Not much, either, in the way of board games. No Memoir ‘44 with the kids. However, the whole family did go over to Ido’s on Saturday afternoon, and so we had a chance to play one scenario of Commands & Colors: Ancients after a long break. I don’t remember the name of the battle, but I was playing the Romans against his Seluecids (including Antiochus). Ido won. His medium cavalry and heavy chariot crushed my right flank for three banners in the first turn or two. I eventually earned a few banners myself, but just couldn’t keep up.

Overall, February was a month of both highs and lows in gaming. I finally joined a local RPG group, I enjoyed the hot new game (Dominion) that I was skeptical about, Ido and I got back to C&C:A, and I played a few games of Memoir ‘44 with the girls. On the other hand, only six board games played over the entire month. I guess I should look at it as quality over quantity.

Tuesday was RPG night. As I mentioned before, the goal is to have two or three campaigns going on at the same time, so that we can accomodate business travel, irregular schedules, preparation requirements, and other absences of various participants, while still maintaining weekly meetings. This week we started a Savage Worlds 1920s pulp campaign run by Joel. I’m playing a Seminole rumrunner/gunrunner. This first night started a little slow with the players completing character generation. But again, we had a great time, especially playing up the characters, even if we didn’t get too far in to the mystery.

Though the winter should be good for gaming Friday night after Shabbat dinner, again this week it didn’t happen. I was sick earlier in the day and still recovering. Julia started getting sick at dinner. However, after getting to bed early, sleeping through the morning, and bailing out on a lunch invitation, the rest of Saturday was an improvement in terms of games. In the afternoon, I played Memoir ‘44 with the girls (scenario 10 [name?]). Julia and I beat Barrie, though it was tense and close.

Then at night was the Kemp Mill Gamers group. At the Tenembaum’s, however, only 2 people showed up (in addition to the host). Still, we played one game each of Dominion and Kingsburg. I wasn’t too eager to play Dominion, but gave it a try and was very pleasantly surprised. I hear it compared a lot to Magic. I’ve never played magic. In addition to the collectible aspect, I’m put off by a game that has many unique pieces. In Dominion, though, while there are many cards, there are not actually that many different cards. And only a select set are involved in each game. Constantly reshuffling the cards is a pain, but worth it for a game that’s easy to learn and plays pretty quickly. After Dominion, we played Kingsburg. For a game that involves dice, Kingsburg takes a fair amount of concentration. And even though I lost again, I still really like it and would put it near the top of my hot games list. (Y’know, I think I’ll finally go add that list to BGG when I’m finished with this post.)

To top it all off, on Sunday I palyed another game of Memoir ‘44 with the girls. Again, Julia and I beat Barrie. This time it actually wan’t as close a game even though I thought the setup gave the Allies a significant advantage. Julia rolled spectacularly well.

Of course, I have all the expansions to the game because I love the Commands & Colors system. At one point, then, Barrie noticed the Air Power expansion and wanted to try a game with that. I thought it probably a little advanced for her level of experience, but I made the following proposal: we’d start over with the first scenario (meant to be an introductory one) and work our way through the book one-by-one, in order. When we’d finished the scenarios that came with the base game, we’d start on the first expansion. In that way, we could build up our understanding of the game and the new units that come with the expansions, and at the same time make sure we hadn’t skipped any scenarios we might otherwise enjoy. She loved that idea, and that’s what we’ve been doing, with her 12-year-old sister Julia, over the last month-and-a-half.

Julia and I play as a team, always taking the Axis side. Barrie takes the Allies. We’ve been through nine scenarios so far. Usually we play a game Shabbat afternoon, but we’ve also played Shabbat at night, Sunday afternoon, and even a weekday night. One weekday when we were all home because of the weather, we played two scenarios back-to-back. We all have a fantastic time. Julia always rolls our dice, but together we choose cards. The wins have gone about 50 percent to us and 50 percent to Barrie.

I love playing games with my children.

Game Night Games is an amazing store. It’s a little unusual for a game store in that it carries no roleplaying games, no collectible card games, and no miniatures. But in terms of board games and non-collectible card games, I haven’t been to a brick-and-mortar store with a better collection. Game Night Games’ inventory is both broad and deep. The store has many different board games of all styles and genres. There are complex Euro games, light family games, heavy themed games, children’s games, war games, traditional card games, and modern card games. And not just a few in each category. The store has separate sections for different categories, some by theme and some by style. There’s a section for science fiction games, a section for young children, a section for economic games, and several more. The store also has multiple copies in stock of most games.

But that’s not all. The store is neat, clean, the fixtures are nice and all match, each section has a painted wood sign, and they even have fancy custom printed paper shopping bags (like the kind you get at a nice department store). It’s the kind of place that would be attractive to non-hobbyists as well.

When I went to Game Night Games on Tuesday night, there was a meeting taking place of the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah. This group meets 1-2 times per month to playtest each others games and discuss advice on getting games published. The group was extremely welcoming and I participated in two playtests that night. The first was a Latter Day Saints themed game that was a cross between a Euro style and a war game. I thought it was a very good game and while I recommended the designer consider a few areas that could be improved, it definitely had the potential to be published. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the game. I recorded the play in Board Game Geek as “Unpublished Prototype.”) The second was Abstracts. This game has been published before, but the designer is working on an update. For what I little know of trivia games, it had some interesting twists, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’s just not my type of game. Nevertheless, I think the designer must have appreciated my comments because he gave me a free copy of one of his other games (a card game that uses a standard deck, so doesn’t seem to be in the BGG database).

With all the great game play and conversation, I neglected to actually purchase anything on Tuesday, so I had to go back on Wednesday (what a shame!). As I was ready to check out with Army of Frogs and Leaping Lizards (for my neices), a group of people completely different from the night before invited me to play Werewolf with them. I did, twice. And though whene I played it before, I hated it, this time was fun. I think the nature of the players makes a big difference. My home group is much more analytical and serious. This group was ready to have fun with the accusations and betrayals.

In summary, if you’re ever in Salt Lake City, you most definitely should check out Game Night Games.

The group gathers at the home of Joel, who is also a relatively new member of my neighborhood boardgaming group. And get this—the current GM, Eric, works at the same agency as I do, in my building!

Eric is running a D&D 3.5 campaign. The setting is original. Nothing particularly inspired, yet, but nevertheless, I’m already having a great time. The game as played is an interesting mix of adhering to the rules and ignoring the rules. But that’s good for me, as given the length of time since I’ve actually played, it may take me a little while to catch up and get in to my part. In the one session so far, we began investigating a series of brutal murders, only to discover the involvement of the party’s nemesis, who was previously thought dead.

Eric will continue running his campaign for the next few weeks. Then Joel has promised a 1920s pulp campaign using Savage Worlds. And since the group likes to have more than one campaign going on at the same time (to account for people not being able to attend on any particular week) I’ve been inspired to restart development on my science-fiction RPG system. More on that soon.

In the meantime, I did play a couple of games of It’s Alive, two-player with Ido. He came over late on Shabbat afternoon. I’ve played the prototype before and wasn’t expecting two-player to work very well, but it did. Two quick games. I enjoyed it very much. At the risk of being labeled a shill for daring to speak publicly about my colleague’s game, I think I’ll post a review on BGG.

Also played some Flea Circus with the girls. Barrie doesn’t like it any more, but Julia is still a big fan. These days, I can’t ever seem to get them to agree on a game, so we often end up with something like one game of Flea Circus followed by one game of Ticket to Ride. I like Flea Circus. Barrie’s doing better at choosing the best cards to play. Julia finally understands and remembers the rules, but she’s still pretty much playing random cards. I posted an article in the strategy forum on BGG explaining how to throw the game. We’ll see how that goes over. It’s the first strategy posting for Flea Circus!