A Lot Going On

So between Job Searching, finishing my graduate work, and getting ready for the release of my game Drop Site, I have not found a lot of time to write posts, but there are plans in store for you...

Yes! Plans...

Drop Site will ship from Europe next week to the States. This means I have to be ready to Sell it when it gets here!

Problem is, we are also getting ready to move (to wherever I am able to find a job).

In other words, I don't have a release date yet, but I am aiming for mid-June officially.

Are you wondering: "WHERE CAN I GET A COPY?"?

Good news! You will be able to order a copy Online from our Website...which is not up and running YET, but will be...(again) I hope by mid-June.

But what about PINEBARS?

Good news again! I have a back-log of blog post ideas just waiting to be written. These will begin to appear either HERE (at pinebars.blogspot.com) or at our Website (URL withheld for now).

In the meantime, are you looking for more board game news? Check out Erik Arneson's board game newsletter. It comes out about every week and has some good board game info.

My Wife Won't Play Dominion With Me...Help!

We all know Dominion is awesome, right?

It won the Spiel Des Jahres in 2009, its spawned numerous expansions, has beautiful artwork, and plays as good as a computer game as it does as a card game.

So why won't our wives play it with us?

I suggest three reasons:

1. Anything that looks like Magic the Gathering triggers an "Ok...why don't you and your friends go downstairs with that..." response. Let's face it, if it looks medieval, then its obviously your attempt to escape to a fantasy realm, and she's not going anywhere near that.

2. There are too many cards and too much reading. The basic game (alone) comes with 500, not to mention expansion cards. Talk about overwhelming! Even Hand and Foot Canasta only uses 270, and you don't have to read those cards.

3. No meeples. Meeples rock. Not just the original Carcassone meeples either. Any wooden game pieces provide a sense of stability in the game play. They're your identifying color, you can build little towers with them when its not your turn, and if the game goes poorly you can hold other player's meeples ransom.

That's right. I said it. Hold meeples ransom.

So, we've established Dominion rocks, and we've analyzed why your wife won't play it with you, but how can you get her to warm-up to the idea?

Again, three suggestions:

1. Point out that Domion is a lot like the Drug Store Game. If you don't know what the Drug Store Game is, its basically the real life version of trashing a card to gain 2 gold and an extra buy in Dominion. Or a little bit like the Moneylender card.

2. Play it one on one. Sometimes a crowd can make Dominion a little stressful. I don't like when everybody else plays their turn so fast that I'm still struggling to shuffle my deck from my last turn. Take it slow when you teach new people and let them read the cards!

3. Bribe her. Offer to make dinner or do the dishes or anything to get her to play. Dominion is awesome right? So if you can finally get someone to play they will probably love it, its the "getting them to play" that's the hardest part.

This post is not intended to be sexist in any way. I promise. My wife beats me at games about 60% of the time! This post is about whomever is not playing Dominion with you and how to change that.

So go forth and have good luck building your dominion of Dominion players.

Board Games for Couples 2: Hive

Hive is a unique and finely-crafted game by John Yianni that my wife and I have found especially entertaining. For two players, this game is an excellent chess-like game that can be played in under ten minutes. Try to trap your opponent's queen bee by completely surrounding it with other insects in the hive. The trick is, the hive has to stay completely in-tact at all times!

We love this game because it is easy to learn, and has multiple levels of strategy. The pieces are strong and durable and they come with a carrying pouch so you can bring the game anywhere with you without having to lug around the box. Hive has tremendous replay value and you will find yourself playing over and over again trying to perfect your strategy and beat your opponent over and over again--if your opponent happens to be your wife (or husband) than the feeling of victory is especially satisfying.

Most recently we played this game over a cup of starbucks coffee and some homemade begnets (thanks wife!).

Thats one hungry beetle!

Highly reccomend: A

PS. Hive has two expansions "The Mosquito" and "The Ladybug." Check out board game geek for insights into how these two add-ons benefit the game!

A Grande Evening!

This past week I sat down for a rousing evening of El Grande with my wonderful wife. She provided the milk and cookies, I provided the game set-up.

Pictured (Left to right): Milk Castillo, Actual Castillo, Salt Castillo

I will confess that on this occasion I won the game using a tried and true strategy: pull out a game that she has not played in at least six months and exploit my superior knowledge of the rules. I bet that if we played again tonight she would probably whoop me.

Muggins, A dominoes game

My wife and I rediscovered a dominoes game called "Muggins." I had remembered playing a dominoes variation several years ago in which players score by making the endpoints equal to a multiple of five. When I searched for the rules, I found this page at Wikipedia, which seemed to be what I was looking for, and it was.

The rules in brief are as follows:
-Use a set of double 6 dominoes

-Draw 7 tiles (5 if 4 or more are playing)
-Player with highest double starts
-Players play off the starting double in up to four directions (from its endpoints and from its sides)
-Whenever all the endpoints equal to a multiple of five, player earns that amount of points

-Doubles are played perpendicularly (so their sides match with an endpoint). Count both sides of a double for adding up a score.

-Only the starting double is considered a "spinner".

-If you can't play, draw a tile from the bone-yard

-Round ends when a someone goes out (plays their last domino).

-All other players add up the values of their remaining dominoes. These points go to the player who went out.

Endpoints equal 11 (no score).

But wait! Wife adds a domino to the right side to make the endpoints equal 10 (Wife scores 10!)

These were the rules that my wife and I played at first, but when I looked in the rule set included in our box of dominoes, I found two rules variants:

1. When a player does not have a domino that is playable, they must draw from the bone-yard until they draw one that they can play.

2. Even if a player has a domino that is playable, they may still draw from the bone-yard.

I admit that the reason I went looking for Muggins, was because I wanted to find a domino game with more strategy than Mexican Train, so I felt free to use whichever rules added the most depth to the game. Question: Which of the two additional rules, then, did I add? The answer: Rule number 2. I quietly ignored ruled 1, since I think that rule would exacerbate moments when a player is unable to play, increasing the margin between victory and defeat. Rule two, on the other hand, gives players an interesting choice. On any turn they can play according to their hand, or increase their potential to score more points, by increasing the risk (remember that any unplayed dominoes are added up and awarded to the player who plays all their dominoes first). This rule also adds an interesting amount of opportunity cost associated with taking on extra dominoes instead of going out sooner.

In conclusion, my wife and I played Muggins again, but this time with Rule 2 from above added. The depth of game play was improved moderately, and I believe that the distinction between luck and skill has been widened, something I usually like.

Hooray for Muggins!

What makes a good couples game?

Since my previous post, I have thought a lot about couples games. Not only have I thought about games that would be good to play with your significant other, or even just about games that would be good to play with other couples, but also about what makes a good couples game. That is, which qualities ought a game possess in order for you to know, before you go out and buy it, that you will be a good couples game.

Some of the things I thought of are these:
1. If at all possible, the game should avoid negative conflict and confrontation. I'm not talking about challenging the opposing team to sculpt a rhinoceros in Cranium, but more along the lines of war games or financial domination games, where in order for you to win, you've got to rob your spouse of every last dollar or territory.

2. The game shouldn't last more than 60-90 minutes. Since the point of couples games shouldn't just be friendly competition, but social interaction and relationship building, the game should not dominate all the allotted time. Plenty of time should be left-over to talk, eat, and hang-out after the competition subsides. If a game takes to long, you could ruin all chances of ever getting your couple friends to come over to play games again. Its always better to wish the game ended too soon, than took too long. Besides, if everyone is having a really great time playing, you could always play again. (Note: if the box says the game takes 60-90 minutes, it is not accounting for the time it takes to read the rules, teach it, or play your first time. You can expect any game to take about 25% longer if the majority of the players are first-timers. Pick a game that says it is 30-60 minutes unless everyone is already comfortable with the rules.)

3. The game should be optimized for the correct number of players. This one should be obvious, but in my opinion it is not a good idea to pick a game designed for less players and then combine couples onto teams so that everyone can play. In this case, I've found, that typically one partner ends up dominating the majority of the play, while the other sits by and watches. While the odd-partner-out might claim this is exactly what they want and that they don't really care to play anyways, the other partner (the one who is playing) could feel strained or uncomfortable that their significant other isn't playing, and at the very least, the type of interaction will be less united if any people have an unequal role in the experience. Unless the game is designed for teams (think pictionary), be careful to select a game whose box indicates the correct number of players.

In a later post perhaps I will add a few criterion for selecting a game, but hopefully this will help if you are ever searching for one and can't decide.

Board Games for Couples

While this post has nothing to do with applying board game mechanics, it does have a lot to do with real life, and real life is often a lot more interesting than theory.

I googled "Board games for couples" just to see what I could find, but I was very disappointed by the results. Of the top ten results five were geared toward "adult" board games, ie, games to spice up your love life. Sex games seem a bit silly to me. Instead of trying to make things happen with cheap ploy's and other's opinions of what makes good romance, why not improve your relationship?

My wife and I enjoy playing board games together as a fun way to spend quality time together. We are both very competitive game players, so sometimes we get upset when we don't win, but overall, playing games together has been a very positive experience, and something that we can have in common. Here then, is a list of top five games that we prefer to play together:

1. Carcassone (Rio Grande Games): Tile laying game. The hardest thing to learn is the scoring. We love it because every game is different, its simple to set-up, and the strategy is not too heavy.
2. Small World (Days of Wonder): Beautiful game with a fanciful theme. Easy to learn and play. Hardest thing is the set-up.
3. St. Petersburg (Hans Im Gluck): Germany's version of Monopoly, only six-times shorter and a whole lot friendlier. Great to play over a mug of hot cocoa and a TV movie.
4. Thurn and Taxis (Rio Grande Games): Non-aggressive game about the first international postal service. A bit counterintuitive to learn, but very easy and fun once you get going.
5. Ticket to Ride (Days of Wonder): Simple game with light strategy. Not a lot of down-time between turns. We like it because you have to plan ahead!

Thats our list for now. Hope you look one of these up and give them a try someday with your significant other, and may your relationships be blessed.