Growing Up Gamers

Dead and Dreaming: A Commander Deck for Magic: The Gathering

2012-02-24T14:09:00.004-08:00

by Randy

Greetings! Today I wanted to write about Magic: The Gathering, Commander format (rules here). It's a fun multiplayer Magic format that allows for longer, more social games, varied and often thematic decks and interesting interactions. I'm going to talk about the format and also about my first and favorite deck.

Why Commander?

I'm a casual Magic player; it's all kitchen table for me. Though I do get excited about new sets (really looking forward to Avacyn Restored, by the way!), I'm not the guy who buys two cases of boosters going after the newest mythic rare cards. Nor am I going to spend the money necessary to buy these on the secondary market. True, sometimes I may spend up to five bucks on a card every now and then, but that is indeed the exception. And where the Standard and Modern formats thrive on this, and, indeed, the hobby game industry as a whole is supported by this, it's just not for me. And for Commander, it's just not necessary.

The Commander format has players create 100-card decks with no more than one copy of anything but Basic Land cards, and with a Legendary creature as the commander, or general. The general is not shuffled into the deck; it is put in a command zone and may be cast from there at any time. If the general dies, it is put back into the command zone and is immediately castable again (though each death raises the cost by 2 mana). This means that creature is always reliably available, and strategies will develop around that creature.

Theme Decks!

I'm a sucker for thematic decks. And when you are making a large singleton deck, you are able to choose cards based on theme instead of four copies each of the eight "power" cards everyone else is using. Aside from the land cards, a typical Commander deck has about 60-65 unique cards that can be drawn from 19 (and counting!) years of Magic history; that leaves a lot of room to express the theme, and get in the utility cards that make it viable. So... what does a theme deck look like?

Behold... Cthulhu!

Okay, actually Nyarlathotep...

My first and favorite Commander deck is called "Dead & Dreaming", and is Cthulhu-themed (for an explanation of Cthulhu, click here). I got the idea from the card Wrexial, the Risen Deep (very Cthulhu-inspired!) and chose to go with that. I had some initial assistance from my wife Angie, who is far better at building decks than I am. Over the last few months, though, I have made a lot of changes.

The first thing needed for my theme were huge monsters, especially of the alien, godlike or aquatic persuasion. I chose to go with several Eldrazi for this. Eldrazi were introduced in the Rise of the Eldrazi set of the Zendikar block. They tend to be huge and expensive, and usually have the Annhilator keyword (meaning that when they attack, the opponent must sacrifice permanents equal to the Annhilator value before blockers are declared). In addition to Eldrazi, there are also a couple leviathans and a legendary octopus.

Every deck also needs small creatures, so there are plenty there. They provide the cultist and minor beasts role. A lot have utility powers that are useful, such as allowing creatures to become unblockable (Cephalid Pathmage), changing land types (Tidal Warrior), making copies of creatures (Evil Twin) and Infectors (creatures who deal damage as -1/-1 counters to creatures, or Poison counters to players). Most of these carry along the theme, though not all.

As for the rest, the Instants, Sorceries, Artifacts and Enchantments have a lot of horrific effects. Artifact/creature destruction, boardwiping and card drawing are a given. There are some the give Infect, or effectively make little creatures huge. Several Eldrazi tribal spells made it in, most of which create Eldrazi spawn (0/1 creatures that you may sacrifice for colorless mana). In addition, one of my all-time favorite Instant spells is in there: Tainted Strike.

What's so cool about that? Well, it's a very simple card. It is an Instant that costs 1 Black, and gives a creature +1/+0 and Infect. This is a really fun surprise card to throw down. Since Infect is a big mechanic in my deck (Poison counters will eliminate a player; in our group, we have rules that 20, rather than the standard 10, will take out a player). It is always fun to see two other players attacking each other and playing this one one of their guys, either resulting in a creature getting a lot of -1/-1 counters, or the player getting more Poison counters. I have even kept myself from being eliminated by playing this on a creature attacking me, causing it to do its damage as Poison counters and not as life damage. Nifty!

Well, I'll let you look at my deck list. I am not in any way saying that this is especially powerful, or anything at all like that. I am just saying that this is a thematic deck that I have had a great time playing and refining.

My Theme Deck: Dead and Dreaming

Card art from Wrexial, the Risen Deep

Commander:
Wrexial, the Risen Deep

Planeswalkers:
Jace Beleren
Liliana Vess

Artifacts:
Sol Ring
Darksteel Ingot
Dimir Signet
Contagion Engine
Dreamstone Hedron
Everflowing Chalice
Venser's Journal
Quicksilver Amulet
Hedron Matrix
Konda's Banner
Grafted Exoskeleton

Instants:
Not of This World
Virulent Swipe
Memory Plunder
Undying Evil
Consume the Meek
Tainted Strike
Tragic Slip

Enchantments:
Corrupted Conscience
Mind Control
Eldrazi Conscription
Bloodchief Ascension
Snake Cult Initiation
Conspiracy
Glistening Oil
Phyresis
Inexorable Tide

Sorceries:
Life's Finale
Skittering Invasion
Corpsehatch
Mass Polymorph
Treasure Hunt
Dead Reckoning
Reduce to Dreams
Diabolic Tutor
Sleep

Creatures (Small):
Hand of the Praetors
Skinrender
Pawn of Ulamog
Solemn Simulacrum
Aetherplasm
Triskelion
Hedron Crab
Aether Figment
Gomazoa
Kraken Hatchling
Mortician Beetle
Cephalid Pathmage
Hex Parasite
Evil Twin
Tidal Warrior
Guard Gomazoa
Plague Stinger

Creatures (Large):
Wrexial, the Risen Deep
Stormtide Leviathan
Artisan of Kozilek
Kederekt Leviathan
Lorthos, the Tidemaker
Phyrexian Vatmother
Deep-Sea Kraken
Scrapdiver Serpent
It That Betrays
Hand of Emrakul
Pathrazer of Ulamog
Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Lands:
Swamp x 11
Island x 11
Dimir Aqueduct
Eldrazi Temple
Sunken Ruins
Darkslick Shores
Reliquary Tower
Command Tower
Tainted Isle
Dreadship Reef
Haunted Fengraf
Terramorphic Expanse
Eye of Ugin
Jwar Isle Refuge
Halimar Depths

So... that's it, as it is currently. What do you think? What's your favorite commander?

The Positive Benefits of Gaming With Kids

2012-02-22T10:22:00.012-08:00

By Angie

The Positive Benefits of Gaming with Kids

We’ve already talked about Reasons to Play Board Games with Your Kids, and given you some advice on Teaching Games to Kids, so I thought I’d follow up with a list of some of the key benefits of playing games with your kids. These were written with interactive social games such as board games, card games, and role playing in mind, but many of these concepts apply to digital games as well, especially when families play them together.

It’s OK to Make Mistakes

Games allow an opportunity for kids to try and fail. So much of our society is focused around success and achievement, and even young children are having their efforts at learning “graded”. However, the best teacher is experience, and games provide situations in which children are encouraged and supported as they attempt new strategies and tactics, and in which they are “allowed” to fail safely. Failure provides a chance to examine your approach and modify your actions to try again next time, but in our society kids are often taught that failure is bad and an unacceptable conclusion to any event. In most games, failure is inevitable… no one can win 100% of the time, and that provides children with an opportunity to practice valuable life skills and be rewarded for perseverance, adaptation, and hard work. Kids need to have a safe environment to learn new skills, and games are a great way to provide structure and reinforcement of concepts in a fun setting.

The Thrill of Discovery

Games provide excellent discovery kits. Opening up and exploring the contents of a game box provides many different learning opportunities. Games contain pieces which can be used for sorting, color matching, exploring shapes and textures, and important tactile processing skills. Game components also provide a great medium for imaginative play and can be as exciting as any toy play set. Learning how to play a game provides another avenue of exploration and discovery. Kids learn about how the pieces work together, what happens when they take certain actions, and how specific strategies or tactics will play out.

Creative Power

Games provide children with a vast source of artistic and creative inspiration. The art and components for games are something that many children are drawn to, and interacting with the pieces of a game or visualizing the themes through the art of the game can help children to grasp a concept as well as inspire their own art, stories, and games. Many games contain amazing and detailed images of fantasy worlds, exciting characters, and grand adventures, all of which can help kids visualize and imagine their own whole new worlds.

Practicing Social Skills

A game is a structured social activity in which children learn and practice many valuable life skills. The core life lessons of sharing, taking turns, cooperation, good sportsmanship, accepting and learning from failures, positive social interaction, communication, critical thinking and analysis, decision making, self confidence, healthy competition, problem solving, and following rules and societal norms are built right into gaming experiences. Games offer a unique opportunity for children to explore these essential life skills while immersing themselves in imaginative play in an intrinsically rewarding activity.

Planning Ahead

Games allow children to learn and practice thinking ahead. Success in many games requires the participants to learn to control impulses, mentally plan out actions and enact a specific strategy, and that process creates a clear example of how choices and actions carry consequences. Replaying games offers kids a chance to see how different choices can result in different outcomes, and can encourage a thoughtful approach to decision making.

Learning New Words

Playing games with your kids provides an excellent opportunity for teaching new vocabulary and building their word base. Communication is important during any social activity, and games are no exception. Games usually have a theme or concept that carries its own set of terminology, and provide a great branching off point for discussions on a wide variety of subjects. Exposure to new ideas and new words is an important part of children’s vocabulary and language acquisition skills, and playing games will encourage and promote vocabulary expansion and word usage while having fun.

Task Mastery

Children learn by emulating adults and older children, and are most challenged by activities that are just outside of their current skill level. Many games provide a perfect opportunity for kids to practice and master new skills though watching and interacting with other players. Games also present a challenge in which repetition is encouraged, and accomplishing game goals can help reinforce a developing sense of self-efficacy. By playing games, kids are able to improve their cognitive, motor, and social skills while engaging in a rewarding activity.

Number Practice

Games provide a motivation and practical application of math and spatial reasoning skills. Counting spaces on a board or life meter or adding together the results of a dice roll are common gaming tasks. Many game components offer a strong internal motivation for kids to practice basic addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, fractions, and even geometry just by playing the game. Figuring out things like how far you have to move to get to a certain space, or what your combined skills roll might be, are essential parts of many card and board based games. Kids are learning and using these skills just by playing the game, and playing games for even a short time has been shown to dramatically increase students mathematical achievement. As kids grow beyond counting and expand their number fluency, even more complex learning opportunities emerge. Games have obvious and subtle math calculations that factor into the mechanics, and learning strategies in games can start out simple with calculating odds of success and grow increasingly more in depth as the vast possibilities are explored and discovered.

Providing Context

Games provide a great introduction to a new concept within a familiar context. Kids learn best when they can connect a new concept to a prior experience, and playing a game that introduces a specific theme will help kids make the connection between the real life events and their own in game experiences. For example, playing a game like Memoir 44 which simulates some of the major battles in World War 2 provides a kids with a concrete exercise in considering the problems the historical people faced, fortifications, superior firepower, beach landing crafts, airborne strikes, and coming up with solutions and tactics to solve the problems the game represent. This experience based mini-lesson provides an easy transition to a follow up learning exercise in which the historical context surrounding D-Day Landings will be much more interesting to the kids, and there is a personal tie in because of the time they spent immersed in the theme of the game

Complex Ideas

Games also allow kids to learn about abstraction. Young children are usually very concrete thinkers, and playing a game that simulates something they are familiar with can help them to begin to realize how certain systems, tasks, and aspects of life can be thought of in new ways. In a game such as Agricola, the kids are responsible for taking care of their own farm. Players make decisions about what crops to grow, which livestock to invest in, how they will provide food for their family, expand and renovate their home, pursue career options, and utilize tools to accomplish the task on their farm. By playing a game such as this, children are taught about how pieces represent other things, how the activities of daily life and time management affects working people, and how the whole game system works together to create this tense and exciting experience. Game pieces and game mechanics are used to represent objects and actions, and playing a game develops children’s understanding of symbolism and simulation as they discover how all of these systems work together to represent a bigger picture.

Quality Interaction

Playing games with kids allows you to spend time bonding over shared experiences and encourages meaningful interaction amongst participants. In comparison to passive experiences such as TV viewing, the quality and quantity of interactions with children is dramatically higher while engaged in an enjoyable activity such as gaming. Games provide many opportunities for conversation, laughter, camaraderie, and fond memories of time spent together. Playing games with your kids allows you an opportunity to “make deposits” in their positive attention “bank”, a core concept of positive behavior support parenting methods. By providing your child with fun and memorable experiences and reinforcing their learning and growth opportunities through gaming, you are also setting yourself up to reap the rewards of providing positive attention before needing to make a “withdrawl” (behavior correction or redirection). Kids want and need to interact with their parents, and playing games together can be an enjoyable activity that both fosters your child’s intellectual and social development as well as strengthen the bonds between you.

Lasting Effects

Sharing games with your children makes for enjoyable time spent together now, provides a variety of skill building and cognitive development opportunities for your children, and can create a lifelong connection you can always come back to. Family game nights are a fun tradition that can last a lifetime, and the memories of time spent together laughing, talking, learning, and growing through gaming are invaluable.

…and Many More

Did I miss anything? Have you noticed any specific benefits of playing games with your kids that you would like to share? Please jump into the comments below, we love to hear stories from our readers and are always looking to expand our ideas and knowledge base.

Do's and Don't's For Teaching Someone To Play Magic the Gathering

2012-02-20T12:35:00.001-08:00

by Julian

I was watching Nerdcore Rising the other night (documentary about a nerdy DJ called Frontalot) and one scene has a time lapse video of a dude teaching someone Magic the Gathering and stumbling through about 2 hours in the attempt. It was sad to watch but I’ve seen others struggle with the same problem. Now I know Magic has about a million and half rules, but explaining it really does not have to be such a daunting task. It doesn’t require a detailed flow chart matrix and a weekend seminar. You can teach your friend, your mom, or your kid to play magic in 15-20 minutes by using the right kind of decks and ignoring a whole host of rules they won’t really need until much much later.

Frustrated? Confused? I'm here to help.

BUILDING THE DECKS

First start with the right decks. This goes a long way to making the game easy to explain. You don’t have to debate the complexities of Ice Cauldron if it isn’t the deck. I recommend building two training decks for explaining to the new player. Here are some do's and don’t's for the deck building:

I love this card and I'm still unsure about how it works!

DO build mono-colored decks with only basic land. Need a mana, tap a land. Any land.

DON’T include non-land mana sources or lands that do special effects. Keep the equation symbol. Mana comes from tapping lands and this is the only thing lands do. Period.

DO include these five types of cards: lands, creatures, enchantments, sorceries, and instants. New players need to get familiar with the different card types.

DON’T include artifacts or planeswalkers. Artifacts come in a variety of types and basically mimic other card types like lands, creatures, or enchantments. Players will easily get artifacts once they understand the other cards. Don’t bog them down for now. Plansewalkers should also be avoided as they are extremely rare and work like no other card.

DO include lots of creatures. Make it a creature heavy deck. If new players only get one solid thing out of their first few games it should be the basics of how combat works.

DON’T include creatures with tap effects. Again, keep it simple. Creatures tap to attack. That’s it.

DO build a deck with a strong theme and cards that work together. New players should see how cards can build on other cards as part of the fun of Magic. Tribal decks can be a good choice.

DON’T build a deck with complex cards, upkeep, or alternate win conditions. To start, Magic is about summoning creatures and fighting it out. A few spells for variety and creature boosting is fine, but don’t make them deal with fancy graveyard effects, deck milling, or anything that requires an upkeep. Focus on solid, straight forward effects.

TEACHING THE GAME

Now that you’ve good built good decks for explaining the game, here are some tips for actually teaching it:

Shove aside your vast Magic knowledge and focus on the basics.

DO tell them the story of magic, but make it quick and simple. You are both wizards summoning creatures and casting spells to try and defeat your opponent. Tell them the theme of the deck they are about to play to help them be excited about the type of wizard they are.

DON’T explain their entire deck before they start. They don’t need to know every card or special ability. Tell them about haste or deathtouch when a creature hits the battlefield that has it.

DO explain the cards in this order: Lands (you play one a turn and they are how you cast any spells). Creatures (you summon them, they stick around and your main way of attacking your opponent). Enchantments (these are permanent effects that modify the game or specific creatures). Sorceries and Instants (These are effects that happen right now and go away. They are essentially the same card types except instants you can play out of turn, in response to things, and during combat).

DON’T explain the stack or resolving multiple card effects until it comes up in the course of play.

DO explain the following basics of combat. Creatures tap to attack. The defending player may assign untapped creatures to block. If unblocked, attacking creatures deal their power in damage to the defender. If blocked, an attacking creature fights the creature that blocked it. They each hit each other at the same time with their power. Any creature that takes a hit equal to or greater than its toughness dies and goes to the graveyard.

DON’T explain blocking one attacker with multiple creatures. For the first game or two, just let it be that one creature blocks one attacker.

DO play with hands revealed for the first few games or at least the first several turns. New players will have lots of questions about their cards and this will just speed up the explanations. Likewise, they can see what you are considering and you can explain your choices and why you made them.

DON’T tell them what to do on every single turn. Give them guidance for the first several turns, answer any questions they ask, and then let them explore their own deck. Part of the fun of magic is discovery and you will ruin their first play experience if you hold their hand every step of the way.

Please let me know if you find these tips helpful or not and share any tips of your own in the comments!

Here Comes a New Challenger!

2012-02-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

Hi all! My name is Julian and I'm pleased to be jumping in and joining the GuG writing crew. I am a dad who is in to board games, card games, rpgs and video games. I've been friends with Randy and Angie for over a decade and I am honored to contribute to this blog. I look forward to providing some fun/helpful content and getting to know all of you faithful readers of this fine blog.

This is me when I shaved my beard all crazy awhile back.

Often Playing: Skyrim, 7 Wonders, Dominion, Magic the Gathering (Commander)
Often Wishing: My 9 month old boy would go back to sleep!
Often Working On: School, leveling up my house, and a super cool family friendly RPG with my GuG buddies.

If you want to know anything more about me I am happy to answer any question in the comments. Hit me with whatever crazy ya got! :)

We're Growing Up!

2012-02-13T23:22:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone!

We just wanted to update you all about what we're up to. We haven't had a lot of blog posts this year so far, but we've been really working on some cool ideas and ways to connect with our readers and provide more consistent content updates. Here's what's on the horizon:

1. We're adding another regular contributor! Yay! Our friend Julian is a father of two little gamers-to-be, a game designer, reveiwer, and blogger, and an all around cool guy who is going to start providing weekly articles to the site. We're doing this to add in another perspective, help us get content going out more often, and because we love reading what he has to say and think you will too! Look for his debut soon!

2. We've finally decided to commit to a more regualr schedule of blogging. With some life issues sorted out and arranged, we're ready to jump back into producing regular content about gaming, raising gamer kids, the positive social and educational value of games, and other fun ideas/how-to's/cute pictures/gaming stories/whatever else sounds fun. You can expect to see something from each of us adults (Randy, Angie, and Julian) once a week, plus bonus posts from the kiddos whenever the mood strikes them!

3. We're updating the look of the site. Please hang in there with us as we make the transition from a basic blogger template to a much cooler looking (and reader friendly) layout, with better visuals and pictures and all that high tech stuff. Hopefully our weird layout and awkward framing days will be behind us!

We're Growing Up... but just a little bit. If you have any suggestions, feedback, fun gaming stories to share, or ideas of posts you'd like to see, please leave us a comment or shoot us an email at growingupgamers AT gmail DOT com. :)

STOP SOPA! STOP PIPA!

2012-01-18T06:10:00.000-08:00

http://sopastrike.com/

GOALS!

2012-01-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!!!

It's a new year, and we're taking this opportunity to reflect on our gaming goals from 2011 and set out our new goals for 2012. We're really excited to play EVEN MORE games together this year!

Katie on her goals from last year:

Katie playing MAgic with her werewolves deck!

1. My first goal was to play harder and harder games and I think I did that. Magic is harder than Settlers of Catan and I’ve been playing Magic for a while now.

2. My second goal was to learn to read while I’m playing games. I did pretty good on that too because I can read some words on Magic cards; like “creature”, “flying”, “deathtouch”, “wolf”, “human”, “forest”, “rats” and “zombies”.

3. My third goal was to play 100 different games with my family. Well, we kept a list for a long time and I added it up to almost 100, like 70 or so.…and then I learned how to play Magic and that’s all I mostly want to play now! I think its ok that I didn’t get exactly 100 games, because I set a really high goal and at least I got to play a LOT of different games. Sometimes its fun to play games you already know, and Magic is the best game I’ve played in my life.

Katie’s Goals for 2012:

Damia, Sage of Stone! Katie's new Commander Deck

1. Play Magic 155 times! At least 6 of those times I want it to be Commander, because I have my own Commander deck now. Collect as much GOOD Magic cards as I can, like maybe 100 different cool ones. I want to get as many cards from Dark Ascension and Avacyn Restored as I can, because those are the new sets I know about for next year!!

2. Try 33 new board games, and 33 new video games. Because I never know if I might find a game I like even better than Magic!

3. Play “Just Dance” or another exercise game 5 times a week with my mom. I love exercise, YEAH! Playing a game while you exercise is even better! YEAH!!!

"Big-Boy-Three-Year-Old" Jack:

"I am Robo-Rally!"

While Jack happily chimed in last year, he doesn’t really understand the concept of “reflecting on past goals”.

I will say though that he played with lots of dice AND cards AND robots this year, and he especially enjoyed playing with RoboRally pieces.

We’ll call that a resounding success. And he wants you all to know he's 3 now!

Jack’s Goals for 2012:

1. Learn to play Mario Kart and play lots of Mario games. Also collect lots of Mario cards. And I want to beat Once Upon a Monster!

2. Ask to play games from the shelf, say “Pleeeeease”, then clean ‘um up so I can be allowed in the game room!

3. I have a dream I can play Magic with you. When I’m bigger. (Awwwwwww!!!!)

Randy's Goals from last year:

Randy blogging

1. My first goal was to play in a Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 campaign. I am very happy to say that this was successful, and I am now having a great time playing Pathfinder! My current character is here.

2. Another goal was to help Katie meet her goal of playing 100 different games. Well... we didn't hit 100, but we had a darn good time playing the 70 or so we did play. Maybe we would have gotten farther if the last one wasn't Magic: The Gathering!

3. My last goal was to get a game ready for publication. Not there yet, but I am working on it. Here is a link to an interview of me.

Randy's Gaming Goals for 2012:

Gaming with Auntie Shannon

1. Play more games with family and friends!

2. Work on my painting skills, with the hope of someday becoming good enough to do alters. Alters are Magic cards that have been artistically enhanced, and seems like a fun way to enhance a favorite card. I don't expect to ever get to the level of the guys who do this professionally; maybe just enough to have some fun with our collection.

3. Blog more. Not just game reviews, but opinions on gaming, and aspects of the hobby that get me excited.

Angie's Goals from last year:

I got a picture with Super Mario!!!

I already reflected on many of my challenges and the things I learned in 2011 in another post, so I will just pick one specific goal from last year to focus on. We started out the year really strong with family game nights and I really enjoyed having a specific time set aside where we all four played games together, but we got distracted with OUTSIDE when summer came around and it’s definitely something I want to bring back. Family Game Night FTW*!

(*For The Win, apparently there is another use of those letters, but not from me!)

Angie’s Goals for 2012

I love seeing my kids play games together!

1. Make more time for family gaming, and really try to say “YES!” whenever the kids ask to play a game together.

2. Blog! I’m going to try to post something or help the kids write and post something at least once a week.

3. Get together a semi-regular group for playing Magic. In a more general sense, this goal is really just about making time to play the games we love with people we enjoy spending time with!

We Want to Hear From You!!!

What are your goals for the upcoming year? What type of content would you like to see more of on this blog? As we work to find our groove for blogging we really want to take a moment to say thank you to our readers! We would love to know what YOU are thinking, and appreciate any comments or feedback. Until next time...

Game On 2.0 Video Game exhbiti at OMSI

Twenty-Eleven: A Year in Retrospect

2012-01-01T23:57:00.000-08:00

by Angie

As I think about 2011, I have been reflecting on the things I’ve learned, and how I’ve changed and grown over the year. We started this blog in December 2010 and really got going strong in early 2011. However, we finished up the second half of the year with relatively few posts. We’re still playing games, and we have a lot of fun ideas for posts bouncing around, but they never seem to make it onto the blog. This is something we are hoping to remedy this year, and so we’ve identified what was keeping us from posting more frequently and are going to try to remedy those issues.

OUCH!

The first major issue is that I have been recovering from a head injury and related complications, which has made it hard for me to use the computer, read rulebooks, or write for more than a few minutes at a time. This has seriously impacted our gaming, blogging, and every other aspect of our lives. I’m on medical leave from my doctoral program and focusing on getting better and taking care of myself and my family. As I continue to work on recovering, I am hoping to begin posting more frequently again.

Lessons Learned

The second thing we’ve come to realize is that we love to blog about things spontaneously, whenever and about whatever ideas strike us. As our blog started getting followed and noticed more, we began receiving (and occasionally soliciting) review copies of games we were excited about. Turns out, reviewing games on any kind of schedule is just not for us. We love to talk about games we enjoy, and we are very grateful to receive games from companies and individuals, but we got overloaded very quickly with games to play, reviews to write, and stuff to keep up on. As review games rolled in, we tried all kinds of lists and systems to keep track of what needed to be played and written about… and it became very overwhelming for us. Kudos to the prolific reviewers out there, I never realized how much effort and consistency goes into providing high quality reviews regularly. Unfortunately for us, gaming started to feel a bit like working and when we had some free time instead of sitting down to play whatever seemed like fun at the time we’d look at the big list on the wall and sigh, many times electing to do something like watch TV over learning a new game. No one wants their reviews to be written by someone in that frame of mind, and we don’t want to feel compelled to “have to” play or write about anything specific… so our new policy is that we are not going to be “game reviewers”. We will likely still review games from time to time, but it will be because we are passionate and excited to do so. We’re very sorry to everyone who has sent us a game and not seen a post about it, there are a lot of great games out there and we have loved the opportunity to try new ones out, but we just can’t keep up with playing and reviewing games like "the pros" at this point in our lives.

One Game to Rule ~~Them~~ Us All

The third factor that has influenced our lack of blogging is that we’ve become smitten with Magic: the Gathering again, and Katie has discovered a new passion. We’ve been playing and thinking about and talking about Magic more than any other game, but we are such casual kitchen table Magic players that we haven’t really felt that we’ve had many meaningful things to say on the subject. Well, we’re over that, and have decided to just share our love of Magic with you all for as long as it’s what we’re playing together as a family. We’re still going to talk about board games and video games, but why not throw Magic in the mix?

Katie's first game of Commander, 1/1/2012

Thanks to all of you who have hung in there with us this past year, and welcome to all the new readers out there. We’re just a family of gamers who love playing together and talking about our experiences. Our journey as bloggers has hit a few bumps through the year, but we’re still here and we’re glad you are too!

Magic in a Box!

2011-12-28T07:51:00.000-08:00

by Randy

Hello, hello! Happy holidays to everyone out there! I hope everyone is having a great time celebrating with their families, and hopefully playing a few games, too. Today I wanted to share a gift idea and craft project. This is a Christmas gift that my wife and I put together for Katie, who just turned six. We introduced her to Magic: the Gathering this year, and she has been craving more!

Angie and I have played Magic for a few years now. Though initially we were hesitant to start playing a collectible card game, we have had a blast with this. Currently, our preferred format for playing is Commander, which is a multiplayer format we feel works great for casual players like us. Katie also showed interest, and, earlier in the year, set a goal to learn to read better so that she could play Magic with us (I'll let Angie relate more on that later, if she wants to!). Now, she wants to play Commander. And Angie came up with the idea to make a Commander deck for her for Christmas with Damia, Sage of Stone as the general.

Here's where I come in: I made a box for the deck. I started with a standard small corrugated cardbox that you can pick up at any card shop. I have been a miniature painter for years, but I haven't really done much in the way of character painting. Still, I decided that on every face, I would paint an interpretation of a card that appears in her deck. I was pretty happy with the results, for the most part. If you click on the name of the piece, it will take you to the card listing in the Magic: The Gathering card database, the Gatherer.

Howlpack Alpha: We picked up the Mayor of Avabruck/Howlpack Alpha card at the Innistrad prerelease and Katie loves this card. Her favorite deck thus far has been a green one that has a variety of effects that create Wolf tokens and this seemed like a no-brainer to put in her Commander deck.

Damia, Sage of Stone: This is the general of her deck (for what that means, check out the Commander Rules). This was the first side I painted, and sadly my least favorite; it was a bit later in painting that I "found my groove". If you check the link, this is the one that diverges the most from the card art.

Wydwen, the Biting Gale: A fun and tricky fairy to throw in. I don't feel I did the shimmery pieces justice, but whatever. I'm happy with the background, and I feel it came out okay.

Prized Unicorn: In a six year old girl's deck, a unicorn is practically obligatory. Not only is this card pretty, it's also super useful; I've seen many games won by use of this card. I was really happy with this piece, too. This one is tied with the next one for being my favorite.

Full Moon's Rise: This is a utility card that boosts Werewolf creatures, of which there are a few in the deck. I really liked the card art for this one and thought it would be great for the front of the box and with a Magic logo glued on top. I liked my results on this one!

I also did a top for Katie's box. This is not my favorite piece, but gets the point across. Here it is:

So that's it. Katie loved it, and the deck. If we feel particularly ambitious after a few rounds of play and tweaking, I may ask Angie (who is building the actual deck) to post the deck list. If we do, please note that it isn't a deck focused on power combos or designed for super-competitive play, it is instead focused on simple rules and ease of play for a beginner.

For those interested in something like this as a creative project, I want to point out that the box itself is one that you can find at any card shop for around a dollar. The paint I used for this one was tube acrylics (Reeves brand) applied with Citadel brand brushes, with the help of a Privateer Press P3 Wet Palette. If you work with acrylic paint at all, I highly recommend use of a wet palette (Google it and you will find both commercially available ones, as well as instructions for making your own). Prior to painting, I used a non-photo blue colored pencil to lay down the lines to start with. These pencils are super light and will not show up even with heavily thinned layers of paint. Here is another similar box I made for my son for his Super Mario Bros. trading cards:

Anyway, that's that! Any other gamer geeks out there who did game-themed crafts for holiday gifts? We'd love some links!

Event Report: Rainy Day Games Game Day and Auction!

2011-10-22T19:48:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Hello! Welcome back! As you all may know, we were at Rainy Day Games' Game Day and Auction at the Washington County Fairgrounds last weekend, and we had an excellent time. Angie and I arranged a weekend in the Portland area to coincide with the event so we could get in some gaming, and haul out a few games. We were not disappointed.

We got things started by playing a great game called Mermaid Beach with its twelve year old designer! How often do you get to have a game taught to you by its designer? Emily Ehlers was fun to play with, and we enjoyed playing a couple rounds with her and her mother. In fact, we like it so much we're going to need to Katie to try it out and share what she thinks.

Next, we played a little Ascension with James Eastham and his son. James is one of the designers (along with Steve Ellis, one of the owners of Rainy Day Games) of the Railways of the World Card Game, another game we think very highly of. Sadly, we had to call it quits before we finished up. Why did we not finish, you ask? The auction started!

For those of you who haven't seen this auction, let me tell you... it's a lot of games. I was amazed at the sheer number of games on the tables. Chances are, your local game store doesn't have this many games, and this was probably the main attraction for most of the attendees. The bidding started silent auction-style, with bidders writing a bid on a sheet attached to the games. After a while of that, an auctioneer then started doing live bids for items that received three or more written bids. All in all, it was handled very well.

One of thee tables of games!

You're probably wondering what we walked out with. We certainly left with a nice armload. Here's the list:

-Lords of Vegas
-Camp
-Snorta
-Talisman
-Runebound 2nd Edition
-Bringing Down the House
-Munchkin Holiday Edition

That's seven games... and we paid significantly below retail. Next year, we're going to be a little more prepared. We didn't put any games into the auction to sell, but we will next time. Sellers receive the sale price in in-store credit at Rainy Day Games. It's a great way to turn games on your shelf into new games. And even better, some other gamer is going to get to enjoy the game! As far as I can tell, that's a win all around.

Well, I'd like to wrap this up by saying a big "Thank You!" to Steve and Amy Ellis of Rainy Day Games, as well as Emily Ehlers, James Eastham and everyone else who gamed with us. We had a fantastic time and hope to do all of this again!

Rainy Day Games Game Day!

2011-10-10T10:21:00.000-07:00

by Randy and Angie

Hey there!

We want to alert everyone to an upcoming gaming event in the Pacific Northwest, particularly for people in the Portland/Beaverton area. If you've read our blog, you have certainly heard us speak about our good friends at Rainy Day Games. In our opinion, this is the best game store ever. And in no small part due to the great events they put on. Today we are talking about the Rainy Day Games Game Day and Auction happening on Sunday, October 16th at the Washington County Fair Complex.

The first component of this daying is the gaming. From 9am to 11pm you can play games. All day. Board games will definitely be the most represented, by there will also be roleplaying events. You will at the very least find D&D RPGA and Lair Assault events for official offerings. For the board games, people may sign up to run their favorite games throughout the day. If you are in the area and like gaming, I would advise you to consider saving this date on your calendar.

The second component is the auction, and this absolutely rocks. Gamers bring in their old games which can be bid on in auction. A live auctioneer will be present starting at 2pm. If your game gets sold, you get that much in-store credit at Rainy Day Games. And other gamers can pick up games at well below retail. A completely win-win situation! Note: Game drop-offs for the auction are 10/1-10/12; hurry if you want to put your games in!

And what's more is that we (the Growing Up Gamers crew) will be present for at least part of the day to cover the event, game, and (hopefully!) add some gems to our collection. We hope to game with you!

Complete details can be found at this link:

Rainy Day Games Game Day!

Join us for a great day of fun!

Conquest of Planet Earth!

2011-10-03T16:01:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Greetings, gamers of the internet! We of the Growing Up Gamers collective come in peace to be your benevolent and protective game reviewers. Do not be alarmed. We have recently acquired a review copy of Conquest of Planet Earth from Flying Frog Productions and wish to impart our wisdom upon you. Or consume your resources and leave it a dried husk. Whichever works. We have not yet come to a decision, so on with the review.

Are any of you familiar with Flying Frog Productions? We certainly are. I really enjoyed playing Last Night on Earth, their scenario-based zombie survival game. Complete with a soundtrack and stunning photographic art, it is a very nice game and worth a playthrough. So we were pretty excited to try out Conquest of Planet Earth, with its quirky 1950’s B-movie saucermen theme. And we love it.

How it looks

For starters, it’s pretty . This game does not use the fun photography and makeup of the Last Night… series. Instead, this goes for a more traditional painted/drawn style. The alien races are all well illustrated and really convey those B-movie tropes. You could totally see these in a monster movie from the 50’s or 60’s, or maybe even off of the original Star Trek series. The Rantillion Beetlemen, the Fishmen of Atlorak, the Vyborian Arbiters… heck, there’s even some warrior-women and and space emperors in faux-Roman clothing. The miniatures are well-scuplted, with four tokens of each color (all the same sculpt), and four unique ally tokens. They very much capture the theme. Embrace the cheesiness! And then there’s the soundtrack…

Player tokens

Why a soundtrack for a game? Why not! On the CD, there are eleven tracks of instrumental music that goes a long way to set the mood for the game. Most of the ten alien races have tracks named after them, themed after their breed of vileness. Crazy, spacey, atmospheric… I highly recommend those of you trying out the game play this in the background. Sure, it’s not absolutely necessary; but don’t let that stop you from turning a playthrough of a boardgame into an experience.

Four different games in one!

The Orzax

For those of you really trying to make the most of your gaming dollar, I want to point out that there are four ways to play this game. That’s right: four. The first is the competitive game. In this, each player plays an alien species bent on taking over the Earth, but there’s these pesky humans in the way… not to mention the other aliens who want this prime real estate! The second is the cooperative game, in which the alien players join forces to take over the Earth, but the humans are much craftier and have a more active resistance. The third is a team game, which has two teams of two aliens fighting for the planet. And the last is the solo game, which is just like the cooperative but it is played solitaire, with the player choosing to play one or more alien races, again, trying to subjugate Earth. Of those four, the competitive and cooperative games fit our play style the best, and both offer great gameplay.

Overview

All styles have a similar board setup, with a central human capital and an additional adjoining board for each alien player. Location cards are played on the spaces when aliens move to an undiscovered one, and each have a Terror rating (victory points for the controller) and a Resistance score. The resistance score determines the number of battles a player will do with human defenders from the Resistance deck. Watch out! Those crafty humans have ways of joining forces and some cards will stack and give bonuses. Woe to the saucerperson who finds Captain Fantastic… he’s the toughest the humans have to offer, a pulp-era hero ready to swing his super-powered fists at any alien daring to land on his planet! A dice roll for each side, plus modifiers, determines the outcome, though cards in players’ hands can, of course, alter outcomes. Simple resolution, meaningful choices… perfect for a theme-heavy game of this sort.

Our thoughts

The Venezian Matriarchy

We love this game. It’s just that simple. This is a game that can be equally enjoyed by those looking for a game with a quirky, fun theme, or a more strategy-oriented player. Granted, there is enough randomness here that hardcore eurogamers may have cause to turn up their noses, but this isn’t for them. This is an experience in a box. If you have ever delighted in watching a cheeseball low-fi movie with aliens and rayguns, check this game out. You won’t regret it. My advice is to make a night of it; try watching something like The Green Slime (1968, rating a whopping 3.8 of 10 stars at IMDB!), or maybe just an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series after playing the game. You'll have a blast!

Bellwether Games interviews Randy!

2011-09-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Hey, all!

I just wanted to let everyone know about some upcoming projects by the Growing Up Gamers crew. Bellwether Games, publishers of Drop Site, did an interview with me about some game design work I'm doing (some with my wife Angie and Julian of Cool Factor 5). We discuss Princess of the Hill as well as some other projects in the works. Drop by and check it out! Here's the link:

Interview with Randy

A big thanks to Dennis of Bellwether Games for giving me this opportunity!

Befuzzled!

2011-09-11T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hello! Who likes party games? We at Growing up Gamers do, and we wanted to share one with you. The excellent people at FunQ Games provided a review copy of their newest party game, Befuzzled. And here are our thoughts...

Okay... party games. It's an interesting and important genre in the boardgaming world. I would guess that most boardgamers had their first taste of boardgaming via a party game. Overall, they focus on social interaction. The rules tend to be simple and the idea is that you can open the box and have things going in a few minutes. Some party games are games to play at parties, and some are kind of meant to -be- parties, meaning they consume a lot of time and overshadow other social activities. A good example of the latter is Cranium, though most people could probably fill in one or two more. The game we're looking at today fits in the latter category... a game meant to be an activity (and a fun one at that!).

Befuzzled by FunQ Games is light, quick and fun. The game consists of three types of cards: Shape, Flip and Action. Eight Action cards get dealt out and randomly paired with one of the eight Shape cards. Once that has been set up, one player is the judge for the turn and looks at the Flip card, which will have one of the eight shapes on it. The judge then reveals the Flip card and will award the card to the first player to perform the action corresponding to the shape on the card. The the next player to the left is the judge, and the process is repeated until the Flip cards are gone. Pretty simple, yes?

What makes this game a lot of fun is the frantic race to perform the action. The actions range from Clap Hands, Laugh to Say "Arr" Like a Pirate. It's very amusing to see several people clamoring to pat themselves on the head! Each Action card also has an illustration with a little guy who looks like Einstein showing the action (to the extent they can be shown; the "say" actions have him with a word balloon). This is great... and I'll tell you why.

We at Growing Up Gamers are all about playing games with kids. We love to teach them to play games, and we believe that are great reasons to play games with them. It's always great when a game has features that can make it more feasible to play with non-readers. The little illustration of each action allows you to play this with kids too young to read. To scale this to work with a pre-reader, simply replace any Action cards that come up that require reading. There are plenty of Action cards that will work for kids who haven't yet learned to read, so at the startup swap out any like "Say 'Befuzzled'" for something like "Make Antlers" or "Flap Arms". Then prior to starting, go over each action and perform it. Voila! Kids are ready to play!

Our verdict on this game is that we like it a lot. It's a party game makes no illusions of being "the" thing at the party, but can certainly generate a few laughs. This is an excellent choice for younger kids, with the advised changes above. The box recommends age 7 and up, but we played this with our five year old and had a blast. And we're not the only ones to think so, either! Creative Child Magazine named it their 2011 Game of the Year. Check it out!

Using Games to Teach: Through the Ages- A Story of Civilization

2011-08-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

By Angie

The Big Idea:

Games are fun. They invoke optimism and curiosity, create systems in which it is ok to try new strategies, acceptable to make mistakes and to fail, and provide an environment in which to compete with others in healthy ways while developing and practicing a myriad of social skills. Games encourage us to enjoy time spent together socially while also critical thinking and doing what our brains love to do best: solving problems. Games help boost a sense of efficacy and inspire esteem, in a game you CAN accomplish great things, and believing in yourself is the foundation for all future successes. Regardless of their inherent “educational value”, games provide all of these amazing benefits and more. Many games also involve opportunities to learn and practice reading skills, language, vocabulary development, math concepts, and spatial relationships… to name a few! Games also provide meaningful opportunities to hone essential life skills such as thinking ahead, strategic planning, resource management, positive social interactions, conflict resolution, and teamwork. Some games model basic economic principles such as supply and demand, while others encourage players to evaluate multiple possibilities and decide on the best course of action, while still others demonstrate probability in action. Learning is everywhere in our lives, and games offer a very specific type of experience that is innately educational in all of these ways, and likely more that I haven’t listed here.

A basic concept of educational theory and pedagogy taught to teachers is that students learn best when they are engaged and interested in the material, and that a sound way to build engagement is to connect the material at hand to prior experiences or background knowledge. Effective teachers often build lesson plans that include “anticipatory sets”, activities designed to introduce students to concept and pique their curiosity, or review concepts previously learned. Effective teachers also find ways to connect the subject material in a personal way to the students, asking questions, invoking imagery, telling stories, and progressively building up ideas so that students understand not only the learning objective of the day, but the context in which it occurs.

So, here’s where I think a good number of modern board games can REALLY shine… many “off the shelf” games designed with optimal play experience in mind (not learning objectives or content standards!) can be used to introduce broad concepts to students and set up a base of knowledge and experience that will help cultivate curiosity and create connections. By interacting with game pieces and cards representing historical elements, playing through systems that are designed to emulate some of the important events and relevant themes, and experiencing fun and engaging game play centered around a specific time period, teachers can use games as an activity to help create an optimal learning environment that will motivate students to learn the content. The game doesn’t need to “teach” the concepts, just introduce them in a fun way, provide some interesting mechanics that encourage thoughtful decision making, and create an experience the players will remember.

This is a bit of a revolutionary idea, and it doesn’t necessarily integrate well into a typical classroom setting, however I think this is something worth exploring. Within the current educational climate, this idea could be implemented through parental interventions (play games with your kids!), afterschool board game clubs, through individual or small group tutoring sessions to help struggling students, and in libraries and other community outlets to enhance learning. Additionally, if time and resources allow, many games could be played in small groups in the classroom, or modified for whole group play. Games can be used to introduce a lesson block topic or could have entire lessons built around the concepts presented in the game. The point is to make the learning fun for the students and to engage them by activating their curiosity about a topic and providing relevant “experience” that can’t be easily replicated in other ways.

Forming connections with material is a key factor in retention and engagement, and playing games gives students a potential reason to care about a topic. Have you ever heard a student ramble off a giant list of stats and details about a game character they loved? Looking at ways we can use the power of games to interest students is an invaluable step in providing top notch engaging curriculum. Board games seem like an especially great avenue because they encourage social interaction and require the players to keep track of the game state information that is often hidden behind the scenes in video games, which can help provide a more solid understanding of the overall framework and enhance the learning capabilities.

An Example: Using Through the Ages

Here are a few general ideas of how existing games could be used in this way with a complex game called Through the Ages. Through the Ages is an in-depth civilization building game by Eagle Games with a long play time that may make it challenging to use in a classroom, but it offers amazing potential to explore world history and provides a broad knowledge base upon which a teacher could build a vast array of lessons that connect back to the experience of playing the game.

As an introduction to world history, this game has mechanics that represent the how development of new technologies influenced the capabilities for food and resource production. It provides a wide range of historical leaders which each have game play mechanics that help reinforce the philosophies and tactics they are best known for. It uses wonders to present historical monuments, and again reinforces the theme through mechanics. This game provides a broad reference and jumping off point for many historical explorations, and it’s amazing strategic depth and game system really reinforce the theme well and provide an opportunity to practice many of the skills discussed above as well as cover a broad base of world history.

Playing through a game of Through the Ages can help provide an experienced base context for a wide array of lessons, and can inspire curiosity that will motivate students. “Who is Hammurabi?” “What is the Kremlin?” “Why does Genghis Khan give me a bonus to my horseman units?” On the flipside of that, playing a game that includes historical figures and places will provide something for a student to “latch” on to when they are learning about a topic. “Oh, Frederick Barbarossa? I remember him! He was my leader in that game we played and I got to turn my workers into military with him… that totally makes sense because he led his people into all those wars”. Educators can capitalize on this curiosity or reinforce these connections and make the experience richer and more educational.

In addition to specific people and places, key concepts can be represented in a game in a way that allows students to experiment with these ideas and really get a grasp of how they work. For example, in Through the Ages technology advances such as the development of irrigation (then later selective breeding and mechanized agriculture) really affects the food production of a civilization, which influences the population level that can be sustained, the happiness of the people, and the ability to generate armies. These broad concepts can be emphasized by a teacher and used as a basis for lessons on how the availability of food has significantly impacted civilization growth, achievement, and conflict throughout history. With the experience of interacting within the environment of a concrete game mechanic, this concept can become much more tangible for students, and also far more interesting.

I could go a lot deeper into the specifics of this game, or the multiple "teachable" moments this might present so over the next few months I am planning to develop some of these concepts into curriculum ideas and discuss some specific games that seem especially suited for this purpose here on the blog. Feel free to comment or send any ideas or comments my way. I’d love to hear what other people think, how games have worked (or not worked!) for you in educational settings, and recommendations for games that can be used to teach “right out of the box”.

Sacred Arrow for Pathfinder RPG

2011-08-20T23:32:00.000-07:00

Hello! I noticed that we were neglecting pen-and-paper roleplaying for a while, so I decided that I would share a bit of custom content I made for my favorite roleplaying game, Pathfinder. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game is the successor to Dungeons & Dragons version 3.5. One of the very first prestige classes in D&D 3rd Edition, the Arcane Archer has stood the test of time. It's an excellent concept: an elf fighting tradition that fuses arcane magic and archery.

So what I have done is I took the Pathfinder version of the classes and modified it to combine divine magic and archery... why should the arcanists get all the love? I think that this is an overdue concept! I have reworked abilities to focus on combating enemies of the faith, including abilites primarily good against undead and outsiders. So... here it is! Enjoy!

Sacred Arrow

Elves or half-elves who seek to perfect the use of the bow in service to their deity sometimes pursue the path of the Sacred Arrow. Sacred Arrows are masters of ranged combat, as they possess the ability to strike at targets with unerring accuracy and can imbue their arrows with powerful spells. Arrows fired by Sacred Arrows smite the enemies of their faiths. At the height of their power, Sacred Arrows can also deliver the blessings of their deities via their arrows, as well.

Those who have trained as both rangers and clerics excel as Sacred Arrows, although other multiclass combinations are not unheard of. Sacred Arrows may be found wherever elves travel, but not all are allies of the elves. Many, particularly half-elven Sacred Arrows, use elven traditions solely for their own gain, or worse, against the elves whose very traditions they adhere to.

Role: Sacred Arrows deal death from afar, winnowing down opponents while their allies rush into hand-to-hand combat. With their capacity to unleash hails of arrows on the enemy, they represent the pinnacle of ranged combat.

Alignment: Sacred Arrows can be of any alignment, though as elves and half-elves tend to be free-spirited, they are rarely lawful. Similarly, it is uncommon to find evil elves and half-elves, and the path of the Sacred Arrow is therefore more often pursued by good or neutral characters.

Hit Die: d10.

Requirements

To qualify to become a Sacred Arrow, a character must fulfill all the following criteria.

Race: Elf or half-elf (Note: many think this requirement is unnecessary!)

Base Attack Bonus: +6.

Feats: Point Blank Shot, Precise Shot, Weapon Focus (longbow or shortbow).

Spells: Ability to cast 1st-level divine spells.

Class Skills

The Sacred Arrow's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Knowledge (Religion), Knowledge (The Planes), Perception (Wis), Stealth (Dex), and Survival (Wis).

Skill Ranks at Each Level: 4 + Int modifier.

Table: Sacred Arrow
Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special	Spells per Day
1st	+1	+0	+1	+1	Enhance arrows (magic)	—
2nd	+2	+0	+1	+1	Align arrow	+1 level of existing class
3rd	+3	+1	+2	+2	Enhance arrows (righteousness and retribution)	+1 level of existing class
4th	+4	+1	+2	+2	Seeker arrow	+1 level of existing class
5th	+5	+2	+3	+3	Enhance arrows (distance)	—
6th	+6	+2	+3	+3	Disruption arrow	+1 level of existing class
7th	+7	+2	+4	+4	Enhance arrows (elemental burst)	+1 level of existing class
8th	+8	+3	+4	+4	Hail of arrows	+1 level of existing class
9th	+9	+3	+5	+5	Enhance arrows (aligned)	—
10th	+10	+3	+5	+5	Arrow of life	+1 level of existing class

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the Sacred Arrow prestige class.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A Sacred Arrow is proficient with all simple and martial weapons, light armor, medium armor, and shields.

Spells per Day: At the indicated levels, a Sacred Arrow gains new spells per day as if he had also gained a level in an divine spellcasting class he belonged to before adding the prestige class. He does not, however, gain other benefits a character of that class would have gained, except for additional spells per day, spells known (if he is a spontaneous spellcaster), and an increased effective level of spellcasting. If a character had more than one divine spellcasting class before becoming a Sacred Arrow, he must decide to which class he adds the new level for purposes of determining spells per day.

Enhance Arrows (Su): At 1st level, every nonmagical arrow a Sacred Arrow nocks and lets fly becomes magical, gaining a +1 enhancement bonus. Unlike magic weapons created by normal means, the archer need not spend gold pieces to accomplish this task. However, an archer's magic arrows only function for him.

In addition, the Sacred Arrow's arrows gain a number of additional qualities as he gains additional levels. The elemental, elemental burst, and aligned qualities can be changed once per day, when the Sacred Arrow prays for spells.

At 3rd level, every nonmagical arrow fired by a Sacred Arrow gains one of the following weapon qualities: Merciful, Ghost Touch, Undead Bane, (Aligned) Outsider Bane (chosen alignment must not be either component of patron deity’s alignment)

At 5th level, every nonmagical arrow fired by a Sacred Arrow gains the distance weapon quality.

At 7th level, every nonmagical arrow fired by a Sacred Arrow may gain one of the following elemental burst weapon qualities: flaming burst, icy burst, or shocking burst instead of one of the qualities in the Enhance Arrows (Righteousness and Retribution).

At 9th level, every nonmagical arrow fired by a Sacred Arrow gains one of the following aligned weapon qualities: anarchic, axiomatic, holy, or unholy. The Sacred Arrow cannot choose an ability that is the opposite of his alignment, or the alignment of his patron deity (for example, a lawful good Sacred Arrow could not choose anarchic or unholy as his weapon quality).

The bonuses granted by a magic bow apply as normal to arrows that have been enhanced with this ability. Only the larger enhancement bonus applies. Duplicate abilities do not stack.

Align Arrow (Sp): Starting at 2^nd level, every nonmagical arrow fired by a Sacred Arrow is aligned, as per the spell Align Weapon. For the purpose of overcoming damage reduction, the arrow is treated as Good/Evil/Lawful/Chaotic (only one). The Sacred Arrow may not choose an alignment opposite his own, or of his patron deity. Therefore, a Lawful Neutral Sacred Arrow of a Lawful Good deity could not choose Evil, for instance.

Seeker Arrow (Sp): At 4th level, a Sacred Arrow can launch an arrow at a target known to him within range, and the arrow travels to the target, even around corners. Only an unavoidable obstacle or the limit of the arrow's range prevents the arrow's flight. This ability negates cover and concealment modifiers, but otherwise the attack is rolled normally. Using this ability is a standard action (and shooting the arrow is part of the action). A Sacred Arrow can use this ability once per day at 4th level, and one additional time per day for every two levels beyond 4th, to a maximum of four times per day at 10th level.

Disruption Arrow (Sp): At 6th level, a Sacred Arrow can launch an arrow once per day at an undead target, granting it the disruption quality, except that the Save DC is 10 + half the Sacred Arrow’s class level + the Sacred Arrows Wisdom modifier. Using this ability is a standard action (and shooting the arrow is part of the action). A Sacred Arrow can use this ability once per day at 6th level, and one additional time per day for every two levels beyond 6th, to a maximum of three times per day at 10th level.

Hail of Arrows (Sp): In lieu of his regular attacks, once per day a Sacred Arrow of 8th level or higher can fire an arrow at each and every target within range, to a maximum of one target for every Sacred Arrow level she has earned. Each attack uses the archer's primary attack bonus, and each enemy may only be targeted by a single arrow.

Arrow of Life (Sp): At 10^th level, once per day the Sacred Arrow may fire an arrow at a target as a touch attack. If it hits, the arrow itself does no damage but instead acts as a Heal spell cast at the Sacred Arrow’s effective caster level. As with a normal Heal spell, this may be used as a Harm spell against undead.

So... I hope you liked it! This is one example of how you can tweak existing content to give you new and interesting options. This could be a great advancement option for a Cleric or Inquisitor focused on archery, or perhaps a Paladin with the new Divine Hunter archetype from Ultimate Combat. Lots of possibilities!

Event Report: Train-y Day at Rainy Day!

2011-08-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Hello, everyone! The Growing Up Gamers crew is excited to bring you our first event report! Randy & Angie went to Rainy Day Games in Aloha, Oregon (near Portland) for the release of the Railways of the World Card Game expansion on July 31st.

Let's start by talking about Rainy Day Games. If you are a gamer and you live in Oregon, you need to check this place out if you somehow have not already. I am being very serious here. Their staff is friendly, and every one is a gamer who knows their stuff and can make great recommendations. It is always well-stocked and clean, too. Angie and I have gotten to a point where it is starting to get hard to find game stores that have more games than we do, but we never lack for something new to check out when we go there. So when they invited us to attend this event, we immediately slapped it on the calendar and made a plan.

Steve Ellis and Randy

We recently discussed the Railways of the World Card Game in this post; if you have read that, you'll know that we love the game. I'm not going to rehash everything about that, but I do want to emphasize that it is a very strategic and fun game that delivers the experience of a train game in cardgame form. It was designed by Steve Ellis and James Eastham, who also designed the expansions for the standard version of Railways of the World (which we were inspired to pick up... possibly a review of this soon!). They were on hand to get things started and let us know what the expansion did for the game.

The primary new things the expansion adds are tunnels, switches, grey cities and railway barons. Tunnels allow you to create a link from one city on the board to any other with the same color link. The switches allow you to make a link with cards to two different colors, useful for laying down high-cost cities or making a high-point link. Grey cities are cities that do not allow goods to be delivered to them, allowing for longer deliveries. The rail barons all give an endgame goal that can get you extra points. Another optional extra introduced in the expansion is an alternate draw method, which makes things less random. Instead of one draw pile that combines links, there are three draw piles and face up daw options. Links in one pile (three face up, draw up to two), cities in another (two face up, may draw only one) and locomotives in the last (may only draw one). The draw method makes the planning of your turns and links a little more strategic, and players can map out their routes more carefully.

This expansion really raises the stakes for the Railways of the World Card Game. Players familiar with the game can expect higher scores, and possibly bigger point spreads at the end. I like all the additions, but my favorite are the rail barons. I like having a goal to work toward and be able to cash in for points at the end. If you have played Race for the Galaxy, these kind of work like the six point developments in that game. We played with the method where each player is dealt two barons and gets to choose one to kepp, which we really enjoyed, but there is another way to play in which several barons are face up on the table and as an action a player may select one to take. This looks like another great way to use the baron cards, and we'll definately be trying this next time.The tunnels are great, too. Each player may make only one, but this can be a great setup for a long end-of-game delivery. Like I said, expect higher point games! This expansion has a whole variety of fun new things to add to the base game, and you can totally mix and match them as you like for a customized play experience and to mix up your game. We really enjoy what the expansion has to offer, and if you like the game you will definately want to pick this up!

From left: Joan, Jason, Randy and Angie

The great thing about gaming events is getting to play with new people. We were introduced to Jason and Joan, who had each already played the game and who had come to try out the expansions, as well. We had a great time playing with them, and they both gave a us a run for our money. We played the with the base set, the expansion and the optional draw method. Everybody made great use of their tunnels, and loads of goods were delivered. The actual scores I don't remember, but Angie took first place and I took third. A relatively narrow point spread told us that it was anybody's game up to the very end, and we all felt like we had been pretty evenly matched. I'd like to add that on top of being great opponents, they both had heard of our blog! We were pretty stoked to have people recognize us and tell us they liked our blog.

Randy's in trouble! Angie caught him checking out Cleopatra's Caboose!

We had a great time. If you find yourself in the Portland/Beaverton area, and you have the opportunity to pop by Rainy Day Games, please do; you won't be sorry. I have never seen a store with the selection they do. And also, as soon as I can transcribe it (I type glacially slow) we will be posting an interview with the designers of this game (our first interview!). Stay tuned!

5 Signs Your Family Might Be Playing Too Much Angry Birds

2011-08-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

by Angie

(AKA How we figured out we were playing Angry Bids a little too often...)

1. You're two-year old admonishes you for "breaking a poor piggy's house"... then asks for a turn!

"Oh no! I broke the piggies houuuuuse!"

2. You've spent time debating whether there is really any evidence against piggies, or if it's all some kind of propaganda campaign launched by the birds

Art by Randy

3. When you see anything resembling a "piggy house" you immediately want to hurl the closest small creature (or toddler!) towards it to see if you can knock it all down

...and the kid is happy about it!!!

4. Your refrigerator now sports an Angry Birds fan art section

Art by Katie

5. You bought the Angry Birds: Knock on Wood board game so the fun doesn't have to end when your battery runs out!

Birds in a box- let the slinging begin!! This game is awesome!!

So...are you an Angry Birds addict? It's ok, we won't judge! Share your stories, or just leave us a comment... we love to hear from you!

Things To Come

2011-08-05T06:40:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Well, it's that time of year. The time of year where you are either at Gen Con, or you aren't. A whole lot of amazing things happen in the gaming industry there in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and if you are an avid gamer and happen to be not there, you are likely hovering over various blogs and social media to find out the big news from your favorite game publishers. Outside of there, it's a pretty quiet time. The Growing Up Gamers crew... is not there. But that doesn't mean we're not working on some great material. Here's a bit of what we have coming down the pipe for the near future!

1. I (Randy) did an interview with Steve Ellis and James Eastham, designers of the Railways of the World expansions, the Railways of the World card game and its expansions at the release party at Rainy Day Games. Our first interview! I am busily transcribing and hope to get that up soon.

2. Event report of the Railways of the World Card Game event. We had a blast playing, and we want to share that.

3. We're logging some plays of some great games, and expansions to games we have, so expect some reviews. We have games ranging from party games to space exploration to trains, so keep your eyes out!

4. A character/campaign update on my current Pathfinder game.

5. More game design material. I'm working on art for two games, and rules and a prototype for another. One of the games is Princess of the Hill, which you've probably read about on the blog. The other is an exciting project that we're itching to share; more on that one soon!

6. A multiple-perspective look at Game On 2.0. This exhibit (currently at Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) is an interactive exhibit of the history of video games, and we are going to tell what we thought of it and why you should go check it out!

Okay, that's what's in store from Growing Up Gamers in the near future. Stay tuned!

Playing with Trains: Discovering Railways of the World Card Game!

2011-07-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

by Angie

Over the years I’ve ran across the mention of “train games” over and over, and I always thought to myself “Train games? Like Ticket to Ride and Transamerica… sure, I’ve played those”. Somewhere along the way I started to realize there was a whole world of games I was missing out on. Delivering goods, laying track, running locomotives, buying stock… sounds interesting. I was running across phrases like 18xx games and crayon rails, which a quick Wikipedia check are listed as some of the primary varieties of train or railway games. With my curiosity peaked, earlier this year I decided to explore what train games have to offer.

Now, here’s the thing about complex sub-genres of board games. The enthusiasts in these fields are often very passionate and have a slew of favorites and recommendations, usually on the more complex and lengthy side. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I like to play games that offer a lot of variety and depth, but don’t have a complex learning curve or take hours to play. My dabble into wargames started and stopped with Memoir ‘44, which is probably not considered a wargame by most enthusiasts, but fit the bill for me and has grown to become one of my top 3 games of all time. So I set out to try to find my “Memoir ‘44” of the train game genre.

I discovered a trio of games that seemed to be what I was looking for: Age of Steam, Steam, and Railways of the World. I had no idea which of those three to start with, or what the differences between them were. However, I had been hearing great things all over the internet and podcasts about the Railways of the World Card Game. Railways of the World Card Game is published by Eagle Games and designed by James Eastham and Steve Ellis. We know Steve, and he's an all around great guy who owns our very favorite game store, Rainy Day Games in Aloha, Oregon... so it seemed like a perfect place to start! If Steve says a game is good, we are never disappointed. With great reviews, co-designed by a cool guy who's taste in games is right up our alley, and a very reasonable price tag, it was basically a no-brainer to pick up Railways Card Game. And I'm SO glad we did. Yay, trains!

Jack LOVES trains!

We started out with Railways of the World Card Game, which is an amazingly deep and satisfying train game experience. The basic gameplay revolves around collecting track cards, city cards, and locomotives, and then using these cards to create a network of connected cities and delivering goods between them. As a first introduction to the train genre, I feel like it included all of the things I was looking for and more. There is a good level of tension and decision making throughout this game, with many opportunities to develop varying strategies and score points. For example, you can build complex networks and focus on optimal deliveries of goods, or you can compete for city control by building a lot of tracks into key cities, or you can just rake in the points by building long high value links. There are a lot of considerations and ways to earn points, but it never feels like the game slows down because there is too much to consider. The game has a nice flow to it; with many different factors working together to deliver a different experience each time.

Family fun with Railways Card Game

During our first game, Randy and I each built our own long sprawling train networks on opposite sides of the board, and had very little competition for points and goods. Since then, we’ve become increasingly more competitive as we learn new strategies and tactics to increase our scores and gain an edge. I can’t help but pay attention to the cities he’s laying track into, the goods he is adding, and the opportiunities to jump in there and swoop some points out from under his nose! This game has a lot of replayability, and is has considerable depth for a small package!

Katie carefully planning out her links

We decided to try out the rules for young players with little Katie, and it was a big hit. I’ve often found when there are easy versions or rules that a lot of the depth and strategy in a game is diminished, but that is not the case with this game. The young player rules in Railways of the World Card Game still offer a very engaging, strategic, and rewarding experience with lots of options to consider, while also remaining simple enough for our 5 year old to quickly grasp and enjoy! She is looking forward to learning the full game, but we are having so much fun with the basic rules we haven’t yet felt a need to add anything. The “kids” variant was a very exciting feature of this game, and we’ve come to love playing it both ways.

Randy enjoying Railways Card Game at a coffee shop

We were having so much fun with trains, so Randy got me Steam for my birthday (it was the only one of the three that was in stock at our friendly local game store). We’ve played Steam once and thought it was an interesting game, but with Railways of the World Card Game I feel like we may have already found the perfect train game experience we were looking for. Every time we think about sitting down to play another game of Steam, we end up pulling this one out instead. We’ve packed in along to the park and the coffee shop, something we couldn’t easily do with a big box train game. I feel like Railways Card Game is a perfect introduction to this genre because it uses many of the same concepts and terminology as other train games. It’s a simple game to learn, with emergent complexity that offers a high level of interaction and rewards strategic playing. I highly recommend trying out this game, and think it makes an excellent entry point into the world of train games. I really think as we continue to branch out and explore the genre, this will remain a favorite because of its strategic depth, portability, reasonable play time, awesome “kids” variant, and unique gameplay.

AWESOME ALERT!!! If you are in the Portland Oregon area (or willing to travel like we are!), there is a Railways of the World Game Day event this coming Sunday July 31st, 1PM, at Rainy Day Games. Both the board game and card game verisons of Railways AND THEIR NEW EXPANSIONS (!!!) will be available to play, with the designers present and excited to teach, play, and socialize. We'll be there, you should too!!

Are any of our readers train game fans? If so, which do you love and why? If you haven’t tried one yet but are interested in the genre or just looking for a fun new game to play, give Railways of the World Card Game a shot and let us know what you think!

The Workshop: Princess of the Hill, Part Three!

2011-07-23T00:19:00.000-07:00

by Randy

The creative gears are a-grindin' for the folks at Growing up Gamers! Angie and I are teaming up with our friend Julian of Cool Factor 5 on a big soon-to-be-revealed and super awesome fun project. 5-year old Katie just recruited programming talent to code her very own video game (yes, I am being serious... that girl has ambition!). Our two-year old son Jack is the only one not working on a game design, as far as I can tell... wait, scratch that... when I said that out loud he replied "No, I has a game project too! I own project" and its apparently involving a "beetle with a camera" (?). So in the midst of this, I decided to brush off Princess of the Hill and share the fun stuff I have simmering on the back burner. Since the original post, I have received a fair amount of feedback, both in comments and in drawings from my daughter. Since then, I have done a little more concept art and started working on the basic mechanics of attacking opponents.

So I have decided that there will be equipment to be used. Equipment will be findable on the board (unsure of exactly what that looks like...). Not quite so extensive as what Katie recommended, but it'll be there. First up, we have Crowns. Crowns are symbols of authority, and each princess will have one at most. Each is unique and will most likely add to an attack value, allow changing attack cards or give a draw bonus. Here are a couple examples:

The Crown of Assorted Errands: Fit for a Princess who likes to soften up opponents from afar first, this Crown allows a Princess to make a Strike attack at range.

The Crown of Irony: This Crown was into rulership before rulership was cool, as the hipster Princess wearing this will. This Crown grants a +1 bonus to Drag attacks, as the one who wears this will certainly be a drag to hang around with.

Next we have Scepters. Scepters are representative of a ruler's power, and the ones here are no different. Each Scepter is unique and will usually add to attack power and/or allow the Princess to keep her attack card instead of discarding at the end of the attack phase. Examples:

Scepterchucks, yo!: Scepterchucks... do they need further introduction? The joke may... it's a reference to 8-bit Theater. I haven't decided the exact effect of these, but I expect both keeping Strike cards played and granting +1 Strike.

Louisville Scepter: When you absolutely gotta knock a princess out of the park, the Louisville Scepter is a good, solid choice. This one will grant a +2 Push.

Additionally, there will be Scepter and Crown combinations called Regalia. WHen you have both pieces of the set, you will get a bonus. To make things simple, it will most likely just increase your draw valued by one, in addition to the individual effects of each item. These will most likely not be the only items, but we'll see.

To counteract equipment, I'm thinking that some attack cards will have a Steal effect upon the resolution of the attack: some will steal on a success, and some will steal on a failure. Just to mix it up a little.

Now on to mechanics. As stated in the original post, there will be three types of attack cards: Push, Drag and Strike. Drag beats Push; Push beats Strike; Strike beats Drag. Strike is the easiest to resolve: the player will discard cards equal to the value of the attack. Push is also pretty straightforward, both conceptually and in effect. Here is a diagram of Push:

Note the numbers; this will be where the defender ends up after a successful attack by the attacker.

Drag is a little more complex. I looked over the board and imagined what a Drag in a fight would look like. Basically, you grab the person, spin and let them careen to their fate. Here is what I see this looking like:

So that is a basic representation of combat. The examples I gave do not have other Princesses around that could be hit, nor Unicorn Poop to slip on, nor anything like a brick wall to suddenly arrest movement. We're not taking uphill/downhill into effect, either, nor are we worrying about facing (though the pieces in the examples have their front arcs marked. I'll get all that figured out in a rules mockup soon. Sound fun? I hope so!

Okay, that's it. Anyone have any ideas to share? Quirky equipment ideas? I'd love to hear 'em!

Drop Site

2011-07-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

by Angie

About a month ago (just before our vacation!), we were lucky enough to receive a review copy of a clever little card game called Drop Site from Bellwether Games. Drop Site is a game in which thematically you are attempting to coordinate your humanitarian aid efforts, sending supplies to those who need them throuhg air drops while communicating with ground forces to ensure a successful operation. Mechanically, this game is an interesting card game in which you are trying to line up the communal pile of cards to match your own secret pile. I'm not sure the theme and mechanics blend together super well, because the game plays quite competitively, whereas I somewhat expected by the theme that we'd cooperate a bit. However, I think Drop Site is a quick fun game with a lot of strategic value.

The gameplay of Drop Site is relatively simple, but I've seen a lot of different strategic plays arise while playing. The cards each have a number value along the upper left side and a +points in the bottom middle. On your turn you may play a card into a communal pile (by playing lower than an existing number on the pile, or by starting a new pile). or you may play one of your cards into your debt (a personal face down pile). The round ends when a certain number of piles have been started, so there is always a tension about when another player might start a new pile and bring closer the end of the round. The goal is to have as many cards as possible from your debt match the top face-up cards in the communal piles when the round ends. You score points equal to the +points number on the card for each match, and lose a couple points for each card that doesn't match. Scores are kept from round to round and the goal is to reach 100 first.

Drop Site is one of those elegant games with simple rules where the depth emerges throughout play. The first few hands of the game, players are often scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to play cards to their best advantage, and when to bank cards for potenital points. As the game progresses, strategies such as blocking another players moves, predicting your opponents plays and using them to your advantage, and deciding when to gamble all become relevant. To me, this is where this game comes to life! The player interaction and strategic planning makes this simple game into a rewarding, interactive, deeper-than-it-seems gameplay experience.

Oh, one other thing I love about this game is that it is extremely protable and doesn't take much space or time to play, but gives a satisfying strategic feel. In the last few weeks, I've played this game sitting on the edge of my bed, at the park, and on a camping trip. Throw it in your bag/backpack/purse and you're set!

Let's Get the Party (Kick)Started!

2011-07-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

by Angie

I've recently been quite fascinated with Kickstarter. If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, you should pop over and give it a look. Kickstarter is a really cool crowd-funding platform for creative projects, and I think its great how many new game designs are getting published because of it. Kickstarter provides a valuable service to game designers, publishers, and gamers alike. Designers and publishers can get the funding they need to get their games to market; and gamers can be in on the ground floor of exciting new games, helping to decide which projects they want to see happen and often gaining cool rewards, recognition, swag, and other benefits for their support.

In addition to all of that, Kickstarter presents an interesting method for communication between the game’s creators and the players, allowing for comments and ideas to be integrated before a game prints. Some game creators offer supporters the ability to name things in the game, make choices about certain elements, and other fun interactions that really make you feel like you are part of the process. And of course as a supporter not only are you helping make a game come to life, you also are able to guarantee yourself a copy before anyone else. Many of the Kickstarer campaigns have exclusive bonuses or reduced rates on extra copies of the games for supporters, so it’s worth taking a look even If you are on a budget, every little bit helps.

I’m mentioning Kickstarter because I think it’s something every gamer should know about. I’m also bringing it up now because we had the opportunity to play a prototype copy of a game that is up on Kickstarter right now, with 13 days to go at the time of this post. The game is called White Elephant Card Game, and is designed by Brian Kelley. This card game manages to be both a fun light game that recreates the experience of a white elephant gift party AND makes a particularly cute gift FOR a white elephant gift party. Double Whammy!

The basic premise of the game is that you are a cheapskate who needs to pick up a few gifts for some friends and family for the holiday, but don’t want to spend any money… so you hatch up a plan to trade the junk in your attic for stuff the people on your list will like by attending several white elephant gift parties. Just in case you are wondering what it is all about, a white elephant gift party is a quirky gift exchange game in which everyone brings a wrapped gift (often a silly or weird item) and places it into a common pool. There are a lot of variations of the “rules”, but it usually involves people taking turns opening a gift, with each subsequent player having the ability to steal a previously opened gift or grab a new one from the pile.

This game replicates that core idea well in a card game format. You are trying to grab cards with a high score in specific colors, and you do so by bringing gifts (placing a card face down on the table), opening presents (turning a card face up), and stealing them from other players (taking a card they’ve revealed and putting it in front of you). The game flows well, and the fun retro style art and zany oddball gift photos and description really help drive home the theme.

After playing this game last night, we were discussing how funny it would be to stock up on a bunch of copies of this game and give it out at my family’s annual gift exchange party (which is similar to the white elephant exchange game described above, except we usually bring nice presents that people would like instead of junk from our attics!). Anyhow, we were discussing about how it would be interesting and amusing to give one each year and follow up with a few rounds of playing the game to extend the fun of the party. It seems like one of those perpetual gift items that could turn into quite a family tradition. Whoever ended up with the White Elephant Card Game would have a fun reminder of the event, and a neat little game to play as well… assuming they didn’t give it away at their next white elephant party. Even passing a single copy of the game around would make for a good holiday laugh.

If you just love white elephant gift parties and can’t get enough, or you really want to stock up on gifts for the next few holiday seasons, this is a dream come true! Otherwise, it’s still an interesting, light-weight, family-and-friends game that plays quickly and offers some strategic decision making that is worth checking out. Kickstarter projects are time-sensitive, so what are you waiting for?!? :)

New Logo!

2011-07-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

We're excited to show off our new logo!

As a super secrect insight I'll tell you that the meeples represent each of the members of the Newnham family; Katie is of course the pink one, Jack-Jack loves orange, Angie always plays yellow, and Randy prefers red.

And here's how you'll be able to recognize us on social media sites (facebook, twitter).

These lovely new logos were created for us by our good friend Julian who just re-launched his blog, Cool Factor 5. Stop on by to check it out, I think he's got a really great system by which he is going to evaluate existing games and talk about new game designs and concepts. Fun stuff. We're working on some game design projects with him, so you might be able to get some exctiing previews from either site.

Thanks for stopping by! We're trying to increase the frequency of our posts because we've got so many great games to talk about, fun ideas for blog posts, and interesting things to share.... so come back soon :)

Castle Panic

2011-07-06T23:56:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Hello, readers! Miss us? We've been away on a family vacation. It was great, but we're glad to be back, too. I hope your summer is also full of fun and adventure. Speaking of adventure... today I'm looking at a cooperative game called Castle Panic by Fireside Games. The great people at Fireside provided us with a copy to review, and we wanted to share our playing experience with you!

So let's start off with what it looks like, shall we? The art is nice, and consistent throughout. Components-wise, we have a standard sized game board and and various cardstock bits. There are castle walls and towers in the center with standees, and loads of wedge-shaped monster and event tokens (more on that later). Additionally, there is a deck of cards mostly consisting of warrior types in red, green and blue. This game is certainly a good deal when looking at the price of the game versus the components.

The way the game plays is that monsters (trolls, orcs and goblins) are coming at the castle from all sides, seeking to tear down the walls and destroy the towers inside. The players are tasked with killing the monsters before they can accomplish this. The board is arrayed in a circle divided into three colored wedges, with each colored wedge containing two number sections (six total). There are concentric circles around the castle, named by the warrior cards required to attack monsters in that ring. Players have hands of cards that are mostly warrior cards with a particular color, which they use to damage and kill the attacking hordes. The monsters are on wedge-shaped tiles, a clever design that has you rotate the creature to represent damage (for those that require multiple hits). At the end of each player's turn, more tiles are drawn and assigned randomly to a section, and move each turn.

What I like about Castle Panic is that this is a cooperative game that gets it right. What do I mean by that? A good cooperative game should have a good balance of tension, and a meaningful array of choices. The rate that monsters are added in the standard difficulty (and the difficulty does scale- bonus!) certainly will keep you on your toes. As far as choices... you may trade cards with other players. There is indeed a balance to keep in mind... since there is also a competitive aspect to it. You see, if the players win, the player with the most monster kills is declared the Master Slayer. So there is also the consideration of whether of not you want to give another player the cards he needs to slay beasties if you want to be in the running for that title. So there are competing priorities that make the game interesting.

While we're talking about positive aspects of the game, I want to note that it is also pretty kid-accessible. The age recommended on the box is 10 and up, but I would set that a little lower. Aside from the rules, there is very little reading involved. Some of the tiles do indeed have minor instructions, but I want to note that I played this a couple times with my five year old and had a blast. Granted, Katie is a bit advanced and needed help with the reading, but I wouldn't say she was exactly on a ten year old level with playing games. So long as an adult plays, I can easily see the under ten crowd having as good a time as my daughter, who absolutely loved it. With kids, I advise the "less panic" rules and a de-emphasis on the Monster Slayer title.

My family likes this game. We thoroughly enjoyed checking this one out, and it is certainly great to add another cooperative game to the top shelf. The simplicity of this game's play makes it easy to teach, and the tension level seems well balanced so that no game will seem like pushover. Worth checking out! We'd like to thank Fireside Games for providing a copy to us for review.

I hope you enjoyed the review! In the next couple days, tune in for our new logo! Our good friend Julian at Cool Factor 5 was kind enough to design a logo. He just relaunched his blog, and I think we can expect some great stuff in the near future over there. Check him out!

5 Signs Your Kids Might Be Growing Up Gamers!

2011-06-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

by Angie

Here's a few ideas we had for how you might be able to tell if your kids are getting adequate geekery in their lives and are properly developing as little gamers....

1. Your kid has a sketchbook is full of game design ideas.. complete with components breakdown!

Katie's "list" of components for prototyping her new game "Sea"

2. Your daugther wanders away at the grocery store to find a comfy place to read a game catalog and make sure you aren't missing any upcoming releases

Apparently the beer aisle is both "cool" and relaxing

3. Your little one gives tactical advice to your wargame opponent about your weaknesses and comes up with a winning move!

Katie and Bodhi kickin' my booty at Memoir 44

4. Your kids get up before you to sneak into the gameroom and play games together without you and your silly "rules"

Jack telling Katie "this how you do it!"

5. Your daughter's dream-come-true craft projects are to paint plaster wizards and Warmachine minis with Dad

Can we paint minis today Dad, please? Please?

At ages 2 and 5 our kids have fully embraced our gaming lifestyle. They listen to gaming podcasts with me, never ever turn down an invitation to play a game, and Katie even asked if we could go on a family trip to a gaming convention this summer. What evidence do you have that your gamer training is paying off with the little ones? Are they growing up gamers too? We'd love to hear from you!

Playing with Steam!

2011-06-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Fine, I'll admit it. I'm a closet steampunk. Which is -not- to say that I have closet full of spiffy custom or DIY quasi-period threads, have a computer with a wicked lacquered wood and brass or go to conventions and speak in my best imitation old-school Queen's English (though I wish I did!). What I mean to say is that I have a fondness for the aesthetic, read steampunk fiction and lurk in steampunk forums. There's some great creativity going on there, and it's worth taking a look at. So, what is it, anyway?

Steampunk is usually represented as Victorian futurism... that is to say, mostly contemporary people trying to imagine a future that Victorian-era people might have foreseen. Clear as mud? Okay, okay... think of heroes in top hats and/or corsets riding dirigibles, fighting mad scientists with death rays. Or in steam powered exoskeletons. Not all steampunk is necessarily Victorian-based... a lot can take place in a fantasy setting, with the primary steampunkiness coming in technology having the flavor of that era but generations ahead in function and complexity. I'm including a sample reading list at the end for those of you interested in looking at the literary genre.

Off the page, you'll see steampunk enthusiasts at conventions, making really cool stuff and/or online in various forums devoted to the subject. Without a doubt, steampunks are the best-dressed geeks around (and I say geek affectionately, as I consider myself one!). It's hard to find a group of people so obsessed about their wardrobe... or their cool toys! A browse through the interwebs will reveal to you a very active bunch of people making amazing case modifications to computers, creating amazing clothing, action figures and mock weaponry. And T-shirts, presumably for when they're not wearing corsets or waistcoats. But, all that aside... what about gaming?

Quite a few games recently have incorporated steampunk into their theme over the last few years, to varying degrees. I am not going to try to go over all of these; this is not a comprehensive overview. But the ones I'm including here are games that have caught my eye and/or crossed my game table. So here they are... a delightful smattering of ludological diversions that, perchance, you may ask friends to indulge in should they come a-calling!

The Games

Girl Genius: The Works: This is a card game based on the Hugo Award-winning webcomic and graphic novel series by Phil & Kaja Foglio. I must say that I follow the webcomic faithfully, and if you haven't read it, I recommend starting from the beginning. The game has you lay out cards in a gear-like pattern. On your turn, you rotate a card and check to see if any of the symbols match surrounding cards; if it does, you remove the card ("pop" the card) and perform the listed action, for good or ill. Then you add it to your score pile and replace it with a card from your hand. This continues until you hit 100 points. As a game, it's decent. What I like best is the Foglio art of characters from the Girl Genius storyline.

Red November: The only truly cooperative game on the list, Red November casts the players as the drunken gnomish crew of a submarine that is both falling apart and being pursued by a kraken. I had a good time playing it. What I think is really innovative about the game is how it tracks time. The board is framed with a time counter. The person whose token is farthest back on the time track takes the next turn. You have discretion in how much time you want to spend trying to repair something (or another task); the more time you spend, the higher likelihood you'll be successful. It's great to have as a consideration, and an excellent way to ramp up the tension. Overall, not the best of the cooperative games out there, but very good, very funny and very steampunk.

Around the World in 80 Days: Based on Jules Verne's classic and a Spiel des Jahres nominee, Around the World in 80 Days isn't necessarily the strongest steampunk-themed game, but I feel it belongs here. It's a race against time, and against other players. You collect various types of travel cards and spend them to advance to the next location. It's pretty simple, and it's pretty accessible for non-gamers.

Aether Captains: I've heard positive things about this game but have not yet tried it. It's a solitaire dice game where you are the pilot of a war zeppelin fighting air pirates. I primarily included it because... it's hard to get more steampunk than war zeppelins. Enough said.

Ascension: We reviewed this earlier, but I wanted to include this as a good example of a fantasy setting that incorporates steampunk. The Mechana faction in this game are all about the clockwork and anachronistic technology. Cards like the Watchmaker's Altar, Rocket Courier X-99 and Reactor Monk are examples. A solid and fast-playing game in the deckbuilding genre, Ascension is a good addition to any game shelf.

011: This is one that caught my eye for it's excellent art. The only game that has not yet been released, it is based on a novel and the game itself is a collaboration between game designers and a symphonic metal band called Therion. The BoardGameGeek entry has some card images and I recommend checking them out. They went all out with the steampunk theme, and photography figures heavily into the graphic design. Based on the description, it appears to be "competitive cooperative"- meaning that everyone must work together, but in the end one will win. Castle Panic has a similar mechanic. So... that's all I know about the game. But it's one that I'm very interested in trying.

Etherscope: Etherscope is the first roleplaying game on the list. Also a game I haven't played, but I've browsed the books and am fascinated. Based on the d20 Open Game License (OGL), it combines elements of steampunk and cyberpunk. From my readings, it seems to combine the best elements of Shadowrun with the standard tropes of steampunk. I keep meaning to pick up used copies of the core books, but have never got around to it.

Lady Blackbird: This is an indie RPG module with a light rules system that looks a lot like The Burning Wheel (I think it is some sort of BW Lite, but I could be wrong). The module seems very flavorful, and has very interesting pregenerated characters. It's a free download, so try it out! This was recommended for inclusion by Joseph Giddings. Thanks, Joseph!

Airship Pirates: This is a new RPG that I'm looking forward to trying out. The system it uses is from the Victoriana 2nd Edition (another steampunk RPG I missed!). I know very little of this other than that it is based off the songs of Abney Park. The art that I've seen for this is pretty amazing and I can't wait to locate a copy.

Iron Kingdoms: Iron Kingdoms (IK) is actually a setting that spans multiple games by Privateer Press. In my opinion, this setting is one of the best out there. It combines sword-and-sorcery fantasy with steampunk... they call it "full metal fantasy". It's a world where where is fought by steam-powered constructs (warjacks) alongside kinights and riflemen. Here are the games this encompasses:

-Iron Kingdoms RPG: The longest-running game I was dungeon master for was set in the Iron Kingdoms. In addition to having some of the best-written setting material, one of the things I like about it was that it did a great job of incorporating mechanical magic (mechanica) into the setting. Though mechanica items were significantly cheaper than standard magical ones that did the same effect, they were powered by batteries. Well, accumulators... which are magical batteries. New classes for the d20 system included Gun Mages (as awesome as they sound!), Arcane Mechaniks, Bodgers (sort of a junker, sort of roguish) and Fell Callers (a race-specific battle bard). And, later on, warcasters. warcasters are the rock stars of the Iron Kingdoms... mages (mostly) in steam-powered armor leading warjacks and others into battle. An amazing setting, and worth a look.

-Warmachine: Warmachine (and its sister game, Hordes) is a miniature skirmish game. It pits battlegroups led by warcasters (warlocks for Hordes) against each other. Five factions struggle for control of the Iron Kingdoms. One of the most popular mini games around. I personally own and have painted loads of these minis for my roleplaying game, but do not actually play it. I do, however, own most of the books, and mine these for roleplaying material.

-Grind: Grind is a game based on the Warmachine universe where teams of Warjacks play an arena combat game, trying to score goals with a huge spiked ball. I own it and keep meaning to play it. Mostly, though, I just got it because the plastic warjack minis are the same scale as Warmachine and it's a cheap way to get new warjacks (Cygnar and Khador factions).

-Infernal Contraption: Privateer Press a few years back decided to release a line of games called Bodgers. They all feature gobber (goblin) bodgers and their shenanigans. This one is a race to complete crazy machines by raiding junk piles and connecting them to each other and to appropriate power sources. I wanted to like this one, but beyond theme (and great art!), it's not spectacular.

Hopefully you've found something you'll want to try in that list. I personally find the steampunk genre immensely fascinating, and I'm all about combining that with my favorite hobby! If you want to get into steampunk, or know more about it, here's a reading list and some resources:

Fiction:
Boneshaker, Cherie Priest
Dreadnought, Cherie Priest
The Peshawar Lancers, S. M. Sterling
Leviathan, Scott Westerfield
The Horns of Ruin, Tim Akers
Heart of Veridon, Tim Akers
The Difference Engine, William Gibson
The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia
Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

Nonfiction:
The Steampunk Bible, Jeff VanderMeer, S. J. Chambers
1,000 Steampunk Creations, Grymm, Barbe Saint John

Online Communities:
The Steampunk Empire (I'm coffeeswiller)
The Clockworker's Guild
Brass Goggles (also coffeeswiller there)

I hope you enjoyed this! Do you have any experience with the genre, or have any games, books or anything else to share about it? Leave us a comment!

Bring on the Cheese!

2011-06-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

by Angie

The nice folks over at Pressman Toy sent us their new game Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Cheese Touch Game to check out, and I really had no idea what to expect. I’ve looked the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books before and thought they were cute, and have even heard good things about them from my kid friends, but they aren’t something we’ve read… yet. The graphics and style of this game has all the cuteness and fun flavor of the book series, and I’m sure fans will have a lot to identify with. As an outsider to the series, we found the characters and art to be interesting and it definitely piqued our interest in the stories behind them... but you don't need to read the books to enjoy this game. After looking it over for a few minutes I was super excited to give this game a try because it looked like a simple, streamlined, and clever party-style game (Cranium-esq) that is playable by all ages. Sweet! This game did not disappoint. Bottom line is we’ve had a lot of fun playing it, and it’s one that will definitely see a lot of table time in the future.

Quirkly style, simple rules

The basic game play consists of rolling a die, moving your piece, and drawing a card of the appropriate type based on where you land. The card varieties each offer a different type of challenge, ranging from guessing what other people will answer to acting out requested tasks in a specific way, with some random elements thrown in. Success on the challenge usually results in moving forward on the board, while failure results in obtaining “the Cheese Touch” (which I think is supposed to be equivalent to “cooties” or something??). First one to the finish line wins, with the kicker that you can’t win if you have the Cheese Touch. The pacing seems just about right, you are usually moving forward pretty quickly, the track isn’t too long, and there are lots of ways for the Cheese Touch to be passed around. The thing I enjoyed best about this game is that it encourages you to get to know each other better through clever questions, without being too complicated, long, or “boring” for young kids.

Random hugs are part of this game! Seriously!

Our first play through included me, Randy, Katie, and a couple of adult friends that were over visiting. When friends come over Katie often wants to be included in gaming, but finding a game that offers a fun experience for a bunch of adults and one little kid isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Our lovely friends have indulged Katie and played many games of Candyland, Disney Yahtzee, and other kid favorites over the years; but I’ve never seen the adults enjoying themselves as much as we all did playing Cheese Touch. Laughter, good conversation, and full engagement from Katie AND the grownups were hallmarks of this game. Favorite questions involved trying to figure out who Katie would think was the most likely to survive in the wilderness, admitting the longest we'd each gone without a bath, guessing which pet peeve belonged to which grown-up, and trying to act out swimming and eating "incorrectly". We had fun and enjoyed the experience, all while learning a little more about each other. We highly recommend this game for a fun family experience; it’s simple, light-hearted, and offers a solid party game experience in a cute little package.

An insta-hit, loved by Katie and the grown-ups!

Those Pesky Humans!

2011-06-10T01:23:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Have at thee, readers! I'm going to start this off by asking, who doesn't have a great memory somewhere of some great wacky dungeon crawl, whether it was Dungeons & Dragons, HeroQuest, Talisman or any number of similar themed games? Heck, maybe even Munchkin on a good night. Well, our offering today is something in that vein. The friendly people over at Minion Games were nice enough to provide us with a review copy of their crazy dungeon crawl game, Those Pesky Humans! Here's our thoughts on it.

As you can gather from the title, it is definitely intended to be light-hearted. It is playable with two to four players, with there being two teams. The first team is the band of adventurers delving through the dungeon, while the second team is the ogre and his minions, whose goal is to eliminate the humans. I'm a big fan of turning standard tropes on their ear and getting a new perspective, and this one does that. The idea that at least one player plays the dungeon denizens is not new (I have not played them, but Dungeonville and Dungeon Lords have similar themes), but it is definitely fun. It's quirky, and has the art to back it up.

Speaking of art... I enjoy this game's art. It's a fun and cartoony style, poking fun at standard fantasy stereotypes. I like it that all the player and monster pieces have front view and rear view art. It would be extremely easy (and cost-cutting) to make both sides of the standing cardboard tokens the same, but I appreciate the extra effort they took to make it a higher-quality game. Style-wise, it's not nearly as over-the-top slapstick like John Kovalic's Munchkin art, but is amusing nonetheless. Anyone who has any experience with the fantasy genre should immediately take to the great illustrations in this game.

In the components department, this game has a lot of them. As it says on the box, "Over 200 pesky pieces!". The player and monster tokens I mentioned before are cardboard pieces fit into plastic stands. There are also standing door tokens, item and condition tokens, map hexes and card decks for each team, plus smaller ability decks for the adventurers. On the subject of the cards... this is where I need to weigh in and say that the quality of the cards is lacking a bit. The stock used for the cards doesn't shuffle well and shows wear after even minimal use. We tend to not sleeve our game cards as many do, but this one would be a good candidate for sleeving (Magic: The Gathering-sized sleeves should work). Using card sleeves would definitely solve both the shuffling and wear issues, so please consider that. Otherwise, no complaints about the other pieces; everything else is high-quality printing on appropriate stock.

On to gameplay. Gameplay is pretty straightforward; each character or monster is moved and an action is taken with each every turn. The goal of the humans is to find the three legendary gems and get back out; the goal of the monsters is to defeat all the humans. Combat is pretty simple; each side rolls, add a stat and compares totals. It's a dungeon crawl game, and you'll find the standard fare of monsters, items, traps and interesting room effects. In that sense, it does a far better job than Castle Ravenloft. It does have a longish play time, and for this type of game I feel it is a little outside what I consider the "sweet spot" in the fun-versus-time spent area in most gaming situations. I'm under the impression, though, that this will be a great one to pull out when some younger cousins come to visit and want to play a mad dungeon romp.

So that's what we think. There's a lot to like about the game. The theme and art do a great deal for it. Gameplay flows reasonably well. A few years ago, I would have loved this game instead of just liking it. Longer play times like this I usually reserve for either heavier strategy games, or for roleplaying games. I recommend this game for people looking for a crazy D&D-like experience without having to worry about making characters. As I mentioned before, I plan on bringing this to the table when my wife's late teen/early twentysomething cousins roll into town, which is exactly the experience they tend to shoot for.

I'd like to wrap up with a big "Thank you!" to Minion Games for providing this for us. They have some interesting games available now and on the horizon, so be sure to stop by their website!

Mastermind!

2011-06-03T12:40:00.000-07:00

by Katie

Problem -solving is in this game! Yep. That’s what the game is all about to me.

There are two players in Mastermind, the codemaster and the codebreaker. The codemaster puts out a secret code of colored big pegs. Then the codemaster needs to make sure to keep their code secret and also put out little pegs for the codebreaker so they know some information. The codebreaker tries to figure out the code by guessing the pattern. Like if my mom puts out green-white-purple-orange and she is the codebreaker, I would look at my secret code and see how many pegs she has that are the right color in the right places, and how many are the right color in the wrong place and put out little pegs for that. You have to get them exactly right, in the right place.

Breaking the code!

When you are the codemaster you have to be really smart about your code because the other person might guess it in only one turn, so it’s good to be tricky. Also when you are the code breaker you need to use your thinking brain to put together the information you got from all of your other guesses and think-think-think hard to figure out the code.

When I’m the codemaster I like to trace a line with my finger from each color in the guess to my secret code to make sure I’m putting out the exact right little white and red pegs. I don’t want give the codebreaker the wrong information!

The strategy is to look at everything all together. My mom calls that logic. I think that means to look back at your previous moves to make sure you don’t just guess the same wrong thing. I’m learning how to use logic to solve the mystery of the code!

Jack sneaks in and moves the pegs
around for extra challenge!

I like this game one hundred and fifty nine! That means I like it like almost infinity. It might even be one of my favorite games in the whole world of games. Totally. It’s different than my other favorite game, which is of course Settlers of Catan. I learned to play Mastermind yesterday and if you put all the times I’ve played it so far together I’ve played it about 16 times already!

I want to say thank you to the nice people at Pressman Toy for sending us all those games. I hope they are having a happy day like me, because I have new games to play. I hope all you blog readers have lots of happy games to play too. Have fun playing games!

Games Research: Closing the Gap

2011-06-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

by Angie

First off, I wanted to say than to everyone for the encouragement, cautionary tales, excitement, networking opportunities, and general interest in my previous post about my education/career/life goals and how it relates to gaming. It’s very exciting to hear from so many enthusiastic folks, and I’ve had the pleasure of sharing some of the literature I’ve been reviewing with others who are looking for academically credible “evidence” that games provide positive benefits.

I read a lot of articles about games research; I’m absolutely fascinated. I want to know what studies have been done, what the findings were, and what possible implications are considered. I am personally and professionally interested in the connections made and applications found for this type of research. I have been scouring databases and amassing a collection of articles on everything game related, and there is some really important work I’ve dug out. Lately I keep running across a lot of cross-references to a specific study that had some pretty amazing results, so I thought I’d share it with you all!

Disclaimer: This is a blog post providing a quick and simple overview of the article with lots of personal commentary added in and in no way constitutes a scholarly analysis of the content, the study methodology, or the results. For any academic or professional purposes you should read the original article! There’s a handy reference below.

Tell us already!

Ok ok, enough rambling. Let’s get to the good part. A couple years back (2008) an article was published entitled “Playing linear numerical board games promotes low-income children’s numerical development”. In this journal article, the authors explain that they conducted a two-part experiment involving kids and games then discuss the results.

Chutes and Ladders is a well-known example of a "linear
numerical game", although NOT the one used in this experiement.

The first experiment showed that preschoolers from low-income households were not as proficient at placing numbers in a number line as kids who came from higher income families. This is not particularly surprising, this type of research has been around for a while, and is one of the reasons early intervention programs like Head Start exist. It’s an important issue facing teachers, how do we provide a quality education for all students when some are entering school with far less-developed skills?

The second experiment is where things get interesting. The researchers hypothesized that playing linear numerical board games (a game with a board that has numbered spaces in a line) might help the low-income kids “catch up” to their middle-income peers. The way they tested this was to take two groups of low-income kids and have each group play a game for 4 different 15-minute sessions within a period of 2 weeks. It appears as though a specific game (not commercially available) was designed for this experiement which consisted of a track 10 spaces long, and the kids played by moving a token 1 or 2 spaces based upon the result of a spinner. The control group played a color-based version of the game and the test group played a game where they moved pieces along numbered spaces. Not the most creative or engaging game I could think of... but that's what they used.

Drumroll please...

Here’s where it gets exciting, it worked! The kids playing the number game greatly improved their numerical skills from pre- to post- test, while the kids playing the color-based game did not. After ONLY 1 HOUR of total time playing the game the low-income kids in the test group demonstrated the same level of proficiency as the middle-income kids in the first experiment! They were completely "caught up" to their peers just by playing a game 4 times! The possible implications here are vast; we’re looking at an inexpensive, simple, and highly efficient way to reduce the gap in early numerical understanding in preschoolers. This is a potentially invaluable and very basic intervention that could be widely adopted.

To be fair, this study is somewhat limited in scope. The control was a color-based board game and not some other number learning activity, which makes me wonder if the same results would be seen had the students spent the four 15-minute sessions doing another number related activity? Flash cards? Numbered manipulatives? Is the board game the most effective way to achieve these results?

I can't help but wonder, would simple calendar activities or other
number-based interventions provide the same results?

I personally believe that there is a level of engagement present in gaming that is hard to replicate in other learning activities, and I choose to be excited about this study despite my as-of-yet unanswered questions. I am motivated by this type of research, and can’t wait to see what follows: how these results will be built upon or implemented and what other possibilities games possess for helping people learn while having fun. I’m eager to find out what other ways games can be used to solve some of the problems in our educational system, and how they can be implemented in a way that promotes engagement, enjoyment, and achievement.

So, to sum up... it looks like maybe all we need to do to close the achievement gap is get kids playing more games!

Reference:

Siegler, R. S., & Ramani, G. B. (2008). Playing linear numerical board games promotes low-income children's numerical development. Developmental Science, 11(5), 655-661. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00714.x

Say Anything Family!

2011-05-30T14:36:00.000-07:00

by Angie

A little while back, the kind folks over at Northstar Games sponsored our very first contest by sending a copy of Say Anything Family to one of our lucky blog readers, and as a bonus they sent one to us too! We had high hopes for Say Anything Family because as some of you may remember we absolutely LOVED Wits and Wagers Family. Let me tell you up front that this game did not disappoint, it is one of the funnest family party games I’ve ever played.

It’s Really That Simple

The game is easy to learn and explain. One person draws a card and selects a question from it to read out loud. Everyone else writes down an answer that they think the reader will think is the best answer. All of the answers are played face up, and the reader secretly selects the one they like best. The other players now try to guess which one the reader picked. Players score points for writing the winning answer, voting on the winning answer, and the reader gets points for people guessing right. It kind of reminds me of a cross between Apples to Apples (the playing and picking answers), Wits and Wagers Family (the betting aspect), and any one of a number of party games that rewards you for knowing the other players well or provides an opportunity to get to know each other better. While that may sound like a bit of a mash-up, it plays very smooth and really hit the sweet spot for us.

Looking Under the Hood

This game is about the experience, but here’s a few quick thoughts about the rules/components/etc. I appreciate that this game is easy to teach, and that you really can just jump right in and play. No one seems to have any questions, it’s nice when the rules just blend into the background and the focus is on fun. I really like that each card has three possible questions and the reader gets to choose which one to pick. Aside from increasing replayability, this is an opportunity to direct the game a bit, avoid something you don’t want to talk about, or explore what the other players might think you think on a fun topic. This is the type of game you could really play for any length of time, but the scoring system seems to have the game play out for just the right amount of time. I did miss the meeples though! We love betting with the meeples in Wits & Wagers Family, and with the art of the game showing meeple images I found myself looking through the box a couple times to try to find them. There are tokens that are used instead, but I like the meeples better and wish they had been included in this game as well.

Say What?

Wits and Wagers Family was a big hit with my extended family over the holidays, so I was really excited to give Say Anything Family a try at a recent family get together. I was able to easily convince my mom and grandma, my aunt Judy, and my uncle Rob to give it a try. This game had us laughing, groaning, telling stories, and having fun together right from the get go. We were grossed out by the idea of kissing a urinal, imagining what the best part of being a dog is, pondering how lottery winnings would be spent, discussing who would be the most fun to have dinner with (Gene Simmons in full costume?!!?), and laughing about what the weirdest family secret might be. We kept a causal pace throughout the game, with lots of conversation and smiles. It really was an amazing experience, and I’m looking forward to many more plays. It was a big hit, and we ended up with a phenomenal 12 thumbs up, everyone loved it!

Good ol' family fun!

Up Next…

We’re going to try to play this game with Katie soon. Reading is the biggest barrier here, but I think it will be possible to help her through it, or to have her team up with a grown-up reading buddy. I’m sure her ideas will amuse and delight everyone playing, kids say the most interesting things!

Reasons To Play Board Games With Your Kids

2011-05-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

by Randy

I am a gamer. I have played games most of my life, and all of my adult life. most of my gaming time is spent on board games, but I also play roleplaying games, card games and the occasional video game. It's an excellent hobby and has made me many friends, including my wife. It has and continues to enrich my life in many ways; one of those ways is by sharing the hobby with my children. I'll tell you why.

Developmental

It's a proven fact that kids who play games are smarter; see the research. I definitely want my kids to have every developmental advantage and I fully believe that the type of reasoning that is necessary to play games will lead to creative and analytical ways of interacting with the world. Being able to weigh choices in the controlled environment of a game will help acquire the skills they need to succeed: resource management, weighing long term vs. short term investment, anticipating the actions of others. Exposure to these concepts early on will help them develop a more integrated and multi-faceted view of the world, be better problem solvers and and better at
thinking ahead.

Social Benefits

In an age where communication is increasingly less face-to-face, it is more and more necessary for kids to learn social skills; board games are a great teaching tool. Not only are you sitting around a table with fellow players, you are in conflict with them in a standard game, or on a team with them in a cooperative game. It creates a slightly more complex and nuanced interaction with the people participating. This is a great teaching opportunity for concepts such as teamwork, civility, and the idea of being a good winner or loser. These are social skills that my children need, and will serve them well in their lives.

Family Bonding

Families need to do things together to be healthy; it's the basic premise of the much-used "Families who X together stay together" (replacing X with whatever activity supports your opinion). There's a reason people say that; families who bond by pursuing a pastime together tend to have more cohesion, and more common ground. Games are a great way to interact with children. For those of you familiar with the banking model of positive behavior support, games a great way to make "deposits" in the bank of trust for the parents ("withdrawals" happen when applying discipline).
It's not hard to find articles on the benefits of playing games with your kids, if you look. And it beats the heck out of watching TV!

Exploratoration
Young minds need to explore and discover; their mids are little superprocessors cataloguing and interpreting what they interact with and their experiences. A game offers a lot of tactile experiences. Want to see some exploration? Open a game box and put it in front of a toddler and let her sift through (making sure to be aware of potential choking hazards). There are all sorts of amazing, brightly colored and odd-shaped bits... possibly a board... and other things. Watching a little person look over each of the things, play with them and make up ways to have them interact with each other is fascinating. Exploration is great. As an older kid, actually playing the game (as opposed to with it), other means of exploration present themselves. Games offer contained little worlds to try different thing... a controlled environemnt where it is okay to fail without consequences. Being able to explore opportunities and not worry about the consequences of failure is one of the greatest parts of playing games, and cannot be understated.

Creativity

Kids are creative creatures, and love making art and participating in imaginative play. Games have varied and creative themes, and gaming with you kids may just add a little fuel to their creative fires. For instance, after playing a game about horse racing, my daughter was inspired to draw a picture of a horse, and when I told her I was designing a game, she jumped in with a load of suggestions of her own. Additionally, I have seen my kids engage in imaginative play where they use words and concepts picked up from games. I personally believe that creativity is something to be nurtured and helped to blossom, and games are a great starting point for other forms of creativity.

Vocabulary

The acquisition of vocabulary in children is a big determiner of academic performance later in life. Games are excellent in that they often teach vocabulary indirectly in a fun way, and in a context where you learn related concepts. A game about exploration may teach words about exploring, expeditions and idols, and a game about trains may talk about goods, passengers and connections. And they learn about it in an active way, where they are relating it to actions that they take in the game. The research I've seen talks about quantity and quality of words a child hears in their early years, and playing games and discussing the concepts in games can certainly give them a boost.

It's Cheap!

Gaming can be a very cheap hobby, depending on how you go about it. A typical game costs about the price of taking the family to the movies, maybe even getting refreshments as well. A movie is over in a couple hours, but a game can be played over and over again. I cannot tell you how many times I've played my copies of Settlers of Catan or Attika; I can tell you that I have had so many hours of fun playing those games with family and friends that it's hard not to smile when thinking of playing them. It's true that you can go overboard and spend loads on games, but you do not have to. A handful of good games, purchased after reading reviews and possibly trying at the game store or with friends, is all you need. And if you really want to game on the cheap, keeping an eye on thrift store game shelves can turn up some gems at a small fraction of the price. I encourage supporting your lolcal game store, though, but other options exist.

They inspire *my* creativity!

Ever heard someone say, "Kids say the darnedest things"? Well, they do. They interpret the world through fewer filters than we adults and often come up with brilliant insights. Pay attention! Write stuff down, if you need to. I often find myself thinking about what one of my kids has said to me. And the better the input, the better the output. Show them a game about elves and dragons, they'll name them and talk about their mommies. Show them a game about aliens conquering worlds, they talk about making friends with them. Seriously... listen to them; you'll be surprised at what you hear.

Abstract Thought

Games, even non-abstract ones, usually have you manipulate things that represent other things. Little black cylinders can represent oil drums, cubes can be influence and some things may not actually represent anything, like the stones in a Mancala game (before that one comes back to bite me, I'll just say that if they represent something, I don't know!). The concept that something can represent something else is a big cognitive leap, and games help introduce and reinforce this concept.

Lifelong Hobby

Gaming is a great hobby. It's an excellent pastime to share with your kids, and may even play a significant role in their life; it has in mine. Some of my best friends I have met through gaming, including my wife. Sharing something like that will mean that no matter what, you'll have something fun to share. And they'll likely pass it on to their kids. It's a great gift to give. And further, you may just end up with a new best gaming buddy, or that one extra person that you need to play your newest game!

Convinced? Check out what my wife Angie has to say about getting started gaming with your little ones for some practical advice about introducing kids to our favorite hobby. And leave us a comment, we love to hear from you!

Perfect Stride

2011-05-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Hello! We have another review for you today. The wonderful people at Funleague Games provided a review copy of Perfect Stride, a game about horse riding. It's a very thematic game that Angie, Katie and I tried out; here's what we thought.

A Horse Game!

This is a game about horses. I wasn't sure I could get into a game about horses, but I was happily surprised. Players assume the roles of riders who are racing to complete the most jumps and stay in the lead. The theme might not appeal to some, but this game does a great job of bringing the theme to the forefront in look and feel.

Pretty Game

The first thing that you'll notice about this game is the art; it's a beautiful game. Every card has unique art, with no duplications (save for a few cards with multiple copies). The full-color paintings really bring the theme to life. A rough count tells me that there are around a hundred unique illustrations on cards alone, not counting the box and rulebook art; there aren't many games that can boast this much art of this quality. Additionally, we found oursleves taking the time to stop and read the flavortext on each card; Katie in particular enjoyed that. Katie was even inspired to draw her own idea for a card for the game, and she rarely does that.

Game play

There are two versions of play for Perfect Stride: the basic game and the full game. Angie and I played the full game first to get a feel for the rules, and then started off with the basic game with Katie. After playing through the basic game, we talked with her about the other cool cards in the game and she decided she wanted to try those out, so from that point we were playing something in between the two.

Both versions have riders competing to go through a course of jumps. Every horse will have a kind of jump they're good at, and each jump has a Difficulty. You need to have enough Effort to meet the Difficulty, and you get this from skill cards. Each horse that makes the jump gets a ribbon (this game's victory points), and moves to the next jump. Pretty straightforward and simple.

The advanced version is far more interesting and strategic. More of a racing element is present, and being in the lead will earn you more points. There are also events that happen at every jump, which can change the difficulty for better or worse. There are also power-ups for horses called Horse care cards. What I found to be very interesting is that the advanced game has a bid mechanic for determining who's in the lead. Everyone starts with four cards representing speeds (Walk, Trot, Canter, Gallop) and a draw value for cards that decreases the faster you go. I found that this in particular was a great element for bringing the racing element to life.

Just one more note about the game play: the minimum age on the box. I really feel that the designers have assigned too high of a minimum age by saying it is for thirteen years and older, and think they should consider altering that on later printings. I don't think any of the concepts present are that difficult. I think that about ten years old would be a good minimum age for the advanced game, and eight for the basic. The basic game does require reading and basic math, and that is why I wouldn't recommend that too much younger. Our five year old daughter Katie loved it, but needed help with the reading (and just a little with the math). I'm worried that some parents who would otherwise pick it up for their children may skip it due to that, which is unfortunate, since it is a wonderful game.

Katie's idea for a Horse Care card!

Katie shares her thoughts on the game:

What did you think of the game?
It was awesome! I like horses.

What was your least favorite part?
Nothing!

Can you tell us more?
The cards are great. They can get you past jumps. Sometimes they are jumps and can get you ribbons. I think the person that did the art made great pictures and details. I want to play again with the horse care cards and event cards. Speaking of playing again, let's play right now!

Finish Line

There you have it! We liked this game quite a bit, especially Katie. There's a fair amount of randomness in the skill cards, moreso than in most games we play, but that is actually good for a family game in that it levels the playing field a bit. Honestly, we were surprised at how much we like the game. Though I don't imagine it will be one that Angie and I necessarily clamor to grab off the shelf, we were quite happy to see Katie so engaged in the theme; I get the impression it will be a game that she will want to play again soon. And here I thought we were going to skip the "Daddy, can I have a pony? Please?" stage!

Worlds Collide: How I'm Turning My Love of Games into a Career!

2011-05-08T19:54:00.000-07:00

by Angie

I love games. I really really do. I love learning new games, playing them, reading about games... and I'm especially interested in how playing games can improve our lives. So much so that I've decided that what I want to do is research and design structured around the use of games in education. I've recently began a new branch in my career path as a doctoral student. Today I've decided to share an excerpt from my "Letter of Intent" that I wrote as part of my doctoral admissions process. This is a peek into my motivations and goals for the future, and explains the basic premise I am basing my dissertation research on:

Looking forward into the future of education, I am excited about the possibilities. I imagine a classroom in which students are engaged, motivated, and academically successful regardless of background. I believe that this is an achievable vision, and I think that what students need to accomplish this is to play more games. Research studies are consistently showing the intellectual and social benefits of gaming, and demonstrating how games can help us learn to become motivated problem-solvers and creative thinkers. Games research has shown that games can help close the achievement gap, promote engagement in academic material, motivate students to stay in school, and enhance social and intellectual skill development.

During my Masters of Education program, I took a class entitled Action Research. Throughout this course, we were challenged to think about problem solving through research and taught how a methodological approach to answering important questions in education practice could result in improved classroom results. As I learned about this approach, I began to consider what question I would most want to answer. My conclusion was that my question was bigger than a single classroom. What I want to know is how can a teacher, who is excited about the possibilities a games-based learning approach can offer, implement games into the classroom in a way that will help enhance learning and increase student outcomes? In other words, how can we implement games-based learning as a core curriculum component? How can I work towards contributing to this vision of the future? It’s not like a “good idea” is enough; I need evidence based best practices to back up my ideas, and a solid understanding of both curriculum theory and leadership techniques for implementing positive institutional change. I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership and Curriculum/Instruction, with hopes of diving into and becoming a part of the research I am so excited about. I intend to devote my energy and attention to researching, developing, implementing, and sharing solutions to this challenge.

The teacher in me is elated about the educational possibilities and the gamer in me is stoked for another excuse to play more games. Win-win! I'm planning to occassionally post about my progress, interesting artciles I come across, and new ideas relating to using games in education, so I wanted to start of explaining where I'm coming from and what I'm hoping to accomplish. As always, feel free to leave comments, ask questions, or chime in with your thoughts!

That's How I Role: My Zen Archer Monk!

2011-05-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Introducing That's How I Role, a new category of posts. Whenever we post our own content about a classic pen-and-paper roleplaying game that we're playing in, excluding reviews or general discussion, we'll add that label.

Hello! Any roleplayers out there? I hope so. Roleplaying games (RPGs) haven't received a lot of wordcount on our blog so far, and, since it's my favorite type of gaming, I think it's time to correct that. Today, I'm going to discuss a character I play in a new Pathfinder campaign. For those unfamiliar, the Pathfinder RPG is an overhaul of the Dungeons & Dragons version 3.5 rules. If you want to check the rules out, they're available for free here; it's an open source system. A spiffy thing about this new campaign is that it was spawned by a discussion on this blog... and I think that's pretty awesome.

I often get excited when new character making options present themselves. A while back, I picked up the Pathfinder Advanced Player's Guide, a supplement that added options for players, including new classes and further options for existing ones. Some of these caught my eye; specifically, the new Inquisitor class and the Zen Archer archetype for the Monk class.

Seriously, a Monk?!?!

The Zen Archer archetype made me want to play a Monk; I can't really say I had ever wanted to before. Seriously. The core class, though made very interesting in its Pathfinder version, was a very specific type of character. It's a great set of abilities, but the Asian-themed flavor seems out of place in what is typically a quasi-medieval fantasy. The Zen Archer swaps out a lot of the Wuxia-style abilities for archery abilities. I'm not going to detail all the abilities ad nauseum, but the classic Flurry of Blows for this variant is only for attacks with the bow, and at third level they may use the Wisdom modifier instead of Dexterity for bow attacks. Very interesting! A good base for my character.

Nobody expects the Inquisition!

A new full twenty-level class from the same book, the Inquisitor, also offers some great options. The theme of the class is a divine huntsperson who seeks out enemies of the faith. It offers medium combat abilities, a secondary spell progression and a set of abilities called Judgements. A judgement can be pronounced in a battle upon one's enemies, and gives a bonus of some sort (bonus to attack, bonus to damage, increased ability penetrate spell resistance, healing, some others). Additionally, they also get a geat sprinkling of other fun abilities. An excellent class on its own, but I'm using this as a secondary class to "dip into" to snag some interesting abilities that complement my character idea.

A question of race...

For a race, the answer was simple: an elf. Elves are archers, right? Looking at it, it seemed pretty simple. A closer look at the Zen Archer Monk, though, makes it clear that WIsdom is a very important ability score, and elves do not grant a boost to that. Oddly enoughh, a dwarf would be better. Humans are always tempting, as well as both the half-elf and half-orc, since any of those three would allow a boost to Wisdom as well. My concept fits an elf better, though. So that's what I chose. When I think of the portrayal of Legolas in the Lord of the Rings movies, I kind of see this character being that kind of archer (well, later!). So elf it is!

Introducing... Hallyr!

The campaign, set in the default Pathfinder world of Golarion, this character is in had a quirky twist to start it off: all the player characters had been turned to stone prior to the start. So I felt a little creative license with that to create a character who had lasted walked the earth over a thousand years before. The scion of a noble house, his family believed him to be the reincarnation of the warrior who founded the house. As such, he was trained to be a warrior and was quickly given command of troops when a Gnoll uprising happened. His lack of experience resulted in being ambushed and losing his whole command and left for dead, he was found and healed by a wandering priest of Sarenrae. Ashamed, he decided not to return to his homeland. All he has to remind him of his past life is his bow Malachiel, said to be created by the founder of his house (and named after him), and his sword. He lived among (mostly) humans for the next several decades, living the life of a traveling scholar... until he encountered a medusa some 1400 years ago. That is the story of Hallyr Narcissar... Currently, he has thrown in his lot with some others who had met similar fates and were awakened with him.

At the time I am writing this, Hallyr has just gotten to level three. He has two levels of Monk and one of Inquisitor. A first level version of him can be found here. I'll skip a stat block unless explicitly asked, but that's the current character I'm playing. That's how I role! :) Anyone else playing something they're excited about? Or want to? Who knows, another discussion here on GUG could spark up a gaming group for someone else... and we love to see your comments, anyway!

Why I Game

2011-05-03T23:04:00.000-07:00

by Randy

Katie and I playing TransAmerica

Hi, everyone! I was thinking that today I should diverge a little from recent content, which has been more heavily focused on reviews, and tell you a little about myself. Specifically, I want to tell you why I game. If you've followed the blog at all, you'll have a general idea of what my family likes to play, so I'm going to throw out another angle. Here's what motivates me to sit down at the table and get my game on.

Fun

That's an easy one, right? Of course I do it because it's fun. It almost goes without saying. People play games... because they are fun. I am no different in that regard, though my uses and gratifications may not be exactly the same as another person. In board games, I like to execute interesting strategies. In roleplaying games, I like make interesting characters and see their stories unfold when put in interesting situations. These things are fun to me. It's also fun to see other people do these things, too. Winning is fun, too, but honestly, I'd rather lose by a small margin than win by a huge one. Why? Because that usually is not fun, even for good sports. And I have the most fun when others are having fun, too.

Mental Exercise

Pondering Agricola...

Some games, particularly strategy board games, are a kind of mental calisthenics. Just think about it: you are introduced to a closed system that has its own unique rules. You have some finite amount of resources (which could be time or moves), most likely roughly equal to your opponents. With these, you are tasked to employ a strategy better than your opponents, possibly having to employ tactics against them whilst they work against you. This requires and develops reasoning skills, forethought and the ability to predict what opponents will choose. Have you heard the quip "The brain is a muscle; if you don't use it, you lose it"? That kind of sums up my feelings about that.

Social

Unless you play solitaire games exclusively, gaming is a social activity. Whether just playing something with my wife, or my kids or friends, I appreciate having a fun activity in which to participate. I am a social creature and games allow you to interact with anothers on a different level. My wife and I often have great conversations over a game. When meeting new people, I find a game can be a good icebreaker. Many of my friends I actually met because we gamed together... my wife included!

Family

Guess What I Am? with the kids

Games are a great family activity. It beats zoning out in front of the television! I really like playing games with every member of my family. Even the two year old, Jack! I just love seeing the wheels turn when the kids figure out something neat in games, and appreciate very much what that means for their cognitive and social development. I love gaming with my wife, too. It's an excellent way for us to engage in a mentally stimulating activity together after the kids go to bed.

So that's a little bit about me. That doesn't necessarily sum up every reason I play games, but it hits the main ones. Without a doubt, I'll come up with another within a few minutes of posting this. I hope you enjoyed a little insight into me as a gamer! Have a great day, and be sure to share why YOU play games!