GAMING THOUGHTS - Of Civilization and Card Sleeves and Time and Maps

Today I received some wooden tokens I ordered from Mayday during one of their Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. I am going to use them as replacements for the cubes in Walnut Grove (which I love and have wanted to pimp out so couldn't resist the sale)

But Walnut Grove is not on my mind at the moment. I also received a pack of standard Euro card sleeves. I don't normally sleeve cards so was surprised to see the pack. I didn't order them!? Free!? Hmmmm. What can I use them for?

I checked their website and looked at the spreadsheet that shows you which sleeves go with which games.

These ones (59mm x 92mm) fit a variety of games. The ones I own that I *might* consider putting sleeves on are:
Agricola: Farmers of the Moor
Agricola: The Legen*dairy Forest Deck
Aladdin's Dragons
Atlantic Star
Balloon Cup
Blue Moon City
Civilization (1981 Avalon Hill)
El Grande Decentennial
For Sale (Uberplay 2005 Ed)
Jambo
Kingdom Builder
Le Havre
Princes of Florence
San Juan
Stone Age
Taj Mahal
Times Square
Torres
Troyes
Yspahan

I was a bit surprised to see they would fit Civilization! It was the first 'real' game I owned. I was 11 when I bought a copy of the 1st edition of it after it was part of the Games 100 in Games magazine in 1982 (or thereabouts - I did a couple of quick searches and it seems that's the year). Not sure what intrigued me about the game - perhaps the map. At some point in my youth I plastered my walls with National Geographic maps as I was fascinated by them (don't worry, I had a half-naked girl on the back of my closet door, too) But, yes, I was a game geek and a map geek way back then...I think that's why I've always been interested in war games - more for the maps than for the actual game play. I'm definitely a Euro die-hard, but I am still drawn to war games for some reason, even though I suck at fighting games and generally never play them. Ah, those maps are beautiful though....


Well, interestingly, I have a mostly unpunched copy of Civilization I'm in the process of selling so I had it on hand. I pulled it out and tried on a sleeve - nice fit although a bit long. Well, I wasn't putting it on THAT copy since I'm selling it. I have a COMPLETELY unpunched 2nd edition copy that I received from my Secret Santa 2 years ago that I've not had the heart to punch yet (sorry SS!) He got it to replace my long missing 1st Edition that I've pined since getting back into gaming.

But I keep thinking about that unpunched copy. I've been very close to punching it lately. VERY close. I really want to play again. Now I have sleeves for the Civilization cards which are a pain to deal with by themselves so I'm thinking the sleeves were meant to be....to get me to punch the darn thing and actually get it played!

No, I'm not planning on buying sleeves for the trade cards. Well, not yet....(nice marketing hook by the way - send card sleeves to get you thinking about buying more!)

Well, Civilization only needs 72 sleeves so I'll probably use the rest on Kingdom Builder terrain cards since there are only 25 of those and my Dad and I love playing it.

Anyhow, Civilization - I want to get it to the table again soon, but it takes a lot of time to play. 6+ hours (probably a lot more depending on number of players). Plus I'll need to re-read the rules if I want to run a game of it. 

A friend ran a game with Advanced Civ a couple of years ago that I enjoyed immensely. You definitely need someone to drive it. That game took 12 hours to complete (and I think we decided ahead of time on an earlier end point) 

But, I want to play the original game without Advanced Civ. That may be sacrilege for some gamers, but its how I want to experience it - in its purest form like when I was a kid...which, ironically, I don't think I ever actually played a full game way back then as I didn't have that many geeky friends. I just loved looking at it and reading the rules and I think I even played a partial game by myself. I don't recall exactly, I just knew I loved it. Funny, I bought The Civil War around that time as well but probably only played a partial game by myself of that as well. Another map game I suppose....

Well, I think its time to get that unpunched Civilization box out and punched soon. I'll get those sleeves on the Civ cards and look for some player aids. And maybe, just maybe, I'll find a way to get it to the table and played soon...or at least to look at the map...