I have mentioned a few times on Twitter and Facebook about the amazing 10th Anniversary gift my beautiful wife surprised me with a few weeks ago. And just in case you missed it I will do it again!

Mrs. GeekJock got me an entry into the Carolina  Hurricanes Alumni Fantasy game this upcoming Sunday April 1st. The game will feature 10 Canes Alumni and 30 of us “average Joes”. The ten pros include  the two team captains Ron Francis and Rod Brind’Amour. Also playing will be Glen Wesley, Aaron Ward, Shane Willis, Robert Kron, Steve Rice, Steve Halko, Tripp Tracy, and Jesse Boularice. Also playing with us will be Henry Staal, father of Canes Captain Eric Staal. I simply cannot say enough about how amazingly excited I am to play in this game. It’s going to truly be a dream come true. Not to mention that every step of the way Mr. Willis has gone above and beyond to make each and every one of us feel welcome to thegame and has stated in the press that “We’re going to let these guys feel something we were lucky enough to do for a career.”

As the days tick closer and closer I have to say that there has been a little bit of growing butterflies in my stomach but hey that’s to be expected. To be on the ice with 10 guys you have idolized all throughout their playing days, and two guys who have been favorites of mine their whole careers (Brindy and Francis), simply is a bit overwhelming to think about sometimes. But hey all I can do is get some more practice this weekend and plenty of rest to be ready I guess. I will be on the ice  a couple of times before the event this weekend, once helping out my son’s U8 practice and another on Sat when my B team plays a scrimmage against a team coming from out of town (Philly). So those two should get my legs under me a bit coming off a work week where I haven’t skated in over a week. I will try and get a few quick blog posts this weekend leading up to the event and I am fairly sure I will post a ton of pics after the event since I know the Mrs. will be taking a ton.

Here is a link to the page on the Canes site so you can see the Fan Guide to the Alumni Game. It’s going to be a fun time, and a great way to raise some more money for the Kids ‘N Community Foundation. There won’t be any charge for going but they will be taking donations at the door as well as have a snack bar open for purchases. So come on to the PNC Arena (former RBC Center) and see us avg Joes have the fantasy hockey experience of a lifetime, Sunday April 1st at 3pm, doors open at 2pm.

So keep an eye out for #19 in Red and try not to laugh at me when you see that my point shot can’t break a pane of glass! But hey, maybe it’s still good enough to beat Tripp Tracy glove side!

–GeekJock

My apologies for lack of real posts in a while but I am headed on my annual pilgrimage to Vegas this week for the Ice Hockey Tourney we play in every year. So I have had to work a bunch extra to get these extra days off. So after tonight I am likely unable to post much for about a week and a half but I will try and get back on the horse ASAP when I get back in town and off from work.

BUT… Until then I wanted to talk quickly about a few games I got last week. I went to a different FLGS (Sci-Fi Genre) then I normally go to, mainly b/c I needed to grab some comic book boxes to re-box my collection. It’s not a huge collection but it’s about 3 boxes of all comics being 20+ years old. They have been in my garage for a bit so I now want to get them in new boxes and see if I can inventory them a bit and even estimate what it might actually be worth. I am under no delusions of grandeur, but I am hoping holding on to them so long is going to one day pay off. But back on point, the good thing about this game store is it has a different sort of selection of board games then The Gamers Armory. The Armory has a great selection, but of what it has I generally have everything I want that isn’t brand new, so sometimes it’s good to see some of the out of the ordinary things other stores have. The other good thing about Sci Fi Genre is that it has a little different rewards program then the GA. The Armory has a program that for every $100 you spend you get $10 store credit towards a future purchase (which is great). The alternate program that Sci-Fi has, is a pay a price per year (I think it’s at or just under $20) and then you get special on line only pricing on purchases. This generally evens out after 1-2 trips at absolute most.

While there I was wanting to pick up Egizia, which is a great next step in worker placement since my group, and wife all love Stone Age. It’s easy to learn, deep to master and a ton of fun. I also had wanted to try and grab the 1st expansion of Fresco which has expansion modules 4,5,6 (yeah I know it’s weird-they package “expansions” 1,2,3 with the game itself), and Alan Moons amazing followup to Ticket To Ride—> Airlines Europe. Well I was 1 for 3 as they at least had Airlines Europe in stock. I also saw Dungeon Run (Plaid Hat Games), which I had wanted for a while  and Donal X Vaccarino’s Kingdom Builder which I had played before a few times and have fallen in love with. Since I couldn’t make up my mind which 2 to get I ended up with ALL 3!!! The Mrs would have been upset but b/c of the online pricing I basically got 1 of the games for free which worked out well enough for me!

Here is my quick impressions of each of these:

Airlines Europe: I start with this one b/c it’s the only one of these 3 that I didn’t have the opportunity to get to the table yet. However, that’s not to say I haven’t played it. I have previously played this game twice, and I loved it both times I played it. Think Ticket To Ride with a sort of bluffing, Stock component to it. Instead of collecting tickets to lay down routes, you are paying money to purchase routes for certain colors. You also can buy stock in certain colors, and lay down stock/share cards in each color which determines how many points you get when it’s a scoring round. Each time you play a color plane to get a route the stock of the plane goes up as well. So what you basically have is a give and take to decide between, do I buy routes, do I pick up share cards, do I lay down share cards? Buy too many and other people won’t touch that color and you are increasing it by yourself, or someone will use their turn to steal all the shares. So it’s got a great element just like TTR to bide your time and try and not give away your real intentions too soon.

As I already said I love this game and I think not only will my group love it, but Mrs. GeekJock and my parents should get into it as well. The only down point being this isn’t going to be a good 2-player game.

Dungeon Run: I wanted to get this one, b/c it’s a light dungeon crawler with simple mechanics, so it’s a good introductory dung. crawl for both the group and for my 8 year old daughter. She just loves playing games with me and I know this is one we can house rule a bit and play completely co-op and have a great bonding game session. In a nutshell you each have a character, with unique powers/stats/abilities, and are going into a dungeon trying to fight monsters, level up and ultimately defeat the dungeon boss and get the summoning stone. Normally once you get the stone you become the new boss with your own big time special power and then it’s even man for himself as you try and get out with the stone alive. But again, with my daughter I figure we will both just try and level up and try and defeat the boss together.

Fighting is simple as every monster has a number(s) of dice to roll, numbers which they hit you and a defense #, that you have to roll higher then to hit them. You can equal their to hit number of yours when you roll to block, And/or you can just roll higher then their defense to hit them. This is all done with six-sided dice. Now, it might sound a bit confusing, but do it once and you will know exactly how it goes. The beauty in the game is the varied monsters, the simplicity in it all and the ease of set up/strip down. Our one play had a few problems to it unfortunately. When we shuffled up all the monster/encounter cards we ended up with what seemed to be an endless run of trap cards. So not only did we have problems with these, but we also didn’t get enough EXP from them, so it felt like we were running in place. So when the boss was finally revealed (upon turning over the last dungeon tile in the stack, the boss tile is placed the furthest tile away from the entrance) none of us felt like we had a chance to beat the boss. I went on a nice roll as I was trying to get TO the boss so I was able to kill him and then each of my opponents and escape with the win.

I don’t think either of them particularly liked it, but I think they also both recognized that it was more our bad luck in the draws then the game itself. Hopefully, this has made them enjoy it enough so that I might be able to sometime soon play it again, and then borrow one of the D&D board games (Castle Ravenloft or the Dizz’t game) and have them like it.

So all in all I like the game but the jury is out I think from the rest of the group, and I hope to get my daughter to play it soon enough.

Kingdom Builder: A lot has been debated both online and in person by many people about this game from Dominion’s creator Donald X Vaccarino. I got into a couple of spirited debates on Twitter, but only one did I think was totally off his rocker (no not you Gamer Chris— I definitely agree that a first turn 2 card draw can be a beneficial variant– but 1st turn only like you say as well–Click his name to check out his very good, very through review). The reason I get annoyed at people who dislike games like KB are the same reasons I get annoyed with people who don’t like Ascension. They all say the same thing. There is no real choices, b/c all of my choices are pre-made by what is drawn or on the board. My response to this is, once you TRULY know how to play the game you will notice this is not the case. B/c once you learn the strategies and how to really plan ahead you will see the tons of options available to you. I will admit 100% that both of these games have that slight possibility that every 10th or more games you play that you will just get screwed by the luck, and well both those games (especially KB) are so short that the next game is never more then 30 mins away. Of course any real reviewer who has played the game more then a couple of times would be able to see this themselves. I suspect some of the real haters out there just have not played it enough.

So after my derailment how the hell do you play this game. The game comes with double sided boards which can all be used as a game side with varying hexes as terrain, and a scoring side with a scoring track. You shuffle each of the boards up and place four of them together to create the game board. You also take the final scoring cards (I believe there are 12 in all int he base game) and you shuffle them up and only use 3 each game. So right there you have 2 great aspects of random set up and game variability/re-playability. Each player in turn takes one of the terrain cards from the stack and then places 3 of his houses on the board on the terrain type of that card. The biggest rule is that if you can you MUST play adjacent to an existing house of yours on the board. There are also special power pieces that you can acquire to use which allow you to cheat a little but I am not going to go into all the rules here. So you basically go around the table placing your houses on the board until one person is out then play out the round. The whole time you are just trying to put yourself in to position to score points at the end game based on the 3 end game scoring cards which are out. Again it’s not a secret that I LOVE this game. The subtle complexity, and deep strategy are what I like, but the EASY as all hell to learn and harder to master is what I LOVE. My group has played this a ton b/c when you all know how to play it can be played in 30 mins or less (and max of 40-60mins even with teaching) and they all loved it as well. I haven’t shown the wife or fam yet but that’s soon to come, as I know Mrs GeekJock will love it, and who knows maybe even my 8 year old will be good at it too!

Well as always I started off thinking this would be a quick blurb but I can never manage to shut up. There has been no “real”buyers remorse from my 3 purchases from the store, the slight BR from Dungeon Run will go away once I get it to the table again.

I hope you pick up one of these great games and better still let me know what you think of these three games as well! Drop me a line by clicking the contact me up top, or just comment here, I will get back to you after VEGAS BABY VEGAS!

–GeekJock

Killer Elite (2011–116 mins) Jason Statham, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro

I am a HUGE fan of all three of these action giants in this spy triller. I have been saying for a while now that Statham is an actor who is really coming into his own as a vehicle for action movies as long as they don’t go to martial artsy with him. Owen has that silent but funny way about him which works well in fast action romps (Yes “Shoot em up” is a guilty pleasure movie which I loved). And of course De Niro is De Niro so nuff said there. So naturally I wanted to see what this pure action romp had in store for me. It’s got more of an Indy feel to it which is ok for these types of movies, and it also is “based” on a true story so I knew it would also be bogged down with some confusing “history” points it was trying to make (or rather it’s own version of said history which those “based on” movies tend to do). All in all it’s a mindless action film which you can’t try to overly dissect or understand b/c it will make your head spin. So rather just sit back, watch chases and people being killed left and right, and enjoy it a bit more.

In a nutshell, Statham is a retired British spec-ops officer who has to come to the aid of his former mentor (De Niro). In order to do so, he is blackmailed into doing some deeds for some unsavory characters. But trying to stop him from doing said deeds, is another secret society spec-ops guy in Owen. So the whole movie is spent trying to figure out who is doing what and why and wondering who is going to bite the dust next. We rarely know who we REALLY want to root for cept for the fact that we know Statham and Owen are the stars and we think Owen is just a tad more of a jerk the Statham so he must be on the perceived ” bad” side of it all. Honestly don’t try and go too much further into it or like I mentioned above it will make your head hurt and you won’t enjoy it as much.

As much as I make fun of the confusion of it all, it’s still a good pizza and beer guy flick. Don’t go into it expecting a whole lot of De Niro, you just won’t get as much as you think you might. But for the other two, they are both excellent and you get what you expect out of them both.

Verdict–> It’s a good guy pizza and beer movie but not much more. Don’t bother trying to show this to women who don’t enjoy testosterone action flicks b/c they will be sleeping in 3 mins. Not a movie you are going to buy and watch over and over either, but for a rental for chases and fighting it’s worth the couple of bucks.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011–117 mins) Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner 

Twilight is a pretty polarizing franchise. On one hand you have the teeny-bopper girls, and love struck women who faun over the guys in the movie and the doomed from the start love story. Then you also get the people who hate it simply because it’s both a love story and so damn popular (I am looking at my co-host on the Geek Allstars Podcast—-> Gyroplay for this one). Me? Well, I will say I don’t go to either extreme, and sit fairly in the middle.

It’s no secret I love Sci-Fi and Fantasy type movies and Vampires and Werewolves are both equally welcome in my movie going world. I have also been pretty patient with the lovey-dovey,depressed b/c we can’t be together and free crud we get forced to watch in each movie. I still maintain that if you remove that stuff you are left with some decent Sci-Fi stuff. This next to last installment in the series is, unfortunately almost entirely a love fest. However, if you didn’t know that going into it, it’s your own fault. It’s the wedding/honeymoon installment so sure, there HAD to be all of that. After said nuptials, the marriage is consummated and lo and behold Bella is PREGNANT (we will have to go with the WSOD on this one to allow our mind to wrap around the idea that  Vampires can procreate). So we spend a good amount of the movie watching the downward spiral of Bella’s body b/c a Vampire baby not only grows extremely fast but it takes quite a toll on a human’s body.

The part that gets us a little back to enjoyable-ness is how this offspring is effecting and going to effect the delicate world of Vamp-Werewolf relations. And there is where the movie starts to bring us to some action and the setting up of the inevitable action packed (I hope) last movie which will be out this year (due in NOV). Bare with me, as I have not read any of the books and have no idea what is in store for the last movie, but I suspect we will get some fighting with the werewolf clans and I am sure the whole Volturi will come involved and want to have their hand in controlling the baby as well.

All in all the movie isn’t ALL that bad, just a bit slow for those of us who can care less about the soap-opera part of the series.  I still enjoy the “family” dynamic of the Cullens , how they interact, and I have a full on crush on Alice (Ashley Greene) who is possibly IMHO the sexiest, coolest and most fun vamp to watch (yes, I can’t believe I just said that too). These aren’t cinema classic’s by any stretch but for a couple of bucks there are certainly worse things to watch from the Red Box.

Verdict–> It’s kinda simple really, if you have enjoyed the series you will likely enjoy this movie. If you are a guy, there isn’t much here you will watch with your buddies but you certainly could do worse then getting this for a date night. If your better half enjoys these then do her a favor and grab it and earn some much needed brownie points. It’s going to bore you at first but should have some redeeming qualities in the 2nd half. Girls who like it will of course love it.

I have backed Zong Shi on Kickstarter a while back and like most I am eagerly waiting on it to come in so I can play it. Luckily for me a buddy of mine has a knack for getting advance copies of things and I managed to play it twice in the past week. I will try and give an overview of the game and my thoughts afterwards. I will do my best to get ALL of the rules I mention correct but again, I don’t have the game in my possession so I am kinda working from memory so I as a little latitude.

All photos borrowed from Board Game Geek

Ok so here’s the game overview.

Z-S is fairly light worker placement game in which everyone has two workers they send off to do errands. You are essentially trying to score the most points at end game by getting goods and fulfilling projects and making respectful visits to the elders.
You have a Master Worker who is the bigger figure who can start and work on projects, and a smaller apprentice worker who can go to the other areas but does smaller version of the master’s effects (more on that later).

Resources— There are four main resources represented by the 4 color tiles. Yellow->Gold , Green-> Jade, Brown-> Bronze, White-> Ivory

Spots on the Board

Respectful Visits– There are 4 spots (one for each resource) where you can make respectful visits to the elders. You get points in end game for each spot you make a visit to in the game (1,2,4,8 pts at end game based on 1,2,3,4 boxes visited). In order to fulfill a “visit” you have to pay the cost of the resource you are visiting. You have 4 cardboard chits with the numbers 1,2,2,3 which you put one of those in the box which you visited. You have to pay X number of that resource to make the visit. The first person to visit each of them gets a chit which was randomly put there that has a special 1 time reward on it. These include getting your resources back, drawing 2 random resources, a free card (more on those later), and a couple others. There is only one per each visit space and only the 1st one who goes there gets it and only the master can do it.

Master–> Master can do two things the Ap cannot. First he can get the special chit if he’s first. Second, he can work on more then 1 visit at one time. The penalty for doing so is you have to pay 1 more resource then normal. Ex if you are doing the 1,2 chit you pay 2,3 of those resources.
Apprentice–> Can visit but he can only do 1 of them.

Marketplace
There are two markets. They prolly have names but for here we will call em the big and small market. The big market has #players +1 resources from bag, and the small has # minus 1 resources from bag.

When you place a worker here you get a draft which ensues after the workers are all out.

In player order the Masters first draft 1 tile from the big market. After they Masters get 1 each then it’s on to the Apprentices. The A’s get only 1 tile no matter how many other workers are there (no more). Then if there are tiles left the Masters may continue to draft tiles. If there is only one Master there then he gets ALL the remaining tiles there. The same is then done for the small market.

Temple
The Temple is where you get your action/cheat cards in the game. They have a variety of powers including a 1 tile discount on projects, a 1 round discount on projects, getting random resources from the bag or market and some other good ones.
Master–> Either worker can get 1 card from the Temple. The bonus for the Master is he can then discard tiles to get more cards per tile (resource) discarded.

Pawn Shop

In the PS you can turn in 2 tiles of any color and claim one cardboard tile from the PS. This tile you can then use as an exchanger later for those colors. Example you go to PS and you turn in a Green and a white resource tile and thus claim the G/W chit. It goes into that spot on your board. For the rest of the game you can exchange one Green in your Workshop for a White or vice versa.
Master–> The advantage of the Master vs the Ap is that the master can turn in as many pairs of resources he has to claim those tiles vs just 1 for the AP at a time.
Each one of those claimed is worth 1 point at end game, if you have all six of them you get a 2 point bonus at end game.

Projects

Ok finally we will talk about the meat and potatoes of the game. You go to the bottom right of the board to get your Master to start working on a project. In order to start any of the projects you have to pay the costs listed on the card in resources (Example-each discount project costs 4 of that color to start) to the supply. Once completed the project is completed it goes to your board and you then get the bonus associated with the project. The other type of project is the Masterwork projects which give you points only no power. They also have 7 tiles (I think it’s 7 and not 6) to turn in to start and they are all 4 rounds to complete (more on that in a sec too). So as you can see by looking at the player board you cannot work on the masterworks until you either A) have other projects completed that give you discounts or B) have the project which gives you 2 extra workshop storage spaces.

The types of basic Projects

A) Discounts–> The top row has a project in each color/type of resource, in which when they are done allow you a 1 tile discount of that color to start a project.

B) Other powers–> The second row has 4 projects which once completed allow you to cheat in one way. These powers include:
–Reduce your time to complete projects by 1 round
–Draw 1 random tile every time your master goes to the market
–Store 2 extra resource tiles (giving you 7 storage)
–Draw 2 cards when your Master goes to the Temple and you can now hold total of 5 cards (In stead of the base 4 –I think the base is 3 or 4)

Timing of projects
Ok so how long do they take? Well, each project has a number next to an hourglass on it on the top right of the card. When you claim/start a project you put your Master worker on the # spot next to the hourglass. At the end of each round you move your Master down one spot. Once the Master has reached zero the project is complete and it goes onto your board and you can start receiving the effects the start of the next round.
Two exceptions to the timing include the power of one project which decreases the time to complete by 1 round, and a Temple card which does the same.
There is also an exception to this all where you can get a card which allows your Apprentice to begin a project but I will save that whole explanation for when you play it.

Individual Player Board

End of Game
When one player fills his board up it triggers the last round (remember you complete a project at the end of one round and the next is the last round). After the last round you add up all the points from your board/projects, your visits, resources left over, and Pawn Shop chits and figure out who wins!

Ok before I get to a couple of quick session reports I will give you some review info.

Components

Boy did I love the components. Namely the resources. The square tiles are real nice and shiny and heavy and just top notch. The little bag that came with it is a nice Asian inspired sewn bag and looks cool. The board also has some nice artwork to it (even with a not so hidden meeple on it). The cards are also on a nice stock and feel good. All in all the game just looks cool. The Pawn shop chits are cardboard but eh they still look fine. And the workers and completely cool as hell start player Buddha are both real good.

Rules/Game play/ease to teach.

All in all I have to say it’s kinda easy to teach and play. Yet, it’s also have some depth to it and seems like it has some real re-playability. I think friends ranging from the guys who play at the FLGS (bit more hard core), my usual gaming group (medium core), to even a couple who games with my wife and I (light strategy gamers) will all pick it up quick and not be confused by anything at all.

Verdict
It’s prolly not secret if you have gotten this far in my write up that I loved playing this. I cannot wait to get my hands on it and show my group and wife the game and get it into rotation. It’s not hard to learn, it’s fast enough to play (60-90 mins with teaching) and looks great.

I will try and get some session reports written up about the game soon. So stay tuned!
–GeekJock

Anyone who has listened to our podcast (The Geek Allstars) will know that one of our ranks, Todd (Gyroplay), is a colorblind gamer. Generally this has been only a minor inconvenience to him in the game and also garners the usual good natured ribbing by the rest of us. However, it wasn’t until our latest recording that we noticed it can really RUIN a completely good game for people who want to love the game.

First a little back ground on color blindness. It sounds simple enough, blind to color right? Nope. In fact there are a few different types of color blindness. There is a wonderful web site that covers this EXTREMELY well (and is mainly about making presentations for colorblind), but I will quote only one excerpt here for the definition for color blindness.

The human eye has three types of cone cells. These cells express different types of opsin genes, which are sensitive mainly to red, green and blue, respectively. Colorblindness is the situation where the function of one of these opsins are lost, or perturbed.

This picture also gives you a pretty good idea of what normal colors look like to people with the different types of colorblindness.

Now for most of us board game junkies, this is something that we might never think about in our normal course of gaming. Whether it be the other percent of the population is not in our game group, or those people possibly never got into gaming b/c of these difficulties, either way it doesn’t come up as often in many of our gaming lives.  Turning two of my best friends into hard core gamers in the last year has been an amazing experience, and one in which the whole idea of gaming with the color blind has only recently become a big topic. Most of the games I have exposed them to early, have been “gateway” types of quick games (Pikomino,Carcassonne, Coloretto), deck builders (Ascension,Dominion), and Euro-style games (Ticket To Ride, Stone Age). Some of those I mention use color quite a bit and the majority of others use color but augment this with heavy use of symbols (TTR,Ascension), or different shaped chits (Stone Age). As I mentioned above usually it’s only a mild inconvenience to play games but last night we played two new games to the group which nearly caused Todd to want to quit gaming for a while (or at least a few hours lol).

First up was Macao by Stefan Feld. As a group we absolutely LOVE this game for the mechanisms and the depth, however it has two GLARING flaws. First the rule book is TERRIBLE, poorly written, and some of the abbreviations on the cards should have been different for ease of play. I will blame this more on translation, and a general laziness in publishing (I am not sure if Rio Grandeis 100% to blame for this but for now in my eyes you are). But I will keep that whole argument for another day and time and not here.

Not the easiest of pieces for CB people

Yet, what I will complain about here is the colors. This is mostly due to the way the cards are printed. See the wooden cubes can be separated in piles and they could be distinguished apart from each other by a color blind individual easy enough, but the colors on the card are terrible. It’s quite likely that it’s just b/c they were trying to go for the whole “old world” feel to the game, but the biggest problem is the colors on the card don’t even remotely look like the colors of the cubes in some ways (namely the reds and purples). This unfortunately garnered the quote from Todd “it’s a great game but I will never play it again”.

On to the second new game of the night, Race for the Galaxy. Our group is fairly deck-building and anything card and dice loving, so RFTG was a natural fit. (It’s still fairly new to me so please excuse any miss-use of Race game terms in this part) Coincidentally enough while over at Eric Martin’s house on Sat, I was able to play this for the first time twice, and I loved it from first deal. Knowing what type of gamers we are I knew race would be a easy fit. After watching a couple of video’s Todd was in love and instantly went out, bought, and sleeved the base game in preparation for our game night during the Super Bowl. The first play went pretty smooth. Even being new to the game their first game went pretty well with the usual slow downs for icons, but all in all success. The second game, not so much. The ease of the 1st game was primarily due to Todd going for a military strategy and it just so happened no wind-fall or color related things came up at all in front of him in the whole first game. However, he decided he wanted to go a different route in the second game only to be stymied by the cards. The biggest culprit to the problem was both the size of the icons on the bottom of some cards and also the size and amount of color on some wind-fall worlds. He was starting off with a world which gives him a discount to take over brown worlds, and this was instantly a problem b/c in his hand he had what looked to him like 3 brown worlds only to realize two of them were actually yellow. To complicated this even further, he got a card with a power which had the exception that it could NOT be used on yellow regular or wind-fall worlds. Since a few of these colors look the same this lead to him both trying to get discounts on a card which did not match up and later trying to use his produce power on yellow cards which he could not do. Now let me stress, we are all real good friends and I don’t care how many times he asks me, I have no problem at all telling him what color something is, but if you put yourself in his shoes, this is frustrating on a few levels. Not only does he have to feel that he is an idiot asking 100 times (his words), but he also on some level is revealing his strategy to us (again, not a big deal but at heart all of us heavier gamers want to win and not have our plans revealed). So this second game left a REAL sour taste in Todd’s mouth as he LOVED the mechanics of the game but the color thing made him want to bash his head against a wall.

Which now, after a couple of wordy stories brings me to my main point, what can publishers do to adapt to the color blind? Well first let’s look at some examples of games which do it RIGHT. I won’t complain about the ones who do it wrong b/c I gave Macao and Race as 2 examples of games which would benefit from a re-thinking of how they can fix their color blind unfriendliness. A QUICK ASIDE—> For anyone who is colorblind or curious about some games and implications of color blind playing, please check out this REAL GOOD Geek-List from boardgamegeek.com from user Ozludo —“Colourblindness and Games (that’s color-blindness for our US friends)”

Use Symbols — A perfect example of this is Ticket to Ride. It might not be readily apparent to the average person on first glance, but each different

Ticket to Ride uses both Symbols and Different pictures

TTR train card is not only a different color, but it also has a different symbol on the card. It might take an initial explanation to a color blind person for using the board and matching those colors to the cards, but this is a perfect example of how the game can make one simple subtle change and yet cater to the CB demographic. (I know each train type is completely different on the card as well which helps, but work with me here)

Use Backgrounds– A perfect example of this type is Coloretto. Sure the WHOLE game is about colors, but for us color unchallenged, have you ever noticed that each color has a different background to it? This one simple detail makes a game which would suck to play as someone who has color issues, to the fun quick joy that the game really is.

Shapes and sizes– I already mentioned how Stone Age uses different shapes for their goods along with the different colors, which makes things easy as pie to tell them apart. The second example I want to throw out is the game Fresco. Fresco, is another game completely based on color and painting, but it’s use of size of it’s cubes makes it easier to play. The basic colors are all one smaller size, the second set of colors is a second size and the most advanced colors (brown and pink in game) are a completely different size. Not only is this an easier thing to see once explained, but also the tiles you are to claim keep the colors in the same place on each card. If you were going to look at a card with a color cost all you have to know is which color is on which side of the tile and you can extrapolate what colors are needed. When we played this only at the beginning of the game did Todd have to say “so what color is this”.

Coloretto uses different backgrounds

Once explained initially he got it and he was good to go. This made what could have been a disaster of a game session, into a game he thoroughly enjoyed and wouldn’t mind playing again.

Fresco Tiles and Cubes Note the locations on the tiles and Size of the cubes.

So I ask this of you game developers, take notice of people with color blindness. Make them a part of your play testing. Try and use things like SYMBOLS and varying sizes. Also don’t try and get too stylistic as it can cause you to totally miss out on the fact that it’s ruining the game for a section of the population. We, as gamers should not have to deface our games just to make something color blind friendly, it should come in the box that way.

I hope you will look at games a little differently now and I hope designers and publishers think of these things, b/c I would really like to play Macao or RFTG again with my group!

The Help (2011– 146 mins) Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer

Skeeter Phelan (Stone) is fresh out of college and wanting to show the world what she can do. She’s got aspirations of being a bigtime writer back in her small town world. However, the world doesn’t exactly work like that, and she finds her life a bit unfulfilling for a bit. She also begins to notice some old world thinking that still exists back in her small town. Some of it manifests itself in the treatment of their house keepers/nannies/cooks all rolled into one person they call “the help”. She starts to notice that these black women do everything around the house and then some including often being the only main friend/caregiver to the kids, and are generally treated like utter crap and paid as crappy.

Skeeter then gets an idea for a tell all book. A book which will tell “anonymous” stories of the help and the times they have had to endure and some of the hi jinks they have had in their times as well. It would be quite eye opening and scandalous if she can pull it off and it might even manage to open some eyes of people in the south and how their treatment of employees just just plain wrong.

It’s a pretty straightforward movie with plenty of heart , comedy and some decent side stories and anecdotes. It’s a real enjoyable story from beginning to end with a few surprises. I thought it would be a bit cheesy with it’s heart but I stand corrected as it never really goes too far with it, and I found myself enjoying the movie quite a bit. The only fault I find with the movie is it’s run time is a bit artificially long and could have stuck to right at (or just under) 2 hours. But most people won’t notice this during the film b/c as I said it’s an enjoyable ride.

Verdict—> It’s as good as advertised and a fun movie to watch. A great movie for date night as all women will enjoy the chick-centric humor and throwback to the past in the setting. A top recommendation for couples dates etc and anyone looking for a good family film (not the smaller of the kids for some situations and language).

The Guard (2011– 96 mins) Brendan Gleeson, Don Cheadle and Mark Strong

Brendan Gleeson has a knack of playing a smart ass character, sometimes bordering on down right assish, but making them generally like able. This Indy role is perhaps one of my favorites of his by far. He plays Sgt. Boyle, a small town Irish policeman, who is quite set in his ways and not in a rush to do a whole lot of anything. However, what he is, is quite street smart, and quite an investigator under a bit of a hard candy shell.

Enter FBI agent W. Everett (Cheadle). He’s over in Ireland from the US investigating some murders believed to be tied to a huge drug smuggling ring, which he has been investigating for some time. Besides being a bloody American Everett is black which is another thing that the locals aren’t very accustomed to having poking around in their affairs. Even Sgt. Boyle has his own brand of needling for the American on his soil.

Essentially this is an odd couple comedy cop movie. It’s still a decent story and some smart, funny writing. I think what works well is their quirky sense of chemistry. It’s a bit slow and shot a bit oddly but hey it’s an Indy and it looks like one (not a bad thing just that certain look to it). Both actors are great and even Mark Strong as one of the criminals turns in an excellent performance in a limited role. He continues to be quite the unsung actors of the last few years.

Verdict–> This isn’t the most main stream of comedies, but it’s a Indy version of the typical buddy cop film. It’s a funny enjoyable movie which I dug, but it’s not for everyone. If you enjoy Indys then you will like it, and it you like either of these actors you will likely enjoy it as well. A good indicator of how it’s shot and the humor in it, is the trailer. Check it out HERE (from IMDB) and if you like it you might enjoy the movie. But all in all a decent recommendation from me.

Moneyball (2011- 133 mins) Brad Pitt, Robin Wright and Jonah Hill 

I am a huge baseball fan and I am also a pretty big believer in the whole “saber-metrics” craze that Bill James wrote about, which Billy Beane brought to the bigs in the late 90’s early 00’s. So naturally I was wanting to see how it all translated to the big screen with Pitt playing Beane himself. To summarize to non-baseball people in quick terms, in the old adage homeruns were sexy and hitting for average with a good swing makes for a great ball player. Which is all fine and good for the Yankees and RedSox and all, who can afford to throw hundreds of millions of dollars at players but the Oakland A’s don’t have that type of money and can’t afford the high priced talent. So they need to find a way to score runs and win games.

In steps Beane with with his secret weapon statistician Peter Brand (Hill). Brand manages to convince Beane that not only can they compete but they can do it cheaply by working in on base percentage (OBP) as a higher weighted measure of talent then power (OBP basically factors in walks plus batting average to show how good they are at getting “on base”). The movie is a good story and is told quite well. It is quite engaging and really keeps you interested the whole way through. Pitt is excellent when he plays a charasmatic part and is able to carry the movie. Hill holds his own as the shy side-kick-brainiac behind the whole scheme retooling of minds.

Verdict —>For the movie it’s good, well real good in fact. It’s good in a way that people who don’t even like baseball will like it. Those people might think it’s a bit long tho. Yet, for those of us who love baseball or even those who mildly like or tolerate it, you will likely love it. I say no matter who you are it’s a top recommendation, and I think an early front runner for one of my best when 2012 is over with.

After the Verdict—> So for anyone who is curious how a lot of this shakes out or how much is true vs false, I am here to give you some more of my take on the whole “moneyball” revolution in baseball, or the love of OBP. Now before I start let me say again, I do like the idea of saber-metrics and using OBP in evaluating players, but it’s not the end all be all of stats. It’s great that Beane embraced it but what the movie fails to tell you is that sure, he won some games but they haven’t been to the World Series in his tenure as GM, even with some pretty decent rosters. See, you need to mix those players with SOME high priced guys and give up on others when it’s just not the right thing to do (I am looking at you Eric Chavez). Their biggest problem is they get good young players and don’t keep em around long enough to let them be impact guys or to get some loyalty to the city. They trade or let go anyone who is nearing that arbitration period or free agency time. Beane is still in Oakland and they generally competed well the early and mid 2000’s  (5 trips to the post season but only winning 1 round total), but then they fell off the map being pretty crappy the last 5 years.

So is “Moneyball” the end all be all and way to the promise land? Nope. But, I think what it shows is that the game is evolving and changing. But to evolve you can’t just throw things upside down. You incorporate new things into the old and roll with it. I think some of the teams that have succeeded the most in the last ten years (Red Sox, Yankees, Phillies) have done this. The smart GM’s/Owners have seen that there is some new ways of thinking and brought it in and molded it into their own and that is the real success of the “moneyball” revolution.

Last week I posted the top and bottom lists of my viewing of Red Box movies in 2011. Today I want to hit on a few of the honorable mentions from last year. These are movies that are real good to watch but for whatever reason I felt they were just not top 10. However, the more I think about them 2 of them SHOULD have been on my top ten, and one possibly should have been in the top 5 but for some reason it just slipped my mind. Oh well we all make mistakes, some of us bloggers more then others!

I am also going to throw out a list of 4 movies that most people might not have either heard of or even seen. But to me, you should REALLY see all of these. One of them even has SUBTITLES! and that is a no-no in the GeekJock viewing rules. I generally view reading during the WHOLE movie as work,it takes away from my viewing enjoyment (I like to look at details in the scenery/movie and you just can’t if you are reading) and it drives me insane. So I will stop with the run-on sentences and get to more lists!

HOMORABLE MENTIONS

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part2— Gotta admit I am a complete moron for leaving this off the top 11 list. This is easily top 5 if not one or two from last year and I goofed on it. I think it’s b/c I bought the blu-ray and therefore never actually reviewed it and it slipped my mind. But it IS at the Red Box and it was easily one of the best movies of the year. Sorry Harry, can you forgive a Muggle?

2. Super 8— Well, I waiver on this one quite a bit. Yes, it IS a good movie. Yes it IS the Goonies of the current generation. Yet, there is still something about it that keeps me from LOVING it. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s just lacking something that would put it in the top tier. Don’t get me wrong, good movie, great family movie, but just not elite in my mind. None the less go rent it for a good night of movie watching!

3. Friends with benefits-– Just good (mostly) unclean fun. Mila Kunis might not be the best actress in the world, but she’s hot and quite funny, so she’s OK in my book. And sorry, I might hate his music but Timberlake is quite possibly in the top 5 funniest actors in Hollywood right now.

4. Thor — Not the best movie of the year but still a TON better then expected. A little short on the action and plot, but just a fun decently funny movie. Another commercial for the Avengers with the Hawkeye sighting and ending cliff hanger but still I kinda dug the movie.

MOVIES YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE HEARD OF OR WANTED TO WATCH BUT YOU REALLY SHOULD!

Yep, that’s right I used ALL CAPS… and that’s kinda a no no. But I REALLY wanted to emphasize this. Go see these movies.

1. It’s kind of a funny story–> This rom-com-drama follows a kid who checks himself into a mental hospital to work his issues out. There he learns quite a bit about life and falls in love. Some actual good movie making and acting and the scene where they sing “Under Pressure” might be one of my favorite scenes of the year.

2. Wild Target— A funny little British comedy with Nighy, Blount, and Grint. Very subtle, a bit slapstick, but a lot to like about it.

3. Drive Angry— Don’t dismiss this Nic Cage movie as bad. Oh it kinda is but in all the right ways. Don’t take it too seriously, as he is after all a guy who broke out of hell to save a baby’s life, but it’s fast paced, a bit gory, a bit funny but all enjoyable cheese.

4. Troll Hunter— This one  you might have to find on Netflix or Amazon but it’s a real cool movie and a great watch. A  feaux documentary about a man who keeps the Troll population of Norway at bay and keeps them from the spotlight of the world. Sounds dumb until you are glued to your TV and for a few seconds you think you are really watching something that is true. Trust me on this one it’s a good flick.

So there you have it, some omissions by me and some recommendations for films you might never have wanted to try or have even heard of till today. Please let me know if you DO check these out and what you thought. If you want to send me your top or bottom lists of last year by all means please do! I might even post them up there as well! Just click the contact me link at the top or shoot me a wall post on my face-book page.

–GJ