Pretentious Board Games

Dead Drop  is a 2-4 player micro card game. It takes 2-15 minutes to play and could have been named "Clue - the good parts" were it not for copyright reasons. That last statement is not entirely accurate. It has a similar deduction requirements, but the mechanics are different. I have played about 30 games so far (given that I printed it on Friday of last week this is a pretty decent amount of games). About 8 were 2 player, 8 were 3 player, and 14 were 4 player. In the game one card (the drop) is placed face down in the middle and all players attempt to deduce what card that card is by finding out what cards all the other players hold. There are cards that are visible to all of the players (one per player), and cards that each player holds (1/nth of the remaining cards). There are three possible actions that players have allow them to swap cards with other players, with the visible cards, and to ask other players if they have specific cards. A round of the game co...

Over the weekend we played some more games of Council of Verona as well as a game of Creative Accounting. Both games were well received. Creative Accounting has reached a fairly stable point (in terms of rule changes.) I am ready to start to come up with a better theme for the game. The accounting theme is apparently scary and boring to many people. Let me tell you, coming up with a theme that is both scary and boring at the same time should be considered a feat in and of itself, but that doesn't help the game to be approachable, so I have to change it anyway. I am thinking that it should be set in space - perhaps in an asteroid mining operation where people are finding valuable things and attempting to smuggle them to a place to sell them. The company that owns the whole mining operation wants to curtail this black market selling of the valuable objects, so they have a mole planted in the crew of the ship. The mole can search people's stuff and try to find smuggled objects...

For the last three days we have been playing Council of Verona  at lunch. The work crew have been enjoying it a fairly well. The best play that was played was a certain player 'poisoning' Romeo with his 5 token (Which fooled everybody into thinking that he really was poisoned and won the player the game). We also played a game of Avalon, which was pretty good as well. My Dancing Robot artwork is very nearly done. I can't wait for it to be finally completed. Alison and I have been working through the games that I brought home from SaltCon. Just last night we played Dominant Species. It was pretty fun. I was ahead in the beginning, and she came back for a close victory at the end. The grub eating eagles and the oat spiders were our favorite parts.

I am back from Salt Con. Here are the highlights: I played a bunch of games which I had never played before. Here are my thoughts on them: Machi Koro: This game was very similar to Settlers of Catan. It was slightly better that the aforementioned game (which I don't like very much), but not entirely horrible. There was a better ability to control your own destiny Council of Verona : This game was excellent. I had read the rules before the con, and decided to play the game at the con to see how much I liked it. After having played it I bought it (those who know me know that I am not really that likely to buy things right off the bat (so that is a large endorsement for me)). I would definitely recommend it to anyone that liked Love Letter, Avalon, or Coup. Get Bit: It was pretty fun. I would try it again. Walk the Plank : This game was very fun. I would definitely play it again. It has the ability to be moderately strategic, but you have to plan your moves in advance, and yo...