Jack of some, master of none.

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1863 London Underground Now Available

Posted on by JustHonour

It has taken some time to get to this happy day, but the game I’ve been studiously (lol) working on for nearly a year is now finally available to the masses… Well, 5 physical copies are until I get more components. There is also the option of grabbing the game as a digital download for folks that prefer to print and play their own copies. This will be much cheaper for obvious reasons, plus I really dislike printing all the components myself so I’ve heavily favoured this as the main way to get hold of the game.

If you want to know more about the game there is information available on the store page here, or on Board Game Geek. The manual is also available to download and read here.

As always I look forward to hearing what players have to say – comments and criticisms are welcome.

Backgammon – Full Circle

Posted on by JustHonour

Having spent rather a lot of time playing numerous games I guess it’s no surprise that the ones that have lasted thousands of years are actually rather good.

I’m a fan of chess, but it requires a level of commitment I don’t have plus I’m not overly fond of the analysis paralysis it induces in me. Add to that, the fact (for me at least) that it needs a good hour or so to play then it is shuffled into a pile of other things I’d rather be doing with that time. Backgammon has a lovely amount of speed, strategy and luck allowing it to flow extremely well. It can be played in a single match often less that 10 minutes – where plain luck will frequently shine through – or to a number of points with the Doubling Cube thrown into the mix to really bring the skill of Backgammon to the fore. Some folks also use this element to add a little monetary spice to the game.

Overview of Backgammon
Overview of the starting positions in Backgammon
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1863 Live Test

Posted on by JustHonour

After too long testing by myself I finally got to see the game played with real players (the promise of pizza seems to help gather willing participants). This friendly test didn’t go to completion – unfortunately only about 4 hours of slow play – but it did go a long way to helping me understand how some of the different elements are utilized by the players. Oh, and how important it is to triple check the manual. We stumbled as I had written “sum” instead of “average” for the share price calculation during a merger. Weeding out these issues is important but I’m kicking myself as I had hoped basic things like this wouldn’t creep in so we could concentrate on the overall experience. That will come with time I suppose.

The great part of playtesting, and gaming in large, is to see the different strategies employed by the players. I was particularly intrigued by the Waterloo start position taken by a regular gaming friend, a place I thought would be better suited to late game but was made to work rather successfully as an initial starting point. I guess, even though I have been scrutinizing, playing on and changing the map many of my original thoughts on good locations simply didn’t update with it. So I continued with my “tried and tested” starts.

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1863 London Underground Logo

1863 London Underground

Posted on by JustHonour

One of my more recent passions in the area of board gaming has been the 18xx series of games. The first game, 1829 by Francis Treasham, was released in 1974 and now probably number in the hundreds of different adaptations, sometimes bringing their own flair – or “mcguffin”, other times marrying several together from different games. Ostensibly “train games” but, for me at least, this aspect simply drives the stock market and share prices which is where players win or lose the game. With no luck involved (no dice, no cards, just a player driven tug of war) and a fairly simple ruleset players take turns across a number of rounds floating new companies, buying and selling shares, and – of course – running the trains (calculating the revenue earned and how much to pay out in dividends or hold in the company treasury). I really can’t do the games justice with my short description so I’ll probably add a more detailed post later, although there are many such articles around the web already which do a far better job than I’ll be able to cobble together.

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Mad Catz T.E.2+

Posted on by JustHonour

In keeping with storing some useful utilities and apps that I find myself hunting down occasionally I’m adding this to the group. It’s the 64bit Driver for the excellent Fight Stick from the now defunct Mad Catz. Pity really. Although most of their controllers were “Player 2” quality (anyone who’s ever fired up a game over a friends house will know what that means) their Fight Sticks were top notch! I found the drivers here, and decided to host a copy of the one I need on this site here (download below)

Download

As always, I hope this is of use to someone – perhaps sooner rather than later as we seem to be entering a bit of a Fighting Game Revival 🙂