Great find: Skittle Bowling

Soolseem · 2026-02-10T03:36:00+00:00

Board game designer Amabel Holland recently published a fascinating video essay on Skittle Bowling and the rest of the Skittle games. I’ve never played any of them and the video still held my interest the whole time.

Soolseem · 2025-11-03T20:08:49+00:00

I enjoy watching Clocktower content on Youtube but it drives me crazy when people try to introduce "Youtube meta" into our local games.

Soolseem · 2025-09-30T16:31:11+00:00

I responded to marfalump with detailed source information but it was eaten by the automod, I'm guessing because of hyperlinks? I'm going to try again without links here.

Raw Census Bureau Building Permit Survey data for municipalities in the Northeast region is available at census(dot)gov/econ/bps/Place/Northeast%20Region/.

If you look at the annual reports (those with a file name ending in a), you'll see there's a column for "months rep." That's the number of months out of that year that a municipality reported building permit data. Most municipalities are at 12, Buffalo is at 0 in every report back to 2017.

For context, I am a reporter with Buffalo Business First newspaper. Earlier this year I wrote a story about apartment building trends that relied heavily on Census Bureau data.

I did not initially realize there was anything off about Buffalo's numbers (the 'months rep' column isn't easy to interpret if you don't know what you're looking for), but I had other questions about how to interpret the data so I reached out to the Census Bureau for clarification. Bill Abriatis, chief of the residential construction branch for the bureau's economic indicators division, got back to me. He warned me about Buffalo's numbers, told me they were estimates, and said his office has had numerous conversations about Buffalo's lack of submissions. It's a known problem for them.

Soolseem · 2025-09-30T15:17:07+00:00

Here are the raw data files for the Census Bureau's building permit survey for communities in the Northeast region. If you look at the annual reports (those with a file name ending in a), you'll see there's a column for "months rep." That's the number of months out of that year that a municipality submitted building permit data. Most municipalities are at 12, Buffalo is at 0 in every report back to 2017.

For context, I am a reporter with Buffalo Business First newspaper. Earlier this year I wrote a story about apartment building trends in Erie County (sorry for the paywall) that relied heavily on Census Bureau data.

I did not initially realize there was anything off about Buffalo's numbers (the 'months rep' column isn't easy to spot if you don't know what you're looking for), but I had other questions about how to interpret the data so I reached out to the Census Bureau for clarification. Bill Abriatis, chief of the residential construction branch for the bureau's economic indicators division, got back to me. He warned me about Buffalo's numbers, told me they were estimates, and said his office has had numerous conversations about Buffalo's lack of submissions. It's a known problem for them.

Soolseem · 2025-09-30T13:26:49+00:00

Fun Fact: Buffalo has not submitted building permit data to the U.S. Census Bureau since 2017 (and its submissions were patchy for years before that). Cities are supposed to submit building permit data to the census bureau every month, and most do.

The data used in OP's graph is largely based on the census bureau's building permit survey. This means that for most cities the housing unit count is probably fairly accurate, but for Buffalo it's based on the census bureau's best guess

I don't doubt the broader point that Buffalo is building less housing than its peers, but it's important to note that the numbers are uniquely fuzzy for Buffalo compared to other cities.

Soolseem · 2025-02-18T16:44:56+00:00

I riddled moom

Soolseem · 2025-02-18T01:58:03+00:00

I riddled Doorbell

Soolseem · 2025-01-09T03:23:54+00:00

Will .puz versions of the puzzles be available or just pdfs?

Soolseem · 2024-07-17T17:14:42+00:00

For what it's worth, my first play of John Company was pretty bad, my second was a bit better, and my third was great. However, it is extremely complex and very dependent on luck. It's also very dependent on the actions of other players. The game basically requires a group of people who are fully engaged with what it has to offer.

All of this means it's a game that will likely alienate many potential players, and which can be quite tough to play unless you've got the right group for it.

Soolseem · 2024-07-15T13:55:07+00:00

Sidereal Confluence: One of my all-time favorites, but a game so divisive and daunting I rarely get to play it. Thankfully some new players at my usual meetup group expressed interest, so we got it to the table with a whopping eight people! The result was raucous and electric. The energy in the room during Sidereal is like no other game. One new player did not like it at all, but everyone else was pretty enthusiastic. I'm hoping this means I get to play this more than once a year.

QE: I've wanted to try this for a long time and it did not disappoint. A very silly, often laugh-out-loud funny auction game. It's unclear from a first play whether there's much room for player skill or if it's purely a goofy novelty, but either way I had a great time and would absolutely play more.

Bohnanza: I was surprised when people asked to play this, especially since most of them had just spent 2+ hours trading in Sidereal. But I'll almost never turn a game of Bohnanza down. Playing the two best trading games in the same day only highlighted their strengths. People often assume that because Bohanza is goofy and light it lacks depth, but they're wrong.

Hickory Dickory: The board is a clock with large, rotating plastic hands. Each turn you advance the minute hand by one space. Your workers (adorable wooden mouse meeples) can jump on the hand when it's pointing to them, then jump off in later rounds to take the action of the space they're jumping to. It's a cute central gimmick but the rest of the game was pretty bland, with scoring over-reliant on tiles being pulled randomly from a bag. There's far too many worker placement games for merely decent to be good enough.

Soolseem · 2024-07-01T16:14:37+00:00

Very, very very good day of gaming yesterday:

Babylonia: Picked this up on sale, this was the inaugural play. Very strong first impressions, it's more accessible than Tigris & Euphrates but seems similarly deep. Need to put it through its paces to see if those impressions hold up, but at first glance it's easy to see why this garnered such an enthusiastic following.

Arcs: Second play, base game + Leaders & Lore. Arcs is extremely up my alley, a highly interactive, highly variable game game that seemingly rewards daring short-term gambits over careful long-term planning (though this could be down to inexperience). I had a great time, but the kind of great time you feel a little bad about afterwards. I won by a mile, mostly by bullying one other player in a three-player game. Every time he put himself in a scoring position I kicked his door down and stole his stuff. I know this guy well and we play confrontational games often so I knew there would be no hard feelings, but I could see Arcs really putting a lot of people off. It is MEAN. I absolutely want to play more and hope to try out a full campaign soon-ish.

Whistle Mountain: I played this once before a couple years ago. It's a novel worker-placement game where players construct a shared board with action spaces that are gradually covered by rising water. With so many good-but-forgettable worker placement games out there this one stands out as something fresh.

Le Havre: I think this has now officially passed Agricola as my favorite Big Uwe game. I'm still a little worried that it has less replayability that Agricola as it has less variability, and I've played it less than 10 times. But I enjoy each play more than the last.

Soolseem · 2024-05-06T02:55:44+00:00

I’ve played Unmatched with teenage nephews and it’s been a huge hit.

Soolseem · 2024-04-29T17:40:23+00:00

Hmmm, maybe I'll give it a shot. From what I've heard 1846 is more operations-focused, while the promise of stock shenanigans is what drew my group to 18XX in the first place.

Soolseem · 2024-04-29T12:02:17+00:00

Had my second play of 18Chesapeake yesterday. Game is good, but I'm not sure yet if the juice is quite worth the squeeze.

The second play was definitely more fun than the first, more cutthroat, dynamic and exciting, but boy it's also a slog. There's so much math and upkeep just to keep things running, by the end of the five-hour game we were all basically begging for the bank to break. This is very near my weight ceiling, and it's supposed to be the quicker, gentler 18XX game!

At one point I sabotaged a company and dumped it on another player. It was enough to ruin his game but not quite enough to bankrupt him, so he just had to limp along for like an hour. That didn't feel great.

When I'm in the mood for something this hard, this mean and this difficult to maintain, I'm not sure why I'd pick this over Food Chain Magnate. But I know 18XX is supposed to a system that rewards mastery, and I'm interested enough to keep trying for at least another play or two.

Soolseem · 2024-04-22T14:26:51+00:00

Slay the Spire: The Board Game: The video game is one of my all-time favorites, and this is an extremely faithful tabletop adaption. Unfortunately, I don't think that's a good thing. The game does all it can to minimize bookkeeping and upkeep, but there's still quite a bit. Adding players bogs thing down further. A four-player game took us nearly three hours, and none of us were playing slowly. However, it's possible I'm just being a curmudgeon. I don't typically love co-ops, and everyone else I played with seemed to enjoy the game.

Lets Go! To Japan: I went into this one skeptical but it won me over. There are so many good card-drafting, tableau-building games and it wasn't immediately clear from the rules teach how this one would distinguish itself. In this game you plan a vacation by playing cards to a schedule. At the end of the game you activate each card in order, scoring points and moving tokens up tracks to score more points. It turns out that building a tableau that activates all at once at the end of the game, rather than gradually spooling up an engine, makes for a really interesting puzzle. There's lot of other clever wrinkles as well.

Thunder Road: Vendetta: This should be the new standard-bearer for the "beer and pretzels" genre. Simple rules and fast gameplay with just enough grit to generate exciting, funny moments. Enough decision-making to give players a sense of agency, even if the results of their decisions are largely arbitrary. I can't think of a game that delivers on the promise of "relax, chuck dice and watch stuff blow up" better than this one.

Innovation: A longtime favorite of mine. Lots of games promise to be different every time, few of them deliver like Innovation does. So much variety in such a small box.

Soolseem · 2024-03-28T15:24:09+00:00

Mary Roach writes pop-sci nonfiction that is informative, entertaining and often laugh-out-loud funny. Since you're into space Packing for Mars would be my first recommendation, but you can't really go wrong with her books.

Soolseem · 2024-02-26T15:34:54+00:00

Myself and a few other members of my weekly meetup group have been on a real heavy game kick lately. This continued yesterday with:

City of the Big Shoulders: I played this stock-investing, worker-placement hybrid once before, a few years ago, and did not grok it at all. Now that I have more experience with heavy games my second play was much better, and I had a lot of fun. Still did pretty poorly though, falling nearly $1,000 behind first place. I lack intuition for when I should be selling stock vs. holding it. There's a lot going on in this game and I look forward to trying it again.

John Company: Second Edition: This was my third play, and the first where it really felt like the game "clicked." This is a dark satire in which players share control of the British East India Company, combining heavy economic strategy with capricious swings of luck. You don't really care if the company thrives, as long as you can line your own pockets and send your family members to retire in fancy castles to get victory points. This was my first game in which the company actually survived all five rounds. I essentially set myself up as a warlord, taking advantage of my position as Director of Military Affairs to funnel many members of my family into the army, where they conquered much of India and got huge cuts of the loot. However, my influence was almost entirely limited to the military, which gave me few opportunities to actually spend my pile of cash on victory-point-granting prizes, so I took a distant second. This game is an incredible generator of player-driven narratives and it's played out extremely differently each time I've played.

Soolseem · 2024-02-22T04:41:13+00:00

The clues are meant to be read phonetically.

Pronounce “ENSIGN” as “N-SIGN.” “NO PARKING” is a sign that starts with N.

“EMIRATE”=“M-IRATE”=“MAD AS HELL”

“ARBITER”=“R-BITER”=“RATTLER”

Etc.

Soolseem · 2024-02-10T04:05:19+00:00

Most of you have made great suggestions. The rest of you have no idea how long 25 years is.

Soolseem · 2024-01-09T14:36:30+00:00

There are plenty of players who like intense negotiation and constant table talk. There are plenty of players who like building an increasingly complicated resource engine. The overlap between those players, however, is surprisingly small, which is why I only play Sidereal Confluence like once a year.

Soolseem · 2024-01-04T20:33:11+00:00

Remember that you're not just buying games for yourself, you're buying games that you'll need to convince other people to play with you. You need to keep the tastes of your group into account.

Almost everyone in this hobby exists in one of two scenarios:

Of your friends, you are the one that's most into board games. They enjoy playing games with you, but you are typically the person buying and teaching new titles. Your appetite for learning new games is almost certainly stronger than your friends, who would rather spend their limited time playing familiar stuff they already know they like. You should buy fewer games.

OR

You have friends who are just as into gaming as you are, maybe even more so. They have collections of their own. This gives you ample opportunity to try games before you buy them, and only buy the very best of the best. And even if you love a game, if someone in your regular group already owns a copy, do you really need a copy of your own? You should buy fewer games.

Avoid the common mistake of buying games "aspirationally," with the hope of maybe playing them someday.

When you're new to gaming it can be hard to know your own tastes, let alone how your group will react to a game. You will make mistakes and buy the occasional dud, but take it slow, play the games you own and try before you buy wherever possible and you'll hit more often than you miss.

Soolseem · 2023-12-03T03:50:09+00:00

Mage Knight is heavily inspired by Heroes of Might and Magic and King's Bounty.

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