Trivia Question

Chris Haney passed away last Monday at age 59. Haney was born and raised in Canada and was a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette until he quit in 1980 to pursue a business idea. What was the idea?

The Adventurers!

We celebrated Patrick's birthday tonight. Number one on his wishlist (other than a Thierry Henry jersey) was a 2009 game by Alderic Entertainment Group (AEG) -- The Adventurers. Each player in the game represents an Indiana-Jones-like explorer making his or her way through a Mayan Temple. The adventurer's goal is to gather as much treasure as possible, while avoiding traps such as rolling boulders, lava pits and rickety bridges. The traps are built with 3-D plastic pieces -- similar to the 1963 Ideal game Mouse Trap (although not as elaborate).

The game was nominated for The Dice Tower's awards for Best Family Game, Most Innovative Game and Best Production Values. Tom and Melody Vassel also have a video review at YouTube.

Teresa was able to pick a lock (on her second try) to get a 9-treasure-point card near the exit, and that was the difference, as she ended up winning with 19 points. Gillian came in second with 15 points, I had 10, Patrick had 7. Andrew had 24 points, but was run over by the giant boulder before he could reach the exit. At one point I made the mistake of ending my turn on the rickety bridge. Gillian decided to try to cross the bridge at the same time, and only some lucky rolling prevented our combined weights from causing the bridge to collapse.

Dennis, Non and Mom sat out, but everyone who played it liked it. Dennis requested that we play Longshot next Friday night.

San Juan Sunday

Gillian and I pulled out San Juan by Rio Grande for a Sunday-night game. San Juan (published in 2004) is a card adaptation of another Rio Grande game, Puerto Rico, which was published in 2002 and is the top-ranked game at BoardGameGeek. I bought San Juan in February 2007 (at Amazon, for $28.60). Gillian and I were taking a cruise in March, and I wanted to get a quick, easy and portable game that we could play in the airport, on the plane and/or on the ship.

The game is all of those things and is often recommended as a "girlfriend" game -- having a minimal amount of conflict. In fact it's sometimes criticized as being multiplayer solitaire. Unfortunately, while that makes it a good girlfriend game (and Gillian considers it one of her favorites), I find it a little boring. We've only played it about a half dozen times since the cruise (mostly with just the two of us, but once with Al and Linda). This was the first time we'd played it since last August.

The rules are online, for anyone who wants to check it out. There's also a free online Java version that allows you to play against up to three AI (computer) opponents.

Certain card combinations can generate big victory points in San Juan, and one of my favorites is to combine the Smithy, that reduces the building cost of production buildings, with the Guild Hall, that gives extra victory points for each production building. That's the combo that I was able to build tonight, giving me 12 bonus points and a total of 34. Gillian's favorite strategy is to build the Chapel, which can also produce a number of bonus points. She wasn't able to get it built in time, however, so she finished with 25 points.

Long(er) Shot

We gave Z-Man Game's Long Shot another try Friday night. In addition to the boys and Teresa, Gillian was back home, and Dennis made a surprise appearance.

Dennis won with $270. He bought the winning horse, bet $20 on it and held onto a pile of cash. Andrew was a close second (with $240), followed by Teresa ($175), Gillian ($160) and Patrick ($130). Mom and Non decided to sit out, and I was the banker.

The boys and Tersa still enjoy it, and Dennis seemed to have a good time too. Gillian said that it was "cute." I haven't actually played it since the first go-around, but I can see why it's popular as a party game. It's easy to learn and fairly quick-moving.

Second Dominion

Patrick requested that we play Dominion again today, so we played a two-player game. Patrick won 33-21.

Dominion is a deck-building game -- players start with ten cards that are mostly treasure cards. The treasure cards can be played to purchase more treasure cards, victory point cards and action cards. Action cards allow players to draw extra cards, spend extra money or "attack" the other players. To add to the game's replayability, the selection of available action cards is determined randomly each game.

The game moves quickly and has a good amount of replayability. I can see why it's popular. My only criticism is that the theme is mostly meaningless.

First Try of Dominion

Patrick wanted to try out Dominion this afternoon. I had ordered it on May 4th when Amazon put it on sale for $36.68. The game was published by Rio Grande Games in 2008 and has already become extremely popular -- boasting three full expansions with another on the way.

The rules are fairly simple, and, once again, Mya's excellent (and funny) Playmobile Legions Review at BoardGameGeek is better than anything I could supply. The game is a little similar to another Rio Grande game that Gillian likes, San Juan. I think San Juan is OK, but I don't really enjoy it that much -- especially with just two people. I'm hoping that Gillian will like Dominion.

I won today's game with 39 points. Andrew finished second with 33, and Patrick had 32. All of us had a good time, and both boys want to play it again.

Descent: Into the Dark

Al and Steven came over last night for a full four-heroes game of Descent. Al took Byrah the Falconer, Steven took Grey Ker, Andrew took Landrec the Wise, Patrick took Mordrog, and I played the Overlord. They took on the first quest -- Into the Dark -- plowing through the dungeon without much trouble. Andrew's hero (who has very powerful magic attacks, but was short on armor) died once, and Patrick barely survived being surrounded once by beastmen and skeletons. But the group came through just fine -- killing the master giant at the end of the quest without much danger.

The consensus on BoardGameGeek is that the heroes should win most of the quests in the basic set. And that's fine with me, as I view Descent more as a cooperative roleplaying game than a test of wits. I also understand why the rules have the heroes lose all of their weapons and armor between quests. The heroes were so powerful by the end of the quest that they were killing a roomful of five monsters before the monsters knew what hit them.

We hope to continue playing throughout the summer, and Patrick plans to paint the figures once school lets out.