Boards, Tiles, and Golf
Lots of stuff to talk about this morning so I’ll get right to it.
A new column will appear on GameShark this week or next (as soon as we get approved artwork). This is a boardgame column called Cracked LCD by a fellow named Michael Barnes. Michael is an interesting fella. He’s the only user, to my knowledge, to earn a banishment from boardgamegeek.com.
He’s also a talented writer (with incredibly strong opinions..). He has forgotton more about the boardgaming hobby than most people will ever know. You may not always agree with him (I don’t) but Michael always has something to say — which to me is the key to writing a great column.
After being booted from BGG for being too opinionated (that was basically the reason from what I read) he co-founded the Fortress: Ameritrash blog. Some of the stuff on that blog is brilliant, other stuff is just juvenile weirdness, but it’s a bookmarkable site for BG fans.
Michael has already submitted his first four columns, each hovering around 1,500 words. He wrote these up in a matter of a few hours. The guy is a machine. If you really enjoy the BG hobby I think it’ll be required reading. It’s A-list stuff.
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Staying with the bg angle, the XBL version of Carcassonne comes out tomorrow. Woo hoo. Digital meeples! I like Carcassonne — not as much as Settlers, but it should make for a good XBL conversion.
Oh, and I still haven’t played Puerto Rico yet. I had a late game night but we played Ingenious, Citadels, and some Settlers. Ah well. I’m also currently playing a game of Twilight Struggle with Mary…and it looks like the U.S. is about to lose the Cold War. Sorry, folks. Er…Comrades.
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Finally, videogames. I’m currently playing Total Pro Golf 2, and having a hell of a good time with it. I reviewed last year’s game for CGM (3/5 stars) and this is a significantly better game in both its sim aspects as well as its playability. It’s funny — I play the game almost exactly the way Bill Harris does. I sim a lot of it, and jump in and play when it gets juicy; this way I can play multiple seasons quickly but still get a sense of how it plays. The first two days of a golf tourney always bored me (unless I was playing in it) so I wait to see how the weekend shakes out. Expect a full review shortly although Bill’s blog review pretty much says it all.