F$@& BGG lists

Board Game Geeks top games.

Starting with the positive.  I love the resource of Board Game Geek and their ratings.   Designer board game products have just exploded the last 10 years and ANY filter or basis we can use to select them is just marvelous.  If something is ranked in the top 50, there must be a reason, similarly, if something is ranked 5000^th, there is a reason.

So the problems:

1)      It’s an unscientific poll.  The system requires activation by reviewers, who may or may not have some kind of agenda.  BGG does weight the responses, it takes a lot of responses for a game to climb the rankings, so this is probably mitigated.  And generally speaking, I trust the reviewers are giving honest assessments of the games, but even honest responses have a way of becoming biased.    Scale of the problem:  NABD.

2)      Reviewers tastes.  This ties into the unscientific-ness.  Reviewers tastes really effect the ratings.  Two games I no longer like, Fresco (ranked 123) and Thebes (ranked 165) are awfully high on the list.  Both of these have severe game play problems, but really work well with their themes.  I speculate that theme integration is a big deal for a lot of reviewers, much more important to them than it is to me.  I parallel this to movie reviews; you have to know the critic.  I never ask Juan for movie advice, because he loves every movie ever made.  Contrast to Richard Roeper, formerly of “At the Movies”.  Roeper hates nearly every movie ever made, so if he likes it, I probably will too.  Scale of the problem:  Kind of a deal, mitigated by the subcategories.  Fresco rates really high as a “Family” game which I suppose should give me a clue about themes vs. gameplay.

3)      Breaking the Game.  Stone Age is ranked 26^th and there is not a bigger travesty on that list.  Now the first half dozen or so times we played Stone Age I might have agreed.  Once we figured out the fatal flaw of going 2^nd, the game was broken.  Now Nerdy Friday has some pretty smart people participating, but there is no F$%^ing way that we are the only ones to ever notice this.  So how does that game remain top 50?  My (uninformed) conclusion is that early reviews push this game up the ladder, then once broken people can’t (or don’t) take back the rating.   Scale of the problem: A big deal.   It might be fun figuring out the game breaking move, but once you do the game is unplayable.

Quick summary.  The list is not perfect, but just browsing and going by my own untrustworthy memory…

I have played half the games in the top 10, and like them all.

I have played 9 of the top 25 games and like all but 1

I have played 16 of the top 50, and like 13 of the 16.

So it’s a good tool.  It soitenly increases the odds of buying a game I like.

F$@& Different designers and their styles

Vlaada Chvátil

·         2006 Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization

·         2007 Galaxy Trucker

·         2008 Space Alert

·         2009 Dungeon Lords

·         2011 Dungeon Petz, Mage Knight: Board Game

Martin Wallace

·         2001 Liberté

·         2002 Age of Steam

·         2003 Der Herr der Ringe: Die Rückkehr des Königs

·         2003 Princes of the Renaissance

·         2004 Struggle of Empires

·         2005 Byzantium

·         2007 Brass

·         2008 Tinners' Trail

·         2008 After the Flood

·         2008 Steel Driver

·         2009 God's Playground

·         2009 Automobile

·         2009 Rise of Empires

·         2009 Last Train to Wensleydale

·         2009 Steam

·         2010 Age of Industry

·         2010 Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth!

·         2010 London

·         2011 A Few Acres of Snow

·         2011 Discworld: Ankh-Morpork

Philippe Keyaerts

·         1999 Vinci

·         2001 Evo

·         2009 Small World

·         2011 Olympos

Vlaada Chvátil is probably my favorite designer right now.  The dude is incredibly creative in figuring out new mechanics.  I haven’t played everything by him of course, and either he has or will release a clunker.  In my admittedly limited experience with his games, I have found a couple of hallmarks.

-          They are quirky and irreverent in tone.  His games are supposed to be fun.  Perhaps some deep strategies exist, but in general, these are more light hearted in nature.

-          Everyone is involved most of the time.  Space Alert and Galaxy Trucker have two distinct phases, in my vernacular the “Planning Phase” and the “Resolution Phase”.  The majority of the game takes place during planning, and in both those games every player goes simultaneously.  In the resolution phase, turns go quickly, in Space Alert because you have planned all your moves already and in Galaxy Trucker because there’s very little to do each turn.

-          This is just personal, but I really enjoy myself even while getting my ass kicked. 

Martin Wallace I like ok.  Brass remains a favorite, and he has lots of other higher ranking games.  I don’t find him terribly innovative, but he does have a knack for making the ‘traditional’ mechanics fit together well. 

-          Martin Wallace games are complicated.  A lot of thought of experience is required just to play them correctly. 

-          Once you get that experience, the games are deep.  There are usually several paths to victory, many mutually exclusive. 

-          The rules will require several reads even after playing a couple times.  They aren’t well phrased or organized and some important nuggets will fall through the cracks.

-           Oh yeah.  Usually an early industrial theme, whether its trains, textiles or car makers.

Philippe Keyaerts is completely hit and miss with me.  My 3 followers will remember that I like Olympos but hate Smallworld.

-          Keyaerts games will have conflict.  That’s all Smallworld is, and it’s a huge part of Olympos.

-          There are mix and match permutations.  In Smallworld tribes are paired up with badges giving X tribes times Y badges possible combinations.  In Olympos the building tree changes from game to game.

-          Keyaerts rules are a joy to read.  The games must be well play tested, because our gaming group has yet to find an exception or conflict not specifically covered and easy to find in the rules.

I  know I am missing, well dozens of designers.  But here’s a good start.

F$%^ Space Alert Tips: 2 of a million part series.

Serious Threats are still not named Serious to fool you.

Read the F$^%ing card!

Beware Tunnel vision

It’s really easy to get locked in to what you are doing, and it’s really bad when you that’s all you are concerned with.    Try to keep informed of what your teammates are doing.   At least listen when they need help.

Power is not a limiting factor, its actions.  Always actions.

Main power guy really only has 4 actions committed.  1 move to reactor and 3 fuel rod adds.   That leaves 8 actions to help out in other spots!  He can easily help with lower blue or red side power/guns/C buttons.

Furthermore, the ship starts with 7 power.  And even a totally inept chief engineer will add at least 9.  That should be more than enough to handle the threats.  We should think about charging shields in the quiet spots early and then refilling those batteries before the other bad guys appear.

Nerdy Friday recap - Now Captain you die, and we all move up in rank

Games played:  Space Alert, Ticket to Ride, No Thanks!

Space Alert:  This game still remains fresh.  Mostly because we haven't seen all the cards or played all the soundtracks.

Introductory training:  Handled with no problem
Advanced training:  Handled with no problem
Mission 1:  Whoops.  I screwed up the commando, forgetting that he moves.  He blew apart the previously damaged red section.  Sorry Captain Red Wings John.
Mission 2:  Captain Mike led us to a successful completion, but did it while screaming at everyone at the top of his lungs.  After action we had to check the F%^&ing rules to make sure that we heard the threats right and didn't downgrade a serious to a normal threat.  Security Officer Darren unlocked the arms locker and led a mutiny.
Mission 3:  No good deed goes unpunished.   Captain Darren gets the entire crew killed.  Again.  Warren may have survived in the interceptors, but probably asphyxiated before someone came by and rescued him.

So some things we did right in mission 2.  Ensign David blasted the ablative shield with the laser that takes no power before we piled on with the big guns.  One attaboy for David!  Captain Mike and Security Officer/Chief Engineer Darren tag teamed the power draining serious threat with a pair of B+1's.  That's how we do it downtown!

Things that went wrong in Mission 3.  Mike has an advantage when he's captain, he doesn't have to deal with Mike as a subordinate.  Mike miscounted the actions it took to kill the Man-O-War, which was bad enough.  But he also insisted that he had it right, so no redundancy was applied by Gunnery Sergeant Red Wings John.  Gunny played well over his head.  His timely missile launches ALMOST saved the day.  Oh yeah, Warren played with droids for the entire game, which means he basically passed 11 of 12 turns.

Ticket to Ride:  Warren won a really close game.  I knew I was screwed 3 turns in when I had cheap easy routes and no more than 3 train cards in the same suit.

No Thanks!:  David won the first game.  Bully for him.  Mike set a record for the 2nd game, finishing at -15! He wrote that down, but also got some amazing F&*%ing luck when he pulled that 11 card run out of his A$$.

F&%@ Steam!

Martin Wallace is a pretty clever board game designer, prolific too. We've played several of his games, and Brass is among our favorites. However he's probably most famous for his family of rail games that we're not familiar with at all. The first of which was Age of Steam (2002), followed by Railroad Tycoon (2005), and finally Steam (2009). All these games look, play, and feel very similar, with Railroad Tycoon varying a bit more from the other two.

Caveat: I've played Railroad Tycoon a couple of times and Steam just once. So I'm giving my initial impression but I'm no expert.

If you've never played any of these games, here is what you need to know. It's a map of hexagons, which cities spread around. Each city has some cubes on it. Cities are several different colors. Cubes are the same several different colors. You build track and try to connect cubes with their city (by color). Each turn the players pick roles with minor abilities and then go through the process of builing track, delivering goods, paying bills and picking roles for next turn.

In Steam (as opposed to Age of Steam and Railroad Tycoon), VP and income are separate, and points earned can be applied to income or VPs. This helps. The balance of income, loan, and VP is a strength of Brass, seems natural that he split this in the final iteration of his train games. It does make it fit a typical pattern of these eurogames though, where you play for money/income early, and then transition over to VPs.

The primary mechanic here is the cubes. You have a red cube in a given city, you need to deliver it to a red city. A grey cube needs to go to a grey city. And the further you ship it, the more points it's worth. So the the competition is to deliver a cube before an opponent can, and still get the most points out of it (which as I stated are then applied to income or VPs).

To prevent cubes from drying up, and to help set up big long distance deliveries, there are 12 sets of cubes that can be added to the board with the city growth and urbanization roles. These options are awesome and super powerful. But they come with a downside, that role picks much later in the next round. Because of this, you're not going to get urbanization several turns in a row or even more than a couple times the whole game. You have to set yourself up to get it and make sure you are going to earn big big points when you do.

This type of game is challenging for me, it's like chess. You have to think of all your options, all your opponents possible reactions (a couple turns ahead) and somehow lock cubes up so you can deliver them later for big points. Or force them to deliver a cube for small points before a bigger better option appears down the road. I'm not super good at this sort of thing :) so I think I'm going to struggle against my friends as they gain experience. I have good initial feel for it though, so hopefully I can rack up some wins before they start crushing me.

The game has TONS of expansions, not only by Wallace, but by fans (seems Wallace encourages this). He supplies pieces for a six player game even though the original game only places 3-5. This adds a lot of variety because building the same routes around New England or Germany could get stale.

A couple weaknesses. As I said, there is a lot to puzzle over when trying to figure out how to squeeze out the maximum net points out of the available cubes. And remember, after set up, it's all there. There are no more random events, just random players. This is the sort of thing that leads to analysis paralysis as players go over all possible scenarios going forward. Also, the game has something in common with Automobile: It feels like your treading water for the first half of the game, and then once you finally get going, the games over (in the case of Steam, there's simply nothing left to deliver).

Tips: I got nothing. Well, I have a few tips, but maybe once I get some actual experience I'll try and share something. Maybe I'll leave it to Darren.

I have to say, it must be nice to get three wacks at designing a game.

F$@& Tech Trees

Belated tech tree post.

This isn’t entirely about tech trees, it’s more about game mechanics that provide rules exceptions.  Often these fall into a tech tree path, but that is not necessarily the case.

Different games call them different things: buildings, research, technologies, developments or whatever.   I am going to use most of these terms interchangeably, because no matter what the game calls them, they all do the same thing; provide exceptions to the core rules.

The first game we played with this mechanic was Civilization (20+ years since we first played Civ.  Now that’s a spicy meatball).  Civ used generic resources to buy these.   Hold on before you protest that salt and bronze and cloth aren’t generic.  When you trade in a set, those are converted to a generic amount you can use to buy the developments.  And there’s no mechanic that makes you just get cloth instead of wine.  But I digress.  These developments do a couple things.  Almost always they give some kind of in play bonus (metal \m/ working lets you fight better), but they also provide a discount.  That discount makes an almost default tech tree.  Sure you can skip developments on the path, but optimally you want to get a lot of discounts before buying the higher value items.    Mike really took this to an extreme.  He had The List ™.  This was an ordered, itemized list of what to buy in what order.  I remember getting quite annoyed with The List ™ at the time, but in hindsight, a F$#%ing 6-10 hour game is probably what really bothered me.

So even though I have absolutely zero desire to ever play Civilization again, I need to congratulate that game on influencing pretty much every resource gathering game that came after.  This was the Godfather of designer board games.

Onto the modern equivalents.  Puerto Rico is a really elegant building game.  The resources are just drafted, no purchases required.  The buildings are structured within tiers.  There’s no tech tree at all, but generally tier 1 and 2 buildings are built early, with tier 3 built mid game and tier 4 for the end game.  The buildings also incorporate a draft; there are limited amounts of each building.  That is really really clever btw.  The small market costs 1 gold but gives the owner +1 gold off every trade.  Easily the most cost efficient building in the game, and if 5 were available every player would take one.  The Harbor gives +1 VP for every shipment, (arguably) the most versatile card in the game.  No matter what strategy the player employs, it’s hard to not go a game without shipping a good for VPs.  Not saying this is a must buy for every game, but it’s seldom a bad buy.  And the small market and harbor, like every tier 1 -3 building (not production facilities) is capped at 2.  Tier 4’s are strictly VPs and only one of each is available in the game.  The winner of Puerto Rico (even those with a massive shipment strategy) is the player who purchases the most synergized buildings.

So I can’t actually think of a game that has a strict tech tree hierarchy.   “You need this to unlock that, and there are not exceptions.”  7 Wonders has cards that unlock later cards, but that’s instead of paying the resource price.  That’s tech tree-ish and probably the closest example I can think of.  

A quick list of other games that I think fall into this tech tree, buildings style

Magic the Gathering

Olympos

Race for the Galaxy

San Juan

Galaxy Trucker

Brass

Glenn Drover’s Age of Empires: Age of Discovery

Most of these games are among my favorites, so I guess I really like the building-tech tree mechanic.

Nerdy Friday recap - Information I could have used an hour ago

Games played :  Steam Galaxy Trucker.

3 player Steam:  a learning experience.  First time out, this is a solid but not brilliant game.  There might be conflicting wishes, I think the game would be better with 4 or more which competes with other peoples desire to have room to build.   See there are 7 roles to choose, and a couple weren't chosen at all, and a couple more were only chosen once.  Warren should have read the teaching games post by Mike.  We play the entire game, and SURPRISE, turns out the amount of rail you build also counts for VPs.

3 player Galaxy Trucker:  Mike killed us.  Lots.  Really really lots.  He should have won the last game regardless, luck made it a slaughter.  I don't know what my strategy for making the spaceship is, but its wrong.

F&%# Teaching New Players!

A subject near and dear to my heart.

Effectively teaching a game to new players is not a simple thing to do. Some games you just can't win the first time you play, there's too much to comprehend without a trial game. But in many games, teaching the game well can be the difference between a competive new player, and a new player who is just pushing pieces around. In most cases, a new players can be taught the major concepts rather than have to learn on the fly. I'm not a good teacher if I don't spent a couple minutes organizing my thoughts on how to approach teaching a specific game. If I do have some time, I think I'm pretty good at it. Each game is different, but these are the general steps I go through.

I think I'll use three games as examples, Settlers, Thebes and Automobile. I think these games have enough differention in mechanics to be good examples.

1) What am I doing? First describe the setting and the theme. Even in the games that have an awkwardly glued on theme like Ra, it still helps to know that you're trying to collect stuff and build a cool egyptian themed empire. In Settlers you're trying to build the best settlement on the island of Catan. In Thebes you're trying to uncover artifacts in the turn of the century middle east. In Automobile you're manufacturing and selling cars.

2) How do I win? Describe the victory condition. In Settlers you're trying to get to 10 points first. In Thebes you're trying to get the most points in a fixed amount of time. In Automobile you're trying to earn the most money by game end. Now while you explain mechanics, it's all in perspective. In Brass, money is a means to get VPs, in Automobile, money is what's up.

3) Now you can start high level flow of the game and work toward the details. How does the game work? What is a turn at a high level, and how does control move from one player to another player...in other words, when is a turn over? Many games are composed of a fixed set of rounds, explain this right way.

In Settlers, you roll the dice to see what resources are producing, and then you spend collected goods roads, settlements, cities and cards. There's no reason to explain the robber or development cards on the first go around. Explain the mechanic of how goods are produced, and how they are spent. Once that's clear, you can explain the details of cards, robbers, ports, etc.

In Thebes, each turn is a move around the map and an action such as taking a card. You are collecting these cards to do digs for artifacts. Explain how to move up the time track when a turn is done. Once you've given a number of examples and the mechanic is clear, take your collection of example cards and show how a turn can also be a move and a dig. Now you can hit the details, for example explain the special (non-research) cards and that you can acually only dig in each site once per year.

In Automobile there are four rounds, each round consists of the same set of steps. Basically pick a role, manage your factories and production, and sell your cars. Then I go through the steps and explain them in detail one at a time. Remind them, we're going to do this same sequence four times. In a game like automobile, a practice round would be recommended if most of the table has never played.

Often the most interesting mechanics are going to have to be saved until last. How the robber works is a whole lot more meaningful when you understand what it means to lose half your hand, and how stealing a card from an opponent could tactically be used to your great advantage.

4) How does the game end? What's a typical winning score? It may not be obvious, in fact it probably isn't, so reiterate under what conditions the game ends. I like to give examples of a winning score so a new player has some scope of what they're trying to accomplish. Also, during the game they might better understand the benefits of a situation if they have a target to aim for.

5) Advice portion - Once the rules are all pretty clear, I like to go over high level strategy in just a couple of senteces, and warn them of the most common early mistakes.

In Settler: "Most people think stone is the best resources and you want to make sure you have some access to it." "Sheep suck." "Very difficult to win without cities."

In Thebes: "You can string together multiple turns, that can be quite useful" "you want to try and squeeze in at least two digs the first year, and at least three the second, although depending on the quality of the digs, that might vary." "We really shouldn't be wasting our limited time with this game, are you sure you don't want to play something else?"

In Automobile: "Most people don't by luxury cars early, it doesn't seem to work." "Note that there's no demand for economy cars in the first round, don't build those!" "You need to be making money each round, but the big bucks will be made in the last round, as your figuring out the game, try to set yourself up for a big final round."

There you have it. How to teach a game in five steps.

F&^# Broken Games - How to fix Thebes

I don't fix games, I don't even like house rules. I play the game as the designer intended, and if the game sucks, I play something else. Furthermore, in my experience when someone makes a suggestion on how to alter a game, all the other chiefs at the table need to pipe up on what they think should be done instead of or in addition too, etc, etc.

But I'll take a stab at Thebes for your entertainment and give you the chance to offer your own suggestions.

In my opinion, the game is fine right up until you go to draw from the bag. As you may remember, you first figure out how much research you have done and decide how much time you are going to spend digging. Then you consult a chart! You draw some random tiles. You keep the good ones and put the crap back into the bag. The tiles have different values (and they are different depending on what bag you draw from as well), with more than half the tiles being blank. So this is the part that needs to be addressed.

We want to reward two things:

1) amount of research collected

2) amount of time spent digging

Rather than a chart, I'll just reward each separately.

First rewarding the amount of research collected. I would give victory points equal to the amount of research collected divided by two (rounding up). Further, I'll require you dig for at least one week per VP awarded. Since you can only dig in each place once per year, this shouldn't be abusable.

Second, we'll use the bags to award VPs for the amount of time spent digging. The bags are trying to model two things. One that there is less to find in subsequent digs, and two that you use your research to find things. So we'll accomplish the same thing by giving you one draw per week spent. The maximum number of weeks you can dig is equal to your research.

Bags will now be filled with just 20 tiles. 10 tiles are worth one VP, and 10 tiles are blank. You keep the VPs you draw and put the blank tiles back in. If you go to dig in palestine with 10 points in research, and decide to dig for 10 weeks, you get 5 VPs for the amount of research you have, and you get 10 draws from the bag. You should end up with 8-12 VPs total.

All other arbitrary point awards should be balanced around this mechanic. It's better to keep this part simple than try and balance this with the existing points.

Sorry Ryan, no Nazis :(