Future Focus is a board game about Diabetes by two teenagers who were bored or confused with the ways they had been receiving information about the subject.

The game is a roll-and-move trivia game. Their goal is to give away a free copy of the game to every newly diagnosed diabetic child, as well as every education center on the disease; they’ve already handed out 500 copies of the game, and they’re looking for sponsors.

The web site is a bit of a mess, but it was created by the 15 year old, so I forgive him.

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Rand McNally, the map company, gives us Boredom Breakers, a series of portable games to be played in the car while the parents fight over who gets to look at the map.

Games include Story Starters with (interactive CD), Car Karaoke, Travel Card Games (3 games: 30 Second Interview, an ice breaker game; I Saw It First (spot the object and collect points); Tough Choice (sounds like Would You Rather?)), and Magnet Message Makers (not really a game; create a license plate with magnetic pictures and words). Car Game Countdown is coming soon.

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This Chess art exhibition took place at The Reykjavik Art Museum in Iceland from January until May.

There were 15 unique Chess sets. Here are short synopses from the information page:

Muarizo Cattelan: The King on the black side is Adolf Hitler, the white side Martin Luther King. Pawns include Donatella Versace, Rasputin and General Custer (black) and Superman, Mother Teresa and Sitting Bull (white).

Jake and Dinos Chapman: Post-apocalyptic adolescents, white with blond-styled haircuts and black with Afro hair.

Oliver Clegg: An exact replica of Sigmund Freud’s desk and chair made in wood and leather.

Tracey Emin: Bronze pieces modeled in clay and all over the set are mono-prints and hand written texts in ink on fabric.

Tom Friedman: A pawn in the form of a tiny steel ball bearing or miniscule self-portrait carved out of Styrofoam. Larger objects such as a modified Crest toothpaste carton and a can of defunct Busch beer.

Paul Fryer: Chess pieces made from Tesla coils.

Damien Hirst: Medicine bottles in silver and glass with modified labels on each side. The labels for all pieces are either etched or sand blasted while the board is made from mirrored glass displaying the biohazard sign throughout and placed upon a freestanding surgical trolley with accompanying white leather dentist chairs.

Barbara Kruger: An audio chess set where each piece on the board is a miniature speaker. Every chess piece contains a series of different audio recordings from classic Kruger questions such as “What time is it?’ and ‘What’s up with your hair?’ or Kruger announcements like ‘You feel comfortable losing,’ or ‘You can’t be serious’.

Yayoi Kusama: Hand-painted porcelain pieces and board covered in brightly colored red and black spots on a white and yellow background. Housed in its own leather pumpkin case.

Paul McCarthy: Random objects chosen from the contents of his kitchen: a ketchup bottle and rubber duck, either recast to look identical to the original found object or an identical item.

Alastair Mackie: Each piece encapsulates a single suspended insect. The ‘white’ pieces are represented by flying insects and the ‘black’ side by ground based insects. So, for example, the ‘white’ knight is represented by an exotic wasp and the ‘black’ king, by a scorpion.

Matthew Ronay: Cast in bronze and then hand painted, the pieces range from pink and blue cup cakes as the King and Queen on the white side to two marijuana joints as King and Queen on the black side, one with tobacco as in the European style and the other without. The pawns appear in the guise of pizza slices, one side with pepperoni and the other side in plain cheese.

Tunga: 32 teeth in the head and 32 chess pieces on a board. Incisors, canines and molars transformed into pawns, bishops and rooks respectively.

Gavin Turk: A film approximately 14 minutes long showing Gavin, dressed in Turkish costume complete with Turban (as the Mechanical Turk), executing the Knight’s Tour with one hand in a mechanical fashion.

Rachel Whiteread: Identical copies of original miniature chairs and kitchen units, the two sides creating an opposition between utilities and furnishings.

(more pics)

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The Rulebook for Legend of the Five Rings Celestial Edition is now available for download here.  Here are some highlights of changes:

• Legacy holdings appear to be no more.  Now, each player starts with one or two specific holdings (the number dependant upon whether you go first).
• Action cards are now called ‘Strategy Cards’.
• Rings are now Unique.  (They were before, they just didn’t have the keyword.)
• Daigotsu is on the cover of the rulebook.  As noted in previous posts, he will own your face.

The table is yours,

Phil

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In an upset that no one seems to have expected, Dominion has won the Spiel des Jahres (for a reminder, the SdJ is the German game of the year and is generally considered one of the most influential game awards in the industry). Dominion is the brainchild of Donald Vaccarino and is essentially a card game featuring a very innovative mechanic – everything in the game represents a card that can either be bought or put into your deck. You use your deck to help you accumulate more cards, some of which are worth victory points. This game has been a huge hit for the freshman designer, with a new expansion being released just this week (Dominion: Intrigue)! Also winning at the SdJ this year:

• Children’s Game of the Year: Das Magische Labyrinthe by Dirk Baumann (this one’s not available in the US quite yet and features a special board that allows players to move components around the maze by moving magnets underneath the board)
• Special-Party Game: GiftTRAP by Nick Kellett (a guessing game where players rate gifts across a grid with all of the other players attempting to guess that player’s ranking of gifts)
• Special-New Game Worlds: Space Alert by Vlaada Chvatil (a cooperative survival game that mixes in a bit of Roborally with an audio CD that keeps the game moving)

Congratulations to all of the SdJ winners!

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Saturday saw crowds on the show floor and in the gaming rooms. I find the shopping better early and late, so it was extended time in the Board Room for me. Some of the hotest games were Dominion: Intrigue, Finca, and Smallworld. Of course, besides the latest games, there are still some traditions maintained at Origins. Outside the Board Room all day long could be found teams of people negotiating the fate of the Western world in the game of Diplomacy. And late at night, when it’s really time to finally get some sleep, it’s hard to back out of a couple of games of Werewolf.

Another tradition at the con is the Origins Awards, and this year I think the dedicated board gamers will be a lot happier. In the category of Card Games, Dominion actually came out ahead of Monty Python Flux. Pandemic won the Board Games category. Other highlights included Mouseguard winning in the RPG category and Say Anything in Children’s, Family, and Party Games. For the rest of the details, check out the full report at Critical-Hits.

Sunday was slow—just enough time for a few more games of Dominion: Intrigue and a quick check for discounts on the show floor before people had to run off and catch their flights for home.

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Sorry for the delay on this one – my Internet connectivity was a bit spotty! Day 3 was my last day due to other obligations, but Origins really busts wide open on Friday – the crowds come out in force and nearly all of the events are in full swing. If you could only make one day of Origins, Friday is definitely the day – the crowds are large, but still manageable, there are still good deals in the exhibition hall and if you can’t find a game, you’re just not keeping your eyes open. So what was new on Friday?

• Live Auction – Troll & Toad ran the auction at Origins this year and they seem to have been taken aback by the sheer number of entries into the auction (we caught the line extending the length of two exhibition halls at one point), but they managed to get things up and running after a three hour delay
• Consignment Store – The consignment store also opened late this year and seemed to suffer from a lack of material when compared to the massive auction
• The Spiel Dinner – Steve Conway of the Spiel podcast held a dinner on Friday and then brought folks back to demo the Spiel des Jahres nominee, Fauna (which is actually pretty cool – can we get this one in the US? Please?)
• The Dice Tower Memoir ‘44 Challenge – Several stalwarts from the Dice Tower podcast took on all-comers in an overlord game of Memoir ‘44 – including our own David! Needless to say, David and his companions soundly routed their Dice Tower opponents 13-9 (seriously, it was a really close game that was well played by all – sometimes those dice just don’t like you!)
• The Smithee Awards – Like B-grade, camp movies? Then check out the Smithee Awards for all of the “pun”ishment you can handle…

Overall, I had a blast at Origins this year and my wife and I are already making plans to attend next year. Thanks to all of the new people I met (special shout outs to Sydney, Nate, Nick and Mike!) and we’ll see you next year!

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Gamers can be an odd bunch – let’s face it: most of us are a wee-bit quirky. It is with this in mind (and with the admission that we totally could be guilty of nearly any of these comments), that we present to you our favorite overheard conversations at Origins 2009:

• “If I had the budget, I would totally have an augmented LED eye”
• “There are a ton of girls at Subway who want me”
• “See – here are the other two paragraphs of rules they couldn’t fit on the card”
• “He’s definitely 50% human” (in all fairness, this was during a game of Battlestar Galactica: the Board Game by FFG)
• “And by chicks, you mean dudes in drag”
• “Eight is part of twenty-two <squeal>!”
• “Because I will kill you. And then you will be dead.”
• “He’s been waiting since puberty for someone to acknowledge that beard”
• “I’m not sandbagging – I don’t even know what sandbagging is!”
• “The rest of them are here – they’re just hiding from you and asked me not to say anything”
• “Protesting causes hair loss! And bad breath!” – claims from a group of protestors…

What were the best lines you heard?

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Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers have been morphin’ to games for over 15 years, none too successfully. To continue that tradition, Bandai released Power Rangers CCG last year to no particular fanfare or notice.

The artwork comes from the somewhat more successful Rangers Strike TCG, which is only in Japanese.

The game: each player has exactly 20 cards, which require you to discard cards to use and which deal damage in making your opp discard cards. First player to run out of cards loses. Play simultaneous: count to three and play a card. Higher power wins. You can bluff by not playing a card on three, in which case you simply lose.

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In Drowning and Falling, from Bully Pulpit Games, you get to play a character who must fall. Or drown. I believe that these terms can be taken figuratively, so the game does not necessarily end with the death of your character, but then where’s the fun in that?

All profits are donated to ORBIS International, whose mission is to eliminate avoidable blindness and restore sight in the developing world, where 90% of the world’s blind live.

Another fun-looking Bully Pulpit game is Fiasco, wherein you play the protagonist in a scene out of something like Fargo or Blood Simple: grand ambitions, with poor impulse control.

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