Sunday, July 22, 2012
HistoriCon 2012: Borg Attack
HistoriCon 2012: A boardgamer's reflection
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Games for a family of three (or four)
Monday, July 16, 2012
East India Company playtest
In this round, I incorporated a number of notes from our previous playtest. I drastically - and successfully - simplified the process for declaring dividends for bonus points. Also, since the previous game ended just when it seemed to get going, I lengthened the game from a minimum of 11 to a minimum of 15 turns. I made this adjustment despite my general concern about the overall playtime.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Ethics in gaming: Reflections on the WBC seminar
[While on vacation in North Carolina, in anticipation of going to the World Boardgaming Championships in Pennsylvania in a few weeks, I scheduled a re-post of one of my most popular articles, a reflection on the "Ethics in Gaming" seminar from the 2011 WBC convention. Originally appeared 15 August 2011]
Last week at the World Boardgaming Championships, Joel Tamburo led a fascinating seminar on ethics in gaming. I had no idea what to expect and was pleasantly surprised at the directions that the conversation took. Right away, the group explored the question of whether it is ethically acceptable to lie in the course of a game. The immediate example that came up is Diplomacy, a game only half-facetiously blamed for ruining good friendships. A consensus emerged that there is an understanding that in a game like Diplomacy, lying is an expected part of negotiation. Although success requires alliances, winning sooner or later requires betrayal. So as long as it is understood among players that lying is - or can be - part of the game, then that becomes part of the game's acceptable code of ethics.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Tumbling through Troyes
I can see the appeal of this game to the Euro crowd. Players are dealing in dice in three colors, influence points, deniers (money), meeples, and victory points. Actions involve frequent exchanges among the different elements - spending influence to modify dice, using dice to obtain influence, using dice to acquire money, spending money to obtain dice, spending influence to obtain meeples, spending money to move meeples to take actions ... The astute reader will have caught on by now that Troyes is steeped in the Euro practice of resource optimization among disparate parameters. As a dice placement game, Troyes adds dice luck to the mix.
The activity cards in three categories - clerical, military, and civil - provide the primary engines for converting dice (the workforce) into money, points, influence, or even modifications to other dice, with varying degrees of efficiency. We are still new to the game and trying to grasp the activity card symbols relative to their actual functions; as it is, we refer to the Appendix page every time a new card is turned up to be sure we understand how it works.
My orange meeples executing my strong military strategy - three in the castle plus the Diplomat and Troubadour |
One source of confusion to us early on is the pricing for purchasing dice from other players or from the neutral district to use in your own activity. The important thing to remember before buying any dice is that for any given action, a player may opt to use one, two, or three dice.
- If one die will be used, the price of buying a die is two deniers.
- If two dice will be used in the action, the price for each die purchased will be four deniers. Note that purchased dice may be combined with a player's own dice to complete an action.
So for example, if I want to use two dice to conduct an action - one of my own, and one that I purchase from a neutral district - then I have to pay four deniers for the die that I purchase. (That one die would only have cost two deniers if it was the only die that I used in my action, but the fact that I am using it as part of an action involving two dice means that the price for the purchased die is four deniers.)
If I want to purchase two dice to perform an action, the price of each die is four deniers, and so the total cost is eight deniers. - If three dice will be used in the action, the price for each die purchased is six deniers.
If I'm only buying one die and combining it with two of my own to complete a three-die action, then the cost of the die that I buy is six deniers.
If I'm using one of my own dice and buying two more, the price of each is six deniers, and so the total cost to me is 12 deniers.
If I'm buying three dice to use in a three-die action, then the total cost is 18 deniers.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
What to pack for a vacation
[While on vacation in North Carolina, I scheduled this re-post of my vacation boardgaming selections from last summer. Originally appeared 29 July 2011]
We recently went on a vacation in the West Virginia mountains for some white-water rafting, horseback riding, paintball, and a zip line canopy tour. (ACE Adventures, if you're interested.) In the absence of internet and video games, we anticipated the need for some quality family downtime in the cabin. So of course that means boardgames!
Last time we went, three years ago, we brought Uno and Guillotine, both of which were successful choices. This time we wanted more options without having to bring the entire game closet. So we put together a packing list of games that most of us like. Everybody got to pick at least one game. We wanted to have at least three options each for two, three, four, or five players. At least three of the games had to be accessible to the youngest of us (ten years old). We were mindful of space limitations, but we didn't necessarily cramp our style if there was something we really wanted to bring. Here's the list we came up with:
- Chicago Cribbage
- Incan Gold
- Citadels (note - this link plays music)
- Ace of Aces
- Catch Phrase
- Martian Fluxx
- Travel Scrabble
- Trains Planes and Automobiles
- Empyrean Inc
- Forbidden Island
- Car-Go Othello
- Pirateer
- Uno H2O Splash
So what did we actually play? Well, Car-Go Othello got a lot of action during the six-hour drive to West Virginia. The brilliance in the design of this game is that there are no separate parts. The board (a six-by-six simplification of the eight-by-eight original Othello) has an integrated rotating piece for each space on the board. Each space can be rotated to show a green blank, a white piece, or a black piece. The game can be passed back and forth without risk of something falling on the floor of the car and getting lost under the seat (as happened with Travel Scrabble).
Whirlpool randomizer from Uno H2O Splash |
Sample page from Ace of Aces |
We did play a few conventional games during our down-time in the cabin. Incan Gold played out to an exciting finish, when our ten-year-old left the ruins with the artifact and the lead on the final mission, forcing the rest of us to play out the round until scared away by monsters and leaving him with the win. Our Pirateer session saw a crazy round in which every player touched the treasure at least once before our ten-year-old stole the treasure on a perfect snake-eyes die roll and brought it home to his harbor just a few turns later. My wife beat my 18-year-old son and me in Black Jack (using cards from Chicago Cribbage and money from Incan Gold) when she kept betting all her money to get out of the game but kept winning hand after hand. My wife just destroyed me in a two-player session of Citadels, which is nevertheless still my favorite game right now.
And, oh yes, we were in the mountains of West Virginia, so we did plenty of white-water rafting, horseback riding, paintball, and zip-line canopy touring during the gaps between boardgames.
Six days until I go to World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Run roughshod in Robber Knights
Kathy's winning wine over my losing beer |
This round, I think I lost sight of the resource-conservation aspect of the game, as I grabbed every big-point play I could make. Early on, my blue knights thoroughly dominated the board, and though I knew some of the points were destined to be stolen, I thought that I'd sufficiently saturated the board that I could protect a substantial number of acquisitions and maintain a lead until the end of the game.
But by the middle game, Kathy had taken over a significant portion of my holdings. Although we were at one point fairly even in number of remaining tiles and knights, she had taken a lead and locked in quite a few positions that left me little opportunity for cherry-picking any points away. Again I burned up tiles and knights in the late game, so that by the end, I had only two knights and two tiles (a city and a forest castle - which meant that I'd be unable to score the city). Kathy meanwhile place a city tile with three sides open so that she'd be confident that she could reclaim it if I tried to steal it from her.
Close observation reveals the number of my blue knights covered by my wife's green for the score |
The bottom line was a strong win for my wife, 34-22, thanks to taking full advantage of my impulsiveness and her making judicious use of resources to dominate the board.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Relaxing 24/7
Close-up of 24/7: The Game showing the physical tile quality - in particular, my run of five tiles ('2' through '6' in sequence) that Kathy subsequently used in her own "24-in-7" bonus score |
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Losing "For The Win"
Kathy (black) wins second game of For The Win. Can I blame it on the martini? |
I hadn't bothered with the pre-release print-and-play version because, to me, the appeal of FTW as it was for Hive! is the physical domino-quality tileset. Yes, the gameplay is important, but as with 24/7 and Confusion: Espionage and Deception in the Cold War, there's a tactile gratification to handling the bakelite-style game pieces. And FTW does not disappoint. In fact, somehow I had the mistaken impression that the tiles would be significantly smaller. I had envisioned something like 7/8-inch (22mm) squares, but they are in fact 1 1/4 - inch (31mm) square, a very comfortably sized playing piece.
Bakelite-quality square tiles make for a gratifying tactile experience. |
We played our first two rounds of FTW at our customary cocktail hour this afternoon. We found the game to be easy to understand but tricky to strategize, as I suppose any good two-player abstract game should be. It is also a rather quick play. I think it took Kathy less than 45 minutes to learn the game and beat me twice at it. Now, to be fair, the first game we were taking a rather ad hoc approach just to get the feel of the game and the mechanics of the rules. It was in the second game that we each buckled down and tried to exercise some real tactics. (And, yes, she won that game, too.)
As it happens, Kathy and I misinterpreted (that is, I misread the rule and misled my wife) the behavior of the monkey's banana. We assumed that the monkey's banana action renders all tiles adjacent to the monkey face down (inactive), regardless of original state. Instead, a closer reading of the rules shows that "tiles that were face up are now face down and vice versa [emphasis added]." So now I see the monkey in a whole new light. The monkey can be used to activate multiple friendly pieces in a single action. <Bwa-ha-ha-HAH> I make no claim that this rule misinterpretation was in any way a factor in my losing the game twice in a row. I just wanted to point that out.
All kidding aside, we really like FTW as a two-player abstract short game with simple rules, no luck, and considerable potential for depth. I'm reluctant to call it a "filler" only because we don't know just how tactically challenging it might prove. I have to say, I'm very pleased with this Kickstarter discovery.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
I have an Alibi
Image (c) Mayfair Games. Used by permission. All rights reserved. |
For my family, Clue has been a multi-generational favorite. Whenever we'd go home to visit my mother, we'd play it on the kitchen table. I lost count of how many different copies and editions we went through. My kids enjoy playing it even today. Clue is not what you'd call a great game in the context of the boardgame culture, but it has great sentimental value and meaning as a focus of family get-togethers.
Nevertheless, recently, we have been looking for another mystery game for some variety, as Clue has betrayed its age and repetitive nature with so many playings. Based on a review by BoardGameGeek "Tim," I had added Alibi to my wishlist as "a bit more interesting than Clue, though not compellingly so." It seemed worth taking a shot to bring Seth's unplayed copy into our household and see if it couldn't get some attention.
My two teenage sons, my wife, and I played our first game this afternoon. At first, the task of adding emotion (motive) to the customary questions of murderer, location, and weapon seemed only a minor complication - until we realized that there are ten suspects, 18 locations, 18 weapons, and 18 motives to eliminate, as well as time of day (morning, noon, or evening). Whereas Clue has 21 cards from which to determine three, Alibi has 78 cards from which players must discern which four describe the murder. Daunting, indeed.
But of course the game works very well, and in many ways very differently from Clue, which is what we were really hoping for. Questions can only be asked that have a number as an answer, and only of one other player. Rather than ask (as in Clue), "do you have Colonel Mustard, the knife, or the dining room," a question might be, "How many weapons do you have," or "How many blunt objects have you seen?" Even more dramatically different is that players are required to pass one or more cards to the left after each question is asked, so that some cards eventually get seen by some or all players.
Three "Auto" location cards. (c) Mayfair Games. Used by permission. All rights reserved. |
The result is a game that requires completely different approaches and strategies to deduce a near-correct answer well enough to outscore one's opponents. In our game, our 16-year-old initiated the end-game with what turned out to be a correct accusation, but my wife tied his score because she had exposed higher-scoring card combinations. Everybody agreed that it was a fun, approachable, and different take on deduction games, and we are likely to play it again soon. I am sorry for Seth that he had to give it up, but he may like knowing that his copy has found some fresh life in its new home.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
S. Craig Taylor
S. CRAIG TAYLOR, Jr: I regret to inform my many friends in the hobby of the passing of our longtime friend. Craig was a prominent wargame designer who left his mark on the genre with designs for such varied concerns as Battleline, Yaquinto Publications, Avalon Hill and Lost Battalion, among others. His work was steeped in his background as a miniatures enthusiast and a keen interest in military history - an area of expertise in which few were his equal. He authored virtually dozens of games, but will probably be best remembered for his seminal work on Wooden Ships & Iron Men. I had the pleasure of working with Craig for nearly 20 years at Avalon Hill and admired him for the honesty and principles with which he lived his life as well as his obvious skills. My life is richer for having known him. He will be sorely missed.Wooden Ships & Iron Men is perhaps my favorite wargame of all time. I remember buying it at K*B Toys in 1976, the year after it came out. It was billed as an "Official Bicentennial War Game." My copy is now "well loved," heavily worn from so many sessions of tabletop sea battles.
I met Craig Taylor at HistoriCon, I think six years ago, when he was with Lost Battalion Games and I was hawking my very first real game design, Diadochi. I bought two games from him (Enemy in Sight and Task Forces at War) and sat in on his demonstration of the western front Sergeants! Expansion, which was just coming out that year.
Sad that people like him don't last forever.
Sergeants! (designer S. Craig Roberts) demonstration at HistoriCon 2006 |
Midway: Pyrrhic victory in the Pacific
Frank played the Imperial Japanese Navy, and I had the United States Navy. We played the Basic Game with the Tournament Game fighter rule added. We elected not to require the Japanese to reduce Midway before the invasion (because we agreed that it was a complication that made the Japanese position too difficult) and not to have surface combat (because that's just stupid in a carrier battle).
PBY Catalina - USN photo |
We were able to find each other immediately upon daybreak of 4 June, which turned out to be a bloody morning indeed. He had united the entire Japanese fleet - carriers and invasion force - except for two light cruisers for reconnaissance. Our strike pilots must have waved to one another as they passed above the Pacific, each seeking to deny the other a place to land when the fight was over. We had each split our fighters fairly evenly between Combat Air Patrol (CAP) and fighter escort, so the fighter pilots spent this first sortie jousting with one another but playing nearly no role in defending their respective fleets.
USS Hornet - USN photo |
My tactical focus for the strike focus was exactly the opposite. I focused all airpower on sinking the Atago, which served as the flagship for the invasion fleet. Part of my thinking was that I had already shot down a lot of Japanese planes, so the carriers were already less effective. But mostly I had my eye drilled on the prize - the protection of Midway Island from IJN troops. As it happened, I heavily damaged Atago and suffered minor losses among my tightly concentrated aircraft, but sank no ships.
Our planes returned, and I decided that I was going to withdraw Hornet from the front line to save her from the brunt of the second Japanese wave. So all fighters landed on Hornet to serve as a CAP home base, and all strike aircraft were divided between Yorktown and Enterprise. Planes were fueled and loaded up, and they went at it again four hours later.
Mitsubishi A6M3 Zero |
Meanwhile, my strike force on the heavily defended Japanese fleet did not fare so well. Although I succeeded in sinking the Atago, my efforts to divide the Japanese AA defenses and inflict damage on carriers failed remarkably. In retrospect, my tactics were not well thought-out. I exposed a significant portion of the attack wing to AA fire that they might otherwise have avoided in a more concentrated strike (my preferred tactic). I lost a significant number of aircraft while scattering hits among three battleships and the Hiryu. Having lost their racks, seabags, squadron support, and landing strips to the demise of Enterprise and Yorktown, the returning aircraft had to reach the more distant Hornet on the remaining fumes of their tanks plus a generous tail wind. It was necessary to throw about six elements of F4F Wildcats overboard to make room for returning SBD Dauntless dive bombers.
IJN Yamato Government of Japan photo |
The morning of 5 June, Hornet had backtracked east to get within staging range of Midway, whose aircraft deployed to the deck of the Hornet to replace all those planes lost in the Hosho strike. Later that morning came one more exchange of air strikes, and it was at that point that we realized that the Hornet and the seven remaining cruisers defending her would never be sunk by the few surviving Val dive bombers in the Japanese strike force. That meant that the Japanese had done all the damage they were going to do for the rest of the game.
SBD Dauntless Public domain |
It was clear at this point that the Japanese were going to get no more points for the rest of the game, whereas the Americans had enough fight left to take out at least one more cruiser. That would suffice for me to pull ahead in victory points and win the game, so Frank graciously conceded and requested a rematch with switched sides at our next opportunity.
Final score:
Japanese (Frank H.)
10 for sinking Enterprise
10 for sinking Yorktown
4 for sinking New Orleans
2 for sinking Atlanta
26 total
Americans (Paul O.)
4 for sinking Hosho
4 for sinking Atago
3 for (presumed) sinking of Mogami or another cruiser
16 for preventing invasion of Midway
27 total
It was a very fun game, but this was a narrow, Pyrrhic victory by any measure. Nimitz would not be happy with Spruance if he had returned on Hornet with no other carriers and had meanwhile left the Japanese fleet largely unscathed. But Frank believes, and I'm beginning to agree, that the protection of Atago and therefore the invasion of Midway is extremely difficult - perhaps impossible for the Japanese player. That 16-point deficit therefore makes it necessary for the Japanese to sink at least two and probably all three American carriers to win the game. And if the Americans sink one or two IJN carriers themselves, then the Japanese cause is daunting indeed. As it is, I won a narrow victory despite some serious tactical errors. I'm going to go back and brush up on some of the writing on this topic and think through how I need to attack and defend ships, as well as to revisit the Japanese position and strategy.
Submarines are so much easier to operate.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The Russian Campaign - Session report from the front
Friday, June 22, 2012
Lambasted in Le Havre
Well, not so much, perhaps. Today we played another shortened version of the two-player game. (Shortened? Really? We still went a solid hour and a half, even though we understood the actions and got into the rhythm of the game.) Several times I lost track of the number of turns I had left before the end of the round, or the amount of food I'd need, or the amount of energy I'd need to build a ship or take some other action crucial to my master plan. So, much of the game for me was two steps forward, one step back.
I jumped to a pretty substantial early lead by focusing on building the most valuable buildings I could as soon as possible, so I ended up with the Steel Mill very early in the game. It's a great source of 22 points, but if you aren't prepared to make coke or charcoal, convert a bunch of iron, and build a steel ship or sell the steel, well, then, there's not much point to having a steel mill, now, is there? Oh, yes, Kathy paid me to use it once ... and shipped the steel using her Shipping Line for a whopping 32 Francs in one turn. Well, so much for my commanding lead from a 22-point building.
Kathy's winning array of buildings. Note her action token denying me access to the Shipping Line, so that my hides would languish undelivered and useless on my docks. |
So as you might have guessed, despite my large building construction, Kathy ended up with a huge pile of money at the end and won the game by the score of 115 to 99 - a closer margin than our first session, but still an object lesson in the fact that I still have quite a bit to learn about this wonderful game.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Tale of Two Game Designs
Burton ship, image courtesy of www.beer-pages.com |
I haven't mentioned the other work-in-progress, which I actually put together sooner and playtested a few times already. This earlier design has the working title "Supply and Demand." The board is a matrix with axes indicating supply (horizontal) and demand (vertical). A cross-reference of each index yields a commodity price on the board. A transparent marker on the board shows the current price of the commodity. Players get partial information into cards that show positive or negative movement in supply and/or demand. Players then buy and sell "contracts" among each other at whatever price they think will earn a profit when all the cards are played face up and the final market price resolved. Players who bought markers have to sell them to the bank at the final market price; those who sold markers to other players have to buy them back at the final market price. So a profit is made when a player bought lower or sold higher than the final market reconciliation price. After two playtests (one at home, one with my local gaming group), I made some simplifications and other improvements. I think the result is pretty smooth and ready for some serious attention.
The problem is that I just read on Seth Jaffee's blog about a very similar-sounding game called Panic by James Earnest, Greg Parsons, and Mick Sullivan. This seems to be the story of my short game-design life. I could dedicate an entire blog post to games I've designed just in time to discover another professionally made game that already does what I was trying to do, better than I did myself.
Oh, and now I find that there is already a computer game with the title East India Company, so I guess I will probably have to change the working title of my colonization-trade game, too.
Nature of the beast, I guess.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
East India Company: Father's Day playtest
Image courtesy of www.nostalgicbay.com |
Rules explanation took rather a long while, and the game started slow. I was really afraid that I was going to lose the attention of my 11-year-old altogether. But as the game started to flow and he started to get the knack of how it worked, he really started to enjoy it.
EIC involves loading money on ships, sending them to far-flung colonies to buy products, and then sailing them to another location to sell for profit. Early on, only a few colonies produce only a few things, and the only market at which to sell them is Europe. Generally, the more distant colonies produce the more profitable goods, so there is something of a trade-off with respect to profit vs. opportunity cost.
One fear I had in the early design stages was that the game was too linear and that a few basic strategies would dominate the game. That didn't turn out to be the case at all in our playtest. My youngest son took the short route to West Africa, bought tobacco there, and sold it in Europe for a modest profit. The up-front cost was so low that he could afford a second ship, and before long he had a tobacco profit engine going as a reliable source of income. My wife went for the long-haul big-money strategy. She sent a ship all the way to China for a load of spices. Unfortunately, she ended up without enough capital to send a second ship anywhere else, so she spent a good part of the game (eight turns) waiting for her China spice ship to come in. I took the middle ground, picking up ivory in East Africa. My 16-year-old was the big gambler; he took out a loan, invested in new colonies, and levied tariffs all over the trading world trying to make money off other traders (or else keep the best markets for himself). So I was very gratified that the system motivated multiple approaches.
I found a number of significant (but not back-breaking) flaws and took a lot of notes. Perhaps the biggest was my wife's down-time waiting for her slow boat from China. All of her capital was tied up in her Chinese venture, and because it took so long to make the round trip (and no other spice markets opened up until late in the game), she didn't realize her profit until halfway through the game. Until that happened, she was just passing in every Market Phase, unable to take any other Market actions while we were all loading and unloading ships in ports closer to home. Now, admittedly, an option she chose not to exercise was to take out a loan from the European banks and finance a second ship to develop an income stream. She took a conservative approach in that regard, and I wonder whether loans are too burdensome to motivate borrowing. It's hard to tell whether the game is flawed, or whether I just need to tweak the risk-reward balance so that players may reasonably finance trade ventures if the profit margin outweighs the interest.
I also had a few physical lessons learned, just in terms of game piece sizes and how they obscure information when placed on the board with each other. Levying a tariff involves placing a poker chip and a player marker on top of the colony commodity tile; that placement prevents reading the tile without moving the tariff marker. Also, the ships were so small relative to the poker chips that it was hard to tell the nationality of any ship with money on it.
All of us were reluctant or unable to build any ship bigger than a brigantine (the smallest size) until very late in the game, at which point the money invested in a bigger vessel is unlikely to be made back before the game ends. I think I need to make ships easier to build. Part of the issue in this particular session is that so few colonies produced timber, normally the most common product of all. And cheap timber facilitates inexpensive ship construction. In fact, six of the seven colonies could produce timber, but only one timber production tile came out during the game. So timber was less common in our session than it would normally be.
Nutmeg from Spice Islands, Indonesia - image courtesy www.littlesmileorganic.com |
I had some ideas for player's aids as well. Some mechanics (especially declaring dividends for bonus points) seem more complicated than they need to be, so I should rework those for smoother execution. And the early game seemed (to my family at least) to be very slow, only to end abruptly just when it seemed to be really picking up steam. So I'll probably adjust the starting conditions and game end triggers.
But the great thing about the whole experience is that my eleven-year-old said several times afterward, "I really like that game," all the more gratifying after his early-game confusion and difficulty. Once he got the hang of it (which really started to click for him when his tobacco route kept making money), he really enjoyed it. I think everybody did, and I really appreciated their patience and willingness to be my Guinea pigs for an afternoon. The bottom line is that I think the game is fundamentally sound and that I just have some adjustments to make to get it in good running order.
I'm very excited about where EIC is going.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Boardgames in the backyard: Perry Rhodan returns
Spring weather brings out the shorts and the backyard boardgames. |
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
East India Company: First prototype playthrough
Sir James Lancaster, commander of the first East India Company voyage |
I finally learned why so many games use tile pulls rather than card draws for some randomization functions. It's very difficult to shuffle cards that have information on both sides without inadvertently compromising the randomness and uncertainty. So right away I know I'm going to replace the 21 colony-commodity cards with tiles in a tile bag. (I'm not sure how I'm going to do home-made tiles for my next prototype; I'm open to ideas if any reader has some.) Right away, that fixes the two-sided card problem, plus tiles will take up a lot less room on the board. My first prototype map was enormous (three-quarters of the dining room table), but now I have a way to scale everything down to much more manageable dimensions.
A lot went right in this play-through, though. The mechanic I came up with for pirates and rebellions works very well - significant enough to require some risk management, but not an outrageous random turn of fate that shifts the balance of the game. I think I like the way I have trade routes laid out on the map. There is a nice conundrum between shipping cheap timber in from colonies to build ships, or to pay for the timber in Europe at premium prices to save time. Many things seem to have worked right the first go-round on the table.
I think I should type out all the rules before my next play-through. I found that I kept changing the order of events in the market phase, which means I haven't got a clear idea of how it should really go. Putting it down in writing should clarify my thinking on that part of the game. I'm also happy with how the loan mechanism works. I had one "player" go into debt to finance an expedition, but the interest payments started exceeding his cash flow, to the point where he needed a subsequent loan just to finance the first debt. Classic money management problem.
The bottom line is that I've accomplished more in about three days with "East India Company" than I did in many months with "Gold on Mars." I'm really excited about this project. More to follow, I'm sure.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Sometimes it takes a whole new theme
Coins of the Modern East India Company of England Image courtesy of emeritus.ancients.info |
I've sketched out a basic map and typed up an initial set of cards, each of which describes a marketable product from a colony somewhere around the world. Players will seek to monopolize colonies, build ships, and find ideal trade routes to maximize profits. One element that I have just begun to consider is the ability to corner a market and how that might improve profitability. Trade with the most active colonies will be threatened by pirates as well.
I've pretty much got the entire concept in my head and the most crucial, numerical elements on paper. The next step is, naturally, a playable prototype, followed by playtesting. I'm hopeful that I've got a good concept that I can develop into a game that crosses commodities trading with pickup-and-deliver in a fun, approachable way.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Boardgames in the Backyard II: Discovering Perry Rhodan
(c) Z-man Games Used by permission |
We finally got it to the table during one of our few cocktail hours this week, in the backyard on a beautiful spring afternoon. (She had a French 75; I had a Margarita.) We discovered that Perry R. sets up very comfortably on our little outdoor table - a sun with a spiral scoring track, a row of six planets, and five goods cards alongside each planet. The game is compact, visually very appealing, and relatively quick to set up. We both picked up the rules fairly quickly. Money and victory points are equivalent; the first player to reach 70 currency units wins the game. (The names of the planets, the races, and even the unit of currency are ridiculous and nearly unpronounceable, so I won't bother to look them up and repeat them here.)
Agent Infiltration intervention card Image uploaded to boardgamegeek.com by David Gerrard |
Some interventions are innocuous, but others have a "take that" flavor, such as switching locations with your opponent or switching contents of containers. Kathy seemed to get the knack of the game first, but I found my groove and caught up to her after a few turns. The lead traded hands a few times before we had to stop the game prematurely for dinner. (We had a late start from having to learn the rules - not uncommon when we pick up a game for the first time).
So we came away with a very favorable impression of PR:TCL as a light, compact, fun game with quite a bit of nuance and tactics to keep it interesting. I think card luck might turn out to be a significant factor as we play it more, but tactical decision-making still seems to count heavily on the game progress. We look forward to trying it again.