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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Hidden information and random elements often get the short shrift in our hobby. (What does short shrift even mean?) Indeed, some of the most prestigious games, at least in the eyes of larger world, are ones that have no hidden information or random elements. People who wouldn’t know Descent if it hit them in the face view Go or Chess as brainy and elite. (Admittedly, if someone hit me in the face with Descent, I wouldn’t know anything until I came to)
Which is kind of funny, in a way. After all, perfect control and information is about as far from real life as you’re going to get. The world of the Go board, in some ways, is a more fantastical place than many games themed around magic and mystery.
(Yes, I know the depth and complexity of games like Go or Chess or even Checkers, with their intricate decision trees, is the real reason they wear their laurels.)
That being said, I have often found that a dose of hidden information and luck is what can make a game playable. Mind you, I am more of a casual gamer who has lots of time restraints so that plays into my opinions. Random elements often keep a game from stagnating due to analysis paralysis and keep things rolling along. One of the prime examples of a game that is enhanced by hidden information and random elements is Masons.
Leo Colovini is a designer who I pay attention to but who I have never quite made the step of becoming a real fan of. While he has designed some games that have done well by me, like Masons and Clans, he has also designed some games like Alexandros or Go West that have flopped for me like a bag full of mud off the high dive.
His games occupy the drier and more abstract end of the Euro spectrum, a statement which is probably enough to make some gamers run away screaming  Anyone who complains that Reiner Knizia’s games have paper-thin themes needs to play some Colovini designs. That said, he has created some very elegant games that make me think of clockwork gears spinning merrily away.
Masons is a game where players, on their turn, place walls on a grid of triangles. After placing a wall, you roll some dice to choose the colors of the houses and towers you place next to the wall. If players finish a closed shape of walls, they create a city and scoring takes place.
And this is where is the clever bit. You score points by playing scoring cards. Different cards will score points for different aspects of the entire board. Nothing on the board belongs to anyone. You can all take shameless advantage of the same features.
Of course there is more to the game than that but that’s the basic idea of Masons. It’s a kind of like majority control except anyone has a crack at any given majority (or minority ).
Masons has two random elements. The die rolls, which simply help move the game along. If players could choose colors, the game would slow to a crawl. It also decreases the chances of certain scoring cards being rendered worthless. (It still might happen but it makes it harder for players to completely lock opportunities out)
However, the real key to the game is the scoring cards, which are drawn randomly though out the game and are a closely guarded secret until you play them. I know of at least one player who doesn’t care for the game for those reasons. He argues that this prevents you from being able to plan out a long term strategy and also means you don’t know if you will trigger a scoring that is advantageous for other players.
While valid arguments, I think that the former just means that you have to keep your options open and be prepared to be flexible. It’s a game where tactics is the word of the day, not strategy per se. As for the latter, that’s a calculated risk you have to take. The unknown forces you to make choices and chances.
Masons revisits some of the same ideas that appeared in Alexandros. In both games, scoring is an action that the players have to set into motion and is not something that ever happens on its own. However, in Alexandros, you know how many points each player will get when you score. That was enough to make our one play of it stall out. It’s harsh to judge a game on one play but that one play was so unpleasant, we never wanted to ever go back to it.
Masons, on the other hand, is a game that has been fun and popular at a number of different tables. It’s a game that I will cheerfully reach for and my biggest regret about it is that the box is large enough to be inconvenient. (Then again, it does come with enough wooden pieces to serve as kindling for a week-long camping trip)
And that’s I feel Masons highlights the value of luck and hidden information. It has the same central mechanism as a game that my group reviled and is one that we enjoy instead.
And, let's face it, we're still talking about a dry and analytical Euro. When you take luck and hidden information out for a spin in a dynamic game (say, Age of Gods), then you are strapping yourself in to a roller coaster.
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