Cliffhangers

I heard once that motivation was bunk. That a whole bunch of motivational speakers who talked about how to be motivated for something---that they were wrong, it just didn't work. Or if it did, it wasn't really that effective. The key to doing something, the speaker said, was

Election's coming up soon. Soon meaning 72 days. Less than two months. And I've heard people from both sides saying that if the other guy wins America will be plunging into chaos and our country will be destroyed and yadda yadda yadda. Or you could think like I do, and think that this is just going to be another election, and life will go on. Because the 2016 election was also supposed to be, like, the finalizing election to determine the future of the country. And do you know what happened? The nation kept right on moving. However, during this election I really hope that

So many game ideas. Working with A Thousand Faces again. Newlands. History of the Church the Game (a co-op game where you try to move Church headquarters all the way to Utah before too much bad stuff goes down). The Magnificent Machine. A new one that uses colored dice to buy new cards that can do awesome things including affecting future dice and so forth. But, like, I only have so much time. And there are so many ideas. And I have to do school stuff too, and games take up so much time, especially creating them, that I think I will have to

My mother-in-law's birthday was this past week. 61 years old. Older than my own mother. Which I guess makes sense because I'm the eldest child in my family and Heather is the second youngest. You know, I've thought about that. Like, what if the oldest kid in a family (we'll name him Mark) has a kid when he's like 20 or something (we'll name Mark's daughter Julie), and then someone else elsewhere is the youngest kid in their family (we'll name him Ralphie), born like 18 years after Mark was born. So Mark and Ralphie are in the same generation, right? Like, their parents could have gone to school together in the same grade and everything. But Julie and Ralphie meet at BYU or something and they fall in love and since there's only 2 or 3 years difference between their ages it's totally cool, even though one is in a completely different generation than the other! And suddenly the whole generation thing isn't a step by step ladder into the past, it's messy and full of

School is still all online. Our district decided to not meet back up in person yet. And I'm like, hallelujah! Because I like online teaching. You get a ton more time to prep and make cool videos like this one:

Which is part of our Beowulf unit we are doing right now. And the students can go on any time they want and watch, to help them with their homework or quizzes or their huge Beowulf project that involves

I've already mentioned before that I have these story ideas but can't seem to get the motivation to start writing them. I heard once that motivation is bunk, that it's a lot harder to do something you don't want to if you allow yourself to talk yourself out of it. The trick is to just jump in and do it as soon as you think about it. The speaker called it the 5-second rule, that you have 5 seconds after you have a thought to do something (clean the dishes, write a letter, do homework, etc.) before your brain says, nah, here's some excuses. But if you just jump in without thinking too much to think yourself out of it, you can get tons of stuff done, all without worrying about the whole "motivation" thing. I've tried it before and it does actually work. 

Last election year, 2016, was kind of a lose-lose for me, because I didn't want Hillary or Donald to win. This year is kind of a won-win for me because even though I'm not going to vote for Trump, if he does win I'll be like, okay, good, we have a conservative in the White House who's pro-life and stuff. But if Biden wins at least we'll have a President who knows and acts on the fact that Climate Change is real and man-caused, and might actually do something to help save our planet rather than denying it like most conservatives do for some unknown reason. Plus other factors as well (one of the biggest being he's actually Presidential and won't be a complete embarrassment to our country).

I'm just going to have to set some time aside for making games, and maybe even work on just one at a time. Working on too many at the same time drains your resources (no pun intended) and energy and you aren't as effective at any one thing. That's the same reason why multi-tasking is ineffective.

Genealogy is cool because I can have a person that is seven generations back on one side of my family but only five or six on the other. This is where the term "once removed" comes from. For more cool facts, check out this generation chart found here: https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/cousin-chart/

My students' final Beowulf project comes in three parts, and each part has two assignments. However, they only have to do one assignment per part. So in all there are six assignments, but only have to do three. It gives them a bit of choice just in case one of the options sounds terrible to them. They have to 1: a) make a crossword puzzle, or b) make an album cover. 2: a) make a storyboard, or b) write their own song. 3: a) Choose already existing songs that match up with Beowulf and explain how, or b) write a character analysis on six different characters.

The Shipwreck Arcana

Trapped in a drowned world, you and your allies are doomed -- or are you? Using a mystical deck and a healthy dose of logic, you can predict each others' fates and escape unscathed.

And that is how we are introduced to Mesomorph's newest game, "The Shipwreck Arcana," a cooperative game of deduction and logic. It was on Kickstarter and I found it on Thursday. It seemed interesting, and I considered backing it, but wanted more time to think before I did anything. Unfortunately, I didn't have more time, due to the fact that by the time I found it it had 3 hours left in its campaign. 

Here's the thing with me and Kickstarter: I've only backed three projects, each for $5 or less. The first, "Steampunk Rally," I backed with $5 to get the print and play files, which I then printed off, cut out and formulated, and then gave to my mom for mother's day. The next, "Book of Mormon Heros: The Servant of Helaman," was a computer game created by a member of the church. By pledging $1, I was emailed a link to where I could download the game. I never did download it, come to think of it. Hold on a sec.     . . .     Okay I'm back. So the link I was given: bookofmormongames.com leads me to another page which has a whole bunch of other links to it, and I'm too lazy to try to search for it. Plus, right now it looks like one of those sites that could give you viruses. Anyway, it only cost a dollar and supported him, so all's good. The third project I backed, "Anachrony," was also a $5 pledge to get the print and play version. The difference between this and Steampunk Rally, however, was the fact that Anachrony is huge. Like, really big. Like, it's over 100 pages for just the base game, not including all the expansion stuff I also got. So I never did have the time or money to print it all off. But I still have the files.

So I have never really gotten a game through Kickstarter, just files to print off at home to make my own version. And I'm thinking, it's about time I got one. With Steampunk Rally and Anachrony, to actually get the game would have cost $55 and $59, respectfully. I just don't have that kind of money to spend on games. (Unfortunately. Maybe some day...) But with Shipwreck Arcana, not only did it seem like a really interesting game, it was also only $15 for the entire game, plus all unlocked stretch goals. I got a $25 gift card that I could use for whatever I wanted (read: games) so I decided to go for it. 

The Shipwreck Arcana is a real game about a fictional deck of cards. The deck exists in a world which is described only as "sunken" or "drowned." The world's history is unknown -- but it is hinted at by the fictional illustrator of the tarot deck, providing a glimpse of the history that surrounds it. The Shipwreck Arcana is a compact, cooperative game of deduction, evaluation, and logic, combining simple, speedy play with incredibly deep strategy. Players take turns playing tokens according to rules found on an ever-changing tableau of cards, in order to convey information to the rest of the group before their doom arrives. 2-5 players, 20 minutes, recommended ages 10+.

Although I was kind of rushed with my decision, I still think that it was a good one. In reality, I wasn't that rushed with my decision. I decided to support it, and gave the credit card information for my $25 gift card. A day later I got a notice telling me it was declined because it couldn't accept that kind of card, so I had a week to fix it or just drop out. So I had a week to really decide whether or not to get it, and in the end I decided that it would be a great enjoyable game.

Some reasons I backed it: (1) It is a short game. My favorite type of games are the ones where there's tons of different ways to score points and it's strategy driven and there are multiple paths to victory. For example: T'Zolkin: The Mayan Calendar. Great game, for those very reasons. Also, I'm really looking into a new game called Merlin that fits this exact style. My game Somerset was structured after these ideas. However, sometimes you just need a quick, light game. Timeline, for example. The Shipwreck Arcana lasts only about 20 minutes, and is a filler, which will be a nice breath of air after all the heavy strategy games.

(2) The game is like a series of difficult logic puzzles. You can read the rules and learn more about the game here, but basically every turn a person is using logic to get to to figure out what he has, and you are using logic to figure out what he has. With 30 cards that give a variety of different situations, and 49 (seven times seven) different tile sets you could be given to work the puzzle with, the variety of logic puzzles to solve is near endless.

(3) It supports adding and dropping out players super easily. Have you ever had a game where when you were in the middle of it someone came in and wanted to join, or somebody playing had to leave? This game allows that flexibility without messing up the flow of the game at all.

(4) It has a super quick set up time. One of the reasons why I love Splendor.

So all in all I'm excited for March 2018 to come, when I'll be getting my copy. Yes, in six months. That's about the amount of time it takes to get a game when you back it on Kickstarter after it has been successfully funded.

Deer Creek Reunion

Last weekend was our family reunion. Lots and lots of great-grandchildren running around. I really like the location (it was less than 45 minutes away from our house) so I think we should have it there every year instead of in California (a really long way away from our place). Plus, the cabins were so much nicer. But Camp Connery has so many nostalgic memories, you know? But on the other hand, most people that came to the reunion live in Utah anyway (pretty sure). But on the other hand, Connery was for a week and I'm not sure how long you can reserve River's Edge at Deer Park. But on the other hand, we old timers seem to now be outnumbered by those great-grandchildren, so they don't remember Connery at all. But on the other hand, tradition! Bum bum bum baaa tradition!

Hannah did a stellar job at making everyone shirts. Thanks Hannah!

Some random pictures that were taken with our camera:

Summer job, parties, Hero with A Thousand Faces

I got a Summer job working at Provo Parks and Recreation again, just like I did last year. I'm even under the same guys. This last Tuesday was my first day of work, and so far we've dug up some old roots from some cut down trees, fixed sprinkler systems, planted five new trees where the old ones used to stand (my favorite project thus far), pulled some weeds, trimmed some bushes near a jogging path, and unclogged a path near a river whose pump had gone out, flooding the walkway under the bridge up with about two feet of water. That was fun too, actually, we got to get this massive pump and siphon everything out back into the river, then scrape up the muck, then siphon some more, then actually got access to the malfunctioning pump, all while getting splashed occasionally by nasty stale water.

A few weeks ago (which I was going to post about but haven't posted in a while, sorry) was my wife's side of the family's family reunion. It took place up in Idaho, about a three hour drive. We got there around midnight because we left late because we were packing, and set up our awesome tent in the dark. The next day we had breakfast with everyone and I handed out name tags for people to fill out, and there were games for the kiddos. I was one of the stopwatch people for an obstacle course race that Heather participated in with her team and around six other teams. Her team didn't come in first, mainly because of this ridiculous station where you had to stand a few feet from a watermelon half and chuck CDs at it and you had to get them to stick. Super hard.

I played games with some of the cousin guys. We played two games that Heather got me for Father's Day. She got me Cover your A$$ets as well as Splendor. Cover your A$$ets is a really great party game, and was introduced to us by Ryan when he visited us with his girlfriend. Splendor though is now one of my all time favorite games. Heather and I alone have played so much Splendor these last few weeks due to the fact that it is simple, super quick to set up, and engaging and fun. I'll be bringing both games to the family reunion in August. So we played a lot of those during the reunion.

Three days before the Fourth of July was the Stadium of Fire. Heather and I have never been together, and I have never been. Heather's only gone once when she was working as security (they hire a whole bunch of students every year to do that). I didn't know any of the singers and only one song because it was all country and I'm not a big fan of country music, but what made up for the price of the ticket was we got to see Brian Reagan live! He did some jokes I knew and some I had never heard before, and some about talking jokes with fireworks exploding overhead that he made up on the spot. "I didn't expect to be doing jokes in between firework noises. Timing is hard enough in comedy; trying to do the set up, then hear a blast, and then hit a punch line. Was not expecting that. 'Why did the chicken cross the road? Pow! Pow! Pow! Ka-pow! Pow! To get--Pow! Pow! Pow! Ka-pow! Pow!--to the other side.' That's what I'm dealing with up here."

The fourth of July happened one week before I started work. Heather and I went to the parade and then went to the colonial fair to see a little musical they we putting on about how people throughout history protected liberties and freedom. It talked about not only our country of the United States of America, but also people like Joan of Arc. After the play we went home and napped and then we went to the fair they always have down town in Provo. Every year around the fourth of July they set up a few blocks on Center Street to set up booths and food vendors and there's even a little carnival that's set up, although we never go on the carnival rides because we're not sure we trust the safety of how well they're set up. We got a few things there and headed home to sleep. The day after the fourth (or before, or on it, I can't remember) we went to see hot air balloons go up, and it was so cool! We also went to the downtown place again, and went to the colonial fair.

Parade float

The musical

Gail Halvorsen, better known as the candy bomber, was a the play
the same time we were, so we snagged a picture of him to prove it.

A Thousand Faces: About a year and a half ago my brother Eric sent me this email:

"So in my dream I'm looking at the MTG card Manalith, like a monolith of mana, right, only I misread the card as "Monomyth." And I'm like, monomyth, what kind of card would that be? Is basically how this started out.

So I've got an idea for, probably a deckbuilder?, where cards represent individual characters or settings or whatever, and you arrange them as part of the Hero's Journey, and you get points for having sets, cards in a row and plots that make sense, and maybe for completeness?

It's not my only idea or even my favorite, but it's still an intriguing possibility, and wanted to know what you could make of it?"

I had an idea and then starting working on it, then dropped it, then starting working on it, then dropped it since then and now. I've recently picked it back up again and am getting pretty far into it; it's not quite what Eric envisioned (he had envisioned what I consider to be Elysium, so congrats Eric! Your game is already out there!) but my game is part Elysium, part 7 Wonders, part my own thing. I'm still tweaking it and trying to make it work the best that it can. If all goes according to my plan, this game should also be ready to bring to the reunion in August. fyi the Title "A Thousand Faces" comes from the title of Joseph Campbell's book "Hero with a Thousand Faces," which is where the Hero's Journey and Monomyth comes from.

And some pictures of Henry just because he's cute:

And tomorrow will mark one year since my first blog post! It's been a good year!

Post-Christmas games binge review

This Christmas break was amazing. I didn't get in my weekly post because I was so busy with everything else that was going on during break. And by everything else I mean playing games. But I'm back at school and blogging again.

During break I played a lot of new games, most of which I had never played before, including a lot of new ones that we got for Christmas.  Following are some of my thoughts.

Seafall: Seafall was an incredible game and an incredible experience. I loved it. It was my first time ever playing legacy game, (and Ryan's as well), and it was a blast to be able to change everything about the game. From the cards themselves to upgrading your own province board to making your ships better, it was awesome being able to change things for future games. The best part though for me was being able to discover islands. Sailing out into the wild unknown waters and using an explore action to see if you could discover an island was so amazing. I was the first one to do it in my game. And while I was not the first one to set up a colony on one of the islands, I was the first one to get three, getting me that milestone. Like in Eric's blog, it's really hard to not talk about the best, most exciting moments of the game because of spoilers, but let me just say the stuff in those little boxes is awesome. The entire game felt like an epic story to me, unfolding a secret past history of the sea that we slowly uncovered and discovered. All in all it was a great game and I had a great experience. It's too bad I can't go back and do it again, not in the same awe-inspiring way, because uncovering the secrets was one of the best parts. There was one time when we knew what we had to do, but weren't sure how the game would know when to trigger itself when it happened, but as it turned out everything happened smoothly and the game knew just what to do with itself. I can't wait to play another legacy game, such as Pandemic: Season 2, coming out later this year.

Viticulture: I love this game. I can't even explain really why, but this game is so fun and amazing. I just love the fact that you can use your workers in summer OR winter, but not both, and how your grapes in the crush vats and your wine in your cellar age at the end of every turn--I love those mechanics. And the visitor cards give a whole new spin on everything. This game is just great, and definitely one of my favorites of all time.

My Village: I like this game a lot better than regular Village. There's the amount of growth you literally see in front of you as your village gets bigger and progresses. It's the cool fact that you have five guys and once one of them dies you need to replace them to keep doing that part of your village. But mostly it's the dice. That glorious mechanic of that dice pool. I love how you can pick any two dice to add up to the number you want. I love the fact that there are the black dice which you can pick, but cost you two time to do so. I love how you can activate your buildings with them depending on what number is on the banner. It just all comes together for me so neatly and clearly. But yeah, picking two dice from that dice pool is just a great mechanic.

Mystic Vale: It was so fun to be able to construct your own cards. Which pieces fit together the best? Will that card part even come up when this is out there? Building up supercards was one of the best parts of the game. And I like how when you spoil you get that one-shot free mana, but man, spoiling! I hate spoiling! But when you can pull it off--wow, you're feeling good about yourself. I haven't played it enough to get all little tricks and dig into all the corners and niches that this game has to offer, but I hope to soon.

Codenames: This was quite a fun party game. And it was a lot shorter than I was expecting it to be. I was expecting a game to last around a half hour, but most games only lasted from about 10 to 15 minutes. And it was fun being both the person giving clues and the person pointing at words based on those clues. They are about equally fun in my mind, because with one you can make awesome clues, but have to wince inside when your team just doesn't get it, and with the other you can try to extrapolate what the code master meant and try to delve into their thought processes.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig: This game was really fun. I loved being able to construct my very own castle, and loved how the extra points on the room tiles made sense. The meat locker wants to be attached to an outside room to let out the smell. The theatre loses points if it's next to a sleeping room because the noise coming from it would wake up the guests. It was little things like that that made playing so much fun. Plus, you even got to set the prices of the rooms every go around. My trick was not placing the rooms my opponents wanted too far out of reach, but I'd put them just low enough so that they would justify buying it and I would reap the profit.

Imhotep: This game was really simple, and thus fun. You grab stone, place stone, or sail. And that's it. Yet the game remains competitive and tense as you try to balance those three very simple things. Timing is so critical to this game. I only barely barely won my first game I played by one point.

Istanbul: Letters and Seals: This is a really good expansion. I don't see myself playing with it all the time though, because Istanbul by itself is so polished and tight and close to perfection in a game. The expansion adds a whole lot of neat nifty stuff, but as a result also adds a little bit of complexity and AP. With the added piece you can move it increases options on your turn and also the likelihood you'll have to pay two lira when you go to a spot. But it was definitely a lot of fun; all of the new added stuff is solid.

Caverna: Like Agricola, but you feel more free in this game to choose your own path. In Agricola you were always worried about feeding your workers and getting tons of every animal so that you didn't go negative, but in Caverna both of those problems are fixed.

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn: I played with Alex twice. I lost the first one terribly, but almost one the second one. I was so close! I like how it's a card and dice game, with the dice activating card powers, and some card powers allowing you to change dice. The card drafting thing would have been so neat to do, but there was just no time this vacation.

Shakespeare: This game only lasts six rounds, which is incredible, because you think you won't be able to get anything done, and then by the end you look back and think, wow, I got a lot done. I really liked this game.

Alhambra and Fresco: I loved the city building of Alhambra with the wall thing, and I loved how if you paid for a city tile exactly you got to go again, and I loved how you could only pay for a tile using only one type of currency. It's a good game, and Heather really liked it too and was excited when she learned that we also got a copy. I loved the hiding-the-workers part of Fresco, where you reveal where your guys are going at the same time. But I don't know if this is just me but the only place where that really mattered was the market. It seemed like any other place it didn't really matter as much. Oh, and painting the ceiling too I guess because they might paint the section that you were going to paint, or move the abbot away from the place you would have gotten bonus points from. And I liked the getting-up-time mechanic, similar to the one in Viticulture. Plus, the mixing colors together to get other colors is just genius.

Treasure Hunter: A fun game. It has this really cool card drafting mechanic where you want to lowest in a suit or the highest in a suit, but not the middle of a suit, and so you're trying to build up a team based on their rank number to get highest or lowest. Plus there are dogs and coins and weapons and all sorts of crazy things. Also, a short game. That won a lot of points with me; I love shorter games.

Hey, that's my fish!: A simple game that can get deep if you want it to. My wife got me this for Christmas. I first played it with Brandon earlier last year.

Kingdom Builder: This was a fun little game. It's not super deep, like other games I like, and it is kind of annoying having a one-card hand (a hand of card?), but other than that it's pretty solid. I love how with the expansions it adds a ton of new goal cards, because those three goal cards are the focus of the game, and I'm a sucker for variety.

Dominion expansion cards: Speaking of variety, I got a whole bunch of new Dominion cards! Some of which no one has ever played with before because they're from the new second edition games that just came out. We actually didn't play this over the break though....

We made a list of who won what game with how many points and how many players were playing. I think Alex is doing some math to crunch some numbers to determine who is the overall Christmas break games champion. Or something like that.

In other non-game related news: The Fitbit challenge! My family is doing a Fitbit challenge where we see how many steps we get in one month. It averages out to about 7,000 steps a day I think. Because I walk to the bus stop to and from school every day, I easily rack up over 20,000 steps in one day. Plus as a teacher I'm up in the front of the class teaching too, so things are going well for me. But it's so funny, because now I love waking around and even go out of my way to do it now so that I get more steps to beat everybody else. So the challenge is working--it's getting me to exercise more. Right now I'm in first place. :)

Heather and I saw Moana over the break (thanks Hannah!) and it was great.

And everyone made it safely home! I'm so grateful that we were blessed with safe travels. Heather, Henry and I made it home safely, despite horrid Salt Lake City roads, and Eric and Ryan managed to make it to BYU-I safely, and my mom and dad made it back home to Fallon safely, all of which I am incredibly grateful for.

Thanksgiving, Seafall, Bushes of Love, Somerset

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving break is over. Well, it has been over for about a week now. But one more thing I am thankful for: driving home safely afterwards.  In Mesa, we looked online and also heard that there was a severe weather warning in Utah. I remember driving to Fallon one year, I think it was for Thanksgiving, that the roads were just super terrible. I remember passing a piece of highway where three cars had skidded off onto the side of the road, and one point where there was just one lane which was slick. It was a nightmare. So learning about the severe weather literally gave me a panic attack and anxiety. We left on Sunday after sacrament. We were going to originally go straight up through the Kanab route but with the weather warning I wanted to be on interstates the entire time: none of this going on one-liner streets through the woods in the middle of nowhere at night. So we decided to take the route through Las Vegas.

We got on the road, and everything was going smoothly. There was this one point where it started pouring down rain like crazy and that was pretty frightening.  Then there was this one point in the road which I missed last year: there's this turn I'm supposed to make off of the 40 to stay on the 95, and last trip I missed it and had to backtrack a bit to get back on the right trail. This time I knew that that might happen and so I was on the lookout. And I missed it again. I knew something was off when I passed the sign saying: "Welcome to California." Great. But by that time we were so far off that it was faster to just keep on that road and turn north later on. By the time we finally got to Vegas due to my mistake, it was already dark. But the Lord blessed us and we were able to be on our way.  I was still anxious about the horrible snowy weather that was coming up. But in the end, the Lord blessed us yet again and the roads were nice and clear and there was inly one spot where it was really snowing, but we got through that super easily. When we reached Provo finally at around 12:30 a.m., it was softly letting down flakes of snow, but absolutely nothing like that trip to Fallon I was talking to you about. So we were definitely blessed.

Winterim

Winterim year: It looks like off the three blocks, I'll be teaching my Psychology and Science class during the first block, my Game Design class during the third block, and during the second block I'll be... doing lunch duty, I guess? There are four teachers who aren't teaching a class second block and are instead doing lunch duty.  But it will a nice break.

Seafall

I've been looking up the game Seafall in preparation to play the campaign this Christmas break with Eric, Ryan, and Alex. It seems pretty interesting. I'm not sure what course to take: making exploring or plundering better, or upgrading my storage in my ship or making it sail farther. I'm leaning toward plundering and hold space right now, but I'll have to wait and find out what the rewards are for exploring, which you only access in the captain's book when you explore that region. Maybe the rewards will be super good and I'll think about needing more dice for that than for raiding, who knows?

However, and I must mention this, the reviews for Seafall are mixed at best. One of the problems, as pointed out by the Dice Tower here, is that the game had so much hype to it. Your expectations are shot so high by anticipation that when it finally comes around to play it, you might be disappointed. Also, as pointed out in this review here, while Risk Legacy and Pandemic Legacy had legacy elements put onto an already fun well established game, Seafall did not. So while the legacy aspects might seem exciting, the game itself by its own might not stand the test of time. I'm still excited and want to play, but I'm not sure how smart it would be to spread out all the games over the entire Winter break like we were planning on. Maybe playing 2 or even 3 games in one day might be better? Who knows. We'll find out during Christmas break. Which I'm totally excited for.

Bushes of Love

The other day I walked some students down to their classroom during lunch because they were just standing around the hallway. When I got them back to their class which was having lunch in there, they were watching one of the wriest you tube videos I've ever seen. And the thing is, I swear I've seen it before. If I were to guess I'd say that it was Danny that showed me way back in the day when they lived in the Stoehr's first house (as opposed to their second house where Heather had Thanksgiving with us a few years ago, and their third house which they have now), but that can't be right because the video's only 11 months old.  I swear I remember being scared that a chicken-duck-woman-thing would attack me from the bushes though when I was younger... oh well. Here's the video:

Somerset

Without photoshop on my computer, it's hard to work on files for the rules for Somerset, but here's the cover page and the first page at least:

Somerset tiles

Let's not talk about the election yesterday. (I voted for McMullin for President btw who nearly tied Clinton for 2nd place in Utah. Even though all of Utah's votes for McMullin and Hillary combined didn't even match the number of votes Trump got in Utah.)

Instead, let's talk about games and how awesome they are.

The tiles for Somerset are now done. They still need play testing to see if the different strategies are balanced and such, but the good news is that its' already got some play testing from some of my students at school who play it during the study hall period.  They come in and ask if they can play it, so I get it out and they set it up and play it, and occasionally ask me for rules clarifications. Because of their sample runs, I've already been able to fix some bugs.

I haven't started working on any art or anything for the cards, but I have the index-card cards to play with right now and that's good enough. I still need to test out the cards to see how good they are, but right now I'm focused on the tiles.  There are 25 of them which are always available to anyone to buy.  There are also the starting tiles, which are way less powerful but you start with them so hey. The starting tiles I made to look like it's the city, which I'm calling the City of Camelot, and then the tiles you can buy are made to look like the country side. So you start off in the city and build out into the countryside better actions.

The starting tiles for 2 players. They are to be laid down in a random configuration. The sword in the stone is the first player marker.

The starting tiles you add for 3 players. The starting tiles you add for 4-5 players.

Advancement actions: Turn a peasant into a knight or a knight into a wizard. (It cost resources to do so.)

Advance on the government track or activate an action on the government track that you've already reached.

The Government track. Get money, or get resources, or get magic/cast a spell, or get building/spell cards.

Resource tiles. I'm not sure what else to say about these. Rutabaga.

Actions that allow you to draw building cards or spell cards. These cards are (should be? will be?) really nice.

The Magic actions. Either collect Magic, cast a spell, or both. (You must have at least one wizard before you can cast spells, however.) When you cast a spell it uses up a certain amount of magic.

These are the random or miscellaneous tiles. Do an action of a tile surrounding the one you're on, get money, build with a discount, or build some roads.

There you have it. Ah snap, sorry, I just remembered as I'm writing this that there were also going to be 7 Attack tiles that you can play with as well, but are optional if you don't want to play with attack tiles. So I'll have to do those too.