Icon, Idaho Convention for Boardgamers May 19, 2007

In May I attended and ran a few games at the Icon convention. This is a Board gaming convention held in eastern Idaho in the city of Idaho Falls. So far this event has been semi annually and is run by Josh Wheeler a gaming enthusiast and friend of mine.

The conventions features mostly open gaming, featuring many types of games, Euro games, classic board games and some Wargames. There are also a couple of tournaments,and lots and lots of door prizes.

The convention typically runs from 9:00am and until midnight.

Like I stated, I demoed a few games, ElGrande, Battlelore, Twilight Struggle, Cluzzle and Wits and Wagers.

Conventions Like these are a great way of meeting other board gamers in the area and although this one is in its infancy, its a great little Con!!!!!

I highly recommending attending and will post the next date here!!!!

Robot Chicken Star Wars

You can't beat this combination, of Robot Chicken (one of the funniest shows on TV) and Star Wars. You can watch the whole thing on the Cartoon Network website.

Abbott and Costello "Whos on First"

This is one of the greatest comedy routines ever, and one of the best performances of the routine taken from the film The Naughty Nineties.

Batman the Animated Series

I recently purchased the Dvds of the complete Batman the Animated Series. This series first aired in 1992 after the release of the Batman Returns feature film. This series featured the animated adventures of DC comics Dark Knight, produced by Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski. This “cartoon” took a serious approach to the Batman mythos, showing a grim Batman set in a very dark Gotham City. From the start with the first episode “On Leather Wings”, Batman fans knew that this was the Batman we had been waiting for, there was no camp, no mugging for the camera, and grown up tales of a Batman we had seen only before in some of the best Comics of the series.

It is certainly evidenced that the creators were Batman fans based on the detail given all the characters of the series. It’s widely known that Batman has the best rouges gallery of any hero and it shows in all its glory within the series.

One of the best features of the series in the voice acting, no longer did a company use the stock performers we all grew up with from the Hanna Barbara stable, no this time real actors took on the roles giving it their all. For example Mark Hamill, brings the Joker to manically life throughout the entire series, so much so that when ever you see the Joker all you can here is Hamill’s distinct laugh for the character.

Also the series features some of the best writing for these characters ever produced with many of the best episodes being written by Paul Dini. Dini not only utilize all the elements of what made all the characters great, but in many cases reinvented them and gave them more depth, for example Mr. Freeze in the first season episode “Heart of Ice”.

Also the look of the series was very distinct, given a very dark look, with very detailed lighting effects and a style which can easily be traced back to the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 40s. The pictures in this series are dark, extremely dark and this fits the mood of the entire series and the characters. Again, much of what animation had looked like in the past thirty hears had been established by companies like Hana Barbara and Flimation, which utilized very limited background stills and reused the foreground art over and over again.

In my opinion the creators of the series had done the definitive Batman……The Batman that every fan knew and didn’t know, and wanted more of each week. I can’t recommend this series enough; it’s a treat for every Batman fan out there and possibly for any anime fan as well.

Also it is noted that Paul Dini, is currently writing Batman in Detective Comics and is introducing many of the animated elements into current Batman continuity, so check it out!

Game Night, May 17, 2007

In attendance were Thomas, John, Josh, Marcus, Brian, Scott, Anna, Ted (after a long absence) and joining us were Whitney and Trish and of course myself.

Starting off, Whitney, Scott, Anna and Brian played The Game of Real Life
, while Trish, Ted and John played Settlers of Catan, and finally Josh, Thomas and I played Settlers of the Stone Age.

Marcus did not play a game right off the bat and sat out on the three that were going on.

The Game of Real Life ended earlier than the other two games with Scott wining, after that the same group played a game of Cluzzle which according to most accounts Anna was victorious.

I the time it took that group to play two games, the other two groups continued with there game with finally Thomas wining Settlers of Stone Age and Trish wining Settlers of Catan.

After, Whitney, Scott and Anna left for the evening leaving Brian, Marcus, Trish, Ted and John playing a game of Ticket to Ride.

At the same time Josh, Thomas and myself played a game of RA.

Both game took about the equal amount of time to play with Josh wining RA and Ted wining Ticket to Ride.

Just one side note, This was my fifth play of RA, and I'm just now starting to see all the layers this game has, on the surface appears to be a very simple auction game but it contains much more depth, and complexity that is only apparent after several plays.


I want to thank everyone for coming to game night and I hope that you all had a really great time.

Just a reminder, I will be on vacation next week so game night is cancelled for the 24th and 30th.

However it will be back on June 7th.

thanks

Game Night, May 10, 2007

Game Night had arrived again. In attendance were Marcus, Alan, Anna, Brian, Scott, Thomas, Michael, Andrew, Josh (and his little daughter), myself and after a long absence John.

The previous Monday had been had been Thomas' birthday and so John had brought a cake for us all to share (thank you very much John), (and Happy Birthday Thomas).

Well last week Scott had requested a game of Marvel Heroes and earlier this week
Anna had emailed me that she wanted to play Fury of Dracula.

So we split into three groups, Scott, Thomas, John and myself playing Marvel Heroes. I had played this once before but this was the first time for all the others.

Anna, Brian, Alan, Michael and Andrew playing Fury of Dracula. Anna and Brain had played this previously but this was the first time for all the others.

Marcus, Josh and Josh's daughter playing Cluzzle.

The game of Cluzzle is fairly short so that game finished much earlier than the other two, and I don't know who won that game. After Josh had to get home to put his daughter to bed and Marcus left early also.

The Fury of Dracula ran long, till about 11:00 pm, from what I'm told it was coolly received which is a disappointment since usually we have a really good time with that one, Anna had played Dracula and the other players beat her (though she said near the end she was being reckless).

Our game of Marvel Heroes was the last to finish, at approximately 12:45 am (boy am I tired today), but we had a really great time. The first hour of the game was a little tense since it was taking a while for everyone to catch on, but finally when that did it was a blast. Scott won the game breaking a tie with John, after I had 5 points detected in my last turn. (really have to play this again!)

Oh and Alan had brought some Baklava (thanks Alan!!!)

I want to thank everyone for come to game night and I hope to see you next week!!!!!