This is my Wednesday Night Game Bag. Dutifully carried to The Compleat Strategist on almost every Wednesday since 2004, it’s got everything I need for tabletop gaming on the go. Altogether, it weighs 10 pounds, and holds twenty games plus six Icehouse stashes plus all the supporting generic accessories I can think of needing.
The bag itself was meant for fishing tackle. I’ve never used it for outdoorsmanship, but it carried my towel during my days of competitive swimming back in the mid-Nineties.
The main compartment is where all the games live, with minimal wasted space. It’s taken me five years of Tetris-like precision packing, but I doubt I could accommodate even one more box. In fact, I’m in trouble if one of these games gets reprinted in a different size box!
Back row… Bang (with all expansions) and En Garde share a plastic clamshell. So do Guillotine and Naval Battles. I carry two picks from the B-Movie card games, out of the six sets I own, and I swap these out as I see fit. Give Me the Brain, Chez Goth, Fluxx (in the Pink Treehouse box), and Management Material are lined up back to back. Behind this row lie Martian Coasters and Proton, two slim and sturdy flat games that fit nicely in a space where nothing else could belong.
Front row… Battle for Hill 218, Aquarius, Igor, Chrononauts, Early American Chrononauts, and Burn Rate. I don’t need to carry both Chrono sets, but I always will anyway. I’m a sucker for time travel.
Then on top, I’ve carefully arranged five tubes of Icehouse pyramids. Each tube holds six nests, for a total of six stashes, sufficient for pickup games of Volcano, Martian Coasters, Zendo, or Zarcana. There’s my Zarcana deck, too, wrapped up in the incredibly nifty Chessboard bandana. My deluxe copy of Wanderlust lives in its own box. Ferrball’s Mansion has its own tuckbox, but the rulesheet won’t fit. There’s still room for three copies of Wanderlust to hand away, but I’m all out at the moment. I think I’ve sent out 25 copies already.
The front pocket holds the rulesheets for many games. The rulebook for Naval Battles wouldn’t fit without folding, so I made my own one-page summary sheet. There are a handful of ICE-7 packets to hand out to potential pyramaniacs. Two Altoids tins hold dice, one of d6s and the other of polyhedra. A mangled Magic: Ice Age box holds my promo cards. My deck of playing cards of choice is the 2003 California Recall deck, inspired by the Iraqi 52.
The side pockets hold tins of things, and other extras. These mesh pockets aren’t as protective as the main compartment, so boxes and cards don’t go here. There’s two tins of chips for tokens, a tin of Go stones for Othello or Zendo, a pouch of my best d6s, a d30 and d24 just in case, and two Altoids tins full of… Altoids. Go figure.
Nifty Wikipedia Thing: Casanova’s jailbreak
Amusing Internet Video: When Engineers Own a Dog
Another Amusing Internet Video: 0118 999 881 999 119 7253 (earworm alert!)
Movies I’ve Seen:
Kiss Me Kate (1953) ~ terrible way to treat women
The Apartment (1960) ~ finally, a believable cinema romance
Terminator 2 (1991) ~ the zenith of pre-CGI stunts
Batman Begins (2005) ~ Nolan mastered thriller, not action
Casanova (2005) ~ surprisingly pleasant Shakespearean comedy simulacrum
3:10 to Yuma (2007) ~ some outlaws honorable, some aren’t
The Dark Knight (2008) ~ Joker chilling-est villain since BrickTop
What I’m Reading:
"The Federalist Papers" by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay
The Ryanarium 