2013 Widgey Season Wrap Up

12.14.2013

Wednesday was the last game of the 2013 Widgey boardgame season, our 7th season of the modern era. Somehow, Keith managed to Two-peat as back-to-back champion, an unheard of feat.

It was a good year for boardgaming - we finally starting making a dent in the amount of shrinkwrapped boxes I developed into collecting. Not all of the new games were winners (we're looking at you Level 7) but for the most part the games have been fun. This has led to the latest challenge for the upcoming year - focus on getting more of those unplayed, shrinkwrapped games played, and hopefully cut back on procuring every new game that is released in the next year.

That's my plan. No idea how well that'll work out. According to my collection stats on BoardGameGeek I've got over 200 games and I doubt we've played 20% of those. Let's up that percentage!

Just to let Keith brag, here's the standings for the 2013 season:

	Wins & Losses					Win %			Points Rank + Win % Rank - # of Wins
	Wins	Losses	Points	Ranking		Win %	Ranking		Combined Points	Combined Ranking
Russ	9	10	56	1		47.4%	6		-2	2
Jer	7	4	36	3		63.6%	5		1	3
Keith	9	5	46	2		64.3%	4		-3	1
Joe	3	0	12	4		100.0%	1		2	4
Steve	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5
Richard	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5

Overall Champion Lowest combined points in rankings. Champion with -3 points Keith

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2013 Widgey Season Update

12.01.2013

After mine and Keith's afternoon of gaming last Sunday, I finally updated this years Widgey rankings. Before Sunday, Jerry was in the lead for the championship (as he had been for most of the year). Keith and I played 3 games Sunday, which thanks to the quantity (Widgeying rewards laying often) and winningness (Widgeying rewards winning twice as much as losing) of Keith, he managed to surge from 3rd place to 1st place.

	Wins & Losses					Win %			Points Rank + Win % Rank - # of Wins
	Wins	Losses	Points	Ranking		Win %	Ranking		Combined Points	Combined Ranking
Russ	6	6	36	1		50.0%	6		1	3
Jer	7	1	30	3		87.5%	4		0	2
Keith	7	4	36	1		63.6%	5		-1	1
Joe	3	0	12	4		100.0%	1		2	4
Steve	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5
Richard	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5

Oddly enough, if Jer beats me in 1 additional game, the rankings would change as:

	Wins & Losses					Win %			Points Rank + Win % Rank - # of Wins
	Wins	Losses	Points	Ranking		Win %	Ranking		Combined Points	Combined Ranking
Russ	6	7	38	1		46.2%	6		1	3
Jer	8	1	34	3		88.9%	4		-1	1
Keith	7	4	36	2		63.6%	5		0	2
Joe	3	0	12	4		100.0%	1		2	4
Steve	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5
Richard	1	0	4	5		100.0%	1		5	5

... giving the Jer the overal win for the year.

It's an odd points system I've constructed. I should have constructed it to where I could win.

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Unsanctioned Widgey - Shadows Over Camelot

10.26.2013

Last night I got together with the DealNews crew and played Shadows Over Camelot, which has currently been played on Wil Wheaton's Tabletop (it's fun to watch to get a feel of the game). In the game, everyone is working together to complete quests and win the game for all, except 1 person might secretly be a traitor and working for the forces of evil.

One of the fun parts of this game is everyone wondering/accusing the potential traitor, especially since there's a small chance the traitor won't be present in the game. I've generally shied away from this type of game, as I've never really grasped the concept of how you can by the bad guy but to cover it up you have to help the good guys - to me it would just seem so obvious that the traitor would be doing the minimum.

In Wil's game, the traitor was actually pretty helpful, at least in my eyes. When Wheaton's group was playing, he pointed out how when someone plays the first time they can get away with a lot more by "acting ignorant" of some of the rules if they are the traitor. I took advantage of that, as I WAS THE TRAITOR in the first game we played. It seems this game is so difficult for the good guys that revealing the traitor just send it over the top, so that was my strategy. Be helpful beyond the minimum until the opportunity for me to win shows itself.

I had a small advantage in keeping my secret since I don't work with these guys every day. I know them well enough to cut-up, joke, and accuse, but I was able to keep it all subtle enough to not raise too many suspicions. The hardest part was to not keep looking at the rules for what to do once the traitor is revealed. Play started, and taking a cue from the game I saw on YouTube I was focusing on planting siege engines around Camelot (need to place 12 for Camelot to fall and me to win the game). There were other ways for me to win, but this seemed the most straight forward.

As we were all learning the game (from Richard's rules speech), everyone fumbled around a little and did some things wrong, some things right. I teamed with Phil on a quest, but then he left me. Completing a quest is a point for the good guys, so I was secretly happy he left. Then Keith and Daniel came along to help me complete the quest. While completing the quest was bad for my overall goal (complete enough quests and the good guys win), this particular quest had the smallest reward. I also received a bonus for completing the quest, so the good guy face I had to show was happy. Meanwhile, larger quests were starting to fail.

The siege engines around Camelot were growing, to around 10 out of the 12 which would make Camelot fall. Everyone was rallying back to defend Camelot, but I managed to find a (valid) excuse to try and finish the quest I was on, which of course I had no intention of doing. Siege engines were destroyed, but drawn cards kept putting more back. After a couple of turns, we were back to 10 siege engines and thanks to a special knight power, we were hinted that some Very Bad Cards were set to be drawn. Amanda took her turn right before me and placed siege engine #11 on the board for her Bad Thing because she knew the Bad Card was very bad. Her good thing was not to battle the siege engine, so on my turn there were 11 of the 12 siege engines present to make Camelot fall.

I decided to have a little fun, if for no other reason than I like to mess with Joe and he falls for it most of the time.

Everyone looked to me as I started to reveal what I was going to do. "Ok, we know the black card is bad" I said. "But, I've got 5 Health so I can lose 1 health point as my bad thing." Everyone nodded as I fumbled with my health die, ready for me to sacrifice a life point. "Ok, so I place a siege engine." Nods went to confusion, and Daniel tried to stop me as he realized it would end the game. Joe looked at me with a "Wait, why would you do that? Hey, are you the.." as I turned over my card and revealed myself as the traitor.

It was AWESOME!

We played another game, and Keith won as the traitor but he had to work for it a little harder (he didn't cover up his traitorness as well as I did and was exposed!). Shadows Over Camelot isn't truly fun until you play as the traitor. Seeing how long you can get away with lurking in the shadows (over Camelot) is a lot more fun than I expected.

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Token Redux

08.04.2013

2 months ago I ordered some customized tokens for Zombie Mall. Unfortunately, I was disappointed once I received my order. The tokens were double sided, and the front and backs didn't match up (worse than when I initially tried). The cut lines went outside the bleed area to where the border and part of the next token was often on a token. There were valid reasons for this from the guy I ordered them from, but I would have expected to hear the reasons before he shipped the order to give me a chance to correct any of the problems instead of included in a note with my order.

The tokens weren't un-usable, they just weren't as nice as I had hoped. They also didn't feel worth the $40 getting them made + shipping + waiting 2 weeks between order submittable and shipping. I bagged up the tokens and put them in the box with the rest of the game components that have come to make up my version of the game.

This weekend I decided to try my hand at making tokens again. Originally I just applied labels to both sides of cardstock (110lb). This worked, but it didn't have the nice weight most people are used to when they pick up a game token. I'd gotten some heavier weight chipboard (just thickly layered cardboard) which had a good weight, so I would try using it instead of the cardstock. After surfing YouTube for a couple of different examples of how people make their own tokens, I had a plan!

Step 1 would be how to properly print the tokens. The chipboard was 6"x6", so I would use 1 sheet of label paper and fold it to cover the both sides of the chipboard (before I had tried to line up 2 sheets between the front and back). When laying out the tokens, I increased the bleed area and gave each token a thicker black border.

After getting the label(s) on the chipboard, Step 2 was to score cut lines with my rotary trimmer. The reason I score the lines is because the trimmer blade isn't deep enough to cut through the chipboard. One of the YouTube tutorials showed a cutter that can handle chipboard, but I started this little project on Friday and had to make do with what I had/could get locally. Plus, $225 for a cutter is one of those things that needs a little thinking about before splurging.

Step 3 required a trip to Sears before getting integrated into my process. To actually cut the chipboard (using those scored cut lines from the previous step), my best option was going to be a Craftsman Edge Utility Cutter. Basically this is a large razor blade that cuts like a pair of scissors. The blade fits into the score lines nice and smooth!

After cutting out the tokens, Step 4 was to pretty things up with a black Sharpie. One of the tricks of papercraft modeling is to go back over cut/fold lines with a black marker to cover up white paper that gets exposed. Since I was using white chipboard, but the tokens had black borders, marking up the edges of the chipboard would make things look better. In addition, for those times when my black bleed area didn't match up between the front and back, I could use the marker to fill in a little extra border.

Once it was over with Saturday night, I had re-made 328 tokens. I'm not sure how long all of this took, but based on the streaming videos I watched from Amazon Saturday I spent at least 5 hours on Saturday making the bulk of the tokens. I had other plans for my Saturday, but for me this turned out to be a nice way to spend the day. Working on game rules & components has become my odd method of relaxation over the past year.

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Zombie Mall Expansion 1

07.28.2013

2 months after releasing Zombie Mall onto the world, I've managed to finish what is really the first draft of the rules allowing people to play as zombies. This was something that was originally intended to be in the basic game, in fact it was one of the main ideas that once a person died, they would come back as a zombie. For better or worse, I learned while developing the rules that I really needed to get the basic "how to play as a human" working before I added in "how to play as a zombie".

The zombie play has complicated the rules a little, but I think having as solid a set of base rules to work from as I did with the Zombie Mall rules I tried to limit changes to how play existed and focus on the best way to tweak adding on what was needed for zombies. I didn't cut as many corners as I probably would have if I had just tried to do everything in the beginning. Now, of course, I see how going back and re-writing the basic rules to include the zombie player from the start would be easier for the players learning, as well as keep from saying one thing in the early set of rules and adding in an "oh yeah, and" later on. But I don't want to do that right now. I'm ready for another little break from zombies.

This leads me to my next project that I've been working on, albeit slowly, for the past month or so. I've gotten more and more interested in Dust Warfare (the game that I got all the models for and never originally intended to play). There are reference cards available online for all of the units. These are nicely done cards, but I would like something a little more customizable - mainly I want to build my forces and have all of the stats on 1 handy piece of paper. With that in mind, I've been going through the rules collecting all the little bits of data I can think that I might need in order to (eventually) populate a database that some magical web app I'll whip up can reference and then spit out what I want. To my surprise, it's actually been a good way to learn some of the rules along with the mechanics of the game. Nerd fun at its finest!

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