Strange Gaming Month w/ a New 1st

After complaining about not playing much last month, June has turned around. The new Dungeons & Dragons rules (4th edition) has come out, I got a call from my friend Ron who wanted to play a new board game he bought, I made it out to a Fathers' board game day at Mike's house, and Rockband for the Wii came out.

I've known that 4th edition D&D has been coming for about a year now. I haven't read many of the preview articles and was unsure about what changes were occurring. The core d20 mechanic that was core to 3rd edition has been kept and tightened up. Issues of level balance have been addressed and characters are supposed to be playable to 30th level. The main problem I have with the new rules is the feel of the game now. It feels like a table-top version of a MMORPG like Everquest or World of Warcraft that have become immensely popular lately. Characters are supposed to fit into one of four party roles and abilities center on encounters. We played our first game with the new rules last night and it felt a little clumsy. It doesn't help that I've played D&D since 1st edition and in 28 years have become accustomed to certain things that are not true in 4th edition. I need to play some more before I can officially say whether I like or don't like the game.

My friend Ron picked up a copy of Memoir '44, a board game that is a simplified World War II battle simulation. It has a lot of cool little miniatures like tanks and cannon and the board is two-sided, one side has a beach and the other is an open field. There are lots of board elements that can be added like trees, rivers, wire obstacles, bunkers, etc. The game plays quickly, probably less than an hour for a typical game. The core mechanic is the cards that allow you to command troops in one of three different board regions. We played 3 games and I finally caught on and one the third game. The game is fairly simple to learn but had enough strategy to keep it from becoming boring.

The Fathers' board game day that occurred on June 1st consisted of me, Mike, and Damian. Damian had just had his bariatric surgery a couple of weeks before and was looking for a guy who just had major surgery. We played Stone Age, Race for the Galaxy, and The Hanging Gardens. Stone Age was an entertaining resource management game with a number of different components. I undervalued how some of the cards would play out for points. It's a game I need to spend more time with. Race for the Galaxy has been immensely popular over the last couple of months. It's a very complicated card game about civilization building. The randomness of the cards and how they come up can have an impact on play strategies. Fortunately, it plays quick and you can get in a couple of games in a short time. The Hanging Gardens is another card game based around building sets of gardens for points. The cards are placed over each other in patterns designed to match up similar squares on the cards. Again, this one plays quickly and is easy to learn. I picked up a sound strategy after two rounds of the table. It was a good weekend and was very much needed.

The last game so far for the month is Rockband for the Wii and this marks the first time I've spent more money in a month on video games than I have on traditional table-top games. But I had to have this game. We played the Xbox 360 version a couple of months ago at Sam's while we were grocery shopping and I have never had so much fun. I have been eagerly anticipating this release for Wii and I even got up at 7am on a Sunday so we could get to the store to pick it up early. It was a good thing too. I got the last copy they had in stock. We took it home, cleaned up the living room, and spent about 30 minutes assembling the different components. The game comes with a guitar, drum set, and microphone and it is completely awesome. I played with this for about two and a half hours until Elizabeth got bored (she's 3 so it was ok). But Amy (my wife), Elizabeth (our daughter), and I even made it through a song without getting booed off the stage. It was amazing that Elizabeth could hit the drums enough to keep up. I can't wait to get home and spend more time with this game. I freakin' love it.

So June was a good month. I had a lot of fun and feel better about life in general. July should be fun for other reasons. It's vacation month. We're going to Colorado to see family over the 4th of July week. The following weekend is Disneyland for the 1st time with Elizabeth. It should be a blast.