Chupacabra is the only game I actually bought during Gen Con 2012.  I was wandering through the halls, on my way from the Rio Grande room towards the main expo hall, when my attention was caught by a man carrying a serving tray suspended by a strap around his neck.  He beckoned me over, along with a few others and handed us each six dice.  The dice were all the same and had pictures of animals and glowing red eyes embossed on them.

The man instructed us to each roll our dice and then match up like animals.  I rolled and had a group of three eyes, a bull, and two goats.  My opponents made similar groupings, but no one had nearly as many eyes as I did.  He told me that made me lucky, as my chupacabras got to eat first.  Eating works like this:

Chupacabra Feeding Rules

1 Chupacabra………………..can eat…………………. 2 Chickens
1 Chupacabra………………..can eat………………………….1 Goat
2 Chupacabras ………………..can eat………………………….. 1 Bull

 I began evaluating the clusters that my opponents had, that’s when our GM told us of another very important rule:  there is safety in numbers.  For instance, I only had three chupacabras, so if my opponent had a group of two bulls, I couldn’t decide to eat one bull and leave the other.  I had to be able to eat the whole group, or none at all.   Well, that changed things a bit!  I ended up eating a group of chickens, and some goats, because that combination ate the most dice.  The dice that I ate then became part of my grouping of dice.  We went around the table, until all the chupacabras had fed, and then we moved on to the next “night”.  Each person picked up all their dice (the dice they had left, plus any dice they just ate) and re-rolled.  The game continues like this until one person has all the dice.

The game stayed on my mind, and eventually I went to the dealer hall and bought myself a copy.  The game was fun.  There was plenty of moaning as people ate your animals, and a lot of triumph when you rolled a lot of chupacabras.  I mulled over the idea of writing up an article about the statistics behind the game, like I had done for Zombie Dice.  I started pondering how best to go about that, and that’s when the realization dawned on me… this is just a variation on a “put and take” game.

There are a lot of put and take games on the market.  The most famous of which is probably the dreidel game, which is a staple of Jewish tradition.  But if you don’t know much about Jewish culture (or have never heard the dreidel song) then you might not know what I am talking about.  However, you might be familiar with L-C-R.  L-C-R is a game that took the nation by storm about six years ago.  When I worked at Games by James in 2006, it was our most popular game.  We sold hundreds of copies each month (although now you can simply pick up a copy at your local Wally-world).  The game consisted of nothing more than three dice (with L, C, and R on them) and some chips.  It’s a game people commonly play for money at parties.  The goal there is also to be the last man standing, and if you are, you get the pot of money.  Pretty simple and nothing more than a game of luck.

Chupacabra is also nothing more than a game of luck.  The only decision you make in the game is which groups of animals to eat, and the logical strategy for that is to always eat the groupings that are going to yield the most dice.  I suppose that one could make arguments for eating lesser groups of dice, if it meant taking away dice from someone with a large pool, rather than taking away more dice from someone who has very few, but the argument is thin at best.  Either way you go, it really is just a matter of lady luck smiling upon you.

But even now, given that this is nothing more than a game of luck, it’s a FUN game of luck.  Something about it appeals to a baser instinct.  Couple that with very neat looking dice (that glow in the dark, I might add), and you are looking at a game you can’t help but want to purchase for filler.  Well, at least until you see the price tag.  This game sells for $20.99 online.  I paid an even $20 for it at the convention.  Once you realize you are paying that much for a simple “put and take” filler game, that price tag becomes harder to swallow.  However, in their defense, this game comes with 20 custom dice that are embossed with the images rather than simply being stickers or paint.  The game components are quality.  So the question you must ask yourself is, “How much do I like put and take games?”

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Every once in a while I receive a game in the mail that makes me want to bang my head on the table.  A game where the premise is so bad, or the idea is a clear rip off.  Pong Cano was one of those games.

The game is very very simple.  Bounce the ball on the table get it into the center of the volcano.  If you can, you take the chips.  If you can’t, you put a chip in.  The idea is to get all the chips in the game.  Does this sound like anything to you?  Oh… how about quarters?  Or beer pong?  Or even tiddly-winks?  What about Cuponk?  The game is not original in the slightest, and actually could probably be played with items from around your home for the low low price of nothing, rather than the $13.99 currently advertised on Amazon. Go to the kitchen and grab a plastic cup, or a shot glass, and either a ping pong ball, or a quarter.  Grab something to use for chips (you only need 12 of them) and ta-da, you have your very own home made version of this game.

The second thing I really loathe about this game is the packaging.  You see, each of the games we review go into the library so it can be played by our patrons in the future.  We categorize over a thousand different games, keeping track of parts, rules, statistics, etc.  It’s no small task, but something that helps immensly with that is a game that COMES WITH RULES AND A BOX.  Take a look at the top picture.  Notice something?  This packaging is not really a box.  Once you take the blow mold plastic off, you better have another way to store the game, otherwise you are doomed to loose chips and the ball.  Gallon sized ziplock baggies to the rescue!  However, there still isn’t a rules sheet.  The rules, while very simple, are important to have.  The only place they are printed is on the back of the packaging.  You know that awful packaging you were going to pitch and use a ziplock baggie instead.  So much hate!

But how it plays is really the important part right?  I mean, if it’s fun who cares?  And, well, that was the surprising thing.   When we sat down to play, we scoffed at this, but before long we were bemoaning our opponents success and cheering at our own.  We became a bit competitive about it to say the least.   My players and I sat around the kitchen table bouncing that little ball for well over an hour, well past when the game was over.  Once the game was officially finished we weren’t satisfied.  We kept bouncing the little ball, trying desperately to get it in the hole.  Until someone finally asked, “Umm… guys?  Why are we still playing this?”  And that really struck this idea home.  The game itself is simple, but the concept is addictive.  In retrospect it makes sense that there are so many similar games, because this kind of skill game makes you want to play more, like a gambler who just needs to play one more hand to get his luck to turn around.  If you just try again, surely you’ll get it in the hole this time!

Once we had decided to move on to some other game that evening, we first sat back and had a moment of conversation about what we had just played.  Who would this game be good for?  We had a mom among our players and she immediately said “This would be terrible for my kids”, ages 7-10, “they would get so frustrated, and then they would be fighting”.  This varies from the manufacturers suggested age of 8+.  One of the gals who was playing is in her early 30′s and single, she said “Well, it was fun I guess, but if we were going to play it regularly, alcohol would have to be involved!”.   And there in lies the problem as I see it.  The game play is too hard to be appropriate for children, but the game just doesn’t have a lot of draw for adults in and of itself.  To be a real hit in the market place I think this game either needs to be made easier for kids, or more interesting for adults.  But either way, for God’s sake put it in a proper box!

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I don’t know why but I had this one sit on the shelf for a while. I guess I was just having a hard time getting enthusiastic about it, and with so many other shiny things on the shelf, my self-discipline wavers from time to time.  So, while looking over the games I have to review, I realized this one had been on the list for far too long and I, trying to be more responsible, pulled it out from my library and sat it in my dining room.  Surely if it is right there – staring me in the face – I would play it.   And that is almost exactly what happened, a game night with friends ended with a “What do you want to play?”, ” I dunno what do you want to play?” and it dawned on me, “Five Fingered Severance!”

I had never really given the games name much thought, but when I started reading the rules, I finally understood.  In FFS you play as clerks in a convenience store.  You are going to be fired at the end of the day, that’s inevitable, so you want to steal, slack, and insult customers as much as possible before you go.  However, you still have to keep an eye out for the boss, otherwise you could find yourself fired early.  Once I understood the theme, the game was far more intriguing and when I described it to my friends, it wasn’t long before I had a table full of people who were eager to play.

Each player’s turn consists of two actions.  These actions can include things such as “steal”, “stash your stolen goods”, “slack off”, “insult a customer”, “tattle”, or move to another aisle.  Yes, you can actually even do a little bit of work here and there in order to brown nose your way to not getting fired so quickly.  In addition to your two actions, you also have a handful of “plot cards” that you can play at any time during your turn, for free.  These do things such as “move the boss” or “rummage” for the best merchandise to steal.  However, despite all of this, the “worker” cards are the driving force behind the game.

“Worker” cards serve two major functions.  They put a time limit on the game, and they help to keep the game moving along.  At the beginning of each players turn, they are compelled to flip over the top card of the worker deck and respond accordingly.  Usually these are cards that are going to get placed on the board as either a customer to insult, a job to be done, or an available slacking activity.  However, occasionally they can be other things such as a sudden move of the boss.  The game ends when only one person remains employed or when all of the worker cards are gone.

Over all, we all had a really good time with the game.  The theme was a lot of fun, and some of the cards were just edgy enough to get a good solid laugh out of us (such as peeing in the coffee as a way to slack).  My group of players ranges in age from early 20′s to late 30′s so most of us either do work in a job like this, or can remember working in a job like this in the not so distant past, so the theme of the game let us revel in all the things we would have loved to do, but didn’t, on our last day.

However, despite our fun with the theme, we did have two major complaints with the game:  the rules (I know, I know, I nitpick rules), and the final slack tasks.  Both of these needed a little more thought and careful execution.

The rules were pretty short compared to how much was going on in the game.  They were also funny in places, which is a nice change of pace.  However, they took far too much for granted.  For example, the customer cards have a couple of symbols on them that match locations in the store.  We assumed that this was the potential starting locations and the person who drew the card could choose the placement, but we never actually found in the rules whether this was correct or not.  This was just one of several little things that we had to figure out for ourselves.

Final slack tasks were a great concept, but according to my group of gamers, they were poorly executed. Final slack tasks are those acts that are so heinous that they will instantly get you fired, but, what a way to go!  Things such as “telling the boss where to go”, or “blowing up the cash register”, or “stealing the office computer” all fall under the header of “final slack task”.  If you successfully complete one of these tasks, it’s worth 6 points and you get fired, if you fail to complete it you don’t get the points but are still fired.   So in order for it to be worth it, you either need to be way out in the lead on points, or believe the game is going to end shortly after it gets back around to you.  Otherwise, how many points might your fellow players rack up in the turns after your termination, likely more than six, right?  It was for this reason that no one attempted a final task.  It just wasn’t worth it, strategically speaking, and makes me wonder how much this element of the game was play tested.

However, despite the problems with the rules and the final slack tasks, all of my players seemed to have a good time.  One even suggested that we immediately reset the game and play a second time.  It wasn’t until we pointed out how late it was that people had a moment of “really!? It certainly doesn’t feel like we were playing for that long”, and of course that is always a sign of a good game.  While I was initially shy of this game, I’m really glad I put it in my dining room to remind me to play.  The game itself was great and I would recommend it to others who always wished they had told the boss where they could go on their final day.

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One of the games that I saw at Gen Con 2012 was “Cheap Shot”.  Ok, I take that back… I didn’t actually see the game, but I talked to its creator, Lisa Steenson, about its premise and Kickstarter campaign.  The game was described to me as “Insult rummy” and I was invited to take part in a play test.  I really wanted to go, because I like Lisa’s other work (Trailer Park Wars, Redneck Life, and Oh Gnome You Don’t!), but sadly my schedule did not align.  However, when I got back from the con, I talked to Lisa about getting a demo copy, and just a few days later Cheap Shot was on my kitchen table.

The copy I received was one of the play test models, so the cards were all in plastic sleeves, and the whole game came in a plastic baggy.  However, there were full color printed rules and the game had a surprising amount of polish on it.  So I pulled out the rules and began reading.  A few minutes later I was done and ready to play, but I was left with a sense of disappointment.  While the game sounded solid and a lot of fun, gone was the style of rules that made me originally fall in love with Lisa’s games.  In her other games, rules often say “Don’t read all these rules, just do _____ and then come back here for more details on what to do next!”.  It gets you playing the game right away, and thus it’s all more fun, because it’s like it would be if you had a teacher right there showing  you how to play.  Also missing from these rules:  Dang.  Normally the rules are colored with some light Redneck humor, such as including the expletive “Dang” in appropriate places.  Sadly this humor had vanished.  What you were left with were a basic set of rules that could have been written by nearly any company on the market.  None of Lisa’s normal pizzazz had made it onto the page.

Playing the game was easy though.  On your turn, you draw a card, play down a set if you have them, and then discard a card.  When a person runs out of cards, the round is over and the score is tallied.  Pretty basic stuff, right?  The difference comes in with what is counted as a set.  ”Set” might be the wrong word here, because you are not playing down cards that match.  Instead, you are playing down cards that make up a sentence.  The sentence must be grammatically correct, except for punctuation.   Sentences were comprised of insults that you are flinging at an individual. Such as :  You/are bigger than a barn/and smell like a bucket full of armpits.

Did you notice something about that insult?  It was surprisingly clean.  Sure, it is insulting, but I and my players were all hoping for something a little bit dirtier.  Perhaps we have been tainted by games such as Cards Against Humanity, but it was that kind of raunchy insulting that we felt was lacking.  However, I also wouldn’t feel comfortable playing a game with that kind of raunchiness with my family.  So there is a trade off.

However, ultimately, the question must be asked:  Was it fun?  While it wasn’t “squirt coke out your nose” funny, it was amusing.  There was giggling about insults that were made, especially when the object of the insult was someone the defender didn’t like anyway.  There was quite a few instances of “You’re right, my sister is a ______” from one of our players.  It made for an entertaining evening, with an entertaining game that I would play again.

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For those who may not know, “Are you a Werewolf?” is a game published by Looney Labs and is a reinvention of the old parlor game “Mafia”.  In this game, each player receives a card that depicts one of three things:  a werewolf, a villager, or the seer.  If you get a villager card, your goal is to kill the werewolves.  If you are a werewolf, your goal is to eat all of the villagers.  The seer player is on the side of the villagers, but has the ability to confirm his or her suspicions about each person during the night, while the village sleeps. Each round, the werewolves eat one person, and the villagers will lynch one person, until either side creates their victory condition.

On Friday night I wandered into the werewolf hall and purchased my wristband.  It’s good for two hours of play time, and I figure that would be plenty.  I hear that a new village is forming and I hurry over and grab a chair in the circle.  Once we all get our cards, the game begins.  I am a werewolf.

Suddenly, I realize that this game is being taken much more seriously than I have ever seen it taken before.  One person begins to take the role of village leader, and starts asking each person “Are you a werewolf?”.  He’s clearly looking for ticks.  Sometimes he intersperses his questioning for one person with “So you are not a villager?”, just to try to trip people up, and see what they will say.    Suddenly peoples postures and fidgety natures are being called into question.  ”Surely the guy with the red shirt must be a werewolf, he blinked when he was asked and now he is bouncing his leg”, “that girl over there, she must be a werewolf, look how tensely she is holding her shoulders”.  It’s madness!

After about fifteen minutes or so of discussion, we decide to lynch someone, sadly for them, they were a villager.  Night falls, and me and my fellow werewolf eat a delicious mortal.  The daytime comes and our evil deeds are revealed.  Discussion begins again.  Analyzing who that person had accused, who they might have made eye contact with.  People scrutinize body language some more.  We have now been playing for more than twenty minutes, longer than my entire previous games of “Are You A Werewolf?”.  But rather than feeling like the game is dragging on forever, it’s become exhilarating!  I am dodging questions, turning arguments around on people, and bending peoples opinions against their fellow villagers.  Round 2 and 3 go by, me and my fellow werewolf are both cunningly still alive, but the number of prey is dwindling.  Just a couple of more rounds and we seal the deal, eating the last of our remaining prey and securing our win.  Victory tastes so sweet!

Three games of “werewolf” later, I find out the time.  It’s 3am!  We have been playing for hours!  It certainly does not feel that late.  I say goodnight to everyone and head to my bed, but I am loving the games I just played.

The next day I am totally jazzed up for more.  One of my friends who was not able to come down to the con earlier in the week, shows up to have some fun, and when 10 PM hits, I suggested we go play “Werewolf”.  He didn’t really have much experience with the game, but agreed to go and see what the buzz was about.  We both bought our wrist bans and hopped into a village.  When we finally were ready to leave for the night, the sun was about to rise… it’s 6 AM!

I was the “werewolf” approximately four times that night, and never once was lynched.  I must say I am proud, but two moments really stand out.

…so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

My fellow werewolf and I have whittled down the village to a small handful of villagers.  We just need to survive through two more rounds and we have them!  An accusation was made in the circle, a guy just turned on his own sister that he had brought with to play.  He had been defending her all game, but now suddenly felt like she was behaving oddly.  Perhaps she is the werewolf.  When night falls and it’s time for my partner and I to feed, my partner wants to take out the brother.  I want to take out another random villager, because clearly taking out the brother seems too obvious.  My partner quietly insists, and I decide to agree.

When the morning rises and the brother is found dead, everyone clearly turns on the sister.  It’s obvious!  But almost as soon as the accusation is made it is disregarded.  Clearly the wolves are trying to make it look like the sister.  We go back and forth around the circle and that’s when I decide to put forth that we have run into an “Iocane Powder” situation.  A few people giggle at the Princess Bride reference, and for the others I explain:

“Clearly if she is the wolf, she wouldn’t like his accusations and would have eaten him to get him to stop.  However, she would know that would be too obvious, so clearly she can not be the wolf and it must be a setup.  But, perhaps she is a particularly crafty wolf and knows that we would think that to be far too obvious, and thus eating him would actually take the heat off of her, and so she decided to make him her victim.”

… after a couple minutes of debating the iocane powder situation, the townsfolk decided to string her up, just to be safe.  She was a villager, shucks.

If you knew he was the seer…

Another time, I was the wolf again, my favorite role to have.  It has come down to the last few villagers again, and me and my partner wolf are only steps away from winning.  There is a dramatic vote, and one single person votes against the group.  We lynch the poor fellow and away we go to dream land to feast on human flesh.  My partner really wants to eat the guy who voted against the group, and that is just fine by me.  When we wake up we find out that we have taken out the seer.  I carefully mask my face, trying to look disappointed and upset, but underneath I am bubbling with our good fortune.

Suddenly there is an accusation being pointed at me.  Did she see the happiness glitter across my face?  When pressed as to why she feels I should be lynched, she doesn’t have anything but her “gut” to go off of, and the fact that I led the charge to have the previous guy lynched, and our seer voted against it.  Then she lets it drop that she knew he was the seer… now I have something to go off of.

“Wait!  You knew he was the seer?”

“Well, yeah, he told me I was safe.”

“Really… so our seer suddenly drops dead… out of the blue… and you seem to be the only one who knew he was the seer. ”

She gets a look of panic, and multiple people pick up on it.  Wrong move, chica.   Now it’s time to reel them in.

“Here is what I think happened.  Our seer put faith in the wrong person.  Let you know that he was the seer, and then before he could out you to the village, you killed him off.  After all, if you aren’t the wolf, why wouldn’t you have voted with our seer earlier?  Try to drive influence towards his guesses?”

“I’m not the wolf!”, she exclaimed while sweating bullets.  And she continued to sweat bullets right up until we lynched her, allowing the final couple of kills to take place in order to eat every last villager standing.

Having now played the game at a con with other people who take it seriously, I love it.   The logical deduction, the bluffing, and the ability to stay cool under pressure.  Saturday night, me and my friend spent eight solid hours playing round after round of the game, and if it hadn’t been so late/early, I could have played a couple more.

Want to play 'Are You A Werewolf?'

Are You A Werewolf? Tournament

- When: Saturday, June 8th @ 7pm.
- Where: Game Paradise – 1110 E. Prospect Street, Indianapolis, IN

Prizes given to the winners!

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So the bad is behind us, what does the future look like?  Well, for starters, the future has a bright shiny new gaming space.  Ok, it’s not new… the building is actually about 12 years old, and is in the historic Fountain Square district of Indianapolis.  That’s right, I have taken a huge leap of faith and rented a retail space for us to host the library from.  Now gamers can come in and play one of our 1000+ games, Tuesdays through Sundays from noon till 1am.  Yes, now you have another great late night option that isn’t a bar.

A lot of people have asked about events and such, and yes, we certainly plan to do that.  In fact we are hosting a “Are You A Werewolf?” tournament on June 8th, with prizes given to the winner.  But we know that people are clamoring for lots of other events.  If you are a sanctioned judge, I would love to talk to you.  Give us a call!  Our new store number is 317-972-GAME.

Let’s see, what else can I tell you about our new endeavor… well… hmm…

We are both a retail shop, and a board game library.  Most people are familiar with board game stores, we sell board games.  Pretty simple.  Although we are also going to be carrying lots of other really cool gamer gear, including T-shirts, geeky buttons, stained glass dice, etc.  It’s going to be epic.

The part of the shop that most people don’t quite understand is the library, and that is the bulk of our business model, so allow me to explain:  We have 1000+ open box games (and a pool table, how cool is that?), and for a small membership fee you can play any game you like off of the shelves.  No need to pay $40+ per board game, when you have the ability to play so many games for very very little.  How little?  Well, you can play at an hourly rate of $5/hour, and this has a $12.50 daily cap on it.  So if you come in at noon, and play till we close, you are still only going to get charged $12.50.  Cool right?  Let’s say that you want to play often though…. like every week… or shucks, even every day.  Well, then our monthly pass is probably right for you, it’s $35, and if you plan on coming in at least three days a month, it’s totally worth it.
So that is the new skinny.  I really hope that I see you in the shop some time soon!

Happy Gaming!
-Victoria

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Thank you all for your understanding during this time of transition.

Happy Gaming,

Victoria (The_Null_Entry)
-Co-Owner of Game Paradise

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Party games. What makes them enjoyable? What makes them flops? This is a style of game that seems to be more art and less science, as the formula for success is a wibbly wobbly kind of thing. However, one ingredient that seems to always be present with such a success is laughter. “Who’s Got Game” certainly had rounds of laughter, but not every one was a gut buster. This intermittent view of the game, is one that permeated most aspects of our opinions.

“Who’s Got Game” was created by Neil Strauss. With a lot of gamers, that name might not ring a bell, but he is the author of several popular books about dating. I asked my players, before we got going, if they were familiar with the designer and all of them gave me vacant stares.  It wasn’t until I started listing his books that there was a hint of recognition. However, even then, it was only a hint. This gives me the impression that with most hobby gamers, Mr. Strauss might be fighting an up hill battle.

Given that this game was created by a man who writes books on how to pick up women, you can probably extrapulate the nature of the game… or can you? We expected a dating game full of provacative questions and tantalizing answers. What we got instead was a “Get to know your neighbor” sort of game.

In this game you pick a partner. Each player is playing for their own points, but many of the games mechanics refer to your partner. This is really equivalent of saying “the player on your left”, but I guess they decided partner was an easier way to phrase it. Although, while easier, this also caused a small amount of confusion as the players had the misconception that if their partner did well that they would always do well too. This is not the case in this game. Your partner is often there to simply fulfill small tasks, such as read questions.

Once your partner is chosen, it’s time to start playing. On your turn you draw a card out of the box. This deck of cards is actually several different kinds of cards all mixed together in one box. These cards have players doing a variety of tasks: handwriting analysis, answer matching, answer recognition, acting, etc. Now that you have your card in hand, read the instructions to the group and follow what it says.

While not all of these tasks were funny, we did have some funny moments. For example one the cards told the players that the “Leader” (person who’s turn it is) had to guess who wrote down each answer to the following question:

If you were to meet God, and could ask him only one question, what would that question be?

… The group of us playing that night were all pretty well read geeks, and proud of it to boot. So when we all passed in our answers, there was a lot of giggling. None of us knew what the others were writing, but it didn’t matter, because great minds think a like.

So the leader was stuck trying to guess who would ask God…
1.) What is the f-ing question!?
2.) What is the question to the answer is 42?
3.) If the answer is 42, what is the question?

… and now, if you have read the Hitchhiker’s Guid to the Galaxy, you are likely snorting with laughter right now too. It was so unexpected and so absurd, you simply could not help but laugh.

Another moment of laughter came with a challenge card that required your partner to put makeup somewhere on your face. If you left it there the whole game you received ten points at the end of the game. This left one of the boys to put makeup on his female partner, and since the card only said “on their face” and did not specify exactly where and how, some lewd things were drawn on her face using some teal eye shadow. It was special, to say the least, and we all got a good giggle.

So at this point you might be wondering, how do you win? Each time you play a card their are points associated with a given action, such as correctly answering a card or getting someone to guess an answer. The game goes for 12 rounds, each round being the length of one card. At the end of those rounds, points are tallied and the person with the most points win. We found that the game has really good pacing. It was long enough that we felt satisfied in our experience, but not so long as to want to revolt. I think the designer did a good job at picking what originally sounded like a very arbitrary number.

A group enjoying an evening of "Who's Got Game"

But given this bit of brilliance in design, there were some other choices that were made that were less than impressive, specifically, in regards to components. Firstly, this game comes in a rather large box. When packing the game away, all of the components fit in less than half of the box, and that leaves things to roll around, and the game takes up a lot of room on the shelf. Secondly, the game comes with wooden pencils and paper pads. In one game we went through half of the paper pads that came with the game, which was a fair amount of paper. Dry erase boards, or some other variety of reusable boards, would have made for a much better option. Also the score pad was made of a slick paper, and the pencil really was nearly impossible to use on it. However, even with those negatives there are good things to say here too: the cards are full color and of a good quality stock, and the box is very heavy duty.

Leave it to an author to write good rules as well. This game came with a full rules sheet as well as a quick start guide. The quick start was all we needed for the vast majority of the game, and the cards described the rest. The one thing that I must dock the quick start rules for is that it never mentions to read the back side of the card prior to flipping it over, which does make an effect in the game and was easily overlooked. A simple mention to that would have saved us some grief on our first game.

So, overall, how did we feel about this game? Meh. It was ok. The game had some funny moments that we appreciated, but we weren’t rolling with laughter like we are with some of our other favorite party games. The mixture of actions in the game was nice, but we saw a few very similar cards and that sucks away some of the fun of it, especially when they were back to back. The overall theme of the game was ok, but it didn’t make a strong impression either way, and it certainly didn’t fit the preconcieved notions that the cover art and the author’s reputation conveyed. However, it wasn’t a bad game, and it was an amusing way to pass the time and get to know some of my players a little better.

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The first step was to find a suitable game.  I went to my library and started scanning the shelves.  However, with the exception of a few games that I have to review, their just really wasn’t a whole lot of games I hadn’t played or at least didn’t know how to play.  Sure, there were some “roll and move” style games I hadn’t bothered to try, but given they were mostly clones it’s not like I didn’t know how they were played.  That seemed against the spirit of the rules.  So what to do?

And then I was reminded that I have some foreign games that I’ve never been able to translate!  You see, a while back we bought a few lots of games off of E-bay.  While we knew that some of the games were not in English, we were assured that they all had English instructions and were non-language dependent.  In short, the seller fibbed and we were left with about a dozen games out of the lot that were unusable (and yes, this was after searching the Internet for translated rules).

Ok, so a foreign game, but which one?  I had about half a dozen to choose from.  I started opening the boxes and looking at the components.  One of them only had numbered cards, that looked a lot like an Uno deck, certainly not much to extrapolate from.  One game had cards that were covered in German text, and no symbols.  Another one simply had a bag of Jenga like blocks and a rules sheet.  And then I hit upon one that would do:  Gebrauchtwagen Handler.  This game has colorful cards with symbols and dollar amounts and paper money.  These were components that we could work with!

So we sat down together to extrapolate the rules.  One gal in my group could read a very small amount of German, and given that German is a romance language we could pick out prefixes here and there.  But we only used this insight on the cards themselves, the rules stayed firmly tucked away.

We went round and round with possible mechanic ideas.  What we ultimately decided on was a bidding game where you are trying to build the most expensive fleet of cars.  Each round you started the bidding on a face down car, not knowing how much it is worth.  You could pay 100 Euro to take it to the mechanic and see (aka, peak at the card) what the vehicle was worth.  Otherwise you were bidding blind and hope you made a sound investment.

In addition to bidding on the fleet you also had a hand full of cards that were either improvements to your vehicle or damage to someone else’s.  For instance you could buy your car new tires, which might add a 500 Euro to it’s worth, or you could play a flat tire card on someone else that might lower that car’s worth by 500 Euro.

So how did our mechanics work out?  Meh, I’ve certainly played better, but I’ve played worse as well.  Our end game goal (when all the cars were purchased) was far too long, and we went through the other improvement/damage cards way too fast.  Our rules were vaguely interesting, but would need a lot of polish to be a real game.  However, that being said, it was a very interesting experience and it was neat to see what we came up with.

The next weeks challenge might be difficult for some: Play an old Avalon Hill game.   This company made a bunch of games that are commonly referred to as “bookshelf games”, and a search on E-bay for that term will yield you a bunch of options.  We have several, it’s just a matter of deciding which one is right for us this week.

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As geek culture emerged as more and more of a cultural phenomenon, the influences began to seep into the music.  This is a song from a few years ago (2009) that was released by the cast of “The Guild”, a web-isode about online gaming such as World of Warcraft.  This song discusses, in a humorous and catchy way, the idea that online avatars (digital representations of a person) are often more attractive than their flesh and blood counterpart.

In October of 2010 a new song emerged on YouTube: Roll the Dice by The Sinister Six. This song not only held strong board game and role playing themes, but also threw down the gauntlet, declaring that board game players were superior gamers to those who relied on consoles and computers to “get their game on”.

By 2011 the emergence of table top themed music was no longer in its infancy. This song was released on YouTube in May of 2011 and features the cast of the movie “Gamers: Dorkness Rising”. This song explores some generic “Dungeons and Dragons” gaming themes, as well as lively fun pokes at gamer habits.

Popular music was also not safe from the gamer geek invasion. The popular song “Like a G6″ by the Far East Movement was quickly adopted and twisted into a parody of itself and was reborn as “Roll a D6″.

Another song released in August of 2011 is a little bit more personal. Rather than being a song about table top gaming in general, this song is immortalizes a single evening of gaming by regaling us with a hillarious tale of repeatedly killing a player.

And now we are seeing a new evolution in geeky gamer music: LARPing. LARP is a acronym for “Live Action Role Playing” and is generally treated like the red headed step child of the gaming community. This song however, embraces the hobby proudly.

These are only a handful of the gamer songs available. There are dozens, if not hundreds of others that we could have chosen from. Is there a particular song that we missed that you would like to share with the rest of the gamer world? Please post it in our comments, so that the gamer geek music can keep flowing!

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