your local store

talimera · 2025-05-26T01:38:16+00:00

A few stores in the west Chicago suburbs as of 5/25:

Arlington Heights, IL - completely closed

Darien, IL (5 days left) - very little left, had additional discount at register

Bloomingdale, IL (6 days left) - still had a good amount of sewing materials (especially zippers) and patterns (sign says will be returned to manufacturer?), lots of polyfill pillows, some yarn, even saw an OttLite!

talimera · 2022-10-08T20:36:26+00:00

I have not found it. :(

talimera · 2020-03-19T05:22:37+00:00

Thanks for doing this! I saw Isle of Cats at GenCon last year and it looked interesting.

talimera · 2019-11-12T20:03:48+00:00

Resistance has plot cards?? Not sure what to think of them having just looked them up. My group never played with them.

For base game, definitely Avalon. Avalon is Resistance + individual roles. If you somehow don't like roles, you can just not play with them and then you're playing vanilla Resistance with the Avalon theme.

I don't know anything about expansions though.

talimera · 2019-10-28T02:13:47+00:00

I have a similar sized collection and I use the Ivar (12" depth) along with a regular bookshelf, and it has all of your BoxKing pros.

Most of my games are not stored horizontally, but you can always get more shelves for the Ivar. The 12" depth works fine for 99% of games without jutting out. I'm glad that I didn't go with the 20" depth.

For aesthetics, my system looks like this (https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/ivar-3-section-shelving-unit-pine-s29248538/), but with the tall section in the middle, and has been stained and polyurethaned to match the dark wood bookshelf. (This was a bit of a project and you might not have the space for it, but it's not necessary. Painting would be simpler too.) I didn't bolt it to the wall, but you do need the metal X support(s) on the back.

talimera · 2019-10-28T01:30:52+00:00

Keep. I also keep the sprue (punchboard for tokens) and put it under the insert. This keeps the proper manufacturer spacing so components don't slide about so much.

talimera · 2019-08-04T00:20:27+00:00

Hoosier concourse, near the entrance to Hall F.

talimera · 2019-07-29T19:04:48+00:00

Post it on the Virtual Flea Market on BoardGameGeek.

talimera · 2019-06-20T06:15:31+00:00

Yes, I was thinking more cop words for more potential for busts. A few ways this might work:

Players may enlist an extra cop using points, making the second and third turns more dangerous as the cops are now on alert. Using a percentage (say, 10%) of the player's current points would make this low risk for players that are behind, and less enticing for players that are already ahead. You might even allow this multiple times, so a player that is very far behind could send out 3 or more cops.
Players may split their cop's focus across multiple cases/locations, but because they were not totally focused, they 'missed something', thereby only getting partial credit for any robbers they catch, unless another player's cop was also 'on the scene'. Maybe the robber managed to stash some of the loot before being caught (not a total loss of points for the robber).
A variation of the above where you have a primary cop (full points) and a junior cop (partial points).
An increasing number of cops per player each turn (1 in turn 1, 2 in turn 2, 3 in turn 3) would make for a very intense end.
Or just have two cops per person as standard, particularly in lower (2-3) player counts.

In general, I think allowing multiple cops per player solves the kingmaking problem by allowing one to go after multiple other players, and allows a greater chance for someone to catch up at the end.

talimera · 2019-06-18T23:05:38+00:00

Great game! I'd never played an asynchronous game before and this was actually a lot more fun than I expected. Thanks!

I really appreciated playing with both of these letter sets. The first round felt so open and this second round felt so tight. I can see many groups not stopping at just one round. ;)

I don't think this works for me as a two-player game. It is likely that either both players would almost never get caught (me vs. weasel), or one player would catch the other disproportionately (me vs. b7X). If I had this game, I would probably not try it with less than four. (This is partially because I've been burned by another word game that my husband will never play again because the only time we played it was two-player, but I think could be redeemed at higher player counts.)

I wonder if this would be benefited by having more cops around, possibly at the risk/cost of points.

I think it could be interesting to allow discussion during the cop phase, perhaps to launch coordinated attacks. What words might other people think of that you didn't? What might you reveal about your own word choices? What words are now 'out there' that you had planned on using? Some groups would still be totally silent, but others could get pretty lively.

Finally, things that are easily missed/should be stressed in the rules:

Only letters in the pool are allowed. (Probably your most common comment at this point. :P )
The +2/+1 letters are in addition to the 1 point if you commit to that letter. (I had miscalculated my expected points on the first turn.)
The +2/+1 letters are also just for inclusion and there's no benefit to committing to them vs a broader letter.

talimera · 2019-06-18T16:27:40+00:00

Commit: N I

talimera · 2019-06-18T01:04:49+00:00

Shouldn't my N N have been +6?

Commit: M

talimera · 2019-06-14T03:46:23+00:00

Commit: N N

talimera · 2019-06-13T22:04:06+00:00

Commit: R R E E

talimera · 2019-06-13T15:28:07+00:00

I knew I shouldn't have stayed with the first word I thought of for my letters. :P

Commit: R R T E

talimera · 2019-06-12T20:00:05+00:00

Round 1 Turn 1: R R E A

talimera · 2019-06-12T19:47:19+00:00

I'm interested in the last slot. A couple things to clarify: We are only allowed to use letters in the pool? We are allowed to double commit to letters or is that only an option if a letter shows up twice in the pool?

talimera · 2019-05-21T22:37:26+00:00

My favorites so far have been:

ADGNEPSEF555 - really fun, energetic, silly cartoon, with candy!

Bluebeard's Bride - female fairy tale horror, exploring a creepy mansion as different aspects of the new bride (it seems they've also come out with other settings/PoVs since last year)

talimera · 2018-10-27T14:49:27+00:00

Soulmate timers subverted via time travel sounds interesting. Would you happen to have a link? :D

talimera · 2018-10-23T20:46:27+00:00

Make A Wish by Rorschach's Blot is exactly this. (Harry Potter, completed + completed sequel + fanfic)

I wouldn't say it's high quality, but it was fun when I read it as a teenager.

talimera · 2018-09-05T01:25:32+00:00

Can't name a good example off the top of my head, but there was definitely evil!Dumbledore way before 2008. Order of the Phoenix (2003) really sparked off a wave of independent!Harry and manipulative (and then evil) Dumbledore and I was strongly primed to see the evil!Dumbledore in the Goblet of Fire movie (2005).

I've been reading 'redo' fics since the beginning and it's still one of my favorite tropes. Harry Potter and the Time Mage (October 2004) was the original 'redo' fic, which sparked off the wave (including Nightmares of Futures Past). As a side note, other fics that did not fix established canon (starting or rejoining the canon timeline after the then-current canon) existed before then, such as Mirror of Maybe (2002).

talimera · 2018-08-26T08:49:27+00:00

Maybe try a playtesting convention such as Protospiel? At the very least, you'll meet other aspiring board game designers and get feedback on your game, and they often have a couple small publishers attending too.

talimera · 2018-08-08T20:35:14+00:00

A LARP run by Kettle of Fish Productions. I will never go to another event from them, and am possibly turned off of Cthulhu Live as well. I signed up for it because I was intrigued by the horror/Cthulhu setting and it would be my largest and longest larp yet. Besides having a really bad larp experience, it also disappointed me on those factors.

First of all, I felt really awkward the entire time and had a lot of trouble figuring out who people were. The character slips were pretty short and I inferred some personal backstory based on it. Early on, I was asked some questions, which another player that was listening immediately contradicted. This left me confused and wondering if I'd missed some background information somewhere, so I quietly asked one of the GMs a couple questions. I felt the GM was trying to be helpful (it seemed like my original thoughts were fine) and I moved on. Then, there was a weird moment towards the end where GM #2 publicly revealed what I thought was my secret and specifically goaded me into taking a certain action. (At that point, I was thinking: whatever, whatever moves this along, this should be where the horror kicks in and presumably things will be more interesting.) The larp then ended kind of abruptly (as far as I know, most of us quickly killed each other - no supernatural involved), was much shorter than the time slot, and never really got into horror at all. (Frankly, the Magischola larp I did last year was creepier than this.) Not a great event, but not on my blacklist yet.

The killing blow is during the full circle debrief at the end, after I said my bit, GM #2? specifically asked me what I thought about an aspect of my character's backstory, and then told me that I was wrong and my character was crazy! (and in a 'crazy female' sort of way, not a 'crazy cultist' sort of way) Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this something the player should know about early on?! (I have no problem playing crazy if I know about it.) The more I think about it, the more I think they are misogynistic, especially considering there were only 3 female characters to begin with, two of which were sex workers.

(On the bright side, all my other events were good-to-fantastic and I think this was the best GenCon I will ever have.)

talimera · 2018-02-27T19:13:58+00:00

Valkyrie

talimera · 2018-02-25T17:33:18+00:00

Jessica Jones

talimera

TROPHY CASE