The store is located a couple of blocks from the 12th Street BART station, near the Oakland Convention Center in what I guess must be the Swans building. The original building was built almost a century ago, but I think was renovated around the time that Endgame moved to this location from a previous one in Lakeshore. The space is just gorgeous. I didn’t take any pictures of the interior since they have a great gallery of pics on Picasa.

I had the opportunity to chat a bit with one of the owners, Chris Hanrahan, and we talked for a while about the history of the store and some of their guiding principles. I made a comment regarding the layout of the store and how the merchandise is displayed, and he said that they tried to create a style of presentation similar to a Pottery Barn. How cool is that? A Pottery Barn for gamers. You can actually see all the product. It’s not stacked in corners or crammed into tiny shelves. I also mentioned that I was impressed with the amount of imported stock that they had and he said that was one of the ways they try and set themselves apart from some of the other games stores in the area, that and their commitment to stocking games from small independent press designers. Smart retailers = great game store.

Here are some of the things that I thought really made Endgame special:

• Each section of the store is easily identified by these great little signs. Now you might say, “Jeff, that’s stupid. What’s the big deal? Can’t you just look around, dork?” You might say that, but I would tell you how much time I spent looking through the crammed dusty shelves in a game store in Burbank for an RPG book and was told by the owner, “It would be over there somewhere.” I enter the RPG area at Endgame and can walk right over to the neatly arranged section for the Savage Worlds RPG and check what’s there. Easy as key lime pie. (Which I just recently tried for the first time, and it’s awesome!)
• They have a Haba/kids games section that would impress even Mark Jackson. They had a copy of Geisterwäldchen that I almost bought but I didn’t because I would have had to carry it around all day. Now I wish I had picked that up. Lazy Jeff!
• There is a lounge area with big comfy chairs and a place to buy snacks and drinks. Why? Because upstairs there’s a…
• … giant game loft broken into two sections connected by a short walkway. The larger of the two areas has these giant gaming tables for terrain pieces for miniatures gaming. Check out some of the pics from their Flames of War Megabattle they held in January. The smaller side of the loft area has tables so patrons can try some of the open Eurogames in the store’s game library. All game stores should be like this one, right?
• They hold regular events like minicons and have special annual events like their anniversary party and Endgame Auction.

Endgame is pretty much everything I want in a game store, too bad it’s over three hours away.

Battle Line is actually a re-themed version of the game, Schotten-Totten, which was published in 1999. You can play a game of Battle Line in about 30 minutes and while the publisher recommends the game for ages 12 and older, I think you could go younger than that, especially if the younger player is somewhat familiar with the idea of ranked sets of cards, like you find in poker style games.

In Battle Line, players attempt to gain control of a series of nine red wooden flags, which are actually just red wooden pawns. I guess calling them flags makes it fit the ancient military theme a bit more. Whatever blows your hair back, I suppose. Anyway, you line up these nine red flags between you and your opponent, and through the course of the game, you attempt to gain control of the flags by playing a higher ranking set of cards on your side of the flag. If you can gain control of three adjacent flags, then you can claim victory, because you have punched a hole through the battle line. You can also win by gaining control of five total flags. In this case, you have won by just overwhelming your opponent.

The cards are made up of six colors or suits of troop cards numbered from one to ten. Players start the game with a hand of seven cards and on your turn, you must first play a card to one of your available zones and then draw a card from either the troop deck or the tactics deck. I’ll talk more about the tactics cards in a bit. An available zone is an unclaimed flag that contains two cards or less. Once you have played a third card in a particular zone, you may at the start of your next turn, claim that particular flag, if you can show that your ranked set cannot be beaten.

The sets of cards are ranked in the following manner, from highest to lowest rank:

• Wedge – Three cards of the same color with consecutive values.
• Phalanx – Three cards of the same value.
• Battalion Order – Three cards of the same color.
• Skirmish Line – Three cards with consecutive values.
• Host – Any other three cards.

Both sides of a flag need not have a complete set of three cards before it can be claimed. For example, if I have a set of three nines on my side of the flag and my opponent has a red seven and a red two on his side, then I can claim that flag. There is no card that my opponent can play that will outrank my set. This is one of my favorite aspects of Battle Line, because as the game develops, the cards that you don’t play are as important as the cards you do play. I may play a particular card into a zone that I know I will not win, just because by having that card on the table, I can later claim victory in another zone. I may also not play a certain card that I know will allow my opponent to claim victory in a zone I know I will eventually lose.

The tactic cards add another level of interest to the game. The tactic cards are special cards that can act as wild cards, move or remove cards from a particular zone, or can even modify the requirements for victory in a certain zone. The first couple of times I played Battle Line, I missed an essential rule involving the tactic cards. A player may never play more than one tactics card above his opponent. If my opponent has played two tactics cards and I’ve played only one, then I can essentially prevent him from playing any other tactics cards simply by not playing any myself. This is great if you find that your opponent has a couple of tactic cards in his hand and you do not. By not playing any tactic cards yourself, you effectively reduce his hand size and limit his options.

I’ve never played Schotten-Totten, so I’m not going to compare the two games, but the tactics cards are not present in Schotten-Totten. I have a feeling that the folks who have played Schotten-Totten for years will prefer it to Battle Line, just because that’s what they are used to playing, and the same can be said for the folks who started with Battle Line.

The more I play this game, the more I enjoy it. It’s great game to play during your lunchtime. It doesn’t take up a huge amount of table space and can fit in your coat pocket if you take it out of the box. I say coat pocket because you’re going to look like a dork if you’ve got a big deck of cards in the pocket of your pants. The game retails for around $20, but you can find it for less online. I think it’s worth $20, so if you see it, buy it.

You used to be able to play the game online, but Knizia seems to have pulled most of his games from the free sites in order to develop them into mobile apps. That’s fine with me. I would rather play Battle Line in person.

Go play a game with someone you like. I promise you will feel better.

Disclaimer: I have recieved no review copies of this game. I have included links to funagain.com, an online retailer that I support by including affiliate links to games. If you purchase something from Funagain, and include my affiliate code, P2RX, then I get a few pennies of store credit so I can buy more games.

TransEuropa will play from two to six players, although I’ve never played with more than four. The entry for TransEuropa on Board Game Geek suggests that the game is best with five or six.

TransEuropa was designed by Franz-Benno Delonge and first published in 2005. The recommended age is eight and older, which is about right, but I think you could go a bit younger with some kids.

TransEuropa plays pretty quickly and the rules are extremely simple, which is exactly why I chose this particular game. Players draw cards from five different regions across Europe. On your turn, you can lay down one or two pieces of track. The board is a map of Europe with major cities connected by a triangular grid. Most of the grid lines are a single line [ - ] but some are double lines [ = ], which represent an area where it is more difficult to lay track.

You start by placing a marker of your color in a particular city and then on your turn you can start building track from that location. Once your track is connected with another player’s track, your network of travel then expands to include all of their track, and they have access to yours as well. A round ends when a player has managed to connect all five of their cities. That player will score no points, but all of the other players will lose points equal to the number of tracks they would have to lay down to connect all of their cities. [ = ] Double track lines count as two tracks when making this determination. Those players then move their locomotive up on the scoring track accordingly.

I also have the expansion Vexation, which I’m pretty sure is now included as part of the base game. The expansion gives each player three special tracks of their color that allow them to make connections that can only be used by them, so if the rail networks are linked other players may only use the combined rails up to the point that they reach a rail of an opposing player’s color. No particular intersection of the grid can have more than two colored rails adjoining it, which prevents a player from being locked out of a region. We almost always play with this expansion, but I think it’s important to teach the game without it, especially when playing with younger children.

TransEuropa is actually a re-implemented version of TransAmerica, which is the same game but is played on a map of the United States. TransAmerica was first published in 2001, and was a Spiel des Jahres Nominee in 2002.

You can check out a terrific video about these games created by Scott Nicholson over at Board Games with Scott. Yay Scott!

Disclaimer: I have recieved no review copies of this game. I have included links to funagain.com, an online retailer that I support by including affiliate links to games. If you purchase something from Funagain, and include my affiliate code, P2RX, then I get a few pennies of store credit so I can buy more games.

I don’t know how many of you get to go to gaming conventions like BGGCon, KublaCon, or any of the Stategicon events, but those of you who do go know how tiring it can be to play games hour after hour until early in the morning. You want to make the most of your time while you’re there, right? Who wants to do something lame like sleeping, when you can play another game of Galaxy Trucker? What’s a dedicated gamer to do? Energy drinks!

I decided to try a few of the more popular energy drinks and write down my thoughts on taste and such, because I’m just that kind of a guy.

I tried the 16oz. Red Bull even though I had already had that before. Red Bull tastes like chemicals to me now. It does give me a boost, but it certainly did not give me wings. In fact, I think I crashed harder after drinking this one more than any of the others. I’ve heard that this tastes much better if you add alcohol to it, but that seems a little silly to me, like storing matches next to the gasoline.

The 16oz. Rockstar is my energy drink of choice. It looks like bad pee if you pour it into a glass, so just drink it out of the can. You really don’t want to look at this while you’re drinking it. I really like the taste of this stuff. I don’t really know how to describe it. It tastes like how I imagine an electrified cactus would taste. A couple months after having one of these, I was driving back from a day at the coast and got rerouted because of the wildfires. It added three hours on to my trip home, and Rockstar kept me very alert until I got home at 3:00 AM.

I tried both the regular and lo-carb versions of the cool looking 16 oz. Monster energy drinks. I wanted to like this one because it’s looks scary and there are tons of ads for it all over the Vegas monorail, which makes it somehow cool to me. Unfortunately, it totally sucks. Both versions, like some of the others, look like pee if you pour them in a clear glass, but this looks like pee from someone who has some serious problems. The regular Monster had this really unpleasant taste that made the inside of my mouth feel icky. It gave me a huge energy boost, but it wasn’t a good energy. It made me all shaky and gave me a horrible headache. The lo-carb version didn’t give me any of the jitteryness or headache, but it tasted so damn-awful horrible, I couldn’t finish it.

I tried a 16 oz. can of Amp, which tasted very light in comparison to the others. It had a pleasant citrus flavor and a nice color. It gave me a good amount of energy, but it made me extremely jittery and irritable. I was seriously ready to rip someone’s head off because they were taking forever to take their turn. It’s too bad, because it tasted pretty good, but I don’t think an energy drink defense would stand up in court if I injure someone who takes too long to make decisions in Thurn and Taxis.

The 16 oz. NOS energy drink tasted sort of like a super caffinated version of a Cactus Cooler, which is one of my favorite soft drinks of all time. It looked like some radioactive liquid right out of a Simpson’s episode. It gave me a fair amount of energy, but I didn’t finish the whole thing. It just got old after a while. I would certainly choose this one over all of the rest, with the exception of the Rockstar.

There are a bunch of other brands out there. I may try some more as time passes and let you know what I think. If you have any favorites, and would like to share your thoughts, I would love to hear what you think.

GAME ON!!! with EXTREME energy!!!!!

In the game, each player takes on the role of a recycling company, trying to clean up the city. There are four types of items that can be collected: paper, plastic, aluminum, and glass. There are four corresponding recycling plants where you can deposit your collected items and pick up more. If you are the player that contributes an item or items that equals a total of four or more, then you get to pick up a scoring token from that particular recycling plant. The scoring tokens are stacked in values from zero to five, using less tokens if you have fewer players. There is a negative value token in the middle of each stack that creates a wonderful speed bump in the game where players try to avoid that recycling plant; however, at the end of the game, you must have at least two tokens from any particular recycling plant in order for them to count, so if the negative token is the only one you have from that particular plant, it doesn’t count in your final score.

The game is really all about hand management, which is made difficult by this cycle of depositing and picking up new trash. Every time you place an item from your hand to a particular recycling pile, you have to take all of the trash available. The trash is then refilled with a number of cards equal to one more than the number of recycled items currently in the pile. This wouldn’t be a big deal, but you have a hand size limit. Your truck can only hold so much, right? If you go over your hand size limit, then you have to discard down to a legal hand size. You have to go and dump your trash illegally. At the end of the game, you suffer a penalty in points for every item you have to dump. The game ends when a player removes the final scoring token from one of the four recycling plants.

R-Eco is published by Z-MAN Games and retails for around $15 at your friendly local game store, or you can find it for a bit less from a trusted online retailer like Funagain.com.

It’s worth mentioning that I first learned about R-Eco by listening to Garrett’s Games and Geekiness, a weekly gaming podcast produced by my friend Doug Garrett. If you are not already a regular listener, you should check it out. I highly recommend it. You can visit garrettsgames.com or you can do what I do and just subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

Disclaimer: I have recieved no review copies of this game. I have included links to funagain.com, an online retailer that I support by including affiliate links to games. If you purchase something from Funagain, and include my affiliate code, P2RX, then I get a few pennies of store credit so I can buy more games.

Now, I will tell you up front that I am not a fan of Monopoly. I think it’s about one-tenth as fun as it is long. I won’t play it with you ever, unless I really really love you or I owe you money or something. I just don’t care for the game.

The Monopoly Deal Card Game is not Monopoly, but rather a Monopoly flavored set collection game that will play from 2 – 5 players in about 15 – 20 minutes, ages 8 and up. In the game, the first player to collect three complete sets of property cards is the winner. The properties are the same familiar ones from the Monopoly board, so if you have Park Place and Boardwalk, you have a complete set.

The rules are pretty simple.

• You shuffle the cards and deal five to each player.
• At the start of your turn you draw two cards, or if you happened play all of your cards on your previous turn, you get to draw five.
• During your turn you may play up to three cards. There are essentially three types of cards:
• Property Cards – When you play a property card in front of you, then you own that property. You don’t have to buy it. It’s just yours. There are property cards that are wild and may be used to complete more than one type of set. These wild cards can be moved around freely on your turn.
• Action Cards – These cards allow you to do things like charge your opponents rent on a property that you have in front of you, steal or trade properties, build houses or motels, draw additional cards, or require that your opponents give you money because it’s your birthday. Really.
• Money Cards – These cards are played in front of you and act as the money you have in your bank. This is an important concept in this game, because you can never pay someone with money from your hand. It must come from the cards you have in front of you. Almost all cards can be banked as money, even action cards, but once they are banked as money, they can never be used as anything else.
• If you are forced to pay rent and you do not have any money banked, then you have to pay your opponent by giving them an appropriate amount of your collected property cards, which they get to lay down and add to their own properties. This is why it’s important to keep money in your bank.
• Once someone collects three complete sets of properties, the game is over.

This is seriously a great little game for the money. You can play it just about anywhere, and you can teach someone the game in just a few minutes. It’s Monopoly, but it’s fun!

You should be able to find this just about anywhere. I got my copy at Target for under $6. Go buy it. Play it. You will like it. Grandma will like it. Your kids will like it.

Now pay me rent for Baltic Avenue.