Last Year's Top 71 Games: 2005-2006

Last year at the start of September I wrote an article called Last Year's Top 70 Games in which I ranked the top 70 "new" games that I'd newly played that year, from best to worst. It was timed to followup the various awards for the year, and also to precede the new games out at Essen.

This year I've decided to continue that tradition by once more listing every newly released new game that I've played in the last year. For this definition I include any game released, for the first time, in a U.S. edition in 2005 or 2006 and which I played for the first time from 9/1/05 to 8/31/06. Unlike my reviews, in which I generally try and assess which games I think are best, philosophically, this list only includes my personal preference for and enjoyment of the games. I'm a casual-to-medium-weight gameplayer, so you'll probably get the best use out of this list if you match that category.

Oddly, I once more seem to have about 70 games fitting this category of play.

I've linked to reviews for each game when I have them, so click on the linked names for more information.

My Listing of 71 Games That I've Played

The average quality of the games seems to be about the same as last year. I think #1-10 are top-notch, #11-25 are generally worth buying (with the last couple being more iffy), and #26-50 are generally worth playing. Beyond that, the ordering is generally my most to least favorite.

1. Dungeon Twister - An almost-brilliant games of tactical play with superb fantasy theming.
   
2. Blue Moon City - A fine resource-management game that's a new mid-level Knizia entry, and his best since last year's Beowulf.
3. Kreta - A great, baroque majority control game. Why, why has no American company picked it up!?
4. Reef Encounter - A beautifully themed great game system, finally available in the U.S.
   
5. Beowulf: The Legend - A very good Knizia auction game that's right up there with his best.
   
6. Funny Friends - I'm afraid this unique auction game might eventually get old, but for now it's at the top of my list, though I'm sometimes afraid that it'll offend other players.
   
7. Thurn and Taxis - The play is a little repetitive but this is a great short game with fun brinkmanship and interesting play.
   
8. Havoc: The Hundred Year's War - This clever little Poker-like game continues to go up in my estimation the more I play it.
9. Three-Dragon Ante - A wonderful fantasy Poker variant who's only deficit is that it's not a constrained game: you instead play it till you're done, like normal Poker.
   
10. Ticket to Ride: Märklin Edition - This series has lost some of its personal charm to me through nearly 100 plays, but this is still the finest of the series and enjoyable to play if a bit fiddly.
    
11. Hacienda - A very enjoyable Kramer game that doesn't feel that innovative, but is made up of a lot of nice parts you've seen before.
    
12. Palazzo - Another Knizia auction, not as deep or interesting as his true classics, but still generally worth playing.
    
13. Mall of Horror - A great variant of the lifeboat game where you throw fellow shoppers to Zombies. Rargh!
    
14. Arkham Horror - A long game but beautifully thematic, and one that I have a lot of fun playing with my RPG group.
    
15. Caylus - An intriguing and strategic game that allows for great and thoughtful play, though it fails somewhat on a per capita measure of fun/minute, as it were. (E.g., the game's too long.)
16. Pickomino - A great press-your-luck game, ultra-light, but worth the 15 minutes any time.
    
17. Big Manitou - A great trick-taking game, with lots of angles and lots of originality.
18. PÜNCT - A great 2-player abstract with fun geometrical play.
    
19. Fairy Tale - One of the best fillers of the year, starting to lose a tiny bit of its appeal after 6 plays, but still going relatively strong.
    
20. Elasund: The First City of Catan - A nice Teuber resource-management game that personally strikes me as a bit slow and a bit dry.
21. Parlay - A very cool word game that would go much higher if I played word games more.
22. The Scepter of Zavandor - A bit longer than I'd usually play, but a fun, colorful resource management game.
    
23. Seismic - Not terribly original, but a fine cross between Carcassonne and Metro.
    
24. Ostia - An interesting auction & blind-bidding game that sometimes gets a little long.
25. Hey! That's My Fish! - A very amusing and quite strategic ultra-light filler.
    
26. Grand Tribunal - Some interesting Princes of Florence-like play once you get past the mistakes in the rules.
27. Il Principe - An interesting and thoughtful game that I suspect won't get much table time due to its length and complexity.
    
28. Marvin Marvel's Marvelous Marble Machine - Mirthful machinery makes many mug merrily.
    
29. Castle Merchants - A pretty neat game of card management and racing.
    
30. Dead Man's Treasure - I'm pretty certain this will fade fast, but for now this remains fine bluffing fun, as long as the game doesn't go too short.
    
31. Knights of Charlemagne - Yet another cute Knizian filler that I'm glad is finally available in an American version.
    
32. Ark - A thematic and clever game that I love but ultimately feel I have almost no control over victory.
    
33. Cleopatra and the Society of Architects - An interesting resource management game that's just a bit too big for its own good when all is said and done. And a little dry too.
    
34. Street Illegal - A pretty neat racing game played with cards.
    
35. Glory to Rome - A deep resource-management card game that's just on the other side of too complex for me to commonly play.
    
36. Camelot - A very amusing real-time game that I'd play a lot more often if I had a group that played this sort of thing.
37. Poison - Hearts-light in a big box. Nothing heart-stopping here, but nothing bad either.
    
38. Manila - An entirely OK risk management game that I'd be happy to play.
    
39. Tempus - Another resource-management game, but one that seems to get more staid the more I play it.
    
40. The Hollywood Card Game - A fine set-collection game who's only deficit is that it's entirely light.
    
41. Epic Dungeoneer: Call of the Lich Lord - Generally not my gaming fare, but I'm sure my RPG group would love an occasional play.
    
42. Conquest of the Empire II - I ultimately decided that, eye-candy aside, I preferred Struggle of Empires, and this game's very heavy weight (by which I mean mass) keeps me from ever bringing it to gaming.
    
43. Herocard Galaxy - An interesting game that's not quite my style.
    
44. 10 Days in Europe - Yet another 10 Days. Innocuous enough that I generally won't turn a game down.
    
45. Double or Nothing - Nothing wrong with it, but no spark either.
    
46. Mesopotamia - colorful resource-management game that was too repetitive, dry, and deterministic to be very exciting.
    
47. Palatinus - A weird and chaotic majority-control game.
    
48. Wallamoppi - A fast-action stacking game that I don't have anything against, but really doesn't meet my definition of playing games.
49. Travel Blokus - A fine abstract. My wife hates it and so it shall never be played.
50. Ice Pirates of Harbor Grace - An amusing American-style game that I'd have loved 10 or 15 years ago, but don't expect to play much again.
    
51. Sneeze - An entirely innocuous family game that I'd probably play if I were a family.
    
52. Lucca Citta - A sort of weird pseudo-set-collection game that I'd play, but which I didn't find at all exciting.
53. Treasures and Traps - A mostly harmless but entirely random fantasy-themed American game.
    
54. King of the Beasts: Mythological Edition - A Reiner Knizia game that's so light that it feels like there's nothing to it.
    
55. The Nacho Incident - An American game that utilizes many a German system (blind bidding, card management, bluffing, majority control), but which never entirely geled into a game.
    
56. Bone Wars - An American style set-collection game that was mostly flat for me.
    
57. Nature of the Beast - A fine pseudo-CCG game with great theming that nonetheless isn't really my style. My games generally ran too long.
    
58. Fuddy Duddy - A simplistic (family) set-collection game.
    
59. Architekton - Largely a failure, because it seems dry and simplistic.
    
60. Fjords - One of last year's wasted purchases because it feels like 25 minutes of setup for 5 minutes of game.
    
61. Harry's Grand Slam Baseball - A pretty cool game for its time period, but that's not now.
62. Desert Bazaar - Mostly harmless, but a great direction for Mattel to be moving in.
    
63. Hunting Party - A deduction game with some so-so components and some OK gameplay that doesn't really draw me back.
    
64. Antike - A long and sharp-edged indie game that could have been so much more.
    
65. Vampire: Prince of the City - A very American majority-control game that was perfectly fine for its class, but for me took way too long and was way too complex.
    
66. Siena - Painfully long and sharp-edged, with atrocious components. Sadly, there's an interesting game hidden inside.
    
67. Dwarf Stones - An uninspired, largely random American wargame.
    
68. UWO - A somewhat uninspiring game of 2-player combat.
    
69. Beetlez - A kid's game with almost nothing going for it.
    
70. Pepper - A cute card-matching game that falls apart in actual play.
    
71. Conquest of the Empire I - The original version of this game made me want to claw my eyes out because of the boring, long play.

Stats

So how did the various publishers do? Here's a comparison of my numbers last year and this year:

LAST YEAR Top 10 Top 25 2F-Spiele 0 0 Alea 0 1 Asmodee 0 0 Atlas Games 0 0 Days of Wonder 2 2 Fantasy Flight Games 1 2 Goldseiber 0 0 Hans im Gluck 2 2 Kosmos 1 2 Lookout Games 0 0 Mayfair Games 0 1 Phalanx Games 1 2 Pro Ludo 0 0 Real Deal Games 0 0 Rio Grande Games 3 6 Sunriver Games 0 0 What's Your Game 0 0 Wizards of the Coast 0 0 Ystari Games 0 0 Z-Man Games 0 2 Zoch Verlag 0 0

THIS YEAR Top 10 Top 25 2F-Spiele 1 1 Alea 0 1 Asmodee 1 2 Atlas Games 0 1 Days of Wonder 1 1 Fantasy Flight Games 2 3 Goldseiber 1 1 Hans im Gluck 1 2 Kosmos 2 3 Lookout Games 0 1 Mayfair Games 0 3 Phalanx Games 0 1 Pro Ludo 0 1 Real Deal Games 0 1 Rio Grande Games 2 8 Sunriver Games 1 1 What's Your Game 1 3 Wizards of the Coast 1 1 Ystari Games 0 1 Z-Man Games 1 3 Zoch Verlag 0 1

Here's some comments on the results:

• Companies will come and go from results like this. (In fact, I didn't even bother to list people who showed up last year but not this.) However some companies that went off this list are notable, particularly the fact that Amigo and Uberplay didn't make my top 25 this year, and they each had multiple entries last year. Amigo seems to have notable troubles getting anyone in the U.S. to carry their games, but that might be improving with their new Mayfair distribution of Intrigue and Weinhandler. Uberplay meanwhile mostly dropped off the face of the Earth when they started their new game-party business.
• The most exciting new company entry is What's Your Game. They've only put out 3 games thus far, and every one made my list in the top 25. Wow. On the other hand, they're all reprints.
  
• Asmodee is the other notable new-comer, with their new push on American games producing good results.
  
• Alea continues with their uninspired performance of late, making just one entrant into my top 25 and no top 10 games for the second year running.
• Of the American companies, Fantasy Flight is doing even better than last year and Z-Man is trending upward as I predicted. Mayfair also seems to be trending up, I think thanks to their new publication deals with Phalanx and Amigo. Rio Grande continues to be the top jobber on our side of the pond, despite any concerns about their self-publications.
  

And that's it for another year in gaming!

We've also recently reached our yearly anniversary here at Gone Gaming, and I've been getting a bit burned out on the weekly schedule. Thus with this article I'll be dropping back to biweekly and (I expect) concentrating a bit more on Views & Reviews.

So I'll see you all in 14!

From the Mailbag

Coldfoot,

What's the story behind ASL (Advanced Squad Leader)?

Jim5467

Jim,

ASL was actually invented by Joe, the supervisor down at the DMV. Joe is a long time civil servant. Not many people know this, but Joe retired as a clerk from the Supreme Court. He actually wrote most of the 1500 page decision in the original asbestos lawsuit. In his spare time Joe freelances writing environmental regulations for the EPA, and converting well thought out and sensible tax laws into meaningless gibberish for the IRS.

Joe once told me that he was originally commissioned by Steve Jackson to design a game that might best be described as a less complex version of Memoir '44. However Joe is incapable of designing anything less complex than workplace codes for OSHA. The project was cancelled after five years. Joe had just finished determining combat modifiers for Estonian mounted cavalry units with depleted hay reserves when the rug got pulled out from the project. Steve Jackson sold Joe's basic design to Avalon Hill which was later refined by Don Greenwood and sold as Advanced Squad Leader.

I hope I don't offend Joe, but if I an going to invest days studying rules just to play the most basic scenario, I'd rather study the tax code. Finding tax loop holes in order to save money, in order to buy games that are more fun than ASL, would be much more rewarding than studying ASL.

Coldfoot,

I'm thinking about starting a boardgame blog. I've already thought of a cool name (Linger Longer) and am ready to start raking in the big bucks as a full time boardgame blogger. What advice can you give me?

Omar in Dearborn

Omar,

Linger Longer? Ahhhhhhhhhhhh... OK.

Big Bucks? Well, the money isn't bad, but once you are in the spotlight don't let the fame go to your head. Most of the boardgame groupies are fickle friends who will dessert you as soon as the cocaine and smack run short.

The #1 rule of boardgame blogging is to never make anything up. Boardgamers are an intuitive lot and can smell a white lie a mile away.

Luckily this should never have to be an issue for bloggers. The groovy thing about blogs is that there are no deadlines to meet. You should have plenty of time to check your facts before posting. In fact the only boardgame blog I can think of with a daily deadline is over at Boardgame News.

Rick "Cronkite" Thornquist (the chief bottle washer at Boardgame News) is a solid reporter, but the word around the campfire is that he is a slave driver. Not only does he pay his bloggers next to nothing, but he penalizes them if they miss a deadline, and imposes a fine if their post is less than 2000 words long. That is why I usually take anything I read in the Boardgame News blog section with a grain of salt.

Sorry Omar, I'm getting far a field from the original question, just let me reiterate: 1> Take advantage of the groupies before your stash runs low. 2> Don't feel you need to make stuff up just to fill space. 3> Always apologize to Thornquist. Sorry Rick.

Dear Coldfoot,

What would you suggest as an appropriate means of distraction during games with lengthy "analysis paralysis," such as Civilization or (gack) Axis & Allies? The time between turns is interminable. I mean, it's a real snoozer. Brushing up on the game rules and errata are almost as boring. So is staring out the window, lining up the game pieces and picking at the wads of chewing gum under the table. I've thought about bringing my laptop or some needlework, but I didn't think this would go over well with the other players. How about a book?

Signed,
Bored enough to read Tolstoy

This question was actually handwritten and placed upon my kitchen table. The writer is obviously not a serious gamer. A serious boardgamer knows the difference between analysis paralysis and downtime.

My short answer is: If you can't run with the big dogs, stay in the kitchen and fix snacks for the big dogs.

Until next time: Keep those questions coming.

Bridge, by Wolfgang Kramer

Bridge, by Wolfgang Kramer
A game for 2-4 players

In ancient Greece, four kingdoms vie for political control of the land:

- The Clubs, masters of ancient warfare
- The Diamonds, traders and finaciers
- The Hearts, a nation of priests
- The Spades, an agricultural society

Each kingdom has an emperor, king-potentate, queen, prince, and ten other minor lords. Every year, these leaders gather at the senate at the great Council Bridge in ancient Greece, casting votes before the great overlord in order to implement their policies for the coming year.

Voting represents a great opportunity for the two teams of councilors to the great overlord. The councilors have secret ties to members in each of the kingdoms, and they promise votes to the great overlord. By establishing control over the families, the great overlord grants great rewards to the councilors. But beware! If you promise more than you can deliver, the great overlord gets angry and bestows favors on your political opponents.

Components:

1 gameboard depicting ancient Greece and with a scoring track
4 councilor tokens, 1 in each player color
1 ascendancy token
1 votes promised token
1 starting player token
52 political leader cards in 4 colors

Setup:

Place the game board in the middle of the table. Choose two teams of two players each. Teammates sit on opposite sides of the board. (See special rules for 2 and 3 players on page 4.)

Place the councilor tokens at the start of the scoring track. In a 2 or 3 player game, place any unused councilor tokens back in the box. Place the ascendancy and votes promised tokens beside the board (see diagram).

The game is played over a number of rounds. Each round has 14 phases: an auction phase and thirteen action phases.

Choose a starting player. Give that player the starting token. Deal thirteen political leader cards to each player.

The Auction Phase:

During the auction phase, each team promises to deliver a number of votes to the great overlord from the gathered leaders. You do not know on what issues the votes will be, but you know what leaders you directly control for that year!

The first player starts the auction by declaring the ascendant kingdom and the number of votes he promises to deliver, or by passing. All players then do the same, either upping the bid or passing. The auction is over when three players have passed the last bid.

See the accompanying diagram for an example auction ...

...

The winner commits to securing a minimum number of votes during the year. Failure to secure the votes will result in political gain for the auction winner's opponents in the senate. Place the votes promised token on the number of votes promised.

Secondly, the declared kingdom named by the winner rises to ascendancy. For the rest of this year, even the lesser members of this kingdom have higher ranking authority than any member of any other kingdom. Place the ascendancy token on the declared kingdom.

Thirdly, the winner gets to go last starting in the first action phase.

Fourthly, the winner's partner must reveal his or her political holdings, giving control over to the winner. This only happens after the first political card is played by one of the winner's opponents in the first action phase.

Exception: in the rare situation in which all players pass, redeal the political action cards and restart at the beginning of phase 1: the auction phase.

The Action Phases:

Each phase represents a vote in the senate. Each player must play one political card from his or her hand each vote in order to try to sway the vote. The first person to play a card determines the issue being voted on. For instance, if a leader of the military kingdom is played first, then the vote is about a military issue. All players must play leaders to try to influence the vote in that issue. If they have no leader of that kingdom, they must play a leader of another kingdom, but the leader has no power to determine the vote. The highest ranking leader of the issue at hand wins the vote.

Exception: if a player has no leaders relevant to the current issue, they may play a leader of the ascendant kingdom. In that case, the highest leader of the ascendant kingdom automatically over-rides the vote and wins. A player does not have to play an ascendant leader, if they have none, or if they don't wish to expend one.

Exception: After the first political leader is played in phase 2, the auction winning player's partner reveals his or her hand, as described on page 2.

The winner of a vote begins the next vote.

See the accompanying diagram for example play ...

...

The auction winner plays both his or her own political leader cards, as well as the cards of his or her partner.

At the end of thirteen votes, the voting for that year is over. If the auction winning team gathered all the votes promised, each receives a reward. Additional bonuses are rewarded if the auction winning team promised a minimum numbers of votes, or if they collected more than they promised. Additional bonuses are rewarded depending on which kingdom was raised into ascendancy (or none at all). If the auction winning team fails to secure the promised number of votes, their opponents gain a certain number of points for each vote the auction winning team failed to secure.

Move your councilor tokens forward on the scoring track. Choose new teams, and then mix and redeal the political power cards for the next round. The game ends when one person achieves 1000 points. The player with the most victory points at that time is declared the winner. If there is a tie, the player with the most number of leaders in the ascendant kingdom in the last year wins. If there is still a tie, the tie stands.

Variant: deal each player one emperor card before dealing the remaining political cards. This will create a more balanced, and tougher, play scenario.

Variant: each player may not play a leader of the same rank during a vote, if one has already been played, unless that player reveals that he or she has no other leaders to play.

An expansion to the game is planned that will add a fifth player, special event cards, and a traveling great overlord token which gives bonus points for certain issues when he is moved onto that issue's location on the board.

Yehuda

Edit: Added instructions for the tokens.

The Game of Life

Just how much gaming is too much? I love playing games of all types, so much so that it often encroaches into the rest of my life. At times, I find Life to be one big game. Something as simple as driving across town becomes a game to me. Each time I drive I will try to optimize my route from point A to point B in order to “win” the game. Simply finding the most reliable route is not enough, though. I can increase the complexity by trying to take into account time of day, whether the local university is in session, and other factors. I can even introduce luck into the equation, one direction might have a couple left turns and a stop sign or two, but the other route may be shorter but have several stoplights that can wreck havoc with a good run. Things can become even more complicated as I introduce optional side-routes depending on the situation. At one point, there are two traffic lights that can be bypassed by a stop sign and a bit of driving, if I note the stoplights will be red, I can peel off into the “alternate” route and gain a bit of time as long as traffic isn’t too heavy. If I get to my destination in pretty good time, I feel like a “win”. Little tiny wins can happen if I note a light is about to change to green and I break well before the stoplight so I can coast through right when it changes. As in any game, rules must be followed – no dangerous actions, obey the speed limits, etc… Although I will admit that at times I am glad there are no acceleration limits.

I think the main reason I view driving as a game is that I hate to do it. I find moving a little wheel around to get me to my destination a complete waste of my time. I’d rather be reading a book or playing a game. (Even in high school I would let my little sister drive me to school when I was a senior so that I could spend my time on more “worthier” pursuits. Some may enjoy the status given by driving yourself to school; I found it more useful to be chauffeured.) Trying to drive the “perfect route” gives me something to do while I am driving and (usually) shortens the time I have to drive. Of course, I do the same thing when I am walking around from place to place at school or on a campus – try to optimize my route, but I can still claim I’m just trying to shave off the time I spend “between” places. The main drawback occurs if I take the whole thing too seriously and get upset at losing my game. Being grumpy about arriving at my destination a couple minutes later than planned is no reason to be upset. Thankfully, I have a very short emotional reaction time and never stay upset for long.

This love of optimization comes into play in many of my favorite games. A game is much more attractive to me if I can analyze my actions once the game is over or even when I am away from the gaming table. Card games like Bridge or Spades are great examples of this. In a typical hand, each play can be analyzed to determine if I played the right card. At times, I will lose even if I play each card correctly, but I can console myself with the knowledge that I did the best I could. Other games, like Puerto Rico or Caylus, can offer up specific mistakes under post-game (even mid-game) analysis. They have enough complications that specific mistakes may be hard to identify, but a more general analysis of strategy can still be performed to see if I choose a poor overall strategy for the situation. This criterion is often the basis for me to dislike luck in games. I have no problem with luck in a game, I like Risk (the newer ones best), Axis & Allies, Bootleggers, and even Can’t Stop. However, a game that has a large amount of chaos (sort of uncontrolled luck) will typically rub me the wrong way. Take, for example, Poison. There are clearly opportunities for players to make mistakes, but (especially in games with more players) so much depends on what the other players do, that I can play a nearly optimum game and still lose. This wouldn’t cause a problem – I could console myself with the fact that I played as well as I did – but the chaos present in the game is such that it may be very difficult for me to decide if I did play an optimal game. If I can’t tell my good moves from my poor moves (bad moves are easy to spot), I don’t enjoy myself as much. Now, Poison is a game, and so by definition I would definitely be willing to play it – games = good. However, given the chance, I would prefer to play something else.

Now if I can just post this column onto the Gone Gaming site with a minimum of mouse clicks, I win…

Demonstrating games

Demonstrating games is very much on our minds this month, with 12 days of September's 30 committed to the museum. Rather than telling you even more about our fantastic display (come and see it!), I wanted to talk a bit more generally about demonstrating games to the public.

The first, and absolutely crucial, element of your game demo is not the games, but the people who are demonstrating. It's essential that your demo is well-staffed by people who are knowledgeable about games in general, and the games you are demonstrating in particular.

Specifically, they should know what skills are used in a game, what ages it is suitable for, and ideally roughly how much it is and where it can be bought (we have had a lot of queries about these last 2).

For us, in a non-profit environment, it was also important that our demonstrators not have a commercial interest in selling games. We didn't want to confuse the goals we had set for the event (interest more people in games, educate them about the range & types of games that were available) with commercial pressures. This also seems to have been a good policy decision as the people we chat to often ask whether we are selling the games.

Also, when people say "wow, cool, game demos, I will help" -- get them to write their names on a calendar then & there. It doesn't matter if it is 8 months before the event, just do it. We are having some difficulty finding people to staff the display, especially during school holidays. Today we had 3 people and we were stretched to the limit.

The second crucial element is the games themselves. As Fraser (in particular) is very fussy about the condition of our games, there was no question that our own copies of some games could be used. There are plenty that we are taking, but there were others where we approached the supplier to see if they could loan us a demo copy or donate one to the cause. Three local suppliers came on board, although we're going to need to speak to the one who invoiced us for them - maybe I'm being cheap, but we're already giving up 12 days (including 4 days when I would have been paid for work) to these demos, we don't want to spend money on duplicates of games we already own.

It was important to us that we have a good range of games to demonstrate. We wanted to really highlight games for families and adults, as well as having plenty for kids to do.

The third element is the rules to the games. I'm always wary of playing games with home rules, but when you're demonstrating there often isn't time to go through every single rule. Make sure that your demonstrators are not so married to the game's mechanics that they can't simplify it when needed. (Remember, I'm talking about demos to the general public, not to gamers). We need to remember that these people have come to visit the museum, not specifically to play games.

Some examples of rules modifications we have made:

• Transamerica - depending on how much time people have, we might eliminate all the blue cities from the board, or even all the blue and green cities. Apologies to readers who live in places that abruptly cease to exist. We also only play one round, then we explain that you can play as a series of rounds.


• Carcassonne - no farmers (again, you can explain them after they have played, if you want to). As we have it left out, we can explain the map building aspect first before we add meeples.


• Snorta - and other games - only play with the basic ruleset, not anything more complicated.


• Apples to Apples - and especially Apples to Apples junior - always have an adult be the judge.


• Ingenious - get them started placing pieces before you even try to explain the scoring.

The fourth element (probably more important than the rules, if truth be known) is the setup, or the layout of your demonstration area. We have two trestle tables, with an option of adding another although I'm really not sure where it would go.

A suggestion that came from Jon Power of York's Beyond Monopoly group, and that grew from our own experiences too, was that it's a good idea to actually have people playing a game - especially if they are willing to talk about what they are doing. We experimented today with Ticket to Ride with train cards face up, but quickly were sidetracked by other queries.

So one table contains a game in play, hopefully with gamers sitting around it. The other has a big pile of games, hopefully arranged in some way. You need one or two people who are *not* playing the demo game who can talk about and demonstrate the games as people stop to look.

One last point - try to have a tagline or something to say about every game. It doesn't need to be profound, but it seems to personalise the encounter for people:
"I like this because my kids can play it together and I don't really need to supervise."
"We went to Albury to play in the national championships for this game - the winner won a trip to Germany."
"I bought this the day after I first played it, I liked it so much."
"I think this should be in every primary school in the country."
"It plays in about 45 minutes, so it's great for after dinner."
"Our daughter used to trade her bedtime stories to play this game."
"Last time we played this, Fraser sneakily took my green route and then all the other players conspired to shut me out of Seattle, so I took a -22 on my longest route card and lost the game 123 to 156. Of course, that was using the first edition board that only scored up to 80 around the outside, and didn't have symbols on the route spaces."

Or maybe not :)



Don't eat the Meeples.

xx

Melissa

A Real Gaming Controversy

There isn’t much controversy in the gaming world. Much of what we think of as controversy is actually so mild-mannered that outsiders to the game world might not even dignify our squabbles with the C word. My friend Ted Cheatham recalls how he once called War of the Rings “Risk with cards” on Boardgamegeek. He soon felt like a victim of a fatwa as War of the Ring fans repeatedly denounced his ignorance and delusional thinking. But no one has sued Ted, or ordered him banished from Boardgamegeek. Ted remains an important member of the gaming community.

But over the last month or so a real gaming-world controversy has come to a boil, and it has shown us just how ugly such a thing can be. I am referring to the cancellation of the publication of the new Firefight Games wargame titled Resistance is not Futile.

Let me trace my growing awareness of the controversy so that you will understand exactly how much and how little I know about the matter.

Last week I saw on the Comsimworld website that Resistance is not Futile was available to be ordered from Firefight Games, a company that makes desktop-published wargames. Checking the website, I learned that the game was a simulation of the World War II battle that resulted when the Nazis tried to raze the Warsaw Ghetto. For those unfamiliar with the conflict, the Warsaw Ghetto was inhabited only by Jews, and their heroic resistance against the Nazi extermination plans has been the subject of both novels (Mila 18 by Leon Uris, The Wall by John Hersey) and movies (The Wall, 1981; Uprising, 2001).

I also checked the Firefight Games forum on Consimworld. To my surprise, I saw that there seemed to have been a hundred or more postings just on August 31. A quick glance at the postings showed that there was a heated debate going on about the appropriateness of publishing a game about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I then started at the beginning of the Firefight Games forum with the intention of reading every posting on the subject. A genuine controversy in the gaming world seemed too good a topic for an essay for me to ignore. I read about one hundred or so of the postings before stopping for the day.

When I tried to resume reading the Consimworld Firefight Games forum on Tuesday, September 5, I saw that the forum had been shut down, and that Paul Rohrbaugh of Firefight Games had announced that he was no longer going to publish Resistance is not Futile. He also stated that he was considering legal action against people who may have made libelous statements about him.

I was stunned. What had been said that would cause the cancellation of the game? Well, we may never know, but I already knew the broad outline of the controversy from the postings I had already read.

The gist of those objecting to Resistance is not Futile is that no one should make a game about the extermination of the Jews. Although one player in the game will take the role of the heroic Jewish resistance, the other player steps into the shoes of the Nazis and will attempt to destroy every Jewish unit in the game. And some people very much object to a game in which any player’s goal is to further the cause of genocide.

The Firefight Games position is that the game was created specifically to honor the Jewish resistance. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising has been the subject of novels and movies designed to honor the Jewish martyrs--so what’s wrong with a game that is trying to do the exact same thing? And anyone who is truly offended can simply refuse to buy the game.

One factor that probably separates Mr. Rohrbaugh and his critics is whether they think of the Warsaw Ghetto conflict as a battle or as an act of genocide. Mr. Rohrbaugh undoubtedly sees the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a military battle. And certainly it can be characterized as one. And what is so objectionable about making a game about a military battle? There are thousands of such games.

But those who object to the game consider the attack on the Warsaw Ghetto to be an act of genocide. And it certainly was that. And so it can be argued that making a game about the extermination of the ghetto is about as appropriate as making a game called Auschwitz.

I assume that the comments on Consimworld grew a great deal more heated than my brief summations can imply. But I am less interested in wild insults and broad accusations than the logic of the arguments that each side presents. No one is likely to dispute the legal right of Firefight Games or anyone else to make a game on any subject they please. But is a genocidal battle an appropriate subject for a game? Is Resistance is not Futile a tribute to the heroic resistance of an oppressed people, or an exercise in bad taste?

Randy Cohen, who writes a column on ethics for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, is fond of saying that “In ethics intentions count.” And I have little doubt that the intentions of Mr. Rohrbaugh are honorable. He has stated that the game was intended to honor the Jewish fighters, and I have no reason to doubt him. Even the title of the game refers to the Jewish point of view. If the game had been published, it could have been an educational tool that expanded knowledge of the Ghetto Uprising, and may have helped correct the idea that all Jews were passive victims of the Nazis rather than active resistance fighters. In short, I have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Rohrbaugh and his point of view.

But I am not convinced that those who disagree with Mr. Rohrbaugh are entirely in the wrong. I also believe that there are subjects that should not be the subject of a game. For example, it would be in bad taste for an American game company to make a game about any war in which our soldiers are currently fighting and dying. If I was the parent of a soldier fighting in Iraq, I wouldn’t like to see anyone playing a game called Insurgency in which one player gains points by blowing up American units with suicide meeples.

If the intentions of the designer are one factor that helps us decide if a game is in good taste or not, the other factor is time. Imagine a game called Disaster. In the game, players represent factions in a location that has been struck by a catastrophe. Each player must try to shepherd his own meeples to safety while hindering other players with nasty event cards.

Would this be an appropriate subject for a game?

Well, if the game is called Pompeii, the answer is yes.

If the game is called World Trade Center, the answer is no.

There already exist two or three games about the Pompeii disaster. I read one Boardgamegeek review in which the writer explained how much fun it was to send cardboard lava flows over other players’ meeples.

But imagine playing the hypothetical World Trade Center game. Would any American player be likely to chortle about playing a “Stairway Blocked” card on another player and dooming their meeples to die in the collapsing tower?

Obviously, time makes a big difference about how we feel about an historical event. Maybe some day there will be games about the 9/11 attacks, but I wouldn’t want to see them in my lifetime.

Some might argue that enough time has passed since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that it can be made into a game with little chance of offending anyone except hyper-sensitive crackpots.

But for some subjects, time makes little difference. There are some people who still refuse to play Martin Wallace’s Struggle of Empires because players can profit from slavery in the game.

My own thinking on that subject is somewhat confused. While I would hate to see a game called Slave Trader published, it seems to me that eliminating all references to the slave trade from a game about colonial empires would be whitewashing history. Mr. Wallace may have included slavery in his game to remind us of the brutality of European colonial policy.

And would gamers have objected to an event in Struggle of Empires called “Opium War” in which a player can enjoy huge profits after defeating China in a war? Somehow I don’t think that event would have caused as much controversy as the slavery issue. And yet Britain’s opium policy was nearly as evil as the slave trade, and surely created many millions of slaves of a different sort. Why are certain reprehensible acts taboo while others can be portrayed in games without generating controversy?

On page 5 of the Totaler Krieg Player’s Guide there is an essay by Alan Emrich on the evolution of this World War II game. Mr. Emrich tells us that the designers of Totaler Kreig once considered adding a Wansee Conference card to the German hand. The card would have required the Nazi player to initiate extermination plans against the Jews before being allowed to play his valuable Total War card. The designers thought that it might be a good idea to remind gamers exactly what the Nazis were all about. Of course, playtesters objected to this card, and no Holocaust card ever appeared in the finished version of the game. But imagine the protests that would have erupted if such a card had been included. And yet the designers’ intent was only to educate and remind gamers of brutal historical realities.

I admit that I would feel queasy playing a Wansee Conference card in any World War II wargame. And it would be very easy to mock the educational impulse that reduces the Holocaust to the play of a card. Such a simple mechanism would trivialize a monstrous event rather than add to our understanding of it. And yet I still admire the game designer’s impulse to attempt to deal with history as honestly as the format of the game allows.

Many will argue that the very purpose of games makes them an inappropriate format for dealing with sensitive material. On some level, games are always about fun. Unlike books or movies, we “play” games. Even people who can’t articulate why the idea of touching on the Holocaust in a game bothers them probably sense that there is a lightness of purpose about gaming that adheres to even the most serious and detailed historical simulation.

But even if gaming is essentially a hobby pursued for fun, I don’t see why game design has to be divorced from the impulse to educate—including the impulse to deal with serious material. Certainly, the designers of the most detailed historical simulations might argue that they have earned the right to deal with sensitive material because of their very seriousness. The men who designed the various editions of Totaler Krieg or Decision Games enormous War in the Pacific are very studious fellows who approach their games with as much or more seriousness as a doctoral candidate working on his thesis paper. I’m not sure what the best way would be for a World War II simulation to touch on the Holocaust, but there is probably a way that would be both sensitive and educational.

Why is it perfectly fine for anyone to play Axis and Allies--a game that simulates a conflict in which tens of millions of people were killed--and yet it is in bad taste to include in a wargame details that remind us just how some of these people died, and who did the killing? Are gamers somehow tainted when they play games which touch on genocide or slavery, and yet can emerge from playing a thousand ordinary wargames dealing with slaughter without any stain on their souls? I sometimes think that the line between what is acceptable in a game and what is unacceptable has more to do with habit and less to do with ethics than many of us would like to admit.

Or have wargames already corrupted my soul?

When making a logical argument, it’s not unusual for my mind to insist on pointing out the valid points of the opposing point of view. But on this issue, I find that my sympathies jump back and forth between the opposing camps. I hope that is a sign that the topic of political correctness in games is a complex one, and not merely a symptom of my wishy-washy thinking.

I wish I could come to some intelligent conclusion about this subject that would show gamers the way back to common sense and common ground. But I can do no better than to make lame and banal suggestions for patience and tolerance when dealing with combustible subjects, and with those who hold differing viewpoints. I hope that most of us will consider every individual free from bigotry until there is much evidence to the contrary.

I fear that we will be experiencing more of these sorts of controversies in the years to come.

By the way, those interested in learning more about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising can find inexpensive used copies of the books and movies I mentioned on Amazon.com.

16 Short Faidutti Reviews

The November 2006 issue of Knucklebones magazine is out and it contains my first article for them, "Professor of Chaos", a biography on Bruno Faidutti and his games. I encourage you to take a look, and in the meantime here's a complementary article to whet your appetite: a short review of every one of Bruno Faidutti's English language games other than Knightmare Chess. (I'm not a chess fan.)

---

Boomtown (B+)

Publisher: Face 2 Face
Co-Authors: Bruno Cathala
Release: 2004
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10964.phtml

An auction game with majority control and logistical elements. This game shows off many of Faidutti's strengths. It's well-themed and it's got some funny elements. None of the elements are terribly innovative, but they combine together in a coherent, interesting method. Sometimes the game can feel a little repetitive & long, but when it goes fast it's great to play.

Castle (B)

Publisher: Blue Games / Descartes / Asmodee
Co-Authors: Serge Laget
Release: 2004
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10757.phtml

A card management game. Sometimes people deride Faidutti's games because they can be quite chaotic, turning on a dime, and I'll generally accept that as individual preference. However, some of Faidutti's games shine entirely because of their chaos, and this is one. All you're trying to do is empty your hand of cards, but the catch is that there's a limited play area for the cards, and each card has a special and wacky power which can influence the cards already played and those to be played in the future. The result is enjoyable just because the results can be so unexpected. And trying to figure out the right order to play your cards can offer up some nice strategy too.

China Moon (B+ to C+?)

Publisher: Eurogames / Descartes / Asmodee
Co-Authors: None
Release: 2003
Full Review: None yet.

An abstract movement game. This is the one Faidutti game that I've played but haven't been able to review yet. It's a clever abstract movement game where you're bouncing around cute little frogs, hopping over other frogs, and trying to collect points along the board. I've only been able to play 5 player thus far, and that game descended into total chaos. There was no ability to plan, and it felt like the results were largely random. I'm waiting to see if a fewer number of players plays better, and that's going to ultimately decide my final rating.

Citadels (A-)

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Co-Authors: None
Release: 2003
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10836.phtml

A logistical game with elements of role selection and bluffing. This is generally considered Faidutti's masterpiece (thus far) and rightfully so. You draw cards and collect coins in order to build the city districts marked on those cards. The catch is the roles, one of which you get each turn, and which allow you to do various special things to propel yourself to victory. Some people get upset at the Assassin roles which stops another player's action and Thief role which takes their money, but if you don't like them stop taking the roles which cause you to be hit by these characters. You're only as much of a target in this game as you allow yourself to be.

Corruption (B-)

Publisher: Atlas Games
Co-Authors: None
Release: 1999
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11116.phtml

A blind bidding and bluffing game. This is a severely underrated Faidutti gem, I think mainly because of its early publication date and its uninspiring components. This is a pretty neat simultaneous auction game, where during each round of play you're trying to bid on a number of different awards, and you're doing so somewhat blindly. There's even a few "roles" which can be mixed in with your bids. It's quick, but it's thoughtful, and if you haven't played it (and you haven't) you should.

Democrazy (C)

Publisher: Blue Games / Descartes / Asmodee
Co-Authors: None
Release: 2000
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10963.phtml

A voting game. Over the course of the game you try and pass various votes to make your particular collection of resources more valuable than your opponents. I like the idea of a voting game, but the result leaves me a bit cold because it's so random and so chaotic that it feels like you don't have much real chance to strategize. This is a love-or-hate game, and I find that it goes over quite well for more casual players and quite poorly for more serious players.

Draco & Co. (C+)

Publisher: Blue Games / Descartes / Asmodee
Co-Authors: Michael Schacht
Release: 2001
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12224.phtml

An American take-that game. This is a neat Guillotine-like game where you're constantly trying to arrange the order of a set of characters (here, in a circle) so that you get the most money during periodic toasts. It's a very American game, with most of the plays involving fairly random cards that move characters this way or that. There's not a lot of strategy as a result, but the gameplay can still be amusing.

Dragon's Gold (A-)

Publisher: Blue Games / Descartes / Asmodee
Co-Authors: None
Release: 2001
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12207.phtml

A card management and negotiation game. This is another of Faidutti's masterpieces. You play a set of cards to kill dragons, but then more importantly must negotiate with the other players to divide up the dragon's loot afterward. The result is social, tense, and very enjoyable. If you don't like interacting with other people in a game, you'll hate it, but if you do you'll discover it's a best-of-class game because the negotiation is so fast-paced and cutthroat.

Fist of Dragonstones (B-)

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Co-Authors: Michael Schacht
Release: 2002
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10734.phtml

An auction game. This game is a pretty pure blind bidding game. Each round you bid on 10 characters which give you specific advantages, and you try to do so in such a way as to get dragonstones and convert them into victory points (through various special character powers). I've always found the game a bit overwhelming in its sameness--you play auction after auction--but I nonetheless enjoy it every once in a while.

Iglu Iglu (B)

Publisher: No U.S. Publisher
Co-Authors: Bruno Cathala
Release: 2004
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11135.phtml

A tile-removing tactical movement game with some majority control. This is the one Faidutti game I've reviewed that isn't yet available in an American edition, but it was just too cute to ignore. It's an action-point game where you spend moves to catch food and build igloos while an ice sheet slowly melts under you. It's thematic and it's got some innovative rules, the best of which is the slowly melting ice. For some reason it never gets a lot of play for me, I think because it's a bit complex (rulewise) for its light play.

Knock! Knock! (B-)

Publisher: Joly Roger Games
Co-Authors: Gwenael Bousin
Release: 2004
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12223.phtml

A bluffing game. You play face-down cards to other players, some of which are good, some of which are bad. Based on their limited knowledge of what you have in your hand, the other players try and let the good cards in and turn away the bad cards. This game is paper thin, with no depth, which is the reason for my B- rating, but conversely it also does a brilliant job of its core mechanics: bluffing. It's fast, furious, and funny, and if you're looking for a 15-minute bluffing game, this is it.

Mystery of the Abbey (B-)

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Co-Authors: Serge Laget
Release: 2003
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9375.phtml

A deduction game. This is a beautifully produced and beautifully themed game that fits into the same niche as Clue, but in a Medieval monestary. There's different rooms that you can move among which genuinely do different things and there's some chances for wild and crazy occurrences through various decks of cards. I've grown a bit less in love with the endgame the more I've played, because it seems like players always make a run to guess when they have most of the answers, then someone randomly wins. Still, the process of getting there is neat.

Queen's Necklace (B-)

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Co-Authors: Bruno Cathala
Release: 2003
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9462.phtml

An auction and blind bidding game. You collect gems in (sort of) timed auctions, then three times per game you spend those gems in blind bids, hoping to put together the most gems of each type. I love most of the mechanics in this game, but don't like the fact that it places a very serious premium on card-counting: if you know what gems each player has you'll do much beter in the blind bids than if you don't. If you play in a group where everyone counts cards or no one does, this will work better than otherwise.

Terra (C+)

Publisher: Days of Wonder
Co-Authors: None
Release: 2003
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10076.phtml

A cooperative game of card management and set collection. Crises are besetting the Earth, and all the players must play their cards to offset them, but each individual player will do better if he hoards his own cards into collected sets. I actually don't think this is a very good game, but it is a great conversation starter for issues of collective action.

The Hollywood! Card Game (B)

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Co-Authors: Michael Schacht
Release: 2005
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/11/11652.phtml

A card drafting & set collection game. This feels more like a Schacht design, in the Coloretto family. You draft cards using an entirely unique method and in doing so try and collect large sets of similar cards. It's an ultra light filler that doesn't have much to it, but in that category of 10 or 15 minute play is a perfectly enjoyable, but largely innocuous game.

Valley of the Mammoths (C+)

Publisher: Euro Games / Descartes / Asmodee
Co-Authors: None
Release: 1991
Full Review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12265.phtml

A wargame. This is Faidutti's oldest game that's on the American market. It's a very traditional wargame, but with lots of interesting nuisances, such as two seasons, fun event cards, and roaming animals which can be predator or prey. It's in a totally different class from Faidutti's other games, and would generally be considered too slow and clunky nowadays, but if you're still playing wargames, this one is worth a look.

---

With all that said, here's my personal ranking of the Faidutti games currently on the American market:

1. Citadels
   
2. Dragon's Gold
   
3. Boomtown
   
4. Castle
   
5. The Hollywood! Card Game
   
6. Iglu Iglu
   
7. China Moon(?)
   
8. Corruption
   
9. Fist of Dragonstones
   
10. Knock! Knock!
    
11. Queen's Necklace
    
12. Mystery of the Abbey
    
13. Valley of the Mammoths
    
14. Draco & Co.
    
15. Terra
    
16. Democrazy

The top 10 are the ones that I'm generally willing to play.

Cleopatra vs. Blue Moon City

I recently got to play both Cleopatra (2nd play) and Blue Moon City (1st play) in the same day. Blue Moon City I totally enjoyed; Cleopatra, I can do without. Why? The card play.

Your task in both games is to accumulate cards so you can build something but not all card management is created equal. In Blue Moon City, your choices can be so many and varied that your sense of tension is almost constant. This is due to the special actions that the cards can be used for instead of using them to build. I never felt that I had no good choices since cards let you change the color of other cards, move your token farther to get where you want to be, move a dragon somewhere convenient, use 2 brown cards as wild. Just because I have a hand of red but I’m not near the red buildings, doesn’t mean I’m stuck. Even near the end of the game when un-built buildings were spaced far apart, I wasn’t waiting for just the one right card as there were several ways I could manage the cards and my movement.

Cleopatra, on the other hand, feels stifling. There is so little control over the cards, both in what you get and what you can do with what you get. Everything you can build requires an architect so if you can’t get one you’re stuck. A couple of buildings require marble and lapis and again if you can’t acquire the necessary card(s), you have no where to go, no choices. There’s no trading, no discarding cards to draw new ones although you can go over your hand limit when you choose which pile of cards to take and hope something you need is in there, face down. Any special action card you play has the same risks—no guarantee of success and at least one corruption token. I understand that this game doesn’t quite qualify as a hand management game but rather a test of efficiency--build with the least amount of corruption--but to me, it lacks tension and fun. Towards the end of the game, I was just hoping someone would build the last thing just to get it over with.

I love card games and games that use cards to control your actions. When they’re done well, they should give you tough decisions and make you squirm when you have to choose. They should always give you an option, “an out”, somewhere to go besides sitting and waiting for that special card. Maybe I’m comparing apples and oranges but no game should make you feel like the end is dragging on so that you say a little prayer to the Goddess of Gaming to PLEASE, make it end!
~~~~~~~

I like to watch old movies while I’m busy around the house and one day I had on “It Happened One Night”. It’s funny how your mind goes leaping around from place to place and the next thing I knew I had linked the last word of the movie title with the first word of a game title. Go fig. Here’s the result of some movie-game title combinations.

It Happened One Nacht Der Magier
The African Queen’s Necklace
It’s a Wonderful Lifeboat
Dirty Dancing Dice
Hey! That’s My Fish Called Wanda
~~~~~~~
Home is where I stack my Games.

Mary

Encounter 6/9

Encounter

By Yehuda Berlinger. Copyright 2006, Yehuda Berlinger. All rights reserved.

(Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5)

Chapter 6: Mirror

In New York, Sarah dreams.

Sweat streams. Skin burns.

A dark New York haze coalesces into a young woman in Jerusalem, rising from damp rumpled sheets into shafts of sunlight and dust. Her black hair is framed in a golden halo.

Sarah emerges from the bedsheets, picks her white robe up off the floor and slips into it, tying the belt in a double bow. She opens her door, crosses the hall, and enters the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

On the back of the bathroom door is a full length mirror. Sarah drops the bathrobe and her underwear and looks at herself in the mirror. She turns her face left, and then right. She turns her hips left, and then right. Her image is blurry through sleepy eyelids. Her right hand reaches out to the mirror, where it meets the left hand of her mirror twin.

"Touch," she says to her twin.

As she turns around and starts the shower water, the mirror lightly ripples out from the contact point, and then stills.

Dream fog envelopes her body and then sweats down the brow of her body on Long Island. Sarah moans feverishly and turns in her bed. In Queens, she is softly snoring. Uptown, she is sleeping noiselessly. Downtown, a black hand caresses her pale cheek. She is smiling in her sleep, and her face is drenched as the water streams out of the shower and down her skin.

She scrubs herself healthy and pink, ignoring a calendar message about her AI paper. David Lanz restarts in her ear.

She steps out of the fog in dreamy mode, her mind too scattered to focus. Her movements are automatic. She dries, robes, and returns to her room. Her dressing is automatic. She doesn't know what she is wearing. She goes downstairs.

The living room floor is littered with her brother's friends who are sleeping half out of their black and gray sleeping bags. They are scattered across the floor like cocoons. Sarah recalls that one of them is supposed to be dead. Papers, pencils, game books, miniatures, and colored polyhedral dice dot the bridge table and the surrounding floor. She crosses the room with awkward steps, avoiding stepping onto anything, or anybody.

In the kitchen, Sarah packs a yogurt, plastic spoon, carrot sticks, and peaches, while she scrolls through the news. The U.S. Secretary of State will be leaving for Egypt today. A shooting in Bnei Brak, which may have been criminally motivated. Police are still on high alert for a terrorist attack in the capital. The weather will be seasonably average. She stuffs the food into her backpack next to some papers, zips the bag halfway up, and heads out the kitchen to the front door of the apartment.

She leaves the apartment building and walks to the corner, and around the corner market to the dingy bus stop. Two older women are seated at the stop. They speak to each other in Russian.

When the bus arrives, she enters first. She asks for, and receives, a transfer ticket, pays her shekels, and walks to the back doorwell of the bus. There is a pause while the old women slowly make their way onto the front of the bus. The bus driver lurches forward before they can sit down, knocking one of them off balance. One of the women begins to yell at the driver, to the amusement of the other passengers.

Sarah's hand grabs a pole as the bus turns towards the shuk, and grips a blanket as her head tosses right, and then left. She touches the arm stroking her face, right, and then left. She mutters in her sleep. She rolls over, and gets up as the bus stops. She gets off the bus, along with most of the passengers, those in the front struggling to get through a mass of people equally struggling to get on.

Sarah walks past the entrance to the shuk, passing vendors already yelling about their bourekas, sandals, watermelons. Women soldiers check bags and chat amiably. People in shabby coats sleep on the sidewalk, open tin cans next to their still bodies. The cans have priming coins in them. She continues to the bus stop that will take her to Hebrew University.

"Lady! Lady!" someone shouts in an Arabic accent. Sarah ignores the voice, as she ignores all Arabic voices. She is still more than a little scared of Arabs. Of personal violence, of robbery, of rape.

"Lady," says another voice, a woman's. She stops and turns her head to see a middle-aged Israeli woman with impossibly magenta hair pointing behind her. She turns fully around and sees a wrinkled Arab man with a bright white beard and a keffiyah. He is sitting on the sidewalk smoking a hookah, surrounded by trashy souvenirs. He is smiling with half a mouth of yellowed teeth and holding out some papers to her. Her papers, which have fallen out of her open backpack.

"Thank you," she manages in Hebrew to the outstretched hand and smiling face. She takes the paper, stuffs them into her backpack, and zips it. He waves his hand half a wave, looks at her with small black eyes and darkened skin, a deep bronze. She turns around and walks away, embarrassed.

Her bus stop is only five meters away. She turns to look at him once. He is still looking at her and smiling. She looks the other way. Standing next to her is a fat Haredi man in a long black coat. He also has dark skin, like the Arab's, and he is sweating. Behind him, on the inside wall of the bus stop, is a provocative poster announcing Madonna's upcoming concert in Tel Aviv.

The bus arrives. She hands her transfer to the bus driver and gets it back with the driver's punchmark in it. She heads to the rear doorwell again but then sits in an empty seat across from it. The dark Haredi man walks down the aisle toward her.

A Haredi woman stands in front of her, hand on a baby carriage. Three grubby children cling to her skirts. The baby is whimpering in the carriage like Sarah is whimpering in her bed. Her face suddenly frowns under the gentle arm.

She looks back at the dark Haredi. He stops in front of the woman and smiles, reaches into his pocket, and says something that sounds like, "Hello, mouse."

There is an unearthly noise and a flash.

Sarah wakes from a dream and into a nightmare.

Museum Exhibition - the final set up

Our Museum Boardgames exhibit in the Community Collections is up and running. Well, has been up and running for a little over a day. Therefore this post will concentrate on the last minute^H^H^H^H^H^H few days preparation and the setting up.

Melissa had contacted a few publishers and some local distributors about either promotional material and/or demo copies of games. Since we are planning on at between 8-12 demo sessions during the month we would prefer not to use our own copies if possible. The last school games night has shown that games can suffer somewhat in the hands of non-gaming children (and adults) who have not yet been taught that it is not good form to hold a card so it looks like a crumpled up tissue! A few things have been promised, a few are still in transit and a few have arrived. The ones in transit should arrive early next week and will be included.

The promotional material that arrived early included stuff from Don Bone for Sunda to Sahul which included a demo copy, spare pieces and some promotion boards that he had at Essen with him. We also picked up a display stand and a set of Blokus and some spare pieces.

Since Sunda to Sahul can also be played as a solitaire puzzle, we decided to do the puzzle and mount it on a board with some of Don's Essen material. Even though we had a detailed diagram of exactly where every piece went, it took Melissa and me around about two hours to put it together, and then Melissa had to glue the pieces to the board.

We had measurements of the various display cases that we had access to, so spent a while sizing potential candidates and logically grouping games together. Melissa then wrote up a bunch of blurbs to go with our displays which I printed off and got laminated.

Thursday night was finalising the lists and pulling out and boxing the games ready to take to the Museum, with Friday morning doing the ones we forgot on Thursday night.









Museum Ho - Good thing they had a trolley for us to unload things on to!

An empty cabinet waiting for games

A bunch o' games to be displayed

Starting to set up Power Grid

Finished setting up Power Grid and Big City in the background with their display cards.


Melissa set up Settlers of Catan, I don't think she was feeling very pro-red on Friday.

Union Pacific has more different colours of trains and bigger cards than Ticket To Ride so it got set up on display in the Train Games cabinet.

The Settlers case almost ready for sealing with normal Settlers set up and the rest of our Settlers collection, excluding 5-6 player expansions because they didn't fit. On the wall is the Sunda to Sahul display and some details about Settlers of Catan. We checked the things on the wall with a spirit level, so the camera must have been on an angle

Over here we have Shear Panic, Tier auf Tier and a bit of space left over for a special guest arrival who was not ready to be displayed on Friday.

There were complaints about the lack of Big City photos, so here is one for the record.

The bottom shelf of the display cabinet has die Nacht der Magier and Dicke Luft in der Gruft

The second shelf consists of Plus and Minus and Frank's Zoo on display plus a bunch of other card games.


The top shelf is bookcase games and almost bookcase games, games across history if you will. A full Alea bigbox set would look quite nice there, but alas we are a few short. There were a few others that we would have liked to put their including the Gibson's editions of Kingmaker and Escape from Colditz as well as the old Avalon Hill History of the World but the boxes are too big to play nicely with the others.

We were going to be getting a spare board for Shadows over Camelot for our wall mounting, but it hasn't arrived as yet. We hope it does, because we are not entirely sure how playable ours will be after hanging on a wall for a month :-)

Did we tell you that we have a very limited edition set of Trias?

After the setting up we, with the assistance of Alice from the Museum, put the covers back on the cases and carefully moved them back to the wall. Observant readers may notice the slightly different alignment of the big boxes of the Settlers family in this photo.

It took Melissa and I four and half hours to set up and install the games (there goes a game of Die Macher).

We are still intending for a selection of Scott Nicholson's videos to be showing, but the first DVD that was burnt had errors, so stay tuned.

If you are in the Melbourne neighbourhood, it is there for the month of September. Some more specific infomation including a map of where in the museum the exhibit is can be found here. The quick guide is through the entrance - turn right - up the escalators - turn left - turn right into the Australia gallery and it is in the back right hand corner.

Mmmm Meeples taste like...

Theme Delivery Systems and the Unconscious Imagination

How’s that for a pretentious title?

I usually check the Best of Boardgames website (http://boardgames.blogsome.com) every week to see what others in the hobby are saying. I noticed that two of the latest recommended writers had a bit to say about theme in games. I’m interested in theme for a variety of reasons, and so I’ve decided to throw in my two cents on this topic.

Anthony Simons has an essay about the relationship between theme and gaming mechanisms. Mr. Simons believes that theme must precede game development, and that mechanisms should evolve from the theme. He quotes Reiner Knizia as saying that theme comes first. This is surprising to me because some of Mr. Knizia’s games seem to be thinly-themed. But if a designer as prominent as Mr. Knizia thinks that theme is paramount, I take that as an indication that some mighty smart people believe that many games are really theme delivery systems.

Before we go any further, maybe I should define what I mean by theme. (Chris Farrell scolded me for not defining what I meant by a wargame-euro hybrid in my blog on that subject, and I think he made a valid point). I think of theme as the subject matter of the game. But this subject matter must relate to some separate reality in the real world or in some imaginary world. The more that aspects and mechanisms of the game embody the subject matter, the more richly themed a game is. The more that the aspects and mechanisms of the game reflect nothing but themselves, the more abstract we say the game is.

For example, Go may be one of the most important games of all time, but it is almost entirely an abstract game. Go may have started out as a simulation of warfare, but now we regard Go as merely a stone-placing game, a game that is about nothing but itself.

Contrast this with War of the Ring, a game about Tolkien’s fictional world of Middle Earth. The world that War of the Ring simulates may be a fantasy land that never existed anywhere except in the pages of Tolkien’s books, but it is a very detailed world that the game goes to great lengths to simulate. War of the Ring is very much a theme delivery system. Even gamers who don’t particularly enjoy War of the Ring often acknowledge that it does a good job of simulating the political and military conflicts of Tolkien’s world.

Note that being richly themed or thinly-themed has nothing to do with the overall quality of the game. Chess, Go, and poker are all thinly-themed games that will probably be popular for as long as mankind continues to play games. And a game may be richly themed but still be a lousy game. Or the theme may be shoe-horned into a game whose mechanisms may have little to do with the subject matter (Lord of the Rings Monopoly, Pirates of the Caribbean Monopoly). Or the subject matter may be of such little consequence that it adds little to the game’s appeal. I think Bean Trader is a decent light game, but I doubt that anyone plays it because they are dying to recreate the real-life excitement of bean-trading.

I believe that theme matters in games because players like to use their imaginations to participate in the worlds that games simulate. In a richly-themed game, we project ourselves into the game’s world in much the same way that we enter the world of a novel when we read it.

But I suspect that the gamer’s imagination is participating at a less conscious level than a reader’s imagination. When I read a good novel, I create the scenes of the story in my mind; I see the characters and hear their words. I am very conscious of the fact that my imagination is participating in the creation of the novel’s world.

But the process is somewhat different when I play a game. If I play Arkham Horror, and my character is attacked by an Elder Thing, I don’t picture the character firing his pistol at an alien horror in the streets of a New England town. I look at the abilities of the monster on the game piece, and then I calculate if my character should fight or flee. My conscious mind is more concerned with the odds of success than with imaginary participation in the action that the game is simulating. It may seem that theme in a game just doesn’t work on me in the same powerful direct way that a novel can.

But I don’t believe that my imagination is asleep just because my conscious mind is more concerned with strategies and plans than with vivid images of imaginary actions. Somewhere in my subconscious, my imagination is having a ball pretending to battle a Lovecraftian horror in a street lit by gunfire and forked lightning. Our imaginations want a chance to play, and if we give them the raw materials, they will snatch them like a starving dog spotting a discarded Big Mac. An observer watching a group of serious boardgamers may note that they look a lot more sedate than a group of goofy roleplayers who use silly accents to speak in character, and who swing their arms as if holding invisible swords. But I suspect that the imaginations of many boardgamers are no less active than those of the flamboyant roleplayers.

I have no solid proof of any of this, of course. And I am not a psychologist. But I think there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence that my thesis is true. For one thing, theme makes a difference in game sales. Why else would Lord of the Rings Monopoly even exist? If the essential game mechanisms are the same as original Monopoly, why would gamers be willing to buy a clone with a tacked-on theme unless their imaginations are so desperate to play that they value even a superimposed theme. Why would many gamers be willing to master complex sets of rules when there are so many wonderful easy-to-master games available? Isn’t it because some themes require complex rules, and gamers are willing to pay the price of complexity to get the themes they want?

Why would gamers buy the genre of game that seems the driest, most complex, and least visually interesting of all the subgroups of games? I am referring of course to wargames. Wargames are almost always heavily-themed games because they usually try to simulate a very specific conflict. But the level of complexity that exists in the wargame genre can often give a euro-gamer nightmares. Decision Games has just released their remake of the old SPI game War in the Pacific. This is a game that comes with seven maps and nearly 9000 pieces. I suspect that playing it would feel like fighting World War II in real time. Would any gamer attempt to play this monster if his imagination were not engaged on some level?

In the Sam Shepard movie Fool for Love the old coot played by Harry Dean Stanton announces that “I am married to Barbara Mandrell in my mind.” I suspect that many players of War in the Pacific are Admiral Nimitz or Admiral Yamamoto in their minds.

So who was the other writer recommended by Best of Board Games who touched on theme? It was Mike Siggins in his Gamer’s Notebook article for Fungain.com. Mr. Siggins shares my opinion of Arkham Horror although he probably expresses it with greater clarity than I could. Mr. Siggins notes that the game often resembles an inter-dimensional game of “Whack-a-Mole.” He also notes the overly-long playing time and problems with the end of the game. But despite these and other criticisms, Mr. Siggins feels the game redeems itself (at least partially) with a strong theme.

Yes, for many or most of us theme is the key. Brilliantly designed gaming mechanisms may help us love a game once we have it in our hands, but we wait with eager anticipation to receive the latest railroad game, or Civil War game, or World War II tactical slugfest. No one ever sat impatiently waiting for the mailman to deliver the latest innovation in card drafting or a new twist on the area majority mechanism.

Sure, you can claim that you play games solely as a test of skill or as an exercise in inter-active history. And you may push those cardboard chits across the hexmap in stony silence without a hint of emotion showing. But in your subconscious, you hear the rumble of panzer treads or the thunder of a cavalry charge.

As do I.