I had an excellent experience touring the Boards & Bits warehouse in Toledo. See my post in late March for photos and impressions. www.boardsandbits.com

Swat! received a nice mini-review over at boardgamenews.com:
http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamen...

Picked up a copy of this at Boards&Bits (www.boardsandbits.com) for $21.66 (retail $34.95), looking forward to introducing this to Kevin and the gang. I think this game could be a huge hit, seeing how much we all enjoyed San Juan. This games teals the role-selection mechanic from Puerto Rico (which borrowed it from another game as I recall), and adds a beautiful science-fiction theme.

Turns out that I picked up the wrong card-protectors though, they are too small for these cards. Have to find another game to use them in...

Ah yes. I should do a post on the games I\'ve \"burnt out on.\" Good idea! Thanks!

There are number of ways I can imagine it would enhance the boardgaming experience. I can see it being a place to record scores, locations of hidden pieces, track game statistics, run combat algorithms, send secret or public messages (taunts?)...

The possibilities are almost unlimited. I could see it being used to play a boardgame with someone in a remote location even, making physical moves on a map and sending updates on the pad...

You can do that now of course, via email, or phone, or texting, or whatever. I've successfully played 3-player games of Puerto Rico, for example, over the phone, and even Agricola two-player.

They have a "ding and dent" copy of AoE for sale for only $26.98 here:
http://www.thoughthammer.com/ding-dent-conquest-o...

They also have Die Macher (ranked 25th all time on BGG, although probably not my cup of tea), the reprint for $31.47:
http://www.thoughthammer.com/ding-dent-die-macher...

Also Twilight Imperium (hmmm, do I need a second copy?) Starcraft (I didn't care for this but it's probably not that bad). Good stuff.

Turns out this game is pretty good! There have only been a few downloads as of 1-27-10, but I am sure more will come as boardgamers begin to hear more about it... There are actually a number of cool games out there that would appeal to boardgamers: bridge, hearts, checkers, chess, several chess clocks, and I'm sure a few more I've missed. I wonder if there is a page of BSC that could be devoted to this...

Thanks Colin, for popping a couple of comments into Skribit already. Now we just have to get to it. Your comments actually have me thinking about adding a couple of static pages to the home page... one on the history of German-style boardgames, and maybe one or two more on specialized topics. Have to give this some thought.

Yep - this one was a biggie, the first I remember after Star Craft.

The board game is quite good - and is a pure "Euro" design, using a worker-placement mechanic. Worth trying, it has a good theme, excellent components, and scales pretty well between 3 and 5 players. I think there is an expansion in the works...

We'll definitely show you how to play again. I'd like to play a duplicate version of the game with 8 or 12 players sometime too, which is the ultimate way to play bridge. In duplicate, every table is dealt a set of cards, they play the hand, conceal the score, and then pass the hand and the concealed score to the next table. The new table plays the same hand, and attempts to achieve a better result. At the end of the session, after say 12 or 24 hands, every partnership has had a chance to play the same deals, and a the winners are the ones who did the best possible with what was available. Fantastic way to play cards. All the chance is removed, true skill is measured...