Taipan sales and new Link

I have just made a few minor changes to the Description section of Taipan in the Store to help point players to the two different versions of Taipan on the Game Crafter.

Taipan: Merchants of the Far East
This is the full version that has higher quality parts, a 10'x10' box and divider to help keep the parts organized.  There are also high quality Micro Cards to represent money and Cubes to represent Cargo.

Taipan: The Play Test Version

This is the less expensive Play Test Version.   There is no box or divider.  Coins are represented by Paper Money and Cargo is represented by Plastic Poker Chips.

I have also added an Image of Taipan in the upper right of my Blogg.  You can direct link to Taipan in the Game Crafter store by clicking the image.  Please share the links with your friends and help support the Play Test of Taipan.

Come One Come All....

I have opened the store on the Game Crafter site.  If you have $50 extra bucks and want to help test Taipan, go and pick it up at:

Look for this image in the list of games.

https://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/taipan


You might have to do a search for Taipan, it seems like the link only takes you to the list of games, not the actual Taipan page.


It takes about 10 days for them to print and ship it out to you.  I need a lot of feed back on the Rules.  No one but me has read them so I am sure there is a lot that doesn't make any sense.  I need your help smoothing out the bumps, so please send notes and feedback.


Thanks for your support.

Playing Again!

Tuesday night I went to my friends house to play Taipan.  I brought over the newly printed Game Crafter version of Taipan and set it up.  We BSed and ate dinner for about an hour and go started around 8PM.

I blame the bad picture on the 21 year old Scotch. Mmmmm...Glenfiddich!

I had two new people who had never played (TJ and Sean), so it was good to get some fresh eyes on the game.  Right out the gate I got very lucky where I fought off 3 pirates and got two gold cargo.  This would have resulted in me earning 22 coin on the second turn of the game.  In my continued attempt to minimize the huge random swings of the game I adjusted the rules only allowing players to choose 1 cargo from any Pirate victory.

The Start of the game using the new Game Crafter set.

Over the course of the game we found several other issues that need to be addressed.  TJ got himself into a bad position where he had no money and lost most of his cargo when he got into a fight with Pirates.  We came up with a new rule that allows a player to stay in port on his turn to earn 2 coins.  I might change this to if he takes no Port Actions, he gains two coin.  This will prevent players from loosing a turn and falling behind the other players who are earning much larger amount of money.

In addition, TJ also took Rasheed which did not help his situation any.  After talking about it we have determined that his ability (Repair any two damage for free) is purely a defensive ability and playser can rarely win a game by playing all defensive.  I will be revisiting that character to change his ability in some way.

Clearly Sean and Bryan have had way too much to drink.

I had a good lead for a long while, but in the end, it was Bryan who won.   While I spent the game slowly paying off my debt, he built up his ship so that he had Max Sails and Hull.  In combination with Markus Seawell (Move into and out of Port once per turn for free), this allowed his to make big buys and massive sells and pay off his debt in the last four turns of the game.  This is a good strategy and the one I think all expert players will take, but it makes it very binary and appears to be the only correct choice.  We talked about reducing the number of Ship Upgrades from 3 to 2, but my fear with this is that it will slow the game down.  The game took 2 hours, and that is the perfect amount of time in my mind.


I think I am going to change Marcus Seawell so that he will be able to take advantage of specially marked short cuts on the Sea Map and Rasheed will become the Harbor Master allowing him to move out of Port for free, but not into port.  There where a few other issues, but nothing to major.  Some art issues on the cards, and some missing details and typos in the rules.


Cant wait to have time to make the changes and do it all again.  Maybe this weekend I will get to dive back in.   Until next time, happy gaming.

Old Dog, New Tricks....

It doesn't happen often so don't get use to it, but sometimes I do like to learn something new.  This time around it's making, editing, and uploading videos to YouTube.  Thats right, my first video and I am such a big nerd that it is the Open Box reveal of Taipan!  Sorry for the inconsistent video quality and random flares of over-saturated light.....did I mention this was my first go?

In about 4 hours I filmed it, learned how to use iMovie to edit it, did said editing and then added the fades (the parts where it fades to black).  After that I learned how to upload to YouTube, and finished it off by posting it here. All in all, not a bad nights work.



My only complaint with opening the box and seeing the parts was the Micro Cards.  The Micro Cards turned out to be much smaller than I was expecting.  This doesn't really affect the Coin Cards, but the Cargo Cards are near impossible to shuffle, so I will have to order a set of the regular Poker Card sized deck of the Cargo Cards.  Also, the Coin Cards I left the Coin to small on the card, so its hard to tell the difference between the gold and brass coins.

The only other issue I have found is that everything printed a little bit darker than I was anticipating. That doesn't affect the game any, so it's more of an observation than a problem.

Taipan Testing and Design Changes

This past Thursday I got to play test Tiapan.  It was a good group of players including my friend and fellow Game Designer CW Karsten, the creator of the recently Kick Started game 'Dragon Valley'.  I have been trying to get him to play Tiapan for a while now.

The game played well and we played all the way to the end.  Things seemed to play quickly and despite a few big problems and lots of little ones, there were no game stoppers.  Also, I got one of the best compliments I could ever get.  'I like this better then Merchants and Marauders'.   If you have been following this Blog since the beginning you know that M&M is the game I frequently referenced early on in the development o Taipan.  So for one of the players to say that was a nice ego boost to hear.

After the initial Set-Up, the game is underway.

For the first few turns things played really well.  Right off the bat, players scattered to the four corners of the board, so that felt like a big win since early versions of the game everyone always went straight to the top closest ports.  I think one of the things that helped with this is the new City Cargo Values and players getting the Free upgrade of their choice.  

Things are about to start going very bad.  Let the Brokenness commence!

And then the first big problem happens.  One of the players draws an Event Card that doubles the sell price of a random type of cargo.  A cargo he just happened to be carrying, and in the city he just happened to be going to.  This let him sell those 2 Rice Cargo for 10 each instead of 5 each.  This got compounded when he took that money and upgraded his ship twice, a rule I will need fix by saying players can only upgrade once per port visit.

To fix this problem I am changing the card to a +1 per cargo sold.  I was going to do a +2, but there are also City Modifier cards this card might stack with making to the total possible bonus to be up to +4.  This feels like too much of a possible bonus, so I am keeping it small.  This is a good general rule about using multiplication in game design.  Unless you have some way of controlling it, don't use it.  The numbers get too big to fast, so its always better to use smaller additive bonuses.

CW trades in some Cargo to Upgrade his Ship.

The next big problem game a few rounds later when the same lucky player (John) drew the 'Gift in Hong Kong' event card.  This allowed him to pick a single cargo of his choice.  Before the last round of big changes this wouldn't have been that big of a deal since the most value he could have got would have been 8 coins (still broken but not as bad).  With the new changes I made to the City Cargo values, he got a value of 12 coins, and if he wanted to take an extra turn moving to another City he could have got 15 coins.

A gift in Hong Kong? What a coincidence, I just happen to be in Hong Kong!  =)

After the game, we discussed the problem of 'A Gift in Hong Kong' and came up with an interesting idea.  Players can sell 2 cargo of the same type and get 1 of the next highest cargo for free.  What I like about this is that it forces the player to have to do something to make this happen, it doesn't just happen for showing up in the right place at the right time.  The down side is that if a player sells Black Powder (the highest cargo type), what does he get?  Now I have to come up with some special rule for that?  I think I will revert to what it was originally 'Players gain the Ship Upgrade of their choice' with the added mechanic that they have to sell 2 Cargo of the same type to get the benefit.

John (the guy on the right) just got lucky and goes on to with the game.

After this it was clear who was going to win.  He had gained so much money there was no real way to catch up, but everyone was happy to keep playing to see what they were able to achieve before the game ended.  Near the end of the game I realized that my Captain's special ability required that I get into combat to use it.  He can repair 1 damage once between Port visit.  Bus since there were a total of 4 pirates the whole game, it never really got used.  I am hopping this will get fixed in the next game when I have more Pirates starting in the game, and make some adjustments to the Event Deck to fix some of the unevenness.

My Captain is only useful if I get into enough combat that I need to repair a lot of damage.

Other issues included: Not enough pirates, some copy paste errors and poorly phrased descriptions that made understanding some of the cards difficult, Cargo Token colors not matching the Cargo colors on the cards, and Players being able to buy more than one Ship Upgrade a turn.

Some challenging problems and lots of small, easy fixes! I just wonder how many I will find in the next play though.  =)

The forgotten taste of free time!

I have been working long hours, and when I do come home I spend my free time with my girlfriend.  (Pro Tip: Spending time with your girlfriend makes them happy.  Do not put them off to work on your game, its never worth it).  This does not leave a lot of free time to work on my game or write about it.

Needless to say, I have been working very hard on Taipan, but as my past posts discouraging you from working on art would indicate, the second you start adding art, the development time suddenly becomes takes much longer to keep focus and maintain your development and testing pace.

This past week I got to print my cards and get them cut out and sleeved. The total process took almost a full week, but that was mostly because I was doing it an hour at a time when every I had a little free time.

It took me 2 days to cut all of the print outs.

Cutting the cards wasn't difficult, just boring and time consuming.  In the end I didn't make the guides small enough so some of the cards wouldn't fit in the sleeves.  This required more cutting as I was trying to slide the cards into the sleeves.  That was frustrating.

In the end, the leftovers look like this

Here all the cards before they got put into their sleeves.

The final count is 5, Ship Cards, 14 Captain Cards, 34 Cargo Cards, 32 Combat Cards, 48 Event Cards, and 29 City Cards.  I also printed out a new version of the Map using the new art and the new cities that I added.  The map and all of the cards look great.

The final product looked great.

This past Thursday night, I left work early to attend the Dragon Valley release party.  My friend CW just got the first print run of his game Dragon Valley that he got funded through Kickstarter.  It looks great and I am very happy for him.  When Taipan is ready to go, I will have to pick his brain about the whole Kickstarter process.

Dragon Valley is now available.

While I was at the Dragon Valley party, I got a chance to sit down a play a partial game of Taipan.  I say a partial game because I didnt have a lot of time, so I quickly came up with a rule that I thought would make the game take about half as long.  I was right, a game that I thought should take about 90 minutes took about 45.  Just enough for the game to get going, but not enough to get a good sense of the flow of the game.

The start of the first game of Taipan I have played in about a month.

It did help to identify a few new problems.   Not enough threats from Pirates allowed for player to hang on to their money instead of spending it on upgrades or paying off their Debt.  Some Event Cards still reference the old Cargo type Medicine which has been replaced by Tea.  Upgrades were too expensive in the cities other than Hong Kong.

With all the new rules and mechanics, I am not surprised there are all new problems to solve.  Well, I guess its back to work.  I will try to have an update about the new changes soon.

Taipan is still here...just barely!

Things are moving along very slowly.  Work has kept me busy and I have had several setbacks with the cards and data sets.  There wasn't much point in posting till I had some good progress to report.  Sadly this is a report on how little progress I have made.

My ship was nearly sunk by adding all this art!  As cool as it can be RESIST!

On my last post about Taipan I showed off the new art I had been doing and trying my damnedest to dissuade you from following in my footsteps.  DO NOT DO ANY ART until the game is done.  Remember that mantra I was chanting a few weeks ago?  Well, doing art continues to take a big wet bite out of my ass.  In the process of making images I could post for you all to see, I saved on of my more complex Data Set images into a single layer JPEG.  What does this mean?  I will have to rebuild that file from scratch.

Since I had a free weekend (the first in almost a Month) I thought I would have an opportunity to finally print the new cards with all the new art.  Sadly this will not be the case.  I have been finding lots of little problems with the Data Sets since adding the Art References and now I will have to rebuild the City Modifier Event Cards.  It brings up one more good point about not doing the art yet.  Its one more moving piece that you have to get lined up with all the others.  It adds another layer of complication to your design process and just gets in the way of making the fun.

Sailing once again.  I will have more news soon.

I hope to have good news in the coming week.

And I thought I was soooo clever!

Well, its been a fun week.  I have been working late every night as we try to meet our deadlines.  It seems that working 12+ hours a day does tend to cut into your Play Time....who knew?  That Said I did manage to get a basic art layout for all of my cards.

From left to right: Cargo, Captain, Damage, Cities

I am still using the test art for the Captain and Cargo Cards but that will be changing soon. You can see the difference in visual quality on the Cargo and Captain Cards compared to the City and Damage Cards.  I will have to go back and rework them so they look like the same art. Thanks to my good friend Ben and his fantastic info about how Public Domain works, I should have most of the art done in the next week or two.


Now for this weeks lesson:  DO NOT ADD ANY ART until your game is much closer to being done.  There are a many, many....MANY reasons for this:

1.) Cards Change and so does the Art.  There is no point in making art that will get thrown away.  You will be driven mad by how often you will change stats, layouts and cards.  Save your sanity. 

2.) Printer Ink Costs are not cheep.  There is no point printing out all the ink and colors if the balance of the cards are broken.  Save your money. 

3.) Until you have an artist hired, your art will be inconsistent and look like its from different games (like my cards).  Save your time.

4.) Once you add art, you have invested a significant amount of time and money into your game.  Now you will be less likely to make the changes that your game needs because it will mess with all that work you put in, making you more resistance to change.  Save your creativity.

5.) When you finally bring your game to a publisher, and persuade them to publish your game, they will hire an artist and have all of the art redone.  This can be very frustrating since you grow attached to the work you put into your art.  The Publisher will have other ideas about how best to market this game they are taking a chance on and will (unless you are a world class artist) insist on changing the look and layout of the art.

In the end, you should resist adding art.  I know it makes it all look better and gets others more excited about it, but you will only kick yourself.   Making art is very time consuming. Unless you are an artist, you will be better off using stick figures and focusing on making the game play and mechanics fun.


I know all of this and I still do it.  Almost every game I have ever made I started piling the art on almost from day one.  Maybe I am starting to learn since this time I waited a full 2 months to start in with the art.

A first look at the Cards

I have my first prototype of what the Cards will look like so wanted to share it with you.

The new Hotness!

It has taken a lot longer than I originally thought, partially because of work monopolizing my time, all the gaming I have done over the Holidays, and the complexity that my Data Sets have taken on.  In addition, while working on creating the new Data Sets, I became unhappy with some of the Event Cards.  I have been struggling with how to make the old Event Cards, which only affected an individual player, work on a Global Scale to affect all players evenly.  Many of the Cards just didn't work, so I had to scrap them and create new ones.  Some of the ones I kept needed to have their mechanics changed.  

The Deadly Storm.

The Storm Cards were the most problematic Events.  Where they once just hit a single player, they now needed to affect an area.  I played around with dividing the map into 3 section, north center, and south.  To make it simple I even thought about making Storms affect the whole map, but this felt cheep.  Instead I choose to use the same mechanic that I use on a lot of Event Cards.  Draw a Cargo Card to choose a random city and then any ship up to 2 spaces from the city at the end of the round will receive damage.  This lets players avoid the area and escape it if they happen to be caught in the area when the storm hits.  This way, if a player takes damage from a storm, in most cases it will be their choice if they want to risk the storm.

The Pirate Bounty, a dangerous way to make some extra cash. 

To complete the Data Sets I needed to include the pointers to the Images that will be on the cards.  Once I had the place holders for the images, I couldn't stand looking at the empty Data Sheet "Fill Space" where the image would be placed when the Data was called.  So I got to work on inserting the image references into the Data Sets.  Even with the much faster process for creating the Art Images, it is very time consuming trying to find images that fit the theme and time period, and are free and/or Public Domain.  This is why it is always good to make a game themed to a fictional setting so you don't need to worry about being historically inaccurate. 

This photo for Ship Upgrades does not look right and will be changing.

It is very difficult to find images that fit for the cards I need to represent.  It has forced me to choose a few images I am not happy about and will be changing the first chance I get.  This image doesn't fit the other images because its built from a photograph.  This is one of the images I will change when I find a suitable replacement.

Math Bad!

I am going to go out on a limb and say that for any game designer you will have a much better success at designing games if you have a strong background in math.  It helps with more than you will ever know.  Take it from a guy who struggles with math, I waste a lot of time trying to solve problems that can almost always be handed by a moderately difficult math equation.  I end up doing more iteration because I don't do a great job of figuring out the math issues early on.  This leads to some wasted time and frustration.  Learn from me and get a healthy does of advanced math skills before you leave high school or college.

I bring this up because I played Automobile last night and fought myself to pay attention and understand what I needed to do all night.  It's a deep and complex game with lots of statistical and analytical thingking.  Players are trying to build their Auto Manufacturing company by building factories, manufacturing cars, managing Car Sales Men, using the Characters Special abilities (which can change every turn) to their maximum effect.

Bryan (center) teaching the Rules of the game.

You have money that is a lot in the first and second rounds but is gone after that and is near impossible to get back. I made several big mistakes but they were all based on assumptions about how the game worked and how stiff the penalties were.

An unknowing Me, about to get my ass handed to me! 

Late in the first round I used a special phase of the game to shut down my factories and avoiding the penalties I would have got for having the lowest technology Car Factories.  But I didn't do the math to calculate how much money the factories would be making for me and that I could have waited to sell the factories until turn two, making a lot more money.

In the end it came down to math.  The two guys who did the best were the math experts, correctly calculating how many cars they could manufacture and effectively sell, gaining the highest profits, allowing them to buy more factories and sell more cars.

Apparently Bryan doesn't know how to take a non-blurry picture of me.

Automobile is a cool game and I would play it again, but I don't think I would go back to it often.  It is the start contrast to my game, Taipan, which has a fair bit of hidden and random elements.  Speaking of which, I am having a hard time getting the new Data Sheets set up properly.  I have made so many changes that the Cards for Taipan have become so significantly changed on the Data side, that I have to clean up the Photoshop files before they will read properly.

As a bonus, check out this insane pistol that shoots shotgun shells.  This is Ben (Bryan's son) holding the monster of a gun.  That thing is almost as big as he is!

Heres me, a 6'4 reasonably muscled guy having a hard time even holding the thing.  Aiming it causes my hand to wobble from the weight.  Maybe I should have cheated like Ben and used both hands!  ;p

A picture is worth a thousand words...

I have been working on a combination of Game Designs for the latest version of Taipan and new Art.  I have to admit that the Art is derailing me a bit and keeping me from getting my cards printed.  But since I don't have the time to organize and play my game this week, it's not that big of a deal.


I have added a new Debt system to Taipan that should make for a clearer Win Condition for the game.  Players must return to Hong Kong to pay off the 50 Coin of Debt they start the game with. The first player to pay off all their Debt ends the game.  The player who has the most Money and is Debt Free, wins.

I have created Coin Art for a 1,5 and 10 Coin.  I also have the Debt Coins made (The red one on the Right).  I searched for a while to find coins that were minted close to the same time the game is set.  I think the Silver Coin was the only one that was not made in the same time period (about 40 years later).  Also, the Debt Coin is not a Coin at all. It's a Wall Plaque that was created in the same time period.

In addition, I have been experimenting with paintings from the same time period (1750-1850) to try out some different ideas for what the final card images will look like.  It's very hard to get them all to match perfectly.  The art from that era was all so different from one another.  Also, there really isn't a lot that survived very well.  Much of it is too dark or too damaged to modify and ends up looking bad after I do my process to them.

 The Rebellion City Modifier Card

This will be one of the City Cards

This will be ether a Storm or Wrecked Ship Event Card.

I am playing with some textures to make them look like they are painted on rough canvas, but those are not ready to show yet.  I have a lot more images as well, but I will save those for another day.  I hope to have a sample card ready to show some time this week, depending on free time.  I am also going to get one last night of gaming in tomorrow.  We are supposed to play Automobiles, so I will have an update about that tomorrow or the next day.

The Last Gaming of the Year

I am sure you are all looking for some news or an update about Taipan, and it is coming, I promise.  There is just not a lot to show or talk about just yet.  In between playing all these games, I have been working on updating the rules (which you can find HERE)  and creating all new cards to replace the old ones that done work with the new rules.  I should have all new cards printed and ready for playing by the weekend.  Until then, here is the latest version of the Far East map with the latest corrections.  Enjoy!

I went to my friend Bryan's place last night to play some games.  We played Merkator a ponderous game that is too complicated for what it is.  So complex in its game play I barely know where to begin.  Players can buy and sell Bonus Cards and Buildings at the start of their turn.  Then they can travel to locations to collect resources and when they do this, the adjacent locations connected by a rope (don't ask) on the board gain 1 addition resource on their location.  They can also travel to these locations to complete Contracts.

Players start the game with 4 contracts ranked 1-4 and are only allowed to keep 5 Contracts.  Contracts can be completed over and over multiple times.  Each Contract has a location and a set of requirements the player must deliver to that location to complete the contract.  If the player completes it, he gets money and a new contract 1 level higher than the level of the Contract he complete.  Players have to travel to these locations and depending on the location ether takes a Time Token or pays Time Tokens (its all feels very arbitrary).  When the player takes a Time Token for traveling to certain locations they flip it over and the Letter on the back is the Column (on the players warehouse) that all players must discard a Good from their warehouse.  Also, other players can then pay that player time tokens to travel with him to perform actions on their turn.  This makes it important to know that focusing on one area or one set of Contracts is the wrong way to win the game.

The game ends when all the Time Tokens are depleted or a player scores the single Level 14 Contract.  Bryan crushed us mostly by cheating (Unintentionally).  He was keeping more than 5 Contracts and several round went by before we caught him.  But he also just had the most options of things to do at the most locations.  I focused on two really good combos, but it cost me too much time to do those combos over an over to be worth it.  Bryan was getting a lot done on our turns and doing a lot on his own turns.

I like the concept but there was so much abstract, vague, and arbitrary rules and mechanics that, In the end, I just did not have a good time playing.  It was all of our first times playing and we discovered several rules that were over looked, or lost in the original translation that we were all just guessing at some points. I would be willing to try it again, but we would have to go another round on learning the rules and check the errata online first.

After a dinner break we came together to play Age of Empires III.  This was sold to me as a 3+ hour game.  In that sense I was not lied to.  It took just over 5 hours to play.  Let me start by saying this is not my type of game.  I could have played 2-3 games in the time it took us to play this one game.  Bryan taught us the Rules and after 40 minutes we started.

This game is big and Epic.  To try to explain it all here would take forever.  Here is the Abridged Version.  Each player is a European contry trying to expand and colonize the New World.  You do this by placing colonists on one of many possible actions.  Colony Ships let you move your people to any place that has been discovered.  Trade lets you take one of the 4 trade goods that are available. Trade Ship acts as a wild card for your trade goods (you only get money if you have 3 of a kind), Construction lets you spend your money to buy buildings. Discovery lets you send a group over to try to open up a new area for colonization. Specialists lets you get one of the special characters that have additional abilities depending one where and how you use them.  And last is Warfare that lets you attack other players.

On top of all the special places you can place a colonist, there are 5 special types of colonists.  Soldiers, Captains, Merchants, Builders, and Clergy.  Each one can be used in different ways depending on where you place them.  Soldiers give bonus money when you used them for discovery and they are used in warfare as a colonists.  Captains count as 2 when bidding on the Trade Ship and when used for Discovery.  Merchants give 5 gold when they land in the New World and they count as 2 when bidding on the Trade Ship.  Builders make buildings cost 5 less and they make fortifications in a Colony that act as End of Game Victory Points.  Clergy count as 2 colonists when they land in the new world.

At the start of the game only the Caribbean is available to Colonize so it gets crowded fast.  In the image above you can see Orange and Purple have piled their people on there.  I got blocked trying to get the Trade Ship twice and I got blocked on getting the building I wanted. I ended up getting a lot of Soldiers, but no money or trade goods.  So I went on the War Path.  Half way through the game I was sure I was in the lead.  I was scoring so many points from the colonies that I had conquered, I knew it was down to Alex and me.

But in the end, it was Ben who pulled out all the stops.  He had generated enough money to buy some really valuable buildings that gave him score multipliers on how much money he had.  He had also got a ton of points from his trade routes.  Alex and I were dead last!  Once we understood what were doing and how all the different Colonists are used, the game started to pick up speed and play faster.  I think with people who really know what they are doing the game could be played in about 3 hours.

Its interesting that on the scoreboard, the two people who where in the lead ended up being last.  And the ones in last place on the board pulled all the way to the front.  While I did enjoy this game, I do not like 5 hour games, so it is unlikely that I will every play this game again, but I would consider it.

Time out for some gaming...

I have been working like crazy on restructuring my Taipan formulas and spreadsheets.   Below, you can see the new Cargo Spread Sheet.  The main reason it became so complicated is due to the fact that I created a lot of automation using Formulas and Conditional Formatting.  I have it set up so I only need to change a small set of numbers on another page and the formulas do all the calculations and adjustments on this page.  Its like very light programing, its complex and time consuming but I am hopping it will spead things up in the future.  I also have all of the Cells set to change color based on the values in the Cell, this allows me to see at a glance the best and worst numbers giving me a good sence of the balance.  If the number is at its base level the Cell is White, if its lower that the base value its Yellow, and then if the number is above its base value it is Red.  This is all automated through conditional formatting and is a big hassle to set up.  The nice thing is that now that it is done, whenever I make a change, every affected Cell will automatically change and update its colors accordingly.

It has been a big pain in the ass and I needed a break.  To turn my brain off, I have been playing Saint's Row: The Third.  It's what is called an "Open Sandbox Game" where you have a large world and have almost no restrictions on what you can do or where you can go.  Just like in all the games like this (Grand Theft Auto, etc...), you race around car jacking people, killing your rivals, police, and anyone to slow to run out of your way when they see your coming.  But Saints Row is more about the outrageous and outlandish and goes more in the direction of a game just trying to let you have fun with a big box of toys.  Lots of mini games involving tanks and attack choppers.  The second game had mini games where you were driving a septic truck around spraying sewage over your enemies territories.  This game is aiming more for mindless fun rather than cerebral challenges.  Saints Row is fun, but ultimately forgettable.

And before you get up on your high horse and give me crap about violence in video games corrupting our youth: I am an adult of 41.  I have no kids.  And I have been watching horror movies and playing video games since I was 5.  For as long as there has been violence, do we really need a specific cultural event to blame?  Before video games it was Rap Music, before that it was Rock music.  Before that it was Comic Books, and then Pulp Novels, and on and on and on!  People need something to blame because its easier than blaming themselves for being bad parents.  OK, putting my soapbox away and getting back to games.

Thankfully, my friend TJ came by to play some board games and saved me from the mindless doldrums.  We broke out my unused copy of Ascension and still shrink-wrapped copy of Blood Bowl: Team Manager.  Let us first talk about Ascension: Chronicles of the God Slayer.  This is a Dominion style card game that has been artificially bumped up in price by the introduction of a useless board.  I am sure this was a marketing trick to increase the selling cost by $10 for something that most likely costs about $1-$2 for them to print.  The game has some good parts, but really falls flat because of the random nature of the available cards.  Imaging if the available cards to buy in Dominion were not set, instead a single deck all shuffled and 6 cards laid out for purchase.  Then when one is bought, you immediately replace it.  That is a very basic idea of how Ascension plays.

Why is there a board for this game? Why, to jack up the price of the box set of course!

There are two economies, Attack and Magic, and each is used to buy diferent cards laid out in the middle.  Attack Cards will eliminate creatures and Magic will let you buy cards that are added to your Deck.  The big problem with having two economies (and those of you who have played the Dominion: Alchemy expansion know what I am talking about), is that it creates barriers to make strategic choices.  It instead relies on luck to get you enough of what you need, and this game has a lot of luck.  Luck of what out there to buy.  Luck of what cards come into your hand allowing you to buy.  And Luck that the other player didn't take a card you needed.

But still, the biggest flaw in the game is the book keeping.  You have Cards that all largely look the same.  Some are removed from the board when you pick them and some go into your discard pile.  Some are played in front of you and give bonuses for the remainder of the game.  Some give bonuses only on the turn you play them and then they go back into your discard pile.  Some let you score points if you perform certain actions.  Its all very cumbersome and gets in the way of what initially appears to be a very smooth and quick playing game.

TJ's experience playing the iPad version
allowed him to crush me in Ascension.

TJ has played a ton of the iPad version of this game and based on our conversation afterwords, it is clear that that the iPad is the best way to play this game.  The book keeping is handled by the computer letting your focus on the game.  On top of that, it's only $4.99 as opposed to the $40 of the board game. 

Now lets talk about a fantastic game, Blood Bowl: Team Manager.  This is another deck building game with focus more on building up your bonuses and earning Fans which are the Score of the game.  Your Deck is important, but it doesn't grow in variance to the same degree that other similar types of games do.  Your deck is only Players and you only get 5 cards per turn to play.  There are some player types that let you draw more players but you always have to discard down so you never have more players in play than another player.  But this is a Team Manager Game and building up your franchise is just as building your Roster of Players.  You will need to do both to score enough Fans to win the game.

The first round of Matches are complete.

You will want to gain Manager Cards that give you some bonus fans at the end of the game, but also let you use special abilities during the matches.  The Team Cards are similar to the Manager Cards, but are designed specifically for each of the Teams.  They give bonus Fans based on certain criteria at the end of the game and in rare cases allow the player to tap the card to perform special actions.  This is the one aspect of the game that gets a bit cumbersome making it hard to remember all the special cases that you get your bonus fans or forgetting that you could have used an ability at a critical moment.

The end of the game, even tho the score board
 don't show it, I will go on to win this one.

I had an advantage over Tj with this game.  I have played twice and knew the importance of the Manager Cards and building up your Team Roster with Star Players.  I tried to show him the value but I don't think I did a very good job because he was surprised at the end of the game by how many points I gained though the final bonuses I had acquired.

In the end we both had a great time.  I would not recommend Ascension to anyone unless you have played the iPad version and absolutely loved it.  Blood Bowl on the other hand I can't recommend enough.  It plays well and scaled well.  TJ and I were just two players and I would say it played just as well as when I played with 4 players.  Maybe just a bit faster.