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.

Lots of Gaming

No ... this stack of games isn't mine, but it would describe my gaming the last few days.

First up, The World Cup Card Game: The boys are back in town (but not the ones that "been hangin' down at Dino's"), so we've been playing more World Cup action. On Wednesday afternoon my Ghana beat Patrick's Paraguay in the final. Friday afternoon I made an illegal card play to push Patrick's Cameroon over Andrew's Brazil. (In best FIFA tradition, I didn't notice the foul at the time, and we won't be reviewing it.) Finally, Friday night, we taught Teresa to play, and her USA defeated my Mexico in the finals. I'm glad that we're still enjoying the game even though the 2010 World Cup is over. We still want to show the game to Dennis, but I'm afraid that it may go onto the shelf for good in another week. I am looking at the World Cup board game from the same publisher, as it would allow us to play any world cup from 1930 to 2006. The only sticking point is the time requirement -- it appears to be a two- or three-hour game.

While the boys were travelling last week, they remembered how much fun we had playing Naval Battles (published by Phalanx Games) during our trip to Washington, DC last summer. So, Patrick and I played two games on Friday. In the first, my Japanese fleet staged a major comeback to defeat his US fleet. In the second, his German fleet wiped out my British fleet without working up much of a sweat. It's a really fun, fast-paced game, and I'm glad that we pulled it out.

Finally, since my tennis elbow is still acting up, we couldn't play Wii last night. So we played five quick games of EcoFluxx before heading to bed. As is always the case with Looney Labs games, they're best played late at night, since the fun is in the playing, not the strategizing. Patrick and I each won two, with Andrew winning one. We laughed a lot and didn't want to quit. But it was 11 PM, and we all needed to get to bed. In total, we played nine games yesterday.

World Cup Action

The 2010 World Cup is in full swing, and I'm loving every minute of it. I like international soccer a lot more than US Major League Soccer, and this year's World Cup seems to be full of drama. It's also nice because both boys are really into soccer this year. We spent much of the spring playing FIFA 2010 World Cup for the Wii.

A few weeks ago, I ran across a description of The World Cup Card Game from a British Company, Games for the World, at BoardGameGeek. The game's designer, Shaun Derrick, created a World Cup boardgame in 2006, that allows gamers to recreate the 2006 World Cup. (Gamers can also buy expansion packs that can be used for virtually every World Cup from the 20th century.) This year he adapted the game to a simpler card version for the 2010 World Cup. The game won the Best Cardgame award at the 2010 UK Games Expo.

The game isn't available (directly) in the States, but I was able to order it from the publisher using Paypal. I ordered the game on June 12, 2010 and the Royal Mail was able to get it to me on the 21st. The game cost $13.35 (including shipping, after conversion from pound sterling).

Patrick and I were able to give it a try today. The US won the Cup, defeating Germany in the final. (Italy and Spain took third and fourth.) The scores were completely realistic -- with most games finishing 0-0 or 1-0, with the occaissional 2-1 or 3-2 game. The biggest blowout was Ghana defeating Australia 4-0 in group play.

I'll write a more thorough review once I've had the opportunity to play it a few more times, but our initial impression was very positive. The game consists of 64 cards -- one for each World Cup team, plus 32 action cards. The photo (taken by Nic Chilton) gives some idea of what the cards look like.