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Women's medium - Swirl with rings (Magenta, Lilac, Medium Blue)
Men's medium - Diagonal Pleats with ragged ends (Green, Yellow, Blue)
Still playing around mostly. I need to get some sodium alginate (kelp) to add to my urea dye prep solution. I used synthrapol during the wash-out and I think it did a pretty good job keeping the dye suspended. Like the other pair of shirts, I left them tied and dyed overnight before the washout. The soda ash is really keeping the colors vibrant. Still need to work on dye application techniques. I might try to pick up a syringe as well.
This is a hot pink and lavender "spider". A special fold restriction and specific dye application (small squirt bottles) creates the effect. Not bad for a first attempt but potentially too little dye depending on your taste for the amount of white.
This is a combination of two techniques using a basic swirl but using spider dye application. Done in Magenta, Lemon Yellow, and a self mixed Orange. I'm not happy with the Magenta bleed and its relationship to the yellow/orange. I'd leave out the Magenta next time. The yellow on the other hand is awesome; very vibrant.
The last few weeks have been extremely hectic with birthdays, end of school, parties, baseball, softball (Sophie is playing in two leagues this summer), etc. but I did manage to squeeze in some time for the June installment of Analog Game Night.
Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures because I somehow managed to forget my camera. We met at Bob's house (a first time hoster...thanks Bob!) with a small group of only four this month. Three/Four is, in my opinion, the sweet spot for most games so for me anyway, it worked out quite well. Bob had recently picked up a copy of The Princes of Florence and although it took quite awhile to get up to speed on the rules, I had a great time. I'd never played PoF (I know, I know...) and I was impressed. If I had one excuse as to why I stayed away from it, it was because of the auction. For years I've been an auction bigot and if the game had an auction...it wasn't for me. Although it's taken a long time, the auction mechanism is growing on me as long as it isn't a major aspect of the game. The auction, although very important, didn't seem to dominate the play. I can see how more plays will help me determine the value of items and therefore trigger some more intense auction combat, but I still think there are many other aspects of the game worth exploring. I'm looking to pick up a copy for myself.
Tim had to take off after PoF and I'd brought my copy of Amazonas (Bob had requested it). It's been a long time since I'd played but we seemed to get up and running pretty quickly and were burning through the event cards as fast as we could. With three, the competition for village building plots was relatively mild. It may have been due to the hidden "goal" cards that we'd been given but for whatever reason, we only had a few times when you could hear a groan when a village was built. I'm not sure I'd purchase Amazonas were I faced with the option again but I have had a lot of fun playing it over the years. It only supports 3-4 players which is too narrow for my tastes these days. I have to really like a game to consider buying it if it only goes up to 4. 3-5 is preferred with 2-5 comfortably clearing the bar and onto other selection criteria.
As a closer we played Sushizock im Gockelwock; a fun little tile/domino collection game. Surprisingly simple to learn and quick to play, it makes a great filler for opening or closing a game night with gamers or some light play with your family. There's a lot of luck involved with the rolling of the dice but you can work the odds and push your luck. I'm looking to pick up a copy. I had a great time playing.
Well, thanks for a fun time at AGN June 2009 and I look forward to next month.
Noah's birthday was today and yesterday we took 9 of his closest friends up to a high ropes course where they spent 3 hours up in the trees climbing across cables, jumping between platforms, and generally pushing their limits. More pictures of Noah's birthday and the ropes course are in the gallery.
...and as usual, our anniversary took a back seat to his birthday but Lisa and I celebrated our 23 wedding anniversary today.
Noah's braces went on November, 2007 and now they're off. To his right you might just be able to see the basket of candy he's plowing through...
I received my copy of Rails of Europe about 5 months ago and I have yet to play it. So I cracked the box last night and reread the Railroad Tycoon rules (the base game that Rails expands) and set up for a solitaire game. It didn't take long before I realized that there's just too much going on to keep track of independent players to make it really a game. However, I did enjoy being able to work through the rules and, embarrassingly enough, fondle the bits. I'll not go through the rules but in short, Rails is a good delivery game. Your job is to connect cities by building railroads between them. Once connected you can ship cubes between cities using the rail lines. Different terrain types affect the cost of the track and colored cubes must be shipped from their original location established at the beginning of the game to a city of corresponding color. You move up the victory point track when you ship cubes which earns you more money each turn. You'll most likely need to sell shares in your company to raise cash to build rail lines but doing so forces you to pay dividends each turn reducing the cash you have available on your turn. If you've played Ticket to Ride or Union Pacific, you might think this games are similar because there are plastic trains and you "build track" but the similarity is only superficial. Rails is much more of a "gamer's game" and there are many more goals to think about, money to manage, and decisions to make about where to build. The smaller board brings players into contact much sooner than RT setting the stage for a potentially more challenging and confrontation game.
The board is 2/3 the size of Railroad Tycoon and I thought I'd be fine playing without my dining room table opened up but, unfortunately, it's very tight even with the smaller size. I beginning to think the only way I'm going to get a set of very specific games to the table will be to organize a special game night with the games already chosen.
It was getting a bit late last night and there were only three of us but we decided to kick ourselves off the computers and play a game. Since it was late I scanned the titles in my collection and decided on something that wasn't heady and if push came to shove, we could cut short. Winner's Circle was the winner.
Neither Noah nor Lisa had played before and it had been since October since I'd played but WC is extremely easy to teach and with only a couple pages of rules it doesn't take much to get back up to speed.
The game comes packed with a board representing a track, fat plastic horses in varying colors, thick cardboard placards depicting a horse's abilities in 4 areas (horse head, saddle, helmet, horseshoe), some money chips, 4 betting chips per player, and a 6-sided die with 3 sides depicting a horse head, and the other three sides depicting saddle, helmet, and horseshoe.
The game comprises three individual races. The horses are lined up and the placards are turned up and assigned to specific horses. In round robin fashion, players place bets on horses (a betting chip depicting 0, 1, or 2) until all 4 betting chips have been placed (you can't bet on the same horse twice). Once all betting chips are down, the race begins and the starting player rolls the die. The player then chooses any horse and moves that horse forward on the track according to the number on the placard that matches the symbol rolled on the die. After moving the horse, the placard is turned over and the horse is not allowed to move again until all other horses have moved.
The game does have some pretty significant back stabbing aspects to it since you can, for example, on a bad roll choose a horse you didn't bet on and move them a small amount. Making situations worse is that it's not allowed for horses to occupy the same spot on the track. If, when moving forward, your horse lands on an occupied spot, you must back up until the first free spot opens up (maybe all the way back to your original position). Congestion on the track can really devastate some moves restricting some horses from breaking out of the pack.
The first horse that passes the finish line is moved to the center of the track followed by the 2nd and 3rd horse. When the 3rd horse crosses the line, the race is over and the horse in last place is moved to the center as the "last" horse. At this point, a payout occurs and using a chart on the board, players determine the value of a bet based on the finishing position of a horse and receive money based on the value of their betting chip. The 0 betting chip pays nothing but is used as a bluff bet since it looks as if you intend to split a reduced pot for the horse and may make others choose another horse. Players that have bet on the "last" horse owe money to the bank.
That's basically it, you set up for the next race and go again. The game is relatively random but fun. We played with the Royal Turf variant where you use the 0 betting chip and bets are secret (placed face down). In addition the "horse head" value of the placard (the most common dice roll since it's on 3 sides of the die) must be different for every horse in the race. It bothers me somewhat that the horses are always lined up in the same order behind the starting line and they don't start from a flat start as in a real race. A variant I might like to try would be to turn up placards and place bets but then randomly assign the start order to represent the random nature of a good/bad start as the come out of the gates.
Winner's Circle is a chaotic bit of fun that is pretty much a crap shoot strategy-wise but I'm glad to have something like it in my collection. If you can find a copy just about anybody can play (gamers and non-gamers) and the theme ties in relatively well to real life so players shouldn't have much of an issue at quickly picking it up.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/484167
I uploaded the upper image to BGG in August, 2006 and Sophie staged the image again almost three years later. It seems that something has changed in the two shots :-)
Just hanging out at Derby Court in the Columbus Musuem of Art while my daughter serves her time as an "Art Ambassador" in the cubism gallery. She's playing the role of a docent during an open house for Columbus Public Schools. The exhibit behind me is a Dale Chihuly creation.
I'm thankful for the public wi-fi spot where I can hang out with the Mac while I wait. It's a nice spot and I can listen to a small string group playing for the public (4 violins, 1 viola, and a cello).
Copyright © 2008 Memoirs of a Board Gamer
