boardgamegirl

Now, this isn’t all about playing board games… but bear with me. I’m rediscovering my love for the SNES recently.

1. Super Mario World (on SNES Super Mario Allstars)

I can play level 8.1 blindfolded by now. Level 3 of that world is batshit-insane. I fucking hate hammer brothers.

2. Carcassonne with the River, the River II, the Traders & Builders,  the Inns and Cathedrals, and the King & Scout Expansions

Carcassonne is one of my favorite 2-player games, but I think it loses a lot of its appeal when you add more players. It just slows down so much - at least with the people I play with and considering the amount of expansions we use. If 4 or five players want to make a good strategic decision, it just takes freaking forever until it’s your turn again. Also, I lost. Poo.

3. Tetris (on SNES Dr. Mario & Tetris)

Oh, Tetris. One of the two only games pre-teen me ever owned on the original, humongous grey gameboy I got for Christmas one year. I just never had any money to get any more games. Sometimes I’d borrow other games from my friends, but if you never have anything to lend back, they eventually catch on. But the point of the story is not to empathize with working-class child-me, but rather to explain how Tetris is the only game I don’t massively suck at. In two-player mode, I can destroy players who beat me in EVERY OTHER Super Nintendo game with a Level 1 to Level 9 handicap. Man, I used to play so much that when I closed my eyes at night in bed I would drop and rotate Tetris blocks to go to sleep instead of, you know, think about pre-teen boys.

4. Dr Mario (on SNES Dr. Mario & Tetris)

I can grasp shapes and where they fit immediately. But when it comes to colour, my brain just skips a beat. I don’t know why, but I have to make a really conscious effort to decide where to put those damned pills, and then it’s often too late. In conclusion, I’m not very good at it yet, but I want to be. In fact, after I’m done writing this post, I will probably go to my living room to practice. Also, to my defense, I’d never played this game before.

5. Zombies Ate My Neighbors (SNES)

I really enjoy 2-player cooperative games. They allow me to be of assistance to an inevitably better player than me, and they cut down on the frustration of attempting level 8-1 of Super Mario world for the 142nd time ( don’t think I’m exaggerating here. I really suck, but I want to learn). I played through “Goof Troop” a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed the top-down view, relatively slow and unhurried gameplay, colourful graphics and cooperative nature. I wanted more of that! So, on the recommendation of a few fellow nerds (and also this thing called the “interwebs” or somesuch), I acquired Zombies Ate My Neighbours today at the local flea market. I’m not sure I like it yet. The gameplay is too fast and hectic for someone with my low skill level, and it’s always a stressed game. There’s always stressful, panicked music and screams in the background, and it makes me unconsciously tense up while playing.We’ll see about that. Verdict is still out.

6. Settlers of Catan

I’m tutoring a nice gentleman from Korea in English as a Second Language. Since he’s new to Canada, he doesn’t have a lot of friends yet, and I invited him to come to my board game club this weekend. He was a bit sceptical, but he ended up coming, and we played Settlers (without expansions) as the typical beginner’s game with him. He caught on really fast and seemed to quite enjoy himself during the game. He even finished second. My club is already really international (A German, a Russian, two Brits), and it would be neat to add a Korean to the mix. I just hope I won’t start acting completist about nationalities.

7. Balancing game whose name I forgot

It’s wooden pieces in a fabric bag, and the goal of the game is to add all your pieces to the wooden base without making anything fall off. My Korean student won with a brilliant and daring move.

8. Acquire

I’ve been meaning to try this for a while, and it’s a neat little game of growing and merging corporations while buying and selling their stock, which appreciates as the corporation grows. It was fun enough, but I somehow felt like I was playing 3/4 of a game. There was some meat missing. Also, I shouldn’t say that because I’m trying to be a vegetarian (environmental and economic reasons - producing 1000 calories in meat is economically much less efficient and pollutes vastly more than producing the same amount of calories in beans or other vegetables).

9. Carcassonne with the River, the River II, the Traders & Builders,  the Inns and Cathedrals, the King & Scout, and the Mayor and Abbey Expansions

This time I won. ‘Nuff said. Actually, no, not ’nuff said: The mayor is kind of pointless, and while the barns are kind of neat, they don’t introduce that much more gameplay. The abbeys are a truly new idea, but sadly, they look like big ugly red wounds on the beautifully fitted Carcassonne landscape. All in all, not a very good expansion. And I own almost every single one available.

Also, I might have lied. I think I’m too tired to play more Dr. Mario, so I’m going to go to bed and read that really horrible novel about women in a knitting club that for some odd reason sounded vastly interesting to me when I read the excerpt on the back cover while digging through the cheap novel bin at the grocery store. I’m 30 pages or so in, and the novel still feels like exposition. And I even like knitting!

As you may have guessed, or just plain read in my comments section, I think Agricola undeservedly usurped Puerto Rico’s rightful first place in boardgamegeek.com’s ratings.

Here are some of the reasons why:

10. Puerto Rico doesn’t take up three tables to play.

9. Puerto Rico’s rules are better written.

8. Puerto Rico doesn’t need 14 different variants and card decks to remain interesting.

7. Puerto Rico has much less downtime in a game with three or more players.

6. Puerto Rico allows for meaningful player interaction.

5. Puerto Rico allows for spiteful player interaction.

4. Puerto Rico’s design and game components are prettier.

3. Puerto Rico’s theme isn’t boring.

2. There is less chance in Puerto Rico.

1. Puerto Rico doesn’t steal most of its mechanics from Caylus.

I have always liked board games. I’ve always wanted to play them. But through some cruel twist of fate - or maybe just a suppressed masochistic streak in my personality - I somehow managed for the longest time to surround myself with people who didn’t like them. My family - didn’t like them. My grade school friends - didn’t like them. The first three of my four serious boyfriends - didn’t like them either. Sure, I managed to get the occasional party game in, because teens everywhere use them as an excuse to act silly in front of the opposite sex. For example, to this day I remember kneeling on my classmate’s living room floor, alternating hand gestures between a praying motion and outlining huge  boobs on my chest to make my 16-year-old peers guess the word “nun” (”MONK!”, they screemed. “FAT MONK!” Pause. “Oh, I know: KNEELING HOOKER!”).

But I never had the chance to *really* game: I wanted to be competitive. I wanted to win. I wanted to destroy my opponents. Simply put, I wanted to be the best. And if- and when!- I lost, I wanted to try again, and do better - with (HA! Didn’t count on that, suckaaaa!!!) a different strategy. But finally, I started dating someone who felt similarly about competition, and the rest is legend.

Hey, talk about a long introduction! Let’s get to the point now. Ever since I seriously got into board gaming about 3 years ago, I remember Puerto Rico inhabiting the throne of boardgame honour: the number one spot as rated by thousands of game nerd users on boardgamegeek.com. After some quick research, it turns out it had been inhabiting that number one spot for more than five years! And not only was Puerto Rico firmly established in the board game, uh, establishment, I happened to share the establishment’s view: Puerto Rico is an awe-inspiring game on absolutely every level ( and I’m certain to expand on why that is in a future post on this blog).

In any case, it came as a huge shock to me that Puerto Rico was booted from the number one spot some time on August 2008 of this year. In the board game world, an upset like this is the equivalent of whatever football team it was that won all those games and then screwed up the Superbowl this year (please don’t tell me in the comment section. I couldn’t care less). So, of course, I was bursting to get my hands on a copy. But on August 18th, I happened to be on a cross-country road trip, and I think I was somewhere in Iowa, gazing at ripe corn fields. Then, of course, Agricola was sold out all over the place, and I ended up ordering it from my old friend John at boardgames.ca. Finally, at the beginning of last week, I played my first game.

What did I think, you ask? Well, that’s for tomorrow’s post. I’ve had a long day here in the Maritimes. Sleep tight,

Boardgamegirl out.

So I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m female, in my late twenties, and I live in maritime Canada. I have a B.A. in International development and Creative Writing, and I’m currently establishing a career as a freelance writer (for example, I wrote two Canadian expansion sets for the Xbox Live Arcade version of Wits & Wagers!).

But most importantly, I love board games. I own or co-own about 60 games, and the collection is always growing. I’ve played each of them several times, and my favorite ones many dozens of times. No matter what happens in my life, playing games will make me calm, happy and relaxed in no time at all. That’s why, in the spring of 2006, I founded a board game club at the university I went to and spent almost every single Sunday afternoon since then playing games with my friends. And even though I moved to a different town all the way across Canada just a month ago, I’ve already re-founded my club here, and the playing continues…

There are probably only about four or five Sundays per year I don’t spend playing games. And when I’m not gaming on a Sunday, chances are I’m visiting my family in Bavaria, Germany. Where, yes, I sometimes wear a “Dirndl”:

But that’s enough about me for now… Tomorrow: My thoughts on Boardgamegeek.com throne-usurper Agricola.

Boardgamegirl out.