The Unsinkable Puerto Rico

By Ward Batty

This week I want to talk about what is arguably the best boardgame of all time, Puerto Rico by Andreas Seyfarth. It has recently regained the top spot as the top-rated game at Boardgamegeek.com, after being temporarily overtaken by the upstart game Caylus. Puerto Rico has been a favorite for many serious boardgame aficionados since Alea and Rio Grande Games first published it in 2002.

Each player is developing their own version of San Juan on their own small board. The city area has space for the buildings, and there is a field area where crop tiles are placed. Players are competing to produce goods, which can be shipped for victory points or sold at market for money, known here as doubloons. Doubloons are used to buy buildings. The buildings are worth victory points, and also have special uses that help the player. There are buildings that allow players to get more money when they sell goods, for example.

The core of the game is the different roles that each player selects. These include building, producing goods, shipping goods, trading goods at the market, adding a new crop to your field, adding new colonists or just taking money. The first player gets to be the Governor, and at the end of the round the Governor passes to the next player. Everyone selects a different role, then the Governor is passed and all roles are returned to the center of the table and are available to be selected. The roles that were not selected have a doubloon each placed on them, to make them more desirable next time. When a player selects a role, they do the action first, and then all players in clockwise order also may take that action, if they can. The player who selected the action also gets an additional benefit. For example, the person who chooses to build gets a discount of one ducat off the cost of the building.

Designer Andreas Seyfarth didn't invent the game mechanic of players having roles that give them special abilities or privileges, but Puerto Rico uses it to great effectiveness. What distinguishes Puerto Rico from other games is the game flow. Timing is the only variable in the game. Everyone may build or ship, but not everyone can. You have to produce a good before you can ship or trade it. If someone with goods ships or trades before you have the chance to produce, not only do you miss on that chance to ship, but also shipping is unavailable until the Governor passes. In Puerto Rico, timing is everything.

Other than the number of victory points players have collected when they shipped goods, all information is public. So as you choose what role to take, you can easily see whom it will help and who still has a turn and what roles are available. This allows players to learn to anticipate what others will want to do. How you respond, take that action that most helps you but may help another more, or take a less appealing action so you won't set up the next player? This is the crux of the challenge and fun of the game.

As Peggy Hill says, "It's fun to choose." You get to make many interesting choices in Puerto Rico. There are only three boats that take goods away and they are three sizes and each may only contain one type of good. Also, they don't empty until filled. Goods are limited, so if too many goods remain on a boat they may not be available for future production. The trading house, where goods are sold, only has space for four goods and won't buy a second of the same good until the four spots are cleared. There is a building that let's players sell the same good again, however. Building selection is also very important. Some buildings are more useful early, some late. Many work well in combination.

Finally, Puerto Rico has lots of different ways to win. You can ship a lot, concentrate on making a lot of money and buying a lot of buildings, or select a middle course. There are three different ways the game can end, so a player that is building a lot or shipping a lot can try to bring the game to the end before an opponent?s plan can come to full flower. Again, in Puerto Rico, timing is everything. The greatest plan in the world can be no good if the game ends a turn too soon.

The game is recommended for ages twelve and up and that's pretty accurate for most kids. The game is relatively easy to learn, the abilities and privileges of each role are on the card, as are the abilities of the buildings. There's a PC version available, and sites where the game can be played online. There's a plethora of information available about the game at Boardgamegeek.com.

Puerto Rico is published in North America by Rio Grande Games and is for 3-5 players. Games take 45 to 90 minutes, depending on the number of players. Puerto Rico should be available locally at a specialty game shop. Even if the shop doesn't have the game in stock, many are happy to special-order them. Your local store is a great place to learn more about these great games. Online, I'd suggest going to Google, click on Froogle and search for the game by name.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

Time to Teach You About Tichu

By Ward Batty

This week we are going to focus on a popular four-player partnership card game called Tichu, which is pronounced like "teach-you," see how funny my headline is now? When I had a store we had an employee who said that Tichu was adapted from an old Chinese game played with a regular deck of cards called Zheng Fen. Of course, he said the same thing about Monopoly, so who knows? What I can confirm is that Tichu was designed by Urs Hostettler and first published in Germany in 1991. Tichu is currently available in North America from Rio Grande Games.

The Tichu deck consists of a standard 52-card deck and four special cards, Mah Jong, Dog, Phoenix and Dragon. After receiving their hand of fourteen cards, players select three cards they give to each of the other three players. Before playing their first card, each player has the right to declare a small "Tichu" If he then wins the round, his team receives an extra 100 points - otherwise the team loses 100 points. The object of Tichu is to be the first to play all your cards.

A player may lead a card, or any of the following combinations of cards: a pair, a run of pairs of adjoining values (8,8,9,9,10,10, for example), three cards of the same value, a full house (triple and pair), or a straight of at least five cards. The next player may either pass or play a similar combination but of a higher value. The only exception to this rule is playing the "Bomb," which is a straight flush or four of a kind. It is legal for players to pass and then come back in again as long as some other player played in between.

If all four players pass consecutively, the player who last played takes the trick and starts play again. Play continues until three of the four players have played all of their cards. The one player remaining, who still has cards in his hand, gives any remaining cards in his hand to the opposing team and all the tricks he has won to the winner of the round (the player who was the first to play all his cards). The hand is now scored. Fives, Tens and Kings are worth points, and each hand worth one hundred points (without bonuses). The first team to a thousand points wins. Full rules as well as a description of the four special cards can be found at the Game Cabinet.

To try to convey the great appeal of Tichu, I asked several players to help explain the zeal the game engenders. Derek Carver says "To knock Bridge would be crazy. Yet Bridge is one of the only games I know where simply learning the rules doesn't allow you to play the game. It is the conventions that have been superimposed upon the game that have made it what it is. This means it's no use visiting friends and saying 'Let's have a great evening at cards - I'll teach you Bridge!' Tichu on the other hand can certainly be taught in a normal gaming evening and it'll then simply depend upon your 'card sense' as to whether you play it well.

"What do I find so great about Tichu?" asks Michael Weston, "Tichu has several elements that each provides for a fun mental challenge in a trick taking game with almost the depth of Bridge, at least Bridge up to the moderate level of play. There's the real angst and tension of calling a Tichu. The decision of what to pass is not always cut-and-dried, especially the card to your partner. How to play any given hand can vary and shift. You could repeat the exact same deal several times and play quite differently each time."

Of his Tichu experience, Chris Lohroff says "As a person that is learning to play bridge my first comment would be that is a LOT more accessible than bridge. After more than a year of playing at lunch everyday, we still have to refer to our bridge bidding convention sheets. A person can learn the basics of Tichu and play reasonably well after just a few games."

Jonathan Degann says, "What I like about the game is that it lets you look at your hand and create alternative strategies around playing it and organizing it. Every hand is a story, and you have to direct it to its full potential to determine if it has a happy or sad ending."

"It is neat how a given hand can be organized multiple ways. Do I play this really long straight, knowing that it will break up some low unmatched pairs - or do I break up the straight so that I can keep my pairs together? What can I do to get the lead and how will I be able to keep it? Do I have a viable plan for getting it back if I lose it prematurely? I suppose experienced Bridge players go through the same thing. I don't play Bridge and can't speak for them. But I am able to plot out the life of my hand in Tichu with more interest than with any one-card-at-a-time trick taking game that I play."

Richard Irving says "In learning Tichu, one should stopping calling it, and trying to play it as, a "trick-taking game" because it is not. This misapprehension that Tichu is a trick-taking game causes many new players to mistake the capturing of point cards (which is an important aspect of many actual trick-taking games) and forego getting out as quickly as possible (which is never part of any trick-taking game.) Many new players focus on not playing the Dragon or Phoenix when necessary --because it'll cost you 25 points or trying to capture that pair of 10's, etc. These are habits are ingrained from playing trick taking games."

I'll give Matthew Baldwin the last word. "I'm relatively new to Tichu (just started playing a few months ago), but hooked all the same. Perhaps my favorite aspect is that it feels like the best parts of a whole range of game genres packed into one package. There's the partnership element of bridge; there's the "try to go out first" element from Great Dalmuti; there's the "try to capture points" element of Spades; there's the "create combinations" element from poker and rummy; and while a player may have a grand strategy, he may need to make tactical decision based on how the hand plays out. There's also the gambling element: not just in the call of Tichu, but in the decision to break up a good combination to take a trick: Should I play an ace, claim this trick, and save my other ace for a future play, or should I hang onto it and keep the two aces as a pair?"

"The game is less huge helping of a single food and more a buffet."

Ward Batty enjoys a good buffet and is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

If I Were King of the Forest

By Ward Batty

Since I closed my game store in early 2005 and have been doing freelance writing, I've received some interesting job offers. One of the more interesting occurred recently. It was from a game company we'll call the Acme Game Co. A third party passed on the offer in the form of "How would you like to be Mr. Acme Game Co.?" I have a job co-publishing Comic Shop News, but thanks to the timesaving computer and internet it doesn't take as many days each week as it used to, which is why I've had time to do the writing and, prior to that, my store. But it was, as presented, such an intriguing idea that I had to at least entertain it.

I received the offer at Essen and it was a week before I finally was able to speak with Acme, so I made a bunch of notes of ideas, which I presented to them at first opportunity. This is probably not the best way to get hired, "Hi, thanks for considering me for the position, here's everything you are doing wrong." But I wanted them to know what they were getting if they hired me. Turns out, as they so tactfully put it, they were really in need of "someone to handle the daily nuts and bolts of the business rather than the strategic needs" which has less appeal to me, so I passed. I ended up with all these notes and nothing to do with them, so I decided to share them with you and at least I'll get a column out of the experience. Plus it is always nice to be asked.


Many of the notes dealt with specifics of how they are currently running things at Acme as well as properties that might be worth looking at, so I'll omit all that. For our purposes, I'll just include my more general ideas about how I would have run things. The advantage of these ideas is they won't be put to the cruel test of reality, so they will always be pure. That's why we have columnists, BTW.

I advised Acme to stop selling direct. This was always an issue with me as a retailer, the publisher as a competitor. They have what's called a three-tier system, (publisher/distributor/retailer) which I think works for a reason. Also, I don't think it is the best use of the publisher's time and efforts at conventions. This is a complex issue I can't address in detail in this space or forum, but that's what I would do of I had become Mr. Acme Games.

One advantage of not selling direct is it greatly simplifies what is needed to have a presence at more conventions, since if you aren't trying to be a retailer, you can use a mostly volunteer workforce at these events. Looney Labs has a volunteer force called "Bunnies" that is something to behold. Not a week went by when I had a store that I wasn't contacted by a Bunny about doing an in-store demo for one of their games. I'm not sure how they accomplish such a devoted group of volunteers, but it is an invaluable asset to them and I wanted to see how to replicate it.

Another idea worth stealing is the promotion Days of Wonder did with the Sir Bedivere figure for Shadows Over Camelot. When you have a game where it would be relatively cheap to create a bonus card, tile or piece that would be a great thing that can be distributed through retailers, conventions and magazines. They do this more with CCGs, and while obviously a gimmick, I think it adds a lot of value and enhances the customer's experience.

There was a great promotional video that one of the CCG companies did a couple of years back. It was an attractive girl doing a demo of this card game. It was maybe five minutes. You could download it as a movie file and I believe they also made it available on a DVD to shops. With digital technology these promotional films are much cheaper to do and edit and distribute than in the past, and I think that would be worth doing. This leads me to the next thing I wanted to explore, a rule-set that would be included on a DVD with every game. A combination of flash animation and digital shots of the game would be very doable at this point. People dread having to learn the game from the rules and, as we all know, having someone who can show and explain the rules is preferable than having to plum the rulebook.

The educational supply and toy stores are a much bigger market in the US than the game stores. Parents will also spend more for an item they believe is educational or mentally stimulating. There are hurdles in terms of distribution, but that market is always worth pursuing.

I've had a dream of selling small box and card games from vending machines at airports. You can buy an ipod from a vending machine, why not a game?

I don't believe that the Rio Grande Games model of gang printing in Germany to create an English version of the game will work at this point for anyone other than RGG and Mayfair. Acme probably isn't getting first or even second dibs on new games published in Germany, so they are stuck releasing lesser titles, which is no way to establish a reputation. With the dollar still weak against the euro you end up with very pricey games, which are harder to sell. Most US publishers have responded by trying to get the rights to produce the English-language version, which is then generally produced in China so it can be list priced at $35 and not $50. $40 is sort of a magic number for boardgames in this market. If you have something that costs more than $40, there needs to be something spectacular about it. There are a lot of games in the marketplace and I think that the Days of Wonder approach of releasing fewer games and making sure each is really good makes more sense than a more scattershot approach of releasing a game a month or more. If you can make the numbers work, I'd say between 2 and 4 releases a year would be ideal. Gives you a chance to focus your marketing.

Which brings me to the next thing I'd do if I was Mr. Acme Games Co. and that's get some mainstream press coverage! I maintain a site that links to mainstream media stories about board games. Maybe 5% of these stories are about "our" kind of games. I don't understand why publishers get so little free press but I am certain I could change that. In the two years I had my store, we had around a half-dozen stories on local (and in one case national) media and we are just a store. I am certain I could get Acme much more press than anyone currently receives. Very few game publishers send out press releases, so it won't be that hard to do better. I'd also develop better relationships with what we'll call the fan press.

I have a theory that comics and science fiction people (the other two fandoms I'm familiar with) tend to include the liberal arts majors while gamers tend to be more the engineering and math types. The results of this can be seen in how we write about our hobby. With comics and SF you get reviews, of course, but also a lot of writing about the hobby and a strong emphasis on the history of the hobby and the creators involved. You get things like faan fiction. Our closest version of that might be variants, open game systems and the fact that every gamer is also a closet designer. But most writing about games is reviews that include detailed descriptions of the game mechanics. Almost like something you'd find in a user's manual or scientific review. Of course, I'm making generalizations here and, of course, all generalizations are wrong. I'm digressing, but the net effect is that game publishers send out press releases much less than comics publishers. Comics also get a ton more mass-media coverage than boardgames and the level of the mass media's understanding of the medium is much more sophisticated than it is for board games. But educating the public is a process and it takes time.

I would have Acme sponsor a design competition modeled after the Hippodice. I suspect the officiating is a bit of a nightmare. Since it is such a close-knit community, maybe make the designer identity a secret during the competition and only announce the winners' names. Acme could promise to publish the winning design as the big prize.

That's it. Obviously, I'm not re-inventing the wheel here. Most of these ideas aren't original, but hardly anybody is following this particular course either. It would have been interesting being Mr. Acme Games, but I would've had to give up all my writing, and I already have another project I'm pursuing. I may never be Mr. Acme Games, but I'll always be Mr. Entrepreneur.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

Reiner Knizia by the Numbers

By Ward Batty

Reiner Knizia is probably the most prolific game designer of all time, with over 200 published games. The number of Knizia games that have been or are scheduled to be published this year alone is over forty. While some of these are re-releases of older, previously published games, for one designer to produce so many titles is quite a feat. Consider that most boardgame companies don't release forty games a year.

You don't achieve this sort of creative production without taking a systematic approach. Knizia rises at 4:30 each morning, a habit from his days when we was designing games in addition to working in banking. His early morning hours, during which he says he is his most creative, are spent exercising and thinking about his designs. His afternoons are spent in his office, dealing with publishers and other tasks, such as speaking with the press. Evenings are spent in play testing sessions with the number of groups around London, where he currently resides.

Knizia says that game design has been an interest of his since early childhood. "I have some games in the basement that I designed when I was six years old. Even so, in my early years, I never tried to publish any of these games. The excitement was in playing them. It seemed that I could never find, or be able to afford, enough new games in the shops and I didn't see the themes that interested me, so I would invent my own to play. I would also make a lot of games around Monopoly. We would play it sometimes, but I would also take the money from the game and improvise a new game around that. With many games, I would play it a few times, get an overview, and start experimenting with my own rules."

Unlike many designers who work on games with other designers, Knizia works alone. While he is the sole designer, Knizia works in conjunction with his many play test groups. By working with several groups of play testers he can draw on their collective experience. "I'm very sure it wouldn't work for me to collaborate with one specific other designer. When I'm very excited about a game I can become very obsessed about it and will spend a lot of time on it. With my play testers I get a lot of input from them and I owe them a lot. We have been together now for many years and they bring a lot of variety into the process."

Knowing Knizia's past as a mathematician and having played many of his games that feature number cards, often with one through six, I had concocted a theory of how Knizia was sharing his inherent love of numbers with the world through his games. Reality differs from my theory in this case as he tells me that most of his game designs begin with the theme. "The theme, mechanics and the materials in the game must work as one unit and if they don't gel together I think the game is not complete. Sometimes people say that my games are a bit abstract. I'm a more scientific man. My approach is that the game should have very simple rules and depth of play comes out of these simple and unified rules. There may be a lot of details, but usually I have a good thematic reason for these additions."

Does Reiner Knizia have an inherent love for the numbers 1-6? "I think that every designer has his own handwriting,? admits Knizia, "Maybe you discover things about me from playing my games that I don't know about myself. But I am a scientist and that influences my character and how I see the world. So maybe my games have more of the analytical side stressed, not because I am doing this in awareness but more because that's who I am and that's how my world looks like. But there is a second aspect to it. I believe that games and especially the rules should be simple. I don't, for example, think it is necessary to operate with big numbers. Why should players have to add up 47 plus 39? I'm trying to reduce the game points and many aspects of the game to very simple numbers and mechanics. If players fight over 4 or 5 points it is the same as if they fight over 400 or 500 points. Therefore I am reducing many of my systems to small numbers. The numbers 1-6 does not obsess me; it is just that when you reduce it to small numbers you will always end up with the numbers 1-6. I don't want to distract people with big numbers or the handling of the game components. I want to make the world very easy to the players so they can then concentrate on their game strategy."

Knizia's systematic approach also extends to the type of games he designs. These cover a wide range from Tigress & Euphrates, one of the most-respected "gamer's games" to children's games and even licensed tie-in. Knizia has designed games for such properties as the Lord of the Rings, Simpsons, Bibi Blocksberg, Star Wars, King Arthur and even Donald Duck. "When I decided to design games full-time eight years ago, I didn't want to dig deeper into the same type game all the time." Knizia says, "I wanted to spread out my interest. I want to work for different audiences, work with different game systems, and different themes even different possibilities like having electronics in the game. So I want to do children's games and two-player games and whatever else I can think of. Anything I haven't done yet is particularly exciting for me. I read Donald Duck comics as a child, so now to be doing a game with that character, I find that very thrilling. It took a while to be able to get access to these projects and now I enjoy having that access."

After creating mostly games for the adult and family market early in his career, over the last few years he has turned his interest to children's games. You can't just take a strategy game and make the strategy easier, Knizia says, "I think that would be the wrong approach to fascinate children. Children see the world with different eyes. They touch much more than we adults do. They want to experience the game with their fingers and hands and even put things in their mouth. So the experience and the components play a much bigger role. This fires up their imagination. You can't put a black and white abstract thing in front of them and say this is so-and-so, they just don't see that. So I think one needs to come from a more optical and tactile experience. The world of the game needs to be the kids' world, simple and lovely. The rules need to be very short and simple. You need to speak to the kids through their language, to their perception of the world."

Children's games have to be play tested with kids and this has its particular challenges, says Knizia. "One good thing is that the kids are not nice to you, they are simply honest. They don't even say anything, necessarily. You can tell by watching if they are fascinated with the game. Either they are concentrating on the game or they run off and do something else. You get very good feedback and very good insights. Since I've been playing with children, especially small children, I've learned a lot about the essence of playing. Of course they also have a great ability to destroy everything. My prototypes usually don't last very long when I'm playing them with kids (laughs). But that's part of the play testing as well because then we know what materials we can and can not use."

One can't get over 200 games published without an understanding of the commercial side of the business. Knizia explains there are two very different categories of game design. "One is the pre-game design where I come up with my own ideas and I'm not thinking of the finished product. The other is an up-front agreement to do a specific type of game and then I have to deliver that. The first kind is much more fun. I sit down and develop my own ideas and then I don't really have a target group in mind. I always say the game is like a child. You can lead and you can guide it, but eventually it develops by itself and it will have its own personality." During the development process, a game might start as a card or a board game and then would develop into a tile-laying game and then the theme would change. Many games that are published end up being very different from the genesis of the idea. "Why should I restrict myself by saying this has to be a certain way? It is best to let the game naturally develop into something that can create the most fun and excitement."

The other type is when there is an up-front agreement. "In these situations," explains Knizia; "I need a publisher and the agreement up front so we can acquire the license. Then there is also the understanding of what the target market is, how expensive the game will be, at what point in time will it come out and what sort of materials we can use. So there are many restrictions coming in and of course you also have a deadline. So it is less fun, more work and much more demanding. It's a much bigger challenge to do, but, of course, these are usually the big, very exciting projects which are certainly worth doing as well."

Knizia has been successful getting games published in both the US and Europe, but acknowledges that the markets are different. Says Knizia, "In America, the theme is seen as the game where as in the European the game mechanics and the game system are seen as the game." Knizia tells a story about when he took a game prototype to America. It had an Egyptian theme and when an American publisher saw the theme they said, "We are not interested in this game, we have a game about Egypt and we don't need another." So Egypt was the game to them. Knizia asked them "Won't you at least have a look at it?" and they said no, we don't want this game. A few weeks later he was back in Germany showed the same game to a German publisher. The publisher sees the game has an Egyptian theme and says "Oh, are just in preparation of an Egyptian-themed game, so the Egyptian theme wouldn't work for us. But let's see the game first and then we can see what we'll do about the theme." In Germany the game was not the theme, but the game system. So there is a very different perception of what is a "game." For Knizia, that understanding is the starting point for what games he offers to the different markets.

But even in the same market, publishers are very different. They have their own niches and look for their own products, but they also vary in how they produce the games and the criteria by which they choose what to publish. Once accepted, some will take the game as delivered and some want to add their own ideas. "Sometimes these ideas are good, and sometimes they are not so good." says Knizia, "Some publishers are much more pleasant to work with than other publishers. So you have a selection process where publishers are trying to choose the good games and I am trying to choose the good publishers."

Some Knizia games have more lives than Shirley McClain's cat. Quandary, Thor, Flinke Pinke and Loco are all various incarnations of the same basic game. Colossal Arena is a card game where creatures battle to the death and was previously published as Titan: The Arena. In one of the stranger re-theming of a game, it was originally published in Germany as Grand National Derby, based around the famous horse race in England. Knizia explains, "The mechanics were relatively simple and it worked very nicely. It is a steeplechase and a lot of horses do not finish and drop out during the different hurdles. Then when the idea came from the American publisher to do a Titan: the Arena game we needed to beef it up a little bit. So more thematic elements came in and that brought a bigger range of different abilities for the cards, which the original horses didn't have. So we have a game that was very much liked in both markets with very different themes. Another example is my game Through the Desert, which is now a game of moving caravans. The working title of my original design was Rockefeller. The original idea was an island filled with rich people each trying to out-do each other by building the biggest palace and the biggest golf course and linked to the nicest areas of the island. These became oasis and palm trees and caravans of camels. This theme was actually suggested by the publisher because they thought they could position it better. They were right as the game has done well in many different languages."

When a game is re-published Knizia admits he is rarely picking up the game again in such an intense way. It usually works one of two ways. He leaves the game as is, perhaps making changes in the wording of the rules, but not the rules themselves. In other cases, he uses the opportunity to significantly change the game, so it is almost a new game. Knizia says, "Sometimes a different market requires something else like we did with Shotten Totten which became Battle Line that had extra cards that were not in the basic game. The extra cards make it thematically richer, which I think is the right thing for the American market."

Knizia thinks that electronics will become part of the future of boardgames. He points out that electronics are everywhere, in all sorts of products we use and we aren't aware of them because we don't have to think about them. In games there has been a separation between the social boardgames and electronic games. The electronic games are played in front of a screen while boardgames are more social and you played around a table with other people. With new technology, this is changing and he thinks the challenge now is to integrate the electronics into the game in a way that the player doesn't have to learn to operate these electronics, it simply happens. Knizia designed one of the most innovative electronic games to date with the King Arthur game, published in Germany by Ravensburger in 2003. Knizia says the real innovation of the game is not in the electronics, but in the board, which was produced with conductive ink. "That's where the magic starts. Players sit around the table and play it as usual, moving their figures around the board, but each figure has a chip and when the figure is placed on a space, through the conductive ink, the chip communicates with the unit without the player doing anything. So the unit knows who that player is and where they are and what they are doing. That enables the electronics to react so that players meet different characters and face different challenges. It brings up a totally new and enriched game atmosphere. The electronics really support and drives along the game without the player having to do anything. That's how electronics will be accepted into social games, as a supporting and enriching factor, and we will see many more of these games in the future." Unfortunately for game fans stateside, the game speaks and there's no English version available at this point.

Sometimes a game that is very simple on the face of it has a certain "x-factor," a secret ingredient of fun that materializes. Games like Trendy, Exxtra and Honeybears are good examples of simple games by Knizia that have this quality. Is this something that can be consciously designed? "I think that is something that I strive for," says Knizia, "You can recognize it in play testing, but not something that you can plan for. Through intensive testing I want to get this sub-conscious element that grabs the people. They don't know why it grabs them and they don't need to know. I'm the designer. I need to put that in and they can just enjoy it. But there are certain elements of the game that click with people. That's the right mechanic. Another one works as well but this is the mechanic that grabs the people, that stimulates them and encourages them to open themselves. This comes through a lot of testing and good luck as well. But it is something to watch out for and to bring a game to the situation where people say 'I don't know what it is about it, but this is a game I like.' Of course this is a rare process. It is very difficult to get there, but with all the testing that's where I'm trying to drive my games."

As anyone who has tried their hand at game design knows, a simple and elegant game is often the most difficult to achieve. So which is easier for Knizia to design? "A complex game that plays very long and has a lot of aspects integrated into it needs a lot of testing and is quite a challenge to do. A smaller card game is in this respect simpler to do, so I think in this respect complexity requires more work. If I have a big game, I want to make this game really round, taking off the corners and so it is intuitive to play and, perhaps unconsciously, very addictive. I think making a well-rounded game is always difficult and that can be for a small card game or a children's game as well as a bigger game. How many rough corners are there in the individual categories? Fixing that's quite hard to do. Making an 80% game is very easy. A lot of games that are out there are just 80% finished. With more testing the game could be more elegant and the last 20% takes a lot of time. That's the difficult part."

Knizia has never self-published and has strong opinions on the subject. "Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and I think that designing games and publishing games are two very different occupations." Knizia says. "I have a limited number of hours in the day and in my life and I want to do the things I can do best. If I started self-publishing, that means I would have to get into the production and then the selling and distributing of the games. It requires very different experience and it is a totally different business. I want to stay in the game design business and not go into the publishing business. If I say yes to something else then I have to say no to game designing, at least to a certain degree, and I don't want to do that. I think it's a very naive thing to say 'Now that I've designed a game I think I'll self-publish it.' I might as well become a book publisher or produce music CDs. That seems odd, but simply saying about a game 'that's the same product, so I can do that.' Well no, I can't, and I won't. The desperation of some people saying 'no one will publish my game so I'll do it' is, in my eyes, a very dangerous temptation.

A detailed discussion of Knizia's prolific output could fill a book, but I couldn't resist asking about a recent favorite of mine, and a game that is rather unusual for a Knizia design, Ingenious. About the game, Knizia says, "It is now out in 12 or 13 different languages and still growing in the market. It was agreed up front that we wanted to do a more abstract game and see if we can bring out the fascinations through the tactical and tactile fascination with the pieces and what is created with simple game play and an exciting scoring mechanism. I was very fascinated to do that because abstract games can be difficult to play and it is usually a risk to develop. It was relatively straightforward. I never ran into any real big problems. There was a lot of testing, of course. I think it turned out very well and a lot of people mention it to me. There will be a CD ROM version coming out soon that will have tweaks and extra challenges."

Another favorite is Tigris & Euphrates, one of the most original and challenging games available. I was very intrigued to hear that a card game version was planned, and was quite impressed when I had the chance to try it at the game fair in Essen, Germany. About the game, Knizia says, "It is called the Euphrat & Tigris card game for a reason because the core elements of Euphrat & Tigris are in there as well. You don't have to know the board game, but what you have the four different colors, the king, the trader, the priest and the farmer and you have the leaders again so you are building kingdoms but with cards and no board. It isn't a two-dimensional way but more a one-dimensional way where the kingdoms are columns and you play the cards in the columns. I wanted to make it very simple so you don't have any scoring cubes. Whenever you make a red point or a green point you have to play these points as cards from your hand. So if you make a green point and don't have any more green cards you don't get any points. There's a different component to it. It is not only that you want to play the right cards into the kingdoms but you also want to keep the right cards to score your points with. So it's much simpler than the board game but the basic elements are there. You have the kingdoms, you have the leaders, and only one color of leader can be in a kingdom. You have internal conflicts, which are still done on the red colors, and you have external conflicts when you join together two columns of kingdoms and they are fought out with card colors of the conflicting leaders. There are treasures; every kingdom has a treasure, so when you combine two kingdoms the trader can take the treasure. The game ends when all the cards are played or all the treasures except two are taken. So the basic elements are there but the entire approach is a true card game and therefore simpler and much shorter to play than the board game."

With so many published games, what is Knizia's favorite? "There's no one game that I can say this is my absolute favorite game. It depends very much with whom I play. With different players I play very different games. It's a different atmosphere, a different mood. The history of what we've played before comes into the new game. There is no absolute favorite game. But, having said that, I'm hardly playing any of my published games. I'm usually playing my unpublished prototypes because there are so many on the go and in this respect always the new games I'm working on are my favorite games. Whenever there's an opportunity to play again, I can't wait to play these new designs and drive them forward and see how they develop. So my favorite game changes all the time."

It would seem that one could get jaded after having so many games published. But Knizia says it is still exciting when the published version arrives. "There are some games I particularly look forward to because I have a lot of effort going into it." explains Knizia, "For example King Arthur or The Island game because of all the electronics. We are no longer playing from our imagination but are playing the real thing, or the Blue Moon world with all the fascinating graphics. Of course getting your first game or book published is something special and I don't think you can really repeat that, but it is still great seeing the final product and it makes me very proud."

The Finer Reiner
A half-dozen Reiner Knizia games that should be welcomed into any game collection.

Tigris & Euphrates, Euphrat & Tigris Card Game
Tigris & Euphrates, published in the US by Mayfair, is one of my top five favorite boardgames of all time. This is an extremely interesting and challenging tile-laying game that gives players plenty to consider. The Euphrat & Tigris Card Game, just released here by Rio Grande Games (using the original German title), really captures the feel of the boardgame but is more streamlined and plays in less than half the time.

Winner's Circle
This is a rock-solid horse racing and wagering game, which is my favorite of the genre. Very well balanced, with a nice mix of luck and skill. Always a fun ride. It was released in Germany as Royal Turf in 2001 and the new version in English should be finally available from Face2Face Games.

Ra
A wonderful auction game set in Egypt. Unavailable for years and going for over $100 on ebay, it has been reprinted by überplay in a new edition that features the original art by Franz Vohwinkel.

Lost Cities
This is a great two-player game, available from Rio Grande Games. It's sort of a competitive solitaire but with lots of game tension (that's a good thing, really!). An especially good game for couples.

Ingenious
This is a wonderful abstract game that is easy to learn but has lots of interesting decisions. My favorite version is the 4-player partnership.

Tutankhamen
This is a very original set-collection game where all the information is public. Players travel along a path of artifacts, wanting to have the most or second-most when the last artifact is collected. Released in the US in a very nice, compact and affordable version from Out of the Box Publishing.

Author's note: An abbreviated version of this article was originally published in Knucklebones magazine #2 in January 2006. When I was assigned to interview Dr. Knizia it was for a 2,000 word article. I ended up with more material than they had space for, and they were able to stretch it to 2,500 words or so. This is the first time the full 4,000-word article has appeared.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

Strategy for Two

By Ward Batty

With Chess and Go, does the world really need more abstract strategy games for two? Clearly the answer is yes, as this has been a popular category of games for centuries. Some of my favorites are part of what is known as Project GIPF by designer Kris Burm and published in North America by Rio Grande Games.

Project GIPF is a series of two-player abstract strategy games. They are stand-alone games, but the designer has also created what he calls "potentials" which are optional add-ons that can increase the possibilities and increase the complexities of the games. The games in the series are Gipf, Tamsk, Zertz, Dvonn, Yinsh and Punct. All of these games are interesting and worthwhile, but I'm going to focus on three of my favorites.

Zertz is played on a board that is made of washer-like discs. They are arranged into a large hexagon shape. There are 5 white, 7 grey and 9 black marbles available for play. The rules are simple. On your turn, if you can capture a marble, you must. Just like in checkers, marbles can jump over another marble to capture; multiple marbles may be captured if possible, just like checkers. If you can't capture a marble, the turn consists of adding a marble and removing one of the discs that lie along the outside edge of the board. So the board changes as the game progresses. You can capture a group of marbles by removing the disc that isolates them from the rest of the board. The object is to capture 3 white, 4 grey or 5 black marbles, or 2 marbles of each color.

The game rarely goes the same way twice because of the deteriorating board, varied winning conditions and the ability to capture multiple pieces in different ways. The rule where you set up your play by forcing your opponent to make a capture is a great one. Zertz is the game I've played the most and it always rewards with a great play experience.

Dvonn takes an old game mechanic and improves on it. This time the pieces are just flat discs, 23 black, 23 white and 3 that are colored like pepperoni. No one who has seen it has ever disagreed with this description. Players are moving pieces or stacks of pieces in an attempt to end up with stacks with their own color on top. The player whose piece is on top of the stack controls its movement. Stacks may be moved as many spaces as the number of pieces in that stack. Any time a group or stack of pieces become separated from one of the three pepperoni pieces they are removed from the game. The goal is to have control of the most pieces at the end of the game.

Yinsh has a familiar goal, get five pieces of your color in a row. However, the manner in which this is accomplished is unique. Each turn, a player moves one of the rings they have on the board. Every time a marker is moved the player places a marker in the space the ring originated. These markers are white on one side and black on the other. If you pass the ring over other markers, they are flipped and so the marker color will change. If in doing this player gets five markers in a row of their color, they remove those markers and a ring. The goal is to be the first player to collect three rings. Of course, removing the rings limits the player's available choices, so the game gets trickier as it progresses. The relatively straightforward goal of Yinsh makes it the most accessible game in the series, in my opinion.

There's not a bad game in the bunch, but these three are my favorites. The GIPF series is one of the more impressive accomplishments in recent boardgame design. To learn more about these games, visit the GIPF site at http://www.gipf.com/.

These games should be available locally at a specialty game shop. Even if the shop doesn't have the game in stock, many are happy to special-order them. Your local store is a great place to learn more about these great games. Online, I'd suggest going to Google, click on Froogle and search for the game by name.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

Cards, Anyone?

In my introductory column I said this column would cover boardgames and custom card games that don't use the standard 52-card deck. It's taken nine columns, but I'm finally getting to card games. There are as many interesting and unique designer card games being created as board games. So where to start?

Let's start with Circus Flohcati because it is a game that works well for very young children through adults. It also says it plays up to five but I've played it with six players many times. The name is a combination of English and German and is about a flea circus. If you don't know what a flea circus is, ask your parents or grandparents if necessary, you won't believe the answer.

With Circus Flohcati there are ten suits in different colors numbered 0 to 7, illustrated with ten different names and types of flea circus acts. The first player flips over the top card and takes it if they want. If not, another card is flipped. As long as the suit of the new card is not the same as a card showing, it may be taken by the player or added to the display. Players continue to flip over cards until they take one, or until a card of a suit that is showing is flipped in which case that card is discarded and that player's turn ends with them getting no card.

The game ends when someone has collected one card from each suit. That player gets a bonus, but everyone adds up the face value of his or her cards. There are three action cards. Two that let you steal a card from another player and one that allows the player to keep rolling cards until they get a match, discard it and still draw a card.

This is a great game for kids and adults. It generally runs ten to fifteen minutes and has lots of replay value. Circus Flohcati is by Reiner Knizia and published by Rio Grande Games.

San Juan is a card game version of boardgame called Puerto Rico, but works very well on its own whether you have played Puerto Rico or not. This is an innovative game of city building and economics. The cards represent buildings, which are worth victory points and have additional functions. Some cards produce goods, which can be sold for more cards, while others have unique abilities that aid that player.

There are five "role" cards (not like in D&D, don't be scared). Each player selects a role such as builder. That player, as the builder, gets a one-card discount on the cost of playing a new building card face up. The other players will also be able to build at the regular price. If a card costs five to build, a player will place that card face up and discard five cards from their hand as payment. Other roles include the chance to use their production buildings to produce, and then later sell that product or draw a new card. Players are constantly trying to acquire more cards so they can build more buildings.

The particular abilities of the buildings are important and getting buildings in combinations where the abilities compliment each other, say a building that increases production and another that allows players to trade an extra good, is the key to success. The game is a race to build twelve buildings but all players will add up the value of their buildings to determine a winner. The game usually lasts 20-30 minutes and works well for two, three and four players. San Juan is by Andreas Seyfarth and is published by Rio Grande Games.

Finally I'll mention another fast and fun card game called No Thanks!. It is a very simple and is fast but has a bit of bite to it. There's a deck of cards numbered 3 to 35. Each player gets eleven chips. The deck is shuffled and nine cards are randomly removed from the game without looking at them. A card is flipped. If a player wants it they take it. If not, they pay a chip. When someone takes a card they get it and all the chips players have paid to avoid it. Chips are worth a point and cards are worth minus the face value in points. However, if you get consecutive numbers, only the smallest numbered card is counted against the player. The fun in the game is making others pay you to take a card that you want, but they can't really afford to take. The game always unfolds nicely, accommodates 3-5 and takes maybe 10 minutes to play. No Thanks! is by Thorsten Gimmler and is published by Z-Man Games.

These games should be available locally at a specialty game shop. Even if the shop doesn't have the game in stock, many are happy to special-order them. Your local store is a great place to learn more about these great games. Online, I'd suggest going to Google, click on Froogle and search for the game by name. I promise I won't wait another nine weeks to talk about card games again.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

News and Notes from the GAMA Trade Show

By Ward Batty

I had the pleasure of attending the GTS (GAMA Trade Show) in Las Vegas last week. This is a trade show of game store retailers, distributors and publishers. While most of the games are for what I'd call the hobby-game market such as role-playing games and collectible card games, boardgames are increasing each year and a number of publishers were there with new and upcoming releases. Here are my highlights of upcoming releases.

Days of Wonder had the latest release from their successful Ticket to Ride game series by Alan Moon. Ticket to Ride is a railroad connection game, which was followed by Ticket to Ride Europe. They have won fourteen international game awards, including the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) in Germany for Ticket to Ride. Over a half-million copies of the two games have been sold to date.

The latest game in the series is Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition. According to Days of Wonder, train hobbyists consider Märklin the premier name in the model train world. This German company has been around for over 140 years and is the world's leader in the miniature train hobby. The board for the Märklin Edition is based on a map of Germany and introduces passengers and merchandise to the Ticket to Ride game play. Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition will be available in April.

Atlas Game has a clever road building/earthquake game called Seismic. I had the opportunity to play the game with designer Ted Alspach. Players build roads and score for the length as well as the value of the ends, but all roads lead from San Andreas, California, so players are going to lose roads to earthquakes. The game won't be available until July.

The horses are on the track. Face2Face Games is releasing a personal favorite game of mine. This great horse racing game by Reiner Knizia was released in Germany as Royal Turf and will be released this spring as Winner's Circle. While the horses move by the roll of a die, the horses can be handicapped and the payout is adjusted based on how many bets the horse received. The game play is very straightforward and the races can be exciting and fun. I'm glad to see this available again and in English for the first time.

The most intriguing new company there was Immortal Eyes Games. It is a new branch of Winning Moves and will be releasing three games this summer, Terra Nova, Conquest of Pangea and Pecking Order. Winning Moves Germany has released a number of good games that have been released in English not by Winning Moves US, which concentrates on games for the mass-market stores, but by other US companies. With Immortal Eyes Games, Winning Moves is bringing these releases in-house.

There was a lot of other news of interest from the event. For a full report, check out Rick Thornquists' Boardgamenews.com.

Imagine There's No Boardwalk

I've been reading and enjoying Bob Spitz's The Beatles and was intrigued to learn that John Lennon and George Harrison were "Monopoly fiends". In the book, Spitz quotes Art Schreiber who was one of five reporters (two American, three British) designated to follow the Beatles on the 1964 North American tour. According to Schreiber, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney played poker while Lennon and Harrison hustled him into "cutthroat" games of Monopoly. "Lennon was a fiend, and extremely competitive. He got so keyed up over the game, he had to stand up to roll the dice." Schreiber recalled that they would get to a new city and no sooner than he had checked into his room the phone would ring with Lennon wanting him to come play and the games could last until dawn.

My reporter's curiosity up, I found even more on this subject. In an article by Rick Nathanson in the Braille Monitor in 2003, Schreiber says that Lennon "wanted so badly to get Park Place and Boardwalk. He could stand to lose the game, as long as when he lost he had Park Place and Boardwalk."

Harrison was preoccupied with acquiring the B&O Railroad. "I asked him why he wanted the B&O so badly, and he never did tell me. He never did tell me much of anything. We'd play until sunrise and during this whole time George would say practically nothing."

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

Getting Childish with "Fluff Daddy"

By Ward Batty

Mark Jackson may have the earned the moniker "Fluff Daddy" for his love of light and easy games, especially kids games, but he is quite serious about getting kids to play games and making the experience a positive one for everyone involved. This week the Game Table taps the Fluff Daddy Brain Trust for some advice on kids and games.

"The first thing is to have fun yourself," says Jackson, "Most kids thrive off the energy & interest of adults, and that carries right over into playing board games with them. A bored adult will inspire boredom in a child."

"Second, you need to pick games that you can enjoy together. Way too many 'children's games' are barely fun for kids, let alone for adults who get roped into playing them. Luckily, there's a lot of good stuff out there, but you won't typically find it at your average 'big box' store."

Playing games teaches kids lots of valuable lessons, both socially as well as from the decisions required from the game itself. Valuable lessons kids learn are how to win, as well as how to lose. For many kids, a game may only seem to be worthwhile activities of they win. Jackson says, "A helpful analogy might be baseball. A .400 hitter is considered hot stuff - but that means he only gets a hit four out of every ten times at bat. Dialing down your child's expectations about winning - especially if you're playing multi-player games and/or games with lots of luck - can help keep their perspective clear."

"More importantly, you have to separate the joy of winning from the joy of playing. Don't get me wrong - I like to win. But more than that, I love to play. I flat-out enjoy the experience of getting into a game with my son & watching him make a smart move, or help him figure out the best possible play, or just join him in the play-acting/pretending that is so much a part of younger kids & games."

Sometimes it can be difficult to drag the kids from the TV or videogames. Jackson suggests "Choose themes that your kids enjoy - for example, for those kids into sci-fi, there are a number of Star Wars games available. They may or may not be the 'best' games out there, but they are more likely to draw kids away from TV & videogames. It's also helpful to choose games that reward the skills they've developed playing video games - 'speed' and 'dexterity' games both capitalize on the hand/eye coordination that they've been honing with video controllers. Jackson also notes that it can increase the chance of your family playing games together if parents set a limit on TV/video game time.

Here are some of Fluff Daddy's favorite games for kids and adults to enjoy together.

First games:

Cranium Cariboo
Cranium Hullabaloo

Ages 4-6

Akaba (Haba)
Chicken Cha Cha Cha (Rio Grande)
Gulo Gulo (Rio Grande)
Dish It Up! (Gamewright)
Eureka (Gamewright)
Midnight Party (Ravensburger)
My First Uno (wide variety of licensing tie-ins)

Ages 7-9

For boys:

Heroscape (Hasbro)
Star Wars Attacktix

For boys & girls:

Eiertanz (Haba)
Igloo Pop (Rio Grande)

Ages 10+:

Go with the standard gateway games: Ticket To Ride, Settlers of Catan and Bohnanza.

Thanks to Mark for his advice. A good place to find out more about these games is to visit Boardgamegeek and search for the game by title. You can also visit Mark Jackson's site and his blog.

Many of these games should be available locally at a specialty game shop or educational toy store. Even if the shop doesn't have the game in stock, many are happy to special-order them. Your local store is a great place to learn more about these great games. Online, I'd suggest going to Google, click on Froogle and search for the game by name.

Next week, we'll take a look at some of the more interesting upcoming boardgame releases from the GAMA Trade Show (a trade show for game store retailers, publishers and distributors) in Las Vegas, NV.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.

Checking in With SimplyFun

By Ward Batty

Gail DeGiulio is serious about play. Not long ago, the Bellevue, Washington mother of two and businesswoman was disappointed with the lack of variety and innovation of traditional games that she had played with her children, family and friends.

"I couldn't seem to find games that were both easy to learn and fun to play, and when I did it was always through word-of-mouth from a friend," DeGiulio says. When she did purchase a new game, her family found the rules were too complex or the game itself took hours to finish. The games they enjoyed most were discovered at someone's home party, at a family gathering, or through a recommendation by friends. A former board-game industry executive (Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast, SVP of Marketing and New Games), the inspiration for the SimplyFun occurred when DeGiulio attended a scrap booking party.

"Why doesn't someone make some great games and sell them at in-home parties?" was her thought. The in-home concept was perfect because that's how games are really bought and sold ñ through word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations from a friend or other trusted source.

"And that's now exactly what happens." says Matt Molen, VP Marketing & Co-founder. "A SimplyFun Consultant shares great new games with customers in a game-night setting, allowing the customers to 'try before they buy'. The Consultant acts as the trusted source and can make personal recommendations based on the customers' needs, likes, and price."

SimplyFun consultants -independent business owners - conduct parties where they teach guests how to play the games, and offer personalized shopping recommendations.

Diane Mendenhall, SimplyFun Founding Director says, "A party can consist of a few people or a lot of people. We like to get our new consultants started with a list of one hundred people they know to help them get the word out that they have started in a new business. But a party is different."

She adds that parties are usually about two hours. "That includes playing games, looking at the rest of the products, ordering, booking new parties and sharing our wonderful business opportunity."

About the games, Molen says, "Our development philosophy is to create games that are simple to learn and fun to play. Most of our games are geared towards the family and being able to play them thirty minutes or less. These products fit into any busy schedule. From there, we look for creative, fun products for both children and adults. We're looking for fun activities that fit into our mission of getting people to play together."

Mendenhall says, "Our number-one game is Walk the Dogs. Walk the Dogs is a fun strategic game. It has sixty-three cute little dogs. You make your own line of dogs according to the cards you have in your hand. The object of the game is to have the largest line of the same breed dog you can. If you get five you automatically win. But you never know when the dogcatcher comes and takes your dogs. This game looks like a children game but adults love it too. It is a perfect game to have parents and children playing together and everyone having fun! Eye to Eye is a fun game for adults and is also one of our top sellers. You're trying to see Eye to Eye with everyone else. This is a game that makes you and your friends laugh until you cry."

"If someone wants a party in their area or if they want to be a consultant they could contact SimplyFun or they could contact me directly (which I would love). I have consultants around the country and am building an awesome team!"

Top picture Jeremy Young, Gail DeGiulio and Matt Molen. All photos ©2006 SimplyFun.

Ward Batty is a long-time game-player who has been with the same weekly game group for over twenty years. "I understood there was a pension." is his excuse. He writes a monthly column on the business of board games for Comics & Game Retailer magazine and has written articles and reviews for The Games Journal, Scrye, Knucklebones and Games International.

The Game Table is a weekly column which is self-syndicated by the author. If you would like to see this column in your local newspaper, please write the managing editor of the paper. Interested in carrying The Game Table in your paper, please contact Ward Batty.