No April Fools...

The Gauntlet has been Thrown

Surely the SABG Band will not let this stand. If I remember the last few sessions I attended before fatherhood, this was the typical weekend routine for you guys.

For those WOTR CE owners..

Are all those who purchased the collector's edition following this thread on BGG?

Seth from Mayday Games posted this afternoon:

"Just to confirm, those pics Mike put up are exactly what we needed... we ARE going to make these in the next few WEEKS (as in 2-3) and will have them available for preorder in the next 7 days on our site. We are putting these into 75 sleeves per pack so you will need two packs to sleeve the entire game.

We are just waiting on the exact time frame and quote from the factory to price this right. We will post as soon as we have them available. This will be a one-time run though for sure and we will have reasonable worldwide shipping costs as well

We will post the preorder as soon as it is available."

Carpe freedom...

Feeling a looming life overhaul in my future (read, baby coming in about 4 months), I feel like I should be doing more with what's left of my freedom, like gaming, before I turn into Ben.

Has anyone ever considered getting into Paintball?

Further Game Clearance

Yes, I have launched yet another BGG auction. The purge continues...

Bid early and bid often!

I'm not looking forward to shipping this stuff, so I'll entertain any local offer with great interest.

Brown Paper Packages tied up with strings...

So, as everyone expects, my package of new games arrived last Monday after I was at Dragon's Lair. So that means that new games will be making to tomorrow night. What new games? Well, at least El Capitan. Incan Gold went MIA (well, parts of it), which is kind of like a locked room mystery, in that the game was in original shrink. I'm not sure if I'll bring Origins, but we'll see. And maybe a mystery game. That can play solo. In case ya'll show up late. I'll be there at 5:30 ish, as normal.

Got some extra money to spend?

ASL Auction--look at that price. Wow! I liked ASL a lot in college but only played a friend's copy. Glad I never felt compelled to be an ASL collector.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330414120133

Quick Bonus Gaming

I just got Origins: How we became human, and would like to host a game of it Saturday (@ my house at 10am). The rules are online. I think it would be best if I had 2-3 others (so, 3-4 players total). Fair warning, it's a long game that arguably doesn't work, but it's fascinating. I'll be putting up some thoughts on my blog tonight. RSVP in comments if you are interested. Rules are online (not that they are easy to understand without the game).

BGG.CON 2010

Although registration is not quite open for this year's BGG.CON, the prices are up, and it's kicked up to $75 for Early Registration, and a cool $100 after that.

Seeing this really made me feel like I'm getting to be a gamer grump, because this feels like it went just a little bit over my personal price limit for this kind of thing. I don't want to dampen the enthusiasm too much, since I think there will be a lot of people from here that want to go (especially a lot of the new gamers, I hope), but when I start to figure in the cost of the con, the drive, the hotel, and the food, I'm considering skipping this year. It just seems like a lot of money to spend for essentially a weekend of gaming. (And get off my lawn, you dadgum kids!!!) I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts (especially those planning to attend).

Enchantment!

Hooray! I finally finished Dragon Age: Origins last night, just in time for the expansion to come out tomorrow. Talk about a long game! I'm sure I put at least 80 hours into completing the sucker. Worth it? Pretty much. Its not Tolkien-worthy, but there were some parts where they succeeded in firing the epic fantasy thing on all cylinders.

No spoilers here, of course, for those that haven't finished it.... But I'll be very curious to see how the import character function is going to work.

Your weekly monday planning

I'll be there earlier than normal, perhaps a touch before 5pm, so don't delay.

In other media news: Paranormal Activity gets a thumbs up. Yeah, it's a Blair-Witch sort of thing. The fact is, it's a well-done Blair-Witch sort of thing. (As was Blair Witch, now that I think about it). Right now there's a moth hitting outside my window and I'm totally not creeped out by it. No way was I paying a significant percentage of the total budget to see it in the theatre, but worth it on Netflix...

Saturday Game Day Wrap-Up

It was a great turnout last night. I think we had about 16 people present.

Games played:
China
Starcraft
Pandemic
Incursion
Crokinole
Golf (was that the Rummy-like card game?)

And the final four who remained until 10-ish played:
Gloom
Last Night On Earth

Did I miss any other games during the day?

Starcraft was a fun game, but I found myself very frustrated with the choices I made on my two l'il planets and the Protoss race. I'd play the game again, but I definitely need to ramp up the upgrades so I can build the other units so I can actually use those combat cards. Oy.

Crokinole! I love that game and the prospect of being beaned by a smooth wooden disk! I notice May Day Games is doing a pre order for a board. Anyone hear about these?

Thanks to all who showed. Until next time!

Edit: There is a forum post on BGG about Mayday Games' offering, but I'm getting permissions errors when trying to view it. Perhaps some technical difficulties are occurring on some of BGG's servers as I was attempting to view?

Time to Clean

Following the recent example of our most famous member, I'm attempting a Geeklist auction. Anything not selling is going to Goodwill, so make me an offer if you want any of this detritus. At a certain point when the boxes become more irritating than entertaining, its time to purge.

Newest Future Gamer

It's been a long time since I've showed up at anything sponsored by the SABG. Based on recent developments, it'll be a while longer.

Let me introduce you to Tennyson Reid Kostek. He'll go by "Reid" except when I slip and call him "TR".

BTW, I just finished reading River of Doubt about the original TR's Amazonian expedition. Check it out. A real life adventure story.

For the SABG Band

Rumor has it this is the only game you guys play now... besides Rock Band. So, thought you might enjoy.

Floored....

Anyone else thinking of going to this? June 5th in town.... wow.

Monday Night Gaming

After a dreary weekend and crawling back to work Monday, you know you want to game. You just know it. And if you wanted to buy a few games, they have those there too. Or you could buy some of my games I'm selling. True Story.

So, what have people been doing outside of gaming? On the media front, I've been slowly going through the DVDs of How I Met Your Mother (recommend), and moving through the queue of recent movies at a tolerable clip. (Netflix frees me up to turn the movie off if I decide it's over-rated or not to my taste. I liked Patton, Raging Bull was ok. I turned off City Lights and Annie Hall got sent after violating the "1 week without being watched" rule (which is a good sign that I wasn't that interested ... perhaps later).

Streaming I've been watching 30 Rock. Torchwood Season 2 and Children of Men just came out on streaming. I haven't seen Season 2, and what I saw of Season 1 was only ok, but Children of Men is a stunning piece of work (and the first Torchwood I saw, so accessible enough). A mini-series that would do the Twilight Zone proud. Not universally good (it would have been better as a 3-hour series, instead of 5, IMO) but well worth checking out. I added Season 2 to my queue in hopes that there's more gold amidst the dross.

And, of course, there's the standard popcorn fare. I just saw Star Trek 90210. It was fine. And you? What should I be watching? Will I watch the Oscars? Steve Martin is hosting, and he's the only host who has Oscar jokes I can remember more than a few days later. (On Bjork's famous swan dress -- "Whew, I almost wore that. That would have been awkward." On the writer's strike -- "Without writers we wouldn't get such classics as Dude, Where's my car. OK, I'm being unfair ... I had read the novel.") I guess I should check out the opening, at least.

Who's the Cylon...er, Traitor?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/5/

Interesting discussion. I had no idea these guys had ever heard of board games. Good for them.

Maybe Gaming?

I may be able to game tomorrow ... don't know. But is anything going on?

Collector's Edition

I also have purchased this game. It is big, beautiful, wonderful, jaw dropping... etc, etc.... but when are we going to get it on the table? I'm up for a 4 player game! Anybody interested?

Fantasy...Baseball

At the risk of yet further rejection I thought I would take this opportunity to mention that opening day of the Major League Baseball season is now 1 month away and so I thought I would check to see if there is any interest at all in a Free Fantasy/Rotisserie Baseball League?

Glory to Rome w/ twist + Civ game = Innovation

I am very intrigued....and thinking of preordering. They'll give you some crappy preproduction cards first, and then they'll mail out the actual game during the summer. That's an innovative way of running a preorder program.