Typo

Typo is "6 nimmt!" meets "Ghost". It is a new small card game from
Cwali. If you're familiar with the word game Ghost and Kramer's 6
nimmt!, it is rather obviously a direct mixture. If you're not, the
Cwali website has a
good description of play. I'm a big fan of 6 nimmt!, enjoy word games
in general, and have enjoyed Cwali's products in the past so I was
eager to give this one a try.

I like it, and it seems to do well with different numbers of players.
I've played with 2, 3 and 5 and it worked well in each number. The
play isn't quite as quick as 6 nimmt!, but unless players are
exceedingly pensive, it moves along fairly well. Unlike many word
games, it feels a bit more luck driven than is typical, but not
overwhelmingly so. With more players, the luck seems to spread out a
bit more evenly, while with two, one person can get a lot of bad cards
and be more hurt by that than they would be with more players.

I've seen other comments that point out that this game may more
strongly require evenly matched players, and I'm inclined to agree. I
don't think it's as strong a requirement as it may initially seem,
however. Certainly, playing with children may not work, and a broader
vocabulary will benefit a player, but not so much as to prevent
enjoyment of the game by others.

Like other word games, I imagine Typo would heavily reward studying of
word lists, especially the thorough learning of unusual 3 letter
starts to words. It's quite entertaining without such preparation,
naturally.

Overall, I really like it. It's got a good amount of luck and has a
good playing length (30 minutes) for its depth. Further, it is nicely
produced and is extremely compact, which to me is a very positive
feature. Recommended, especially if you like word games and wouldn't
be put off by a fair bit of luck in it.

Game Metrics for 2004

I've discussed game metrics before, and listed my top games by various measures last year, so here's this years version. My favorite measures remain the Huber Happiness Heuristic and Matthew's Month Metric, and not just because they are pleasingly alliterative.

Huber Happiness Heuristic

Equation for a games "happiness units (HU)": (Rating-Offset)*Total Time

1. Goa (3300 HUs)
   
2. Power Grid (3240 HUs)
   
3. San Juan (2630 HUs)
   
4. Heroscape (2230 HUs)
   
5. Oasis (1620 HUs)
   
6. Electronic Catchphrase (1610 HUs)
   
7. St. Petersburg (1520 HUs)
   
8. 10 Days in Africa (1365 HUs)
   
9. Crokinole (1365 HUs)
   
10. Princes of Florence (1215 HUs)
    

Other games yielding at least 500 HUs: Typo, Marco Polo, Tongiaki, Ticket to Ride, Einfach Genial, Yinsh, Buy Word, Phoenix, Vinci, Adam & Eva, Victory & Honor, Attika, Geschenkt.

Month Metric

Month Metric
(distinct months in which the game was played)

1. Electronic Catchphrase (8 months in 2004, 31 ever)
   
2. San Juan (6 months in 2004, 6 ever)
   
3. 10 Days in Africa (6 months in 2004, 7 ever)
   
4. Oasis (5 months in 2004, 6 ever)
   
5. Crokinole (5 months in 2004, 20 ever)
   
6. Adam & Eva (5 months in 2004, 5 ever)
   
7. Ticket to Ride (4 months in 2004, 4 ever)
   
8. Tongiaki (4 months in 2004, 4 ever)
   
9. Typo (4 months in 2004, 4 ever)
   
10. Can't Stop (4 months in 2004, 22 ever)
    
11. Coda (4 months in 2004, 4 ever)
    
12. Einfach Genial (4 months in 2004, 4ever)
    

Most Plays Metric

See the 5sAnd10s2004 list.

Most Sessions

1. San Juan (13 sessions)
   
2. Electronic Catchphrase (9 sessions)
   
3. 10 Days in Africa (9 sessions)
   
4. Crokinole (8 sessions)
   
5. Heroscape (7 sessions)
   
6. Tongiaki (7 sessions)
   
7. Adam & Eva (6 sessions)
   
8. Oasis (6 sessions)
   
9. Power Grid (6 sessions)
   
10. Typo (6 sessions)
    

5s and 10s for 2004

As has become the tradition, here are the games I played this year at least 20 times, 10 times and 5 times.
Italicized games have appeared on my lists in past years. See also my list from last year.

I played somewhat fewer games total this year, but also fewer different titles which means the 5s and 10s list is about the same size as usual. It was a good year for word games (Electronic Catchphrase, Typo and Buy Word) as well as for new games.

20+

Electronic Catchphrase (23)

10+

10 Days in Africa (13), Crokinole (13), Quack Shot (13), San Juan (13),
Heroscape (11)

5+

Adam & Eva (8), Typo (8), Phoenix (7), Tongiaki (7), Buy Word (6),
Einfach Genial (6), Geschenkt (6), Light Speed (6)
Ma Ni Ki (6), Oasis (6), Power Grid (6), Yinsh (6), Goa (5),
Magic: the Gathering (5), Marco Polo (5), St. Petersburg (5), Zirkus Flohcati (5)

The only game on this list that doesn't entirely "deserve" to be there is Quack Shot, which was played 13 times all in one sitting.

November 2004 Games

36 games played, 20 titles (8 new to me) over 8 sessions with 38 different people.

Hot Games for November, 2004

Buy Word (6 plays)

This is a fun word game. I'll try to write a full review soon.

Leapfrog (3 plays)

Interesting simple game of simultaneous action selection.

Light Speed (6 plays)

Still one of the best speed games around.

Princes of Florence (1 play)

I tried a prestige card focused strategy. Not a win, but some success.

Victory & Honor (1 play)

I'm wondering about it's staying power, but it's fun.

Electronic Catchphrase (3 plays)

beep beep beep

Heroscape (1 play)

My main current wish on this is that it didn't take so long to set up. Still fun.

San Juan (1 play)

Production buildings just aren't that useful.

Plupsack (2 plays)

I've come up with some new mnemonic approaches that make me less awful at this.

Typo (1 play)

Buy Word is better, but this is still a fun word game.

Games of the Quarter, retrospective

This is a retrospective of what the various top games for me have been over the past 6 years, measured quarterly.

Q1 2000: Vino. One of my early German game acquisition, and a clever and fun business game. Sadly, I haven't played it in over 3 years, though I will have to do something about that.

Q2 2000: Vinci. Acquired this in April and remains one of my favorite overall and certainly about the best there is in the genre of empire expansion games.

Q3 2000: RoboRally. If I had bothered to enumerate the "game of the quarter" for years prior to 2000, it probably would have been RoboRally pretty much every quarter. It still gets pulled out once or twice a year and remains one of my favorites of all time.

Q4 2000: Lord of the Rings. This came out at Essen this fall, the first time I went. I loved the game then, though was a little skeptical about its endurance. I remain about as enthusiastic to play this now as I was then. The expansions have continued to improve it. Sadly, many of those I regularly game with are not as fond of it.

Q1 2001: Battle Line. The first ten times I played this I lost. I kept wanting to play it all the same, and it is by most assessments my favorite 2-player game. (Though the Q4 2005 game may give it a hard run, but we'll see).

Q2 2001: Pounce. I was introduced to this twitch game by a friend and promptly found a copy for myself on eBay. It is best played late at night when everyone is well past a reasonable bedtime.

Q3 2001: Electronic Catchphrase. This got introduced in the groups I play with in July of 2001 and has been played constantly since then.

Q4 2001: Zirkus Flohcati. I picked this up at Essen 2001 and it quickly became one of my favorite fillers.

Q1 2002: Industrial Waste. Another fun business game. Other than the initial burst, this hasn't gotten a ton of play, but I doubt it will be shelved permanently for a long time.

Q2 2002: Puerto Rico. An obvious hit from the beginning.

Q3 2002: Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation. Remains one of the best 2-player games out there.

Q4 2002: Puerto Rico. Everything else remained pale in contrast...

Q1 2003: Fresh Fish. I had played this and loved it in 2002, but it wasn't until 2003 when Plenary reprinted it that i was able to get my own copy.

Q2 2003: Amun Re. This was the big hit of the 2003 Gathering, and while many seemed to burn out on it quickly, I remain fond of it.

Q3 2003: Light Speed. A rather clever speed game, and the best of the "under 5 minutes" set.

Q4 2003: Attika. This was the hit pickup of Essen 2003, whose star has largely faded. I enjoy it more with the 6-free-cards-for-connecting-shrines variant.

Q1 2004: 10 Days in Africa. A great filler and extremely teachable.

Q2 2004: San Juan. Surprisingly outstanding adaptation of the Puerto Rico concept to a card game. Gets as much play as Puerto Rico now.

Q3 2004: Heroscape. The best "toy" game ever.

Q4 2004: Buy Word. There have been a few fairly good new word games in the past few years (Typo, My Word, eg) and this is probably the best of them.

Q1 2005: Crokinole. This has been a big hit since 2001, but the discovery of it by work colleagues and its adoption as a post-lunch game earn it this slot.

Q2 2005: Fiese Freunde Fette Feten. A hugely entertaining and clever game system. All the Q2 plays were on a pre-production copy.

Q3 2005: Fiese Freunde Fette Feten. Finally, it was available, and partially driven by my own enthusiasm, many people wanted to try it.

Q4 2005: Blue Moon. Despite my first two plays of this in 2004 being entirely uninspiring, I retried it and am very glad I did.

September 2004 Games

While fatherhood has induced an increased bias toward shorter games, I actually got to play a bunch of games this month. For various reasons, I also have some slightly more in depth comments this month than usual.

39 games played, 17 titles, (3 new to me) over 10 sessions with 20 different people.

Hot Games for September, 2004

Heroscape (9 plays)

I'm writing a more complete review which I will post soon, but it's certainly the big hit recently. I'm not 100% sure why I'm as enchanted by this game that at many levels is rather frivolous, but I'll try to deconstruct that a little bit in my review. Suffice to say, it's been a lot of fun

Typo (5 plays)

I already wrote a review of this. It's fun.

Magic: The Gathering (5 plays)

Ok, this one deserves explanation. I am not a fan of "collectible" games, by which I mean those with artificial rarities and random contents packages. I'm fine with "expandable" games, like the above Heroscape, or RoboRally, or Carcassone, but the random aspect bothers me as a consumer. Years ago, I played Magic to see what all the hooplah was about. It was fun, not amazing, but fun. A friend and I decided we weren't interested in diving into the money-draining pit of collecting, but if we each bought a bunch (about $40 worth) of cards, we could play together and it would be fun. It was, a little. Unfortunately, $40 worth of cards doesn't really give you a great deal of deck building flexibility. So, we played some and I largely abandoned it. Recently, another friend dove in head first and has a great many cards including many of the pre-constructed "theme decks", which we used in the 5 games I played. That works better as a game. It was fun with interesting gameplay, albeit quite a bit of luck. It seems like deck construction makes for a very interesting game, but to truly have all the options available to you, you need 4 copies of each card to choose from. That's expensive and impractical. A few games were fun, but for the few hundred dollars worth of cards it would take to make the deck building options feel reasonable, I'd rather have a bunch more German games.

Maharaja (1 play)

This is good. Nothing stunningly brilliant, but not totally unoriginal either. It's got several nice interlocking mechanisms and seemingly several paths to victory. It's not as good as I hoped it would be, but it is much better than I feared it might be.

Phoenix (3 plays)

Quick and entertaining two-player game which is more fun than it seems like it should be given it's simplicity and straightforwardness.

Einfach Genial (2 plays)

I need to play this more before I have a sense as to whether there any genuinely deep strategy or tactics options, but its engaging enough even before such depth (or lack thereof) is apparent.

Zirkus Flohcati (2 plays)

Continues to be great filler.

Tongiaki (1 play)

The chaos here doesn't really bother me.

Blue Moon (1 play)

I think the first time I played this, I may have played with the wrong rules. It's better with the right rules, or at least its better with the expansion deck I played with than with the built in decks.

The "Much Better" threshhold

In general, people have a lot of inertia when it comes to switching between "stuff". That is, most people don't switch bank accounts just because a different bank offers slightly better rates, or move to a new town or state even if it would be better in nearly every way. For things like banks and homes, there's a lot of friction built into the system. Moving is a hassle and costs money and time. Even changing direct deposit is a hassle and takes time. With a lot of technology, the friction of switching systems is reduced, but there's still a hassle and an avoidance of the unfamiliar that causes people to stick with decisions. In order for someone to switch to something new, the something new has got to be "much better" than whatever they had before to get over that hump. Despite being a technology geek, a group who typically have a fairly low "much better" threshhold, I have a reasonably high threshhold. I kept my very nice Kodak DC280 2-megapixel camera a long time past when everyone else was at 3- and 4-megapixel. The Fuji E550 I got is much better. It's 6-megapixel, has very fast repeat rate, is more compact, faster to transfer, lighter and has better manual control. In that vein, there's a bunch of things I've realized fall into that category for me, and they're worth pointing out in case anyone else is looking for the next "much better" thing in any of these categories.

My TiVo is much better than my VCR. I've had a TiVo for nearly 7 years now. I'm not a huge TV person, but I enjoy several programs. I'm not going to preach the gospel of TiVo here, but it is really a revolutionary device. If you don't have one, get one. It is both worth the monetary cost and the "hassle" of switching to something new.

My Mac is much better than my Linux box. This is only mostly true. I still rely on my linux box as a server for both my this web server, numerous limited-audience web services (family, etc.), private server resources (an arcane but useful todo system I wrote years ago), and various other things. But, as the computer I actually use for web browsing, mail reading, document handling, coding and playing, the PowerBook is so much better than any Linux box I've ever had, and I was a big fan of Linux. For various family and friends I've converted, the Mac is much better than Windows, for them. For me, Windows has always been much worse.

Ruby is much better than perl. This is a new
realization. I've been coding in perl for 14+ years and find it to be
a brilliantly expressive language. I've written vast amounts of code
in perl, ranging from uncountable one-liners to occasional hacks to
enterprise-class software. I still think it's a great language. I've
learned lots of languages over the years, and each has their strengths
and weaknesses, but none have been much better than perl, except for
Java, but that seems an unfair comparison. Java is much better than
perl, but perl is much better than Java. It's like saying a hammer is
"much better" than an apple. If you're driving nails, that's very
true. If you're hungry, not so much. In contrast, comparing perl and
ruby is much more of an apples to apples comparison. Ruby is
expressive like perl, maintains nearly all of the positive things
about perl, removes many of the negative things, adds a great deal of
positive things of its own, and adds only a few negatives of its own.
Especially from the perspective of a perl/Java fan, ruby is
remarkable. Note, I'm not talking about "Ruby on Rails" here. Rails is interesting, but I'm not yet a religious convert.

Roomba is much better than my vacuum cleaner. It is the 21st century and having a domestic robot do chores for you feels right, but that's actually only a small part of what makes the Roomba so much better. Sure, not having to push around a machine is nice, but that's the obvious part.

• It's quiet. Ok, it's not quiet, but it's nowhere near as loud as a normal vacuum.
  
• It's battery powered. In addition to not having to push it around myself, of course, I don't have to deal with finding a place to plug it in, like we did with the upright. Unlike the other battery powered vacuums I've used, the Roomba picks up dirt very well.
  
• It's light. Normal uprights aren't that heavy, but the fact that it's really easy to just pick it up move it is great.
  
• It's really easy to empty. We have to do it a lot more (every or every other cleaning) but it's so easy, in contrast to dealing with bags. Similarly, it's easier to clean than a normal vacuum, but that's more a function of its weight.
  

Plus, for me, it's rather entertaining to watch. Others I know find it very frustrating, since it can be very "dumb" seeming at times.

There are other things that fall in the category, but those are the big ones. What I'm looking for now is a blogging system that is much better than blosxom. Blosxom has served me well. It's small, elegant, hackable and met my needs. But, there's enough features I would like that it doesn't have that I haven't found other people's plugins that meet the need, that I'm starting to look around. The problem is, most that I've looked at, I'm not convinced they are much better. Typo looks promising, but I'm not sure it'll overcome the inertia.