Purchased My First Microbadge

Dice! Dice! Dice! When people acquainted me as a gamer, I would tell I am also a dice collector and dinosaur collector. When BGG gave me a chance to own a microbadge for my profile, it came to mind to get a representative one for being a dice lover. Unexpectedly there was no such microbadge for dice fans. Dice are very representative and commonly found accessories used in many classic and mordern games. A request was written to BGG forum and someone did help making one beautiful microbadge for the purpose. I have to thank Herb Petro (mentis) for his kindness. Now I can have a very representative microbadge added to my BGG profile (tonyfung1205).

The Pillars of the Earth - Coming from Mayfair Games

An English edition of Kosmos' Die Säulen der Erde will be released by Mayfair Games. The game has received pretty good reviews. Derek, my friend, is very keen on this game and want to buy a copy. No release date has been announced yet however.

Mesopotamia Expansion Cards

Mayfair Games announced the Mesopotamia Expansion Cards which adds 7 new cards to the base game Mesopotamia: Craddle of Civilization. Mesopotamia: Craddle of Civilization was published in 2005, which is designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, the designer of Carcassonne. It is a action-point boardgame set in the Mesopotamia age. You try to lead your people to build up a clan by collecting valuable resources, and at the same time to bring offerings to the magnificient temple.

Mayfair Games is selling the expansion cards at US$3 from their website. It's a rather small expansion. There is a rumor that it may be given away together with the Games Quarterly Magazine, but I doubt.

Twilight Imperium 3rd - Preset Maps

Twilight Imperium 3rd edition (TI3) is a heavy boardgame set in a galactic world. You can find multiple elements, like politics, diplomacy, economy, technology, military, integrated into a single game. Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), the publisher of TI3, announced a downloadable set of preset maps for setting up TI3. The preset maps offer a balanced but still configurable galaxy. There is also a very interesting way to construct a setup map for a 5-player game. The multi-galaxy maps are creative and produce a different kind of strategic tension.

The news of this extention is so welcome.

Gra Gra Company Needs Another Name

Z-Man Games acquired the rights for publishing the English version of Gra Gra Company which was first brought to the Essen 2006 by a Japan company. Z-Man Games is now looking for a more marketable name for this game which will be published in May 2007. Whoever submits the winning name will receive a copy of the game. You may check out the Z-Man Games website for submission details.

Strategy of Rock Paper Scissors

When I did my regular browse on BGG tonight, I ran into an interesting discussion thread (you may follow the title link). It talked about Rock Paper Scissors (RPS). Some readers were surprised by the claim of existence of strategy at playing RPS. They misbelieved that RPS was a mere random act, and could not admit the use of strategies.

I have studied a bit about this before. From a psychological view, there are well-known techniques to influence a RPS decision. There are also well-perceived patterns of RPS decisions, say a tendency to play Rock more often. These make RPS decisions no longer pure random results. It is particularly true if multiple games are counted than playing just a single game.

Game theory also suggests that a strategy of pure random actions is an inferior one. Randomized decisions generally makes below-average results, because such strategy does not take into account your opponent's model. Most people cannot understand this well. They even believe random is optimal at the situation of uncertainty. There are many researches and studies showing that it is not the fact. There are some good players who are capable of winning RPS more often.

To further support the idea, there is an annaul programming competition about computer RPS algorithms. Random is hence justified by the competition results that it is not an optimal strategy. It may not be the worst one, but never the best one neither.

As a side note, there are often situations in gaming which your opponent is asked to randomly draw a card from your hand. At the very first glance, it sounds like a random pick. However, there usually exists behavior pattern as discussed in social psychology. I sometimes make use of this piece of knowledge to arrange my hand of cards and "direct" him to "randomly" pick the card I intented. It works fine more than 50% of the time.

New Year 2007 Resolutions

Happy New Year 2007 to you all. It has already entered 2007 for 3 hours in Hong Kong. I have some resolutions regarding gaming.

1. Record (not buy) at least 100 more games from my existing game collection onto BGG.
2. Give ratings to at least 50 games on BGG.
3. Give comments to at least 50 games on BGG.
4. Record all games I play on BGG.
5. Try to write game reviews or session reports.
6. Try to be a columist about gaming in a local magazine.
7. Explore the possibility to publish a book on gaming.
8. Work out to publish a game of my design.
9. Acquaint a few more capable and smart gamers with good attitude.
10. Play more games than buying. Particularly play more old and rarely played games and heavier games.
11. Study more about the educational aspects of games.
12. Research more games suitable for a couple.
13. Keep this blog alive and active, and well-organized.
14. Brief the naming of this blog.

Sounds too many items mentioned, but I do wish I can manage them well all this year. Keeping writing this blog is utterly important as I wish to practice more on writing. Some of the resolutions aim to help reinforcing my knowledge on gaming and turning into expertise. Lastly, my dream is to make gaming somewhat at certain extent into (at least part of) my career.

Let see how it go, and let me do an evaluation at the end of 2007.