Session Report - Feb 27 2008 - COWs came home

The VBGG joins the Beta Test of Catan Online World

Out of all of our jaunts into online gaming, I would have to say that this has been one of the smoothest starts to a new game. We are more experienced now, and the COW interface is definitely better than others we use. The consensus was that COW was quite playable, and the VBGG is looking forward to trying different games, such as Cities and Knights.

Bart and Pete are lovers of Catan the Cardgame, and are looking forward to trying that out.

We took just a bit to all relocate to Würfelbach, and wander around the city. LadyCassandra tried to invite us all in for tea in her new home, but the door was locked. Aww!

Using Teamspeak with great success for managing communications on two tables. That's really nice! Thanks to everyone for using Teamspeak.

On to the game results.

Table 1: Pete, Bart, Lisa, Beth -

Standard Catan, our very first go. Pete placed pretty silly, as this game was more for learning.

Bart got totally starved out of resources, and Pete got a nice windfall. Pete rolled on wheat, Rock and sheep to stack dev cards and make 4 cities nicely.

Pete 10
Bart 5
Beth 7
Lisa 5



Table 2: Karen, Dana, Collin, Bill -

Standard Catan

No detailed report from table 2 yet. Other than The robber tried to make Bill loose, but he held on another round to win.

Karen 6
Dana 5
Collin 4
Bill 10


Beta Comments:

• Dana registered, but seemed to register as a german, as his interface is in German. We think he did something wrong.
• It would be great if you could look at dice statistics with popup window (ala cities3D), they are always fun to look at.
• Card Animations during trade are slow. For all users on Table 1.
  
• Seems like other animation lags as well, like dice rolls?
• It would be nice to be able to create "private tables" We do this with mode "invisible" on BSW, then ghook friend. Or just password a game, that would be ok?
  
• It would be nice if you could turn invisible on and off during a game.
• Animation issues in the city, where the user name doesn't erase properly. Like magicmagennisisisisisisisisisisi as the player moves west.
  

Session Report - Feburary 20 2008 - New Convoy

The group, minus Pete picked up Convoy as a new game to add to the list. Here's the report from Karen:

Learning a new game when 5 of the 6 players had never played before is not a good VBGG move.

But it is a fun game nevertheless.

Collin wins because Brian has a penalty card that kept him from a tie. Dana's strategy of buying all of the tickets does not do well.

Gen Con Broke

Gen Con has filed for Chapter 11, but says Gen Con Indy will go on as planned.

Read Boardgame News' report

What happens next?

Will WOTC buy the whole thing?

A diminished role of Gen Cone may be just what other game fests across the country need.

Session Report - Feburary 13 2008 - Ticket to Speak

Team Speak seemed to work. Just remember to increase the bit rate on the codec when creating a new room/table, the default bitrate sounds awful.

Beth and I joined late, and watched the 4 player TTR with Dana, Lisa, Brian, and Karen. Not sure who won.

Then we split into two games, three players each - Brian bowed out for the evening.

Game 1 Table 2: Collin, Paul, and Lisa. Paul went out west, Lisa Played the middle, and Collin went up north and down the east coast. While Paul had the longest route, Collin outscored everyone in total tickets and points for cars played. Lisa, unfortunately, had a 12 point deficit for not completing a route. Final score Collin 117, Paul 113, and Lisa 79.

Game 2 Table 2: We switched up players, with Beth joining Collin and Paul. Collin kept all his beginning tickets, but they were all small value runs. Paul absolutely commanded this one, scoring the most for train cars played, highest point value routes completed, and longest run. Final Score: Paul 128, Beth 94, Collin 93.

Report from Beth:

Game 1 Table 1: Beth, Dana, and Karen: Beth forced endgame and was the only one with all completed tickets. Dana had longest route. Dana 142, Beth 112, Karen 98. (Karen probably sent screenshot to you, Pete)

Game 2, Table 1: was Dana, Lisa and Karen - no idea who won that one.

But here's the final board. Congrats to Dana:

Voice Chat with TeamSpeak

Greetings fellow gamers -

For the past year we have been using Skype as our voice communication system. Skype works fairly well, but has the following problems:

• Crashes on occasion (which is very disruptive)
  
• Limited to 6 people
• Cumbersome to "invite" people
• Large overhead in memory
• Can't move easily between tables
  

I think it is time to try an alternative. I have been testing TeamSpeak, and find it to be a pretty solid system. It has the following advantages:

• Remote server (low overhead to users)
• Small memory footprint
• Doesn't crash
• Channels, allowing users to just join a chat channel (what we call a table)
  
• create new channels
  
• move between channels
  
• Free
• Easy

I would like to try this for a future VBGG session! So, without further ado, here's what you need to do!

Step 1: Download client

http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads

Select the Teamspeak2 client for Windows. (The first one. For windows. The 5 meg or so one)


Step 2: Install and Run program

Y'all know how to install a program, don't you?

Step 3: Connect to Pete's Server

See the Teamspeak status box on the right? Click on the server name or channel to connect.

If all went well, you just heard "Link Engaged". Woot!

Step 4: Set your audio and push to talk

• Click Settings -> sound input/output settings from the menu
• Select push to talk radio button
• click the set key
• press the Ctrl key (this is your push to talk button)

Nice! Whenever you want to talk, just press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard.

Step 5: Test (if there's nobody online to test with)

• Put on your headset
• On the same settings panel above, click Activate local test mode
• hold down the ctrl key
• say "I'm so cool! I r leet haxor!"

It worked! Click deactivate test mode, and close. You are done!

When you join Pete's TeamSpeak sever, you will be in the Default Channel. You could move to other channels, or create your own.

Note that Teamspeak is a simplex chat system. That you must press push to talk to chat. This will help us get a quieter chat session, as we won't have to listen to room noise or ukulele music.

Hope it works well for us! If not, well, we'll go back to Skype.

Pete's TeamSpeak server is up 24 hours a day. Just IM Pete, and he can try to meet you there for a test!

THANK YOU!



Note -

You may want to add the server to your teamspeak client directly, so you don't have to visit the vbgg page here to connect. Try this in your teamspeak client:

• Click Connection
• Click Connect
• Right Click Servers, and select Add Server
• Give it a name, like VBGG
• set server address to www.hoffswell.com
• Set nickname to your name
• Click Connect

Session Report - February 6 2008

Greetings!

Reports follow. Thanks so much for those that submitted!

Collin Magennis to pete 11:33 PM

While waiting for Bill to join up, Collin, Beth, Dana, Lisa, and Karen played a quick game of TransAmerica. While Karen won the first round, she ended up being happy that scores don't go into negative. Collin wins with 10, followed by Beth with 7, Lisa with 3, Dana with 2, and Karen, um, triggering the end of the game.

-- Gigantically, IceFire2112 won the game with 10 points. (20:44 min.)

Bill joined up, and we split into two tables of San Juan.

First game had Bill, Dana, and Collin at one table, and Karen, Lisa, and Beth at the other.

Bill and Collin both tried the guild hall strategy, while Dana started with the chapel strategy. Bill played it just a little better than Collin, and won the game. Dana's chapel strategy worked well, tying Collin for second.

-- IceFire2112 erreichte 31 SP, davon 15 SP durch Gebaeude und 16 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- Lamork erreichte 36 SP, davon 22 SP durch Gebaeude und 14 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- danar erreichte 31 SP, davon 19 SP durch Gebaeude und 0 SP durch grosse Gebaeude. Kapelle: 12
-- Heavenly, Lamork smashed the opposition's hopes with 36 points. (29:55 min.)

Game two we mixed up the tables, with Dana, Beth, and Collin on one table, and Bill, Karen, and Lisa at the other.

Collin went the guild hall route again, with Dana choosing that route as well. Beth went the chapel route. This game started slowly, with everyone making use of their original starter indigo plant. Collin ended up the game with 4 silver smelters, and eeked out a 1 point win over Dana and Beth.

-- magennis erreichte 40 SP, davon 23 SP durch Gebaeude und 8 SP durch grosse Gebaeude. Kapelle: 9
-- IceFire2112 erreichte 41 SP, davon 29 SP durch Gebaeude und 12 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- danar erreichte 40 SP, davon 18 SP durch Gebaeude und 22 SP durch grosse Gebaeude.
-- The victory of IceFire2112 was planned in an exemplary fashion and ended with 41 points. (37:03 min.)

Good games all!
Collin



Karen Fitz La Barge to Pete 11:45 PM



While Transamerica wasn't Karen's game tonight, San Juan proved to be.

Utilizing the market hall, a plethora of silver smelters produced so many cards in the first game that she threw away over 15 cards --all due to the fact that a tower was no where in her cards. However Karen still managed to corner the victory by a slim margin of 34 points.

In the second game, the combination of four silver smelters with a guild hall and a palace produced 41 points and busted the competition (including Bill who had won his first game in the evenings tourney set up. )

The biggest hero of the night however proved to be Collin. He sent over Pete's Brettspielwelt client file so that Karen could reload it and get rid of her mini-screen problem. (See photo.) Thanks Collin! You are a true gamer and a gentleman as well!


--
Karen Fitz La Barge