These Past 2 Months

Wow, it's been two months since I posted here. Well, obviously it was too hard to keep up with posting about every single game I played, so I guess I need to add "Some Of" to the title of this page ("The Games Andy Looney Is Playing"). Another reason I stopped posting here was that I'd begun playtesting a couple of new games but I wasn't ready to talk about them yet. Thus it was easier to go silent than to think up code names.

But this week I'm finally revealing details (at Wunderland.com) about one of these new games: Martian Fluxx. (The other now has an official code name: Secret Project EMR-35.)

So here are a few highlights of the games I've played since November 18th (besides lots of test games of Martian Fluxx and Secret Project EMR-35):

• Nanofictionary: I've started playtesting a new set of rules for Nano. The first printing has now finally sold through (last I heard there were less than 2 dozen decks left in stock) and it's going to be a while before we reprint it. Part of this delay is because of my desire to improve the design. After 5 years of playing it as first published, I've becoming totally disenchanted with certain elements of how it plays, in particular the long and often tedious Writing phase. The fun part is the telling of stories and it takes way too long to get there in the current version. Especially problematic in this regard are the Action cards, which have proven to be much more trouble than they are worth. In the Second Edition of Nanofictionary I plan to dump those cards entirely (replacing them with zero point Honorable Mention cards, so that you don't have to re-use regular cards for the Empty Envelopes during voting). Setting aside some resistance to change on the part of a couple of die-hard Nano-fans, I'm very pleased with the reactions to the revisions we've been playtesting.
• Just Desserts: While most of my best game designs have come together very quickly, often in a matter of days (as just happened with EMR-35) it sometimes takes years of iterative revisions to successfully invent a good game. After many massive revisions and another recent round of tweaks, I'm feeling like the design is really good. But the massive art job required for the final production of this game is keeping it lingering on the back burner. Anyway, we played this several times recently with my latest tweaks, and I think they're really good (but I still need to update the online rules with my latest changes.)
• Binary Homeworlds:
  • Shel and I played 9 more games of Homeworlds, all of which I won (though many were uncomfortably close)
  • On Christmas Day my nephew James and I played Homeworlds for the first time. He did quite well!
  • Rob Bryan (known as TwoShort on SuperDuperGames) was in town for the holidays and we played Homeworlds; he's long been the top-rated player at SDG and I've lost to him every time we've played online, but I've also beaten him every time we've played in person, so a lot was riding on this game. Plus he hit me with a crazy Gemini star opening! But I prevailed.
• Simultaneous Random Word Game: On New Year's Eve Cooperjon taught me a clever little game (what's that called, John?) in which two people say a random word simultaneously, with each person trying to anticipate what the other will say, and the goal being for both people to say the same thing when they get to the third word (in which case, they win that round). Try it, it's fun!
• Videogames: On the PS-2 I've been playing Tomb Raider (my usual) plus something new (to us): Sly Cooper. Mostly I've been helping Kristin get through the really hard challenges as she plays (when called in this way I'm known as the Andytron-3000).
• Over The Edge: Keith Baker was in town and he joined us for a very memorable session of OTE. This is the same scenario that started last summer when he ran a session for me, Kristin, Alison, and Robin at GenCon; I took over as GM where he left off and we've had quite an adventure without him. In joining us for a session now, Keith became a guest player in what has become my own version of what he started.
• A Small Problem: Alison ran two sessions (of a planned trio) of a Role-Playing Game by a group called NASCRAG which she'd played in at GenCon. Our party became miniaturized and sent on a series of adventures we have yet to recover from. (The other players were Kristin, Petra, Shel, Liam, and Dave.) I played a character named Finnegan Mulcahy.
• Poker: I played 15 games of Martian Hold'em since my last update. Most were cash games in which I lost a couple of bucks. 2 were tournaments which I won. I lost a total of $4.64 over the course of these 15 games.

That's still not all of the game I played in the last couple of months, but it's most of them.