Star Wars now in the hands of the Disney--some quick thoughts

  So, no time really for serious reflection, but the news that Disney has purchased Lucasfilm, LTD., and that Episode 7 is on the way, is simply huge.  Not only does it mean that the future of the franchise is more or less secure, which is important given Lucas's age, but it also means that a director and creative team will get a shot at making the next Star Wars film.  I share the opinion of a lot of Star Wars fans in regard to the prequels in that I didn't much like them.  No one can disparage Lucas's creativity and passion, but it seemed that his film making instincts had degraded seriously in the years since he made American Graffiti, THX 1138, and the original Star Wars trilogy.  I have to imagine that directors will be willing to fight for the chance at tackling Episodes 7,8, and 9.  The list of dream director's is pretty long, but I'll throw out a few possibilities: Ridley Scott, Joss Whedon, Peter Jackson, or Guillermo del Toro.  Lucas even mentions in the press release that he is eager to see the franchise in the hands of a new generation of filmmakers.  Well, so am I. 

How good a steward will Disney be?  Well, I know that not everyone will agree, but I'm impressed with the overall quality of Disney projects, especially considering just how many films they pump out each year.  All of the so-called money grab sequels to the classic Disney films have actually been very well done.  Really, only the Pixar sequels have really seemed like cynical attempts to fill the coffers.  I have to think that Disney knows that the purchase is only worth it if they preserve the general goodwill audiences have toward Star Wars despite the last three movies.  Certainly, they have the experience to handle a franchise that makes as much money from toys and other merchandise as from the films themselves.  

We knew that the Star Wars franchise would at some point be in other hands than Lucas's.  I really can't think of a company more prepared or capable to handle the franchise than Disney.  I'm sure a lot of people will worry that Disney might gravitate toward the kind of pablum seen in the prequels (Jar Jar is actually a lot like a Disney supporting character), but I would be surprised if they didn't realize that fans want the next films to be more like the original trilogy and go where the fan's hearts (and money) reside.

Read the full press release here, and let us know what you think about the acquisition in the comments.

Team Fortress 2: Mann vs. Machine Gameplay Video

I've been playing around with the newest Playclaw release for video capture.  Here is a short video of one round of the new TF2 mode Mann vs. Machine, which is basically a co-op horde mode.  I'll try doing one with voiceover soon.

Lords of Waterdeep Review

  Lords of Waterdeep

Wizards of the Coast

Designed by Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson

Is this the best Ameritrash/Eurogame hybrid to date?

 I'm fortunate to have two very distinct gaming groups—one which prefers old-school American-style hobby games (hereafter: Ameritrash) and another that mostly seems interested in the latest Eurogame hotness. For a gamer who likes all types of games, this is a huge luxury, but it also means that when I buy a game, it usually is only going to see play in one group or the other. For that reason, I've had my eye out for so-called hybrid games—games that appeal to both the Ameritrasher and the Eurogamer. The latest game to get pinned with that appellation is Wizard of the Coast's Lords of Waterdeep. After getting multiple plays in with both of my game groups, I'm ready to declare it the best crossover game I've yet come across and a very good game overall.

In Lords of Waterdeep, players take on the role of masterminds attempting to gain control of one of the flagship cities in the Forgotten Realms (one of Dungeons and Dragons two main universes). The players accomplish this by recruiting heroes of four different types (cleric, fighter, wizard, and rogue) and sending them on quests that earn the player influence (victory points) as well as other benefits. The game is played over eight rounds with the player who finishes with the most influence winning.

Mechanically, Waterdeep is a worker-placement game. Players have a certain number of agents that they can place onto locations on the board each turn. Placing agents allows the player to recruit heroes, that will be used to complete quests, or gain other benefits. After each placement, a player can complete a quest if he has the heroes in the correct number and colors. Like Caylus, there is a building mechanic that allows players to build and own locations that they get rewarded for each time an agent is placed there. To me, the game feels like a mix of Agricola and Caylus, but the mechanisms should be familiar to players of any worker-placement game.

The question when a game is so familiar mechanically is “what does it do better than other games in the genre?” Why play this instead of Stone Age, Caylus, Agricola, Ora and Labora, Dungeon Lords, Troyes, Dominant Species, Age of Empires III, Antiquity, Alien Frontiers, and In the Year of the Dragon (the worker-placement games currently in the Boardgamegeek top 100 games)? Well, I haven't played all of those, but three are among my all-time favorite games (Age of Empires, Agricola, Caylus) and Waterdeep offers a few things that recommend it over (or as an alternative to) those great titles. First, it plays very quickly. The limit to eight turns makes for a quick game and the diminishing options available each placement means adding new players doesn't add much time per player. In my experience, four-player games run about an hour, three-player about forty-five minutes. With three players, I can get two games of Waterdeep in the amount of time I could play one game of Caylus (or set up one game of Dungeon Lords, but that is another issue, entirely). The other difference is what makes it a great game for my collection—the Ameritrash mechanisms included as chrome.

The two elements that separate Waterdeep from the euro worker-placement games it will be compared to are the lords and the intrigue cards. Each player is randomly dealt a lord at the start of the game. These lords have special end-game bonuses and are kept secret from the other players. This keeps the victor in doubt right up until the final count. The intrigue cards introduce a level of take-that game play that is missing from the Eurogames. My favorite intrique cards are the mandatory quests, which can be played on an opponent forcing him or her to deal with them before completing quests of their own. Other cards allow players to break certain game rules for a one-time advantage. The cards are a very Ameritrash addition that add an element of surprise but don't add enough randomness to spoil the strategy.

It is those two elements that make the game more appealing to my Ameritrash group (along with the theme, since we are also a long-time D&D group). So far, the cards haven't provided enough of a swing that my Eurogame group were put off by them. The game has been requested multiple times by both groups, making it money well spent already and potentially one of my best bang-for-the-buck purchases in years.  

Dragoncon Cosplay Gallery

 My wrap up of DragonCon is coming soon, but I thought I'd go ahead and post some of the cosplay photos as I got them uploaded.  You can find the gallery here.  My favorites were the Rollerball players, the awesome 4th Doctor (featured to the left), a Hiro Protagonist that I was unable to get a good picture of, and a Arrested Development character to be uploaded later.  Enjoy, and let us know what you think in the comments.

Gaming with the Kids

 I haven't done a what-I've-been-playing post in a while, and, since I've been playing a lot of games with the kids, I thought I'd start there. We've mostly been playing older games from the stuffed-in-the-garage portion of my collection because I felt like the dusty old games needed a little love. Here's my take on what we've been playing.

 Sleeping Queens, Gamewright

 This light card game designed by a young girl and her family has been one of my daughter's favorite games for years, and now my three-year-old son has glommed on to it.  In the game, players use cards to "wake up" sleeping queens, each of which has a different point value and some different effects.  The game has cute art and has players form a mathematical equation in order to discard cards.  For example, a player could say, I'm discarding a four, a three, and a seven because four plus three equals seven, and draw three new cards into his or her hand.  The object is to draw a king card in order to wake up a queen.  Very cute stuff.  I'd say that Sleeping Queens is about a must-have game for families with young kids. It is a great math learning tool, has a fun theme, and has enough take-that elements to work with the kids on not taking a game too seriously. It also has enough take-that elements to cause fights, so beware if you have extremely sensitive kids. If you want a friendlier game, the negative cards like dragons and sleeping potions (and their counters—knights and magic wands) can be taken out, leaving a math-heavy game that is still a good time.

Looping Louie

  I've got the original, larger version of this infamous action game from the 90's. In it players compete to protect their chickens from a mad crop-dusting pilot who is trying to knock them from their perch (do chicken's have perches?). It is really the only battery-powered kids game that I still like playing, and it even gets some table time on adult game nights. If you can pick up the original or the new, smaller version, I recommend doing so. The differently themed Bobbin' Bumblebees is also good, if not quite as responsive. For the record, I logged 20 games of this on my play count, but I've probably played more like 100 games this month. My little boy adores “woopin wooey.”

See Loopin' Louie in action in this tv commercial from 1993:

 Snail's Pace Race, Ravensberger

 This kid's “racing” game could be on the “what German games could be converted for gambling?” that someone used to keep in the early days of BGG. In the game, players predict the order of finish of a group of six different-colored snails. Each player writes down which snail they think will come in first and which last. Players roll dice to determine which color snail moves forward until all have crossed the finish line. The players who picked the first place and/or the last place snails win. Since no player actually owns or controls a snail, the game, theoretically, won't cause your kids to break down in tears when their prediction is wrong. In my experience, however, predicting a snail to win is much like adopting it, and my youngest kid has gotten upset a few times when his snails didn't win. I have devised some rules to turn this into a grown-up gambling game, but I haven't had the chance to bring it to game night yet to see how it works.

Lionheart, Milton Bradley

 I remember being disappointed with Lionheart as a game for adults when it was released. I bought it hoping for a medieval Battle Cry and got something much lighter. I would have tossed it, but decided to hold on to it for my kids to play. It's a good thing I did. My three-year-old really enjoys it, and I don't even have to simplify the rules. It is basically a move-forward-and-attack kind of game, with the opposing armies lined up on opposite sides of a grid. The combination of the archers' range and the infantry's slow movement make ranged combat completely broken, but my son and I play it unmodified, and I balance the game by taking all infantry and giving him archers. He enjoys always winning by darkening the sky with arrows, and I get to enjoy easing my son toward being my eventual Warhammer opponent.

 How do I get these?

 All of the games mentioned here can be purchased cheaply online. Some are out of print, but all are available on Ebay. Loopin' Louie goes for pretty random prices—up to 80 bucks—but hang around and you can get the classic edition or the smaller box edition for around 20. Lionheart is also out of print, but can be found for less than 10 dollars. Sleeping Queens and Snail's Pace Race are still in print and available from multiple retail outlets.  Clicking the links in the three in-print titles will take you to Amazon where you can by the game and help support Nerdbloggers at the same time.