apres le calme vient la tempete

So, after shutting my clam for over two months, I can't shut up anymore! Anyways, I just thought I'd give a short update on how I spend my leasure time!
I mostly moved on from roleplaying into Magic the Gathering exclusively, my one most lasting obsession. But these days, I'm hooked on board games. Especially Settlers of Catan. I've owned the basic game for a long time, converted a lot of friends, and recently converted the family too (i.e. Janine and her lovely sisters Chantal Celine and Pascale, my sister Leila and finally my uncle Joe's sons, Rami Chadi and Dani).
The conversion of these non-gamers (especially the Sayeghs) took some time, and Alhambra was a lovely game to play to get them on the road to something a bit more complicated like Settlers of Catan.
The excellent part is that I never lack a play group, unlike my days in Boston, or even in Florida. Plus, it's a lot more fun when you're playing with people that are so close, unlike Magic where you play people you don't obligatorily know that well.

Thus, I segway into my shiny new interest: The Settlers of Catan 10 anniversary 3-D blah blah blah edition. This is Settlers of Catan, with Cities and Knights, for 3-4 players, with awesome pieces. Everytime I think about it, my mouth waters and drool goes down my chin. Unfortunately, it's $450 canadian before taxes, so a nice $513 with taxes, aka something I can't afford. I looked on ebay, and I can get it for less. Even better, a friend of mine can grab me one through his special channels for "only" $350. Still, it's probably a stupid thing for me to spend money on a game I already own! So what if I don't have the pretty 3D pieces, and the shiny multicolor elements! It's probably better for viewing and gaming to play on the flat board anyways...

It's just that I have seen something cool and have to try it. Just here I prove that, like most men, I'm just a boy with more expensive toys :)

One last problem: it would be a lot less expensive for me to actually MAKE myself a 3D board. There are at least two places where the process of making boards is documented, but unlike Bourgui and most of the group, I hate the whole painting and crafts part of gaming. MageKnight and the such were made for people like me, who want to play with armies but don't want to suffer the painting.

Here's a couple of links to the home-made 3-D boards, just for reference:
- this board predates the 3D edition, and it looks like it was an inspiration to the people who made the selling version. I mean they even put the same kind of sheep on their board.
- this board comes at a later period, and is also very pretty.

Either way, if I was to make something like this, I would still probably not have the patience to make it look good... Also, even if I do make the board, I won't have all the collateral, like the settlements, cities, roads, knights, robber, merchant and more.

One thing that helps me rethink spending all the money is that there are many issues with the official 3D board:
- there are no spots planned for putting the numbers on the tiles properly (??? is this an oversight?)
- there are no spots planned for putting the robber on the tiles properly (except for the desert tile, where the robber starts the game) (this is also stupid, but not as bad as the problem above
- the numbers are made of a transparent disk, which makes them a lot less legible than they should be (the people who made this version thought that seing the actual board below was more important, a bad decision in my opinion)
- what about playing with more than 4 players? (no news on whether there will be a 5-6 player expansion in 3D, but it's very unlikely either way)
- the price (even at $350, it's about 4 times or more the price of the same game in non-3D form)

Well, I think I'm done talking about Settlers for today. I'll keep everyone posted on further developments! :p
Love,
Karim