Visit to Canberra

I had to fly to Canberra today for work reasons. You see we're introducing a new training management computer program and one of my roles will be the state coordinator of this system. So myself and a colleague from each state were scheduled to travel to our national office in Canberra to be trained in the new system. My wife asked me to take some photos so I thought I'd share them with you. For those of you who aren't already aware Canberra is the capital city of Australia.

It's 1268km (788 miles) by road from where I live in Brisbane to Canberra which would take approximately 16 hours to drive. Thankfully it's only a 90 minute flight. I've only been to Canberra once before and that was in 1987 to attend a gaming convention called CanCon.

Brisbane airport - my plane, a Qantas Boeing 737-400

So I was up at 4.00am after a total of only 4 hours sleep due to a sick little Georgia coughing for most of the night. My plane was scheduled to depart at 6.10am and I arrived at the airport at around 5.30am. As I passed through security I dropped my hand luggage on the x-ray conveyor belt and passed through the metal detector without any alarms going off. As I was picking up my bag I was approached by a female security person who advised me I'd been randomly selected for an explosives check. She waved what appeared to be some electronic sensor (an explosives 'sniffer' I assume) over my body. She then pressed a sticky tape on the end of a tool on to several areas of my bag. After that she peeled off the sticky tape and ran it through a machine. After an all clear I was on my way.

The view out my window of the pacific ocean far below

I would have loved to catch up on some sleep as we flew south along the east coast of Australia but unfortunately I find it difficult to sleep on planes. Instead I read a book - Prisoner 1167 - The Madman Who Was Jack the Ripper by J.C.H. Tully which I'd picked up 2nd hand at a school fete a year or so ago but had never read. It's an interesting read in which the author tries to link James Kelly, a paranoid schizophrenic who escaped from Broadmoor asylum, to the Jack the Ripper murders in the latter half of 1888. I was so engrossed in the gruesome details of the murders that the 90 minute flight flew by and before I knew it we were commencing our descent into Canberra. After landing I caught a taxi to my destination and managed to take some quick photos along the way.

We like to point out to tourists that Canberra is our national capital - not Sydney

Did you know that Canberra was the sister city of Nara, Japan? - No, neither did I

Lake Burley Griffin with Parliament House in the distance

If you look in the distance past Lake Burley Griffin you'll see Australia's Parliament House. See the white building in the center foreground on the other side of the lake? That's not it. Parliament house is the white building behind that with the 81 metre flag pole. Incidentally, the Australian flag flown atop that flag pole measures 12.8m by 6.4m which is about the size of half a tennis court.

The Telstra Tower on the summit of Black Mountain

We (meaning the taxi driver and myself) passed the Telstra Tower (AKA the Black Mountain Tower) on the way to Belconnen where our office is situated. The Tower, rising 195 metres above the mountain summit, is not only a landmark in Canberra but also offers panoramic views of the city and its surrounding countryside from a viewing platform or from the Towers revolving restaurant.

Almost there!

Belconnen is situated to the north-west of Canberra's city centre and surrounds Lake Ginninderra. As I had a little time to kill before the training session I decided to stop at Westfield Belconnen which is a large shopping centre only a couple of blocks from our national office.

Any game stores I wonder?

The first thing I did was check out the game stores in the shopping centre. Unfortunately all they had was a Toys R Us.

But do they have any Heroscape expansions?

I've recently bought the game Heroscape and frustratingly I can't find any of its expansions anywhere locally. Apparently Hasbro, the makers of Heroscape, are no longer distributing to Australia. I was hoping that this particular store would still have some expansions left. Alas, for after some searching, I was again disappointed.

After that I headed to the office. I won't bore you with the details of this suffice to say that I sat in a computer training room for 4 hours with 9 other people learning the complexities of the new program.

I decided to get out of the office at lunch time, so I walked a couple of blocks back past Westfield Belconnen to the shores of Lake Ginninderra where I found a nice spot to eat my lunch and read my book.

A relaxing half hour by the shores of Lake Ginninderra

If you're wondering about the photo above, no, I didn't ask someone to take a picture of me, I simply set my camera on the rock wall and pressed the timer button. That explains the odd angle. It was a beautiful day, not too hot and not too cool. What I really enjoyed was the lack of humidity in the air. Brisbane is often very humid during the warmer months but Canberra is more southerly and also inland so it's much drier. After eating my sandwiches and reading more of the awful murders which occurred in Whitechapel in 1888 I headed back to the office.

I struggled to keep awake through the afternoon session but before I knew it I was heading back to the airport by taxi to catch my flight home. Unfortunately my flight was booked for 5.45pm and I arrived at about 3.30pm. That meant I had about 2 hours to kill. I decided to head up to the departure gate to see if I could catch an earlier flight. This time as I was passing through security I followed the same procedure as the morning. I placed my bag on the conveyor belt while I walked through the metal detector. There were two metal detectors and just like in one of those 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books I chose the left one. I must have chosen incorrectly because the metal detector beeped and I was directed by security personnel to take off my shoes and pass through again. This time my shoes went for a ride through the x-ray machine while I again passed through the metal detector. Thankfully on this occasion there was no beep so I picked up my bag and put my shoes back on. It must have been the metal eyelets on my shoes which had set off the metal detector.

I checked to see if I could get on an earlier flight but they were fully booked. With a couple of hours until my flight I decided to head back past security to the lounge area where I bought a coffee and read some more of my book.

Come the time to pass through security again I chose the right walk-through metal detector. I must have chosen correctly because, bizarrely, that metal detector did not pick up the metal in my shoes and I walked through without any hassles.

By this time I was feeling pretty tired. It had been a long day and I always find training sessions to be quite draining. I still couldn't sleep on the plane so I just read. The plane touched down in Brisbane about 7.20pm and I caught a taxi and was home just before 8.00pm.

The sunset looking west out of the left side of the plane at about 6.30pm

A lost game is found

A couple of years ago I lost my copy of Buccaneer. I thought I'd taken it away on holidays with me and accidentally left it behind. I couldn't find it anywhere. You see, my board game collection is spread over the house in boxes, cupboards and bookshelves both upstairs and downstairs. I've spent many hours over the last few years looking for Buccaneer but to no avail.

Today I was going through my games considering which ones I'm going to sell.

Look what I found when I opened one of my HeroQuest boxes...

It was like opening a pirate's chest to reveal the treasure within!

Obviously to save space I'd put it in an empty HeroQuest but forgot about it! D'oh!

How much HeroQuest is too much?

Over the years I've picked up a few copies of the Milton Bradley board game HeroQuest at garage sales, school fetes and flea markets. I just can't help myself when I see them so cheap. HeroQuest looks like a fun board game which has both a role-playing feel to it as well as heaps of cool plastic miniatures. One day I'll paint up a set of miniatures and when my daughters are older run them through the scenarios with me as the Game Master.

A tower of 16 HeroQuest boxes

I'm going through a bit of a Spring clean with my games at the moment with the plan of putting a few of the less played games on eBay and opening up some shelf space for future game purchases. As I had today off work I decided to do a bit of a stock take. It was then that I realised I had 16 boxes of HeroQuest! I know I've had to ditch broken HeroQuest boxes in the past so I would estimate that I'd have over 20 complete sets within those 16 boxes. Wow!

I've had plans for cutting up some of the boards room by room and corridor by corridor to use as terrain for other miniatures or role-playing games. Other projects include painting and basing the miniatures for war games rules such as Hordes of the Things. These are all things I'm going to do when I have 'time'. Unfortunately free time is something that is in short supply when one works full time and has young kids.

I plan to list a stack of books, games and miniatures on eBay on Thursday 8 November. Anyway, back to the stock take.

Gaming With Grandma - 36

After a week of heat, humidity and evening storms it was nice to have a cooler change this morning. My Mum (Grandma to our kids) dropped by this morning for her weekly visit and gaming session. The other member of our regular weekly gaming session, my daughter Maddie (aged 6), had to go to a friend's birthday party so that left Mum and I considering what 2-player games we'd like to play. Meanwhile, my wife Deb was working so little Georgia (almost 21 months) sat on her Grandma's lap while I looked through the dining room game cabinet.

We decided on Through the Desert. This is a Go-like game of placing plastic pastel camels on a board to obtain points by various means, such as claiming water holes, reaching oases, having the longest camel route and enclosing areas.

I was green and Mum was orange

On an amusing (!?) note we'd just placed all the water holes and oases on the board and were into our second or third turn when Georgia grabbed the edge of the board and lifted it up sending camels, counters and palm trees everywhere. Ahh...the joys of playing when toddlers are about! We started again but as it was that time of the morning I laid Georgia down for a nap. We were then able to play in peace.

It was interesting that in this game Mum was striving to simply place camels to get the most points while I was trying to strike a balance between attempting to deny her points while trying to secure points for myself. I cut off a couple of her camel routes from being able to reach more than the one oasis while myself having a couple of my routes managing to reach two oases. I also was able to enclose a relatively large space while she managed a few smaller areas. She had 3 of the 5 longest camel routes but I was able to peg it back to 2.5 each on the last turn. Even so I though for sure I would safely win this one. It turned out that it ended up quite close. I won on 119 points but Mum was very close behind on 113 points.

Next up was Carcassonne. We played with the Inns & Cathedrals expansion tiles but as we hadn't played this in a while I decided to just teach and play the vanilla Carcassonne rules. For those of you who don't know, Carcassonne is a historic fortified city in southern France. In the game players randomly draw a tile and place it so that its edge matches the edge of an already laid tile. The tiles represent the castles and surrounding countryside of the Carcassonne area. Each player has 7 game markers colloquially referred to as 'meeple' which they may place on tiles they have just laid down (an 8th meeple is used as a marker on the scoring board). Depending on what sort of tile it is and where you place your meeple on that tile determines how many points you will immediately, or possibly later, score.

I was green and Mum was yellow

I haven't played Carcassonne that much but I understand the basic strategy and the importance of farmers. Mum and I played relatively 'nice', not really interfering with each other's tile placements. I say this only because I'm aware that Carcassonne can be played as a 'cut-throat' game in which you actively try to disrupt your opponent's plans. So this learning game was rather sedate with me, after explaining the rules, reminding Mum of her options each turn. I think after a few more games under our belts I'll increase the confrontation to spice things up. Final scores were me on 123 and Mum on 87.

Billionaire!

No, I haven't won the lottery or come into money or anything exciting like that. I dropped in at a thrift store this afternoon and picked up the card game Billionaire (AKA Pit) for $1. When I saw it on the shelf there were cards spilling out of it so I made sure to count them all and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was complete. I've played this game before and always find it to be a laugh. Loud, frenetic, card-swappin' fun is how I described it on BoardGameGeek. Billionaire is great as a filler and can be enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night...

We had a storm this evening with a spectacular lightning show. I took the following pictures from our back deck.

A pitch black night is suddenly virtually turned into daylight

Lightning strike!

Gaming With Grandma - 35

Another Saturday morning of gaming with my mother and daughter. Today we had the opportunity to play some recent game purchases from Germany - Burg Appenzell and Der schwarze Pirat.

In Burg Appenzell (or Castle Appenzell) each player controls four cute coloured mice and tries to collect pieces of cheese from within Castle Appenzell. On their turn players spend action points to either put new mice into play, reveal corridors in the castle, move their mice, or push a tile which changes the maze and can possibly drop mice into the dungeons below. If on a turn any two of a player's mice are sitting on tiles that show the same kind of cheese, that player obtains a piece of this cheese. The first player with 4 different pieces of cheese wins the game.

Burg Appenzell from above - the various roof tiles hide the board below

On a side note, Appenzell is a region in north-east Switzerland. A cheese called Appenzeller has been made in this region for the last 700 years. My mother was born in Switzerland so it was interesting for Maddie to link the place where this game was set to her Grandma's country of birth.

The components are simply beautiful with nice thick cardboard, lovely artwork and cute mice tokens. The box itself doubles as the castle and contains a plastic tray with internal wells representing the dungeons.

Each player starts by placing one of their mice (did I mention how cute these mice are?) in one of the four castle towers. The starting player is the last person to visit a real castle. Out of the three of us that would have been me but the general policy in our house is that youngest player (in this case Maddie - aged 6) goes first. Maddie chose blue, Grandma chose yellow and I chose green.

Maddie quickly picked up the action-point mechanic and used it to lift roof tiles to reveal cheese tiles below and move her mice. Roof tiles cover 2 to 4 spaces. There is an element of memory involved because as soon as there is no mouse in an area at the end of a player's turn the roof tile is replaced thus hiding any cheese tiles below. There is also the element of sliding tiles like in the Amazing Labyrinth. The cool part is there are 3 tiles with holes in them that can be used to drop opponent's mice into the dungeons and take them out of play.

One of Grandma's mice is headed for a one-way trip to the dungeon

I took an early lead and mentioned to Maddie and Grandma that I already had 3 pieces of cheese. I was proud to then see Maddie whispering in Grandma's ear about ways to stop Daddy from winning. As I was so close to winning we all decided to change the required number of cheeses to 7. I did eventually go on to win with 7 pieces of cheese, with Grandma on 5 and Maddie on 3. Burg Appenzell is a light fun game for adults and children.

My winning haul of cheeses. Mmmm....cheese.

Next up was Der schwarze Pirate. This was another beautiful game with great components. The board is formed by four pieces which interlock like a jigsaw puzzle. I was concerned that the edges of the board pieces may not lock together properly or perhaps be warped but was relieved to find they fit together extremely well and lay flat. There are raised edges around the edge of the board and also raised areas on the board which represent islands.

Each player is assigned a coloured wooden ship with cloth sails which starts on a predetermined space in the middle of the board. A black pirate ship starts in a predetermined bay on pirate island. The aim of the game is to move your ship around the board by blowing it with a rubber puffer or bellows. On the various islands will be gold coins which you will collect if you enter the bay (represented by a lighter blue than the surrounding ocean) of that particular island. When all the available coins have been collected the player with the most coins wins the game. Maddie chose red, Grandma chose yellow and I chose green.

Maddie placing a coin and trying to blow her ship at the same time

On their turn the player will roll two dice. The first die will show how many puffs of the bellows you can use to move either your own ship or the pirate ship. The possible outcomes are 1) move your ship 3 puffs, 2) move your ship 4 puffs or 3) move the pirate ship 3 puffs. The second die determines onto which island you will place a coin. Sometimes two coins will be placed on two islands.

Moving ships with the bellows is the cool part of this game. Experimentation will reveal that it is best to blow at the more stable wooden base of the ship rather than the cloth sail. Blowing at the cloth sail will often result in a capsize which ends your turn and forces you to place your ship back on its predetermined starting space in the centre of the board. Maddie took a little while to perfect her bellows-style but was soon as proficient as the adults.

If your die roll means that you move the pirate ship you can choose either of two tactics. Either move the pirate ship into the bay of an island (like you would do with your own ship) and claim all the island gold for yourself or try and move the pirate ship so that it touches an opponent's ship. The player whose ship was boarded by the pirate ship must now take 3 coins from their bag and place them hidden in their two hands (either all 3 in one hand or 1 in one hand and 2 in the other). The pirate player then selects a hand and gains all the gold in that hand.

Hoping the winds of fate will blow me into the bay of that island to claim the gold

As the placement of the coins is randomly decided by a die then you will find yourself having to try and navigate around the raised islands to seek your glory. Dexterity games like this are fun with all players cheering when a particularly well-placed gust of wind sends a ship flying towards its target.

Once again this was another quality game from Germany with a beautiful thick board, lovely cloth bags, gorgeous yellow wooden coins and stunning wooden and cloth ships. Fun for adults and kids alike. Final scores were me on 18, Maddie on 10 and Grandma on 8.

Our final game of the morning was my hand-made copy of Diamant. This is a fun quick game of push-your-luck. Players are adventurers exploring 5 caves which hold gems and hazards which are determined by revealing cards. Knowing when to leave and take your accumulated gems is the key to this game, although sometimes pushing your luck and outstaying the other players can pay off. Its all about managing risk versus reward.

My home-made version of Diamant

The photo above was taken on the second card draw of round 1 before I realised that we had forgotten to share the gems before moving on to the next card. Final scores were me on 51, Grandma on 48 and Maddie on 25.

Gaming With Grandma - 34

Mum came over to our house this morning for her weekly visit. I had planned to play Der schwarze Pirat and Burg Appenzell with her and Maddie but unfortunately Maddie wasn't feeling well. Having the GIPF project on my mind for the last few days I suggested some games.

First up Mum and I played ZERTZ. In this game you lay out 37 rings in a hexagon pattern. The first player to capture 3 of each colour (white, grey and black) marbles, or 4 white, or 5 grey or 6 black marbles wins the game. You capture marbles by jumping one marble over another checkers-style. Each player on their turn may place a marble and then take away a ring. As the game progresses the board shrinks. If on your turn you are in a position where you can capture a marble then you must do so. However, this means you cannot place a marble and take away a ring. You can also capture marbles by isolating them from the main area of the rings.

ZERTZ

The strategy is in placing a marble on your turn to force your opponent on their next turn into capturing it with a marble of the colour you want and thereby putting their marble into a position where you can capture it on your turn. Obviously this means sacrificing marbles to be captured by your opponent. The trick there is to ensure that you force them to capture marbles which don't help them too much. I went on to win but it was by the rare event of, after exhausting the marble pool, using one of my captured marbles to place in the final vacant ring thus effectively 'isolating' and capturing all the marbles on the remaining rings.

We next played YINSH, a favourite of mine. In this game both players place their 5 rings anywhere on the board on the line intersections. The goal is to get 5 of your coloured markers in a row, thus allowing you to remove one of your rings as a scoring point. Score three rings and you win the game.

YINSH

On your turn you choose a ring to move by placing your colour marker in the ring. You then move your ring in a straight line along any of the lines leading from that intersection. You cannot move through another ring. You can jump over as many markers as you want as long as they are in a straight unbroken line and you finish with your ring on the first vacant point after the last marker. Every marker you jumped over is flipped to reveal the opposing colour. You may jump over your own and your opponent's markers. I really enjoy this game and went on to win 3 rings to 1.

"Daddy can I play?"

Our final game of the morning was DVONN. I love the board for this - it looks like a sandy beach. In fact DVONN would be a great game to take to the beach. Leave the board at home and make the imprints of the spaces on the sand with the rings. As the rings are Bakelite it doesn't matter if they get wet.

DVONN

In the first phase of DVONN players alternately place their rings on the board. The three red DVONN pieces are also placed at this time - two by the white player and 1 by the black player. The aim of the game is to have the highest stack of pieces at the end. A player owns a stack if their colour is the uppermost colour of the stack. The red DVONN pieces are important because a piece or stack must be able to draw a connecting line to them. If any pieces or stacks are isolated from being connected to a red DVONN piece they are removed from the game.

You can only move a piece that is not surrounded on all sides by other pieces. A single piece can move 1 space. A stack can move in a straight line an amount of spaces equivalent to the number of pieces within the stack. It's a great game of move and counter-move that is visually appealing as well. Mum won the game with some great moves and ended up with a stack almost twice as high as mine.

TZAAR - A new game from Kris Burm

I'm a fan of Kris Burm's GIPF project. I've just become aware that he has designed a new game for the project entitled TZAAR. Boardgame News has a story on the new game here.

Apparently the new Belgian publisher of the GIPF project, Smart, is dropping TAMSK from the lineup and replacing it with TZAAR.

Here’s a description of TZAAR from Kris Burm (from Boardgame News):

TZAAR is a game about making choices. Both players have 30 pieces, divided in three types: 6 Tzaars, 9 Tzarras and 15 Totts. The 3 types of pieces form a trinity: They cannot exist without each other. The aim is either to make the opponent run out of one of the three types of pieces or to put him in a position in which he cannot capture anymore. The tricky question the players will have to ask themselves on each of their turns is: “Shall I make myself stronger or my opponent weaker?” Meaning: Will you capture an opponent’s piece and make him weaker, or will you jump on top of one of your own pieces and make yourself stronger? If you choose to jump on top of your own pieces too often, you will probably leave your opponent with too many pieces on the board. On the other hand, if you capture too often, you may end up with pieces that are not strong enough at the end of the game. What to do? Up to you to decide!

TZAAR will be released by Smart on a broad scale in 2008, but a special pre-release edition of the game—limited to 1,000 copies signed and numbered by designer Kris Burm—will be on sale at Spiel 07.

Spiele aus Deutschland!

Games from Germany! Fellow board gamer Friendless recently put in a games order to Germany and offered some other Brisbane gamers to share the cost of postage with him. This was an opportunity to get some games which may not be available in Australia and at a cheaper price than if they were.

I ordered Der schwarze Pirat, Razzia! and Burg Appenzell. These are all language independent games - they do not have any writing on the board or game pieces that would affect play for an English speaker. Two of them come with rules in English and I can get the translated rules for the third game from BoardGameGeek.

Friendless was nice enough to bring them into work with him today and as I only work in the next city block I was able to meet him for the pick up. I hope to play a couple of these games on Saturday morning so I'll post again then.

Gaming With Grandma - 33

My wife Deb recently picked me up the PC game Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy for $5 from a garage sale. Maddie wanted to watch me play so I let her design the character with which we would play. She chose a Twi'lek female and had fun designing the character's skin colour, face, and clothes. I control the character but she tells me what to do. We normally play for about half an hour each session and I've been surprised at Maddie's problem-solving abilities during game play. She's also good at reminding me to hit the quick-save button before we do anything too risky. So we've been sharing some Daddy/daughter time together and Maddie's been learning a lot about the Star Wars universe. Over the last week I've been calling her 'my young Jedi apprentice' and 'my little padawan' which she gets a kick out of. That sort of sets the scene for our choice of game when my mother (Grandma) popped around this morning for her weekly visit.

I brought out Epic Duels, a game from Milton Bradley/Hasbro which was released in 2002 as a tie-in with the 2nd of the Star Wars prequels Attack of the Clones. Epic Duels allows players to fight individual battles between famous Star Wars characters using a set of 31 miniatures on 4 different board locations. Players choose a major character that has one or two minor characters with it. Each set of characters has its own deck of cards which are used for attack, defence, or special abilities. Each deck is unique with certain special powers relevant to the major character. There are different modes of play; one on one battles, up to three teams can play against each other, or up to six players can play a free-for-all, last-man-standing battle.

In our first game Maddie chose Anakin Skywalker/Padme Amidala, Grandma was Obi-Wan Kenobi/2 Clone Troopers and I was Darth Maul/2 Battle Droids. We chose the Kamino Platform battleground.

Darth Maul AKA Darth Dad

The starting positions

We agreed at the outset that Grandma and Maddie would team up against me. I sent one of my Battle Droids to the left to try and get in a position to shoot the enemy as they advanced up the landing platform. Obi-Wan raced straight for me while Anakin and Padme followed. While Anakin and Obi-Wan engaged me in a lightsaber duel Padme and the Clone Troopers attacked my Battle Droids. Unfortunately, Battle Droids are as crap in Epic Duels as they were in The Phantom Menace and they quickly fell under the blaster fire of Padme and the Clone Troopers.

Lousy Battle Droids!

Meanwhile, wounded, I realised I was quickly running out of cards so I tried to buy myself some more time by moving behind the starship. Anakin and Obi-Wan closed in on either side of me. I dealt some major damage to Obi-Wan and he retreated but not before inflicting some cruel blows on me.

Darth Maul fights on alone with 1 hit point remaining

My double-bladed lightsaber flashed wildy but Anakin managed to land a blow that reduced me to 1 hit point. I counter-attacked but the next turn he cut me down. The light side of the force had triumphed.

I found it's very difficult for one player to win when being ganged up on by two players. This game is all about hand-management and as you only have two actions a turn you must decide whether to play a card or draw a card. The problem is that to attack or defend you must play a card so when being attacked and defending you quickly run out of cards. In hindsight I should have positioned myself behind my two Battle Droids and then tried to keep out of combat for as long as possible while just drawing 2 cards each turn.

Maddie immediately wanted to play again. I agreed but on the condition that I took two characters to even up the game balance. Once again it would be Grandma and Maddie versus me. For our second game Maddie chose Darth Vader/2 Storm Troopers, Grandma was Emperor Palpatine/2 Royal Guards and I chose Luke Skywalker/Princess Leia and Han Solo/Chewbacca. Our battle would take place in the Emperor's throne room.

Darth Vader makes straight for Princess Leia

Our 2nd game was much more balanced. Darth Vader moved quickly to attack Leia and Luke from behind while Han and Chewie blasted away at a Storm Trooper and Royal Guard. The Emperor hung back menacingly.

Chewie and Luke take out a Storm Trooper and Royal Guard

I sent Luke Skywalker towards the Emperor but he had to cut down a Royal Guard who tried to block him. Luke then realised Leia was in danger so he moved back to help her. Too late! Darth Vader cut her down. The Emperor decided this was an opportune time to attack and he and Vader trapped Luke in a hallway.

"Turn to the dark side Luke!"

Luke's Jedi skills were strong enough to do damage to both Vader and the Emperor and they retreated. Han and Chewie then fired away at Darth Vader while Luke chased down the Emperor.

"The Force is strong in this one..."

Luke managed to kill the Emperor but took a lot of damage in the process. Meanwhile, Han and Chewie were also almost dead but still fighting Vader heroically. A lucky shot from Han's blaster finally put an end to the Sith Lord.

"He's not so tough now is he Chewie?"

It was a surprisingly close game with all remaining characters being left with only a few hit points each. The game was very tense and it could easily have gone the either way. I liked the different powers of the characters and look forward to exploring the card combinations of the individual decks in future games. Epic Duels played fast and was heaps of fun. Maddie needed Grandma to read some of her special power cards but apart from that she held her own and really enjoyed herself. I can see us playing this game again.

A Foggy Morning

Last Friday morning I awoke to find a fog covering the area. This is a fairly rare occurrence so I took a photo. Compare it to the photo I took the following morning at about the same time. The view is taken from our back deck overlooking our back neighbour's house and yard.

Gaming With Grandma - 32

My Mum (Grandma) dropped by for our weekly gaming session. This morning we decided to play a game of Scrabble. Mum went first after drawing an A to my C.

Turn 1 [Mum] RAKE 16, [Me] YA(K) 18
Turn 2 [Mum] H(A)IR/H(A) 21, [Me] FLOO(R) 10
Turn 3 [Mum] (F)IG 14, [Me] (O)NE 4
Turn 4 [Mum] WA(G) 14, [Me] P(A)/P(I) 8
Turn 5 [Mum] (YAK)S/(I)S 13, [Me] DUA(L) 5
Turn 6 [Mum] (W)ED 14, [Me] (A)G/G(O)ON/(O)N/N(E) 16
Turn 7 [Mum] J(E)T/PA(T) 15, [Me] (J)EU/E(D) 26
Turn 8 [Mum] P(U)S/(WED)S 23, [Me] Swapped 3 tiles
Turn 9 [Mum] ((Y)AM 8, [Me] EXA(M) 26
Turn 10 [Mum] (HA)T/(A)T(E) 9, [Me] ST(E)W 14
Turn 11 [Mum] (T)O/O(X) 11, [Me] (PUS)H 13
Turn 12 [Mum] VA(S) 8, [Me] A(N) 2
Turn 13 [Mum] DO(V)E 24, [Me] (D)UN 4
Turn 14 [Mum] BR(I)DE 12, [Me] (B)EY 12
Turn 15 [Mum] TILE(R) 10, [Me] L(I) 4
Turn 16 [Mum] CO(W) 8, [Me] (C)AT 15
Turn 17 [Mum] LE(E) 9, [Me] ZeS(T) 24
Turn 18 [Mum] R(E)CUT 16, [Me] fE(Z)/E(R) 35
Turn 19 [Mum] DI(N) 5, [Me] MAI(L)/M(U)/A(T) 12
Turn 20 [Mum] GO(D) 7, [Me] (T)RIBE 10
Turn 21 [Mum] (Y)O 5, [Me] LI(E) 3
Turn 22 [Mum] N(O) 2, [Me] (I)N 2

I ended the game by playing my last tile. Mum was left with an F, Q, R and V for minus 19 points (ouch!) from her final score.

I found this an oddly satisfying and yet overall frustrating game. The word placement was very constrained and right from the start we both seemed to be trying not to let the game open up. The satisfying part for me was attempting to make several words at once and I believe my four words on turn 6 was the most words I'd ever scored on a single turn.

The frustrating part of the game for me were the tiles I chose. I seemed to get most of the vowels while Mum got most of the consonants. It got so bad for me that on turn 8 I decided to swap 3 tiles which is something I rarely do.

My 2-letter word knowledge paid off with some obscure words like ED (education), PA (father), PI (a Greek letter), AG (agriculture), NE (born with the name of), LI (a Chinese unit of distance), ER (used to express hesitation) and MU (a Greek letter). My interest in history gave me BEY (a Turkish ruler) and my interest in games gave me JEU (a game).

Mum held her initial lead for most of the game with me only overtaking her score on turn 18. Final scores were me on 263 points and Mum on 245 points. I averaged 11.95 points per turn which is a bit lower than some of my previous games.

Gaming With Grandma - 31

Another Saturday morning gaming session with three generations of my family; my Mum (Grandma), my 6 year old daughter Maddie, and myself. Today was Maddie's choice of games.

For our first game Maddie chose Nobody But Us Chickens. This is a fast-paced, trick-taking card game where players earn points by capturing chickens with their predators (foxes and rats) or protecting chickens with their guard dog. We always enjoy this game. Grandma came 1st with 31 points, I came 2nd with 30 points and Maddie came 3rd with 11 points.

After that Maddie chose Pass the Pigs. This is basically a push-your-luck game where you throw two pigs and score according to the positions in which they land. First person to 100 points wins. Grandma had the lucky throws today coming 1st on 100 points, Maddie 2nd on 46 and myself 3rd on 23.

Grandma wins in style with a double razorback!

Next up Maddie chose The Simpsons Slam Dunk game. In this game the dealer keeps turning over cards until one of the other players slams the slam dunk board and shouts out "Slam dunk!" thus taking all the face-up cards. The trick is to wait for enough good cards to be revealed and make the slam before the other players. As there were only three of us that meant you were only ever trying to beat one other player each round. Winner is the first person to win two hands. We chose to play only the one hand. Grandma came 1st on 32 points, I came second on 31 points and Maddie came 3rd on 24 points.

Following that game Maddie decided to play Pick Picknic. This is another family favourite and one we've played several times since it arrived as a present at Xmas 2005. It has a very similar theme to Nobody But Us Chickens but in this game players are vying for corn in 6 poultry yards. Points are scored by playing fowl to eat the corn or foxes to eat the fowl. It's another game where you try to outguess your opponents. I came 1st with 56 points, Maddie came 2nd on 54 points and Grandma came 3rd on 52 points. It was a very close game.

Maddie then wanted to play a couple of card games from the Kidz Cardz tin I'd bought her for a previous birthday. First up was Go Fish which Grandma won. We then played Old Maid and Grandma was left with the old maid card.

Our final game of the day was Loco! which I suggested. Loco! is a quick and simple game by Reiner Knizia. There are five different coloured chips, with six cards, zero through five, in each of the colours. The cards are dealt out, and then players take turns playing a card and taking any available chip. When one colour has all six cards played on it, then the game is over, and players use the last card played in each category to value their chips. The highest total value wins.

We played three games of Loco!

Game 1: Maddie 1st on 16, myself 2nd on 12 and Grandma 3rd on 8.
Game 2: Maddie 1st on 26, Grandma 2nd on 9 and myself 3rd on 6.
Game 3: Grandma 1st on 37, myself 2nd on 34 and Maddie 3rd on 29.

I was very impressed with the way Maddie played. We ended up calling her 'Loco Queen' due to the amount of times she frustrated the plans of Grandma and myself by slapping down a Loco! card on a colour in which we had both invested heavily.

Father's Day

We had a barbecue breakfast on the back deck this morning. The weather was great; clear skies with a cool morning leading into a warm day. The girls had made some Father's Day crafts at day care and school so they were eager to give them to me. I'll stick them up at work on my workstation. I was also excited to receive the 3rd season of Deadwood on DVD from Deb. I've seen the first two seasons of this brilliant TV series so can't wait to watch the 3rd season.

Maddie had found a recipe for fruit kebabs the other day and spent yesterday afternoon making them with a little help from Mummy. They had grapes, strawberries, kiwi fruit, marshmellows and banana on the wooden skewers. The girls also decided to cover them in chocolate before leaving them in the fridge overnight. We had them after breakfast - delicious!

Mmmm....chocolate-covered fruit kebabs!

After breakfast we drove to the Ferny Grove markets and walked around looking at the stalls. We arrived about 11.00am so by that time the stalls were fairly picked through. No matter.

Back home for a cup of tea and a read of the Sunday papers. We put Georgia to sleep in her cot and then Deb and Maddie decided to go rollerskating while I took the opportunity to have a nap. Three hours later I awoke when Georgia had awakened and started crying. Wow! Having the opportunity to sleep during the day is one of the things I've missed most since having children. What a pleasure it was to catch up on some sleep.

All in all a nice day.

Fun With Bubbles

Today was the first day of Spring for those of us in the southern hemisphere. This afternoon we blew bubbles for our kids. Georgia was particularly fascinated by them.

They're so pretty!

I wonder what they taste like?

Yucky!