The games that we are giving for this Christmas can be broken into a number of categories. A significant number of them come from Amazon.de because they have, or had, a deal where shipping from Germany to Australia was a flat 14.00 Euro regardless of the order. Amazon.de don't stock all German games, but they do stock a significant number of games compared to their counterparts in other countries.
Games for, or to play with, Daughter the Younger and Daughter the Elder (that have already arrived)
Daughter the Younger is 4 3/4 and Daughter the Elder is heading towards 9 1/2.
Beppo der Bock Looks good for the Daughter the Younger age group and we would probably have fun playing it as a family. The winner of the 2007 Kinderspiel des Jahres.
Trötofant A game that is played with party tooters! Melissa has been itching for an excuse to get this for ages, and the 14 Euro shipping was the reason! This will probably remain the only game we have that has components that need to be put through the dishwasher after each game.
Chicken Cha Cha Cha Obscenely cheap when ordering it direct from Germany. This was the winner of the 1998 Kinderspiel des Jahres. The girls will be familiar with the artwork from Pick Picnic.
Games for the family, or games that have already arrived and been broken out
As Melissa and I do not seem to be specifically giving each other games this Christmas these will have to count as "our games".
Wizard We have already played this with Daughter the Elder and a friend of ours. It will be a good training ground for her in the art of trick taking games with suits. Something that comes as second nature to experienced players - before playing the card you want to play, answer the question do I have any cards of the suit that was lead? The fools and wizards make this variation much more interesting to play than standard Oh Hell!
PitchCar, PitchCar Extension and Pitchcar Extension 2. Actually PitchCar was ordered ages ago and finally arrived. These two expansions arrived too and so now we have them. We will probably play it in the next few days.
Other things that haven't arrived yet or are still to be sent but still only cost 14 Euro shipping
Pecunia non olet and Los Mampfos combine with our copy of Drunter und Drüber to complete Melissa's holy grail of the trilogy of poo games. If you are fan of "The Two Ronnies" and have seen Melissa collapse in tears of laughter at the line "and the Richard the Third flew away" you would have some understanding as to how important it is for her to complete the set.
Hart an der Grenze This is a game I played a while ago at Dockers one night and enjoyed. It's not the sort of game I would play every week, it would probably only come out every couple of months, but with the right group of players will be a real hoot.
Make 'n' Break Extreme We have Make 'n' Break and love it. It is pretty much a hit with everyone that sees it, so given that this may not be available in Australia for years, this is pretty much a no brainer.
Die Steven Segal it was only a few euros and we have played other people's copies quite often. Side note, I know Die Steven Segal is not its real name, but I can never remember the real name - to the extent that in BGG I have a page 2 QuickBar entry under the name Die Steve Segal to link to the game's page just so I can find it. I have submitted a game correction to have "Die Steven Segal" listed as an alternate name, but it would seem that my suggestion was declined.
Äpfel zu Äpfeln - Erweiterung - 1, the German expansion to Apples to Apples. Melissa is fluent in German and Daughter the Elder is going to a German Saturday school next year to learn German. Need I say more?
Halli Galli This game is expensive and quite difficult to obtain in Australia. It is an excellent game for children who have just started school. Daughter the Younger is starting school at the end of January, so we have ordered two copies of this to be given as birthday presents for her friends. Note when playing this very competitively protective gloves should be worn.
Destined for Secret Santa recipients
To protect the innocent not many details will be provided, suffice to say that the list of games was Die Säulen der Erde - Die Erweiterung (the German edition of the Pillars of the Earth 5 & 6 Player Expansion (by request), Medici vs Strozzi, Ziegen Kriegen, Notre Dame and All-Zeit. This last game was the most difficult to arrange, but through a complex chain of people and favours, we managed to track down a copy that could be sent to [placename deleted], even though none of the online stores seemed to list it at that time.
... and now the end is near...
We joined Gone Gaming about six months or so after it started, so are not foundation members, but are honoured to have been in such company. I wouldn't call myself a writer, and I imagine most of the readers agree, but it has been fun to be a contributor here. See you over at Boardgamenews in 2008 (or very late 2007 depending on what timezone you are in!)
Showing posts with label fraser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fraser. Show all posts
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Saturday, November 17, 2007
After being defeated by the rules, the play made it clear...
There have been a few games where I have found myself utterly defeated after reading the rules. Instead of knowing how to play the game I have no idea at all, in some extreme cases I know less about the game than I did before I started and also I am no longer entirely sure what my phone number is.
In pretty much every case this has been cured by playing the game, preferably with somebody who knows how to play it.
Games where I have been defeated by the rules include Coloretto, Mamma Mia!, Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, Tigris & Euphrates and Air War (OK I will admit that the last one was not at all recently).
With Coloretto and Mamma Mia! a step by step playing of the game in close concert with the rules meant that things that were previously clear as mud suddenly became obvious as if some magic spell had been lifted. Interestingly enough I had no problem at all with Zooloretto, mostly due to the familiarity with Coloretto.
Air War is really a case of being defeated by the errata. I spent hours working my way through the hefty rule book to suddenly find this enormous errata that basically poked out its tongue and said everything you have learnt before is wrong and you must learn it again. I put the rules and the errata back in the box, gave the game back to its owner and went back to playing Foxbat and Phantom instead.
With Tigris & Euphrates I read the rules and felt I was about half way. I had some understanding, but was clearly foundering. This time I went down the path of getting someone who had already played it to teach it. This worked a treat, again suddenly everything was very clear and we played it three times in a row. With the game in front of you an experienced player can teach this in about ten minutes and actually explain the internal and external conflicts in a meaningful way as opposed to that blank look that people get when they first read the rules without having played the game.
In the case of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper I read the rules twice and even tried playing a game solo. Three - nil in the game's favour. The rules aren't that long, it shouldn't be that hard. I read the rules to War in Europe and just played it from scratch, but am now being defeated by a card game and its cursed melds. At least I could console myself that I was not the only one who has had this problem, there are many similar stories at BGG.
I issued the "Teach me" plea and to my gratitude Gregor responded and it was arranged for the next EuroGamesFest. Sure enough after a brief explanation and about a hand or two it was pretty much all perfectly clear and I could now successfully teach other people how to play, which means Melissa and Daughter the Elder are now fans of the game and we have played it quite a few times recently, including a hand or two waiting for meals to arrive at a restaurant and in the waiting room at our GP's waiting room waiting for a Doctor for Daughter the Younger.
My plan of attack for our unplayed pile is still usually:
1) Read the rules
2) If that does not succeed, try a solo game
3) If that does not succeed, call on somebody who has played the game before to assist.
Usually we have a successful game after step 1, but not always.
Hmmm meeples taste like...
In pretty much every case this has been cured by playing the game, preferably with somebody who knows how to play it.
Games where I have been defeated by the rules include Coloretto, Mamma Mia!, Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, Tigris & Euphrates and Air War (OK I will admit that the last one was not at all recently).
With Coloretto and Mamma Mia! a step by step playing of the game in close concert with the rules meant that things that were previously clear as mud suddenly became obvious as if some magic spell had been lifted. Interestingly enough I had no problem at all with Zooloretto, mostly due to the familiarity with Coloretto.
Air War is really a case of being defeated by the errata. I spent hours working my way through the hefty rule book to suddenly find this enormous errata that basically poked out its tongue and said everything you have learnt before is wrong and you must learn it again. I put the rules and the errata back in the box, gave the game back to its owner and went back to playing Foxbat and Phantom instead.
With Tigris & Euphrates I read the rules and felt I was about half way. I had some understanding, but was clearly foundering. This time I went down the path of getting someone who had already played it to teach it. This worked a treat, again suddenly everything was very clear and we played it three times in a row. With the game in front of you an experienced player can teach this in about ten minutes and actually explain the internal and external conflicts in a meaningful way as opposed to that blank look that people get when they first read the rules without having played the game.
In the case of Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper I read the rules twice and even tried playing a game solo. Three - nil in the game's favour. The rules aren't that long, it shouldn't be that hard. I read the rules to War in Europe and just played it from scratch, but am now being defeated by a card game and its cursed melds. At least I could console myself that I was not the only one who has had this problem, there are many similar stories at BGG.
I issued the "Teach me" plea and to my gratitude Gregor responded and it was arranged for the next EuroGamesFest. Sure enough after a brief explanation and about a hand or two it was pretty much all perfectly clear and I could now successfully teach other people how to play, which means Melissa and Daughter the Elder are now fans of the game and we have played it quite a few times recently, including a hand or two waiting for meals to arrive at a restaurant and in the waiting room at our GP's waiting room waiting for a Doctor for Daughter the Younger.
My plan of attack for our unplayed pile is still usually:
1) Read the rules
2) If that does not succeed, try a solo game
3) If that does not succeed, call on somebody who has played the game before to assist.
Usually we have a successful game after step 1, but not always.
Hmmm meeples taste like...
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Signs that you might be thinking of Essen just a little too much
o Prior to the media day you are constantly checking boardgamegeek, boardgamenews, Frank's site and other places for the first snippets of information and complaining when there isn't any there
o Planning to SMS "Ready, Set, Go!" to people who are at Essen at the exact time the doors open to the public.
o Posting to blogs, BGG and mailing lists about Essen envy
o Knowing the airfare to Essen
o Knowing which hotels at Essen still have vacancies
o Know that if you take the child who has a passport that your luggage allowance will be doubled
o Searching out German rules for new games on the internet, emailing your partner/spouse/friend with access to a printer to print them out so you can determine whether or not to place an order with your Essen "personal shopper"
o Wanting to go to the airport and ask for a ticket "on the next flight to Germany"
o Being prepared to ditch a local community event that you have put at least 100 hours work into to go to Essen instead
o Knowing what time the doors at Essen close, factoring in time for the Essen correspondents to type up their reports and then you start checking
o Having Aldie say "You are jonesin' for some Essen"
o When ringing your spouse on the phone you say "I'm not at home, but I am not at the airport"
If many of the above apply to you then, to quote Aldie, "You are jonesin' for some Essen"
Fraser
o Planning to SMS "Ready, Set, Go!" to people who are at Essen at the exact time the doors open to the public.
o Posting to blogs, BGG and mailing lists about Essen envy
o Knowing the airfare to Essen
o Knowing which hotels at Essen still have vacancies
o Know that if you take the child who has a passport that your luggage allowance will be doubled
o Searching out German rules for new games on the internet, emailing your partner/spouse/friend with access to a printer to print them out so you can determine whether or not to place an order with your Essen "personal shopper"
o Wanting to go to the airport and ask for a ticket "on the next flight to Germany"
o Being prepared to ditch a local community event that you have put at least 100 hours work into to go to Essen instead
o Knowing what time the doors at Essen close, factoring in time for the Essen correspondents to type up their reports and then you start checking
o Having Aldie say "You are jonesin' for some Essen"
o When ringing your spouse on the phone you say "I'm not at home, but I am not at the airport"
If many of the above apply to you then, to quote Aldie, "You are jonesin' for some Essen"
Fraser
Saturday, October 06, 2007
To retheme or not to retheme, that is the question
It is not an uncommon practise for games to be reissued in a rethemed version. Usually with only minor differences, if any, from the original apart from the theme. Sometimes there may be quite a few changes or additions compared to the original, but does that just make it a "second edition" or does it require the retheming?
Here's a few:
Schotten Totten to Battle Line
Revolution to Atlanteon (OK only one entry)
Tycoon to El Capitan
Dune to Twilight Imperium Universe Dune?
There are some rethemings that seem sensible or reasonable. In some cases the original version is out of print, so the opportunity exists, or possibly the original artwork is no longer available so it is going to be recreated anyway.
In the case of Schotten Totten and Battle Line both versions have been in and out print, but certainly when we bought our version of Schotten Totten both games were in print. Our copy of Schotten Totten includes the tactics cards, so there is very little difference between the two games apart from Battle Line's apparent homage to This is Spinal Tap by making the cards go just that one higher than Schotten Totten. Unfortunately this is one of the games that the lovely Melissa has not done a rules translation for, so I cannot confirm the tactics cards are exactly the same in function, but I believe that they are.
Why then change it from wild Scots in the Highlands to ancient warriors?
In this case I the the answer can be found by looking at the new publisher GMT Games and their main market. They are primarily a wargame company and thus the majority of their customers will be interested in wargames. The retheming would make the game much more marketable to their customers.
In the case of Revolution to Atlanteon I am not aware of any changes other than the theme. The theme has changed from Revolutionary Paris to Undersea Kingdoms. I think this is another case of the new publisher, Fantasy Flight Games in this case, targeting the theme to their customer base. Is it an accurate assumption or are the publishers guilty of dumbing down their own customers? Since they didn't sell both versions I suppose we will never know. Interestingly enough FFG let Senator out of the door with its historical, as opposed to science fiction, theme.
A case mentioned here at Gone Gaming recently is Tycoon to El Capitan. I played Tycoon for the first time only a few weeks ago and enjoyed it. The theme worked well for me - I thought that the cost of travel being so high because you are a tycoon flying around in your own personal jet with your potentially large entourage, so it does cost a lot of money to relocate from one city to another. Corporate tycoons must be out of flavour now, because El Capitan has shifted it to Tom Vasel's most reviled theme, Mediterranean trading ports. Sure this fits in thematically with more of the games released over the last ten years, but was it really necessary to change it? Will the sales be that much better than a straight Tycoon Second Edition would have been?
Dune to Twilight Imperium Universe Dune? is an interesting case. As far as I understand it, Dune is no longer licensed. If it was relicensed it could be reprinted, or a second edition released. The retheming is the outcome that would occur if nothing changed with the licensing situation.
Now I must admit that I have never played Dune, mainly because I have not had the opportunity. My personal feeling though is that theme is very important to this game. The Dune universe through the books has quite a history and people associate with that. Sure you could retheme it and technically have the same game or possibly an even better one, but would it be as engaging without sandworms and spice (even if they are just cardboard chits)? I doubt it.
Going from Schotten Totten to Battle Line is no great loss and there was no great investment with the Highland theme, but I can see that in going from Dune to something else there definitely would be a loss of investment for people familiar with the original. For people with no knowledge of the original it probably wouldn't make much difference, but would the new be as engrossing as the original was because of the history?
It sort of reminds me a little of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. A very nice film if you knew nothing about the books or the radio show. However if you had listened to the radio show time and time again and read the books, the first twenty minutes of the film was excellent and the rest was, to put it politely, not.
For some things you just have to ask yourself, why did they change that?
Mmm meeples taste like...
Here's a few:
Schotten Totten to Battle Line
Revolution to Atlanteon (OK only one entry)
Tycoon to El Capitan
Dune to Twilight Imperium Universe Dune?
There are some rethemings that seem sensible or reasonable. In some cases the original version is out of print, so the opportunity exists, or possibly the original artwork is no longer available so it is going to be recreated anyway.
In the case of Schotten Totten and Battle Line both versions have been in and out print, but certainly when we bought our version of Schotten Totten both games were in print. Our copy of Schotten Totten includes the tactics cards, so there is very little difference between the two games apart from Battle Line's apparent homage to This is Spinal Tap by making the cards go just that one higher than Schotten Totten. Unfortunately this is one of the games that the lovely Melissa has not done a rules translation for, so I cannot confirm the tactics cards are exactly the same in function, but I believe that they are.
Why then change it from wild Scots in the Highlands to ancient warriors?
In this case I the the answer can be found by looking at the new publisher GMT Games and their main market. They are primarily a wargame company and thus the majority of their customers will be interested in wargames. The retheming would make the game much more marketable to their customers.
In the case of Revolution to Atlanteon I am not aware of any changes other than the theme. The theme has changed from Revolutionary Paris to Undersea Kingdoms. I think this is another case of the new publisher, Fantasy Flight Games in this case, targeting the theme to their customer base. Is it an accurate assumption or are the publishers guilty of dumbing down their own customers? Since they didn't sell both versions I suppose we will never know. Interestingly enough FFG let Senator out of the door with its historical, as opposed to science fiction, theme.
A case mentioned here at Gone Gaming recently is Tycoon to El Capitan. I played Tycoon for the first time only a few weeks ago and enjoyed it. The theme worked well for me - I thought that the cost of travel being so high because you are a tycoon flying around in your own personal jet with your potentially large entourage, so it does cost a lot of money to relocate from one city to another. Corporate tycoons must be out of flavour now, because El Capitan has shifted it to Tom Vasel's most reviled theme, Mediterranean trading ports. Sure this fits in thematically with more of the games released over the last ten years, but was it really necessary to change it? Will the sales be that much better than a straight Tycoon Second Edition would have been?
Dune to Twilight Imperium Universe Dune? is an interesting case. As far as I understand it, Dune is no longer licensed. If it was relicensed it could be reprinted, or a second edition released. The retheming is the outcome that would occur if nothing changed with the licensing situation.
Now I must admit that I have never played Dune, mainly because I have not had the opportunity. My personal feeling though is that theme is very important to this game. The Dune universe through the books has quite a history and people associate with that. Sure you could retheme it and technically have the same game or possibly an even better one, but would it be as engaging without sandworms and spice (even if they are just cardboard chits)? I doubt it.
Going from Schotten Totten to Battle Line is no great loss and there was no great investment with the Highland theme, but I can see that in going from Dune to something else there definitely would be a loss of investment for people familiar with the original. For people with no knowledge of the original it probably wouldn't make much difference, but would the new be as engrossing as the original was because of the history?
It sort of reminds me a little of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. A very nice film if you knew nothing about the books or the radio show. However if you had listened to the radio show time and time again and read the books, the first twenty minutes of the film was excellent and the rest was, to put it politely, not.
For some things you just have to ask yourself, why did they change that?
Mmm meeples taste like...
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Transformers Risk and some other things
In general I am a believer in replaying games. It’s one of the reasons I buy games I like, so that I can play them again next week, next month, next year or next decade. At Gamers@Dockers sessions however, I quite often find myself playing new games, either physically new, or games that I haven’t played before.
On some occasions this is because it is a game that I haven’t played before, but I wanted to and because somebody was there who had the game and new how to play it I seized the opportunity. Sometimes it is because someone has just bought and brought a new game and wants to try it out. One of our members runs a OLGS so he often brings demo copies of new stock to play. Other times somebody just wants people to play their favourite game(s) and is recruiting people to play.
Transformer Risk fell into the ‘someone had just bought and brought a new game’ category. We had actually lined up a game of Fury of Dracula, but it had still not arrived at the building and Transformers Risk was there. REGGY sticks by his claims that he bought it to play with his ten year old son.
Four player Transformers Risk is team play, red and yellow versus purple and black. At this point I must admit that my knowledge of Transformers doesn’t go much past the words Megatron, Decipticon and robots transforming into vehicles and vice versa. Therefore I it is possible that I am unable to appreciate or convey the richly themed aspects of the game that some others may pick up on.
A quick run through the rules had us on top of everything with the possible exception of the spinning discs and the “secret” factories. C’mon people , you slide the region and it is written right there on the board “Secret Factory”, it is hardly a very well kept secret is it? The spinning discs were conceptually OK, but we could find no mention in the rules of whether they started open or closed. We opted for closed, or mostly closed in the case of Asia^H^H^H^H the green territory since it will always be at least partially open.
Mr Skeletor had never played Risk face to face before, although had played it on the PC. B5mith didn’t make any admission about his Risk pedigree, I used to play it a bit in my younger days, but the only time in the last five or so years would have been my one game of Risk 2210 at the same venue.
Fans of the original Risk may look at the map of the Transformers planet and remark that it looks an awful lot like the Earth. Obviously not I say, I mean there’s two paths into Australia instead of one and you can go North and South from North America to South America, I mean from the Red region to the Yellow region. Totally different! And let’s not forget the Secret Factories shall we? Or maybe we should, since they are meant to be secret aren’t they?
Anyway during the setup phase Mr Skeletor built predominantly in the Red region and I built mainly in the Yellow. We also branched out twards the other areas including some well garrisoned outposts in the middle of bad guys territory which caused them to waste more and more resources defending the neighbouring territories.
During the first turn Mr Skeletor and I consolidated our hold on the Red and Yellow continents and defended the approaches. We also caused some havoc from our outposts in enemy territory, especially against the secret factory (which was clearly marked on all our maps).
Since resources are scarce and you can only win a maximum of one card per turn, it didn’t seem worth over-extending ourselves. Where we were close together we operated in concert, for example Mr Skeletor softened up one of the bad guy territories in our area and then in my turn I cleared it out.
When day 2 arrived we each held a complete territory. This gave us bonus robots, not many admittedly, but every robot helps. We continued our attacks into their territories, picking of their large concentrations and keeping our home territory defended. I conducted much more reckless assaults from my base near the “secret” factory figuring that they were going to come and get me anyway so I may as well cause as much grief as possible before they did.
Our two pronged assault in to Asia was very successful and by this stage unless we were doomed to forever roll ones it was just a matter of time before we overwhelmed our opposition as we were probably producing three time as many robots as they were and could afford to drop them into the front line to use as assault troops.
Despite some spirited defence it was all over red rover by the end of turn four. Total annihilation of the bad guys had been achieved. I’m not sure if Mr Skeletor’s singing of the Transformers theme helped, but it did add to the theme.
To quote and old real estate expression, the important thing during initial placement is “location, location, location”. Our initial placements were much more consolidated and defensible and we took advantage of that.
The special areas are cute, but given that you will win a maximum of six cards in a game and some them don’t even have the ability to activate one of the areas, I am guessing that aren’t likely to be used very often. Especially if the alternative use for the card is to add one to any die roll for the turn.
This said, as far as my admittedly limited experience in Risk variants go, this is a good one. Limited resources makes it a more strategic game and the fixed or capped number of turns should keep playing time reasonable.
I also got to try Ahoy, Logistico and Factory Fun.
Ahoy is a short game and good strategy is reliant on memory. If you memory is faulty you will probably not go well at all. There is some strategy involved with the memory aspect, so elder children would probably enjoy it.
Logistico is one those games that is, for me, going to require a few plays to get a complete understanding of the different possibilities and strategies that may be there. Did we deliver too much early in the game for low rewards, or was that just safe guarding it from being exploited by other players for large rewards later in the game? I am not at all sure.
Factory Fun, is it a game or a puzzle? You are definitely competing against other players for the choice of machines. You either want the best machine (i.e. most valuable) or the one that suits your factory the best. You need to know what qualifies the machines in this aspect and then pick the appropriate machine before somebody else does. This is a very quick but tense phase. Where’s the machine with blue outputs but no brown input? Is there one, yes there it is, oh no wait that’s a blue input not output, ah there it is, drats someone else has taken it. Is my red reservoir still accessible because everything that is left needs red… etc.
When placing the machine consideration must be taken for allowing room for future machines, both leaving room for them and efficiently using the output of one machine as the input of another (which is greatly rewarded). Substantial rebuilding of your factory is allowed, but this costs money and you may not have enough.
We were all happy enough the first time to jump straight back in for a second play.
The highlight of my gaming month though was finally getting Melissa to play Formula Dé, we had seven players, six of whom hadn't played before. We played a one lap race on the Zandvoort 2 track and it seemed to go well.
Mmm meeples taste like...
On some occasions this is because it is a game that I haven’t played before, but I wanted to and because somebody was there who had the game and new how to play it I seized the opportunity. Sometimes it is because someone has just bought and brought a new game and wants to try it out. One of our members runs a OLGS so he often brings demo copies of new stock to play. Other times somebody just wants people to play their favourite game(s) and is recruiting people to play.
Transformer Risk fell into the ‘someone had just bought and brought a new game’ category. We had actually lined up a game of Fury of Dracula, but it had still not arrived at the building and Transformers Risk was there. REGGY sticks by his claims that he bought it to play with his ten year old son.
Four player Transformers Risk is team play, red and yellow versus purple and black. At this point I must admit that my knowledge of Transformers doesn’t go much past the words Megatron, Decipticon and robots transforming into vehicles and vice versa. Therefore I it is possible that I am unable to appreciate or convey the richly themed aspects of the game that some others may pick up on.
A quick run through the rules had us on top of everything with the possible exception of the spinning discs and the “secret” factories. C’mon people , you slide the region and it is written right there on the board “Secret Factory”, it is hardly a very well kept secret is it? The spinning discs were conceptually OK, but we could find no mention in the rules of whether they started open or closed. We opted for closed, or mostly closed in the case of Asia^H^H^H^H the green territory since it will always be at least partially open.
Mr Skeletor had never played Risk face to face before, although had played it on the PC. B5mith didn’t make any admission about his Risk pedigree, I used to play it a bit in my younger days, but the only time in the last five or so years would have been my one game of Risk 2210 at the same venue.
Fans of the original Risk may look at the map of the Transformers planet and remark that it looks an awful lot like the Earth. Obviously not I say, I mean there’s two paths into Australia instead of one and you can go North and South from North America to South America, I mean from the Red region to the Yellow region. Totally different! And let’s not forget the Secret Factories shall we? Or maybe we should, since they are meant to be secret aren’t they?
Anyway during the setup phase Mr Skeletor built predominantly in the Red region and I built mainly in the Yellow. We also branched out twards the other areas including some well garrisoned outposts in the middle of bad guys territory which caused them to waste more and more resources defending the neighbouring territories.
During the first turn Mr Skeletor and I consolidated our hold on the Red and Yellow continents and defended the approaches. We also caused some havoc from our outposts in enemy territory, especially against the secret factory (which was clearly marked on all our maps).
Since resources are scarce and you can only win a maximum of one card per turn, it didn’t seem worth over-extending ourselves. Where we were close together we operated in concert, for example Mr Skeletor softened up one of the bad guy territories in our area and then in my turn I cleared it out.
When day 2 arrived we each held a complete territory. This gave us bonus robots, not many admittedly, but every robot helps. We continued our attacks into their territories, picking of their large concentrations and keeping our home territory defended. I conducted much more reckless assaults from my base near the “secret” factory figuring that they were going to come and get me anyway so I may as well cause as much grief as possible before they did.
Our two pronged assault in to Asia was very successful and by this stage unless we were doomed to forever roll ones it was just a matter of time before we overwhelmed our opposition as we were probably producing three time as many robots as they were and could afford to drop them into the front line to use as assault troops.
Despite some spirited defence it was all over red rover by the end of turn four. Total annihilation of the bad guys had been achieved. I’m not sure if Mr Skeletor’s singing of the Transformers theme helped, but it did add to the theme.
To quote and old real estate expression, the important thing during initial placement is “location, location, location”. Our initial placements were much more consolidated and defensible and we took advantage of that.
The special areas are cute, but given that you will win a maximum of six cards in a game and some them don’t even have the ability to activate one of the areas, I am guessing that aren’t likely to be used very often. Especially if the alternative use for the card is to add one to any die roll for the turn.
This said, as far as my admittedly limited experience in Risk variants go, this is a good one. Limited resources makes it a more strategic game and the fixed or capped number of turns should keep playing time reasonable.
I also got to try Ahoy, Logistico and Factory Fun.
Ahoy is a short game and good strategy is reliant on memory. If you memory is faulty you will probably not go well at all. There is some strategy involved with the memory aspect, so elder children would probably enjoy it.
Logistico is one those games that is, for me, going to require a few plays to get a complete understanding of the different possibilities and strategies that may be there. Did we deliver too much early in the game for low rewards, or was that just safe guarding it from being exploited by other players for large rewards later in the game? I am not at all sure.
Factory Fun, is it a game or a puzzle? You are definitely competing against other players for the choice of machines. You either want the best machine (i.e. most valuable) or the one that suits your factory the best. You need to know what qualifies the machines in this aspect and then pick the appropriate machine before somebody else does. This is a very quick but tense phase. Where’s the machine with blue outputs but no brown input? Is there one, yes there it is, oh no wait that’s a blue input not output, ah there it is, drats someone else has taken it. Is my red reservoir still accessible because everything that is left needs red… etc.
When placing the machine consideration must be taken for allowing room for future machines, both leaving room for them and efficiently using the output of one machine as the input of another (which is greatly rewarded). Substantial rebuilding of your factory is allowed, but this costs money and you may not have enough.
We were all happy enough the first time to jump straight back in for a second play.
The highlight of my gaming month though was finally getting Melissa to play Formula Dé, we had seven players, six of whom hadn't played before. We played a one lap race on the Zandvoort 2 track and it seemed to go well.
Mmm meeples taste like...
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Gaming events, big and small
I was thinking recently of games events that I go to now as well as games events that I used to go to and games events that I either will or would like to go to in the future.
One significant impact on my attendance at these events has been, what can best be described as, which phase of life I am in. For me there have been three main phases that have been relevant.
a) Single
b) In a couple (for some people this would be in a couple with a gamer or with a non-gamer), but I have never really spent time in a relationship with a non-gamer so that's not an issue for me
c) Married with small children
Future intended stages include
d) Married with older children
e) Empty Nesters
As some readers may remember, my background in gaming can be summarised boardgames, then wargames, then roleplaying games and now mostly boardgames.
The types of gaming events are:
1) Home or group based games night
2) Club based games night (club being a formal group, i.e. not just a bunch of friends)
3) Home or group based games day
4) Club based games day
5) Home of group based games weekend
6) Club or convention based games weekend
7) 3-4 day group based
8) 3-4 day club or convention
9) Longer events
As a single I attended all of the above. Particularly when I has heavily involved in roleplaying. A group of us used to travel from Melbourne to Sydney and Canberra for three and four day roleplaying game conventions as well as run one of our own in Melbourne. On top of this there were regular games nights either board gaming, roleplaying campaigns. There were also the day long events, either roleplaying sessions or tournaments, or games of Diplomacy or Civilization. Amongst the group of friends from Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney we also had what could best be described as a mini gathering of friends. A place would be booked roughly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney and thirty or forty gamers would meet for around three or four days of socialising and gaming. We also had some regular Christmas holiday sessions down at a beach house and this involved ten or more people for anywhere up to a week or more of gaming interspersed with visits down to the beach.
I remember discussing this with one of the Canberra based gamers who said that meeting up three or four times a year for three of four days of gaming each time was a good way to run a friendship and it was a regular occurrence for around a decade.
When I became part of a couple, nothing really changed. Melissa has a similar gaming pedigree as I do, just without the wargames. We had both attended the same events and done the roleplaying games convention circuit before we started going out, so we continued to do it.
During those days most of the games conventions were primarily roleplaying games conventions, other games were more of a sideline. Canberra's CanCon was the only real exception to this, it had a large non-roleplaying component as well, although we only went for the roleplaying. To my knowledge boardgame only conventions, especially if you exclude Diplomacy and wargames, are a relatively recent concept in Australia. Ditto with trade fairs, i.e. conventions were there is a significant presence of vendors and/or publishers. Usually the most we would have was a retail outlet with a stall, it was all about the playing of games not so much the purchasing. The Australian Games Expo is the only event in Australia that I know that has a significant vendor or publisher presence.
The arrival of mortgage and children has curtailed both the amount of disposable income and free time that we can devote to gaming. I used to often travel interstate to a games convention and crash on the floor or a spare bed at a friend's place. When you are travelling with a family of four this is rarely a viable option, paid accommodation is required and suddenly everything has got much more expensive. Otherwise the options are leave the children behind (not something we are willing to do at their age), take them with us to the convention (also something we are not willing to at their current age) or arrange activities or babysitting. This makes travelling to a convention logistically challenging and we have only started doing this again last year. Locally based conventions are much more viable, but I don't think we are ready to go back to the solid three or four days of gaming that was the normal occurrence at roleplaying conventions. With the Australian Games Expo we travel with the children and bring along babysitting with us.
When the girls are older they may either be interested in attending such a convention or, more likely, could go off and stay at a friends house for the weekend. A roleplaying convention is still something I would prefer to be able to commit a large amount of time to. This is because there are normally up to ten or so three hour playing sessions that you can book for different games. A boardgame event is much different in that you are really only committed for a game at a time, unless you pre-arrange something. It is possible to drop in and play something, leave and come back later.
I find that, even if you are playing regular rolepaying sessions at home or at a friends or even a club, that a roleplaying convention still gives you an opportunity to play, or be exposed to, different games and styles of games that is difficult, if not impossible, to come by in other settings. With a boardgame convention this much less the case. With regular games at home and club based games night there are very, very few games that I would not be able to play if I wanted to play them. The other possibility is different opponents to play against, but again with home and club based evenings I have quite a large body of people to play with already. Thus, to me, they are not as necessary an event to be able to scratch that gaming itch as compared to a roleplaying convention is to scratch the roleplaying itch.
It used to be that everyone I gamed with was at some stage a roleplayer, however there are people I now play games with who have never roleplayed at all. I must ask them about the concept of two or three day conventions and if they have a different concept due to a different back ground.
Then there are also the fantasy conventions. Being in Australia it is hideously expensive to get to Europe or the United States (and in the case of the former it requires a whole day sitting in an aircraft). We would love to go to Essen and BGG.con to name but two. I wouldn't even say no to Origins or GenCon if I happened to be in the neighbourhood at the appropriate time. I hope you people with relatively easy access to these conventions realise just how lucky you are, for some of thus they are really nothing much more than pipe dreams. Especially since we are raising gamer children and it is not like they are going to let us go to an overseas convention without them :-)
So what is my current gaming fix?
1) Home or group based games night - Once per fortnight (every second week)
2) Club based games night (runs once a week, I usually try to make it every second or third week)
3) Home or group based games day (up to once or twice a year we would organise one of these)
4) Club based games day (there is a once a month regular event in Melbourne, we drop in when we can)
5) Home of group based games weekend (a thing of the past)
6) Club or convention based games weekend (there's a couple of these each year, depending on commitments we try at make it to at least one day)
7) 3-4 day group based (a thing of the past)
8) 3-4 day club or convention (restricted to the Australian Games Expo these days)
9) Longer events (a thing of the past or for the future)
One significant impact on my attendance at these events has been, what can best be described as, which phase of life I am in. For me there have been three main phases that have been relevant.
a) Single
b) In a couple (for some people this would be in a couple with a gamer or with a non-gamer), but I have never really spent time in a relationship with a non-gamer so that's not an issue for me
c) Married with small children
Future intended stages include
d) Married with older children
e) Empty Nesters
As some readers may remember, my background in gaming can be summarised boardgames, then wargames, then roleplaying games and now mostly boardgames.
The types of gaming events are:
1) Home or group based games night
2) Club based games night (club being a formal group, i.e. not just a bunch of friends)
3) Home or group based games day
4) Club based games day
5) Home of group based games weekend
6) Club or convention based games weekend
7) 3-4 day group based
8) 3-4 day club or convention
9) Longer events
As a single I attended all of the above. Particularly when I has heavily involved in roleplaying. A group of us used to travel from Melbourne to Sydney and Canberra for three and four day roleplaying game conventions as well as run one of our own in Melbourne. On top of this there were regular games nights either board gaming, roleplaying campaigns. There were also the day long events, either roleplaying sessions or tournaments, or games of Diplomacy or Civilization. Amongst the group of friends from Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney we also had what could best be described as a mini gathering of friends. A place would be booked roughly halfway between Melbourne and Sydney and thirty or forty gamers would meet for around three or four days of socialising and gaming. We also had some regular Christmas holiday sessions down at a beach house and this involved ten or more people for anywhere up to a week or more of gaming interspersed with visits down to the beach.
I remember discussing this with one of the Canberra based gamers who said that meeting up three or four times a year for three of four days of gaming each time was a good way to run a friendship and it was a regular occurrence for around a decade.
When I became part of a couple, nothing really changed. Melissa has a similar gaming pedigree as I do, just without the wargames. We had both attended the same events and done the roleplaying games convention circuit before we started going out, so we continued to do it.
During those days most of the games conventions were primarily roleplaying games conventions, other games were more of a sideline. Canberra's CanCon was the only real exception to this, it had a large non-roleplaying component as well, although we only went for the roleplaying. To my knowledge boardgame only conventions, especially if you exclude Diplomacy and wargames, are a relatively recent concept in Australia. Ditto with trade fairs, i.e. conventions were there is a significant presence of vendors and/or publishers. Usually the most we would have was a retail outlet with a stall, it was all about the playing of games not so much the purchasing. The Australian Games Expo is the only event in Australia that I know that has a significant vendor or publisher presence.
The arrival of mortgage and children has curtailed both the amount of disposable income and free time that we can devote to gaming. I used to often travel interstate to a games convention and crash on the floor or a spare bed at a friend's place. When you are travelling with a family of four this is rarely a viable option, paid accommodation is required and suddenly everything has got much more expensive. Otherwise the options are leave the children behind (not something we are willing to do at their age), take them with us to the convention (also something we are not willing to at their current age) or arrange activities or babysitting. This makes travelling to a convention logistically challenging and we have only started doing this again last year. Locally based conventions are much more viable, but I don't think we are ready to go back to the solid three or four days of gaming that was the normal occurrence at roleplaying conventions. With the Australian Games Expo we travel with the children and bring along babysitting with us.
When the girls are older they may either be interested in attending such a convention or, more likely, could go off and stay at a friends house for the weekend. A roleplaying convention is still something I would prefer to be able to commit a large amount of time to. This is because there are normally up to ten or so three hour playing sessions that you can book for different games. A boardgame event is much different in that you are really only committed for a game at a time, unless you pre-arrange something. It is possible to drop in and play something, leave and come back later.
I find that, even if you are playing regular rolepaying sessions at home or at a friends or even a club, that a roleplaying convention still gives you an opportunity to play, or be exposed to, different games and styles of games that is difficult, if not impossible, to come by in other settings. With a boardgame convention this much less the case. With regular games at home and club based games night there are very, very few games that I would not be able to play if I wanted to play them. The other possibility is different opponents to play against, but again with home and club based evenings I have quite a large body of people to play with already. Thus, to me, they are not as necessary an event to be able to scratch that gaming itch as compared to a roleplaying convention is to scratch the roleplaying itch.
It used to be that everyone I gamed with was at some stage a roleplayer, however there are people I now play games with who have never roleplayed at all. I must ask them about the concept of two or three day conventions and if they have a different concept due to a different back ground.
Then there are also the fantasy conventions. Being in Australia it is hideously expensive to get to Europe or the United States (and in the case of the former it requires a whole day sitting in an aircraft). We would love to go to Essen and BGG.con to name but two. I wouldn't even say no to Origins or GenCon if I happened to be in the neighbourhood at the appropriate time. I hope you people with relatively easy access to these conventions realise just how lucky you are, for some of thus they are really nothing much more than pipe dreams. Especially since we are raising gamer children and it is not like they are going to let us go to an overseas convention without them :-)
So what is my current gaming fix?
1) Home or group based games night - Once per fortnight (every second week)
2) Club based games night (runs once a week, I usually try to make it every second or third week)
3) Home or group based games day (up to once or twice a year we would organise one of these)
4) Club based games day (there is a once a month regular event in Melbourne, we drop in when we can)
5) Home of group based games weekend (a thing of the past)
6) Club or convention based games weekend (there's a couple of these each year, depending on commitments we try at make it to at least one day)
7) 3-4 day group based (a thing of the past)
8) 3-4 day club or convention (restricted to the Australian Games Expo these days)
9) Longer events (a thing of the past or for the future)
Sunday, August 05, 2007
Pirates and Culling
On Friday night we played a five player game of Pirate's Cove . Three players were new to the game and one of them was relatively new to gaming in general.
The rules explanation went reasonably quickly, although as Melissa and I were dredging particular rules out of our collective memories, I figured that it had been quite a while since the last time either of us had played it.
On the first turn I went to cannon island and all four of the other players went to sail island where a length and destructive battle ensued. Amongst my trouble free loot was quite a bit of gold and Billy Bones' Parrot. This parrot allows you to always fire your total number of cannons, regardless of crew number. Needless to say, since I was already at cannon island I spent all my gold to raise my cannon to five.
Over the next two turns I was involved in battles with other players, but with the help of Billy Bones' Parrot I was able to quickly dispatch them to Pirate's Cove for repairs.
That was actually the last time that I was involved in a battle with another player. Through skill, luck or good fortune I managed to pick islands where other people did not go or were too scared to go. This meant that I had a steady stream of loot flowing into The Black Betsy's hold. I did have the Royal Navy sent after me twice, but on both occasions I was able to send them packing all the way back to Blighty.
Thanks to my five gun volleys, the few combats that I was involved in were relatively quick, all in my favour and relatively painless. Admittedly the two combats with the Royal Navy did damage my hull and I did have to throw some treasure overboard to stay afloat, after looting the island of course! The fact that I almost never had to make any repairs to The Black Betsy meant I was accumulating a lot of gold. In fact the gold was accumulating so much that on my second visit to treasure island in addition to burying nine chests I buried fifteen gold (which is an unprecedented amount in my history of playing the game).
The other unusual aspect of this game was that we actually exhausted the tavern card deck, which I don't remember doing before although some of our previous games were only four player. The tavern cards certainly weren't going through my hand though, I only had five or six card for the entire game.
We had two cases of people forgetting that the Legendary Pirate was visiting an island (even though his boat was there before destinations were chosen), although in one case the player in question did manage to defeat the Legendary Pirate.
On the last turn of the game it looked highly likely that Captain Melissa was intending to deliberately take on the Flying Dutchman at Treasure Island so, after consulting my Evil Play Techniques handbook, I played the Consort card to grab half her loot should she succeed. To my joy, she played some battle and volley cards and quickly dispatched the Flying Dutchman and I then grabbed half of what she buried to boost my final score a little bit more.
With the combination of three new players including one who is a little prone to analysis paralysis, the game actually took about two hours which is longer than normal. Every turn bar one had at least one combat and the judicious use of smoke screens did mean some quite lengthy battles which also helped extend the game length.
After the game I decided to check my theory that it had been quite a while since we had played by looking at the "When Did I Last Play?" statistic in John Farrell's excellent Extended BGG stats. Sure enough my gut feel was correct and it was actually a little over two years since I had last played Pirate's Cove. This is quite a while for a game that we like playing, although admittedly we usually go for slightly heavier games and Daughter the Elder obviously hasn't expressed an interest in playing it for a little over two years :-) (she was involved in that last play back when she was six).
I remember reading on BGG a while back of someone who used to cull (trade or sell) any games in their collection that had not been played for two years. I thought at the time that this was quite ruthless and I assumed that they either a) only played certain types of games regularly, b) only had a small amount of storage space, c) only wanted to keep a small collection or d) didn't want to revisit old games that weren't getting regular plays.
There are a number of reasons why I would not cull games based on how long it was since I had last played them
a) With a collection approaching four hundred games, even if it was assumed that we could play a game a day (to quote This is not Frank's Planet, "That's a mighty big if") then it would be over a year before any game would be due to hit the table for a repeat play.
b) I have found that there are certain stages of life where it is difficult to play long games. Having young children is one such stage. In the past I have played Civilization, Diplomacy, World in Flames and even War in Europe. I have not played any of these games in quite some years now. However, I do fully expect to play both Diplomacy and Civilization again in the next few years. I will admit that the chances of getting World in Flames or War in Europe to the table are slim and I will probably be looking at the five to ten year time frame at least, but I am still not willing to part with them.
c) I am a bit of a hoarder.
d) There are games in our collection that we have owned for ten, twenty or more years. They may not get played often, but they are still good games and are still enjoyed. Many of these older games would be particularly difficult to replace (think EON Cosmic Encounter). Quite a few of them are games that we had and played as children and are now getting to play with our children, and possibly in another twenty or so years may get to play with our grandchildren.
e) Unlike computer games, which can be sometime be dependent on a particular hardware platform, operating system or slower chip set than is still available, board games just need a table to play them. It doesn't matter how old they are, if you want to play them you still can. The physical game doesn't become obsolete, granted sometimes the game itself may become outdated in terms of mechanics or game play.
f) I try not to buy many games without doing any research, so generally if I have bought it there's a fairly good chance that I will like it. Therefore there's not a lot of dead wood in our collection.
g) The words "sell my game" have no meaning to me.
If our collection gets too much bigger we will have to do some serious reorganisation of space and shelves or possibly revisit some of the above, but for now there will be no culling of games in our house.
Mmm meeples taste like...
The rules explanation went reasonably quickly, although as Melissa and I were dredging particular rules out of our collective memories, I figured that it had been quite a while since the last time either of us had played it.
On the first turn I went to cannon island and all four of the other players went to sail island where a length and destructive battle ensued. Amongst my trouble free loot was quite a bit of gold and Billy Bones' Parrot. This parrot allows you to always fire your total number of cannons, regardless of crew number. Needless to say, since I was already at cannon island I spent all my gold to raise my cannon to five.
Over the next two turns I was involved in battles with other players, but with the help of Billy Bones' Parrot I was able to quickly dispatch them to Pirate's Cove for repairs.
That was actually the last time that I was involved in a battle with another player. Through skill, luck or good fortune I managed to pick islands where other people did not go or were too scared to go. This meant that I had a steady stream of loot flowing into The Black Betsy's hold. I did have the Royal Navy sent after me twice, but on both occasions I was able to send them packing all the way back to Blighty.
Thanks to my five gun volleys, the few combats that I was involved in were relatively quick, all in my favour and relatively painless. Admittedly the two combats with the Royal Navy did damage my hull and I did have to throw some treasure overboard to stay afloat, after looting the island of course! The fact that I almost never had to make any repairs to The Black Betsy meant I was accumulating a lot of gold. In fact the gold was accumulating so much that on my second visit to treasure island in addition to burying nine chests I buried fifteen gold (which is an unprecedented amount in my history of playing the game).
The other unusual aspect of this game was that we actually exhausted the tavern card deck, which I don't remember doing before although some of our previous games were only four player. The tavern cards certainly weren't going through my hand though, I only had five or six card for the entire game.
We had two cases of people forgetting that the Legendary Pirate was visiting an island (even though his boat was there before destinations were chosen), although in one case the player in question did manage to defeat the Legendary Pirate.
On the last turn of the game it looked highly likely that Captain Melissa was intending to deliberately take on the Flying Dutchman at Treasure Island so, after consulting my Evil Play Techniques handbook, I played the Consort card to grab half her loot should she succeed. To my joy, she played some battle and volley cards and quickly dispatched the Flying Dutchman and I then grabbed half of what she buried to boost my final score a little bit more.
With the combination of three new players including one who is a little prone to analysis paralysis, the game actually took about two hours which is longer than normal. Every turn bar one had at least one combat and the judicious use of smoke screens did mean some quite lengthy battles which also helped extend the game length.
After the game I decided to check my theory that it had been quite a while since we had played by looking at the "When Did I Last Play?" statistic in John Farrell's excellent Extended BGG stats. Sure enough my gut feel was correct and it was actually a little over two years since I had last played Pirate's Cove. This is quite a while for a game that we like playing, although admittedly we usually go for slightly heavier games and Daughter the Elder obviously hasn't expressed an interest in playing it for a little over two years :-) (she was involved in that last play back when she was six).
I remember reading on BGG a while back of someone who used to cull (trade or sell) any games in their collection that had not been played for two years. I thought at the time that this was quite ruthless and I assumed that they either a) only played certain types of games regularly, b) only had a small amount of storage space, c) only wanted to keep a small collection or d) didn't want to revisit old games that weren't getting regular plays.
There are a number of reasons why I would not cull games based on how long it was since I had last played them
a) With a collection approaching four hundred games, even if it was assumed that we could play a game a day (to quote This is not Frank's Planet, "That's a mighty big if") then it would be over a year before any game would be due to hit the table for a repeat play.
b) I have found that there are certain stages of life where it is difficult to play long games. Having young children is one such stage. In the past I have played Civilization, Diplomacy, World in Flames and even War in Europe. I have not played any of these games in quite some years now. However, I do fully expect to play both Diplomacy and Civilization again in the next few years. I will admit that the chances of getting World in Flames or War in Europe to the table are slim and I will probably be looking at the five to ten year time frame at least, but I am still not willing to part with them.
c) I am a bit of a hoarder.
d) There are games in our collection that we have owned for ten, twenty or more years. They may not get played often, but they are still good games and are still enjoyed. Many of these older games would be particularly difficult to replace (think EON Cosmic Encounter). Quite a few of them are games that we had and played as children and are now getting to play with our children, and possibly in another twenty or so years may get to play with our grandchildren.
e) Unlike computer games, which can be sometime be dependent on a particular hardware platform, operating system or slower chip set than is still available, board games just need a table to play them. It doesn't matter how old they are, if you want to play them you still can. The physical game doesn't become obsolete, granted sometimes the game itself may become outdated in terms of mechanics or game play.
f) I try not to buy many games without doing any research, so generally if I have bought it there's a fairly good chance that I will like it. Therefore there's not a lot of dead wood in our collection.
g) The words "sell my game" have no meaning to me.
If our collection gets too much bigger we will have to do some serious reorganisation of space and shelves or possibly revisit some of the above, but for now there will be no culling of games in our house.
Mmm meeples taste like...
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Some games with the kids
Recently Melissa was sick and spent the day in bed, during the day amongst time spent in the cubby house, meals, reading (for Daughter the Elder) and the occasional DVD both the girls wanted to play games. Although there are some games that we all play together, this day was a day of two player games.
First up was the Stock Market Game. Daughter the Elder has been quite a fan of this for a while, I was when I was young too. She tends to hoard her cash a little too much instead of buying and selling, but still does quite well. For some reason she was getting bored after a while and called this game early, she was worth twice as much as me. Every game of this I have logged has been with her, we are rated #2 in plays for this game at about half the #1 player.
Daughter the Younger had been watching us play and she now wanted a turn, Color Clowns was her game of choice. To avoid the end game tedium of trying to roll a combination that you didn't already have, e.g. a purple triangle, we allowed three rolls to try and get something that allowed you to place a tile. This speeds the game up nicely. A win to Daughter the Younger.
We then played Marrakesh. As I have mentioned before Daughter the Younger pretty much learnt this by osmosis, just watching the rest of us play. She is now fully versant with the rules and plays it very well.
In our first time through the bag, all four sandstorms came out in a row which meant one camel lost to the sandstorms for me. Daughter the Younger still likes to take green and yellow goods from the market (the generally poor scoring ones), so she is also given a red or blue as appropriate for real scoring. She managed to get her fourth camel off the board whilst I still had two camels within reach of the end. Unfortunately two of the three tiles I drew were sandstorms so I only managed to get one of them to the market in time. A 22-15 win for Daughter the Youngeer.
Next was Daughter the Elder and Spy Alley. I have mainly only played this two player and occasionally three player and it may play a bit differently with more players but it really does feel under-developed. There seem to quite a few more Move cards than you are ever going to use and many many more times Free Gift cards than are ever going to be picked up. The quality of the components varies from excellent to mediocre. We have found that the lure of the possible $20 for going into Spy Alley and the likely hood of being hit with a $5 fine for avoiding Spy Alley means that it used around 90-95% of the time. Those comments aside, it is still a reasonable kids game and Daughter the Elder and I have logged more games than anyone else on BGG. We played three games and unlike any of the times we had ever played before a wild card was drawn from the Free Gift deck. No wonder they are worth $50 to "acquire" from another player, in each game that they were drawn that player won. In our other game Daughter the Elder guessed who I was. 2-1 victories in favour of Daughter the Elder.
After dinner and before Daughter the Elder's bed time it was time for Balloon Cup. We have been playing this since she was five. It was a closely contested game, but I grabbed my third third trophy the card before she would have picked up the other two trophies and probably the third as well.
After Daughter the Elder went to bed, Daughter the Younger requested one more game. This time it was Space Race. A simple roll and move game, but the spaces are well colour coordinated and you can learn the planets in the solar system as you play, although I am not entirely sure why the space ships are racing to reach the sun. A house rule we have implemented is that you do not have to roll the exact number to reach the sun, it can lengthen the game hideously. This was another win to Daughter the Younger.
There ended the day of games with Daughter the Elder and Daughter the Younger.
First up was the Stock Market Game. Daughter the Elder has been quite a fan of this for a while, I was when I was young too. She tends to hoard her cash a little too much instead of buying and selling, but still does quite well. For some reason she was getting bored after a while and called this game early, she was worth twice as much as me. Every game of this I have logged has been with her, we are rated #2 in plays for this game at about half the #1 player.
Daughter the Younger had been watching us play and she now wanted a turn, Color Clowns was her game of choice. To avoid the end game tedium of trying to roll a combination that you didn't already have, e.g. a purple triangle, we allowed three rolls to try and get something that allowed you to place a tile. This speeds the game up nicely. A win to Daughter the Younger.
We then played Marrakesh. As I have mentioned before Daughter the Younger pretty much learnt this by osmosis, just watching the rest of us play. She is now fully versant with the rules and plays it very well.
In our first time through the bag, all four sandstorms came out in a row which meant one camel lost to the sandstorms for me. Daughter the Younger still likes to take green and yellow goods from the market (the generally poor scoring ones), so she is also given a red or blue as appropriate for real scoring. She managed to get her fourth camel off the board whilst I still had two camels within reach of the end. Unfortunately two of the three tiles I drew were sandstorms so I only managed to get one of them to the market in time. A 22-15 win for Daughter the Youngeer.
Next was Daughter the Elder and Spy Alley. I have mainly only played this two player and occasionally three player and it may play a bit differently with more players but it really does feel under-developed. There seem to quite a few more Move cards than you are ever going to use and many many more times Free Gift cards than are ever going to be picked up. The quality of the components varies from excellent to mediocre. We have found that the lure of the possible $20 for going into Spy Alley and the likely hood of being hit with a $5 fine for avoiding Spy Alley means that it used around 90-95% of the time. Those comments aside, it is still a reasonable kids game and Daughter the Elder and I have logged more games than anyone else on BGG. We played three games and unlike any of the times we had ever played before a wild card was drawn from the Free Gift deck. No wonder they are worth $50 to "acquire" from another player, in each game that they were drawn that player won. In our other game Daughter the Elder guessed who I was. 2-1 victories in favour of Daughter the Elder.
After dinner and before Daughter the Elder's bed time it was time for Balloon Cup. We have been playing this since she was five. It was a closely contested game, but I grabbed my third third trophy the card before she would have picked up the other two trophies and probably the third as well.
After Daughter the Elder went to bed, Daughter the Younger requested one more game. This time it was Space Race. A simple roll and move game, but the spaces are well colour coordinated and you can learn the planets in the solar system as you play, although I am not entirely sure why the space ships are racing to reach the sun. A house rule we have implemented is that you do not have to roll the exact number to reach the sun, it can lengthen the game hideously. This was another win to Daughter the Younger.
There ended the day of games with Daughter the Elder and Daughter the Younger.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
School Games Night the second
As forewarned by Melissa last week, we held another Family Games Night at Daughter the Elder’s School on Friday. We had twenty-five adults and thirty-five children. This year in terms of adults explaining games there was just Melissa and myself as well as contributions from Daughter the Elder. You can read about last year’s session here.
This year we were scheduled from 4:30 pm until 7:30 pm, which was actually ended up being 8:30 pm. It was also designed to be a fund raiser via our friendly internet games shop in that the school will get 10% of any orders.
We took most of the games that we intended to take, although one or two have been eaten by our house. There were two specific requests, Settlers of Catan and Fish Eat Fish.
The parents and children who came brought some of their own games, which were all played.
Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition
Chess
Fish East Fish
Monopoly
Trivial Pursuit - Junior
Popomatic Sorry or Ludo
These are the games we ended up bringing, including a couple of demo copies from our FIGS.
Ticket to Ride Always popular with the parents.
Von 0 auf 100
Perpetual Commotion
Make ‘n Break
Spooky Stairs sans expansion.
Cartagena
Marrakesh
M is for Mouse
Carcassonne
Apples to Apples Junior!
Halli Galli
Catch the Match
TransAmerica
Dancing Eggs
Incan Gold played as Diamant, i.e. without the artifacts
Gulo Gulo
Piggy Back
Sherlock
Pick Picknic
Fish Eat Fish
The Same Game
All the above were played, these were the lonely ones
Settlers of Catan
Finstere Flure
Gopher It!
There were some stand out popular games for the night.
I started a session of Von 0 auf 100 very early on and it was played most of the night, quite often with children teaching other children how to play. It’s a lovely little racing and bluffing game. Another Haba gem.
Make ‘n Break is always popular and rightly so, it is fun and easy to learn and play.
Spooky Stairs got a lot of table time too. The cute little ghost and magnet head meeples probably help, but it an excellent variation on a roll and move game.
Piggy Back is another excellent variation on a role and move game. With hitching ride on the back of other players and a balancing mechanism to reduce the chance of runaway lucky leaders.
Apples to Apples Junior! a good one for parents and children together. The Junior edition is good for primary school children and for people outside the US it also has the advantage of being more global.
Catch the Match is realistically just a pattern matching game, but it has been designed very well and captivates both adults and children without fail.
TransAmerica Ticket to Ride may not catch the attention of the children and these games nights, but TransAmerica does.
Dancing Eggs was played a lot at night, including occasionally in a very non-standard manner with eggs flying across the room!
Fish Eat Fish is too abstract for Melissa, that or her reaction to fish may be subconsciously put her off. I like this, but she doesn’t. It was being played most of the night. It required explanation, and got a few glazed looks during the explanation but after a few turns it would invariably click with the players and they became quite enthused (both parents and children).
I still think that the more helpers the merrier is the case for this sort of event. It is billed as a Family Games Night to get the children along. I suspect an alternate way of getting games into the homes might be to run a Parent’s Family Games night, where you can teach the parents various games without the distraction of marauding children. This has its logistical difficulties, including babysitting and just how many parents would come to such an event, but it is an idea bubbling around in the back of my mind to possibly try out one day.
This post is dedicated to the memory of the red Ticket to Ride train that was sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and the card from another game that was grabbed by the baby, it was bent back into shape, but I don’t think it will ever be quite the same. They gave their best in service to games.
Mmm meeples taste like …
This year we were scheduled from 4:30 pm until 7:30 pm, which was actually ended up being 8:30 pm. It was also designed to be a fund raiser via our friendly internet games shop in that the school will get 10% of any orders.
We took most of the games that we intended to take, although one or two have been eaten by our house. There were two specific requests, Settlers of Catan and Fish Eat Fish.
The parents and children who came brought some of their own games, which were all played.
Ticket to Ride - Märklin Edition
Chess
Fish East Fish
Monopoly
Trivial Pursuit - Junior
Popomatic Sorry or Ludo
These are the games we ended up bringing, including a couple of demo copies from our FIGS.
Ticket to Ride Always popular with the parents.
Von 0 auf 100
Perpetual Commotion
Make ‘n Break
Spooky Stairs sans expansion.
Cartagena
Marrakesh
M is for Mouse
Carcassonne
Apples to Apples Junior!
Halli Galli
Catch the Match
TransAmerica
Dancing Eggs
Incan Gold played as Diamant, i.e. without the artifacts
Gulo Gulo
Piggy Back
Sherlock
Pick Picknic
Fish Eat Fish
The Same Game
All the above were played, these were the lonely ones
Settlers of Catan
Finstere Flure
Gopher It!
There were some stand out popular games for the night.
I started a session of Von 0 auf 100 very early on and it was played most of the night, quite often with children teaching other children how to play. It’s a lovely little racing and bluffing game. Another Haba gem.
Make ‘n Break is always popular and rightly so, it is fun and easy to learn and play.
Spooky Stairs got a lot of table time too. The cute little ghost and magnet head meeples probably help, but it an excellent variation on a roll and move game.
Piggy Back is another excellent variation on a role and move game. With hitching ride on the back of other players and a balancing mechanism to reduce the chance of runaway lucky leaders.
Apples to Apples Junior! a good one for parents and children together. The Junior edition is good for primary school children and for people outside the US it also has the advantage of being more global.
Catch the Match is realistically just a pattern matching game, but it has been designed very well and captivates both adults and children without fail.
TransAmerica Ticket to Ride may not catch the attention of the children and these games nights, but TransAmerica does.
Dancing Eggs was played a lot at night, including occasionally in a very non-standard manner with eggs flying across the room!
Fish Eat Fish is too abstract for Melissa, that or her reaction to fish may be subconsciously put her off. I like this, but she doesn’t. It was being played most of the night. It required explanation, and got a few glazed looks during the explanation but after a few turns it would invariably click with the players and they became quite enthused (both parents and children).
I still think that the more helpers the merrier is the case for this sort of event. It is billed as a Family Games Night to get the children along. I suspect an alternate way of getting games into the homes might be to run a Parent’s Family Games night, where you can teach the parents various games without the distraction of marauding children. This has its logistical difficulties, including babysitting and just how many parents would come to such an event, but it is an idea bubbling around in the back of my mind to possibly try out one day.
This post is dedicated to the memory of the red Ticket to Ride train that was sucked up by a vacuum cleaner and the card from another game that was grabbed by the baby, it was bent back into shape, but I don’t think it will ever be quite the same. They gave their best in service to games.
Mmm meeples taste like …
Saturday, May 19, 2007
An autumn evening at Gamers@Dockers
Gamers@Dockers is the gaming group that dacoutts, Reggy and myself founded around two years ago, handily situated at the building where we worked at the time. Two of us are still with the organisation, but only one of us still works in the building. We started fortnightly (that’s once every two weeks for those places unused to the f word) and moved weekly a few months later. We were up to about twenty a fortnight and after the initial move to weekly numbers dropped to about a dozen or so a week, but are now back to above twenty each week.
I should point out that the website is rarely updated anymore, but it still holds the important location and contact details. Discussion of what is likely to be played and by whom is usually done at Melbourne Gamers or via our mailing group.
Originally games played at Gamers@Dockers where primarily Euros, but as people realised that they had anything upto seven or more hours if they started on time, or didn’t need to be at work early on Friday morning, longer and more varied games were played.
I could say that this was an ordinary night at Gamers@Dockers, but that is not entirely true. The Tichu tournament was coming to a close and the Combat Commander: Europe tournament was still in full swing.
In between my games that night (Thursday 10-May-2007) I went around attempting to record everything that was played. Unlike some clubs we have no uberstats person who keeps a record of everything played.
I logged a total of twenty-four people present for the evening, well over half of whom have have BGG accounts.
The games played, in no particular order, were:
Expedition. I played this at Dockers ages ago and quite liked it.
Combat Commander: Europe As mentioned above the tournament was in progress and I counted four different games of this played over the evening.
San Juan A couple of the Tichu tournament players were waiting for another game to finish so played this with a couple of other people as a filler.
Carcassonne Possibly being played as a warm up for the tournament in Albury next month.
Polarity Unfortunately I didn’t get to see this played. I saw a bit of a game previously and it was fun to watch.
Fire and Axe. I thought this was new game, but it has a date of 2004! Perhaps that’s the date of the original version. I do believe that Mr Skeletor wrote this session up over at F:AT
Tichu, the last three games of the tournament plus one just for fun.
Reef Encounter, a learning game as I don’t think any of the players had played it before. Using the Z-Man games edition.
Robo Rally Played twice. The first game was with six or seven players and went quite a while. The second game was with only four.
Guildford, the Eutaw Springs map or scenario. I only saw the name Eutaw Springs on the map, so it actually took a bit of investigation to track down the real name for this game.
Texas Holdem, about four hands waiting for the last Tichu tournament game to start. We used Tichu cards (the spare deck) and the Dealer button and chips from my copy of Vegas Showdown.
Settlers of Catan Remember people decide if you are going to play the rules as written in the set you have on the table or the more modern tournament rules before you start playing.
Tutankhamen I haven’t seen a copy of this for about a year or more.
Bug Bluff Mr Skeletor seems to be a fan of, and quite good at, this. I haven’t played it myself.
Under the Lilly Banners Ben insisted that this was really called Musket and Pike, but that’s not what is written on the box is it Ben?
There was quite a range of games on the tables, slightly influenced by the two tournaments running, but it would not be unusual to see either of the tournament games hitting the table once or twice on a normal evening at Gamers@Dockers anyway. Looking back over the list I would say the surprise omission would be Power Grid
Mmm meeples taste like…
I should point out that the website is rarely updated anymore, but it still holds the important location and contact details. Discussion of what is likely to be played and by whom is usually done at Melbourne Gamers or via our mailing group.
Originally games played at Gamers@Dockers where primarily Euros, but as people realised that they had anything upto seven or more hours if they started on time, or didn’t need to be at work early on Friday morning, longer and more varied games were played.
I could say that this was an ordinary night at Gamers@Dockers, but that is not entirely true. The Tichu tournament was coming to a close and the Combat Commander: Europe tournament was still in full swing.
In between my games that night (Thursday 10-May-2007) I went around attempting to record everything that was played. Unlike some clubs we have no uberstats person who keeps a record of everything played.
I logged a total of twenty-four people present for the evening, well over half of whom have have BGG accounts.
The games played, in no particular order, were:
Expedition. I played this at Dockers ages ago and quite liked it.
Combat Commander: Europe As mentioned above the tournament was in progress and I counted four different games of this played over the evening.
San Juan A couple of the Tichu tournament players were waiting for another game to finish so played this with a couple of other people as a filler.
Carcassonne Possibly being played as a warm up for the tournament in Albury next month.
Polarity Unfortunately I didn’t get to see this played. I saw a bit of a game previously and it was fun to watch.
Fire and Axe. I thought this was new game, but it has a date of 2004! Perhaps that’s the date of the original version. I do believe that Mr Skeletor wrote this session up over at F:AT
Tichu, the last three games of the tournament plus one just for fun.
Reef Encounter, a learning game as I don’t think any of the players had played it before. Using the Z-Man games edition.
Robo Rally Played twice. The first game was with six or seven players and went quite a while. The second game was with only four.
Guildford, the Eutaw Springs map or scenario. I only saw the name Eutaw Springs on the map, so it actually took a bit of investigation to track down the real name for this game.
Texas Holdem, about four hands waiting for the last Tichu tournament game to start. We used Tichu cards (the spare deck) and the Dealer button and chips from my copy of Vegas Showdown.
Settlers of Catan Remember people decide if you are going to play the rules as written in the set you have on the table or the more modern tournament rules before you start playing.
Tutankhamen I haven’t seen a copy of this for about a year or more.
Bug Bluff Mr Skeletor seems to be a fan of, and quite good at, this. I haven’t played it myself.
Under the Lilly Banners Ben insisted that this was really called Musket and Pike, but that’s not what is written on the box is it Ben?
There was quite a range of games on the tables, slightly influenced by the two tournaments running, but it would not be unusual to see either of the tournament games hitting the table once or twice on a normal evening at Gamers@Dockers anyway. Looking back over the list I would say the surprise omission would be Power Grid
Mmm meeples taste like…
Saturday, April 21, 2007
International Gamers
Or should that title be International Gamers of Mystery? Perhaps not.
Anyway, thanks to places like BGG, BSW and SBW (and others) gamers who travel have a much better chance of getting in some games as they travel or relocate around the world.
This is particularly true when our International Gamers are visiting places that have established clubs or groups with some sort of web presence, either via BGG or elsewhere.
Let us take Melbourne, Australia, as an example – since that is where I live. There are two weekly groups (Billabong and Gamers@Dockers) as well as one monthly group (EuroGamesFest Melbourne), not counting the occasional convention. Take note, most groups are usually more active than their websites may imply. There are also plenty of private groups and maybe other groups that are just not advertising themselves out on the world wide web.
Apart from a number of expats from various places living in Melbourne we have a number of international, interstate and out of town visitors:
o Backpackers who are spending any from a week to a few months in town
o Travellers passing through
o Business travellers (just this week we had a guy who was in Melbourne for a little over three days who managed to fit in sessions at both Billabong and Dockers)
o People who are working here for a while on contracts or temporary transfers
If you are travelling and are likely to have a bit of spare time I would suggest checking the BGG forums for local groups in the area(s) you are going to. These are often infrequently updated, so you shouldn’t assume that they have lapsed into inactivity. Contact someone who posted to the thread or contact someone who posts regularly on BGG and ask them. Another way is just to post a message to BGG or the Spielfrieks mailing list saying something along the lines of "I will be visiting X between the dates of Y and Z, any chance of a game?" As far as I can tell that approach works remarkably well too.
I know we have had English, French, German and American visitors drop into one or many of our sessions and there have probably been others I don’t even know about.
If you are travelling and are likely to have some spare time, do yourself a favour and checkout the gaming scene in your destination cities before you leave, it will probably be better than the local TV!
Tikal
We finally got to play Tikal last night. A two player with Melissa. I concentrated on treasures early in the game which protected me from Melissa’s aggressive pyramid strategy. She thought it was a little abstract for her, maybe she just doesn’t see the little Indiana Jones’s running around the jungle like I do! Given that this is an open information game I will have to start or join a few at SBW.
Home delivered games
We had a message on Friday that one of the games that Melissa had ordered at our FLGS had come in. Melissa rang them back at about 8:00 pm to check which one. It was Pillars of the Earth, Melissa discussed sending me in to pick it up straight away or Saturday morning, but Pete offered to drop it in on his way home. Sure enough he did, COD and Gamers@Dockers discount included. Now, we do shop there quite a bit and do know Pete socially, but still home delivered games is good!
Mmm meeples taste like…
Anyway, thanks to places like BGG, BSW and SBW (and others) gamers who travel have a much better chance of getting in some games as they travel or relocate around the world.
This is particularly true when our International Gamers are visiting places that have established clubs or groups with some sort of web presence, either via BGG or elsewhere.
Let us take Melbourne, Australia, as an example – since that is where I live. There are two weekly groups (Billabong and Gamers@Dockers) as well as one monthly group (EuroGamesFest Melbourne), not counting the occasional convention. Take note, most groups are usually more active than their websites may imply. There are also plenty of private groups and maybe other groups that are just not advertising themselves out on the world wide web.
Apart from a number of expats from various places living in Melbourne we have a number of international, interstate and out of town visitors:
o Backpackers who are spending any from a week to a few months in town
o Travellers passing through
o Business travellers (just this week we had a guy who was in Melbourne for a little over three days who managed to fit in sessions at both Billabong and Dockers)
o People who are working here for a while on contracts or temporary transfers
If you are travelling and are likely to have a bit of spare time I would suggest checking the BGG forums for local groups in the area(s) you are going to. These are often infrequently updated, so you shouldn’t assume that they have lapsed into inactivity. Contact someone who posted to the thread or contact someone who posts regularly on BGG and ask them. Another way is just to post a message to BGG or the Spielfrieks mailing list saying something along the lines of "I will be visiting X between the dates of Y and Z, any chance of a game?" As far as I can tell that approach works remarkably well too.
I know we have had English, French, German and American visitors drop into one or many of our sessions and there have probably been others I don’t even know about.
If you are travelling and are likely to have some spare time, do yourself a favour and checkout the gaming scene in your destination cities before you leave, it will probably be better than the local TV!
Tikal
We finally got to play Tikal last night. A two player with Melissa. I concentrated on treasures early in the game which protected me from Melissa’s aggressive pyramid strategy. She thought it was a little abstract for her, maybe she just doesn’t see the little Indiana Jones’s running around the jungle like I do! Given that this is an open information game I will have to start or join a few at SBW.
Home delivered games
We had a message on Friday that one of the games that Melissa had ordered at our FLGS had come in. Melissa rang them back at about 8:00 pm to check which one. It was Pillars of the Earth, Melissa discussed sending me in to pick it up straight away or Saturday morning, but Pete offered to drop it in on his way home. Sure enough he did, COD and Gamers@Dockers discount included. Now, we do shop there quite a bit and do know Pete socially, but still home delivered games is good!
Mmm meeples taste like…
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Our racing games
We have a few racing games (i.e. where you are involved in a race of something, as opposed to just racing to victory by building a civilisation or by filling your sheep station full of sheep). They are, alphabetically, Alan Jones Formula 1 Grand Prix Racing Game, Formula Dé and Um Reifenbreite. I am reasonable certain that I used to have Auto Racing, but that end up being locked in the boot of a car which I could no longer get open and the car ended up being traded for a slab of beer with the game still locked in the boot, so it doesn’t really count.
Alan Jones Formula 1 Grand Prix Racing Game is not terribly well known. Oh who am I kidding? I have registered all the plays, well actually the only play, on the Geek and we have the one and only registered copy. Melissa claims to have played this with me on our honeymoon, but she has to date steadfastly refused to play it again. It is card driven and has beginners and advanced rules. There is a single map, but the different teams have different strengths and slightly different rules apply for different “courses”. Maybe I can get Daughter the Elder interested again, although I think she prefers Formula Dé , if only for the different tracks and the dice.
We picked up Um Reifenbreite in an order from Germany, but haven’t got around to playing it yet. We have heard good things about it and based on our research should enjoy it.
I played an eight player game of Formula Dé as a try before you buy experience and liked it. I managed to then get the game and four expansion tracks 10th Anniversary, Montreal & Long Beach, Hockenheim & Zeltweg and Buenos-Aires & Barcelona. Unfortunately with a couple of exceptions most of the other tracks are very hard to come by these days.
This is another game that I have failed to get Melissa to play, although Daughter the Elder and I have played it quite a bit. She approves that I picked up an extra set of dice from French eBay so that we have our own set of dice each when playing now. She seems to prefer the faster tracks, so I suppose I need to pick up one of the US track packs.
While trawling through the geek a few weeks ago I found this thread talking about the downloadable computer version and the specific post that have linked to refers to a French forum where you can get the links for a version that works properly. There are two downloads, one for the base game and one for expansion tracks. Checking it, there are twenty four tracks available, so it is not the complete game, but quite close.
It has an online connection and single (or hot seat) player options. I haven’t really played around with the on-line stuff as it connects to French servers and to quote a friend’s uncle “I speak French like a Spanish cow”. The single player options are very good though.
You can pick any one of the twenty-four tracks and run one to ten cars in any combination of human or computer controlled. You can select to have a practice qualifying round or a one, two or three lap race. Choose your weather and tyre options, change the configuration of your car, select your pit or just select the defaults and start racing.
If you choose the qualifying round, remember that burning tyres equals penalties, so possibly it is worth downshifting and slowing down to avoid that potential penalty. You even get to watch the computer player doing their qualification round too.
For standard racing you click on the die representing the gear you want to be in and the result is rolled and then the computer shows you all the spots, both good and bad, where you can end up given your roll. Something that I didn’t realise for a while is that it doesn’t take into account using brakes as an option in the display. Brakes are under your control so if you don’t like the offered results you can choose to check off brake points to modify the result – which can certainly save the occasional disastrous overshooting of a corner.
In gear selection you can always go up or down one gear or stay in the same gear as the previous turn, downshifting is available assuming you have fuel and/or brake points to allow it. If you don’t have them then the gear options are restricted, which can be rather depressing as you scream up to a tight corner in sixth gear with no fuel left. When you mouse over the gear options the possible rolls and ending positions for your car are shown on the track as a guide to assist you in your gear choice risk benefit analysis.
The computer takes care of all the collision checks and debris on the track. Something that I have found that as you add extra players the amount of debris (and totalled cars) on the track increases quite drastically. With four or less cars the track usually remains relatively clean, but with a ten car race the track itself can become quite lethal by the second and third laps. I have seen corners where it is impossible to avoid hitting debris on the way through. With corners like that it is just a matter of time before your car itself just adds to the debris on the track :-(
Another nice feature of the computer game is that the longest path through a corner is specially marked on the track. At least I find it nice, others may consider it a cop-out to those who can’t be bother paying attention.
It has sound effects for rolling of the dice, pit stops, engines blow, collisions and shooting through corners. If you want a little Formula Dé fix with just you against the computer it plays very fast and there are lots of tracks available.
I think I have played through all the different available tracks now and updated my wishlist based on being able to play on the different tracks. It would probably also be worth somebody who wished to try before they buy the base game to give this a go if they don’t have a physical copy available in their group.
I have only noticed one bug so far. On one of the tracks, and I can’t remember which one it is now, the first corner is marked as a single stop corner. The computer player approaches as it as a one stop corner, gets into the corner and then suddenly acts as if it is a two stop corner. In practice this means you get ahead whilst the computer play does a lot drastic changing from fourth gear to first or second.
I recommend it. Now I should post this and see if I can convince Daughter the Elder to stop bugging me to use the computer and actually play one of the physical games!
Mmm meeples taste like…
Alan Jones Formula 1 Grand Prix Racing Game is not terribly well known. Oh who am I kidding? I have registered all the plays, well actually the only play, on the Geek and we have the one and only registered copy. Melissa claims to have played this with me on our honeymoon, but she has to date steadfastly refused to play it again. It is card driven and has beginners and advanced rules. There is a single map, but the different teams have different strengths and slightly different rules apply for different “courses”. Maybe I can get Daughter the Elder interested again, although I think she prefers Formula Dé , if only for the different tracks and the dice.
We picked up Um Reifenbreite in an order from Germany, but haven’t got around to playing it yet. We have heard good things about it and based on our research should enjoy it.
I played an eight player game of Formula Dé as a try before you buy experience and liked it. I managed to then get the game and four expansion tracks 10th Anniversary, Montreal & Long Beach, Hockenheim & Zeltweg and Buenos-Aires & Barcelona. Unfortunately with a couple of exceptions most of the other tracks are very hard to come by these days.
This is another game that I have failed to get Melissa to play, although Daughter the Elder and I have played it quite a bit. She approves that I picked up an extra set of dice from French eBay so that we have our own set of dice each when playing now. She seems to prefer the faster tracks, so I suppose I need to pick up one of the US track packs.
While trawling through the geek a few weeks ago I found this thread talking about the downloadable computer version and the specific post that have linked to refers to a French forum where you can get the links for a version that works properly. There are two downloads, one for the base game and one for expansion tracks. Checking it, there are twenty four tracks available, so it is not the complete game, but quite close.
It has an online connection and single (or hot seat) player options. I haven’t really played around with the on-line stuff as it connects to French servers and to quote a friend’s uncle “I speak French like a Spanish cow”. The single player options are very good though.
You can pick any one of the twenty-four tracks and run one to ten cars in any combination of human or computer controlled. You can select to have a practice qualifying round or a one, two or three lap race. Choose your weather and tyre options, change the configuration of your car, select your pit or just select the defaults and start racing.
If you choose the qualifying round, remember that burning tyres equals penalties, so possibly it is worth downshifting and slowing down to avoid that potential penalty. You even get to watch the computer player doing their qualification round too.
For standard racing you click on the die representing the gear you want to be in and the result is rolled and then the computer shows you all the spots, both good and bad, where you can end up given your roll. Something that I didn’t realise for a while is that it doesn’t take into account using brakes as an option in the display. Brakes are under your control so if you don’t like the offered results you can choose to check off brake points to modify the result – which can certainly save the occasional disastrous overshooting of a corner.
In gear selection you can always go up or down one gear or stay in the same gear as the previous turn, downshifting is available assuming you have fuel and/or brake points to allow it. If you don’t have them then the gear options are restricted, which can be rather depressing as you scream up to a tight corner in sixth gear with no fuel left. When you mouse over the gear options the possible rolls and ending positions for your car are shown on the track as a guide to assist you in your gear choice risk benefit analysis.
The computer takes care of all the collision checks and debris on the track. Something that I have found that as you add extra players the amount of debris (and totalled cars) on the track increases quite drastically. With four or less cars the track usually remains relatively clean, but with a ten car race the track itself can become quite lethal by the second and third laps. I have seen corners where it is impossible to avoid hitting debris on the way through. With corners like that it is just a matter of time before your car itself just adds to the debris on the track :-(
Another nice feature of the computer game is that the longest path through a corner is specially marked on the track. At least I find it nice, others may consider it a cop-out to those who can’t be bother paying attention.
It has sound effects for rolling of the dice, pit stops, engines blow, collisions and shooting through corners. If you want a little Formula Dé fix with just you against the computer it plays very fast and there are lots of tracks available.
I think I have played through all the different available tracks now and updated my wishlist based on being able to play on the different tracks. It would probably also be worth somebody who wished to try before they buy the base game to give this a go if they don’t have a physical copy available in their group.
I have only noticed one bug so far. On one of the tracks, and I can’t remember which one it is now, the first corner is marked as a single stop corner. The computer player approaches as it as a one stop corner, gets into the corner and then suddenly acts as if it is a two stop corner. In practice this means you get ahead whilst the computer play does a lot drastic changing from fourth gear to first or second.
I recommend it. Now I should post this and see if I can convince Daughter the Elder to stop bugging me to use the computer and actually play one of the physical games!
Mmm meeples taste like…
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Some early thoughts on CRTs and Card Driven games.
I had pretty much drifted out of wargames before card driven wargames became popular and as such have only relatively recently played any card driven games. My experience so far is limited to Memoir ‘44, Command and Colors: Ancients and Combat Commander: Europe, although I expect this list to grow over time.
I suppose I grew up on CRTs (Combat Result Tables), sometimes they were on charts on other games they were printed on the map or board. Usually it was just a matter of adding up the attacker’s strength and the defender’s strength dividing the attacker’s total by the defender’s and finding the ratio on the CRT. Then roll the die, in some games a modifier was possible due to other factors such as air support, weather etc. The die roll meant that usually you were not entirely sure of the result. To me the randomness of the die roll meant that it was the influence of things that you could not control, or had not taken into account when planning the attack. Depending on the game it could be anything from local weather conditions, morale, timeliness of supplies, improperly maintained equipment or just plain dumb luck. If you had a huge majority you could be reasonably confident of a victory, however the smaller your majority the less confident you could be of any level of success.
At times in history battles, both big and small, have been won against seemingly impossible odds, the CRT with die roll helps simulate this.
In card driven games the CRT has been replaced by rolling hits on a die. The stronger the attacker the more dice they roll (or in the old system the better column they were on). The same basic outcome applies, with a large majority for the attacker you would be more confident of winning. As the attackers strength decreases, your confidence of winning also decreases.
In the traditional hex and counter wargame, you could usually move all units every turn, subject to supply and interlocking zones of control of course. There may have been some games that had something akin to an action point system, i.e. you only had a certain number of moves, or a certain number of action points to spend each turn, although at the moment I can’t actually name any.
In the card driven games I have played so far, you are restricted to moving units based on the cards you hold. It is rare to be able to move or order all of your units to do something in a single turn unless you have very few units left of course!
As all the card driven games I have played so far are at a tactical level, this would seem to simulate that you cannot have command and control over all the units all the time, you are concentrating on some of the forces at your disposal at any given time. Of course it could be argued that if you had ordered that if you had ordered a squad to advance to the farmhouse engaging any enemy units that it encountered, you don’t really need to be concentrating on that unit until it has reached the farmhouse. A little bit swings and roundabouts really, although it can certainly be frustrating when you want to order particular units and you just don’t have the cards for it.
Games like Combat Commander: Europe have done away with physical dice and have a multi functional card deck. The cards are the subset of orders that you can issue your forces, they can also trigger random events, resolve the random events, have functions separate to the normal orders at special times (e.g. when the deck is complete) and replace the dice rolls and as such function as a dice deck. As far as I can tell the Combat Commander: Europe deck is two complete result sets of rolling 2d6, i.e. there are two “2”s, two “12”s and twelve “7”s. Any given turn of the card in isolation is the same as roll 2d6, however as you work your way through the deck this becomes less and less true, because the result set in the last few cards in the deck is strictly limited, where as with the roll of the dice the complete result set is available at all times. For example in my first game of this I had seen all the eleven and twelve results already appear so I started burning through the end of the deck as quickly as possible so the deck could be reshuffled and they could be put back in the mix of the result set. This phenomenon can on occasions influence tactical decisions, but is not a game breaker.
As I said at the start my experience with card driven games is limited, I would be interested in seeing if there are many strategic or grand strategic games, my gut feel is that the mechanic is more suited to a tactical level. I presume over time I will find out, it should be interesting.
I suppose I grew up on CRTs (Combat Result Tables), sometimes they were on charts on other games they were printed on the map or board. Usually it was just a matter of adding up the attacker’s strength and the defender’s strength dividing the attacker’s total by the defender’s and finding the ratio on the CRT. Then roll the die, in some games a modifier was possible due to other factors such as air support, weather etc. The die roll meant that usually you were not entirely sure of the result. To me the randomness of the die roll meant that it was the influence of things that you could not control, or had not taken into account when planning the attack. Depending on the game it could be anything from local weather conditions, morale, timeliness of supplies, improperly maintained equipment or just plain dumb luck. If you had a huge majority you could be reasonably confident of a victory, however the smaller your majority the less confident you could be of any level of success.
At times in history battles, both big and small, have been won against seemingly impossible odds, the CRT with die roll helps simulate this.
In card driven games the CRT has been replaced by rolling hits on a die. The stronger the attacker the more dice they roll (or in the old system the better column they were on). The same basic outcome applies, with a large majority for the attacker you would be more confident of winning. As the attackers strength decreases, your confidence of winning also decreases.
In the traditional hex and counter wargame, you could usually move all units every turn, subject to supply and interlocking zones of control of course. There may have been some games that had something akin to an action point system, i.e. you only had a certain number of moves, or a certain number of action points to spend each turn, although at the moment I can’t actually name any.
In the card driven games I have played so far, you are restricted to moving units based on the cards you hold. It is rare to be able to move or order all of your units to do something in a single turn unless you have very few units left of course!
As all the card driven games I have played so far are at a tactical level, this would seem to simulate that you cannot have command and control over all the units all the time, you are concentrating on some of the forces at your disposal at any given time. Of course it could be argued that if you had ordered that if you had ordered a squad to advance to the farmhouse engaging any enemy units that it encountered, you don’t really need to be concentrating on that unit until it has reached the farmhouse. A little bit swings and roundabouts really, although it can certainly be frustrating when you want to order particular units and you just don’t have the cards for it.
Games like Combat Commander: Europe have done away with physical dice and have a multi functional card deck. The cards are the subset of orders that you can issue your forces, they can also trigger random events, resolve the random events, have functions separate to the normal orders at special times (e.g. when the deck is complete) and replace the dice rolls and as such function as a dice deck. As far as I can tell the Combat Commander: Europe deck is two complete result sets of rolling 2d6, i.e. there are two “2”s, two “12”s and twelve “7”s. Any given turn of the card in isolation is the same as roll 2d6, however as you work your way through the deck this becomes less and less true, because the result set in the last few cards in the deck is strictly limited, where as with the roll of the dice the complete result set is available at all times. For example in my first game of this I had seen all the eleven and twelve results already appear so I started burning through the end of the deck as quickly as possible so the deck could be reshuffled and they could be put back in the mix of the result set. This phenomenon can on occasions influence tactical decisions, but is not a game breaker.
As I said at the start my experience with card driven games is limited, I would be interested in seeing if there are many strategic or grand strategic games, my gut feel is that the mechanic is more suited to a tactical level. I presume over time I will find out, it should be interesting.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Last 30 Days revisited
Back in October 2006 I discovered a feature on BoardGameGeek which showed you the games you had logged as played in the last 30 days, with the recommended image for each. I thought it was time to revisit this and see the differences.
My earlier entry was made not long after our month at Melbourne Museum and spring had not sprung weather wise. This thirty day period covers a hot summer, back to work for the parents, back to school and kindergarten for the girls and this year Daughter the Elder has homework and it is our preference that homework is done before games.
There are a lot less games played over the last thirty days than back in September/October last year. A lot of this due to weather and work/homework commitments.
So here are my play counts (face to face only) from the last 30 days.
Who’s The Ass - 14 plays.
The game de jour at lunchtime these days, at least when we don’t have four players. We played three to six players. The hands seem better although it is much more cutthroat with
three players, but it works well with any number. It has no defined finish, so we just play until our time is up.
Tichu - 5 plays.
As before when we have exactly four people at lunchtime games and a deck handy this is the game of choice. Last week we started an eight player tournament where all the players will playing with all the others as partners. It will mainly get played at Gamers@Dockers sessions on Thursday nights with possible fill in sessions at the monthly Eurogamesfest.
Bamboleo - 3 plays.
A very recent acquisition. When pulling it out of the box our initial thought was this will never work, but we were very wrong. An excellent dexterity game, hideously expensive in Australia.
Santiago - 2 plays.
I first played this about two years ago, liked it a lot, acquired a copy and never played it again. I recently took it off the shelves and took it into work so it was available for a lunchtime session or Gamers@Dockers. Three player with two newbies can be done in under an hour, not sure about four players though. Having played it again, I have also joined about ten games at SpielByWeb although I don’t log those ones. I am still not 100% sure about the open money at SBW, but I can understand the reasoning for their implementation.
Gang of Four - 2 plays.
This used to be the number one lunch time game, we had a day where we had four players and no Tichu deck so brought Gang of Four out of retirement.
Mü und Mehr - 22 plays.
Prior to Who’s The Ass arriving on the scene if we didn’t have four for Tichu then this was the standard default game for lunchtime at work. It has taken a back seat recently.
Kingdoms - 1 play.
I originally played this as Auf Heller und Pfennig at BGG when I thought I was signing up for a Tigris & Euphrate game. Having not read the rules it was a little confusing! I picked this copy up recently and have tried it two player so far. It is one that I think Daughter the Elder might like.
Lost Cities - 1 play.
We played this at Daughter the Elder’s suggestion, she says that this is her first victory against me.
Midgard - 1 play.
El Grande light perhaps? After one play I would classify it as a good short game, I think it only took about an hour. Mr Skeletor won, but he felt it was a hollow victory and he hadn’t enjoyed the journey there. That could have been the game or the people picking on him :-)
Indonesia - 1 play.
We had a four player game and nobody had played it more than once previously. It took us about four hours, although it didn’t feel like a long game, there was always stuff happening. I think you need that first game just to get an idea of what is going on and what other possibilities exist. We all liked it and would play it again.
MidEvil - 1 play.
A Beer & Pretzels game at best. The map tiles are too flimsy and the figures look nice but are a bit flimsy and why oh why do some of the player figures have to be exactly the same colour as the skellingtons? Most of the five players who were playing were happy to wrap it up as quickly as possible and go and play something else.
Power Grid – Central Europe - 1 play.
And this was the something else after MidEvil. My first play on this map, I didn’t suffer from the no nukes policy or gain advantage from the Vienna’s cheap garbage. Two people got hemmed in and the two of us on six cities were content to stall for a while to build up some cash. As usual with our Power Grid games, the final result required a cash count.
Age of Steam - 1 play.
Interesting the two player Scotland expansion doesn’t have an entry on BGG. I wonder why? The final game for the evening at this month’s Eurogamesfest. Being two player it is not a game to play by the seat of your pants, at least if you want to win.
Combat Commander: Europe - 1 play.
Chee-Yan and I arrived almost at the same time to Eurogamesfest and everyone else was playing something, so he offered one of his selection of two player wargames. It has been a long time since I played a wargame so I was happy to give it a go. We played one of the easier scenarios. My Germans managed to hold off his determined Russians hanging on to the majority of the objective hexes for the win. A squad level game, I’m still not entirely used to card driven wargames, but I enjoyed it.
Commands & Colors: Ancients - 1 play.
This was the next game out of Chee-Yan’s bag of games. Theoretically simpler than Combat Commander although I found that I could get by on my old wargaming memories in Combat Commander but for this game I think a bit of experience in the actual game is required to go well. That said I only lost 4-5, but I was not confident on what I was doing and I am sure Chee-Yan was being nice to me. Next is to get him to teach me some of those Columbia games I picked up!
Taluva - 1 play.
It’s got pretty pieces and tiles, but it is an abstract at heart. We got a five player game up with all newbies. Forget the mineshaft gap, the temple gap would seem to be all important in this game, if somebody gets a leading position, your only chance is that you have set yourself to be able to catchup, otherwise they have probably won. I imagine that more experience in the game would help alleviate that.
Mmm meeples taste like…
My earlier entry was made not long after our month at Melbourne Museum and spring had not sprung weather wise. This thirty day period covers a hot summer, back to work for the parents, back to school and kindergarten for the girls and this year Daughter the Elder has homework and it is our preference that homework is done before games.
There are a lot less games played over the last thirty days than back in September/October last year. A lot of this due to weather and work/homework commitments.
So here are my play counts (face to face only) from the last 30 days.
Who’s The Ass - 14 plays.
The game de jour at lunchtime these days, at least when we don’t have four players. We played three to six players. The hands seem better although it is much more cutthroat with
three players, but it works well with any number. It has no defined finish, so we just play until our time is up.
Tichu - 5 plays.
As before when we have exactly four people at lunchtime games and a deck handy this is the game of choice. Last week we started an eight player tournament where all the players will playing with all the others as partners. It will mainly get played at Gamers@Dockers sessions on Thursday nights with possible fill in sessions at the monthly Eurogamesfest.
Bamboleo - 3 plays.
A very recent acquisition. When pulling it out of the box our initial thought was this will never work, but we were very wrong. An excellent dexterity game, hideously expensive in Australia.
Santiago - 2 plays.
I first played this about two years ago, liked it a lot, acquired a copy and never played it again. I recently took it off the shelves and took it into work so it was available for a lunchtime session or Gamers@Dockers. Three player with two newbies can be done in under an hour, not sure about four players though. Having played it again, I have also joined about ten games at SpielByWeb although I don’t log those ones. I am still not 100% sure about the open money at SBW, but I can understand the reasoning for their implementation.
Gang of Four - 2 plays.
This used to be the number one lunch time game, we had a day where we had four players and no Tichu deck so brought Gang of Four out of retirement.
Mü und Mehr - 22 plays.
Prior to Who’s The Ass arriving on the scene if we didn’t have four for Tichu then this was the standard default game for lunchtime at work. It has taken a back seat recently.
Kingdoms - 1 play.
I originally played this as Auf Heller und Pfennig at BGG when I thought I was signing up for a Tigris & Euphrate game. Having not read the rules it was a little confusing! I picked this copy up recently and have tried it two player so far. It is one that I think Daughter the Elder might like.
Lost Cities - 1 play.
We played this at Daughter the Elder’s suggestion, she says that this is her first victory against me.
Midgard - 1 play.
El Grande light perhaps? After one play I would classify it as a good short game, I think it only took about an hour. Mr Skeletor won, but he felt it was a hollow victory and he hadn’t enjoyed the journey there. That could have been the game or the people picking on him :-)
Indonesia - 1 play.
We had a four player game and nobody had played it more than once previously. It took us about four hours, although it didn’t feel like a long game, there was always stuff happening. I think you need that first game just to get an idea of what is going on and what other possibilities exist. We all liked it and would play it again.
MidEvil - 1 play.
A Beer & Pretzels game at best. The map tiles are too flimsy and the figures look nice but are a bit flimsy and why oh why do some of the player figures have to be exactly the same colour as the skellingtons? Most of the five players who were playing were happy to wrap it up as quickly as possible and go and play something else.
Power Grid – Central Europe - 1 play.
And this was the something else after MidEvil. My first play on this map, I didn’t suffer from the no nukes policy or gain advantage from the Vienna’s cheap garbage. Two people got hemmed in and the two of us on six cities were content to stall for a while to build up some cash. As usual with our Power Grid games, the final result required a cash count.
Age of Steam - 1 play.
Interesting the two player Scotland expansion doesn’t have an entry on BGG. I wonder why? The final game for the evening at this month’s Eurogamesfest. Being two player it is not a game to play by the seat of your pants, at least if you want to win.
Combat Commander: Europe - 1 play.
Chee-Yan and I arrived almost at the same time to Eurogamesfest and everyone else was playing something, so he offered one of his selection of two player wargames. It has been a long time since I played a wargame so I was happy to give it a go. We played one of the easier scenarios. My Germans managed to hold off his determined Russians hanging on to the majority of the objective hexes for the win. A squad level game, I’m still not entirely used to card driven wargames, but I enjoyed it.
Commands & Colors: Ancients - 1 play.
This was the next game out of Chee-Yan’s bag of games. Theoretically simpler than Combat Commander although I found that I could get by on my old wargaming memories in Combat Commander but for this game I think a bit of experience in the actual game is required to go well. That said I only lost 4-5, but I was not confident on what I was doing and I am sure Chee-Yan was being nice to me. Next is to get him to teach me some of those Columbia games I picked up!
Taluva - 1 play.
It’s got pretty pieces and tiles, but it is an abstract at heart. We got a five player game up with all newbies. Forget the mineshaft gap, the temple gap would seem to be all important in this game, if somebody gets a leading position, your only chance is that you have set yourself to be able to catchup, otherwise they have probably won. I imagine that more experience in the game would help alleviate that.
Mmm meeples taste like…
Saturday, February 24, 2007
An old book we found
One of the things we found recently when clearing up at Melissa’s father’s Bridge club was the 1954 title Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions by David Blackwell and M.A. Girshick.
It has some interesting definitions about games.
“A game is characterized by a set of rules having a certain formal structure, governing the behaviour of certain individuals or groups, the players.”
“Broadly speaking, the rules provide that the game shall consist of a finite sequence of moves in a specified order and the nature of each move is prescribed. Moves are one of two kinds, personal moves and chance moves. A personal move is a choice by one of the players of one of the specified, possibly infinite, set of alternatives; for instance, each move in chess is a personal move; the first move is a choice by White of 1 of 20 specified alternatives. The actual decision made in a particular play of a game at a given personal move is called the choice at that move. A chance move also results in the choice of one of a specified set of alternatives; here the alternative is selected not by one of the players, but by a chance mechanism, with the probabilities with which the mechanism selects the various alternatives specified by the rules of the game.”
“The rules specify, as a function of the choices and outcomes at the successive moves, when the game shall terminate and the score, not necessarily numerical, that is to be assigned to each player.”
The example games given are chess and bridge and there are various coin tossing games devised for the statistical work. It was a probably a fair selection of games for the intended audience back in the early fifties.
The “finite sequence of moves” part of the definition probably caters for the difference between games like chess and bridge where a player’s turn consists of a sequence of one move and that of many games today where a player’s turn may consist of a number of moves or actions.
In a wargame a player's turn generally consists of a number of personal moves, usually moving a unit and/or instigating combat. In the case of moving a unit the outcome is known upfront (to excuse the pun). However, if the move is, or includes, instigating combat then a chance move is often required to determine the resolution of the combat and thus the outcome of the move. This may be the rolling of a die or the playing of cards. It could be argued that your playing of a card is a personal move, but if you do not know what card your opponent is going to play, or your orbital mind control lasers are down for maintenance, then the overall resolution falls more into the category of chance.
In many games a chance mechanic has determined the set of alternatives that you may choose from, e.g. the deal in a standard trick taking game, the plantation draw in Puerto Rico or the face up cards that available for selection in Ticket to Ride or Around the World in 80 Days. You are making a personal move, but your selection is restricted by the game’s prior chance move.
In auction games I see bidding as a personal move. You are choosing what to bid based on what you think the item being auctioned is worth, both to yourself and to other players. There may well be imperfect information involved, e.g. do you know how much money the other players actually have, or is your estimate of the item’s worth accurate? I find, at least in the first few plays of a game, my estimate is often incorrect, or at least at odds to that of other player’s estimates.
Your standard draw a card, play a card game is a sequence of chance move then personal move. Corollary play a card, draw a card would be personal move, chance move.
A roll and move game like Snakes & Ladders is chance move game. Once you have your number there is only one alternative available to you. In a game like Formula Dé there is also the chance move with the roll of the die, but there is a personal aspect both in the choosing of which gear you are in and thus which die is rolled and exactly where the car will move as there is usually more than one alternative as to where to move the car.
The mathematics involved in the statistics in this book was enough to give me a nose bleed, it is aimed at “graduate students” in statistics, or post graduates as we would call them in Australia. For “an excellent treatment of numerous aspects of game theory” the authors recommend J.C.C. McKinsey’s Introduction to the Theory of Games, McGraw-Hill, 1952.
Possibly there may be some more recent and slightly more accessible to the layperson books around too :-)
Mmm meeples taste like…
It has some interesting definitions about games.
“A game is characterized by a set of rules having a certain formal structure, governing the behaviour of certain individuals or groups, the players.”
“Broadly speaking, the rules provide that the game shall consist of a finite sequence of moves in a specified order and the nature of each move is prescribed. Moves are one of two kinds, personal moves and chance moves. A personal move is a choice by one of the players of one of the specified, possibly infinite, set of alternatives; for instance, each move in chess is a personal move; the first move is a choice by White of 1 of 20 specified alternatives. The actual decision made in a particular play of a game at a given personal move is called the choice at that move. A chance move also results in the choice of one of a specified set of alternatives; here the alternative is selected not by one of the players, but by a chance mechanism, with the probabilities with which the mechanism selects the various alternatives specified by the rules of the game.”
“The rules specify, as a function of the choices and outcomes at the successive moves, when the game shall terminate and the score, not necessarily numerical, that is to be assigned to each player.”
The example games given are chess and bridge and there are various coin tossing games devised for the statistical work. It was a probably a fair selection of games for the intended audience back in the early fifties.
The “finite sequence of moves” part of the definition probably caters for the difference between games like chess and bridge where a player’s turn consists of a sequence of one move and that of many games today where a player’s turn may consist of a number of moves or actions.
In a wargame a player's turn generally consists of a number of personal moves, usually moving a unit and/or instigating combat. In the case of moving a unit the outcome is known upfront (to excuse the pun). However, if the move is, or includes, instigating combat then a chance move is often required to determine the resolution of the combat and thus the outcome of the move. This may be the rolling of a die or the playing of cards. It could be argued that your playing of a card is a personal move, but if you do not know what card your opponent is going to play, or your orbital mind control lasers are down for maintenance, then the overall resolution falls more into the category of chance.
In many games a chance mechanic has determined the set of alternatives that you may choose from, e.g. the deal in a standard trick taking game, the plantation draw in Puerto Rico or the face up cards that available for selection in Ticket to Ride or Around the World in 80 Days. You are making a personal move, but your selection is restricted by the game’s prior chance move.
In auction games I see bidding as a personal move. You are choosing what to bid based on what you think the item being auctioned is worth, both to yourself and to other players. There may well be imperfect information involved, e.g. do you know how much money the other players actually have, or is your estimate of the item’s worth accurate? I find, at least in the first few plays of a game, my estimate is often incorrect, or at least at odds to that of other player’s estimates.
Your standard draw a card, play a card game is a sequence of chance move then personal move. Corollary play a card, draw a card would be personal move, chance move.
A roll and move game like Snakes & Ladders is chance move game. Once you have your number there is only one alternative available to you. In a game like Formula Dé there is also the chance move with the roll of the die, but there is a personal aspect both in the choosing of which gear you are in and thus which die is rolled and exactly where the car will move as there is usually more than one alternative as to where to move the car.
The mathematics involved in the statistics in this book was enough to give me a nose bleed, it is aimed at “graduate students” in statistics, or post graduates as we would call them in Australia. For “an excellent treatment of numerous aspects of game theory” the authors recommend J.C.C. McKinsey’s Introduction to the Theory of Games, McGraw-Hill, 1952.
Possibly there may be some more recent and slightly more accessible to the layperson books around too :-)
Mmm meeples taste like…