VOTE for the PEOPLE'S CHOICE AWARD - Buzkashi Game Design Competition - BGDC

Joe Scoleri

(The Maverick)

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Your participation is required - please read on!

The Buzkashi Game Design Competition (BGDC) began back in March of last year. Two designs were submitted by BoardGameGeek users: A Lamb Between Two Lions by Tim Mayse-Lillig and The Horsemen of Buzkashi by Tom Decker (Zero Radius Games).

This Geeklist will be used to decide the People's Choice Award, a completely unscientific "we like this game best" bonus for one of the designers. The Award will be decided by "votes" posted on this Geeklist through March 1, 2006.

So here is what we need you to do. Please download the files specified below, try each game, and then vote for your "favorite" of the two by entering a comment below stating which is your favorite - ALBTL or THoB. The game with the most votes on March 1 (as of my first visit to BGG on that day) will receive the People's Choice Award.

Geekgold For You - The Reviewer's Bounty: As an additional incentive to get people to try these games and to analyze them thoroughly, any BGG user whose reviews of both games are accepted and posted on BGG before March 15 will receive an additional 6 GeekGold from me to acknowledge your assistance to the BGDC. This will double the GeekGold you receive for the two reviews!

I hope you enjoy trying these two very distinct interpretations of the sport of Buzkashi! Both designers put a lot of thought and creativity into their submissions, so please do not vote until you have tried both games.

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Posted Sun Jan 8, 2006 4:32 pm

Edited Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:13 pm

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1. Board Game: A Lamb Between Two Lions [Average Rating:6.00 Unranked]

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Joe Scoleri

(The Maverick)

Download these two files to play the game.

Game pieces and board (PDF): http://files.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14690

Game rules (.doc file): http://files.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14689

BGG Summary:

A Lamb Between Two Lions is a game for 2-6 players that attempts to represent some of the action of Buzkashi games held at festivals in northern Afghanistan.

In summary, the sport of Buzkashi involves skilled horsemen who attempt to pick up a carcass (called the Boz) from the ground and then ride free of the other horsemen without allowing the Boz be taken away.

Components: A circular board (made up of concentric circles which are in turn divided into rectangles to form the spaces); six playing pieces for each player (consisting of four attendants, one Chapandazan - a champion Buzkashi rider, and one Khan - the Chapandazan's sponsor); a pair of six-sided dice for each player; and a supply of poker chips or other markers used to track each player's score.

The goal of the game is to move your Chapadazan to the Boz to take possession of it (grabbing it away from another Chapadazan if necessary) and get free from the rest of the riders or move off the playing board.

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Posted Sat Jan 7, 2006 4:38 pm

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2. Board Game: The Horsemen of Buzkashi [Average Rating:6.00 Unranked]

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Joe Scoleri

(The Maverick)

Download these four files to play the game.

Game rules (PDF): http://files.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14858

Rider cards (.doc file): http://files.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14859

Other cards (.doc file): http://files.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14860

Read Me file (.txt file): http://files.boardgamegeek.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=14857

BGG Summary:

The Horsemen of Buzkashi is a card game for 2-4 adventurous horsemen which simulates the national pastime of Afghanistan.

Teams of horsemen try to gain control of the Boz, traditionally a decapitated sheep or goat, and carry the Boz around a flagpole set away from the center of activity, and then bring the Boz back to a set circle or goal area on the field called the Hallal. A successfully deposited Boz within the Hallal scores a point for that team.

Objective: Score the most points by dropping the Boz into the Hallal after two halves of play. If at the end of the second half, there is a tie for most points, then a freeforall period is played with everyone (even those who did not have the most points), with the first player to score declared the winner of the game. Otherwise, the team with the most points at the end of the game wins!

Components: 40 action cards; 24 combo cards; 120 rider cards (5 chapandaz and 25 pakir for each of the four teams - Turkmen, Mongol, Tajik and Nuristani horsemen); one six-sided die; a Boz marker; and a Flagpole marker.

Each rider has individual statistics for strength, speed, tactics, and boz skill. Further, each team is designed to have a different flavor; the Turkmen tend to be the fastest riders, the Mongols the strongest, the Nuristani the best tacticians, and the Tajik are pretty well-rounded.

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Posted Sat Jan 7, 2006 4:38 pm

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Joe Scoleri

(The Maverick)

Here are some background materials regarding the competition. The official rules can be found in this forum post:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/59879

This forum post provides additional information on the sport of Buzkashi:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/37185

And some informational Buzkashi links may be found here:

http://www.themaverick.us/buzkashi/

Posted Sat Jan 7, 2006 4:30 pm

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Joe Scoleri

(The Maverick)

And time is up!

We're tallying the votes... Certifying the results...

Hold on to your hats...

Lamb - 0
Horsemen - 0

It seems that between all the site changes that have been going on lately, together with the speed at which geeklists zip off the front page these days, we have gotten lost in the shuffle.

I am going to think on this for a few days to decide if there is a better way to go about this process, or whether the people's choice award should just be dropped and we should get to the interesting awards...

I am open to any suggestions.

Posted Wed Mar 1, 2006 7:24 am

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Vince Londini

(Vince Londini)

Hi Maverick,

Sorry this is late, but I didn't pay careful enough attention to realize that the review posting date, and the voting date were different.

First, thanks for the contest and thanks to Tim and Tom for the two games. They stimulated us and we enjoyed them - Great work!

Obviously, the difficulty is engaging a quantity of people to print, assemble, learn, and play two (in this case) unfamiliar games. It looks like only 4 or 5 (not an exact count) claim to even own the games. So, the pool of prospective voters was quite small. Some probably forgot, missed the thread, or hadn't played both enough (or at all) to feel qualified to vote.

Ideas? Hmmm... Maybe you should offer a ridiculously large amount of GG for the "best" review of each game in the next contest (say 50GG or something - which you obviously couldn't offer for "each" pair of reviews, well, this year you could have

). Once the designs are in, actively campaign for 3 months (no, I wouldn't relish doing it, either) by posting forum threads to advertise (weekly, or more frequently). Maybe a Geekquestion (remember mine about Richthofen last April?

) might spark some interest and remind people.

I liked both designs, enjoyed assembling and playing both, and appreciated the motivation to give them some time and thought. My second review should be posted shortly.

While I liked A Lamb Between Two Lions for its simplicity, my (too late to count) vote goes to The Horsemen of Buzkashi solely because I find the mechanic refreshing, not because of any failure in the other.

Thanks again, Maverick, Tim, and Tom!
Vince

Posted Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:29 am

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