Buried In A Cheap Cardboard Coffin

When we weren't looking, Cheapass Games died.

Admittedly, the current claim is that Cheapass Games is only hibernating. However, it's employees have moved on, James Ernest is designing games for other people, and Toivo is no longer collating.

I'm not sure what lead to this state of events, my three theories are:

1- At it turns out, people would rather pay 300% more for cool plastic widgets. The evidence for this can be found in the catalogue of "James Earnst Games," an imprint of Cheapass games that specialized in full-color card games, including previous hits like Give Me The Brain, and Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond. And while Killing Doctor Lucky was fun in black and white, the Paizo company has determined that it would be even more fun to do so in glorious Technicolor. (Paizo being the company that has licensed certain Cheapass Games assets. Perhaps I'll finally get a nice copy of Spree.)

2- Game Designer James Earnst's obsession with games where you bid for resources. For every The Great Brain Robbery, there seemed to be a Bleeding Sherwood, or a Jacob Marley, Esq.. I own some of those Bidding Games, and I can tell you that the only one I could ever convince people to play a second time was The Big Cheese. And that's because The Big Cheese could be played at a restaurant, while waiting for the pizza to come out. I do not imagine my experience is atypical.

3- My demographic cannot keep a business alive. Perhaps there was something else involved in the company's demise other than low sales, but given that Secret Tijuana Death Match never sold out of it's initial 5,000 copy print run, we can conclude that it was at least a strong factor.

At least the dream of James Ernest lives on. Unspeakable Words is a fun card game by James Earnst, where you try to gain 100 points by spelling out words. Every angle in the letters you use earns you a point, and the more points you make makes the word more likely to drive you insane. (Which potentially leads to a number of skipped turns, unless optional rules are used. Optional rules always make me wonder how fully a game was play-tested.) Sanity is measured by thirty neat little C'thulhu tokens, which could easily have been represented by pennies instead. I don’t know if the game has legs, but the first few play-throughs have been enjoyable enough that I’m tempted to snap up my own copy.

Alternatively, you can play Stonehenge, a board game with five different ways to play. James Ernest suggests you play a game that involves bidding on things.

Played: Kill Dr. Lucky

Kill Dr. Lucky is the story of 2 to 7 players who gather at a Clue-like mansion, each with the intent of killing the eponymous Doctor. Players take turns sneaking about the premises, laying in wait for Dr. Lucky, making attempts on his life, and foiling the assassination attempts of the other players. (The game takes place in a time before Internet message boards and instant messaging, so none of the players realize that everyone else in the mansion wants Dr. Lucky dead, too.) The bare bones Director's Cut is available through Cheapass Games, and Titanic Games produces a deluxe edition. One version or the other should be available through your Un/Friendly Local Game Store.


In addition to providing pawns, a very pretty board, and cards of high quality stock (the philosophy of Cheapass Games is that you already have game pieces, dice, etc., so why not pay 5 to 10 bucks for a game instead of 30 to 50?) the Titanic version gives you spite tokens. In previous incarnations of Dr. Lucky, the only way to fail a murder attempt or increase the value of an attack on the Doctor was to play the right cards. Spite tokens offer an extra wrinkle. Every time a player attacks Dr. Lucky and fails, they gain a spite token. These add one point to all future attacks on Dr. Lucky, and, yes, I quadruple-checked, they are not spent in this manner. They are only spent to contribute to a failure, at which point they are given to the player who failed.


Allow me to explain how a board game night involving Kill Dr. Lucky usually runs. During first game, which takes 30 minutes to an hour, everyone learns or slowly remembers the rules. The second game lasts half that time. A third game is suggested, now that everyone knows what the hell they're doing and can plan against what went wrong on their second try. The third game doesn't end until the player who is the second most and second least stubborn throws the game.

On a typical board game night, I am the least stubborn person, allowing games to go on far too long after I realize that we've either screwed up the rules or we broke it. Meanwhile, the most stubborn player won't give up because, damn it, we kept at it this long, and they still have a good chance of winning.

The problem with spite tokens is that unless you're playing with people who openly adhere to the Jander School of Failure Cards, the game will never end. In the original Dr. Lucky, failure cards are kept unseen in a player's hand. Spite tokens, however, are on the table. So it's easy for the other players to conclude, "I'm not going to waste failure cards on this attempt, because I know the last guy has enough tokens to take care of it."

Which gives the attacking player more tokens. After all failure cards are spent, the game becomes a tedious exercise in keeping the player with 14 spite tokens away from Dr. Lucky while slowly siphoning those same tokens to other players until their combined efforts can't stop an attack. Or alternatively, the session ends when the second most/least stubborn player says, "Fuck it, I don't want the guy to my left to win."

Which is what spite tokens are all about. The player with the least spite is most likely to harbor the most.

This is not to say that I don't endorse spite. I highly recommend the deluxe version. Spite tokens embrace the gameplay attitude that Jander always understood: "I have two spite tokens here. But if you leave it up to me to save your ass, I'm not spending them. That's why they're called spite tokens."

'Tis The Season No One Updates

I wanted to take a moment today to highlight our highly selective list of linked content, but this is probably the worst time of the year to do so.

It is the last workday before the Christmas and New Year's holidays, which means most web sites will not be updated for a week and a half at best. The links we offer here will only lead you to "best of the year" articles (or a list of "best articles of the year"), pre-generated content with no immediacy, movie reviews written weeks ahead of time, and podcasts that will return in 2007.

It would seem to be a bad week for those of us stuck at the office. (What the hell am I supposed to listen to on my commute? Music?) But never fear. Canned Food and Shotguns will still be updated on our usual irregular schedule throughout the holidays. So it will only suck for me, assuming I actually have time to browse the Internet at work, and Mr. Bile, who does not work in an office, much less The Office, which had the best Christmas episode ever.

I encourage anyone who missed the latter to pick it up via iTunes as a present to themselves. I know some of you might be on the torrents and believe information deserves to be free, but really, is $1.99 that bad a price for 42 minutes of information that contains the phrase: "We're going to Asian Hooters"?

And on the subject of Christmas presents, we may even have one or two for you next week. I already know what I'm getting you. If you have a wish list, send your suggestions to Mr. Bile immediately. I asked for a Tight Hat.

Hey, it's Christmas. I can make all the obscure references I want.

Risk: Godslow (Supersized 11/25/06)

That took longer than expected. "That" being a friendly game of Risk: Godstorm and preparing Straight Guy Ambrosia. What made it straight? The fact that I can't properly peel or cut fruit. Without Rachael Ray as my guide, I probably couldn't slit my wrists. Of course, having her there to instruct me would be added incentive to get the job done right.

As it turned out, the ambrosia dish was a bit of misnomer. The only person not to partake of the Straight Guy Ambrosia was the straight guy. I followed the directions in my Williams and Sonoma salad recipe book and it called for several fruits that I don't eat.

I inflict board games on my friends once or twice a year, usually on holidays. I hope to increase that frequency in the future, perhaps running Advanced HeroQuest on Valentine's Day and Descent during Fashion Week. (I can't believe I forgot to put that on my Christmas list!) I also have a wedding anniversary to plan each year. But in case I continue to slack on the board game front, I have some helpful advice for my future self.

"Dear Narraptor,

Hi. Has Lost Adama Caused the Destruction of the Colonies'ed yet? LOL. ADCtDothC is the new Raped By a Panda. Should I worry about Bernard and a polar bear? No spoilers!

It's been six months, so you've probably forgotten about what happened last time and are thinking of having a board game night. You might want to break out the tokens the day before and play two rounds. That way you can avoid game-breaking misinterpretations and rules omissions that need to be re-looked up on the Internet before the real session reaches the point of no return. In the case of Risk, that's two hours, after everyone has finally placed their armies.

Oh, and unless you plan on taking it, make sure the card that sinks Atlantis is in the proper spell deck next time, though that did lead to an amusing chase scene on the Atlanteans' part.

See you in May."

After consulting Mr. Bile, I came to the conclusion that there are four annoying player archetypes common to board gamers:

1. The guy whose turns take too long
2. The guy who gets bitchy when he decides he doesn't understand how to play
3. The guy who throws the game
4. The guy who can't tolerate being back-stabbed in back-stabbing games

You'll notice all of those examples are male. In my admittedly limited experience with unconventional games--the ones that you won't find at Toys 'R Us--the only time I've ever seen a female player pissed was in response to the intelligence scores of female brains in The Great Brain Robbery. Our first reaction was, "Aww," but it quickly became scary. That's why Kate the Simple Housewife has an extra zero added to her IQ with a Sharpie.

Mr. Bile pointed out that each archetype may have different reasons for acting the way he does. One might take too long on his turn because there are too many options, another might find it necessary to calculate every single one. The guy who throws the game might do it because he no longer sees the possibility of winning, or maybe he refuses to ever use a failure card on principle.

Full disclosure, I myself fall into the second archetype, as I learned when I was exposed to Robo Rally. Mr. Bile acknowledges to exhibiting tendencies of the first.

I bring this up because board games are a social activity, and I think it's important to know under what circumstances you start to ruin it for everyone else. For example, in our second round of Godstorm, I succumbed to my board game shadow. After depleting many of my troops in spite I sat back, had another half-tumbler of wine, and remembered there were other people there trying to have fun. Why should I throw off the game balance just because I hadn't got the rules right from the beginning? After that, I did the best with what I had, just like when I resigned myself to sending all of my Johnny 5's into the same pit round after round in that stupid robot game that doesn't make any sense.

I lost terribly.

I had hoped to play Puerto Rico, but it's been so long I can't remember why I liked it. With only vague memories of fun, the gameplay instructions don't make it an easy sell to newbies. "The players go from round to round in different roles and initiate the associated actions." Hell, yeah!