Posts from 2006

My Top Gaming Experiences of 2006

Maybe I’ll do a top n games list for 2006 at some point, but when I reflect on the past year what comes to mind are great gaming experiences, not great games...

Disney World and Kennedy Space Center

Here’s a quick wrap-up on our trip to Florida last week.  After our visit to Homasassa Springs, we drove down near Disney World to stay in a timeshare for tw...

Homosassa Springs, Florida

We all flew down to Florida Saturday morning and are currently staying with my parents near Leesburg, just northwest of Orlando.  The boys have been hankerin...

Roads & Boats, Die Macher

Last Saturday I hosted a dynamic duo of class big games - Roads & Boats and Die Macher (new edition).  Eric, Wes, and Michael joined me for a morning sta...

14 days and 23 games

I’ve made some great progress, but have a tough 2 weeks ahead of my to complete my unplayed games list burndown. While a few of the remaining games are quic...

Israel, November 2006

The Monday after Thanksgiving weekend (Nov 27) I traveled to Israel for the second time this year on Corillian business.  Scary thing is, I’m growing used to...

First Class?

I’m a United 1K class member (meaning I earn at least 100,000 qualifying miles in a year - two trips to Israel, a trip to Brussels, and a trip to Germany vir...

We’re Back

Sorry about the extended outage - had some problems with the ISP (server outage).  I’ll actually post a few things this weekend too!

The Hottest Game Company in Portland

Somehow we’ve managed to leverage our Chuck Norris guerilla marketing skills into a number of local press coverage items around the Portland area.  Seriously...

Burndown at the Beach

I’m late writing this up, but we had a great time out at the coast last weekend.  The weather improved on Friday allowing us to spend some time playing footb...

End of Football Season Stats

Time to brag a little bit about how well Jacob and Matthew performed in football this season.  Both boys led their teams in every single meaningful statistic...

Salishan

We are driving out to the coast to checkout the house and make sure everything is kosher after the heavy rains this week. There’s a high wind advisory tonigh...

My Todo List

Games I need to play, sell, trade, or dump by the end of the year.  Ranked in descending order by BGG rank.   Die MacherShogunPaths of GloryRoads & Boats...

Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization

Saturday marked the end of Matthew’s football season, the end of Jacob’s regular season (they have a playoff game next weekend), and a chance for Jacob and I...

Game On! Class Started this Week

Julie and I started the Game On! class this week at Matthew’s school (read more here and here).  We ended up doing two classes to accomodate the 40 kids that...

Essen Game Summary

This year I’d like to give a bit more information about the games I saw and played while at Essen.  I’ll do another post where I talk some more about the Sun...

Made the Frankfurt-Portland Flight

Barely… Again. Last year it was the crazy drive from Essen to Franfurt with five of us in a small car with bags stacked to our noses. This year it was a dela...

At the Dusseldorf Airport

Bags checked in fine - no weight issues but all three bags I checked were about 24 kilos each. I guess I fit within the 1-2 kilo grace range. We had some goo...

Fair is Over

I’m sitting here in Carey’s bathroom while Carey, Linda, Lorna, and Erik work on packing our various leftovers (not many!) and acquisitions into our return l...

Day 4 Begins

I managed to be just inside the main entrance in hall 12 (I forgot the cash box key in the hotel room) when the fair opened today - wow, what a crazy scene. ...

Day 4 Begins

I managed to be just inside the main entrance in hall 12 (I forgot the cash box key in the hotel room) when the fair opened today - wow, what a crazy scene. ...

Saturday Night in Essen

We are in the home stretch.  We had a great dinner at one of the nicer places I’ve seen around here - the name escapes me, but the food was on the gourmet si...

Der Elefant

Trying out the Amigo card game Der Elefant here in the conference room at the Arosa. This is about the classic “elephant in the china shop” story (? I though...

Sitting Down for Dinner at the Manda

We have our crew plus Matthias and Ina Catrain - Matthias is our artist for Incan Gold. I’m sipping a Paulaner Weissbier and we are having some great convers...

Salamanca

I’m trying out the new Zoch zum Spielen game Salamanca. This is a tile laying game that feels a bit like New England to me. Players take control of buildings...

Die Baumeister von Arkadia

I’m sitting here at the Ravensburger booth playing Arkadia, a new game that recycles the tower pieces from Torres. We are playing 2-player which I suspect is...

Day 1 Is Almost Over

I’m here in the Messe hanging out in smoke-filled hall 4A between 4 and 5. Sorry for the lack of posts, but it is such a non-stop craze that it is hard to fi...

Arrived at the Arosa

We made it safe and sound to the Arosa in two taxis. It is almost fortunate that three of our bags didn’t make it (they are held up in Frankfurt and will arr...

Made it

Customs and security didn’t slow us down too much and we are sitting on a B737 for our flight to Dusseldorf. Carey, Linda, KC, Marty (KC’s dad), and Lorna Wo...

Landed in Frankfurt

Racing to catch our flight to Dusseldorf. Hopefully they’ll hold the flight or we may arrive in Essen much later than palnned!

Essen 2006

The time is quickly approaching where I’ll board a Lufthansa flight here in Portland to join a bunch of my partners and friends for the trek to Essen.  Sunri...

Nexus Ops

I recently picked up the Avalon Hill game Nexus Ops from Toys R Us (great deal - $19.99 with free shipping) and we all sat down to give it a try today.  The ...

Burndown Update for October

Time for a quick update on my unplayed games burndown project.  In my last update, I mentioned that I need to kick the playing and possibly the getting-rid-o...

Antiquity

Nearly a month ago I spent the better part of a Saturday over at Doug’s to play the Splotter game Antiquity.  Doug already did a great job of describing the ...

Game On! Games

I’m running a weekly morning gaming class for kids at Archer Glen Elementary.  On this page you can find a list of games we’ll be playing this year as well a...

Canal Mania

I broke down and purchased the newest Ragnar Brothers game Canal Mania after reading the Counter review and seeing some positive buzz online.  Seeing that fo...

Posting from my BlackBerry

I’ll be at the Essen Spiel show again this year and while I don’t expect to be online with the laptop much (if at all - it is expensive!) I’d like to be able...

Gemblo Light

At Origins earlier this summer Tom Vasel was kind enough to give me a copy of Gemblo Lite, the smaller version of the Korean game Gemblo. The publisher is tr...

Gaming Survey Results are Posted

A while back I mentioned an online survey about games being conducted by GAMA and The Ohio State University.  The results of this survey are now online.

Football

I’m sitting here on a United flight from Connecticut to Chicago, watching a preview of the upcoming TV series “Friday Night Lights”.  This is a high school f...

I’m Taking Down my Blogroll

Why?  Because it is woefully out of date, I doubt anyone uses it, and Yehuda does such a nice job keeping his up to date.  If you are looking for other blogs...

Summer Scouting

This was a great summer for scouting (of the Boy and Cub variety).  I managed to spend about 3–4 days each at Jacob’s and Matthew’s summer camps and we finis...

ASL Starter Kit #1 - Retaking Vierville

I made significant progress on the burndown list over the past week – a combination of Goodwill donations, eBay sales, and focused gameplay has created a net...

Warrior Knights

Jacob, Matthew, and I broke out Warrior Knights for the first time Saturday night and Sunday morning.  I set the game up in between football jamborees for th...

Help Me Choose Games for My Games Class

I’m a little burnt out on the chess class I’ve been teaching at school for the past three years, so I’ve delegated that away and will instead be doing a 50 m...

The Making of Viktory

I learned about the game Viktory II listening to The Dice Tower recently.  Tom’s glowing remarks and the mention of 660 miniatures certainly perked up my ear...

Battlestations

Friday night the boys and I tried out Battlestations, the sci-fi sorta-RPG with ship-to-ship combat.  This is a game I received in the BoardGameGeek secret s...

Memorials and Reunion in Burlington, Iowa

 Not much about gaming in this post… all personal stuff. About 2 weeks ago I took the family out to the midwest to attend memorial services for my two grandm...

Parlay

I failed to mention that I played Parlay recently at one of our lunchtime gaming sessions at work.  I met Jennifer and Paul Sturgis, designers and owners of ...

Burn ‘em, Danno

This was a good weekend for working on the good ol’ burndown list. We got back from the triathlon at about 3:30pm, and with Matthew away at a Portland Beaver...

Unplayed Games Burndown - August Update

Things are not looking good.  A bulk purchase of games at Funagain combined with a lack of playing time over the summer has really set me back on my quest to...

18FL, Axis & Allies D-Day

I recently had one my best gaming experiences in a long while – a game of 18FL with Tim, Wes and Eric.  You can read all about the details of the session ove...

Strange Magic

Magic:the Gathering is having a bit of resurgence around our home of late.  Last weekend I pulled out the Ravnica cards I bought for the New Year’s Gaming ev...

Board Games with Scott - Well Worth Watching

I haven’t talked much lately about gaming podcasts, but I just have to say how much I like Board Games with Scott.  Scott’s a little goofy (who in this hobby...

Playing with Swords

I failed to mention in my final Origins post that I participated in an ad-hoc tournament on Friday.  This wasn’t a typical tournament for me – I got roped in...

Hacienda

On Saturday morning, Julie, Matthew, and I left home at about 5am to drive to Camp Pioneer to get Jacob at summer camp (more on that in a future post).  We m...

Origins 2006 - Day 3

Day 3 meant final day for me as I needed to scoot back to Oregon to get ready for Boy Scout summer camp with Jacob – I’m going to join him for 4 days out at ...

Origins 2006 - Day 2

I’ve got a Flickr photostream setup for the Origins photos I’m taking… I’ll just post a few photos here to highlight the games I played today. I had a pure c...

Origins 2006 - Day 1

I’m able to mix some business with pleasure this week.  I’m here in Columbus, OH doing some customer visits but I’ll be able to squeeze in about 2 days at th...

Boardgame Feed Aggregation

Now this is pretty cool.  Nice work Aldie.  I particularly like the newspaper-style layout.

Winner’s Circle

A rarity – we got in some family gaming this weekend!  After spending about 24 total hours on baseball fields this weekend (local tournament for both boys), ...

Axis & Allies Miniatures

I first saw Axis & Allies Miniatures at GenCon 2005 and after hearing so-so playtest reports from Jacob and Matthew I decided to skip it.  Besides, it wa...

Two Links

First, in case you didn’t know, fellow gamer Moritz Eggert’s soccer/football composition “Die Tiefe des Raums” will be performed at the opening ceremonies fo...

Kid Stuff

I’ve been very slow to provide weblog updates lately.  I’m sure one reason is that it seems that within 8 hours or so of a session I hold, 2 other people hav...

Martin Fowler Likes Boardgames

I’ve long been a fan of Martin Fowler.  Even sat down for lunch with him back in 2000 when we were both speakers at Software Development Expo in San Fran.  N...

Conquest of the Empire, Tycoon, and More

Oh, so much more.  I detest meta-blogging, but let me start by apologizing for the lack of content around here for a while.  You’ve missed out on all the gam...

Join Me in Wallenstein

Time to start another game of Wallenstein.  Game: Cubs Rule.  Password: maddux.

Take this Gaming Survey

The Ohio State University and GAMA are conducting a comprehensive survey of the hobby game industry.

Israel, 1 Year Later

Or just about… I abandoned Julie in St. Louis (I have a habit of doing that) and flew to Israel via Washington DC and Frankfurt on Sunday, arriving at Ben Gu...

Thurtene 2006 - A Tribute to Coach

Julie and I spent the weekend in St. Louis visiting our alma mater, Washington University.  The last time I visited was in 1995 at a five year class reunion,...

Itching for some PBW Games

It has been too long since I’ve played some online PBW games.  So, join me in a game of Wallenstein, Bus, or Amun Re over at Spielbyweb.  Look for the games ...

Madge Gardiner - Rest in Peace

My (other, last) grandmother passed away this week. Madge Meredith Gardiner, 97, of Morristown Manor in Morristown, Ind., formerly of Carmel, Ind., and She...

Memoir ‘44 Eastern Front -Breakout at Klin

Matthew and I sat down to for a first playing of the Eastern Front expansion to Memoir ‘44.  I’ve read elsewhere that people have been able to pack all of th...

Do You Know Where I Can Find A Starbucks?

I joined a few folks at the Starbucks near Washington Square last night for a brief evening of gaming.  Joining some of the regular Rip City folks was Ben Ha...

Die Macher Reprint

Looks like there is a decent likelihood of an English language reprint of Die Macher.  Valley Games, a publisher startup in Alberta, appears to be running a ...

6 Nimmt, El Grande

I managed to make a mid-week gaming session at Mike’s, a rare occurrence these days.  It turned out to be a nice crowd – we were expecting six but George was...

My Friend Tom Interviews My Friend Nick

Tom Vasel recently posted an interview of Nick Medinger, head of marketing for Funagain Games.  I had the pleasure of spending quite a bit of time with Nick ...

Pueblo, Descent, and Roma

Last week before my trip to DC we worked in a game of Pueblo before bedtime.  This was an Essen pickup for me, and as an abstract, one I thought might really...

Gaming Near Dulles

Cool – twice in two weeks I’m able to hook up with a local gaming group while away on business.  Last Thursday I joined David Fair and a group of his gaming ...

In Birmingham They Love the Boardgames

I’m hooked on not-too-obscure musical references.  Or maybe it was too obscure – you tell me. Anyway, I spent last week in Birmingham, Alabama on business.  ...

The Year I Was a Champion

Wow, only four posts so far this month.  Getting this post in before midnight puts me at five, tying my record low of five in Feburary 2005.  I’ve got a dece...

Trip to Brussels and Amsterdam

I had a business trip to Brussels last week, with meetings scheduled for Tuesday-Thursday.  Erich and I arrived around 6:30am on Tuesday morning, and knowing...

Torres, Yahtzee Deluxe Poker

There’s been a dearth of game playing in my life for the past two weeks.  Mucho travel (I guess I should post some pictures of Brussels and Amsterdam), some ...

Superbowl Gaming

Mike hosted another great day of Superbowl gaming last weekend and posted a detailed session report. I finally got around to editing some photos that you ca...

Chess for Success 2006 Regional Tournament

Saturday was the regional tournament for Chess for Success, the Oregon-wide organizational body for scholastic chess.  Laurie and I chose our team from the t...

GameStorm Game Day

After Jacob’s Game Maker class two Saturdays ago (January 21) we drove up to northwest Portland to attend the GameStorm game day.  I was pretty amazed at the...

Pizza Box Football and Doom: the Boardgame

Turns out I’m the Geek of the Week over on Boardgamegeek.  Check it out and feel free to ask some questions. Time to catch up on some session reports.  Two w...

1st Annual Jack Weeks Challenge Cup

It has been almost a year since I posted anything about the chess program I run at Archer Glen elementary here in Sherwood.  We just kicked off tournament se...

Another SimplyFun Night

Julie and I attended a SimplyFun party last Friday night at Eric’s house, with Mike Deans providing the consulting power.   I didn’t expect to see much new b...

Strike One Off the List!

I showed Julie the game Ido tonight, recommending that she use it as a combination art literacy / gaming session at the school.  As we were fiddling with the...

Harbor Seals at Salishan

I thought I’d share some nice photos taken last Sunday morning at the northern tip of Salishan spit.  This is where the harbor seals and sea lions like to co...

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5

Hereafter referred to as just “D&D”, Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 is the most recent version of the 30–years–and–running juggernaut roleplaying game from Wiz...

Get Ready for GameStorm 2006

When it comes to gaming conventions in Portland, there’s really only one game in town and that’s GameStorm.  We’ll be running a number of events this year, i...

Tal der Könige, Bus, and More

I made it to Mike’s “South Tuesday” game night tonight, a good step towards meeting my New Years resolution.  We had a great crowd of 9 tonight and decide to...

Star Wars D20, Antike, Wyatt Earp

I recently made a commitment that I would post more about the role-playing game sessions I run.  These don’t happen frequently, but they are an important par...

New Year’s Gaming, (Final) Day 4

Monday is a day of cleaning up, packing, and heading home.  That doesn’t mean we can’t fit in a few games. I woke up fairly early to watch the Iowa / Florida...

New Year’s Gaming, Day 3

A stormy day at the coast means there’s no good reason to leave the house.  More gaming goodness. I started off the day with a four-player game of Barbarossa...

New Year’s Gaming, Day 2

First, Happy New Year!  We’ve had a great day of gaming at the coast, including some 3–on–3 basketball action down at the outdoor half-court. Highlights for ...