Sign on San Diego pimps a card game group. (source)

Boston.com pimps the designer of Anomia. (source)

Carleston City Paper pimps The Settlers of Catan and a local place to play it. (source)

A trade magazine for McDonald’s Canada pimps Monopoly, Werewolves of Millers Hollow, The Settlers of Catan, and other games. (source, via)

Chatham Daily News pimps family game night by instructing you to go through the games you already own and pick one, after which you try to get the kids on board. (source)

Destructoid pimps Brenda Brathwaite’s talk about her art game about the Holocaust, Train. (source)

Santa Ynez Valley News pimps Karen Palmer, designer of Let’s Save Our Earth. (source)

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Harrisburg, PA: Lawmakers testify that games played at meals on taxpayers’ expense were not gambling games but Spades and Hearts and so on. (source)

Tampa, FL: The Seminole tribe were not allowed to run banked (as opposed to non-banked) card games as of two years ago and continued to do so. They’re being sued by some people who lost money at these games. Although they are immune to lawsuits, there is special dispensation to sue anyone over gambling losses. Or something like that. (source has disappeared from site)

Berlin, Germany: Armed robbers stole $200,000 from a poker tournament, part of the European Poker Tour. (source)

Port Charlotte, FL: Police arrest management of All In.Magic Players Club for running illegal card games (the policeman sat in several games and won). (source)

Milville, NJ: Man threatens a woman at a card game with a lighter shaped like a gun. (source)

Chicago, IL: Man stabs a woman to death at an early morning card game. (source)

Cleveland, OH: Man shoots and robs another man at a dice game. (source)

LaFollette, TN: Police officer pistol-whips a man with his gun and points his gun at him when the man argues with him over money at a card game. (source)

Little Rock, AS: One man accused of shooting another over a game of Dominoes. (source)

Wichita, KS: Man buys crack cocaine using Monopoly money. (source) I don’t know who’s stupider: the seller for accepting Monopoly money, or the buyer for accepting an invitation to the seller’s house a few days later (the buyer was beat up after arriving at the house).

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I have to admit I didn’t even know of this game’s existence until I read a review of it over on GeekDad today.

At first glance, my first thought was: “I want this game!”

Iconica is both designed and illustrated by Eric Torres, and is set in his World of Rynaga. The design is both minimalist, and breathtaking, and immediately caught my eye.

Eric hand makes each set, and sells them through Etsy for $16.  You can even purchase more cards for the game there at $3 a piece.

When you buy a 2 player starter set you get:

6 Iconica Character Cards (as depicted in the photos
1 Iconica Quick Reference card
2 standard 6-sided dice
36 game markers
2-player Iconica rules

The game is a 2 player tactical strategy game, and apparently he’s working on more cards and rules variations.

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The South by Southwest festival of music, film, and interactive technology starts this Friday in Austin, Texas. Also in Austin, Steve Jackson Games will welcome SXSW participants in an open house Saturday from 4-9 PM to talk about games, play games, or generally shoot-the-breeze. RSVPs are not required but would be appreciated.

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Dragonslayers is a card game for 1 – 2 players by Andreas Propst, and another interesting looking game that’s being distributed by The Game Crafter. The game comes with 8 card decks of various sizes, a d6, and a bunch of counters.  The object is to kill a ton of monsters without being killed.

The rules are fairly basic, and the game seems to be pretty light. I’m guessing once you start digging into the card decks that a bit more subtlety may emerge.

The game weighs in at almost $37, and to me that seems a bit too much for what it seems to be, but that’s the cost of dealing with a server like The Game Crafter. Still.  I can’t see many people plopping down that much cash when you can most definitely get a game you know is going to be good for that price.

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Hot news of game sales.

Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar stores are running significant sales on some of their remaining holiday stock of board games. Note that not all games are on sale, but if you look around you should find a table or two of games with red stickers. Last night, I purchased Masters of Venice, Travel Blokus, and Time After Time for 75 percent off! I understand that tomorrow prices might be lowered to $2 per game. Of course, stock will vary by store and is very limited. But if you hurry up, I left you several copies of Wits & Wagers, Red November, and a variety of Goliath Games in the Rockville, Maryland shop.

Besting even the Barnes & Noble discount, White Wolf is celebrating Read an E-Book Week (did you know that was this week?) by offering a PDF copy of the World of Darkness Rulebook (normally $25) for FREE!

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The Prisoner was a popular TV show, and a card/board game based on the show and published by UK sggc Card-Board Games. You go around the board trying to find the items you need to escape.

Card-Board Games aims to reduce the cost of their game production by creation games whose boards are created by the cards as you play. I.e. tile laying games, using cards.

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Brand New Games is a startup game publisher. Soon to be followed by two more, the company’s first game is Nay-Jay. It’s a fast-paced game of simultaneous card play, similar to other speed card games, but where players can build the central piles up or down, as well as change a pile’s color with a wild-card. Cycliste will be a strategic card game about bicycle racing and Bones of Ascension will be a fantasy-battle-themed strategic dice game.

Brand New Games was formed by a group of friends in Mapleton, Utah but its president, lead designer, and energetic spokeswoman is Naomi Tripi. In her own words:

I wanted to become a game publisher not only because I love games personally, but I love creating things. To have something in your head that is just a thought, an idea that you have is one thing, to actually see your idea take physical form and become an object that anyone can see and interact with is thrilling for me. So far, game publishing has worked out better than I had ever imagined.

On how it feels to present one’s design to the public at-large, Naomi says:

I get nervous sometimes, I hope people will enjoy the games, but I know that not everyone can like every game. Most of the time I’m just excited to share a new way to have fun with other people who share my appreciation for games. The first time I taught Bones of Ascension to a play-testing group my hands were shaking because I was so nervous, but after the first few minutes of game-play the nervousness was replaced by a kind of euphoria. It is just so rewarding to see people enjoying something that you created.

So far, accepting the public’s reaction to my games has been really easy because the feedback has been so positive. The harshest things anyone has said about Nay-Jay are “this game won’t appeal to serious gamers” and “It’s just like Nertz”. But this game isn’t targeting serious gamers, and I fully acknowledge Nay-Jay’s similarities to Nertz and Speed. It is a different game, but yes it is similar, so I took no offense to those comments.

Brand New Games is attacking the market with gusto. The company runs frequent in-store demos, crowned a 2010 Nay-Jay World Champion at the recent SaltCON in Salt Lake City, and is planning various additional events for Origins, Gen Con, and local shopping malls.

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Marcelo Figueroa discusses his ideas on how to start a game company.

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Mary Couzin is the brains and muscle behind the fastest-growing and perhaps most important game convention in the United States, the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, aka CHI-TAG. There are long-established trade fairs for toys and games, such as the ones in New York or Dallas, as well as player conventions for hobby games, such as Gen-Con and Origins. What there wasn’t, until Mary came along, is an American game fair – classics, mainstream, and hobby – for families, such as the one held yearly in Essen.

Mary started out as a game designer. Through the course of marketing her own games, she met other lone designers who were reinventing the wheel in terms of finding suppliers, dealing with contracts, and trying to market their games, and whose power as individuals was rather weak. She formed Discover Games in 1997 as a cooperative project to collect the wisdom of these designers and to market the group’s games as a group. Rio Grande Games and R&R Games are sample companies that got their start through Discover Games.

Mary drew her inspiration for CHI-TAG from Essen, which she attended in 2000. She spent a few years trying to build up support in the gaming community. Early support came from Rio Grande Games, R&R Games, and Out of the Box Publishing (a Chicago-based company), who formed the core of her first event in 2003.

The 2009 fair had 11,000 visitors, support from major game industry players such as Hasbro, celebrity guests such as Daryl Hannah (pimping her line of board games), and important people you’ve never heard of, such as Reuben Klamer, the inventor of Hasbro’s edition of The Game of Life. The fair also had sit downs with the publishers, toy and game awards, and a whole lot of family-friendly entertainment.

In person, Mary is amazingly sweet and charming. Yet beneath that sweetness and charm lies the determination to forge a national convention out of nothing that now has major entertainment players (yeah, bigger than Hasbro or Mattel) coming to her to find out how they can participate.

She has also founded initiatives for games in education.

Mary Couzin and Yehuda Berlinger

Mary Couzin and Yehuda Berlinger

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