Let’s get right to it.

What I played:
Z has taken to 10 Days In The USA. He has chosen that over the rest all week. We have played it about 4 times. And he didn’t win any of them. Yet he keeps choosing it. That’s the mark of a good game. The oldest daughter even joined us for a game (and subsequently won).
We played Memoir’44 again too.
We also got a play in of my game, Opening Day. In Opening Day, players are duck hunters trying to bag the most ducks. It has a lot of ‘take that’ and some interesting decisions. I’ll talk more about it in an In The Lab post soon.

I played the tutorial for Summoner Wars on my iPad.  It was fun and I’ll probably buy the bundle soon so I can actually play someone.

Gaming News
The biggest thing to me this week was all the talk in the blogosphere about game reviews. I think every game blogger and podcaster was talking about whether getting review copies of games affects the review. I have something to say about this but I think I’ll leave it for another post.
Another issue that was all over the place was The Jones Theory and whether it makes sense. The Jones Theory states that if you have two games that, in Tom Vasel’s words, ‘scratch the same itch’, you do not need them both. Get rid of one. I’ll post on this later too.

The Dice Tower awards were announced. You can find them here.

Days of Wonder announced the return of Mystery of the Abbey.  I’ve not played this one so I’m kind of excited to play this at some time.

Spiel des Jahres winners were announced.  The Spiel des Jahres 2012 winner is Kingdom Builder.  This is no real surprise.  It’s a game that hits all the check marks.  It’s a good game.  I’ve played it a couple of times and like it ok.  But it has some issues.  I hear the Nomads expansion fix this so I’m hoping to play it again soon.  The Kennerspiel winner is Village.  I’ve not played it yet as it is not imported into the USA. Yet.  Tasty Minstrel will be bringing it over soon I hope.  I’m hoping to snag a copy.

Ace Detective funded successfully on Kickstarter.  This one is a card game from Richard Lanius and has a pulp theme and art from Black Mask.  So of course I had to buy it.  It looks great.

That’s about it.  I’m off to work on those posts I talked about and an interview with Bully Pulpit Games’ Steve Segedy and Jason Morningstar!

Go Forth And Game,

Tom G