Positive Feedback

I recently picked up Dominion because I played a lot of San Juan.

No, that isn't too clear. Let me try again.

Last game night, I played San Juan three times in a row. That was a bad experience. San Juan is fun for 30 minutes, but 90 is pushing it.

San Juan is the card game based on Puerto Rico. I like San Juan a lot more than Puerto Rico. The randomness of card deals isn't a bad thing for a 30 minute game. It feels more dynamic than waiting for the person with tons of corn to finish shipping their goods while your coffee rots.

So I entered into the three games really liking San Juan. After 3 games, my opinion was somewhat altered. San Juan is still a good game, but not good enough to play three times in a row. Each time I played the game followed roughly the same flow. Same decisions. Same feeling. I ended the last game early by triggering a build because I just wanted the game to be over.

Now back to where I started this post: I recently picked up Dominion because I played a lot of San Juan.

I went to my local game store a few days after the triple San Juan day, and saw a new card game: Dominion. It plays 2-4 players and takes 30 minutes according to the box. Now I'd have something different if I'm ever trapped into 3 thirty minute games.

Opening up the box I found 500 cards (well that's what the box says there are; I didn't count them). And I found out that you only use a sub-set of the cards in each game. If my simple math skills from college are still working 25 pick 10 is 25!/(10!*15!) which is 3,268,760. So there are over 3 million different decks that Dominion can be played with.

Already the replayability of this title seems light years ahead of San Juan. But how does it actually play? Is the game hard to teach? (One of the reasons we played San Juan so many times is that Race for the Galaxy was considered too hard to teach.)

In a miraculous bout of luck we happened to have guests coming over that night and I was hoping to see how it played with 4 newbies. Teaching the rules was easy because there are about 5 of them. Everyone seemed to enjoy the game, but if you are looking for theme (as one person was) then this game will disappoint. There isn't much.

It is a game about buying cards from a common pool to add to your deck. Everyone starts with the same cards. Everyone has access to the same cards. And everyone seems to end up with very different decks.

Dominion feels like a stand up act. You get direct feedback from the game and need to adjust to said feedback to do well. I suppose after a while this adjustment will be unnecessary because the cards you buy will flow better.

You get feedback from the game, but no so much from the other players. This is very close to multiplayer solitaire. I don't mind multiplayer solitaire games, if they are fun. And the feedback loop of building your own deck while you are playing it, is fun for me. The 3 million different possible pools of cards to build your deck seems to solve the San Juan problem.

There are card combos and synergies but since the available card selection changes with each game, part of the fun is finding new combos. What do you do if a favorite card isn't available in this game? Better come up with a plan B.

Probably the most fun I've had playing a Eurogame since Galaxy Trucker. I probably should write something about Galaxy Trucker, but with the expansion out. I'll wait until I've gotten a chance to play with the expansion. Even without the expansion Galaxy Trucker is easily the best Eurogame of 2007, in my opinion.

Teaching In the Year of the Dragon

One of the things that sets board gaming apart from a lot of hobbies is teaching games. If you are into football (soccar) then you don't need to explain on-side rules to other fans. I was one of 3 people trying to teach In the Year of the Dragon (great game by the way), but the learner eventually gave up and just watched.

The rules are fairly simple. Pick one of seven actions (or pass) then hire one of nine people. You then have two "bookkeeping phases". Almost no thought required there. You resolve an event (which has and outcome almost purely determined by the actions taken earlier in this or another turn). And then score points (again based on things you've already gained).

Multiple victory paths was the tricky bit to teach. There are at least 2 viable ways to win In the Year of the Dragon. Going first allows you to a greater selection of actions (you have to pay to take an action from the same group as someone who goes before you), but the only way to go first is to ignore the best immediate point sources. There is also a scoring at the end of the game which highly favors players who went earlier in turn order (that's been the case in every game I've played so far).

So do you go for points now or do you hope that your points at the end of the game will beat the people scoring heavily now? If I knew the answer to this question then the game would lose a lot of its appeal. I don't think there is an answer to it. The order of events is randomly determined at the start of each game (which would make any memorized "opening" less than ideal.

So how do you teach a game without a simple ideal strategy? The learner grasped the rules quickly, but was just as quickly frustrated because the ideal move wasn't clear to them. Maybe the simple answer is that the learner doesn't like this type of game and no teaching approach would work.

Games without a simple ideal strategy are ones which I tend to enjoy more than mono-strategy games. The appeal of trying something new (even if I end up in last place) keeps me coming back to these games. Games which I'm thinking about for days afterward.

So after all that "analysis", I'm back at square one with no insight on how to teach multiple-path-to-victory games. I am sure this will happen again because of the type of game I tend to enjoy. If you have any suggestions feel free to drop me a line or mention it in the comment section.

Games I'm Looking Forward To (or instantly dated post)

There are tons of games that I am looking forward to in 2008, but in the interests of brevity (and blogger's 200 character label limit), I'll be talking about two in this post. Others might follow later, depending on comments and what else is going on.

As I've written earlier, I'm a fan of Marvel Heroes, but War of the Ring isn't enjoyable for me. I mentioned that the theme turned me off War of the Ring, but there are a few more quibbles with the game. The action dice serve to limit your choices and strategy. A lot of the game is spent working against the dice (and the dice have no direct link to Tolkien's prose).

I am not the biggest fan of Robert E. Howard, in general, and Conan stories in particular, but I am anticipating Nexus's new "Age of Conan" game with the ill-patience reserved for great games. Age of Conan sounds like a re-tooling of War of the Ring. So why am I so enthused given the theme and mechanics?

Because it sounds like the fantasy war game. It is really multiplayer (unlike War of the Ring which has a fixed 2 sides there are 4 countries players can be). The action dice are back but this time in a common pool. So if I take an action it means that others might not be able to do it, too. This sounds like it will add tactical decisions instead of taking away options (as the dice is War of the Ring could do).

There is also a diplomacy mechanic so war isn't the only path to victory (I enjoy multiple viable victory paths). And Conan is in the game. Auctions to steer the "force of nature" that is Conan might be the best implementation of Conan in board game form that I've heard. It does sound a bit like the Groo game, but the level of detail on Conan's activities, decks for each player nation, cards for events in neutral countries, and so on sounds like it will bring an immersive fantasy world to the table in a way not seen.

Age of Conan is very high on my radar. Here's hoping it is a great big sprawling epic game.

The other game, I'm interested in is actually an English reprint of a game already available in German: Agricola. It is about being a farmer in Europe. The fun in this game would be the same fun in economic games (see comments on Brass, 1825 and Industrial Waste for my love of economic games): building a profitable enterprise.

It also shares limited actions that make a lot of eurogames fun for me. With only 14 turns, it appears that figuring out what needs to be done now and what can wait until later will provide a delicious tension. Blocking other players actions sounds unthematic and just a way to interject interaction into the game, but since when have euros been judged on their thematic strengths?

But wait there's more (just like the infomercials say). You also get the first few planned expansions in the box. That's something like 350 cards. The cards do seem to have combinations, but simply being dealt a good hand doesn't hand the game to you on a silver platter. You have to take an action to play cards, and who knows what the opponents will do with their action advantage over you.

There doesn't appear to be any catch-up mechanism. So if you mess up then that's that. Player elimination is fine in games. It sounds like a tough game that doesn't cut much slack (other than allowing your family members to beg for food instead of staving, but even that comes with a big cost -3 points for each mouth you can't feed).

Looking over this post there doesn't seem to be much in common between the two games I'm anticipating. But that's probably good. If every game were exactly the same as every other one, then there'd be no reason to play different games. I guess variety is the spice of life.

Confession Time: I Hate Puerto Rico

According to wikipedia Puerto Rico has won the following awards:

• Deutscher Spiele Preis, 2002
• Essen Feather, 2002
• International Gamers Award (General strategy, Multiplayer Category), 2003
• Nominee for the Spiel des Jahres, 2002
• As of January 2007, ranked number 1 in Internet Top 100 Games List
• As of January 2008, ranked number 1 at BoardGameGeek

I understand that a lot of people must like this game for it to win all those awards. I have heard people try to claim that "objectively" it is a good game, but I haven't seen an objective review for this game, but maybe that's because I played before finding out about the hype.

An objective review isn't something that sets up a list of ideals that a game must have, and then tells you that you must like or dislike a game because of how much it conforms to said list. Roger Ebert writes opinions instead of reviews. An objective review should let you know if you'd like what's being reviewed not just if the reviewer liked it.

I dislike Puerto Rico for a lot of reasons, but my number one gripe is that there is no long term planning. If long term planning isn't important to you in a game then you might like Puerto Rico. A long term plan for me is something that you can work toward all game. It is something that you can position yourself for (making small moves which eventually lead to your end goal).

I've heard Puerto Rico fan praise the strategic depth of the game. The difficult choices of role selection. Anticipating the next players's moves. Blocking them from shipping their goods. All these choices exist on a turn to turn basis.

There aren't gradual game shaping choices. If I have a lot of plantations, I'm going for a shipping strategy. No ambiguity there. I might as well pass a note to the player sitting to my left saying, "take Captain, when you can, to block my shipping". I in turn must look at what the players around me are doing and take roles mainly to hinder them.

There are only seven roles in the game. So on your turn you pick one of the remaining roles and that's it. Small decision tree with easy to understand consequences. Also has very little luck (which leads to even easier to predict results).

Puerto Rico reminds me of a Cheapass game included in Change!: Diminishing Returns, but with better components. Diminishing Returns doesn't have 2 major strategies; there's just one. It does play quicker than Puerto Rico though. Same feeling to the decisions: if I play this amount, the players to my left will play this amount, and so on.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted any "reviews" in this blog. I don't pay attention to components or rule clarity when playing, and I know that some people care a lot about those elements. I hope this semi-objective rant let you know why you should avoid Puerto Rico or why you should check out Change!

Scalable Train Games: 1825 and On the Underground

Most train games are good for a fairly small range of players. By looking at two games which do seem to scale well we can see what mechanism help scalability (but it's really just an excuse to gush over 2 games I really like). On the Underground player 2-5 and 1825 plays 2-9 (although I've only played up to 5).

There are many way to get victory points in On the Underground: loops, passenger, National Rail stations, connecting two matching stations, and terminus stations. That's an awful lot of different "paths to victory" available. If someone is blocking one VP source then there are so many others to choose from. This game gets its tension from providing an environment where you want to do 5 or 6 things each turn, but can only do 4.

The game plays in semi-random number of player turns (there is a deck from which 1 or 2 cards are drawn each turn and when exhausted it's the final round). This keeps games at a similar length regardless of how many players are in the game. There is more downtime with more players, but since so much of the game is trying to connect lines without being blocked and blocking others, I am involved all the time.

The other scalability mechanism is giving out different amounts of track lengths depending on the number of players. Even the number of different colours you have available changes (and since you can only add to ends of existing lines, number of colours does change the opportunities available on the board).

It does feel like the same game with 2, 4, and 5 players (I have not played the 3 player version, yet). I think this is, in part, due to the passenger movement. There is always something out of your control each turn so adding chaos from other player's moves doesn't seem like a major shift.

1825 on the other hand, only has "one" way to get "points": money in hand at the end of the game. It scales, in part, because there are more companies than players. You can (and I usually do) run 2 or 3 companies in the game.

Another huge scaling factor in 1825 is the modularity of the board. You play on different parts of Britain depending on how many players. This keeps the number of companies per player manageable, and keeps track building competition intense.

The joy of 1825 comes from setting up a long term business plan for your companies and watching them fail. Also watching the stock market for undervalued stock is a must. 1825 is short enough (with 2-5 players) to play in an evening, and with the linear stock market is less overtly cutthroat than the 1830 branch of 18xx.

The Anti-Theme

Let me preface this post by saying that I dislike Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (and Peter Jackson's film trilogy). I prefer The Silmarillion (which makes me an even bigger geek than LotRs fans.)

I also dislike Riener Knizia's base Lord of the Rings game because it's too linear. I enjoy making long term plans. The simplicity of planning in the base game bores me: save travel cards for Mordor (and other simple plans).

But Lord of the Rings is one of my favorite games when played with the expansions (any single one or combination of them). Why? Because the basic framework of the "boring" game is a framework on which a fun game is then played.

By fun I mean that the long term effects of choices is harder to judge. Which board(s) to skip in Friends and Foes (is it better to go through a board than take damage from foes)? In Battlefields there is always tension about saving precious fighting cards for the main track or killing enemies to prevent damage and/or prevent damage (better to kill the double damage enemy or the one who mores the eye back).

Sauron has the dark rider to hurt the fellowship in the Sauron expansion. Picking which symbol to effect you each turn is hard. Do you go for the extra goodies on the side tracks or ignore them? There doesn't seem to be a best option with Sauron since the player can listen to hobbit strategy and adjust his actions accordingly.

Sauron seems to have a big advantage in this expansion (at least with new players). I feel that Sauron is best played by the least experienced player. This way they can learn the game without being bossed around by more experienced players. If your group is good at Sauron it is easy to handicap the game for the newbie (add another expansion, start Sauron on 10 or 12, and/or use dark event tiles).

The game is a fun cooperative game, but even in talking about it (dark events, flow chart battle boards, skippable boards), I'm not immersed in J. R. R. Tolkien's world. War of the Ring is a game which is almost impossible to talk about without LotRs immersion. I prefer Knizia's abstract cooperative game, though. It is one of the few games that I would play almost any time (it does require thought so if I'm really tired I'd probably bow out).

Thanksgiving

Just played two games of Beowulf: the Legend over Thanksgiving weekend. I didn't win either game. My opinion of Beowulf hasn't improved either. Beowulf is like one of those old "light gun" games in the arcades: Terminator 2, Area 51, and so on.

It is an auction game because auctions are what Beowulf did best!!? (Forget dragon slaying.) You have cards which are the different "currencies" of the auctions. These currencies are supposed to represent Friendship, Wit, Courage, and so on. The players just call them foxes, boats, fists, and so on. (Can you match the "thematic" name to what we called them?)

There are 2 types of auction: blind bids and "regular" round the table, but always the same auction types in always the same order. Even the goods up for auction are in the same order. After all the auctions the game is over. Most victory points wins.

You are stuck on the rails and there's nothing you can do to fix it. This game feels like it has tactics, but nothing I'd call strategy. There are tactics in when to risk. Tactics in managing your hand, but you are always optimizing your hand for the exact same suits for the exact same auctions for the exact same goods.

Maybe playing two games of such a static game is a mistake. I did find out that I was over-valuing some of the items. It's an okay game, but it feels more like a filler than a real game (something true of a lot of Euros).

If you are wondering what I over-valued: it was wounds. I took zero wounds each game, but ended up in 2rd or 3rd place. If I'd been at 2 wounds and 2 scratches then I'd have won more than 5 extra points, putting me in first. (But notice how even this simple analysis makes this game sound even more like a mindless optimization exercise instead of epic adventure with Beowulf.)

I hear the Zemeckis Beowulf film is also disappointing.

Theme in Games

Game theme is a highly subjective game attribute, but I think theme is part of the immersion of a game.

Immersion is when the game stops being rules, wooden bits, cards, cardboard, and so on and becomes something more. RPGs seem to be inherently thematic and immersive.

Without immersion you are just sitting around a table talking and rolling dice (not much of a "game" there isn't even a winner); RPGs are enjoyable games because of the immersion. And they acchieve this immersion via theme (plus social aspect of game).

Game theory seems to be unable to fully describe RPGs, but narrative theory does deal with RPGs. The more narrative based a game is the more each move in the game can be narrated.

Industrial Waste is very much a game theory game, but it also has some narrative. Each move is fairly dry. For example:

I recently played a two player game of Industrial Waste. I was the yellow company and my opponent was red. The red company's logo is NiN (industrial bands for industrial waste).

I went second. Action cards were dealt face up into 3 piles of three cards each (no duplicates allowed in a pile). The opposing company, NiN, picked up a pile containing Growth, Innovation, and Order. I took the pile with Order, Raw Materials, and Waste Removal.

NiN played growth moving up to 15 million Euros for a completed order (game ends once a company reaches 20 on the growth track).

I played my raw materials card to auction off 5 goods. The auction in this game goes once around the table. NiN bid 5 million Euros and I raised it to 6 million winning the auction. Since I called the auction and won the 6 million went to the bank. If I'd let NiN get the goods, I would have taken their 5 million bid for myself (person who starts the auction gets the money).

But at a high level:

I played Industrial Waste again. I warned the other player repeatedly about the disadvantages of non-stop pollution in the game, but he filled up all of his waste storage area, and couldn't run his factory any more. He tried bribes to keep things quiet after pollution related accidents plagued his plant, but all the money wasted on bribery plus the inability to produce put him in a poor position for the end game.

Chess and Go are immersive because of the level of thought involved, but there's no real narrative (hence, no theme from my point of view). Theme isn't critical for an enjoyable game.

A well themed game is one where you can tell a story about what happened afterwards, and that's inherently immersive for me.

Hollywood Blockbuster

If you haven't played Hollywood Blockbuster (or Traumfabrik as the original game was called) then you are missing out on a lot of fun.

My enjoyment is mainly from the theme. Producing movies is so much fun. Without the theme it would be just an auction game. You start with a few screen plays which could be made into movies. Each screenplay has some requirements: actors, directors, and so on. The items needed to complete movies are available at auctions and parties.

The game rewards both speed and quality. However, it is hard to make good movies fast, and you frequently have to choose between one and the other.

I've always been fascinated by closed economies (no bank to inject more currency into the system). And this is an auction game in a closed economy. The amount of currency (called contracts) in circulation is fixed at the start of the game (based on the number of players). Contracts are points at the end of the game; the game rewards people who manipulate its economic system.

But the thing I remember after playing is the films actually produced like The Lord of the Bling starring Jack Nickledime, Demi Less, and Christopher Walkon directed by Quint N. Tarantula.