BoardGameGeek!

So I decided to start tracking my (board)game plays on BoardGameGeek. To the right, just below my Gamertag you should see my last five plays. Wootness. The "Collection" function of BGG is not terribly accurate for me yet - I'm adding games as I run across them, so it's pretty spotty right now. It will get better over time. BoardGameGeek can be slightly . . . inpenetrable to the normal mind so I should point out one "feature" of how the database works, especially as it relates to plays. Each game and the game's expansions are listed separately, so an individual "play" of a game (such as Carcassonne) can trigger multiple entries. For instance Karin and I played Carcassonne only once (on Christmas Eve) but we used three expansions (The Games Quarterly "Mini-Expansion", The River II, and Inns & Cathedrals for the curious. Even though we own Traders & Builders and The River (1) we left them out.) so this creates four "plays" in my record.



While I was at it I fixed two long-standing HiddenJester bugs. It used to be that if I didn't have enough (or recent enough) post content the right sidebar would flow into the left - which I found quite ugly. Also, any "normal" text in the right sidebar would be in a dark blue color that was unreadable against the grey. I'd like to change the color scheme and lose the grey, but for now I fixed it so the right column stays right, even if there are no entries, and regular text is now black. (Although it occurs to me it should be the same light grey as main text. Hmm. I'll go fix that when I'm done posting. EDIT: Yeah - It's the "regular" grey now.) Let me know how it looks for you. It should work on Internet Explorer, but honestly, for my own personal blog? Can't be bothered to test. I didn't do anything that should trip up IE - but if I did oh well.



Before I've never had the HTML/CSS chops to fix this, but I've been doing enough web development that I can actually read the underlying structure of the site, so I fixed it.



Lots of stuff afoot, but let me just say if you're interested in boardgames and you haven't played Caylus? WOW! I like it a lot, a lot, a lot. The rules are murder to figure out and fairly poorly organized - if you're local get me to play it with you and I can (now) explain it much better than before Karin and I struggled through it today. But wow, was it A) complex, and B) fun. It currently ranks #3 on the BGG ranks (under Puerto Rico and Tigris & Euphrates - also both really freakin' great games that you can ALWAYS get me to play if you muster up the right number of players.) It might fall a bit over time, but I think it's really hot in the 2-5 player space. Way more complicated than Thurn & Taxis (which is why it missed out the Spiel des Jahres - even though it got the weird new "Special Prize for Complex Play" which was invented pretty much for Caylus) and I can think of groups of 3-4 people where I'd reach for Ticket to Ride, or Thurn & Taxis first, but if I've got a table of folks who will play for real - right now I'd go for Caylus in a heartbeat. Only one play under my belt, but I really like it this far.





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