Do The Robot

After over a year and a half of not being able to play board games, this is the third Friday in a row I’ve had friends over for an evening of laughter and fun around a table. Goodness, it feels good to see friends again. 

Tonight I decided to inflict the 2005 Avalon Hill edition of RoboRally on two of my neighbours. RoboRally is a notoriously long game among my college friends, but that’s mostly down to playing “Monopoly Rules”. That is to say, no one checks the actually rules and goes with the decision of the person who owns the game, in this case, usually in relation to maps and victory flag positions. RoboRally comes with a bunch of suggestions at the back of the book for maps that cater to Beginners to Experts, Short to Long games. We played a Short Beginner suggestion, and including rules teach at the start the game was finished in a hair over two hours. That might sound long still to readers outside the modern board gaming hobby scene, but remember that a lot of the time was just us chatting between resolving turns. 

However, Claire did comment upon seeing us start “Are you sure you have enough time?”

An early burst saw me reach the first flag a solid two full turns before my friends. Highlights along the way included a friend messing up an early game turn that resulted in him travelling in a big circle to end his turn in exactly the same space as he began it, and the time that I forgot that rotating right by 90° four times would put me back in my original orientation, not, as I needed, facing to my left. I failed the RoboRally Dance big time there. 

But the true highlight of the night was the final turn that saw my robot push one of my friends robots out of winning, only to immediately have my other friend reverse onto the third and final flag. In the end, all three robots were beside each other around the flag, but only one was sitting atop it as the victor. We all burst out laughing. 

A wonderful way to end any game. 

My Friday Adventure

Last night I sat down early to write my 150 words in order to free up my evening to watch a TV show. Tonight, it’s super late as I start writing. In fact, technically, I’ve kinda missed Friday entirely. It’s already 12:10am as I write this sentence. But that’s okay, because, like last Friday, I spent the evening hanging out with friends playing board games!! 

Actually, that not entirely accurate. I spent most of the whole day hanging out with friends playing board games!! And even more time travelling about with board games as a goal. 

This morning, after dropping Ada to school, I packed my bags, kissed my wife and son good-bye and travelled far across land and water the far off shore of North Vancouver. Took me about 90 minutes by bus and SeaBus. I noted on my way that I believe this was the first time I have travelled on the SeaBus without children in at least seven years, possibly ever. Taking this rare opportunity, I sat at the back of the passenger ferry, rather than gazing out the front window. 

I met up with a friend I hadn’t seen in person since the pandemic began, and we got a lovely lunch, on his recommendation. The reason for our meeting was to swap games. I had a game he ordered, and he had one I ordered. With the swap done and nothing to rush away to, we played two board games and had a lovely chat and much laughter. 

Around 3pm we parted ways. I travelled once more on the Seabus, this time gazing out the far more enjoyable front window at Downtown Vancouver drawing ever closer.  I adventured onwards to my Friendly Local Game Store to add two more board games related items to my Bag of Holding. I chatted with the owners, but didn’t stay long! I had places to be and more games to acquire. 

I took the bus back through downtown, getting off before crossing the bridge and walked to visit a friend who had (you guessed it!) another board game for me! He took my arrival to be a good time to head out himself, and we walked and chatted together much of the way back towards the bus before separating and going our own ways, him to buy Christmas gifts (in November?!?), me to finally trek home. 

I returned to my domain around 5pm, ate dinner with my family, put the kiddos to bed, along with the nightly brushing of teeth and reading of the story books. Mud Puddle is the current hot piece of evening literature among 3 to 6 year olds. Some time around all this I managed to squeeze in an hour playing a very silly and fun drawing game with online friends on Twitch. And digital friends are real friends too.

By 8pm, I had the company of two more of my friends in my home. We talked about the news of the day, before playing two board games, neither of which I won. 

But victory was never the goal. Good company, laughter and friendship were my reward, and my day was filled with it. It is late, now just gone 12:40am. It is time for this adventurer to rest, and with a little luck, dream of board games. 

I’m The King Of The Castle

After lamenting the fact that I miss my friends and haven’t played board games in months in a recent post, I got to play a board game with friends tonight!! Hah!!

I decided to have a few games picked out of my collection that I’d enjoy, but let my friends pick which one we actually play. I’ve been in the situation that all board gamers dread where friends call over for a night of games, than spend an hour just trying to narrow down their options from a huge selection. It’s not fun. 

As such, I pulled out three games from my shelves that I thought would be interesting, but also were varied in play style, and dusted them off. Literally. I had to get a cloth. It’s been a while. Most of my game shelves ahven’t been touched since I rearranged everything way back at the start of LockDown 1. 

Tales of the Arabian Nights is a storytelling game, with a huge book of adventures that you can encounter on your. journey, in classic Choose Your Own Adventure style. It’s fun and funny but a little random at times, and I prefer to play it with the goal of telling a fun story, than reaching the victory conditions and winning. 

Quantum is a space strategy game of colonizing planets. It is compact, tight and clean. I’m terrible at strategy games, but this one is just at my level. Plus, your spaceships are represented on the board by dice, with each face a different ship! Very neat. 

Kingsburg is a dice rolling worker placement game, I guess? You usually roll three dice, and depending on the rolls, you can decide the board spaces you want to use. If you roll 2, 3, and 4 on your dice, you could use spaces 2, 3, or 4 with individual dice, but also combine them to potentially use spaces 5, 6, 7, 8, or even 9! The choices become really interesting as you develop your kingdom, with some buildings allowing you to modify dice rolls. All this, and you have an ever looming threat of attack at the end of each of the five game years. 

My friends chose Kingsburg, and we had a blast. Lots of blocking one another by taking the exact space someone else wanted, and plenty of space during the game for chitchat and relaxed discussion. Despite the fact that neither of my two friends had played before, and I hadn’t played in about eight or nine years, it was a supremely easy teach. I had brushed up on the rule book this evening, and watched a How To Play video, which was more than enough. 

It felt good to be back playing games among friends. I wonder why I haven’t been doing it more often…

Oh…

Oh yeah. That. 

Would You Like To Play A Game?

I love board games. 

Since we all got locked in our own homes, a number of resources to play board games online together have grown rapidly in popularity. When they originally launched, in The Before Times, I think much of the board game community gave these digital board game platforms a bit of a snarky side-eye. The whole point of tabletop gaming was the tabletop, sitting with friends, sharing a space. Whether at home or a convention, the point was to get away from the computer screen that was dominating the rest of our lives. But with that not really an option, the idea of meeting through a digital application and chatting over Zoom or Discord while playing swiftly grew in popularity.

Of course, some board games have had a digital version for years. I love being able to play Burgle Bros, Ticket To Ride or Carcassonne on my iPad, churning through single player games against the AI at my leisure. 

But this is different. Digital platforms like Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia and their ilk are basically physics engines with little intelligence beyond maybe snapping appropriate elements to appropriate spots. You need to learn the rules of the game you’re playing, as if you were playing it on a table, but you also need to learn the “rules” of the platform, such as the button combinations for actions, or how to hide you hand of cards. They might automate the setup, but if you want to grab all the cards and flip them over and dump all the pieces into the wrong bag and award yourself a million points, the application isn’t going to stop you. There are a few platforms where games can be programmed with all the rules, but they tend to have a much smaller catalogue, as it takes a lot more to develop games for them. 

I know many of my friends use them a lot, and love playing on them. Or at least, accept playing on them enough to join weekly game nights. Game designers have leveraged them for advance playtesting, or giving reviewers access to their game without needing to ship promotional copies across the world. Crowdfunded games, that might not even have physical copies yet, can get a digital version written up and distributed ahead of the campaign to drum up interest and let prospective backers try before they buy, so to speak. 

This is all great. It’s allowed board games to spread even further, given more people easy access to the hobby, or to sharing the hobby they’ve already loved for years with friends and family across the world. It’s kept people in contact with their groups when they couldn’t get together, or allowed gamers to find entirely new groups, playing with other fans of their favourite game in other continents. 

And I dislike it. Quite a bit. 

I wouldn’t say “I hate it” even though that would be a more dramatic and punchy way to continue this post. I’ve played one game recently on a stream with two friends and it was great. Honestly, it was a whole lot of fun, and it was so nice to be able to game and chat with people not in my immediate family. 

It’s just not why I game. 

I don’t play to win. That’s not to say I don’t try to win. If you’re not at least trying to beat the game or your opponents, then you’re wasting everyone else’s time. It’s just that winning isn’t my reason for being there. I love to sit at a table, chat face to face, feel the cards, tokens and plastics bits and bobs, get excited at a critical roll of the dice, or gasp together at the wrong event triggering at the right time. I love to look my friend in the eye as I take their territory, and then stare them down as they take mine. 

Online gaming can replicate almost every aspect of a board game needed for it to function as the rule book demands, but it can’t match the experience of a shared space with great friends. 

I miss my friends. I miss board games. But, if all goes according to plan, it won’t be for much longer. 

Teaching Inis

There’s a particular board game I love. It’s been at the number one spot on my favourite’s list for a number of years now. Designed by a French designer, published by a French publisher, it is entirely themed on Irish mythology. 

Inis is about trying to control key gameplay states on the board to be crowned king of The Island. It has an awesome table presence, from it’s uniquely shaped modular board pieces, to the lovely little minis each player moves around the board, to the stunning artwork on the cards, all licensed from a world famous Irish artist that specializes in Irish mythology art. When the game is laid out on a table, it just screams at anyone walking by “Hey you! Come look at me! I’m beautiful!” 

SHUX is a convention run by a popular board game review site based in the UK. The twist is, because they love me and wanted to spend time with me, they chose Vancouver to host their convention! I got a ticket to the very first one, sight unseen, day one of sales, some 10 months before the actual event. 

I played Inis four times over those two days. Worse, I taught Inis NINE times over the two days. By early on the Sunday, people were hunting me down because other attendees had been tweeting about me. I had The Teach down to a fine art, a swift 25 minutes, filled with gags to keep players engaged. 

On Sunday morning I borrowed a second copy from the actual owner of the company that publishes Inis and ran two games side by side. It was an amazing sight that made my heart sing with joy. 

But even so, I was burned out by Sunday afternoon. Staying up gaming in the convention hall until 1am Saturday night/Sunday morning probably didn’t help. So, as I was expalining the game for the nineth time, I decided that this was the last one. 

Halfway through The Teach, someone walked by the table, stopped and said “Ooohh! Inis! I’ve wanted to play this all weekend but never got the chance.”

Inside my head, my brain silently screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOO!! Don’t you-“ but my mouth involuntarily responded “I can teach you once I’m done here.”

I heard a door slam and my brain stomped off angrily into the foggy ether of my subconsciousness. 

Thankfully, he thanked me, but said he was heading to the airport soon and would have to take me up on the offer next year. 

My brain shouted “You’re on your own!” as it drove out of sight in an imaginary red Ferrari, and I really don’t recall much of anything from the rest of that Sunday. 

The moral of the story is: Don’t stay up until 1am at conventions when you have a whole other day to come, even if it is to school a table of friends in your first game of Nations: The Dice Game by winning with at least a twenty point gap to second place. 

Gaming Dad

My large board game collection has been largely gathering dust since March. Actually, apart from a complete reorganising in the early days of the first lockdown, it’s been entirely gathering dust. Up to recently, I’ve avoided adding to my collection, knowing that I wouldn’t be getting to play any of them any time soon. As well as saving money, it removed the feeling of the cult of the new, or of “missing out” on new releases. I figured if I was still interested in a game once all this was over, it was worthwhile adding to the shelves. 

But in the last couple months I’ve cracked and added a small number of games to my collection. Not including Kickstarters that I had backed pre-pandemic, all the new games I’ve gotten are ones I can play with my kids, mostly my five year old daughter. We’ve turned the morning into a regular game time, putting the screens away and playing a few games face-to-face. 

I love board games for the social, hanging out with friends aspect, and I really miss that during this extended time of physical distancing. Playing games with Ada helps a lot. Seeing her grow and understand games and rules more and more makes me so happy. I hope she’ll at least tolerate occasionally gaming with me when she’s older. I’d hate to have to guilt trip her into playing Inis again with her nerdy dad.

I’ll still do it. I’ll just feel bad. 

Plastic, Cardboard And Friends

I love boardgames. I love the challenge. I love the components. I love the art. I love the tactile nature of a physical, on a table, plastic and cardboard game. 

But mostly, I love the friends. When we first moved to Vancouver and chose this neighbourhood as our home, I googled for boardgame stores, found one within reasonable walking distance and treked over in the first few weeks after we had settled. It’s not there anymore, the whole area has been redeveloped, but it’s where I made a lot of new friends in this strange land. Over the years, boardgames was my jumping off point for many of my friendships, either through meeting people at conventions or being connected through other friends by way of “Hey, you both like boardgames, you should talk!”

And that’s been the hardest thing about these past seven months or so. Not being able to share a room with friends outside my bubble means no boardgames. There are options, but none of them support the casual chitchat of meeting up on an evening and laughing over some snacks and a short game. 

So, when all this is over, I’ll be hitting up every meetup and minicon I can find within moderately reasonable distance! I needs me my games, I needs me my friends. 

Inis

I'm not usually one for games that fall into the "dudes on a map" category of board games. I've never been good at strategy, and find it hard to see those critical moves in map games.

But Inis is based around Irish mythology, with card art by Jim FitzPatrick, an artist I grew up seeing in my text books throughout my schooling. I had to at least have a look. And thanks to a local convention, I got to try it out with a friends copy before I took the plunge myself. As it turned out, it took me about 16 hours before I owned my own copy.

I fell madly in love with Inis from the moment I played it. It is a legendary experience, full of magical moments. Win or lose, I always have a great time playing it and come away with great tales to share.

Inis is an area control game. It's a battle of wits to be in command of territories on a modular map that changes every game. You can declare your intent to become King and win once you meet one or more of the three possible victory conditions.

Inis is a drafting game. You have to react every turn to the cards you end up with in every turn from a tiny selection of possibilities. There are only 17 Action Cards in a full four player game, with four dealt to each player every turn and the last one burned, or placed to one side. Rather than keeping the hand delt to you, you pick one, and pass on the rest. You keep doing this until you have a hand of four cards. This gives you some control over the cards you have every turn.

Inis is fast, easy to learn. The rules are intuitive and allow the game to flow nicely, though your first combat takes a little work to get through. Once you see one play out, combat is a breeze as well. The strategy layer is clean and clear, and really accessible. I never felt overwhelmed by Inis, though I still love seeing the amazing moves other players manage, and learn from every game.

In my experience, Inis always results in excitement and laughter, whether you win or lose. At the end of almost every game I've played we've talked about the amazing actions or surprises that each player managed in the game while we're packing up. The final, winning move is nearly always an epic play, resulting in whoops and cheers regardless if you end as High King or defeated clan.

It's also one of the very few games I have played that genuinely work in all its player counts. Lots of games claim 2-4, or 2-5, but really only work with 3 or 4 players. Inis works with 2, 3 or 4. My 2-player game was an incredible head to head, filled with fast card play between two players that had played the game a few times. The whole game lasted a hair over an hour and felt really good.

The board and cards are beautiful to look at, evocative and full of colour. The components are fantastic, with really nicely detailed minis to represent your clans. One of the molds has a great moustache too.

Thanks to cutting back on new board games this year, I've played Inis more than any other game in my collection in the last seven years since moving to Vancouver. While at SHUX in October, I ended up teaching the game to nine different groups of people, resulting in about 30 new players, and played in four of those games.

This is easily my most treasured board game right now. I crave another game like some sort of addict. After over a dozen games played, I might even win a second time!

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Board Game Review Master List

Rest The Wallet

Last year, 2017, I decided to stop buying board games for the majority of the year. Or, maybe, to try to stop. I love board games. It's hard for me to not add games I enjoy playing to my own collection, but, in an effort to see if I could, I set this personal goal.

Because I bought it through an online store, I can tell you that the last board game I bought before taking this decision was bought on March 7th, 2017. It was Inis, a game that would go on to have a huge impact on me, but that's a story for another post.

My personnal purchasing prohibition extended to Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sources as well. This was important because I had developed a problem of backing too many games this way, especially if they offered exclusives. Luckily, I had hit winners almost every time, getting really fun games htat I enjoyed getting to the table.

Setting out, I gave myself one exemption. I had tickets to the first ever convention by board game website Shut Up & Sit Down, SHUX, being held in October. I would be allowed by one game at the convention. I would also be receiving new games through Kickstarters that I had backed prior to March, so my shelves would still see fresh additions throughout the year.

Over the following nine or so months, I played the games I owned a lot more than I have in recent years. I often buy games that I'm really excited about, play them once or twice and than buy the next game I'm really excited about. Rinse and repeat. This year, I racked up a lot more plays on a lot less games, especially my new favourite, Inis. I also cracked open some old classics that I love buy hadn't played in years.

By the time I got to SHUX in October, I actually didn't feel like breaking my self imposed sabbatical, but I did end up buying the expansion to one of my favourite games, Sheriff of Nottingham. I know this gets onto the table regularly, so I didn't feel bad about it being my cheat.

But then Christmas rolled around, and an obvious in hindsight, unforeseen wrinkle. Boxing week sale. Several of the nearby board game stores have massive sales in the week after Christmas, ending on New Years Eve. One puts a blanket 25% off everything in store. It would be hard to resist not availing of that offer.

Or it would have been any other year.

Looking around the store, I just didn't feel like buying anything. Nothing exciting jumped out at me. Those hot games that appeared throughout the previous year had now cooled and lost their shine.

I walked away, my goal securely intact for the last week of 2017.

This was a fantastic, refreshing action for me to take. It opened my eyes to how easily I was spending money on board games. As of this post, I haven't backed a Kickstarter in 2018 yet, nor do I have any desire to. What few games that have shown up and peaked my interest I've chosen to let come into retail so I can see how things shake out over time.

There are a few games that I've added to my collection since January 1st, but all of them have already proven to be worth my time, either because I played them a bunch at Meetups, or because continuous reviews suggest they're my kind of game. Reviews of them will be coming.

This was an amazing experience, and one I'd recommend to anyone. It'll hopefully have a lasting effect. I'd like to say I'll be more reserved with my future purchasing, but only time will tell for that.

 

Captain Sonar

Captain Sonar is, ideally, an 8-player realtime board game where two teams of four take command of a submarine each and try to blow the other team out of the water. The four crew of each submarine are:

The Captain, who calls out directional orders for her boat and watches in dispair as her and her crew spiral into an inescapable, crushing darkness.

The Radio Operator, who listens to the increasingly uncertain commands of the enemy captain and attempts to discover the location of the opposing vessel, mostly through a haze of frustrated head-scratching and sudden clarity, akin to solving a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

The First Mate, who is tasked with making ready the various systems on the submersible, and then politely informing the captain she can't use them because everything is broken and/or on fire.

The Engineer, who breaks things constantly, much like some sort of traitorous gremlin.

By working as a team, or at least a horribly faded facsimile of one, you hope to inflict four points of damage to the enemy first, crushing them within their steel sarcophagus under tonnes of seawater.

Played in realtime with a full player count, Captain Sonar, by Matagot, runs at about 30 minutes, the first 25 of which see both teams travelling the frigid depths, oblivious to their opponents true location, before ending in a burst of adrenaline and excitement as everything suddenly clicks into place on both sides of the table. It is crazy, chaotic, frustrating and utterly, absolutely, insanely genius.

The first time I played Captain Sonar was with six players, one of whom was probably too young for the game. This resulted in a 3 versus 2.5[1] player game. It ran longer than hoped, mostly because I was teaching and learning how best to teach it along the way. The second and third had eight players, but also ran well over 30 minutes each, for a few reasons, none of which were the games fault[2].

Games four through nine however were much more how I imagined the game would play from reviews I had seen. Games four, five and six were all fast, frantic and unbelievably hilarious, with everyone howling with laugher whether they were on the winning boat or not. This, despite those games being played in a noisy convention hall among 200-odd other gamers. Games seven, eight and nine were equally fast, in a room with just the eight players present, but ended with some tension, not due to the game, but to the mix of personalities present.

Captain Sonar is a fun party game and should absolutely be treated like that. Don't over-think actions, or get annoyed when someone on the other team makes a mistake. Laugh and congratulate your opponents, win or lose, and then challenge them to a rematch. Don't worry if you're feeling lost in your first game at the start. You're supposed to feel like that. Trust me, the other team feels the same way.

If there is a fatal flaw to Captain Sonar it is the player count. Dispite the box proclaiming it to be for 2-8 players, you really do need eight players to have the most fun[3], which is fine as long as you treat it like a party game, only played when you have lots of people around. And play it in realtime. There is a turn-based varient, but use that to run through a few sample rounds before pushing into realtime as soon as possible.

The artwork is beautiful where there is artwork, the roles are hilarious, the player interaction is chaotic and the game has become a huge favourite in my collection, after a short rocky start almost beached it. I've only owned it since Christmas, and with nine games played already, I don't have any other game that I've played that much in that short a time since, probably BattleStar Galactica The Board Game was released. And if that isn't a huge endosement, I don't know what is!!

Amazing YouTube board game review (mostly) channel No Time For Games has a wonderful short on Captain Sonar. Watch it below, then go and watch everything he's made (there's not that many and they're all short[4]) and then subscribe, because this guy deserves more fans.

[1] Maybe even 3vrs2, because one of the players on that team was splitting his time between his own station and watching and correcting her station, diminishing his role effectiveness in the process too.
[2] Missed rules and language barriers mostly, though also hard-core gamers over thinking things a bit.
[3] I weep at the thought of playing it as a 2-player game.
[4] I highly recommend his Inis video.

Related Posts:

Board Game Review Master List

 

Pack It Up

I put together a video of me packing my shiny new Game Canopy with some of my favourite games! The orginal version had a piano cover of a licensed track, but this one has license-free music thanks to BenSound.com.

Related Posts:
The Game Canopy
ChromaCast Cajon Bag
Battle Of The Board Game Bags

Battle Of The Board Game Bags

I now own both an expensive and cheap option for carrying my board games. I've seen lots of people online asking about if it's worth spending the money on an expensive bag, or is the cheap option just as good. Let's compare them both.

The Game Canopy is designed from the start to carry the weight of several games at once. It is stitched with that purpose in mind, as the handle straps are actually one long piece, going all the way around the base of the bag, stitched in several places, distributing the load across the whole length. The ChromaCast bag is designed to carry a cajon, a square drum that is much lighter than a stack of board games. It is lightly stitched, with the top handles are only stitched to the top of the bag. Because of this, although the capacity of the ChromaCast bag is greater than that of the Canopy, the Canopy has a higher carry load limit. My ChromaCast has already ripped where the handle meets the bag, even though I avoid filling it fully.

There are two stitched on thin shoulder straps on the ChromaCast, with a very minimal rubber pad on each or your shoulders that effectively does nothing while carrying games in my experience. If they were replaceable, I'd invest in better ones seperately, but they're not. This is a pity, as, given the weakness in the top handles, this is how I mainly use the bag. The shoulder strap for the Canopy is high quality, with a thick shoulder pad that includes a nice light rubbery underside to stop it slipping. It's great, with one catch. It doesn't come included with the bag, but is an additional purchase. Still, it's strong, has really nice clips and looks great.

The materials on the main bag bodies are very different as well. The Game Canopy is made of a much higher quality material, both inside and out. The exterior is a lovely dense weave fabric with a pleasing shine, and the interior is durable but soft, protecting those precious game boxes. The ChromaCast has a lighter fabric on the outside and a very light fabric on the inside. It's not terrible by any means, but certainly cheaper looking and feeling, plus, I'm wary of it rubbing against the game boxes, especially as the fit isn't quite as snug as the Canopy.

Which brings me to padding. The ChromaCast is padded to hold a cajon, so it has nice padding around the sides, and even on the top and base. The main difference is that, while appearing to be roughly the same thickness as the padding in the ChromaCast, the Canopy padding is a more rigid material, holding the bags shape even when empty. Also, the Canopy has a protective flap of padding inside the zip to prevent the zip from making contact with the boxes.

The Canopy is fit to hold standard sized game boxes snuggly, with no room to shift around and rub against anything. The ChromaCast is just a fraction bigger in width and depth, allows boxs to slide inside just a bit. I avoid this by including play mats on the side to fill out that gap. The Canopy can hold five game boxes, while the ChromaCast holds about seven, though, as mentioned above, I don't advise filling it.

Finally, the Canopy includes four D-rings and a pocket front and back, perfect for clipping a water bottle too, or storing small snacks. The pockets are big enough to hold small card games to help get your game evening rolling, though they don't have a cover, so be aware of the weather outside. There is a full rain cover available for the Canopy that covers everything, which I got because I live in Vancouver. The ChromaCast has no extra features. I guess cajon players don't need snacks. Or a quick round of Rhino Hero before the gig.

It's obvious that the Game Canopy is a far superior product, but that was never going to be the take away here. It costs six to seven times that of the ChromaCast cajon bag. Of course it's better. That doesn't mean the ChromaCast is bad. In fact, I really like it. It's certainly a fine alternative as long as you keep a few things in mind, namely not to over load it and maybe consider getting a trolly to move it instead of carrying it.

But, the Game Canopy is gorgeous. I'm delighted I got it, and am perfectly happy to have paid so much for the final product. It's going to be joining me to all my board game meet ups and conventions for many years to come.

So what would I recommend? I can't easily answer that. If you can afford the Game Canopy and even think it might be, possibly, maybe worth it for what you need, then get it. It absolutely is what you need. It's every bit as amazing as it looks. But if you just want something cheap and functional, the ChromaCast cajon bag is perfectly adequate. It's not going to set your world on fire, but it's better than plastic grocery bags!!

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The Game Canopy
ChromaCast Cajon Bag

ChromaCast Cajon Bag

I've always wanted a good carry solution for my board games when I bring them to friends game nights or meet ups,m which is why I backed the Game Canopy on Kickstarter. But as with any Kickstarter, I had a long wait ahead of me, and several events before then.

I started to hear about alternatives to expensive custom carry cases on the BoardGameGeek forums, and one in particular was mentioned again and again.

Cajons are cuboid shaped drums played usually by sitting on it and slapping the face with your hands. But the important thing about them is that the carry cases are them also cuboid, with some padding, and, roughly speaking, about the same base dimensions as a board game box. According to the folks at the BGG forums, ChromaCast made a good one that was fit for purpose, and only cost around $25.

At that price, it was worth the risk.

My ChromaCast cajon bag can hold six to seven board game boxes stacked one on top of the other, as long as we're not talking the oversized ones. Even then, there's a little breathing room on the sides for a hardback RPG book or small card games. It has light paddding all around, and a big, chunky plastic zip running down each side that opens the entire front panel, giving easy access to remove any of the games within, which is very nice. It also has a flap on the front top that covers the gap at the top where therre isn't any zipper, protecting the contents from the rain.

The fabric is apparently water resistant, though I doubt it's to any great degree, but it's a fair sight beter than an Ikea bag would do, or, apparently, my backpack, which has failed me once too often. The interior fabric is rough and I wouldn't want to have my games sliding around in it too much, as I could easily see it rubbing off corners and edges. That's why when I've used it to date I've packed it on the sides with either some light cloths or one or two play mats.

The stitching around the outside isn't designed to stand up to the weight of a full load of games either. The top handle is only stitched to the upper seams, and the shoulder straps, while slightly better, are still very lightweight. I used my bag to carry games to a few meet ups and Terminal City Tabletop Convention, and it's already ripping at the top.

One solution I've been using is not over filling the bag. Instead of packing the seven games it could hold, I only pack four, filling the rest of the space with a large felt I can use on the table we're playing at, as well as some small, light card games. Even then, I'd only carry lighter boxes in it, so no Cosmic Encounter. Another option is to invest in one of those small shopping trollys you often see the elderly employ. Attach the bag to that and wheel it around, rather than carrying it.

It's clear that others have been using this bag and enjoying it for board game travels. The Amazon reviews are all 4 or 5-stars, with hilarious comments like "Cajon owners beware, the board gamers have found your Cajon bags, and we love them", and "I bought this for my husband who is a HUGE gamer".

Mainly because of it's price, I'm hesitant to dismiss the cajon bag as a possibility if you're looking for something to carry your games in. As long as you're aware of the caveats and willing to be careful with it, you really can't go wrong for $25. It is functional, it will somewhat protect your games, and it does turn heads when you unzip the front panel and reveal a broad selection of games instantly accessible for play.

Related Posts:
The Game Canopy
Board Game Review Master List
Battle Of The Board Game Bags, comparing the Canopy to the ChromaCast

The Game Canopy

I don't drink, smoke or do drugs, nor have I in recent years been spending money on addictions I used to have, like comics, action figures or video games. These days, and for some time now, board games have been my one vice, the one thing I impulsively spend money on, either in my friendly local gaming stores or online, especially at Kickstarter.

I'm proud of my collection, and enjoy sharing it with others, both long time friends and new. But carrying games safely has been an issue for gamers like me for years. We use Ikea bags, backpacks or, in a pinch, light plastic shopping bags, risking rain and crush damage, or the corners getting rubbed away on rough surfaces, all of which have happened to games I own at least once. In fact, just last month I brought Captain Sonar to a friends place, safely tucked into my backpack, only to arrive at gaming and have to wipe off the rain that got though the fabric.

I do live in Vancouver after all. It's a temperate rainforest. It rains.

A lot.

Which is why, despite the perceived high cost, more-so after including shipping and taxes, I was willing to back the Game Canopy from Level 3B when it appeared on Kickstarter back on April 24th, 2016, almost a year ago now. I was there when the campaign went live and one of the first backers, number 191 out of a final total of 1,753. This isn't even my first time talking about the Game Canopy on my blog.

After what felt like much longer than a year of waiting, I have my new game transport system in my hand. A year of waiting, anticipating, reading updates, following progress, getting increasingly more excited about how good it could be. That's Kickstarter's biggest flaw. No matter how good the final product is, it's almost impossible to live up to the imaginary possibilities that lengthy waiting conjures up.

Except, the Game Canopy is that good.

Padded on all sides, including base and top, the Game Canopy is custom built to protect your games in best possible way. Level 3B thought of everything. There is even padding inside to cover the zip so that it can't rub against its precious cargo. The top carry handles are stitched all the way around the bag to prevent the load from pulling on one seam, with D-rings on all corners front and back giving you plenty of options for how you'd like to attach the shoulder strap, which itself is the nicest shoulder strap I own, thick padded with a grippy material underneath.

The Game Canopy can comfortably fit five "standard" sized board game boxes laying flat, one on top the other. You know, the Ticket to Ride, Mysterium, Cosmic Encounter square box. Of course how many you can fit and how many you can carry can be vastly different numbers. My Cosmic Encounter box includes all the expansions to date and is a hefty load by itself. Change the orientation a bit and the Game Canopy is tall enough to handle Inis, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and Legendary Encounters. Side by side. Together. Not that I'd advise carrying those four games together. I have no doubt the Canopy could handle it. I just doubt you or I could. That's a lot of compressed dead tree matter.

And it looks great doing all this. I chose the charcoal base with mandarin trim (read: grey with orange edges), and it's exactly as the promotional photographs indicated. My own photography doesn't do it justice in the visual appeal. I love how clean, crisp and professional it looks, while also being fun and bright. Board gaming isn't just a hobby for recluse stereotypical nerds, and the Game Canopy is easily a carry bag I'm going to be proud to carry around the city to events and display. It's just so gorgeous!

All in all, the Game Canopy is everything I could have hoped for. I'm really excited to take it out to my next game night at the end of the month. I can tell this is the start of a beautiful relationship. Just me and my Game Canopy and Captain Sonar and Mysterium and Takenoko and Santorini and Battlestar Galactica and...

Addendum: While writing this and testing out some game combinations for the photographs I learned my two year old can open and close the zip, and really enjoys playing with my Canopy. A great start for my future gamer.

Related:
ChromaCast Cajon Bag
Board Game Review Master List
Battle Of The Board Game Bags, comparing the Canopy to the ChromaCast

Watch Me Say

One of my favourite board gaming related YouTube channels is Watch It Played, a channel designed to teach you how to play board games without needing to pour over a long instruction booklet. I've been a fan and supporter for a few years now.

Occcasionally, the host, Rodney, will pick a topic to discuss, share his thoughts on it, then ask viewers to share their opinions on the topic, either in the comments, or via a short video. Reccently, he did one on ties in games and how you resolve them or not, and I thought I'd record my own feelings on the matter. It made it into his follow-up video, embedded below.

Terminal Gaming

In a previous post I talked about my favourite weekend of the year, Terminal City Tabletop Convention. I discussed why I love it, mentioning that I get to play lots of games. Now I want to go into detail about the particular games I played.

This year I hit the ground running, jumping into a game of Inis as soon as I walked in the door. Inis (pronounced "Inish") is an Irish mythology themed area control game that I've been interested in since I first heard about it. Thanks to new friend Marc (phone contact Marc TCTC) I got to learn and play it, and then went home and ordered it online. It was really quick to learn, and has a wonderfully clean ruleset, with only combat causing us some initial head-scratching, but once we had a fight or two, we totally understood it. The components are nice, with the armies having a handful of different models for their units, adding nice variety to the board. The art on the cards and tiles is gorgeous, all done by aclaimed Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick.

After Inis, I taught three other players Quantum, the dice-as-spaceships strategy game, which I love, and they seemed to enjoy as well. I'm pretty terrible at Quantum, and usually I'm on the receiving end of another players epic final turn, where all their upgrades fall into place for some bonkers cool victory. But this time, I managed to pull off just that, dishing out a dramatic turn to drop my final colony onto a planet and secure galactic dominance.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was getting to play four games of submarine themed team game, Captain Sonar, each with a full player count of eight. Well, technically, I played two games and "GMed" the other two, answering questions as they arose. The first one was on Saturday and went a bit longer than hoped, and I was upset that maybe the game wasn't as much fun as advertised. But the three games on Sunday were amazing! Each lasted under thirty minutes, and we're jammed with hilarity and tension! They were exactly how I hoped the game would feel, and now that I've played it properly, I feel I know better how to teach it in the future, and what elements beyond the rules to draw attention to. I'll do a full review of Captain Sonar soon, but the games I played at TCTC definitely taught me a lot about the game.

Super Motherload was being taught throughout the weekend, and I jumped into a game on Sunday, falling in love with it immediately and grabbing the last copy on sale as soon as I was done.

I played many more games over the weekend, but these were just some of the highlights. Terminal City is a great convention every year, but my bank account always suffers during and after.

Not that I'm complaining.

 

How To Make Friends And Crush Your Opponents

When we first arrived in Canada, tabletop gaming was integral in how we made friends. It was through RPG.net that we met the lovely couple who took us in that first week, and showed us around this strange new city. Once we got our own place, the first thing I did was Google local game stores and went directly there, where I met many of the friends I still have today. And I still use tabletop gaming as an ice-breaker for making new friends.

So when I discovered a new tabletop gaming convention was having its first event back in 2014, I knew I had to be there. And I've been going every year since.

Terminal City Tabletop Convention, or TCTC, is a weekend long tabletop celebration started by one man, and has been my favourite annual event of the year four years running. This years TCTC was March 4th and 5th, and I'm already looking forward to next years. Every year I anxiously await the chance to playing with friends I only get to see at the con, as well as making more new friends every year. My phone contacts list is filled with "John TCTC", "Michelle TCTC", and so on, and my group email gaming list grows every March.

TCTC is a great opportunity to play old favourites with new opponents, try brand new releases, classics that you missed, or just something different. Better yet, there has been strong support since the very first year for independant local developers to show off their in-development creations and get feedback on them. Prototype Alley is always a busy corner of the convention floor, and this year, there was even a new award and prize for the most promising prototype submitted, backed by support from Panda Game Manufacturing. I played a bunch of stuff all weekend, and taught a whole bunch more, but I'll leave those details for another post.

One of the more popular areas of TCTC on the Saturday is the silent auction, which started in 2015 with just a few small tables on the stage area, grew last year to fill every inch of space available on the tables, to this year where the stage quickly burst its banks and flooded onto several overflow tables off to one side. The auction gives attendees the chance to bring along and sell games they no longer play, and pick up games they might be interested in second-hand. I've sold something at every auction to date, and usually buy sometihng as well, but this year I was way too busy playing games to bother with the stress of trying to outbid others that I just didn't bother.

I love teaching games. I bring a few bags filled with games I'd like to play or teach, and I do end up spending a lot of time sharing out my collection and teaching others to play while I play something else, or even go teach another game and drift between both as the group play their first few turns. TCTC has a Game Steward system to help attendees pick out and learn new game. Seeing as how I love teaching anyway, it made sense to sign up and help out. I ended up teaching probably over half a dozen games, including Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Tsuro, Onitama, Tak, Patchwork, Santorini, and four different games of Captain Sonar!

One thing that struck me as odd was the number of requests for two-players games. I forget that although I'm there to play with as many people as possible, some folks are there to find new games to play with their partner. It made me wish I'd brought my copy of Quoridor along.

If I had one complaint it was that it had become too popular for its current venue. I'm delighted to see it grow and grow, because that means more people for me to become friends with, but it's outgrowwn it's current space. In previous years, numbers have been limited to comfortable levels and I felt that everyone had a table to be at all weekend. This year, Saturday especially, there were plenty of folks wandering the hall looking for a corner of a table to set up and game on. People seemed to be on top of each other, careful not to knock into the gmae beside you with your elbow while you played your game. At one point, we had to move out to the hallway and use two tables in the public access area. Thankfully, while I was writing this post, it has been annouced that TCTC 2018 will take place in a much larger venue! Woot!

Year after year Terminal City Tabletop Convention has been a great experience, meeting and making friends, playing a bunch of games and having a great time. It's the kind of thing I wish we had more often in Vancouver, but it's extra special because it's only once a year.

Roll on 2018!

Related Posts:
Terminal Gaming

 

International Tabletop Day 2016

Last year at this time I had my hands full with a newborn, so I missed out on Tabletop Day. In the past, we've hosted Tabletop Day in our own place, but with Ada, it's difficult for me to focus on a game, so, with Claire's permission, I headed out for a day of board games.

After spending the morning at Family Place with Ada, Claire picked us up from the park before dropping me over to Players Wanted Games on Victoria Drive, and then heading out for lunch with Ada and a friend. I had packed a few games I hoped to play, but nothing too crazy. I stuck to a few small, fast, fun card games, and box games chosen for their ease of teaching and speed of play, as well as repeated success for me in introducing them to new players in the past.

On arriving, I spent a short time browsing the shelves and bumped into a lovely couple who had just randomly wandered into the store while visiting the area. Although big board gamers themselves, George and Jenn hadn't known about the Tabletop Day event, and were just lucky enough to stop by. After bonding over a copy of Mysterium on the shelves, I offered to play a game or two before they had to leave, so, along with the Rubin, a local and regular, I started my Tabletop Day teaching Gravwell, the fantastic space race game of plotting, luck and hilarity.

After Gravwell, George and Jenn were short on time, but I managed to convince them to try one round of Rhino Hero. It was an easy sell, and turned out to be the most tense game of the day, filled with laugh-out-loud moments. Everyone played a stormer, and the apartment grew to an astonishing 14 floors! Rubin and Jenn were standing on chairs toward the end just to play their turn! I ended up playing Rhino Hero three times over the course of the day, with a bunch of different folks, and it was amazing every time, drawing plenty of attention from everyone in the room. Reaching 14 floors successfully might have been the day's highlight, but for sheer hilarity, I don't think I'll ever forget watching Rubin attempt to place a wall, dropping it twice and having to retrieve it before trying again, finally succeeding without knocking the tower! That man has steady hands!

After a quick break to stretch my legs, I was excited to finally get the chance to see and play Pandemic creator Matt Leacock's new game, Knit Wit. This is a fun game of word association, presented in an absolutely beautiful fashion. Everything from the components to the box itself is gorgeous, with tiny, loving details cropping up throughout. This was another game filed with laughter and more than a little head-scratching. We ended up playing two games of Knit Wit before packing it back into it's amazing box.

I'm delighted to have had the chance to teach a bunch of folks Council of Verona, one of my favourite little bluffing games around. It was a chaotic game that ended with just a single card scoring, and poor Romeo wasn't even in the game to have a chance of getting together with his Juliet.

A 6pm approached, I pulled out Quantum. Quantum is always an easy sell, with its beautiful bright dice, colourful planets and great player board, so it was a joy for me to be able to play not only a four-player game, but also a wonderful, fast two-player one right after. They both felt so different, the first full of deals and friendly advice to attack other players, the other a fast head-to-head of landing colonies and retaliation strikes.

Finally, sandwiched between those two games of Quantum were a few games of No Thanks, which got unusually competitive, but in an always friendly fashion.

And that was my International Tabletop Day at Players Wanted Games. Full of great games, lots of laughter and meeting new people. So how did I do? Well, anyone who reads my blog regularly might know that I have a terrible record of repeatedly loosing games I own and often winning games I'm playing for the first time. This started a bit differently, with, if I remember correctly, me winning Gravwell, before quickly returning to business as usual, as I lost Council of Verona and both games of Quantum, but won one of the games of Knit Wit with a maximum possible score.

Rubin won the second game of Rhino Hero by playing his last card, but I don't think we even checked who won the other two, as we were all having too much fun laughing at the tower falling. While Rhino Hero does have rules for deciding who wins when the tower falls, in my experience, people rarely bother to check. The game is fun enough that declaring a winner isn't always necessary.

Lastly, I just want to mention the venue. Players Wanted Games is one of the newer game stores in Vancouver. Before Ada arrived I dropped in a few times to game. The store has a small retail space, but is packed with a great selection of games in all shapes and sizes. They have a huge play space in the back, with plenty of room for a big number of people to game. Yesterday there was board gaming, HeroClix and Magic all going on, with video gaming joining in later in the day!

But what makes Players Wanted special is the staff and regulars. Like I said, I dropped in a few times before Ada arrived, but pretty much disappeared for the last year. Yet I turned up yesterday, was welcomed in like an old friend and I felt like one of the regulars right away, with everyone chatting and having fun. The atmosphere is bright and cheery, and people seems happy to strike up conversations about all sorts of games.

It's a great store, and I look forward to actually becoming one of the regulars over the next few months and beyond.

Related: Board Game Review Master List

I <3 2P

A good two player game pits you against an opponent in a battle of cunning and wits. A great two player game is one I can grasp in a few minutes, and feel competent at after a game or two. So that's chess right out then.

Starting out at the top, Quoridor is my all-time favourite two player game, and easily one of my top board games ever. I've played it with other hard core gamers, and six year olds, and it's great every time. That's not because there's a high element of randomness or something. In fact, it's pure strategy, with zero randomness. Instead, it's so simple to teach and learn, anyone can play. I find that older gamers will over think a series of turns, planning well ahead, while younger gamers just spot the weak link and destroy all those plans. At least, that's what happens to me.

Quoridor is played on a 9x9 grid. Players have to get from the their side of the board to the opponents, either moving one space, or placing one of their ten wall pieces anywhere on the board. You can never corner in your opponent, so the trick is to make their journey to your side longer than your journey to theirs. It's wonderfully simple, elegant and fun. I highly, highly recommended trying it. Gigamic publishes a beautiful wooden edition of the game that might seem a bit pricey, but based on play value, it's worth every cent.

There is a four player varient for Quoridor, which I didn't like for the longest time. But playing it with the school age kids I work with, I saw the value in it as well. It's a completely different strategy, and fun in it's own right, but I still mostly love this game for the one-on-one version.

I picked up RESISTOR_ from Cardboard Fortress through Kickstarter based entirely on the visual design. Luckily, it plays as wonderfully as it looks. RESISTOR_ is about two Cold War supercomputers battling each other, atempting to lull the opposition into a false sense of security, dropping its DEFCON level before launching a nuclear attack without the chance of retaliation. The game is played with cards lined up, each one looking like a big microchip. You have to connect to the opponents computer to drop its security level, which dealing with resistor chips that dramatically reduce the playing field. It's a crazy fast, fun, and funny game, that is easy to play and beautifully presented.

Kickstarter is a godsend for two player games, it seems. I guess big publishers are hesitant to finance games that are restricted to such a small number of players. I've been told that even games designed for four players see pressure to expand to six players for retail. But thanks to Kickstarter, I have two more two-player games coming to me, hopefully by the end of the year, if things go according to plan.

Santorini is a stunningly beautiful game that has been under development since 1986 by designer and mathematician Dr. Gordon Hamilton. This is merely the most recent edition, and looks stunning, adding in a whole bunch of new player powers and a few new elements thanks to the massive success of the Kickstarter campaign. The game is a two player abstract strategy game, building the town of Santorini and trying to reach the top of a tower while blocking your opponent from doing the same.

I can't wait to get my hands on this game. The rules are all online, and it would be easy to replicate with Lego, blocks or other components, so hopefully I can play it before this beautiful edition arrives. It's still available to back on Kickstarter for a few more days if you're interested.

Also on Kickstarter right now, but with more time left on the clock at time of writing is Tak, a game from James Ernest and Cheapass Games, based on a game described in the fantasy novel series, The Kingkiller Chronicles, written by Patrick Rothfuss. In Tak, you place pieces on a square gridded board, attempting to build a continuous, straight road from one side of the board to the other. It looks lovely, with wooden components and the promise of a wooden board coming soon as part of a stretch goal add-on, which I will definitely be getting.

I haven't even mentioned Patchwork here, which I have but haven't gotten to play yet. Do you have any two player games you enjoy? I'd love to hear about them! Let me know in the comments to this post.

Board Game Carry Solution

I love board games, that much is obvious. I also love sharing my board games, and teaching folks my favourite games. I love broadening my hobby by introducing people to this amazing social activity. But transporting my games to local conventions has always been an issue.

In the past, I've employed IKEA reusable bags and other tote bags, as well as my backpack, like so many other gamers through the years. However, it rains a lot in Vancouver during certain times of the year, and this has caused issues. I've damaged more than one game box from having it out in the rain, even while it was in my backpack. I can sometimes plan ahead and wrap them in a plastic bag first, but all that is just awkward and messy.

Which was why I got so excited when I saw the Game Canopy from Level 3B on Watch It Played. It looked ideal for my needs. Sealed, safe, and water resistant, and it holds the boxes flat! No more opening up a game to teach and spending the first ten minutes sorting out a pile of cards and tokens that got knocked loose in the box.

I followed Level 3B on Twitter and via mailing list, and anxiously awaited the start of the Kickstarter. I was there the second it went live, and grabbed the Adventurer Level, which includes the Game Canopy, the shoulder strap and the all important rain cover. It's more expensive than a duffle bag, but far safer for my games. It also looks amazing! Like any hobby that isn't a sport, board gaming regularly gets dismissed as a childish, or geeky pastime, so I love having accessories like the Game Canopy that just elevates our hobby to a new level, showing it off in a professional, smart light.

The Kickstarter has only just begun and is already a huge success. It's got over 1,000 Backers, and is about to break $150k in funding at time of writing. There are some odd features of the campaign that I hope get fixed soon. The reward levels are fixed, trying to cover ass many bases as possible with different levels, but still don't suit everyone's needs. The Level 3B team seem hesitant to allow add-ons of the Canopy bag or the smaller Vanguard to pledges, and I noticed that this has resulted in some pledge levels seeing vastly more popular than others. The worst is Game Knight Lite, with no Backers at all. Allowing add-ons would have avoided this, having less Reward Levels, but ultimately more options for Backers. I'm happy with the my level, but would definitely consider adding a Vanguard as well if it was an option. There is one with everything I have, plus a Vanguard and a second shoulder strap, but I really don't want the second strap.

The only other issue I have is that the delivery date is in the far distant future of April 2017. I'd love to have it for Terminal City Tabletop Convention 2017 in March.

It's going to be a long wait.