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Monday Brews 7-21-14
Welcome back to Boards & Barley. I’m so glad you’re here. Today we’ve got a standard Monday Brews article but I’ve got some good stuff in the pipe for this week. I’ll have an article about game design regarding when/how to chip away at your game. I’ll also have a Grand Illusion article. And I’m hoping to have one other article for you all on Friday. Not sure of the content yet, but I have a few ideas. It’s about time that I started making this blog rock again, don’t you think??
As a reminder, I want to point you to my article about the new board game publishing company that several friends and I are starting: “It’s Time for a Mutiny!” The company is called Moon Yeti and we are going to be giving away about 100 copies of a sweet microgame called Mutiny at Gen Con. Will you be there?
Now, let’s get on to the Boards & Barley!
The Barley:
You and me goin’ fishin’ in the dark!
BARLEY SPOTLIGHT: Capital Brewery, Fishin’ in the Dark Imperial Schwarzbier
This was a quite enjoyable beer from Capital Brewery. They are located in Middleton, WI and have branched out a bunch since the previous brewmaster left to start Wisconsin Brewing. Capital are brewing some really cool beers. This one seems a fine addition to their lineup.
- New Glarus Spotted Cow
- Boddington’s (I know it’s “brand” beer but at least it is enjoyable!)
- Southern Tier Live Pale Ale
- Shock Top Honeycrisp Apple Wheat (never again!)
The Boards:
Lovely artwork, enjoyable game.
BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Steam Park
This game is pretty legit. The theme is cool and unique. The gameplay is tight. And in the end you find yourself with your own little theme park. That’s pretty sweet.
The game lasts 6 rounds. Each round players roll 6 dice (over and over again) until they get the results they want. Then in turn order (based on who stopped rolling first, second, third, etc.) players will resolve their dice. The dice allow for building rides or stations, finding visitors, cleaning your park, or fulfilling bonus cards.
There is a good amount of forethought necessary when trying to optimize your dice. And there is also a bunch of different ways you could try to win. Players win by having the most money. If your park is too dirty at the end, you will lose money.
Overall I felt the game was a lot of fun. It’s a game I definitely want to play at least one more time.
- For Sale
- Tikal
- Ticket to Ride (with Dice)
There you go. I made no game design progress last week, which was extremely disappointing as I am really hoping to get Brooklyn Bridge to a better state prior to Gen Con. It will be a big focus for me this week and I try to hone the design and infuse more fun, more interesting decisions, and more long-game strategy.
What Boards & Barley have you been enjoying?
Monday Brews – 7-14-14
First things first: Today is July 14th… Gen Con starts August 14th. That means we are 1 month away from Gen Con! Woo Hoo!
Now let’s get to the bi-weekly Boards & Barley that I have enjoyed. As usual we’ll start with the Barley.
The Barley:
Clean and friendly with some delicious beer!
BARLEY SPOTLIGHT:
Next Door Hammerhead IPA
As one of my goals for the year I am “adventuring” out of my beer comfort zones and into more varieties of beer. IPAs are one of those varieties that I previously would never have chosen. But I am now embracing them.
In the past I have typically stayed away from hoppy beers. But this beer was actually very drinkable and enjoyable. The hop level wasn’t too strong and it seemed to provide just the right about of character. If you are ever in the Madison area I recommend stopping by Next Door Brewing!
- Oskar Blues Old Chub Nitro Scotch Ale
- New Belgium Fat Tire
- Summit Summer Ale
- Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
- Potosi Cave Ale
- Next Door Egon’s Revenge (Gose)
- Next Door Rockets Red Ale
- Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale
- Leinenkugel’s Red
- Leinenkugel’s Original
The Boards:
Simple and elegant artwork and gameplay!
BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Sushi Go
I played this at Next Door Brewing and I really enjoyed it. It is quick, has beautiful and simple artwork, and the gameplay is elegant.
Sushi Go has a card drafting mechanic similar to the game 7 Wonders. Ultimately, Sushi Go is like 7 Wonders Lite. Take a card, pass the rest, then play the card. The cards present different scoring opportunities. Some have you build a set to score. Some score straight away. Some score at the end of the game. The design is so smooth and simple that it is easy to see why people enjoy this game.
Designer’s Corner:
With Gen Con one month away it’s really crunch time in terms of the designs I want to show. Brooklyn Bridge is really at the forefront and will be where I place the most effort over the next few weeks. It’s at the point where some of the cards need some tweaking, but ultimately it just needs to be played more.
I would also like to see if I can prototype The Grand Illusion and get in some preliminary playtests, even if it means the first time it gets played is at Gen Con.
Monday Brews – 6-30-14
Another week gone by. And another summer weekend in the rear view mirror. And another tornado warning where I live. What a summer this shall be!
It’s Monday, so let’s take a look at the Boards & Barley that I enjoyed this past week.
The Barley:
BARLEY SPOTLIGHT: Lake Louie Mosquito Beach
This is a beautifully tasteful beer and perfect for warm summer evening enjoyment. Lake Louie, a local brewer, makes some excellent brews. This particular beer, a “California Common,” is Lake Louie’s first lager beer. It weighs in at 5.8% abv and possesses 30 IBUs. And it is really tasty!
- Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy
- Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss
- Smith & Forge Hard Cider
What brews have you been enjoying?
The Boards:
BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Brooklyn Bridge
I made a change to the brickyards based on a suggestion for a local world-class game developer and it took the game from “This is a game” to “This is special!”
It worked really well, increased player interaction dramatically, added a slightly more cut-throat nature, and most importantly made it more fun and enjoyable. I can’t wait to get it to the table again and keep working on it!
The only other game I played last week was Mutiny, which I should be able to write about in the near future. I’ll keep you posted on that.
What board games have you been enjoying?
Monday Brews – 6-23-14
I’m Back! My paternity leave is over, my baby is a month old, and I am ready to jump back into game designing, blogging, and brewing.
As usual since today is Monday I recap the Boards & Barley I’ve enjoyed. But it has been a long time since I posted so I have an extensive list today. We’d better get started… (So many beers means I won’t be linking them all. If one sounds interesting, just do a search for it.)
The Barley:
Oh Baby!
I can’t pick a Barley Spotlight beer since there were so many good ones. Here’s what I’ve enjoyed over the past few weeks:
- Bell’s Oberon
- La Trappe Quadrupel
- Anchor Old Foghorn Barleywine
- Leinenkugel’s Lemon Berry Shandy
- Capital Amber
- Grand Teton Sweet Grass American Pale Ale
- Vintage Sasparilla Killa
- Capital Supper Club
- Delirium Tremens Tripel
- Konig Pilsner
- Solemn Oath Snaggletooth Bandana American IPA
- Leinenkugel’s Honey Weiss
- Tyranena Down & Dirty Chocolate Oatmeal Stout
- Capital Lake House
- 4 Brothers Prodigal Son
- Labatt Blue
- Southern Tier Creme Brulee
- Breckenridge Nitro Vanilla Porter
- Kostriker Schwarzbier
Wow… what a list. Probably could have done without the Labatt Blue, but otherwise it’s been an enjoyable few weeks on the Barley front!
The Boards:
No Boards Spotlight here either. We’ll be back on track next week with the spotlight items.
- Qwirkle
- VivaJava Dice x3
- Le Havre: The Inland Port
- Nauticus
- Feudality
- King of Tokyo
- Mutiny
That’s not as many games as I thought. Maybe I forgot some. I guess I was pretty busy painting the baby’s room, hanging curtains, putting mulch around our house, playing with the two older kids, watching the World Cup (Pretty good timing for my paternity leave!), and sleeping. But it’s good to be back!
Designer’s Corner:
It’s time to make a strong push to get Brooklyn Bridge ready to demo for people at GenCon. I’ve got just under two months to refine the game to a point where it is fully enjoyable without any gaping holes. There’s aren’t really any gaping holes right now. It’s just not fully enjoyable. But I have a few tweaks that I want to test this week that my Level 1 friends have said sound like good changes.
Also, I have a new game design idea that I really like. The theme is totally fun and interesting to me. I’ll give you more information on Thursday when I plan to share the concept with the world. The cool thing is that I will be doing all the design publicly on this blog. Each Thursday for the next few weeks I’ll be posting design articles about the game and I’ll be wanting your feedback for it. We can all design it together in a sort of crowd-sourced design thingy. That should be pretty awesome.
So progress is being made on Brooklyn Bridge. I’m going to tweak a few things with Quantum Orcas and make it more flavorful, which hopefully will increase replayability. And it should be a fun 7 weeks leading up to Gen Con! Will I see you there???
Monday Brews 5-19-14
After a week off from my Monday Brews articles last week I’ve wrangled up a long beer list. It was aided by the fact that my city was having a Craft Beer Week. And it was also aided by two playtests of Brooklyn Bridge. So I’ve got a nice long beer list for you this week.
I also brewed another beer. I’ll be writing about that later this week unless my new baby pops out of my wife’s belly. It is a wheat beer that I’m calling “You’ve Been Wheated.”
So let’s jump right in and start with the barley…
The Barley:
Best word to describe it: Yum!
BARLEY SPOTLIGHT: Tyranena Doubly Down and Even Dirtier Barrel Aged Chocolate Vanilla Double Stout
I enjoyed this most amazing beer with possibly the longest beer name ever during a Madison Craft Beer Week event. It was on tap and it was amazing. It was very rich with a beautiful flavor and a solidity to it that made it feel as though you just ate a full meal. I will definitely drink this again. Also, it’s baby brother, “Down & Dirty,” is also very good and more accessible.
- Sprecher Special Amber
- Boddingtons
- NEW! New Belgium Snapshot – I liked it at first but then it seemed to have a characteristic closer to a Sour beer. I’ll try it again.
- Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
- Lucette Hips Don’t Lie
- NEW! New Glarus Spiced Ale – Not as spicy as I was expecting, which was pleasant.
- NEW! Boulder Shake Chocolate Porter – Warm this one up a little and you’ve got yourself a full-on dessert!
- NEW! Potosi Steamboat Shandy – This was a very enjoyable shandy.
- NEW! Blakkr Imperial Black Ale – This brew is actually a partnership between three breweries. (Three Floyds, Surly, Real Ale). I didn’t particularly enjoy this brew.
- New Belgium Trippel
- Hofbrau Original
- Bridgeport Kingpin
- NEW! Green Flash Double Stout Black Ale – This was an excellent, deep, dark double stout.
The Boards:
How good of a Euro could this be? They don’t really look that bored.
BOARDS SPOTLIGHT: Aquadukt
This isn’t a new game, but it was new to me. And I loved the simplicity of it! The options you can choose on your turn are simple (build houses OR build a well OR build canals). But with those three simple choices comes a game with surprising depth. Which house tiles do you build – 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s? When/Where should you build a well? How/Where should you build canals. This is a euro and it doesn’t try to hide it. The board is basically a big grid sectioned into 20 areas. I love games that use simple mechanics but yet have deep and interesting decisions!
- Targi – such a fun 2 player game!
- Quantum Orcas – Ran another successful playtest. Still not sure what I want to do with this game.
- Love Letter
- Unpublished Prototype – oh man… this one is SOOO good!
- Qwirkle
- Brooklyn Bridge – more below.
Designer’s Corner:
The progress currently being made on Brooklyn Bridge is making me feel much better about the game. While there are interesting mechanics that people seem to enjoy it has been all the other stuff in the game that has been needing the work.
The most major change is that money is no longer a part of the game. (Side note: I may bring money back with money being the points in the game. Currently the points are set up such that they could be equivalent to $$.) Previously players could earn money without having to build the bridge. That meant that early in the game they would focus on money to buy abilities. With the change the only way to buy abilities is with points and the only way to get points is to actually build the bridge… imagine that!
I am extremely happy with how the latest playtest went. The first half of the game worked really well, consisted of interesting decisions, and players overall seemed to be having fun. A big thing that was an improvement was the new player mats. These allowed me to get rid of the 30 red, 30 yellow, 30 brown, and 30 silver cubes that represent the bricks and mortar. Now players have one cube of each color and they move it along on their player mat.
It wasn’t all good though. The second half of the game imploded. It was as if the game ran into a brick wall (no pun intended). The upside is that I have implemented a few changes which should circumvent that issue. I can’t wait to get it to the table again. This is probably the first time with Brooklyn Bridge where I really feel like there is “publishing potential.”
There you go… the late, great version of two weeks of Boards & Barley. What Boards & Barley have you been enjoying???
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