300: The Board Game

It was over quickly, and I enjoyed it ... sort of.

A gamer friend once told me, " Being an out of the closet Ameritrash fan means never having to answer the question 'What were you thinking when you bought that game?'" I'm going to answer the question anyway. It has Spartans. Other than that, my expectations were not particularly high. Reading between the lines of the description, I figured that it was a tactical game with a high luck factor, that could be played by two players in under an hour. In other words, about 45 minutes of chucking dice and quoting the movie in deep theatrical voices. Not much to ask. 300: The Board Game simultaneously exceeded expectations and disappointed.

Andrew Parks has done an exceptional job of creating a world in which players can immerse themselves. There are many well thought out touches that bring this game to life. I have a minor quibble with the legibility of the counters, due primarily to the use of movie stills, rather than icons to indicate unit type. However, this choice is understandable and excusable. The one thing that really prevents 300: The Board Game from being a really great, trashy, beat the crap out of your opponent game, is the use of an outmoded, arithmetic heavy battle resolution system. With a sleeker battle resolution system, such as the ones employed for Memoir '44, Nexus Ops or Monster Mash I, 300: The Board Game could have been that elusive, fast, light, exciting, 30 minute, two player game that would have saved me from another round of dull Euro fillers.

Out of the box, the game looks tasty. I almost ripped the board upon removing it. The board fills the box right to the very edge. Probing with my fingers, I found the fold and pulled. The board lurched. Much to my surprise, I had only grasped half the board's six panels. The other half swung free. I quickly lay the board down to prevent ripping it. The board was huge. Size does matter. I love the epic proportions, and the sense of place the map conveys.


The board is larger than it needed to be for a two player, column battle. Essentially, only the 6 Coastal Plain and the 6 Hot Gates spaces are necessary for game play. The rest of the board is there for thematic impact and convenience. The board is well thought out, providing everything needed to play, plus a nice clear space in the middle for rolling dice. There is a glory point track around the outer edge for keeping score. Two player aids, the Round Order and Battle Chart are printed on the upper corner. Player aids on the board are always a plus. The Persian and Spartan Camp spaces hold reinforcement tokens, so no need to worry about piles of tokens in front of players getting knocked off the table. The game lasts for 6 rounds. However, rather than having a generic turn marker, Ephialtes, the hunchback, moves one space along the goat path at the end of each round. This nice thematic touch not only keeps players in the world of the game, but also makes it easy to remember to move the marker (remember, we are the people who forget to move cars, so remembering to move a turn counter is a challenge). The only thing that I don't like about the board is the "300" written across the middle. It's like "Who the hell tagged the cliffs?" [insert lame Vandals joke here]


There are two decks of battle cards. One for the Persians, and one for the Spartans. The cards are printed on the thinest card stock ever. I think I have received greeting cards printed on thicker paper. I guess they blew the budget on the board. The cards are battle or movement modifiers. They are pretty typical - add to your attack, add to your defense, cancel the effect of your opponent's card, cancel wounds, immediately kill off some of your opponents units, etc. Most have some criteria that must be met to be used, such as a specific unit or leader must be in the battle. Each card also has a still from the movie and a quote. The rules actually state that you must read the quote aloud when playing the card, although it does not stipulate that you must read it in a deep theatrical voice. So points for providing us with the quotes, and points for pictures of hot Spartans.

The Spartans and Persians units are cardboard counters. They are about the size of a quarter and are round, and thick, and glossy. They aren't minis, but they do feel good in your hand, and there's a certain tactile satisfaction when sliding them around on the board. The Persians also get two war beast counters which are about the size of a half dollar. This sizing is, like the board, well thought out. For stacking and attack limits, each war beast is equal to three regular units. The larger size token takes up about as much room on a space as three regular sized counters. This makes it easy to not screw up the stacking limit. Another nice touch is that Xerxes, the God King of the Persians, is worth 20 points to the Spartans if killed. Dilios, the storyteller, will subtract 10 points from the Spartans score if killed (he's the only Spartan with a glory point number). This provides incentive to the respective players to have these two characters survive the battle.



Each counter has a still from the movie, as well as unit type, an attack number, and a defense number printed on them. The Persian units also have a glory point number. One side has the starting stats, with a blue boarder for the Spartan units and a yellow border on the Persian units. The flip side has the wounded stats, and is bordered in red for both the Persians and the Spartans. Here is where the design stumbles a bit. If you are sitting on one side of this huge board, looking out over your army at about a 45 degree angle, you know what you see? Yellow or Blue ringed counters with a big blur in the middle, reflecting light off their glossy pictures. You have to stand up, and bend over, with your face perpendicular to, and no more than a foot above the counters, just to distinguish one unit from another. Once a bunch of units are wounded, you can't even tell which counters are yours. Don't even think about playing this game with someone over 40. They'll be hanging four inches above the board, whipping their glasses on and off and swearing. You'll be like, "Get your fat head out of my way, I can't see my dudes." After a couple of beers, forget about it. You'll both be leaning over, and smacking your heads together, and there will be real blood on the board. Okay, that's an exaggeration. We didn't bleed, but it hurt like hell. After that, we used glass blobs to mark our units so we could tell what was what with out injuring ourselves. Fortunately, there aren't that many different unit types, The Persians have Infantry, Cavalry, Immortals and four leaders. The Spartans just have Spartans and five leaders.

Finally there are 6 "Battle Dice," which are just standard six sided dice. These dice are used as follows. You determine which of your dudes are involved in the battle, and add up their attack numbers, being careful not to whack heads with your opponent who is doing the same thing. Then you look up your attack number on the Battle Chart printed on the board, to determine how many dice you roll. Then you and your opponent simultaneously roll your dice and add up your totals. That's your damage number. The Persians have to kill off dudes until the defense numbers of the dead dudes add up to the damage number that the Spartans rolled. Then you add up all the glory points on the dead Persian dudes, and the Spartans score that many points. The dead Persian dudes get reincarnated as reinforcements and are put into the Persian camp. The Spartans then kill off dudes until the defense number of the dead Spartan dudes add up to the damage number that the Persians rolled. The Spartan dead dudes are just dead, and get tossed out of the game. Additionally, if the total of your defense and the total of the damage doesn't work out all nicey nice, you flip a guy to his wounded side. So for example, if you had three units with a defense of 10, 4, 2, and your opponent rolled an 11, you could kill off your 10, and flip your 2, or you could kill off your 4 and your 2 and flip your 10. Got that? Actually it is not difficult, it is just tedious.

So here's how the game works. The Spartans have to earn 100 glory points before goat boy makes it to the Persian camp (i.e. earn 100 points in six turns). The Spartans earn points by killing Persian dudes, and by taking ground. The Persians win if they prevent the Spartans from earning 100 points (i.e. if the Persians don't die too much) or by fighting their way through the Hot Gates and taking the Spartan camp (i.e. moving onto a row's last space, which is adjacent to the Spartan camp). There are 6 rounds. Each round you draw battle cards, march, battle, and finally move the hunchback along the goat path.

During the March phase, you move in your reinforcements. Each Persian unit can move one space forward. Each Spartan unit can move either one space forward, or one space sideways. There really isn't a lot of movement choices, and most of the time the choices are a no brainer. You just keep pushing your dudes forward. I like that this mirrors the movie and gives you a sense of men constantly surging forward. It is particularly evocative when playing the Persians. You get a real sense of the frustration of having so many men, but not being able to push them through to the front line.

The real game play is in the battle cards. We have been playing with the "gamer" variants, which gives you a starting hand of 5 cards, and allows you to pick two cards at the beginning of each round. Additionally, you can use a card to add one point to your attack number, rather than use it for it's specific purpose. This allows you to burn your useless cards, such as those that require a specific hero to be in a battle, when that hero has already been killed off. Typically at the beginning of each battle you have a hand of about four or five cards, so you have some choices.

During the Battle phase you chuck dice and kill dudes.

So here is how the game plays. The initial set up is dictated, so there is no over thinking how to place your guys. You don't even have to decide what guys to move into battle. You begin face to face, and immediately start hacking at each other.

The Persians: [throwing down a Battle card] I would gladly kill my own men for victory! I add two to all my attack numbers and subtract 1 from all defense numbers.

The Spartans: [throwing down a Battle card] Here we stand! Plus one to all units defense.

The players grab the dice and face off, but wait. Stop. First we must do some arithmetic.

Spartans: Okay, I'm 8 plus 6 is 14 plus 4 is 18. Look it up on the chart, I get three dice.

Persians: I'm 3 times 2, so that's only one die.

Spartans: Don't forget your card.

Persians: Oh yeah, Okay, I get 2 dice.

The dice are thrown. And it is time to do a little more addition to determine your damage number. Then some subtraction to figure out which units get killed off. Don't forget your card modifiers. Then some more addition to calculate Glory Points. In total, seven little addition/subtraction exercises are required to resolve each battle and track points. Gee wasn't that an exciting battle.

And that was only the first row. Now reapeat the above to resolve the second row.

Move the hunchback along the goat path. Pick some cards. Push your tokens forward. A couple of movie quotes, and it's time for three minutes of grammar school arithmetic again.

This is Sparta! This is not grammar school. Battle resolution should be immediate, visual and visceral. Arithmetic is not exciting. Counting things is not exciting. Bookkeeping is not exciting. When I have to pause to add/subtract seven different strings of small numbers to resolve one battle, the game just loses momentum. I am pulled out of the world created by the game. The forth wall is breached. My suspension of disbelief is broken. I get flashbacks of my cubicle at the office.

The amount of work required: depth of game ratio is just off. For me, getting that balance right is the heart of a great game. Unfortunately 300: The Board Game was so close to being an amazing, trashy filler, and then just blew the balance.


On the other hand, the man likes 300: The Board Game. He says if I let him play the Spartans, he'll play in costume, so I expect we will be playing again, just not at Game Club.

Ubergames of 2006

So everyone has been coming out with their game awards, and Best of 2007 lists. I find some of the criteria for these lists bewildering. For example, the award is for 2007, but the games were published in 2006 except for those that were published in 2007, unless the games were published earlier and weren't readily available in the U.S. until 2006, or they were originally published years ago, but were reissued in 2006. I think I need errata for this rule. Of course, there is always the debate over what is a Family Game, and what is Children's Game, and is Battlelore a War Game or a War Themed Game.

I decided to just make my own list. The criteria for the Ubers is easy. The game must have been published in 2006. I get to decide the criteria for each category. It's a Family Game if it is playable by three generations of my family, including flaky grandparents, ADD in-laws, and normal, non-gifted, non-geek kids. It's a Children's Game if typical children can play it with other typical children without my having to grab them by the scruff of their necks to separate them. If nothing exceptional was published in a category, no Uber will be awarded. Only one person gets to vote - me.


Fury of Dracula - Ubergame 2006.
This has already reached the status of Classic in my mind.


Marvel Heroes - Uberslugfest 2006.
A strained marriage between Euro mechanics and AT sensibilities, this game is clunky, fiddly, complicated, and the rules are a mess. However, it is still a damn fun game to play. Don't over-think it, and for heaven's sake, never, ever play with any over-thinking, AP-prone person. Just go out there and kick the crap out of the bad guys.


California - Uberfamilygame 2006.
Alhambra-like with a sense of humor, and no boring scoring. It's accessible; it's fast; it's tense; it's easy to teach; it's got just the right amount of passive-aggressive "screw-you." Plus it has the hot chick.


Blue Moon City - Uberabstract 2006.
Despite the so-called theme and pretty artwork, this is an abstract game. For some inexplicable reason, Blue Moon City triggers a Talisman sense memory. Maybe it is that it is a race game where we run around, picking cards and hope for the best, and accumulate dragon scales, like dead enemies, for points. Then when we are ready, we "go-up" to the center of the board.


Warrior Knights - Uberwarthemed 2006.
This game has it all - theme, player interaction, tough choices, negotiation, a touch of chaos. A game where players get so immersed and invested that by the third turn they are threatening vengeance - that is one awesome game.




Cleopatra and the Society of Architects -Uberboring 2006.
See also Masons.



Leonardo da Vinci- Ubercrap 2006.
See Also Cartagena II, Thurn and Taxis, & Tempus.

Wicked Thoughts on Games by Ubarose

When forced to play Euro auction games, pretend you have Tourettes. During the bidding yell out a random word or phase such as "Holy jump-a-mum-mum" or "underpants" or, if you prefer, words that cause your e-mail to be intercepted and quarantined by corporate IT security.










When forced to play a game with one of these, suddenly say, "Oh. I have to remember to pick up C batteries on the way home." Then write yourself a note so you don't forget.











When forced to play Leonardo da Vinci, carefully study the backs of the cards throughout the game.





























and have a Happy Halloween.

Deep Thoughts on Games by Ubarose

A group of people who can not remember to move out the car at the foot of a driveway, before attempting to back out the car at the head of a driveway, should not play fiddly games unsupervised.

Play responsibly. Appoint a designated turn marker mover.

Deep Thoughts on Games by Ubarose

Teach Ca$h 'n Gun$ to six children between the ages of 8 to 12 years old. Take side bets on how long before a gamer dad needs to intervene.

Happy Birthday to Me

Although I didn't recieve any boardgame gifts today, I did recieve Prophecy from KingPut a few weeks ago (early b-day gift). My trade arrived today - Mare Nostrum. Mordred should arrive eventually. Al says since I got so much other loot for my b-day, he may have to hide Mordred away until Chanukkah. I told him "NO WAY, plus Mare Nostrum doesn't count since it was trade, not a b-day gift"

Other cool b-day loot includes the Harry Potter Lego Castle, a black lace shrug, and a pair of black peek-a-boo stilettos.


Editing to add: In case you are wondering why this incredibly dopey post is on F:AT, I accidentally posted it here instead of to my personal blog. Also, thanks everyone for the birthday wishes.

Trashfest 2008

Today I received an email from KingPut, who, as readers of this blog may remember, is the ex-second-best Caylus player in the world and my brother. He is planning on proposing TRASHFEST, a wildcard tournament to run concurrently with Eurofest 2008. (for more information on Eurofest http://euroquest.gamesclubofmd.org/).

He writes:

I think for the 1st year or 2 it would be best to run it with Euroquest. If it's run as a wild card type event as part of Euroquest we would only need about 20 people participating to make it viable. If there is enough interest in later years it could be run as a stand alone conference. We'd pick 6 - 12 Ameritrash games that people can play anytime during the weekend. Scoring for Trashfest would be similar to the Wildcard events: # of players * # of hours the game takes = Trash Points. Winner takes all. There is no 2nd place in Ameritrash games.


KingPut, despite his recent psychotic break during WBC, is a pretty together person and seriously has the ability to make this happen. What he needs, however, are game suggestions and an idea if there are people who are actually interested in attending. My suggestion was that he propose games that I'm good at so that I would win and then he would have to refer to me as "your highness" for an entire year. He didn't like that suggestion, and asked me to solicit some real suggestions from you all.

Fear and Loathing in Lancaster. A Savage Journey into the Heart of the Ameritrash Dream

Chapter 1:
We were somewhere around Bucharest when the Romanian liquor began to take hold. I remember an aftertaste of gasoline and saying something like "He's either in Varna or Dublin . . ." And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around me and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving. And a voice was screaming: "Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?" My brother was pouring beer down his throat. "What the hell are you yelling about?" he muttered. "Never mind," I said. "It's Dracula's turn."

It was Wednesday, almost midnight, and we were about 40 miles south of Lancaster, at the home of my brother, KingPut, the second best Caylus player in the world. Registration for the fabulous World Boardgaming Championship was already underway, and we had to be there by 4 tomorrow to claim our hotel room. We were on our way to Lancaster to find the Ameritrash dream. I was, after all, a contributer to Fortress: Ameritrash; so I had an obligation to cover the story, for good or ill. But what was the story? Nobody had bothered to say. So we would have to drum up our own. Do it now: pure Gonzo journalism. It was a very ominous assignment - with overtones of extreme personal danger. 24 hours earlier I had received an urgent e-mail from KingPut's wife containing an excerpt from his blog.

Getting ready for WBC. To me July 31, 2007 felt like December 25, 1977. I was eagerly awaiting the start of WBC. I would get to play all the “hot” new Euros at Jays Café. But my biggest excitement was to play in the Caylus tournament. In 2006 I had come in 2nd place in Caylus at WBC but I was denied wood even though I played 9 hours of Caylus and had beat out 71 other players because Caylus was a trail event. Leading up to July 31st I felt like Michael Jackson riding the Dumbo ride in Disneyland. A had given up gaming for 9 whole days (to win brownie points with my wife) leading up to WBC. I thought I had lucked out on Friday July 27th when I walked into a Good Will shop and found Wizard Quest for $0.97. Let’s look that up on BGG. From 1979, did they make good designer games in 1979? Settlers didn’t even come out until 1995. Oh, a rating of 5.94 that’s not good. Even Apples to Apples Jr. beats that. But T&T is selling it for $40 and I can always give it to Ubarose.

WBC Day 1. I left work at 3:30 on Tuesday, July 31st and made it up to Lancaster by 5:00 PM. The first heat of Caylus didn’t start until 9:00 so I had a few hours to kill. As I was sitting there alone at Jay’s Café looking at the WBC booklet thinking what I’d do from 5:00 to 9:00. Jay called over and asked me if I wanted to learn how to play Arkadia.

The beverage I drank was definitely, Bottled Sam’s Club (BSCW) water. I think this is a very appropriate beverage for playing my first game at WBC and for playing Arkadia. First of all, water is the most natural, refreshing, thirst quenching drink on the planet. There was one other reason I drank bottled Bottled Sam’s Club Water (BSCW) while playing Arkadia. That was the fact that one of the other guys I was playing the game with was wearing a collar. No, not a Polo Ralph Lauren collar but a priest collar. The thing is this priest guy was the slowest player I had ever played any game with in my life. By the end of the game I wanted to stand up and yell God damn it, for Christ sakes will you put your fucking workers on the board and get your stupid victory points. But being brought up a good Catholic I pulled out my BSCW and said “Okay, I think its still your turn” I realized that he was playing the game with his daughter which means he wasn’t a Catholic priest so maybe I actually could stand up and say for Christ sakes build your building Europriest, guy but since his daughter was there that would be in bad taste.

I took one of my turns around 6:00 then got up and went over bought an Italian sausage sub. I took a couple of bites of the sub but then I had a heart attack. I reached down to drink some of my beer to help prevent the heart attack but all I had was BSCW. So I was rushed over to some Amish hospital where I was brought back to life by some hot looking Amish nurse. I came back to Jay’s Café to apologizes and to explain to other players for taking so long to buy and eat my sub and to have a heart attack and stuff when I realized it was still the Europriest guy’s turn. My rating of Arkadia is a very bland 5.5.


O Christ, I thought, he's gone around the bend. Look what Caylus has done to that poor bastard. I showed the e-mail to my husband. "Hell!" he exclaimed. "This one sounds like real trouble!" "You're going to need plenty of psychological advice before this thing is over," he said. "And my first advice is to load up the CRV with Ameritrash and beer and drive like hell to PA." We spent the rest of the night rounding up materials and packing the car. Somewhere around noon we had lunch at a Terrytown deli, then drove carefully across the bridge and plunged into the heat of the NJ turnpike, heading west.

We finally got to KingPut's house around dusk. We pulled out FURY OF DRACULA. It was a classic affirmation of everything right and true and decent in Ameritrash.

"Your Van Helsing," I said shoving the mini into KingPut's hand. "Can you grasp that?"
He nodded but his eyes were nervous.
"Hell, I forgot all about the Romanian liquor."
My husband handed KingPut the bottle. "As your psychologist, I advise you to drink this."
KingPut swallowed. His eyes cleared. And we were into it. Tearing across Europe on Dracula's trail. No point mentioning the bats I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.

Now, two hours later, Dracula had triumphed, and there was still time for another game, but those terrible Cthulhu creatures in the blue cage kept screaming like my college roommate having sex. "What are those goddamn animals?" "They're just the 3rd grade's guinea pigs," said KingPut, "How about DOWNFALL OF POMPEII?" It was a Euro. Right. We had to go slowly. Challenge them on their own turf. And then everyone was running. There was lava. People screamed like little girls as they were thrown into the volcano.

Chapter 2:
Thursday, almost noon, and we still had more than three miles to go. They would be tough miles. Very soon, I knew, we would both be completely twisted. But there was no going back, and no time to rest. We would have to ride it out.

We pulled into the hotel parking lot around noon. The back of our car looked like a mobil FLGS. We had two baggies of baggies, seventy-five glass pellets, five sheets of errata, a bottle half full of Basil Hayden, a case of Magic Hat, two quarts of peaches, two cases of Red Bull, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored plastic bits . . . and also three boxes of Fantasy Flight, four boxes of Avalon Hill, two boxes of Z-man, two Knizia's, one Hasbo and a Euro. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious game collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the Euro. There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of cube confusion. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.

We ran the gauntlet - check-in, badges, WBC mug shots. "Your room's not ready yet," the desk clerk had told us, so we went downstairs to find Dan and KingPut. Dan was playing a war game. A good looking guy walked up to say hello and Dan introduced us to him. I didn't catch his name because I was sitting and was distracted by the universe of colorful buttons, baubles and badges that were decorating his eye level crotch like a Christmas tree. I tried to make out the name on his badge, but the Romanian gasoline was leaving my system. I felt lightheaded and my eyesight blurred. "I think I need something to eat," I said. "Time spent eating is time not spent gaming," said Dan. My husband pressed a cold can into my right hand, and a cold bottle into my left. "As your psychologist, I advise you to drink Red Bull with a beer chaser."

Upstairs, my head began to clear as the Red Bull kicked in. KingPut took a seat and I pulled out COSMIC ENCOUNTER. My husband saw the young man wandering around the open gaming area long before I did and motioned him over. His name was Daniel and was familiar with the Eon version of COSMIC ENCOUNTER and would be happy to be our fourth. We passed around the bits and the beers. I glanced at Daniel. The nice young man's face was changing: swelling. pulsing . . . horrible green jowls, the face of a Zombie. I lunged backwards into my husband. There was nothing there but a Virus. I suddenly felt empathetic and peaceful. I didn't want to fight anyone. We could negotiate and work this all out. But that loathsome Virus just kept spreading, and that fool Zombie whore was willing to ally with anyone. The fear set in. We were all doomed.

The Virus claimed his fifth colony about the same time I noticed the man with the crotch jewelry wandering around the open gaming room. Holy shit. Now that I could see clearly I recognized him. It was Malloc. Weirdness, Malloc and Dan, my daughter's godfather, know each other. Malloc was off to play GANGSTERS or something.

An adorable woman named Ruth stopped at our table and said, "That's my most favorite game ever," pointing at BETRAYAL AT HOUSE ON THE HILL. What the hell! We had nothing but time and games and half a case of cold Magic Hats. We pulled it out and were joined by another man who made me laugh, but whose name I have forgotten. Was it Dave? I quickly reviewed the rules for KingPut, who had never played before. "You move. You flip tiles. You pick cards. Shit happens."

I was in the basement. I could see my unconscious body lying below me as I floated above it. My stinking traitor brother was kicking it over and over again. The bright light appeared and I moved towards it, into the light. It was over for me. It was peaceful. But then I had to reincarnate as a rules lawyer since I was the only one who was dead and therefore could read KingPut's traitor sheet.

I found myself alone at that the table. I don't remember where everyone went. Tournaments? The bar? the bathroom? Then Dan was sitting beside me and we were talking to Zev about Z-man's plans to publish TALES OF THE ARABIAN NIGHTS. Dan and Zev were talking about the artist contacted to do the box art, and I was thinking about the last time I played TALES, and the smell of the incense, and how shiny and black Zev's curls looked right now. Did he have new glasses? They looked really nice on him. Jesus! Did I say that? Or just think it? Was I talking? Did they hear me? Zev smiled at me and said, "Thank you." Then disappeared.

It was 2 a.m. Friday morning. I had explained the Arkham Horror rules to KingPut hours ago. "You move. You pick cards. Shit happens." Somehow, all the shit that had happened had gone horribly wrong. We were four, exhausted investigators on the edge of madness with nothing more than a shotgun, a rifle, two pistols and a knife between us, facing a loathsome, twisted Ancient One. A small group of the morbidly curious had gathered to watch the final battle. "Run you fools! There is no way I can hold off this beast with nothing but a pistol and a knife." But somehow we did. The strange vibrations ceased, and the gates closed with a deafening sucking sound.

Chapter 3:
A loud crash. I came awake fast - thinking, what does that mean. I glanced at the clock. 7:30 a.m. Maniacal laughter, then shouting. KingPut was outside his room, the door ajar, a baggy of cubes in one hand, dice gripped in the other.

" The gates have begun to open," he screamed, waving the handful of dice above his head. "Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the gates between other worlds and my bathroom. The portal must be closed." He hurled the dice into his room.

Shit. Four Ameritrash games in 36 hours had been too much for his anemic Euro system. He was totally twisted. I looked into his room. There was a gaping 2'x 2' hole above his sink where the mirror had been. A gurgling noise issued from its darkness.

KingPut screamed like a little girl. "A Gug!"

"The bailiff!" he laughed uncontrollably, ripping the lid off the Caylus box and plunging his hand inside. "The bailiff will deactivate this glug." He pointed the bailiff menacingly towards the hole.

"Goddamit!" I said. "You've done too much. The first rush is the worst. Just ride the bastard out."

He turned toward me, bleary eyed, waving the bailiff around in quick circles in front of his teeth.

"Look," I said, "you'd better put that goddamn bailiff away and get your head straight. Get back in bed, I'll be back in twenty minutes."
I went to my room and called the front desk about the mirror and the gaping hole in the wall.

My brother was in bed when I returned. Submerged in green sheets.
"Caylus," he snarled.
"You're doomed," I said.
"Don't make me use this." His arm lashed out of the sheets, the baggy of cubes gripped in his fist.
"Jesus," I muttered. At this point I figured he was beyond help - lying in the bed with the biggest baggy of cubes I had ever seen, totally incapable of reason, demanding Caylus.
"Help! You bastard! I need help!" He was reaching across the night stand toward the Caylus box. "I want that fucking game," he snarled.
I grabbed it away from his hand. "You fool!" I said. "Get away from that goddamn game!"
"I want you to throw that fuckin game in the bed with me."
"Not me," I said.
"Bullshit!" he screamed crazily, thrashing around in the bed. He ripped off the sheets and lunged at me, waving the baggy of cubes out in front of him like a man who meant to optimize something.
"MUNCHKIN!" I shouted. "You want this?" I waved a MUNCHKIN box in front of his eyes."
"You bastard!" he hissed. "You'd do that, wouldn't you."
I laughed, still waving the box in front of him. "You'll like it. Shit, there's nothing in the world like MUNCHKIN - forty-five minutes on your knees rolling dice. It'll calm you right down."
He sagged.
I menaced him again with the MUNCHKIN box. "Get back in that bed," I said. "Try to calm down. Fondle some cubes - shit, do what ever you have to do, but let me get some rest."
He shrugged and smiled distractedly. "Hell yes," he said very earnestly, and shuffled back to bed. He had shifted gears; the next phase would probably be one of those hellishly intense introspection nightmares; but nothing physical. I watched the door close behind him, and quietly slipped back to my own room for a couple more hours sleep.

Chapter 4:
Friday afternoon . . . the game library . . . LEONARDO DA VINCI . . . methadone for my poor bastard CAYLUS junkie brother. Malloc stopped by to abuse me for playing the horrible, piece of crap. I flashed the back of a card at him. "The full monty," I explained. Malloc flashed a picture of Opie on his cell phone at me. "Barnes," he said.

Malloc invited us to play STRUGGLE OF EMPIRES. I was Queen Victoria, and we were not amused. How did I get mixed up with this gang of psychotics? Those scumbags were trying to kill us. Then there were accusations. The game had been set up wrong. While people argued and sulked, we escaped with Malloc leading us through the maze of hotel corridors, through his room to the pool bar.

"I advise you to drink many margaritas in the sun," said my husband.
"Twilight Imperium tonight," said Malloc.
"Shit. I have a date tonight to play WARRIOR KNIGHTS with KingPut's friend Cody." I said.
Malloc, laughed, "Cody is one of the eight guys sleeping in my hotel room. I'll work it out." And he did. And we agreed to meet in an hour.

The tequila buzz was wearing off as we attempted to pull out of the hotel parking lot. I had a strong need for Basil Hayden, and the bottle was empty. Twenty minutes of cruising and no liquor store. Finally pulled into a WaWa to ask for directions.

"The clerk said there are no liquor stores," my husband announced, as he got back into the car and slammed the door.
Shit. How can that be possible. I rolled down my window and shouted to a large man in black with tattoos covering his arms, "Where's the liquor store?"
"Jesus Christ!" said Dan, ducking.
"A liquor store." I yelled again, hanging out the window. "I need bourbon. Point me to bourbon."
The man pointed and shouted back.
"What are you doing?" said Dan, pulling me back into the car, his eyes nervous.
I laughed. "He said the liquor store was eight miles that way, in the next town."
"Fuck that." My husband said taking the corner at full speed and heading back to the hotel. "I advise you to drink over priced Makers Mark at the bar."

Twilight Imperium; the black tar heroin of Ameritrash. Holy shit! What can I say. Eight hours of screaming, table pounding, in your face depravity. I tell you, this is the Ameritrash dream in action! We'd be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.

Chapter 5:
Sunday morning 11 a.m. . . . Memories of Saturday are extremely hazy. All I have, for guide pegs, is an ear full of balaclava lint and handful of crumpled cocktail napkins, all covered with scribbled notes.

Here is one: "WARRIOR KNIGHTS. . . two player possibilities . . . cool knights . . . almost great . . . needs dice"
Another says: "COWBOYS . . . corridor battle . . . best new game . . . $50. No fucking way."

My husband packed up our car. KingPut packed up his. As we pulled out of the parking lot, KingPut rolled down his window and shouted, "MONSTERS MENACE AMERICA. Tomorrow. Your place."

"See you in eight hours." I shouted back. My heart was full of joy. This trip had been different. It was a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of gaming in this country - but only for those with true grit. And we were chock full of that.

Wizard Duels

In the spirit of the Harry Potter book release, we played some games with wizards and spells this weekend.



The ability to smack an opponent with some random chaos from across the board has always been a hallmark of Ameritrash games. Lots of people hate that aspect of AT games with a firey passion. For others it's the best part of the game. It is so good, in fact, why not do away with all the other extraneous aspects of a the game, and just have an all out wizard smack down? I bring you two of the more recent offerings in a long line of wizard duels, from Flux to M:tG.

Lord of the Rings: The Duel

Gandalf encounters the Bolrog in the under mountain Caves of Moria. The result is a fantastic duel of their magical powers on a small bridge over a deep chasm.

Hey cool, a magic duel. It's a two player game. It has a nifty 3-D bridge. It's one of the most exciting scenes of the books. It's got Gandalf. It's gonna be great! Well, it isn't great, but it doesn't suck. The Duel is essentially a card game. The 3-D board is just a fancy way to keep score, you don't actually play on it. You could play the game without the board, if the scoring was a little less quirky.

The battle resolution is actually somewhat interesting. Each player receives their own deck of cards. Along the right and left sides of the battle cards are four spaces, some of which contain a "magic symbol," some of which are blank. The right side of the card is the attack. The left side is the defense. Players alternate laying down cards next to the card previously played by their opponent. A spot where there is a symbol on both the attacker's and the defender's card is a successful block. A spot where the attacker has a symbol and the defender doesn't is a hit.

Above you see that Gandalf makes a three dot attack. The Balrog defends with three diamonds, blocking two of Gandalf's dots, and taking one hit. The Balrog makes a two diamond attack. Gandalf blocks one and takes one hit.

You play four rounds of 18 cards. After each round you determine how many steps you get to move up or down on the bridge. Who ever is on the highest step at the end of the game wins. About half way through the second round, I forgot that I was in the middle of a "magic duel" - a battle of life and death between a great wizard and a terrifying monster. I was sitting in silence, staring at my hand as I played an abstract game of match the dots...

I take it back. This game does suck. I want that m****r f*****g Bolrog to burn. I want to throw his ass off that bridge. I want the catharsis of Gandalf triumphing, and to finally get over the trauma of the first time my father read "He staggered and fell, grasped vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss.' Fly, you fools!' he cried, and was gone."

So, cool bridge, interesting battle mechanic, but ultimately a dry, abstract disappointment.

Harry Potter Trading Card Game

Welcome to Hogwarts! With the Harry Potter trading card game, you join the other new wizards at school in a duel. Then you summon creatures, use magical potions and cast spells to make their cards disappear first. If you do that, you win.

Looks cute. The kids around here spend a great deal of free time dressed in their Hogwarts Halloween costumes, speaking pseudo latin and waving sticks at things. Here's a way for them to play without putting someone's eye out. So I pulled out a couple of decks and played a round with one of the kids. It's been called "baby" Magic the Gathering. You build your own deck, which is made up of Lessons, Spells, Items and Creature cards.



You must have a certain number of lesson cards in play to play spells and summon creatures. The creatures do damage to your opponent, the spells can either do damage or help you in one way or another. You get the idea. It's fairly simple, it's a kid's game, but I'll be damned if it wasn't a hell of a lot of fun. We were summoning snakes and unicorns, casting spells, and yelling "Incendio" and "Stupefy" at each other. I didn't want to give up my deck to the kid who was waiting to play. A couple of adults came to watch and wanted their turn to play. I'm going to have to sit down and make up a few more decks.

Notice I didn't explain the game by saying you play cards with a numeric value whose suits match the suit of the lesson cards in play. These cards subtract the number of points indicated on the card, from your opponent. No, I said that we summoned creatures and cast spells, because that is what it felt like. The theme and the game play were tight.

So, Harry Potter TCG - fast playing fun with lots of flavor.



Here we have two games, that, when deconstructed down to their most abstract form, are quite similar . Each player has their own deck of cards. You play cards which subtract points from your opponent, or prevent your opponent from subtracting points from you. Why did one bore me, while the other amused me? A year ago, I wouldn't have thought too hard about it. My assessment of the two games would have been The Duel = bored now, put nasty game at bottom of game chest. Harry Patter TCG = spell-casting-goodness, put in pretty box on shelf. Beer now.

However, that was before F:AT. As I have said before, for me the most important contribution of the on going discussion of AT games is not the classification of games, but the introduction, and legitimization of new rulers by which to measure games. So I pulled out what I have now identified as my most important ruler : the ability to create narrative. Harry Potter measures up, The Duel not so much. Why? Really, the games are so similar. It's all just addition and subtraction. It would be easy to reduce the Harry Potter cards down to dots and symbols like the Duel cards... but ...they're not symbols. The Harry Potter cards have text. They have FLAVOR TEXT. There are no dots, and arrows and symbols. These cards are not language independent.

I almost called language independence, flavor text's evil twin, but that's not really fair. Language independence has many fine qualities; however I'll leave the lecture on the economics of game publishing and the purity of abstract puzzle solving to Professor Euro.

Evil language independent hieroglyphics. What the hell does this shit mean?

When I open a box for the first time and see those hieroglyphics, I groan inside. Now I have to learn a whole new language of pragmatic symbols, and none of them will translate into anything exciting or poetic or funny. In a language independent game there will be no heroic leaps, or fire balls, no "Horror at Groundbreaking" not even any "Go directly to jail." Instead people will be saying things like, "I'm going to shovel a circle," and "Any one got feet, we need feet?" I'll have to ask to see the rule book again to look up exactly what all the little arrows and pictures of Vienna Sausages mean, which pretty much negates any sense of immersion in theme.

However, when I open a box and see cards with lots of text, especially completely superfluous text in italics, I sigh with contentment. The designer wants to create narrative, and has provided the text for us. We just have to fill in the gaps with our choices and sometimes a die roll or two. It is so much more amusing to summon a Surly Hound, or transform a Raven into a Writing desk, than it is to play 3 dots against your opponent. Maybe, instead of banishing The Duel to the bottom of the game chest, I'll deface the cards with the names or appropriate spells and maneuvers. I have a friend who is a writer and has really good penmanship.

I know that many players ignores the flavor text in their rush to speed up the game. What's the hurry? I suspect these people say things like "I pick yellow," rather than "Mr. Fantastic transforms into a big bouncing ball." I'm certain that they never jump up on their chair, point at you menacingly and shout "Incendio," before slapping their card on the table.

The Right Way of Thinking

I'm a cold hearted bitch.

A while back a house guest was looking through my games for something for us to play, and noticed El Caballero on the shelf.

"That's a good game," she said.
"I don't like it," I told her, "You can have it if you want it."
"No thanks," she replied,"I don't like it much either."
"Let's play Talisman," I suggested.
"Talisman is so chaotic and random, we might as well just roll a die, see who's highest, and call it a day."
"Sorry, I thought you liked Talisman."
"I do, but it is a bad game. I rather spend my time playing something more worthwhile."

Then my head spun around like that chick in the exorcist.

I was confounded and bewildered. How can you say that a game you don't like is a "good" game, but a game you do like is a "bad" game? Clearly I was missing something.

So I crawled out of my cave, looked around and discovered there were these things called "Game Clubs," and "Game Groups," and "Game Nights." People went to these to meet other "gamers" and play games. More importantly, they discussed games. Not only were people discussing games in person, they were also discussing them on the internet. Through these discussions, a set of objective criteria had evolved by which it could be determined whether a game was objectively "good," or "bad." These criteria included elements such as randomness, meaningful decisions, player interaction, perfect information, playing time, and elegance. Apparently benchmarks had been set. It took me a while to determine what these benchmarks were, but eventually, I think I figured it out. I may be mistaken, but it seemed that Chess and Go were towards the top of the scale, Monopoly was towards the bottom, and, the most important benchmark of all was Settlers of Catan. Games whose various criteria fell above Settlers and Chess were "good" games. Games whose criteria fell below Settlers were "bad" games. It was an epiphany. Here I had been happily playing Talisman, Arkham Horror and Merchants of Venus, unaware that these were "bad" games.

I decided that I had to find more worthwhile games. In fact. I decided I had to find the best game. After years of searching, I finally found it: Hey, That's My Fish.

Hey, That's my Fish has variable set-up. I learned that that's important for replayability. All this time I had been playing games on the same board, over and over. I'm such a dope. It has perfect information. That sounds impressive doesn't it - PERFECT INFORMATION. Player interaction. Yep. Meaningful decisions. Yep. Short playing time, and short rules. Absolutely. I think you can teach someone to play in about a minute and a half, and the whole game takes only about ten minutes to play. And most importantly, zero randomness (well except for the set-up, which, I am told, is an allowable randomness).

In Hey, That's my Fish, you play a penguin trying to catch fish, while attempting to set all the other penguins adrift on small ice floes, so that they can't get any fish, and die or something. I know kids who like this game. I know adults who like this game. I know adults who like playing this game with kids. But, crap, I just don't like it. I really tried, but I just don't give a damn about my penguin. Shouldn't I feel something? I should feel happy when my penguin gets a two fish tile, instead of a one fish tile, right? I should feel bummed when he is set adrift, facing certain death on that tiny ice floe, shouldn't I? I should at least feel annoyed that my stupid penguin can't swim? If he could swim, he could just jump off that ice floe and save himself, right? Maybe I am supposed to feel compassion for him or something, because of his disability?

So, Hey That's My Fish is a good game, but I don't like it. My friends think it's because I'm too stupid to understand it's depth of play. But the truth is, I'm just a cold hearted bitch that doesn't give a damn about my lame penguin.

Who wrote these stinkin' rules?

"All players go through these steps simultaneously.

The active player goes first in each step."

HUH???? I kid you not, the above rule is from a game that I have spent the last three days trying to figure out how to play.

In the past month I have read the rules to three new games. None of these games are particularly complicated. None of them were translated from another language into English.

One set of rules was clear and understandable.

One set of rules had about a half dozen instances of ambiguity, and one out right contradiction. It required three trips to the publishers web site, and a print out of the errata and the FAQ's to clear up the confusion.

The last set of rules read like they had been run through babblefish. After reading them three times, visiting the publishers website several times, printing out the new revised rules and reading those through twice, and printing out the eight pages of FAQs and reading those, I'm still not clear on a couple of points.


Poorly written rules are inexcusable. Hire a technical writer for heaven's sake. Hire a proof reader. At the very least, hand the rules to someone who is completely unfamiliar with the game and see if the person can understand the rules well enough to play the game. I'll volunteer. Send me a copy of the game and the rules and I will gladly tell you how friggin' awful they are. God, I miss the old AH rules with the cross referenced, numbered paragraphs.

Things in Game Rules that Piss Me Off

• Grammatically incorrect sentences. All a publisher has to do is pick up the phone and call the nearest Catholic school and hire a nun to proof read the rules. While the publisher is at it, they should hire that nun to teach a workshop on ambiguous reference, general reference and weak reference. "Take the top card from the deck and place it face up in front of you," means "Take the top card from the deck and place the deck face up in front of you." In this case I know that the writer's intention was that the card should be placed face-up, not the deck; however, grammatical mistakes of this nature can make more complex rules incomprehensible. Futhermore, I don't want to waste my time diagraming sentences, and argueing with rules-lawyer friends over the strict gramatical meaning of the rule vs what the author really meant to say.



• Rules written by someone so close to the game that they leave out what is obvious to them. In one of the games mentioned above, a player has to move one of their pawns onto a "challenge space" to attempt a "challenge." The opponent player can increase the difficulty of the challenge by playing cards out of their hand. What the rules fail to mention is that the opponent must have at least one of his pawns on the challenge space in order to be able to play those cards. This one omission makes the difference between an interesting game and a stupid game.
  



• Rules that attempt to be funny, or that are written in a conversational tone. Extra verbiage is annoying, confusing and just makes the rules longer. The babblefish rules mentioned above contain the following gems:

"like...uh"
"Yep. Another two-player passing thing."
"Duh."
"Yikes!"

• Rules with a section entitled "Sequence of Play" where every third line is "see page xx." If you are going to include a sequence of play, write it in sequence, damn it!
  



• Important rules that are buried in a paragraph of a section that is about something else, such as healing rules buried in the section entitled "Movement."
  



• Rules that don't define words that have specific meanings in the game but have other meanings, similar meanings or multiple meanings in the English language. The most common examples are games that have "turns," "rounds," "phases," and "steps," and games that have "skills," "traits," "attributes," and "talents." Games that have thematic names for things like points and money are also guilty of this offense.
  



• Rules that use "player" and "character" interchangeably. My favorite example of this error is, "You can do X to the player next to you." The intention of the rule is "you can do X to the character whose pawn occupies a space adjacent to your character's pawn," not "you can do X to the person sitting next to you." How about "You can attack a player that occupies the same space that you occupy."? I claim that this rule breaks the laws of physics, however my husband claims this rule means that if I sit on his lap, he can attack me.

A Paragon of Masculinity

This morning my husband started my car by pushing it out of the driveway, rolling it down the hill and popping the clutch. He’s my man. My hero. My knight in shining armor. My Conan.

In a typical week, the manliest thing most husbands or boyfriends get to do is haul the trash to curb. Unless he is an AT gamer. I know it’s all make believe, but watching a man’s mind work, witnessing him crush his enemies, seeing his victory dance – it’s all good. Honestly, I don’t understand why so many men have trouble getting their women to play with them. What woman doesn’t want to spend an evening flirting with a warrior, a Viking, a hunter, a superhero?

Oops, I just remembered. The first game you are supposed teach the little woman is about matching colored cards. W00T look at me. I can count and know all my colors. Yeah, that was impressive back in kindergarten.

I believe that little anonymouse said something about AT games being adolescent. Did this guy turn twenty and exchange his testosterone for a calculator and a minivan? And how does his woman really feel about that?

Buffy: "We fight monsters, this is what we do."

I spent last week fraternizing with the enemy . . . literally. I was staying with my brother, who is the second best Caylus player in the world (at least according to WBC). He also won the EuroQuest Caylus tournament, but it is more fun to call him the second best Caylus player in the world because it annoys him.

Anyway, we're pounding some crabs and Natty Bo, and the flesh is flying, which brings up the topic of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which leads to discussing Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Game. My sister-in-law, who is mostly a party gamer, gets interested and suddenly turns to my brother and says, "I want to play the Buffy game."

My brother just about swallows his tongue. He sputters, "You wouldn't like it."

Feh! For shame! He says this to a woman who was just about the best Mina Harker I've ever played with. So I have a date to teach the Buffy game to my sister-in-law this summer. The way I get my sister-in-law to play with me is . . . well . . . frankly, I lie like a rug.

Last summer I set up Fury of Dracula. Sis walks in.

I just hand her the Mina mini and say, "Your playing Mina."

She looks bewildered for a moment, but before she can say that she can't play because she is on the way to the Outlet Mall, I tell her, "It's really easy. It's a cooperative game. You play on a team like in Wits and Wagers. Your on the same team as the second best Caylus player in the world. Just do what he tells you until you catch on. The object of the game is to figure out where Dracula is hiding, kind of like you do in Clue. You just move one space per turn and then pick cards, like in Pictionary, except the game is about Dracula. You get to be Mina, the hot chick that Dracula bites."

Sis shrugs and says okay. A couple of turns into the game, she is on her feet telling all the boys to shut up because she has a good card to play, which she did. Half way through the game she wants to know why she has to fetch cards and never gets to fight anything.

I told her that Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Game is like Fury Dracula, but not the hunting part, just the fighting part. It takes place in a city after you have already located the Vampire. You just roll to move. Get next to the Vampire and kick him in the head. Easy. Also the two best hunters are the women, Buffy and Willow, so the boys have to be the ones who run around the board and fetch cards for you. That's when she said she wanted to play.

I won't lie to you all though. Buffy the Vampire Slayer the Game is a compact dungeon crawl that plays in 45 - 90 minutes. It has a fresh, modern feel. There's no geeky elves and orcs, or ugly space marines. The heroes are modern humans, the strongest of which is an attractive, fully clothed young woman with normal sized boobies. This might sound stupid to the guys, but I swear, whenever I try to get female friends to play Runebound with me, they take one look at the female character cards and I get a lecture on exploitation and distorted body image and anorexia and the whole world is going to hell in hand basket because they let 8 year olds wear halter tops to school, and OMG Bratz dolls. And I'm like crap, it's a game. You can use a meeple if it makes you feel better. But it's too late, and we end up playing something with a robber, or obelisks or trains instead.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Buffy-dungeon crawl. The problem that I have with dungeon crawls is that they start out exciting, but about half way through they bog down and become dull and repetitive. Then there is the final excitement at the very end. Buffy has two mechanisms that keeps the game moving and changing. First, at the the beginning of the game four artifact cards are placed at the four corners of the board. One of these will make the forces of Evil obscenely powerful if the Evil player can get it and deliver it to the right character. The other three are also pretty spiffy. The beginning of the game, is therefore, more of a race than a simple slugfest. Get your characters to the artifacts, without getting them killed. By the way, getting killed is something that really happens in this game. Healing is very difficult. And when a character is dead, they are pretty much dead for the rest of the game.

The other interesting bit of the game is the phase chart. Some of the faces of the movement dice have a moon on them. If this symbol is rolled, a token is advanced on a circular path that depicts the various phases of the moon, as well as one sun symbol. If the token is on a New Moon, the Evil player has advantage. If the token is on the sun, vampires can not be outdoors. Any vampires that are caught outside when the sunrises take damage and have to run for cover. Finally, during the full moon, the character's that are werewolves transform and become super powerful and super fast. How strong you are, who's up and who's down can change at any moment.

The result of these two mechanisms, as well as the balances and imbalances between the two sides, results in a game that is more cat and mouse than the average dungeon crawl. It is about maneuvering and timing, rather than running out, guns blazing to meet the opponent head on. It's more like, wait for the right moment. Race in. Bitch slap the enemy and then run like hell. There are always tough choices, and all of them have risks. You constantly feel that you are are on the edge of losing, but that victory is almost within your grasp. Also it is just fun kick vampires in the head, or take a bite out of someone.

Finally, if you enjoy Buffy the Vampire Slayer the TV show, this game captures it's flavor and spirit. It's one of those games that when it is over, you remember the story you created by playing.

Menu suggestion: Bloody Marys