This profile on the Tyson Wells Game Store is part of an ongoing series about Friendly Local Game Stores I’ve visited. Read other profiles here.
In the Arizona desert, just before the California border, sits the town of Quartzsite, which has a population of nearly 3,700. Folks driving into California often make a pit stop there as it’s about 2 hours west of the Phoenix area.
The Tyson Wells Game Store is open seven days a week.
Quartzsite is mostly known as a snowbird destination, as the town’s small population swells to about 250,000 during the winter seasons.
Snowbirds — people who move to warm weather locales during the winter — set up camp in their RVs and enjoy the town’s famous rock and gem shows, and vendor fairs. Most surprising, visitors can also purchase their favorite board games at the Tyson Wells Game Store.
This side of the store has a lot of new releases.
The Tyson Wells Game Store stocks over 2,500 games, and the selection is vast and top-notch — everything from new and Kickstarter releases, as well as old favorites and classics. The 2,000-square-foot store also sells miniatures, paint and supplies, and gaming accessories. It’s a board-gaming oasis in the Arizona desert.
Old favorites and classic games are also on store shelves.
The store has two rooms full of games, and it’s something you’d expect in the middle of a large-sized city, not one you’d find on a dusty road surrounded by RV parks.
In addition to the snacks and knick-knacks it also sells, the space is the home base for owner Kym Scott’s many businesses.
“I do rock-gem-mineral shows, arts and crafts shows, RV park and self storage,” he said.
Kym Scott is the owner of the Tyson Wells Game Store.
Scott was born and raised in Quartzsite. He grew up playing games such as Risk and Axis & Allies, and now plays Arcadia Quest, Star Realms, euros and worker placements. “Back when I was growing up here, it was about 400 people,” Scott said.
The store has a large room and one in the back with even more games.
The game store started small about seven years ago when Scott had extra office space. “Then four years ago, I connected with bigger distributors and game publishers and started carrying a full line of games,” he said.
The games in the other half of the back room.
The business is named after Charles Tyson who owned a well nearby during the 1800s called Tyson’s Well. When Scott’s stepfather started the business, he changed it to Tyson Wells. The Sell-A-Rama, Scott’s event where vendors sell their gems, art and jewelry, just wrapped up its 42nd show in January.
Scott is active in the gaming community on both sides of the Arizona-California border, attending meetups in Blythe, California, and Lake Havasu, Arizona. Scott also attends local conventions like Dice Tower West and Arizona Game Fair.
Of course Quartzsite has its own Monopoly game!
Scott said the gaming community in Quartzsite consists of snowbirds from across the U.S. and Canada, and people in RVs. “Because they’re so limited by space and the size of the games,” Scott says his best seller is the card game Five Crowns. Ticket to Ride and Catan are also popular.
Lastly, the best part of owning a game store is “Every time I get a delivery, it’s kind of like Christmas. I get to see all the new games,” Scott said.
Information and photos
Tyson Wells Game Store is located at 121 Kuehn St, Quartzsite, AZ 85346. It’s open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can find more information on its Facebook page and website.
My gaming group really loves 18xx games. But since there’s a whole lot of AP during our games, there’s no way we can really play one on a weeknight. Hence, we try to schedule our games on Saturdays as one game seriously takes an entire day for us.
Last Saturday, we punched out and busted a new 18xx game to most of us: 18CZ, set in the Czech Lands. As with most other 18xx games, the purpose of this game is to have the most personal money, and to increase the stock price of companies you own while also owning high-valued stocks.
The game is unique to other 18xx games we’ve played recently as there are a fixed number of rounds. Usually, when players break the bank, that’s when the game ends. In 18CZ, there are eight stock rounds and the number of operating rounds with each stock round increases as the game progresses, culminating in three operating rounds in the last phase. And trains rust after each set of stock round and operating rounds.
The game ends after 8 rounds, which include a stock round and three operating rounds.
But before the game gets started, a pre-stock round occurs where players can purchase private companies. The privates are randomly placed on this board based on their sizes (there are small, medium and large companies), which prices then in increasing order, and players take turns in a snake draft, buying them until they all pass.
These privates provide income to whoever owns them, and they can later only be purchased by a company of the same size or larger. For example, a medium company later cannot buy a large private company. They also provide a one-time use to build a special tile upgrade. Other than purchase price, they’re all identical.
The pre-round for buying private companies in 18CZ.
Small, medium and large sized companies — and their matching sized trains — make up 18CZ. Trains rust immediately when another player purchases a larger train of that type. And it’s printed on the train card itself too as a reminder.
Unlike other 18xx games, when you float your company, it’s fully capitalized. You don’t need to try to convince others to buy into it. But you suddenly flushed with $1,000 in your company coffers if you set its initial stock price at $100. Having all this money is great — you can immediately buy a train or two. But being fully capitalized makes it much, much harder to funnel money into your company when you need to purchase a very expensive train.
You’ll have to withhold payouts to add to your company coffers, which decreases the price of your stock. And unlike some other 18xx, regardless of how much you pay out to stockholders, your stock will jump once, and twice if you’re a large company.
Some of the early trains in 18CZ. How you orient them determines their scope.
Maximum ownership also varies for the different types of companies. Players can have 75% of their small company, and 60% of medium and large companies. Lastly, there’s no bankruptcy in this game.
Starting a large company can’t occur until later in the game. And players get to select their starting location from one of two hexes on the board. This is another neat mechanism of this game. You can start building your network over on this side of the map, but there’s a chance you won’t be able to build that large company near it to connect everything.
Mergers allow you to fold a company of the same size or small into your new company, and you can upgrade your trains this way as well. You can flip the orientation of your current train card or scrap it to get a larger train, and you’ll only have to pay the difference. This was helpful later to acquire larger trains.
Each company comes with fewer station tokens than other 18xx games I’ve played, so you have to be judicial during placement. In other games, you can use one to block another player, but there didn’t seem to be much blocking in this game as you couldn’t afford to waste a station.
Our recent 5P game of 18CZ. You can see from the red hexes that the large companies have been floated.
Our game ended up going for about 6 hours, which seems on par with the box description of 4 hours. My gamer group is slow and methodical, and we usually tack on some extra time to what it says on the box, even though we have cut time by not using actual paper money in the game. We just write everything down in our ledger. I highly recommend it!
I really enjoyed how unique 18CZ is compared with other 18xx games I’ve played recently. There’s a running joke among us saying that we play an 18xx game once and then never return to it. Maybe that pattern will change this year, and we’ll actually play the same 18xx twice! 18CZ is the one I’d totally recommend for that.
For those train folks, what’s your favorite 18xx game?
It’s officially been five years since my first blog post. I wrote about last year’s anniversary, and with every passing year, I like to take a look back down Memory Lane.
As I sit at my dining table plugging away on my laptop, my back toward my Kallax shelves full of board games, I can’t help to think of the first games to enter my collection, the catalyst to the inevitable transformation of my dining room area to board gaming central — mini-studio lights and all.
The first five games in my collection were Catan, Ticket to Ride, Agricola, Arkham Horror and Twilight Struggle. Catan, TTR and Twilight Struggle were all gifts, and Arkham and Agricola I purchased after a deep dive into the BGG rankings.
The first five hobby games that started it all for me.
A few months ago, after a game of Agricola, nostalgia spurred me to share on Twitter these five games and asked followers which five hobby games first entered in their collections.
Feeling nostalgic since my Agricola game last night. What were the first five hobby games in your collection? Mine were:
I received over 850 board game submissions, and I thought it’d be fun to compile that information and see which games were most often mentioned. A good majority of my Twitter followers seemingly entered the hobby around the same time I did, based on their responses.
For clarity’s sake, I lumped versions/editions/expansions into the base game of the same name. For example, I grouped all of The Settlers of Catans and Catan Seafarers all under Catan. The top 12 results are below in a nifty data visualization I created. (You can hover over each bar to get more information.)
And here are the top 25 games mentioned, broken down by years. There appears to be a dark period there, based on the responses, between 1985-1995. (I’m pretty sure a lot of people were playing all those Milton Bradley games, such as Shogun).
Then in 1995, Catan debuted and helped usher in the Golden Age of board gaming. And as they say, the rest is history.
I still have a fondness for my first five games (which are all still present in my collection), but, in all honesty, I’d probably only play four of them if asked right this minute. I’ll let you guess which one wouldn’t make the cut.
What were the first five hobby games in your collection, and which of them do you still own?
Two weekends ago, I went down to Tucson for their annual board game convention RinCon! I particularly love how a bunch of us from the Phoenix area all trek down south to Tucson to game nonstop for a few days. I also love all the unique perks that RinCon offers its convention-goers — from nightly midnight snacks to the wonderfully curated Women’s Space.
Here’s one of the main rooms at RinCon. The tablecloths are color coded, so you’ll know if a table is reserved for scheduled gaming.
It’s the third year in a row I’ve gone, and the second year in a row I’ve been a special guest. About 600 people attended this year’s convention, which was held again at the Sheraton Tucson Hotel and Suites.
Gamers setting up giant Azul in the RinCon lobby.
Friday
My buddy Mark and I arrived Friday afternoon, and we dove immediately into a game of Mexica. I love, love this game, and it never fails to disappoint! Everyone always falls in love with the game’s components, and, for me personally, I enjoyed easing into a hectic convention with a game I’m quite familiar with.
Mexica has such table presence! But it can be so mean! The new players in this game learned quickly that blocking people is the way to go.
I then taught a 4-player game of Irish Gauge, a stock-based cube-rail train game. It’s the first title in the Iron Rail series by Capstone Games, first published by Winsome games back in 2007.
These guys are always so fun to game with! I wish they all didn’t live clear across town and, for Mike, in Tucson!
It’s a 3-5 player game that plays in about 60 minutes. Learning the game is easy; there are 4 actions to choose from after the initial stock bidding around. Players are building track to expand their train company, auctioning of stocks, upgrading towns to cities, or calling dividends. When dividends are called, cubes are randomly pulled from a bag, and that determines which routes will pay out. It’s a very stripped down stock game — complete with adorable candy-like train pieces. Irish Gauge was the first of many train games I played during the weekend.
Irish Gauge is a quick 3-5 player stock–based train game.
I then taught a 3-player game Dead Man’s Cabal, a clever puzzly strategy game where players are trying to raise the dead. It has skulls, spells and zombie cards! Players have a private action, and then everyone does a public action, based on the skulls in play, and each skull represents a board that has actions associated with it. If you don’t have a particular color of that skull in your supply, then you can’t take the action. I really enjoyed this midweight euro!
So many skulls! This game has been delightful each time I’ve played it.
Next up was Tokyo Metro, an economic stock game from Jordan Draper games. This is probably the heaviest of his games — and a little busier and fiddly, too — where players are investing in stocks and working to increase the values of stocks, as trains pass through rail stations along a giant cloth map of the Japanese metro. Trains only move a certain number of spots, so you’ll have to calculate payout based on that train schedule, and only certain actions will come out each round, based on the action cards that are phased in. I’d love to try this again, as my train was totally melting down by this time of night.
So many trains, and so many rail lines! Tokyo Metro is based on the Japanese metro.
Then at 11 p.m., I hosted a Mega Game of Welcome To. About 20 people came out, and we used the Halloween expansion pack for our game. Welcome To is a roll-and-write game that doesn’t involve dice but instead cards containing numbers and special abilities that players use to fill out a map of their city. Everyone selects a number simultaneously so it’s a game that can be played out on the big screen in a large group.
GloryHoundd took this photo of me hosting Welcome To on the big screen.
And even though I was nervous running my first mega game ever, I had a great time, and I think everyone did, too. The winner was GloryHoundd, and she received the game, as well as a couple expansion packs, and the second- and third-place winners received some Halloween candy.
Winner winner chicken dinner! The winners of the Mega Welcome To game.
At midnight, RinCon served its first midnight snack of the convention: Eegee’s. For those unfamiliar, Eegee’s are Tucson-based frozen fruit drinks, and people lined up to get a cup of this sweet treat. All attendees get tickets with their badge, which they trade in for the midnight snacks on Friday and Saturday night.
Saturday
I then started early on Saturday morning at 8:30 a.m. by teaching a 2P game of Abomination. I love this game so much, and I believe it’ll be more widely available now for more folks to check out! But I like to preface that this is not a short game by any means. Even with our 2P game, it took well over 2 hours.
Building bodies early on a Saturday morning.
I then was invited to do a noon panel called “How to Teach a Game in 5 Mins.” Five us from the board game industry talked with a group of folks about methods that worked for us for teaching games, whether light or heavy. The discussion included how to teach teenagers how to win graciously as well as empowering new gamers to teach other gamers. Also, we had a legit space scientist Dante Lauretta among us panelists who is a board-game designer and does educational outreach at the Boys and Girls Club in Tucson.
GloryHoundd and I then hung out at the bar after our panel and caught up for a bit while drinking our respective signature drinks. Our drinks were super yummy and provided a midday breather to an already busy day.
Drannnnkss! GloryHoundd and I both enjoyed our signature convention drinks.
My next game was The Soo Line, where I learned that it’s pronounced like the name Sue and not so. That’s the Valley girl in me coming out!
Always a fun time with Greg, Dr. GloryHogg and Brian!
Anywho, The Soo Line is a 45-minute pick-up-and-deliver stock train game. I made some poor choices for bidding in the beginning and never quite caught up again! How does the Soo Line actually made any money when it has to come all the way across the board? Tell me your secrets, folks!
It was so hard getting the Soo line all the way across the map!
I then joined a group of a dozen people to play Blood on the Clocktower, a giant social-deduction game described to me as similar toWerewolf but gamier. Benjamin led many, many games of this during the entire convention, and it was SUCH. A. BLAST.
Our fearless leader Benjamin running Blood on the Clocktower.
Unlike Werewolf, when you die in Clocktower, you can still have one vote for the rest of the game so that you can help your side win the game. It’s humans vs. demons, and there’s even a character sheet so you can deduce who is which character, and strategically reveal information about yourself or others.
I was the ravenskeeper, and even though I died, I was instrumental in finding the imp, leading the humans to victory!
After a quick dinner break, I taught a 4P game of Tiny Towns. I was so involved in teaching this game that I completely forgot to take a photo, but friends, let me tell you that I crushed the game. I played a second game of Irish Gauge with 4 different players and immediately after a few games of Strike.
Strike is such a bar game, in which you’re tossing dice into the box stadium, and if there are any pairs, you take back dice into your hand. Players get eliminated when they run out of dice, and the last person standing wins the game.
Throw in your dice to get more dice! Strike is a fun filler!
I then got to hang out with David Short and taught him and my buddy Rob Watergate. I always get kind of nervous getting games I love to game designers, because they know game mechanisms so well and I’m afraid they’ll find something really off or broken about said game. Luckily, everyone ended enjoying the game!
The rest of the night was a series of shorter games. We played NMBR 9 (always a good time) and Illusion (I can’t for the life of me figure out these color percentages) before getting pizza for our midnight snack.
And then some late-night shenanigans 1 a.m. happened with my buddies Mark, Greg and Brian.
We then played Giant Rhino Hero, Point Salad and Skulls. This was my first time playing Giant Rhino Hero and it was a riot! Players are basically stacking cards to build a giant tower for the Rhino Hero to move up in.
This is when it got called than me, though some people might say that it doesn’t take much to reach a height taller than 5’3″!
The tower eventually got much taller than me, and its ultimate demise was captured on video. (Notice that I am in fact standing on a chair!)
Forgot to send this on Twitter last night, in case everyone was wondering how it ended. Tragically, I'm afraid. 🦏🦏 pic.twitter.com/F19ZnAzcwB
Point Salad is a quick card drafting game in which you’re collecting fruits and veggies to score objective cards. And Skulls is a fun bidding, bluffing game that has gorgeous artwork.
Sunday
I began my day teaching Watergate at the Women’s Space. Folks, I cannot tell you how amazing this space is. I love that RinCon sets aside a suite for women to relax, get away from the crowd, and learn scheduled board games from female GMs. Mari runs the space, which is fully stocked with meeple cookies, snacks and drinks.
A nice couch to chillax on during the convention!Here’s Mari, who keeps the lovely Women Space up and running.
Two ladies signed to learn Watergate, and they enjoyed the game so much that they switched sides and played again. The same player won both times!
These ladies are ready to go head-to-head in the battle for the White House.
I ended the convention playing another game of Mexica and Coimbra, which was the top game I played in 2018. And in case you were wondering, I crushed my two opponents in Coimbra.
Coimbra is such a good game. We need to get to get it on table more often!
And just like that, another awesome time in Tucson was had at RinCon. This convention never disappoints, and I love how friendly everyone is here. Karen Arnold Ewing is the chair of the convention, and she succeeds in making this con inclusive and inviting, especially with the incredible women’s space. There are gamers of all ages, and there is definitely something for everyone!
Here’s RinCon’s fearless leader Karen Arnold Ewing, who, along with an army of volunteers, works tirelessly to put on a wonderful convention.
And just like that, three days of gaming came and went. I had a lot of fun hanging out with friends and meeting new ones, and hosting/teaching games. Thank you so much for having me, RinCon, and I can’t wait to be back next year!
I love these pronoun badges that are provided at every RinCon convention.
I don’t play too many monster-themed board games. Unless it’s in the Cthulhu world, and even then I’m referring strictly to Arkham Horror or Cthulhu Wars, monster games don’t usually draw me in. That is … until Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein by Plaid Hat Games. This worker placement game is strategic and fun, and, surprisingly, oozes with a unique theme that even a sometimes curmudgeonly eurogamer like me can appreciate.
In Abomination, scientists are working in Paris to “collect” muscles, organs, blood and bone, and the occasional animal part when really, really needed it. And I say “collect,” because what you’re really doing is raiding hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and other suspicious Parisian locations for the freshest cadaver parts required to create your very own monster!
The board features locations across Paris where you can collect cadavers, atone or do research, which will help you gain expertise and make better creatures.
Each player comes with a player board to place your resources, and three dials that keep track of your humanity, reputation and expertise. They also get a character card, which gives you variable player abilities, as well as two assistants and one scientist meeples. Later in the game, as your reputation increases, you can add an additional assistant, and you can trade them out for scientists, too.
The player board features dials, which are various tracks that will give or take VPs, as well as other benefits.
Acquiring more scientists is important because locations on the board have placement restrictions and they show which type of meeple will activate that location. Some are either/or, but the majority of them are reserved for scientists. If you don’t have an available scientist during the round, you cannot place your meeple there. Also, some locations give you more benefits if you place your scientist there instead of your assistant.
Abomination goes for 12 rounds, with four phases each round. At the start of each round, the event phase happens, and the first player draws from a deck filled with events or encounters for the round. The city phase is when players place their meeples one at a time on the player board. In addition to locations to find cadavers, there are also places where you can work for money, gain expertise or reputation, buy and sell items at the market, or hire some questionable characters to acquire some resources.
Abomination plays for 12 rounds, with an event or encounter happening each round.
In most eurogames, when a meeple is placed at a location, that location is closed to the rest of the players for the round. This isn’t the case for Abomination. Players can pay money to bump a meeple, so that the location will be available for them to use. There are only three meeples that can be bumped in each round, and those meeples go to the bump track at the bottom of the board. The bumpee pays the person who is being bumped 1 franc (or 2 francs if it’s the third and last bump in the round) to go there (or pay nothing if you’re bumping yourself). There is a lot of bumping that goes on in the middle of the night.
Bump, bump, bumpity bump. Such a fun mechanism!
Lastly, the person who took the first-player spot can place that meeple can make a legal move to an open location. We always call this mechanism the Waterdeep move (because in Lords of Waterdeep, there are meeples that get to move after everyone has taken their turn.). The person who took the first-player spot cannot be bumped during the round.
When everyone passes or have no more legal moves to make, the lab phase occurs. This is when people turn in their resources to make body parts, according to the resource and expertise requirements. Complicated body parts like the head require more expertise than say an arm. You gain VPs based on the decomposition of the body parts, as well as 1 expertise.
If you time it correctly, you can actually gain the expertise and VPs by building body parts in a certain order, so that you can meet the next expertise threshold. Super neat! Players can also complete a monster part, which involves collecting blood in addition to body parts, by flipping over their body part from the muscle side to the skin side up.
These are the requirements to start a monster part. The head needs the most expertise of course.
Players can also throw the switch to shock their monster to life, but they also run the risk of inflicting damage, which can degrade your body part if you have enough of it. The dice rolls are this stage in the round can be a little punishing, but there are research cards you can gain at the Academy location that can mitigate the dice effects. Plus, gaining expertise will give you the option to use the more favorable blue dice.
When you’re ready to throw the switch, you roll 2 dice per Leyden jar you have charged.
The last phase of the round is the reset phase. This part, in my opinion, features the most clever mechanism of the game. On your player board, when you find a cadaver, the cadaver card will give players either expertise or body parts. If you go to the hospital, you will receive Stage I or Stage II body parts; if you go to the cemetery, you’ll get less fresh parts, more likely Stage III or Stage IV parts.
These are a few examples of cadavers and the body parts you’ll get for them. Or you can forgo body parts and move up in expertise, which is the brain symbol.
During the reset phase, after you’ve built your body parts for the round, all your unused body parts will decompose one stage. This timing element is important because when you build body parts with less-fresh body parts, you will net fewer VPs. If you haven’t used your body parts by Stage IV (or preserved your materials from the lab phase), they you lose them. You can purchase ice from the Market to stop the decay though. The reset phase also wipes cards on the board for new ones and moves the round marker forward.
The VPs you receive when you build a monster part depends on the resources’ state of decomposition. The fresher, the more VPs.
Abomination is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike. Even though the box says 60-120 minutes, I cannot imagine ever getting through a game in under two hours. The 12 rounds take a while — even though there are events or cards that can move the round marker meeple forward — and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make, with decomposition creeping up on you.
I love the variety of locations on the board, including the Dark Alley, where you’ll get the freshest body parts — and a lot of them — for the dark price of some of your humanity. You can always visit Saint-Roch to atone though, but if you murder too many times, well, you’re irredeemable because the humanity dial locks you into that super negative space, and you lose a lot of VPs in the end. The events and encounters keep the rounds different, and the objectives also help factor into the decisions you make in the game.
I love the diversity in the cast of characters, even on the box cover!
The artwork in Abomination is gothicly interesting, and I appreciate the diversity in the cast of characters, even if it can be a bit too morbid for some folks. The game is not light by any means, so you’ll need to devote some time to playing it. The game really comes alive as people start assembling their monsters, which takes a few rounds to get going, and hopefully your creature is alive at the end as well!
Thanks Plaid Hat Games for sending me a copy of this game!
Do you like wargames, whether COINs or the hex-and-counter variety? Well, you need to come down to Consimworld! This 8-day wargaming convention happens every year in Tempe, Arizona, literally in my very own backyard. I love attending this convention every year it allows me to play some games that normally wouldn’t come out at other conventions, plus I get to hang out with some of the wargaming legends!
Look at all that cardboard, plexiglass and chits! Gaming is officially underway.
Consimworld was June 22-29. Sorry for the delay of this post; it’s been a whirlwind few weeks. Consimworld is located at Tempe Mission Palms, and the location is so convenient. You don’t need a car as the hotel provides a shuttle to the airport, or you can take the light rail to it. The best part too is that there are plenty of food options in walking distance. (I’m giving a lot of other conventions the side-eye here.)
I arrived on Day 1 and learned to play Maria with my buddy Dan flew into town from Milwaukee. This 3P game is so freakin’ awesome! It’s set during the War of the Austrian Succession. One player is Austria, the second player is France and Bavaria, and the third plays as Prussia and the Pragmatic Army. Each army has their own set of cards, and armies battle each other based on the suit of the location they’re fighting from. You have to manage your card hand, as well as ensuring your troops are still within range from their supply line. I really want to get a copy of this game!
Maria is such a great game! It’s a 3P wargame, where battles are resolved based on the suited cards your hand and which suitted terrain you’re sitting on.
Dan then showed me his game that’s he’s working on. It’s an Age of Sails wargame that plays in about 2-3 hours set during the Battle of Virginia Capes, a crucial naval battle during the American Revolutionary War. One player plays as the French, and the other as the British, and they move and position their boats along a checkered board (in accordance with the wind direction), and they take turns battling each other. You then both secretly decide which order your ships will fire, and you roll dice to fire upon your enemy.
Dan always has the fanciest prototypes! Here are the ships battling each other out at sea.
Hit points are marked on individual boat cards and designated to an area on your boat based on your opponent’s directive, which makes for interesting player decisions of how to allocate damage. If your boat can no longer move, then it’s removed from the game. The French are trying to last 12 rounds — which killing British ships shortens the game — while the British are trying to move up a track by destroying French ships. The game was tense and super fun, and I liked being able to allocate where on my enemy’s boat they should mark the damage. (It’s like a wargame roll-and-write!) I’m crossing my fingers that it gets picked up by a publisher.
Dan created these ship cards that you mark you hit points on with a dry-erase pen. If your ship can no longer move, it’s out of the game.
Next up was Fire in the Lake. The last time I played Fire in the Lake was at last year’s Consimworld. Man, I was so rusty! And the last few times I had played as the NVA (because I like red), but this time, I played as the VC for the first time, and it took me a bit to start terrorizing and spreading out my VC guerrillas. This game lasted way late into the night, and we had to call it. It looked like the Americans were winning.
Fire in the Lake has the most vibrant board and is one of my favorite COIN games.
Day 2 began early by cracking open Gandhi. Fire in the Lake ended so late on Saturday night that it was a quick turnaround for a 9 a.m. game of Gandhi, one I had briefly looked over the rulebook, but luckily another player read the rulebook as well, and we all decided it was going to be a learning game that morning.
Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.
I had been excited to see how a nonviolent factions play out for a COIN, and was equally surprised to see that two of the factions do not have any currency. The British Raj’s actions are tied to the Restraint track, and the Revolutionaries’ actions costs resources. I played as the British and particularly liked being able to affect how much my actions cost. I plan to write more about this after a few more games under my belt. All I can say is this: Gandhi is a great COIN and seems more accessible than the other ones. Here’s me playing Gandhi:
— Harold Buchanan 🔜 Gen Con (@HBuchanan2) June 23, 2019
I then played the first of many games of Pax Pamir (second edition) this convention. Oh. My. Goodness. Love at first play! I’ve played Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance before, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself. And especially with Pax Porfiriana, it was difficult to visualize and keep track of who is dominating what.
Look at these amazing components! Pax Pamir is really well done.
That’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to see which faction is dominating. The components are gorgeous, and each game I’ve played of this has been different. There are just so many cards, and I ended up playing this game two more times during the course of the convention. I played it as a 3P and as a 5P. I think Pax Pamir plays best at 4P, even though I did end up winning my 5P game.
I absolutely cannot get enough of Pax Pamir! I wish I owned a copy of this game.
Saturday night ended with another awesome game of Battlestar Galactica. This is the second year in a row I’ve played with Dan, Mike, Harold and Jordan. We even got Kurt into the mix! These guys are always so much fun! I became a cylon sympathizer during sleeper, and despite two cylons and me as the sympathizer, we still lost to those awful humans. The worst!
These guys are so much fun! I look forward to avenging my loss next year!
I took a day off on Day 3 since it was a Monday. I played a quick game of Sekigahara, and by quick it was about 2 hours. The game continued through all seven weeks and came down to victory points. I love this game so much!
My favorite part of Sekigahara is the hidden info of which armies are going toward you.
I then played my other two games of Pax Pamir at the various player counts. I then got a chance to play Rococo. It’s a shame that this game isn’t more widely available! It’s a deckbuilder about making dresses. Players collect materials at various locations on the board, and ultimately, it’s an area control game in regards to where you display your dresses and coats. The game plays out over seven rounds.
Making dresses in Rococo can be cut-throat!
In the middle of Rococo was the welcome ceremony. John Kranz took time to welcome everyone and give expo updates. Altogether, over 350 people had signed up, with more than 60 newcomers. Very cool! He also highlighted those who came from afar — some as far as the Philippines and Bahrain! That’s super neat to see people travel for all the wargames!
Everyone’s all gathered! John Kranz likes to give updates about the convention, and there’s a giant raffle at the end of this meeting as well!
One slide featured a nice tribute to my buddy Tom Wells. I miss gaming with him; there was never a dull moment gaming with him.
I finished Monday night with another tense game of Maria! My buddy Mark and I did better this time, but Dan still beat us. (It’s one of his favorite games, after all.)
Dan and Mark are too much fun! Dan and I are heading to SD Historical Con in November. I’m looking forward to that!
The rest of the week I worked during the day but I stopped by afterwards to get in a game or two. On Tuesday night, I got a chance to play a prototype of Barrage. What a clever eurogame with very specific spatial and timing quality to it! You are all companies trying to harness the power of water to get electricity. You have to build dams, conductors and power factories on this hill so that you can capture that energy as water flows down.
There’s an intricate network of how things need to be powered, and when you spend resources to build your buildings, they’re locked up on this wheel on your personal board, and they can only become available to you again when you build more buildings, which you probably won’t be able to do since your resources are tied up in this wheel! What a dilemma! You can, however, spend actions on this main board to move that wheel along. The main board is where the majority of the worker placement happens.
Stuff rolls downhill! Here are are trying to harness the power of water, and hoping someone’s dam doesn’t get in your damn way.
Each player has a team of engineers, and you can allocate however many you want to an action spot when it’s your turn. Players take turns placing their engineers until they’re have no more workers and must pass. So you need to manage your pool of engineers with the actions you want to do, while also trying to complete objectives during each round. Lastly, the last piece of the puzzle is that water isn’t always available each round. It will flow according to the cards drawn, and if someone else’s dam blocks water flow to your buildings, well, that’s a damn shame.
On Wednesday, I fangirled sooooooo hard. I got a chance to sit in as the awesome Mark Herman taught one of his games, Pericles: The Peloponnesian War to John Butterfield, Nick Karp and Bruce. They all go way back to Victory Games, and it was like being among the wargaming legends.
Here’s me being chill, even though I’m fangirling so hard inside.
Mark taught one round of Pericles, and I jumped into a second round, (holding my own I might add!) and pushing the Demogogues forward. It was great hanging out with them and hearing about old industry stories. Also, achievement unlocked below: my dinosaur dress got into a C3i report!
The last night I attended Consimworld, I played Root twice, first with Kurt and Jordan, and then we picked up a fourth player for our second game. Kurt LOVES, LOVES Root (and if you want to be highly entertained, next time you see Kurt at a convention, ask him about COIN games.)
Our first game of Root that evening. I won as the cats!
And just like that, an entire week of wargaming ended. I always have such a great time at Consimworld, and I always feel included among all the gamers here. That said, I’d love to see more younger folks here, especially more women and people of color. If you’re interested in these types of games, please let me know and maybe we can schedule something special for next year. I’d love a chance to teach some of these heavy games! Save the date: next year’s convention will be June 6-13, 2020. You’ll find me in the back with some giant tweezers pushing some cardboard chits.
Thanks for having me, Consimworld! Can’t wait until next year’s con!
Sekigahara has been on my wishlist for a while, and I couldn’t have been more ecstatic when I saw this at game for $30 at a recent Arizona Game Fair flea market — unstickered!
Sekigahara: The Unification of Japan is a 2-player game published by GMT Games in 2011. According to the description, “the battle of Sekigahara, fought in 1600 at a crossroads in Japan, unified that nation under the Tokugawa family for more than 250 years. Sekigahara allows you to re-contest that war as Ishida Mitsunari, defender of a child heir, or Tokugawa Ieyasu, Japan’s most powerful daimyo (feudal lord).”
Sekigaha plays out for seven weeks, with each week consisting two movement and battle phases for each player. The game comes with 119 wooden pieces, which you’ll need to sticker yourself. There is a lot of stickering. But it isn’t too bad as the wooden pieces are substantial and it’s not too hard to align the stickers with the edge. Mitsunari’s forces are yellow, while Ieyasu’s forces are black.
Stickering took some time, and I thought I had lost one sticker but I accidentally placed it on a second side of one block. This is what happens when you’re up late stickering. Friends don’t let friends sticker after midnight.
Sekigahara also comes with 110 cards as each player has their own deck to draw from. Lastly, there’s a mounted map, rulebook and a handy-dancy player aid for each person. The game isn’t difficult to learn compared to other wargames, as the rulebook is well written.
The game lasts about 3 hours, but the time goes by quickly because there’s little downtime, as there is constant movement on the board, and you’re always strategizing your next move.
In a nutshell, Sekigara is a card-driven wargame that involves blocks on the board, which represent a unit that warriors that correspond to a daimyo You are marching your forces across Japan to defeat your opponent’s leader, and using cards in your hands to deploy warriors and inflict war casualties. The cards are suited, and their symbol must match the daimyo warrior block you’re deploying.
This is the setup for Sekigahara. Starting blocks have a symbol for their starting position on the board, and a few random blocks drawn from a bag are added to various locations.
The coolest thing about this game is the hidden information. Your warrior blocks are facing toward you; and your opponent’s blocks toward them. You can see a giant formation of blocks marching toward you, but you don’t always know how strong the warriors are who are coming down to attack you and which leaders accompany them.
At the start of each week, players must play a card to bid for turn order. If your card has the highest number, you get to decide if you want to go first or second in each phase. Turn order stays the same throughout the week.
When it’s your turn, if you play zero cards, you can discard any number of cards and redraw from your deck, or you can move exactly one stack. If you discard one card, you can move three stacks. If you discard two cards, you can move all your stacks. Additionally, you can muster blocks from your recruitment box in place of a stack movement. The recruitment box is filled with a specific number of blocks at the start of each round, and they just sit there until they’re recruited.
Decisions, decisions! The cards in your hand are used for movement and battle.
Cards also come into play during the movement phase. Each stack has a base movement of one space. Highways; leadership from a leader, castle or capital; and a force march from discarding a card will give you movement bonuses, while the size of your stack will negatively affect your movement total. The larger the army, the slower they’ll move. And to get a leader bonus, you’ll actually have to show a leader from your stack, which can make for some revealing moments. When you enter a space with your opponent’s blocks, the movement stops. If you have four times as many forces than they do, their block is overrun and it gets removed from the game. Otherwise, battle occurs.
When players battle, the attacker deploys the first block by playing a card with the matching symbol. Initiative is calculated based on the number of symbols, plus bonuses for matching special attack symbols as well as matching the symbols from previous blocks deployed in this battle. The losing side holds initiative then and keeps playing cards to deploy blocks until they take the initiative lead. There are also Loyalty cards that can be played as an interrupt, and if the recipient doesn’t show a card with the matching symbol, the impact for that block gets calculated for the other side.
The battle continues until one side declines further deployments. The impact is then calculated. For every 7 points worth of impact, the opponent removes one block from the game. And the losing side also removes one block. For every two blocks removed, that side gains 1 card. Both players then redraw for every card used in battle.
These are some cards I used in a battle. The one with the double symbol allows you to deploy two blocks, with impact resolved for each block individually.
When the two phases are done, the week ends and the reinforcement phase begins. Players discard half of their cards, draw five cards and draws blocks from their bag to add to the recruitment area. There are also various locations on the map, that when controlled, either give you more cards at the start of the week or more blocks to add to your recruitment area.
The game ends immediately if the Tokogawa block is destroyed, or the Ishida block or Toyotomi disk is destroyed. If neither of these things happen after seven weeks, VPs are calculated — 2 VPs per castle and 1 VP per resource location to whoever controls it, and the person with the most points wins the game.
Ishida’s forces are surrounded! This battle might not have ended well for the Ishida side.
Sekigahara is so much fun to play! The combat is very in your face, and you have to make tough decisions about how to spend your cards. You need a lot of cards to move around the board quickly and to be successful in battle, but you also need the right type of cards to be able to deploy your warrior blocks. There were some moments when one of my blocks just got annihilated because I didn’t have any cards that corresponded with that stack. I’ve learned that it’s a good idea to keep your armies varied, so that you can be prepared for anything. But you’re at the mercy of which cards are drawn, and which blocks enter the game. And man, you can blow through your hand so quickly when discarding to move stacks around.
If you’re looking for a great introduction to wargames — and have a few hours to spend — Sekigara is just so much fun! The game is visually appealing, and the blocks and use of suited cards make the game accessible to many types of gamers. The game mechanics are simple and streamlined, but there’s so much strategy and history in the game. I immensely enjoyed the hidden information aspect of it, and I can’t wait to get this on table again! Hopefully at next week’s Consimworld — let me know if you’re going to be there!
Sekigahara is just delightful. Have you played this?
I love boba. Growing up in Los Angeles with predominantly Asian friends, we didn’t say, let’s get coffee. Nope, instead we’d say, let’s get boba, also known as bubble tea in other parts of the world. For the unfamiliar, boba are marble-sized tapioca balls that you can order in a drink, drinks such as milk teas and slushies, in all sorts of flavors as well as other add-on toppings. My personal favorite is taro milk tea with boba. So yummy!
So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that Renegade Game Studios has a new game called Bubble Tea, another real-time game by Aza Chen, complete with the adorable animal artwork that he’s also known for. He’s also the designer of one of my favorite games of 2017, Shiba Inu House.
Bubble Tea is all about making boba drinks! At left is a taro milk tea with boba at Milk Run, one of my favorite drink cafes in the Phoenix area.
Coming out in July, Bubble Tea is a 20-minute game for 1-5 players. The game comes with wooden dice, Customer cards, Tea Base cards, Moji Moji cards (which are these transparent square tiles for layering ingredients), and a drink shaker! Just like when you order boba and they mix up your drink at the cafe, so will you, except with dice that feature drink ingredients drawn as cute animal characters. Characters such as the Milk Tea Cow, the Green Tea Frog, the Tapioca Dog, and the Taro Ball Bear.
Oh. My. Goodness! These cards are just so freaking cute! And I see the cute doggo from Shiba Inu House.
Bubble Tea is actually two games in one, which was a pleasant surprise! In both games, players are trying to craft the best drinks the fastest and get the most victory points. The first game actually involves shaking up the dice in the drink shaker. The current player places the dice inside the shaker and shakes them up. They flip over the shaker, the dice land on the table and then everyone yells, “1, 2, 3, Go!” to start.
Simultaneously, players are trying to match the tea base and ingredients shown on the dice by arranging and stacking the Moji Moji cards on their Tea Base card. This is trickier than it sounds because the nine Moji Moji cards that each player has are all unique, with different ingredients situated in various squares. The Tea Base cards are gridded, so you’ll have to arrange the transparent cards on top of each other in varying orientations, while following the grid on the Tea Base card, to match the dice that have just been tossed out of the shaker.
Players quickly stack and place their transparent Moji Moji cards to match the dice shown.
When a player finishes their drink, they take the shaker lid and cover the dice. Players check to see if they made the drink correctly, and if they did, they gain a Customer card. If that player didn’t make the drink correctly, they lose a Customer card and the other players continue playing. The game ends when a player gets three Customer cards.
For the second game, players are again simultaneously competing, this time to complete their Customer cards and gain victory points. In this game, you don’t need the dice, just the shaker, which will sit in the middle of the table. Each player draws 5 Customer cards and place one card of their choice face down in front of them. When everyone is ready, they all say, “1, 2, 3, Go!” and flip over their chosen card. Just like in Game #1, players must arrange their transparent Moji Moji cards onto the correct Tea Base card, according to what their Customer card is asking for.
If a player is first to complete their drink by placing their Moji Moji cards to match the ingredients on the Customer card, they receive the VPs on the back of the card.
The player to finish their drink first grabs the shaker. Game play stops, and they check the player’s card to see if they have the right number and type of ingredients in their drink as well as the correct Tea Base card used. If they did, they flip over the Customer card for VPs. The harder the drink, the more VPs it’s worth. If the player incorrectly created their drink, the round continues until someone correctly makes their drink.
At the end of the round, everyone passes the leftover cards from their hand to the player on the left. This game ends after five rounds, when there are no more cards to pass. The player with the most points wins the game.
Bubble Tea is just so adorable, and it comes with its own shaker!
Bubble Tea is so fun, and I just love, love, love the theme! Seeing a mainstream board game company create a game about a possibly niche food theme — but one that’s been a major part of my life — just warms my heart.
Bubble Tea is perfect to bust out with your friends at the boba cafe or when you need a quick filler for up to five people. The artwork is colorful and adorable, and having an actual shaker is just super duper cool, even if the dice can be a little bit loud when you’re tossing them around. But it doesn’t matter, because that action is such a small part of one game, and more often than not, you’re just frantically working to place that Sugar Monkey in that one sweet spot on your Tea Base card.
Thanks Renegade Game Studios for sending me a copy of this game!
A few months ago, I started seeing a lot of buzz online about Tiny Towns, a new game from AEG. It wasn’t until recently that I got a chance to play it, and, what can I say, this game is delightful. If I’m being honest, I initially dismissed it because it seemed too light for my group, but after playing it multiple times, I discovered it’s a great crunchy, puzzly short game.
I’ve had so much fun every time I’ve played Tiny Towns.
In Tiny Towns, each player gets a 4×4 cardboard grid in which you’re building out your little town. Each square can hold exactly one resource or building. On your turn, you become the Master Builder — yes, there’s a cute little hammer included in the game — and you choose one of the resources: wood, wheat, brick, glass or stone. Then, everyone grabs that resource to place in their town to place on a square that’s empty. After everyone places their cube, they have the option to build any of the buildings in play for your game.
There are seven buildings in play every game. One building is always the Cottage, and, for the other six, players randomly select one card from four of that type to use. Players also receive two monument cards, and they keep one of them to potentially score in the game.
Tiny Towns comes with a lot of wooden buildings and cubes, and one hammer. The pink building is your monument, and everyone only gets one of those pieces.
Each building has resource and spatial requirements that must be fulfilled, and if a player has laid out their resources in the exact pattern on their grid, they can remove those resources and place that building on any of the spaces those resources occupied. After everyone builds (or not), the hammer moves to the left, and the next player starts their turn.
The game feels like a mix of Patchwork and Bingo (and I mean that in the most positive way because I love Bingo!). You’re anxiously awaiting the caller and hoping they pick the resource you need so you can place it in a beneficial location. Or you hope that you can place a resource you don’t need at the moment in a space that won’t mess you up too badly.
In each game, the Cottage is always in play, and then one random card from all the other types. Each card indicates what resources and pattern you need to build it, and what the building’s benefits are.
Game play continues until everyone fills up their grid, either with buildings or resources. There’s player elimination, but the entire game isn’t very long so it’s not a big deal if you’re eliminated early. When everyone is done, you remove all the unspent resources on your grid, and any unused space is -1 point. Players then calculate their VPs based on the building’s benefits.
Tiny Towns, which plays in 45-60 minutes, is for 1-6 players, which is great, as I’m always on the lookout for solid games that satisfy large player counts. And the best part, it keeps all the players engaged throughout the game — at least until they’re eliminated.
I’m the Captain … oh wait, the Master Builder. Isn’t this hammer so cute?
The game also offers opportunities to be a just a teeny bit mean, as you can pick to see which resources your neighbors are waiting for, and then select something else. There were more than a few moments during our games when someone would yell, “Why did you pick that??” The one complaint I’ve encountered so far was that you were at the mercy of the Master Builder’s selection, which, to me, adds to the puzzle of the game. You have to be flexible in placing resources but also deal with unwanted cubes.
You also don’t want to build in a way where you’ll trap yourself in a corner, unable to clear cubes for a future building. It’s the perfect mix of resource gathering and pattern building. When you plan and place your buildings perfectly, it’s so very satisfying. But more often than not, you’re staring at your 4×4 grid saying, “Gah, poor choices were made!”
Have you played Tiny Towns? What are some of your favorite crunchy short games?
This review of Teotihuacan was featured on Episode 60 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Dragon Castle, Blue Lagoon, Iron Dragon and Circle the Wagons.
What was the most complicated game that came out in 2018? I actually don’t know the answer to that question. But I can tell you which game was most complicated to say for a lot of people, so much so that there were video tutorials on its pronunciation. I grew up in LA and was surrounded by all types of languages. So seeing and saying a word like Teotihuacan comes pretty naturally to me. But in case you needed a tutorial, the word is luckily spelled exactly how it sounds, which isn’t always the case with Aztec words.
This average-sized box comes with an insane amount of components, which makes each game unique.
Teotihuacan: City of Gods was published in 2018 by NSKN Games. It’s designed by Daniele Tascini, who has also published The Voyages of Marco Polo, Council of Four and one of my absolute all-time favorites, Tzolk’in.
In Teotihuacan, which plays in about 90-120 minutes, players play as powerful noble families trying to achieve everlasting glory while planning the construction of the pyramid. In its essence, the game is a giant rondel, with, when completed, a gorgeous pyramid sitting in the middle.
The board is incredibly busy, which is a detriment to the game. People see that beautiful pyramid and then slowly back away when there’s a million things they seemingly have to decipher on the board.
I’m here to tell you to come on back and don’t be freaked out by board!
This board is way to busy, which can make the game more daunting than it is.
There are 8 action boards on the entire board. Instead of worker meeples players use dice to represent their workers, and the pips on the dice indicate which power level that worker is at. On a player’s turn, they can take a normal turn by advancing one of their dice 1, 2 or 3 action spaces in a clockwise direction.
After moving that worker, that player must perform one of three possible actions on the action board they’ve landed on. They can either collect cocoa, worship or perform a main action.
Cocoa is needed to enter an action space where there are other dice present and if you want to take a main action. To collect cocoa, you count the number of different colored workers already present on the action space, and you receive that number of cocoa plus 1.
If you decide to take a main action on an action board, you must pay cocoa equal to the number of different colored dice on that action location already there. Each action board has a different main action.
Three of the action boards are locations where you receive resources to build houses and/or pyramids. Those resources are wood, gold and stone. When you land on an action board, how strong your worker dice is determines how much you’re receiving. Also, when you land on a location that already has your dice, you’ll also receive more resources because your workers are more powerful there.
Another action board allows you to pay gold in order to receive a technology or benefit for the entire game. If you have two dice there, or you enter the location with a 4- or 5-level dice, you can pay gold for higher-level technologies. Many of these technologies will trigger when you activate a certain action board.
Even though there are a lot of dice on the board, this is by no means a dice game.
Another action board allows you to use wood to build buildings. The earlier you build these, the more victory points you’ll score, but the houses are relocated from Building Row on the Main Board, which comes to play during the scoring round.
The last two Action boards deal with the pyramid, either selecting decoration tiles that sit on steps of the pyramid, or building the pyramid itself with resources you’ve collected. The pyramid tiles are study square mah-jong-type tiles and are just delightful to play with. Taking either one of these actions moves you along the pyramid track.
Now instead of performing a main action, you can always worship. When you worship, you enter an action board’s worship space and claim a discovery tile, which are benefits or masks for end-of-round set collection victory points, or you can go up a temple track. If you want to do both things, you’ll have to pay with cocoa. There are three temple tracks in the game, from which you can receive more benefits or masks as you advance on them. When your worker worships, that dice is locked until you pay to free them on a future action or until someone pays cocoa to bump you off if they want to worship as well. Also, during your turn, you can unlock all your dice for free, but that’s all you do on your turn.
After performing a main action, at least one die will level up. This is how you get more powerful workers that move around the board. Once you hit level 6, you ascend. You then advance your marker one step on the Avenue of the Dead and select a reward on the Ascension wheel, which includes unlocking a level 3 dice for the board. Your die that ascended then starts at Level 1 again and at the Palace Action Board. When a player ascends, they advance the white disc on the Calendar Track.
Tracks galore in Teotihuacan, whether you’re going up the pyramid track or one of the temples shown here.
The calendar track controls the pacing of the game. A normal round consists of everyone taking their turn, and then advancing the white disc. When the white disc reaches the black disc, an eclipse is triggered. Players gets VPs for their step on the Avenue of the Dead (which is multiplied by the lowest visible number on the Building Row on the main board), and for their step on the Pyramid track (which is multiplied by 4, 3 or 2 points depending on if it’s the first, second or third eclipse.) The player farthest along the pyramid track also gets 4 points, and the pyramid track is reset for the next phase.
Players also get points for collecting sets of masks and each player must pay 1 cocoa for each of their worker that’s a level 1 to 3, and 2 cocoa for their level 4 and 5 workers. The game continues for three eclipses, with fewer rounds each eclipses to trigger end-of-round scoring, and the person with the most victory points wins the game.
Some have said Teotihuacan is a re-skin of Tzolk’in. The time mechanism and sheer genius of Tzolk’in is unmatched, even by Teotihuacan. I feel like Teotihuacan is more forgiving, whereas Tzolk’in is straight up mean, which I love. You can always enter a space in Teotihuacan; what you receive or action you take is determined by whether you have enough cocoa.
Look at our glorious pyramid! But that also means that the game is suddenly over.
But Teotihuacan is still a solid game and worthy of its predecessor. The beauty of this game is managing your workers around the rondel as well as the timing of when to level them up. I enjoy the variability of each play. The game comes with a lot of components, from the cool pyramid tiles to a bunch of sturdy cardboard tiles. I just wish the board wasn’t so busy with unnecessary artwork.
And that’s Teotihuacan! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!
