Bunker Project Log

I’ll let you make your own caption for this one:

This weekend, I was cruising around boardgamegeek, and found a bargain thread that I couldn’t pass up. I bought a lot of games, but don’t tell Mrs. G how many, she hasn’t figured it out yet.

For some reason, I keep buying the resource management/settling/development/trading games because they are highly rated on the geek, but we never end up playing them. I guess it’s good for my games list/sex appeal, but I’d play Can’t Stop, Blokus, or Quoridor, before Puerto Rico, any day.

But, that could be because we have never been able to make it past 2 turns of Puerto Rico. Mrs. G’s favorite thing to say is “BORED!” and you better be quick with the rules, or have none at all if she is going to play.

Anyway, tonight we sat down with four of the games that I received from the BoardGamesUSA sale. Here is a brief, and too-vague synopsis. Expect a flurry of long posts with the minutiae later.

Ricochet Robots: A group puzzle game where you try to get robot X from point A to point B in a more efficient way than player Y,Z, and C, and D, and E, and F.

Turbo Taxi: Another group puzzle game similar to Ricochet Robots. In this, all players are given identical sets of tiles, and a starting tile and paths that must be completed around this central tile. The first person to complete their city wins the starting tile. Once all 12 starting tiles are gone, the game is over. The player with the most tiles wins.

Zertz: A game with similarities to Checkers and maybe Go. Players may take one of two possible actions: place a marble, and remove a piece of the playing surface -or- if you can… you must jump a marble with another marble, like Checkers. You win by collecting either 2 of each colored marble, or a certain number of a single color.

Yinsh: A game where rather than subtracting pieces from the board, you add them. There is also a jumping mechanic, but when you do so, you flip the pieces you jump to the opposing color. You win by removing three rings from the game, and you remove a ring from the game by creating a line of five pieces of your color.

Here are the dark and blurry pics of the festivities:

I have documented my love of Target before. This weekend contained two blissful trips to that commercial mecca.?On the second, I stumbled upon this deal.?I’m posting it here because: 1) it’s a great deal and you should buy it, and 2) I get to bitch about USB memory stick design, which, on the whole, is moronic.

First, why this is cool? 4Gigs be big. It’s light and svelte, and most importantly, this:

and… it also does this:

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Excelsior!?

Why doesn’t every memory stick manufacturer do this? Because,?USB memory key designers are chimps, that’s why. How many of you have lost that stupid cap? How many of you?bent the connector? How many of you have gotten sand or lint or?some other unmentionable pocket “stuff” jammed in there? It’s okay to admit it, all of you have!

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

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I don’t even take that cap with me, that’s the only reason I still have it.

Now, there are?a few?problems with this deal, the first is that I’m forced to recommend a Sony product (that isn’t Singstar.) However, my guilt is assuaged by this being at a $50 markdown from the 79.99 MSRP.

The second is that the lanyard acceptor doo-dad is very small, and possibly very weak. I know I am going to have to devise some buttressing:

Finally, this thing ain’t no speed demon. It took about 15 minutes to transfer 2 gigs of pics (but only about 3 to transfer a 1 gig file.)

So, should you decide to seek out this deal, here’s a pic of the blister:

Good hunting!