PrezCon 2014 Part 4: Social gaming

Part of what I love about conventions is re-connecting with gaming friends as well as meeting new people.  This year at PrezCon, I got to meet in person Dan Patriss, whom I'd heard many times on the Geek All Stars podcast.  He was with Chris Kirkman of Dice Hate Me Games, and Friday night we got together with Stephanie Straw, T.C. Petty III, and Darrell Louder for a couple of late-night games.

(l. to r.) T.C. Petty III explains Euphoria to the confused
Paul O., the enthusiastic Dan Patriss, the sedate Darrell
Louder, the demonstrative Stephanie Straw, and the not-
pictured photographer Chris Kirkman

T.C. taught the rest of us Euphoria (designers Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone, artist Jacqui Davis, publisher Stonemaier Games), an insanely-themed exercise in resource management rendered all the more mind-bending by the unique method by which T.C. explains games.  Euphoria is set in some kind of dystopian industrial setting in which each player represents a faction of workers seeking to ... well, I'm not sure what "stars" represent, but victory points are represented by placing stars in various locations on the board.  The first person to place all his or her stars wins the game.  Workers are represented by dice, and the number rolled on the dice when they are made available for placement represents the intelligence of the worker.  Oddly, workers that are too intelligent realize the futility of their predicament and abandon the nirvana of mindless labor, so rolling too high means losing a worker.  Workers can be placed to accumulate such resources as water, power, fruit, and "bliss," each of which tends to be associated with a faction.  There are also tunnels that factions can dig from one resource pool to another in order to gain easier access to resources of other factions.  Resources can be spent to manipulate various elements of the board - including retrieving workers for subsequent placement again - with the ultimate goal of finding an avenue to place stars.  Early in the game, star placement is very difficult and expensive, but in a clever semi-cooperative mechanic, players can combine efforts to open "markets" with easier star-placement opportunities.

In our game, I found a fairly nice engine involving bliss that allowed me to place stars fairly regularly, and I very nearly won the game until Dan snatched victory out from under me.  My general impression of Euphoria is that it is fun and interesting, but the board is so "loud" (in terms of color and graphic design) and there are so many mechanisms at work that I found the whole experience a little overwhelming.  (Perhaps the fact that we were playing a six-player game in the middle of the night added to my mental saturation.)  So I can't say that I'll go looking for a copy for myself, but if someone proposes playing it again, I'll be happy to do so.

Dan (second from left) clearly does not appreciate the
serious nature of Coup as do T.C. (l.), Chris (r.), and I.
Photo by Stephanie "Kill them one coin at a time" Straw

The other game that we played that night was one of my favorite hidden-identity games, Coup.  I have to say that I particularly looked forward to playing again with Chris Kirkman, who taught me Coup at PrezCon last year and who is the consummate social meta-gamer.  Coup is just a crazy knife fight with six players, and we had a lot of fun second-guessing each other.  Stephanie took the ultra-conservative tactic of taking income gradually every turn while the rest of us assassinated and bluffed and challenged each other down to a Mexican stand-off, when I failed to assassinate her (because she had the Contessa).  After that it just came down to who could "coup" whom first, and Stephanie came out on top.

Interestingly, I believe that Chris K. and I have interpreted the rules differently as to what a player can or can't do when announcing an action.  My interpretation is that once I announce an action that can be performed by a specific character, I am de facto claiming to have that character.  That leaves me open to challenge, and if formally challenged, I can not "back down" but must either reveal the claimed character or lose an influence.  Chris seems to interpret the rule that there are different "degrees" of claims and challenges, and he can offer to take an action that, if challenged, he can simply back down and not take but just lose his turn (without losing influence).  I'll have to talk with him in more detail about his thinking on this game.

Dan, Chris, T.C., and Stephanie discussed these games and other PrezCon experiences on Episode 71 of The Geek All Stars.