To Lose, a Carcass Zone

You don’t wait for ages then two posts happen in the same year. Having met Britinla recently on his trip back to the motherland (or the land adjacent to the motherland) I suggested a game of Carcassonne. Unfortunately I picked up the wrong satchel, instead of a mellow & interesting Eurogame of tile-laying I had my homework and lunchbox.

There are various implementations of Carcassonne, notably on Xbox360 Live, but more in keeping with the original game is a Dutch-made online Java variant: Toulouse (double-geddit?). Registration is free, doesn’t even need your email, and the site is without adverts or sales. The implementation is superb, from lobby to play. The first two expansions are included (and optional) and you can play against AIs too. The site also has a Settlers of Catan variant, Xplorers, and some others. It’s a fan site, donations are welcome and it’ll be closed the moment the owners of Carcassonne or Catan decide to close it. But that’s not in their favour, the site keeps interest in the games without profiteering from them.

See you there. I’ll be the one called “viberunner”…

GCGC

Met with the societies coordinator today with the view to starting a gaming society, possibly Glasgow Caledonian Gaming Club as GCGC is one of the less clunkier monikers. Had a useful meeting of requirements and facilities, they’ll give a a hundred quid or so to get a few choice games into the society to kick it off, and provide a nice space on a weekly basis. The planning, constitution, advertising and the rest should take 3-4 weeks, after which it should be up and running.

Have tickets to see Control, the Ian Curtis/Joy Division story, this Friday at the extravagant Grosvenor.

Board Now

For years the only board game that interested me was chess, while I was into role-playing games the concept of most board games left me cold. When I wasn’t slaying dragons I’d be trapping kings, and that seemed fine for me. Actually, as anyone who plays Dungeons & Dragons knows, while you might get to experience a lot of dungeons, you rarely get to fight dragons (not least because they are really, really, really tough; to go from starting character to dragon-slayer strength takes months, even years of play). Though I’m certain I toasted a few dragons in the Dragonlance (the clue is in the name) campaign I played, I don’t actually recall killing any during it. Over ten years of play the only dragon I remember killing was a juvenile red dragon (thanks David!) and he was pretty much bullied-to-death by me and another player who’d just picked up the “Fighters Handbook”, a mechanism to get players to spend yet-another tenner on the game and thereby pretty much triple your characters power. People running games seem to find it very difficult to ban rulebooks if players have spent money on them.

A couple of years ago a friend got me into Risk, a game I didn’t think I’d enjoy and now love, and that led me to start looking afresh at other board-games. Em has been getting into them too, and she went on a frenzied spending spree. We came back with three boxes, and two are in the post.

The one we played tonight was Cults Across America; a Cthulhu Mythos game by Chaosium, who make Cthonic role-playing games. Unlike their very serious RPGs, this is very silly. The game is a Risk variant, you vie with other cultists one city at a time to control America. You control cultists and High Priests, can summon various Mythos critters, and equip your guys to boost them. There are neutral “personalities” to control, including the Pope and the President. There are a lot of action cards, many of them humorous and appropriate, as you’d expect from a team who have been writing Mythos material for decades.

The physical materials are underwhelming, a flimsy board with America drawn in crayon, and flat cardboard counters. Chaosium produce books, not toys, so they obviously had limited production scope. This is a game that is screaming out for miniatures; but that’s okay, there are miniatures out there that could be acquired for the game. I enjoyed our short game (we ended after two turns) but reviews hint the game has problems resolving in a reasonable timeframe. It looks like a house rule or two might be in order, but otherwise it’s looking to be a thoroughly enjoyable game.