Games Games and Stuff

Yay games!  I play a lot of board games.  It has gotten to the point where when I look to how I want to spend my  money video games have fallen by the wayside and board games are taking up the majority of my funds.  I am okay with this.  Its funny though because I started with Arkham Horror and then I kinda moved around for a bit and now I seem to be settling on Euro games and block war games.  I love me some block war games.  Currently on my radar is Strike of the Eagle, Le Havre, Caylus, Aquire and Wizard's War and Virgin Queen.  Oh man I want Virgin Queen.  However, VQ is a 5-6 hour 6 player game and currently the thing we all want to put in that time slot is Twilight Imperium and we don't get to play that nearly enough so that game will be kept on the back burner.

Most of these games sound pretty boring.  Take Aquire for example which plunges you into the fascinating world of corporate murders and exicutions...I mean mergers and aquisitions.  Yeah you get to play job that caused Patrick Bateman to turn to murder what fun.  Yet it is 20 bucks and it does look like a good time.  It also looks like something AJ will kick my ass in but whatever he's moving someday so I'll get a shot at my place in the sun.  I like these kinds of games.  They require thought, they are hard, and the lack of random factors means that you can't just fall back on luck and hope to come out alright.  It is about making a plan and hoping it is better than your opponent's or something like that.  It is hard to describe however, I feel the conflict far more personally in Agricola, Dominion, or Puerto Rico than I do in something like Malifaux, Magic, or Wiz-War.  Heh this is especially true in Wiz-War so much random shit happens in Wiz-War that it is more like a rue goldberg machine designed to cause chaos than a proper game.  That isn't to say that I don't love Wiz-War because I do very much.  It is more that I find Agricola or Dominion to be far more satisfying.  Some people can't get over the lack of direct conflict.  I find these people boring.

On a related topic there is a group of people who have started coming to Anime club over the summer.  They are obsessed with My Little Pony and they are adpating Frag to both the ponyverse and TF2.  A pretty worthy endevour.  By itself Frag is a solid C of a game.  Randomized movement, annoying damage rules, static ugly maps, its fun for a couple of play thoughs but as it stands it really either needs some serious modifications or you know a better game.  It is a fun game but there are better things out there.  There are times where I am tempted to show them a world with Wiz-War, Cosmic Encounters, skirmish minature rules which would cover what they are trying to do much better, but they annoy me so they can learn on their own. 

It is odd though, how different we must seem to them.  All of us sitting around a table brows furrowed in concentration as we try to plan our next move.  Moving disks around one board so we can put smaller disks, or cubes on another board and occationally we yell fuck as we realize something has gone wrong so someone has taken an advancement we needed.  That's the thing about gaming though.  Stuff for everyone.  There are pleanty of times where we just want to throw caution to the wind and blow things up for fun and profit and we have some very good games for that I am just glad that I can go buy a complex euro with confidence that not only will it be played but everyone will be better at it than me.