One For Sorrow is a good addition to my In Hand library

I am always on the lookout for new In-Hand games and One for Sorrow turned out to be a dandy one. 

The theme of the game is that you are guarding the forest and the magpies from the Keeper of Sorrows. You need to align the magpies before either the Keeper of Sorrows and his allies kill the forest or evil thirteenth magpie fully rises.

So, you are putting cards in numerical order while dealing with a timer counting down.

There are thirteen magpie cards, four tree cards and one Keeper of Sorrows card. Eleven of the magpies are good guys and have special powers to help rearrange the deck. The trees each have two hit points and serve as timers for the game. The first   magpie and the Keeper damage the trees, which both hurts your final score and brings one of the losing conditions, all the trees being dead, closer. If the thirteenth magpie ever reaches the top of the deck while being flipped upright, that’s instant game over.

The gist of each game turn is that you resolve the top card of the deck and then move one to four cards to the back of the deck without changing their order. 

As I mentioned, all of the good magpies have some kind of special power that lets you rearrange the cards. After you use it, you turn the card upside down (not flipped over) If you don’t use a power, you can reset the card. Most of the cards will still let you use the power when they are upside down, but they are only worth points at the end of the game if they are right side up.

One for Sorrow has two strong design elements that make for a good gameplay experience. It has a solid decision tree and it is mechanically simple. Your end goal of getting the cards in numerical order is simple. The special powers are easy to understand. And you never have to hold the cards in any kind of funny way, just as a deck.

That might seem like a strange thing to highlight, but it’s actually a big deal in a In-Hand game. While some of them have an intentional dexterity element, having the game be easy to physically play is a big deal. More than that, because you never have to tilt cards, the ability to pause One for Sorrow and come back later is easy.

One for Sorrow is physically and mechanically accessible. It has a solid theme and offers good gameplay. It is well on its way to becoming part of my travel kit.

October without M.R. James is like Thanksgiving without Pumpkin Pie

 I've gotten into the habit of reading some M. R. James every October. His ghost stories are quite influential, which is impressive considering he has a fairly small body of work in that area. I view him as one of the bridges between the Victorian, gothic tradition and the modern ghost story.  I first discovered him because his stories had influenced the The Ring by Koji Suziki, which became the basis for the manga and the movies.

Since I'd read Ghost Stories of an Antiquary several times, I decided to read A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories. I'm pretty sure I read it when I first discovered James and blitzed my way through his ghost stories but I had almost no memory of the book. It was like I was reading it for the first time.

And, I have to admit, it felt like leftover ideas that he didn't want to bother with earlier.

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It really says something that, at the end of The Haunted Doll's House, James included an apology admitting that the story resembled his earlier work The Mezotiny. The most problematic story, though, is An Evening's Entertainment. The story is twice nested, first in an essay lamenting how the tradition of oral storytelling is fading and second by a hypothetical grandmother telling a story. James uses framing devices almost constantly but this felt disjointed and distracting. I will come back to this story, though.

Honestly, though, what I felt this collection was lacking was a sense of things being dire, at least for the protagonist. Earlier stories like Count Magnus or the Treasure of Abbot Thomas, just to name two, gave a sense of visceral danger, sometimes to the point of an unhappy ending. In A Warning to the Curious, the protagonists, at most, watch other people being in dire trouble. The horrible deaths happen to other people, sometimes people they don't even care about.

With that being said, the stories are perfectly good and there are some nice touches. The death at the end of the story A Warning to the Curious with destruction of the victim's mouth is properly disturbing. And the previously mentioned An Evening's Entertainment, once you get through the two layers of framing devices, may be the strongest story in the collection. It does a good job of leaving out enough details to make things mysterious but giving you enough for the story to hold together.

A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories is not M. R. James at his strongest and not what I would recommend to start with. However, if you are going to be a completist (like me), it's not an unrewarding read.

Thanks for the good memories, Onirim app

One of the funny little side effects of getting a new phone is that I no longer have the IOS version of Onirim. Quite frankly, I am amazed that I managed to be able to use the app for as long as I had. I still have a physical copy of the first edition of the game and I am looking into seeing if I can still get in some plays via Steam. 

Still, the app gave me a long run with Onirim. It became part of my morning routine, playing a couple of games over coffee. For around eight years, I played Onirim every day. It easily became my most heavily played game. Of course, having a short playing time, being a solitaire and being on my phone all played a big role in achieving that status.

Clearly I am biased but I think, for all its simplicity, Onirim was an interesting game that offered good game play. There isn't one single formula to winning. Instead, as the cards played out, I would see which formula I would need to use. The game offered actual tension, knowing that the nightmare cards were there to destroy my plans and force me to come up with new ones.  Indeed, the core idea of playing Onirim, at least as far I see it, is to not get attached to any move. To know when to drop your plans and come up with new ones.

While I am going to miss Onirim, I knew that there was going to come a point where it wouldn't be a digital option anymore. Particularly with the convenience of having it be its own app on my phone. The very nature of programs is that they will be superseded, that they will become obsolete and that they will fade away. It isn't the first game I regularly played to lost support and be discontinued. It's had the longest run but its not alone.

While I'm sad its no longer at my fingertips, I am glad I got in so many good memories and good games with it.

Ceramicus - speed matching in nine cards

 In 2022, I tried out a game from that year’s Nine-Card-Design Contest, Ceramicus. It is, for all intents and purposes, a nine-card Dobble/Spot It deck. I made a mental note that it might make a decent travel game and I probably got rid of my copy when I purged my collection for a big move.

But… the game lingered in the back of my head.

Ceramicus is not a game you’d pull out when you’re actually planning on playing a game. I mean, there’s a ton of Spot It decks out there and if you wanted a speed pattern recognition game for a game night, just use Spot It. And it’s not a game like Scott Almes’ Simply Solo series that I’d play for a solitaire break.

However, there are times when I want a game for fidgeting. Waiting in the car, waiting for coffee, times like that. And Ceramicus works well for that. I can play it solitaire in-hand, which adds some versatility. In-hand play is really handy for the whole sitting-in-the-car play.

I particularly like that it has a low-ink option, making for a minimal cost option that I don’t care if it gets damaged. I wouldn’t feel so casual grabbing and carrying around nine random Spot It cards.

Ultimately, Ceramicus is a very clean implementation of an idea that requires some decent number crunching. 

It has to say something that I have developed a collection of games that I can use for fidgeting. I’ve been using Down from 2016 this way for years and  Labyrinth Runner and Starspeaker from Onthewayover have been really good experiences.

While Ceramicus doesn’t do anything new, it packages what it does do in a very convenient way. And, unlike many fidget games, it can be expanded into a multi-player game without any problem.

At first, Ceramicus seems like a trifle. However, since making a new deck, it keeps on seeing play. It definitely has a use and a place.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2785972/wip-ceramicus-a-9-card-potters-duel-2022-9-card-na

How Mark Waid made me stop worrying and love the Flash

Mark Waid turned me into a fan of the Flash. I am sure I am far from the only person who can say that. I recently read The Flash by Mark Waid vol 1 (yes, that’s the title), which is both his earliest work on the Flash and  some of his earliest work period. 

Since it was before I started read the Flash back in the day, I hadn’t read a lot of it. And, well, you could tell that it was early work. It was readable but it didn’t have the quality that Waid would start developing shortly after these stories. And yet, you can see the starting sketches of what would become Waid’s bigger picture.

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When Waid took over writing for the Flash, it was after DC comics had introduced the Wally West version of the Flash. Barry Allen had died in the 1986 Crisis on Infinite Earths and Wally went from his sidekick as Kid Flash to the big role. And, with everyone knowing death is cheap in comic books, readers kept expecting Barry to come back.

It’s a testament to how well Waid got readers to accept Wally that Barry stayed dead for 23 years.

The key storyline in that was ‘The Return of Barry Allen’, which is in volume 2 of the Waid reprints. That was the storyline where I started reading the Flash. Actually reading it one month at a time to pace it out and knowing just enough Flash lore to appreciate the twist made me a fan.

And after that, Waid stopped dealing with the idea of Wally being a replacement and focused on Wally as a real grownup and exploring a whole bunch of neat ideas about super speed.

But reading this earlier work has made me realize that the Return of Barry Allen was also Waid coming into his own as a writer. He made Wally West into his character and made that character fun.

And in volume one, I can see Waid laying the groundwork for that, in particular retelling and recontextualizing Wally’s origin story. It wasn’t quite there yet but you could see where Waid was heading.

Back to basics concepts are Spicy’s strength

Spicy is an example of taking a traditional card game and tweaking it with some nice art and a couple new rules. To be fair, I think this can be a very good formula.

In the case of Spicy, it builds off of a game that I’ve heard called BS, Bologna and ‘I Do Believe You Are Lying’ It’s a climbing game where you play cards face down, stating what card it is. Of course, you could be lying and other players can call you out on it. You get penalized if you lied and were caught. They get penalized if you were telling the truth.

You’ve probably played the game by one name or another.

Spicy uses a three-suit deck with three of each rank from one to ten. There are also five wild suit cards and five wild rank cards. The suits are chili, pepper, and wasabi. And the artwork is of googly-eyed tigers, a traditional theme in Korean artwork (An art style that I know is clearly referenced by Jinu’s pet in K-Pop Demon Hunters lol)

The clever twist in Spicy is that when you call someone a liar, you have to specify if they are lying about the card’s rank or suit. This makes the bluffing more interesting. It also wouldn’t work as well with a traditional deck of cards. Spicy having fewer suits but multiple of each card helps the bluffer. 

Spicy is a fun time. It’s perfect for smack talk and casual play. And learning it or teaching it is greatly enhanced by how it builds off of game mechanics that folks are probably already familiar with.

I have come to think of this less as recycling mechanics and more of tapping into the tropes and language of games. I recently learned some word games that were very distinct from Scrabble but used Scrabble’s scoring methods. That helped learning and playing the games. 

Using red to represent anger isn’t plagerism or recycling. It’s using a common understanding.

Spicy has a low bar for entry but is also has room for fun social activity and solid gameplay.

Sid Sackson’s Pinball: so very simple and ahead of its time

I have realized that pinball is a subset of Roll and Write games I rather enjoy. Which is odd because I'm not actually interested in actual physical pinball machines (lol) WhizKids Super-Skill Pinball is an excellent use of the theme. Metal Snail's Paper Pinball is a system I play all the time. And I want to try Pinball Builder before the end of the year.

But the very first Roll and Write Pinball game I ever played, well before I realized Roll and Write was even a medium, was Sid Sackson's Pinball from his book Beyond Solitaire from 1976. So I decided it was time to revisit it.

The game sheet consists of a grid of dots with some shapes scattered about, as well as entry points at the top and the bottom row that has point values. You get four rounds of play per game. The rules say to use different colored writing tools for each round, which you don't have to do but does make it easier.

Each round consists of drawing a line dot-to-dot from top to bottom. And you use a compass rose and dice to determine what your options are. You roll two dice and then choose to use one or two dice. Each of the eight directions on the compass rose has a different number so any roll will always give you two to three choices. You cannot go to the same dot twice and, if you make a roll that won't let you move, just roll again.

Each of the shapes on the playing sheet have a number in them. Each dot is worth that many points. If you fill in an entire shape, it is worth the number times the number of colors you used to tp fill it in. (Like I said, you don't need different colored pencils/pens/markers/chalk/etc., but it does make it easier) And you get the points for whatever dot you end on when you reach the bottom.

Try and score lots of points. 30,000 is considered a winning score. Play bunches of times and try to beat your high score.

Looking at Sackson's Pinball now, with a lot more experience and familiarity with Roll and Write as a medium, there are three things that strike me:

First, it is a very simple system, particularly compared to games like Voyages that use a similar core mechanic.

Second, it could be rethemed as Pachinko just by changing the name. While it doesn't really feel like Pinball, it really feels like Pachinko.

Third, the compass rose, the heart of the game's mechanics, is a really solid design. It's very simple, very intuitive and very flexible. Pinball, while it is no Acquire or Can't Stop, is a reminder of why Sid Sackson is so important as a designer. Pinball offers you a steady supply of limited but meaningful choices.

Sackson's Pinball is barely thematic as pinball but it is very solid as Roll and Write.

Why yes, there’s a reason Medici is a classic

I have long known that Medici is considered to be one of Knizia'a classic designs. Back in the day, it was considered to be part of Kniza's Auction trilogy, a concept so sprawling that it eventually became Kniza's two auction trilogies. And, intellectually, I have always appreciated it. However, I had almost never played it. Mostly because no one in any of my circles owned a copy so I was much more familiar with Modern Art, and Ra and High Society and Aman-Re, among other Knizia designs. (Sadly, I have yet to play any incarnation of Dream Factory, also considered a highlight of his auction games)

That changed during a recent reunion with old gaming buddies. One of them had added Medici to their gaming library and it became the game we played more than any other during that weekend. And my intellectual appreciation of Medici became a true appreciation.

Out of all Knizia's auction games that I've played (and I'm honestly not sure how many the man has published), Medici is the absolute purest. Even High Society, which is arguably less complex, has more little twists. In Medici, there is only one type of auction, one around with the current dealer going last. You are competing for majorities in categories that don't change. And points and money are one and the same, which makes things both simpler and more anxiety inducing at the same time.

Scarcity is what gives Medici its edge. Players are merchants in Rennaissance Florance, which I guess makes this sort of a trading in the Mediterranean game (Is that joke still a thing?) You are loading up boats but each boat has cargo space for only five cards. Over the course of the three rounds of play, you will only get fifteen cards. Unless the game gets nasty. Then you might get less. You have no room for chafe. And you have to focus on only a couple of types of good. If you can't corner a couple markets, you will discover the sorrows of bankruptcy.

Where the game really lets you learn to hate each other and the number random generator gods is dealing out the cards for each auction. The dealer can deal out one to three cards but there has to be at least one player who can take that number of cards and if the load is bigger than your empty spaces, you can't make a bid. if you're not getting locked out of bids, everyone is being too nice. And the dealer can push their luck and end up with a lot that adds up to garbage.

Every element of Medici is simple. And that's something that Knizia often does. So many of his games aren't intricate but instead offer complex choices in a simple framework. Medici is a shining example of this. It offers a much fuller, richer game experience than an overview would make you expect.

Medici isn't perfect and it can be very unforgiving. If you go into the third round underwater, I honestly don't think you will be able to pull ahead. You have to have a gameplan from the start. I think Ra is more forgiving, so I do like it more, particularly for a general audience. However, there is a reason Medici stays in print and stays on the table.

Cthulhu Armageddon is a delightful Halloween read for after the world ends

In his foreword to Cthulhu Armageddon, the author C.T. Phipps compares his book to Brian Lumley’s work, specifically The Transition of Titus Crow.

Really? No. Phipps is selling himself far short with such a comparison. 

While both works deal with idea that humanity can win at least some battles with Mythos horrors, Lumley includes Titus scaring off Yug-Sothoth and befriending Cthulhu’s twin brother.

In comparison, Cthulhu Armageddon is an existential scream of despair.

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In the world of Cthulhu Armageddon, the stars have already become right. The Great Old Ones have risen. The world has been razed. Tiny remnants of humanity desperately try to survive and will be entirely gone in less than a century.

It’s Mad Max: Beyond R’lyeh.

The main character is former military ranger named John Henry Booth and the book is ultimately about his conflict with the necromancer Alan Ward. So, while the setting is a Lovecraftian nightmare, it’s about two guys duking it out. And their battle, which escalated to a small war (there’s not enough people left for a big war), is still inconsequential for the Great Old Ones.

Mind you, Ward has mutated himself into an eldritch abomination and Booth is blessed by Nyarlathotep (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg ) so it’s ultimately a stretch to call either of them human. And they are still beneath Cthulhu’s notice.

Yeah, there are some cool action scenes in the book that would look great with a big special effects budget. And Booth does come out the winner against Ward. However, it is clear that these are fleeting, momentary victories. In the end, it charges nothing for Cthulhu and its kin.

So I think C.T. Phipps has done a good job creating a story of cosmic horror and despair. Which is what I want when Cthulhu is in the title. It’s the first of three books and I now want to read them all.

And if Booth punches Cthulhu out in the last book, I’ll revise the cosmic horror opinion.

Was Groosham Grange a precursor to Hogwarts?

I stumbled across Groosham Grange, a 1988 fantasy novel by Anthony Horowitz, due hearing about its similarities to the Harry Potter books. I’m actually shocked it took me so long to discover the book since Horowitz isn’t exactly an obscure author.

There is no way for me to discuss the book without spoiling the entire plot so…

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Truth to the tell, the fact that there is a sequel is a spoiler all by itself since, up until the end, it would have been quite believable that the book would end with the protagonist’s death, even though it’s aimed at a younger audience and a comedy.

And, while there are some striking similarities between Groosham Grange and Harry Potter, they are telling very different stories. If this was plagiarism, then we’d have to start accusing Lovecraft and Tolkien of plagiarizing Lord Dunsany.

David Elliot, seventh son of a seventh son, goes an academy of mystery after his hilariously abusive parents get a mysterious acceptance letter.

The biggest resemblance between the two series is David’s parents to the Dursleys. Except that Mr. and Mrs. Elliot make the Dursleys look like Brady Bunch. The amount of slapstick violence that happens between them would make the three stooges wince.

The actual plot is David discovering what is actually happening at Groosham Grange. Which, spoiler, is that it’s a witch’s coven as a boarding school. While blatantly obvious, it’s not fully revealed until the end, where David has to choose between joining or dying. 

The tone of the book is over-the-top comedy with a lot of wordplay and flatout horror. The school is a genuinely disturbing place and, as I mentioned, it would have fit the tone of the book for David to die at the end.

I rather enjoyed the book and I’m quite curious about the sequel. The book ends with a ‘start of darkness’ vibe so I do want to find out where Horowitz went from there.

The overall structure of the book is pretty predictable. However, the writing makes it a fun journey. It was a nice Halloween season read.

Last Light - part art installation and part galactic epic

 Last Light is an epic 4X game about the heat death of the universe. It's also short and 'simple' enough that you could probably get a game in on a work night.

I don't actually own a copy of Last Light. More than that, my one friend who does own a copy lives several states away. On top of even that, it’s not the kind of game I'd get out for the family so I don't actually need a copy. Still, glad to have learned it.

My friend owns the Kickstarter edition with all the stretch goals so it was like there was an art installation on the table. A board with two inner circles that revolve. Lovely model planets on stands. Last Light wouldn't look out of place in a glass case at a planetarium and made me think of Aughra's living room from the Dark Crystal.

My friend also argued that the game was very simple since the rules were all on the cards. Which would make Magic the Gathering a simple game and my friends who are tournament judges would have no reason to be there. With that said, the action cards do clearly lay out the structure of the game and help make it a lot more accessible.

My buy-in to Lost Light was Puerto Rico and Race for the Galaxy. While they are very different games, the similarities in role/action card selection structure helped me understand the core mechanics of Lost Light.

Another game that Lost Light brought back to me was Nexus Ops, although that has even less in common with Lost Light than Puerto Rico or Race for the Galaxy. However, it was Baby's First 4X Game for me and Lost Light brought back how I learned that you need to pay attention to all for the Xs. You need to eXplore, you need to eXpand, you need to eXploit and you need to eXterminate. You can (and may have to) specialize but you can't ignore an element.

Last Light has a lot of nice touches that I liked. The rotating board means everyone will end up in each other's business. The limits on refreshing action cards means you have to balance out your choices.  And the fact that collecting light, not military conquest, is the ultimate goal of the game makes the decision tree broader and more interesting.

Last Light isn't a simple game. Its a game that makes complex choices accessible. I'm glad I had a chance to play it.

My September Gaming

September ended up being my heaviest gaming month of the year so far and probably will be for the year on a whole. That’s because I went to a convention as a reunion with a bunch of old gaming friends.

I learned:

Paper Pinball - Mall Bats

The Walking Dead - Surrounded

Food Truck Madness (Alexander Shen)

Scout 

Portal Heroes

Last Light

Cursed Court

Spicy

Biscuits and Battles

Hadara 

Cat Ass Trophy

Point Salad

Dinks and Donkeys (playtest)

Last Light was the heaviest game I’ve learned in a while. In a past life, I’m not sure if it would have qualified as heavy, just toyetic. (A word I just learned existed, thanks to reading an article about the development of the Paw Patrol franchise lol) With that said, I was glad that I was able to follow along and enjoy myself.

I also really enjoyed Hadara. It doesn’t quite cross the line into being a Civ-light game but it is the kind of game that got me into board gaming. Enjoyable choices and a tempo that keeps the game going.

While it wasn’t a new game to me, Knizia’s Medici was the hero of our table. I played it more in one weekend than I ever had before. It is such a ridiculously pure auction game. I still like Ra more but Medici earns its reputation as a classic.

And I also learned some solitaire games as usual. The Walking Dead - Surrounded is a nice little tile laying game that gets a lot of its value through its advanced play.

Yeah, it was a good month.

My September PnP

 September wasn’t crazy busy for PnP crafting. Truth to tell, I have a feeling that the rest of the year will be busy enough that I won’t be crafting a ton of stuff. I definitely have more stuff in queue than I’ll make this year.

Mind you, I also want to play what I make, which means just crafting away isn’t much fun.

I made:

The Walking Dead - Surrounded + expansion 

One Page Mazes

Pont D’Avagnon

Butterfly Garden Duel - Solo version

Townspire (cards and Bunny Creek map)

Dinks and Donkeys (playtest)

I’ve had the Walking Dead in the line for months and I decided it was time, that it would be my big project for the month. It was better than I expected but you really need to play with the objectives, not just the base rules.

Butterfly Garden: Duel was another ‘larger’ build. I was very happy with Dr Finn’s recent R&W book and o wanted to try out some of his other PnP designs. This seemed like a good start. And I’m behind on my goal of playing g everything that Radoslaw Ignatov has made so Townspire was a no brainer.

Life can be crazy PnP can help you stay sane.