In The Spotlight

Well my friend Scott was in the spotlight recently when one of my co-workers here at KVEW TV, Amy Bouska, decided to do a story on our boardgaming for the KVEW website.

She came by on a Friday night when it was just me, Ed and Scott sitting down to play Thebes. Even though Amy felt kinda overwhelmed when Scott tried to teach her how to play and she ultimately ended up bowing out of the game, we all had fun and her video ended up great.


I think everyone reading this should go watch Amy’s video right NOW!
Click HERE to watch it.


OK are you done? It was pretty good huh? If you truly did watch it, you might have noticed that the main theme was centered around the fact that the kind of boardgames being discussed, the kind me and my friends play, are not what the typical American is used to. Amy made a hilarious display in pointing out that learning to play the games was intimidating and even confusing. This is the typical reaction we get whenever any of us Boardgame Geeks tries to teach someone that has only ever played the “standard” American boardgames, like Monopoly, Sorry, Chutes and Ladders, Scrabble, etc. etc. I have often wondered why people are so intimidated buy learning a boardgame like the ones we play. I know that people do buy the “standard” type American games, if they didn’t you wouldn’t see them in stores like Toys ‘R Us and Wal-Mart. But when it comes to learning the games that we play, especially the “Euro-Games” like Thebes, most people get kinda nervous and look like your asking them to do your taxes. After thinking about it a lot I think I might have stumbled upon part of the answer.

Most Americans are used to a fast paced lifestyle and they just feel like it takes too much time to learn things from scratch. I think that most people when they have to “learn” something use shortcuts. The shortcut that I am referring to is past learning association. If you have had to learn something somewhat new or complicated in the past, the next time you are put in a similar situation you try to match up what you are attempting to understand with something you have firmly grasped before. In applying that to boardgames, for example, if someone is teaching you a new game and they say something like “Ok, first you roll the dice and move the number of spaces indicated on the dice” you might instantly flash back to every other boardgame where you “rolled dice” and “moved the number of spaces indicated on the dice”, and that aspect of the new game would be completely natural to you and not intimidating at all, and it would make learning other less familiar aspects easier to swallow. It’s a totally natural way of learning and my friends and I do it too. Whenever one of us gets a new game and we sit down to learn it we see similarities all the time that make it easier to learn the new game. Even in these “complicated” games there are similarities especially in “Euro-Games”.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is that the first time you are exposed to a new game it will seem intimidating because you have little if any frame of reference, but once you have be exposed to a new type of gaming it will get easier and easier every time you pick up a new game. So if you have never played these types of games before just give it a chance. Yes the first time will be hard but it will get easier and it will be worth it, you’ll see.

It’s Magic!

Well I took two more small steps in completing my seemingly eternal quest to buy every Magic theme deck ever made. I bought two decks from the Urza’s Destiny block that was released back in 1999, just 8 more years of Magic Decks to go! The two decks are “Enchanter” and “Fiendish Nature”. “What’s this about buying every Magic Deck ever made?” you might ask, well let me Explain.

Even though my friends and I play board games we also include a lot of card games too. My friend Scott owns quite a few card games published by companies that also put out board games. Fantasy Flight is one such company. They have games like Blue Moon and Colossal Arena .

Thanks to my girlfriend I now own another of Fantasy Flight’s card games called “Anima”


There are also plenty of other Card Games out there by companies other than Fantasy Flight. Scott has recently purchased games such as Infernal Contraption by Privateer Press and Boomtown by Face 2 Face Games .


---------------------------------------------------
What all these card games have in common is that they are self contained non-collectable games. All the cards you need to play are in the box. Sure some of these games have expansions that add more to the game but they are not required. If you do elect to buy an expansion, all the cards for the expansion are included, you don’t have to keep buying pack after pack to find all the cards for a set, which is the problem with Collectable Card Games like Magic. So why after praising these non-collectable card games would I be spending so much on Magic? Well to put it simply Magic the Gathering (its full title) is in my opinion the best card game ever made! There is so much strategy and variety in this game that has been around since 1993. It was the first Collectable Card Game and it is the best. Every new set that comes out, about 3 every year, adds new game mechanics and strategy. There have been around 14,000 cards made for this game, if that isn’t variety I don’t know what is.

You might still be saying “Ok Mike we get it , the game is great, and there is lots of cards out, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s collectable!” Your right, the collectable aspect would still be a huge turn off for me and my friends. When we first got into the game we tried to get some of the best cards and build our own decks. Building decks is one of the key aspects of the game. But it was just too crazy, trying to find the perfect cards to build a deck around and always coming up short unless you spent a lot of money was frustrating. Then Scott and Ed started buying these pre-built Theme Decks and it all started to make sense. The Theme Decks came out with every new set and showcased some of the new cards and play mechanics that came with them, and the decks were built by the game designers and they have access to all the cards, so you could really get a good feel for what the new sets added to the game. The theme decks are also very affordable and widely available and they are not random, you know what you are going to get. Now I know that hardcore Magic players turn their noses up at these “entry level” Theme Decks, mainly because they take away what most Magic players consider the key element of Magic, Deck Building, but I have found something just as fun and entertaining as building your own deck. That is the fun of playing a deck that you haven’t built! Think about it. When you build your own deck you know it inside and out, but when you pick up a pre-constructed deck you get to learn all about it as you play, you get to see all the strategies and combos on the fly, and since you hardly ever go through the whole deck in one game you get to learn more about the deck as you play it more. I really find it more enjoyable, and it takes a lot less time. As soon as you open the deck all you have to do is shuffle the cards and your ready to play, and there are so many decks to choose from, at any time you can just reach for another one and play another game. I wish that other CCG makers would follow this approach to their games.

As I said I have set out to buy every Theme Deck every made. They have been making these Theme Decks since 1997 and I have only bought all the ones up to 1999, and a few more recent ones. In all, I own 34 Theme Decks.



There are probably around 150 Theme Decks produced so I still have a ways to go. Of coarse there are always new sets coming out with new decks to go along with them. The newest set that is coming out in October is called Lorwyn .

This set already has my interest with the fact that instead of the usual four Theme Decks this set will have five, one of which brings back the concept of a 5 color Deck. It would take a long time to explain what a 5 color deck is to someone who has never played, but let me just say that they are a challenge to play. They are also great fun when you can get them to work, most decks only use 2-3 colors, but when you have to work with all 5 colors it can be daunting, but when they work they work well. As hard as they can be to play I could imagine they would be even harder to make, there is another reason to buy Theme Decks, for decks you might not have the patience or money to make yourself.