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Back in the days before rediscovering modern tabletop games we played classic card games quite a bit. One of the best features of those is, obviously, their travel-friendliness. Literally hundreds , and possibly thousands, of games can be played with just one standard deck of cards. (I should really revisit some of those, I realise!) Problem Even games that consist mainly of cards come with their own deck of specially designed cards now. (This is pretty obvious, as how/why would people buy these games otherwise?) For immersion and rules recollection that is neat, but for travelling this adds unwanted bulkiness.  Solution Lately I have compressed my travel gaming by bringing one tiny game that allows for playing several others, namely " 6 nimmt! ". Great games that work with this relatively small deck of cards are: 6 nimmt itself, obviously. An amazing game that plays from 2 to 10(!) players with increasing degrees of haphazardness - two player is an ...

Second batch of rented games tested on the kids!* Monza Monza (as in the Italian F1 race track) is a classic dice-based racing game from Haba. Overview Players control cars racing around a colourful three-lane oval track using handfuls of colourful dice. The goal of the game is to, well, win the race. Each round a player throws 6 dice - each with the same six colours on its sides. Any dic result lets you move to an adjacent place on the board of that colour, as long as you move forward, forever forward. It's up to the player to chose the order in which their dice are spent. And that is where the game manages to introduce basic concepts of tactics. Rare stuff in a game for 5 year olds, but it works well here. Components Nice wooden race cars, efficient wooden dice. Nice, big enough player board. (Maybe it could have benefited a double sided board (ala Automobiles from AEG) for longevity?) From what age? Box says five, and I tend to agree. Some tactical thinking is ne...

I'm beginning to get more experience in testing games on tiny human beings. Oftentimes more focus-challenged, and less interested in... tactiquery than middle-aged ones of the same species. Oftentimes. Recently we have started renting board games from a local-ish friendly game store here in Lyon. To remember what we have played and what we thought about the games we have played I started making a list. And then I figured, why not put the list on this blog, in case it can inspire others. (And so that I will be able to find the list again.) Maybe this will become a series . Who knows. Anyways, first out is a post on the two first games we rented - the grand classique  Pique-Plume ("Chicken Cha Cha Cha" in English) and a game I had never heard of before, Hop ! Hop ! Galopons !  from Haba ("Hoppe Reiter" in original version.) Pique-Plume Pique-Plume is a game I've seen on many a list of recommendations for board games for kids. And since it has a kind...

So, here it finally is, the list of my favourite games from 2015. (I learned some weeks ago that one can wish people a "bonne année" the entire year, here in France (at least in some regions), not like I've been previously led to believe only the first month, so I'm not _that_ late... Heh.) This year I've decided to introduced categories - from silly to less silly, from, for the lack of a better word, slapstick to... well, worker placement games. OK, here we go... Slapstick games These are the silliest of games that still count as proper games. They manage to balance the ammount of complete bonkerness and interesting enough decisions. Winner: Incan Gold Incan Gold is an excellent push your luck game by Faidutti and Moon from 2006 (reimplementing Diamant from the year before adding, basically idols, and... more interesting... components.) Incan Gold Runner up: Colt Express Colt Express was the  Spiel des Jahres winner this year. Releas...

This year's Spiel in Essen will be a bit amputated for me unfortunately. Even more important to arrive prepared! So, I made a list. Maybe it can be of interest for others. Who knows. (A BGG Geek List with the same info: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/197261 ) Main Releases 504 https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175878/504 This year's Friedeman Friese seems fascinating. "504 is a game that creates 504 different games out of one box.", they say, but will any of them be worth our time (and shelf space (and money))? 7 Wonders: Duel https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/173346/7-wonders-duel Antoine Bauza teams up with Bruno Cathala to revisit "7 Wonders" as a two player game with intriguing drafting mechanics inspired by... pyramid solitaire. Barony https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/167513/barony Splendor is one of my favourite games from last year. Marc André is back with a seemingly (slightly) heavier game. Mysterium https://boardg...

This morning I came across this XKCD strip . (I hope someone actually makes that app... Although with enough parallel ghosts chances are that you will lose more than you win, of course.) Later in the day Flowing Data published this fascinating visualisation of, well, when you might die. (Based on US life tables, mind you...) Each ball is a potential future self. (Like the ghosts in Randal Munroe 's strip.) Travelling along the life table line 'till they... die. Fascinating. And then I wondered what would happen if we somehow mapped causes of death to that? And voila, based on data from CDC , I added this colour coded death causes (along with some other minor changes) to Nathan Yau 's excellent D3.js work: (Click here for a full frame viz.) Scary. What could be next? Bar chart reflects the colour coding of causes? More detailed causes of death could lead to a better... narrative? Life tables and causes of death probabilities from other countries? Maybe ...

So, today I needed to scan something. And our Canon MP560 printer was out of ink... The beast never got past a screen saying "Ink tanks empty" on this and that colour, and thus wouldn't let me scan. Even remotely from my VueScan. And it was Sunday so our local friendly printer ink recycling store was closed. I suspected all hope was out, and cursed printer manufacturers conspirational grip on customers' use of their products, but did a quick google nevertheless. Lo and behold! " If you want to scan during an ink tank / cartridge error condition, press and hold the <Stop> button on the printer for at least five seconds, and then release it. The above procedure will disable the ink level detection. If the issue still persist, the ink cartridge would need to be replaced."  ( Source ) I put back the empty tanks. Turned on the printer. Held the red button (that I guessed was) called "<Stop>", and hey presto, I could scan.