Print, Motrin and Play

How cool is it to find a game you like that is free? All it wants is a few common household items and a couple hours of your time.

One of the first print and play games I found was Kardinal & Konig: Das Kartenspiel. The printing turned out to be the hardest part since the download was for the European paper size called A4 rather than our American 8 X 11. Once I twisted my printer’s brain to speak European, I found the cutting out of the cards rather relaxing—don’t forget to round the corners.

Then I discovered Dschunke: Das Legespiel, the original version of Rat Hot. We enjoyed this game so much that I printed up a second copy of the tiles and put them on a thin piece of masonite and cut them out with the band saw. My dear husband then built a small box to hold them, complete with a sliding lid.

Before Himalaya, there was Marchands d’Empire. Yep, I put that one together, too. Now we’re talking quite a few pieces to cut out but I still enjoyed it and I think the board is much nicer looking than the Himalaya version.

So on Monday when I checked out Rick Thornquist’s new site and found a print and play game that is a triangle-based version of Blokus called Tricky Tiles, I fired up the printer and got out my “common household items.” Card stock, poster board, sticker paper, old cutting board, metal yardstick, scissors and a hobby knife.

I wanted the pieces to be thick enough to pick up easily so just printing on both sides of card stock wouldn’t do. No, I decided to print them on 2 pieces of card stock and use spray-on glue to put them on a piece of poster board, one on each side. This took some time but they came out almost perfectly aligned.

For a board, I’m usually satisfied to use sticker paper and make the board one big piece which I store standing up in a closet but this time I wanted to try to make a folded board. This actually turned out pretty well for a first, cheap effort using just poster board and sticker paper. My board now folds into quarters and is compact enough to fit in a box the size of the Kosmos 2-player line.

Most of the day was spent cutting out 88 small, strange-shaped pieces with a hobby knife. This is where the Motrin comes in. My back hurts from bending over the table (I’m short so sitting and leverage don’t go together); my left hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder ache from keeping pressure on the yardstick to keep it from slipping out of place; and the tip of my index finger on my right hand is numb from pushing on the knife.

Was it worth it? Yeah. I coerced Richard into trying it after supper and found it to be both tougher and easier than Blokus. The first thing that makes Tricky Tiles tougher is the strange shaped pieces with their odd angles. We spent more time placing pieces as we had to fiddle with several to get them to go where we wanted to go. Another aspect that makes it tougher is a wider choice of places you can place pieces because you can match not only outside corners but any triangle point within the piece, even along a straight edge. The many and varied pieces seem to make it easier to fill the in-between spaces but as with Blokus, get those big pieces out there early. I like that the playing area on the board changes with the number of players, reminding me of Einfach Genial (Ingenious).

I think if you’re a fan of Blokus, this would be worth your time. If we’re lucky, it’ll be picked up by a publisher so everyone can enjoy it. Until then, warm up the printer and bring out the Motrin.
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Games

I haven’t played a full game of anything this week (you may post your condolences here). By the time we sat down for Thanksgiving dinner, I was getting a headache so passed on the chance to twist arms but Richard was kind enough to play Ingenious with Chris, Jessica and her father. After that, the turkey kicked in and we all sat around watching either football or Garfield’s Thanksgiving on DVD followed by one of our favorite Christmas movies, Christmas Vacation.

I received Kreta this week, which Cori, Richard and I tried out on Sunday evening but it had been a long day and after 9 provinces, we agreed the game should be called on account of yawning. None of us were playing our best so I’ll withhold any comment until I can play it with a working brain.
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Until next time, buy stock in Ziploc.

Mary

The Designer's Rules

In the beginning there was darkness over the land and all the world was Candyland.

And God said, "Let there be choice!" And there was choice, and each player now had two pawns, such that when they flipped a card, that player had to choose which pawn to move. And God saw that Candyland was now suitable for creatures with greater than low-grade intelligence.

And God saw that the change was simple and elegant, and was pleased. But the people were still bored.

So God said, "Give each player a hand of three cards. And each turn, the player must choose which card to play and then draw back up to three. And furthermore, the player can choose two cards of the same type to use as a wild. And the double cards will function as a double wild when combined with a single card of the same color." And the people asked God "What is this, Web of Power?" And God shuffled his feet, for the people complained so.

And God had a grand hangover from the people's complaints, yet still the people told him, "Not good enough, oh Big Fat One." And God was cranky (and I blame him not, for so would you be having to deal with such people), so God answered thus, "Let each player start his three pawns on any space of the board that they so desire, such that there be at least six spaces between each of his own pawns. Furthermore, let the last space of the board be a transporter space that can move your piece to any space on the board, except one that is occupied already by another piece of any color. Otherwise, if the pawn would continue past the end of the track not landing on this transporter space, let it continue again from the beginning. The object of the game is now to land on your opponent's pieces. Each player still has a hand of three cards, as I said before. The double cards, in contradiction to what I said before, may now be used to move backwards or forwards a single length, but two cards of the same color are still wild. The last person with a piece remaining wins. Oh, and you can play a card on your opponent's piece to make him land on a lose a turn square." And the people scratched their head and got to work figuring this mess out.

But God had not finished, because something was in his morning brownie other than chocolate. "Whenever a player lands on his own color, he may draw four more cards and discard four. And each piece color will have a name, ... uh: Grinchly Green, Baby Blue, Radical Red, and Yippeeyi Yellow. Yes. And each color will furthermore have special abilities. GG always draws back up to four cards instead of three. BB can discard his hand at the end of his turn and get a new one. RR eliminates your pawn if it lands next to your piece, not just on it. And YY can discard a card to run away if you land upon his piece if he discards a card of the same color upon which his piece is standing. Choose your color at the start of the game, or pick at random, I don't care."

And God slumped in his chair and called for a beer. And the people pushed their pawns around and so forth. Yet still they were not satisfied. And God told them to put on a tutu and work on that come-hither look. "Not that kind of dissatisfied!" they said. "This game is still half-baked!"

And God rolled up his sleeves, with an angry look in his eye. And then the people were afraid, lest they had gone too far.

"Tryest thou this," he snarled, with a mad gleam in his eye. "Further to the game as I have already described, divide the cards equally before the game starts among each player, such that each player has an equal number of each type of card. Cards played go into your discard pile. Whenever you land on a space of the same color as another player, you engage in battle with that player. If a piece is also on that space, that piece's player is automatically an ally of the defender. If that piece is the same color as the defender, that player will lose his piece if he loses the battle. Each player may invite allies. After allies have been declared, each player and ally places a card on the table face down. Flip all cards. An orange card counts as red+yellow, a purple as red+blue, and a green as blue+yellow. Colors that are duplicated an even number of times are removed from the challenge. For instance, if blue, green, and orange cards have been played, the blue cancels out the blue from the green leaving yellow. The yellow cancels out the yellow from the orange, leaving red. For another example, if three blues are played, two would cancel, leaving a blue.

"If the result is no color, the defender wins. If the result is a color, the player whose color it is wins. If no color of any player in the battle is represented, the attacker wins. If the attacker wins, the attacker and all of his allies gain a point (keep a scorepad), and the defender loses a point, if he has any. The defender's allies lose nothing. If the defender wins, the attacker loses a point and the attacker's allies lose nothing, but the defender and all allies gain two cards from the deck.

"Pink cards may only be played by the attacker or defender. If only one of them plays a pink card, that player loses, but gets the other player's hand. If both play a pink card, the allies get nothing, each of them gets a point, may move one of their pieces to any location on the board, and may discard their hands and pick back up to three cards.

"When a player needs to pick from his deck and there are no cards, shuffle his discard pile to make a new deck.

"Also, instead of either moving and/or attacking during his turn, a player may instead place a combination of two cards down in front of him. A player may only have two combinations of such cards in front of him at any time in such a manner. During a player's turn, they may play this card combination at the appropriate time, in addition to taking their turn. Once played, the cards are discarded. The combinations are as follows:

RR - Add a red to the attack after cards are revealed.
RB - Play another card this turn.
RY - Switch two pieces on the board.
RG - Switch hands with any player.
RO - Nuke. Drop one of these cards from a height of at least two feet off the board. Any pieces hit are eliminated from the game. Leave the card on the table. Spaces covered are out of the game.
RP - Return one of your pieces eliminated from the game to play.
RPi - Change your opponent's card to a pink before cards are revealed.

BB - Add a blue to the attack after cards are revealed.
BY - Skip your turn. Take two turns next time it is your turn.
BG - Place the green card on the board next to any one space, under any pieces. Pieces in this area are in a safe zone until it is your turn again.
BO - Look at any player's hand before starting your turn.
BP - Force an alliance.
BPi - Change your own card to a pink before cards are revealed.

YY - Add a yellow to the attack after cards are revealed.
YG - Mix together everyone's hands and return to each player the same number of cards.
YO - Return a player's pawn to the start square.
YP - Switch the card you played with one from your hand after cards are revealed.
YPi - Change both player's cards to pink before cards are revealed.

GG - Add a green to the attack after cards are revealed.
GO - Place both of the cards across the path in two different locations without distrubing any pieces. No player may cross this point until any one player discards a card of the same color.
GP - Force a player to change his played card after cards have been revealed with another card from his hand.
GPi - All players must discard all pink cards.

OO - Add an orange to the attack after cards are revealed.
OP - Return all pieces eliminated from the game to the start location.
OPi - All players must play pink cards, if they are able.

PP - Add a purple to the attack after cards are revealed.
PPi - Search through every player's discard pile, take a pink card into your hand, replacing it with the purple.

PiPi - Gain a point."

And God looked at what he had done, laughed evilly, and went off to his game group. And thus it was proved that every game can be improved [some versions say: mangled] to look like Cosmic Encounter.

Yehuda

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ The Highlander Effect

Seeing as how I'm in the throes of moving from a largish house on a fair sized piece of land to a way downsized rental house with only a single car garage for storage, I've been a bit pressed for both gaming time as well as writing time over the last 7 days.

Add to that the bonus of a cranky ex-girlfriend who's so used to having it her own way that she is once again proving my philosophy of both gaming and life... which is:

No good deed goes unpunished

Perhaps I shouldn't have knocked off that extra $25K on the sale price of Mosquito Acres to her and her parents. Oh well, I never claimed to be particularly smart, just straightforward.

But onwards to something game oriented that I have taken note of over the last 25 or 30 years and which has been highlighted, proven and polished to excess on www.boardgamegeek.com. I call it The Highlander Effect.

Basically, The Highlander Effect goes like this; Gamer plays game. Gamer has fun with game. Gamer gets excited about game. Gamer's intellect, ego, self-image, id, libido, worldview and everything else that can be added is defined (in his or her view) by the game, mainly because Gamer seems to do well at the game. Effectively, said game becomes "The One." As in, "There can be only one", from the really terrible, and therefore highly fan-driven, Highlander movies and TV series.

Boardgamegeek is a boiling cauldron of arguments, threads, flames, mathematical formulas, assaults and onslaughts that take The Highlander Effect to dizzying heights. The previous genres I noticed this in back in the 80's and 90's were D&D and MTG. But since there is no site I'm aware of that does for CCG's and RPG's what BGG does for board games... which is throw several thousand over-active egos into the electronic dimension and give them a forum for rating games and then defending their ratings... the Geeks of board games have taken The Highlander Effect into uncharted territory.

For proof I give you Puerto Rico, and now it's equally ugly step-sister, Caylus. I would be willing to bet you a date with my recently ex'd girlfriend that when Caylus reaches the #1 spot on BGG that major Highlander warfare will erupt. And why not? If a gamer has spent hundreds of hours playing a game and then hundreds of additional hours defending the game online, it's unlikely that gamer will suddenly cede his or her contention that Puerto Rico is THE ONE to any other game... ever.

But there are many other games that suffer from this effect, I wrote about one last week. Age of Steam versus Railroad Tycoon has sparked numerous threads and the AOS defenders are thicker than flies on horseshit, staunchly defending AOS with what I consider fairly dense and even laughable points. Such as: AOS doesn't have as much chance as RRT. Huh? Fer Chrissakes! You roll the dice, six of them, every round. Bad roll? No product. No product? No income increase. No income, bad for victory conditions. And then there's the boring auction defense of AOS vs. RRT which proclaims that AOS auctions -- which are a snooze-fest to start with -- are better than the the equally unexciting RRT auctions. Well I'm sorry to bust anyone's bubble, but auctions in any game that is played by unexciting, fearful, cheap and terrified players are boring.

In a recent game, attended by a fellow BGG'er Jon and his son, I claimed a vital route from Raliegh to Atlanta for 8 points (roughly the margin I won that game by) one turn before Jon could claim the route. He was kicking himself for "letting me have it easily". Yeah, sure. When we were BS'ing about the game afterwards I pointed out that there were five players in the game and only two of use were actually bidding for starting player the first 7 or 8 rounds. I further pointed out that had he been bidding at all, he could have claimed that route one action before me. Jon is certainly no dummy and he pretty much said that he saw that Shaun and I were much more aggressive bidders and he wasn't.

The point? AOS and RRT both have auctions. AOS is more restrictive, RRT is more open-ended. Winning either game's auction can be what determines your final tally. So if you want to win, you ought to think about bidding. Anything else is too passive a gaming style to be competitive in games with auction mechanics.

Have I digressed?

Right. Back on point. I personally feel that RRT is an evolution and also an improvement on an excellent game. By my reckoning, it's better in almost every regard. It's deeper, it allows more freedoms -- and therefore requires much finer control as a player -- it's got hidden elements and a flexibility in track-building and product delivery that it's older brother doesn't have. It's so much more attractive that only people who think Hillary Clinton is a "hot number" would choose AOS over it for presentation. And, it's much easier on novice players due to it's more open architecture and switchable strategies. Not to mention, it's less prone to "take that" moves that are all too cheap and easy to employ in AOS.

So, I pronounce RRT a better, deeper and more flexible game than it's predecessor. Which will likely cause a number of gamers suffering from The Highlander Effect to shake their heads and wonder what it is I missed.

Back when I role-played, about 20 years or so ago, I found other systems superior to D&D. Many gamers tried to correct me. Just as the 1st Edition fans correct the 2nd Editon fans who correct the 3rd Edition fans. Same goes with MTG. There are definitely better CCG's out there than MTG, but the defenders will defend no matter what. Most won't even try many other CCG's and some will try them only to discover why they aren't as good as MTG.

Wanna know what I think?

I think lots of games are good. MTG is a good game, so is D&D. No doubt Caylus is too. AOS is good and I also like 7-card Stud better than Texas Hold 'Em and I like Formula De better than Speed Circuit. But I'll play them all and most likely I'll lose a few and win a few. Just like in Puerto Rico or in my somewhat questionable choices in female companions.

Hmmmm.... I'll get back to you on the "win a few" part when it comes to romance. Perhaps "There is only One" in that department and I just barely missed her 32 years ago when I arrived at a party 20 minutes late. Well, whatever, she probably hasn't aged well and has now added 200 pounds and 5 unruly kids to her life, along with a husband that makes Homer Simpson look cultured and urbane. Or maybe I'm thinking of one of my ex's, there was that one who did add 200 pounds and a clutch of squawking brats not 5 years after we parted company.

Anyway, back to games.

My whole point here is that there really isn't "Only One". There are just too many good games out there to ever truly determine that any specific game is somehow better than another game if both are really, really good to begin with. Games are all about who you play them with and the mechanics and clarity of play, along with other elitist traits like "weight" and "elegance" only matter if the group you're playing the game with is somehow focused on those traits above other positives aspects of the game. I've played several thousand games in my lifetime and hope to play that many others before the Great Pale offers up it's door to me. Looking back at the images, sounds and emotions of thousands of game sessions with as many different people, I personally could never be so frickin' self-centered as to declare any particular game as THE ONE.

I will offer this though, to those who are utterly convinced that such a thing as THE ONE exists... there are what I think should be called defining moments in gaming. Specific sessions, people, interaction and environment that all combine just the right mixture and the perfect qualities and generate a memorable experience. And if you can sustain those elements, keeping them all in play over a series of game sessions, then you could easily be convinced that it's the game that made the experience. And you might mistakenly think that that game is truly The Highlander of all games.

Of course if you did that, you'd have immediately reduced yourself to a slobbering fanboy and I wouldn't trust your lousy judgement on a printed bus schedule, much less a game.

If Caylus never reaches #1, or if it does get there but fails to inspire lively defense from the Puerto Rico Cult, I'll be happy to set you up with that date I offered earlier. My recent ex is very attractive and I would only suggest that you bring a suitcase full of money, some tie-downs and WD-40 for her brood, a set of jumper cables for her vehicles, earplugs, manure rake and possibly a bottle of anti-depressants. That last item will be for you.

In the meantime, I think I'll go home and mix a drink, see what Tivo has for me and savor my recent Railroad Tycoon victory... thanks to that Raleigh/Atlanta route card.

NEWS of the Day

There have been several developments that have transpired since I commenced to begin writing this today, such as the creation of the "BoardGameNews" site with Rick Thornquist as the managing editor on that! For many, then this is a welcome 'relief' as it keeps the ole 'Rickster' upon the ''gaming scene'' for their reading fulfillment requirements. I'll place the LINK to that here as well, while we should be soon adding that upon our ''site LINKs'' here too:

http://www.boardgamenews.com/

You may have to 'copy & paste' that for the time being as I'm not certain if this LINK will show up for 'clicky' response once I've 'published' this entry. I wish the folks over there on the 'site' the very BEST regards for this, as I'm certain that others join with me in this sentiment. If I'm not mistaken, then they may even be taking 'content' contributions from plenty of other 'authors', with considerations given for those who have a decided 'preference' by others.

The next 'item' on this subject is a ''call-out'' for some 'Playtesters' to aid the folks at the ''Deer Valley Game Company'' with their upcoming release of ''The Gettysburg Campaign'' game! It is based upon the BLOCK-style of games and looks very impressive for this 'effort', while not too many 'Battle Campaign' games in this genre are currently available. This appears to be akin to the ''Napoleon'' game in its presentation, with a few NEW 'twists' provided in it that will distinguish itself from any others. Here's the LINK to their site then:

http://www.dvgc.com/tgbc.html

As I mentioned before, then you may have to 'copy & paste' that IF it doesn't become 'clicky' here. It'll certainly be a welcomed 'addition' to these sorts of GAMEs, while providing yet another ''feather in their cap'' for those folks as well. These are the 'guys' who also created their ''SQUARES-the Civil War Battle Game'', and if you check into them further, then you'd also take note that there are some VARIANT articles and 'addendum' for other games that they've done too.

Now, on to my 'own' announcement about the creation of the ''GLOGs''!
While this will mean: ''a Gaming Log'' and is a 'means' for doing just that! I've created the first of these on its seperate 'locale' with several 'items' in that for the time being. I expect other GAME additions for this when I can provide them, and it is a great method to 'display' YOUR own 'playings' in this fashion! Here's the LINK then, with the same 'precaution' about its 'clickyness':

http://grogsglogforfortressamericax.blogspot.com/

Those shown on the 'site' provide just about ALL that you'll need to know about them, IF you're already familiar with the basic GAME that they are based upon. There could even become actual ''Boardgames'' created from THIS, with the 'right' amount of motivation from many others who'd care for such. The GAME 'bits' are even STILL being produced by ''XENO'' of Canada, while with enough persuasion, then maybe they'll put together an entire SET of theirs for others to use in these shown so far. I have several other 'notions' that I'm entertaining, as well as what I've created thus far, and when I believe those to be ready in ''consummation'' for 'display' purposes, then I'll provide them as well.

The View from the Fifth Floor

I've found myself drawn to Knizia's Palazzo lately, and have been studying the rules, playing solo games, and trying to figure out what makes the game tick. Naturally there's something to see on a superficial level, namely the little puzzle of how best to go about constructing buildings given a specific situation and the trade-off between shooting for many easy buildings or fewer hard building with more bonus VPs, but is that what the game is really about? Certainly that alone is nothing to catapult a jaded gamer out of his armchair and into his FLGS. I've found, however, that there is a slightly deeper, more subtle level to the game, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to express what that is here.

What is interesting about Palazzo from a design standpoint is that it turns most of the familiar qualities of the auction mechanism on their head. The current trend in auction games is that of tighter and tighter finances, even to the extreme case of a game like Industria where shortness of funds essentially prevents players from being able to execute any long-term strategy. In most of these games the trick is to correctly evaluate the worth of an item or items up for sale, gauge the interest of the other players, and try to either secure the item at or below fair market value or make another player pay more for the item than it is worth. Palazzo, on the other hand, gives us the opposite situation: money is quite easy to come by; in fact it falls right into your lap when another player chooses to take cash, and in certain funny circumstances your finances might improve more than the active player if he leaves you a card that allows you to meld into a fifteen-point group.

One might imagine, then, that the pressure is instead to have sufficient money to acquire particularly valuable lots as they come up for auction, and certainly this is the case to some degree; a fifth matching floor for a palazzo made up of one material is no small amount of points. However, it is the players themselves who choose when the auctions happen; as some have correctly pointed out, all the players in the game could decide to do nothing but take money until the pile was gone, and the tiles currently up for grabs would patiently sit and wait for them. Moreover, the three-gold certificate is not such an overwhelming advantage to the auctioneer that there is a significant trade-off between calling the auction yourself and letting others do it for you.

In order to understand what's really going on in Palazzo, one has to make note of three things: first, there's only so many tiles that a player can buy in one turn (three is the maximum, in fact); second, it is important to acquire both the early tiles and the late ones; and third, it is possible for players to sidestep the auctions entirley. What this means is that a certain nebulous opportunity cost must be factored into every purchase, and also that the game is not about precise evaluation but rather staying ahead of the pace of acquisitions in the game.

Up to this point I've been talking about Palazzo in terms of an auction game, as this is how it is usually described by the drive-by reviewers (as they seem to take a certain pleasure in writing "do we really need another auction game from Herr Knizia?"), but actually it's not quite so, for players can simply buy tiles from the building supply instead. Certainly one is also populating the quarries for the hoarders in doing so, but only up to a point. What is important here is one particular rule, presented in the rulebook as if it were a bit of fiddliness to take care of aberrant situations, and one which I confess didn't fully sink in until the third read-through. Here it is: "Exception: if there are four or more building tiles on the quarry with the master builder, these are not auctioned. Instead, the players do the following: the player whose turn it is takes one of the tiles and builds it. Then the others follow in clockwise order, each taking one of these tiles and building with it. After each player has taken one building tile, the players place any remaining tiles on that quarry face down in the box." What this means is that if the players are being threatened by one or more opponents collecting money and waiting for the auctioning to start, they can dodge the auctions, and the quarries will eventually fill up to the point where all the tiles will just be handed out evenly when an auction finally is called.

Tiles being handed out to opponents or being chucked back into the box is particularly devastating to hoarders because one cannot make up for buying nothing in the early game by buying double one's share in the late game. The building tiles are distributed among the three stacks in such a way that lower floors come first and higher floors come later, and this is done not just to make it easier for players to build valid structures but to ensure that players pace themselves, because in order to get the juicy bonuses a player's palazzo needs both a penthouse and a lobby.

With all this in mind, it seems to me that what Palazzo is really about is not so much commodity evaluation as outpacing your opponents in acquisition, which means always knowing where you are in relation to your opponents in terms of money and points. Finding opportunities to get ahead, noticing when your competition is unusually rich or unusually poor and then acting accordingly, keeping the pressure on in terms of pace, holding a cash reserve so that no one else can get too good of a deal in the auctions, and even being aware of what tiles are likely to come down the pike next are the subtleties of game play that elevate Palazzo above the luckfest that some have taken it for.

I'll also mention that the comments that the game's mechanisms are unoriginal are off the mark. I've never heard of another game which has a rondelle mechanism for populating and auctioning lots in the way that Palazzo does, though of course I haven't played everything. The three suits plus limited melding also creates an interesting effect where one's finances have a fun and unpredictable fluctuation about them.

The only problem with all this is that Palazzo is a game that is so subtle—in some way the anti-gamer's gamer's game in that it is not quite a luckfest yet it is unsolvable to the degree that it may require more intuition than analysis—that it has a complex, epicurean feel to it which is not what necessarily leaps to mind when someone thinks about what it means to play a game. If High Society is a buffalo wing and Taj Mahal a filet mignon, Palazzo is a really kick-ass risotto.

Still, I'm not quite sure what to make of it overall. I'd need more actual playings to really come to a decision on where it stands within the Knizia canon. However, while I might understand why someone may feel that it doesn't grab one by the collar and give one a good shaking, I still think that those who are dismissing the outing with a wave of their hand are letting their haste get the better of them.

Black Friday/Advanced Civ

Here's hoping all of you had a good Thanksgiving. Even you foreigners who aren't familiar with Thanksgiving, and Canadians, who celebrate it on the wrong day.

That brings us to my least favorite day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving. In America today is the biggest, busiest shopping day of the year, the oldies channel switches to non-stop Christmas music, and I start arguing with Dame Coldfoot about when to put up the Christmas tree.

Woooo-Hoooo.

The only bright spot is the annual Advanced Civilization game. The plan is to start today at 10:00 a.m. and play until it is over. If the game gets over before midnight we will play a couple other games. Those of you familiar with Advanced Civ are shaking your head, but it is a possibility. The last game of Advanced Civ lasted less than 8 hours. With no timers, I might add.

The winning strategy in our group is well known, but hard to implement. The key to winning is to start with a civilization far from Walt and Bruno (Bruno Sinigaglio to those of you grognards who might know him). About 1/2 way into the game Walt and Bruno get bored and start attacking their neighbors. If those two start adjacent to each other it is much easier on everyone else, but when the game is 3/4 done they both realize they are losing and team up with no purpose other than to cause havoc.

Good times. I can hardly wait.

I have been waiting 18 months to try it, but today I will implement Cavedog's card buying strategy, and report back. I do note that Nate Sandall (Cavedog) doesn't allow for the possibility of sitting next to Walt or Bruno. I may need to modify the strategy to allow for defense against repeated, pointless attacks. Road Building and the Religious advances may play a more important role when facing an opponent who has lost all interest in winning the game.

I also think Nate underestimates the Architecture advance. Being able to pay to build cities out of the treasury is an important advance if you are one of the leaders, and I plan on leading. It also makes calamities much easier to deal with. With Architecture you can easily recover from most calamities, even multiple calamities, in the next round. The Civil War calamity is still a problem, but Civil War is a problem whether or not you have Architecture.

To effectively implement the strategy I suspect I will need to bring a cheat-sheet. Notes are allowed in Civ, aren't they? Doesn't matter. No one playing the game will read this blog until after the game. Most of the people who will be there aren't blog readers anyway.

I've heard of another Civilization strategy that I have never had the opportunity to use for various reasons. It will only work with certain civilizations, and I suspect it is a strategy better suited to regular Civilization due to the limit on number of cards you can hold. But, it goes something like this;

Do not build any cities until you can comfortably build three cities. This may mean not progressing on the progress track for a turn. The next turn build 2 more cities.

This will leave you with a 1, 2, and 3 commodity from the first turn and a 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 commodity from the second turn. That leaves you with a total of eight commodities, the maximum hand size going into the next round. You can trade if you like, there is little chance of drawing a calamity so early in the game.

You will theoretically get 5 more commodities in the next round, and you may be able to found another city or two giving you a couple more commodities. You will have a good hand of at least 13 cards with which to trade and relatively few of those cards will be 1s and 2s. With so many cards to trade early on, you should be able to snag a couple higher value advances early in the game.

This strategy can be adapted to certain civilizations in desert areas (such as Africa) as follows;

Do not build any cities until you can build two. Build one more city on the next turn. Build nothing on the next turn. You will now have the maximum of eight cards, and have (probably) not missed a chance to move up the progress chart. On the next turn build two more cities or even 3 if you can. You will have a lot of 1 and 2 commodities, but you will probably be able to trade off your 4 and 5 commodities for two or three low cards each. With good trades you can end up with a pile of low cards. The exponential value of cards will lead to a good payoff, and, like I said, you shouldn't get held up on the progress chart.

I am more skeptical of that strategy than Cavedog's, but I suppose it sounds alright on its face. It does seem like it is a strategy better suited to regular Civilization, no?

And way down here. Way at the bottom. I will add a small contest to this blog. One geek gold to the person who posts a comment correctly answering this question: How is the value of commodity sets calculated in Civilization?

For example, one "1" value card is worth one point. If you have six "1" cards they are worth thirty-some-odd points. One "2" card is worth two points, six "2" cards are worth seventy-some-odd points.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend,
Coldfoot

Five Games I'm Thankful For: '05

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Americans. Since I have the misfortune to post on Thanksgiving Day proper, I figure there's only a few dozen of you reading, max (and that only thanks to the International nature of the Internet), and so I've decided to go with a pretty light & fluffy topic this week: five games I'm thankful for.

They're not necessarily the best games I've played, nor even the games that I've played most, but in various ways they've made me happy over the years. When I've reviewed the game in question, I also included a link to my review over at RPGnet. Go check that out for some more thoughts on the game in question.

#1: The Settlers of Catan
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9971.phtml

The Settlers of Catan gets a lot of respect as a gateway game, and guess what, it was my gateway into the Euro-gaming field. I'd known about Settlers for years. Heck, I even had a copy of the original Mayfair edition, but it didn't get played nearly as much as Wiz-War, Titan: The Arena (another fine American release as far as I knew), or Mystic War. It was an odd and quaint amusement. I'm not even sure when or why I bought it!

Then 2002 came around, and I started making plans at work to design a new online strategy game using an underlying code base that we'd already developed for a game called Galactic Emperor: Hegemony. It was to be a real-time science-fiction game of trade & commodities.

"You should play some trade games", my boss said, and he suggested The Settlers of Catan as an obvious first step. What followed was several months of fighting with our poorly run local game store (a topic for next week), trying to get them to stock the various Settlers supplements. Most I got piece-by-piece, but the historical supplements I had to purchase from Mayfair direct, at GenCon. My group and I played through Settlers, then Seafarers, then Cities & Knights. We even tried out Canaan and of course the official historical supplements. Afterward I moved into other trade games like Res Publica and Bohnanza and by that point I was fully invested in the German scene.

I've been recording my games played at BGG since October, 2003. In that time I've played almost a thousand games, and only about half-a-dozen of them were Settlers. Nonetheless I remain thankful for it getting me into the hobby which has given me many hours of enjoyment over the last few years.

#2: Scrabble

On March 12, 1999, my not-yet-wife and I went out on first date. We'd been working out together for a few weeks due to a friend-in-common, but this time our friend-inc-commo had been busy, but we decided to work out anyway. Afterward we figured, hey, why not hang out some more. We wandered to a very distant Thai restaurant, and afterward went to the Albatross, a cute little bar that's renowned for the fact that it has board games that you can borrow while drinking.

So we got a couple of ciders and a game of Scrabble. We played hard and in the end I beat her by a single point. That was clearly kismet, and a sure sign of our compatible interests and intelligences.

In the weeks and months that followed, Scrabble was a serious part of our courtship, played quite regularly. By the time we moved in together, at the end of the summer, we had three copies of the game, one regular copy that had been at my house, one that had been at hers, and a deluxe copy that we'd bought at some time, with larger pieces and a lazy susan. All three copies are still about the house that we now live in.

Scrabble is another game that has fallen off over the years. When we want to play a word game, we usually play her favorite, which is Boggle, because if we end up playing one of my favorites instead ... well that isn't Scrabble anymore (nolstalgia aside).

#3: Mystery Rummy
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9872.phtml

By the end of 2003, Kimberly and I did still play games of various types. Scrabble, Boggle, The Ungame, Loaded Questions, Scattergories, and A to Z were the ones that got pulled out with the most frequency. However in late 2003 I was also delving even further into These Games of Ours. In October I received an order from funagain (having by now given up on that poorly run local game store) and it contained Mystery Rummy #1: Jack the Ripper.

It was the first of several packages that I received over the next several months which contained games that I thought Kimberly would like, and it was also the first success. We played the bejeezus out of Jack the Ripper and later the other games in that series. This is yet another game that we don't play much any more, though I bet we do again when #5 comes out.

It was also yet another gateway game, but this one opened up my wife to share in at least some fraction of the deeper, more strategic games that I'd discovered.

#4: Memoir '44
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10372.phtml

Though my wife enjoys playing games, and though she's grown quite fond of Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Mystery Rummy, Alhambra, and a few others, she's often quite resistant to learning new games. I, meanwhile, have a constant desire for newness.

Enter Memoir '44. It's a two-player war-game, and I never would have bought it on my own, because I couldn't have imagined Kimberly enjoying it. But I got it as a review copy from Days of Wonder, and Kimberly was even kind enough to agree to play it, because she knew I needed to write a review. Much to my surprise, she liked it quite a bit.

To date we've played 32 games over the last year and a half. It satisfies Kimberly's desire to keep playing the same old thing and it satisfies my desire to keep playing something new (as I wrote about in a previous article).

We've played Ticket to Ride more, ditto Carcassonne if you count up all the variants, but it's this one that continues to be the most fun.

#5: El Grande
http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10167.phtml

We offer talk about "gateway" games, which help players get into the hobby, but we don't pay nearly as much attention to another category of games, those which help open up the hobby for us, to show us the depths of possibility, the real tactics and real strategy that can be found here. These are transformative games, which change the way we play.

"Stairway" games, "mineshaft" games, I'm not really sure what to call them. For many people, I suspect this game is Puerto Rico. For me it was El Grande. It offered up much more intricate, rich, and strategic gameplay than I'd seen before in games like Settlers (which is light) and Res Publica (which is short), and thus it became one of my models for what I wanted to see in new games.

I've only played it face-to-face a half-dozen times. It's too long & too big to get dragged down to my local game store very often. If I looked now I could see some cracks in the game's facade, like how easy it is for an early leader to get absolutely pummelled. But it still remains one of my must-plays, a game that I won't turn down unless time constraints disallow its play.

Your Turn

What's your Settlers? What's your El Grande?

What games are you thankful for?

The Teacher Gets and "F"

Friday my son, Chris, and his girlfriend, Jessica, came over and after a game of Ingenious, I brought out Hansa to teach them. Jessica doesn’t really enjoy games and has said a couple of times that she likes Trivial Pursuit, a game I find dead boring and a waste of way too much time, so my goal has been to find simple yet challenging games that she will enjoy playing. She liked Ingenious enough to request it on this night but it isn’t a game that I want to play and play and play, hence the shot at Hansa.

Once I’d laid out the pieces and started explaining the relationship between buying goods/selling goods and the markets I realized that it doesn’t actually sound that simple and this thought was echoed by Jessica who said, “You said this was going to be simple.”

“I know it sounds complicated now but it’ll be clearer when you see how it works,” I replied with my fingers crossed.

Now I know from experience that just because you gave all the rules, doesn’t mean they all sank in, especially with non-gamers, because there’s nothing to relate the rules to until you’ve seen it in action. My solution for this is to point out how the game works while it’s in progress.

“If you move there, you can pick up the good for free since you have the majority of markets.”

“If you move there, you can sell those goods which means Richard loses his good—it’s out of the game.”

“You can only sell goods where you have a market so it’s good to have them spread out around the board.”

This is how the teacher’s mind is focused: help Jessica “get it” so she enjoys it and won’t mind playing again. Add to this the fact that Chris has a tendency to analyze each move to within an inch of its life so we were doing a lot of talking and laughing and maybe you’ll understand why, in the middle of the game on Jessica’s turn, I look over and see that she has NINE gold to spend this turn. Danger, danger, Will Robinson! Now I finally look at the big picture and do an assessment of the board and realize that she has the majority in 5 cities while Chris has 2 and Richard and I have 1 each. We’ve been buying goods from her the whole round and she’s going to kill us if we can’t get some markets out there. Unfortunately, she has 4 or 5 markets in a couple of cities which is hard to beat and at this point the board has a scattering of chits, mostly 1 and 2 barrel which isn’t very helpful because it’s going to cost me all my gold just to pick one up. Can you say, “Deep doo-doo”?

Desperation set in and I found myself spending a pair of goods with 2 and 3 barrels on them to build markets (oh, the pain, the pain) and even skipping a couple of turns since the only thing I could do was pick up a 1 goods chit which I would have to buy from Jessica. In the end it was just too late and we had let Jessica get the upper hand. The final scores were Me-30, Richard-35, Chris-38 and Jessica with an impressive 50.

On the plus side, I don’t think it will be too hard to convince Jessica to play it again. Then the teacher will stay home and the gamer will sit in her place.
~~~~~~~~

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in America—a day we gather with our family and friends, taking time from our hectic lives to relax and remember all that we have to be thankful for. We watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with it’s giant balloons in the shapes of cartoon characters; singers and dancers, marching bands and finally Santa Claus. We eat turkey and stuffing, yams and cranberry sauce, potatoes and gravy and maybe that green bean casserole with the crunchy deep-fried onions on the top, and finish up with a piece of pumpkin pie. We watch football games, and talk and laugh with the ones we love.

Both of my children will be here, which is an unusual occurrence, along with Jessica and her father and Chris’ little dog, Bart—a Pomeranian-Dachshund mix who loves playing with our Corgi, Tucker. The cats will be in hiding, wondering why all these people have invaded their quiet and why that little dog keeps showing up and wanting to play with them. Whether we play a game or not isn’t important. It’s the time together, sharing the day, that’s important.

I wish you all a wonderful, noisy, laughing, loving Thanksgiving.
~~~~~~~~

Mary

Gaming Risks

This thread discusses the hazards of trying to import a game with nazi symbols on it into Germany. Can't say that I blame the guy for feeling frustrated, but I can't say that I blame the custom officials or German laws, either.

My own group refused to play a game (Origins of World War II) simply because it had a picture of Hitler on the cover.

This leads to the deeper yet gingerly ignored issue of violent games in general. Games about killing, especially games depicting symbology of real-world evils and horrors, are not fun to some people. In fact, they are highly offensive to some people. Like violent video games, they don't lead to violent behavior (necessarily), but they do desensitize us to violence.

Isn't it possible that when we play games about raping, pimping, beating up women and children, slaughtering innocent bystanders, shooting cops, etc. that we don't work as hard to solve these problems in the real world, because we have gotten blase about them?

Is anything sacrilige? Is everything relative? Is censorship the only evil? Is it possible to make critical decisions without generalizing about slippery slopes?

Yehuda

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ Why Railroad Tycoon is Like a Topless Dancer

It's late Sunday evening and I'm feeling pretty tired from two back-to-back games of Railroad Tycoon. Since RRT hit the streets I've played it about seven times. At least 12 or so locals have learned the rules, the store is sold out of copies and it currently occupies the majority of the headspace I've allotted to thinking about games.

When RRT came out for the pc I had the same experience. Also when RRT 2 came out. RRT 3 didn't create that same inner need for compulsively gaming, so I removed it from my pc, reloaded RRT 2 and played it some more.

I'm beginning to see a pattern here. I latch on to a game and then play it until I'm done playing it. Then I put it away, sometimes for a year or two and sometimes never to open it again. I did this with Settlers of Catan, I did it with Bang!, I did it with Empire Builder, I did it with Magic: The Gathering, with Dungeons & Dragons, with Wolfpack, with Fortress America and so forth and so on, ad nasuem.

I'd almost say I'm exhibiting addictive behaviour, except that I know that almost every man, woman and child who counts "board games" as one of their hobbies does the same thing. So we're not addicted, we're fans. If there were less of us and people looked at us with disdain, crossed the street when they saw us coming and muttered under their breath about street crime and wasted youth, then we would be addicts. We're not addicts. We're fans.

So what is it about a game like Railroad Tycoon that instills the desire to play again and again and again? And why didn't I get that feeling after finally completing a game of World In Flames? And why did I totally burn out on Puerto Rico after 6 or 7 plays and was only able to open the game up without feeling queasy and sick until at least a year after my quick romance with it? Why are most war games so frickin' unapproachable? And while they are often high quality experiences, most of us need to do something else for a while, gamewise, before we crack open War in the Pacific for a repeat play.

To answer my own questions, I think games like RRT and Ticket to Ride and many other popular games have several things going for them that hit a sweet spot in most gamers.

* Accessibility

Most of the games I've developed this sort of behaviour towards are relatively easy to learn and teach. They require very little in the way of arcane thought processes to a novice or brand new gamer. This quality gives the game a much wider audience.

* Speed of play

Most of these games play fast with very little down-time between your turns.

* Attractive

For the most part, and you have to allow for some leeway here in terms of personal tastes and the era of the game, the games are visually appealing before and during play. Railroad Tycoon is no slouch in this department. And even the humble little $10 Bang! feels good and has a presentation that suits the subject matter.

* Hope

Usually a game that inpires this level of willingness to play repeatedly doesn't leave the player feeling like they can't win. Typically you can always post-mortem a session and see how to approach the game even better next time. Which means you want to play again right now and try your plan out.

* Chance

Almost every game that has gotten into my gut this way has a chaotic side to it. You don't feel programmed and that strikes a chord in the majority of human beings. Having a sense that unseen events, a turn of the cards or a risk taken might just be exploited and fall into cadence with your march to victory is very alluring.

Looking these five qualities over it's apparent these may not be the qualities of the top ten or even top twenty-five rated games on websites like www.boardgamegeek.com, but they certainly are the qualities of many games that sell extremely well and that appeal to the vast majority of people who are inclined to spend time and money playing board games.

Upon closer inspection, they also fit right in with the things I look for in a woman.

Hmmm... they also seem to be the qualities I look for in my personal choice of cars and motorcycles.

I'm sensing a pattern here.

My old buddy Mike Johnson, who, while working at my store, was awarded the coveted Employee of the Month status for three weeks running, often comments on this blog and challenges me to a round of Renegade Legion. Sorry Mike, Renegade Legion is like an old girlfriend, she was fun when I was young, but now I know way too much about her laundry, her psychiatrist, her family and why she holds me forever in contempt. I could no more get a thrill out of kicking your ass again in that game than I could in dating my 9th grade sweetheart now that she's fifty.

Which leads me to the firm belief that the games that have these five qualities tend to be short term fixations. And that may answer the question as to why Puerto Rico and a few other unalterably boring, scripted and visually unappealing games remain so highly rated. They usually require way too much cerebral activity and not enough Yee-ha! activity. They aren't sexy. But they are durable, reliable and satisfying when brought out in the right company.

What I'm suggesting here is that games that don't have these five qualities require too much work to extract the same level of uninterrupted enjoyment from. They're good, of that you can be sure, but they're not really that much fun.

Which, now that I look closely at it, my choices in games, women and vehicles usually has a lot more to do with Yee-Ha! than it does sensible spending and quiet evenings sipping chai tea with a couple of IT goobers who don't like to be interrupted by conversation while they're selecting a building in a boring game depicting the enslavement and abuse of half the population of Africa and the eventual exploitation of them on a fetid little island off the coast of Florida that had little more to offer than commodities, cockroaches and really good baseball players.

Yes, I will play Puerto Rico and yes, I will play Europe Engulfed (to mention two different types of games that rate highly), but no, I won't play them instead of Railroad Tycoon. At least not right now anyway. Why would I willingly drive a 1987 Buick when I can choose to drive a new Corvette? Why would I date someone's spinster sister when I am getting fluttering eyelash semaphore from the former topless dancer and massage therapist swaying drunkenly at the end of the bar?

Wow. I think I just figured it out. Now I know why I get this almost irrepressible desire to repeatedly play the "hot" new game. It's because Railroad Tycoon in very much like a former topless dancer and massage therapist who in her half-drunken state tosses me the keys to her new Porsche and says, "Okay Darlin', let's you and me go for a ride."

Whereas Puerto Rico is akin to being forced to double-date with your best friend's cousin who's visiting from Duluth and the only car available is his great aunt's 1986 Chevy Celebrity with the fuel efficient four-cylinder engine.

And the more I think about it, the less important it is to waste precious time playing the dry and themeless offerings that so many tout as superior. You have to take advantage of the situation at hand when a new Yee-Ha! game appears, enjoy the ride while it's still being offered. A fast and exciting game with twists, turns, unforseen events, wild suprises, shock, elation and adrenaline needs to be saddled and rode while it's still willing to hang out in your pasture. The bloom comes of that particular rose a lot quicker than some and I want to sniff it while it's a rose, not when it's all shrivelled and dried up.

Your buddy's cousin in Duluth? Yeah, yeah, she'll still be there next year and the Chevy Celebrity will still be snootily using less gas than the fast car. So what's the big rush? Besides which, like Puerto Rico, she started out kind of dry and shrivelled up and was never particularly exciting anyway. So I'll call her if I'm in town sometime with nothing better to do.

_____________________________________________

I also want to comment, in a half serious manner, about how excellent I think the production quality of many of the new games is. Games Like Railroad Tycoon, Descent and many other recent releases have really upped the bar on board game quality in general. Even some of the card games and lower priced games from the likes of Rio Grande Games and many others have a look, feel, smell and heft that is pleasing to those that find themselves pleased by such things.

I suspect the fact that more and more, the publishers are adding a lot of eye-candy and curb appeal to their games, but not because they think they need it to attract you to the game. I think it's because they have figured out that these factors really do expand the desirabilty of board games and that on a gut level, that's how they'll draw new players into the market.

The latest in GAME expounding & expanding!

For some of YOU that may have taken the time and looked over a little 'workings' of mine elsewhere, then I present this HERE now, and fully available for anyone's 'purposes'. Yes, I'd finally finished THIS little 'project' and so I bring it up for ALL to partake of and use(if you want), once they've printed out and/or 'created' the necessary components for such. Just WHAT I'm going 'on' about is the "Expanded Order of Battle" for "the Russian Campaign" 2nd/3rd editions game! This was derived from many others 'efforts' in enhancing the 'game' with their ways & means for it, while I've done the 'stuff' that you do see here on that! Here they are then and you can decide for yourself what you think of it.




















I tried to cover ALL of what was 'desired' and from what I'd gleaned concerning this matter over the decades, with some other considerations of my own. In case you're wondering about the duplicate "Soviet" Units, then I've provided BOTH 'sets', with one of these having 'white' SET UP numbers, and another with 'black' ones to distinguish them from ''regular'' GAME counters. There's even some ''Weather'' notation markers to help keep track of that aspect, as well as some 'extra' RAIL markers in case anyone needs them. For the most part, then it IS a ''labor of love'' for such a venerable 'gaming partner' and excellent GAME overall, of mine, and for others too I'd believe. Everything regarding THIS should be 'covered' or explained enough upon the CHARTS, while you'd follow the ''regular'' game's RULES as well. I've been wanting to try this out myself and since I don't mind what little time and materials it would take to create this, then I hope others will enjoy it as much as I expect to. I'm sure there'll be some folks who need a bit more 'prodding' to convince them to give it a 'go', while I already have been 'convinced' with the notions presented here, and especially as it should provide additional 'playings' thusly.

There are many another's 'leanings' upon their ''favorite'' games, and we ALL should welcome their efforts in these regards. It doesn't necessarily mean that you HAVE to like them, but at least someone is displaying their 'devotion' for that-or some such-while providing additional musings for our collective 'amusements'.

Boardgamers - The Next Generation

This week's guest blogger is another gaming mom from America's heartland. She has been one of the premier female voices on Boardgamegeek for some time now.

Denise Patterson-Monroe's, aka Denise on BGG, comments are always worth the read. She was an easy choice for me to extend an invitation to write an article for Gone Gaming. Denise is perhaps best known for her article on writing a good game review. Those of you who have ever written a game review on Boardgamegeek may have noticed "Click here for help on writing game reviews" on the review page. Clicking will bring up Denise's timeless advice on writing a game review. I consider the fact that I wrote the first comment on that particular article to be one of my brushes-with-greatness. Of course I have no life.

BTW, I still haven't figured out how to roll the dice so they stay on the table, or to otherwise not cause a calamity with the game pieces, so if you don't want your kids to turn out like me take notes while you read this.

Coldfoot

Survey the boardgamers you know and I bet all of them played boardgames as children. Survey all the non-gamers you know and, well, not so much, you'll find a lot more people who never played as kids. (And the people who DID play games as a kid but don't anymore are often good candidates to lure back into the fold with Ticket to Ride, but that's another topic altogether.)

But the kids! If you are interested in keeping boardgaming going for the next generation and not just relegating Settlers to being an obscure fad of the '90s, the kids are where you have to go. Drag 'em away from the X-Box and show them there is A Better Way.

Sounds easy enough - if you are a parent. And I expect most of the non-parents have skipped to the next blog by now anyway. But hang in there, non-parents! Some of you may yet become parents, and others may have nieces or nephews, some of you may be (or know) teachers, Sunday school teachers - even for non-parents, there are lot of ways we can reach out to the Youth of Today. Dare to be the fun grownup at the next inter-generational gathering you attend!!

Now there are lots of articles that list good games to play with kids. That's not where I'm going with this. Kid games come and go, as do regular Euros, so anything I list could be out of print next year. This is a strategy article. I'll list some specific examples, sure, but only for illustration - you can apply these basic principles to a great number of games.

Where to begin? Depends on the age of the child. Once they are seven or eight or so, you really have no problems. Pull out your standard gateway games, get 'em into Carcassonne and you can go from there pretty easily. But honestly, an eight year old who has never played games, or only played roll and move games, may not 'get it'. Hopefully they will, but ideally you want to lay the foundation at an earlier age.

That's right, start 'em young! As soon as they are old enough to not eat the pieces is the right age. For the youngest, look for games that are extremely simple. In fact, don't think of gaming with this age as gaming at all - think of it as introducing basic game mechanics. I've played Snail's Pace Race with kids as young as two (watch them closely to make sure they don't eat the dice!). Keep in mind toddlers have to be taught EVERYTHING, including how to shake and roll the dice, and how to move the pieces one space at a time. This is actually a good opportunity - we've all played with people who can't roll dice without rolling at least one of them off the table, teach them how to roll properly at age two or three and it won't be an issue later.

A couple other things to look for in the very first game you introduce to a very young child. Colorful, high quality bits are good. Not only are they more attractive for the little 'un, (always keeping in mind you don't want the kid to eat the pieces!), but you'll be competing with the video games sooner than you think. Length of game is important too - no more than fifteen minutes for the youngest set when you are first introducing game, and even shorter is better. Candyland is a HORRIBLE game in this regard, goes on WAY too long for what it is.

Non-competitive or less competitive games are good too - yes, we need to teach the budding gamer to be a good sport, but that can come after you show them how FUN games are. Remember, at this age you aren't really teaching them to game, you are teaching them pre-gaming skills. Sportsmanship isn't going to happen at age three. You can (and MUST) demonstrate it yourself, but don't expect it of them yet. If you start demonstrating sportsmanship to a very young child, you are giving them a model that they can draw on later when they are a little more mature. They will need MANY reminders and kindly reinforcements for several years yet - you must be very patient. Don't tolerate outrageous behavior, no tantrums allowed, but you can still be kind about it.

For a slightly older child of four, five, or six, start considering outside factors. Unless you know the child is a precocious reader, all games should have no reading, maybe a few symbols to remember. Although an interested child can rise above this - my daughter at age 4 memorized all the spaces on Monopoly Jr because she loved the game SO much. But when you are first starting, don't assume they will be that interested - if it happens, great, but don't bank on it.

Consider who the child is most likely to get to play with. If you give a game like Coloretto that requires three players to the only child of a single parent, you are setting that child up for a poor experience, as they may never even get to play the game before they forget about it. If the child has multiple siblings that might be enticed to play, look for games that support more players than something from the Kosmos 2-player line. A shy child should get a game that plays well with two so they can be comfortable with the social interaction, and a social butterfly should get a game that allows them to invite all the friends along.

Theme is important to this age group. Unfortunately. There are a lot of crappy games that are marketed to kids this age based on being tied-in with some popular show or movie or character. There are some good themed games too, of course, but mostly they are not so much. At this age, the adult picking the game needs to be responsible for getting past this potential pitfall. Look for good games that are related to things the kid likes without being an actual tie-in. Don't pick that horrible Quidditch game for the Harry Potter fan, get them Frog Juice instead.

If you want to play up the educational value of a game, tell the parents, not the kid. Yes, King's Breakfast uses some multiplication in the scoring, but let's not turn the kid off by making them think they are in school, ok? Tell the parents - they will be impressed, the kid will just be turned off.

Last, and most important, have fun. The BEST way to get a kid excited about a game is have a blast with it. This is the time to pull out your sound effects, tell stories about your meeple, make pyramids with the bits, all that fun stuff. Change the rules if need be - if you insist on getting all hung up on some obscure scoring rule like the farmers in Carcassonne that the kids don't quite get and therefore the kids are just confused at the end, it's not fun. Ditch the farmers and play with the other rules until the kid is ready for it. If the kids are having a good time, then they are much more likely to want to play the next game with you, and then you have them hooked.

Denise

The Problem with Luck

I am sick to death of people complaining about luck in their board games.

OK, fine, if you can't stand luck at all, and you spend your life playing Chess in a hermetically sealed bubble, I won't complain. That's your call.

But this article is for the rest of you, who happily draw cards, pick tiles, and maybe even (heaven forbid) roll dice in your favorite games--who do all these things, but then complain about the newest Beowulf, Settlers, or Louis XIV, because it's trendy to do so, and all the cool kids are. I'm sick to death of people complaining about luck in their board games because, simply enough, most people don't understand how randomness actually works and don't understand how moderating luck is an important game skill.

The Truly Lucky Game

Yes, there is such a thing as a truly lucky game. Candyland is one of the most simple and obvious example. You draw a card and you move forward to the appropriately colored space.

What's notable about Candyland, however, isn't the fact that there's a random draw of the cards. Instead it's that there is no option for choice. You can't do a darned thing to make your next draw of the cards more or less useful.

That's a truly lucky game.

Controlling Luck

Let's move on to These Games of Ours, which aren't truly lucky in nearly the same way. I think many people would admit that one of the "luckiest" games around is The Settlers of Catan. Don't roll your numbers and you don't produce goods, period. This is lucky, but probably not as much as most people think.

Part of the feeling of luck in The Settlers of Catan is human psychology. We always remember the unusual, not the usual, so that string of no "8"s for half the game stands out, while the other three games where "8" came up an average amount of time aren't remembered. That's Fortune Telling 101.

However another reason that people feel that Settlers of Catan is luckier than it actually is is that they do a bad job of controlling their luck in the game.

Consider the following situation: you have a wheat production on an "8" and you're given an opportunity to build a second wheat production either on an "8" or a "10". Which do you do? Statistically "8" is a better choice, because you're 5.5% more likely to produce there (13.8% v. 8.3%). However that presumes that an arbitrarily large number of rolls will be made, sufficient that all numbers produce according to their probabilities, and that's just not the case in The Settlers of Catan, particularly not as the game goes on. Instead the "10" can often be a better choice because it insures you against a slightly (but not very) unlikely event where "8" doesn't get rolled enough in a single game.

If you complain about the luck in Settlers, but you greedily grabbed up only the most likely production numbers, even if it meant clustering on the same numbers, then it's your own fault that you did poorly, because you didn't attempt to control the randomness of the game.

Risk v. Reward

Another way to look at how to control luck is by measuring risk vs. reward. This is actually a central basis of many games that people call "lucky". In my Settlers example you took a bigger risk (clustering on fewer production numbers) in the hope of a bigger reward (more production). That's fine. It's a meaningful choice, but step up and admit your own culpability in your loss.

Be a man. (Or woman. Or meeple.)

Beowulf is the game that really got me started on this article, and it has the exact same structure. If you take more risks, you're likely to earn more rewards, but you're also likely to be punished more if you fail at the risk. Figuring out when your level of risk is greater than the potential reward and when your level of reward is greater than the potential risk is the heart of those games, and if you're not able to do that well, 3 games out of 4, that's why you lost, not because Joe or Fred got particularly lucky.

Risk/reward's less probabilistic cousin, which you might be more familiar with, is the cost/benefit analysis.

Consider Age of Steam where you might say, "If I defer a move action to upgrade my locomotive from 4 to 5, instead of doing two 3-value moves, I can instead do one 5-value move. Therefore I have a cost of 1 point, plus the cost of using a better cube, all paying for the benefit of upgrading my locomotive." And then you figure out if the cost or the benefit is greater. If the cost is greater you don't take the considered action, if the benefit is, you do.

You can make a similar analysis in Beowulf where you say "I have a 25% chance of failing this risk, which results in my gaining a second scratch and having to defer a draw of two cards down the line to heal myself, but I have a 50% chance of getting one card from the risk and a 25% chance of getting two." And then you figure out if the risk or reward is greater. In this case I can even thumbnail that caculation: the risk = 25% * 2 cards, or a loss of half a card, while the reward = 25% * 2 cards + 50% * 1 card, of a gain of a full card. I take the risk because it has a sum half-a-card benefit.

If you're doing these types of thumbnail calculations, and when you're familiar enough with a game they'll come naturally, then you're playing a risk/reward game right, and if you're just taking chances as they strike you, that's why you're losing.

Perceiving Luck

The thing that really drives me crazy about complaints about luck in games is that it's all about perception. First off, if someone does well in a "lucky" game, more often than not it's attributed to luck. If someone played brilliantly, but was also a little more lucky than average, we see the luck but not the skill.

More importantly, though, people seem to have major knee-jerk reactions to "luck" in a game if it's easier to see. Take Louis XIV an analytical gamer's game released this year. Everyone and their brother complains and complains about the fact that some points are distributed at the end of the game based upon which shields players (randomly) collected.

The thing is, it's just a few percent swing on the points. A player is very unlikely to get more than 1 or 2 points other than his expected value. And, I've never seen those one or two points actually make a difference in a game. I'm sure if I played enough I would, but I consider that a pretty minor cost to the benefit of the game not breaking down with end-game paralysis and king-making.

What really bugs me is the fact I don't think the shields are even the largest random element in Louis XIV. That would be the mission card draw, where randomly drawing particularly good or bad cards can give you very quick swings of +5 points (or alternatively the loss of the tokens that you need to turn in for those same points).

But because the shield lottery happens at the end of the game, everyone kvetches much more than is warranted, and because the card lottery happens on a turn-by-turn basis, everyone forgets about it.

And before I close out, let me offer an additional note about Louis XIV. As with any good game, there's an opportunity to control your luck, to balance risk versus reward. If you lose a game because you tried to take a medium mission, when you might have been able to complete an easy one, that's your fault, and if you won a game because you against all odds completed a hard mission with a lucky draw, that was a reward for the risk that you took.

Probability as Meta-Game

Perhaps people could deal with luck better if they understood it was a sort of meta-game. Yes, I might win an individual game of Settlers/Louis XIV/Beowulf due to a particularly lucky opportunity, which usually means a long risk that I took. You can similarly sometimes win Poker, Bridge, or almost any classic game due to a risk.

However if you keep taking those long risks, you're going to lose a lot more than you win, and that's the meta-game that you have to keep in mind in any game with any random element in it. Poker makes it easy, because those chips mark how someone is doing, long-term. Similarly Bridge has a clever invention called "points" to mark the same. These Games of Ours are longer, and so we usually can't play multiple rounds of a game to even out the luck, but if it really bugs you, figure out how to do so.

In your secret little game notebook you can keep track of how often you beat Crazy Harvey, and then that one time his long risk comes through will be more obviously the fluke that it actually is.

Understanding Luck

I suspect that a lot of players would be a lot happier with the luck in games if they understood the odds. I mean, you don't hear a lot of whining about how you can win a hand of Poker if you happen to draw a Royal Flush, because the average player understands that a Royal Flush is pretty unlikely, and that the idiot player drawing for the same will lose the other 649,739 times.

So, before you condemn the "luck" in a game, try to at least understand it, and to help with that I offer two simple thumbnails for probability calculation.

First, the odds of an event occurring are the numbers of ways it can occur divided by the total number of possible events. So, take Memoir '44 as an example, where you attack with a die with 6 faces: infantry, infantry, tank, grenade, star, retreat. The odds of hitting an infantry with a die are thus 3/6 (infantry, infantry, grenade), the odds of hitting a tank with a die are thus 2/6 (tank, grenade), and the odds of hitting an artillery with a die are thus 1/6 (grenade)--50%, 33%, and 16%.

Second, the expected value (E.V.) of something occurring is the probability of it occurring, times the number of times you take that chance. So, if you're throwing two dice at infantry in Memoir'44, your expected value of kills = 2 * 50%, or 1. If you hit 0 or 2 times, that was slightly unlikely. I'm amazed how often someone has the expected value for something happen in a game, then curses their luck. ("How could I only get one infantry!?")

Finally, with these two simple statistical ideas, you can even start making some good strategic plans. Take Memoir '44 again. By looking at the expected value of a single die roll and the number of hits required to destroy a unit, we can then quickly calculate how many dice we want to throw to have an average chance of destroying a unit:

Unit	Size	Hit E.V. per Die	Avg. Dice Needed
Infantry	4	50%	8
Armor	3	33%	9
Artillery	2	16%	12

And that's one the clearest examples I can offer of how actually understanding the probability of a game, instead of just complaining about it, can improve not just your game experience, but your gameplay too.

A Christmas Carol for Gamers

It’s almost Thanksgiving here in America, which marks the beginning of Christmas carol season in my house. From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, I’m allowed to play Christmas music to my heart’s content, then back on the shelf they go. So in keeping with the season, I’ve come up with a gamer’s version of The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).

M’nop’ly roasting on an open fire,
Choices nipping at your mind,
Many friends and comfortable attire.
Here’s Christmas of a gamer’s kind.

Everybody knows some meeples and some wooden bits
Help to make the season bright.
Grown up tots with their eyes all aglow
Will find it hard to sleep tonight.

They know that Santa’s on his way,
He’s loaded lots of card- and board games on his sleigh.
And every Euro-geek is gonna smile
Because he has enough games now for awhile.

And so I’m offering you this simple phrase
To gamers from 1 to 92.
Although it’s been said in many languages and ways:
Happy Gaming to you.
- - - - - - -
Since I’m thinking about Christmas music, I’d like to recommend the Trans-Siberian Orchestra to anyone who hasn’t already discovered this amazing group. Each album tells a story through the songs which are a mixture of traditional and original compositions with some wonderful arrangements. My favorite is Christmas Eve and Other Stories which tells the story of an angel who is sent to Earth by God to bring back “the one thing that best represents everything good that has been done in the name of this day.”

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Games

I’m in the middle of my second game of Amun-Re online at Spielbyweb. I’ve never played before and I’m completely smitten with this game. (Yes, Kane, I should have listened to you long ago!)

For someone who keeps insisting that she doesn’t like auction/bidding games, I keep running into games that have something unique in them that makes the auction/bidding not only acceptable but fun. Now I have to modify my statement to read “I don’t like once-around bidding games.” Unless I’m the last to bid, I find I’m either being outbid or I bid some ridiculous amount just to finally acquire something. I need to work my way up to the point where I have to decide if $X is too much or does Freddie want this enough to bid even more; I can’t determine how much something is worth with any reliability in just one bid.

Amun-Re’s bidding system is very interesting and also allows for some bluff, if you’re willing to take a chance. Besides that, you’re also faced with some information to help you judge the worth of a province to you and to your opponents, so you’re not just taking a blind stab. Now I can ask myself “how much can you afford to bid and still have enough money to build your province into a money-making point-getter?” “Do you have a card that would make a province worth the extra cost to acquire?” “Are your opponents in the same quandary or are they just being belligerent?”

Yes, this game is tough, interesting and fun and I’m very glad I had the chance to try it out online or I most likely would never buy it. Now it’s very high on my want list and I can’t wait to play it face to face.
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Until next time, safe sailing on whichever sea you find yourself.

Mary

Rules, Rules, Rules

One thing that continually astounds me is the reverence people give to playing a game "by the rules".

Recalling many of the earliest Dragon magazines, I can recall issue after issue of Gary Gygax imploring, and then threatening, his readers about the dangers of changing the rules of D&D. "You will not be playing real D&D!" he warned. When it wasn't about D&D, it was about going to the "right" convention. "Origins is not Gen-con!" Each month it was something else.

Maybe it's me. I am just not the sort of person who has even been able to comfortably conform to all of society's expectation. I need to hack. I need to know why rules are the way they are and push them to their inconsistent limits. It could be because I grew up Jewish in a non-Jewish world. Or it could be that I like attention. Maybe both.

Despite a strict belief in reasonably acting civilized and trying not to hurt other people, however, I am a very strong individualist. I don't like arbitrary restrictions imposed on my liberties, and I don't like codes of behavior best handled by etiquette and manners being enforced by law. If for no other reason than that law is going to muck it up pretty badly.

When I buy music, I like to play it how I like it, sing it how I like it, harmonize with it, maybe even change the words while I'm singing it. This doesn't mean that I don't want to know what the original is, or that I will wreck the tune if singing with a group. But once I know the tune, it is mine. My thoughts, my singing, mine to do what I want with. Sometimes I can come up with better lyrics or even a slightly better tune than the original singer. That is, of course, my opinion.

The same thing happens when I buy games. A game is mine when I buy it. OK, the copyright holder can enforce a very limited restriction on my ownership: I can't create carbon copies and sell them, or create derivative works and sell those without compensation.

But that's it. Once I know how the game works, I am free to change the rules, make variations for private use, play it how I like it. And I do.

Why does that frighten so many people? I so often read people saying "But if you change X it will change the entire game!" Yeah, so what? Or "That's not how the game designer made it!" Again, yeah, so what?

I can tell you that several mechanics work together in my Menorah game; disrupting them will create some imbalances. Some of these may be negative, and some may be positive. Other mechanics I chose totally arbitrarily. If you change them, it may have little or no impact on the overall game play. Again, so what? Do what you want. Experiment, try it out. Be creative!

The mechanics and rules of our games are a cultural heritage that we must sieze as our own, like the lyrics and music of old folk songs. Take them and change them to your heart's content. Mind copyrights and so forth, but build something new. Don't let games devolve into stagnation just because the designer or publisher made some arbitrary decision.

Rip it. Mix it. Burn it. Just play fair.

Yehuda

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ Fish In A Barrel

Driving into town Saturday from my soon to be sold ranch and mosquito breeding facility, I chanced upon Kim Komando’s radio program. She apparently is a leading authority on pc’s and software. Anyway, she related a statistic that shows that electronic gaming is enjoyed by something like 60% of the population of the planet, has sales nearing those of music and movies and that the average age of the pc and console gamer is thirty.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t 60% of the planet, but it was a bunch, a whole bunch.

All this got me to thinking, I'm not a huge fan of electronic games and though I will play them, it's only if forced to by a lack of opponents or by scheduling issues. Komando says the average age of the electronic gamer is high because her generation, I think it was X, grew up playing them. Being a Baby Boomer I grew up playing Chinese Checkers, Chess, Monopoly, Parcheesi and Sorry.

Chess was the hardest for me because my Grandpa, a former German military officer, used to make me play it with him at his ranch/farm/goat-herding-operation out in Cisco, Texas. Every night we’d play and every night I’d lose. Then he’d grab me around the neck with one big ruddy paw and with the other he’d give me a major Noogie on the head as punishment for losing. I never understood why thought physical pain would make me a better chess player. It must have been some sort of German military officer thing.

So my summers usually consisted of shoveling cow manure, beheading chickens, avoiding the sinister herd of goats, who were bent on drowning me in one of the big open wells that dot West Central Texas, and then getting my head rubbed raw by Grandpa Max after losing at chess in the evening. No TV, no radio, no DVD, no Playstation, no MP3's... just Grandpa and his mandolin and Grandma and her big German smile.

Any time I had a chance to play Monopoly or Chinese Checkers or The Game of Life I was thrilled. Roll & Move was my friend. I found myself hungering after board games. Sadly, in the late 50’s and early 60’s there really weren’t a lot of them around. But there were a few and it was getting a copy of an early and very simple wargame that really got me hooked.

I have related the story about my acquisition of the American Heritage Dogfight game at some point on www.boardgamegeek.com, but if you missed it, here it is again.

Long about 1963 I was with my Mom in Dallas for the end of summer. I saw a Milton-Bradley ad in a comic book that had both Dogfight and Broadside advertised. I was thrilled! The two youngsters playing Dogfight in the ad were having a whole lot more fun than I was used to having. Plus, there was no former German military officer lurking in the background ready to rub the loser’s scalp raw with his knuckles. I had to have that game!

Somehow I came up with the five bucks needed to buy it and then I set to work on my mother. She was a single mom working 9 to 5 so she looked at me like I was nuts when I asked her to get the game for me. There was no way she was going to start pounding the streets for a stupid board game. So I started calling stores while she was at work. One store, a hobby store and magic trick retailer downtown, said they had the game. After coaxing my mom for several days she gave in and said I could ride downtown with her, go get the game and then I had strict orders to go sit in her car until her work day was done.

For the many of you not familiar with Dallas weather… and those who recently attended BGG.Con don’t count because I mean Dallas weather in August... you may only have some minor understanding of what I had to go through to get this game. August in Dallas is like being inside a steaming pressure cooker surrounded by goat liver, onions and broccoli. It’s not just hot and it’s not just muggy, it’s freaking hot! It's "Satan would be uncomfortable in Dallas" hot. And so muggy that your sweat glands build their own muscles. Perspiration squirts out of them, arcing over 6 feet away leaving boiling pools of moisture that are rapidly sucked up by the parched soil. The sun beats down like a giant bank of sun lamps positioned 6 inches from your head and you can literally fry bacon on your buttocks... if you're so inclined.

I found the store, bought the game and dutifully returned to my mother’s aging Volvo. Like a good boy, I sat there all day, in the car, except when she came and got me and bought me a sandwich and coke at a variety store lunch counter. I set the board up between the two front seats, balancing it on the shifter and crouched on the floorboard and by 5:15 when she arrived I had played at least seven games. I had also lost about 8 pounds and stained the carpets from sweating as the interior temperature in the Volvo easily went over the 140 degree mark.

My brother played Dogfight with me twice. He hated the game. My buddies wouldn’t play because there were teenaged girls in the neighborhood and they were rumored to be friendly. My mother just laughed when I asked her to play. So the game went back with me to El Paso where I maybe got two or three plays in with my friends, handily winning each one, and then they refused to play as there were teenaged girls in the neighborhood who were known to be friendly.

I never did get anyone to play my copy of Gettysburg, which I had ordered directly from Avalon Hill, but I played it numerous times solitaire. When I went overseas in 1967 all I could find in the UK and Spain were card players. So I played cards. But then, in Boston in 1968, I met an MIT student who mentioned a board game I’d heard of called Blitzkrieg. Tom and I played many a game of that one in his dorm. And I never even played Risk until about 1971 out in Los Angeles. Six of us used to play for money, turning the simple game of world conquest into a barroom brawl and exercise in the "diplomacy of the fist" every Saturday for nearly 6 months.

And the point to this tale of the barren gaming landscape of the 60's?

It’s that social board gaming up until the mini-explosion of Avalon Hill, TSR and SPI in the 70’s was a trial by fire. You really had to want to play a game other than Chess, Backgammon or Go to suffer through what many of us did. It’s my opinion that Viet Nam was partially responsible for the sudden growth of board and role-playing games. Lots of young men traveled overseas and became familiar with military stuff. Lots came back and they were used to having small, close-knit groups of buddies and if they weren’t too weirded out by their experiences or too high on ganja, games became a natural for enough of them to create a growth spurt in the tiny board game market.

Fast forward to the early 80’s and the sudden boom of electronic gaming and it’s easy to see that kids, like mine, who grew up with a Nintendo controller in one hand and a pacifier in the other, were predisposed to a more visually stimulating solitary gaming style. The latest Halo version by Microsoft has sold $600 million worth of units. That’s one game. It’s a multi-multi-billion dollar industry.

While I’m certain board games (other than the Monopoly genre) have sold more than a billion bucks worth, it’s taken several decades to do it and it’s just a fraction of what is sold yearly to console and pc gamers.

Yet despite our hobby being a niche within a niche within a niche, it’s obvious to me that the current Golden Age of Board Games is rooted in the success of the electronic gaming phenomena. In fact, my gut feeling is that were it not for Pong, the Atari and Mattel’s Intellivision there would very likely be as few board gamers today as there were back in the late 70’s.

Board games become pc games, pc games become board games, movies become pc games and board games and books become movies, pc games and board games. The cross-pollination is staggering. And along with that there is a similar cross-pollination amongst designers, marketing people and publishers. It’s as if the electronic revolution has opened up a multitude of vectors to get games of all sorts to the eager public. And the genre that appeals to me, and to most who read this blog, is one of the primary beneficiaries of this entertainment revolution.

I'd estimate that 97% of the customers I have sold games to in the last decade also play console or PC games. In fact, probably 90% of them played electronic games first. They played D&D on a pc, or Command & Conquer, or Doom or even Sesame Street. They grew up within a culture that does not frown upon game players. In fact, our culture now worships gamers. True, electronic gamers are the big fish, but they are gamers at heart and anyone who games one way can easily find similar entertainment in another genre.

With that in mind, is it any real surprise that Days of Wonder has sold half a million copies of the two Ticket to Ride titles? Or that Apples to Apples sold over 1 million copies before they were picked up by a major chain?

Here’s an anecdote that illustrates why I firmly believe that electronic games are the main source of our hobby’s recent success. I had this guy Kevin working for me a few years back. He had my cell number on his speed dial. Kevin also left his phone in his pocket and one night, when he sat down, it called me on it's on. When I answered I could hear Kevin and his wife playing D&D with four or five others. I eavesdropped for 15 minutes and the conversation was eye-opening. They were playing D&D, but there was a side conversation between all of them about pc gaming. So they would take a swing at the Orc, discuss a pc game, hack at a dragon, relate a pc gaming experience, brutally beat the kindly old gatekeeper to death, then argue the finer points of an online game, etc., etc.

Talk about multi-tasking!

As I stated earlier, I'm not a real fan of pc games. I only have a few and I also own an X-Box, but I haven’t played any of them for months and months. Too many board gaming opportunities keep cropping up. But Kevin and his generation play them all. I think there are very few gamers out there like me, ones who eschew electronic gaming unless there is a dire need for gaming relief and nobody available to pound on. It seems that the large majority of the potential markets for board games are people like Kevin and his D&D group.

What does this all mean? Well, it’s just my opinion, but I think it means that board games are not just experiencing some sort of temporary spike in sales. I think the surge in sales and new titles in the last several years is just the beginning. I am starting to view the board game market now and in the future like a salmon run during spawning season. Tens of thousands start the trek back up the river with romance on their tiny little brains. But only the strongest make it. The others die of exhaustion; get caught by sportsmen, snagged by bears or drift back downstream in hopeless futility, too weak to flap a fin.

And the source of all these salmon are the mega-corps who produce the multi-million selling titles… Sony, Microsoft, Blizzard and the rest.

Of course the best salmon are, in this analogy anyway, board gamers. The weaker, less adaptable salmon are the weirdo’s who spend their monthly stipend from the government on Ho-Ho’s and Mountain Dew and stay live on World of Warcraft 24/7, or sit silently in their dark, dank rooms with a headset and a 27” monitor playing Halo. Or they get sucked into the black hole of collectible gaming, never to return, wandering aimlessly for years calling stores in a vain attempt to sell off their old Pokemon cards. Or perhaps they become RPG-freaks, living their lives as an extension of their 127th level Wizard and trying to pick up chicks by showing them the size of their dice bag.

As a seasoned board gamer that fought the good war, I am much more tolerant of pc and console games than I was 15 years ago. Now I see them as fertilizer for the renewable resource of new fish…errr… salmon… uhhh… board gamers, that’s what I mean, new board gamers… who will start their struggle upstream early in life and when the cream of the crop emerges at the top to spew their precious cargo into the roiling waters….

Sorry, it’s graphic I know, but bear with me

… into the roiling waters, what will emerge is... a shiny new Board Gamer!

Wow. I like that simile a lot.

Hmmm... looking this week’s blog entry over I think perhaps my next career ought to be in marketing games. I wonder, if I gave Erich at Days of Wonder a call, or perhaps Glenn over at Eagle Games, and ran the salmon-spewing thing past them if they’d offer me a job?

I’d probably accept a VP position to start with.

Whaddya think?

MOVIES that could become GAMES!

After the most recent spate of movies that are or HAVE become 'remade', then this got me to thinking upon certain others that could become GAMEs in and of themselves. Just now, ''the Sand Pebbles'' movie concluded while the very first version of ''Sahara'' is playing out on the AMC channel. Both would be good candidates for some sort of 'RPG' style playings, or maybe even a 'Solitaire' sort of game with enough materials for them. I have to admit that I even liked the 'remake' of ''Sahara'' with 'Jim Belushi' in the main role for it, and I don't wish to spoil this for anyone, but that version has some added 'twists' to distinguish it from the very first film, besides being in FULL 'color'. Another great movie into a GAME theme would be ''Kelly's Heroes'' for many to enjoy and relive or discover, for those who haven't had the pleasure already. Then there's '''the Dirty Dozen'' of which they'd have many more exploits besides just the 'one' that was featured in that. Another along the same lines would be ''the Devil's Brigade'' with a combined Canadian-American force making that one up. I know that ''ole Scrib'' would like to see something done for ''the Wild Ones'' movie and it could become very involved if someone took the time and effort for that. Since it is set in pre-WW I times around the Tex-Mex borders, then there's plenty of 'source' topics that could be covered in a detailed setting for that! Man, watching ''Sahara'' is making ME thirsty, and I can't believe that they're 'spilling' WATER as they take their 'sips' of that! Now these next few movies that I'm going to mention are a bit obscure for many others, so you'll have to bear with me on these. First off, we have ''the Battle of El Alamein'' and this is an 'Italian' production, and with such then it concerns an outfit of 'Italian Paratroops' in that pivotal 'Battle'. I'm not saying that it IS a good or likely 'candidate' for a GAME, since you'd have to see this in order to 'disbelieve' its 'propitousness'. On the flip side of that same DVD is a movie called ''Battle of the Last Panzer'', for which I haven't seen this just yet but from the description of it, then it sounds pretty ''fantastic-farcical'' in its presentation. They mention how an American outfit in FRANCE, having just completed a huge, major 'Battle' are of the mind that the WAR is over! ha! They're NO where near to entering a humbled 'Berlin', so you can see just WHY it sounds so laughable. Anyway, let me delve into some other subjects now.

So, does anyone recall a movie called ''Battle beyond the Stars'' with 'Richard Thomas'?-(of ''the Waltons'' show fame). This also has 'Robert Vaughn', 'George Peppard', 'John Saxon', 'Sybil Danning', and lots of other minor role actors including 'Marta Kristen'-("Judy" from the ''Lost in Space'' TV show!) It is a thinly veiled Space-based version of ''the Seven Samurai'' genre and can get quite 'campy' in its appearances. The 'Space Moose Ship' that ole ''John-boy'' flits about in could even be 'seen' as the very first of its 'kind' that features having its very OWN 'personality' as others have followed suit in the cases of ''LEXX'', or even ''Farscape'' and perhaps a few similiar types as well. Now, it wasn't a 'living ship' as those previously mentioned sorts are ascribed to 'be', so they're NOT exactly the same, but you get the gist. I'm surprised that a GAME wasn't developed upon the basic premise of ''Battle beyond the Stars'' since it'd provide adequate material for conducting such. Maybe even having several 'saviours' being dispatched to off-world places to seek out 'Mercenaries' to bring back and defend their 'system'. I know that many folks, myself included, would really get into a CAMPAIGN 'game' based upon the ''Sid Meier's Alpha-Centauri'' computer GAME, although it would have to be very detailed to cover ALL of the aspects inherent in THAT! I've got some notions of my own upon this matter, but I don't wish to give those away and I'd have to cleverly disguise this to avoid the legal hassles too. For the most part, then I only have enough 'stuff' to create at least ONE version for some games that I have in mind, and obtaining enough additional objects is something that would have to be looked further into for the rest.

Here's some photos of 'Space Ships' that could easily be used in some gaming environments.












They are currently being made available through a mail-order place called "US Toy Company'', although the 1st set on the LEFT as you see this, are ''out of stock'' for the time being. At the prices that they are going for, then they're an excellent bargain and I've gotten some just like the 1st SET that cost me around $8.50 plus Sales TAX for the same amounts. There's even a couple of 'Ship' designs that I didn't get in my own as that was packaged as ''XXXth Century Starships'' by 'Nexus' products, while I also got 'stands' for mine and they ARE featured in some actual games too. Still, I'd like to get even more of these and at the current prices too, while I'd even 'modify' them further to enhance their 'abilities' in whatever I had planned for those. There are also some flat appearing multi-piece 'Space Ships' but they don't look as good as these do and check them out here if you'd like.
See what I mean? Then again, they could be utilized for other purposes or even 'fleshed out' to avoid being disregarded in some gaming places. There's substances that can be 'glopped' onto these to bulk them out and then look better once every 'thing' had been done for that. I could see some 'Space Stations' or 'Planet Installations' being created from them, although I'd have to have them in hand in order to get the proper 'feel' for such. I already get enough FREE 'stuff' that I intend on utilizing for that anyway, but at least there's these alternatives. Oh yeah, ''ole Scrib'' got some 'Star Troopers' from 'moi', that I found a while back, and maybe he will get some photos of them to display for others to view, or I will if I can get my 'digital camera' to work properly upon this current POS `puter infested with the 'X P'. Those are only in '2' colors for the time being, although I could fairly easily create additional varieties with what I have on hand. I had wanted to create a '3-D' or MINIS version of the ''Marine 2002'' game, or something like that, involving 'Lunar Combat' between the Soviets & the USA forces of which they're BOTH on the Moon-scape surfaces. Also, they could become a VARIANT for the ''Buck Rogers Battle in the 25th Century'' GAME as outside forces to bring into that as well. Well, that'll just have to be something ELSE to look forward to in that ''ConQuest NW Seattle'' event coming up next February, eh?

How to Eat a Game

Buy one medium-weight game for a family of four, or else figure half an hour per person.

Open box, remove contents. Discard plastic bags.

Soak board in water with a touch of lemon juice.

Put pawns and wooden cubes in a lightly greased pan, sprinkle with coriander, and bake in oven at 400 degrees for one hour.

Heat canola oil in large frying pan. Shuffle cards, cut into 1/2-inch strips. Dip the strips into raw egg and bread crumbs, deep-fry for twenty minutes.

When board is thoroughly soaked, carefully remove paper from board. Scrape all glue into mixing bowl. Discard paper.

Tear up rules. Soak bits in sherry and diced chives and roll into balls.

Assemble cube tower. Tenderize with hammer.

Add the fried cards, rule balls and roast pawns to the mixing bowl and stir. Shave cubes with sharp knife, add to mixture to taste.

Cover mixing bowl with aluminum foil.

Get in car, drive to zoo, strangle kangaroo. Extract juice from pineal gland with a sturdy syringe. Hide evidence of foul play in pouch.

Return home, remove aluminum foil, squirt kangaroo extract liberally onto mixture.

Stuff the mixture into the cube tower with spatula, roll tower in softened board.

Broil for two hours.

When done, garnish with dice and serve with tossed tiles.

Bon appetit!

Powergrid. View from the rear.

Or How a Humiliating Defeat Can Breathe New Life Into a Stagnant Game

I've played Powergrid several times in the recent past and it never really sparked my imagination. It has been our go-to game when we needed a non-war-like game for 6 players. I think I rated it a 7 on BGG, but I was sorely tempted to rate it as a 6 or even a 5. Choices seemed to be obvious. Power plant auctions seemed to lack tension, because it was difficult to value power plants early in the game and there was a never ending supply late in the game. There were few interesting choices in the commodity market, despite the fact that many fanboys claimed that the commodity market was the heart and soul of the game.

The thing that bothered me most about the game was the tinkering with the turn order from phase to phase within a round. Determining turn order from phase to phase is an important part of Powergrid, if only to keep the leaders in check. I've received grief for this position before, but it is my contention that any game that has fiddley criteria to determine player order from phase to phase within a round for the purpose of keeping the game close is inherently flawed. I'm not going to make that case right now, but let it be known that it is a mechanism that annoys me.

Well, something happened this last weekend that made me re-think my opinion of Powergrid. I got my butt handed to me. The view from last place gave me a new perspective on, and a new appreciation for, the game.

I don't believe I have ever done worse than tie for second place in previous games. Not only did I lose last weekend, I lost by a wide margin. I now appreciate some of the strategy nuances that I had missed in previous games. As a perpetual leader in Powergrid your choices are rather obvious, especially if your opponents aren't playing to screw you.

First, I got blocked out of my easy connections. Then, I miscalculated the cost of connecting a certain city by $10. That mistake didn't so much cost me the game, as it cost me my dignity. May you be so fortunate as to never lose by such a wide margin.

Fiddley turn order did not help me one iota. Although I was trailing by too wide a margin to capitalize, I did see that the commodity market could be more effectively manipulated than I had thought. My opponents in previous games just didn't manipulate the market effectively, nor did my opponents in previous games calculate the value of power plants very well. My opponents in previous games were less interested in blocking access to new cities than they were in protecting their own connections.

Powergrid is now on my must-play-with-cut-throat-players-only list. And off the not-quite-boring-game-to-be-played-only-when-we-need-a-six-player-game list.

I don't know if it will go higher than a 7, I think many of my original concerns are still valid, but losing has renewed my interest in Powergrid. After I get a few games under my belt with aggressive players I'll report back.

As a side note: This is another game I will only be playing with poker chips in the future, instead of the provided play-money.

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Curious story concerning my acquisition of Powergrid:

A year ago my local game store had been unsuccessfully trying to get Powergrid into stock for several months. The owner, who wouldn't pull my leg, told me on a couple occasions that he had talked to his distributor and they assured him the game would be sent. About that time a couple of his shipments were lost by Alaska Airlines, and he never was able to get Powergrid into the store.

One day the owner told me that he appreciated my patience, but I might as well order the game on line. I went on line to order the game and every store but one was sold out. That particular store was in Canada, and would only ship to Alaska via UPS Next Day Air. Forget that. That added another $30 to the price of the game.

I lamented this fact on Boardgamegeek, and who should send me a private message? BGG fixture, and fellow Roads and Boats junkie, Sterling Babcock. He said his local game store had a couple copies in stock and he could help me.

Sterling lives in Longmont, Colorado. That is odd because my only brother also lives in Longmont. Figure the odds. Anyway, I was able to get the address of the store from Sterling and my brother picked up the game for me.

Thanks again to Sterling, and never underestimate the long reach of Boardgamegeek.

Coldfoot

Memoir '44, The Seafarers of Catan, and Other Scenarios

One of the most successful games that I've acquired in the last few years has been Memoir '44. It's not necessarily the most strategic game that I've played in that time period. (Despite my occasional grognardery, I'd probably admit that was Puerto Rico.) Nor is it the most clever game I've played in that time period. (For that I'd currently say Dungeon Twister, though ask me again when the new-game smell has worn off.)

However, Memoir '44 is one of the games that has kept me coming back for more the most, and which I expect to keep doing so for years to come. It's long been obvious that Days of Wonder's business plan is to create true evergreen games that can continue to sell long past the initial drop ship, but for their games to be really evergreen not just for their distributors and retailers, but for their players too, that's a truly cool thing.

Scenarios & The Web

The secret behind Memoir '44's success, for me at least, is their use of scenarios. As of this writing I've played scenarios #1-#10 in the original book, once on each side. I've also played #38-40 in the Eastern Front and #34 in the Terrain Pack. That's a total of 28 different games, and it's never once felt repetitive.

As much as anything this is because Memoir '44 isn't really a game. Instead it's a game construction kit. It just so happens that Days of Wonder included the first 16 games made with that kit in the original release as scenarios #1-16. And they've since released a plethora of additional, official "games" on the web and in their new expansions.

However, Days of Wonder also did a few additional clever but simple things.

First, they numbered all the scenarios, giving players a clear method to step through them. Other than playing a D-Day scenario on D-Day, and jumping around between the various expansions for review purposes, I've played through all the scenarios in order, and thus never had to sit around wondering what should be next.

Second, Days of Wonder provided an online spreadsheet that I could use to keep track of which scenarios I've played and how I did. For me this has been amazingly important, because when I had a long break in M44 playing, I could afterward just glance at my online info and see what was next. If I played M44 a lot more, to the point of repeating scenarios, I could go back and look at my battle reports and get clues as to how to replay the scenario in the future.

On the whole the whole idea of scenarios in M44 appeals to me in many ways:

• The originality of the scenarios constantly appeals to my desire for newness, but without requiring me to go play a new game.
• The numbering of the scenarios appeals to my collector bug, so that having played one I want to play the next in line.
• The historical basis of the scenarios appeals to my sense of story, and encourages me to know more about the real battles which are being described.

My experience with M44 has been good enough that I dearly wish that more games used similar structures, to allow me to keep playing the great games that I love rather than being forced to constantly go on to the next new thing by my unabashed need for novelty.

Scenarios in Other Games

Of course Memoir '44 isn't the first board game to use scenarios. Its immediate predecessor, Battle Cry, contained 15 Civil War scenarios, but with no expansions, no support (and no scenario numbering), Battle Cry just doesn't have the same staying power as M44. In miniature and war games, scenarios are much more common, and that's no doubt how they crossed over into These Games of Ours with Richard Borg's releases.

You could sort of say that Runebound has instituted their own scenarios by releasing small decks of cards that replace the endgame of the core Runebound game, but having to go out and buy even small supplements isn't quite the same thing, nor is there the same variety. And Ticket to Ride offers a good example of why scenarios can't quite work for many games. There are some cool additional maps out for the initial game, but if you've ever spent the hours necessary to construct such a board (and its associated cards), you'd know that it isn't quite the same plug-and-play experience that Memoir '44 offers.

I think that Klaus Teuber really missed the boat by including scenarios only in his Seafarers of Catan release. The main Settlers just begs for that sort of treatment because of its modular board, but instead almost every game of Settlers ever is played on a plain hexagonal island. (Yes, I'm aware of The Book but its general unavailability to the American public keeps it sufficiently below my RADAR, and really, I don't think it has influenced the way that Settlers is played that much.)

I can imagine an alternate reality where the original Settlers had itself included a book of scenarios, and not just scenarios based on different random setups, but instead a history of the settling of the Catan islands. It would be evocative and fun to play, and you could have a clear through-line across the games. Heck, it could even be cleverly marketed so that the first several scenarios only depend on the main game, but to play the next several you need to pick up Seafarers, then Cities & Knights.

Likewise, I can imagine that many other popular games could be made that much more enjoyable with the inclusion of scenarios. Modular boards like those of Settlers and Memoir '44 make it easiest, but there are even possibilities in games like Mexica (where different initial island setups and possibly different victory conditions could make a lot of difference) and Puerto Rico (where scenarios could vary building availability, resource availability, island size, and who knows what else). I'm sure these differences wouldn't be as major as that found in Memoir '44, but a little bit could go a long way.

Conclusion

I think that Days of Wonder has made some really smart moves with Memoir '44, both with their initial release and their web support. The recently released Eastern Front (which brings the war to a new locale) and Terrain Pack (which is largely a make-your-own-game kit, even moreso than the original game) just show how much expansion possibility there is for the system.

Here's hoping that more publishers will consider the possibilities of dynamic scenarios as a different type of game publication than their more staid & set cousins.

Deal 'Em

I love playing cards. One of my earliest memories is playing Rummy with men in my grandmother’s tavern—and sharing my Popsicles with her dog. Kids can get away with things that adults wouldn’t dream of.

Later I learned Euchre (I’m originally from Illinois) and Canasta (double deck with a widow hand). I haven’t played either of these games in a very long time and doubt I’d care to play Euchre now but I’d still be willing to play a no-holds-barred, vicious, teeth-baring game of Canasta.

After I married into the Air Force, I learned to play Pinochle (double deck, no passing). I was never really good at it since I am not a card-counter and am lucky to keep track of either trump OR aces; trying for both causes the blue screen of death in my brain. Sad, I know, but I always enjoyed myself.

As my kids got old enough to play cards, we found Wizard, which is a great trick-taking game that we all enjoyed. The luck in it lessens with each hand because each hand is dealt with 1 more card than the last. The addition of the Wizards and Jesters gives you a touch of control that is more fun than simply playing Oh Hell.

When my son, Chris, was in high school, Richard and I taught him and his friend, Eric, how to play Pinochle. Now what I need to know is how is it that 2 kids with no clue can come up with great hands time after time and beat the snot out of 2 veteran adults? They would bid something outrageous, not really understanding what they were doing, and manage to make the bid each time. It was really quite embarrassing. Still, we all had a good time and that’s what counts, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

When I found my way to the Internet, I found very nice free downloadable programs of card games from around the world at Thanos card games. Here I discovered Mizerka, King, Preference and Madrasso, among others. Of these, I taught my daughter and husband to play Mizerka since it’s for 3 players and it’s getting almost impossible for me to find 4 card players these days. This has some elements that were new to us so it stands out as a very good trick-taking game. Nastiness, tough decisions, and “oh, shit” moments included.

Then I found the Board Game Geek and lots of card games, some just variations of older games like the Mystery Rummy series or Corsari, which we like very much. Some are totally new ideas for us like Crazy Chicken (Drive), 6 Nimmt (Category 5) and Coloretto, which have all been hits with us. These are all lighter games that you can play with your children or with non-gamer friends and have a good time. I love Crazy Chicken, although I rarely win, and my husband is partial to Corsari, which he wins only occasionally. Why are we attracted to the very games that we don’t seem to have a knack for? That seems dumb to me but I still can’t fight the feeling.

Some are trick-taking games that I may get to play occasionally because they don’t require 4 players--David & Goliath and Sticheln—and require only basic knowledge of trick-taking games to have fun. Others are trick-taking games that I’ll be very lucky to get to play like Mu, and Victory and Honor because they require a higher degree of trick-taking experience but I’m happy to have them in my collection in the hopes that some day…ah, some day…

There’s also climbing card games where the “trick” keeps going around the table, getting stronger with each player, until everyone passes. The last player that played to the trick, wins it. Again, this was a totally new concept for us and Gang of Four became a favorite even with 3 players and a dummy hand. A couple nights ago we gave Frank’s Zoo an inaugural playing with 6 players and I can see this one getting played when we want something light and fun. It’s not as easy to look at your hand and form a plan until you’ve played enough to know what beats what in this strange hierarchy but that isn’t necessary if you’re looking for something fun.

These are just the games I own; there are many others, each a little different with its own twist on the rules. If you like card games, there’s something here for everyone. And give the dog a lick of your Popsicle; it won’t hurt him.
~~~~~~~~
Games

Ta-Yu
I finally got to try Ta-Yu as a partnership game. I and my son, Chris, teamed up against Richard and Chris’ girlfriend, Jessica. Chris had played before but Jessica was playing for the first time.

This is not a rowdy, quick game at any time; it’s a head-to-head competition and the play was appropriately slow and calculating. We were drawing our tiles ahead of our turn in order to have time to plan our move but there was still plenty of down time whenever the board took an unexpected turn.

Amidst all this silent pondering, we managed to get in a few chuckles and a good laugh or two. At one point I declared that a certain tile looks like boobies in a sports bra—well, it does! So during one of the long, indecisive pauses waiting for Chris to make a move, I asked him if he wanted my boobies. It’s a good thing no one was drinking anything at the time.

In the end, it was a very close game, the final score decided by the last tile played by Jessica who was sitting to my left. After much thinking and weighing of choices, she decided to block our access to a 2-point space but also gave us one connection. This turned out to be a very good move because Chris’s next play would have given us the two-pointer and a single connection. The final score was 40 (5 x 8) to 49 (7 x 7). If Jessica hadn’t blocked Chris, the score would have been 50-49. I consider that a very close game.
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Christmas Wish Lists

I see the Christmas Lists are starting at the Geek, and none too soon. As for myself, I don’t put games on my Wish List since I buy so many during the year. I usually find one or two to buy before Christmas, though, to have something new to play with friends and family during the holiday season. This year I’m thinking of either Apples to Apples or Squint—something fun for a bunch of people. My Wish List usually includes music CDs, DVDs, books, my favorite perfume and PS2 games. Yeah, I’m a PS2 junkie as well as a board game addict! “I Love Katamari” is my #1 choice this year, followed closely by the third Sly Cooper. Of course, if anyone insists on buying me a board game, I’ll graciously accept!
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Until next time, let your actions be controlled by knowledge.

Mary

Con-vinced

BGG.con

Well, now I know what a con is. Why do we go to them? Why do we have them?

Let's start with Derk, Aldie, and company. Why did they do this? It can't have been to enhance their reputation, which already hit its peak after being publicly dissed by Reiner Knizia. It can't have made money for them; just consider the amount of time they must have taken off of work to do this. And they really didn't get much time to play.

Answer: it had to be a labor of love. They could do it - so they did it. I imagine that if things hadn't gone as smoothly as they did then we might not be seeing BGG.con 2. But they did, so unless they lost money on this, we will.

How about the local Dallas people? Couldn't they have sat in their houses and played games? They have a large group anyway. OK, they ended up getting door prizes and so forth, probably worth about $40 or $60 anyway. How about the people flying in from God-knows where who spent a lot more on flight and hotel?

Answer: We wanted to meet people who we have come to know only by email and postings. More than that, we wanted to have conversations with people about games for four days and have noone think that we are weird. For some people, it may also have been to keep up with the latest and greatest in gaming. But it was also a perfect vacation: an opportunity to play for days in a row, which most of us wouldn't get to do otherwise, and to learn many games that we would never have access to without buying first. For me, of course, I also had a business agenda - to introduce my game to as many new people as possible.

What about the vendors? Publicity and goodwill to the people who matter most - the hardcore gamers, who will in turn spread word of the games to many other people.

Is it worth it? Yes. It is fun, and if the people are nice and the con is organized, the time is pure enjoyment.

But this was only my first con. What about the others cons? Are they worth it? What about people (unlike me) who are wallflowers? Do they get into a con? If there are worthwhile cons and not-worthwhile cons, how do you know which is which?

Yehuda

GAME STORE CONFIDENTIAL ~ DW's Field Guide To Gamers

With all the changes going on in my life: selling my property, prepping the store for it's closure, planning my next career, establishing a proper routine for my young son so he gets an equal share of Mom and Pop, I haven't felt the creative writing juices flowing lately.

So I have started to look over some articles I wrote 15-20 years ago for my old store newsletter, These Are Dark Times. Today I'm offering the first part of a fairly lengthy article I wrote back in 1989. One goal I had back then, other than to try and entertain, was to attempt to diffuse the very strong perception non-gamers had in the 70's and 80's about what a bunch of dorks and losers we all are.

Most of my Dark Times articles were a little rough and the big focus of the era was role-playing and Warhammer, which at least partly explains why I was so abusive of the Brits. Board games were waning and CCG's were still years away. But the newsletter was eagerly awaited by customers and went out to a number of industry people, some of whom reprinted a few in their house newsletters. So today I'm offering up the first part of one of those articles. I'll post the second part on another Monday. Hopefully you won't be too offended if you find yourself in here. If you are, well, tough nuts!


_____________________________________________________

DW's Field Guide to Gamers ~ Part I


I’ve just about had it! For years and years I have listened to derisive slurs and insidious comments about gamers. And I have had it! Up to here!

Writer makes slashing motion with hand across exposed throat

Oh sure, at first it was funny, all the references to Game Geeks and Dice Dorks. After all, gaming is not a serious endeavor and gamers, of all people, ought to be able to laugh at themselves. Agreed?

But Jaysus-H-Christo! The constant and seemingly endless stream of so-called humorous comments over the last 20 years has worn a little thin on me. So let’s us analyze the non-gamer’s perceptions of the gaming mainstream for a moment. How do they see Gamedom? Hmmmm?

Well, for starters, I think they don’t understand a gamer’s passion, and like the weak mammals they are, the tendency is to strike out in fear at what they cannot comprehend. I consider this to be irrational behavior (except in the case of British gamers, whose existence defies all the laws of nature and whose gruesome appearance would cause even the most battle-hardened and cool-headed career soldier to fumble about wildly for the extra clips). The non-gamer’s feeble attempts at understanding gamers will almost always fail – the result of which is the onslaught of verbal abuse and name calling that we are all so used to hearing.

Damnit ! We don’t have to take that! All gamers are not the same. We are not some faceless, milling herd of dice rolling freaks. We are distinct and different individuals… sensitive, caring and (usually) intelligent. Oh I’ll admit that a non-gamer’s first look at a large group of gamers can be unnerving. Even frightening. Ian and I had that experience when we went to our first Con with the old Dark Horse Miniature Company. It was overwhelming to begin with but we stuck it out. Sure, we had to drink lots of beer and yes; we did tie a rope to our waists to insure we wouldn’t get too far apart. But we survived… and we learned. After three days we came to understand that that there are actually very distinct categories of gamers… they’re not all the same.

As luck would have it our first major exposure to a large group of gamers was at OrcCon in Los Angeles, a show which drew maybe 1500 gamers. Had we gone to GenCon first and had to confront over 9,000 gamers things might have been tragically different. So we watched, we talked, we learned.

We learned that not all gamers weigh 350 pounds, wear a druid’s cloak cut from burlap and have body odor thick enough that it can be photographed. Not all gamers speak in strange, TV based languages, carry huge stacks of evil books and typically look like the before pictures in a Stridex ad.

No, not all gamers are weird, para-intelligent Geeks. Some are, I’ll admit, some are. But not all. Not even nearly all. Why, I’d bet that at least half, or nearly half aren’t even recognizable as gamers out side of a game store or Con. You just have to know what to look for if you want to spot gamers in the wild. If one has a little education in the subject one will find that there are several very distinct types of gamers. And amongst those easily identifiable types are many subtle variants and crossovers. Gamers are like a mosaic… a puzzle, complex, yet at the same time, simple. If a non-gamer tries to look at the whole picture at once its confusing and scary and hasty judgments are made, prejudices formed. But with a little patience and some remedial coaching even a non-gamer can begin to appreciate the wonderful world of gamers.

So let’s start with a brief examination of the four distinct classes of gamers…

TYPE A ~ The Skinny Little Dweeb

This genus of gamer is what the non-gamers usually call a nerd. With his thin body, jutting elbows and size 14 quadruple-A feet, the TYPE A is often the object of verbal and even physical abuse. Because the TYPE A appears frail – and often is – he is an easy target for mouth-breathing non-gamers who feel the need to prove their missing manhood.

In my pre-gaming days we used to beat these guys up all the time. Despite the fact that TYPE A’s appear quick, they are usually slow and ungainly. One TYPE A I remember was known in my high school as “Bones Jones: The Incredible Folding Boy”. That was on account of the fact that we could actually fold him up and fit him into a standard hall locker. What we didn’t understand about TYPE A’s like Bones was that all we were doing was toughening him up.

TYPE A’s tend to have a greater than normal success ratio in later life. Despite their geeky clothes, silly duck walk and pained expressions the large majority of TYPE A gamers turn out better than just okay when they hit their mid-twenties and early thirties. Low-life cretins and casual hoods (like my buddies and yes, like I used to be before my conversion) have taught them the hardest lessons in life early. The “skinny little Dweeb” you pound on today is likely to be the dude who ends up owning the slum you are forced to live in tomorrow. The new Porsche and the Bitchin’ Babe on each arm are just a couple of the perks that go along with being a full-grown TYPE A gamer.

As for Bones, the last I heard was he became some sort of electrical engineer or some thing and got in on the ground floor of some company called Microsoft. Hopefully he turned out okay and wasn't too scarred for life, from what I understand this software stuff can be used maliciously if the guys who write it have an axe to grind.


TYPE B ~ The Large Blimpy Oaf

These guys are the heavyweights of gaming. Most of them are just out and out large and that’s easy to understand, they are fat because they eat a lot of food. But is that any reason to make fun of them? Just because a guy looks like a Sumo wrestler gone to seed is no reason to call him terrible names.

The Type B gamer is a staple at all Game Cons. They roll through the aisles like an aircraft carrier brushing aside assorted Type A and other classes of gamer like so many puny gnats. They require two folding chairs to sit on and they buy their Doritos by the case. TYPE B’s are loud, tend to have booming voices and you most often find them at the head of the game table, running the game and ensuring everyone is having a good time.

Me and the pack of dogs I used to run with in school normally avoided TYPE B’s like the plague. When we did get up the courage to jeer at one it was usually from across the room or at a safe distance. The non-gaming antagonist has a deep-rooted, genetic fear of TYPE B’s. For good reason too.

In there early days of gaming there was one classic TYPE B that we used to tease incessantly. We’d snatch his books, make fun of his clothes, ridicule his sweaty brow and heavy breathing and even snap Polaroid’s of him in the locker room. We later stuck one such photo on the Student Activities Board with the caption: “Dallas student’s weight found to be cause of Earth’s loss of Spin Rotation”.

The torment came to a head one day when we discovered that he was a gamer. It was too good to be true as few things in Texas in the 1960’s were more reviled than teenaged boys who engaged in cerebral activities. So after school we caught him at the edge of the school yard and surrounded him like a pack of yapping hyenas. Darting in and out we snatched at his books and clothes, made farting noises and teased him about dice and slide rules. The general idea was to get him to tip over and we’d snap another Polaroid.

But he didn’t fall over. Instead he got mad. First he got red in the face, then he slowly dropped all his books and pencils, then he carefully took off his cardigan and removed his pocket protector. Laying them gently on the ground he straightened up and just stood there for a moment, his eyes glinting with malevolent fire.

Being a little slow on the uptake, we just stood there, too closely, and watched, wondering what the heavy-set geek was doing.

He started twirling around… slowly at first and then faster and faster until all his heaving, pudgy excess was compressed by centrifugal force against his body. The TYPE B now looked like a rotating Conan with short greasy hair and glasses… I swear he looked like Boris Valejo painting with a pasty complexion. It was magic.

Then he slaughtered us.

Letting out a huge roar and still spinning at high speed he waded into our dull group like a wheat thresher in a ripe field. It was ugly

Jimmy went through the chain link fence with his face… which actually improved his looks somewhat.

Bob was slammed head down into the Texas hardpan. When he was later dug out by paramedics he uttered the first complete sentence he’d ever said, “Phew! That hurt real bad.”

Randy was pummeled senseless and went into a walking coma. When he came out of it 9 years later he discovered he was now a typewriter repairman in San Francisco with a 38-year-old wife and three stepchildren.

He sat on Leroy and flattened him.

I didn’t see much after that as the furious twirling had set up a sort of mini-cyclone which, in addition to blowing out all the windows in the school and causing an emergency closure of Love Field Airport several miles away, swept up all of his loose papers, one of which hit me square in the forehead knocking me out cold. The force of the paper hitting me blew me into some nearby bushes where I was overlooked by the ambulance crews who came to clean up the mess. When I regained consciousness several hours later the first thing I saw was the paper that had knocked me out, which was stuck to my nose. It was an early catalog from the Avalon Hill Game Company.

And so began my conversion.

As for the TYPE B? Well, he gained a huge measure of respect and, of course, a bevy of Bitchin’ Babes. Remember, TYPE B’s are sensitive, intelligent and take-charge kind of people who are usually smarter than you. And if called upon to do so they can easily beat your brains out.
______________________________________________________________

Perhaps next week I'll post the rest of the article where we get to delve into Gamer Thugs and gamers who attempt to hide the fact that they're gamers. I also have been revisiting games from my distant past lately as well. Several plays of the classic Regatta this week have again piqued my interest in older designs. We also played Formula De, which I hadn't played for close to two years. I went through and pulled out several other titles from the 80's and even 70's and plan on giving them a whirl in the near future.

Like many, I missed the first BGG.Con, which I had paid for months and months ago. Little did I know that my semi-planned change in both career and living arrangement would arrive so quickly. Hopefully Derk and Aldie will put my $40 to good use... I'd suggest whiskey for the men and beer for the horses.

Stuck & Deserted without a 'CON' I can Game within

Yep, for those who missed out on attending the ''BGG Con'' this weekend, then it's just wrapping UP as I write 'this'. Maybe I'll have to 'institute' something akin to that for around here, and it can become well known as the ''Deserted 'CLASSICs'!'' in my circumstances. Then it could have the ''latest & greatest'' of the *blog blog* to set it apart from NOTHING other just like it! We could even have discussions upon just 'what' wasn't being played, or excellent 'round-file`r' games and the like. I could trot out my ''almost lost jams'' for GAMEs that I consider as being mostly 'relevant'...mostly. Well, at least good ole ''Yehuda'' here managed to attend and I even heard that he premiered his own 'Game' there at the ''BGG Con'' as well. You'll be finding out more upon this later on then, and from the ''mouth of the source'' no less. While if anyone else of the 'Group' here has been able to attend, then by all means you'll be finding out of their 'experiences' as well. There are numerous 'leads' that many have been providing for the rest of US to 'live' vicariously through their postings, and I Thank You folks for at least doing that. Maybe we ought to have a ''Left Coast'' version of THIS so's many others can join in on the 'comraderie' that would be most inviting. There would STILL be some folks who are definitely of the ''anti-socialite-weights'' who wouldn't 'care' to participate, for who knows WHY! They've developed some sort of 'fear'(?) of such proportions that it may just take them ''over the deep end''-should they 'attend', and maybe the rest are better off for that. Then there's others that only LIVE for ''GAME Con'n''! I don't consider myself as 'one' of them types, as I soon learned to 'live' without just HAVING to 'be' at each & every single Gaming Event. The former are sort of like them ''Dead-Headz'' people and their obsessions with ''the Grateful Dead''. I happen to personally know of a 'wannabe' kind like that, and they just seem to ''jump on the bandwagon'' of whatever the current 'fad' that they take a fancy to, is handy.

Speaking of "Gaming Cons", for which I will be keeping 'updates' on the ONE that I expect to be a major part of, then I've gone ahead and made a proposal to host & run an ''OGRE-Miniatures'' Event! This is in co-operation with the ''ConQuest NW Seattle'' premiere taking place next 'President's Day' weekend in February. I don't have many 'Official' kinds of these 'minis', but I do have 100s of my OWN creation and mainly it will involve a HUGE ongoing 'Battle' with the Troops & Vehicles from that 'genre'. In addition, then I have many others that I've invented to include 'Naval Vessels' with enough to form a couple of 'Battle Groups' for '2' sides for this. Those were improved upon or fabricated entirely from other game's Ships and even some actual model kits with enhancements to many of them. I've got some others that I need to work upon to get them ''up to snuff'' with the rest, while I shall also be including the 'Air Groups' for plenty of the ''Carriers'' that I wish to ''get into the mix'' with. That'll mean some 'Amphib Assaults' shall need to take place and it'll provide an entry for these upon the gaming playing fields. I'd also like to get in some one-on-one or multiplayer GAMEs as well while I'm there and provide some ''Classics'' for any to partake of to enjoy when they otherwise might not be able to. This could involve the likes of ''Red Storm Rising'' & ''the Hunt for Red October'' with even ''A Line in the Sand'' as possibilities for those who'd like to try their hand on these. Here's a listing on some others that I have in mind to bring along:

''Battle for Germany''~S&T-w/the ''Operation: Veritable''-VARIANT
''Across 5 Aprils''~Victory Games-I'd just like to get some playings of this
''World War I''~S&T-w/'Pre-War' buildup VARIANT
''Oldenburg Grenadiers''-American Revolutionary War Battles- to play them
''Fortress America''~w/'Expansion Pack #1' Rules PLUS the actual 'Minis' of this
''Axis and Allies''~Milton Bradley-w/'1941' VARIANT
''A & A''-Europe~w/'Italian Armed Forces' bringing on a 5th Player
''A & A''-Pacific~w/'Alternate Victory' VARIANT w/perhaps some 'alternatives'
''the Russian Campaign''~w/'Expanded OOBs' courtesy of 'moi'

For the kiddies, then I may even bring along the likes of ''Battle Masters'' with a couple of Expansions for it, as well as a GAME of my own making which uses all sorts of smaller scale figures & vehicles with even some aircraft for those too. I've been amassing these over the years and I had intended upon a MODERN 'Battles' type of encounter with them, since they're mostly of those kinds. There's even some 'Missile' and 'Rocket' launching types that really DO that! For the rest, then we'll have to resort to 'rubber bands' for firings since I'd like to keep them mostly intact despite being heavily involved in mock-'Combats'. It should become quite a memorable time and ''tons of FUNZ for everyone's!'' enjoyment. I hope to see some of YOU there if you can make it then.

Sound Familiar?

First the bad news; Did a quick calculation, I figure there are still $300+ worth of games in my friendly, local, game store (FLGS) that I need to buy.

More bad news; That doesn't count HeroScape expansions. My FLGS doesn't carry HeroScape. I have to get them though my FLWM (friendly, local WalMart) and that's gonna be a another chunk of change.

Now more bad news; Caylus, Tempus, Indonesia, Kreta, Railroad Tycoon, Siena, PUNCT, Reef Encounter, Ys, and the Tigris and Euphrates Card Game have yet to be widely released.

The good news; There is no good news.

My conundrum; If I get a part time job to support my game habit, I won't have time to game. As a compromise I'm trying to get my wife to get a part time job.

Can I pawn a cat? And if so, do I have to prove it's my cat?

If I spend everything, can I get Choam Charity?

I've given it some thought and I've reached two conclusions. First, I need to open my own game store. Not to get games at cost, although that thought did cross my mind, rather to give me an excuse to play games and call it work. Maybe I can turn my addiction into a tax write off. At best, it would be a second full-time job for at least a couple years. At best. That would mean less time for gaming with people I want to game with.

Second, this town can't support a second game store. It can't even support one. The existing game store probably does all right with Magic and 40k miniatures and such, but comic books, anime, geeky nicknack, and baseball cards are the important part of the business. Boardgames are barely a blip on the radar screen.

Doesn't sound too promising. Maybe I could set my game store apart if I had an attached espresso bar, aaaaaand sold auto parts, aaaaaand performed discount surgery.

How about if I called it; "Coldfoot's Games, Escorts, and Napoleon Dynamite Videos"? I would have a lock on the geek market, that's a lead pipe cinch. Although I would probably have to change the name when the next Star Trek movie is released, and that would just be a hassle.

How about "Picard Games"? Now that's an idea. "Picard Games and Seven of Nine Comics". Ooooooh. That just might work.

Redesigning Empire Builder, Part Two

Last month I began a discussion of Mayfair's Empire Builder game with the thesis that it's a solid game with a lot of appeal, but that its 25-year old design is rough around the edges, and that there's thus a lot of room for improvement. Unlike my regular column, that one was published on a Monday, so if you haven't read it yet, feel free to go browse Redesigning Empire Builder, Part One. I'll wait.

Last time I concentrated entirely on the graphical design of the game, showing how gameplay could be considerably improved with just some work on the demand cards. This time I want to wander through a few of the other design elements. The point? As much as anything to look at how much game design has improved in the last 25 years, and also to highlight some of the factors that a game designer should probably be watching out for.

As I see it, Empire Builder currently has a lot of room for improvement, with these problems being biggest:

• Long Game Time
• Long Downtimes
• High Calculation Requirement
  
• Low Player Interaction

Before I get into those, however, I should probably offer a brief reminder of how the Empire Builder games work. They're crayon-rail games, which means that you pay money to lay track that you draw on the board with wax-based crayons. You then move your train along those tracks to fulfill "demand" cards, which show a desired good and a destination it should go to. There are three demands on each card, of which you fulfill just one, and you have three demand cards in your hand at any time.

And with that, let's get underway ...

Reducing Game Time

To a certain extent, game time is a personal preference. However, I think that a game that can play in an evening is usually a better design than a game that can't, and the Empire Builder games tend to straddle that line. By using fast rules, maintaining a smaller number of players, and pushing I can get an Empire Builder game done in just under 4 hours. Given that my game nights usually start at between 6.30 and 7.15, and adding in a bit of time for early evening socialization, that means an Empire Builder game tends to run until at least 11p. That's a pretty hard sell for a lot of people.

On a more analytical level, I think you can measure a game's appropriate length by its amount of game variability. If a game changes a lot as you play, even better if it has some very distinct phases within the game, then it's OK for it to be longer, while if the gameplay remains largely the same, I think it has to be shorter to prevent boredom. Empire Builder does change a fair bit, as early on it's largely about scrabbling for pennies, through the middle game it's mostly about expanding your network, and in the endgame it's usually about hauling freight. That's a fair amount of differentiation as you play. However, I also do feel that at least the endgame of Empire Builder (the freight hauling) gets too repetitive for the length, and so at least that part is too long.

So, by my personal scale Empire Builder needs to be shortened, and by my analytical measure at least the third phase of the game should. The question is, how do you do so?

Time in Empire Builder is spent in two main actions. First, there's the analysis, as you figure out what to take where and as you count out shortest paths on the board. These analytical issues are also the bases of my complaints about "long downtimes" and "high calculation requirements", and so I'll address them more completely there. (They're also corrected to some extent by the graphic design I offered up in my last article.) Second, there's the raw time spent hauling freight around and increasing your monetary supplies, and it's these areas where I suspect that you could really shave off minutes or even hours.

The Empire Builder rules themselves usually contain a variant for faster trains, which speed up all movement by about 25%. The "9" trains move "12" and the "12" trains move "16". I've used these during my last couple of games, and they speed the game with pretty much no down side. I think that even faster might be better, perhaps "18" and "24" move trains, double the initial rate. However, the more you change from the original values, the more opportunity you have to mess up the gestalt of the game.

You could theoretically throw off your game quite a bit if you get your trains moving faster than you can build track (a max of 20 spaces a turn in clear territory), but you're actually doing sustained building right in front of your train pretty rarely, so going just a little bit over (18/24) probably isn't that big of a deal. Likewise you don't want to cram too many decisions into a turn as that goes straight back into downtime issues, but given the distance between things on the board, even with substantially faster trains, you're still unlikely to make more delivery per turn (and I'm going to talk next about how to reduce that particular downtime issue anyway).

The other fix to speed up Empire Builder is equally obvious. As I said, the one point where the game really feels like it starts to drag is in the endgame, where you've connected up all your required cities, and are just trying to accrue the required $250M. There's a pretty obvious answer to that: reduce the amount of money required. I'd need a lot of playtesting to figure out the correct stop point, but I'd go with $150M as a first stab in the dark. That reduces the final phase of the game by a full 40%, but still keeps the bar high enough that you can really see someone heading toward it (not that there's currently any way to stop people).

Reducing Downtime

Closely tied to game length is the problem of downtime. It can take a long time between your turns. This is largely due to two factors: the first is the problem of getting a new demand card, and then needing to lookup all those new supply and destination cities, and figuring out what your new plans should be. The second is the fact that drawing new rails takes quite a bit of time, as you have to count out up to 20 different spaces.

The cause of the lookup problem is the phase placement of when you draw your new demand cards. You do it right in the middle of the turn, and thus you get a bunch of new information that you have to read and assess before you do anything else. This is almost universally a bad design in any board or card game; games shouldn't require a draw at the start or middle of your turn unless the cards drawn are so simple that their use is obvious.

There's two potential ways to change this draw. The first is to say that demand cards aren't drawn until the end of your turn. The second is to say that your turn ends as soon as you make a delivery. Each possibility has some disadvantages. If you don't draw until the end of your turn then you have the possibility to make a very bad move, such as moving one space off of a town, then learning that you had a delivery for it. On the other hand ending your turn whenever you make a delivery can punish particularly efficient play, such as if you'd manage to group together two deliveries for the same location.

Ultimately, I like the first possibility better because it gives players a choice. Inexperienced players might mess themselves up, but experienced players now get to balance options: do they take the other portion or their movement, or do they sit waiting for a very lucky draw? I think that press-your-luck choices like this often make for interesting gameplay (as long as they're obvious enough to the players).

Reducing Calculations

The second downtime issue of adding up to 20 tracks each turn dovetails straight into the issue of high calculations. A lot of time is always spent counting out spaces on the board and drawing crayon rails over them.

I've seen an on-the-net variant for this, where groups explicitly split play into two sections, transport and railbuilding. They then have two turn markers going around the table, one for the current trainmover and one for the current trackbuilder. The one marker is never allowed to lap the other, and thus players always get the two phases of their turn in the correct order, but the slowness of trackbuilding spaces itself out while players consistently push through train movement.

Ultimately I think that this solution is solid, but also very inelegant. It'll probably scare off most less serious players and it doesn't really address the problem.

The problem, ultimately, is that counting up to twenty of anything is going to take a long time. Imagine if your favorite tactical game gave you 20 Action Points to spend a turn. If you already cringe at the downtime of a Tikal or a Dungeon Twister, this idea will probably make you grand mal. The APs of Empire Builder are very constrained, but nonetheless, you still do have to make up to 20 decisions, and that's going to take some time.

Reducing the amount of track that a player can build in a turn doesn't really solve the problem, because you're ultimately going to have to build that same sum of track over a game, and this just spreads it out.

Instead, to reduce the calculation of Empire Builder, I'm fairly convinced that the board should be less granular. If there were half as many mileposts on the board, and thus cities were effectively twice as close, I'm fairly close that this would double the speed of track-building, perhaps more because it's easier for players to keep "10" in their head than "20".

In fact, combining this with my original idea about speeding up the locomotives you'll see that you don't actually need to double their rates: instead you keep their speeds the same on a board that's been halved in size.

Unfortunately, unlike my other suggestions in this article, you can't just adopt this idea. Mayfair would need to do in a second edition variant of their games. Which I suppose leaves us with one main method for reducing calculations: the two-token turn system that I outlined above.

Ah well.

Increasing Interactivity

And that brings us to the final issue with Empire Builder: interactivity. As it stands, Empire Builder is really a race game, with the only interaction being who gets to the victory condition ($150M or $250M or whatever) first. This in turn contributes to issues of downtime, because it feels like longer between your turns when your opponents' actions don't have any real effect on you. Thus figuring out how to increase interactivity can also go back and further improve the issue of downtime.

The top answer I've seen for increasing interactivity on the 'net is "shared demands", which presumably means that some or all demand cards are kept in common on the table, and are completed by whomever manages to do them first. I can see this making the game very frustrating, if you keep losing demands as other people finish the cards, but I'm sure there are some ways to do it right (e.g., letting a player claim a demand card once he has the appropriate load on board). I leave others who have actually tried this game variant to offer more comments on it. Instead I'm going to explore some new possibilities.

There's many types of possible social interaction. Some of the ones that I've identified to date include direct competition, resource competition, economic competition, trading, and auctions. You don't want to try and include all of these, in all likelihood, but a sprinkling could make you care more about the other players' turns.

First, I think the idea of doing something with the demand cards is a good one. Rather than introducing chaos by letting anyone grab them at any time, I'd instead introduce order by auctioning them. Take my previous idea of players not taking demand cards until the end of the turn, and expand it to instead only offer them at the end of a round of play. At this point auction off a number of demand cards equal to at least half the number of players and at most the number of demand cards needed to refill everyone's hand to full.

Do these auctions one at a time, not revealing any future cards to prevent analysis & downtime issues. Do them as simple closed fist auctions, but skew the results. The winner of an auction is the player who bid the most money and doesn't have a full hand of demand cards unless none of the winners are missing any cards, in which case the absolute highest bidder wins. I think this tweak is just enough to keep the auction interesting, and also makes sure that there isn't a simple rich-gets-richer mentality.

If you win a card and already have 3 demand cards, you immediately discard one, which also offers a new way to keep the game fresh and interesting.

Second, I'd introduce a trade phase. Let players exchange money, demand cards, and binding promises of goods (more of that in a second). You may have to put a timer on this--an egg timer might do.

I think the above two changes would do a lot to make you feel like you were playing with other people, but still don't address the problem of other peoples' turns being boring, so one more change is needed.

Third, allow players to exchange goods on the physical board. Allow drop-offs at any juncture point where one players' tracks meet another. The goods can just sit there (possibly with a timer of two of your turns to prevent stagnation: flip the good on the first turn, discard it on the second) Thus as part of a deal arranged in the trade phase, you could have a player bring you a good that you can then use yourself, probably in exchange for a payment of some money.

You'd need one other simple rules change to allow this: let trains turn around at any juncture points, so that you can just build a branch off to an opponents' track, grab a good, then return home with your booty.

Of all the changes I suggest in this article, these are on the ones I'm the least confident of, because they add such a new dimension to the game. They could introduce downtime, collusion, or other problems all their own, and thus would need to be tested, but I think that additional dimension would add a lot to the game.

Conclusion

I really should have called these articles Redeveloping Empire Builder. As I wrote in my first blog entry here, there's a big difference between designing & developing a game; at this point I feel like Empire Builder could use a 21st century redevelopment that could improve the game a lot.

Somes changes are easy to implement:

• Double train speeds
  
• Drop victory to $150M
  
• Move demand card draw to the end of a turn
  

Some of the changes I suggest can really only be done by Mayfair themselves:

• Redesign the demand cards
  
• Halve distances on the board (instead of those double speed trains)
  

Finally some are open-ended enough that they'd need pretty extensive testing:

• Introduce auction for demand cards (instead of just moving draws to the end of the turn)
  
• Introduce a trading phase
  
• Allow storage & exchange of goods on the track
  

If you're a fan of Empire Builder, I encourage you to try some of these "improvements" out, and report back how well they worked.

Scary Stuff

With Halloween just around the corner (o.k., it was the last corner, not the next one), I thought I’d mention some things that scare board gamers. Please feel free to express your own scary thoughts.

1) The credit card statement.

2) Drinks in close proximity to the game.

3) Cheetos.

4) A burst water pipe.

5) Cats who like to play Puerto Rico with you.

6) Dogs who are faster than you to pick up any dropped pieces.

7) A house full of people who just want to play Monopoly.

8) Playing Duel with an anti-social homicidal maniac.

9) Termites.

10) Dressing your children up as Meeples…when it’s not even Halloween!

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Das Ende Des Triumvirats

This is one of the Essen games that has caught my imagination. I haven’t heard a lot about it but the few comments on the Geek and a read through the rules (http://triumvirat.zavandor.de/triumvirate_engl.pdf ) has convinced me this is worth looking into. I’ll try to explain why without going into too much detail regarding the rules.

Firstly, it’s for 2-3 players, which is becoming increasingly important in my game-buying requirements. Granted, it won’t be the same level of competition with only 2 but it sounds like it would still be a good fight.

Secondly, there are three different winning conditions so there’s options on what strategy you want to pursue. The first winning condition is a Political Victory: if a player is selected as Consul for the 2nd time (you become Consul by influencing the Citizens in the Forum). The second condition is a Military Victory: a player who owns 9 Provinces wins. The last winning condition is a Competence Victory: if you reach the 7th level in both Military and Political competence (which is kept track of on the Competence Track).

Thirdly, there’s plenty of interaction between players by either directly attacking an enemy’s province or by indirectly affecting his standing with the citizens in the Forum.

Fourthly, is the management aspect which I enjoy in games. You must manage your money which is needed to carry out actions, manage your Legions and their weapons, balance your military and political influence, and manage your standing with the citizens.

The last thing, and the one that really caught my attention, is the way in which the battles are handled. There’s a random element but also a chance to better your odds.

At the beginning of the game, each player places 2 of his “weapons” (cubes) in the Battle Bag. In an attack, up to 3 cubes are drawn from the bag (the number draw is equal to the lowest number of legions either player has in that province). For each weapon drawn of a combatant’s color, 1 of his Legion is eliminated, a non-combatant’s color has no effect and is returned to the bag. Weapons used to eliminate Legions are not put back in the bag but are returned to the player. This is the only luck in the game and does not always represent the whole battle. If the defender has his Leader in that province, his Legions fight harder and therefore eliminate 2 of the attacking Legions. The “main battle” now proceeds which is simply to remove an equal amount of Legions from each side until one or both sides have none left. Not too impressive yet, is it? Wait, there’s more.

The defender, if he loses the battle, is compensated with either a weapon added to the bag or an increase in either of his competences on the Competence Track. If he has also lost his Civil Servant (who helps you get supplies of gold and legions), he may put another weapon in the bag. Another way to improve your chances with the Battle Bag is through an Action which lets you add 2 weapons to the bag.

A couple other nice points about conflict is that no player may be attacked if he has only 1 province, and there is no huge build-up of legions because if you have more than 6 in a province at the end of your turn, they’re removed. Use ‘em or lose ‘em.

My impression is that this is a game with a lot going on but with relatively simple rules. For now it seems as though it isn’t going to be seen in the U.S. any time soon, which is a shame. Anyone interested in getting together to order from Lookout Games?
~~~~~~~~
Until next time, don’t forget to give an offering to the Gods.

Mary

Whose Socks Are These?

For years I have been the source of gaming activities in my little social circles. When I moved to Israel, I found OKBridge and got my brothers hooked. I found out about Magic and arranged some boxes to be bought and brought over. Soon, my brothers and friends were all playing. That was about when I started the game group meetings.

Sometime later I found out about 3e D&D, and I realized that my kids were old enough to play, so I bought the books. I created a campaign for my kids, but I also asked my friends and brothers to test it out, which they did. My brother David then started his own new campaign which is still going, long after I grew disenchanted with 3e and d20.

I brought over Settlers and all the rest of the games, again introducing them to my brothers and friends. Eventually the Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club got its own name and regular nights.

I have very little experience in NOT being the game teacher. My brothers play bridge better than I do. I think my friend David introduced us to Civilization. Long before, when I was a kid, I was picking up 1e D&D and Cosmic Encounter from them. But that was a long time ago.

The first encounter I've had with someone from outside my circles was when Chris Brooks came to visit me a few months ago. Still, it was in my house. Then, about a few months after that, I took my first trip to a game group in Modiin, Israel, where Gilad (want-to-be leader of a Tel Aviv based group) was having a game night.

It was a very strange feeling. Someone else taught the games. Someone else organized. All I had to do was play. I am so used to being the host that I forgot to bring a snack, something I am always admonishing my game group attendees to bring. I am just so not used to being in that mode.

So here I am, in Dallas. On Sunday I got together with some Dallas people to play Die Macher, which was fun (although long). Again, it wasn't my venue or my game, and I didn't have to teach anyone anything. Wow. Is that what it feels like?

Tonight I am on my way to the regular Dallas game night, and Thursday of course (even Wed evening) is BGG.con . What a lark! I'm not organizing anything (I may help out on Wed evening), or hosting anything. I will be bringing my game prototype and teaching it, of course, but otherwise ... so strange.

As I speak, the game club is continuing in Jerusalem without me for the first time. Last week they met, and it looks like they will this week, too. One more time after that, and the next week I'll be back. They don't need me? Oh no, they don't need me! Actually, great, they don't need me! Or something in between.

Speaking of game groups: I know my game group. I know their personalities, and their play styles. We have a certain liesurely, non-competitive, relaxed idea about the rules and turn-taking. All of us, pretty much. I can already see that meeting new people will mean meeting new personalities: the good, the bad, and the radically different. How strange. How different.

Cool.

Yehuda