I showed up at the Lily Pad on game night to find George down with a bug. She wasn't feeling all that bad, but it was deemed best that she lie down and recover. Three others also either sent regrets or cancelled, so it was just the two of us. I did have YINSH and TAMSK with me, but in the end we decided that for a change we'd watch a film.
I'd just acquired the DVD of the film Mirrormask. It's an interesting story of twisted dark fantasy from the minds of Sandman collaborators Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. If that sounds interesting to you I put up a review on my film weblog, The Silver Screener. (I'm also reviewing all the Academy Awards Best Picture nominees.)
While viewing the film we did lament that there are no good fantasy quest games available. Good is relative, yes, but the ones we've tried have never garnered enough interest for a second look. Heroquest, Runebound, Return of the Heroes, Dragonhunt, Magic Realm - all either took too long, didn't provide enough flexibility, or required a player to be the "dungeon master". I suppose if you classify Reiner Knizia's The Lord of the Rings boardgame as a fantasy quest game (and why the heck not) then that would be the best fantasy game we've ever played.
I suppose our standards are just too high after growing up with AD&D and having some amazing game masters among our group.
Anyway. Hopefully back to Eurogames next week. I'll have to tide myself over with games on Spiel by Web, which just launched Tikal, and the new MaBiWeb, which debuts with Hansa and Richelieu.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
And I thought I was a curmudgeon...
Check out the Knizia-hating Geeklist by BGG user MichaelB. (I don't usually read Geeklists any more but a comment linked to the list from Jim off of my Geekbuddy list.)
I know I just ranted on low-utility plastic figures. I think I had good cause.
Conversely, I wonder why this guy plays games at all.
1. He hates randomness (E&T and RA tile draws).
2. He hates Taj's bits: the plastic palaces and their colors. While color is entirely subjective, the palaces are simple and nicely done. Cheap? So he hates plastic.
3. On Amun-Re: "Everything is great in this game but it just feels mediocre... " You're calling the game great and mediocre in the same sentence?
4. Samurai is "not as fun as it should be". Huh?
5. Lost Cities is "too light even for a filler". Duh. I wonder what his idea of a filler is. And I do not think "rip-off" means what he thinks it means.
6. TtD has "silly components and stupid colors". I love the comment "what is a stupid color"?
Amusingly, his Top 10 include Age of Steam (random production rolls, very cheap bits), Conquest of the Empire (plastic bits that are no better than Taj Mahal's palaces), Age of Mythology (more plastic bits, and a mess of a combat system that's more random than tiles could ever be) and Mare Nostrum (simply a mess of a game due to the map balance and crazy trading).
I'm not picking on the guy. I'm just noting that despite nitpicking on certain games and game elements, I enjoy playing games and don't rag on them just for fun. Vasel knocked Farrell for this in one of his recent podcasts, which was completely unfair and unfounded. Farrell has a staggering 42 '10's and 48 '9's which is far more than Tom does, so saying "why does he even play games" is uninformed. I don't expect journalistic responsibility from the boys in Korea, but they could at least do a little checking instead of shooting from the hip based on the negative stuff written on games they like.
I know I just ranted on low-utility plastic figures. I think I had good cause.
Conversely, I wonder why this guy plays games at all.
1. He hates randomness (E&T and RA tile draws).
2. He hates Taj's bits: the plastic palaces and their colors. While color is entirely subjective, the palaces are simple and nicely done. Cheap? So he hates plastic.
3. On Amun-Re: "Everything is great in this game but it just feels mediocre... " You're calling the game great and mediocre in the same sentence?
4. Samurai is "not as fun as it should be". Huh?
5. Lost Cities is "too light even for a filler". Duh. I wonder what his idea of a filler is. And I do not think "rip-off" means what he thinks it means.
6. TtD has "silly components and stupid colors". I love the comment "what is a stupid color"?
Amusingly, his Top 10 include Age of Steam (random production rolls, very cheap bits), Conquest of the Empire (plastic bits that are no better than Taj Mahal's palaces), Age of Mythology (more plastic bits, and a mess of a combat system that's more random than tiles could ever be) and Mare Nostrum (simply a mess of a game due to the map balance and crazy trading).
I'm not picking on the guy. I'm just noting that despite nitpicking on certain games and game elements, I enjoy playing games and don't rag on them just for fun. Vasel knocked Farrell for this in one of his recent podcasts, which was completely unfair and unfounded. Farrell has a staggering 42 '10's and 48 '9's which is far more than Tom does, so saying "why does he even play games" is uninformed. I don't expect journalistic responsibility from the boys in Korea, but they could at least do a little checking instead of shooting from the hip based on the negative stuff written on games they like.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
The Case Against Plastic
You've got your 'old school' chits-and-counters on one side of this theoretical spectrum, and plastic toy soldiers on the other. I'd place your common Eurogame wooden pieces somewhere between those extremes.
Bits. They can make your game look a lot better than it is, or make a good game look like crap. They can work well, or be tremendously annoying during play. They can also be completely useless.
There's been a trend lately, led by Eagle Games (okay, they've been doing this for a while), Fantasy Flight Games, and good ol' Hasborg (fine, they've been doing it for a while too) to stuff as many plastic figures into a game box as possible. The function of this practice is pretty clear - appeal to the Army Men toy gene inside male gamers to entice them to buy a game. For the longest time Eagle did this a lot, with mediocre games like War! Age of Imperialism, Attack! (before the expansion) and Age of Mythology sporting lots of cool plastic figs adorning games that leave much to be desired. Hasborg never really stopped, most recently releasing THE game for young boys to have these days, Heroscape. Finally, FFG has Chinese factories churning our prodigious amounts of plastic figures to stuff into their "epic box" games - Twilight Imperium 3E, World of Warcraft and Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and the less-than-epic-yet-still-plastic-choked Doom. FFG also did the stateside release for Nexus Editrice's War of the Ring, no pushover in the plastic wars itself.
So, what do all of those games have in common?
The plastic pieces have little to do with the game itself. They're purely eye candy and have no impact on the mechanisms. They don't even carry any game information outside of whatever unit they represent. In some cases, the units are even functionally identical despite looking different.
I think that's just silly from a gameplay standpoint. Of course, to some marketing to the eyes is more important than actual gameplay, so you have the games presented as above.
Forget for a moment that I hate War of the Ring's mechanisms. Even if the mechanisms were good (say, Hannibal good) I still would have been unable to get past the tremendously annoying figures that not only choked up all of the board real estate, but were functionally identical. The physical attributes, the decision to use plastic over more sensible counters, would make me give War of the Ring a rating of no more than a generous 6/10.
Days of Wonder has so far shown restraint. The worst offender in their portfolio is Memoir '44, but that's a game that's targeted towards young boys who appreciate the plastic Army Men so we can forgive them. Its older sibling Battle Cry was a Hasborg publication after all. Ancients gave up on the plastic and uses far more sensible blocks. Sadly, BOTH sides of the blocks show the unit. I don't get it. Why not stick with the usual fog of war granted by block wargames?
The bottom line is that the drive of some companies towards using plastic figurines (a) prevents more meaningful use of the game component, (b) is often detrimental to gameplay, and (c) drives up the price point of the games.
Down with plastic. Go back to sensible cardboard counters.
Bits. They can make your game look a lot better than it is, or make a good game look like crap. They can work well, or be tremendously annoying during play. They can also be completely useless.
There's been a trend lately, led by Eagle Games (okay, they've been doing this for a while), Fantasy Flight Games, and good ol' Hasborg (fine, they've been doing it for a while too) to stuff as many plastic figures into a game box as possible. The function of this practice is pretty clear - appeal to the Army Men toy gene inside male gamers to entice them to buy a game. For the longest time Eagle did this a lot, with mediocre games like War! Age of Imperialism, Attack! (before the expansion) and Age of Mythology sporting lots of cool plastic figs adorning games that leave much to be desired. Hasborg never really stopped, most recently releasing THE game for young boys to have these days, Heroscape. Finally, FFG has Chinese factories churning our prodigious amounts of plastic figures to stuff into their "epic box" games - Twilight Imperium 3E, World of Warcraft and Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and the less-than-epic-yet-still-plastic-choked Doom. FFG also did the stateside release for Nexus Editrice's War of the Ring, no pushover in the plastic wars itself.
So, what do all of those games have in common?
The plastic pieces have little to do with the game itself. They're purely eye candy and have no impact on the mechanisms. They don't even carry any game information outside of whatever unit they represent. In some cases, the units are even functionally identical despite looking different.
I think that's just silly from a gameplay standpoint. Of course, to some marketing to the eyes is more important than actual gameplay, so you have the games presented as above.
Forget for a moment that I hate War of the Ring's mechanisms. Even if the mechanisms were good (say, Hannibal good) I still would have been unable to get past the tremendously annoying figures that not only choked up all of the board real estate, but were functionally identical. The physical attributes, the decision to use plastic over more sensible counters, would make me give War of the Ring a rating of no more than a generous 6/10.
Days of Wonder has so far shown restraint. The worst offender in their portfolio is Memoir '44, but that's a game that's targeted towards young boys who appreciate the plastic Army Men so we can forgive them. Its older sibling Battle Cry was a Hasborg publication after all. Ancients gave up on the plastic and uses far more sensible blocks. Sadly, BOTH sides of the blocks show the unit. I don't get it. Why not stick with the usual fog of war granted by block wargames?
The bottom line is that the drive of some companies towards using plastic figurines (a) prevents more meaningful use of the game component, (b) is often detrimental to gameplay, and (c) drives up the price point of the games.
Down with plastic. Go back to sensible cardboard counters.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Weblogs, Boardgamegeek and a Surfeit of Idiocy
It's the topic of the moment I guess.
Susan Rozmiarek
Yehuda
Naturelich
DoctorJ
I just mention what Mary (aka sodaklady) said in the comments on Susan's blog entry. BGG HAD blogs, and those who were so inclined did use them a lot when they were there. Your humble weblogger here included. When the Geek went all Forums on its community, the Geek Journals, as they were called, disappeared from the front page and were relegated to an obscure corner of the Geek Forums.
The motivations in using a weblog vs the Geek forums are easy to cite: more control, no inane traffic, ability to censor comments without idiotic invocation of nonexistent "freedom of speech" in that context. Yeah, sure there's freedom of speech. Go set up your own weblog and you can say any fucking thing you want. You post it on the Geek, and Dan Karp can delete your ass any time he damned well pleases because AlDerk say he can. (By the way, I like that I can say "fuck" on here without people screaming that the Geek is a "family site". As if your 10-year old is going to be researching the advantages of Age of Steam vs Railroad Tycoon. Besides, one post of Mr. Cranky is going to traumatize him more than any four-letter word will.)
Oh, and I don't have to put up with reading worthless comments on "cost per minute of enjoyment" computations on every other thread. Good lord, the idiocy that has permeated the Geek. I long for the days of Aaron Potter.
While I'm ranting, what's with the steady stream of irrelevant pics? Girls with game boxes where the games are a fraction of the picture and the girl isn't even playing the game? Does www.boardgamegeek.com now point to www.spielboy.com? What the fuck? Miss Panda's cleavage pic was a lot more relevant than the "kitten pics" and the "meeples in strange places" pics and the "look at my nice paint job" pics. At least she was playing the damned game!
I knew I had to give up Geekmod when I rejected 14 of the first 15 pics I looked at (mostly for being too big or irrelevant - pictures of computer games? Can I submit 20 pics of the World of Warcraft PC game under that game entry?) and all but one got accepted. At least when a pic I submit gets rejected it's for "redundancy" of my own pics.
The Geek is still the supreme database for boardgames, but as a community it's steadily descending into anarchy. Jim's creation of the BGGF was prescient. Thanks Jim.
Susan Rozmiarek
Yehuda
Naturelich
DoctorJ
I just mention what Mary (aka sodaklady) said in the comments on Susan's blog entry. BGG HAD blogs, and those who were so inclined did use them a lot when they were there. Your humble weblogger here included. When the Geek went all Forums on its community, the Geek Journals, as they were called, disappeared from the front page and were relegated to an obscure corner of the Geek Forums.
The motivations in using a weblog vs the Geek forums are easy to cite: more control, no inane traffic, ability to censor comments without idiotic invocation of nonexistent "freedom of speech" in that context. Yeah, sure there's freedom of speech. Go set up your own weblog and you can say any fucking thing you want. You post it on the Geek, and Dan Karp can delete your ass any time he damned well pleases because AlDerk say he can. (By the way, I like that I can say "fuck" on here without people screaming that the Geek is a "family site". As if your 10-year old is going to be researching the advantages of Age of Steam vs Railroad Tycoon. Besides, one post of Mr. Cranky is going to traumatize him more than any four-letter word will.)
Oh, and I don't have to put up with reading worthless comments on "cost per minute of enjoyment" computations on every other thread. Good lord, the idiocy that has permeated the Geek. I long for the days of Aaron Potter.
While I'm ranting, what's with the steady stream of irrelevant pics? Girls with game boxes where the games are a fraction of the picture and the girl isn't even playing the game? Does www.boardgamegeek.com now point to www.spielboy.com? What the fuck? Miss Panda's cleavage pic was a lot more relevant than the "kitten pics" and the "meeples in strange places" pics and the "look at my nice paint job" pics. At least she was playing the damned game!
I knew I had to give up Geekmod when I rejected 14 of the first 15 pics I looked at (mostly for being too big or irrelevant - pictures of computer games? Can I submit 20 pics of the World of Warcraft PC game under that game entry?) and all but one got accepted. At least when a pic I submit gets rejected it's for "redundancy" of my own pics.
The Geek is still the supreme database for boardgames, but as a community it's steadily descending into anarchy. Jim's creation of the BGGF was prescient. Thanks Jim.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Home Sweet Home - Two Game Nights, Three New Games
After my two trips I was only too glad to get back to the Lily Pad for gaming with the gang. Jay was going to join us so I packed five unplayed games for both game nights - Maharaja (this groups still hadn't had the pleasure) and the four games I got in Hong Kong (Medina, Attribute, TAMSK and YINSH).
We had just four players so Medina was the first out of the bag.
I first experienced arguably the best game from Stefan Dorra's catalog online on Brettspielwelt. Medina is intriguing in that it's the ultimate game of stalling, or what I call "negative timing" as players try to hold out and force opponents to cede the initiative on the board. It's got a feel akin to Reiner Knizia's Samurai, but taken to the extreme. Morgan Dontanville has called it as a game where he never wants to take his turn (he doesn't like Medina). I see it as a plus as players are forced to manage their resources in an unintuitive manner. Here, it's not HOW you spend it, it's WHEN you spend it. (And sometimes, IF you spend it at all.)
Then of course there are the bits. Sure, they could have used cardboard tiles, but the effect wouldn't be the same. This isn't a case of a game company stuffing low-utility eye candy plastic minis into a game just to increase marketability at the cost of functionality. Medina's wooden pieces help visualize the game and set the city features off from each other, which is important in a placement game such as this. People with big hands may have trouble sticking the little wooden men into the alleyways snaking through the city, but otherwise, the wooden pieces are a huge plus.
Anyway, we screwed up the most difficult rule in the game - taking control of the watchtowers by building walls adjacent to palaces. We played through with the incorrect rule, and will correct it on the next play. I had a decent lead through the midgame, but George took the negative timing of the game to heart and held out for a couple of large palaces. The Frog sacrificed a bit of time to deny everyone else the use of his palace blocks after he'd claimed palaces of those colors, but that cost him in the endgame as he "went out" the earliest. This decision led to his not having any towers to his name. All in all, everyone liked Medina and are looking forward to the next game.
It was late that night so I proposed that I show the gang YINSH. Now I've played YINSH extensively on BSW but again this was the first time I was going to teach people the game with a physical copy. The Bakelite felt good, and The Frog picked up the rules quickly. Of course, this being a GIPF game experience counts. Even in YINSH, the most accessible of the series due to its fluid game states, having a few dozen games under one's belt leads to wins over newbies much more often than now. I left the game at the Lily Pad for the enjoyment of my hosts until the next weekend.
>>> FAST FORWARD ONE WEEK <<<
So, it was a week of lots of YINSH and lots of TAMSK. Over this period I grew to love TAMSK and as much as I enjoy YINSH, TAMSK is the best game in the Gipf series for me. The three-layered fourth dimension of time creates a game so unique that I could play a half-dozen games in a row and still be left wanting more. That's a first from an abstract for me.
For the unfamiliar - TAMSK is a game where player's pieces are three 3-minute hourglasses. These pieces move around on a hexagonal board, and when they move the players place a ring on the peg/space when the hourglass lands, and if a peg/space ever gets full up on rings it becomes illegal to move there. When an hourglass is moved, it is flipped. The object of the game is to use more rings than your opponent. If an hourglass ever runs out of time, it dies and becomes immobile. The last element is the 15-second "move glass" or what I've begun calling "the hammer" (because it drives the nail into your opponent's coffin if used correctly - i.e., brutally). You may flip the hammer to force your opponent to move before it runs out of time. If he fails to complete a move he begun, then you get to place a free ring. If he fails to move at all, he effectively passes and you go again.
Try to use the hammer off-rhythm. Don't automatically flip it when your opponent's turn comes up. This forces him to pay attention to it, as he can't reliably determine how much time he has left to move if he doesn't. At the very least, it creates a distraction from the main board. At worst, it'll kill an hourglass or give you a free move.
Anyway, Erik was present for this gathering and we kicked the night off with several games of TAMSK and YINSH before dinner. A good time was had by all. Geroge and I won the TAMSK games. I also won the YINSH games I played.
After dinner, it was decided that it had been too long since we played Puerto Rico. Having four players, the opportunity was ripe so out came PR for its first appearance in 2006.
As usual, a brutal game with The Frog and I ending up with the Factories, and Erik and George scarfing up the Harbors. It was close through the midgame, and the Harbors were humming, but in the end the Frog picked up the win with great balance between shipping and the city, bolstered by the very deadly Guild Hall/Fortress combo.
We had just four players so Medina was the first out of the bag.
I first experienced arguably the best game from Stefan Dorra's catalog online on Brettspielwelt. Medina is intriguing in that it's the ultimate game of stalling, or what I call "negative timing" as players try to hold out and force opponents to cede the initiative on the board. It's got a feel akin to Reiner Knizia's Samurai, but taken to the extreme. Morgan Dontanville has called it as a game where he never wants to take his turn (he doesn't like Medina). I see it as a plus as players are forced to manage their resources in an unintuitive manner. Here, it's not HOW you spend it, it's WHEN you spend it. (And sometimes, IF you spend it at all.)
Then of course there are the bits. Sure, they could have used cardboard tiles, but the effect wouldn't be the same. This isn't a case of a game company stuffing low-utility eye candy plastic minis into a game just to increase marketability at the cost of functionality. Medina's wooden pieces help visualize the game and set the city features off from each other, which is important in a placement game such as this. People with big hands may have trouble sticking the little wooden men into the alleyways snaking through the city, but otherwise, the wooden pieces are a huge plus.
Anyway, we screwed up the most difficult rule in the game - taking control of the watchtowers by building walls adjacent to palaces. We played through with the incorrect rule, and will correct it on the next play. I had a decent lead through the midgame, but George took the negative timing of the game to heart and held out for a couple of large palaces. The Frog sacrificed a bit of time to deny everyone else the use of his palace blocks after he'd claimed palaces of those colors, but that cost him in the endgame as he "went out" the earliest. This decision led to his not having any towers to his name. All in all, everyone liked Medina and are looking forward to the next game.
It was late that night so I proposed that I show the gang YINSH. Now I've played YINSH extensively on BSW but again this was the first time I was going to teach people the game with a physical copy. The Bakelite felt good, and The Frog picked up the rules quickly. Of course, this being a GIPF game experience counts. Even in YINSH, the most accessible of the series due to its fluid game states, having a few dozen games under one's belt leads to wins over newbies much more often than now. I left the game at the Lily Pad for the enjoyment of my hosts until the next weekend.
>>> FAST FORWARD ONE WEEK <<<
So, it was a week of lots of YINSH and lots of TAMSK. Over this period I grew to love TAMSK and as much as I enjoy YINSH, TAMSK is the best game in the Gipf series for me. The three-layered fourth dimension of time creates a game so unique that I could play a half-dozen games in a row and still be left wanting more. That's a first from an abstract for me.
For the unfamiliar - TAMSK is a game where player's pieces are three 3-minute hourglasses. These pieces move around on a hexagonal board, and when they move the players place a ring on the peg/space when the hourglass lands, and if a peg/space ever gets full up on rings it becomes illegal to move there. When an hourglass is moved, it is flipped. The object of the game is to use more rings than your opponent. If an hourglass ever runs out of time, it dies and becomes immobile. The last element is the 15-second "move glass" or what I've begun calling "the hammer" (because it drives the nail into your opponent's coffin if used correctly - i.e., brutally). You may flip the hammer to force your opponent to move before it runs out of time. If he fails to complete a move he begun, then you get to place a free ring. If he fails to move at all, he effectively passes and you go again.
Try to use the hammer off-rhythm. Don't automatically flip it when your opponent's turn comes up. This forces him to pay attention to it, as he can't reliably determine how much time he has left to move if he doesn't. At the very least, it creates a distraction from the main board. At worst, it'll kill an hourglass or give you a free move.
Anyway, Erik was present for this gathering and we kicked the night off with several games of TAMSK and YINSH before dinner. A good time was had by all. Geroge and I won the TAMSK games. I also won the YINSH games I played.
After dinner, it was decided that it had been too long since we played Puerto Rico. Having four players, the opportunity was ripe so out came PR for its first appearance in 2006.
As usual, a brutal game with The Frog and I ending up with the Factories, and Erik and George scarfing up the Harbors. It was close through the midgame, and the Harbors were humming, but in the end the Frog picked up the win with great balance between shipping and the city, bolstered by the very deadly Guild Hall/Fortress combo.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Stealing (Game) Time in Hong Kong with Alan Kwan
Two days after arriving from Bangkok it was time to pack my bags again for a conference in Hong Kong.
Now I haven't been to HK since I left my last "major" job which had its regional headquarters in HK several years ago. I was primarily a roleplayer then and tracked down a game shop in an office building somewhere in Kowloon. Name of the store had "wargame" in it somewhere I think - I can't remember exactly.
Anyway, this time around it was a snap to identify who to contact for a boardgame fix. Alan Kwan is an active voice on BGG. He's also the YINSH champion from the last tournament run at Essen Speile. Finally, he's the proprietor of Tarot Games Hong Kong, the premiere source of Eurogames in HK. I dropped him a line because I'd only be able to get around the city on a Sunday, and Tarot is normally closed on Sundays except by appointment be regular customers.
In a trend among Asian gamers that warms my heart, Alan was wonderfully accomodating. He agreed to meet me at his shop Sunday afternoon. That meant that not only would I get to meet him, I also would be able to buy games! He had TAMSK and YINSH in stock, two games that have been on my wishlist for a long time. He also amazingly had a copy of Stefan Dorra's MEDINA still in the store. Now, TAMSK and MEDINA aren't cheap, the former carrying an MSRP of $50 and the latter being an out-of-print game with a lot of wooden bits, but they are both on my wishlist as "grail games" so I had to have them. Finally, Alan also had a copy of Lo0kout Games's little card game Attribute (yes, the English version) which I believed to be almost impossible to find. Those four games cost me clost to US$200, which was reasonable for an Asian environment. Besides, we have to show support to the people who bring "our" games into the region. Without guys like Alan in HK, Damien in Singapore and Edwin in Malaysia, we'd all be in the same boat as Thailand - no game stores and no way to get a new game fix other than by expensive orders from overseas.
Tarot Games is located on Hong Kong Island, and my hotel was on the other side of the bay in Kowloon. Fortunately, my hotel was a two-minute walk from the nearby ferry dock, which took me across to HK Island. Again, I was lucky since the ferry dock on the other side was right across from the MRT (subway), so I hopped on a train. Fortress Hill, the station nearest the mall Tarot was is, was just two stops away.
I popped out of the MRT station and took the five minute walk to the mall.
I was a bit early so I looked around. Alan had an intersting mix of games in his store window. There were a couple of games (I think they're kids' games) that I couldn't identify (boo). There was Ingenious, and Igloo Pop, and Pickomino, and of course the new Kris Burm game PUNCT.
Alan arrived shortly, and after the requisite introductions we chatted about the HK and Manila boardgame scenes. I had a bit of time, so I proposed that we play a game. PUNCT was handy in the store window, so that was what we played.
I had only played PUNCT before online at punct.biskai.de. The physical game has nice Bakelite pieces. For the uninitiated, PUNCT is an abstract connection game. Players try to connect two sides of the hexagonal board using various-shaped pieces. There are three twists. First is that pieces that are already on the board can be moved in straight lines, with one of the three points on the piece as a stable pivot. The second is that the pieces can stack on top of each other, as long as the pivot point is placed over a piece of the same color. The third twist is that there is a dark area in the center of the board that players can't play pieces into, but can move pieces into.
Alan, as expected, smoked me in two games. Hey, he's the 2005 YINSH World Champ and he's probably played PUNCT and all the GIPF games a lot more than me. I don't mind getting whipped like a BGG Pony two weeks in a row, in two different countries. Abstracts have never been my strong suit. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)
I had to run back to the hotel for dinner, so I thinked Alan for his hospitality and got going. Two games off my personal "grail list" and four games total off my wishlist, plus a couple more games played in a different Asian country. Not bad at all.
Now I haven't been to HK since I left my last "major" job which had its regional headquarters in HK several years ago. I was primarily a roleplayer then and tracked down a game shop in an office building somewhere in Kowloon. Name of the store had "wargame" in it somewhere I think - I can't remember exactly.
Anyway, this time around it was a snap to identify who to contact for a boardgame fix. Alan Kwan is an active voice on BGG. He's also the YINSH champion from the last tournament run at Essen Speile. Finally, he's the proprietor of Tarot Games Hong Kong, the premiere source of Eurogames in HK. I dropped him a line because I'd only be able to get around the city on a Sunday, and Tarot is normally closed on Sundays except by appointment be regular customers.
In a trend among Asian gamers that warms my heart, Alan was wonderfully accomodating. He agreed to meet me at his shop Sunday afternoon. That meant that not only would I get to meet him, I also would be able to buy games! He had TAMSK and YINSH in stock, two games that have been on my wishlist for a long time. He also amazingly had a copy of Stefan Dorra's MEDINA still in the store. Now, TAMSK and MEDINA aren't cheap, the former carrying an MSRP of $50 and the latter being an out-of-print game with a lot of wooden bits, but they are both on my wishlist as "grail games" so I had to have them. Finally, Alan also had a copy of Lo0kout Games's little card game Attribute (yes, the English version) which I believed to be almost impossible to find. Those four games cost me clost to US$200, which was reasonable for an Asian environment. Besides, we have to show support to the people who bring "our" games into the region. Without guys like Alan in HK, Damien in Singapore and Edwin in Malaysia, we'd all be in the same boat as Thailand - no game stores and no way to get a new game fix other than by expensive orders from overseas.
Tarot Games is located on Hong Kong Island, and my hotel was on the other side of the bay in Kowloon. Fortunately, my hotel was a two-minute walk from the nearby ferry dock, which took me across to HK Island. Again, I was lucky since the ferry dock on the other side was right across from the MRT (subway), so I hopped on a train. Fortress Hill, the station nearest the mall Tarot was is, was just two stops away.
I popped out of the MRT station and took the five minute walk to the mall.
I was a bit early so I looked around. Alan had an intersting mix of games in his store window. There were a couple of games (I think they're kids' games) that I couldn't identify (boo). There was Ingenious, and Igloo Pop, and Pickomino, and of course the new Kris Burm game PUNCT.
Alan arrived shortly, and after the requisite introductions we chatted about the HK and Manila boardgame scenes. I had a bit of time, so I proposed that we play a game. PUNCT was handy in the store window, so that was what we played.
I had only played PUNCT before online at punct.biskai.de. The physical game has nice Bakelite pieces. For the uninitiated, PUNCT is an abstract connection game. Players try to connect two sides of the hexagonal board using various-shaped pieces. There are three twists. First is that pieces that are already on the board can be moved in straight lines, with one of the three points on the piece as a stable pivot. The second is that the pieces can stack on top of each other, as long as the pivot point is placed over a piece of the same color. The third twist is that there is a dark area in the center of the board that players can't play pieces into, but can move pieces into.
Alan, as expected, smoked me in two games. Hey, he's the 2005 YINSH World Champ and he's probably played PUNCT and all the GIPF games a lot more than me. I don't mind getting whipped like a BGG Pony two weeks in a row, in two different countries. Abstracts have never been my strong suit. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)
I had to run back to the hotel for dinner, so I thinked Alan for his hospitality and got going. Two games off my personal "grail list" and four games total off my wishlist, plus a couple more games played in a different Asian country. Not bad at all.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
A Gaming Afternoon in Bangkok with Dale Walton of PIN
My flight arrived in Bangkok in the early afternoon so I was able to meet up with Dale Walton, "technical consultant" for toy and game maker PIN International headquartered in Thailand's capital.
I contacted Dale through Boardgamegeek prior to my trip. He offered to meet up with me and play some games. Sure enough, a call to his mobile phone and Dale said he'd meet me in my hotel's lobby to play.
As an aside, there is no place to get Eurogames in Thailand. Even PIN's abstract games which are manufactured in Thailand are not sold in the country. In light of that I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about Manila's dearth of game shops - at least one can purchase the likes of Die Siedler and Carcassonne off the shelf here, albeit at a painful premium. BGG member Michel "pixyfrog" Dauget had just relocated to Bangkok and was planning to open a game cafe sometime in 2006. I hope to visit next trip down.
Dale was carrying two of PIN's abstract games with him. One was a game I expressed interest in seeing - an unusual number that went by the name Zaroc. The other was a game called Creeper.
We chatted about the abstract game scene while Dale demolished me at Zaroc. This little niche of the gaming world has its own quirks. What stood out for me was the stigma of an abstract game being labelled as "broken" or "solvable" which carry far more weight than they do in the Eurogame world. Lacking a theme, mechanisms are the only thing that an abstract can fall back on. If the mechanisms don't work, then the game is usually toast. If it wasn't an abstract, you could bathe the game in artwork and stick shovelfuls of plastic minis into the box and people would buy the game just for the look.
Pic by Geoman, "borrowed" off the Geek
Anyway, about Zaroc - this is a counterintuitive movement game where you're trying to get three of your pieces into the five-slot "bottom" row of the board. Your pieces are skewered on pylons which get shorter as you go "down" the board. The counterintuitive element is in the movement. You can only move your piece "downstream" if it occupies the very top spot on a skewer, and even then it can only move into the adjacent downstream pegs. Otherwise all your piece can do is move sideways; it cannot move backwards. The rule that threw me though was the one where you couldn't "undo" the last move your opponent made (each player gets two moves on his turn). Zaroc is a short game, and it's not really complicated, but it certainly requires a bit of thinking.
The next interesting series of stories Dale related was about the abstract game industry, in which his PIN International competes against the likes of Gigamic. I won't go into details so as not to get Dale into trouble, but suffice to say that there are interesting rivalries and relationships between the companies and the game designers even in the niche world of abstract games.
The next game Dale showed me was Creeper. Now this was a more straighforward game and I wrapped my head around it much faster than I did with Zaroc. The object of the game is connect two corners of the rectangular board with markers. The markers are placed with metal pins that slot in between the hexagonal board spaces. When the pin hops over an empty space, it leaves a marker of its color on that space. If there's a piece in the space the pin jumps, it flips the piece (a-la Othello and YINSH). If it moves along the edge of the space and over an opposing pin, the pin is captured.
Dale still smoked me twice in a row, but at least I didn't embarass myself too badly.
After a second game of Zaroc, Dale said he had time for one more game and would I like to see Fire and Ice? There was no way I'd pass up playing a new game, so he went to grab the game from his car.
Fire and Ice, as Dale tells it, is a game of symmetry. This explains the unusual board layout. Players take turns placing colored pins (red and blue, hence Fire and Ice) onto the board. The game starts with just a single red peg in the center slot of the center isle. The start (fire) player now has to move that peg, either to any open slot on the same isle, or to the same exact slot on a different isle. The catch? You place a peg of the opponent's color in the spot that your peg just vacated. The object of the game is to control three island in a row, or in a ring (see the pic of the board). You achieve control of an isle if you have three pegs in a row or in a ring on that isle.
The fun part is that the game is expandable in iterations. You can play on seven boards, thus expanding the game into controlling three isles in a row or ring on three boards in a row or ring to win. And then you can play on seven sets of seven boards if you really have a lot of time on your hands. Or you want to go insane.
Pic by Pergioco, "borrowed" off the Geek
Dale had to go after killing me at Fire and Ice. Before leaving, he generously gifted me with the copy of Creeper that we had played on. Thanks Dale! It was a nice afternoon of coffee and games, and I was very happy that I got a chance to meet another gamer in Asia.
I contacted Dale through Boardgamegeek prior to my trip. He offered to meet up with me and play some games. Sure enough, a call to his mobile phone and Dale said he'd meet me in my hotel's lobby to play.
As an aside, there is no place to get Eurogames in Thailand. Even PIN's abstract games which are manufactured in Thailand are not sold in the country. In light of that I guess I shouldn't feel so bad about Manila's dearth of game shops - at least one can purchase the likes of Die Siedler and Carcassonne off the shelf here, albeit at a painful premium. BGG member Michel "pixyfrog" Dauget had just relocated to Bangkok and was planning to open a game cafe sometime in 2006. I hope to visit next trip down.
Dale was carrying two of PIN's abstract games with him. One was a game I expressed interest in seeing - an unusual number that went by the name Zaroc. The other was a game called Creeper.
We chatted about the abstract game scene while Dale demolished me at Zaroc. This little niche of the gaming world has its own quirks. What stood out for me was the stigma of an abstract game being labelled as "broken" or "solvable" which carry far more weight than they do in the Eurogame world. Lacking a theme, mechanisms are the only thing that an abstract can fall back on. If the mechanisms don't work, then the game is usually toast. If it wasn't an abstract, you could bathe the game in artwork and stick shovelfuls of plastic minis into the box and people would buy the game just for the look.
Pic by Geoman, "borrowed" off the Geek
Anyway, about Zaroc - this is a counterintuitive movement game where you're trying to get three of your pieces into the five-slot "bottom" row of the board. Your pieces are skewered on pylons which get shorter as you go "down" the board. The counterintuitive element is in the movement. You can only move your piece "downstream" if it occupies the very top spot on a skewer, and even then it can only move into the adjacent downstream pegs. Otherwise all your piece can do is move sideways; it cannot move backwards. The rule that threw me though was the one where you couldn't "undo" the last move your opponent made (each player gets two moves on his turn). Zaroc is a short game, and it's not really complicated, but it certainly requires a bit of thinking.
The next interesting series of stories Dale related was about the abstract game industry, in which his PIN International competes against the likes of Gigamic. I won't go into details so as not to get Dale into trouble, but suffice to say that there are interesting rivalries and relationships between the companies and the game designers even in the niche world of abstract games.
The next game Dale showed me was Creeper. Now this was a more straighforward game and I wrapped my head around it much faster than I did with Zaroc. The object of the game is connect two corners of the rectangular board with markers. The markers are placed with metal pins that slot in between the hexagonal board spaces. When the pin hops over an empty space, it leaves a marker of its color on that space. If there's a piece in the space the pin jumps, it flips the piece (a-la Othello and YINSH). If it moves along the edge of the space and over an opposing pin, the pin is captured.
Dale still smoked me twice in a row, but at least I didn't embarass myself too badly.
After a second game of Zaroc, Dale said he had time for one more game and would I like to see Fire and Ice? There was no way I'd pass up playing a new game, so he went to grab the game from his car.
Fire and Ice, as Dale tells it, is a game of symmetry. This explains the unusual board layout. Players take turns placing colored pins (red and blue, hence Fire and Ice) onto the board. The game starts with just a single red peg in the center slot of the center isle. The start (fire) player now has to move that peg, either to any open slot on the same isle, or to the same exact slot on a different isle. The catch? You place a peg of the opponent's color in the spot that your peg just vacated. The object of the game is to control three island in a row, or in a ring (see the pic of the board). You achieve control of an isle if you have three pegs in a row or in a ring on that isle.
The fun part is that the game is expandable in iterations. You can play on seven boards, thus expanding the game into controlling three isles in a row or ring on three boards in a row or ring to win. And then you can play on seven sets of seven boards if you really have a lot of time on your hands. Or you want to go insane.
Pic by Pergioco, "borrowed" off the Geek
Dale had to go after killing me at Fire and Ice. Before leaving, he generously gifted me with the copy of Creeper that we had played on. Thanks Dale! It was a nice afternoon of coffee and games, and I was very happy that I got a chance to meet another gamer in Asia.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Games around Asia and a Time-travelling Note
I hadn't realized that I'd been away from the weblogs for over three weeks now. My last posts were from mid-January, after I began a series of three trips - to Bangkok, then to Hong Kong, then back to Hong Kong where I am right now.
I took up boardgames as a hobby in between "major" jobs - i.e. the jobs where I do a huge amount of stuff for a transnational corporation and travel a lot. This kind of travel has allowed me to "see" gaming around Asia and meet fellow gamers. These were my first trips to Bangkok and Hong Kong while being a boardgame hobbyist.
My last post promised the story of my afternoon with Dale Walton. It's coming, but don't mind the date. I've been writing the posts but haven't been completing and publishing them on time. So, I'm publishing these things with past timestamps. Not hugely important, but some of you may wonder. Anyway, on with the tales.
I took up boardgames as a hobby in between "major" jobs - i.e. the jobs where I do a huge amount of stuff for a transnational corporation and travel a lot. This kind of travel has allowed me to "see" gaming around Asia and meet fellow gamers. These were my first trips to Bangkok and Hong Kong while being a boardgame hobbyist.
My last post promised the story of my afternoon with Dale Walton. It's coming, but don't mind the date. I've been writing the posts but haven't been completing and publishing them on time. So, I'm publishing these things with past timestamps. Not hugely important, but some of you may wonder. Anyway, on with the tales.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Just Happy to be Nominated
I was shocked to see this blog nominated for the Boardgame Internet Awards. Whoever nominated me, thanks, I'm glad that someone out there thinks it's worth the time to read my random ramblings. That pretty much made my day. :)
I should be more controversial. That nominated post was generated by getting pi$$ed at some stuff on the Geek (which prompted the creation of this personal pulpit to begin with).
An Afternoon with Dale Walton (placeholder)
I'm travelling right now, spending a few days in Bangkok, Thailand. As is my habit I dropped someone from Boardgamegeek a note asking if a meetup was possible. In this case, it was PIN International "technical advisor" Dale Walton who generously agreed to hook up for a few games. (The "technical advisor" bit is an inside joke which I might relate later.)
I'll get into our afternoon games when I get a moment. Have to rush off to the conference.
I'll get into our afternoon games when I get a moment. Have to rush off to the conference.
Monday, January 09, 2006
So, I played Caylus on BSW...
I need to congratulate Ystari Games, the new French publishing house with two games to its name, for allowing online gaming places Brettspielwelt.de and Spielbyweb.com to put its red hot title, Caylus, on the web. I think the reasoning is sound - games of this weight are desired by a small niche market, and that's the niche that's got a good chance to trying the game on those sites.
I've had my misgivings about Caylus purely due to its parentage - a game from a first-time designer and a two-game publisher. After disappointing experiences with titles from small publishers and designers with much more experience (F2F and Friedemann Friese's Power Grid, and R&D and Richard Breese's Reef Encounter) I approached Caylus with apprehension. Coupled with massive Boardgamegeek hype, it was destined to be a let down.
So, I played Caylus on BSW.
It was about what I expected it to be based on its lineage and rules reading. My four main gripes about the game follow in reverse order of significance. (Yes, I'm a curmudgeon. ;-) )
1. Caylus is fiddly. The BSW interface emphasizes this by showing the coins and cubes flying around the screen. Combined with the workers, tiles and house-markers, there are a lot of moving parts each and every turn. If the game was better, though, I could live with this (see Puerto Rico).
2. Caylus is long and slow. Before the the only BSW game I've played that took longer than 60 minutes was a game of Intrige. (Oh, that was painful.) Even the longish Power Grid never took 90 minutes, which Caylus did. This was with everyone taking turns briskly, with little or no downtime. I can imagine how long it will take with just one slow, deliberate player, the need to administer the game (see #1), and the need to consult the rules periodically. Again, I can live with this - Die Macher is even longer but I don't feel the time fly by. I felt Caylus being to drag after 60 minutes... online.
3. Caylus is underdeveloped. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the clean lines of the Knizia and Kramer titles, and by the development that HiG and alea put into their games. The little stock segment of Reef Encounter bothers me as an extraneous mechanism, as does the player-changing and power plant-manipulating mechanisms of Power Grid. I get the same grating feeling from the Bridge/Stable mechanism of Caylus, as well as the ill-fitting majority subgame in the Castle and the favor track. Finally, the multiple currencies (masquerading as "goods") are an element that I rarely like in a game. This is perhaps the thing that most says "needs additional development" because playing the game to collect various currencies then buying stuff with those currency "sets" is tremendously unappealing to me. This, I find very hard to play through.
4. Caylus is processional, a game on rails. Just as Power Grid uses its clunky "stepping" mechanism to control the game's throttle, so does Caylus rely on the three castle segments and the carpenter-mason-lawyer-architect sequence to control game flow. A player cannot decide to start the game off building prestige buildings straightaway, oh no, because you need to build the mason, then the lawyer, which needs to create a residence before you can make that monument. Oh, and you need gold (aka most scarce currency #6) which isn't available until the mid to late game due to similar constraints. This I find hardest to play through as it gives that good ol' cliched "the game is playing me" feeling. So, do I build something that produces two food and one wood, or two wood and one food? Oooh. That's an interesting decision. Not.
I can see how people can like Caylus. Hell, I still don't get the love for Power Grid (still inexplicably #4 on BGG). Caylus just doesn't have the things that I look for in a good Euro.
I've had my misgivings about Caylus purely due to its parentage - a game from a first-time designer and a two-game publisher. After disappointing experiences with titles from small publishers and designers with much more experience (F2F and Friedemann Friese's Power Grid, and R&D and Richard Breese's Reef Encounter) I approached Caylus with apprehension. Coupled with massive Boardgamegeek hype, it was destined to be a let down.
So, I played Caylus on BSW.
It was about what I expected it to be based on its lineage and rules reading. My four main gripes about the game follow in reverse order of significance. (Yes, I'm a curmudgeon. ;-) )
1. Caylus is fiddly. The BSW interface emphasizes this by showing the coins and cubes flying around the screen. Combined with the workers, tiles and house-markers, there are a lot of moving parts each and every turn. If the game was better, though, I could live with this (see Puerto Rico).
2. Caylus is long and slow. Before the the only BSW game I've played that took longer than 60 minutes was a game of Intrige. (Oh, that was painful.) Even the longish Power Grid never took 90 minutes, which Caylus did. This was with everyone taking turns briskly, with little or no downtime. I can imagine how long it will take with just one slow, deliberate player, the need to administer the game (see #1), and the need to consult the rules periodically. Again, I can live with this - Die Macher is even longer but I don't feel the time fly by. I felt Caylus being to drag after 60 minutes... online.
3. Caylus is underdeveloped. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the clean lines of the Knizia and Kramer titles, and by the development that HiG and alea put into their games. The little stock segment of Reef Encounter bothers me as an extraneous mechanism, as does the player-changing and power plant-manipulating mechanisms of Power Grid. I get the same grating feeling from the Bridge/Stable mechanism of Caylus, as well as the ill-fitting majority subgame in the Castle and the favor track. Finally, the multiple currencies (masquerading as "goods") are an element that I rarely like in a game. This is perhaps the thing that most says "needs additional development" because playing the game to collect various currencies then buying stuff with those currency "sets" is tremendously unappealing to me. This, I find very hard to play through.
4. Caylus is processional, a game on rails. Just as Power Grid uses its clunky "stepping" mechanism to control the game's throttle, so does Caylus rely on the three castle segments and the carpenter-mason-lawyer-architect sequence to control game flow. A player cannot decide to start the game off building prestige buildings straightaway, oh no, because you need to build the mason, then the lawyer, which needs to create a residence before you can make that monument. Oh, and you need gold (aka most scarce currency #6) which isn't available until the mid to late game due to similar constraints. This I find hardest to play through as it gives that good ol' cliched "the game is playing me" feeling. So, do I build something that produces two food and one wood, or two wood and one food? Oooh. That's an interesting decision. Not.
I can see how people can like Caylus. Hell, I still don't get the love for Power Grid (still inexplicably #4 on BGG). Caylus just doesn't have the things that I look for in a good Euro.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
The BGGs I Have Known
Well, it was inevitable. On January 3rd, BoardGameGeek underwent a major facelift. As expected, the are those in support, those against, and those who are apathetic. Personally, I adapt to things that I cannot change, so I'll learn to use this version of the Geek as I have the versions in the past.
This is the first version of the Geek I ever saw. I had just played my first game of The Princes of Florence and thought that it created possibilities. However, at the time we had a D&D campaign going, and there was just no time for a new hobby.
I returned to the Geek in 2002 after playing Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, I was living in a foreign country at the time due to work and the main requirement for this hobby to catch on, a steady gaming group, was not available. So, again BGG was more of a curiosity, and my main hobby at the time was videogaming via PC and PS2. Interestingly, I was a sometime member of another online community over at GameFAQs, a site that I had seen evolve over several years. (It has since been purchased by CNET, but seemingly still retains its independence.) I rarely visit GameFAQs these days since I've practically given up videogaming (it was just a lifeline hobby in a lonely time) but when I peek in it's undergone radical changes itself.
I created my BGG account in November 2003. I had returned to my home country and happily regained my gaming group. Our regular gamemaster no longer had time to handle a campaign, and none of us had the time to invest in full-time Magic: the Gathering involvement, so we turned to Eurogaming as our regular hobby. I started to collect games. Hello, Reiner Knizia.
This was a minor redesign in 2004, when the Geek first switched to the two-column format that we see today. It was a very nice format, clean and user-friendly. The twelve months surrounding November 2004 were the peak of my Geek activity, when I wrote most of the content I've submitted to BGG to date, and when I met and began gaming with the online boardgaming buddies I've known the longest - Mary, Gerald and Chester. Joe Gola joined our little group shortly thereafter when we discovered 5P Durch die Wuste on Ludagora.
2005 marked the debut of the Tabbed Geek, which was just an evolution of the 2-column design. This is what most of the current regulars of the Geek should be familiar with. Despite the emegence of Boardgamespeak, my BGG activity declined as the number of users and site traffic increased. I started this blog early in the year when the old BGG Blogs were removed as a site feature. It was a respite from the noise of the Geek, and provided much greater freedom and control. My group of online gaming buddies expanded, and later in the year our invite-only extended online gaming "group" (I use the term loosely here), BGGF, was created. I had the pleasure of meeting and gaming online with Jim, Jasen, Jason, Gerald the Elder, Kane, Chad, Seth and I'm sure I forgot a couple of others!
Which brings us to today.
I'm not quite sure I like it, but that was more or less how many people feel about familiar things that change. It's like tossing your old, comfy but worn-out shoes for stiff shiny new ones. They more advanced, more functional, and shinier, but they're less comfortable and you have to break them in for a while. I use BGG a lot less now than I did in 2003-04 when the hobby was new and much research had to be done on the back catalogs and there were a lot of cool Geeks to meet.
Now, with regular online gaming buddies, a nice selection of online gaming venues (BSW, SBW, BaJ, Ludagora) a mostly-complete collection of all the games I care to own, and a wealth of content being cleanly fed to me by Bloglines, there is much less need to be on the Geek. That is why I guess the redesign bothers me much less than it does other users. I still plan to send in my $25 eventually, as well as submit more content, just for old times' sake.
Thanks to Aldie and Derk, and best of luck to Scott in his new career as Overlord of Boardgamegeek.
This is the first version of the Geek I ever saw. I had just played my first game of The Princes of Florence and thought that it created possibilities. However, at the time we had a D&D campaign going, and there was just no time for a new hobby.
I returned to the Geek in 2002 after playing Puerto Rico. Unfortunately, I was living in a foreign country at the time due to work and the main requirement for this hobby to catch on, a steady gaming group, was not available. So, again BGG was more of a curiosity, and my main hobby at the time was videogaming via PC and PS2. Interestingly, I was a sometime member of another online community over at GameFAQs, a site that I had seen evolve over several years. (It has since been purchased by CNET, but seemingly still retains its independence.) I rarely visit GameFAQs these days since I've practically given up videogaming (it was just a lifeline hobby in a lonely time) but when I peek in it's undergone radical changes itself.
I created my BGG account in November 2003. I had returned to my home country and happily regained my gaming group. Our regular gamemaster no longer had time to handle a campaign, and none of us had the time to invest in full-time Magic: the Gathering involvement, so we turned to Eurogaming as our regular hobby. I started to collect games. Hello, Reiner Knizia.
This was a minor redesign in 2004, when the Geek first switched to the two-column format that we see today. It was a very nice format, clean and user-friendly. The twelve months surrounding November 2004 were the peak of my Geek activity, when I wrote most of the content I've submitted to BGG to date, and when I met and began gaming with the online boardgaming buddies I've known the longest - Mary, Gerald and Chester. Joe Gola joined our little group shortly thereafter when we discovered 5P Durch die Wuste on Ludagora.
2005 marked the debut of the Tabbed Geek, which was just an evolution of the 2-column design. This is what most of the current regulars of the Geek should be familiar with. Despite the emegence of Boardgamespeak, my BGG activity declined as the number of users and site traffic increased. I started this blog early in the year when the old BGG Blogs were removed as a site feature. It was a respite from the noise of the Geek, and provided much greater freedom and control. My group of online gaming buddies expanded, and later in the year our invite-only extended online gaming "group" (I use the term loosely here), BGGF, was created. I had the pleasure of meeting and gaming online with Jim, Jasen, Jason, Gerald the Elder, Kane, Chad, Seth and I'm sure I forgot a couple of others!
Which brings us to today.
I'm not quite sure I like it, but that was more or less how many people feel about familiar things that change. It's like tossing your old, comfy but worn-out shoes for stiff shiny new ones. They more advanced, more functional, and shinier, but they're less comfortable and you have to break them in for a while. I use BGG a lot less now than I did in 2003-04 when the hobby was new and much research had to be done on the back catalogs and there were a lot of cool Geeks to meet.
Now, with regular online gaming buddies, a nice selection of online gaming venues (BSW, SBW, BaJ, Ludagora) a mostly-complete collection of all the games I care to own, and a wealth of content being cleanly fed to me by Bloglines, there is much less need to be on the Geek. That is why I guess the redesign bothers me much less than it does other users. I still plan to send in my $25 eventually, as well as submit more content, just for old times' sake.
Thanks to Aldie and Derk, and best of luck to Scott in his new career as Overlord of Boardgamegeek.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
2005: My Year of Boardgaming, Part II - The Best Games
In a previous post I mentioned that we have a very tight rotation of games. Most of the games that "click" with us will get a lot of repeat play, and those that fail to make a good first and/or second impression likely will not see the table again in a good long while. In 2005, I acquired many games based on their chances of breaking into the rotation. I whiffed with some (Through the Desert, Santiago, Mexica, La Citta - I like them all, but my group likes them less) but others outperformed expectations.
Here are our Top 10 Games Played in 2005. All these games, save for #3, made it to our dime list.
10. Euphrat & Tigris
Much as I'd like to play this a lot more, some of our group just get paralyzed on E&T. I realyl have no idea why. In specific combinations of players, we can polish off a 4P game in an 75 minutes, which is pretty good.
9. Samurai
Got play despite its arrival pretty late in the year. Speed and elegance. Games are over in under an hour. Will continue to see time in 2006.
8. Taj Mahal
7. Modern Art
6. RA
Three rotation staples. Taj gets less play than the two auction games due to length, but overall I don't see them leaving the list anytime soon. RA was finally reprinted so I have an uberplay edition to supplement the lone alea edition we have for play.
5. Clash of the Gladiators
Purchased on a whim, due to the Knizia/HiG pairing and the theme. Turned out to be a huge hit, and hit the dime list in under two months. I think the heavy play will want eventually, but it should be a rotation staple for years to come.
4. Traumfabrik
T-fab surpassed my lofty expectations, becoming more popular than RA and Modern Art just because of the Hollywood theme. It's also surprised me with its mechanisms - I wasn't expecting much due to comments read, but it's a lot more intricate than I was led to believe. It's at least as interesting as RA and Modern Art. I consider this US$70 well spent, as the 2006 reprint does not look promising. This was my best purchase of the year.
3. Die Macher
Follow the story here and here. We have played Die Macher every game night since it got here, which is 5 times. Not unexpected, despite Macher's 4 hour playing time. I've managed to come in last or next to last every single time, which is a sign of a very good game. ;)
2. Puerto Rico
If I did this list for the past three years, PR would have come up as #1 every year. It slips to #2 this year, which is still nothing to sneeze at. I chafe at the 5P game that the rest of the group loves, but still would play 4P in a heart beat. This must have contributed to the rise of our new #1.
1. The Princes of Florence
I finally got some of the people in my gaming group to say that Princes is better than Puerto Rico. Well, of course it is, a lot of people just haven't realized it yet. We usually play with 5 or 4, and Princes plays with 5 in half the time (or less) than our 5P PR games last. So it gets the nod, having even served as "the appetizer" for our last Die Macher game. Isn't that amazing? Princes is still the best Euro ever made.
(No, it's not lost on me that 7 of our top 10 are Knizia games. However, none of the top 3 are by Reiner. Interesting. Just missing the list were Amun-Re, Goa, Power Grid and Java.)
Here are our Top 10 Games Played in 2005. All these games, save for #3, made it to our dime list.
10. Euphrat & Tigris
Much as I'd like to play this a lot more, some of our group just get paralyzed on E&T. I realyl have no idea why. In specific combinations of players, we can polish off a 4P game in an 75 minutes, which is pretty good.
9. Samurai
Got play despite its arrival pretty late in the year. Speed and elegance. Games are over in under an hour. Will continue to see time in 2006.
8. Taj Mahal
7. Modern Art
6. RA
Three rotation staples. Taj gets less play than the two auction games due to length, but overall I don't see them leaving the list anytime soon. RA was finally reprinted so I have an uberplay edition to supplement the lone alea edition we have for play.
5. Clash of the Gladiators
Purchased on a whim, due to the Knizia/HiG pairing and the theme. Turned out to be a huge hit, and hit the dime list in under two months. I think the heavy play will want eventually, but it should be a rotation staple for years to come.
4. Traumfabrik
T-fab surpassed my lofty expectations, becoming more popular than RA and Modern Art just because of the Hollywood theme. It's also surprised me with its mechanisms - I wasn't expecting much due to comments read, but it's a lot more intricate than I was led to believe. It's at least as interesting as RA and Modern Art. I consider this US$70 well spent, as the 2006 reprint does not look promising. This was my best purchase of the year.
3. Die Macher
Follow the story here and here. We have played Die Macher every game night since it got here, which is 5 times. Not unexpected, despite Macher's 4 hour playing time. I've managed to come in last or next to last every single time, which is a sign of a very good game. ;)
2. Puerto Rico
If I did this list for the past three years, PR would have come up as #1 every year. It slips to #2 this year, which is still nothing to sneeze at. I chafe at the 5P game that the rest of the group loves, but still would play 4P in a heart beat. This must have contributed to the rise of our new #1.
1. The Princes of Florence
I finally got some of the people in my gaming group to say that Princes is better than Puerto Rico. Well, of course it is, a lot of people just haven't realized it yet. We usually play with 5 or 4, and Princes plays with 5 in half the time (or less) than our 5P PR games last. So it gets the nod, having even served as "the appetizer" for our last Die Macher game. Isn't that amazing? Princes is still the best Euro ever made.
(No, it's not lost on me that 7 of our top 10 are Knizia games. However, none of the top 3 are by Reiner. Interesting. Just missing the list were Amun-Re, Goa, Power Grid and Java.)
Saturday, December 31, 2005
2005: My Year of Boardgaming, Part I - The Worst Games
Happy New Year!
2005 was a pretty good year for boardgaming in our circles. For the first time in a while we did not have a regular RPG running, and we managed to meet on most Saturdays for a evening. We averaged 2-3 boardgames a night, spread out around dinner and a lot of conversation. We can only hope 2006 is just as good, if not better, gaming-wise.
So, some lists. Let's start with the BAD.
The Shit List: 5 Games played in 2005 that I'd rather not play again
5. Reef Encounter
This game would also win my "Greatest Disappointment" award, if I gave one out. After anticipation at getting it due to all the good comments from my online buddies, I got to try it on spielbyweb. Ick. Even online, a format which the game is well-suited to, the clunkiness and patchwork mechanisms oozed through my monitor. I tried it once face to face (and hey, the Z-Man edition is pretty) and it was far worse. No rhythm. No soul. No more plays for you RE.
4. Niagara
Another example of a game with no soul. Niagara couldn't hold my attention for five turns, much less a whole game. I can't pinpoint anything particularly wrong with it, but I can't see anything right with it at all. There's just nothing fun or interesting about Niagara. Whiff, the SdJ strikes out with me again.
3. Roborally
This was... painful. Richard Garfield's "other game" got the reprint treatment from Hasborg in 2005, but it's one reprint that I wouldn't have minded getting passed over. Roborally is a chaotic mess, and one that I personally consider unplayable due to this. If you have no control, what's the point?
2. Shadows over Camelot
Proof that "gimmick games" don't work. SoC's gimmick is the mechanism stolen from Werewolf - having a secret traitor working against the team. How is this supposed to work if all the other players work together? The game depends on conflict between the players. In a group agreeable to designating a leader (who makes final decisions and breaks impasses) and everyone else cooperating completely, the traitor does not have a chance. In the end, it's all in the luck of the cards.
1. Wallenstein
I don't get it. I just don't. The silly cube tower is the absolute worst resolution mechanism I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. There is no way to calculate odds, and it doesn't make any sense! You have armies going into the tower, and some getting stuck there, and those stuck armies can fight in another battle on the other side of the map? What the hell? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Add that to the tepid area-majority mechanism of Wally and you get the worst game to ever race the BGG Top 10. It's even worse than Settlers, which is saying a LOT.
2005 was a pretty good year for boardgaming in our circles. For the first time in a while we did not have a regular RPG running, and we managed to meet on most Saturdays for a evening. We averaged 2-3 boardgames a night, spread out around dinner and a lot of conversation. We can only hope 2006 is just as good, if not better, gaming-wise.
So, some lists. Let's start with the BAD.
The Shit List: 5 Games played in 2005 that I'd rather not play again
5. Reef Encounter
This game would also win my "Greatest Disappointment" award, if I gave one out. After anticipation at getting it due to all the good comments from my online buddies, I got to try it on spielbyweb. Ick. Even online, a format which the game is well-suited to, the clunkiness and patchwork mechanisms oozed through my monitor. I tried it once face to face (and hey, the Z-Man edition is pretty) and it was far worse. No rhythm. No soul. No more plays for you RE.
4. Niagara
Another example of a game with no soul. Niagara couldn't hold my attention for five turns, much less a whole game. I can't pinpoint anything particularly wrong with it, but I can't see anything right with it at all. There's just nothing fun or interesting about Niagara. Whiff, the SdJ strikes out with me again.
3. Roborally
This was... painful. Richard Garfield's "other game" got the reprint treatment from Hasborg in 2005, but it's one reprint that I wouldn't have minded getting passed over. Roborally is a chaotic mess, and one that I personally consider unplayable due to this. If you have no control, what's the point?
2. Shadows over Camelot
Proof that "gimmick games" don't work. SoC's gimmick is the mechanism stolen from Werewolf - having a secret traitor working against the team. How is this supposed to work if all the other players work together? The game depends on conflict between the players. In a group agreeable to designating a leader (who makes final decisions and breaks impasses) and everyone else cooperating completely, the traitor does not have a chance. In the end, it's all in the luck of the cards.
1. Wallenstein
I don't get it. I just don't. The silly cube tower is the absolute worst resolution mechanism I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. There is no way to calculate odds, and it doesn't make any sense! You have armies going into the tower, and some getting stuck there, and those stuck armies can fight in another battle on the other side of the map? What the hell? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Add that to the tepid area-majority mechanism of Wally and you get the worst game to ever race the BGG Top 10. It's even worse than Settlers, which is saying a LOT.
Saturday, December 24, 2005
Merry Christmas
Just wanted to wish anyone reading this blog a very Merry Christmas. May God bless you all and your families, and keep you safe through the holidays and into the new year.
No gaming for me until Monday, the 26th. The gaming group is planning to meet up in the afternoon for another game of Die Macher. And here I am with the notes from last game yet to be put into session report form. Oh well. Can't think of many better ways to spend half of a day off of work than to dive once again into the German electoral process.
Also, no games for me this Christmas. Receiving Die Macher, Keythedral, Capitol and Flandern on loan is gift enough. I might get to score a couple in Hong Kong in January from Alan Kwan's store. Hopefully, they'll have something I want (Merchants of Amsterdam?).
No gaming for me until Monday, the 26th. The gaming group is planning to meet up in the afternoon for another game of Die Macher. And here I am with the notes from last game yet to be put into session report form. Oh well. Can't think of many better ways to spend half of a day off of work than to dive once again into the German electoral process.
Also, no games for me this Christmas. Receiving Die Macher, Keythedral, Capitol and Flandern on loan is gift enough. I might get to score a couple in Hong Kong in January from Alan Kwan's store. Hopefully, they'll have something I want (Merchants of Amsterdam?).
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Vasel & Santa
For all the crap on the www that gets tossed Tom Vasel's way for whatever reason, this is one of the most interesting things to happen on boardgamegeek that I've seen:
Tom's Secret Santa Thread
It's amazing for three things:
1) Over 200 people signed up to send a game, blind, to someone else regardless of geographical location. This all happened in a few hours.
2) There is no guarantee that you're going to get a game back. Tom worked eight hours to match people up, and he still missed some. People don't seem to really care.
3) People are having fun just scheming to send gifts out, and then some.
Tales of the Secret Santas
So, by posting a single thread on the Geek, Tom created sales for 200+ games and an equivalent amount of postage and delivery out of nothing. And people are happy to send out games because they know that the recepient is a boardgame geek like themselves. I think that even if you don't get a game back (possible) the giddiness of sending out something that brings joy is worth the $50 or so.
If I didn't live on the other side of the world, I'd be doing the same thing. Maybe next year.
Good show Mr. Vasel, good show.
Tom's Secret Santa Thread
It's amazing for three things:
1) Over 200 people signed up to send a game, blind, to someone else regardless of geographical location. This all happened in a few hours.
2) There is no guarantee that you're going to get a game back. Tom worked eight hours to match people up, and he still missed some. People don't seem to really care.
3) People are having fun just scheming to send gifts out, and then some.
Tales of the Secret Santas
So, by posting a single thread on the Geek, Tom created sales for 200+ games and an equivalent amount of postage and delivery out of nothing. And people are happy to send out games because they know that the recepient is a boardgame geek like themselves. I think that even if you don't get a game back (possible) the giddiness of sending out something that brings joy is worth the $50 or so.
If I didn't live on the other side of the world, I'd be doing the same thing. Maybe next year.
Good show Mr. Vasel, good show.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Thoughts on Die Macher
Yes, we played Die Macher on Saturday night despite my zonked out state from partying the previous evening (and into the morning of Saturday). Session report to follow, including some bits about "double dong". In the meantime, thoughts on the game:
TRUE: Die Macher is takes a bit of time to play. It's four simultaneous elections for four turns, then 3, 2 and 1 for the last three turns. Three hours is a good time once everyone is familiar with the gameflow, timing and mechanisms.
FALSE: Die Macher is a heavy game. It isn't. The rules are pretty simple, and it flows well. Once the relationships of the mechanisms are clear, you know what you are able to do. It's the choices you make with your resources that put the tension and enjoyment into the game.
TRUE: There isn't anything like Die Macher out there. With the aggressive streamlining that game developers put into games, the direction has turned away from epic-scale 3-4 hour games in the Euro arena. Reiner tries to keep his games around an hour long, for example. So it's likely that Macher will stand alone - a Eurogame that's truly epic in its feel, with unusual length, but retaining the elegance of a well-developed, polished product. Contrast with the longer indy games of today (say, the Splotter stuff, or Caylus to a lesser extent) which may be epic in playing time but lack the elegance and polish of Macher.
FALSE: There's too much luck in the opinion polls. This is the only knock I've heard about Macher's mechanisms. The poll has a bit of luck in it, sure. Too much to overcome? No. The poll attacks your trend at a single point in time. If you refuse to allow yourself to be vulnerable to it in an important region, you can covert party meetings way before the region becomes current. Or you can bid enough to win the poll. Or you can control the media and immunize yourself. Getting whacked early in the game hurts a bit, but there's an entire game to catch up. With coalitions, no one is ever completely out of it.
TRUE: This is the Grand Shit Poohbah of German Gamers' Games. People who like Puerto Rico, The Princes of Florence, Goa and Amun-Re should seek out Die Macher. It's a 9 by my BGG ratings right now. With more play, it should ascend to a 10 eventually.
FALSE: The won't be an English edition because Die Macher cannot be rethemed and I can't imagine a game this heavy, themed on the German electoral system, generating enough sales to justify and English edition. If you're looking for a good example of theme-to-mechanisms integration, Macher has it in spades. It took a while to understand the "overhang" seats, but now I can explain it and talking about the theme as you teach the game makes it so much easier to digest. So, those who are inclined to own and play it will seek out the German 2nd edition, which isn't all that hard to find in Germany as I understand it. I know I'll continue to do so.
TRUE: Die Macher is takes a bit of time to play. It's four simultaneous elections for four turns, then 3, 2 and 1 for the last three turns. Three hours is a good time once everyone is familiar with the gameflow, timing and mechanisms.
FALSE: Die Macher is a heavy game. It isn't. The rules are pretty simple, and it flows well. Once the relationships of the mechanisms are clear, you know what you are able to do. It's the choices you make with your resources that put the tension and enjoyment into the game.
TRUE: There isn't anything like Die Macher out there. With the aggressive streamlining that game developers put into games, the direction has turned away from epic-scale 3-4 hour games in the Euro arena. Reiner tries to keep his games around an hour long, for example. So it's likely that Macher will stand alone - a Eurogame that's truly epic in its feel, with unusual length, but retaining the elegance of a well-developed, polished product. Contrast with the longer indy games of today (say, the Splotter stuff, or Caylus to a lesser extent) which may be epic in playing time but lack the elegance and polish of Macher.
FALSE: There's too much luck in the opinion polls. This is the only knock I've heard about Macher's mechanisms. The poll has a bit of luck in it, sure. Too much to overcome? No. The poll attacks your trend at a single point in time. If you refuse to allow yourself to be vulnerable to it in an important region, you can covert party meetings way before the region becomes current. Or you can bid enough to win the poll. Or you can control the media and immunize yourself. Getting whacked early in the game hurts a bit, but there's an entire game to catch up. With coalitions, no one is ever completely out of it.
TRUE: This is the Grand Shit Poohbah of German Gamers' Games. People who like Puerto Rico, The Princes of Florence, Goa and Amun-Re should seek out Die Macher. It's a 9 by my BGG ratings right now. With more play, it should ascend to a 10 eventually.
FALSE: The won't be an English edition because Die Macher cannot be rethemed and I can't imagine a game this heavy, themed on the German electoral system, generating enough sales to justify and English edition. If you're looking for a good example of theme-to-mechanisms integration, Macher has it in spades. It took a while to understand the "overhang" seats, but now I can explain it and talking about the theme as you teach the game makes it so much easier to digest. So, those who are inclined to own and play it will seek out the German 2nd edition, which isn't all that hard to find in Germany as I understand it. I know I'll continue to do so.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
The Curse of Quality vs Quantity
By all indications I possess a very reasonable (you might even say pitiful) game collection. I have 67 games listed in my collection on Boardgamegeek. Of those games, I would describe just 40 as "active" - i.e., a possibility on game night. This list includes all of my Eurogames, includinig my two Cheapass games (Falling and the set of Brawl decks), my lone AH game (Republic of Rome) and exactly one CCG (Magic: the Gathering). To these 40, I add nine games I have on loan: Die Macher, Flandern 1302, Capitol, Keythedral, Evo, Vinci, Carcassonne, The Settlers of Catan and Cosmic Encounter.
Wait. Let's take out the last three because they don't have an ice cube's chance in hell of seeing the game table, because we don't like them at all.
So, I have 46 games available for game night. Most of these games play in two hours - the usual meaty Euro like Princes of Florence, Torres, Puerto Rico, Taj Mahal or Amun-Re. Some run longer, like Java, Louis XIV and La Citta, or shorter, like Modern Art, Royal Turf, Samurai and RA. I have precious few fillers - King's Breakfast, High Society, Falling and Brawl. And I have a handful of "event games" - those games that need to be scheduled and take a whole night - Die Macher, Republic of Rome and Magic: the Gathering (usually a booster draft).
Now, my game group likes playing games repeatedly. If I did a "5 and 10 list" we would have several of the meatier games on there, and almost none of the lights. In a regular game night, lasting from around 7pm to 3am, we would play 2 to 3 games. If we play 3/4ths of the Saturdays in a year, that would be 39 game nights. Let's say 40. So that's 120 games, max. Let's say we play the "event games" at least 20 nights. (Likely 12 x Macher, 6 x MtG, 2 x RoR.) That leaves 100 games.
There's no way we don't play Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Euphrat & Tigris, Modern Art, Traumfabrik, Clash of the Gladiators, RA and Taj Mahal less than 12 times in a year. No way. Those are our group 9s and 10s. They are asked for and get played. That's 96 games estimated. That leaves 4 plays for everything else. Now let's say that we get 6 "extra game nights" in a year, due to holidays or whatever. That yields an additional 18 games, for available time for 22 games.
22. Just 22 plays to share among such amazing games as Torres, Amun-Re, Pueblo, In the Shadow of the Emperor, Maharaja, Samurai, Goa, Java, Mexica, Through the Desert, Colossal Arena, and Power Grid. And this is assuming we get plays of fillers like Bluff, High Society and -ick- Bohnanza (when there are nongamers around) "between the cracks".
My friends also have games. They bring and ask to play other very nice games like Traders of Genoa, Ingenious, Lord of the Rings, Acquire.... ok, I won't play Acquire, but the math is clear.
I've hit the limit. I'm starting to accumulate unplayed games. Magna Grecia, a game I'm dying to play, has languished unplayed for three months. The borrowed Capitol and Keythedral are still in shrink. I'm planning to purchase Beowulf and Clippers from the FLGS, but I hesitate. I HAVE GAMES UNPLAYED. Shit.
That means I've hit critical mass with my very good to great games. Which sort of makes sense because my BGG Wishlist is very thin now - just waiting for Knizia classics to be reprinted (Medici and Stephenson's Rocket). My current game collection can keep my gaming group sustained for a full year without getting stale. That means I can be very selective in what I purchase and add to the shelf.
In a way, it feels good to realize this. This tells me that:
1) I'm no collector. I don't care if I don't have Game X and Y and Z because if we won't play them, they're not worth having.
2) I can wait on games. I don't need to get Caylus now because it won't see any table time if Magna Grecia is any indication. Give everyone else time to try it out and wait for the hype to die down so a good reading can be taken. Most of the games we enjoy are the older ones that I had the luxury of researching on the Geek. I have no total dogs (though For Sale was a very close call) and just a few mild disappointments - games that turned out to be just good, not great (Power Grid, Santiago and La Citta).
3) A game my group *really* likes is one that breaks into "the rotation" of titles that see the table a dozen times (at least) in a year. Everything else is "just ok" and will get 3 to 4 plays in a year. Not bad, but certainly not very good.
4) I'm very close to "completing" my Eurogame library. I have almost every title I want. There's the small matter of a few hard to finds (Macher and 1830 primarily) and a few smaller games (Intrige, to be Englishized by Mayfair in 2006 so that's solved). I want to have some of the Gipf series (YINSH, TAMSK, PUNCT) but those will be likely shelf-sitters like LOTR:TC since we almost ever have just 2P.
5) There are such things as "classics" in Eurogames. E&T, PR, PoF, RA, Torres, Modern Art, Macher, Taj Mahal, Traumfabrik, Clash of the Gladiators - none of these games were made in the last 3 years. So, faced with a choice between buying an older game vs a newer game, always go with the older game (likely a reprint). The new stuff hasn't really been up to the high standards of the old stuff.
6) It takes a lot to impress me now. I'm jaded, just like Solko and Siggins. It's a good thing because it reins in my wallet. It's not a good thing because I'm likely close to seeking out a new hobby because, perhaps, I now know them too well.
Wait. Let's take out the last three because they don't have an ice cube's chance in hell of seeing the game table, because we don't like them at all.
So, I have 46 games available for game night. Most of these games play in two hours - the usual meaty Euro like Princes of Florence, Torres, Puerto Rico, Taj Mahal or Amun-Re. Some run longer, like Java, Louis XIV and La Citta, or shorter, like Modern Art, Royal Turf, Samurai and RA. I have precious few fillers - King's Breakfast, High Society, Falling and Brawl. And I have a handful of "event games" - those games that need to be scheduled and take a whole night - Die Macher, Republic of Rome and Magic: the Gathering (usually a booster draft).
Now, my game group likes playing games repeatedly. If I did a "5 and 10 list" we would have several of the meatier games on there, and almost none of the lights. In a regular game night, lasting from around 7pm to 3am, we would play 2 to 3 games. If we play 3/4ths of the Saturdays in a year, that would be 39 game nights. Let's say 40. So that's 120 games, max. Let's say we play the "event games" at least 20 nights. (Likely 12 x Macher, 6 x MtG, 2 x RoR.) That leaves 100 games.
There's no way we don't play Puerto Rico, Princes of Florence, Euphrat & Tigris, Modern Art, Traumfabrik, Clash of the Gladiators, RA and Taj Mahal less than 12 times in a year. No way. Those are our group 9s and 10s. They are asked for and get played. That's 96 games estimated. That leaves 4 plays for everything else. Now let's say that we get 6 "extra game nights" in a year, due to holidays or whatever. That yields an additional 18 games, for available time for 22 games.
22. Just 22 plays to share among such amazing games as Torres, Amun-Re, Pueblo, In the Shadow of the Emperor, Maharaja, Samurai, Goa, Java, Mexica, Through the Desert, Colossal Arena, and Power Grid. And this is assuming we get plays of fillers like Bluff, High Society and -ick- Bohnanza (when there are nongamers around) "between the cracks".
My friends also have games. They bring and ask to play other very nice games like Traders of Genoa, Ingenious, Lord of the Rings, Acquire.... ok, I won't play Acquire, but the math is clear.
I've hit the limit. I'm starting to accumulate unplayed games. Magna Grecia, a game I'm dying to play, has languished unplayed for three months. The borrowed Capitol and Keythedral are still in shrink. I'm planning to purchase Beowulf and Clippers from the FLGS, but I hesitate. I HAVE GAMES UNPLAYED. Shit.
That means I've hit critical mass with my very good to great games. Which sort of makes sense because my BGG Wishlist is very thin now - just waiting for Knizia classics to be reprinted (Medici and Stephenson's Rocket). My current game collection can keep my gaming group sustained for a full year without getting stale. That means I can be very selective in what I purchase and add to the shelf.
In a way, it feels good to realize this. This tells me that:
1) I'm no collector. I don't care if I don't have Game X and Y and Z because if we won't play them, they're not worth having.
2) I can wait on games. I don't need to get Caylus now because it won't see any table time if Magna Grecia is any indication. Give everyone else time to try it out and wait for the hype to die down so a good reading can be taken. Most of the games we enjoy are the older ones that I had the luxury of researching on the Geek. I have no total dogs (though For Sale was a very close call) and just a few mild disappointments - games that turned out to be just good, not great (Power Grid, Santiago and La Citta).
3) A game my group *really* likes is one that breaks into "the rotation" of titles that see the table a dozen times (at least) in a year. Everything else is "just ok" and will get 3 to 4 plays in a year. Not bad, but certainly not very good.
4) I'm very close to "completing" my Eurogame library. I have almost every title I want. There's the small matter of a few hard to finds (Macher and 1830 primarily) and a few smaller games (Intrige, to be Englishized by Mayfair in 2006 so that's solved). I want to have some of the Gipf series (YINSH, TAMSK, PUNCT) but those will be likely shelf-sitters like LOTR:TC since we almost ever have just 2P.
5) There are such things as "classics" in Eurogames. E&T, PR, PoF, RA, Torres, Modern Art, Macher, Taj Mahal, Traumfabrik, Clash of the Gladiators - none of these games were made in the last 3 years. So, faced with a choice between buying an older game vs a newer game, always go with the older game (likely a reprint). The new stuff hasn't really been up to the high standards of the old stuff.
6) It takes a lot to impress me now. I'm jaded, just like Solko and Siggins. It's a good thing because it reins in my wallet. It's not a good thing because I'm likely close to seeking out a new hobby because, perhaps, I now know them too well.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
It Can Only be Magic
(This was from a game night way back in October - it just took this much time to finish writing up the thing. - Rick)
Saturday night gaming at The Lily Pad rolled around, and my first words through the door were "let's draft!"
This could mean two things - either we were going to get our NBA fantasy basketball league draft going, or we were going to follow through on plans made the previous week.
The Frog pulled four chairs up to the table, and grabbed shiny packs from a box. Erik, Annie and I took the other three spots, and ripped open brand new Ravnica boosters.
I hadn't played Magic: the Gathering in years except for a duel or two here and there with other peoples' constructed decks. Erik and The Frog still played Type I on occasion, just to put their power stuff through the paces. The Frog got the bug a couple of weeks ago and sprang for a box of the newest MtG expansion.
The smell of opening a new booster brought back great memories when MtG was THE game for all of us. The smell was a little off though, sort of muted. The Frog told me that they had shifted production from Carta Mundi, long the printer for MtG, back to North America. I guess the strong Euro had something to do with that.
I pulled out the cards and flipped through the art. I'd been away a long time - no more Richard Kane Ferguson, no more Drew Tucker, no more Phil Foglio, no more Brian Snoddy. The art was still very good though, always a hallmark of MtG. A lot of the abilities were new, but true to form the ability text was usually on the card.
With that in mind, we began to draft.
Booster draft remains my favorite limited format, over Sealed Deck (unmitigated luck) and Rochester Draft (slow). Allowing for a bit of time to read the cards, we accelerated the pace. Ravnika is a set that explored cards with two colors. It used to be that these were Legends; not anymore, though many of the two-color cards are pretty nice.
Since I was definitely rusty, I defaulted to a removal/creature strategy, which meant either red or black for the removal and green or white for the critters. I didn't want to fiddle with tricky blue magic. Luckily, I got to draft some red cards, and some white cards. There wasn't a lot of good red removal early, but I took a couple of decent ones - Fiery Conclusion, which is a Goblin Grenade for all critters, and Galvanic Arc, an enchantment that fired a Lightning Bolt when you brought it into play. It would turn out that the first card I took overall, a red/white Legend named Agrus Kos, would be the strongest creature in my deck.
The second pack gifted me with the uncommon Lightning Helix, a combination Lightning Bolt and Healing Salve. This round also provided most of my useful creatures in both colors, including more of the pretty strong red/white Boros Legion.
The last pack provided two more big cards. One was very cool, but fairly unplayable - the Boros Archangel, Razia. The other was more important: the special land Sunhome, which gave a creature the double strike ability. It cost 4 mana to activate, but in a limited environment that usually wasn't prohivitive. (Unlike, say, Razia's 8 casting cost).
Construction time. I put in all of the red/white creatures I drafted, and a few choice reds and whites (the whites mostly for their flying ability). I also decided to play with the Crown of Convergence even if I had no green mana sources in my deck - even if I couldn't cycle my deck, the +1/+1 the Crown would grant would occur more than usual due to my two-color creatures. As usual, I toed the line with mana sources, going with a pretty low 14/40. My deck's mana curve was reasonable, with a couple of goblins and assorted smaller creatures to back up the 4s and 5s. If I manascrewed once in a 3-duel match, it would be ok.
We paired off.
Round 1: Rick vs. Annie
Annie was running a black and blue bruise deck that had a fair number of flyers and some nasty black creatures. This match was all about the Boros Trumpeteer, one of my red/white critters. It had the ability to prevent a creature from attacking or blocking, which helped immensely as Annie's deck threw out creatures fairly quickly. Argrus Kos appeared in both duels, and the match was mine. Rick 2-0.
Round 2: Rick vs Erik
Erik had a fun critter-filled green/white deck that had token creatures as a side-theme. I saw this firsthand in the initial duel as I got steamrolled due to slow mana development even after one mulligan. In the second duel, Erik got going quickly again but I had some removal. The Galvanic Arc and the Lightning Helix appeared, and my creatures held out long enough for Sunhome to appear. With enough mana to operate it, and with multiple creatures enhanced by the Crown of Convergence and Agrus Kos, even Erik's fat green creatures could not hold out for long. The third duel saw Sunhome appear again, and featured Razia for the first (and only) time that evening. Rick 4-1 duels, 2-0 matches
Round 3: Rick vs The Frog
Frog had lost his matches with Erik and Annie, so he wasn't feeling to confident about his black/green deck. All I recall here is that it went fairly quick. My deck's mana curve kicked in nicely and I won both duels without the help of Agrus Kos or Razia.
Postmortem:
My red/white deck was very powerful. In a booster draft, if you can get away with drafting a lot of the Boros cards, do so (though no one should let you). Sunhome in particular was impressive, as double strike combines with first strike to steamroll. The direct damage is expensive (Helix) and unconventional (Conclusion) or both (Galvanic Arc) but in general it is still potent.
Apparently, with a Grand Prix in December we will get to draft again. I dump boardgames in a heartbeat to do that. Even a game of Princes of Florence. :)
Saturday night gaming at The Lily Pad rolled around, and my first words through the door were "let's draft!"
This could mean two things - either we were going to get our NBA fantasy basketball league draft going, or we were going to follow through on plans made the previous week.
The Frog pulled four chairs up to the table, and grabbed shiny packs from a box. Erik, Annie and I took the other three spots, and ripped open brand new Ravnica boosters.
I hadn't played Magic: the Gathering in years except for a duel or two here and there with other peoples' constructed decks. Erik and The Frog still played Type I on occasion, just to put their power stuff through the paces. The Frog got the bug a couple of weeks ago and sprang for a box of the newest MtG expansion.
The smell of opening a new booster brought back great memories when MtG was THE game for all of us. The smell was a little off though, sort of muted. The Frog told me that they had shifted production from Carta Mundi, long the printer for MtG, back to North America. I guess the strong Euro had something to do with that.
I pulled out the cards and flipped through the art. I'd been away a long time - no more Richard Kane Ferguson, no more Drew Tucker, no more Phil Foglio, no more Brian Snoddy. The art was still very good though, always a hallmark of MtG. A lot of the abilities were new, but true to form the ability text was usually on the card.
With that in mind, we began to draft.
Booster draft remains my favorite limited format, over Sealed Deck (unmitigated luck) and Rochester Draft (slow). Allowing for a bit of time to read the cards, we accelerated the pace. Ravnika is a set that explored cards with two colors. It used to be that these were Legends; not anymore, though many of the two-color cards are pretty nice.
Since I was definitely rusty, I defaulted to a removal/creature strategy, which meant either red or black for the removal and green or white for the critters. I didn't want to fiddle with tricky blue magic. Luckily, I got to draft some red cards, and some white cards. There wasn't a lot of good red removal early, but I took a couple of decent ones - Fiery Conclusion, which is a Goblin Grenade for all critters, and Galvanic Arc, an enchantment that fired a Lightning Bolt when you brought it into play. It would turn out that the first card I took overall, a red/white Legend named Agrus Kos, would be the strongest creature in my deck.
The second pack gifted me with the uncommon Lightning Helix, a combination Lightning Bolt and Healing Salve. This round also provided most of my useful creatures in both colors, including more of the pretty strong red/white Boros Legion.
The last pack provided two more big cards. One was very cool, but fairly unplayable - the Boros Archangel, Razia. The other was more important: the special land Sunhome, which gave a creature the double strike ability. It cost 4 mana to activate, but in a limited environment that usually wasn't prohivitive. (Unlike, say, Razia's 8 casting cost).
Construction time. I put in all of the red/white creatures I drafted, and a few choice reds and whites (the whites mostly for their flying ability). I also decided to play with the Crown of Convergence even if I had no green mana sources in my deck - even if I couldn't cycle my deck, the +1/+1 the Crown would grant would occur more than usual due to my two-color creatures. As usual, I toed the line with mana sources, going with a pretty low 14/40. My deck's mana curve was reasonable, with a couple of goblins and assorted smaller creatures to back up the 4s and 5s. If I manascrewed once in a 3-duel match, it would be ok.
We paired off.
Round 1: Rick vs. Annie
Annie was running a black and blue bruise deck that had a fair number of flyers and some nasty black creatures. This match was all about the Boros Trumpeteer, one of my red/white critters. It had the ability to prevent a creature from attacking or blocking, which helped immensely as Annie's deck threw out creatures fairly quickly. Argrus Kos appeared in both duels, and the match was mine. Rick 2-0.
Round 2: Rick vs Erik
Erik had a fun critter-filled green/white deck that had token creatures as a side-theme. I saw this firsthand in the initial duel as I got steamrolled due to slow mana development even after one mulligan. In the second duel, Erik got going quickly again but I had some removal. The Galvanic Arc and the Lightning Helix appeared, and my creatures held out long enough for Sunhome to appear. With enough mana to operate it, and with multiple creatures enhanced by the Crown of Convergence and Agrus Kos, even Erik's fat green creatures could not hold out for long. The third duel saw Sunhome appear again, and featured Razia for the first (and only) time that evening. Rick 4-1 duels, 2-0 matches
Round 3: Rick vs The Frog
Frog had lost his matches with Erik and Annie, so he wasn't feeling to confident about his black/green deck. All I recall here is that it went fairly quick. My deck's mana curve kicked in nicely and I won both duels without the help of Agrus Kos or Razia.
Postmortem:
My red/white deck was very powerful. In a booster draft, if you can get away with drafting a lot of the Boros cards, do so (though no one should let you). Sunhome in particular was impressive, as double strike combines with first strike to steamroll. The direct damage is expensive (Helix) and unconventional (Conclusion) or both (Galvanic Arc) but in general it is still potent.
Apparently, with a Grand Prix in December we will get to draft again. I dump boardgames in a heartbeat to do that. Even a game of Princes of Florence. :)
Monday, December 05, 2005
Game night - 3 December 2005
I had been thinking and dreaming of Die Macher all week. I was raring to give it another go. However, real life laid a chop block on me, and I had to turn in three straight 17 hour days at work due to expected snafus. Ironically, my successful entrepreneur buddy and game night host The Frog also had a hellish week due to the holiday rush. We were both trashed come Saturday night, so when Nix arrived just recovering from being downed by an allergy, we decided that Macher wasn't something that we were going to do justice to.
So we picked something lighter.
In the Shadow of the Emperor (4P)
Yet another influence game. Quick rules review and we were off. Nix got to be Emeperor, and spent the next three turns defending his seat by snarfing up as many of the Emperor election cards as possible. Church influence was strong as he held Trier, and the empire cities gave him leverage elsewhere. G was concentrating on hanging on to Mainz and buying a VP each turn (which she got to do 4 times). Of course, the requisite game of musical chairs was ongoing. The Frog got caught without a chair for a couple of turns, which weakened his standing. We finally broke Nix's strangehold by voting The Frog as emperor on the fourth turn, but serious damage had already been done. Nix finished the game by building out, I decided to take a couple more electorates, and the endgame was close.
Nix: 20
Rick: 20
G: 18
The Frog: 14
In the Shadow of the Emperor is one of the more interesting area majority games, mainly due to the aging of the aristocrats and the entertaining gender selection of descendants. We don't feel that the emperor is especially overpowered, since there is not insignificant opportunity costs associated with hanging on to power. It may be musical chairs, but the ride is pretty damned good.
Okay, so that wasn't as light as was needed. Deej had arrived in the interim, and despite it being past midnight we wanted to get a 5P game in, so we broke out Traumfabrik (still with the modern tiles pasted on).
Dream Factory (5P)
I was running on fumes at this point. Still, I got to complete the first general entertainment film: Raiders of the Lost Ark with Nicole Kidman and Martin Scorsese at the helm ($180M at the box office). I thought I was in pretty good shape for some awards. Of course, since I was suffering from sleep deprivation I was unable to keep tabs on anyone else. That's pretty much fatal in T-Fab. The Frog, a master of this game even when half-asleep, not only completed the first comedy in the first season ($110M Galaxy Quest with Morgan Freeman), he also trumped me with an even better general entertainment offering - Gladiator with Russell Crowe, helmed by Peter Jackson, raking in $210M at the box office. He also completed a $140M drama - Saving Private Ryan with Halle Berry, Drew Barrymore and Harrison Ford. At the end of the game, The Frog's Dreamworks studio swept ALL the major awards. All of them. Except for the "it's so bad it's good" film which Nix took.
It's been a long time since I was able to complete four films in T-Fab. Despite that, my Paramount studios only grossed $580M, a distant second compared to the $1.15 billion that Dreamworks raked in.
'Twas a massacre.
Damn, I thought that this was good enough to challenge for the win.
Oh well. We called it a night while I was still capable of driving home. Next week, we plan to get Die Macher back to the table. My fingers will be crossed.
So we picked something lighter.
In the Shadow of the Emperor (4P)
Yet another influence game. Quick rules review and we were off. Nix got to be Emeperor, and spent the next three turns defending his seat by snarfing up as many of the Emperor election cards as possible. Church influence was strong as he held Trier, and the empire cities gave him leverage elsewhere. G was concentrating on hanging on to Mainz and buying a VP each turn (which she got to do 4 times). Of course, the requisite game of musical chairs was ongoing. The Frog got caught without a chair for a couple of turns, which weakened his standing. We finally broke Nix's strangehold by voting The Frog as emperor on the fourth turn, but serious damage had already been done. Nix finished the game by building out, I decided to take a couple more electorates, and the endgame was close.
Nix: 20
Rick: 20
G: 18
The Frog: 14
In the Shadow of the Emperor is one of the more interesting area majority games, mainly due to the aging of the aristocrats and the entertaining gender selection of descendants. We don't feel that the emperor is especially overpowered, since there is not insignificant opportunity costs associated with hanging on to power. It may be musical chairs, but the ride is pretty damned good.
Okay, so that wasn't as light as was needed. Deej had arrived in the interim, and despite it being past midnight we wanted to get a 5P game in, so we broke out Traumfabrik (still with the modern tiles pasted on).
Dream Factory (5P)
I was running on fumes at this point. Still, I got to complete the first general entertainment film: Raiders of the Lost Ark with Nicole Kidman and Martin Scorsese at the helm ($180M at the box office). I thought I was in pretty good shape for some awards. Of course, since I was suffering from sleep deprivation I was unable to keep tabs on anyone else. That's pretty much fatal in T-Fab. The Frog, a master of this game even when half-asleep, not only completed the first comedy in the first season ($110M Galaxy Quest with Morgan Freeman), he also trumped me with an even better general entertainment offering - Gladiator with Russell Crowe, helmed by Peter Jackson, raking in $210M at the box office. He also completed a $140M drama - Saving Private Ryan with Halle Berry, Drew Barrymore and Harrison Ford. At the end of the game, The Frog's Dreamworks studio swept ALL the major awards. All of them. Except for the "it's so bad it's good" film which Nix took.
It's been a long time since I was able to complete four films in T-Fab. Despite that, my Paramount studios only grossed $580M, a distant second compared to the $1.15 billion that Dreamworks raked in.
'Twas a massacre.
Damn, I thought that this was good enough to challenge for the win.
Oh well. We called it a night while I was still capable of driving home. Next week, we plan to get Die Macher back to the table. My fingers will be crossed.
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