F&#( Online Alternatives

Part of the enjoyment of a board game is the board.  And the bits.  And the table.  And particularly the people sitting around it.  Board gaming is a social activity.  Sure I like the competitive side, but I really like hanging out with my friends, laughing, cracking jokes, etc.  Nonetheless, I find some good games play much better online.

Brass:

I think that walrus is dead, i wonder how many people airports kill each year. 

I hate waiting.  So much so in fact, the airport is one of the most detested places on the planet for me.  Why?  Because typically you spend almost all your time at an airport waiting.  And until the advent of the smart phone, a book was about your only recourse.  Just thinking about the airport is starting to make me crabby, so let's move on.  Brass suffers from a lot of analysis.  It's not "analysis paralysis" persay because there's really not that much information to churn through in order to come to a decision, it just takes a bit of time to digest it all and figure out what you want to do.  And it's not just the guys typical prone to it that take the long turns, it's really everyone with a prayer of competing.  It just takes a few minutes to access the board and make your move.  And there's no need to analyze and reanalyze the board as your opponents take their subsequent turns, because it's all going to impact you and change the scenario enough to that you might as well wait until your turn and analyze it once then.  And you can bet that unless your going back to back, your first chioce of actions is someone else's first choice of action and won't be available by the time it comes back to you.  Same goes for your second choice.  It doesn't matter how the board got the way that it did since your last turn.  It is what it is now.  Absorb it all, make your decision, and take your turn.  Because of all that, Brass turns out to be a good game to play online with notifications by email.  As long as you can check your mail a couple times a day, it plays in a week or two.  The experience is pretty satisfying as far as online board games go.  It's a hard, complex game, so winning is more satisfying.  As a social experience, not so much.  There's a place for posting comments, but there isn't typically anything there.

Dominion:

I have a set of four ceiling cats.

Dominion was innovative, some of the best parts of a CCG boiled down and put in board game form.  So many cards and options, every game is different, many strategies are viable in any given set up.  But what makes Dominion interesting is also its problem.  It takes time to determine the card set you're using and set up the rest of the cards correctly per number of players.  Setup can take 10 minutes, while the game itself might only take 30.  And unless you use the same card set, clean up and setup for a second game might take longer.  It can be mitigated though, if everyone is helping and there's a system for selecting a new card it can go pretty fast.  But there's a second problem - the really fun decks are the ones the cycle.  And keeping track of actions, and buys and coins in a cycling deck is a nightmare, especially when the other players are trying to follow along with you.  Now compare these two problems to the online game.  Setup and clean up online just takes a second.  And it's new and fresh every time.  And buys and actions and coins are tracked for you online.  In fact it's right there for everyone to see.  Games online take 10-20 minutes and you fl through half a dozen without blinking.

Tigris & Euphrates:

I played this game a few times with my friends before eventually swearing it off.  It's just too deep.  Or so I thought.  And teaching it was time consuming.  New players were easily frustrated because when they instigated a battle, it typically didn't turn out even close to how they expected.  Resolving fights takes a while anyway because there is a lot of calculation and explanation.  I couldn't get around the mechanics to think about the game in terms of strategy.  Mostly I was just trying not to blow it.  Recently I played it on the iPad with Jason, and it was much more satisfying.  I haven't played in more than 5 years, but it only took about half a game (less than 15 minutes) to figure it all out again.  And we played three times in less than an hour (three players, two real and one AI).  The game is just much more accessable as a computer version.  Battles are calculated and executed for you in a second.  You can play, make mistakes, and play again in a short amount of time.  This makes the learning curve is much more reasonable.  Look forward to playing again, but not on the table.

This is irrelevant but I'm adding it anyway.

Of course beating some faceless sod online is not a substitute for sticking it to your friends.  But these options might help hold you over between game nights.