And pretty big dice, too.

For the Art Shanty project held each year on frozen Medicine Lake in Plymouth, Minnesota, creative types create all sorts of artistic, interactive works for the general public.

This year, one such project is Dicehouses, a series of five[1] giant dice-shaped boxes that are actually mini gamerooms for couples to play board and card games in the middle of the frozen lake.

More than that, they also created the world’s largest Cribbage board covering over 2 miles of lake area with gigantic metal stakes for pegs.

Many more photos and information on their blog.

(hat tip)

[1] Yahtzee.

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There have been numerous baseball board games called “Play Ball”, or something similar; this one is licensed by Little League.

The game is by Keith Neubauer, and includes a board, nine cardboard players for each side, a deck of “event” cards, and absolutely no decision-making skills. It’s main purpose, for a target demographic of kids ages 3 to 6 or so, is to facilitate a parent teaching their child how to play baseball in preparation for entering Little League.

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Each November Patch Products organizes a “Million Minute Family Challenge“, which is an attempt to get thousands of families and game groups to play board and card games up to and including Thanksgiving weekend.

This year’s challenge exceeded the goal by over 40%, with the highest performing game club – CSRA Gamers Association of Barnwell, S.C. – clocking 188,640 minutes of game play. The single family record was Family Crushers of Oceanside, N.Y.with 20,964 minutes.

(source)

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North of Elsenborn is a new supplement for Avalanche Press’ Panzer Grenadier series.

It contains ten scenarios based on the battles of September 1944 between VII Corps and the German Seventh Army, and costs only $5 as a download, or $10 in print format.

I’m also finding it hard to resist buying AP’s d20 supplement about Celtic faeries:

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A new roleplaying game based on the award-winning Mouse Guard comic book series uses a simplified version of the Burning Wheel system from designer Luke Crane. In a world populated by mice, the Mouse Guard is a cadre of former soldiers now acting as escorts, scouts, and body guards. Players in the game form their own Mouse patrol and contend with weather, predators, and other dangers while completing missions set by the Game Master. A hard cover rule book provides sample patrols, sample missions, and extensive background information on the Mouse Territories, with art and new material from creator David Petersen.

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