Are You Coming to GenCon 2009?

If you plan to be there, don’t forget to look for Best Dang Games! We will be wandering the floor enjoying the event. However, we want to meet you!

If you see us, come up and say hello. We will have BDG shirts on with our logo.

If you give us your e-mail address for our mailing list, we will share a 20% coupon with everyone that signs up at GenCon. How sweet is that?

But wait, there’s more! By getting on our mailing list, you automatically qualify for the 10% off coupon all registrants get. Yes, 20% off one order and 10% off a second order.

But wait, we aren’t done yet! We will also have a drawing from the registered names. FOUR lucky gamers will get their pick of a game that is $50 or less (including shipping) for FREE! Yes, FREE!

So, is it worth your effort to say hello?
1) Free newsletter
2) 20% off one order
3) 10% off a second order
4) Potential to win one of four games (your choice under $50 with shipping)

Happy Gaming and we hope to see you at GenCon!

Pandemic Board Game with Disease of Your Choice!

Free Giant Microbe with Every Pandemic Order

We have a great new promotion running RIGHT NOW!

With every order of the co-operative board game, Pandemic, by Z-Man Games, you get a free disease of your choice (in plushie form). The diseases we have chosen for this promotion match the colors of the viruses you are attempting to put out while playing Pandemic.

The viruses are:

• Blue – Common Cold
• Black – H.I.V.
• Red – Flesh Eating Virus
• Yellow – Hepititis C

If you like them all, and cannot make up your mind, select the Random choice and we will select one for you.

If you were holding off on waiting for the right time to snatch up this game, this is the right time. How great would it be to toss around HIV while playing the game? When you get HIV…it’s your turn!

Get Pandemic and a FREE disease of your choice.

By the way, we are considering carrying the line of giant microbe plushies. There are TONS of them. If you think we should carry these little gems of a gag gift, leave us a comment with your opinions. We want to hear them.

Here is a link to the Giant Microbes web site. Think “Beanie Babies” but with a sickness involved.

Oregon – Board Game Video Posted

As part of a demo set I got from Rio Grande Games, I was lucky enough to get a cool little game called Oregon.

If you like Carcasonnee, this is a cousin to that type of game. It is a tile-laying game, but the difference is that you have a board and you lay tiles on the board. You also have little cowboy meeples. You use cards to either build up settlements or place your meeples to gain points.

Give the video a watch and see if you think you will like it. I know that we have played this several times and really enjoy it. It is odd that it is a game about the wild west, made by Europeans, and there are no gunslingers in the game. Hmmmm.

Friday Night Board Game Night at Daily Grind Coffee Shop

So, last Friday night, we had our fourth Friday Night Game Night at Daily Grind. We are very excited because it is starting to gain a little steam.

As you can see there were a few people there. Many playing board games - not all from Best Dang Games, but that is not the point! People are coming out and enjoying a local gaming establishment – that is not a hobby shop.

We had some of our more common faces come out – and bring a new game we had not played. There were also several other folks that said they would come, but due to circumstnces out of thier control, did not make it. Gary, his wife, and his daughter came out – with Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries and Shadows Over Camelot in tow. We had one extra player for an introductory game of Settlers, so Gary and his daughter played their game.

Along with Gary and his family, we also had my fellow gamer buddy, John – he is in a lot of our other photos. And I am excited to say we hooked another friend on the gaming hobby. Shawn came out. He was out with John and I for a game night, on a Monday. We introduced him to the card games Munchkin and Fluxx. Both were a big hit with him and John. So, we decided to step it up. Settlers of Catan.

Once Gary and his daughter were done playing, they came over to Settlers. Gary tried to advise Shawn, while his daughter was learning how to play.

In a surprise upset, I won! The cool part was that I did not own the Longest Road or the Largest Army. Those went back and forth between John and Shawn. I won on sheer might! I upgraded all my settlements to cities and had a few point-oriented development cards.

So, after that, we were going to introduce Shawn to Carcassonne, but we decided to play a game that everyone could enjoy. Shadows Over Camelot won. This was a bit more complex than should would have preferred, until he got the hang of it. We all thought that the littlest Bacchus was the Traitor and set ourselves up with six siege engines on the board so we could call her out. I called her and low and behold, it was not her.

The traitor ended up being John, which is perfect for him. He loves to taunt us with his dry humor.

We ended up closing down Daily Grind – and we lost to the forces of evil…and the horrid traitor, John.

So, until next time, keep on gaming and we hope to see some more fellow gamers next time.

Monday Night Game Night at Infusion Tea in College Park

Best Dang Games has partnered with another tea shop in Orlando to provide you with yet another option for attending a game night. This is an ongoing event!

Infusion Tea – An eclectic organic tea shop with an art store
http://www.infusionorlando.com/ – We are the top news item on their site.

They have two locations – one in College Park and another downtown.

We will be providing them with a library of games for anyone to play at their leisure.

I believe the plan is to have Monday nights be game night in College Park and Tuesday nights be game night at their downtown shop.

I have committed to hosting the game night for them on Monday, September 8 – College Park and the game night on Tuesday, Sept. 30 in downtown.

This is a free event, so come out and enjoy some organic tea while you enjoy some great games, like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Ticket to Ride Card Game, Blokus, Fluxx, and many others of this style. If you have a favorite, let us know so we can try to have it…or bring your own.

The locations are:
1600 Edgewater Drive
Orlando, FL 32804
407-999-5255

Downtown:
625 E Central Blvd
Orlando, FL 32801
(407) 849-5004

If you call them about this, ask for Christina – the Owner.

Yet again, GAME ON! We hope to see you there!

If you would be interested in hosting a game night at these locations, let us know, so we can work it out and make it happen.

Please support these local establishments that are stepping up to support your hobby of gaming!

Barry Nadler
Best Dang Games

Orlando Game Day at Half-Off Books on Saturday – Sept. 6

We will be gaming and showing our games at Half Off Books in Altamonte Springs on Saturday, Sept. 6 from 10 AM – 5 PM.

If you would like to come out and join us, we will have some games available…or you can bring your own and introduce us to it.

There will be games for sale, as well. Many are new games. Some will be slightly used – for demo purposes. If you think you would like to pick one up, you may pay us on site with PayPal/Credit Card or with cash.

There is no charge to come out and try a game or two to see if you like them. There is also several restaurants in the near area.

We are on SR 436 across from Popeye’s and Rooms To Go, and next to Checkers.

Give us a shout if you plan to come out, so we can watch for you. bcbcbusiness@hotmail.com

See you Saturday.

Tomorrow, I will post up some photos from Friday Night Game Night at the Daily Grind Coffee Shop.

FREE Board Game Night in Orlando, FL – Apopka

Hey all you Orlando, FL game fans!

We have an ongoing partnership with some of the local coffee and tea shops here in town. They will be having board game nights with our games.

I am proud to announce that we will be in Apopka, at the Daily Grind Coffee Shop on Friday Night, August 29, at about 7:00 PM until about 10:00 or so.

The Daily Grind Coffee Shop is on 436 and Hunt Club Blvd, in Apopka.

Here is the direct information if you need to find them or call them.

3060 E State Road 436
Apopka, FL 32703
Phone:(407)774-7463

We have about 6-7 really solid strategy games and card games that we gave them to jump-start their ongoing game library. So far, we have played really good games of Power Grid, Fluxx, and Munchkin. We are looking forward to Settlers and Carcassonne on Friday.

We look forward to seeing you there. Give us a shout if you plan to come out so we can look for you.

Jedi Poodoo! Saw Clone Wars over the Weekend…And I am Sorry!

This is not a typical post for us, but it was something that deserves to be said.

I am a Star Wars fan to the core! I have a movie theatre in my home because of that movie. It is the first movie I tested my sound system with. I have a ton of unopened action figures as a border in my movie room. I also have several movie posters framed in the same room. My wife loves it and my kids love them.

So, you would think that an excursion to see Clone Wars over the weekend, after we got washed out by Tropical Storm Fay would be an exciting event for me. Nay! Nay! Good friends.

Let me spell it out for you. By the way, this will probably have spoilers, so if you don’t want them, stop reading now.

In reviewing the credits, there were some key players missing – George Lucas, Rick McCallum, John Williams, Frank Oz, and every other character except C3P0, Mace Windu, and Count Dooku. Hello! This is supposed to be Star Wars! How do you have Star Wars without George Lucas and John Williams? Talk about a “phone in” movie. Mr. Lucas was listed as Executive Producer – in other words, he provided the money and the characters.

How do you have Star Wars without John Williams (one of the best soundtrack composers of our time)? Let me tell you what a piece of dung the soundtrack was. Star Wars doesn’t not have a rock soundtrack (Clone Wars did in some parts). You also don’t have Noir music (Clone Wars did in some parts).

Anakin does not have a Padawan! It has already been decided by the Jedi Council (in EP I and II that they don’t trust little Anikan) and are concerned to let him be a jedi. Why the @#$%^ do you give him a Padawan.

Let’s address this Padawan for a moment, shall we? This girl is no more than about 12-13 and she consistantly is getting Anikan out of trouble. And she has those big damn anime doe eyes. If I didn’t know better, I would say she was a Miley Cyrus jedi learner. This girl is in the same league as Jar Jar Binks, if you ask me. Very annoying.

By the way, how do the Hutts reproduce? That can’t be a pretty picture. But, that is just the picture we are asked to form in our heads. Jabba seems to have a son – whom Anikan and his Padawan call “stinky” – yes, “stinky!” This baby looks like a tadpole with arms. And who is plotting against the Hutts and steal the baby? The “seperatists” led by the Emporor – with the help of Jabba’s uncle – Zero the Hutt. You ever seen a cross-dressing Hutt? Ever said “I wonder what a cross-dressing Hutt would be like?” Yeah, me neither. But, good ol’ Star Wars decided we needed to know this. Zero looks like a girl and acts like a girl – but is an UNCLE! After the movie – in the bathroom – some kids were even arguing about whether it was a girl or not. What has Star Wars lowered itself too with this?

Can we PLEASE get rid of the damn Trade Federation robots? You know the ones that go “Roger, Roger”. I hate these robots and they are about six times as annoying in this movie. First off, let’s get something straight – Robots are computers. They are essentially smart. You can’t have some that are stupid and some that are smart. They all are programmed the same way. They are an army. They don’t have feelings or humor unless somebody programs them that way. You can’t have a robot army where some are stupid and don’t listen. They would not be programmed to talk back. They are not people and don’t act like them – unless you are in Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica and it is set up that way. These Trade Federation robots are set up to be the butt of the majority of the jokes in this movie. There was one point where one robot says “We’ve got you outnumbered” and the other robot starts counting jedi and troopers to prove they are not outnumbered. They just do stupid stuff. One even loses its balance and falls from a tall tower and makes some kind of joke as he does. Robots don’t act this way. I know C3PO fell backward in Episode 4, but that was because he was walking backwards and took a bad step…in the desert…not off the edge of a building.

Let’s talk about the animation now, shall we? It was an interesting choice to make everything stiff. Kind of like a video game. However, have you seen Monster’s Inc? How about WALL-E? We can now efficiantly create 3-D hair that looks REALLY good. The problem is…they chose not to. If the hair looked good, then everything else would look like crap. You could even see the paint strokes in some of the images. I am sure this was a stylistic decision to make it seem like a cousin to the 2-D version (which was really good, by the way). It just felt stiff and done on a budget. Star Wars makes so much money it really doesn’t deserve a budget – if this movie had been kick ass, it would have made money – no matter what the budget. One of the things I love about Star Wars is that it is kind of a cinematic petri dish where they try new things and push boundries to see what cool stuff they can come up with. Not here – it actually looks like a step backwards – I think the Space Chimps actually show more emotion than these stiff animation characters.

By the way, how come there is only one landing bay on those huge cruisers and only one of them has it? As Anakin was trying to land, the Trade Federation crashes a ship into it. Anikan had to bail and fly all the way to Tatooine. What about the other two cruisers? That’s just poor design if only one cruiser has only one landing bay and the others don’t.

You remember that trick in Toy Story 2 where they hide under cones and cross the street in traffic. Well, it works for toys, but not for Jedi. In the heat of battle, they have to shut down the shield generator. What’s the best way to get to it? Hide under a box and let the army walk past you and over you, then pull a Scooby Doo and stand up and run…with the box over your head. Great Jedi trick!

It also did not open with the typical story crawl, where the paragraphs go to infinity and then you pan down to a ship or a planet or something really cool like that. Nope – you get a narrator that sounds like a commercial. Think about something along the lines of Starship Troopers. You can’t have Star Wars without the opening crawl. They probably did this because they did not have the big John Williams movie score to play with.

I really wanted to like it. There were elements I did like, but they just got drowned out by the quantity of crap. I thought it was really cool to see the tanks and stuff fight going up the side of the monostary. I also thought it was interesting to have a bunch of hive things under the lip of the launch pad. I like the camo troopers. Sadly, this movie was just not memorable. You want it to be big and grandious, like part of a sweeping epic that you get caught up in. Unfortunately, it isn’t.

Save this one for a rental – if that. I sure hope the TV show this was designed to promote is better. Maybe George will get a better phone, so the directors and animators can hear him screaming “No! Cut that out! What are you doing to my empire!” rather than hearing what they think they heard. That way, at least he can phone in some better storylines and script.

We will be at Half Off Books Tomorrow 8/2/2008

I know…I am a bit late on this post. We have been very busy this week and the announcement got away from me.

If you are in Orlando, FL and want to come out and play some games tomorrow (8/2/2008) we will be at the Half Off Books store in Altamonte Springs. They are located next to the Checkers and across from Popeye’s and Rooms To Go.

As always, it is free to come out, visit, and play a game or two. We are happy to share our knowledge of the games we have. If you want, you can pick up a new game or two. It will be WAY cheaper than going to a local hobby shop. Why? Because you don’t have to pay for shipping. At the local shops, you will probably find that shipping is included as part of the typical price. By the way, if you plan to come and buy a game, cash is a prefered method, but we can work with a credit card.

If you don’t mind an open game, we will even sell you an open game at a discount price. All our open games are fairly new and hardly used – mostly demo copies.

We will be there from 10 AM to 5 PM. Come out and see us.

Family Board Game Day at Half Off Books

We had our first showing of family board games at Half Off Books in Orange City, on Enterprise – just south of Saxon.

It was exciting for me to have a retail outlet I could bring our games to and share them with the public. Given this was my first attempt at a retail environment, I am not sure how to quantify success. We had one person come in and say “Hey! Settlers of Catan! I love that game! I played it with some friends a little while back and have never seen it again. I had no idea where to get it.” She obviously gave us her e-mail address so we could keep in touch with her.

We had two other couples ask us about some of the other games.

We had two tables set up with Settlers of Catan and Last Night On Earth out and visible.

 

We also had two tables set up with a bunch of our games out for people to see and look at. We had many open games, with the intent that if someone wanted to try them out, we would let them actually play the game – what better way to see if you like it, right?

We will be at the Altamonte Half Off Books, in Orlando, this Saturday, from 10 – 5. If you want to come out and join us and play a game or two, we would love to meet you.

To get to the Half Off Books in Altamonte Springs, get to the I-4 and SR 436 intersection. Get onto 436 and head west (away from the Altamonte Mall). There is a plaza on the right side, across from Rooms To Go and Popeye’s. They are in that plaza. Here is our original post about these events.

My friend, John was in attendance and assisting me with manning the tables. We got in a few games to make the day exciting. We played Last Night On Earth, Oregon, and Carcassonne. I won LNOE and Oregon, but he beat me at Carcassonne.

Everyone who comes out to meet us will receive a 10% off coupon for your next purchase from us at www.bestdanggames.com.

If you live in Orlando, and want to play some games with us on Saturday, June 14, come out and play!