I've been on a little bit of a mission recently to find some solo games, specifically war or fantasy themes. I just order Field Commander: Rommel and I hope it arrives this week. As any war gamer knows it's sometimes hard to find opponents so when a good solo game comes along it's like come early. By all accounts FCR is a very good game so I'll let you know once I get it.

In other news I see that War of the Ring is now shipping again. I'm ashamed to say I have never played this game, although I have wanted to for so long. I've got so many new games I haven't played yet it seems a little crazy to order a new one. Someone let me know how good it is so I have an excuse.

Finally if you're in the greater Chicago area the club I belong to is holding it's Spring Gaming day called KitCon on April 26th. It's a great time and lots of games are played. If you need further information go here.

D&D Goes Online

This actually sound fairly interesting to me but I can see possible problems. The main one is charging MMO prices for a product you can only use when you get a group of people together and only when one of them has created an adventure.

When I played RPG's pretty heavily we often got together once a week, if I'm paying $15 a month for 4-6 uses a month is it worth it?

Also why go through all of this effort if you character model isn't a true representation of your character? According to the article I can create a male fighter, give him a giant ass two handed sword and dwarven armor but he has none of that in the game session I am playing.

It's a crying shame that Neverwinter Nights wasn't given a true expansion from Bioware, instead we got NWN2 from Obsidian who delivered a toolset that was harder to use and had less built in features. It was awesome that we could create outdoor environments in NWN2 that weren't tile based, but they made the simplest of task from NWN1 like creating a creature or items very difficult. NWN2 was a failure on many levels and it will never even sniff the jock of the NWN community but I digress.

So while I like the concept of what they are doing with D&d 4th edition and the online aspect it sound sort of half assed. I'll still check it out but there are already programs out there that allow you to do what they are attempting and some of them are free.

Where have I been, I'm actually happy that some people have emailed and asked that. Don't worry I am not pulling a disappearing act I am in this blog for the long haul. Frankly put work has been kicking my ass, I'm so stressed out when I come home I've been feeling sick to my stomach.

Whats odd is I have found a nice outlet for my stress and that is figure painting. I'm almost through all of my Decent figures and when I want a break from those I hop over to my Battlelore figures. I'm not very good at this and the last time I painted anything was back in the late 80's, but I am getting better with each figure I do.

I'm not sure why painting is so relaxing to me, it shouldn't be trying to get everything just right, all the details. Perhaps the key is their is a reward at the end, no matter how bad or good the figure ends up. I invested my time, worked through it and it had an ending.

That's something I can't say about my current work situation as i have several clients that require so much attention and their is no end in sight. I'm not talking figuratively here, I mean literally as one client is just going to require daily attention until they leave us which could be never. While that is a good position for my company to be in, that's not what I signed up for and it certainly doesn't fit my personality.

In other news I just submitted by review of Rocketman Axis of Evil for the 360, in short stay far away, very far.

I've previously written on the tale of Key Largo before which is the last game designed by Paul Randles one of the designers of Pirates Cove. Last night was my first chance to play Key Largo with my gaming group and we had a full five player game.

The Object
The object of Key Largo is simple have the most money by the end of ten days. You acquire that money mainly from sending divers down for buried treasure and selling them at the market. You can also make money by taking tourist Dolphin Watching but the real money is made through salvaging the wrecks on the ocean floor.

The Components
The game comes with some rather large wooden pieces to represent your boat, a number of chits of items you can buy like hoses, weights and Tridents. A nicely illustrated board, lots of fake money and then plenty of cards to represent the treasure you find on the bottom of the ocean. I didn't find any of the components cheaply made at all.

The Theme
The game is set around the islands you pillaged during Pirate's Cove, or at least it is loosely based on that concept. The theme of being a salvage captain and sending your divers down works pretty well. I found it odd that the obstacle chosen for the divers were Sea Monsters and that the Trident was used to fend them off, I would of expected possibly a spear gun and Sharks perhaps. It's not a big deal and the art of the divers and the board represent that fun, humorous family ton so it works.

How it Plays
The dynamics of Key Largo are simple enough to get up and going fast. A first time game with 5 players and rules explanation only took about an hour. I think this game can be played in anywhere from 40 minutes to just over an hour depending on the size and group.

Players start with $100, a boat and a single diver. They also have a set of cards which allows them to do various actions, more on that in a minute. Then depending on the number of players you place wrecks down around the board of varying depths (shallow, medium and deep) in a 3 player game for example there are 3 shallow, 4 medium and 4 deep wrecks. Wrecks are stacks of 5 cards placed face down.

So the game is runs over 10 days, that's how much time is left before the hurricanes roll in and wash out all diving for the season. Each day is broken into a morning and afternoon, so effectively you have 20 turns of game play.


Each player has a set of cards with actions on them, you must choose two of these cards and place them face down on top of each other. The top card is your morning action and the bottom your afternoon action. What this means is you can only perform one of your actions once a day. After ten days you count up your money and unsold treasure and whomever has the most is the winner.

The Action Cards
Search a Wreck Card
Your diver goes to one of the wreck decks and draws the top card. Each wreck can only have one boat so there is a start player token and it passes each turn. If more then one player chooses a wreck action then they place their boats clockwise from the start player. You can also hire up to 3 divers, so you could be drawing 3 cards from a diving expedition.

You might remember the different wreck depths? Well in order to dive at medium depth each of your divers needs a hose, to dive at Deep depths each of them needs two hoses. So if for example you have 3 divers and two of them have 2 hoses but one of them has none you can only dive at a shallow wreck.

The wreck decks consist of either treasure or a monster. Treasure comes in the form of goods, gold, artifacts and jewels. When you draw these they simply go into your hand, a monster card just means your diver found nothing. There is a way to counter a monster, it's called the Trident. If you have one of these you can simply ignore the monster card and then draw another card from the wreck depth.

Finally each diver can have a single diving weight which allows him to discard it to draw another card off the wreck deck. When that's a lot to cover, but its best to explain everything here as searching a wreck is the key to the game.

Go Dolphin Watching Card
This card has you take tourists out to see Dolphins and collect some meager cash, how much depends on the day of the week but Friday - Sunday pay the most. There is an optional rule that frankly must be used for this card or else the Dolphin watch card will almost never get played and it's called encounters. Each time you go Dolphin watching you draw an encounter card and can keep it to use later. All encounter cards are beneficial, for example you may draw a card that allows you to immediately sell the last card you drew from a wreck deck.

Buy Equipment Card
I pretty much explained what the 3 different pieces of equipment did under the Wreck card. Just know you can only buy two items on each visit to the shop and each diver can only have 2 hoses, 1 Trident and 1 weight each.

What I am going to do is use this spot to explain the one dynamic that is going to come into play for this card and the remaining two and the one that makes the game interesting and it is the changing market. The number of people who visit the shop at the same time determines the price of goods. A hose might be $30 if you're the only one there, but if two people visit its $40 and if 3 visit its $60. In other words try and shop when people aren't around.


Sell Goods Card (ie visit the market)
This is how you make your money and of course making money is the key to the game. Up top I mentioned the 4 types of treasure goods, gold, artifacts and jewels. Well of those four only three of them can be sold at the market, jewels are never sold.

Each treasure card with the exception of Jewels has two numbers printed on it. The number of crates and the end game scoring value. As an example I might draw a Gold card and it will say 5 crates of gold and have an end game value on it of $100.

Much like the shop, the markets values for selling go changed based on the number of boat captains selling their haul. Gold always sells for $30 a crate, Good sell for less when there are more people an oddly enough Artifacts sell for more if there are more people.

Getting back to my example if I went to the market to sell my card which had 5 crates of gold i would make $150, 5 crates multiplied by the market of $30. So whats the other value you ask, the $100? There is a good chance you will not sell all your goods at market instead of them not counting towards your final score you get the value on the card, in this case $100. Jewels only have a value on them and it is usually a nice sum like $200. I should also mention that you can only sell one type of good per visit. So if I sell Gold I can't sell goods, but I can sell as many gold cards as I want.

Visit the Tavern Card
This is where you can do any of 3 things, the most important of which is buy another diver. Much like the shop, more people here means it cost more to hire a diver. Each boat can only transport 3 divers and no more.

You can also buy the tavern a round of drinks for $20, this allows you to pick two treasure decks, look at whats in them and then reshuffle them. Finally another option rule is hiring a thief, which allows you to steal a card from another players treasure hand.

Conclusion
Key Largo is a decent enough game, there is a pretty good theme here and the rules seem well balanced. The one thing I really love about it is the lack of downtime, everyone is doing their things at once and the game moves. The optional encounter rule should always be played with, while the thief rule I could live without. The game lacks any kind of drama really short of pulling a monster card and most late game strategy revolves around trying to out guess your opponents and be the sole visitor at the market.

Who is it for?
Pirate's Cove fans, people looking for a nice family or dinner party game which plays fast and has no confrontation.

Who is it NOT for?
People looking for a very strategic or heavy game. If you scoff at games like TTR, Pirate's Cove or That' Life stay far away from Key Largo.

Congrats to Mike P. I'll be shipping your expansion pack out tomorrow. I ended up with only 41 entires for this contest. My site traffic is significantly higher then that, which I consider pretty good for a blog who I didn't officially start investing time in until this past January. Maybe people just don't want free stuff.

Anyway I hope to get some reviews up really soon on Key Largo, Pandemic and a few other titles.

Today is the last day to enter the contest, I've had a surprisingly low number of entries despite some real good site stats lately. Perhaps no one wants Battlelore expansions which is too bad as I have a bunch of these to give away. Regardless if you want a pretty good shot at winning this, currently 1 in 25 or so, then get your entries in by the deadline tonight.

I'm starting to see a let up in my daily workload which will hopefully allow me to get some content I have been working on up on the site. I've been spending my spare time painting my Descent figures, which is something I started a while back. I'm about 90% done and I am by no means a master painter of miniatures. Whats weird is something that should be stressful do to the details involved is a huge stress reliever for me. I think that is due to the fact that there is alwasy an end in site, which is something I don't have with a few of my current clients.

I'm behind in a review for Gameshark, I'm not going to say the name of the game yet but I'm having a hard time with it because I don't like it very much. There are so many issues that I would consider things you would find in the last decade of gaming. For example its a isometric shooter on rails and forget about it if you accidentally go too far to one side of the screen and miss and item, there is no going back.

I've been playing some Rainbow Six Vegas 2 lately, a game which I enjoy and I just picked up Viking for the 360 as well. There is some joy in slicing limbs off of opponents I'll admit. Because I got stuck in Cleveland last Thursday do to a snow storm in Chicago I missed game night so I didn't get a chance to play any of my new games. Here is hoping nothing happens this week.

Today is the final question of the contest, I'll also be opening up entires today through midnight CDT on March 31st. Remember the title of your email must be Goblin Contest Entry and then just list the answers as follows:

1. Answer
2. Answer

etc.

If you don't submit like that you won't be entered.

Question 6: Battlelore is part of the Command and Colors System. Who is credited with designing this system and what was the first game published in the system? Hint: It was published in 2000

Good Luck

Unfortunately this week is going to be light on postings as it's crazy busy at work and I am traveling for business again. I'll try and make up for it next week with some good content.

Regardless here is question #5

There were a few promotional creatures released for Battlelore, name one of them.

Going to be an extremely busy day at the real job so here is question #4.

Name one of the roles a player can be in the upcoming Galactic Emperor game.

Also a reminder, please don't send me any answers yet, I will be opening up the entry portion of this contest this weekend. if you have previously sent me an entry it is not valid.

As you can see by my recently playing list I received the Descent expansion along with a few other games I just ordered. No, I have not played them yet that little mistake in my recently played list comes courtesy of Board Game Geeks forms.

Anyway I now have all the Descent expansion and main game and let me tell you transporting this is going to be next to impossible. I also picked up Mare Nostrum and the Mythology expansion for it based on some positive feedback by Bill Abner.

Bill and I have know each other through the inter webs for a long time and I find that his tastes often run in line with mine so if I hate this game, which I doubt from my reading of the rules, then I'll be sending him the bill.

Also scored a copy of Key Largo which was designed by Paul Randles and was his last game before passing away. There is an interesting post on BGG about how this game final got completed and made it to print. I'm a fan of Pirates cove and so is my wife so I decided to pick this up, alas it needs at least 3 to play. It looks like a very fun game so I'm looking forward to getting it on the table, I can't wait until my oldest daughter who will be 5 in May can start to join us on some of these games.

Now for the most important news of the week, we beat Pandemic on Thursday night. Four player game with only 4 Epidemic cards but hey I'll take a win. Strangely winning the game didn't do anything to lessen my desire to play it, which is a good thing.

Currently the only game I have on pre-order is The Last Night on Earth expansion called Growing Hunger and I'm not even sure when that is going to ship. I'll also be putting an order in for Galactic Emperor as well. It's going to be an expensive summer, I should have stuck with video / computer game reviews as you got those copies for free, but you have to do what you love.

What new nation is joining Axis & Allies in the upcoming Anniversary Edition?

Today we have an interview with Adam west who is the designer of the much anticipated Galactic Emperor. This interviewed occurred a few days before Adam announced that pre-orders are now open for the game.

OBG: Today we're talking with Adam West, one of the founders of Crosscut Games, about his upcoming board game Galactic Emperor. Crosscut games has created some real quality computer games in the past like Runesword 1 & 2, even a game called Bronze Dragon which I recall playing on an Apple computer back in my teen age years. Adam thanks for taking the time today to discuss the game with us.

Adam: Happy to be here!

OBG: Can you tell us a little about yourself and crosscut games?

Adam: Sure. I'm the President of CrossCut Games, a tiny game company located in Indianapolis, Indiana USA. Dan Schnake is the co-founder and all around great guy. We're long time friends and have been running CrossCut for over 10 years now. Prior to that, we were called Commonwealth Software. So we've been making games together for about 25 years. We've published several computer games and are now getting ready to launch our first board game.

OBG: How long have you been designing games?

Adam: Since grade school. Well before I had a computer. My friends and I use to play home made games after school. Dozens of the things. Some I still have in my basement.

OBG: How long have you been into board games?

Adam: I can remember playing Panzer Leader in the late 1970's. I played Risk. I played D&D for the first time about then as well. I still have an original copy of the Chain Mail rules! Man, those were good times.

OBG: What was it that made you make the transitions from coding computer games to designing a board game?

Adam: I've really been back into board games for the last 7 years or so
and the games today are incredibly fun and very different from games
many of us played when we were younger. So after getting back into board games, I began thinking about board games again. Really, all my computer games were made so I could play board games by myself - specifically D&D by myself. So in a sense, I'm going back to my roots.

OBG: Is Galactic Emperor your first board game design?

Adam: It's my first intended for retail sale. But I've designed zoodles of board games.

OBG: How would you describe Galactic Emperor?

Adam: It's a very fast playing 4X board game of galactic politics and conquest.

OBG: I like the concept in GE on roles and how every player gets to take an action with each role, but only the player with the throne can use that roles special action. Can you gives us a quick run down on one or two unique roles in GE and which one is your favorite early in the game?

Adam: There are 7 roles in the game: Explorer, Steward, Merchant, Engineer, Warlord, Regent and Scientist. The person who chooses the role gets to use the special ability - a bit of a bump for the chooser if you will. That's just an incentive to pick a role rather than letting someone else do it for you. So the optimization here is deciding which role benefits you the most at different points in the game or hurts others if you choose a role they are not ready for. Early in the game, Explorer is pretty much a no-brainer since getting good sectors early (those with a nice amount of resources) is important. That depends a bit on what sectors are available of course. Also, Scientist is important early since there are limited technologies and Scientist goes out of the game about 2/3's through. A Regent is a good choice (if you didn't get the throne) so you can control the flow for a few rounds.

Hmm. I guess it depends!

OBG: If GE were a computer game, would you consider it a 4X game? If not what kind of game would you equate it too?

Adam: Yes, it's a 4X game - but without the micro-management. In fact, while we were making the game we looked up 4X on wikipedia and we meet all the attributes very well. Think of GE as a lighter 4X game - all the X with less fat.

OBG: Is there a lot of combat / conflict in a typical game of GE? Can you briefly describe how conflict is resolved?

Adam: That's something we worked on through out development. Early on, combat didn't happen too often - maybe only at the end of a game, some gigantic clash. So we had to tune the game over time - loads of play testing - to get combat to happen at the right time in the game. Now the economy is turned up so you can afford to have combat and you can get all your ships into play if you work it right.

Conflict is resolved by rolling dice - the big dreadnaughts roll 3, crusiers roll 2 and fighters roll 1. It's resolved in phases - dreadnaoughts fight and remove casualties, then crusiers fight and remove casualties, etc. So if you've played for example Nexus Ops or Axis and Allies or other American games, you'll quickly pick up what happens. But a given battle resolves in just a few rolls - it doesn't go on and on.

OBG: From reading the rules it sounds like every game of GE can play out differently. By that I mean there is not set opening strategy and a player could win by brute or diplomatic force. Would you consider that a correct statement? If so how much time was spent in play testing GE to make sure if had that dynamic nature?

Adam: Yes, I think that's right. That's been my goal too - to allow for various strategies to be viable. It starts pretty easy - find sectors, take them over. But as the galaxy unfolds, things begin to settle in, you need to start on a path that will work for you. For example, maybe you have several food sectors. Then playing the market is your best bet - since you get money for food and can control prices. And then you have to think about technologies that fit that strategy. In general, you have to always watch out for a balance in economics, warfare and politics. I've seen players win without a single combat, I've seen them win with loads of combat. The best strategy is playing what's in front of you - and figuring out your opponents.

OBG: So would you consider GE a streamlined alternative to TI?

Adam: Absolutely! You know this has come up many times now and I really do like what TI has done in board gaming. It's really epic - and there's a place in my heart for those types of games. Unfortunately, I can almost never play them. Partly because I can't find the amount of time that a game like TI requires and partly because my patience is shrinking over the years. So yes, GE is trying to fill my need for a galactic conquest game in a reasonable amount of time. It's epic in scale without an epic time commitment.

OBG: I know many of my readers might want to pursue getting a game published someday wit that in mind. How long did it take you to go from original concept to sending the game to the printer? How much play testing did you do with GE?

Adam: Hmm. I think it was about a year. The original concept was put together in about a week. But then we went into play testing. And that's where we've spent our time - a year of play testing. Hundreds of games with loads of different people. Game clubs, conventions, strangers - gamers from all over the world. I love the internet!

OBG: Did you do all the art work yourself?

Adam: I did everything but the box cover. That beautiful box cover is from Hugo Award Winning Stephen Hicks. Amazing and perfect for our game. I love the box.

OBG: Was there some information out there to get you started down the right path to self publishing a game?

Adam: There's been a few other pioneers, so I drew from their experience. On Board Game Geek (BGG), several folks have posted their experiences. And then there's Peter Morrison, the designer and publisher of Viktory II. If you haven't seen his web site, you really should. He poured himself into the effort and describes every part of it. So that was really inspiring. In the end, I came to the conclusion that I wanted CrossCut Games to have a top tier product with high quality production values. If we're going to do board games, we need to have the components that make it lots of fun. So that's why I went with a complete outsourcing of printing. No regrets at all. The game will be of the same quality as any AAA game - something I could never hope to do in a computer game.

OBG: What was the one thing that surprised you the most in getting a game self published?

Adam: Many folks have heard I made a board game and say, "You know, I've got this idea for a board game...." And really, it's a ton of work. It takes far more than a great idea. It's not like you can just send the stuff off and everything is done. And marketing, distribution, selling the thing - that's also a ton of work. I like it all right now - but it's so very much more than just a good idea and a color printer.

OBG: How did it feel to get that final production copy in your hands?

Adam: I don't have that feel yet! I'm still awaiting that feeling - and I long for it. I hope it's really as good as I think it will be. I'm pretty certain about parts of the product - but other parts - we'll just have to wait and see!

OBG: Many board games are making their way onto Xbox Live and doing quite well. Catan and Carcassone have been pretty big hits and there are rumors of more games on the way. Do you think this is a good thing for the hobby? Do you think a game like Arkham Horror for example could be put into that environment?

Adam: I do think this is a good thing. It exposes more players to the games, it explores interactivity, it gives players opportunity to play with lots of other people. It's fantastic for the console market - hopefully, console and computer games designers will wake up to what's going on in game design! I think a game that is more heavy on theme will translate less well. The mechanics are part of those games, but really, they are about the feeling of the game. So something like Arkham Horror or Descent - they have to compete more directly with other classic computer games. And you can get that same feeling with other computer/console games.

But Catan, Carcassone - these are perfect choices. They are simply great games.

OBG: When do you expect GE to be available?

Adam: June? I really hope June. I actually hope for sooner. But let's stick with June.

OBG: At what price?

Adam: $54.95 MSRP.

OBG: Will it be a limited print run?

Adam: It's just a very small run - 1,000 copies. I have a sinking feeling those will sell out too fast - that's actually one of my worries right now.

OBG: Will you be selling it at Origins or GenCon?

Adam: Naw, it didn't seem like a reasonable thing to do just yet. First, I don't want to be stuck in a booth during those conventions - I want to be playing games! Second, we only have the one board game right now - so it probably doesn't justify the booth cost. I do hope somebody else will have us on the shelf at those venues. We'll see!

OBG: Finally top 5 board games you enjoy right now that weren't made by Adam West?

Adam: Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan, Memoir '44, Age of Empires III and up and coming is Race for the Galaxy. Age of Empires III came out of nowhere for me and I really love it. Race - I wanted to hate it, but dang it, it's just a flat out great game. I admire it - let's put it that way. I enjoy playing anything new too, so maybe "any new game" is #1 for me.

OBG: Anything else you would like to add?

Adam: If you want a galactic conquest game that plays smooth and fast, go get Galactic Emperor!

I'd liek to thank Adam for taking the time to answer a few questions and if you interested in Galactic Emperor you should head over to the cross cut games site and pre-order a copy now.

If you've followed my recent links to the Descent:RTL previews this one should be easy. In case anyone is confused all of these questions will be board game related and the Geek is a good resource. Anyway...

What is the name of the town that you Heroes have been visiting in Descent when taking a town action?

(I have to start making these harder.)

I'll be posting an interview with Adam West creator of the upcoming Galactic Emperor game. Adam and I discuss the game and a few other various topics.

Also a hint about question #1, it's a game i recently discussed in a new brief.

In what game can you find a nurse named Becky, a drifter named Jake and a farmers daughter named Jenny?

This month I'll be giving away a copy of the Goblin Skirmishers Battlelore expansion. For the next two weeks on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I will be posting a trivia question. I will then be taking entries from March 29th - 31st.

Only one entry will be accepted per email account, I will then take all the people with the most correct answers and randomly select a single winner from those people.

I want to be perfectly clear, I will only be accepting answers on those 3 days. Your single entry email should contain all 6 answers, have your name and return email and be titled Goblin Contest Entry. Any emails sent before or after that date, will not be accepted. Bottom line folks is if you don't get all 6 right, chances are you won't be in the random drawing. Also you need to be located in the United States to enter this contest.

Good Luck

FFG has changed the status on their upcoming and I must saying highly anticipated expansion pack for Descent to shipping. That usually happens once they have it in their warehouse. Figure it will get to distributors next week and then to retailers, I'd say if you're lucky you may have it by the end of next week but more then likely the following week.

There are only 3 days left to get in on the Cuba give away contest over at BGG. I've played this game a few times already an to be honest I am unsure how I feel about it. but the giveaway is for a special Cigar box edition which gets the collector in me interested.

Ahoy,

Check this out, I don't think it is associated with the board game of the same name, but a new game is coming this summer called Plunder. Sounds right up my alley, Abner book me for the review!

One of my favorite games of Last year was Last Night on Earth something I stumbled on at GenCon. At the time my friends thought I was nuts to drop $50 on this little game but I'm always on the cutting edge.

Anyway the game is pretty popular now and the first expansion is on its way. The company who makes it Flying Frog has opened it up for pre-orders. I was kind of hoping to snag one at GenCon but it seems like this will be a limited quantity shipment so I may have to order one.

Another title I'm excited about is called Galactic Emperor by Adam West. I don't know Adam personally but I have played many of his PC games and did some testing for one of them back in the day. It sounds like a shorter and frankly more enjoyable alternative to Twilight Imperium.

I didn't forget about the contest I am just working something out, look for it this week.

Well after 3 nights of trying to figure out why Civ IV would reboot my system after playing it for 5 minutes and give me Blue Screens turns out that one of my nvida.dll files was corrupt. After much research I see this is a common problem.

Removing this and reinstalling yourself has a smaller success chance then me running off with Jessica Alba. After hours of troubleshooting I spent $10 on a little utility called Driver Cleaner and followed the instructions provided in its helps file and now my system is back to 100%.

Anyone who knows me realizes I can't put a problem down without some kind of resolution to this was my entire night time existence for the last 3 days.