The Great Escapism

Wizardopoly Closed

2011-04-13T11:43:00.002+01:00

I have shut down my website www.wizardopoly.com.

All links to it should now be dead and gone.

It was interesting while it lasted, thanks to everyone who was a customer.

Our New Arrival

2008-10-11T16:03:00.001+01:00

Our son, Jason David. Born at 7.59am on 16th of September.

Co-operation

2008-08-29T13:16:00.005+01:00

Most games have you playing for yourself, versus everyone else playing the game, from just one opponant in Jambo, to all comers in El Grande.

Recently there has been a surge of games that the players co-operate with each other to beat the game, or against one foe with a distinct advantage.

My first Encounter with these team games was Lord of the Rings, by Reiner Knitiza. Based upon the Book of the same name by J.R.R. Tolkien. Where the players must play together to beat challenges set by the game, and travel along the game boards (for there is more than one) to get to Mount Doom and destroy the ring. You play cards from your hands to do this, but although you can discuss your card play, you are not allow to say how many cards of the different types you have. I played this with my wife and friends, and we enjoyed it because of it being so different to the usual affair of every gamer for themselves.

Arkham Horror was the next co-op game that I played, I had read about it so was eager to try it out. It is a long game, the longest of all the co-op games available, but does allow the most players, up to 8 to get in on the action. Set in the world of H.P Lovecraft's Cthulu Mythos, the players are investigators trying to stop powerfull god-like beings taking over/ destroying/ devouring the world. Players move around a board visiting different locations to aquire artifacts and destroy monsters in attempts to close the magical gateways that these elder gods have created in our world. Anyone who is eliminated before the end, is allowed to rejoin with a new character and carry on the fight. I played this with 2 girls that had never encountered the Mythos before, and they enjoyed it, so knowing the themes subject matter is no big obsticle to enjoying the game. The board is very large, so make sure you have a big table.

Pandemic, a game that is selling out everywhere, has its 2 to 4 players trying to stop contagious dieseases from killing all human life on earth. In contrast to the previous title, this plays much quicker, often less than an hour, and the board is much smaller. Each player has a certain role that conveys a different ability, and they must use those abilities to find cures for the 4 dieseases, but also try to control any outbreaks that occur during the game.

A new game out very soon, Red November by Bruno Faidutti, from Fantasy Flight Games, has the players trapped on a damaged and sinking submarine, the distress signal has been sent, but help wont arrive for at least 1 hour. All the players have to do is keep the sub from sinking intime for a rescue. I am looking forward to trying this one when it is released.

New Online Game Store

2008-07-06T14:46:00.004+01:00

Over the last few weeks, I have been sorting out the transfer and ownership of Wizardopoly, an online game store.

On July 4th 2008, it went online again with me as the new owner propriator. I have added a new section, but kept the design done by the previous owner, Richard, as I liked the use of Meeples for the different catagories.

Please visist at www.wizardopoly.com/

I would also be appreciative of any feedback you have.

April Snow!

2008-04-06T08:32:00.003+01:00

8am snow all around.

We got up this morning to this view at our hotel in Hertfordshire. Its a good job that it didnt snow like this the day before, as that was the day of my Brother-in-Laws wedding. The off the shoulder wedding dress would have been very cold indeed.

Emily, my wife had woken up before me, and I asked her to look outside to see if it had snowed during the night. She opened the curtains and said "Oh, wow, Snow!"

BayCon 2008, Exeter UK

2008-03-29T11:26:00.011Z

Saturday

Saturday Morning in the main games room.

I had just arrived, however the Convention started on the Thursday, at around mid-day. This was the 22nd Baycon, this figure could be amended later, as no one, not even the organizers seemed to be sure as to how many there had been, however they were sure that it was March.
While I was hovering around the games library carrying my copy of Race for the Galaxy, I managed to get a few people into a game, whom I must have taught successfully, as I was soundly beaten. Next game on the table was a monster, Britannia.

The game was explained, and while pretty straight forward, there are a lot of exceptions, and it does take a long time, I was the Reds, who consist of the Brigantes, The Irish, the Saxons and the Norsemen. The inital Roman Invasion was swift, and got all the way to into Scotland, surprisingly, ignoring the welsh. Who managed to stick out the whole game only ever losing Cornwall and Powys to the Irish and the Saxons. After the first scoring in Turn 5, we broke for lunch. Then the after noon was taken up by many more invasions and territories changing hands, except Wales. The Danes, Norweigans and finally the Normans, all invaded and took their toll on my Saxons, who after a brief reign as King, were eliminated. Harold was killed by William the Conquerer, not at Hastings, but in Bristol. At the end of the game, I only had 1 lone Norseman unit way up north, in the Outer Hebrides. The winner, was Green, the Welsh helped with a huge amount of points, as no-one really tried to get them out of Wales, so were scoring over 20 points every scoring round, for welsh lands alone. The game lasted 6 and a half hours. I enjoyed the game, but it is very long, so I cant see myself getting many more games of this played, but am glad I tried it.

I took a well deserved rest after that marathon, and when I returned to the main room, one of the guys who was in the game of Britannia, was setting up a copy of Antler Island.

This newest game by the Fragor brothers has the players take part in the stag rut on a Scottish island. Each player plays a stag interested in food, fighting and, of course, the opposite sex. The object of the game is to be the stag who has "rutted" witth the most "doeples" and can only win the game if you have challenged another stag in combat, and won.
As usual, there are cutesy playing pieces. You can eat food, move around the island, "Rut" with a doe, and grow your antlers. When you move into a space with another players stag, you must fight, you both sacrifice and amount of collected food tokens, and add that figure to the number of antler pieces you have, the winner gets an "Ive-won-a-fight-so-I-can-win-the-game" chit, the looser get moved away to any space on the island. Its quite a straight forward game, not too many options, however as we found out, don't use all your food in a fight, or the next stag will get you, I was that next stag, and I won this game with 13 Ruts, and the biggest antlers. Then we packed up and had quick game of Race for the Galaxy.

Then I met up with my friend, Steve Kearon, so we got a third player Mike Oakes, and setup for a game of Amyitis.
I had been wanting another game of this ever since our first game (also a 3 player game with Steve teaching) when we (he) got the scoring wrong. Steve was scoring the temples victory points every turn, as an income, rather than as it should have been, as a one-off score per temple. As a result of this corrected points scoring, and proper rules, the scores were a lot closer, Steve won this time, but only by a difference of 5 poins to my second place, rather than the huge gap that there was in the first game.
I do like this game, as there are lots of ways to score points, not just from your own actions, but by careful irrigation, and lots of actions to consider, not just your own, but of the other players too. Even passing, if you choose to pass, and take no further action in a turn, as long as someone continues to take turns, you will earn 1 extra Talant every round. This game finished in around 1 hour and 45 mins. Then we met up with 2 more attendes, Neil Palfreyman and Anthony Simons, I had recognised the names from boardgamegeek., I had even read Anthony's blog. As it was getting late we decided on something "light".

Union Pacific was the game we eventually settled on. It is a train themed stockmarket game, where you can choose to increase the value of different train companies or lay down stocks in those companies so then when a scoring round occurs, you will actually score points. You only score points for share cards you lay on the table, not for the ones still in your hand. There was a slight delay in starting the game, (trains are always late) as the translated rules had a different starting hand than the official german rulebook. So after a small consultation, extra cards were dealt out and we were finally off. I liked this game, its not too overwhelming, but as the scoring is somewhat random, in that as you are working your way through the shares deck, a scoring card could be revealed and score immediately. This isn't too bad, but at the end of our game, with the share deck almost depleted, we go a scoring round, then just 2 card draws later, the final scoring round, only one played managed to get any shares down between the 2 final scoring rounds. Anthony won with Neil a close second. It was now 1.30am, oh and the clocks went forward too, so it was close to 3am when my first day finished.

Sunday

Next Moring after breakfast, I was wandering the game room looking for a game, so got invited into a game of Age of Empires III. It was a 4 player game, 2 of which had not played before. We removed one of the "capital building" tokens before we started, as the it was deemed to be too powerful. Conquest of the Aztecs, which gets the player an instant 20 gold, it was thought to be unbalanced. I thought it was a close game...until the end scoring, when I got second place with 91 points and the winner streaked ahead to finish on over 130. I had missed a few opportunities for getting cash early in the game, so instead tried for a conquest strategy, but as you can see from the photo the ships and trade goods (bottom right) belonging to the winner were enough to take him to victory. The last game of the day was another Race for the Galaxy, which was interupted half way through, for Baycon's award ceremony. Where prizes and trophies were awarded for best players over the entire con. Dr. Reiner Knizia once again praised the quality of the hotel and staff (hehe!), as well as awarding the winners with thier trophies. The main sponsor was JKLM Games, so I could hardly leave without buying at least one game, so I picked up a copy of Wits and Wagers, and interesting combination of a trivia game and the thrill of casino gambling, where you win by betting anyones answer.
This was my first Baycon, and I enjoyed it very much. As you can see, I had trouble remembering everyones names that I played with and met, so if you recognise being in the games ive listed, let me know, and i'll correct it and add your names where they should be.

Poprad Stag Weekend

2008-03-24T08:36:00.014Z

On March 8th 2008, I few out to Slovakia with my Brother-in-Law, Chris, and his friends for his Stag weekend of Skiing and drinking. It was an early flight, 8.30am, from Luton Airport. Its classed as Luton London, despite being over 30 miles from the M25. When we landed, i was surprised to find the temperature similar to when we left the UK...and not much snow on the ground - not a good sign for a skiing trip.

A Short trip from the Airport to Poprad, and to our hotel, the Satel Hotel. A nice 3star in the city center. It was around 12 mid-day so we tried to contact the ski hire at the hotel, but they only open from 8am to 11am and 4pm to 7pm. So we decided to search for a bar. also some of us needed some local currency.
The town was very quiet, not many shops open at all, we all thought this very strange. "Like being in 28 Days later", someone commented. There was 12 of us in total, but 4 had arrived a few days earlier for an extended skiing trip, so the 8 of us that arrived that day eventually found a bar and in we went.
You know that scene from every western movie, when the hero or villain walks into the saloon, and the music stops, and every one looks at him? Thats what it seemed like as we went in. There were plenty of tables, so we picked a corner table and set about translating the menu. "Pivo" it turned out was "Beer" so, armed with this knowledge and hand signals, Richard went to the bar. Soon 8 large beers arrived, and, as they only cost 25SK each (about 50p!) we had another.....and another.
It was about time to get back to the hotel, and meet up with the others, and arrange our first night out with the stag, Chris, present. We set off back to the hotel to get ready.

After everyone arrived in the lobby bar, we went back to the rooms and Chris was introduced to his evenings atire.
Then it was out to the town and some food, we chose "Cafe Crazy", for some real brick oven cooked pizza (and beers).
Then we went to a nightclub, a the door they tried to charge us the equivelant of £12, each! Until we realized that that they were saying that would be the price for everyone, so in we went. The Black lights inside worked a treat on our t-shirts. There were more beers and shots in the dark. Dancing was had by some, but thats where my night ended, about 1.30am, not too drunk, but very tired, as most of us had been up since 4am the previous day.

My mum

2008-03-18T17:26:00.003Z

This was just a quick post from my new phone, A Sony Ericsson K770i, which is able to send pictures straight to a blog. It resizes the pictures and posts in one go. Pretty neat.

I took this last week when my wife and I visited.

Chepstow Mini Con - ChepCon!

2008-02-24T01:16:00.006Z

On Sunday 17th February, some friends and I arranged a games day, Dubbed "ChepCon" - as it was held at Owen's House in Chepstow.

Eight players were planned, however only seven managed to arrive. So While we decided what to play with Seven, and then weather or not to break up in to 2 separate groups of 4 and 3. We kicked off with a game of Category 5

I manged to win the first game of the day.

As I had brought a few games that played 8, we thought we would try some, so we had a game of Bang! with 7. First time for me with a full game including 2 deputies and 3 outlaws. The outlaws won, and in true outlaw style, were arguing amongst themselves about who, of the 3, actually won. They seemed happy to carry on like this, so we didnt attempt to correct them in that all outlaws win.
Then we managed to get Owen's girlfriend, Fred, to play a game of Diamant. The only game of the day to get the big 8 players. There were a few grumbles when I suggested Space Dealer with 8, ah well, maybe next time.

After lunch we split into 2 groups, using half each of the same table, we decided on Thebes and Thurn & Taxis

As Steve K, Jake, Steve R and Owen played Thebes at one end of the table, Jason, Paul and myself played Thurn and Taxis at the other end. We slightly mis-judged the playing times of each, as we managed to get 2 games of Thurn and Taxis played to one of Thebes. Paul managed to win both. Steve K was the winner at Thebes.

As we again mulled over what game to play next, Citadels was suggested. Owen doesnt like citadels, so opted out to assist Fred in the kitchen in making some Stuffed potato skin snacks for everyone.

Another Win by me!

Last Game of the day was Cowboys: The Way of the Gun
We scoured the rules, but couldnt find a scenario for 7, so we did the standard multi-player shoot-em-up - The "Deathmatch", last man standing!
All using pistols and some special cards, we started anywhere on the big map and went after each other. Jake managed to win this by hiding most of the game and then pciking off the wounded at the end - he obviously knows how to do deathmatch properly.

We called it a day at 6.30pm. Well called it a day at Chepstow, 4 of us returned to the regular Sunday evening session in newport for a few more games,

Bill Bailey - Live at Cardiff CIA

2007-11-27T23:39:00.001Z

November 25th, Sunday evening.
I went, with my wife Emily, and our friends, Lucy and Antony to see Bill Bailey live on stage in Cardiff.

The event was sold out, and the queues started early.

We decided not to queue, and go to a nearby pub for a drink. Then wait for the lines to clear and go inside. I booked a CD takeaway, which was a double CD recording of that evenings performance, which you could collect at the end of the show.

The arena was filling up nicely and we only noticed a few empty seats.

The lights came down and I popped out to get Emily some candyfloss.

The show started.

It was a great show, with some very good effects. The giant screens were also used for some cool visual jokes, which dont work so well on the Audio CD version of the show, but still, we have the memories of it to visualize as we listen.
If you have not seen him live, do so, he is excellent. If not, catch him on DVD in Black Books or his live shows.

Hannibal Arrives in Wales

2007-11-24T01:32:00.003Z

It has been a long journey, but finally Hannibal: Rome vs Carthage has arrived. I originally made the pre-order back in March, when Valley Games announced they were re-printing this much sought after game. Valley games set up a pre-order 750, which means that if they got 750 pre-orders they would then print the game. in less than 48 hours they had received over 1400 orders.

They announced printing in April, for scheduled release in July.
Payments were taken, then a few days later I had a request for sales tax. I thought this odd, as we don't have sales tax in the U.K. Just VAT. I checked with Kevin at Valley Games, they had mistakenly had my address listed in Canada, not Britain. I got this corrected and all now seemed to be going smoothly.

The release date was pushed back to September, and then again into October. On October the 5th (1 day after the announcement of a postal strike in the U.K) the games were shipped to the European customers. I waited.

Days past, nothing arrived. Days became weeks, nothing. The Forums on Boardgamegeek were rife with people receiving thier games, and many who had not. There seemed to be no pattern, people in Germany posted that they had arrived, Norway, Belgium. Finally UK residents, who received thiers via DHL, surely it wouldnt be long now.

November arrives and still nothing has been delivered. Essen had been and gone, and Finnally Valley Games announce some problems with the dispatch. I re-sent my details as requested and wait.

Ten days later on 21st November, a package arrived! Hannibal had finally crossed Europe, the English Channel, down the M4 and across the Severn Bridge.

Torchwood On location

2007-10-02T22:56:00.000+01:00

Today I saw some location trucks and support for the Filming of Torchwood on location in Newport cattle market. Didn't see any cast members, but saw the names "Owen" and "Toshiko" on the trailer doors, so possibly they were getting setup for a night shoot.

In the Begining...

2007-09-02T12:41:00.000+01:00

...there was the word, or in this case, these words. My first ever "blog" entry, ever.

Now I have to do interesting things, so that I can add more blurb to my blog.