The Maine Gamer

Attention northern New England BGG users and fellow board gamers from across the state Maine! The Maine Gamer is happy to announce the Northern New England Board Game Geek Meet-up, August 13th (Saturday) in Brunswick, Maine!

We’ve reserved a large, air conditioned community room at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick for this day long event. Bring your favorite strategy, war and family board games or try something new from our lending library. Come for one game or stay for the day.

The meetup will feature: two morning sessions, two afternoon sessions with a break in the middle for lunch, and a board game swap meet. There will also be five unscheduled tables for BYOBG (bring your own board game) fun. For those who wish to linger (and are of age) we will end the day at one of Brunswick’s fine pubs.

The meetup is free (no charge). Children ages 13 and under must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

DAY SCHEDULE:
9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. Open Tables (5 unscheduled tables, first come, first serve)
9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Session 1 (5 reserved tables, registration required)
11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Session 2 (5 reserved tables, registration required)
1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. Break for lunch / Swap Meet ( swap meet geeklist on BGG )
2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. Session 3 (5 reserved tables, registration required)
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Session 3 (5 reserved tables, registration required)

SESSION SCHEDULE:
Signup and registration, along with the schedule of hosted games on the reserved tables, are now online at our Warhorn event page.

HOSTING A GAME:
If you are interested in hosting a board game at one of the reserved tables please register on the Warhorn event page and include the name of the game(s), along with the publisher and edition information in the “Notes” field of your registration application. You may also email the information to the event coordinator from the link provided on the Warhorn event page.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
You are not required to register or reserve a table during a session to attend the event. You may elect to chance the availability of the open tables. However, registration is free and scheduling a session guarantees you a table for you to host a game or a seat at a scheduled game (as availability permits). You may reserve two morning or two evening sessions back-to-back if table availability permits.

There is no time limit on the open tables but they are reserved for board game use only. The open tables are available on a first come, first served basis.

Lunch is not provided. Please bring your lunch or, if you wish, many of Brunswick’s fine dining establishments are readily available downtown (within walking distance from the library).

Please Note: Food and drink are not permitted at the game tables.

DIRECTIONS:
Directions to the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick can be found on the Curtis Memorial Library website. We will be holding the event in the community room which has a separate entrance to the left of the main library entrance.

PARKING:
Please do not park in the library’s (very small) parking lot. There is plenty of street-side, public parking on the streets that surround the library. Also, additional parking may be found downtown and at the Hannaford parking lot nearby (all within walking distance).

QUESTIONS? COMMENTS?
If you have questions or comments please post them on the forum thread regarding the meetup at Boardgamegeek.com.

SPONSORS:
We’d like to thank Merrymeeting Games, Rio Grande Games, GMT Games, ToyVault, Atlas Games and Asmodee Games for their contributions to our board game lending library and sponsoring this event.

The Maine Gamer  would like to introduce the Maine Game Designer as our first recurring feature. Our first featured Maine game designer has combined an obvious interest in history with that of boardgames. Bowdoin College Associate Professor of History Patrick Rael is the creator of Plantation, a game in which players compete in building plantation empires in the New World.

Plantation is a deck based game designed for two or four players. Each card in the deck represents a colony, complete with several plantations of sugar, wheat, indigo coffee, and tobacco. Players take turns discovering, settling and harvesting these colonies, and taking other actions intended to construct the most effective plantation society.

Rael also created the railroad-themed, card-drafting game Iron Horses where each player starts with an engine and works to enhance their train by adding cars. Cars are produced by one of four player-owned manufacturing companies. Players score points by adding cars to their train but may also purchase private stock in another player’s companies as a way to bolster their score.

Patrick Rael is a specialist in African-American history, who earned his Ph.D. in American History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995.  He is the author of numerous essays and books, including Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (North Carolina, 2002), which earned Honorable Mention for the Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder Lerhman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.  He is also the editor of African-American Activism before the Civil War: The Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North (Routledge, 2008), and co-editor of Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature (Routledge, 2001). ^[1]

A factories and wealth expansion for Settlers of Catan (revised)
By Mark Leaman

The Industrialist victory point card may be used with basic Settlers of Catan or with either (or both) the Harbormaster card expansion and the Rivers of Catan expansion found in Catan: Traders & Barbarians.

You may use the gold coins and Glassworks markers (as factory markers) that come with Catan: Traders & Barbarians. If you don’t have access to the Catan: Traders & Barbarians expansion you will need to use something as gold coins (such as pennies) and something with which to mark factories (such as a glass token/counter).

The Industrialist card works best combined with the Rivers of Catan expansion (which adds rivers and bridges to the map, providing an additional means to produce gold) and the Harbormaster card (both found in Catan: Traders & Barbarians). If you use the Industrialist with the Rivers of Catan expansion do not use the Richest Player and Poorest Player victory point cards (as the Industrialist card takes the place of the richest player card).

Setup:
In addition to the standard Catan setup with or without the Harbormaster card and Rivers of Catan expansions from Catan: Traders & Barbarians…

• Each player receives 3 factory markers. (No player may build more than three factories total.)
  
  
• If you are playing without the Rivers of Catan expansion each player starts the game with 2 gold pieces.

Factories:
Factories may be added to an existing settlement or city for 2 Brick, 2 Wood and 2 Gold. Only one factory may be attached to a settlement or city. You receive a gold coin every time you score a resource(s) from a hex (not blocked by the robber) adjacent to a settlement or city with a factory.

You may trade two gold for a resource from the bank (as per the Rivers of Catan expansion rules). You may not do this more than twice during your trading phase. Gold resources may not be stolen by the robber (as per Rivers of Catan expansion rules). You may use harbor ports or trade four resource cards (of the same kind) to the bank for a gold piece during your trading phase.

FACTORY BUILDING COST: 2 Brick, 2 Wood, 2 Gold

The Industrialist card:
As with the Longest Road and Largest Army cards the first player to meet the Industrialist card’s requirements takes the card. Another player can take the Industrialist card away from a player by having a 3 factories and more gold than the player currently holding the card.

Basic strategy:
As with any resource generator it’s best to build a factory early in the game. The sooner you build a factory the sooner it can begin generating revenue for you.

The Industrialist by Mark Leaman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.