the bear, I have all barley," I replied. But when I fanned my cards better, I saw that I did indeed have the bear. The letter "B" in the corner of the card fooled me.

After an apology, we dealt again and started trading. I miraculously got a full hand (barley again), rang the bell, and went out.

This time the reproach came in a less-friendly tone: "You can't go out with the bear!" Sure enough, I had the bear card hiding among all that barley.

I apologized again and took up the cards to deal, determined not to make another mistake. As I dealt, I tossed a card to myself and saw it begin to flip face up. In that split second, I considered that it didn't matter if everybody saw one of my cards, we could still play out the hand.

Then the card fell. It was the bear, the one card that, if anyone knew who had it, the hand could not be played.

That darn bear.

Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of gameplay. Here's a sample.

If you haven't played The Totally Insane Card Game, you are totally missing out. It's like Uno on steroids. Besides a host of insane cards too many to name here, there are more familiar cards like Skip and Reverse. This particular story involves the Take 2 card, just like the Draw 2, except you take from your opponents, diminishing their hands while you increase your own. In Totally Insane, when a Take 2 is played on you, you have the option of playing another Take 2 on top of it, thereby passing 4 takes to the next player.

The game in question started with a Take 2, played by my brother-in-law Tim. I played a Take 2 on top of that. The next player, instead of taking 4, played another Take 2. Cries of, "Take 8," "Take 10," and "Take 12" rang out as everyone played their Take 2 cards, going around the table more than once.

Finally, somebody was out of Take 2 cards. It was Tim, the guy that started it all, who had to take 36 cards from the rest of us, emptying all our hands and ending the round. We each scored zero. Tim scored enough to end the game on turn one. We all won, he lost.

The most amazing part is that the very same thing happened again on a different game night. We played all our Take 2 cards first thing, Tim took all the cards from our hands, lost the game in one turn, and gave the rest of us a shared victory.

Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of game play. But none, I'll wager, stranger than this one.

I brought my favorite party game, Time's Up, to a church picnic and taught it to an interested group. The conversation with a teen I'll call Tony went something like this:

Me: You have to get your team to say the words on the card. It can be a movie...

Tony: Like Titanic?

Me: Right. Or a song or a book. Give clues to your team...

Tony: Like, "The movie where a ship hit an iceberg"?

Me: Yes. But don't say any of the words on the card.

Tony: Like you can't say, "In this movie, the Titanic started to sink"?

Me: Right. Okay, let's start. You go first, Tony.

(Tony picks a card)

Tony: Okay, it's a movie about a ship, and it hit an iceberg and sank.

At this point I leaned over to the player next to me and whispered, "Freaky."