GOALS!

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

 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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!