Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame

I love fantasy genre, I love humour, I like Terry Pratchett books as well, which take place in the strange Discworld. These elements led me to buy Discworld: Ankh-Morpork - The Boardgame by Martin Wallace.

Background story

Lord Vetinari left the city, so the lords of Ankh-Morpork want to get the rule over the capital of Discworld. Our aim to lead one of them to reach his aim, against the others. Is it looks quite simple? Well, it isn't. Ankh-Morpork is the city of chaos, where everyday strange things happens.

Components

The components are quite good, and we have a feeling we got quallity product from our money. The cardboard map is awesome! The artwork on the cards are funny amazing, the wooden pieces (minions and buildings) are good. I have a little problem with the wooden coins and the inner storey, but it doesn't matter.

About the game

It's a 1 hour, 2-4 player game with many confrontation, backstabing and - as I mentioned before - with many chaotic element. I don't want to write much about the setup of board and this game, just only every player gets 5 card and $10. After we have choosen a personality card secretly, we can start the game.

The goal depends on the personality card we choose: we have to control x area, we have to x minions on the  board, we have to x troublemarker on the board, we have to collect x amount of money or we have to let play until the last card of drawing deck.

During our turn we play out cards, then drawing back 5 hand of cards. The played cards determine our actions: we can place a minion, we can build a building (this add some kind of bonus to your turns), we can remove a trouble marker, we can kill a minion, we can get money from the bank, we can interrupt an action, we can play another card or we can play an event card. Playing out random event cards means you start something chaos over city of Ankh-Morpork, and with these cards you can ruin the strategy of others... or yours. This add a funny part to the whole game, but sometimes it can be annoying as well.

Conclusion

I think it is a good, funny game with quallity components. If you like backstabing the others, and if you haven't got any problem with a little luck base then maybe it is your game. The interesting world of Terry Pratchett's Discworld adds lot to this game. If you didn't read any books from him, it's no problem and if you read... then you can met many familiar character from the books. You can quickly learn to love it, if you don't take it too seriously!

(source of the pictures: bgg)

Bye, bye, iGoogle!

I'm a big fan of Google. I love their apps/gadgets/sites like Google Docs, Google Maps, Blogger, Gtalk, Google Reader, etc. One of my favourite is the iGoogle.

Unfortunatelly Google announced they'll stop supporting this development at the future, and according the iGoogle page it will shut down 1st November 2013. I'm very-very sad, because this page, my startpage, is very usefull to me.

I can organize many things in one page. I have to push one (1!) F5 to refresh many important information to me like my incoming messages at GMail, the new Google Reader articles/posts, new twitter messages arrived to my account (TwitterGadget), some important bookmarks, shopping lists, etc. I think I'll have to find an alternative solution, an alternative page, where I can organize my important news sources.

Do you use iGoogle? Do you sad about the decision of Google? Or do you have alternative solution which can replace iGoogle?

Am I geek enough?

Sometimes I just wondering how geek I am. I don't know, I'm very unsure the answer. Maybe I just put on the wrong questions. Am I a geek? Or I just want to be a geek? Or not?

First, I love any kind of electronic gadgets. I'm so lucky to be an owner of iPad 2, and I have admit I love it! But it isn't jailbreaked (yet?). As I have a smartphone with android OS, which is not rooted (yet?). Maybe I'm not really geek or not brave enough to be a real gadget-geek. (Sadly, I have to mention last week somebody stole my wife smartphone.) My love towards to any kind of computer and computer games is a well-known thing. I love look in to the case of PC's and identifying, upgrading the parts of it.

At my Hungarian blog I many times wrote about boardgames. It add an anothet geek-factor to my personality. 10 years ago I said the boardgames are stupid things and they just for kids/children. It's not true! Maybe a boardgame just a game as the name suggest it us, but it means great fun. I bought dozens of boardgames at the past five year, and nowday I live them better than the computer games. Unfortunatelly I haven't got chance to play with many geekish one as Battlestar Galactica or the famous Arkham Horror, but my favorite is a real tough game, the Race for the Galaxy.

I'm owner of 43 boardgame (excluded expansions), but I really count as a boardgame geek?

When I was teenager I bought many comicbooks. I adored for the colorful advantures of X-men, Spiderman, Superman or the mighty Transformers, as I had eagerly read less know comics like Bobo or Góliát. But somehow this devotion is suddenly disapeared. I don't remember the reason of, but something is changed. From an exact point I hadn't bought any comics for a long time, while at 2009 I bought the Watchmen series. Suprise! My all time comicbook adoptation is this movie! The Sin City was great, the new comicsmovies were great (Iron man, Captain America, Thor, etc) and I liked the Spiderman movies, but my personal favourite is still the Watchmen. I have to admit I haven't seen yet The Avengers, but I don't think it will change my mind... But who knows?

I always was a big science-fiction and fantasy fan (I'm sure I'll write about it later), which is still strenghten the geek-factor in me. 

So, as you see from my short post I love doing geek things. But may I say to myself "I'am a geek"? Or am I geek enough?

Superhero film alphabet

I'm a geek. Or I think of myself as a geek. Once I love the comics, as I love the superheroes, the stories about them, and of course the superhero movies. Today I run into a short video, where you can find many superhero or superhero comic/movie characters in alphabetical order. Do you recognize all of them? How many of the characters do you know? And which is you favourite ones?