The Old Ones pay a visit to Atlantic City. (Prototype shown) Photo: Jonathan Liu

Overview: The Old Ones have come to Atlantic City, and they’re each a bit upset that they don’t have a — ahem — monopoly on the place. So there’s a bit of a smack-down ahead, as each one tries to amass Cultists, destroy those ugly hotels, and rip holes in the fabric of reality. This is The Doom That Came to Atlantic City.

Doom is currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. The project is from here in Portland so I got a chance to play a prototype at a local game store. Here’s a run-down of how the game works.

Players: 2 to 4

Ages: 13 and up (for theme)

Playing Time: 45 minutes to 1 hour

Retail: $50 on Kickstarter

Rating: Light but dark — that is, light strategy, dark theme (but with a lot of humor).

Who Will Like It? Fans of Lovecraft will get the most out of the references, and it may appeal as much to Monopoly haters as Monopoly fans. It is, at heart, a roll-and-move game, so don’t go in expecting Arkham Horror.

A sampling of the Providence cards. Black background cards are starting powers for some roles. (Prototype shown)

Theme:

As the Kickstarter video states, it’s a combination of two horrific behemoths: Monopoly and the Old Ones from Lovecraft. As you well know, I’m not a fan of Monopoly, so I was a bit concerned that this would basically be Cthulhu-opoly. Thankfully, it’s not, although it does rely on the old roll-and-move mechanic and the board is clearly patterned after something you’ve probably seen before.

The Chance cards have been replaced with “Chants” cards, and “Go” has been replaced by “Mi-Go.” Instead of going to jail, you’re banished. But it’s not just cute thematic replacements: you each play one of the Old Ones from the mythos, and you have a starting power that gives you some sort of an advantage. You go around wreaking havoc and destroying houses in order to open up gates, which is how you win the game.

Designer Keith Baker and artist Lee Moyer have done a great job in blending two disparate concepts into something that looks like Monopoly but plays like something else.

Components:

• 1 Game Board
• 2 Dice
• 4 Reference Cards
• 8 Plastic figurines of Paul Komoda’s sculpts
• 8 Mythos Role Cards
• 16 Dooms
• 24 Gate Cards
• 40 Gate Markers
• 45 Chants Cards
• 45 Providence Cards
• 50 Wooden Cultists
• 60 Wooden Houses

I played on a prototype so I can’t speak to the quality of the final products, but if you look at the images on the Kickstarter page you can tell they’re going all out with the figurines; the rest of the components will be fairly standard types of things: cards, boards, dice, and wooden bits. The Doom cards and Tome cards seem a little larger than they need to be — they’re certainly nice to look at and the size shows off the artwork (which is fantastic), but I can imagine they’ll be taking up a lot of space on the table if you get a four-player game going.

A few of the Role cards, with spaces for 3 powers, Cultists, Houses, Doubles Tracker, and Doom Tracker. (Prototype shown) Photo: Jonathan Liu

Gameplay:

Each player starts with a role card (showing which Old One they are), 6 Cultists, and a Doom card. In addition, you look through the Providence cards to find the starting power that goes with your character and put it on your board. (Powers can be stolen and replaced by others.) Everyone starts on Mi-Go, of course. The property spaces each start with two houses on them.

The basic mechanic is roll and move. When you land on a space that has houses on it, you can roll to attempt to destroy it: 7 or higher destroys a house, which you take and put on your role card. If it was the last house on the space, then you create a gate, which looks like a tear in the board with your cute little face peeking out of it. The ultimate goal of the game is to create 6 gates … but there are some exceptions.

If you land on a Providence space, you draw a Providence card, which is some sort of power — you can use it on yourself, use it on another player, or just save it up. Some powers (like Malign Force) help you, some powers (like Florid) harm you, and some (like Flabby Claws) increase some stats and decrease others. The Chants cards tend to be single-use things, giving you a bonus in some stat like attack or defense in exchange for a few Cultists or Houses.

You can also attack each other: if you land on the same space as another player, you must attack them. If you’re in the same color region as another player, you can choose to attack them, but it’s optional. You both roll two dice, modify them based on powers and Chants cards, and see who’s higher. (Attacker wins ties.) If the attacker wins, they steal a Cultist from the defender. If the defender wins, then nothing happens but the Attacker’s turn is over.

Also, as gates open up around the board, you can use them to teleport. If you start your turn on a gate (yours, an opponent’s, or a neutral gate), you can begin your movement from any of the gates that match it. So as the game progresses, you have more choices about where to move. Some powers and cards will also allow you to modify your die rolls.

Opening up a gate also has some other advantages: as in Monopoly, you can now charge toll for anyone who lands on your gate — the costs are shown on the gate cards (which look like property cards). You also get some sort of bonus for having a gate there, but it costs you Cultists or houses. The cost for the bonus goes down based on how many gates you have in that region, and if you have all three gates for a region then you get a really big bonus.

Sample Doom cards. (Prototype shown) Photo: Jonathan Liu

The game ends when you open your sixth gate. However, the game can also end in other ways: if you fulfill your Doom card. Each Doom card has a prerequisite (e.g., at least 1 gate on each side of the board). If you land on one of your gates during movement, you can then attempt the associated action — some require sacrificing a number of houses, or rolling a certain number of successful Destruction rolls. Succeed, and you win the game.

There are various other rules that I won’t describe in detail, but there are some bonuses and penalties for rolling doubles, and you can suffer banishment if you run out of Cultists (or land on the “Banished!” space of the board).

Conclusion:

The Doom That Came to Atlantic City isn’t a deep strategy game by any means — it’s a lot of die-rolling and it encourages attacking each other as much as possible (attackers win ties; there’s no significant downside to losing an attack). It does take the basic mechanics from Monopoly and you are moving around a square board, hoping to land on a good space.

However, with the extra powers you get from Providence cards and the ability to modify die rolls (or do crazy things like moving counterclockwise), the game does depart from Monopoly and goes off in a different direction. Because the game ends at the sixth gate (and there is no way to close a gate), there is a certain inevitability that somebody will bring their doom, so the game won’t drag on forever.

Also, the optional Doom goal cards make for a good alternative. In the game I played, both other players had opened three or four gates before I ever got my first one. (Lousy dice.) But then I started getting lucky, and opened four of my gates — and was able to complete my Doom requirement and steal a win from the back of the pack. The ability to do something like that means that nobody is totally out of the game.

I really liked the artwork on the Providence cards especially (the yellow ones you see above) because of the little Monopoly-style creatures that illustrate the various powers. There’s an interesting mixture of Lovecraftian horror and dark humor in the game, and I think fans of the mythos will get a kick out of it. It doesn’t have deep strategy, but it does have Deep Ones.

Interested? Check out the Kickstarter campaign, which ends June 6.

Wired: Fantastic miniatures; funny spin on Monopoly and Lovecraft.

Tired: Only slightly more strategic than roll-and-move.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a review copy of this game.

Witchblade #155 — A sticky problem (Click to Enlarge)

In conjunction with Top Cow Comics, GeekDad is offering an exclusive contest for our readers. In the cover image above for Witchblade #155 is a visual clue that will give you the answer to today’s riddle. Solve today’s cover image riddle and enter the answer in the form below and you are entered to win not one, but two prizes:

1. Daily Prize (7): We will be giving away one copy of the new Witchblade Rebirth Vol. 1 trade paperback signed by writer Tim Seeley every day this week. Enter by submitting the clue from that day’s image for your chance. Only one winner per day, and you can only win this prize once.
2. Grand Prize (1): All entries will be used to draw for the grand prize, a complete set of prints of the covers for Witchblade Rebirth Vol 1 signed by artist John Tyler Christopher. The more you enter, the better your chances are, so even if you win the daily prize, you can keep entering for the grand prize.

Here’s a little hint for today’s image (above):

This couple has a problem that is written in the base, too.

Just a little friendly warning: The codes and riddles can get pretty tricky, and may rely on your knowledge of other Top Cow titles. Look closely at each image for any anomalies. No detail is too small. Good luck, and see you again tomorrow with a new cover.

P.S. You can still enter your answer for yesterday’s cover, Witchblade #154.

Pre-order Witchblade Rebirth Vol. 1 ($9.99) from Top Cow.

Or go here if you cannot see the embedded form.

Personally, I have always been a Bose Sound Systems person. It is not that I have thought that if it was expensive it must be good; I just prefer the smaller form factor and ease of use. I know that you can purchase component systems that will rock the house to the foundation, but typically they take up too much room and require miles of cabling. Bose just always seemed to have rich sound in a little package.

My little room blaster

Upon deciding to upgrade our home sound system from the now aged Bose 3-2-1 system to something more modern, we found the answer at an Apple store instead of the regular electronics emporium. We took a look at the Libratone Live sound system. This was a huge change in the normal thought of sound systems because everything is built into the speaker. When I say everything is built into the speaker, I mean everything – including a Wi-Fi receiver. The Libratone Live utilizes AirPlay, allowing users to stream songs from their music libraries on Mac or PC, as well as music stored on their iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, through their Wi-Fi network.

One cable from the audio out on the TV turns it into your home theater system also. It uses the television’s volume setting, so there is no additional remote needed. If you do want to change any of the setting on the system independently – there is an app for that. The Libratone is adjusted through downloaded apps on the mobile devices. Your iPod can be the remote control. How cool is that? The television line in also has priority over the Wi-Fi. No need for a mode switch. To go back to Wi-Fi audio, just turn off the TV.

Honestly, the Libratone systems are pretty pricey. We went with the smaller Libratone Live model, which is small and even has a handle for easy placement. We wanted to be able to use it anywhere, including outside. They also have a larger Libratone Lounge model, which is designed to stand alone or to fit under a TV or anywhere aesthetically all while enjoying the same exceptional sound.

To learn more about Libratone’s Lounge and Live audio systems visit www.libratone.com.

Batman: Death by Design, Cover, Courtesy of DC Comics

DC Comics releases Batman: Death by Design next Wednesday, May 30. In this over-sized hardback, Batman must piece together a sting of seemingly unrelated accidents in the midst of one of Gotham City’s largest construction booms. Earlier in the week, I had the chance to speak with the graphic novel’s author, Chip Kidd, to discuss the importance of architecture to Batman’s world, the origins and evolution of the story, and the awesomeness of all those wonderful toys.

Masters: Why choose architecture as the theme for Batman: Death by Design? What’s the allure for you?

Kidd: It’s a key element of Batman’s mythology. Gotham is as vital of a character as Batman and Bruce Wayne. I wanted to focus on building a building and what it takes to get a building made. It’s a fantasy, but it’s based in reality.

Masters: How did you come up with the idea behind Batman: Death by Design?

Kidd: I had an extraordinary opportunity given to me by Dan Didio which came from a staged conversation with Neil Gaiman – we were on stage, geeking out together about Batman. Afterwards, Dan said, “You should do a Batman story.” I didn’t have a story waiting to be told; I had to figure out what to do with this opportunity. So, I based it on living and working in New York for twenty years. What real life issues would Batman address, if he visited New York? When the crane mishap in New York killed ten people, it was catastrophic and could have been stopped. The graft and corruption was very “Gotham City.” Batman works best when greed and corruption are going on. It was a good starting point. Also, there was the destruction, in 1963, of Pennsylvania Station. It happened overnight, before watchdog groups existed to protest. They’re urban injustices.

Batman: Death by Design, Page 27, Courtesy of DC Comics

Masters: What other characters within the DC Universe would you like to tackle?

Kidd: I’m completely open. I’m a graphic designer – assignment based. And, I have a knowledge base of these characters.

Masters: From twenty years of fandom?

Kidd: Exactly.

[Batman: Death by Design] worked outside of continuity. It took 3 years to put the book together. DC did their relaunch right in the middle. It was nice to be able to do something right outside of continuity. Bruce Wayne had been missing at the time [after his death]. They didn’t make me deal with that.

Masters: Was it fun writing the Joker?

Kidd: It was a blast writing the whole thing. The only bad thing was that I needed more pages as the story grew out of my control. The original story didn’t’ have the Joker in it. The editor [Mark Chiarello] asked if I wanted to use a classic bat-villain. It was a great opportunity. My approach to the character was to take him back to his roots.

Masters: What about Dave Taylor’s art? It’s a totally different take, but the sketch-style works really well to tie it to the architecture theme of the story.

Kidd: I was familiar with his work through an eight-page retelling of Robin’s origin in Legends of the Dark Knight. The editor said [Taylor] was good at facial expressions and architecture, so let’s see what he can do. He had to devote 3 years of his life to this. The key was to find someone who’s really good and willing to devote the time and effort. Dave Taylor did a ton of research.

Batman: Death by Design, Page 28 & 29, Courtesy of DC Comics

Masters: Why this format over standard graphic novel layout?

Kidd: It was originally to be published in part one and two and combined into a hardcover. Along the way it became one volume; it was the right way to go. The page size was worked out with the artist.

Masters: Here’s a nice canned question for you: What’s your favorite bat-gadget? You use so many of them in the book.

Kidd: The grappling hook is irresistible. When did that even replace the batarang? With the animated series? And the vehicles. I love the autogyro which could take off and land vertically.

Masters: Care to promote any of your other writing projects before you go?

Kidd: I’m working on a book to teach graphic design to kids – It’s far in the offing. More immediately, I designed and edited Rough Justice: The DC Comics Sketches of Alex Ross.

Masters: How cool! Okay, Chip, that’s really all I have. Thanks for speaking with GeekDad today. I hope you’ll come back in the future.

Kidd: Thank you.

Batman: Death by Design, Page 30, Courtesy of DC Comics

Geek Pride Day Survey Infographic, courtesty of Modis

The glorious 25 May is once again upon us, towels are being folded correctly and thousands of voices are suddenly crying out in pain as they discover another little tweak to a certain film that was first released 35 years ago today. If that isn’t enough for you to celebrate, today is also once again Geek Pride Day. Last year IT recruitment agency Modis commissioned a survey of 1,000 Americans on their opinions around the term geek, and they’ve run it again this year to see how things have changed.

Looking through the results it seems that Geeks are becoming even more acceptable than last year, with 54% of respondents rating Geeks as “extremely intelligent” (up from 45% last year). 71% reckon we’re the people to go for technology advice (up from 56%), and more than half of Americans (51%) define Geeks as professionally successful – a huge leap from the 31% in last year’s survey. Around two-thirds of respondents defined a “Geek” as someone who is addicted to technology and who spends more time online than offline, yet when given a list of items and asked which they would have trouble living without, 71% of the “Geeks” put a pen and paper above technology and gadgets such as a computer (58%), smartphone (41%), or MP3 player (25 %). The non-geeks listed their cars as the thing they couldn’t live without!

The results show that our addiction to our smartphones is still increasing with 45% of “Geeks” admitting to using their phones whilst driving – but it’s not clear if this is simply for sat-nav or musical reasons, or whether Angry Birds on the go is really taking off. (Note: please don’t be amongst this number – it’s a really silly, and illegal, thing to do). Slightly less worrying is using them in other inappropriate places such and weddings, funerals, on a date or, in 3% of respondents’ cases, at a job interview! Bet that went down well.

One result I find surprising is that 60% of “Geeks” would find it more stressful to lose the data from their hard drives than to go through a relationship breakup. All I can say to that is that the pool of respondents couldn’t have contained too many GeekDads and GeekMoms because; a) we would definitely miss our other halves more than a bit of data, and b) we’d have all that data backed up securely. In several different locations.

Modis is also running a little “GeekStakes” competition in conjunction with our friends at ThinkGeek over on their Facebook page until June 1st, where you can win some more gadgets to distract you from doing the thing that you’re supposed to be doing right now!

Move on the treasure map to reach the Lost Dutchman's Mine. (Prototype shown) Photo: Jonathan Liu

Overview: Sometime in the late 19th century, a German named Jacob Waltz claimed he had found a gold mine in the Superstition Mountains in Arizona, and started showing up in town with large gold nuggets to cash in. He died, only revealing the location upon his deathbed to his caretaker — who never found the mine. Years later Adolph Ruth went looking for the mine, and turned up dead — missing his head — but with a note claiming he had found the mine. In Legend of the Lost Dutchman, you are explorers searching for this hidden cache of gold.

The project just launched their Kickstarter page and is seeking funding until July 23.

Players: 2 to 5

Ages: 13 and up (though it may work for younger players too)

Playing Time: 30-45 minutes

Retail: $35 on Kickstarter; $40 planned MSRP

Rating: Good — a fun treasure-hunting game with a lot of different elements to it.

Who Will Like It? Players who like the late-1800s gold-hunting theme with a good dose of luck will enjoy this one. It’s light- to medium-weight strategy with some interesting mechanics, but may not satisfy those looking for a heavy-duty Eurogame.

Initial setup: everyone's at the mining camp in the center. (Prototype shown) Photo: Jonathan Liu

Theme:

The theme is nicely done: you explore the land grid to see if you find treasure, fellow treasure hunters, or run into creatures or disasters. Crevices will allow you to quickly move to another location, and Thief cards let you attempt to steal treasure from another player. Sometimes the water level drops — and if the water runs out, the game is over. But what you really want is to reach the lost mine, where you might have to face the ghost of the Dutchman before you can get his gold.

There’s a lot of luck involved in the game — both die rolling and card draws — but the various types of cards in the land grid support the theme: you’ll encounter flash floods, dust storms, javelinas, and jumping cholla cacti. You have to overcome them with your Vigor, Foresight, and Ingenuity. Fail, and you might get exhausted and head back to the mining camp.

Excerpt from rulebook showing initial setup and components.

Components:

(Note: these are the current set of components for the prototype; things may change slightly in the final version.)

• treasure map
• 15 challenge tokens
• 5 player boards
• 20 attribute tokens
• 5 wooden mining tokens
• 5 wooden prospector tokens
• 1 wooden Dutchman ghost
• 10 action dice (5 per player)
• 1 movement die
• 1 directional die
• 1 mining camp card
• 5 water level cards
• 5 character cards
• 10 event cards
• 120 land cards:
• 30 treasure cards
• 24 creature cards
• 12 water level drop cards
• 12 item cards
• 6 treasure hunter cards
• 6 thief cards
• 6 crevice cards

As you can see, there’s a lot of cards and quite a few different bits included. Since my version is a prototype, I can’t say as much specifically about the quality of the components, but the artwork on the game (done by Ian Rosenthaler) is nice. It reminds me a little of the artwork for Bang!, and evokes the Old West.

The action dice and movement die are all standard six-sided dice (in different colors), and the movement die is a custom one that has orthogonal, diagonal, any direction, and “dynamic” (represented by a shovel in the prototype version).

Sample card images: the Javelina and a Treasure card.

Gameplay:

Setup

The land cards are laid out face-down in a 5×5 land grid surrounding the Mining Camp card: each stack is five cards deep. At the beginning of the game, each player turns up three of the top land cards so there are some showing. The water level cards are placed in a stack in order (with “5″ on the top), the Dutchman Ghost token is placed on the mine on the treasure map, and the event cards are shuffled and placed face-down.

The challenge tokens are mixed up and placed face-down on the treasure map, and then the first three (on spots A, B, and C) are turned face up. Each player puts their prospector on the treasure map at the mining camp (in the bottom right hand corner). The challenge tokens each show two numbers: to move past that token a player must successfully defeat a creature or disaster that matches one of the two challenge ratings, with the goal of reaching the Dutchman’s mine in the top left corner.

Each player also gets a player board, two action dice of their color, and a character card. The character card shows what items the player starts with (if any) as well as the initial settings of various attributes on the player board: Health, Vigor, Foresight, and Ingenuity. These are marked with the attribute tokens. The mining tokens are all placed on the mining camp card in the center of the land grid.

Lost Dutchman land grid. (Prototype shown.) Photo: Jonathan Liu

Player Turn

Each turn consists of four phases: Roll dice, move mining token (on land grid), resolve land card, move prospector (on treasure map).

You roll two dice: the movement die is a regular six-sided die, and the directional die has a couple of different faces: 2 orthogonal arrows, 2 diagonal arrows, 1 any direction arrows, and 1 “dynamic” side (the shovel). The movement die indicates how many spaces the player will move, and the directional die indicates what directions the player may move.

For the dynamic side, the player does the following three actions in order:

1. Attempt to bury a treasure card, making it safe.
2. Move the Dutchman ghost either onto an opponent’s unburied treasure card or onto the mine on the treasure map.
3. Move on the land grid in any direction.

To bury a treasure, you simply roll both action dice, and you can bury one card of equal or lesser value by tucking it under your player board. Buried treasures cannot be stolen or haunted by the ghost. Any treasure that has the ghost on it at the end of the game is worth zero points.

You must move your mining token as many spaces as possible, up to the amount rolled. You cannot move through creature cards or disaster cards, and you cannot step on the same space twice. These rules may restrict your movement to less than the number rolled, but you have to move as far as possible. If you end movement on the same space as another player, then an event card is drawn and resolved before play continues. Event cards vary, but can do things like let somebody take a card from the discard pile, allow players to trade creatures, steal gold, and other (sometimes nasty) effects.

Once you’ve landed, you resolve a card where you’ve landed. If the top card where you stopped is face-down, you “discover” it by flipping it over and then resolve it. If it’s face-up already, you just resolve it as follows:

Treasure cards: take the treasure, and then discover (but do not resolve) the next card

Creature cards and Disaster cards: each card has a challenge rating showing a number and then an attribute. You roll your action dice and add the value of the attribute shown. If your total is less than the challenge, you suffer the penalty on the card. If it’s equal, you escaped with no penalty and no reward. If it’s greater, than you defeated the challenge and claim the card (and any rewards shown). Rewards will let you increase an attribute, and the cards are also worth gold at the end of the game. Creature cards have multipliers, increasing the value of each card when you defeat the same type of creature.

Item cards: Take the item card, which can be played on a later turn as explained on each card.

Thief cards: Immediately use the thief — you pick an opponent’s treasure card, and then try to fight the player for it or steal it. To fight, you each roll action dice and add your highest attribute: higher total wins. To steal, you roll your action dice, and you must roll at least 2 higher than the gold value to steal it. The thief card is then discarded.

Treasure Hunter cards: These are special cards that grant you some ability, like doubling the value of one treasure card for scoring, or forcing other players to discard treasure cards.

Crevice cards: Discard the crevice card and move to any other land card and resolve it.

Water level drop cards: Discard the drop card and reduce the water supply by one. Then discover and resolve the next card in the stack.

If you land on the mining camp card, you can increase an attribute by two or regain two health. And if any of your attributes or health ever go below the lowest space, then you’re exhausted: you lose some treasure, reset some stats, and head back to camp for your next turn.

Finally, if you defeated a creature or disaster card equal to one of the numbers on a challenge token, you may now move your prospector on the treasure map past that token. Then reveal any other challenge tokens on connecting trails.

Game End

There are two ways the game can end: discovering the mine or running out of water.

If a player reaches the mine on the treasure map, they’ve found the mine, which is worth 15 gold. However, if the ghost is on the mine, then the player must first defeat the ghost, or else they have to move back a space on the treasure map. The ghost has a whopping 30 challenge level, but you get to add all three attributes (Vigor, Foresight, Ingenuity) to your roll. Defeat the ghost, and you win the gold and the game ends. (Or if the ghost is haunting somebody’s treasure card at the time, you just get the 15 gold for free!)

If the water level is reduced below 1, then that turn is concluded and the game is over.

Players add up the values of their treasure cards, creature cards, and disaster cards (plus the gold from the mine), and the player with the most gold wins. In case of a tie, the player who finds the mine wins. If none of the tied players found the mine, then there’s a roll-off (adding the highest attribute) and the highest sum wins.

Conclusion:

Legend of the Lost Dutchman isn’t a deep strategy game — it’s more of a fun, luck-filled treasure hunt. So whether you enjoy it or not really depends on what you’re looking for. I think this one will be particularly fun for casual gamers and players who like the Old West theme. Going out and exploring, not knowing whether you’ll find gold in them thar hills or fall victim to a flash flood — that’s pretty fun. There is a little bit of strategy in figuring out where you can move so that you can avoid hitting that water level drop card, or get to that second javelina for the extra points. But there’s also a lot of die rolling and of course there’s the luck of the draw in the cards.

It’s pretty easy to pick up the concept of the game once you’ve got it set up — probably the trickiest part of the game is the movement, trying to get to the spot you want while following all the rules of movement. For the diagonal moves in particular, you’re restricted to only certain spaces because of the “no backtracking” rule. Setup can take a little while just dealing out the cards, but once you start playing the game actually goes fairly quickly.

There’s also an additional mini-game included, called Goldfield Gully. It’s a press-your-luck game, and just uses some dice, the back of the treasure map, and a few of the pawns. It’s fairly simple but can be fun: you can go to a location to try to get gold (roll dice), but the town marshal will also go to a building (roll a die) and if he winds up in your location he takes all of your unbanked gold. Instead, you can choose to bribe the town marshal by giving him half your gold, and then the other half is banked and won’t be confiscated. The game lasts ten rounds, and whoever has the most gold wins

I really like the look and theme of Lost Dutchman, and I think it would be a fun one to break out for newer gamers or as a lighter game between heavier stuff. There’s enough luck and a “take that” element in the game, so you can’t be entirely sure of the game’s outcome until the end — although if the player who already has the most gold manages to get to the mine first, then you can also lose by a landslide. Goldfield Gulch is a cute press-your-luck game that I can see playing some more. (I’m a sucker for press-your-luck.)

If you like the Gold Rush and want a light game with some unpredictable exploration, check out the Lost Dutchman Kickstarter page. If you play exclusively medium- to heavy-weight strategy games, it may not satisfy your cravings.

Wired: Great artwork, Old West gold-digging theme, easy to learn.

Tired: Lots of setup, heavy luck factor.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a review copy of this game.

The Cast of the Guild. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

geek

Noun. Slang. A person whose interests ALWAYS take precedence over popularity or conformity. A person who displays the willingness to bear the public shame of liking some weird thing and not caring who knows it.

– GeekDad Jim MacQuarrie

Back in a previous life, when I was studying for an A.M. in social sciences at the University of Chicago, I did some thinking about group formation. This was right at the end of the Balkans War. One of the things which becomes apparent if you study history is that it is much easier to build a group identity around who is not part of the group, than it is to actually describe why people are included in a group. So for instance, Serbians found it easier after the breakup of Yugoslavia to define what it meant to be Serbian by saying they were not like Bosnians and Croats than they did to define exactly what it meant to be Serbian. This led to conflict, even though these three ethnic groups had lived peaceably in Yugoslavia for nearly fifty years. In the same way, during the period from about 1880 to 1945 one influential way Germans understood what it meant to be a good German was by describing it as everything that wasn’t Jewish.

Before any of us starts feeling smug, we ought to remember this kind of identity formation for groups takes place all the time in small and large ways, whether that is in social groups, in business, or academia. When building a coherent group out of a disparate bunch of people it is much easier to say things like “that activity isn’t geeky” or “you aren’t a geek” than to say “this is what it means to be a geek.”

I don’t believe that any activity or sport can be said to be Geeky in itself. As fellow GeekDad contributor Jim MacQuarrie said in a recent email, “[a person] can be a sports geek, a Barbie geek,or a philately geek.” The quality of geekiness resides in the person, not in the activity itself.

One of the great reasons to identify with the word “geek” is that it gives you permission to like what you like no matter what it is. Many of us self-identify as geeks because we have been put down, excluded, and hurt by others due to our interest in “uncool” things like comic books, or board games, or computer programming.

However, as geek culture becomes more mainstream and popular, geeks are beginning to want to try to define what activities are necessary to be a true geek. As soon as we as a geek community start down that road we end up doing the same kind of cultural bullying which caused us to self-identify as geeks in the first place. When we exclude others because they lack “geek cred” we prove we haven’t really learned anything from our life experiences. We are as messed up as those who looked down on us and used the term “geek” as an insult.

As a geek, I am really tired of the culture wars, and I hope to avoid taking part in them even if others try to drag me in. That is harder than it may sound. MacQuarrie has posted a little article on a recent controversy in the archery community. Denise Parker the CEO of USA Archery was quoted as saying, “archery is kind of a geek sport.” Apparently some in the archery world didn’t like this label and took umbrage and Parker was forced to issue an apology.

My instant reaction is to get irritated when someone from the archery world gets angry when it is called a geek sport. Is this a bad thing? I want to go fight for the label I embrace. But if I were to enter the fray, I would have already lost the battle, because that whole conversation is trying to decide what content fits under the word geek. Archery isn’t a geek sport any more than curling or basketball are geek sports, but there are such things as archery, curling, and basketball geeks.

The genius of Jim’s MacQuarrie’s definition of the word geek is that it clearly defines what it means to be a geek without excluding anyone. It tells people to be who they want to be no matter what others say. It simply says be who you are, no matter what it costs you. And that is a definition of a geek that I can support.

"Archery is a geek sport." Photo from MSNBC.

The NBC Nightly News did a feature about the rising popularity of archery in the wake of The Hunger Games (the shots of students taking archery lessons were filmed at my home range, but I’m not in the clips; I was busy running the children’s class on the other side of the hill), and USA Archery CEO Denise Parker remarked that archery “if we’re brutally honest, is a bit geeky; it’s a geek sport.”

US Olympic hopeful Jake Kaminski retorted:

Is anyone else in the archery world as offended by this as me? I for one take this sport very seriously. I try to represent my family and support it and myself through archery. I try to represent my sponsors and exceed their expectations in every facet of the sport.

I would prefer to see this sport grow in a non joking manner. I do not like how we are always made a mockery of. Are track and field athletes called ‘geeks’? Didn’t think so.

Apparently a number of my fellow archers were offended, because USA Archery and Ms. Parker heard from enough of them to warrant a response. The USA Archery facebook page posted this message shortly thereafter:

The following statement can be attributed to USA Archery CEO Denise Parker:

On Friday, May 11, NBC Nightly News aired a feature story on the growth of interest in the sport of archery. The story focused on the recent film “The Hunger Games” and emphasized that the sport, once considered an old-fashioned pursuit, is gaining newfound popularity.

During the interview, I was asked questions about people’s unique fervor for archery, and responded that it is “a bit of a geek sport,” referring to the word’s more modern definition: “A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who passionately pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance.” To me, it was meant to describe the sport as being not-mainstream and unique, which I find very cool about our sport.

I understand and appreciate why some have been offended by the phrase “geek sport,” which can have other connotations, and just want to apologize to any people I have offended with the statement. It was a poor choice of words, and I am sorry. I absolutely love this sport and I have the highest regard for all that participate in it.

My intent was to celebrate the uniqueness of archery and the passion of archers, but never to belittle or lessen the tremendous accomplishments of all of the USA Archery members and Team USA athletes who devote themselves to the discipline of great shooting every day.

Thank you to all who took the time to provide feedback about your feelings on this subject.

Geek Pride is for more than one day a year! © Brandon Hanvey

I’m a geek. I write for a geek blog. “Geek” is right there in the name: GeekDad. If I didn’t consider myself a geek, I wouldn’t be here. I was the guy who inspired Brandon Hanvey’s Geek Pride t-shirt, seen to the left. I certainly understood what Parker meant, and took no offense at her remarks; my reaction was “dang right!”

What Kaminski and others failed to recognize is that we are in a time of “geek chic” where geeks are considered cool, a time I for one never really thought would come. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are demi-gods; geeks rule the world. We dominate entertainment; the comic book that your geeky friend used to read has been turned into a movie that grossed a billion dollars in under two weeks. One of the most popular shows on TV, The Big Bang Theory, is unabashedly geeky; there is some argument as to whether it celebrates the geeky characters or denigrates them. (I myself refused to watch it for a long time, labeling it “geekface,” the geek equivalent of blackface; I felt that Leonard, Sheldon and company were the 21st century version of Amos & Andy, a nerd minstrel show. I’ve since begun watching it, and while it is geekface, it’s also funny, largely due to the performances. The cast is great.)

Geeks are hot now. We’re the people that get called when our jock brothers can’t figure out how to configure their email or set up their wireless router. They need us, and they are starting to appreciate us. At the end of Avengers, the non-geeky portion of the audience turned as one to their geek friends and relatives and asked “who is that?” and we told them, explaining the back-story of those obscure (to the non-geeks) characters in tediously pedantic detail. We win on Jeopardy.

This is our time, and we have in large part reappropriated the word that defines us, redefining it the way that Ms. Parker describes in her later comments. Clearly we still have work to do.

The question remains: we may have reclaimed and rehabilitated “the G-word,” but are we the only ones allowed to use it? Is it still considered inflammatory and offensive when used by non-geeks, or only when applied to non-geeks? Discuss.

Join the conversation at the GeekDad Community page and tell me how wrong I am.

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

In Roman mythology, what pastry did Aeneas and Psyche use to distract a three-headed watchdog?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [New England colony settled 1630] to find that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded then. Search [Massachusetts Bay Colony ruffles fortune] to learn that adornments like ruffles could be worn only by colonists with a personal worth valued at two hundred pounds or more. Laws governing habits of consumption are known as “Sumptuary Laws.”

Homepage photo: Phillie Casablanca/Flickr

Full steam ahead!

Ticket to Ride, the crowd-pleasing series of board games about trains, has been on a roll. Days of Wonder launched the iPad app a year ago, then made a pocket-sized version specifically for the iPhone. In March they announced that the iPad version would be the first board game app to take advantage of the new iPad’s retina display, and then last month they opened the game up to all Mac users. After the latest episode of TableTop which featured Ticket to Ride, Days of Wonder made the pocket version free to download for a limited time.

But what if you’re not an Apple user? Well, that’s where today’s announcement comes in: Ticket to Ride is now available on Steam for PCs. The game costs $9.99 and comes with the USA map — but for the first week you’ll also get the map of Europe for free. If you download it, you’ll be able to join in games with other players on Steam, iPad, the Mac desktop app, and on Days of Wonder’s online portal — so you don’t have to worry about showing up and finding nobody there.

Of course, if you’re looking for the good old cardboard-and-plastic version, you can still pick one of those up at your local game store or from Amazon. (Personally, I recommend Ticket to Ride Europe, which throws in a few interesting wrinkles.) With the physical version, of course, you’ll be able to appropriately express your nerd rage like Anne Wheaton…

Grab your safety glasses and your kids, we’re taking over Father’s Day! Enough with crazy ties and soggy brunches, celebrate the holiday like you’ve always wanted to — with cool activities and experiments picked by WIRED just for families like yours. These projects will help you jumpstart a lifelong love of science and technology for your kids. Plus, everyone learns how to make their own fun.

We are urging folks to host GeekDad Day events at home, on their blocks, or in their towns using the handy guide that’s been prepared. There are even a number of awesome projects hosted on the GeekDad Community Site you can use for your own parties. You can register the number of people for your event on the landing page (so we can all feel the geek-mentum), and if you want to make your event a public affair, stop by the GeekDad Community site and add it to the Events log. If you can’t pull that off, then you can stop by one of many metropolitan science museums that will be holding events.

So please, check out all the information, and help us change the face of Father’s Day!

A lot of people were up in arms about Lego Friends — unfairly, for the most part. A Lego set is only what you make of it. Still, a lot of people bemoaned how the geekiest set, Olivia’s Inventor’s Workshop, still wasn’t all that elite.

Thanks to the magic of Lego CUUSOO, any set that gets 10,000 votes can be made into an actual Lego product. And what better geek girl inspiration — or geek anyone inspiration — than electrical engineer and open source kitmaker Limor “Ladyada” Fried? The Ladyada’s Workshop CUUSOO model shows an accurate representation of Ladyada’s actual workshop, including a laser cutter, soldering iron, and a pick-and-place machine. It was designed by Bruce Lowell.

For more information, check out the project’s landing page on Adafruit.com, or see this CNET piece about the project.

If you dig this project, be sure to support it on CUUSOO!

Crust and Crumb, photo by Gene Davis

Since there was sufficient interest in my original post, here are the detailed instructions for how I make sourdough bread. I will blast through the recipe, and annotate with comments at the end. I’ve tried to keep everything as brief as possible. There are photos of each key step leading to the loaf pictured above on the full post. Feel free to ask questions about anything over on the community.

Recipe:
Makes 2 1-pound loaves (approx.)

Step 1. In a large mixing bowl, mix well:

• 400 g active sourdough starter – see Annotations below if you don’t have this (Photo: Active Starter)
• 400 g water
• 300 g whole wheat flour
• 350 g bread flour

Once mixed, let rest (covered) for 30-60 minutes (Photo: Initial Mix)

Step 2. Add:

• 21 g salt
• 50 g water

Mix well. Transfer to a different nonmetal bowl (or proofing tub if available). (Photo: Ready to Rise)

Step 3. After one hour, perform several “stretches” on the dough (Photo: Stretching the Dough). Repeat this 4-6 times (waiting 30-60 minutes each time), until dough has approximately doubled in volume, and bubbles are visible throughout (Photo: After Rise). See notes on Temperature in Annotations.

Step 4. Place dough on lightly floured countertop (Photos: Ready to Shape, See the Bubbles). Divide in two, and perform stretches and folds to shape into a ball (Photo: Initial Shaping). Let rest 30-60 minutes.

Step 5. Gently stretch out, and stretch and fold into a final ball, and place into a flour-dusted bowl or basket “tighter-side” down (Photo: In Basket). Cover and put into the refrigerator overnight.

Step 6. In the morning, put a dutch oven (or similar all-metal pot with all-metal lid) into the oven. Preheat at 500 degrees for 30 minutes – you want this pot to be hot before the bread goes in it. NOTE: in the next step, ideally you are going to bake the bread on the pot’s LID, and cover the bread with the pot’s BOTTOM.

Step 7. Pull out lid from oven, turn over, dust with flour, and place dough upside-down on lid. Score top of dough with razor blade (Photo: Scoring). Put the pot bottom over the bread, and place into the oven for 15 minutes.

Step 8. Pull off the pan “bottom”, leaving the bread on the lid in the oven (Photo: Remove the Lid). Reduce the temperature to 450 degrees and bake for another 15 minutes.

Step 9. Pull out bread from oven, dust off excess flour, and cool on a cooling rack. (Photo: Out of the Oven)

That’s all there is to it! But of course, as they say, the devil’s in the details, so unless that’s enough to get by with, please read the rest of the post over on the GeekDad Community…

Originally posted by:

Gene Davis

View original post

I stopped by the MaKey MaKey booth at Maker Faire on Sunday and was very impressed by what I saw. They appear to have everything needed to make a successful Kickstarter campaign: a cool product, working versions of the product, a clear and concise plan, and most of all a lot of enthusiasm and love for what they have created.

MaKey MaKey in its default state is a combination USB keyboard and mouse with a very simple and hackable physical interface. Unlike a regular keyboard, or even the specialized USB devices made for MAME cabinets, the MaKey definition of a switch is rather loose. Anything that can pass a little current will suffice, including metal, electrolytes, Play-Doh, and even human bodies.

They had a lot of examples set up in the booth and kids of all ages were playing and having a lot of fun. I heard a few good ideas from the kids, and my daughter came up with a few of her own as we made our way back to the GeekDad booth.

Check out the video for some of the examples, and post some comments below if you have any other ideas. Jay Silver was nice enough to give me an evaluation board and my daughter and I will be thinking up a few projects ourselves to run this week and over the weekend.

Overview: In just a few short weeks, Summoner Wars will be arriving for iOS, as you can see in the preview trailer above. But this tactical combat card game from Plaid Hat Games has actually been around for a few years, spawning a slew of expansions and, last year, a new Master Set. Here’s an explanation of how it all works — so you’ll be ready when the app arrives.

Players: 2 (expandable to 4)

Ages: 9 and up

Playing Time: 30-60 minutes

Retail: $49.99

Rating: Excellent, with lots of replayability.

Who Will Like It? Gamers who like two-player combat, but want more theme than you get from most abstract strategy games. Think of it as a mini-miniatures wargame, without the tape measures.

Initial setup for Summoner Wars is different for each faction. Note the two-part board. Photo: Jonathan Liu

Theme:

In my GameStorm Weekend in Review, I mentioned Dungeon Run, another game from Plaid Hat Games. In Dungeon Run, you’re all after the powerful summoning stone — and when somebody claims it, everyone piles onto them because, hey, you want it for yourself. Well it turns out that there’s more than one summoning stone. Now all these different factions each have their own stone, and they’re all duking it out: thus began the Summoner Wars.

Each faction is different, so you have to take into account both your own powers and abilities as well as your opponents’. The artwork helps to support the theme, though the mechanics of gameplay are really about moving cards around on a grid, so it’s a little abstracted. You can’t attack or move diagonally, which makes it easier mechanically but doesn’t make as much sense thematically.

The Master Set box has room for a lot of expansions. Photo: Jonathan Liu

Components:

The Master Set comes with:

• 1 battlefield board (in two pieces)
• 5 standard six-sided dice
• 20 wound markers (double-sided, with “3″ on one side)
• 225 cards (six different factions, number of cards varies)

Earlier versions of Summoner Wars and expansions have come in several different sizes, from single-faction decks like the Cloaks to two-faction Starter Sets — the biggest difference appears to be the battlefield board: the original versions use a paper map instead of the folding cardboard version.

The premium battlefield is made of pretty thick cardboard with a glossy finish and is definitely a nice touch, but the paper version was much more portable. I’ve actually made myself a paper version as well so that if I want to pick a couple factions and play on the go, I can do so without needing the big box.

And, as you can see from the photo above, the box has a lot of room for expansions. You can actually fit all of the cards for this set into two of the wells, and I recommend rubber bands or tuckboxes to keep the cards from shifting around in transit. The nice thing is that this Master Set doesn’t have overlapping factions with previous versions, so you won’t be doubling up on things.

Some of the Shadow Elves cards, including the reference card.

Gameplay:

Each player takes one faction deck, which is made up of Units (the troops and such), Events, and Walls (a special sort of Event card). The Swamp Orcs also have a pile of Vine Walls, which are a special card and have their own set of rules. Each deck also has a card which shows the starting setup on one side, and lists their Events and a turn summary on the other side.

The Unit cards have a number of features: the large number in the circle is the number of attack dice that Unit gets. Below that is a small number indicating the magic cost to summon that Unit into play. (Summoners have a lightning symbol because they always start the game in play.) Next to the magic cost is a sword or bow, indicating whether that Unit can do melee attacks only (adjacent cards) or ranged attacks (up to 3 spaces away). The little dots to the right of that are the number of life points the Unit has, and the text below explains any special abilities that Unit has.

Each faction gets to start with 1 Summoner, 18 Common Units, 3 Champion Units, 9 Events, and 3 Walls. (If you get “reinforcement packs,” you can get additional cards for existing factions and build a custom deck. In this case, you just use all of the cards of your faction.)

You set up your half of the battlefield as indicated on your card: you’ll always have your unique Summoner and a Wall, plus some number of Units which will vary from faction to faction. The rest of your deck is shuffled and placed in the Draw pile. The goal of the game is to eliminate the other player’s Summoner.

Battle in progress, showing some damage markers and areas for draw pile, magic pile, and discard pile. Photo: Jonathan Liu

Each player’s turn consists of six phases (though the first player will skip phases 1–3 the first time):

1. Draw: Draw cards from your Draw pile until you have five in your hand.

2. Summon: You may spend magic points (move cards from Magic pile to Discard pile) to summon additional Units. Summoned Units must be placed adjacent to your Walls.

3. Events: You may play Event cards and Wall cards, as many as you are able. Walls must be placed on empty spaces on your half of the battlefield.

4. Movement: You may move any three Units up to two spaces each. (Orthogonal movement only, and only through unoccupied spaces.)

5. Attack: You may attack with any three Units — these do not have to be the same units that moved. To attack, you must be within range (adjacent for melee, within three spaces in a straight line for ranged attacks, and with no cards between attacker and target). You roll the number of attack dice shown; any roll of 3 or higher is a hit and adds a damage marker to the target card. If the number of wounds equals the number of life points, that Unit is destroyed and placed in the attacker’s Magic pile, face-down. This includes Walls, which take 9 points of damage to destroy.

6. Build Magic: You may place any number of cards from your hand into your Magic pile, face-down.

Players alternate turns until one Summoner is eliminated.

For a 3 or 4 player game, you’ll need an additional battlefield, and it’s basically teams of two factions each. (In a 3-player game, one player will have to control two factions.) The battlefield is twice as wide, and there are some rules for how movement can wrap around to the opposite side of the board.

The six Summoners included in the Master Set: Selundar of the Shadow Elves, Krusk of the Sand Goblins, Mugglug of the Swamp Orcs, Sunderved of the Mountain Vargath, Tundle of the Deep Dwarves, and Tacullu of the Benders

Conclusion:

In a nutshell: Summoner Wars is easy to learn and fun to play.

The set of rules is short and fairly simple. The complexity of the game comes in the special abilities, because every Unit, from the Commons to the Champions, has something special about it. Even with just six factions, you get 15 different match-ups, which could keep you busy for a while, learning the strengths and weaknesses of each faction.

The other nice thing about the game is that the rules (and the special ability text) are very precise. Yes, it can make them a little awkward to read, but everything is phrased in such a way as to be unambiguous. They define what they mean by “discard” or “destroy” or even the word “through.” This is important when you have special abilities that interact with each other. So far I haven’t had to “house rule” anything, because it’s all spelled out.

One of the things I love about the game is the tension between building magic and saving good cards. Some of the Champions can be devastating, but they cost a lot of magic to summon. The only way to get more magic is either by using cards from your hand (which can no longer be used as Units and Events) or by destroying your opponent’s cards. So if you’re getting attacked and you need to get some new Units in a hurry, the best way is to burn through your own deck. But if you run out of cards, beware! You don’t re-shuffle that discard pile. Some factions (the Deep Dwarves, for instance) can get cards back, but for most of them everything is a one-time use. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Summoner Wars doesn’t take too long to play once you’re familiar with the basic set of rules. I’ve only played a fraction of the possible combinations, but I’m looking forward to trying them all out … and then adding some more factions. I don’t know if I’m personally as interested in the deck-building aspect (preparing a custom deck before playing) because I like being able to just jump into the game, but I do like the idea of filling up all that extra space in my box with more dwarves, elves, orcs, and humans.

Wired: Great two-player combat; 6 factions = lots of replay value; easy to learn.

Tired: If you aren’t getting expansions, the box is way too big. Odd-sized cards use non-standard card sleeves.

Disclosure: GeekDad received a review copy of this game.

It’s NHL playoff season, but, even through two nail-biting scoreless periods of Saturday’s Rangers/Devils conference match-up, my head hasn’t exactly been in the game. It’s also been in my Nintendo 3DS.

Handheld systems aren’t widely regarded for their stable of top shelf sports titles, and 2K Play’s portable iteration of genre mash-up Nicktoons MLB doesn’t exactly redefine the experience, but it is a fun title that seems fairly well tailored to the hardware’s design even if it fails to take advantage of many of the system’s most impressive features. Boasting 175 major leaguers and 27 Nicktoons characters – including favorites from older series like Avatar, Invader Zim and even Ren & Stimpy – it’s got a satisfying stable for young sports fans and cartoon lovers alike.

Visually, Nicktoons MLB 3D is nothing special; the graphics are competent, but never mind-blowing. The same can be said for the generic soundtrack and repetitive voiceovers, although the commentary is a little easier to swallow when coming out of the mouths of Spongebob‘s Perch Perkins and Zim‘s Gir.

But lovable characters aside, the title’s greatest success is its accessible, arcade-style controls. You can control where a pitch is thrown via the thumb stick and choose your pitch type via the face buttons: slider (A button), fastball (B button), changeup (X button) or curveball (Y button). Press once to select the pitch and a second time when the power meter reaches the desired level.

On a hit the control pad moves your fielders and the left trigger toggles control to the closest player. The buttons, which are already arranged in a convenient diamond pattern, make throwing to a base a breeze, and you can use the same method as pitcher (in tandem with the L-trigger) to pick off stealing opponents. The lower touch screen provides a nice overhead view of the field, complete with the current score and stats, which proves helpful as the game-controlled teams tend to steal at every possible opportunity. Batting offers a trio of swing options from the wild power swing to the guaranteed contact of the noble bunt, again mapped to the face buttons. There’s also a Turbo meter that rewards players for exemplary pitching, fielding and batting, and can be toggled on to increase speed and accuracy.

With Quick Play, Single Game, Season and Tournament options, as well as a smattering of mini-games and the requisite multi-cart multiplayer, Nicktoons MLB 3D offers exactly what you’d think. Still, collectibles (in the form of cards) and overall cartoon-y charm help make up for at least some of its repetitive nature and occasional clunkiness. My one word of warning concerns the single AR mini-game Frosty Freeze Toss. The game card printed in the manual simply does not work. Instead use the card that came with your 3DS. It’s a minor inconvenience, but one that’s fairly symptomatic of the title’s overall design.

Coming from a significantly more impressive gaming pedigree is Nintendo’s latest Mario Tennis Open. Developed by Camelot, who also gave us amazing handheld Mario tennis and golf titles on the GBA, this game offers that same brand of vibrant Mario-themed design, but sadly largely excludes its engaging RPG aesthetic.

In the spirit of, well, any Mario sports title, it offers over-the-top arcade-style sports action wrapped in the brightly colored splendor of the Mushroom Kingdom. You can control any of the usual lineup of player characters, each with his or her own unique stats and play style, but you can also play as your Mii avatar. As opposed to these established characters, the Mii is a stylistic blank slate that can be customized by equipping character-themed accessories available at the in-game Item Shop.

While not up to par with the visual mastery of system-movers like Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Tennis Open does look great, and it offers everything from robust single- and multiplayer options (including online) to Streetpass functionality. In each mode, however, the game controls are the same, and that is also exactly where this title truly shines.

Mario Tennis Open maps basic shot commands to both the face buttons and the touch screen, and players can easily stick to a single preferred method or switch interfaces on the fly. This is also true with regard to the game’s movement and aiming controls. In the standard view the analog nubbin does a fine job of moving your avatar around the court and positioning shots within a single wide frame of the entire court area, but lifting the system upright shifts to the close-up Dynamic View. In this view character movement is automatic, but a special emphasis is put on shot placement. You can simply hit to the left or right by turning the system slightly in the corresponding direction. It’s important to note that 3D visuals are suppressed in Dynamic View, a wise move for Nintendo as the combination of system movement and fixed-point 3D failed spectacularly in previous titles like last year’s Star Fox remake.

Another of Mario Tennis Open‘s true high points is the title’s bundled mini-games. Dubbed Special Games, these actually serve a purpose, as opposed to the generally boring filler we see so often shoe-horned into other 3DS titles. They teach valuable skills like ball control (Ring Shot) and shot placement (Galaxy Rally), and even the more superfluous excursions (like the old school-themed Super Mario Tennis) still manage to seem entertaining outside of the core game experience. Playing these Special Games is also a great way to rack up additional coins for use in purchasing stat-shifting accessories for your Mii.

This level of character customization is supplemented by additional unlockable costumes, the first of which Club Nintendo is currently distributing via QR code. It’s just one more way that Mario Tennis Open lets you as a user control and alter the game experience to your liking. Of course this is a Mario sports game, so there’s also an occasionally annoying element of randomness. This unpredictability, in the form of the Chance Shot, occurs when a character stands in a colored ring on the court and presses the correspondingly-colored touch command. This unleashes a specialty shot that, even more so than standard shot-charging and clever use of the slice/lob/spin system, mostly just serves to screw the opposition.

Still, Mario Tennis Open hits more often than it misses. Yes, there’s a bit of repetition, and the difficulty – particularly if you spend a lot of time honing your blank slate of a Mii into a well-accessorized tennis machine – can seem oddly uneven at times. But the game itself is what most of us want in a portable title: easy to pick up and fun to play in small doses, but still boasting an expansive array of overall content.

Review materials provided by: 2K Play, Nintendo of America

Robert Leyland's Desk Filled with Electronics

As I discussed in my interview with I-Wei Huang, Skylanders character designer, there are many untold stories of the heroes behind the games and gadgets we love.

Lightning struck a second time at Toys for Bob in the form of Robert Leyland, Skylanders technical engineer. He’s the brains behind the game’s “Portal of Power” — to give it its full name. Even before we got talking, the sight of his desk was enough to create something of a minor geek-out for me — so many electrical gadgets and gizmos.

As you can see in the video below, I was fortunate to spend some time at Toys for Bob last year and got to interview Leyland about the process of creating the Skylanders Portal and how it changed through different iterations. It’s interesting to hear him talking about an integrated Wii-mote version that quickly got abandoned as players sent their Skylanders toy characters flying into oblivion.

He also talks a little about why portals for different systems use either USB or Wireless connections — something that seems to be a combination of technology and platform holder’s standards. He is obviously a man who really enjoyed his job and it was really good to get an insight into both the process, and the man, behind the now famous Portal of Power.

A question I get more than any other regarding Skylanders is whether you will need to buy a new version of the Portal to make use of the LightCore Skylanders or Series 2 Skylanders Giants. It’s testament to the team behind the game that the original Portal was designed with this sort of forward compatibility in mind.

The other question I get is harder to answer. “How soon will Skylanders Giants be released and how much will it cost?” While we wait for news on that, it may be worth setting up an Amazon search for Skylanders Giants and keeping your eyes peeled.

Witchblade #155 — Mysterious Runes from another high bovine title (Click to Enlarge)

In conjunction with Top Cow Comics, GeekDad is offering an exclusive contest for our readers. In the cover image above for Witchblade #154 is a visual clue that will give you the answer to today’s riddle. Solve today’s cover image riddle and enter the answer in the form below and you are entered to win not one, but two prizes:

1. Daily Prize (7): We will be giving away one copy of the new Witchblade Rebirth Vol. 1 trade paperback signed by writer Tim Seeley every day this week. Enter by submitting the clue from that day’s image for your chance. Only one winner per day, and you can only win this prize once.
2. Grand Prize (1): All entries will be used to draw for the grand prize, a complete set of prints of the covers for Witchblade Rebirth Vol 1 signed by artist John Tyler Christopher. The more you enter, the better your chances are, so even if you win the daily prize, you can keep entering for the grand prize.

Here’s a little hint for today’s image (above):

Mysterious Runes from another high bovine title.

Just a little friendly warning: The codes and riddles can get pretty tricky, and may rely on your knowledge of other Top Cow titles. Look closely at each image for any anomalies. No detail is too small. Good luck, and see you again tomorrow with a new cover.

P.S. You can still enter your answer for yesterday’s cover, Witchblade #153.

Pre-order Witchblade Rebirth Vol. 1 ($9.99) from Top Cow.

Or go here if you cannot see the embedded form.

Am I the only one who always thought that the magic spells in Harry Potter seemed a bit easy? Give a kid a wand, teach her how to wave it, make sure she can properly pronounce a few words of Latin, and suddenly she’s Wingardium Leviosa-ing stuff all over the place.

When it came to wizard duels, though, things got interesting. The budding wizard had to use the spells at his disposal. He had to know the gestures, get the incantations correct, all while paying attention to what his opponent was casting. It was practical magic. And it looked like a lot of fun.

Incantor, a smartphone-based augmented reality game currently in the works by developer MoveableCode, hopes to offer geeks like me a way to wizard-duel in the real world. With a Bluetooth-enabled wand and a smartphone app, I’ll cast spells, battle my friends, and complete quests, all in my own backyard. It’s an intriguing niche project, and one that needs backing on Kickstarter in order for the developers to continue work on it. MoveableCode is looking for $100,000, which isn’t a lot of money when you think about how much cash goes into less ambitious games that don’t include well-crafted magic wands.

The game itself, which should appeal to lovers of laser tag and Muggle Quidditch alike, plays like a Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Each wand has a color and realm associated with it, which determines the class of the player. This informs the types of spells that a player can cast. You battle by gesturing with the wand, which casts your spells on your opponents, in the case of player-versus-player combat, or against hazards and monsters in the augmented reality. The full rundown on the rules is available on the project’s Kickstarter page.

In an announcement today, the Incantor team has revealed that the wand itself will be hackable. Just like enterprising Kinect owners have done with Microsoft’s Kinect SDK, geeks can use their Incantor wands to do all sorts of awesome stuff in the real world.

The Incantor wand schematics. Image: MoveableCode

Kevin Mowrer, MoveableCode’s Chief Creative Officer and a former senior design executive at Hasbro, says, “Our goal in creating Incantor has always been to create fantasy so immersive that it blends with reality. By making the wand able to control real things in the real world, we are putting that power in the hands of our players. We are really looking forward to the creative uses people will dream up.”

When spells are cast with the wand, it generates an Open Sound Controller command. These unique sound-based commands can then be utilized by all sorts of other APIs to control all manner of real life gadgets: MIDI-compatible music instruments, computers (via a tool like Osculator), lighting and stage effects (via Lightjams), and basically anything that can be controlled through an OSC-compatible home automation system.

“Incantor is a passion project for us, but it is serving at least three different passions – our gaming geek, our inner story-telling geek and our gadget geek,” says Nicholas Napp, MoveableCode’s CEO. “The Hackable Wand builds on the trail blazed by the Kinect and makes it possible for anyone to use their Incantor magic wand to control real life devices.”

GeekDads could go wild with some of this stuff. Aside from using the wand as a television remote, imagine a backyard dueling pitch with strobe lights, fog machines, or sound effects triggered by certain spells. Napp directed me to this YouTube video and said, “My personal ambition is to buy one of these” and hook it up to the Wall of Fire spell. Dangerous, yes. And insanely awesome.

Once the project receives its funding and the game is live, MoveableCode hopes to make APIs available for custom apps and interfaces. At that point, the wands will go for $60. Right now, you can reserve your own exclusively designed wand for $100 over at Kickstarter.

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle, and the previous day’s answer (in invisitext) posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

How much was your personal fortune worth if you wore ruffles in the New England colony settled in 1630?

YESTERDAY’S ANSWER (mouseover to see):

Search [most widely grown crop in America]. Find that this is corn. Searching for [corn moon] will show many articles on the Corn Moon or the Harvest Moon. Searching for [month of Corn Moon] will show that September is considered the month of the Corn Moon.

Homepage photo: ursli/Flickr