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| Image courtesy of Rio Grande Games |
I'll blame the rum...
Monday, March 28, 2011
Punked in Puerto Rico
I'll blame the rum...
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Review: Chicago Cribbage
Chicago Cribbage is a 2007 title by Outset Media for two to four players. It requires a cribbage board (not provided) and familiarity with the traditional game of cribbage. It comes with its own deck of conventional playing cards plus 28 "Chicago Cards" that modify the game of cribbage. In a sense, Chicago Cribbage can really be thought of as a "cribbage expansion" deck.Full disclosure: Outset Media gave me a review copy of Chicago Cribbage. No other consideration was given associated with this review.
[Since Chicago Cribbage is intended for players already familiar with cribbage, I refer to standard cribbage terms and rules without definition in this review.]
Artwork
Gameplay
The real innovation in the game comes in the form of the additional "Chicago cards," which add a new dimension to the familiar game of cribbage. Each player starts with a fixed set of seven Chicago cards, each of which may be used only once in the course of the entire cribbage game. There are two opportunities during a hand of cribbage where a Chicago card can be put into play. The first is immediately after the deal (before players place cards in the crib), at which point any player may play a "Deal Again" card. The second opportunity comes immediately after the cut (when the "starter" card is revealed but before any play starts), at which point a player may play one of any of the other possible Chicago cards - "Cut Again," "Trade Hands," "No Fifteens," or "Reverse Counting."
As you might expect, "Deal Again," "Cut Again" (which forces cutting a new starter card) and "Trade Hands" can be played to change the cards that you have to work with. "No Fifteens" and "Reverse Counting" affect scoring of the current hand. "No Fifteens" affects all players (including the one who played it); when played, combinations that add to fifteen are worth no points - not when playing cards, nor when scoring hands, nor when scoring the crib. When "Reverse Counting" is played, all opponents hands (and crib, if the dealer is an opponent) score negative points, but one's own scoring is unaffected.
Impressions
At first, incorporating the additional Chicago cards takes some getting used to. The two opportunities to play Chicago cards come almost as interruptions to the normal flow of a cribbage game, at least at first to the conventional cribbage player. Once the Chicago cards become familiar, however, the opportunities to play them are anticipated and become a natural part of the flow of the game. We found that when a hand is first dealt, the first thought isn't, "what should I put in the crib" but, "should I play the 'Deal Again' card?"
Likewise, after the cut, players start to evaluate the cut and the cards in hand against one's remaining Chicago card options. A player holding several fives might benefit from a "Cut Again" in hopes of bringing up a face card as the starter. Or if an opponent has built a big lead, it may be time to play "Reverse Counting."
We found that the Chicago cards nicely mitigate card luck, which had been a rather significant factor in our previous conventional sessions of cribbage. A standard cribbage game requires some basic tactics to make the most of the cards that are dealt, but once dealt, the course of a hand is confined to the available cards. Chicago Cribbage adds several opportunities to make up for bad card luck - but only a few opportunities, so the player must apply them judiciously.
Timing of Chicago card play can be crucial. In one game, when my wife had built a big lead and I had the deal, I decided to wait to play "Reverse Counting" until she had the deal and the crib, when I figured the effect of the card would be greater. But instead she scored so high during my deal that she ended up within pegging distance of winning the game. Since "Reverse Counting" only affects hand and crib scoring (not pegging from card play), she was able to win the game on the next hand regardless of the card I played - a valuable lesson in timing.
We found that Chicago Cribbage is better suited to a full 121-point cribbage game, less so the shorter 61-point version. It takes the full length of a 121-point game to force careful consideration of when to play a Chicago card, since there are only one or two of each available, and each can be played only once. Most of them came into play over the course of a 121-point game, whereas they seemed underutilized and less tactically demanding in the shorter 61-point game.
All of the games played for this review were in the standard two-player format, but Chicago Cribbage comes with enough Chicago cards to be played with three or four players as well (just as standard cribbage can be).
Summary
Chicago Cribbage is a clever addition of a new dimension to conventional cribbage. It spices up an old familiar game in a new and challenging way. Purists might object to introducing new gameplay elements to a time-honored standard (like some chess variants, for example), so I wouldn't recommend it for those who like their cribbage "just fine the way it is, thank you." For those who have played "the old cribbage" but find it a little dry and uninteresting, however, Chicago Cribbage provides a new element of strategy and thought, perhaps more in keeping with the kind of decision-making and gameplay that characterize more contemporary board and card games. I would especially recommend Chicago Cribbage if you have a cribbage board gathering dust in a drawer or closet and vague memories of enjoying cribbage but never recently including it in your list of, "so what should we play today?"
I should add that my wife and I are divided on whether Outset Media ought to consider offering Chicago Cribbage as a complete set, with cribbage rules and board provided. My wife feels that Outset Media could expand its customer base and broaden interest in cribbage by offering the game in a form that players can learn from scratch. For my part, I'm skeptical that the game would work as a way of learning cribbage itself; to me, the appeal of the product is in bringing new life to an old familiar game.
Chicago Cribbage is recommended for ages 10 and up (although Outset Media's "cribbage game" web page lists it as "8+"). Frankly, the age recommendation is irrelevant; if you are familiar with cribbage, you can play Chicago Cribbage.
Outset Media doesn't sell games from their website but refers customers to independent retailers across North America and provides a toll-free phone number to inquire about finding a local retailer. I did find that Chicago Cribbage is available at Amazon for $9.99.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Progress toward release of my first title
While at PrezCon, I had the opportunity to meet with my publisher and hammer out the final details of the rules to my game. We nailed down some of the final wording, and in so doing I caught a mistake I had made in handling a case where a player's piece lands on another player. We were able to resolve that at the eleventh hour, so I believe the rules should be ready to go to press.
The only outstanding decision they have at this point is to choose between two manufacturing options for the board. They are very interested in making the right quality decision consistent with the target price point. The intent is to go to the printers in time for an April release.
I've got my fingers crossed.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Five friends and Seven Wonders
I enjoy 7 Wonders for a number of reasons. It's relatively easy to teach. The components are beautiful. All action is simultaneous, so you are never waiting for your turn. Everybody is in the game until the very end. There are several different ways to win. Once everyone is familiar with the rules, the game goes pretty quickly. And most of all, it's fun, with just enough strategy to demand some brainpower.
The process of explaining the rules of a game is a real skill, one that I feel I'm still developing. As I went over the rules to 7W, apparently I introduced some confusion regarding how to use resources to build structures and how to purchase resources from your neighbors. It took a while for everyone to realize that building a structure doesn't "consume" a resource production card, and buying a resource from a neighbor doesn't "transfer" that card from one player to another. So I still have some room for improvement as a game "explainer."
It's also important to get all the rules right. Previously, one rule that I had forgotten is that you can't build two of the same structure, like two Barracks, for example. My friend Keith Ferguson, whom I'd taught the game a few weeks ago, learned that the hard way in competition at PrezCon. During one tournament game, he ended up having to give up one of his redundant (and therefore illegal) structures for three coins. "Oh, sorry, man. Missed that rule....."
So back to our recent game last week: Jeff had the Temple of Artemis, Kathy had the Lighthouse at Alexandria, Keith had the Colossus of Rhodes, Sheila had the Pyramids of Giza, and I had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. People got the hang of the game pretty quickly, and it was clear early on that Sheila was starting an arms race. I think she was worried about Keith's Colossus giving him extra military power in his second stage. As she put it later, she could understand the value of building up her military, so that was the approach she took. Her neighbors Keith and Kathy tried to keep up, and in so doing did some fair damage to Jeff and (especially) me. For my part, with the Hanging Gardens, I had built a number of scientific structures in pursuit of a "technology" strategy, but somehow - inexplicably - ended up in last place. Sheila's military superiority and completed pyramids won the day quite handily.
Jeff had mentioned earlier that he had a copy of Rail Baron (a 1977 Avalon Hill title designed by R.S. and Thomas F. Erickson), so after our game of 7W, we had him pull it out and teach it to us.
Learning Rail Baron took me back to the days when I played Avalon Hill games as a teenager. It was a remarkable contrast in standards of game design and production between two eras, and really two different markets in boardgaming between my early gaming days and today. In the 1970s, Avalon Hill tried to develop games as models of real-world decision-making. So the railroads in Rail Baron reflected actual railroad companies and routes at the height of the rail industry.
The early game of Rail Baron is a bit mechanical, as most routes are unowned and therefore traveled at little expense to the players. Destinations are largely determined at random, and so players roll dice and move until they reach their destinations and earn money. It is with the opportunity to invest in a railroad company or locomotive upgrade that the game begins to get interesting. Even so, the first few railroad company purchases are largely inconsequential, as it is relatively easy for opponents to avoid having to travel on your rail line and pay through the nose for passage.
It was rather late in the evening when we were each beginning to purchase our second or third railroad company, and we regrettably did not have the stamina we might have had in the 1970s to continue the game to its conclusion. But I could see, as we began to buy up all the railroad companies in the southeastern United States, that the next player to draw Miami as a destination would have to pay somebody for passage aboard that opponent's rail line, and that would be where the game would really get interesting. I was really intrigued at the notion of trying to dominate a region in the interest of forcing payment and gaining some return on the investment. We just never got to that stage in the game before we had to call it quits. Too bad, too; I was just starting to get my avaricious capitalist tycoon on.
Kathy described her impression of Rail Baron as something like railroad Monopoly, and I could see her point. The game progressed with gradual accumulation of property (indeed, the railroad company title cards closely resemble property deeds in Monopoly) and the opportunity to collect payment from opponents who were forced to travel on the rail lines you own. Although there is no property "improvement" in the obvious sense, there is still an opportunity to "monopolize" a region to guarantee payment when an opponent rolls a destination serviced only by railroads you own.
An aspect of the game that surprised me was the frequency with which it was necessary to look data up in tables - both to determine payment for destinations reached and to determine the next destination. I say it surprises me today, but it wouldn't have surprised me in the 1970s, and that fact opened my eyes to a facet of game design that has clearly changed over the years. Seldom do today's new titles require many table look-ups during the course of gameplay. For the most part, game data are either easily memorized or readily available on cards or on the board. It's hard for me to think of a game today - at least among those I typically play - that requires referral back to rules or tables the way that the strategy games of the 1970s did.
I remember Tobruk was notorious for requiring multiple dice rolls and table references with every weapon shot. I think some people reveled in that degree of realistic detail at the time - the extent to which armor and ammunition characteristics were so carefully modeled in a tactical game like that. Nowadays I wouldn't have that kind of patience, certainly not in a new game. But then again, I'm not the wargamer I used to be. I'm much more interested these days in games that are playable but still pose a mental challenge.
So, the question comes to mind: If I were to redesign Rail Baron today, how would I go about it? How would I preserve the general strategic sense of accumulating railroad companies to dominate regions of a transportation market without having to resort to detailed payment and destination tables? How would I improve the playability and approachability of the game while maintaining the capitalistic appeal of railroad investment?
Before I pursue that question very far, I have to be honest about the fact that I am rather unfamiliar with the state of the art of rail games today. Other than Ticket to Ride, I haven't played any of the recent rail game genre. The 18xx series has quite a following, and I would probably do well to research those games first, to see whether they haven't already answered the "Rail Baron of the 21st century" question.
Learning Rail Baron took me back to the days when I played Avalon Hill games as a teenager. It was a remarkable contrast in standards of game design and production between two eras, and really two different markets in boardgaming between my early gaming days and today. In the 1970s, Avalon Hill tried to develop games as models of real-world decision-making. So the railroads in Rail Baron reflected actual railroad companies and routes at the height of the rail industry.
The early game of Rail Baron is a bit mechanical, as most routes are unowned and therefore traveled at little expense to the players. Destinations are largely determined at random, and so players roll dice and move until they reach their destinations and earn money. It is with the opportunity to invest in a railroad company or locomotive upgrade that the game begins to get interesting. Even so, the first few railroad company purchases are largely inconsequential, as it is relatively easy for opponents to avoid having to travel on your rail line and pay through the nose for passage.
It was rather late in the evening when we were each beginning to purchase our second or third railroad company, and we regrettably did not have the stamina we might have had in the 1970s to continue the game to its conclusion. But I could see, as we began to buy up all the railroad companies in the southeastern United States, that the next player to draw Miami as a destination would have to pay somebody for passage aboard that opponent's rail line, and that would be where the game would really get interesting. I was really intrigued at the notion of trying to dominate a region in the interest of forcing payment and gaining some return on the investment. We just never got to that stage in the game before we had to call it quits. Too bad, too; I was just starting to get my avaricious capitalist tycoon on.
Kathy described her impression of Rail Baron as something like railroad Monopoly, and I could see her point. The game progressed with gradual accumulation of property (indeed, the railroad company title cards closely resemble property deeds in Monopoly) and the opportunity to collect payment from opponents who were forced to travel on the rail lines you own. Although there is no property "improvement" in the obvious sense, there is still an opportunity to "monopolize" a region to guarantee payment when an opponent rolls a destination serviced only by railroads you own.
An aspect of the game that surprised me was the frequency with which it was necessary to look data up in tables - both to determine payment for destinations reached and to determine the next destination. I say it surprises me today, but it wouldn't have surprised me in the 1970s, and that fact opened my eyes to a facet of game design that has clearly changed over the years. Seldom do today's new titles require many table look-ups during the course of gameplay. For the most part, game data are either easily memorized or readily available on cards or on the board. It's hard for me to think of a game today - at least among those I typically play - that requires referral back to rules or tables the way that the strategy games of the 1970s did.
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| Gunfire tables from Tobruk |
So, the question comes to mind: If I were to redesign Rail Baron today, how would I go about it? How would I preserve the general strategic sense of accumulating railroad companies to dominate regions of a transportation market without having to resort to detailed payment and destination tables? How would I improve the playability and approachability of the game while maintaining the capitalistic appeal of railroad investment?
Before I pursue that question very far, I have to be honest about the fact that I am rather unfamiliar with the state of the art of rail games today. Other than Ticket to Ride, I haven't played any of the recent rail game genre. The 18xx series has quite a following, and I would probably do well to research those games first, to see whether they haven't already answered the "Rail Baron of the 21st century" question.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Pay attention when you discard
A couple of weeks ago at PrezCon, I played in two heats of Ticket to Ride (designer Alan R. Moon, publisher Days of Wonder), and it was in the first of these that I came face to face with my own absent-mindedness.
As those familiar with the game know, each player starts with three tickets, each of which identifies two cities to connect by rail for points. Longer routes in general are harder to connect but are worth more points, and having multiple tickets with overlapping connections make it relatively easy to compile a substantial score. Of the three tickets at the start of the game, each player must keep at least two. The disadvantage of keeping too many tickets is that uncompleted routes lose points at the end of the game, so it is prudent to keep no more routes than one is reasonably confident of finishing.
In my first heat, the three tickets I drew were all north-south routes with virtually no opportunity for overlap. One was to connect Vancouver and Phoenix in the west, another Sault-Sainte-Marie and Houston in central Canada-U.S., and the third New York and Miami along the eastern seaboard. So these routes had nothing in common, and clearly the logical thing to do was to discard one and strive to complete the other two. After some thought, I decided to keep the eastern and central routes. I discarded the third card, laid down the two tickets that I kept, and proceeded for the first half of the game to try to complete the two routes I'd decided to keep.
In a five-player game of TtR, there can be quite a lot of overlap among the competing players for key routes, and it became necessary for me to assemble a pretty convoluted network to get Sault-Sainte-Marie, Houston, New York, and Miami all connected. I glanced at my tickets to double-check that I'd connected the right cities, and was horrified to discover that I still had Vancouver-Phoenix in my hand. I had discarded New York - Miami without realizing it.
There was no hope at this point of making the Vancouver-Phoenix route; my opponents had by this time completely locked up the western U.S. So the rest of the game involved scrambling for more tickets that I could reasonably complete by making extensions of my existing route in the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada, in the hope of accumulating more points. I was actually rather successful, but I couldn't quite make up for the eleven points that I lost from having held on to Vancouver-Phoenix. In fact, I came in second, only ten points behind the winner. A most frustrating lesson in paying attention to one's cards.
As those familiar with the game know, each player starts with three tickets, each of which identifies two cities to connect by rail for points. Longer routes in general are harder to connect but are worth more points, and having multiple tickets with overlapping connections make it relatively easy to compile a substantial score. Of the three tickets at the start of the game, each player must keep at least two. The disadvantage of keeping too many tickets is that uncompleted routes lose points at the end of the game, so it is prudent to keep no more routes than one is reasonably confident of finishing.
In my first heat, the three tickets I drew were all north-south routes with virtually no opportunity for overlap. One was to connect Vancouver and Phoenix in the west, another Sault-Sainte-Marie and Houston in central Canada-U.S., and the third New York and Miami along the eastern seaboard. So these routes had nothing in common, and clearly the logical thing to do was to discard one and strive to complete the other two. After some thought, I decided to keep the eastern and central routes. I discarded the third card, laid down the two tickets that I kept, and proceeded for the first half of the game to try to complete the two routes I'd decided to keep.
In a five-player game of TtR, there can be quite a lot of overlap among the competing players for key routes, and it became necessary for me to assemble a pretty convoluted network to get Sault-Sainte-Marie, Houston, New York, and Miami all connected. I glanced at my tickets to double-check that I'd connected the right cities, and was horrified to discover that I still had Vancouver-Phoenix in my hand. I had discarded New York - Miami without realizing it.
There was no hope at this point of making the Vancouver-Phoenix route; my opponents had by this time completely locked up the western U.S. So the rest of the game involved scrambling for more tickets that I could reasonably complete by making extensions of my existing route in the eastern half of the U.S. and Canada, in the hope of accumulating more points. I was actually rather successful, but I couldn't quite make up for the eleven points that I lost from having held on to Vancouver-Phoenix. In fact, I came in second, only ten points behind the winner. A most frustrating lesson in paying attention to one's cards.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
A weekend of gaming
On the occasion of our son's birthday, his good friend and his friend's mother Sue Cochran came to stay for the weekend. The boys played computer and video games in the basement; we played boardgames in the dining room.
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We started with Cities and Knights of Catan (designer Klaus Teuber, publisher Mayfair), a favorite variant on Settlers of Catan. Although Catan usually remains close a contest throughout the game, this time my wife Kathy pretty much ran away with it by exploiting a very profitable wheat port. She left Sue and me in the dust and won handily.
Sue had played Agricola only twice before and wanted to try it again, so we played the family version (without occupations or minor improvements). Sue outscored both of us on major improvements with the well, the pottery, and a cooking hearth, and Kathy got her farm running strong on grain and vegetable fields, but I was the only one to renovate to a stone house, which proved to be the difference in my very close win.
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Sue next introduced us to Iron Dragon (designers Darwin P. Bromley and Tom Wham, another Mayfair title), which turned out to be the big game event of the weekend. I read up on some of the reviews ahead of time, and a few comments were less than enthusiastic. In the interest of simplifying the game somewhat and perhaps shortening the playing time, I convinced Sue to allow us to play without the event cards, which at least one reviewer described as randomly bad and not in general an improvement to overall gameplay. She also agreed to make the "Rainbow Bridge" connection between Bluefeld and Octomare a permanent portal, which greatly simplified access between the new and old worlds in the north. I can see that some fans of the game might think that we deprived the game of some of its challenge and flavor, but I think as an introductory session (in the context of wanting to play other games as well), the adjustments proved reasonable.
One reviewer expressed frustration at having to discard route cards frequently in order to find profitable assignments, but we didn't find that true in our session at all. Admittedly, there were a number of times early in the game where it was necessary to spend more money building rail lines than would be collected in the final shipment, but I considered those costs to be an investment in infrastructure. Many of the rail lines built early in the game turned out to be useful for multiple subsequent shipments, as well as the basis for a more extensive network later in the game. Seldom did any of us discard route cards (if at all) in our session.
In the end, I got to the point where I had enough surplus cash to extend my network to satisfy the victory condition of being connected to seven of the eight major cities. After that, it was just necessary to complete several major shipments to reach a cash balance of 250 gold pieces to win the game. All in all, I would say that it is a fun game, despite being a bit idiosyncratic in its design and execution.
Sue had played Agricola only twice before and wanted to try it again, so we played the family version (without occupations or minor improvements). Sue outscored both of us on major improvements with the well, the pottery, and a cooking hearth, and Kathy got her farm running strong on grain and vegetable fields, but I was the only one to renovate to a stone house, which proved to be the difference in my very close win.
One reviewer expressed frustration at having to discard route cards frequently in order to find profitable assignments, but we didn't find that true in our session at all. Admittedly, there were a number of times early in the game where it was necessary to spend more money building rail lines than would be collected in the final shipment, but I considered those costs to be an investment in infrastructure. Many of the rail lines built early in the game turned out to be useful for multiple subsequent shipments, as well as the basis for a more extensive network later in the game. Seldom did any of us discard route cards (if at all) in our session.
In the end, I got to the point where I had enough surplus cash to extend my network to satisfy the victory condition of being connected to seven of the eight major cities. After that, it was just necessary to complete several major shipments to reach a cash balance of 250 gold pieces to win the game. All in all, I would say that it is a fun game, despite being a bit idiosyncratic in its design and execution.
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| Image courtesy of Outset Media |
We wrapped up with a game of Word Thief (publisher Outset Media), which my wife usually trounces me in. I had a ridiculously good string of luck and managed to use all seven cards in three consecutive turns - a total of 60 bonus points. I did win the game, but only by 27 points, which means that I needed two of those awesome turns just to keep my wife from crushing me.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Power Grid at PrezCon
I had two tries at Power Grid (designer Friedemann Friese, publisher Rio Grande) during PrezCon this year. This is a game that I love to play but at which I certainly have no degree of mastery. In other words, both my games were learning experiences. We played on the map of Germany in both games.
I have a tendency to move out aggressively in terms of building power plants and connections, because I like to build up an income base early on. The first game was no exception. I think I led the pack in income per turn for most of Phase 1. The disadvantage of my approach is that the more cities to which you are connected (or the bigger your biggest power plant as a tie breaker), the later you come in turn order for purchasing fuel resources and connecting to new cities. The quickest way to build high-capacity power plants is to buy plants that are big fossil-fuel-burners. Buying resources late in the turn means paying the highest prices for coal and oil. So I really had a strategy that couldn't last.
But the real problem in my first game was that Aaron Buchanan was at the table. Aaron is a terrific game player, and in our game he had built plants up to a capacity of 13 cities. Late in Phase 2, we were all hovering around ten cities connected and powered, when suddenly Aaron made new connections to five cities in one turn, which brought his total connected cities to 15 - the trigger for game end. None of us was expecting that. Although he could only power 13 of them, it was more than any of the rest of us, which won him the game. I finished third of five, for what that was worth.
In the second heat of Power Grid, I played among a delightful group of players, all very good. Kathy Stroh, Jake J., Leslee E. (if I remember right), and a fourth whose name escapes me. I followed largely the same strategy (because, frankly, I couldn't think of what else to do) except that I bought a couple of nuclear plants to reduce my dependency on fossil fuels. It's a good thing I did, because late in the game, Kathy and the player to her left colluded to deplete the coal market and made it impossible for Jake to power what could have been a game-winning 17 cities (if he had the connections). The game ended with four of us tied powering 16 cities. The tie-breaker is cash, and Leslee and Kathy were tied with five electros each. The third place player had three electros, and I was dead broke, finishing fourth in what was by far my closest game ever. Both Leslee and Kathy advanced to the semifinal.
My good friend Grant G. made it to the Power Grid final, where he faced Aaron Buchanan and Bill Crenshaw, among other top-notch players. They decided on the central Europe map for the final round. Grant finished in fifth, which he attributes to an unfortunate early selection of location.
I would like to get Power Grid, which is ranked 5th overall on boardgamegeek.com, but it does not come well-recommended as a two-player game, and it takes upwards of two hours to play. I have doubts that it would work for my wife and me in our late-afternoon gaming sessions.
Next post: Tickets, please...
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| Image courtesy of Rio Grande Games |
But the real problem in my first game was that Aaron Buchanan was at the table. Aaron is a terrific game player, and in our game he had built plants up to a capacity of 13 cities. Late in Phase 2, we were all hovering around ten cities connected and powered, when suddenly Aaron made new connections to five cities in one turn, which brought his total connected cities to 15 - the trigger for game end. None of us was expecting that. Although he could only power 13 of them, it was more than any of the rest of us, which won him the game. I finished third of five, for what that was worth.
In the second heat of Power Grid, I played among a delightful group of players, all very good. Kathy Stroh, Jake J., Leslee E. (if I remember right), and a fourth whose name escapes me. I followed largely the same strategy (because, frankly, I couldn't think of what else to do) except that I bought a couple of nuclear plants to reduce my dependency on fossil fuels. It's a good thing I did, because late in the game, Kathy and the player to her left colluded to deplete the coal market and made it impossible for Jake to power what could have been a game-winning 17 cities (if he had the connections). The game ended with four of us tied powering 16 cities. The tie-breaker is cash, and Leslee and Kathy were tied with five electros each. The third place player had three electros, and I was dead broke, finishing fourth in what was by far my closest game ever. Both Leslee and Kathy advanced to the semifinal.
My good friend Grant G. made it to the Power Grid final, where he faced Aaron Buchanan and Bill Crenshaw, among other top-notch players. They decided on the central Europe map for the final round. Grant finished in fifth, which he attributes to an unfortunate early selection of location.
I would like to get Power Grid, which is ranked 5th overall on boardgamegeek.com, but it does not come well-recommended as a two-player game, and it takes upwards of two hours to play. I have doubts that it would work for my wife and me in our late-afternoon gaming sessions.
Next post: Tickets, please...
Thursday, March 3, 2011
An old favorite and a new discovery
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Winning in the first heat qualified me for the semifinal the next day. Somehow in the semifinal I had a hard time waiting my turn. Three times I tried to skip Tedd Mullally on his turn. He was a good sport about it; he didn't even break the skin when trying to bite my hand off. ;-) Despite what I thought was reasonably strong play, I came in second in the Alhambra semifinal. Losing semifinals would be a recurring theme for me in PrezCon this year.
Later that afternoon, my friends Brian Greer, Keith Ferguson, Glenn Weeks, and I got together for my first full game of Stone Age (designer Michael Tummelhofer [pen name for Bernd Brunnhofer], publisher Rio Grande), a worker placement game that reminds me of both Pillars of the Earth and Agricola. As such, the game continually poses a variety of options for limited resources, all the more challenging when only one player can grow the family, upgrade a tool, or develop agriculture in a turn. The rest are left to claim victory point options and collect resources to pay for them - not to mention gathering food for the family. In my case, I thought I played a relatively solid game, though not good enough to place better than third of four. I like this game, although I'm not eager to buy my own copy, given its similarity to Pillars and Agricola. Nevertheless, it's a very fun game in its own right.
Next, bringing power to Germany and transportation to America...
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
One day at PrezCon
So much happened at PrezCon that I think I'll take it a little bit at a time. Wednesday opened with an introduction to Leaping Lemmings by one of the designers, Rick Young (the other being John Poniske, the publisher being GMT). My good friend Glenn Weeks was already familiar with the game, so we jumped in for a heat, which was going very well - until one of my lemmings failed miserably at what would have been a five-point cliff dive if not for an ill-timed rock slide. Despite my last-place finish, this was a great diversion, and I'd love to try it out on the kids.
LL is a nice light-hearted title with a decent degree of strategy. It vaguely reminds me of Lost World: Jurassic Park from the standpoint of being a fox-and-geese kind of game (outnumbered predators trying to catch prey running the length of the board), but LL is far superior to Lost World from a play balance standpoint. Rather than having predator players vs. prey players, everyone controls one faction of prey (lemmings), and control of the predators (eagles) rotates around the board. It would be interesting to modify LW:JP along the same lines.
Unfortunately, LL sold out pretty quickly at PrezCon. We all found it surprising that GMT would release this kind of title. GMT has a reputation for solid wargames and a few other represented genres, but LL is downright goofy by comparison with their usual line-up. It's very interesting to see GMT branch out in this direction. Regardless, LL is now at the top of my wish-list for family games.
More posts to follow over the next few days - games played and lost, games bought, and the status of a game sold.
LL is a nice light-hearted title with a decent degree of strategy. It vaguely reminds me of Lost World: Jurassic Park from the standpoint of being a fox-and-geese kind of game (outnumbered predators trying to catch prey running the length of the board), but LL is far superior to Lost World from a play balance standpoint. Rather than having predator players vs. prey players, everyone controls one faction of prey (lemmings), and control of the predators (eagles) rotates around the board. It would be interesting to modify LW:JP along the same lines.
Unfortunately, LL sold out pretty quickly at PrezCon. We all found it surprising that GMT would release this kind of title. GMT has a reputation for solid wargames and a few other represented genres, but LL is downright goofy by comparison with their usual line-up. It's very interesting to see GMT branch out in this direction. Regardless, LL is now at the top of my wish-list for family games.
More posts to follow over the next few days - games played and lost, games bought, and the status of a game sold.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Eagerly anticipated box art
Hey, I just got a note from my publisher with a first cut on the box art for the "eagerly anticipated game." They've got a good artist, and he's done a great job capturing the flavor of the game. The company has also created a new trademark, apparently for their family game line, to distinguish those titles from their traditional wargaming base. So it's all very exciting to see come together.
It's a little intimidating to think about how important box art is to the sales of a game, but I guess that's a fact of the marketplace. For my part, I'd like to think the outside of a game box doesn't drive my purchase decision. To me, the most important factor in deciding whether to buy a game is whether I've played it before. Second is whether someone has recommended it. Third is seeing it demonstrated, as at a convention, for example. Fourth is whether I recognize the designer or publisher and trust that I can buy something "untried" just because of their reputation. Seldom will I buy a game based entirely on the box, but I have done it before, and with some success (as Can't Stop) as well as with some disappointment (as Clue: Secrets and Spies). Conversely, I've seen some games I would never put money down for, just because the outside was so poorly done.
I'm curious to know how many people there are who will buy a game just based on what's on the outside of the box, and what they look for. I also wonder how big a company has to be to spend time, money, and effort on real research to analyze customer reactions to box art and appearances.
A funny thing just occurred to me: All else being equal, I think I'd be willing to pay more for a game if it felt heavy when I picked it up. That sounds dumb, but it's important to recognize one's own human foibles, and that's one of mine. I specifically recall a conversation at HistoriCon with the president of one wargame company in particular. They have some excellent naval wargames, but as we discussed the latest release and why it was priced the way it was, I casually reached down and flicked the corner of the mapsheet with my thumb. The map was essentially a glossy poster paper mapsheet, not hard-mounted. Mind you, the graphics were terrific, and the reputation for the series of games is excellent, but to me, if I'm going to pay a lot, it has to weigh a lot. That's dumb, but it's true.
Something to think about if I ever get into the production end of the business.
It's a little intimidating to think about how important box art is to the sales of a game, but I guess that's a fact of the marketplace. For my part, I'd like to think the outside of a game box doesn't drive my purchase decision. To me, the most important factor in deciding whether to buy a game is whether I've played it before. Second is whether someone has recommended it. Third is seeing it demonstrated, as at a convention, for example. Fourth is whether I recognize the designer or publisher and trust that I can buy something "untried" just because of their reputation. Seldom will I buy a game based entirely on the box, but I have done it before, and with some success (as Can't Stop) as well as with some disappointment (as Clue: Secrets and Spies). Conversely, I've seen some games I would never put money down for, just because the outside was so poorly done.
I'm curious to know how many people there are who will buy a game just based on what's on the outside of the box, and what they look for. I also wonder how big a company has to be to spend time, money, and effort on real research to analyze customer reactions to box art and appearances.
A funny thing just occurred to me: All else being equal, I think I'd be willing to pay more for a game if it felt heavy when I picked it up. That sounds dumb, but it's important to recognize one's own human foibles, and that's one of mine. I specifically recall a conversation at HistoriCon with the president of one wargame company in particular. They have some excellent naval wargames, but as we discussed the latest release and why it was priced the way it was, I casually reached down and flicked the corner of the mapsheet with my thumb. The map was essentially a glossy poster paper mapsheet, not hard-mounted. Mind you, the graphics were terrific, and the reputation for the series of games is excellent, but to me, if I'm going to pay a lot, it has to weigh a lot. That's dumb, but it's true.
Something to think about if I ever get into the production end of the business.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
There's gold in them thar moons
I'm working in earnest on an idea I've had for a while and mentioned here once or twice. The game will be set at a time in the future when mining expeditions to other planets and moons in the solar system become cost effective. Precious materials like gold, uranium, and tritium are scattered all over the solar system, and earth-bound industrialists will pay top dollar for them on the commodities market. Players are CEOs of newly-capitalized mining companies seeking wealth - that is to say, "shareholder value" - by prospecting and mining rare raw materials as close as the moon and as far as Mercury or even Titan.
This game is going to be a step up from my previous designs in terms of complexity and, I hope, nuance of game play. The real balance I want to strike is to make sure that there is no single run-away strategy. I want players to be motivated to take risks, but I don't want the game to devolve into a matter of dice and card luck.
One thing I might be in danger of doing at this stage is trying to do too much. I want to include a corporate strategy element, in which players decide how much to borrow to fund rocket missions and how much to pay in dividends to keep stockholders happy. I also want to include a commodities market element, so that players deal with rising and falling prices of the raw materials they sell and the aerospace products and services they need. I'm even entertaining the idea of have a futures market, so that players can sell inventory for future delivery. I also want to have a space mission element, in which players are faced with the problems of getting equipment and crews to distant planets and moons and then retrieving the raw materials back to earth.
I think this is going to take some real time to work out, and a lot of playtesting to be sure I have the right balance. I really want this one to work. I really want it to be fun.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Know when to fold 'em
With a new printer and a new set of blank business cards, I printed my first prototype of the submarine card game for which I'd adopted the title, "Enemy Unseen" (thanks to the suggestion from my gaming friend Paul R). Although my wife Kathy isn't much for wargames, she was willing to give this one a try, just so I could test out the mechanics and see whether the rules made sense.
Right away there were some obvious problems. First, business cards didn't shuffle well. (This has been a problem for all my previous prototypes as well.) Second, the font size on the submarine cards was too small. Third, the game depends on two distinct parameters - detection range and firing range - but to the new player, they are too easily confused. I was careful to discuss all the parameters that affect detection range first, and that went well, but as soon as I got into the mechanics of determining firing range and combat resolution, the mechanics really seemed to fall apart.
First, the submarines: I included an assortment of NATO and Soviet 1970s-era submarines, both conventional and nuclear, including attack, guided-missile, and ballistic-missile boats. The point value for each ranged from a one-point deisel attack boat to a six-point nuclear ballistic-missile submarine. Each also had a "sonar quality" that could improve detection range by up to four kilometers (km) and a "noise factor" that could contribute to the opponent's detection range (i.e. increase the distance at which you would be detected) by up to four km. The submarines would not be revealed until combat was initiated, so you would not know your actual detection range - nor your opponent's - until you had committed to combat.
I included some complicating factors: Action cards could be used to modify the acoustic conditions by changing the strength of the thermal layer, or to change (secretly) a submarine's depth between "deep" (below layer) and "shallow" (above layer). The strength of the layer and the relative depths of the two submarines would affect their detection ranges. Also, combat options included firing a single shot, firing a salvo spread, or evading without firing.
For the combat mechanics, I tried to work from a basic premise similar to the idea of a stand-off in an old Western movie. At one end of the dusty town street stands the Bad Guy, pistol holstered, gun hand poised. At the other end stands the Sheriff, likewise ready. "Bart, I'm going to take you in." "You're going to have to come get me, Sheriff." One pace at a time, they approach each other, closing the range until one suddenly draws his weapon and fires. The other draws and fires immediately as well, so that the shots are virtually simultaneous and the resolution immediate. "You got me, Sheriff."
Okay, a little corny, but here's the point: The gunmen approach each other until the distance between them is close enough that one of them believes he can hit his opponent, but the other hasn't drawn his weapon yet. In other words, the distance at which shots are exchanged is the greatest distance that either of them believes he can hit the other - or, perhaps, the shortest distance that both of them feel secure that they have a reasonable chance of not being hit. The idea is to initiate combat close enough to hit the opponent but distant enough to have a chance that the opponent's shot will miss.
My thinking for combat resolution was that once a player decides to initiate combat at a certain "firing range," that range is compared to his "detection range" to determine the chance of hitting the opponent. As long as the firing range is less than the detection range, there is a chance to sink the enemy - the greater the difference, the more likely the sinking. But it must also be remembered that the opponent shoots from the same distance and compares that same firing range to his own detection range, so that if he has a better sonar and/or you have a noisier submarine, you are more likely to be sunk than to sink your opponent.
In my first iteration (which my wife and I playtested last week), I had the players "bid up the shooting range" until one of them "calls" by initiating combat. That was really counter-intuitive to my wife: Why would the shooting range go up if we're supposed to be getting closer together? There were also some problems with how to force combat if one player has a high-value submarine and he just wants to get away without getting sunk. What keeps a player from bidding up the range indefinitely until there's no way either submarine could sink the other?
Now, in both the gunslinger example and in submarine combat, it actually happens backwards - they bid down the firing range until one pulls the trigger. Perhaps we ought to say that the players reduce the "too-far-to-shoot" range, or the "I-feel-pretty-sure-you-can't-hit-me-from-here" range, until one player decides they are close enough to take a shot. So in my second iteration of the game (playtested the other day), I started with a set of range cards dealt face up between the players to represent the distance between the submarines. Each player could elect to remove a range card to reduce the total range, i.e., to close with the opponent. If a player felt the range to be close enough, he could elect to shoot, and the opponent would shoot or evade in response.
To solve the "difficult to shuffle" problem, I used some card protector sleeves (provided by my son) in several different colors (the kind used by Collectible Card Game [CCG] aficionados - you know, the Yu-Gi-Oh fanatics). I put the Soviet submarines in red sleeves, NATO in blue, Action cards in black, and Range cards in grey. That seemed to work very well physically.
But even the second playtest wasn't very satisfying. Although my wife said the firing range mechanic made a lot more sense, I realized that players are not in general motivated to change the acoustic conditions, since acoustics affect both submarines in essentially the same way. I had intended to create a certain "cat and mouse" effect, in which players tried to second-guess each other's vertical movements while attempting to close the range without getting too close. Instead, though, we found ourselves continually closing range to some arbitrary point, and then shooting at each other. Whoever had the better submarine generally won.
So the bottom line is that I didn't really have the variety of options that I'd intended, I hadn't created any key decision points, and basically didn't have a game that was fun to play. So I think "Enemy Unseen" is a bust, at least for now. I think an important lesson in project management is to know when to kill a project that isn't working, and this might be one. That's okay. Not all game ideas are good game ideas. I might go back to it again, but for now I think I'll just put it in mothballs.
Right away there were some obvious problems. First, business cards didn't shuffle well. (This has been a problem for all my previous prototypes as well.) Second, the font size on the submarine cards was too small. Third, the game depends on two distinct parameters - detection range and firing range - but to the new player, they are too easily confused. I was careful to discuss all the parameters that affect detection range first, and that went well, but as soon as I got into the mechanics of determining firing range and combat resolution, the mechanics really seemed to fall apart.
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| USS Scorpion Artist - Viktor Stepansky http://www.subart.net/uss_skipjack.htm |
I included some complicating factors: Action cards could be used to modify the acoustic conditions by changing the strength of the thermal layer, or to change (secretly) a submarine's depth between "deep" (below layer) and "shallow" (above layer). The strength of the layer and the relative depths of the two submarines would affect their detection ranges. Also, combat options included firing a single shot, firing a salvo spread, or evading without firing.
For the combat mechanics, I tried to work from a basic premise similar to the idea of a stand-off in an old Western movie. At one end of the dusty town street stands the Bad Guy, pistol holstered, gun hand poised. At the other end stands the Sheriff, likewise ready. "Bart, I'm going to take you in." "You're going to have to come get me, Sheriff." One pace at a time, they approach each other, closing the range until one suddenly draws his weapon and fires. The other draws and fires immediately as well, so that the shots are virtually simultaneous and the resolution immediate. "You got me, Sheriff."
Okay, a little corny, but here's the point: The gunmen approach each other until the distance between them is close enough that one of them believes he can hit his opponent, but the other hasn't drawn his weapon yet. In other words, the distance at which shots are exchanged is the greatest distance that either of them believes he can hit the other - or, perhaps, the shortest distance that both of them feel secure that they have a reasonable chance of not being hit. The idea is to initiate combat close enough to hit the opponent but distant enough to have a chance that the opponent's shot will miss.
My thinking for combat resolution was that once a player decides to initiate combat at a certain "firing range," that range is compared to his "detection range" to determine the chance of hitting the opponent. As long as the firing range is less than the detection range, there is a chance to sink the enemy - the greater the difference, the more likely the sinking. But it must also be remembered that the opponent shoots from the same distance and compares that same firing range to his own detection range, so that if he has a better sonar and/or you have a noisier submarine, you are more likely to be sunk than to sink your opponent.
In my first iteration (which my wife and I playtested last week), I had the players "bid up the shooting range" until one of them "calls" by initiating combat. That was really counter-intuitive to my wife: Why would the shooting range go up if we're supposed to be getting closer together? There were also some problems with how to force combat if one player has a high-value submarine and he just wants to get away without getting sunk. What keeps a player from bidding up the range indefinitely until there's no way either submarine could sink the other?
Now, in both the gunslinger example and in submarine combat, it actually happens backwards - they bid down the firing range until one pulls the trigger. Perhaps we ought to say that the players reduce the "too-far-to-shoot" range, or the "I-feel-pretty-sure-you-can't-hit-me-from-here" range, until one player decides they are close enough to take a shot. So in my second iteration of the game (playtested the other day), I started with a set of range cards dealt face up between the players to represent the distance between the submarines. Each player could elect to remove a range card to reduce the total range, i.e., to close with the opponent. If a player felt the range to be close enough, he could elect to shoot, and the opponent would shoot or evade in response.
To solve the "difficult to shuffle" problem, I used some card protector sleeves (provided by my son) in several different colors (the kind used by Collectible Card Game [CCG] aficionados - you know, the Yu-Gi-Oh fanatics). I put the Soviet submarines in red sleeves, NATO in blue, Action cards in black, and Range cards in grey. That seemed to work very well physically.
But even the second playtest wasn't very satisfying. Although my wife said the firing range mechanic made a lot more sense, I realized that players are not in general motivated to change the acoustic conditions, since acoustics affect both submarines in essentially the same way. I had intended to create a certain "cat and mouse" effect, in which players tried to second-guess each other's vertical movements while attempting to close the range without getting too close. Instead, though, we found ourselves continually closing range to some arbitrary point, and then shooting at each other. Whoever had the better submarine generally won.
So the bottom line is that I didn't really have the variety of options that I'd intended, I hadn't created any key decision points, and basically didn't have a game that was fun to play. So I think "Enemy Unseen" is a bust, at least for now. I think an important lesson in project management is to know when to kill a project that isn't working, and this might be one. That's okay. Not all game ideas are good game ideas. I might go back to it again, but for now I think I'll just put it in mothballs.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Congress of Gamers recap - Part 2
After our game of Carcassone, I went to the vendor "Our Game Table" and bought a tile bag for Carcassone and box bands to replace broken ones at home.
So, Saturday afternoon at Congress of Gamers found me sitting down to play Settlers of Catan (designed by Klaus Teuber, published by Mayfair Games) with Meredith M. and my good friend Grant G. Settlers is an old favorite of mine. Grant obtained Longest Road fairly early on, and he and Meredith seemed pretty evenly matched until she linked two road networks to steal Longest Road from him and jump to a commanding lead. I was able to catch up to her, and we were tied at nine points when I had in my hand exactly the cards I needed to build my last settlement and win the game. But fortune would not smile on me, because before I could take my turn, Meredith bought a development card and turned up the University of Catan for her tenth and winning point. Argh! Victory snatched from my grasp!
Sunday I brought my son with me to Congress of Gamers to meet his friend (whose mother Sue C. ran the Catchy Quips vendor at the convention) and play RoboRally (designed by Richard Garfield, published by Avalon Hill [Hasbro]). Our session was a crazy one, with ten players on three connected boards. The game master, Marc Houde, randomly changed one of the boards every three turns. At one point, the second objective flag sat on a conveyor belt, a literal moving target. It became clear that the game could go on forever, so after three hours with only a few of us having touched the first flag, Marc announced that the first player to touch the second flag would be the winner. One player got to the flag but was carried to oblivion on the conveyor belt before he could declare victory. Much later, my friend Keith F. was able to capture the second flag and win the game, four hours after we started. There is a lesson here about adding random complications to an existing game design. The result can be an unintended convolution that makes a game unnecessarily long and potentially frustrating and draining.
Because RoboRally ran so long, I missed the Puerto Rico session and instead spent a little time and money at the Harmony House vendor picking up parts for a prototype of an interplanetary mining game idea I've been kicking around in earnest.
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Finally came the game I'd been looking forward to most - Agricola. Again, Virginia C. was at my table, along with a woman named Helen and the game master Eric Engelmann. Our table was the only one to use drafting, whereby players keep some cards and pass the rest to other players before the start of the game so that each has the opportunity to assemble combinations of favorable cards and dispose of those least applicable to a strategy. My big early move was bringing out the wet nurse so that every room I added to my house came with a baby. I had a few other interesting occupations and improvements but still felt as though I was behind the group until some late moves to plow and sow, as well as to renovate my hut to clay and build fences near the very end. I just missed second place to Helen by a point, but Virginia took a commanding win with a five-room stone house and 13 points in improvements. With that, Virginia swept the EuroCaucus category for the entire convention.
After all that competition, I had a fun session of Castle Panic with my son and his friend. CP is a fun cooperative game, and it was a nice light-hearted finish to a fun convention. After that, we packed up and headed home, content to have played a solid weekend of games in good company.
And fun in the company of good friends and new acquaintances, after all, is what playing games is really all about.
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| Image (c) Mayfair Games. Used by permission. All rights reserved |
Sunday I brought my son with me to Congress of Gamers to meet his friend (whose mother Sue C. ran the Catchy Quips vendor at the convention) and play RoboRally (designed by Richard Garfield, published by Avalon Hill [Hasbro]). Our session was a crazy one, with ten players on three connected boards. The game master, Marc Houde, randomly changed one of the boards every three turns. At one point, the second objective flag sat on a conveyor belt, a literal moving target. It became clear that the game could go on forever, so after three hours with only a few of us having touched the first flag, Marc announced that the first player to touch the second flag would be the winner. One player got to the flag but was carried to oblivion on the conveyor belt before he could declare victory. Much later, my friend Keith F. was able to capture the second flag and win the game, four hours after we started. There is a lesson here about adding random complications to an existing game design. The result can be an unintended convolution that makes a game unnecessarily long and potentially frustrating and draining.
Because RoboRally ran so long, I missed the Puerto Rico session and instead spent a little time and money at the Harmony House vendor picking up parts for a prototype of an interplanetary mining game idea I've been kicking around in earnest.
After all that competition, I had a fun session of Castle Panic with my son and his friend. CP is a fun cooperative game, and it was a nice light-hearted finish to a fun convention. After that, we packed up and headed home, content to have played a solid weekend of games in good company.
And fun in the company of good friends and new acquaintances, after all, is what playing games is really all about.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Congress of Gamers recap - Part 1
Last weekend I attended Congress of Gamers in Rockville, Maryland. This is a fun little convention that I try never to miss because it's low-key and good fun.
Saturday morning I arrived to find my friend Grant G. playing Can't Stop (designed by Sid Sackson, published by Face 2 Face Games), which is a nice push-your-luck kind of game. I had picked up a copy for my now-nine-year-old son for Christmas a year or two ago. It's still something of a family favorite. When I played it at PrezCon last February, I was astounded at how far teenagers will push their luck rolling the dice. I'm much more cautious at the game, which sometimes works for me, and sometimes doesn't. So in Grant's game, the table was cleaned up by a young player who completed three categories before anyone else got a single one; so I guess there's something to be said for calculated risk-taking.
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My first game of the convention was Carcassonne (designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, published by Rio Grande) with the river expansion. [Edit: Carcassonne has since been picked up for distribution in the U.S. by Z-Man Games under a new contract with the original German publisher Hans Im Gluck. - PDO] This was my first time playing with the Third Edition scoring rules, whereby each farm scores three points for each adjacent complete city. I thought I won against Amy R., Meredith M., and Tom R., but my EuroCaucus card showed I came in second. Oh well.
Every convention I try to learn a game I've never played before. This weekend it was Endeavor (designed by Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray, published by Z-man), a colonial mercantile game of expansion, action placement, and the usual conundrum of decision-making. Though I advanced rapidly in technology to acquire advanced buildings, I neglected to accumulate tokens for taking actions (rather like growing the family in Agricola), and so was left with few opportunities for growth in the latter part of the game. The winner at my table was a delightful woman who, it turns out, has a monthly gaming group not far from us in Virginia. So once again, the nice thing about a convention is that if I'm not going to win, at least I'm going to make a new connection.
Next post: Settlers, robots, and ... you guessed it ... farming.
Saturday morning I arrived to find my friend Grant G. playing Can't Stop (designed by Sid Sackson, published by Face 2 Face Games), which is a nice push-your-luck kind of game. I had picked up a copy for my now-nine-year-old son for Christmas a year or two ago. It's still something of a family favorite. When I played it at PrezCon last February, I was astounded at how far teenagers will push their luck rolling the dice. I'm much more cautious at the game, which sometimes works for me, and sometimes doesn't. So in Grant's game, the table was cleaned up by a young player who completed three categories before anyone else got a single one; so I guess there's something to be said for calculated risk-taking.
Every convention I try to learn a game I've never played before. This weekend it was Endeavor (designed by Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray, published by Z-man), a colonial mercantile game of expansion, action placement, and the usual conundrum of decision-making. Though I advanced rapidly in technology to acquire advanced buildings, I neglected to accumulate tokens for taking actions (rather like growing the family in Agricola), and so was left with few opportunities for growth in the latter part of the game. The winner at my table was a delightful woman who, it turns out, has a monthly gaming group not far from us in Virginia. So once again, the nice thing about a convention is that if I'm not going to win, at least I'm going to make a new connection.
Next post: Settlers, robots, and ... you guessed it ... farming.
Friday, October 8, 2010
More playing than designing this week
All week I've been coming home from my paying job and unwinding by playing games rather than buckling down and working on my submarine game.
Yesterday Kathy and I played Puerto Rico, inspired perhaps earlier this week by Race for the Galaxy, which is similar in concept though considerably more complex (to us) in execution. PR is one of our favorites. It's actually designed for three to five players. We adopted the two-player variant that appears in a solitaire rules set called "SoloPlay Rules," which works well for us.
I used to approach PR with a rigid strategy in mind - either grow lots of cheap crops and ship them like a madman, or focus on generating income and go heavy on buildings. I've since learned that a semi-flexible strategy is important, as is paying attention to what roles benefit one's opponent(s) as much as or more than oneself. I have a hard time articulating my strategic approach to PR better than that, so perhaps it's worth some thought and a subsequent post ... and perhaps some research first into what others have written on PR.
In yesterday's session, Kathy picked up a hospice early, as well as a couple of quarries and a few corn plantations, so I was afraid she'd be off to the races. I had a small start in indigo but went pretty long in sugar. I picked up both small and large markets, so I had some good cash coming in, enough later to buy the fortress and city hall. Kathy got tobacco production going but could only sell it once or twice. She picked up the guild hall very late, but my building points ended up carrying me by three points at the end.
This afternoon was an absolutely perfect fall day, so Kathy lit a fire in the fire bowl in the back yard, I made some drinks, and we sat out and played a couple of games of cribbage. That game was quite popular on my boat when I was in the Navy (and holds a submarine tradition going way back to World War II). Nowadays, I find it a nice diversion. I have to say that my opponent today is distractingly better looking and much more pleasant company than were my opponents aboard ship.
I picked up a copy of Castle Panic (designed by Justin de Witt, published by Fireside Games) today on the recommendation of my son, who came home after a game session raving about it. We tried it as a family game after dinner tonight, and we picked it up pretty quick. I think the cooperative aspect of this game works well for us as a family, once we have the "game courtesy protocol" established (no touching pieces on other people's turns, etc). We players won against the monsters, and my youngest son emerged as the Master Slayer with 16 points.
This nice discovery of Castle Panic (thanks to Spike and Mary) comes serendipitously after my posting earlier this week in which I expressed concern about the approachability of games in their first playing. CP turned out to be very intuitive and straightforward in its execution, and therefore easy to learn in the first play-through. Now, it is a relatively simple game by any measure. Still, I think its construct is conceptually transparent, so that individual quirks and capabilities of unique monsters and action cards could be learned one at a time as they came up. We could learn each new capability as it emerged and accommodate it into our overall understanding of the game without the frustration of saying, "oh, well if I'd known that, I'd have done this differently."
So I think if I want to design family games, I really have to give some thought to this aspect of being able to sit down, start playing, and learn while playing without ever having to go back and re-visit points in the games that the new player previously thought they'd understood.
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| Image courtesy of Rio Grande Games |
I used to approach PR with a rigid strategy in mind - either grow lots of cheap crops and ship them like a madman, or focus on generating income and go heavy on buildings. I've since learned that a semi-flexible strategy is important, as is paying attention to what roles benefit one's opponent(s) as much as or more than oneself. I have a hard time articulating my strategic approach to PR better than that, so perhaps it's worth some thought and a subsequent post ... and perhaps some research first into what others have written on PR.
In yesterday's session, Kathy picked up a hospice early, as well as a couple of quarries and a few corn plantations, so I was afraid she'd be off to the races. I had a small start in indigo but went pretty long in sugar. I picked up both small and large markets, so I had some good cash coming in, enough later to buy the fortress and city hall. Kathy got tobacco production going but could only sell it once or twice. She picked up the guild hall very late, but my building points ended up carrying me by three points at the end.
This afternoon was an absolutely perfect fall day, so Kathy lit a fire in the fire bowl in the back yard, I made some drinks, and we sat out and played a couple of games of cribbage. That game was quite popular on my boat when I was in the Navy (and holds a submarine tradition going way back to World War II). Nowadays, I find it a nice diversion. I have to say that my opponent today is distractingly better looking and much more pleasant company than were my opponents aboard ship.
I picked up a copy of Castle Panic (designed by Justin de Witt, published by Fireside Games) today on the recommendation of my son, who came home after a game session raving about it. We tried it as a family game after dinner tonight, and we picked it up pretty quick. I think the cooperative aspect of this game works well for us as a family, once we have the "game courtesy protocol" established (no touching pieces on other people's turns, etc). We players won against the monsters, and my youngest son emerged as the Master Slayer with 16 points.
This nice discovery of Castle Panic (thanks to Spike and Mary) comes serendipitously after my posting earlier this week in which I expressed concern about the approachability of games in their first playing. CP turned out to be very intuitive and straightforward in its execution, and therefore easy to learn in the first play-through. Now, it is a relatively simple game by any measure. Still, I think its construct is conceptually transparent, so that individual quirks and capabilities of unique monsters and action cards could be learned one at a time as they came up. We could learn each new capability as it emerged and accommodate it into our overall understanding of the game without the frustration of saying, "oh, well if I'd known that, I'd have done this differently."
So I think if I want to design family games, I really have to give some thought to this aspect of being able to sit down, start playing, and learn while playing without ever having to go back and re-visit points in the games that the new player previously thought they'd understood.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Submarine card game
I'm done working on my "eagerly awaited game" for the time being, so I've started in earnest on another idea I've had kicking around for a while. It's a two-player card game based on submarine combat in the 1970s. I haven't fully worked out the mechanics yet, but it will involve some kind of bidding interchange to determine the range at which the combatants shoot at each other. Sonar performance will play into the game, with modifications for environment, depth, and the enemy's noise level. I feel as though I also ought to account for active sonar somehow, but I haven't worked out how to do that.
I've got a good idea what needs to be on the cards, though, so I've got one sheet of ten submarine cards done so far. I think they look pretty good for a first prototype.
I'm really bad at naming my own games, though, so if anybody has a clever idea that they don't mind sharing, I'd love to consider it. My working title is "Submarine Combat." See how bad I am at this?
I've got a good idea what needs to be on the cards, though, so I've got one sheet of ten submarine cards done so far. I think they look pretty good for a first prototype.
I'm really bad at naming my own games, though, so if anybody has a clever idea that they don't mind sharing, I'd love to consider it. My working title is "Submarine Combat." See how bad I am at this?
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Developer's turn
My developer says they have everything they need from me, for now at least. They're working on a rules re-write based on some changes we discussed, so I look forward to seeing how they turn out.
So now it's time to work on another design in earnest. I have two ideas on opposite ends of the complexity spectrum - a relatively simple card game based on submarine combat in the Cold War, and an idea for interplanetary commodities trading that gets more complex every time I think about it. I'll probably knock out the card game first while I ruminate on the commodities game in the back of my mind.
So now it's time to work on another design in earnest. I have two ideas on opposite ends of the complexity spectrum - a relatively simple card game based on submarine combat in the Cold War, and an idea for interplanetary commodities trading that gets more complex every time I think about it. I'll probably knock out the card game first while I ruminate on the commodities game in the back of my mind.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Coming up - play balance
My game of Stonewall Jackson's Way with Paul R., and some responses I got on boardgamegeek about it, got me to thinking about play balance in games. I'll follow up with a more detailed post over the weekend.
For tonight, my focus is on finishing card updates for "PDO's Eagerly Awaited Game" that became necessary when my ambitious developer added nine cards to the deck. More is better, right?
For tonight, my focus is on finishing card updates for "PDO's Eagerly Awaited Game" that became necessary when my ambitious developer added nine cards to the deck. More is better, right?
Monday, September 20, 2010
Stonewall Jackson's Way
This afternoon after work, I met my good friend Paul R. at our friendly neighborhood game store, Game Parlor Chantilly, to play an old favorite, Stonewall Jackson's Way (designed by Joseph M. Balkoski, published by The Avalon Hill Game Company, 1992). We'd played various scenarios of this game before, and this time we went back to replay Scenario 1, "Cedar Mountain," which simulates Confederate General Stonewall Jackson's attempt to halt the U.S. Army of Virginia's movement toward Orange Court House, Gordonsville, and Charlottesville, Virginia. Jackson's efforts would culminate in the Battle of Cedar Mountain, 9 August 1862.
I have always been fond of Avalon Hill games, and I have to say that SJW has become one of my very favorites. The rules are meticulously written, to the point of utter detail and clarity (at the expense, perhaps, of brevity and succinctness). They include some interesting methods for modeling troop fatigue and the effects of forced march and repeated combat on the organization and morale of units. Leadership quality becomes important in attempts to coordinate attacks among multiple divisions. Even in its small scenarios, it poses some great tactical dilemmas that feel true to history.
Most of all, Paul and I found ourselves continually faced with operational challenges that we could easily imagine facing General Pope of the Army of Virginia, or General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederacy. We each had to consider such problems as whether to pursue a retreating enemy at the risk of exposing flanks and exhausting troops, whether to force march a lagging division to reinforce defenses and risk losing unit cohesion, or whether to swing a lone cavalry brigade behind the enemy line for a flank attack at the risk of losing the initiative and seeing the cavalry isolated and wiped out. Some wargames are better than others at posing these dilemmas in a believable way; I find SJW very strong in this regard.
So, of course, the bottom line is that Paul and I had a great time. The game took almost four hours to play, and we enjoyed every minute of it. I was fortunate to have gained the upper hand by the second day of the three-day battle, so on the last day I consolidated Jackson's corps in an uncharacteristically (for Jackson) defensive posture less than five miles from Culpeper. Paul attempted to muster one final assault by I Corps under Sigel but could not unseat the Confederates from their close proximity to the objective. We agreed that the third day's actions were somewhat unrealistic, in that Jackson would not have been so conservative and Pope would not have taken the risks that Paul was forced to take, artificialities introduced by our knowledge that the game would be over after the third day. Nevertheless, it was a fun time, and a great reminder why I enjoy AH games so much.
I have always been fond of Avalon Hill games, and I have to say that SJW has become one of my very favorites. The rules are meticulously written, to the point of utter detail and clarity (at the expense, perhaps, of brevity and succinctness). They include some interesting methods for modeling troop fatigue and the effects of forced march and repeated combat on the organization and morale of units. Leadership quality becomes important in attempts to coordinate attacks among multiple divisions. Even in its small scenarios, it poses some great tactical dilemmas that feel true to history.
Most of all, Paul and I found ourselves continually faced with operational challenges that we could easily imagine facing General Pope of the Army of Virginia, or General Stonewall Jackson of the Confederacy. We each had to consider such problems as whether to pursue a retreating enemy at the risk of exposing flanks and exhausting troops, whether to force march a lagging division to reinforce defenses and risk losing unit cohesion, or whether to swing a lone cavalry brigade behind the enemy line for a flank attack at the risk of losing the initiative and seeing the cavalry isolated and wiped out. Some wargames are better than others at posing these dilemmas in a believable way; I find SJW very strong in this regard.
So, of course, the bottom line is that Paul and I had a great time. The game took almost four hours to play, and we enjoyed every minute of it. I was fortunate to have gained the upper hand by the second day of the three-day battle, so on the last day I consolidated Jackson's corps in an uncharacteristically (for Jackson) defensive posture less than five miles from Culpeper. Paul attempted to muster one final assault by I Corps under Sigel but could not unseat the Confederates from their close proximity to the objective. We agreed that the third day's actions were somewhat unrealistic, in that Jackson would not have been so conservative and Pope would not have taken the risks that Paul was forced to take, artificialities introduced by our knowledge that the game would be over after the third day. Nevertheless, it was a fun time, and a great reminder why I enjoy AH games so much.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Developers tweaking ...
I just heard from my developers, who are working on "PDO's Eagerly Awaited Game." They really like the overall design. There are a few changes they want to make to some rules to clean it up a little and simplify some things. Sure enough, they'd pretty much zeroed in on the one or two weak areas that I wasn't altogether crazy about myself.
I had invented a pretty convoluted rule for what to do when your piece lands on another player's piece, and writing it all out ended up taking up maybe a quarter or a third of the whole rulebook. Well, that just doesn't make sense for a rule that's supposed to handle a contingency case. So we're going to fix that.
I also have a few immunity cards in the original prototype that we think might just be too powerful. I'd really hate to put out a game, only to have it end up that "whoever gets card x usually ends up winning." Who would want to play that twice? So we're kicking around some ideas to mitigate the power of those cards while keeping the intended effect of having them in the deck.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a game a success. I have a few thoughts for tomorrow on what makes a game a failure.
Meanwhile, may your game closet be full of successes, and your game room full of friends to play them...
I had invented a pretty convoluted rule for what to do when your piece lands on another player's piece, and writing it all out ended up taking up maybe a quarter or a third of the whole rulebook. Well, that just doesn't make sense for a rule that's supposed to handle a contingency case. So we're going to fix that.
I also have a few immunity cards in the original prototype that we think might just be too powerful. I'd really hate to put out a game, only to have it end up that "whoever gets card x usually ends up winning." Who would want to play that twice? So we're kicking around some ideas to mitigate the power of those cards while keeping the intended effect of having them in the deck.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what makes a game a success. I have a few thoughts for tomorrow on what makes a game a failure.
Meanwhile, may your game closet be full of successes, and your game room full of friends to play them...
Farming with my spouse
Friday evening, home from work. Time to settle down with a martini out on the deck for a game of Agricola with my wife.
Agricola (designed by Uwe Rosenberg, published in the USA by Z-Man games) is one of the few games I bought without ever having played. The acclaim surrounding this game has been so universal in the community that I figured I just had to have it, just to see what all the fuss was about. At this point, I need to give proper credit to my friend Doug M., an annual pilgrim to Origins, who picked up a copy there for me at a very reasonable price. (I have yet to attend Origins, notwithstanding Doug's perpetual campaign to get us there.)
Although overwhelmed the first time we played with our friends Theresa and Brion, I have since come to appreciate Agricola (Latin for "farmer") as a work of genius. It plays equally well for two, three, four, or five players, which in its own right is rather astounding. So few multi-player games stand up well when played with just two players. (It serves also as a solitaire game, which I haven't tried.) Even more surprising is that the game's simpler version - the "family game," which is played without most of the cards - is in my mind every bit as fun and challenging as the normal, full deck version, though for different reasons.
Outside on the deck, we prefer the "family game," so that we take up a little less space on the table and don't have to manage hands of cards along with everything else. There is remarkably little luck in the family game; the only random element is the order in which certain actions become available in each stage of the game. One might reasonably expect that a worker-placement game with very little randomness would fall into a fixed pattern, but we continually surprise each other with tactical shifts and nuanced approaches to building our farms and trying to out-maneuver each other for critical resources.
To me, the end-game really demonstrates the thought and rigor of development that must have gone into the refinement of Agricola. It seems as though there are always several different, nearly equivalent paths toward maximizing the final score; there is seldom one single, obvious course of action to run out the end of the game. I am almost always faced with a decision among three or four options, all valid, none self-evidently the "best" option, each with its own risk. Some real analysis went into the elements of this game to be able to preserve that "exquisite choice" conundrum right down to the last stage.
As I mentioned in my previous post, it's important that our "cocktail hour" game be fun, challenging, and a good match between us. Fortunately, we both enjoy playing Agricola, and we've each had our share of close victories and crushing defeats - er, that is, I mean to say, she wins some, I win some, but we always have fun together in the process.
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| (c) Z-man Games Used by permission |
Agricola (designed by Uwe Rosenberg, published in the USA by Z-Man games) is one of the few games I bought without ever having played. The acclaim surrounding this game has been so universal in the community that I figured I just had to have it, just to see what all the fuss was about. At this point, I need to give proper credit to my friend Doug M., an annual pilgrim to Origins, who picked up a copy there for me at a very reasonable price. (I have yet to attend Origins, notwithstanding Doug's perpetual campaign to get us there.)
Although overwhelmed the first time we played with our friends Theresa and Brion, I have since come to appreciate Agricola (Latin for "farmer") as a work of genius. It plays equally well for two, three, four, or five players, which in its own right is rather astounding. So few multi-player games stand up well when played with just two players. (It serves also as a solitaire game, which I haven't tried.) Even more surprising is that the game's simpler version - the "family game," which is played without most of the cards - is in my mind every bit as fun and challenging as the normal, full deck version, though for different reasons.
Outside on the deck, we prefer the "family game," so that we take up a little less space on the table and don't have to manage hands of cards along with everything else. There is remarkably little luck in the family game; the only random element is the order in which certain actions become available in each stage of the game. One might reasonably expect that a worker-placement game with very little randomness would fall into a fixed pattern, but we continually surprise each other with tactical shifts and nuanced approaches to building our farms and trying to out-maneuver each other for critical resources.
To me, the end-game really demonstrates the thought and rigor of development that must have gone into the refinement of Agricola. It seems as though there are always several different, nearly equivalent paths toward maximizing the final score; there is seldom one single, obvious course of action to run out the end of the game. I am almost always faced with a decision among three or four options, all valid, none self-evidently the "best" option, each with its own risk. Some real analysis went into the elements of this game to be able to preserve that "exquisite choice" conundrum right down to the last stage.
As I mentioned in my previous post, it's important that our "cocktail hour" game be fun, challenging, and a good match between us. Fortunately, we both enjoy playing Agricola, and we've each had our share of close victories and crushing defeats - er, that is, I mean to say, she wins some, I win some, but we always have fun together in the process.
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