General – Page 3 – Sundered Realm

Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 5

I have written a series of posts looking at the Board Game Geek (BGG) top 100 games, checking to see if I had the game in my collection and talking a little bit about each one, if I could. At the end of the first forty games covered I owned 14 of them, for a 35% ownership rate. I also had one game that I formerly owned but had sold, so it didn’t get counted. Today I will cover games ranked from 60 up to 51 and see where the ratio ends up.

For all posts in this series check for the BGG Top 100 tag. Continue reading “Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 5”

Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 4

I have written a series of posts looking at the Board Game Geek (BGG) top 100 games, checking to see if I had the game in my collection and talking a little bit about each one, if I could. At the end of the first thirty games covered I owned 11 of them, for a 36.9% ownership rate. I also had one game that I formerly owned but had sold, so it didn’t get counted. Today I will cover games ranked from 70 up to 61 and see where the ratio ends up.

For all posts in this series check for the BGG Top 100 tag. Continue reading “Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 4”

Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 3

I have written a series of posts looking at the Board Game Geek (BGG) top 100 games, checking to see if I had the game in my collection and talking a little bit about each one, if I could. At the end of the first twenty games covered I owned 8 of them, for a 40% ownership rate. Today I will cover games ranked from 80 up to 71 and see where the ratio ends up.

For all posts in this series check for the BGG Top 100 tag. Continue reading “Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 3”

Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 2

Last week I started looking at the Board Game Geek (BGG) top 100 games. I looked to see if I had the game in my collection and talked a little bit about each one, if I could. At the end of the first ten games I only owned 3 of them, for a paltry 30% ownership rate. Today I will cover games ranked from 90 up to 81 and see if I can improve that ratio.

For all posts in this series check for the BGG Top 100 tag. Continue reading “Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 2”

The Story Behind the Takenoko Collector Edition

Recently on Board Game Geek someone asked about the collector edition of one of my favorite games: Takenoko. Someone from the game company provide an official answer, which was fun to read.

Actually the original idea was just to make a limited series hand made and assembled for conventions (Tiles were produced internally and we just got the wooden pieces made in a factory, the Panda and Gardener were plastic toys). We used it and people were asking for a chance to buy the game. We then produced a few hundred thanks to Asmodee North America who offered them to their best retaillers [sic] (as far as I understand that right), the leftover couple hundred were meant to be sold at Essen and they did. When we thought about reprinting we could not see the market and after months of considerations going nowhere, we finally got help via Collector’s shelf crowdfunding.

Read the original question (and subsequent discussion) on BoardGameGeek.com.

I participated in the recent KickStarter campaign where they reissued the collector edition once again. I did not buy it (I thought about it!) simply because it would take so much shelf space, and it would not be very portable. I did buy the lower tier option which came with a wooden insert for the regular game and a beautiful play mat.

Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 1

One of my favorite resources for getting exposed to, learning how to play, and discussing board games is Board Game Geek affectionately known as BGG. They have been around for a long time, especially counting in Internet Years. One of the things they do is provide an interesting mechanism for ranking games. Some people like it, some people don’t, but for the sake of this post I will leave that behind and just talk about a different topic.

Suppose I had a goal of owning all of the games in the BGG top 100 list, what would that look like? What’s on the list, what do I have, and if I don’t have something, will I eventually? If I owned a game and then sold it, does that count? Is this the questions only game? Continue reading “Board Game Geek Top 100 Checklist, Part 1”

Zoom For Games

Covid sucks. I have barely been able to get out of the house. On the plus side, my car insurance company gave me a rebate, so there’s that…

But what do we do about social events like board games? How does that work? I have played games with my sister (remote in Colorado) as well as local friends (local meaning each in our own houses, they just happen to be our normal board game partner family). As we have played I have slowly figured out some things that help (or hurt) the board game experience, so I thought I would share. Continue reading “Zoom For Games”

2020 10×10 Challenge Progress

Last year I learned about something called at “10×10” or “ten-by-ten” challenge. The premise is simple. At the beginning of the year, pick ten games. Play each at least ten times each over the coming 12 months. I initially set up only nine games because I wanted to leave one spot open for a “yet to be determined” game (more on that below).

It’s the end of March, how am I doing so far? Continue reading “2020 10×10 Challenge Progress”

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In My Collection: Abstract Games

I like abstract games! What does that mean! What is an abstract game! Why am I using the exclamation point for questions! 😛

Board Game Geek defines Abstract Games as follows:

An abstract strategy game is a strategy game that minimizes luck and does not rely on a theme. Almost all abstract strategy games will conform to the strictest definition of: a gameboard, card, or tile game in which there is no hidden information, no non-deterministic elements (such as shuffled cards or dice rolls), and (usually) two players or teams taking a finite number of alternating turns.

Wikipedia uses the following definition:

An abstract strategy game is a strategy game in which the theme is not important to the experience of playing. Many of the world’s classic board games, including chess, Go, checkers and draughts, xiangqi (Chinese chess), shogi (Japanese chess), Reversi (marketed as “Othello”), nine men’s morris, and most mancala variants, fit into this category.

When I was growing up I played a lot of standard games like Sorry and Risk and Monopoly. As a teenager I grew to hate Trivial Pursuit. 😛 I also played checkers, chess, and tic-tac-toe. And I liked puzzles. Not jigsaw puzzles, but math or physical puzzles. As my interest in board games was rekindled I learned about an entirely new (to me) category of abstract games. Continue reading “In My Collection: Abstract Games”

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Beyond Chess Revisited

A while back I wrote about how I encountered the game called Beyond Chess. I don’t get the game out every month, but it is a regular fixture when I teach the Chess merit badge, and it has also been on a couple of trips. What fascinates me the most, I guess, is how little information there is about the game on the Internet. There is almost no discussion on Board Game Geek and the original web site is defunct. Even the “wayback machine” (aka the Internet Archive) doesn’t have anything useful! There is nothing on Amazon, and as I write this there is one active listing on eBay (asking price: $39.95) and nothing in the 90 day sales history.

Not too long ago I was in Denver and I stopped by one of my favorite stores: Black and Read. What did I find? I found another copy of Beyond Chess! But with a twist! Continue reading “Beyond Chess Revisited”

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