I’ve played Thurn and Taxis a few times, but I usually get my butt kicked. Maybe with a little practice, I can successfully challenge my buddy Mark Johnson online at yucata.de. We played a game early last month and he crushed me like a bug, so I need to level up a bit before I can take him.

Your goal is to build delivery routes by collecting and playing cards that correspond to major cities. You earn points according the the number of adjacent cities in your route, and you place a certain number of city markers each time you complete a route. You can earn additional points by having markers that cover an entire region or by having markers in all regions. You can also take advantage of one of several advisors that can help you manipulate your card choices, play additional cards, draw additional cards, or increase your route score.

That’s all for now. Play a few games of Thurn and Taxis this month and then report back with your thoughts and strategies.

During the game, the players work together to gather four special artifacts from the island and then escape by helicopter before the island sinks beneath the sea. There is no invididual victory in Forbidden Island. Either everyone escapes with the treasures or everyone dies.

Gameplay is very simple. Players take their actions, draw treasure cards, and then determine which tiles are sinking that turn. Actions include turning in treasure cards to take artifacts, keeping tiles from sinking, and moving around the island. Once a player gathers four treasure cards of a certain type, then that player can journey to a temple tile and get the treasure. Each tile has a card that signals when it needs to be flipped over to the sinking side. If a tile is already sinking and the cards indicate fhat it should be flipped, then the tile is removed from the game.

The game takes about 30 minutes and is recommended for players ages ten and older. My son loves this game and can play it with very little help, so a smart six-year-old will have no trouble.

I think Forbidden Island is a great little game. Go find it somewhere and play it with your family.

I actually played some RPGs! I’ve been talking about this for a long time, but I finally got to play both Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition and Savage Worlds. I had been very hesitant to do so last year at Kublacon, because I just didn’t want to sit down with total strangers, who could end up being total dweebs, and be stuck there for six hours.

I got up early Saturday morning and got in on the first Kublacon dungeon crawl of the day. The dungeon crawl had a four hour time limit, so I figured I was pretty safe. Actually, I got up early every day. Gamers are notorious for sleeping in, and it was wonderful to get up and have breakfast alone in the beautiful atrium at the Hyatt in Burlingame. There were a few of us early morning folk, and we would silently nod in understanding of our elite club. I especially appreciated the recommendation for the Eggs Benedict made by my buddy I referred to as “Old Breakfast Guy.”

Anyway, after breakfast, I played Dungeons and Dragons for four hours. I lucked out, and of the five other people involved, there was only one dweeb. Everyone else, including the Dungeon Master was great, and I had a wonderful time. We played on this gorgeous 3D terrain set-up. All of the pieces were from Dwarven Forge. It was very impressive and took up two large tables. I’m sure it would be well over $1000 to purchase this kind of set up. It was crazy cool. If anyone wants to order some of this stuff for me as a gift, you have my permission. I hope to run my own game soon, real soon, even without the cool 3D terrain.

I also signed up for a Savage Worlds session. I lucked out and inadvertently got in on a game run by Scott Alan Woodard, who ended up being a friend of a friend, although I didn’t know that until afterward. He was a fantastic storyteller and this was an even better RPG experience than the D&D dungeon crawl. In terms of actual roleplaying, the Savage Worlds system beats 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons hands down. The system is simple and flows easily from encounter to encounter without getting bogged down with minutiae, and the basic rule set is available for under $10 as opposed to the $70 that you have to drop for the Dungeons and Dragon rules.

I spent time with some great people! Not only did I travel with some good friends from here in the Central Valley, I also got to play some games with friends from the Bay Area and beyond. I met a lot of new folks as well. Gamers, for the most part, are a very social group, which makes sense, right? On the last day of the con, I played The Adventurers with two good friends and some dude that walked up and thought we were doing a demo, and talked to the owner of the Game Kastle who was watching us play. (He’s a nice guy. Go buy stuff at his store.) That’s how it was the entire weekend. I met nice people. I played great games. The Kublacon staff was very helpful as well. They really did a nice job this year.

I found some great deals! I did well at the Friday night and Monday morning flea markets. You have never seen such a mass of geekmanity fighting for bargains. There were no deals to be found in the dealer’s room, ironically, but that’s not a big surprise. I did pick up a couple of games at the auction. That was amazingly fun. I’m not sure why, but I sat there for a couple of hours and just enjoyed bidding and watching. I only won two games, but I got them for cheap! I’ll tell you what was not cheap: food. I was falling asleep at a table Sunday evening while we were playing Forbidden Island and went off in search of coffee or an energy drink. I love this hotel, but geez, give me a break on the prices for food and drink. It’s worse than an amusement park.

My game won the design contest! Yes, after all that moaning about my prototype, my game was chosen as a co-winner of this year’s Kublacon Game Design Contest. I was very surprised, because all of the games looked really good. The game that was also chosen was really impressive. I don’t know what’s going to happen with my game now, but winning the contest was a wonderful way to end the weekend. Will it be picked up for publication? Who knows? I had at least one publisher that showed some interest. Now I need to make some more copies and start knocking on doors, I guess. Special thanks need to go out to Julie Haehn, the designer of Living Labyrinth, for all of her support.

I’m just rambling now, so that’s it. Happy gaming!

I don’t have a lot to say about these games, because for the most part, I haven’t played them.

• Jaipur, designed by Sébastien Pauchon. I own this game and have played it a few times. It’s a neat two-player and I should probably get it out and play it again sometime this month.
• Endeavor, designed by Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray. I’ve only played this once, but I liked it. Maybe I didn’t like it as much as everyone else seems to like it, but I thought it was good.

The next two games on the recommended list are special because while I have never played them or even seen them, I own them. I ordered them as part of a group order months ago and just haven’t gotten a chance to go down to Los Angeles to pick them up. I’m sure they’re awesome.

• Mosaix, designed by Christof Tisch
• Level X, designed by Stefan Risthaus

The rest of the games are total unknowns for me, even Tobago, which was considered by many to be a sure thing for the SdJ short list.

• Don Quixote, designed by Reinhard Staup
• Kamisado, designed by Peter Burley
• Hansa Teutonica, designed by Andreas Steding
• Jäger und Sammler, designed by Reiner Knizia
• Samarkand, designed by David V.H. Peters and Harry Wu
• Tobago, designed by Bruce Allen

I doubt I will get to play any of these before the month is over, but you never know.

I think it’s a pretty good game that has a six-year-old boy sitting for fifteen minutes, having fun, putting numbers in order from least to greatest. Try and do that with a traditional classroom activity.

In Sleeping Queens, the primary mechanic that allows a player to get better cards into their hands involves the creation of number sentences. A player has five cards in their hand at all times. Many of the cards are useful in gathering the sleeping queens, but many of the cards are just valued from one to ten, and don’t really do anything for you. You can discard one of them on your turn and draw a new card, or you can discard a pair of them and draw two new cards, or you can create a number sentence with three cards and then get three new cards. For example, if you have a two, a five, and a seven, you can say, “Two plus five equals seven” and discard those three cards for three new cards. Hopefully one of the three new cards will help you wake some of those queens.

Make sure that you make it a rule for players to actually say the number sentence out loud. It’s that kind of physical and auditory participation that helps children create mathematical fluency, which is exactly what your kid’s teacher is trying to develop by giving them those stressful timed tests in school.

Happy gaming!

The last couple of months have been filled with household/automotive/work disasters. I’m talking big disasters, costing a lot of money. Just this week, the air conditioner broke, and we just started hitting triple digits here in Fresno. Well, okay, so I schedule that to get fixed and then the house fan breaks, which was making it bearable at night. “Seriously?” I asked nobody in particular. I’m sure it will be fixed soon and all will be well, but right now it’s really uncomfortable here.

We’ve been playing a lot of games though. The big hit right now is Forbidden Island. This is a really great game, and we’ve played it multiple times in the last week. For the price, you get a fabulous game with lots of replayability. Look for it at your local game shop, or find it online. Hey, if you order through the link shown, I might even get a few pennies to help pay for my air conditioner.