Anime seems to having a renaissance in the west at the moment, with hundreds of titles being translated and cranked out in form of bulky boxed sets. And since these boxed sets are on the pricey side, I’m a bit wary of taking a punt on new anime, as opposed to titles that I can be sure I’ll watch repeatedly, like Haibane Renmei, Irresponsible Captain Tylor etc. A shame, really, as it means that the guilty pleasures of the anime world (consisting mostly of mecha and copious fan service) are neglected.

One such guilty pleasure — worth watching or renting, but not paying retail for — is Kiddy Grade, a somewhat confusing sci-fi series in which cute girls and giant robots beat the crap out of various bad guys, good guys, and departmental colleagues.

Though relatively mild on the fan service, it does have a zany cosplay element, as the protagonist dons three skimpy uniforms, then branches out into receptionist, pizza girl, waitress, pro wrestler and even motorcycle sentai outfits.

Éclair (the variously costumed heroine of the piece) is an agent of the GU (basically the space UN), and is sort of a blend of superhero, commando, secret agent, and office worker. If you’ve seen any of the Burn Up OVAs you’ve got the general idea. Éclair’s partner / sidekick is Lumière, a wealthy heiress with a taste for fine wines and etiquette, who appears to be no older than age 14. Using a nanotech lipstick and bottle of aged burgundy respectively, they battle evil and make friends in a lighthearted manner reminiscent of series like Rurouni Kenshin and Dragonball.

There’s a bit more to it than that, however, and as the series progresses Éclair starts to have doubts about the ethics of her work, subtly encouraged by the enigmatic / bishi Mr Armbrust. Armbrust (variously titled an ambassador, inspector, and auditor, though the latter seems most likely) bears a strong resemblance to the protagonist of Michael Swanwick‘s Stations of the Tide. Like Swanwick’s bureaucrat, he has a nanotech briefcase and a sort of understated cynicism. The kind of guy who has a preferred brand of Dijon mustard, if you take my meaning.

Armbrust would make a good romantic interest for Éclair, but oddly the series doesn’t exploit this. And actually the plot in general is a bit wonky, with many a loose end and deus ex machina (though admittedly these are fairly standard plot problems with anime). There’s plenty of style, and lots of merchandising opportunities, but the substance is a bit patchy in places.

One good thing that really stood out about the series was the quality of both the design and the animation (by Studio Gonzo). The characters are detailed, the buildings are suitably gigantic, and the mecha are done in a streamlined Full Metal Panic style. The spaceships are a real standout: they’re colourful and birdlike, and scooting about on plumes of flickering blue flame in the manner of an side-scrolling arcade shooter.

The only faults I can find with the production lie with the US licencees (Funimation), who give us not only the usual crap English voice acting, but also a script that diverges from the Japanese a fair bit. And it’s
dubtitled, arrgh!

On the whole, then, Kiddy Grade is like its scantily clad protagonist: easy on the eye, but basically airheaded. That’s not a bad thing sometimes, so I give it 7/10, and suggest you rent it if you get the opportunity.

The BBC and the estate of Terry Nation are a wee bit angry at makers of a recent Dalek porn movie, entitled Abducted by The Daleks. Said movie apparently features, uh, hot plunger action, and unlicenced action at that. The Beeb has prevented the movie being distributed, but naturally a torrent is out there for those of you interested in such a thing.

I was going to write an article on my pick for game of the year in various formats, but realised that it would largely be a repeat of my enthusiastic blurb about Resident Evil 4. That being the case, I’ll assume you’ve all dutifully obtained a copy of RE4 and are now dying to know which board game to rest the console of your choice on. Read on…

In a strong year for board games, my choice for board game of the year is Bonaparte at Marengo by Bowen Simmons. For those unfamiliar with the game (which I imagine is most of you, given that it’s self-published), BaM is a block wargame of the Battle of Marengo.

As a block game, one of Bonaparte at Marengo’s distinguishing features is that information about a player’s pieces is hidden from his or her opponent. The pieces are blocks with information on one face only, and the information side is kept facing the piece’s owner (as in the classic 1950s game game Stratego). When a battle occurs, the pieces are revealed and the winner determined.

Close-up of wooden blocks showing hidden unit markings

Why do I like BaM better than any other board game released this year? There are many reasons, but the main ones are:

• It’s lavishly produced: the blocks are made of wood, the board is attractive and properly mounted (a rarity in wargames, which commonly use paper or cardboard maps), and two copies of the rules are provided.
• There’s plenty of strategic interest: both sides have different pieces, objectives, and playing styles, with an emphasis on manouvering that feels like chess with a wide open board
• A game takes 90 minutes, which means that you can play a game, switch sides, then have a rematch, and still get to the pub before closing time.
• The rules are brief (10 pages) and comprehenisble, though admittedly it’s not the sort of thing you could play with a random family member.

Bonaparte at Marengo will be hard to find in a retail store, but if you’re interested in it you can buy it direct from Simmons Games, or from an online retailer such as Boards and Bits. The BaM page on boardgamegeek.com has reviews and other information if you’d just like to check it out.

BaM photo by Kurt Tolley used under CC licence.

Here’s me dressed as d’Artagnan (of three musketeers fame) for a costume party. Thought you might find it amusing.

The Wings Go Club has a bunch of PDF Go books including a beginners guide, commented games, and some interesting guides to making the most out of handicap stones (the latter are also available in .doc format).

If you prefer physical books and are in Australia, J.W. & S. Hardy have a nice selection.

If you look in the board / card game aisle of your local department store, you’ll quickly notice that most of the games there are over thirty years old. Lets see now, we’ve got Sorry (1934), Monopoly (1903), Cluedo (1946). Some of the card games are bit fresher: Mille Bornes is from 1954, and Uno first appeared in 1971.

With that in mind, one might wonder what’s been happening in the world of board games in the last fifteen years or so (i.e. since computer and videogames became popular). The surprising answer is that Germany has been going through a board gaming boom due, a drunken traveller told me the other night, to winter being ‘cold and dark’. As it is now getting a bit colder and darker around our way, the time seems ripe to discuss some German games of interest.

Throughout this blurb I refer mainly to two sites: boardgamegeek.com (a repository of board game knowledge) and games.unhalfbricking.com, an Australian online board game store.

First up is Carcassonne, winner of the 2001 Spiel des Jahres (German game of the year). This was the first German game I got my hands on, and it blew me away with how different it was from the Parker Brothers style games mentioned above. The first thing that struck me about it was the quality of the playing pieces: the pawns (known to fans as meeples) are wooden rather than plastic, and the tiles are made of thick line-backed card printed in full colour. And the rules not only cover how to play, but also contain colour photographs demonstrating how ambiguous moves should be resolved.

The basic idea of the game is that each player places tiles (containing sections of roads, cities, and farms) in order to form a SimCity type map of the Carcassonne region. As tiles are played, meeples may be placed on them in order to claim the roads, cities, and farms (and the associated points) for a particular player. If you’re looking for a light and friendly first game to ease yourself into more sophisticated modern board games, this would be a good start. Unhalfbricking sells it for A$35. It plays well with 2 to 4 players, so it’s pretty flexible.

If you want something a bit more challenging, China is one of my favourite German games. It’s another good example of the kind of production quality you can expect from the genre: full colour board and cards, one hundred cut and painted wooden pieces, clear and concise full colour rulebook. It’s basically a game of area majority, where you play cards to place your pieces into an area of the board so that you outnumber the other players there. If that sounds interesting, you can read my full review on boardgamegeek.com. This is a game to consider if you like games of skill and confrontation (chess, Risk etc) but are looking for something with no dice for three to five players. It’s a cruel game, but it plays quickly, so the tears of your loved ones will be brief. Unhalfbricking has it for A$50.

Reiner Knizia is the most prolific board game designer, and is considered by many to be the best. The most recent addition to my stack of Knizia games is Samurai, a tile-laying game set in feudal Japan. Samurai is beautiful to behold, with black plexiglass buddhas and a deco-style map that adds more islands to the archipelago as you increase the number of players. Unlike Carcassonne, it’s an influence game, where the tiles you place represent your political and military force being brought to bear on the peasantry, nobility, and religious leaders that are on the map. It’s a very simple game to learn, but it has some of the classic character of Go, as the struggle for territory moves back and forth across the board. Highly recommended.

On to card games now, and one game in particular that everyone seems to enjoy is Bohnanza, the game of trading, planting, and harvesting beans. People are usually lukewarm to the theme, but once you put some cards in their hand they start trading soy beans for green beans as if their very lives depended on it!

Bohnanza has some really clever mechanics that make it a cut above most other card games I have come across. Everyone can trade beans with the active player and also harvest beans at any time, so there’s no looking at your watch and waiting for your turn — you’re playing all the time. Additionally you must play your cards in the order in which they were dealt to you, which encourages everyone to get involved so that they can trade away their unwanted cards. Another great mechanism is the way the game handles income from bean sales: you flip over the sold cards and there’s money printed on the reverse.

You can get it for A$35 from Unhalfbricking. The game supports up to seven players, but the two player game is a variant. A 3 to 7 player game should take somewhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour 15 minutes.

A popular card game for couples is Lost Cities (also by Knizia). It’s basically a game of card counting and compromise, with a rather thin India Jones theme tacked onto it. The components are of excellent quality: big tarot sized cards, and a folding board with areas for the game’s five discard piles. There’s not much more to it than playing cards in numerical order or discarding them, but there are so many choices to be made that the game is strangely addictive. This is a good game to try with relatives that might be confused by a more complex German game with a zillion wooden cubes in it. A$40 from Unhalfbricking.

If the above games sound a bit too light and fluffy for you, a more complex German card game to consider is San Juan. In this game the cards pull triple duty as buildings, money, and trade goods. For example, I might discard two cards to pay for (play) a sugar mill card, which will later produce sugar (a face down card atop the sugar mill) which can then be sold (in a fluctuating market represented by cardboard price tokens) to bring in fresh cards as income. On each turn, the active player chooses a role for all of the players to play out: the prospector draws a random card, the councillor seeks a specific card, the builder builds a structure (e.g. sugar mill), the producer generates trade goods (e.g. sugar), and the trader sells goods. The role selection mechanism is fiendish, and players will try to choose the builder when their opponents are broke, or the trader when their opponents have no goods to sell. If that’s not enough for you, San Juan is actually a simplified version of Puerto Rico, an even more complex board game. Unhalfbricking has San Juan for A$40.