Sunday, May 15, 2005

This game sounds vaguely racist...

...but that's probably me being an overly sensitive bleeding heart liberal. The name of the game is Mexican Train Dominoes, a dominoes variant I played with my folks and sister earlier today. Good game. For a rules summary click here. I also taught my sister the game Ticket to Ride. Somehow I managed to convince her to buy a copy without ever having played it. That worked for Bohnanza as well, making me 2 for 2 at guessing what German type games Jenn would like. Jenn and I also played some videogames on a GameCube a friend had lent her. She had the Double Dash incarnation of the Mario Kart subfranchise, which was a hoot to play. She also had another racing game based upon the Rayman property, a gameline I was otherwise unfamiliar with. What was interesting about the Rayman race game was that it was a footrace. I would bet dollas to donuts that a normal Rayman game is a 3-D platformer/level-explorer type game, because the racing version takes that paradigm and simply makes the levels circuits for people to run around. File that idea under "S" for "so simple someone should have thought of it before now".

Yesterday I ran another d20 Modern session. I had 3 players, my nephews and Michael's friend Cody. The session ran short but everyone had a good time. These kids continue to entertain the hell out of me. The two highlights of the day had to be the interrogation of Squiggy and the fight with the Big Bad.

Squiggy: I wanna talk to my lawyer.

PC: We don't work for the government so the Constitution doesn't apply to us. *points Desert Eagle at Squiggy's head*

Squiggy started talking pretty quickly after that. The fight with the Big Bad involved 16 pounds of C-4 and a house full of druglab chemicals. I don't think I need to explain that further. Good times, good times. With the drugdealers blowed up real good a little ahead of schedule we had time to play some Carcassonne and Fluxx.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:20 AM

    As father of of the nephews reference in Jeff's D20 Modern ramblings, I'd like to add that they have a great time with Uncle Jeff, while learning all sorts of useful information--like how many yards they need to be away from X amount of C4 when it detonates. You know--useful stuff!

    Played Bean Trader and some more Bohnanza with Jeff and couple other guys last night. I think I speak for Jeff when we say we're not quite sold on Bean Trader enough to purchae our own copies. I already have a copy of Bohnanza of course.

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  2. Hey, Jim! Nice to see you found the blog! Bean Trader seems cute but the games are too short. I feel like they end just as I'm hitting my groove. Maybe the supply deck could use an event card or two, like a bean famine or something. I'd really like there to be a few more things to do in terms of trades or buying or selling, kinda like all the bewildering options available in Traders of Genoa. (I wanted to call that game Merchants of Venice, but I knew that wasn't right. Fortunately boardgamegeek.com helped me figure out what I was talking about.) The graphics are cute and the beanometer mechanics seem okay, but the whole game seems so rushed and vaguely incomplete that I wonder if maybe it was rushed out the door in a partially finished state. Or maybe I'm just used to longer games.

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