Today in pure awesome....

Remember Mousetrap?  Course you do.  I remember being enthralled as the Rube Goldberg-esque machine got built up over the game and then proceeded to run its course, devastating the lives of my poor plastic mice (I also remember never, ever playing a version of the game where all the pieces were actually there).  Having played it recently, I can say the game isn't half as interesting as I remember, but I was a kid then and much less cynical/fussy.

Well, what do you know, via BoardGameGeek News and Youtube, here's a group of people who decided to recreate that magic live.  And it's pretty awesome....kinda makes me feel like a kid again.



And if you actually want to get involved with this group of artists or even just help out, their website is here with links to their Kickstarter campaign.

First (absolutely awesome) play: Galaxy Trucker...

Another evening of games at UW and a decent crowd of 12 or so people.  Many games were played before the group settled into two games for the evening....

The Appetizers:  Some oldies - Bargain Hunter and Mord Im Arosa - as well as the lovely-looking connections game Tsuro.

Tsuro....   So pretty!

Dominion binder with all the expansions....   Very clever.

And filed by expansion.  Excellent.

The Main Courses:  After some short warmups, one group committed to a LONG night and started a game of Battlestar Galactica with a whole wack of newbs.  I, unfortunately, suffer from an awful case of full-time employment and couldn't commit to such epicness. (BTW, when I left three hours later they hadn't jumped once yet....  Ugh.)

Instead, I finally got to play a game of Galaxy Trucker by stellar Czech designer Vlaada Chatvil, which I had been wanting to try for half a year now.  And as I had hoped, the game turned out to be just fantastic!  Strategic, chaotic, hilarious, intense, just an all-around great experience.  This immediately jumped to the top of my list.  If you haven't heard of GT, the idea is that you and the other players simultaneously put a ship together under major time pressure using whatever tiles you find on the table.  Connections have to match and you need to balance engines, weapons, crew, and shields.  Once everyone has built their ship, removing all poorly connected parts, everyone then proceeds to fly their ship through a series of brutal and totally unfair obstacles.  Pieces and whole chunks of ship tend to fall off at this point, much to the amusement of everyone.  There is a scoring system and strategy but who cares.  The game's a riot from start to finish and one I must play again.

Cosmic credits - the victory points of Galaxy Trucker

Our ship in round 1 - small but well-built.

Our ship in round 2 - a few exposed connections but still pretty decent

Round 3 - uh oh.  This one took a real beating....

Getting a kick start....

One of the great and yet also annoying things about the growing popularity of board games is the number of entries into the field each year. Whereas in the late 90's there was usually 1 or 2 must-buys a season, now there's at least 20 or 30. And the more people who play games, the more people there are who come up with some great ideas for them (including a few myself which may never see the light of day). And most games don't get noticed by big publishers so the designers often have to go it on their own.

That's where Kickstarter can come in to help. It's a pretty damn cool website where artists, musicians, creative folks, and, yes, board game designers can run funding drives for their projects. And Kickstarter has successfully launched a few great games now, including the wonderfully fun and polished Alien Frontiers, a true testament to the great possibilities of indie game design.

If you read other board game blogs, you may have seen mention of many games on Kickstarter vying for attention.  A game on Kickstarter that I think really deserves a look is Phillip DuBarry's Kingdom of Solomon, what looks to be a pretty interesting worker-placement style game with some network-building and bit of a push-your-luck twist.  Phillip previously got his print-and-play game Revolution! (which I admit I have yet to play) published by Steve Jackson Games which I think is a pretty admirable accomplishment as SJG is not normally known for producing Euro-style strategy games.  Now I openly admit that Phillip is a reader of this blog which is kinda nice but I still wouldn't mention the game if it didn't think it was going to be pretty awesome.  And I could describe it more to you but perhaps I should let the designer talk about it instead:



If this sounds good to you, maybe you should consider stopping by the Kickstarter site to make a pledge. Pledge enough and you'll get a copy sent to you when it's published (plus it'll make ya feel good, too).

Now, back to that little idea for an auction game that's been rolling around in my head foe months now......