Ten Days or Whatever of Kwanzaa

This year's Cards Against Humanity holiday event!

I missed last years event, '12 days of holiday bullshit', and I was forlorn for 12 months waiting and hoping there would be another event this year. The team over at CAH put me out of my misery--Figuratively and literally! This is what came in my first gift.

Well worth the entry fee and still 9 more gifts to go!

Pit Omega

Pit was one of my favorite games as a boy. I don't remember why or when I got rid of the game, but it was at least 20 years ago.

I recently found a copy of the 70's edition of Pit (the same version I had) at a local thrift shop for a $1. I immediately bought it and played it a few times with the family. I broke it out at the last board game night with my friends. So far, I have only played 3-player games. I really enjoy the frenetic pace of the game, but with only a few players, it is easy to track what is going on.

With more players, I imagine that it would be harder to track cards, especially the Special cards. But I still want to up the play-ability within my gaming group--alcohol is likely an increase in fun too!

Pit Omega card back

That got me thinking. I am putting my Omega treatment to Pit, focusing on two aspects: 1) Allowing more players, and 2) Adding more special cards. I researched the interwebs and found that Pit was released in 1904. It is almost an exact copy of a game that came out the year before--Gavitt’s Stock Exchange. In that game there are no Bull or Bear card, but there is a Telegram special card.

In addition to the different special cards(s), there are also a couple mechanical differences between GSE and Pit:

• Must trade one or two cards only (in Pit: up to four)
• Winner gets 2x points printed on their commodity (in Pit: 1x)
• Anyone that has 6 or more of their commodity when the winner is rings the bell gets the points printed on their commodity (in Pit: no equivalent rule)

So I set forth to create a new set of rules and to design a new set of cards. The commodities in the 70s edition are all grains, so the three new commodities I added are also in the grain family. The complete set of Commodities in Pit Omega are:

• Wheat - 100 points
• Barley - 85 points
• Corn - 75 points
• Rye - 70 points
• Poppy - 65 points
• Oats - 60 points
• Millet - 55 points
• Hay - 50 points
• Rice - 45 points
• Flax - 40 points

I decided to include all three special cards from both Pit and GSE (Bull, Bear, and Telegram) and I came up with an additional 2 (Hybrid and Surplus).

• Bull: A Wild Card if you are winner, but worth -20 points if you are not the winner. Score triple points if you win with a set of ten commodities plus any Bull cards(ie a set of eight plus two Bulls)
• Bear: Worth -20 points. Can not win with it in your hand.
• Telegram: Worth +30 points if you didn't win, worth -30 points if you did. Two telegrams in the same hand cancel each other out.
• Hybrid: Worth -40 points. May win with a set of six commodities (instead of nine). Score points based on the majority commodity.
• Surplus: Worth -30 points. May win with this card in hand.

For the design of Pit Omega, I wanted to pay homage to my version (the 70's edition) as well as earlier sets. I took inspiration from the colors from the 70s edition (orange and ocher/green) and the art within a circle from earlier editions. This is what I came up with for the front:

Sample card from Pit Omega

In full disclosure, I used clip art for the grain artwork and the pattern on the back of the card.

Pit is an excellent party game! If you are interested, pick up a copy of the game and download my variant of the rules below.

A PDF of the Rules can be found here. 

The rules presented in this post are home brew variant rules for Pit. No copyright intended.

Poll Results: Classic Game Boxes

I posted a poll back in December asking you if it was worth selling my old game boxes. Well, 85% of you thought it was worth it.

So, they will be added to the growing pile of items to be sold on eBay. If any of you are interested, I will entertain any reasonable offers!

Thanks for your feedback!

POLL: Classic Game Boxes

I have a stack of empty game boxes. Many of them are vintage, and most are from expansions or miniatures.

My question is, are they worth selling? I no longer want to keep them, but hesitate to recycle them.

I usually don't keep these boxes--Once I build a model, or cram the expansion into the main game, I toss 'em.

But for various reasons, these boxes have hidden well enough to evade their destined demise.

 I have a feeling the vintage GW boxes could get some attention, but the rest are not worth it.

Please post your opinion below, or click on the poll at the top right of the site.

Hello

Image used without permission

Hey guys! I have not had much to say over here for quite some time (7 months!!), but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy... I joined a band--Kilty by Association! We are a celtic/folk/punk band and have had a gig almost every month since June. If you are interested in checking us out, here is our FB page. We are in the middle of uploading a bunch of songs from our latest gig, and we should be finished with a 3-song CD by Christmas.

I also recently finished this year's home brews.

This was one of my most popular past brews,
so I made another batch!

This was another of my most popular past brews,
so I made another batch of this too!

 There are 4 stand-outs this year... Kona Storm (a coffee porter), Witch Hazel (a chocolate hazelnut nut-brown)--also a remake, KbA Ale (a 9.3% scotch ale)--named after the band, and a surprise hit, PBJ (a peanut butter and blackberry jelly wheat). The other two are quite good too... Quaker Beer (a maple brown sugar oatmeal stout)--named after the famous brand of oatmeal, and Autumn's Secret (a macadamia pumpkin ale). I always make labels for my beer (and soda). Click here for the album of all my creations.

Now that the cool days are here, and I am caught up with the band's current catalog, I will be posting the few projects I did manage to complete over summer and will start up some new (and old) ones!

Before I go, I do want to give a shout out to a cool Kickstarter project that I can't wait to get my hands on. It is called Boss Monster. The game is inspired by classic video games, and challenges you to become a villain, build a dungeon, lure adventurers, and destroy them! Check it out here.