Game Night - 26 November 2005 - The First Campaign

So Die Macher was on the table, set up and ready to go. Chester had thoughtfully shipped everything he had in terms of documentation with the game. I had also printed off every player aid the Geek had available. In the end I chose to use the colored "note blocks" Mark Coomey had recently uploaded, and Mark Blanco's phase-by-phase guide. I gave my usual theme overview, and this led into a side discussion on the recent German election which resulted in Merkel becoming Chancellor. We also had a discussion on the theoretical relationships of the game mechanisms, and what the paths to victory looked like. There was some discussion on the seven issues, and what would be relevant today as opposed to 1985. And there was a discussion on what other stuff Karl-Heinz Schmiel had done (the only one I really remember was Extrablatt, a game I also want to eventually play and own). This all took around an hour.

Just to prove we're a tight gaming group, we all invested a significant part of our setup resources into the third region, which had 80 seats up for grabs. (In hindsight I think it was a mistake.) The first couple of regions went fairly slow as we got a feel for the mechanisms, especially the regional opinion manipulation and the Tauschpool. Business picked up, and I decided to powder out of the running for winning the 80 seats, and focus on winning a couple of the smaller (20+ seat) regions. I ended up winning the second region, and in a winning coalition for the 80 seats anyway. Unfortunately I had not place a media presence there so I missed out on the points.

Initial thoughts on the opinion polls - strong, but you can protect yourself either by incrementally buying votes beforehand if you think your trend in a region is vulnerable. Or you can control the media, making you immune. Or you can win the poll yourself. Either way, it didn't bother me all that much.

We were slow to pick up on how useful holding an absolute majority in a region was - this was a trick of timing and resource investment. If no one else invests in a region when you do (usually way in advance) then you can make a change a turn, and when that region becomes current you'll have decent synergy with the regional opinion. The seats may not be great, but placing media and opinion on the national board is a reward in and of itself. My national membership kept ticking up because I tried to keep matching the big board, and altering what regions I controlled to match as well.



The whole deal took six hours, including frequent side discussions on game mechanisms, paths to victory and game design analysis. I won, mostly because I took three little (20+ seat) regions that the other folks didn't invest much in, while keeping a finger in the bigger pies (80, 60, 50). I enjoyed myself immensely.

Favorable comparisons from my gaming buddies to PR and PoF, from both a mechanism and stylistic standpoint. I have a better one. Macher's nature and rhythm, among all the games I've played, is closest to Kramer & Kiesling's Maharaja. You're planning and executing 4 elections simultaneously, and trying your darndest to insulate yourself from the inherent chaos of the game system while keeping your timing and resources as straight as possible. You're trying to make sure that you get close to your desired result in every region that matters, whether or not someone whacks you with a bad opinion poll when that region becomes current. (Or outright insulating yourself with media control, which is expensive to set up, but even more expensive for your opponents to undo when they choose to.) I would equate this to being able to do what you plan to do in Maharaja regardless of what hijinks people pull with your character card and the governor track. What Macher has over Maharaja is many, many more paths to victory at the cost of a significantly higher fiddle factor. However, given the theme the whole thing works, and in a surprisingly elegant manner despite all the moving parts.

In short, I (or should I say we) like it a lot, and I can see us polishing off a full game in 3-4 hours once we have the whole thing down and can take turns rapidly a-la Goa at full throttle. Clearly an "only game of the night" situation, but that was how it was when we first started playing 5P PR years ago (we were averaging 3.5 hours a game early on, and we still take 2.5 hours today).

The only trouble we had rules-wise was with the exchange pool. Playing it with Schmeil's "flood the pool" rules was rather counterintuitive, but in the end I guess it follows theme-wise since issues do get more muddled as elections get close to climax.

The Deal, and the Pilgrimage of Die Macher

To start this story at the beginning, Chester Ogborn enjoys Die Macher. Loves it. It's one of his favorite games. Ches is one of my little "original" online (board)gaming group, The Four Friends, along with Mary Weisbeck and Gerald Cameron. We "met" on boardgamegeek.com - Mary wanted to learn Euphrat & Tigris so I set up a 4P game and invited Chester and Gerald to play. We've been playing online ever since.

Anyway, it's common knowledge to these friends of mine that Die Macher is my "holy grail" of boardgames. So one day, Ches says "hey wouldn't it be cool if I shipped you my copy of Die Macher and you could play it and write stuff about it?" I say "that would be cool, but you would be nuts to propose such a thing since I live on the other side of the world and all sorts of bad things could happen to the game enroute, not to mention the cost." Ches says "I don't mind taking a risk on it, it's only a game, and I'm happy to do it." I say "I appreciate the thought Chester but I'm a stranger living far away and Macher is a rare and expensive game so it's a really bad idea so I won't hear of it." "Ok," he says, "but I'm not going to get to play Macher in a while as I won't have time due to work. It's really something I'm happy to do."

I don't quite recall what happened, but I eventually agreed to the pilgrimage of Chester's Die Macher over to Manila. It cost him $25 to ship it, it took over 8 weeks to get here, and it cost me $25 to claim it from customs after it arrived. But arrive it did.









I'm glad to report that the game arrived in great shape. The box has a few dings along the edges, but nothing noticeable unless under close scrutiny. I kept the box for the game's return trip, though I'm secretly hoping that somehow, someway I'd get to hand the game back to Chester in person and get to play it with him.

Two people have asked Ches what possessed him to do such a thing as send a valuable, highly sought-after boardgame to a person he's never met halfway around the world. This was the answer: "It just seemed like the kind of thing I wish would happen more in this world."

So. My end of the deal is to write a review and a couple of session reports. Ambitiously, I'd like to attempt a strategy guide at some point, though that would seem to be on the order of my three-quarters finished guides to Euphrat & Tigris and Torres - daunting, and the games hold me in awe so much that I battle with myself to consider anything written in depth about them as "done."

Anyway, I took Macher straightaway to game night on the same day I collected it from the post office, stopping at a Starbucks to refresh the rules over an Extra Hot Peppermint Mocha. When I got to game night, I laid out the following games for the people present to select (there were only three other players that evening, fortuitously). They had not played any of the games I laid out - I had played 2 of the 4.



The Frog, our host, immediately identified Macher as "that German election game" I had been mentioning to be on a slow boat, sent to us from Missouri by a doctor who I had never met. Yeah, they think Ches is slightly mad too. But poor Magna Grecia once again got passed over, and Macher was the game of the night. Our only regret was that we only started playing after dinner, as I knew it was going to take time to get going.

(Next: The First Game)

It's Finally Here

I got the notice from the post office this morning. I'll should be able to post something on it tomorrow. Question is, should I bring it to game night?

Thanks, Ches.

Finally Some Actual Gaming Content

I realize that I haven't really talked about the games we've been playing. Blame it all on Magic: the Gathering. That night I picked up a sealed booster after years off, I went and started a really LONG post on the little 4-person pod booster draft we did with the new Ravnika set... and I never completed it. I promise to get that up soon, along with some catchup.

A quick summary of the past four gaming nights has a pretty interesting pattern - every night we've had Traumfabrik and Clash of the Gladiators on the table, and we've also had The Princes of Florence out on every night except the night we played La Citta instead. And last weekend, we found out that Louis XIV is the most difficult Eurogame we've tackled so far. Yes, it's way tougher than Puerto Rico, Power Grid, El Grande, Goa, PoF, La Citta and anything else that's hit the table. Anyway, more on the mentioned games in future installements. For now, all I'll say is that Traumfabrik was worth every dime of the US$70 I paid, and I have no idea why no one is talking about Clash of the Gladiators and why its rating on the Geek is a mindboggling 5.80, lower than such classics as Chez Geek, War & Sheep and The Powerpuff Girls - Saving the World Before Bedtime. Shades of Falling (rated even lower at 5.42) I think, being a misunderstood game, but also carrying the expectations of Knizia+Hans im Gluck. (For a similar situation, I think Tower of Babel is also getting a raw deal so I'm going to hazard getting that game, eventually. Trust in Reiner and Bernd.)

I just planed back into Manila from Singapore, and I had a blast two nights ago playing a couple of games with "my Singapore gaming group." Wow, that's a strange one to hear. Siow Hwee, Janey and Wilson graciously invited me for dinner and games. We were one short as Wilson's wife Shih Huei was home sick.

Siow Hwee did me a huge favor by picking up the uberplay RA before it was bought out at the FLGS. Thanks man! He also brought a game I've been wanting to play again - Intrige, the Amigo card version. Janey and Wilson, Siow Hwee's wife and good friend, had never played. After getting confirmations from them that they were aware of what kind of game Intrige was, I launched into the rules explanation, and we were off.

Predictably, Siow Hwee casts the first stone and screws me on the opening deal of the game. He got nothing out of me from then on. Wilson did the same thing to me, but flipped back when Siow Hwee screwed him. Janey was my early ally, trading $10k jobs, but soon enough I was abandoned and it was Wilson and I who were in cahoots. In the end, no one was spared, and a huge final round by Siow Hwee looked like it won him the game - or so we thought.

Janey - $103
Siow Hwee - $93
Wilson - $92
Rick - $85

The next game was KuhHandel. First time for Wilson. I used the quickstart with each player having a chicken, goose, cat and goat to begin the game, and we were auctioning off two animals at a time. There's just no way to narrate the game, other than to say that I completed a set of cows and just needed the horses, but Janey beat me for the equines and that sent me from potential winner to next to last place.

The evening was great fun and I always look forward to hooking up with this group. Just to make things that much more astounding, Wilson lent me three games - Flandern 1302, Capitol and Keythedral. Thanks Wilson! I'll take care of them and report on how they fared over here.

The Second Coming?

Can Caylus become the #1 game on Boardgamegeek?

These are the discussions that certify people as boardgamegeeks.

So, speculation. Why is Puerto Rico the #1 game on BGG? Why was The Princes of Florence the #1 game before that? And why do people think Caylus is The Second Coming?

First off, Caylus has not been released in North America by Rio Grande Games. It looks like it will appear sometime in November, barring delays. The copies people have access to now came from Spiel 05 in Essen. Therefore, the pool of people with access to the game is very limited. It has 88 BGG ratings.

To challenge for #1 over the long haul (i.e., when it gets over 2,000 ratings) Caylus will have to appeal to a wide cross-section of gamers. This is the interesting quality of Puerto Rico, which has the second-most ratings in the BGG database with 4,636 (only The Settlers of Catan, currently ranked 20th, has more at 5,357). That's a huge number of ratings. From personal experience, PR can be enjoyed by everyone from casual players to those looking for a deep strategic game. Interestingly, wargamers seem to not be fond of PR since it's a system game - i.e., it filters interaction through a system and has no direct interaction. It's quite unusual for a game to be useful as both a gateway game and a serious, heavy Euro.

Another quality of PR is that it plays reasonably well throughout its player scale, 2-5 players with the alea 2P variant. This flexibility means that more groups are able to fit it into their gaming plans, and thus it sees a lot of table time. Along these lines, there is a nice scale to PR's speed. It can be played as a 20-minute 2P filler, a 45-minute 3P sprint, or as a 120-minute 5P defensive struggle.

The Princes of Florence shares many of the above characteristics. It's also playable as both a gaetway game and a deep thinker, it scales nicely from 3 to 5 players, and it can be a 60-minute 3P game or a 105-minute 5P game.

Both PR and PoF are also available online at Brettspielwelt, which helps.

Secondhand information indicates that Caylus plays a bit longer than PR or PoF, and its ability to scale from 2-5 players and its acceptability as a gateway game is still unknown. Time will tell. Fearless forecast: Caylus gets into the Top 10 briefly, then drops back down into the 15 to 30 range. Could be wrong, since I still don't understand why Power Grid is rated so highly. Oh well, that's what Geekbuddies are for.

The Gamewire ceases transmission

In an announcement that stunned the boardgaming hobby, Rick Thornquist announced that The Gamewire (or at least The Gamewire by Rick Thornquist) is no more.

Adam Hill, the proprietor of Gamefest, has indicated that The Gamewire will continue, but without the full-time work that Rick put into it, the continued quality of the content is in doubt.

More than ever, gamers looking for news and information on boardgames will need to turn to Boardgamegeek, which is becoming increasingly difficult to use effectively as the influx of members continues.

I join the hobby in thanking Rick for his efforts over the past years in bringing us the latest and hottest news and information on the games we love. The Gamewire by Rick Thornquist will be missed.

Im Schatten Essen

The whole boardgaming hobby stopped over the last weekend, with most of "those in the know" monitoring the web for information filtering out of Essen, Germany. Spiel '05 is of course the largest boardgaming event in the world, and many new titles are debuting there. Some of those able to make the trip have been generously providing updates. As usual, Rick Thornquist is on the forefront. The Gamewire has Rick's impressions of the hot releases, and of the event itself. Pierce Ostrander is maintaining a set of links to other blogs and news sources over at Boardgamegeek.

So far the games that I had my eye on appear to be in the "ok not great" class, which is about what I was expecting. This continues the trend of 2005 being a weak year for games, with no clear blockbusters or must-haves from major industry names and companies, and a lot of interesting niche from smaller publishers.

It's interesting to hear that the E&T cardgame is in fact E&T in cardgame form. While I think I'll eventually pick this up, there is not real motivation to play a card game when you can play the real thing. Hazienda is a more likely early purchase, but since it falls into the "same-y Euro" category (which I'm not opposed to, but the theme here isn't one that sets the world on fire), it's not a priority over adding reprints of proven older titles like RA, Stephensons Rocket, Medici and maybe Reef Encounter to your collection. Mesopotamia seems interesting, but since its designer is more known for fluff (Wrede) than for strategic games, and it's coming from a publisher with an unproven track record (Phalanx), it's definitely a wait-and-see situation.

Unexpected Gaming, and an Unexpected Game

8 October 2005

The weekend looked bleak for gaming. I was flying out to Singapore early on Sunday for three days of meetings, and didn't think I could make game night at The Lily Pad. My dear wife prodded me to go, however, because she knew I needed the distraction. Game night charges my batteries and gives me the social and creative outlet that I don't get at work. I just had to make it home early to catch some sleep so I could catch my 8am flight out.

9 October 2005

Large turnout at The Lily Pad, but the game that made it to the table once again was Traumfabrik. Sadly, I found that my camera had died in the two weeks that I didn't use it, so I was unable to start taking my customary game night pictures again.

There were eight people so some teaming up was necessary since everyone wanted to play. We haven't had a hit this big since Puerto Rico. My memory is starting to fuzz out from the volume of T-fab plays we've been generating, but I do remember that Nix and Tala curned out the night's biggest film - a $200 million box office smash with Nicole Kidman starring as Maximus in the Martin Scorsese-directed Gladiator.

I was attempting to grasp the timing of T-fab but again it eluded me. I got one film completed early, a decent $100 million production of Braveheart with Ashley Judd in the lead role (hey, it was a night of strong female lead characters). After that I was unable to complete a second film, falling one tile short of getting my huge Raiders of the Lost Ark production into theaters. The film ran out of cash, and my pathetic total box office take of $300 million put me firmly into last place, over $200 million behind the fourth place WB of Erik and Annie. Pathetic.

T-fab is giving me the hot Reiner flashes that I got from Taj Mahal and Modern Art - I can't seem to win the damned game, and I struggle to do well. All the hallmarks of what usually is a great game in my book. It helps that we all have so much fun playing the game.

I had to leave just as Princes of Florence hit the table. Regretfully, I headed home, visions of jesters and builders dancing in my head as I listened to Mark Jackson talk to Mike Siggins about Freidrich in the car.

10 October 2005

Sunday, I arrived in Singapore. The first thing that appeared on my Blackberry after I turned it back on was a message from Wilson Tan confirming our meetup to play. Things were looking up. After settling in the hotel I grabbed a cab and heading for the best FLGS in Singapore, Paradigm Infinitum. I was famished so I stopped by the Burger King in the store building's basement and ran into the people I was to meet - Wilson and Siow Hwee and their loverly wives Shih Huei and Janey, plus little Becky.

The stop at Paradigm looked uneventful. They had some new stuff in, but it was uninspiring. They had Dungeon Twister, but I don't have a lot of use for 2P games. Besides, it's got plastic miniatures and is "expandable". Those are always warning signs. Adding those factors to the new designer and a publisher without a good track record and it's a pass for me.

The other game I was taking a good look at was the Face 2 Face Games reprint of Reiner's Rheinlander. Now this is a game that's got a decent reputation, but from the information on the Geek I was pretty sure that I didn't need it in my collection. Reiner's already staked out a sizable chunk of my mid-length, mid-weight games with Traumfabrik, Modern Art, Through the Desert, Samurai and Colossal Arena, plus Euphrat & Tigris to a certain extent. I knew I was going to get RA in a few weeks. I'd rather wait on Stephenson's Rocket and Medici in 2006. Besides, the SG$100 price tag almost made me choke considering the component issues of the game.

There were some other interesting items scattered around. A copy of Struggle of Empires was on display, but not only was it more expensive than Rheinlander, I wasn't interested as Martin Wallace is currently on might "don't bother" list until he puts out a game better than the tepid Age of Steam. Another interesting item was a copy of the OOP RGG reprint of Goldseiber's Mississipi Queen. Too bad I'm not into race games at all. I'll probably play it, but I wasn't about to buy it, OOP or not. Siow Hwee had it and wasn't too impressed. Finally, Wilson pointed out a copy of the lui-meme werewolf cards, The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow, on the shelf. I've always thought that having a nice set of werewolf cards just to drive the theme home when the occasion arose would be useful, so I took that.

While Wilson was off lecturing a friend of his he ran into on the salient points of our hobby (the fellow ended up with Bang! and Coloretto I think, which wasn't bad), I noticed a blue box with the Hans im Gluck logo on one of the shelves. Expecting some lame game, I pulled it out. Reiner Knizia. Clash of the Gladiators. Wow, another OOP game.

Now, this isn't exactly one of Reiner's Finer Games by the BGG rating scale. Not really surprising, because this is a Reiner Dicefest. Now, the good doctor does do dice games, and he does them well. Exxtra, Easy Come Easy Go, Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck... They're all light dice games. Besides, Reiner wrote the book on dice games. So this game, with its theme of gladiators duking it out with wild animals and each other in the Colosseum - yeah, that's right up my alley. The design appeals to the old-time AD&Der in me, so it became my purchase for this trip. I think the game group will enjoy it.

So, I paid for the games and they gave me a big pastic bag so I could put the Kosmos La Citta the Wilson gave me in trade for Java into it along with my new purchases. This was turning out to be a good trip.

We went over to Wilson's office to play a game. Wilson's office had a nice meeting room with a large table. The game of the day was Euphrat & Tigris, which I promised to teach complete with theme. :-) After about 20 minutes of rules, we were off. Siow Hwee had played before, so his seating to my right was something I took note of. Not that it much mattered in E&T but it was good to be prudent. After the initial Kingdom buildups, I erected a Political/Commercial Monument to the north of the Tigris. Siow Hwee waged war and succeeded in exiling my King, but my Trader held his ground, lasting the entire game entrenched beside the Monument. A huge was for Agriculture was waged to the east, and I successfully ejected Siow Hwee's Farmer from the area, following that up with destroying his Priest's power base. The gods were smiling down on the Archer Dynasty.

Siow Hwee attacked a couple of times, both ending in futility. Janey: "he's not a very good player." Laughs all around. Apparently Janey kicks Siow Hwee's butt in E&T.

Endgame had a couple of large wars smack in the middle of the twin rivers. Wilson was doing very well, but I knew he had the same problem as I did - we were both weak in agriculture. The difference was that I had accumulated three treasures. Hoping that that would be the difference, I ended the game by accelerating time.

I had barely won with a score of 8. Siow Hwee had 6, Shih Huie 5, and Wilson 4. It was a very good game for the first time of Wilson and Shih Huei.

We all had to be somewhere, so we packed up with promises of playing more games when I next made the trip to Sing.

The Games Journal

A lot has been said about the decision of Greg Aleknevicus to cease production of the webzine The Games Journal. I think Yehuda Berlinger illustrated how I feel about it on the Gone Gaming blog.

It was indeed a serious issue that very few articles we being submitted. The Games Journal was driven by contributions - Greg, while an excellent and fairly prolific writer, could not have written all the content by himself. This was discussed in a recent episode of Mark Johnson's Boardgames To Go podcast where Greg was a guest. Yehuda had known for a couple of weeks that TGJ was shutting down. That means Greg might have already known that he was going to turn off TGJ when he talked to Mark on the show.

This is all pointing to the recent explosion of media on the German boardgaming hobby, which Mark has mentioned many times on his podcast. With so much creative energy being directed to individual gamer weblogs and podcasts, and into BoardGameGeek, The Gamewire and other boardgaming websites, there was less available energy that Greg could call on for submissions. It doesn't really matter that the content type is very different. Most weblogs are less formal than the average TGJ article. Most of us just type up the recent game night events, or dump current thoughts onto the electronic page. There's very little in the way of researched, edited material which was one of the most valuable features onTGJ (Yehuda linked to several of them above).

In closing, I'll miss having TGJ around. I was never one of the first to hit the site when publishing time came around, but when I did visit I burned through all the past issues that I'd missed.

I do feel that it's pretty silly for so many of us to be mourning its demise now when we never did direct any creative energy into submitting content. Now it's too late, and all we can offer is condolences and thanks.

Thanks to Greg, TGJ's editor, Frank Branham, TGJ's publisher, and all the contributors over the years.

The Games Journal, July 2000 - September 2005

The Second Coming

RA is back.

Reiner Knizia's RA was the first game in alea's popular big box line, and it's been one of the most sought-after Euros since it went out of print. There was much rejoicing when uberplay announced that it was going to reprint it, followed by grave concern (as grave as you can get about a boardgame anyway) when a change of theme was explored.

In the end, RA returns almost unchanged from its original incarnation. There are minor component tweaks, such as a helpful little symbol on some of the tiles to remind the player that they're "permanents" and slightly larger tiles and board. Oh, and the box is not alea's box so you completists won't find satisfaction here.

For the people who just want to play the game with friends and family, a little glimmer of Christmas just arrived. For the game speculators, I hope you dumped your RGG RA for the old $100+ ebay prices because the new game can be had for under $25 online. That's a great price for a great game.

Kudos to Kevin from Eagle Games (who are uberplay's distributors) for posting pics of the new RA:

http://eaglegames.zeroforum.com/zerothread?id=5956

Awards - Yay?

The International Gamers Awards, which is I try to equate to the Golden Globes (since the Golden Globes are given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press), have announced their Eurogame winners for 2005. Well, ok, maybe the IGA hasn't attained the status of the Golden Globes when ranged against the Academy Awards of this little hobby (aka, the German Spiel des Jahres). And they use a funky voting system to determine who wins the award (scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see it). It's sort of a least common denominator thing. It's as good a method as any other.

So. I'm going to ignore the 2P award since (a) I have no idea why 2P gets a category of its own while there is no 3P, 4P, 5P, 6P and 7+P award, (b) War of the Ring is touted on its box to be a 2-4 player game, which should disqualify it and (c) they just gave an award to a Risk descendant whose production values have utility issues. Aaaaanyway.

Ticket to Ride: Europe is perhaps the best representation of a least common denominator. It's a rehash of a game that's already won a lot of praise from the LCD gaming crowd. If the IGA was going to pick a "good game" as Greg says they aim to do, then I think they did their job. No one is going to argue with Ticket to Ride: Europe.

At least it was better than that horrible "me too" pick, St. Petersburg, in the previous year.

So, for 2005, the three awards were:

SdJ: Niagara (fits the high luck, "low thought required" family game profile of recent SdJs)
DSP: Louis XIV (does its main audience, the strategy gamers, a service here)
IGA: Ticket to Ride: Europe (the safest pick, a very effective LCD game)

Nothing surprising in the winners, all appealing to the markets/audience of the respective awards. No risks either, as all three come from major publishers (Zoch, alea, Days of Wonder). Was it only five years ago that the SdJ took a risk and picked the best award winner in its history, the Kramer/Kiesling masterpiece Torres?

As I said, 2005 is/was a crappy year for games (depending on which "season" you're using).

Postscript: There's a low buzz around Caylus. I read the rules. I'm not impressed. The whole thing seems fiddly to the extreme, with a lot of special things going on depending on where your "workers" are placed. Of course, this is all just from a rules reading. The game may be much better in play, but I'm not getting on the bandwagon just yet despite what Rick Thornquist's rating is. (And I can identify with Rick's tastes - the man has the correct opinion on Taj Mahal!) I wish there was more information on Hacienda, which is looking like the only hope for a good big box strategy game from Esson 2005.

Free Games (and good ones too)

How often do you get a chance to win good games?

There are two contest running that have pretty good prizes.

The first is the Cafe Games TEMPUS giveaway on BoardGameGeek. Tempus is a Martin Wallace game that's going to debut at Essen. Those of you who like Wallace's games should be happy with the opp to win one of 12 that are going to be raffled off. All you have to do is answer the 10 multiple choice questions posed by Cafe Games guy Morgan Dontanville. Yes, they're not easy. Yes, you can Google. No, you're probably not going to get them all right even if you Google. Guessing also works I guess, I got 7 of 10 without consulting The Oracle. For each correct answer you get a chance to win. For those of us who aren't impressed with Wallace games, it makes great trade fodder, so why not join? All you need is a BGG account. (Who am I kidding, if you're reading this, you're already a BGGeek.)

The other is the contest Tom and Joe are running on the podcast The Dice Tower.

All you have to do is send Tom and Joe an email with the Top Five Games You Think Their Listeners Hate the Most. The contest is patterned after Richard Garfield's "What Were You Thinking." You get more points if your opinion matches that of the other people who send in entries. The prize? Reiner Knizia's Beowulf - The Legend, published by Fantasy Flight Games. Along with that you also get a poster autographed by Reiner and artist John Howe, best known for his Tolkein work. That's a damned good prize, and it's well worth the email.

As we say in Amun-Re, free is good. Unless it's an all-farmer province in the third year of an epoch.

A trip to the Game Store and Game night - 1 October 2005

I haven't had the chance to drop by the local game store in over a month (but have dropped by game stores in two other countries - go figure). I was hoping that they'd have something new. Well, they did. Manila. At around US$60.

You have to be kidding. I know it's cool to have the name of your city on a nice looking boardgame, but $60? You'd think they were selling Traumfabrik - a German published, OOP game that's really really good.

I look around the store and there's nothing new other than the latest trivia games and Monopoly flavors. No one's bitten on the other Ravensburger Torres they had left (they marked it down 5% from the ~$60 I paid for the other copy). On the interesting side, they marked down slightly shelfworn copied of the RGG Bucket King (around $18) and the Eurogames Clippers with the much-maligned components (around $25). Bucket King isn't a game I'd keep in my collection, but it would make a nice gift to a casual gaming family, or one with kids. Clippers is intriguing, being perhaps the only Alan Moon game with no luck or randomness. There's the component issue that Alan himself was complaining about, and which Greg Scholesser panned. Still, some of the comments on the Geek say that the problems are solvable, and the game itself isn't bad.

I may go back for either or both of those sometime later this month. I'm pretty sure they'll sell out their Crainium before anyone else even picks up either of those Euros.

Anyway.

Game night had Traumfabrik returning to the table. This time, I had Noel Tiangco's modern english paste-ups on the tiles using weak sticker paper. I'm hoping that they won't do any permanent damage to the tiles. I tested them on the tile frames, leaving them stuck for close to a week before peeling them off. No problems.

Anyway, there were too many laugh out loud moments during the game. My first film had Samuel L. Jackson, Shaft, Mace Windu, Jules the Assassin... playing Peter Parker in Spider-Man. With Tim Burton at the helm (over $100 million at the box office). The most awful film of the night had Dana Carvey and Ben Stiller starring in Braveheart, with John Carpenter directing. Its box office take was as awful as that sounded ($30 million). The night's best film was Paramount's Raiders of the Lost Ark, raking in a cool $200 million at the box office, plus another $100 million after its Academy Award wins. That big film was powered by Tom Cruise and Halle Berry. My best film was the $120 million box office hit The Sixth Sense with Cameron Diaz and Toby Maguire. No, I don't know who saw dead people. Ask Ang Lee, he directed the thing.

Nix, who was heading Paramount, blew us away with $890 million in earnings at the end of all four sweeps. I came far behind in second place with $600 million. We agreed that Nix was able to time his forays into the market well, conserving resources and striking when the other four studios had depleted their finances. Traumfabrik is definitely not as light as its reputation portrays. While it's pretty simple at first blush, there's a lot going on in terms of timing, the composition of the lots, the closed economic system, and the way players try to complete their film projects. I'm sure we'll continue to play this every game night.

Next, we had a choice between playing a game new to the group (In the Shadow of the Emperor, Louis XIV, or Maharaja) or playing an old favorite. The old favorite won out so Puerto Rico returned to the table after an unusually lengthy absence.

Five player PR is not one of my favorite games. There's a noticeable lack of control, and the trading house timing can seriously whack you several times sending you to the back of the pack. This is exactly what happened to me, and I got locked out of the trading house for the first four trading cycles. Ouch. To catch up I did the only thing I could - craft repeatedly until the coffee boat (I had a coffee monopoly) cleared. From there the building timing was against me so I skipped the factory-harbor-wharf segment of the game and proceeded directly to the large buildings. Tala had the same idea. We each ended up with two of the big ones, while Nix was milking his factory/harbor setup on the boats. The game was very painful, as is usual for 5P PR, but the scores were close. Tala won, with myself and Nix right behind, a single point separating the first three places.

Next week: More Traumfabrik, and the Princes of Florence. It'll be a short night for me as I'm flying back to Singapore on Sunday morning. On the good side, I'll get to collect La Citta from Wilson and see what new stuff Damien has. Oh goody, more games, no increase in gaming hours. Sigh.

2005: A Crappy Year for Boardgames

Yeah, I know it's only October, and Essen is around the corner, but isn't 2005 (and you might want to include the latter part of 2004) just a crappy year for boardgames?

I got this feeling when going over the SdJ, DSP and IGA lists of nominees and winners for the year. Ick, I say. So, I ask the Geek to give me a listing of all games published in 2005, with a rating of at least 5 and at least 30 raters. I'm chucking all the wargames and expansions, because those don't count. This is what I get:

TI3e - You have to be kidding. 2ed was better than this.
Ticket to Ride: Europe - A rehash. Didn't much like it's daddy either.
Shadows over Camelot - Wouldn't you rather play Werewolf?
Travel Blokus - Zzzzzz.
Arkham Horror - Horror is right.
Munchkin Fu 2 - Bayesian rating of 6.79, 35 ratings. What are these people smoking?
Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean - Brand new. Reports say and rules read: Too many cards, too much luck
Louis XIV - Won the DSP. Might be the best game on this list, which is a relief.
China - Reprint. Didn't much like Web of Power, so pass.
TATATA! - Haven't heard anything, don't know anything, don't really want to know.
Wings of War: Watch your back - Featherlight sequel. It's daddy was ok, nothing great.
Kreta - Steffan Dorra area control game. The dark horse on this list, flying under the radar.
Manila - Gambling game. I wish they called THIS Puerto Rico, and THAT game Manila!
Carcassonne: The Prin... awww fuck it's crappy Carc again.
Roma - New 2P Queen game. Interestingly good remarks from key people (Mike Siggins) but it's 2P so I don't care too much.
Nexus Ops - Hasborg dicefest kiddie dreck.
Tower of Babel - Reiner's Hans im Gluck big box game is an auction/area control middleweight. I think this should get better over time, sorta like Samurai.
Palazzo - Reiner's alea midi box game is an auctionish lightweight. What a letdown.
Fjords - 2P Carcassonnish game. Pass.
Axis and All.... yech.
FFFF - I'm not typing that, and it's Friedemann so pass.
Dungeoneer: Forsaken Desert - Forsake this game.
Control Nut! - Trick taking game, probably worth a look if you like that kinda thing. I don't.
Attacktix Star Wars Kiddie Game bleh
Manifest Destiny - Pass.
Diamant - If this cost as much as Bluff, I'd probably get it despite its parentage. It costs as much as a big box game, so forget it.
Risk: Star Wars - why do people still buy this thing?
Australia - Kramer+Kiesling+Ravensburger=pale shadow of the Mask Trilogy. Too bad.
Ars Mystery - LIttle publisher, but I'd try it if there was an opp.
Amazonas - Lightish card game. Too many of these things around.
Walk the Dogs - SimplyFun fluff.
Poison - Another light Reiner card game.
Monsters Menace America - See Nexus Ops
Go West - Hey it's a Colovini game. I'd play this given the chance.
Pickomino - Another light game.
TransEuropa - Given how bad TA is, why bother?
Anachr... CCG right? Pass.
Verflixxt! - Not bad. Not good, either.
The rest are the same: Gone Fishing, Ice Cream, Coloretto Amazonas, Sword and Skull, Pimp: the Backhanding, SPANC, Clout Fantasy.

Yep, 2005 stinks. And as I noted a few entries before, Essen looks pretty grim for good thinking-man's games, with just Hazienda and E&T das Kart looking promising.

Why Games Need Editors

I was listening to the latest Wingin' It podcast from Michael and Evo over at The Dragon Page, and one subject resonated with me on more than one level.

One of their listeners called in and asked for advice on getting published. Having read more than one self-help book on the publishing and film businesses, I already knew what Mike and Evo and Joe and Summer were going to say. And they said it.

Take your first novel, short story, screenplay, what have you, and stick it in a drawer. Take your second effort, and do the same thing. And your third. And your fourth. Then maybe, maybe you can take your next effort and send it to an editor. Not your spouse. Not your friends. Not anyone who likes you. Send it to someone who'll look at it and take it apart and tell you exactly where it sucks and ask you what the heck you were thinking when you wrote scenes 12, through 28, and what were you smoking when you wrote scenes 33 through 41?

You need someone who'll tell you that your dialogue is stupid and that NOBODY TALKS LIKE THAT (hello George Lucas), and where your plotting is full of holes, and where your characters are so paper thin that you can read the newspaper they're holding through the back of their head.

If you give your draft to someone to read, and they don't tell you any of the preceding, then you can discount that person's opinion. They're not helping you.

What's this doing on BoardGameBlog and not Everyday Insight you ask?

It's here because there are so many games out there that need this kind of editing. Sure, a flawed game can have a cult following. You can equate War of the Ring to The Matrix Reloaded - it thinks it's good and smart and has a lot of shiny bits to keep the kiddies interested, but once you look at it from a structure standpoint, it falls apart. You'll never convince the kiddies of that though because The Burly Brawl (all the dice rolling and the theme and action cards) was So Damned Kewl and it Roxxored!

Look at games that I can assume have gone through an editing process, like the stuff published by Hans im Glueck (Bernd Brunhoffer) and alea (Stefan Brueck). They tend to be "tighter" than the indy stuff from, say Friedemann Freise (see Funkenschlag and even Power Grid). That's the additional value that an editing process can give. It doesn't mean that every game they produce is perfect - alea can have Mammoth Hunters, just as JK Rowling can have The Prisoner of Azkaban. Even Reiner has his clunkers and those go through his own stringent editing process along with that of his publisher.

Sigh.

Yes, yes. I know. You write for your audience. People who read Danielle Steele won't likely be reading HP Lovecraft, just as people who enjoy the superficially-themed War of the Ring dicefest won't likely enjoy a luckless, chromeless-themed brainburner like Torres with all 10 Action Cards in hand.

In the end, all is subjective, and Britney Spears (with her legions of fans) is just as valid a recording act as Coldplay.

Analysis Paralysis: When You're Not Smart or Decisive Enough

(Warning: Those easily offended can piss off.)

Let me be blunt. Analysis paralysis is caused by a mismatch of a game which demands brainpower, and a player who lacks the brainpower to recognize what's going on AND make a decision on what he wants to do.

I'm tired of games being criticized for this. You choose to study rocket science, you'd better have the brainpower. You want to play Java? You'd better have the brainpower. Otherwise, please stick to Settlers where you toss the dice and ask people if they have wood for sheep (cue Butthead here) and don't need to think.

So, translating: If you see a comment about a game that claims it causes analysis paralysis, it means "this game is too hard for me and my gaming group." If you see a low rating along with that comment, that means "we're not smart enough to play games that demand more thought, in a reasonable amount of time." Or maybe "we're smart, but we're not decisive enough and need to spend gobs of time sifting through each option repeatedly."

Don't blame the game.

You know, if the game causes analysis paralysis, you should rate it HIGHER and aspire to be able to play that game in its indicated playing time. Once you do that, you can claim that you've either become smarter or more decisive or both.

Addendum:

I finish this post, look at BGG and what do you know, a Geeklist on analysis paralysis and timers. If I post this on BGG, the propriety police will jump up and down, so I'll say it here. If your players can't play the game properly without a timer (i.e., they're not smart or decisive enough), step down a bit. Try something will a lower difficulty level, then "graduate" to the real games.

The negotiation games like AGoT and ToG, you have the same problem as the fellow who asks "got wood for sheep?" ten times before giving up. Decisiveness is required. If the deal isn't there, more on instead of wasting time trying to harangue people because you think you're smart enough to pull to wool over their eyes (you're probably not if you're taking that long). Or conversely, tell the player who's badgering you to do what he wants to piss off, you're not interested.

But RoboRally? You have to be joking. After you've taken a bit of damage your moves get locked anyway. What's the problem? Wallenstein? TORRES?! Torres is a lightning fast game especially without all ten cards in hand. When you know the game and have all the cards, it gets even faster because you have the means to do stuff! Princes of Florence? Goa?! Sheesh.

The absolute worst one is Citadels. What the heck takes people so long to pick a role? It's not like you can guess which character is going to get assassinated or pickpocketed, so why the fuck are you waffling? Five seconds to choose a role, no more. That's why I gave this one up on BSW - the time it took people to choose roles was infuriating, simply because there THERE IS NO INFORMATION to base your pick on! It's a Faidutti game for crying out loud. Bruno doesn't make games with agonizing decisions! I think he'd go into convulsions if he knew that people were suffering from analysis paralysis over one of his games.

Game Night - September 23 2005

It was a great relief to have a game night scheduled. We'd finally get to play some of the new games I'd been stockpiling over the past month.

The most anticipated game was my newly-acquired copy of Traumfabrik.

Some memorable things:
We popped the Traumfabrik CD into the player, and it was a wonderful mood-setter for the game. Form the opening strains of In the Mood, which almost everyone in the room surprisingly identified, to the Sinatra tunes that were playing while he was considering offers from the studios, the CD proved that little touches do enhance the gaming experience.

My highest-rated film was The Ten Commandments starring Grace Kelly, which was rather hilarious because Grace Kelly in a loincloth was good, but if she had a beard, that was bad.

The worst film for most of the game was a $5,000,000 box-office disaster filmed by a no-name director, starring Reiner Knizia.

That was unbelievably beaten by a $3,000,000 stinker filmed by another no-name director and starred in by Henry Fonda.

Eventual winners Frog and George had the film of the night - King Kong with a $3,000,000 special effects budget starring Marilyn Monroe. No, it wasn't the biggest box-office hit, but it was the most appropriate casting. They avoided the mistake of casting Norma Jean as the monkey and using CGI to animate the Fay Wray.

Final scores:
Frog/George - $71m
Rick - $70m
Nix - $60m
Erik/Annie - $58m
Monch - $56m

Post-game agenda - come up with custom tilesets. Make Keanu the Reiner of that set.

Nix, Frog, George and I decided to go for one more game, and I broke out my new copy of Verrater. I'd played the game a few times on BSW, some time ago.

It was an interesting game as we were all grappling with the quirky double-loop timing of the game, with the start player passing clockwise and the strategist and alliances flip-flopping the combat rhythm in a strange, disjointed waltz. I turned coat three turns in a row, sandwiched between a couple of building turns. Everyone else concentrated on being the Strategist or a flavor of the Diplomat.

When the dust cleared, the most traitorous one emerged victorious. I won the game with 27 points.

So, our all-German edition game night was a rousing good time. T-fab will almost certainly grace our table again next session, hopefully with some variant tiles.

When the Wishlist Runs Dry

Gerald asked me an interesting question in the Geek of the Week feature on BGG. After my last buying spree, what were my top five games that I wanted to add to my collection that were in print?

I had this piddling little list to answer:

Meuterer
Intrige
Attribute
YINSH
TAMSK

So, three card games and two 2P abstracts are all I have left. 2005 has been a tremendously weak year in terms of meatier games that I'm interested in. Louis XIV and Shadow of the Emperor was the extent of additions. The Essen list is also looking very weak, with only Kramer's Hacienda, and Knizia's E&T das Kartenspiel looking like they would merit a second look.

(I must admit to being very cool on Martin Wallace games. Similar to Friedemann Freiese's games, Wallace games feel just short of being completed. His best game, Age of Steam, is a pale shadow of 1830 and has a theme-breaking mechanism that I can't abide. So I really have no interest in Tempus or Byzantium.)

The saving grace is the reprinting of Reef Encounter and RA in the short term, and Medici, Stephenson's Rocket and Taj Mahal in the medium term. (Though I already have the RGG Taj, and am wary of Reef Encounter because it might be like Power Grid - a good game, surely, but clearly not yet polished.)

One can only hope that Reiner has a gamer's game in the works. Otherwise, 2005 will be one of the weakest years for German games in a very long time.

I suppose that this is a good problem to have. My narrow interest in types of games keeps my collection (and related things like spending and space) sane. :)

Torres on Boite a jeux

It's no secret that I rank Torres as one of the best games around. I enjoy everything about the game: the fun theme, the simple mechanisms, the elegant gameplay, and one of the most fitting graphic designs around. Torres is perhaps the best awardee of the Spiel des Jahres award ever. Considering the medicre picks that they have made since then, that seems unlikely to change soon.

I was ecstatic when the Franch gaming site Boite a jeux implemented Torres recently. I immediately recruited my online gaming group, affectionately called The Four Friends, and we launched into playing Torres. (The Four Friends are Mary Weisbeck, Chester Ogborn, Gerald Cameron and myself.) We've been playing multiple games of Torres, in different variations, for several weeks now and I haven't tired of it yet. I don't think they have either. I pray they haven't because this game has legs unlike any others.


A game of Torres on BaJ; as usual The Four Friends are locked in a tight struggle.

I can only compare my Torres fever with the other four top games in my rankings - The Princes of Florence (playing this occasionally on BrettSpielWelt is like giving a thirsty man a drop of water), Euphrat & Tigris (which we've played heavily on BoardGameGeek), Puerto Rico (which I've played heavily on BSW as well but have given up on due to my irritation with the other players on the site), and the unassailable Magic: the Gathering.

If any readers out there would like to play Torres, register on BaJ and drop me a line. You can even pick the variant; I enjoy them all.

Podcasts

Derk and Aldie over at BoardGameGeek did me a huge favor when they started up their podcast, then known as GeekSpeak. It was a radio show on MP3 all about boardgames. Now I knew nothing about Adam Curry or the whole podcasting thing at that point, but the new car I had been given at work had a CD player that had an MP3 decoder, so I tried it out. I downloaded the first installment, burned it onto a CD, and have listened to every episode ever since. I even began doing a log of the shows as a Geeklist. (The list is no longer up-to-date, unfortunately. I may update it at some point in the future.)

Podcasts have now replaced radio and audio CDs as my companions during my hour-long drive to work. Several podcasts with boardgame content have joined GeekSpeak, now renamed BoardGameSpeak, on my car stereo. I thought I'd say a few words about each.

The Dice Tower (TDT) is hosted by those two funny boardgame-playing Americans based in Korea, Tom and Joe. TDT is a spiritual sibling to GeekSpeak in that you have two guys who play well off each other. Well, ok, I think Tom and Joe do it better as Aldie tends to disappear a lot during shows. Granted, GeekSpeak usually has a guest, while TDT is usually just Tom and Joe. The hook here is that Joe is primarily a wargamer, and Tom is primarily a Eurogamer. Warning - this show is not for newbies. Game titles are mentioned at an alarming rate, especially during the weekly Top 10 lists. Have BGG up and ready to search to figure out what games the guys are talking about. Recently, TDT has been running contests to give away games. So far, they've given away Conquest of the Empire, Santiago/Primordial Soup, and a couple of wargames from Wellington. That's more than enough reason to listen and participate!

Boardgames To Go (BGTG) is Mark Johnson's show. He started out with a one-voice format, and that still is his default show type, but lately he's been having various second voices on his show, from fellow gamers to his wife and kids. I found Mark's earlier shows to be rather boring, but since I could relate to the content, I kept downloading and listening. Lucky for me, as the quality of the shows has been improving rapidly to the point that BGTG is now the first show I listen to when I have a freshly-burned CD of podcasts in the car. Mark's recent innovation - whole shows focusing on just one game, are now the podcast I look out for. The first two, on Entdecker and Medici, were all about two games I haven't played and don't own. The Medici show that had Dave Arnott as co-host was outstanding, and I've placed Medici on my "will definitely buy" list as soon as the RGG reprint appears. I just downloaded the newer show, on Verrater, a game I just acquired last week and have played a bit on BrettSpielWelt, and I'm looking forward to hearing that one. Mark's shows are now can't-miss programming as far as I'm concerned.

BoardGameSpeak (BGS) has suffered a bit in its recent shows as Aldie and Derk concentrate on getting BGG.CON organized. The last few shows have been interviews with various persons during a convention, so the sound quality has been poorer than the studio-recorded shows. One weakness of the BGS format is that the show is only as good as the guest, and sometimes the guest tanks the whole show. I haven't been interested all that much in the last two guests, Friedeman Freiese and Andrea Meyer, so I skipped large chunks of those shows. Still, BGS has produced some excellent shows in the past, especially the ones that had Reiner Knizia, Alan Moon and Mark Jackson on as guests.

Have Games Will Travel (HGWT) is a newish podcast from Paul Tevis. This is a hybrid show that features both boardgames and RPGs, but the boardgame coverage is suited for people new to the hobby. (Unlike the three previous entries here.) Most experienced Eurogamers won't really care about a review on Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride, but for those who just happen on Paul's show, it's a good way to become familiar with the base games of the hobby. Paul uses a single-voice format. His latest show, which I haven't listened to yet, has a review of Reiner's mighty Euphrat & Tigris. That's going to be an interesting listen.

Geek Fu Action Grip (GFAG) is barely boardgame related. Host Mur Lafferty's background seems to be primarily in RPGs, but her husband Jim Van Verth is an old-school game designer. Mur adores James Ernest and his Cheapass Games, and crayon rail games. Not much for Eurogamers or wargamers here in terms of game content, but Mur is entertaining and her "being a geek essays" are fun to listen to so I keep tuning in.

Roll 2d6 (2d6) is a new podcast which also encompasses RPGs. They talk mostly about American-style boardgames and RPGs, but the last episode had a mention for Settlers of Catan so I'll keep listening until the content I follow runs dry.

All Games Considered (AGC) is a show I listened to when it first came out. Not only were the first few shows rather devoid of boardgame content, but the hosts were overly self-referential and there was far too little content delivered for the time the podcasts were taking. I no longer listen to this show.