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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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I have been a fan of Caylus Magna Carta for a while. Recently, Lords of Waterdeep has become the hotness, and with the comparisons to Caylus, I though it might replace CMC in my collection.
Unfortunately, while LoW is a fine game, it doesn't really feel like CMC to me, and I just don't like it as much. I'm not a fan of the Intrigue cards, and the randomness of the quests seems just a bit much as well. I like the portability and minimalism of CMC. For whatever reasons, LoW is a barely-7 for me, whereas CMC is an 8+. The question becomes: How can I get CMC to the table more often?
During a recent game of CMC with 2 people who had never played it before, it became clear to me that the road is a significant stumbling block. In CMC, everyone places all their workers first, and then each building is activated (or not), from the start of the road to the end. Contrast that with LoW, where you place your worker, and immediately get the benefit.
In LoW, only have to plan one *turn* (placement) in advance, rather than planning out your entire *round*. Often in CMC someone realizes as the road is being processed that they don't have enough money or resources to use a worker they placed. The sequential batch activation adds a level of depth that many people enjoy, but some don't.
The road mechanic was obviously inherited from Caylus, and is required if you use the provost in CMC. However, I rarely play CMC with the provost anyway, as I find it to constrict the game too much, as well as adding too much screwage. I should mention that I also prefer the "Beginner's" rules for prestige buildings, because in the standard rules they are too hard to build. But my proposed variant would work fine whether you use the lawyer as in the standard rules, or omit it as in the beginner's rules.
With that said, here is my CMC "Instant Gratification" variant:
1. Omit the provost
2. When you place a worker, you immediately activate the building
The rest of the game (income, actions, castle batches, and prestige buildings) remains exactly the same. You can still arrange the buildings in a line on the table, although you don't have to since the sequence no longer matters. That can save table space.
My guess is that this will simplify CMC to about a 2.4 weight, making it more accessible to more people. For me, it will retain the best parts of CMC, and aside from the D&D theme might be palatable to non-heavy-gamer fans of LoW. I know people into heavier games will hate this variant. Many people already view CMC as a too-simple watered-down version of Caylus. Among CMC fans, many like the complexity of the favors expansion, and/or the extra "oomph" of the provost. This variant is not for those people. It is for the folks who find CMC to be at or just above their preferred weight. In other words, the folks who are most likely to love LoW.
I'm posting this variant in my blog for now, because I haven't actually tried it yet. If I do try it, and it works, I'll post it in the CMC variant forums.
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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When I read about Walnut Grove, it sounded interesting just based on the theme and the fact that it didn't seems to have much aggressive/cutthroat player interaction.
I had recently played Agricola for the first time, and really enjoyed the idea of having to pay regular upkeep for your workers. Then I played Homesteaders, where you also pay your workers, but it was even better because (it seems like) you can win the game with few workers or with many. I don't like that in Agricola you pretty much have to grow your family to be competitive.
But a common description of WG is "a mashup of Agricola and Carcassonne". Hmm. Carcassonne was a bit dull, and with the shared tile-laying space could get pretty nasty (cutthroat). That doesn't bode well for WG.
But in WG, each player has their own little farm, so maybe it's really more like Alhambra. But I haven't played Alhambra, and the way you obtain tiles in Alhambra can be pretty cutthroat. In WG you just draw your tiles from a bag, uncontested (which sounds better to me).
And WG has resources, so maybe it's more like Glen More. GM seemed ok to me at first, but the more I played it, the less I liked it. Something about setting up tile combos just doesn't work for me. After my last game of GM, I decided that I just don't like tile-laying games.
That was troubling, because some people describe WG as primarily a tile-laying game, with a bit of resource management. Still, the theme and relative simplicity of WG sounded good. I loved the structure of years and seasons, and feeding providing heat for your workers. So I bought a copy. So far I have played it 3 times solo, and once 4p. So far, I love it.
The year/season structure has lived up to my expectations. I also feel like the game is relatively light on rules but deep in strategy and tactics (although in a subtle way). It has a bit of the flavor of Agricola, and feels nothing like Carcassonne (to me). To me, it is a resource management game with a bit of tile-laying, not the other way around.
Also, the cost of the additional workers in WG is high enough that I think you can be competitive whether or not you take any additional workers. So that's good.
I guess some tile-laying is ok after all.
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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I enjoy reading other blog posts about what folks have played, so I'll try one of my own. March was quite a good gaming month for me, with 36 plays of 24 different game titles. Of those, several were games I had played before, but felt like new:
Homesteaders: First play with actual opponents. Earlier, I played a solitaire game just to understand the mechanics. In March, I played it twice, and enjoyed it both times. It's a very well-designed game, combining interesting auctions with buildings and resources. You have to do a lot of mental conversions, like: "Trade chit plus 2 silver will give me a food, which with a trade chit will get me a steel. And then I can convert my gold to a cow, so I can afford to build that building. Now, if I do that, how much can I afford to bid at auction?)." It requires a lot more thought than Agricola, to take one example, even though Agricola is more complex. I don't need to play it again, although I won't refuse a game.
Fzzzt!: First play with 3+. Definitely better with 3 or 4 players, which is not surprising since it is an auction game. I still don't have strong opinions of the game one way or the other, so I hope to get it to the table a couple more times. Fillers with a little meat, that don't have a lot of "Take that!" play are hard to find.
Oltre Mare: First play with 3+. Definitely better with 3-5 players. Also it would definitely be better with people who already know the game, because it would encourage trading, and avoid the lengthy rules intro. The game isn't really complex, but it sure seems complex at first. It seems like the game would be ideal for a group that meets regularly and enjoys playing the same game at least once per session. It has trading in common with Settlers, so might appeal to fans of that game. Hoever, with a lot of negotiations it could get long, so I would always leave out the 20 grain cards with any player count, until the game became "too short". I don't need to play this one again.
Thunderstone Advance: Towers of Ruin. This really was a first play, but I had played Thunderstone before, so it felt familiar. I really like the new 4-card monster lineup, and the new curses are great. The rest of the game still just doesn't work for me. It's too long, and the hero upgrades are annoying. The theme is not quite coherent ("Dungeon Dilbert" really is accurate). If I had to play one, I would definitely pick Advance. But I will only play reluctantly. During the game, I kept thinking "I would rather be playing Dominion", which I rate as a 7.
Lord of the Rings. First play with 3+. It's quite different with 5 than it is with 2. The cost/benefit trade-offs are different, and some of the tactics won't work because the cards are spread out, and the ability you might want to use might be 3 or 4 player turns away. It's still a classic co-op, and even with Sauron starting at the easiest level, we only barely won.
Ok, now on to the games that I *really* never played before last month:
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game. I got this in a Math Trade. It was a bit of an impulse click, and I probably should have re-read more reviews first. I have never done deck construction, and don't really have an interest in doing so. I'm not sure you can really enjoy the game without constructing a deck. You can use a deck that someone else thought of, but you're still having to pull the cards.
If you use a different deck for each scenario, then you're having to re-construct decks a lot. Plus it kind of feels like cheating to me. I would want a generic deck that could take on any scenario, but the scenarios don't seem to be built like that.
The game feels a bit like a video game to me, where you try something, lose, learn, and reset to try again. And again. And again. I never felt that way with Pandemic or other co-ops.
I am going to play this a bit more (so far I have played once 2p and 4 times solo), but I suspect I will end up trading it away. My copy includes a full second core set in the box, in case anyone wants to make me an offer (via geekmail please).
Dragon Rampage. I like the dungeon theme, and I like dice. I don't like games based on scoring for majorities (or pluralities), which is what this game is about. I think it is a very well-designed game, and I love the multiple ending conditions with different scoring bonuses. The character decks are very diverse and interesting. The level of "take that" play is a bit high for me, but not too bad. I just don't like majority scoring. I played it twice, and would only play it again somewhat reluctantly.
Elder Sign. Our first game started with about 8 terrible turns in a row, and multiple deaths. Then our luck changed, and we won. Our second game was a pretty smooth win, start to finish. It's not a bad game, but it's too long for a light dice-roller, and it's inexcusable that there is no way to adjust the difficulty up or down. The text is in a font that is impossible to read in dim light, and if you read all the flavor text, the game would go from long to WAY TOO LONG. I'm a huge fan of co-ops, but not this one. I enjoyed my one game of Witch of Salem much more than Elder Sign.
The Game of Life: Card Game. This has been on my wishlist for many months, and I finally snagged a copy in a math trade. Based on 2 plays, it has lived up to my expectations. It is light, but still has interesting decisions, and it's fun to see an entire life arc described through the cards you have played. I wrote up a session report: Life can go in very different directions. This should be a good couples game for us for a while.
Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game. Disappointing. I guess it lived up to the reviews, as a brutal depressing slog. It would have been ok at 45 minutes, but our 5p game took 2 hours. I don't need to play it again (nor Ravenloft or Drizzt).
Galaxy Trucker. I didn't expect to enjoy it, and I was right. It's not horrible, but during the 2 hour game, I kept thinking how I could be playing a "real" game. The real-time construction phase is not really my thing, and the highly-random flight was annoying. It would be tolerable as a 15-minute-long filler.
Nefertiti. I didn't know a lot about it, and didn't really end up enjoying it much. At first, it's very intimidating with all those open spaces to put your meeple. The auctions are too hard to close, so there is a long gap between placing a bid and getting the reward. By then, the good you thought you wanted might not be desirable any more. It's kind of a reverse-majority mechanic (bonus for uniqueness), and offers some pretty strong attack cards, neither of which I like. With a lot of plays the strategy might get clearer, but I don't really want to play it again.
Power Grid: Factory Manager. Despite what you may have read, this game is nothing like Power Grid. Seriously. It has rounds with phases. That's it. Although I loved aspects of PG (the plants and the auctions), there were things I hated (stages, city competition, end-game trigger, and end-game scoring). Fortunately, PG:FM has none of the those. It's a straight "most money wins" game played over a fixed number of rounds. I want to play it again a few times to see if it remains "fun" or if it ends up feeling like a dry optimization exercise.
Finally, the games I played in March that I had played before:
Martian Dice. Still a great filler.
NCIS: The Board Game. Still a good co-op mystery game, except for case #5 (Some content may be disturbing).
Terra Prime. Still a solid euro space game with exploring, fighting aliens, colonizing planets, and delivering goods.
7 Wonders. Still a great choice if you're stuck with 6 or 7 players, and I still don't love the card drafting mechanic. And it's still harder to teach than its weight would imply.
Flash Point: Fire Rescue. Still an excellent co-op.
Pandemic. Still a solid co-op.
Ra: The Dice Game and Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age. Still nice light-medium dice games.
San Juan. Still a solid card game, although the leaching is not my favorite mechanic.
Vanished Planet. Still one of my favorite co-ops, despite being fiddly and swingy, and too long with 4+ players.
World Without End. Playing it a second time didn't really change my opinion. It's still a very clever design, and I enjoy playing it. I still wish it were a bit shorter, and I'm not convinced the different ways to generate points are balanced. Would like to play again, but I'm not sure anyone else in the group is interested.
Upcoming in April: Walnut Grove and Lords of Waterdeep for sure, and hopefully many more.
EDIT: Improved formatting, using "micro" images and some floatleft (which usually works but sometimes doesn't). Thanks to Bobby4th for the formatting tips!
EDIT2: Even better formatting, thanks to [ clear ]
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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Recently I played Nefertiti for the first time. It was ok, but didn't really grab me. As I was playing, it reminded me of Ilium, a(nother) game I only played once. It took me a bit to figure out what it was about those games that I didn't particularly like. After all, both involve Set Collection, which I'm fine with, and neither involves heavy conflict or screwage. Ilium does use area majorities which I don't like, but Nefertiti doesn't (it uses auctions to obtain tiles), so that wasn't it.
Further thought revealed that in both games, the first time you play, you have this overwhelming universe of possibilities. There are a few dozen place you can place your first meeple, and you really don't know what would be best. After playing a bit, you start to understand the game and can see better or worse places. But even then, it's hard to form a coherent strategy. At that point, my dislike of Nefertiti shifts in a different direction.
Cue the flashbacks to my one game of El Grande. As with the other games mentioned here, when you first start, you have no idea what to do. And like Ilium, it relies on majorities. But the thing I really dislike about El Grande is the chaos. Until the player before you starts his or her turn, you don't even know what card you will get, and the card will dictate what you will be allowed to do this turn. So you can't really plan a lot in advance. Compounding that is that each player's turn can completely shift the board around, so something you thought you might want to do might no longer be beneficial.
At one point during El Grande, I couldn't even figure out whether I wanted to go early in the round, or late. The player next to me jokingly pointed to a card in my hand and said "Play that one". I should have listened to her, because it ended up being a lot better choice than the one I actually ended up playing.
With Nefertiti, there was such a delay from placing my first worker on an auction until the auction closed and I could decide what to buy (or whether to take money instead), that I just couldn't plan. Too much changed, and even though it was like slow-motion chaos, it was still chaos.
This is all a long way around to say that I have learned one thing I really like in games: To have a short-to-mid-term goal in mind, with a reasonable chance of achieving it. The goal should span multiple turns, but generally would not be a game-long strategic plan. None of the games mentioned so far have that attribute. Or at least I lack the proficiency in those games that would be required to be able to pick a goal and aim for it. And none of these games have enough appeal for me to want to play them enough to develop that proficiency.
Contrast that with some games that I do enjoy. These are not my favorite games, but they are some arbitrarily-chosen games that illustrate my point.
Bombay. At any point in time, you pretty much have one or two destinations in mind. You might be planning to move your elephant to where you can buy silk. You might be heading to one of two cities where you could sell silk. Maybe along the way you will change your mind and decide to build a palace. That's fine. I like games where the situation changes and you have to adapt. But most of the time you can pick a goal (or two alternatives) and pursue it (them) to completion. This may be why I tend to like pickup-and-deliver games.
Thebes. In this one, you know you are going to dig for artifacts. You'll have to decide how much knowledge to accumulate first, and then where to dig, and then for how long. While accumulating knowledge you might get distracted by a conference, or a tool. You might change your mind about where to dig based on where another player went. But you can have a general plan in mind, and more or less stick to it much of the time.
World Without End. This one has a fair amount of chaos, but I find it to be manageable. Each chapter, I know I need to get 2 food, 2 piety tokens, and 5 gold. There are multiple ways to get them, including a potential windfall in each of the 6 turns per chapter. Each chapter I will play 6 of the 12 cards in my deck. Some events throw wrenches in the works, perhaps requiring a whole new plan. Sometimes a free good will land in my lap, allowing me to choose an even better course. But by and large, I can have some goals in mind, and work toward them.
Aside from the three games I mentioned at the start of this post, here are some others that I don't like for similar reasons:
Troyes (overwhelming options when you are new to the game; unpredictability of dice)
Go (overwhelming options)
Guillotine and Give Me the Brain! (total chaos)
Mr. Jack (not knowing until almost your turn which character you will get to move; sometimes overwhelming options)
I think many of the games I have criticized in this post are actually very well-designed games. It's a bit hard for me to see the appeal of El Grande or Guillotine, but I do acknowledge that they each have their fans, so there must be something there. If you enjoy overwhelming options, or extreme chaos, that's great for you. I'm glad I have identified more attributes of games that can help me predict whether or not I am likely to enjoy a game before I play it.
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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A version of this was originally posted as a reply in someone else's blog, and then later as a forum thread reply. Apologies to those of you who already saw it elsewhere. I wanted to have it in a place where I could get back to it easily, to add new finds as I discover them.
2011 has already been a GREAT year for cooperative games, with these titles having been released so far (and I probably missed some):
The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon Board Game
Star Trek: Expeditions
Yggdrasil
Conquest of Planet Earth: The Space Alien Game
Sentinels of the Multiverse
Proch i Stal
Quick Quest
That's already a great crop of games, but look at the additional co-ops scheduled to be released throughout the rest of this year (and I probably missed some):
Flash Point: Fire Rescue
Atlantis Rising
Elder Sign
Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Board Game
The Walking Dead: The Board Game
The Walking Dead Board Game
Dark Darker Darkest
Rune Age
Crossroads
Mehinaku
Ninjago: The Board Game
Equilibrion
Off the Dead - Chapitre 1 : Morts à Venice Beach
Star Trek [Deck Building Game]: The Next Generation
Gears of War: The Board Game
I had hoped the re-release of Wok Star would be on this list, but the latest word is that it won't be out until 2012. Another one to watch in 2012 will be Star Wars: The Card Game.
Those lists don't even include self-published, web-published, or PnP (Print 'n' Play) titles. If you know of other 2011 cooperative games that should be listed here (including good PnP games), please post them below. For those who don't know, you can linkify a game title using the "Insert Geek Link" dropdown above the reply edit box.
Also, a shameless plug: PeakHope's comprehensive list of purely cooperative games
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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There is a form of auction known as "All-pay"[1], where everyone has to pay their bid, whether they won or lost. According to wikipedia, "All-pay auctions are primarily of academic interest..." Well, I'm here to tell you that this auction format is alive and well in board games.
I think I first saw this mechanic when researching some auction-based games I had not heard of (and ended up not getting). As one review described, it's a nasty mechanic, leading to overbidding and wars of attrition. I immediately realized that it's a mechanic I would not enjoy in a game, so whenever I read about auctions in games, I check to see whether they are all-pay or not.
It was only this week that I realized this mechanic shows up in other ways that you might not realize. One example is the Pharaoh track in Ra and Ra: The Dice Game. Over time, you can buy tiles (Ra) or keep die rolls (Ra Dice) that advance you on the Pharaoh track. At the end of each round, whoever has the most gets a bonus, and whoever has the least loses points. Yup, it's (more or less) an all-pay auction. In a 2p game, which is how I play Ra Dice most of the time, it is exactly an all-pay auction.
Interestingly, I had already realized that I would not compete in the Pharaoh track. In Ra Dice, I'll never keep a Pharaoh roll. The only way I advance on the Pharaoh track is when my 3rd roll produces one, and I don't have the choice to re-roll it.
In 7 Wonders, I found myself ignoring military. At first, I thought it was due to my inherently pacifist nature. Now I realize that I was subconsciously refusing to participate in an all-pay auction. In that game, if you have more military strength than your neighbor, you get a bonus, and if you have less, you get a penalty. Whether you have zero or "opponent minus one", the outcome is the same.
The most recent game I noticed an all-pay auction in was Airlines Europe. There is one stock that is difficult to obtain, and whose "price" (payoff) is not affected by adding routes on the board. It pays off at a fixed rate, $X to whoever has the most, and lower amounts to lesser shareholders. Once again, this is a form of all-pay auction, and I don't want to participate in it.
The fundamental problem for me is that these "auctions" become an arms race. In order to stay ahead you must commit more and more resources. And to avoid losing, your opponent(s) must do the same. All that wasted effort, and anyone who stays out of the fray gets to do all the things the participants are missing out on.
As the computer said in the movie Wargames, "the only winning move is not to play."
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-pay_auction
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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About a week ago, I bought a copy of Caylus Magna Carta (CMC) in a BGG auction. Unfortunately, the seller let me know that he wasn't going to be able to send the game out until tomorrow (hopefully). Being impatient, and having read everything I could about the game, I really just wanted to play it.
Theoretically CMC is available online, but it's at jsp. I don't know if it is my lack of French, or that I run Linux, or that their site has problems, or just that I'm missing something. Whatever the reason, I have never gotten jsp to work (unlike Yucata and BSW, which are merely confusing, as opposed to unusable).
Fortunately, I'm a computer programmer, and I have written computer versions of several games. They tend to be crappy barebones implementations, with few if any graphics, no sound, and often requiring cryptic keyboard commands instead of mouse clicks. But they allow you to play the game.
So I decided to try creating a software version of CMC.
After about 30 hours of work, I have a version with almost all of the rules implemented. I haven't done the provost yet, nor the "free discard and redraw" at the start of the game, but both should be easy to add. I think I have all the other rules covered. To save time, I created a (very simplistic) AI first, and all my testing as I built the game engine was with two (or occasionally four) robots playing against each other.
Right now, it's just a scrolling, text-only, command-line app. I structured it in a way that it should be pretty easy to put a pretty interface on top of it at some point. I don't know if I would want to put a desktop GUI front end on it , or drop it into a web server for purely online play. Doing a desktop app would be easier, and would allow offline play against the AI. Later I could add the ability to play against other users across the internet.
Last night, I added the ability to accept human input, so I was able to play my first game ever of CMC. I was allowed to choose my actions each turn, and which buildings to remodel. I haven't yet added the ability for the human to make the smaller decisions, like what wildcard cubes to receive or pay with, or how many prestige tokens to buy, so the AI rules take over for those decisions. I have some ideas for how to make the AI much better without a lot of work, but it would probably take quite a bit of effort to make it truly competitive with experienced players.
The code is in Java, in case you're curious, and it's under 3000 lines of code so far.
I have emailed Ystari Games to see if I could get permission to release the game if I do end up getting it to the point where it would be useful to other people. It has only been a few days, and haven't heard back yet. Fingers crossed.
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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[Inspired by this recent blog post: http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/2950/pod-people which listed interesting podcasters]
Whenever I think of listening to a podcast, I have to compare it to the other forms of media that I could use to get similar information: Print (mostly computer text), and Video. Let's see how they stack up:
Time Efficiency: Print wins easily, as you can read faster than someone can speak, and you can go even faster by skimming the material. Video is next, because you are getting more information per second ("a picture is worth 1000 words"). Podcasts are horrible, and I usually feel like I got (at best) 2 minutes worth of material out of a 10 minute session.
Richness of Information: Video wins easily, with its bright colors and moving parts. Print is second with its static images. Podcasts are a distant third, except if the topic is music.
Searchability: Print has a monopoly here, where you can easily search for anything. There is no way to see if a video or podcast uses a certain word, or to find out where in the presentation a specific topic is discussed.
Portability: Podcasts win, or at least they would if I spent the minimal amount of time/money to be able to listen on my phone. I suppose if I had a kindle, print would come close, and if I did videos on my phone video would be in the running.
Attention: Podcasts only tie up your ears, rather than your eyes, which is probably their biggest advantage. You could listen while jogging, vacuuming, or driving. However, they do also require your brain. That means it's a bit dangerous to listen while jogging in an urban setting, and somewhat dangerous to listen while driving. Also, when your brain drifts, you can miss parts of the podcast (that happened to me semi-often with books on tape, when I was into those during my driving commutes). Video pretty much requires your full attention to get the most out of it, and print definitely requires full attention. However, it is probably easiest to jump out of and back into print. With the other forms, you might have to do some rewinding to get what you missed.
So since I don't jog or have other long stretches where my body is away from the computer but my brain is available for input, podcasts just don't have a place in my life. Perhaps you can suggest other contexts in which podcasts are effective. Listening to a podcast while sitting at the computer is incredibly frustrating, because the information is coming in at a snail's pace, but my brain is too occupied to do anything else at the same time. The moment I start to surf the web, write an email, or read a news story, I lose track of the podcast and start missing information.
I guess I'll end with a plea to podcasters: Please provide transcripts. That allows us skimmers to use the information, allows searching the text for keywords, and allows those of us who are not (yet?) pod people to learn the information you are trying to share. It's frustrating knowing that great content is out there trapped in a podcast where I can't get to it.
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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I like to play games. And, based on how much time I spend on BGG, it seems that I like to read about games, discuss games, and even write about games. Designing games is not something I crave, but sometimes the bug bites me and I *have* to design a game. The idea gets into my brain, and won't let me focus on anything else until it gets out. The end result may or may not be a game, but I have to explore it enough to find out.
The main reason I get interested in designing a game is because it would be one that I would want to play. It has to fill a niche that doesn't seem to be filled by an existing game. It has to have something new, or different. As a fan of lighter games, it's often a case of trying to capture some feeling of a more complex game, but within a simpler design.
Such is the case with the current idea I'm kicking around. So far it's just thoughts and notes (detailed notes I have written elsewhere), and I'm not sure when I'll have a chance to actually test it. I figured I would float it out here, in case anyone might want to:
1. Steal my ideas and create such a game, better and faster than I could (please do!)
2. Offer to work with me to try to develop the game, sharing the workload
3. Tell me "hey, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Do it!"
The concept is a "building" game (civ, city-building, etc), in the 2.0 weight range, give or take. Currently we have Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age, and then there seems to be quite a gap up to games like San Juan. Now, San Juan isn't exactly complicated, but it happens to have all those buildings with special abilities, some of which are non-trivial. I much prefer special abilities like those of Saint Petersburg or Caylus Magna Carta -- simple modifiers.
I also want a game with no attacks, and minimal opportunity for screwage or cutthroat play. Racing to grab a rare resource first is fine, but beyond that I want it to be a relatively "nice" game. Solitaire play is a plus as well.
Enough background. Here is an outline:
Turn order mechanic similar to Thebes. Time is a major resource, and you must spend time to gather resources or to build things. The game ends after a set amount of (game) time has passed. I love this mechanic (Games where the time track determines turn order).
Resource gathering similar to Stone Age. Decide how much time (instead of workers) to spend gathering some resource, then roll dice to determine success.
Buildings similar to Havana. Buildings are strictly for VP, with no abilities. But in this game, building a building requires time, in addition to resources.
Common-card-draws similar to Havana. There are rows of face-up cards, and you can only take a card from either end of a row (unless you are willing to pay a steep surcharge).
To throw in a couple extra wrinkles, I'm thinking of having technologies that have simple special abiilties, that you can buy. Also, I'm thinking of only allowing you to gather non-food resources if you play a matching card (thematically: you can't quarry until after you have spent the time/effort to locate a suitable quarry location, and after you have dug up the good stuff, you need to find a new location before you can quarry again).
The core of the game could easily be solitaire (which means it could end up in the July PnP contest). The main interaction with another player would be in grabbing the better buildings, technologies, and better resource location cards first. Interestingly, it could become a cooperative game, where if the two players meet at the same time (not place), they could trade resources freely. Perhaps they could also share technologies.
So that's the game. Does it sound like it would suck? Are there any games out there already that would scratch this itch? Please, save me from the effort it would take to turn this into something playable.
Thu May 12, 2011 11:06 pm
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Kevin B. Smith
United States
Margate
Florida
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My dad sent me these articles that appeared in a recent issue of an alumni magazine:
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/march-2011...
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/march-2011...
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns-magazine/march-2011...
(The first is the most relevant to board gaming)
In the articles, they discuss "video games", but their definition of video games surprised me. Basically, it is any game played on an electronic device. Monopoly on your PC? Video game. Sudoku on your phone? Video game. Farmville on Facebook? Video game. Candy Land on your XBox? Video game. Uploading photos to a web site and earning points and rankings for doing so? Video game.
With that definition, 2/3 of US households play video games. That's sure not how I would have defined "video game".
Lots of "video gamers" are actually people playing computerized board games (including card games), or board-game-like strategy games or puzzle games. So I'm thinking the board game industry is really missing out from a perception standpoint. Board games as we know them are actually far more popular than the cardboard retail numbers would indicate. Shouldn't we be able to get some online card game players to play in real life from time to time? Shouldn't we be able to get some Farmville players to try Agricola or Stone Age?
How can board gaming be seen as "nerdy" when 2/3 of US households are playing video games? Maybe we just need better PR.
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