Last night Melissa and I went out for dinner.  I had a wonderful steak and lettuce wedge.  She was driving, so I also enjoyed margaritas with my meal.  We were fortunate enough to end up with a large table/booth because we brought along one of our favorite board games to enjoy while having our meal.

We brought along Carcassonne, the Travel Edition.

This is a special “baby” version of the standard Carcassonne game.  The tiles and the wooden components, known as Meeple, are all slightly smaller.

Photograph by Henning Förthmann

What’s really cool is that the game comes in a little cloth bag which is unfolded and laid flat on the table and used as the score board.

Photograph by Henning Förthmann

The interesting this is that we must have been placed, by the restaurant, in exactly the right location.  During our meal, we played 2 games, and we were frequently stopped by either other dinner guests or restaurant staff with questions and curiosity about the game.

That’s the first time that has happened to us.  Usually no one pays attention.  It was pretty cool having young folks and elderly folks stop over to ask what we were playing and how the game works.  Carcassonne is a beautiful game and an elegant design.

We ended up sharing information about some local game shops where you can purchase the game as well as our favorite on-line games retailer Thought Hammer.  My wife also shared with them the URL for my BLOG about board games A World Without String.  Note to self:  Write more often to your BLOG.

We had time to play 2 games.  The Travel Carcassonne game plays pretty quick because it’s only the basic game and doesn’t have any of those wonderful but game-lengthening expansions.  She beat me in the first game, which happens a lot when we play Carcassonne.  But I won the second game.  We noticed that, for some reason, I played better once I had 2 Margaritas in me.

Playing Carcassonne while waiting for dinner and during our meal was quite a bit of fun.  I’m certain we introduced a few new people to Euro-Games too.

I just saw something at my local Target department store that really floored me. They were selling “Settlers of Catan” in the board games aisle.

Wow. That’s awesome. They already sell “Wits & Wagers”, an excellent party game enjoyed by more experienced game players. I can only hope it sells well. Maybe we’ll see “Carcassonne” and “Ticket to Ride” someday in these big chain stores.

I haven’t written a board game review in quite a while. Getting back into the saddle, I have posted a review for the excellent board game “Ad Astra” on my games BLOG:

A World Without String

I recently posted a BLOG entry on my board games review site documenting how I store my copy of TI-3. This was in response to a query on Board Game Geek.

A World Without String.

– Steve

Melissa ordered some new chips for our gaming. They arrived today. Check ‘em out.

I decided to update my current board games review BLOG (A World Without String) to include all of the older game review entries from the previous BLOG. This makes that site the main repository of my board game reviews and notes. I intend to deprecate the older site entries soon.

I moved my domain “A World Without String” today. Near as I can tell the process went smoothly and without a hitch. Let me know if you encounter a problem accessing the site.

I use A World Without String as my board games BLOG and reviews site. If you are seeing the site from the newly moved location it should have a new article named “Haven’t played board games in a while”. If you see that entry the move worked.

I was driving to a friend’s home in Cincinnati this afternoon. I was pulling up to the intersection and spotted a white van with some very interesting icons on the back.

Being the avid board gamer that I am, I thought, “Wow, cool. There’s game hexes on the back of that van. I wonder what it’s about?”

Then I got close enough to see.

I added a new entry on http://www.aworldwithoutstring.com about the custom animal figures we created for the board game Agricola.

I just posted an entry to my board games review site about the games played in 2008.

See A World Without String