Bioterroirsm rules ok

So, I have seen the bioterrorist attempt to sabotage the well-meaning efforts of others in their attempt to curb the pandemic.

Bioterrorist: you must attempt to spread a fifth disease and sabotage research stations. Your moves are secret. And frequent. Be careful not to be caught, and be ultra careful not to allow your uber-disease to be erradicated. If so, you will have to put the kettle on.

Enjoy!

Bandu

Here is something original indeed. And 80's. And sadly out of print. My life quest is to find a second-hand copy.

It's an American game (apparently). You have to build a tower, and of course make it as structurally sound as possible. When your tower falls, your out. So the winner is the person whose tower has yet to topple. You have to build your tower on a block of wood about the same size as a Jenga piece. THe pieces with which to build the tower are odd shapes that ma be slanted or curved. Many of them are based on real-life objects, such as a cotton reel, egg, egg cup, small bowling pin, etc.

Here's where it gets good: everyone starts with 5 beans. On your turn you have 2 options. You pick a piece which you can either "bid to accept" or "bid to reject". If you "bid to accept" the person your left decides if they want it. If so, they bid 1 bean. then it goes round the circle while people either increase their bid or don' want to get involved in bidding. Remember you only have 5 beans for the entire game. If no one bids any beens, you get it for free!

If you decide instead to pick a piece and "bid to reject", the person to your left has 2 choices: either accept the piece and place it on/into their tower or pay one bean to reject it. If they pay the 1 bean, it goes to the next person who has the same options. If it comes all the way back round to you, the cost to reject goes up to 2 beans and so it continues.

Got it? Hope that's clear. My oh my, was there tension, laughter, sqwuarking and at times utter dispair. We had more people than could play (max players is 6), so 2 people just watched. And they had a great time too!

The oddly shaped pieces often fit surprisingly well together, but it is no way an easy game. The numerous pieces and the different ways they can be placed ensures longevity. I doubt 2 identicle towers have ever been built. Sometimes, people were overcome with the aesthetics of a tower.

I beg of you all to seek this game out and buy it. It's not available in UK on ebay. It is in USA, but P+P to UK is extortionate. Is it available in NZ or Australia.

Apparently there is a very similar game called Bausack. Bausack is also unavailable in the UK. Happy searching potential fellow Bandu-lovers!

Slowballs, do you own intrigue?

The news is out...

http://drakesflames.blogspot.com/2010/01/card-game-review-dominion-intrigue.html

Future Gaming

So the reason I haven't been posting recentlyis here. I have made the initial small outlay of buying an Ipad and now have to finance my way through several thousand apps. Apps which prove to be bigger, brighter and pack more features than can be found on the ipod/phone. Theres been a great Catan port to the ipod touch, which makes the most of the lack of screen real-estate, which has yet to be realized on the Ipad. But there have been releases of an picture perfect ‘Small World’ app, Carcassonne has made it in a slightly different guise under the bizarre title of ‘Might and Card Golden’, as well as many of the classics such as Scrabble, Chess and the like.

Of course the ipad will never replace the games themselves, it just cant compare to the physical presence of the original. But I did try playing Pandemic on a busy train across NZ once and needless to say it didn't really get off the ground. The Ipad offers portability, ever increasing choice and style. I can now fully hope to play a game of Small world or Carcassonne on a plane, I don't even have to decide which ones to take with me! The pad offers some inventive features I haven't seen realized with playing the same versions on your laptop. Scrabble and poker both have support for wireless/bluetooth connections to Iphone/pads so you can play on a central game board with your tiles hidden in your hand. Im looking forward to the day I can hide my resource and development cards in my phone over a game of Cities and Knights.

Despite all these options however the app I’ve used far more than any other has been SmartGo Kifu. Go is like no other board game, entirely abstract, its been described as where chess is like a battle, go is a war. The rules are simple, to surround as much territory as possible but the outcomes from playing on a 19x19 board are near infinite. To become confident at this board game requires training and not only does SmartGo give you a good computer opponent player to play against (easier said than done in a game that relies mostly on abstract pattern recognition and is rooted in philosophies of strength and weakness) but it also gives you tutorials, problems and past games to review and learn from.

Perhaps this is where the true greatness of an amalgamation of board games and computer games lie. Battling the rule book of Agricola was a right of passage for me, but inevitably our first few games were full of mistakes, illegal moves, and slow, slow progress. We all appreciate being taught a new game, why not let that teacher be your Ipad?

Black Market deck for Dominion

This seedy man in a dark alley allows you to potentially purchase any other card in the game which you're not playing with. You make a deck of cards from all the unused kingdom cards (one of each). When you play this, you draw the top 3 blindly and have the opportunity to purchase one. Of course there are only a small number of cards that people want (e.g. the witch), but BM's well worth having as he costs just 3 coins, but gives you 2 coins to spend when he's played.

Tasty little card. Feels nice to have him snuggled in my box!

FotM

Farmer's of the Moor! Agricola's expansion. Because there's not enough going on with Agricola already!

So you start with woodland and pete bogs on your farm. During the harvest phase you need fuel as well as food now. The clever thing is, that you need less fuel if you've upgraded to a clay house, and even less for a stone house.

Not enough fuel? Your people get ill. Then they have to waste a turn going to the infirmary to get better.

My favourite bit to the new expansion: there are special cards which will help you get fuel, food etc. You can choose to pick one of these instead of sending a dude out to do an errand. You still get to send all your dudes out, so they're like extra goes. But the clever bit is you can do it any order, so it add in another stressful decision. Therefore if you don't play wisely, your opponent may get 4 goes to your 2 in the early stages. Wow.

Second favourite bit: Horses! Why? Cos they're not wooden blocks, but actual wooden horses. Yay! or should that be Naaaay!

What else? Loads of new minor improvements. One of them gives you 2 extra bits of farm space. And new major improvements. My favourite minor imporvement so far is the Bog Body. A well preserved dead body in your peat bog whcih you can donate to the museum (a major imporvement). I think this expansion will be much better with 4 or 5 players, as then the opportunity to really utilise the new major improvements will be realised.

Final word: the photo in this article is a FotM horse visiting the infirmary. Das Pferd besucht der Krankenhaus! Uber toll!