Pretentious Board Games

Much of my time recently has been spent gearing up for SaltCon. If you don't have tickets yet buy some now, it starts on Thursday! We played a game of The Perfect Moment, and also Avalon at work on Friday. Avalon is a fun lying game. I like it much better than the other lying games that they all love, because you can actually deduce things. I was the Assassin once, and we totally aced the entire game, and then I guessed Merlin as well (though we won the game). On the second game, we won as the good without them guessing Merlin, and then on the third game the good guys won hard core until the Merlin guess, which made the bad guys win. So, I won two out of three games. On Friday night we had a local game group get together, and we played The Perfect Moment as well as Age of Vikings. I practiced teaching it in preparation for my presentation on Thursday. We figured out some parts of the presentation that need more work, and my wife engineered a killer game engine that blew the com...

I made a website to set up Werewolf type games. Currently it can deal out the cards for 8 games including: Two Rooms and a Boom Avalon Resistance Templar Intrigue Cook the Books Witch Hunt Dr. Boom Werewolf/Mafia It also decides who starts in games where a starting player is necessary. The website is here for those who would like to try it out. I am currently talking with the owners of the games to get permission to use their artwork, but I don't really think that I will get it. As part of making this website I created a new character for Avalon. It is the Green Knight. He shows up as evil when Merlin and the lady of the lake look at him, but he is actually loyal to Arthur. He is best played when the good characters are too powerful (like at 6 players in our play group for instance).

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.

Last night we played a game of creative accounting which could have gone better. The biggest problem was having six children with us when we were going over the rules. One good thing that came out of the game was the fact that accountant and auditor look enough alike to cause confusion when distracted. I have updated the names of the roles to bean counter and mole accordingly. Also I will make cards with color to help the game move along more quickly. Another thing that happened yesterday during  work was our first games of Avalon with Lancelot. He changes the game. I am not sure if it is for good or ill, but he definitely changes it.

Over the past few days we have been playing some more "creative accounting". I still haven't gotten in a three player game, but we have played a fair amount of two and four to six player games. It seems like the cut off for two companies might want to be at six players. That decision hasn't been made yet for sure, but it seems like a good place. With two players it is mostly a game about second guessing your opponent, and it ends up playing similar to paper scissor rock (sigh). Cook the books > play it safe > audit. With four players the game is pretty hard for the auditor. It is possible that I should make the scoring different (something like the more book cookers that are caught on an audit the more points the auditor gains). If I do that then perhaps the book cooking should be scored the same. (The game would have a whole new scoring system, but the remainder of the game would stay the same) I entered SaltCon's Prototype alley. I am still trying ...

I decided that in order to judge what font size was acceptable for the cards I needed to have all of the cards done at least in part.  Here  is the gallery with the current appearance of the cards. Obviously there is still work to do, but until the art gets done I can't really do it. We played four or so games of Burgoo over lunch. I decided that I am going to support it. It is pretty fun. The best part is the end of the game when you can judge what every move will do to your chances of winning. We also played some more Avalon as well as some Two Rooms and a Boom (both of which ended up good). During one of the games of avalon we had two spies on the final mission (which was way fun). No-one knew that I was a spy apparently, and we also had the other spy known to Merlin on the mission.