My favorite game is the World's Greatest Travel Game.

It's a bingo-type game with a 5x5 grid. Inside each square is a cube with 5 pictures and one [X] side to flip to when you complete a cube. Each picture is valued from 1 to 5 in order of difficulty. You can either set all the squares to one value and play only that level (bo-ring!), or you can set them all at 1 and play from 1 to 5 (this is the way the experts do it). A picture is scored when you see that thing outside the window of your car. Rules vary as to whether images of that thing count - in the modern era of highway travel, it's nearly impossible not to count images, since the game assumes you will be driving through lots of small towns and therefore will value, say, "mailbox" at a level-1 even though your chances of seeing a mailbox on the Pennsylvania Turnpike are pretty slim.

My mom and I still talk about the time when we wound up following a car with a poster on the back showing a hammock hung between two palm trees, allowing us to score 2 nearly impossible level-5 cubes at once. This was nearly 20 years ago.

The WGTG is the reason I love long-distance driving. I used to play over and over and over on the 18-hour trip to Canada every summer when I was a kid, and I can't wait to pass it on to Dylan when he's old enough. My copy is a battered one missing 2 cubes that I paid way too much for on eBay because my parents wouldn't give up theirs. (I have, however, stolen 2 of their cubes to round out my collection. I picked two at random - hopefully neither was the one with the snake or the hammock.)

Oh, another card-based strategy, if not war, game, is 1960: The Making of the President. Wallybee and I played that just tonight. (She was Nixon, I was Kennedy.) It was a tight game. She was dominant in the West, and cherry-picked New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan our of my stronghold. (And, like Kennedy, the Dems took Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, but they threw their votes to Byrd.) End result - I won by pretty much a single state. If Mrs Nixon had grabbed Ohio or California off me, she would've pulled it off.

My housemate thinks this is the Best Game Evar, but the theme just doesn't pull me in.

MM & Aims, it is indeed Burnout Revenge. Great game, that.

Burnout Revenge sounds like it would appeal to our friend Troy, who cannot be trusted to play multi-person shooter games, as his favorite thing to do is hide around corners and frag his teammates. I remember many evenings hearing "DAMMIT, TROY!" coming from the gamers.

Man...I was just browsing the SR4 site (as I had mentioned the game in an earlier post)...and now I kinda wanna play SR4.

Argh.

Yes, and you need to buy Arsenal , and try out the vehicle, drone and weapon accessory and mod rules!

What? I don't got royalties and I turned in my manuscript two years ago now. It would be nice if I could find out if at least one other person on the planet has read them...

Jess, you must go to travelswithchild and write up the WGTG right now! That's excellent!

Another topic: Rumors of WOTC's "fair use" rules: [link]

billytea, we should be co-located. The DH and I have only been able to play War of the Ring a couple times - the figures are irresistible for the toddler. I have managed to lose as the Fellowship, sadly.

Empress and MM, we should be co-located. There are Rock Band and gaming days every weekend at our house.

Jess, you must go to travelswithchild and write up the WGTG right now! That's excellent!

Oh, thank you!

Empress and MM, we should be co-located. There are Rock Band and gaming days every weekend at our house.

We're sort of starting a local tradition with our friends here, but the more the merrier.

Where are youse guys again?

The DH and I have only been able to play War of the Ring a couple times - the figures are irresistible for the toddler. I have managed to lose as the Fellowship, sadly.

This is why we had to abandon LoTR Risk the other night. Mathilda was having too much fun with the pieces.