Mid semester update!

We've had a busy semester, playing lots of new games, and even having members bringing in their own to share with the group! The web site has not been updated much, as usual due to too much actual GAMING.

Our Ice Cream day last month was a HUGE success! We succeeded in eating something like 30 gallons of ice cream. There was a minor controversy and almost violence this year when chocolate was left out of the flavor selection. We managed to talk people down off their ledges, though, with chocolate syrup.

Don't forget about the Chonkeys Day! Info is available at the top left of the page under "Events".

We have played a bunch of games, as well! Here's a little mid-semester update of much of what we've played since the last update.

Some new favorites are: Kamisado, Shadow Hunters, and TPOC: The Politics of Cannibals. Kamisado is a two player game on a chess-like board. But your every move dictates the possibilities for your opponent. It's mind-bendingly wonderful.

Shadow Hunters is a hidden-identity game where each player is given a card describing them as a "Shadow", a "Hunter", or "Neutral". The Shadows are trying to kill the Hunters, and vice-versa, and the Neutrals have hidden agendas as well. Of course, (at least at the start) no one knows who is who. Only through deduction and luck can you find out.

The Politics of Cannibals is a political game, of sorts (a little bit like an expanded version of "King of the Beasts", a game-club classic). Each player is vying to be King of the Cannibals, and has to observe what topics the voters are interested in and adjust their platform (which are just sets of cards) accordingly. Of course, throughout the game the political landscape can change. People can get put into the big cauldron, and when the chef comes out, voters get eaten. (There is much cheering around the table whenever that happens!)

Girl Genius: The Works is also a new one to game club. It's a very clever steampunk-styled card game, where the cards make a giant machine in the middle of the table, and players try to manipulate it to their benefit. It has some of the best artwork of any game we play.

We've played a LOT of classic games to game club in the past few weeks, as well!!

10 Days in Asia and 10 Days in Europe: We've played quite of few of these classic route-building games by Moon & Weissblum. These games should be in every high school social studies classroom -- you can't HELP but learn the Asian and European maps. And they're fun. TransAmerica, a very different but also route-building game came out, of course too.


We've played some quick party games like ASAP, Cranium Zigity, Smart Mouth, and Thingamajig... they got pulled out fairly regularly.

There's always lots of abstract/puzzle/word games played. We got in some games of: Boggle, Coda, Continuo, Fire and Ice, Gobblet, Jumpin' Java, Quarto!, Quiddler, Rummikub, Blokus, Tsuro, and Traverse.

Around Halloween we appropriately were playing: Betrayal at House on the Hill, Cthulhu Rising, Frog Juice, Guillotine, Mall of Horror, and Poison.

We've actually been getting into a lot of trading/bidding/bartering games, as well lately (these are usually my favorites!!). Things like: Basari, Bohnanza, and Lascaux have all been in steady rotation.

Forbidden has become a new favorite card game. It has elements of Rummy and Mah Jong, with some fun new gameplay elements ("Did you remember to feed the monkey??"). We've also been playing: Cribbage, Gang of Four, Hornochsen, Rage, and Zeus on the Loose.

The role drafting games of Citadels and San Juan are always great, and we've introduced a whole new set of players to their tremendous glory.

We've spent time in Japan, playing both Samurai AND Honor of the Samurai.

We've played a bunch of the press-your-luck games of Incan Gold and Can't Stop the Turtles.

There was plenty of playing with the pirates of Cartagena, the penguins of Hey! That's My Fish!, the politics of Quo Vadis?, and the polynesian Tongiaki.

I'm sure I've missed a few, but this is quite enough for now!!

FALL 2009 is in full swing!

Welcome back!

We are a couple weeks into the semester, and the game club is already back in action. Attendance is way up, and we've had dozens of new faces. We need to start looking as who will be officers this semester, and some discussion has been made regarding that.

We've tried different ways of recording who plays what games -- this semester we will probably have just a sign in sheet of people writing down who is in attendance, and a game sheet where we simply record the games played, so we know what games are the hot ones. We'll see how that goes.

Looks like Game Days will once again be MONDAYS and WEDNESDAYS, starting around 2:00 in the Student Center. You can't miss us, we've consistently taken over 2 tables (yesterday we had 3 going!)...

Already we've played games like...

• Boggle
• Bohnanza
• Farkel
• Five Crowns
• Forbidden
• Gang of Four
• Great Dalmuti
• Incan Gold
• King of the Beasts
• Mall of Horror
• Pass the Pigs
• Quiddler
• TransAmerica
• Tsuro

And there will surely be many more...

Saty tuned!

Gaming on Wednesday, May 27

Summer session has begun. And gaming has continued...

Blog reports will be brief, but at least they will BE.

• Ashlei
  
• Ashley
  
• Cathy Willms
  
• Chris
  
• Eden
  
• Fenwick
  
• Jennifer
  
• Paul
  
• Stephanie

(Heath and Victoria were nearby, but didn't actually join in the gaming. We'll drag them in next week, for sure...)

• WORD PIRATES
  • This is a new one for game club. It's meant for younger players, but it really adapts well to the skill of the group. You all begin in the corners of the board, and basically roll letter-dice and try to make words on the board and connect them to each other, Scrabble-style. First to get to the middle wins! Silly fun. But hey, it has WORDs and PIRATEs. Two of my favorite things in the wold...
  
  
• SHAKE
  • This is a simple dice game with push-your-luck elements. We like those (Can't Stop, Farkel, Cinq-O... we've played a bunch). In this game you each roll a starter die. Matches just get the points they rolled, then, started with the highest unique roll, bonus dice can be rolled for more points (or lose what they've earned by "crapping out" <-- actual terminology in the instructions). Only one person gets to roll the bonus dice, so there is some strategic decisions to be made ("Keep my big points, but maybe allow others to roll more, or RISK my big points to stick everyone else with a lower score.") This game is 77% chance, 22% decision, and 1% crippling frustration -- a perfect combo for a light filler game.
  
  
• RAGE
  • Our favorite trick-taking game! We've played it a lot. It needs no intro...
  
  
• FARKEL
  • The taste of SHAKE still lingering in our mouths, we dragged out Farkel. Another classic game club entry -- roll dice for points. Keep some point-valued dice, and risk that much to roll more. Or keep what you've got. Lots of cheering, as always...
  
  
• QUIDDLER
  • It just wouldn't be game club without Quiddler. (OOH! Marsha Falco, Quiddler inventor, follows me on Twitter! Dang, I'm a geek.)
  
  

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The gaming will continue... stay tuned. AND we'll be definitely be doing some recruiting when orientation comes around later in the summer... Cheers!

Empty semester, blog-wise!

OK, so we haven't updated all semester. It wasn't for lack of playing! And we did record the games we did play, at least. The info exists; at least a close approximation. So I figured I'd just do a giant report of the games for the semester. Check it out...

Game	Qty
10 Days in Asia	2
Anathema	2
Aquarius	1
Basari	1
Boggle	15
Bohnanza	1
Bull in a China Shop	1
Can't Stop	1
Can't Stop the Turtles	1
Cartagena	2
Citadels	1
Coda	1
Continuo	1
Cosmic Cows	1
Cranium Whoonu	2
Cranium Zigity	3
Cribbage	11
Cthulhu Rising	1
Dino Dodg-Em	1
Duo	1
Earthquake	1
Equals	1
Farkel	1
Fire and Ice	3
Fist of Dragonstones	1
Five Crowns	3
For Sale	3
Frog Juice	3
Gang of Four	11
Go Stop	3
Gobblet	1
Gold Digger	1
Guillotine	2
Hive	1
Incan Gold	1
Jumpin' Java	1
King of the Beasts Mythological Edition	3
Klunker	1
kuuduk	1
Labyrinth Card Game	7
Lascaux	1
Lost Cities	1
Mall of Horror	1
Math Dice	1
Metro	1
Mille Bornes	3
Pecking Order	2
Pepper	1
Pivot	1
Poison	4
Quiddler	21
Quo Vadis?	1
Rage	12
Raj	5
Rumis	1
San Juan	3
Scopa	2
Scrabble	3
Shake	2
Shazamm!	1
Simply Catan	1
Six	2
Smart Mouth	1
Snorta!	1
Spy	2
Stone Soup	1
Terra Nova	2
Thingamajig	1
Tiki Topple	4
Toss Up!	1
TransAmerica	4
Tsuro	6
Turn The Tide	2
ZÈRTZ	1
Zeus on the Loose	9
Zombie Fluxx	2
TOTAL GAMES PLAYED	206

SEE?! We played. And will continue to do so...

We'll decide what will be good day(s) for playing over the summer soon.

And we'll go back to actually logging what we play a smidge more often.

Promise.

Monday, January 29, 2009

Games were played! A meeting was held.

Meeting discussions....

• We lost our VP! Brian1 has left us to move on. Appropriately enough, Brian2decided he was interested. No one else expressed real interest, so Ashlei appointed him! Brian2 = Vice President of SGC.
  
• We need to have chonkeys this semester. The Welcome Back Bash is next Wednesday, so that was no good. Monday, February 9th looks to be the day! I shall have to put it on the calendar sidebar...
  
• We may try to get a group trip to a semi-local Scrabble Scramble. The Literacy Volunteers of Sussex County are having one on February 28th (see Literacy For You.org for info!)...
  

And this all happened WHILE we played games...

Here's the stats for the day...

• Alicia (n)
  
• Brian2 (n)
  
• Cathy Willms (p)
  
• Dan (p)
  
• Eden (unsure of affiliation, but we'll tentatively say "p")
  
• Fenwick (p)
  
• Heather (p)
  
• Jennifer (p)
  
• Mike (p) <== Welcome!
  
• Nolan (n)
  
• Patrick (Bp)
  
• Sam (n)
  

• Beat the Buzzard
  
• Boggle
  
• Cartagena
  
• Quiddler
  
• Tiki Topple <== NEW GAME
  
• Tsuro (5 games!)
  
• Zeus on the Loose
  
• Zombie Fluxx
  

Some pics from Cartagena...






Some Quiddler highlights...

Sam had this (and, yes, if it looks upside down, that's because it is).


Heather came up with this. She suggested that Game Club could potentially be looking at a new name...


Mike, new guy, ran this 7-card gem...


Fenwick went with a western theme...


Tiki Topple is a new game to game club! It's a 'reorg the line to maximize your secret goal' style game. I guess the closest thing to that we've played in Guillotine... It's pretty cool, fast, and the bits are gorgeous. Check it out:





Tsuro is a game club classic.






Well, if there's no snow, we'll all gather on Wednesday!

And another semester begins...

We're back! The first game club meeting for Wednesday, January 21 went swimmingly.

We had new people, classic games, good times.

Here's how it went...

• Abe
• Alicia
• Brian2
• Cathy Willms
• Chris
• Crystal
• Dallas
• Eden
• Fenwick
• Jon2
• Kayla
• Liz
• Patrick
• Paul
  

• Gang of Four
  
• Quiddler
  
• Rage
  
• Tsuro
  
• Zeus on the Loose
  
• Zombie Fluxx
  

(I'm pretty sure there were other, uncredited games played. But we're just getting back into the swing of things...)


My camera and I were away from the club meeting for most of it, so I only got a coupla pictures. Here they go...

Zeus was on the Loose...



And here's a couple Tsuro shots...

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Next meeting... Monday, January 26! Be there...