Inside this short film you will find Gavin and Anne Schmitt of Robot Martini, along with other more of the cast of game night.

The election is coming; who will you vote for?
(Please go to the site and watch in high quality)



YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrztLoCZm_g

BlipTV: http://blip.tv/file/1420629

Learn of the second game room, where you can get extra games and win contests.



BlipTV: http://thescarletspider.blip.tv/#1427834
Select Episode 06 and 06.5 on the BlipTV Viewer

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcaOJyxz1l0

At the Origins Game Fair, there are two game rooms with nothing but hundreds of board games; learn about it here.



YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8o7nGh7EdBU

BlipTV: http://thescarletspider.blip.tv/#1427834
Select Episode 06 and 06.5 from the BlipTV Viewer.

Presenting this weeks interview with John MacEnulty, the creator of Kali. He also shows you how to play the game.





BlipTV: http://thescarletspider.blip.tv/

YouTube: htt://www.youtube.com/insidetheboxseries

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/thescarletspider

Almost a decade ago,Patterson Park was a monument to Baltimore's drug dealing industry and general urban decay. Now, despite the housing market slide, this large city park and the partially gentrified neighborhood around it are home to a largely unknown Baltimore event: the pre-halloween lantern parade.


The event is largely organized by the Patterson art collective, which invites the public to stop by and personalize the parade's lanterns. It's a nice touch, and probably goes a long way to keep attendance high.

Several regulars also attend the parade, including the stick figure couple, the Natty Bo sphere, and the giant spider. Coupled with the stilt walking event organizers and the ground people wearing pagoda lantern hats, it is quite a thing to see.


Despite being rained out on Saturday, the weather on Sunday night was excellent and the crowd turn out was what we've come to expect. The attendees are also nicely positive, excited and usually engaged. Throw in the free bands and I'd say it's an absolute must see for the fall season.

...unless your child happens to get mauled by a pit bull, but that only happens now and again...

view all of my photos on Flickr here: http://flickr.com/photos/30636228@N06/

Luke, Drew, Johnny Love, Shawn P, Skwabuck, MechaShiva, and Gavin play?

If you read this blog, you know we love Friedman Freeze's Power Grid. However, we've found one major design issue with the game: it supports a maximum of SIX players.

While this isn't really a design flaw, SEVEN people were attending game night and everyone wanted to play. Below are the adjustments we made to the game.

Additional pieces - Of course our first challenge was to find 21 markers for the 7th player. Be it Ticket-to-Ride trains or glass beads, almost anything under a quarter inch diameter will do. Fortunately, a copy of Monopoly was on hand, and it's green wooden houses, which are a darker shade than the green houses in Power Grid, fit almost perfectly.

Rules tweaks - since Power Grid features a carefully balanced economic system, we assumed adding a 7th player would quicken the depletion of resources. So we chose to use power plant expansion deck, which features generally more efficient and powerful plants than the original.

Additionally, we feared the board would become too cramped, potentially trapping players on the east coast after their very first moves. So we decided to use all six regions of the map. Otherwise we used the normal 6 player game rules.

The resulting game moved at a brisk pace. Specifically, the additional player meant an additional power plant was consumed almost every turn, which brought us to Step 3 by the fifth and final turn.

Surprisingly, exhausting resources never became an issue. Between the game ending at 14 cities, the more efficient power plants, and the amount of resources replenished in a 6 player game, the market stayed fairly steady. Drew in particular powered 7 of his 12 cities for free.

All in all, it was still a fun two and a half hour game. Nothing felt out of place, especially not the 17 electro tie-break at the finish. Maybe next time, we'll try to squeeze in 8...

We ran into Anthony Dihle at SPX this year, though he wasn't actually exhibiting work at the Show. As you can clearly see in his Photo, Anthony is a moderately irritable 14 foot tall x 500 lb man in his mid 20's. What you can not see in the photo, is a corporate graphic designer by day and wicked tee shirt + rock poster maker by night.

first off, I love Anthony's work. I'm jealous of his hand-made qualities, composition, and rich color. If you are in the DC / Baltimore area, you've got to check his stuff out at the local art and craft shows.

check out Anthony's site here: http://www.ant-hive.com