Gaming in Jamaica

Jamaica was beautiful, as usual. I spent most of my time enjoying the scenery and working on a paper for an economics conference. But I did get a little gaming in.

The first game is a self-published effort called All Time Championship Soccer. It's a download-for-free and print-it-yourself package. The game comes with a roster for 32 nations representing the nation's best World Cup showing. I played three games and shelved it, as the goal scoring seemed excessive. So, my search for a good soccer game continues. I still need to try The World Cup Game, and I now see that APBA has a soccer game available.

Gillian and I split two games of EcoFluxx. I still like the game, but I think Gillian still doesn't quite see the point (which is a common reaction to the Fluxx games).

The best gaming of the week was three games of Early American Chrononauts. I had a feeling that Gillian's dad, Ollie, would enjoy it, since he likes history and science fiction and has a good sense of humor. Gillian beat me in the first game while Ollie watched. In the second game, I managed to draw consecutive "Get there first" cards, and I stole two artifacts from Ollie to win the game. Ollie won the third game by snagging his three required artifacts. It was the first time I had played the game with three players, and it reminded me how much fun the game is.

Finally, I played dozens of games of cribbage on my iPhone in the airport. I think the AI is fairly weak, since I won about 80% of the games.

Thinking about Jamaica

The snow has me thinking a lot about my spring break trip to Jamaica. Taking a stack of games isn't an option, so I'm thinking of card games that I can take.

I'm planning on taking Space Hulk: Death Angel, since I can play it solitaire. I'm also planning on taking Chrononauts or Early American Chrononauts and EcoFluxx, since they're easy to teach and fast to play.

I'm considering picking up a new card game or two prior to the trip. I'm especially intrigued by Fairy Tale by Z-Man Games. A couple of other Z-Man card games, Archeology and No Thanks also seem interesting and get good reviews at BoardGameGeek. Asmadi Game's Innovation is one of the hottest titles at BoardGameGeek. It may be a little too complex for relaxing in the sun, though.

I'll also bring a couple of decks of cards for traditional card games. I've been wanting to learn to play cribbage. If Gillian's parents are interested in joining in, I told Gillian that I'd teach them whist.

Aside from card games, I'll probably play some solitaire games at Wargameroom. If Al has some spare time, I'd like to try to connect online and play. There are a lot of good choices there.

2010 was a Looney Year

I hope to make a full "Year in Review" posting later this weekend, but I wanted to post my 2010 stats for games played. BoardGameGeek makes this pretty easy, since you can log all of your plays and then view a summary. If you're curious, you can see the games I played in 2010 by clicking here.

The two incarnations of Looney Labs' Fluxx that I own -- EcoFluxx and Monty Python Fluxx got the most plays this year (25 and 17 respectively). The World Cup 2010 Card Game was third with 14. Our most popular Friday Night game, Long Shot, was next with 12 plays. Two other Looney Labs games, Chrononauts and Early American Chrononauts finished fifth and seventh.

Granted, the Looney Labs games are short, which meant that the boys and I could play five games of EcoFluxx in the time it would take the gang to play three turns of Here I Stand. But, the games deserve their place at the top -- we really played them a lot (especially in the spring and summer). And, since they all run between $12 and $20, we definitely got my money's worth.

Mid-Year Report

The year is half over, so I thought I'd look back on my most-played games at this point of 2010.

As I looked at the totals, I couldn't miss an obvious conclusion. The year 2010 is the year that I found Looney Labs games. While the games are not universally loved by gamers (largely because of their chaotic nature), they are fun and quick-playing.

In some ways their quick play makes for an unfair comparison. I'll obviously get more plays out of a Looney Labs game that take 15 minutes to play than a GMT or Fantasy Flight game that takes seven hours. Because of this I have to give a special recognition to GMT's Here I Stand, which I've only played once this year (plus once in December 2009). At this point it would win the 2010 best "new-to-me" game.

With that caveat, here's the list (through June 30th).

1. EcoFluxx (which I've only owned for about a month, but I've played 11 times)
2. Chrononauts (another Looney Labs game, which I've played 9 times)
2. Farkel (a traditional dice game that I've also played 9 times)
4. Early American Chrononauts (Looney Labs' retheming of Chronauts, which I've played 8 times)
4. Hive (which I've also played 8 times, although about half of these were on the iPhone app)
6. Killer Bunnies REMIX (which was the Friday night game of choice for much of the winter and was played 6 times)
6. Long Shot (which is moving up fast, with 6 plays, having been the Friday night choice for the last couple of months)
8. Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (which I don't even own a physical copy of, but I've played 4 time as an iPhone app)
9. Descent: Journeys in the Dark (a fun dungeon crawl that I've played 3 times, and I think will be played a lot more this year)
9. Scrabble Slam (which I played 3 times with Gillian's family in Jamaica)
9. World Cup Card Game 2010 (which is lots of fun, but probably will be stuck with 3 plays at the end of the year, since the World Cup is almost over)