Australian Monopoly players are competing in the 2009 Australian Monopoly Championships in a bid to land a place in the World Championships that will take place in Las Vegas.

One unusual note about the games, pointed out to me by my hat tipper: they use three dice to “speed up the game”. I’m not sure how that works. What are the rules for this? Doubles? Don’t you pass Go more often and pump more money into the game?

FWIW, Monopoly: Mega from Winning Moves has three dice with clearly defined rules, but the third die is a specially crafted die for that game.

(source, hat tip)

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Anima is a fantasy based narrative around which has been hung a roleplaying game, miniature game, and non-collectible card game. It’s manga based, but the games combine elements of both Japanese and western-style game mechanics.

The RPG includes 20 classes, d10 combat, a range of magic, ki, and psychic powers and so on. The card game includes 110 beautiful cards and plays for 2 to 5 players. and the mini game is a skrimish war game with gorgeous minis that plays in about an hour.

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Restoration Hardware sells a number of fine looking versions of some classic board games, including Clue, Scrabble, and Monopoly.

They also have wooden box versions of these, as well as poker and Yahtzee.

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Gencon LLC received court approval for its reorganization, allowing it to reject any hostile takeover bid.

It plans to repay all of its creditors in full over time and to continue all operations.

This comes less than a week after a substantial new offer was made by something known as the Gencon Acquisition Group.

(source)

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The Baton Rouge Boardgamers club got a nice writeup in The 2 Advocate, an online mainstream news site (joint effort between The Advocate and WBRZ 2 News).

Aside from a BGG mention and its role in helping players find each other, mentions are given to Caylus and Power Grid, including three nifty pictures of a Power Grid game in progress.

(source)

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You just took another month of damage.

As if high prices and poor content weren’t enough to dissuade you from subscribing to D&D Insider, dozens of customer complaints about inability to cancel their subscription over the course of several days – and then being charged for an extra month of service as a result – should just about do it.

Wizards closed two forum threads on the subject and opened a new one here.

(source)

Update: They’re working on it.

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OK, maybe not your toaster (you still use that crappy analog one), but Gameloft is going to bring Uno to mobile phones, PlayStation 3 Network, PlayStation Portable Network, WiiWare, and DSi Ware.

They’ve already published it for the ipod and iphone.

That’s really all I have to say about that.

(source)

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Another unique way of looking at card play as art, 52 Card Pickup is a play with 52 short scenes about the rise and fall of a relationship.

When the play starts, the actors take a deck of cards and throw it in the air, like the “game”. They then pick up the cards, one by one, acting out the appropriate scene for each card. Thus, the time within the play shifts forward and backward, and no two performances are ever exactly alike.

(source)

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Thinkcon-1 will be held January 17 to 18 at the Cempaka Damansara campus, Bukit Damansara, KL.

Speakers will discuss the use of designer games in the classroom at all levels, and include Jimmy Yeoh, the designer of “Math Magic”, Kenneth Phun, an educational psychology specialist, and Edwin Wong, a devoted gamer and writer for Board Game News.

(source)

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