Seen at Canada's Wonderland this past weekend......

Okay, Daryl may have spent this past weekend at GenCon playing brand new swanky titles.  But at least I saw a gigantic arcade Operation.....

On the development of Acquire....

Here's a lovely and very well-researched article by Joe Huber of The Opinionated Gamers on Sid Sackson's Acquire, one of the greatest and most influential board games ever made (IMHO).  A quote:

Having now detailed the path to the production of the test marketing edition of Acquire, the next step – and the most interesting part of the story, for me – is going through the game’s journey to the Acquire we know and love still today.  This is where Sackson’s habit of drafting his letters – and saving the drafts – makes all the difference; as a result it’s possible to follow nearly the whole path.

More than 50 years later and the game is still a monumental achievement that I beg people to play every other week.  Definitely worth the read.

First play: 1830....

It's no surprise to anyone who has read posts on here when I say that I really enjoy train games.  Usually it's the lighter fare - Ticket To Ride, Chicago Express, and the like - but I do enjoy a nice heavy one occasionally.  I still rank Age of Steam in my top 5 games of all time.  Well, there is an even bigger class of train games referred to as the 18XX series which I had yet to really play up till last night.  They are notoriously complex, lengthy, and usually devoid of luck as far as I know.  

Having read about the different versions (all representing different eras and locations), it seemed 1830: Railway & Robber Barons would be the "easiest" intro and the most enjoyably cutthroat of all of them.  Shockingly, I was able to gather 5 others to give up an entire day (8 hours!) to learn and play the game.  Perhaps even more shocking is that every person loved the game and is already talking about when we can play it again next.  It's pretty clear after one play that the next game would run closer to 5 hours as the rules explanation alone took an hour.

The game itself can be described as a stock market investment game crossed with railroad track building.  Players buy stock in the 8 different railroads and whoever has the majority stock in each makes all the decisions in terms of track-laying and station-building.  It's one of those games where one can do quite well without controlling a single company.  In addition, players can play some pretty vicious tricks with the stock market sales to drive stock prices up and down to gain and lose majority control and sink an opponent's company.  There is a lot going on and a somewhat convoluted 30-page rulebook but it never seemed overwhelming as most of the rules just seemed to make sense.  Honestly, learning Through The Ages was way tougher the first time and took just about as long.

It's a testament to the greatness of this game that after an 8-hour marathon everyone wants to play it again ASAP.  I definitely do.  I staved off bankruptcy only barely and ended up losing by an atrocious margin.  Still loved every moment of it.

A gaming historian....

Well here's a job I'd love to do!  This British museum curator studies the history of board games:

This pattern of what Finkel calls "spread and evolution and decline and rescue and unstoppability" is at the heart of what fascinates him about board games. Intermittently, governments have tried to curb them: China outlawed mahjong during the Cultural Revolution, and the Taliban threatened chess players with execution. But games defy control, mutating and leaping boundaries with an inexorable life of their own. Pachisi, says Finkel, was played in India for centuries, jumped to Britain by 1875 and was repackaged there as ludo, which was exported back to India around the 1960s: "Nowadays, Indian children play ludo completely oblivious to the fact that it is a monstrous decomposition of their own fantastic board game."

My only objection is Irving Finkel's comment on his favourite game Monopoly that "the idea of renting out a square was the last 'momentous' innovation in board games."  Right.  This article was from 2008 so I hope he's done a bit more research since then....

(Thanks for the tip, Matt!)

Today in awesome...

(Thanks to BGG for the link...)

Today in awesome.....

Dubstep + classic board games + stop-motion = the best thing I've seen all week.



(Thanks to Daryl for the tip...)

Required reading....

There are many books on the market that contain games but most just have the standards: card games, chess, checkers, etc. However, in the late 60's, prolific game designer Sid Sackson put out a book called 'A Gamut of Games'. Sackson is the inventor of, amongst others, the brilliant Acquire and is the father of modern boardgaming in my mind.

'Gamut' is a treasure trove, let me tell you. 38 original and fascinating games selected from his various gaming groups, 22 of which he invented himself. The book includes his classic abstract Focus before it was published and Soucie's brilliant Lines of Action (a personal favourite). As well, there is a precursor to Das Super-Blatt playable with a deck of cards and a game which is a bit like Monopoly and Acquire's love-child.

Added to all this is a fascinating amount of game lore and some discussion as to how the games were developed. This is gold for someone like myself who is interested in one day producing and publishing his own game. Check it out if you can find it, if only because you'll get at least 20 great games for under $15. Sid, you are missed...

(Oh yeah, and some say Sid owned over 18,000 different board games. Awesome.)