You may be surprised to learn that I’ve been a gamer since 1979 and before last night never played Magic: The Gathering! Tuesday, though, I received some Dark Ascension cards from Wizards of the Coast, and as they were kind enough to send these to me prerelease, I figured that maybe now it’s finally time to learn the game. Fortunately, a neighborhood friend volunteered to give me a quick lesson.

Overall, I had a good time and could see myself playing this game on a regular basis, not in tournaments mind you, but casually with family and friends. The basic mechanics of the game are pretty easy to learn and the special abilities of the different cards are interesting to explore. On the other hand, there are a lot of nuances to the system and individual cards are written in such a way that the full Magic: The Gathering rulebook, I understand, is something like 130 pages long. I’m glad I had a friend explain it to me. The “How To Play” guide that comes in the box provides a decent overview but leaves out a lot of the detail that you need to know when dealing with the more complex cards.

Regarding Dark Ascension, my feelings as a newbie are generally positive but mixed. The theme of the set is very dark and involves a lot of undead creatures, which is not usually my thing. Also, I think that this may not the best set for a beginner, as many of the abilities invoke some odd timing questions and involve playing cards out of the graveyard (AKA, the discard pile). Still, it’s not impossible and if you’re willing to give it a go and be flexible, there’s a lot of fun stuff in Dark Ascension, even for those just starting out.

I’m not going to provide a detailed or comprehensive summary of the cards in Dark Ascension. But I will point out some of those that I found most intriguing:

Seance—Essentially allows a player to bring back from the graveyard one card for each turn.

Ravenous Demon—One of the new double-faced cards. Transforms in to Archdemon of Greed with the sacrifice of a human. As an archdemon, the card has a very strong power (attack) rating, but if an additional human isn’t sacrificed each turn, the card will deal its damage back on its controlling player.

Lambholt Elder & Hinterland Hermit—These double-faced cards are humans that can transform in to werewolfs, but under the right conditions may also transform back.

Black Cat—With a very low toughness (defense) rating, this creature is easily killed. However, when it dies, an opponent must discard a card at random.

Prerelease events for Dark Ascension take place this weekend at hobby game stores. Some will be running a new meta-game, in which a portion of the participants are assigned to vampire, zombie, werewolf, and spirit factions, with the remainder left as humans. Anytime one of the monster players defeats a human player, that human player will turn in to the winning player’s monster type. At the end of the event, the largest monster faction wins.

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Along the way to developing a Scrabble variant meant to reduce the influence of luck from random tile draws, Andrew Thomas, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Carnegie Mellon University Department of Statistics, has managed to figure out the real value of each of those letter tiles (in Scrabble and the derivative online game, Words with Friends), as well as some other very interesting facts.

Prof. Thomas ran computer simulations of both Scrabble and Words with Friends—more than 4 million times each. According to his analysis, the bag (that is, the randomness of tile draws) accounts for 44 percent of a player’s score variance in Scrabble and 34 percent in Words with Friends. The data also shows that going first in Scrabble is worth 14 points to a player’s final score. In Words with Friends the double-word bonus is eliminated, but the first player still enjoys a 10 point advantage.

One factor in the first player advantage is the letter Q. Even though the point value of Q is relatively high (10), the letter is also more difficult to use and interferes with the possibility of getting a bingo (the seven-letter play worth a 50 point bonus in Scrabble or 35 in Words with Friends). In effect, drawing a Q is worth on average -5 points net to a player’s final score. And the first player to draw has a lesser chance of drawing that Q.

Also with an assigned point value of 10 but at the other end of the net value spectrum, is the letter Z, which is worth about 8 points to a player’s final score (in either game). The letter S is worth a lot more in Scrabble, 10 points versus 7 in Words with Friends, largely because of the difference in bingo bonuses. The opposite is true for the letter J—its net value is 6 points in Words with Friends but almost nothing in Scrabble. Blanks are worth about 32 points in Scrabble and 24 in Words with Friends.

[via IEEE Spectrum]

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One of the hottest tech news stories of the last couple of days is that The Pirate Bay has begun hosting 3D models suitable for the new range of inexpensive 3D printers (they’re calling them “physibles“). Reporter Michael Rundle on The Huffington Post hit the story from a gamer angle on Wednesday, pointing out that the earliest hosted files already included a model for a Warhammer 40k figure.

Games Workshop wouldn’t comment on the situation. But what about you? Any thoughts on how this might affect the miniatures business?

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I love super-sized versions of board games! Remember that $28,000 Jenga? At $12,000, this Scrabble is less than half that price and much more playable. My wife is a fan. What do you think, Robin, about putting this in the living room?

And while we’re on the subject, take a look at Mental Floss today for “26 Life-Size Versions of Popular Board Games“.

[via Geekosystem]

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January is going like gangbusters. With 40 projects currently active the anticipated slow down from the holidays appears to have come and gone.

14 of the 40 projects are already past their funding targets. Tephra, the Steampunk RPG is a whooping 1,123% above their goal.

A special shout out to Pieces of Eight – This game is being placed on Kickstarter by a young soldier in Afghanistan. He doesn’t have a video because of where he is located. But his project is already halfway to his mark.

Bold are new projects this week

Read the rest of this entry »

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If Bananagrams gets 1,000 new Facebook likes and 1,000 Twitter followers, the company will donate 200 games to the Toy Industry Foundation.

Gamewright is running a contest in which it will give a copy of the new Rory’s Story Cubes—Actions to the person who submits the judge’s favorite story based on the depicted roll of the cubes.

An Island Life blog is giving away Flippin’ Out from Endless Games. Tots and Me blog is giving away the company’s Zoopanic game.

The Kostiuk Crew blog is giving away Hoot Owl Hoot from Peaceable Kingdom.

Hasbro’s Annual Fun & Game Event includes coupon saving deals and hourly giveaways for 43 days. The coupons are for moms. The giveaways are for kids ages 6-13. I’m a dad, so I didn’t sign up.

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2012 is already shaping up on the Dominion front. 3 print releases and a digital release have been announced, along with a timeline for them all.

Dominion (Digital Release) – First Quarter 2012

Rio Grande has stated they’ll be releasing a digital version of Dominion early this year. No word has been said if it’ll be an iOS version, browser playable version, or a PC/Mac application.

Dominion: Base Cards (Small Expansion) — March 2012

A set of the base cards for Dominion (treasure, victory, and curse) will be released to replace cards from Dominion, Dominion Intrigue, or for use with expansions that don’t include them.

The next two releases are expansions for the game. 1 large, and one small.

Dominion: Dark Ages (Large Expansion) – August 2012 at GenCon
Dominion: Guilds (Small Expansion) – Late Spring 2013

Now for another bit of interesting news. It seems a version of Dominion has popped up on the iPhone and iPad. Dominion by Donald X. Vaccarino is put out by Hammer Technology, and is in no way shape or form an official Rio Grande version of the game. In fact, while you can play Dominion on your iOS device, it’s not very polished at all. The app is free, but in truth, I’d recommend waiting until Rio Grande comes out with an official version, as I don’t even know how long this will remain on the app store. The app seems to rip the box art, card art, etc… straight from the game. Anyone remember what happened with Viking Lords?

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Adrenaline Brush is a British company that specializes in rendering traditional abstract-strategy board games as beautiful works of art. The games are even delivered in wood frames for displaying on the wall between sessions.

Among the company’s new games for 2012 are Nelephants, Patteia 2, and Heads Up.

Another represents a new venture for Adrenaline Brush, language education. Go Global, which the company will be showcasing at the Nuremberg Toy Fair, was designed by students from several secondary schools in Wales to encourage others to take up the challenge of learning a new language. As part of the Routes into Languages program, Go Global will be distributed to every secondary school and FE college in Wales.

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Recently I had a chance to play a few games of Island Fortress from Frost Forge Games. You may recognize the name from our Kickstarter Roundup posts. While my copy of the game was a prototype, the game has now been fully funded on Kickstarter and will be produced soon.

So what is Island Fortress about? It’s about building building a fortress on a prison island, using the convicts as your labor force. At it’s heart, it’s a worker placement game that has elements of set collection added into the mix. It plays 2-6 players and runs around 60 minutes. The 60 minute play estimate is pretty accurate, though my first play went a bit longer (around 90 minutes) since I kept referring back to the rules on several occasions.

During the game you’ll be scoring points by building up the wall, completing rows, and having the most blocks in a completed row. Building patterns from Favor cards into the wall can also earn you extra income, points, and workings. There’s also a bidding element to petition for Governor, which let’s you take the first turn in the actions phase.

Building of the wall is handled by playing Role cards. There’s several types of role cards, each having several actions from which you choose one of when you play it. The roles are as follows:

Builder: Build a wall, replace a block, or complete a favor card
Planner: Buy wall block, draw a favor card, or remove reinforcements
Recruiter: Recruit laborers, collect 6 convicts, or collect from prison
Taskmaster: Move the taskmaster or repeat an already-played role
Treasurer: Collect jade or a treasure

During the actions phase players take turns playing these role cards until each player has taken 3 turns.

The game ends when the wall is completed of the supply of governors blocks runs out.

Now let me just say, the game is meaty, probably one of the meatier games I’ve played in a while. The rulebook may take a few reads before you’re ready to jump in and play, but it’s worth it. Island Fortress is fun, presenting great choices and a real feel of accomplishment when a plan comes together. While I can’t say much about artwork and components (remember my copy was a hand-made prototype) the game play itself is solid. My attempt to give you a brief glimpse of this game is just that, a glimpse.

Would I recommend Island Fortress? Yes. Yes I would. It’s a great game that looks to have shaped up really well.

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THATCamps are unstructured academic conferences meant to bring together humanities and technology specialists for lively discussion.

At the University of Maryland this weekend, is taking place a THATCamp Games. Exactly what sessions there will be, we don’t yet know—that’s the nature of THATCamps. Some of the proposed sessions, however, include games and prediction markets, games vs. crowdsourcing, theater-style LARPs, ARG design, and game data visualization.

The conference is fully booked with 100 participants from various universities, libraries, museums, and other institutions. Last night, though, as part of the event, I was able to attend a screening of an upcoming board game documentary, Going Cardboard. Look for a review of it coming soon.

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