Episode 27: Diceversary!

27: Diceversary

Release Date: Apr. 16, 2007

Running Time: 101 min.

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ep 27

The Spiel is one year old! To celebrate, we roll our way through two games with loads of dice: Battleground Fantasy Warfare and To Court the King.

News & Notes: I Don't Know, What Do You Want to Play, Robotic Mah Jongg Table
The List:
Battleground: Fantasy Warfare, To Court the King
Backshelf Spotlight:
The Magnificent Race, The Omega Virus
Truckloads of Goober:
Lifeboats
Game Sommelier:
Five games for blind and sighted players to play together
Mail Bag:
Listener's Choice Poll, Reboog, and Notes from the OCD

Complete Show Notes continue after the break.

Game News & Notes

I Don't Know, What Do You Want to Play? Link

A game made from the games in your collection. Play this card game when you can't decide what to play next!

Ca$h & Guns link

Asomdee is reprinting this great party game with foam guns.

Robotic Mah Jongg Table link

Push the tiles into the center and the table shuffles and stacks the tiles to form a new wall... all in 3 seconds! Has to been seen to be believed!

Rubik's Cube Made with Dice and Magnets

Make your own fully functional cube with these detailed instructions. Link

Kosmos Cage Match: Stephen 1 Dave 0

Stephen trounces Dave in Lost Cities (3 Game Point totals: 535, 241)

The List

Battleground: Fantasy Warfare BGG entry

Surprisingly deep tabletop wargame that fits in your back pocket!

To Court the King BGG entry

Roll dice combos to collect medieval characters to aid your quest to gain the King's favor.

Backshelf Spotlight

Mystery Connection Contest
Can you find a connection between these two games? We find a mystery connection each episode and challenge you, the listener, to hunt for it! Email us with your guess and you could win a pair of laser cut custom Spiel dice !

Congratulations to Richard Hunt in Columbus for finding our mystery connection in Episode 26!

The Magnificent Race BGG entry

Race around the world using different modes of transportation, but watch out for Dastardly Dan! Cool spinner bowl to determine winner for each leg of the race.

The Omega Virus BGG Entry

Find the virus before your space station is doomed. Trash talking Electronic computer guides you through the game turn.

Truckloads of Goober

Lifeboats BGG Entry

Bright wooden boats make this a goober gem!

Lifeboats

 

Game Sommelier

The Challenge: find five games blind and sighted players could play together

Thanks to listener Matthew Eskridge for sending in the challenge!

Stephen's List

Dave's Vote

Hive Thumbs Up
Lexio Thumbs Up
The Oilman Game Thumbs Up
Quoridor Thumbs Up
Mafia/Werewolf Thumbs Up

Next week's challenge: A double barreled challenge from Cameron Iwon in Douglas, Nebraska and Ian Mackey.

Find five games for a LOST (tv show) party where each game suits of evokes some aspect of one of the characters on the show.

Mail Bag

New donors to The Spiel!

Scotty "Knucklebones" Dickey

Mark "Snake Eyes" Wilder

Listener's Choice Poll Winners! Die Macher and Railroad Tycoon

Ken Maher has a good name for Collector's Corner

Michael McCloud clearly has too much time on his hands. He calculates how many hours it would take for us to play every game on The List assuming we don't add any games to it. Assujing we play once a week for 3 hours, it will take us 2.58 years!

Todd in Aiken, SC gives us the backstory on why Alexander Berg is listed as the designer of The Prince.

David in Featherton, New Zealand suggests we try a Truckloads of Reboog segment, looking for games that should have good components, but don't.

Upcoming Game Convention schedule. We'll be at Origins and GenCon this summer.

Errata

Tom Vasel's response to the Sommelier challenge will appear in Episode 28. We received his audio response too late to include it in this one.

I'm sure there are some other goofs in there somewhere. Let us know if (when?) you find one!

Comments

A couple of rule goofs in your review of To Court the King:

1. There is no limit on the number of rolls you can make (you stated that you are limited to 3 rolls). As long as you keep at least one die each time, you can roll as many times as possible.

2. During the final "roll-off", you must beat the roll that was used to claim the King in order to be in the running for winning the game. In your example, you stated that the first player rolled 6 fours. This player would not qualify for victory, since the King would have been claimed with at least 7 of something. See this link for Tom Lehman's clarification of this: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/912071#912071.

Tim Phelps
Canal Fulton, OH

Oh, it was me.

1. I must have pulled 3 out of my butt. You are absolutely correct. As long as you can set at least one die aside, you can roll until the cows come home!!

2. I misspoke when giving my example. I did mean to say that the first player rolled 7 of something higher than that of the person who claimed the King - not 6. Duh.Foot in mouth

Thanks for catching my goofs.

Dave

 

 

 

I just wanna say that Ca$h

Stephen mentioned having thought of Mah-Jongg as a possibility for the Game Sommelier challenge in this episode but then discounted it as it would be too difficult to keep track of all the different tiles. (Which I'm thinking is 42 unique types with the more traditional sets.)
It's not something I ever saw for myself but my paternal step-mother had a reputation among family members that played against her for being able to pick a tile from the wall, rub her thumb across the surface of it and then either discard it or bring it to her hand without needing to look at it.

I have no idea how complex the iconography was on the set she used at the time but at least some of the tiles would be quite simple, especially on a decent sized set. I can manage some of them on what is apparently half sized tiles.

Hey, Avron.

Cool story about your step-mother! I tried identifying tiles by touch for a little while with my large Mah Jongg tile set and it seemed plausible, though I'd have to play for a while to really get each tile down. Perhaps if one used an American Mah Jongg set with the arabic numerals, that would make it a little easier, too. Good to know my suspicions weren't totally unfounded!

Stephen