Recent Gaming
Here's a rundown of the games I have been playing in the last 4 months or so: (I guess this is the flip side of my job search update.)
(German) Board Games:
Agricola - Currently the most popular game with several members of the Wizards of the Coast crowd. Mike Turian, Henry Stern, Mark Globus and I all suggest this whenever given the opportunity to propose a game and there are several others who are happy to play it as well. It's extremely busy - tons of fiddly bits and enough different options whenever you need to make a move that real analysis paralysis is possible. However, once you get the basics down it's very well balanced and the 14 random cards that you each get dealt at the beginning of the game provide provide a ton of re-playability. It supplanted Puerto Rico as the #1 overall rated game on BoardGameGeek for a reason. (Note the "Gamer-Friendly Link" above my blogroll that goes to a place to play online. I doubt you can learn the game from that interface, but if you already know how to play it's probably worth learning the interface so you can get your fix more often.)
Through the Ages - #5 overall on the 'Geek, this one is very long — about 1.5 hours per player — but in my opinion it's worth the time. It's basically the Civilization video game turned into a tabletop experience. Yes, I know Civilization was inspired in large part by a very good board game. This one is better. Also note that this is completely different from Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame, which I have no first-hand knowledge of but i assume must be terrible because a) It's ranked 2881 on the 'Geek and b) no one has ever suggested to me that we play it.
Dominion - There is technically no board in this game - just cards - but it nonetheless fits perfectly into the "German Board Game" genre. It's a very elegant design that pretty much any thinking gamer will enjoy, but it will particuarly resonate with CCG players as the gameplay is kind of like constructing a Magic combo deck from a limited card pool. I played a ton of it during the winter, but I haven't touched it in about two months. It's awesome and I highly recommend it, but it can start to feel like a solved problem after you play a bunch (which is very convenient to do on BSW). The expansion that's schedule to come out in "late June" should help a lot - the game has tons of potential for replayability just by adding more cards.
Is Brettspielwelt well known out there? It seems amazing to me that you can play many of the best German board games, for free, 24/7, against human opponents. I guess all the German companies see it as good advertising that sells more of the physical copies of their games.
Turbo Hearts has long been a lunch-time and late-night staple at Wizards. VP of R&D Bill Rose maintains a spreadsheet that tracks points from every game that is played amongst the dozen or so regular players (which was something like 500 games last year). The points are then reset back to zero every year at the annual Super Bowl party. The game is incredibly skill-testing and last year I finally invested enough time playing and getting my head bashed that I'm now a middle of the pack player. I think I even had positive points for this year until I stayed for one game too many on Tuesday night.
Around the web:
Bejeweled Blitz - this Facebook app is shockingly addictive. It's basically just Bejeweled with a 1-minute timer, but the sticky part is that they track your high score for the week and rank it next to the high scores of all your friends. Add in some badges, sprinkle to taste with nice production values and "One Minute ... Go!"
Kongregate - I guess this has evolved into my go-to location for killing time randomly while on my computer. It's full of tons of free flash games, some of which are not half-bad, and a few of which are actually good. The real game is acquiring achievements and I'm level 9 at that game, with my most impressive/embarrassing badge being the 60-pointer from Monster's Den. (I am "SaveFerris," by the way, but I have never bothered connecting with any of my friends so I have no idea if any of their social features are any good.)
PC
I tried Left 4 Dead and I have a ton of respect for the constant string of quality games that Valve is able to produce, but at the end of the day I am just not a twtch gamer. No FPS has ever managed to sink its teeth into me and this was no different.
I feel like Empire: Total War is what I'm supposed to be playing, but I haven't really tried out this series yet. I downloaded a demo but it seemed closer to a real-time strategy game than the turn-based campaign mode I was expecting. I then heard their launch was buggy plus I was totally into my quest for 1000 gamerscore on Civ-Rev at the time so I never went back to investigate. Has anyone played this? Is it good?
Magic Online - I played a bunch in December when I thought I was embarking on my Pro Tour comeback. I started an anonymous account and ran it straight to about an 1800 rating and 20ish packs in my collection. I haven't played as much since Wizards changed their mind and decided to keep the rule that immediate family of employees are banned from DCI-sanctioned play. (My wife is the Sr. Editor and a key member of Magic R&D.) I still draft a couple of times per week, but I have found that not having a goal like the Pro Tour hurts both my motivation and my focus. My rating is down to like 1750 and I'm forced to crack out my credit card from time to time so I can keep drafting. Maybe if I was also selling my rares I would be able to go infinite, but I kind of want to build a collection so I can play constructed. Meanwhile the continued bugginess of the program is pretty depressing, but the Championship Series looks pretty cool. I would totally be into that if I wasn't ineligble for the overall championship (since it's a real-world, DCI-sanctionded event). Maybe next month I'll try to qualify for the season championship anyway.
XBox 360
Civilization Revolution - This game is awesome. It is a slimmed down version of the Civilization series that has thrived for years on the PC, and I mean "slimmed down" in the "I am so much healthier now that I lost 100 pounds" way. It's not a straight port, but instead it's pretty clear that they rebuilt the game from the ground up. The constraint of trying to fit things onto a console (and presumably they built the DS version at the same time) was really good for the game. A bunch of extraneous crap got thrown away and the mechanics were simplified down to just the good stuff. All the goodness from those 20-hour games me and my friends all played in college is now condensed down into a 3-4 hour experience that you can finish and then still go to bed and get enough sleep to be functional the next day. I beat the game with all 16 civilizations. I built all 27 wonders. I convinced all 46 Great People to join my civilizations. I got all four flavors of victory (Cultural, Economic, Domination, and Science) and then I got all four again on Diety-level. I even managed to win a game by the year 1100 to unlock the 50th and final achievement. If you're the kind of gamer who likes this blog then I've got to believe you'll enjoy this. (If you don't have a 360, by the way, but you want to scratch your Civ itch anyway you could try out Civilization Colonization, which I suspect I would now find to be a bit bloated after all my hours playing Civ - Rev, but which is smaller in scope than Civ IV and which I quite enjoyed for about a month last year.)
Ticket to Ride - I have bought pretty much all of the board game transliterations that are on XBox Live Arcade and this is the one I enjoy the most. The multiplayer and matchmaking has been pretty buggy for me, though, so I don't think I'm going to have the patience to unlock my last achievement by winning 25 ranked player matches.
Fallout 3 - Friends have recommended this and it won Game of the Year at GDC this year, so I bought it once I finished with Civ-Rev. It's a large-ish single-player RPG, which is a genre that sometimes sucks me in completely (Elder Scrolls III; Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, and way back in the day Ultima III and Ultima IV) and sometimes just fails to hook me and instead stares at me from my desktop mocking me for wasting $50 (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights II, Dungeon Seige). The jury is still out in my mind - it's definitely well-done and I intend to go explore some more, but the fact that I'm writing this blog right now when I could be playing means that it's power over me is far from complete right now.
Grand Theft Auto IV - I had never played a previous GTA title and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The probelm is that I'm both terrible at driving games and don't enjoy them all that much either. I have the impression from reviews that the plot is compelling and that the writing is some of the best in the entertainment industry (construed broadly enough to include books and movies). However, I don't think I'm going to get to find out because completeing even what look like they're supposed to be simple missions is tedious for me. That said, this experience was actually quite useful in clarifying for me exactly what kind of gamer I am and what kind I am not. That clarity has been useful to me in my job search and it also contributed to my decision to start this blog.
Portal - This game was the darling of the industry last year and for good reason. It's really quite clever and they managed to innovate successfully on both game play and also storytelling. However, while there's some interesting mental challenges that come into play with portal placement, at the end of the day this is a dexterity game. Many parts of the game require quick and accurate button mashing in order to move ahead. I have gotten myself deep into the last level and I love what they're doing with the story, but after multiple sessions of multiple hours banging my head against the same scene without beating it, I got pretty frustrated. I've looked up walk-throughs online and I now know intellectually how to get through to the next scene, but it looks quite hard to me and I haven't gone back to finish things.
Braid - Playing this was the most compelling, most rewarding, and overall best experience I have ever had playing a video game. The game play mechanics are deviously brilliant, the production values are top-notch, and the whole package is put together extremely intelligently. I found myself just staring at the TV, thinking about how to solve the next puzzle, and smiling at the ways in which my brain was being twisted. It looks at first-blush like a Mario-style platformer, but with the exception of the last level it doesn't require any real dexterity skills. You have the ability to back up time and re-do anything you want so the real skill is figuring out how to use the very limited ways you have of interacting with the game to collect each puzzle piece. It was quite surprisingly to see how much depth there was in a few seemingly simple time manipulation mechanics. The game just came out on PC within the last month and the PC version includes a level editor so I'm hoping even more cool new stuff will emerge from the community over time.
(German) Board Games:
Agricola - Currently the most popular game with several members of the Wizards of the Coast crowd. Mike Turian, Henry Stern, Mark Globus and I all suggest this whenever given the opportunity to propose a game and there are several others who are happy to play it as well. It's extremely busy - tons of fiddly bits and enough different options whenever you need to make a move that real analysis paralysis is possible. However, once you get the basics down it's very well balanced and the 14 random cards that you each get dealt at the beginning of the game provide provide a ton of re-playability. It supplanted Puerto Rico as the #1 overall rated game on BoardGameGeek for a reason. (Note the "Gamer-Friendly Link" above my blogroll that goes to a place to play online. I doubt you can learn the game from that interface, but if you already know how to play it's probably worth learning the interface so you can get your fix more often.)
Through the Ages - #5 overall on the 'Geek, this one is very long — about 1.5 hours per player — but in my opinion it's worth the time. It's basically the Civilization video game turned into a tabletop experience. Yes, I know Civilization was inspired in large part by a very good board game. This one is better. Also note that this is completely different from Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame, which I have no first-hand knowledge of but i assume must be terrible because a) It's ranked 2881 on the 'Geek and b) no one has ever suggested to me that we play it.
Dominion - There is technically no board in this game - just cards - but it nonetheless fits perfectly into the "German Board Game" genre. It's a very elegant design that pretty much any thinking gamer will enjoy, but it will particuarly resonate with CCG players as the gameplay is kind of like constructing a Magic combo deck from a limited card pool. I played a ton of it during the winter, but I haven't touched it in about two months. It's awesome and I highly recommend it, but it can start to feel like a solved problem after you play a bunch (which is very convenient to do on BSW). The expansion that's schedule to come out in "late June" should help a lot - the game has tons of potential for replayability just by adding more cards.
Is Brettspielwelt well known out there? It seems amazing to me that you can play many of the best German board games, for free, 24/7, against human opponents. I guess all the German companies see it as good advertising that sells more of the physical copies of their games.
Turbo Hearts has long been a lunch-time and late-night staple at Wizards. VP of R&D Bill Rose maintains a spreadsheet that tracks points from every game that is played amongst the dozen or so regular players (which was something like 500 games last year). The points are then reset back to zero every year at the annual Super Bowl party. The game is incredibly skill-testing and last year I finally invested enough time playing and getting my head bashed that I'm now a middle of the pack player. I think I even had positive points for this year until I stayed for one game too many on Tuesday night.
Around the web:
Bejeweled Blitz - this Facebook app is shockingly addictive. It's basically just Bejeweled with a 1-minute timer, but the sticky part is that they track your high score for the week and rank it next to the high scores of all your friends. Add in some badges, sprinkle to taste with nice production values and "One Minute ... Go!"
Kongregate - I guess this has evolved into my go-to location for killing time randomly while on my computer. It's full of tons of free flash games, some of which are not half-bad, and a few of which are actually good. The real game is acquiring achievements and I'm level 9 at that game, with my most impressive/embarrassing badge being the 60-pointer from Monster's Den. (I am "SaveFerris," by the way, but I have never bothered connecting with any of my friends so I have no idea if any of their social features are any good.)
PC
I tried Left 4 Dead and I have a ton of respect for the constant string of quality games that Valve is able to produce, but at the end of the day I am just not a twtch gamer. No FPS has ever managed to sink its teeth into me and this was no different.
I feel like Empire: Total War is what I'm supposed to be playing, but I haven't really tried out this series yet. I downloaded a demo but it seemed closer to a real-time strategy game than the turn-based campaign mode I was expecting. I then heard their launch was buggy plus I was totally into my quest for 1000 gamerscore on Civ-Rev at the time so I never went back to investigate. Has anyone played this? Is it good?
Magic Online - I played a bunch in December when I thought I was embarking on my Pro Tour comeback. I started an anonymous account and ran it straight to about an 1800 rating and 20ish packs in my collection. I haven't played as much since Wizards changed their mind and decided to keep the rule that immediate family of employees are banned from DCI-sanctioned play. (My wife is the Sr. Editor and a key member of Magic R&D.) I still draft a couple of times per week, but I have found that not having a goal like the Pro Tour hurts both my motivation and my focus. My rating is down to like 1750 and I'm forced to crack out my credit card from time to time so I can keep drafting. Maybe if I was also selling my rares I would be able to go infinite, but I kind of want to build a collection so I can play constructed. Meanwhile the continued bugginess of the program is pretty depressing, but the Championship Series looks pretty cool. I would totally be into that if I wasn't ineligble for the overall championship (since it's a real-world, DCI-sanctionded event). Maybe next month I'll try to qualify for the season championship anyway.
XBox 360
Civilization Revolution - This game is awesome. It is a slimmed down version of the Civilization series that has thrived for years on the PC, and I mean "slimmed down" in the "I am so much healthier now that I lost 100 pounds" way. It's not a straight port, but instead it's pretty clear that they rebuilt the game from the ground up. The constraint of trying to fit things onto a console (and presumably they built the DS version at the same time) was really good for the game. A bunch of extraneous crap got thrown away and the mechanics were simplified down to just the good stuff. All the goodness from those 20-hour games me and my friends all played in college is now condensed down into a 3-4 hour experience that you can finish and then still go to bed and get enough sleep to be functional the next day. I beat the game with all 16 civilizations. I built all 27 wonders. I convinced all 46 Great People to join my civilizations. I got all four flavors of victory (Cultural, Economic, Domination, and Science) and then I got all four again on Diety-level. I even managed to win a game by the year 1100 to unlock the 50th and final achievement. If you're the kind of gamer who likes this blog then I've got to believe you'll enjoy this. (If you don't have a 360, by the way, but you want to scratch your Civ itch anyway you could try out Civilization Colonization, which I suspect I would now find to be a bit bloated after all my hours playing Civ - Rev, but which is smaller in scope than Civ IV and which I quite enjoyed for about a month last year.)
Ticket to Ride - I have bought pretty much all of the board game transliterations that are on XBox Live Arcade and this is the one I enjoy the most. The multiplayer and matchmaking has been pretty buggy for me, though, so I don't think I'm going to have the patience to unlock my last achievement by winning 25 ranked player matches.
Fallout 3 - Friends have recommended this and it won Game of the Year at GDC this year, so I bought it once I finished with Civ-Rev. It's a large-ish single-player RPG, which is a genre that sometimes sucks me in completely (Elder Scrolls III; Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, and way back in the day Ultima III and Ultima IV) and sometimes just fails to hook me and instead stares at me from my desktop mocking me for wasting $50 (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Neverwinter Nights II, Dungeon Seige). The jury is still out in my mind - it's definitely well-done and I intend to go explore some more, but the fact that I'm writing this blog right now when I could be playing means that it's power over me is far from complete right now.
Grand Theft Auto IV - I had never played a previous GTA title and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The probelm is that I'm both terrible at driving games and don't enjoy them all that much either. I have the impression from reviews that the plot is compelling and that the writing is some of the best in the entertainment industry (construed broadly enough to include books and movies). However, I don't think I'm going to get to find out because completeing even what look like they're supposed to be simple missions is tedious for me. That said, this experience was actually quite useful in clarifying for me exactly what kind of gamer I am and what kind I am not. That clarity has been useful to me in my job search and it also contributed to my decision to start this blog.
Portal - This game was the darling of the industry last year and for good reason. It's really quite clever and they managed to innovate successfully on both game play and also storytelling. However, while there's some interesting mental challenges that come into play with portal placement, at the end of the day this is a dexterity game. Many parts of the game require quick and accurate button mashing in order to move ahead. I have gotten myself deep into the last level and I love what they're doing with the story, but after multiple sessions of multiple hours banging my head against the same scene without beating it, I got pretty frustrated. I've looked up walk-throughs online and I now know intellectually how to get through to the next scene, but it looks quite hard to me and I haven't gone back to finish things.
Braid - Playing this was the most compelling, most rewarding, and overall best experience I have ever had playing a video game. The game play mechanics are deviously brilliant, the production values are top-notch, and the whole package is put together extremely intelligently. I found myself just staring at the TV, thinking about how to solve the next puzzle, and smiling at the ways in which my brain was being twisted. It looks at first-blush like a Mario-style platformer, but with the exception of the last level it doesn't require any real dexterity skills. You have the ability to back up time and re-do anything you want so the real skill is figuring out how to use the very limited ways you have of interacting with the game to collect each puzzle piece. It was quite surprisingly to see how much depth there was in a few seemingly simple time manipulation mechanics. The game just came out on PC within the last month and the PC version includes a level editor so I'm hoping even more cool new stuff will emerge from the community over time.
Hi Randy nice blog. I too play a lot of boardgames (shocking I know) and pretty much agree that Agricola is the best. That and Dominion are the ones that appeal to me the most although I agree with you that Dominion is a little too "solvable". The problem is of course that with such a limited number of cards (and this is also somewhat of a problem with Agricola) the difference in power level is a little too obvious.
Anyway, since you like Agricola, have you tried Le Havre? Pretty sure it's the same designer and in my opinion a pretty good game.
Also it would be really interesting to hear about what happened/is happening at WotC.
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I have not tried Le Havre. I will seek it out.
That's now two requests for my WotC stories so I will figure to how to put together a blog on the subject.
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Le Havre is a great game. I love Agricola, but would have to say that the designers have done themselves one better with Le Havre. Very much worth seeking out.
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I like your blog so far- I actually was going to suggest Braid after your last post, but realized some people have had the XBox version for a while now. I'm glad you enjoyed it as much as I did. As a gamer with similar tastes, thank you for this post.
Have you played Spectromancer at all/opinions?
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Yes I have played Spectromancer and it seems quite good. It's depressingly invisible, though. It's designed and I think also at least partially funded by Skaff Elias and Richard Garfield. In talking to them I get the impression that it's really hard to make any money as an independent web game. There's so much free stuff out there that it's hard to get people to pay for anything plus there's so much stuff available in general that it's hard for your game to stand out and get noticed anyway unless you have a giant marketing budget. So I see Spectromancer as this experiment to see what happens when you make a great game but with no known brand and no real marketing plan. And it doesn't work. Good gameplay alone doesn't seem sufficient to make any money on the web right now and I find that conclusion depressing. It's probably the single biggest reason I'm still leaning toward a real job rather than trying to build something from scratch.
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Looking at Spectromancer from the perspective of someone who is more a software engineer working on websites than a gamer, it's no surprise to me they are not making money. It's true, you cannot just have a great game. You need a business model that works on the web, and you need technology that works on the web.
Technologywise, it's not even really a web game. You have to download something. Right there, you are losing a large part of your audience. A big reason that iPhone apps and games integrated into Facebook or Myspace can make money is that they are tightly integrated into a customer acquisition channel. Ideally, one would program spectromancer in a way to not require a download, and the home page of spectromancer.com would just be a big button saying "Play now". That also makes it a lot easier to spread via social incentives, like bonus cards for inviting friends to play.
As far as business model goes, spectromancer's freemium strategy is reasonable, but if you're not getting enough exposure then the freemium strategy is the first thing to blame. The more successful web business models now seem to be based on free-to-play, profit via selling virtual goods. Look at anything Zynga does, or the recent slew of profitable gaming companies out of China. It would be nice to combine that business model with an actually great game, and the virtual card model maps directly onto selling them.
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Great blog, Randy. Maybe you can help me out. I'm looking for a good family board game for 3-5 payers that is suitable for my 8 and 10 year olds and actually involves a good balance of strategy and luck. Most games in this vein (e.g. chess and checkers) are limited to 2 players. Based on your review, I looked into Agricola and Through the Ages (Harrison and I love Civilization) at my local game shop but I think they are probably too long. Do you think Dominion would be a good fit?
BTW, Harrison got a DSi for his birthday and promptly bought Civilization Revolution as his first game. He hasn't stopped playing it. It's so great to have a Civ game that you can actually finish in an hour or so and the replayability is endless.
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I agree that Agricola and Through the Ages are too long and also probably too complicated. Dominion should work ... it's pretty short and it's less complicated than Civ Rev. Another game I would recommend is Settlers of Catan. It's got strategy, it's got dice rolling, and it's highly interactive thanks to a trading mechanic.
Both Settlers and Dominion play well with 3 or 4 players, but neither can handle 5. Dominion can also be played with 2 people, but Settlers cannot. Finding a good 5 player game is a lot harder ... I think my favorite is probably Ra, but it's not nearly as highly regarded within the hobby as Settlers or Dominion.
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Two others that play well with 5 people:
Vegas Showdown - a bidding/auction game where you try to build the best casino. Wizards published it several years ago and it didn't sell enough to stay in print, but it's quit good in my opinion and still in occasional rotation at our weekly board game night.
Amun Re - Ancient Egypt flavor, building pyramids, farmer the land, having your crops wiped out by the Nile, etc.
Neither is as elegant as Settlers, which has really evolved into the gateway drug for the whole genre, but if/when you're ready for something more deep and intricate these are fine games that play well with 5. (Settlers probably has an expansion that allows 5-player play, by the way. Most of the popular German games do.)
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Hi Randy.
Settlers does indeed have an expansion which allows 5 or 6 players.
More game suggestions for you:
Race for the Galaxy. Card game. Occupies a middle ground between San Juan and Puerto Rico - the mechanics are very similar. The game is excellent, but graphic design is horrible and painful for the first 1-2 plays. Once you get past that, it's solid.
I haven't played Empire: TW yet, but I have played Rome: TW a fair amount. If you don't like RTS games on the basis of twitchiness, you may not like the TW series - but having said that, the TW games are not very twitchy at all as far as RTS games go, nothing like the Starcrafts of the genre. They are about 50/50 turn-based strategy/RTS - you play on a campaign map and resolve battles via RTS. You can technically set one half or the other to auto-play, but I wouldn't recommend it. If you were going to do that, you'd be better off getting a dedicated turn-based strategy or RTS. It does have the distinct advantage that you can set yourself up for easy RTS victories via good play on the campaign map. If you want to save some $ and just try out the series, Rome: TW is $10 these days.
Sins of a Solar Empire - this is a giant time sink of a game, but it was designed to fill the need for people who wanted to play a RTS game but didn't want it to be decided by how fast you can click. I've played the demo and liked it but so far I wasn't willing to commit the vast amount of time required. Multiplayer is supposed to be good too.
Galactic Civilizations II - I haven't personally played this one, but I have heard that this and Civ IV are the 2 leading titles in turn-based strategy on the PC.
If you are looking for strategy games, generally you are better off sticking to the PC rather than the consoles. Console controllers just don't seem to work as well as a mouse for those kinds of games.
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I like your props to Bejeweled Blitz! I also see you started my new favorite game, Chain Rxn, tonight as well.
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I had seen Chain Rxn before on Kongregate ... pretty cool game. I'm interested to see where this whole "package it up as a Facebook app" thing goes. Are the developers actually goign to make any money off of it? Are they getting enough awareness for their games that they make money on their own sites? Or are we all just going to amuse ourselves with the free versions if and only if they're free?
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After around 18 month of still being addicted to Agricola (three small 24-card expansions available here help of course), we have not played a game with regular card distribution. We always play a draft or sealed with the cards to make the game more fun.
We usualy make 10 card occupation packs and 10 card minor improvement packs and then draft them. occupations first to the left then the other pack to the right. In sealed we just give everyone 15 cards of each which everyone has to trim down foritself to 7 each.
This way you are not angry if you only get bad cards or cards that don't combine at all.
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If you haven't played them, I would strongly recommend some of Nifflas' games. Nifflas is a Swedish programmer who's put together a few games in his free time, and put them up on the internet for free. All 3 games he has out are platformers, and while they don't have the puzzle elements of Braid, the exploration element is quite fun. I think my favorite is 'Within a Deep Forest', where you play as a bouncy ball of sorts. The physics are quite good, but the learning curve is a bit difficult. Of his other two games, I'd recommend Knytt Stories over Knytt, mostly because of the plethora of user-generated content available.
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Some great picks here. Civ:Rev took over my life...twice. After i got all 1000 achievements i took a long break, but i came back later and played through all of the downloadable content. There are so few strategy games on console, and this one is so great, that i get frustrated playing any other (like trying MMO's besides WOW). As much as i like the idea of playing it online, i always get board waiting for my opponents to play...
I would love to see a new version come out with a fantasy skin...
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What's the downloadable content all about? Suddenly I think I might know what's going to the top of my XBox to-play queue ...
Magic: Battlegrounds seems like it should be a pretty reasonable entry into the console turn-based strategy market, by the way. I have seen enough to know that it looks good and is reasonably polished, but I have not played enough to know if it's going to be challenging for long-time Magic players.
Just MTGO already makes Magic the #2 digital turn-based strategy game franchise of all-time, trailing only Civilization in lifetimes sales (I think).
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The DLC is mainly new maps, but also some new wonders/artifacts. Enough to mix things up and steal a couple more weeks of my life...
You mean Duels of the Planes Walkers, the XBLA title right? Looking forward to it....I know the guys at Stainless worked very hard on it.
Is that right about MTGO being #2 all-time? If so, i need to update my resume!
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I know this is a bit of an old one, but I just found out about this site. I didn't know you had been thinking of rejoining the pro tour. I very much enjoy hearing you broadcast and interview, but despite that would love to see you back on the tour. I'm a big fan of old veterans I guess. I Hope wizards changes their policy and you can get back on someday.
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