For the past few months, folks on spielfrieks and other mailing lists have been posting month-end summaries of the games they've played recently. Sounds like as good a format as any for finally adding something to BGTG, so...
Mark's July Games
My game playing has slowed down lately. Mostly that's just due to a busy summer, but it's also true that I'm enjoying a period of less-than-manic attitude about the hobby. I still skim spielfrieks on the web, but I've stopped getting it delivered via email. It's surprising how much time that frees up. I'm not saying I won't change back sometime later, but for now I'm acting just a little bit more normal, practicing basketball with my son, riding bikes with my daughter, etc.
I missed half of the weekly sessions of the Santa Clarita Boardgamers, too, which was disappointing. What's more, I missed the Game of the Month, Industrial Waste, entirely. Rats. The two bright spots for the month were SoCal Games Day 13 and a surprise business trip into the Washington DC area, where I got to tour the Manassas/Bull Run battlefield and rekindle my interest in wargames.
M -- I enjoy Coloretto and tile-laying games, so this one should've been an automatic favorite for me. As it turned out, though, I wasn't really won over by it. I just thought I'd rather be playing Coloretto.
Mammoth Hunters -- I didn't like this very much, either, but upon some reflection I'd like to try again. The game bogged down--a cardinal sin with me--but I don't see why one couldn't simple trim off one of the scoring rounds. You can probably shave 30 minutes off the game, that way. The light/dark card mechanic is very good, and I hope we see it in future games.
Star Wars Epic Duels -- Still lots of fun with my son. We tried the variant suggested by Peter Sarrett of drawing one card for free each turn, in addition to the two actions (which can be used to draw additional cards). I'm not sure that's completely balanced (characters like Mace Windu and Darth Maul may benefit more than others), but there's no question that it makes for a more fluid, exciting game.
Octiles -- I got this abstract thinking it might go over well with my kids, who enjoy mazes. Turns out it's not so much of a maze game as a connection game. In contrast to the photos you see of this game online, the game starts with all of the tiles face DOWN. That precludes some of the analysis-paralysis problems typical of abstract games. Anyway, I did get to play this with my son, and though I had to help him see most of the trickier routes, he enjoyed it. It's also nice that the game has an easily scalable length by varying the number of pawns used. I guess you could use that as a simple handicapping system, too.
Battle Cry -- As a wargame (which I agree it is), I'm becoming a little less enamored with BC. I've got no problem with its chaos--I like a measure of unpredictability or "un-analyzability" in my wargames. However, I like more room to maneuver, to see the battle unfolding on a broader scale. As a fun game with cool pieces, though, it's still great.
Marrakesh -- Just a partial game of the new children's title from Haba, with my 7yo daughter and a gamer friend (Ryan Wheeler). Once again, a kid's game that's getting good word of mouth has failed to impress any of us. Bummer. Looks nice, though.
Edel, Stein & Reich -- Good game, no question about it, but I still prefer the aesthetics of good ol' Basari. From reports, the new version from Out of the Box has some disappointing components, though the price is certainly good.
Carrom -- I enjoy Crokinole so much, I thought I'd try this cousin/ancestor game. It's got the flicking action of Croke, with the pockets, "cue ball" (striker), and strategy of 8-ball billiards. It ain't easy, that's for sure.
Lords of Creation -- I've wanted to try this for at least five years. I traded for my own copy in 2002, and finally got a chance to try it at SoCal Games Day 13. We tried it with Steffan O'Sullivan's considerable variant on the first try, an unusual move for me. It paid off, though, since the game was very enjoyable. I can't wait to try again, and just wish I had the time & energy to do a component-upgrade.
Shrille Stille -- The gizmo is cool, you've probably heard that. What you may not have heard is that the game itself is very enjoyable, too. If it's still one super sale at Adam Spielt, I may have to order one.
San Marco -- I don't really like area-majority games, and I haven't enjoyed hardly any of Alan Moon's boardgames (though I do like several of his card games). For some reason, though, San Marco has always been a big hit with me. Someday I need to try it with four, but for now I think it's ideal with three.
Pitstop -- Six months ago I got rid of this game, then wanted it again (see below!). Now I finally re-acquired it, which wasn't easy, and it bombed again with my group. I'm still not convinced it's as bad as everyone else says, but what's the point if no one wants to play it with me? Might be traded yet again!
Korsar -- If it were any longer the great level of chaos would be irritating, but as it is it works just fine. The game is also helped by the very attractive presentation in this latest edition.
Touchdown-A-Minute Football -- Okay, I was duped. A simple, dice-based game covering American football sounds good, but I should've been able to guess it wouldn't satisfy. Worth a shot, though, wasn't it? Wasn't it?
Most of the time I'm okay with that. Just recently I sold off Kontor. Though the game had a lukewarm reputation, I tended to enjoy it, picked up the little expansions, and always wanted to try some of the more advanced setups or the partnership variant. However, no one who played it with me was ever keen to explore the game further. So, when the opportunity came to sell, I said farewell to a game I still enjoy, wishing the next owner more success than I had with it.
(Perhaps it's obvious--I would've still hung onto the game if I had more storage space.)
That's not really a case of seller's remorse. I sold the game for a good reason, and I'm okay with that. A true case of seller's (or trader's) remorse comes about when I find myself planning to acquire again a game that I once owned. At the moment, there are two games that come to mind in this regard: Wildlife and Pitstop.
You might be surprised to hear that I got rid of my copy of Wildlife. After all, I'm one of the few voices on spielfrieks that talks about this game. It's clearly a favorite of mine. So why don't I still own it? Well, I had a chance to make a good trade, and Wildlife needed to be part of the deal. I know two or three other gamers that own it, one of them in my local game group, so I have opportunities to play. Still, I like it enough that I think I need to own my own copy again.
With Pitstop, it's another case of a trade opportunity I couldn't pass up. This time, though, the trade was even easier since the game didn't impress anyone in its two previous outings. However, I botched a key rule one of those times, and the rules ambiguities about drafting affected both games. With both of those problems resolved, and after doing some more reflection about the game, I decided I want to give it another chance. So does another local gamer. It helps that I've also read some commentary from other gamers I respect (such as Rick Heli, on his SpotlightOnGames.com website) that is favorable.
One more that could make the list someday is Razzia. I've already owned and traded this game away twice, but after playing Hick Hack im Gackelwach recently, I'm thinking about the earlier game again. I agree with those that say Hick Hack's subtle rule changes are for the better, but the overall presentation (theme, graphics, components) of Razzia is superior, and I think it may be possible to graft the new rules onto the old game.
P.S. Although this BGTG entry is talking about re-acquiring games, in general I'm still trying to reduce the size of my collection. This weekend I understood a new goal for that plan: to reduce the collection to the point that my wife notices the increased shelfspace, and believes me! :-)
The Africa game went as usual, fast & fun. No big strategic epiphanies, we all know the importance of relocating nomads (sometimes animals) as the game progresses, including building those opportunities for yourself. A fortuitous discovery of multiple trade goods sure helps, though.
Next up was Samurai, a good game I have almost avoided in recent years. Why? Because I've played some games that really dragged. (Some games don't need to be played so ponderously, but are susceptible to it. This is certainly true of the Sam/E&T/DdW trilogy.) Also, although Knizia's strange scoring system makes more sense since I read his explanation (based on theme, no less) in an interview, it's still strange.
I played anyway, and was glad I did. This playing moved along at a good clip, and the game is beautiful. Embarassingly, the game was mine to be won of the final turn, but I failed to see it. I guess this shows that if I had a little more "analysis paralysis" myself then I'd win more games. Oh well, I'd prefer to be speedy even if it costs me some wins. (Hmm . . . I wonder what my opponents think--would they rather see me slow the game down on occasion if it upped the level of competition?)
I then got a chance to play 3-player Ave Caesar, later getting in a triple-race series with a full boat of 6 players. Race games are always fun for me, and this one is a crowd-pleaser. Time to play Ausgebremst again (& buy Pitstop again--a case of trader's remorse!)
After the race we played Hick Hack im Gackelwack. Most of the other players were familiar with (& fans of) Razzia, a game I've twice-owned, twice traded away. I do like the subtle rule changes in Hick Hack, but agree that Razzia's theme is a lot more fun. And as good as the newer game's artwork is, I always felt the original's complete graphic presentation is superior.
Nodwick has been compared to the classic Pit. (So has Wheedle, but I haven't tried it yet.) Well, I'd much rather play Pit. Part of it comes from the extra bells & whistles in Nodwick's frenzied trading--I don't need 'em. The other part comes from the theme. I guess I understand why American game companies like Jolly Roger, Steve Jackson Games, and Fantasy Flight still use D&D inspired themes (dungeons, trolls, & wizards), but I don't have to like it.
A real treat was the chance to play Wildlife again. I have to admit I may be revelling in the role of the contrarian, rooting for the underdog game. However, I honestly enjoy the game's mechanics, and I really appreciate the theme. (It's still not my ideal treatment of the rich theme, evolutionary biology, but it's the best we've got so far.) At the same time, I understand that it's not got a lot of fans, and in my experience the new players don't really "get" the game on the first try, and are hesitant to play a second time. I'm not sure why El Grande is so widely appreciated, while this game struggles with its reputation. They seem so similar to me.
Oddly enough, I'm not a fan of El Grande, but my enjoyment of Wildlife makes me want to give the earlier game yet another chance. It may just be that I'm engaged by Wildlife's theme, while the one for El Grande disappoints--mostly in terms of a missed opportunity. I believe Wildlife may handle a range of players, 3-6, somewhat better than El Grande, too.
In any case, our Wildlife game was a good one, in that the Crocodiles didn't win (some folks have said their startgin position is stronger than others', but I've never agreed with that), and my auction-overbidding strategy (discussed on spielfrieks some months ago) didn't strain the game. Just the opposite--it worked as it should, with my perpetually shortness of food causing my grief when the Famine event cards were played. But my double-Food genes meant that I had a victory point engine running that allowed me to pay some victory points for the auctions or the food shortage penalty. I won, but only by a single point versus the other experience player.
Yet another game I knew I had to try (again) when Joe was in town was Res Publica. I'd played just once before, some years ago, and at the time no one seemed to understand the strategy. The result was a frustating experience, and no desire to play it again. Now I see more clearly that it's a combination of deduction and constrained trading, two mechanics I generally enjoy, and in a compact, attractive package to boot. What's not to like? Well, it's still got that dry quality that many of Knizia's "second-tier" games have (with a completely pasted-on theme), and a possible rich-get-richer problem. Once everyone understands how the game works, though, it's probably very easy to keep a leader in check, since multiplayer trading is the main mechanic of progress in the game. A leader can't do it on his own. I look forward to exploring this one a bit more. Might be an interesting pick for Game of the Month with our Santa Clarita Boardgamers...
The evening wound down with a two-table game of FFF (I'll never get the exact spelling). This was my first try with the game. My impression is that it's a noble first-effort at an exciting new mechanic in boardgames--multi-table play. However, I understand why some folks have said the single-table game is actually a little better. There wasn't what I'd consider a "natural" reason within the game to switch tables. You simply had to do it because the victory condition demands it. I'd much rather see something such as a scarcity of some commodities at one table, combined with high prices for others, would induce players to "table-hop" as part of their economic strategy. As it is, I don't the game quite has that. I'm also a bit concerned that groups of players moving quicker at Table A will outperform slower players at Table B. The net effect is a pressure on everyone to play quickly, and I think that's mildly un-fun.
That was it for the big day of gaming, though I forgot to mention that earlier in the day we played a couple games with my kids. Hmm, maybe that's a subject for another day.
Well, enough about that. This weblog is supposed to be about boardgaming, not computer devices. The only significance here is that I'm now re-motivated to include some color pictures. We'll see how that goes.
Not much gaming to report yet. This weekend I'm going to a game party organized for my buddy Joe Huber (a BGTG reader! :-), who's in town for the weekend. When I got into this hobby, it was mostly facilitated by reading about exotic-sounding games on the net, and discussing them on r.g.b. Joe was one of the first guys I "met" online. We struck up an email exchange that's still going on, after six years. He's visited me a couple times, and I brought my family to his home once, even though we live in opposite corners of the US (me near LA, Joe near Boston). In the past couple years he's been trying his hand at designing some games, and I'm pleased that he's now got two of them in the pipeline to be published.
So I should have more gaming to report soon enough.
Last night I asked my 9yo son if he wanted to play one of "my games" with me, or else chess (which he's starting to learn). He said yes, and even that I should pick it! Only not chess. :-) When I suggested Hellas, he suggested Starship Catan. (These are the two games I showed him last night, hoping to spark a little interest. I guess it worked!) It's been a year or so since I last played SC, and had never read the rules. I was a little rusty, then, and welcomed the "Professor Easy" read-aloud rulebook.
Well, pretty much. The game took a while to set up, and even with the play-as-you-read rules, it was getting off to a sluggish start, and I worried my son would lose interest. As soon as I could, I jettisoned the rulebook and we just played. It went pretty well. We didn't have enough time to finish before he went to bed, but he enjoyed it. As I expected he would, his favorite part was paying to upgrade his lasers, then take on every pirate he could find! :-)
I finally did manage to collect my year-end stats and report for my boardgaming in 2002. In the end, I liked my format and presentation a little bit better than the year And I've yet to post it on my website.
Speaking of the website, though, it managed to get mentioned in the latest issue of Games Magazine. I found out about this after the author had already submitted his article, but don't mind in the slightest. The reason I'm in there is for my Quick & Dirty Guide to BSW (brettspielwelt), the web page that helps English-speakers understand the interface to the German language online boardgaming portal. However, I was pleased to see that the url listed in the magazine doesn't go straight to that page, it goes to the parent page for all of my material about boardgaming. Including this here Boardgames To-Go, so perhaps I even picked up a new reader or two from that.
This year has started with at least as much gaming as the previous year, even more for wargames, but the month of February slowed things down. A business trip meant I missed it entirely this week, and my attendance at the lunch-hour game sessions is becoming exceedingly rare. Still, I usually am gaming on Wednesday nights. This year I made a switch from the group I've been playing with for four years, the Left Coast Gamers, to my newer local group, the Santa Clarita Boardgamers. That's not an exclusive switch--I plan to still drop in on the LCGers once in a while--but this lets me help build up my own local group. Plus, I was missing out on many of their sessions, and wanted to be more plugged in with them.
A couple LCG traditions have come over with me to SCB, namely Games of the Year, and Game of the Month. Despite the similar sounding names, they're two different sort of things. GotY (not its official name--it doesn't have one yet!) is where we look back on the list of games we played last year, and pick our favorites. I split the list into new games and old (or "classic") games, but since it sometimes takes a while for new titles to make it onto our table (especially those late-year Essen releases), I don't just use the last year of publication as the cutoff for new versus old. For SCB, where we have some players who are truly newcomers to the hobby, I put that cutoff three years in the past. So, the "New-ish" games are all those that we played last year that were published in 2000, 2001, or 2002. Classic games are everything else.
A fun little side benefit of this method is that you see, for example, Puerto Rico have to "compete" for votes with Princes of Florence. So it dilutes the "flavor of the month" sweeping the awards. Awards? Okay, I don't mean to go overboard--this is just a collection of our own votes, after all. :-)
Among the New-ish games, the clear winner was Princes of Florence after all, with 31 voting points. (With nine people each giving 5 points for the first-place game, 4 points for second, etc., that's an impressive 31 of a possible 45 points.) San Marco came next, with a strong showing in second place with 20 points. Then came Africa with 12, Puerto Rico with 10, and a tie between Royal Turf & Wyatt Earp with 8 points each.
For the Older ("Classic") games, the points were more evenly spread. Still, Tigris & Euphrates topped our charts with 21 voting points, followed by a clustering of Medici (17), Entdecker (15), and Union Pacific (14). Rounding out our voting was another 5th place tie, at 11 points each for Can't Stop & Crokinole.
. . . Which led to another fun diversion--strolling down memory lane with those old emails. Sometimes I wish I kept all of my old emails, but that's not practical. So many of them are just your average mailing list material of little permanent value. Besides, most mailing lists have searchable archives these days. Then there's all that spam. Ugh. Instead, I've taken to saving the messages from some friends whose opinions I value, as well as my own outgoing messages.
At any rate, now I've got my database, which I'm calling 90% accurate (maybe 95%). That's enough to work with.
I've also figured out a bit more of what I want my year-end report to be. I liked my buddy Dave Arnott's report, which had a short, punchy paragraph to offer for each game he's played many times (less or nothing about the games he's played no more than a few times), and a highlite of the favorites that went disappointingly unplayed last year.
I also liked Stven Carlberg's format. (We like similar games,too--someday I hope we meet.) Stven gave most of his games a simple yes/no/whatever answer to the presumed question, "Am I looking forward to playing this game again?" (I think his straight text format made this a little hard to read, but he's on the right track.)
In actual gaming news . . . I played a bunch of games last Saturday, when we held SoCal Games Day 10. Wow, our 10th one! You can read the full report when I update the event's web page, or a subset posted to spielfrieks. I got to play Crokinole, Trias, Settlers of Canaan, Entdecker, Meuterer, Tip-It, Medici, Bang!, and Carcassonne:Hunters & Gatherers.
The challenge, however, is to make it interesting for the reader. A few years ago, when family strategy games (a term I'm gravitating toward, rather than "German games") were less popular and less well-known, just about any message that included scraps of info about a great variety of game titles was valuable. You might find a reference to an obscure game someone rated highly, or at least played often. Even better, the message's author might even appear to have similar tastes to your own, based on his statistics.
The situation is somewhat different nowadays. R.g.b. is overrun with talk about family strategy games, spielfrieks has over 1000 members and 30,000 messages, and the Boardgamegeek continues to become the central repository for boardgame-related content (or at least links). All it takes is for you to get one passing reference to an unknown game from a friend, random post, or old magazine review, and you can now go online and learn quite a bit about the game. I think that diminishes the usefulness of the year-end summaries I once loved to read.
Actually, I still read every one of them, and I still learn a few things. However, I find it harder to imagine how everyone else will enjoy reading them, and I'd definitely like to make my own one of the more informative summaries out there. How to do that? Concentrating both on the likely audience and overall message, I think.
The likely audience are can't-get-enough hobbyists like myself, as well as less experienced gamers. Considering that the first group is manic enough to read whatever I post, I'm going to try to write my summary for the latter group. But I don't want to try to turn it into an "Introduction to Family Strategy Games" message. There are enough of those out there already, including some really good ones. Which leads me to the message.
The message will be twofold. First, I want to get the word out that there's a burgeoning game group in Santa Clarita, and my summary gives some insight as to the games we often play (it'll be posted or at least linked to our forthcoming website). Similarly, you can count on a plug for SoCal Games Day in my summary, even though we don't need more attendees so much as a larger room! Second, I want to spend some time looking at longer term trends. One of the advantages of taking notes on this hobby for six years should be my accumulation of data. However, it's the analysis and conclusions from that data that are what folks should be given, not the raw data itself. Hmm...
Well, that's what I'm thinking, anyway. I'd love to hear any ideas other folks have about what makes for good reading in a year-end summary message.
Wondering what gaming I got in over the recent holidays? Not much, but that's how it is every year for me, so I'm no longer disappointed. Much better to have realistic expectations. When my folks were visiting for Christmas, we learned the simple adding game 99 (not the same as the 3-player trick-taking game 99), which I understand has been a favorite at my Oregon grandparents' place. Sort of like how Mexican Train Dominoes is a favorite of my in-laws. It was okay, certainly entertaining and a good way to spend time together.
Christmas with my in-laws was cut kind of short this year, so no games with them, but hooking up with my brother & his wife over New Year's let us squeak in a couple more. We played more 99, only this time it didn't impress the others, and followed up with a lackluster game of Bohnanza (I think some players were just too tired). More fun, though, was playing my son's Battleship game he got for Christmas. Yes, good ol' Battleship, no talking electronics or anything. I'd recently read my buddy Dave Arnott's kind words about this childhood classic at The Apples Project, and was happy to try again. Sure enough, it was a lot of fun, with lots of tension. Honest! The game with my son came down to the final shot (or a tie, if you let both players have equal turns), and the "advanced" game of Salvo with my brother was less even but more thoughtful (and shorter).
I was also pleased to hear that my brother had had good success with some games during his Christmas back east. In years past we'd given them both Bohnanza and Apples to Apples, which they brought with them. Both led to wildly successful pickup games with other folks staying at the same snow lodge in New Hampshire!
Boardgames To-Go is Mark Johnson's occasional weblog and commentary on the hobby of strategic boardgaming, card games, and a few other thoughts. Besides being viewable as a standard web page, it's formatted for reading on PDAs via AvantGo. Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
[Due to filesize limitations for AvantGo I need to start breaking this weblog up into a main file and some linked archives.]