At last, I've finished the second prototype of "East India Company," right down to the makeshift box art and player's aids. This will be the copy that I bring to Congress of Gamers in Rockville, Maryland, this weekend. I hope to gain a lot of feedback and really refine this rough cut gem into something special.
Ridere, ludere, hoc est vivere.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Prototype fever
Prototype art for English galleon game piece |
This evening I cut 25 "ships" out of the 1/16"-thick bass wood. The next step will be spray painting all the wooden pieces in the five player colors. I'm having a lot of fun spending time on the physical components; my first prototype was a very rudimentary hand-drawn paper affair - functional, not pretty. It's nice to take the time to put together something that I hope will be nice looking as well as fun to play.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Favorite 2011 game
In that spirit, my Best Board Game of 2011 is Trajan. Last Will is a close second. Lots of games tied for third. Lots more unplayed.
So as it happens, I bought seven games published in 2011:
- Band of Brothers: Screaming Eagles
- Belfort
- Scrabble Turbo Slam
- Sour Apples to Apples
- Star Fluxx
- Struggle for Catan
- Trains Planes and Automobiles
But my favorite game of this list would have to be Belfort. That's a game that has some depth and potential. It's funny to find myself picking this game as my top acquisition of 2011 publications, given that Kathy and I found it less than satisfying as a two-player game. But I was so impressed with it in the five-player session after work last week that I think it deserves top billing for last year's releases.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Battle Line in the Back Yard
Back yard setting for Battle Line |
I really like this game. In fact, I'd go so far as to say Battle Line is my favorite Knizia game. It's perhaps the most knife-edge card game I know. You really never want to waste a move in this game, never want to make an unnecessary commitment of a card to a slot. It's playing the odds, it's card luck, but mostly, it's calculated risk-taking. Not exactly a push-your-luck game, BL is really a strategic game of options and opportunity cost.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Prototype progress
The last week has seen a lot of preparation for Congress of Gamers and the UnPub ProtoZone event on Columbus Day weekend in Rockville, Maryland. I've been putting together a new prototype for "East India Company" in anticipation of getting some playtesting and exposure of the game in an exhibition environment. My son helped me with the basics of Adobe Photoshop to put together a nice map layout. I've got an order in to Superior Print-on-demand (Superior POD) for a mounted version of the mapboard that I hope will be ready in time for CoG. Meanwhile I've been assembling materials to make up some nice game pieces. So it has all been coming together, and I look forward to showing off my work-in-progress.
My focus has been more on constructing the prototype than on refining the gameplay, so the rules tweaks that will be in place are the ones I identified at the last round of playtesting at WBC. I hope to get more comments and improvements out of the CoG designers room. From there I should get a sense of how close to pitch-ready the game really is. I'm getting pretty excited about EIC, and I look forward to sharing my excitement in a couple of weeks.
My focus has been more on constructing the prototype than on refining the gameplay, so the rules tweaks that will be in place are the ones I identified at the last round of playtesting at WBC. I hope to get more comments and improvements out of the CoG designers room. From there I should get a sense of how close to pitch-ready the game really is. I'm getting pretty excited about EIC, and I look forward to sharing my excitement in a couple of weeks.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Building Belfort
(c) Tasty Minstrel Games Used by permission |
Most of us are fairly familiar with the usual Euro game mechanics, and we found that Belfort is replete with those worker-placing, resource-gathering, building-constructing, area-occupying, hand-managing functions that characterize the genre. Oh, and there's elves and dwarves and gnomes. (Sure, why not?) I'd set up the game by the time the fifth of us arrived, so we launched right into rules explanation and got started. We had the occasional, "oh, I didn't know that" moments where yours truly hadn't quite explained the rules clearly (although I swear I said everything I said I said), but generally the gameplay went well.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Was Alexander the Great a runaway leader?
This afternoon, Kathy and I played Alexandros (designer Leo Colovini, art by Grafik Studio Krüger [website in German], publisher Rio Grande), which was a gift from some years ago. Although we hadn't played in a while, we've both done well against each other, so it was fun to bring back to the table.
Alexandros is a semi-thematic game of area control and card management with an interesting mechanism for moving the neutral Alexander piece around the map of his empire and carving it up into provinces for the players to occupy and tax. The map is clearly recognizable as a representation of the extent of Alexander's empire, and the roles of the players as generals fits with the historical fracturing of his empire. Beyond that and the Hellenistic iconography, the game is fairly abstract. The decision space isn't very large, but it can be a brain-burner.
Alexandros is a semi-thematic game of area control and card management with an interesting mechanism for moving the neutral Alexander piece around the map of his empire and carving it up into provinces for the players to occupy and tax. The map is clearly recognizable as a representation of the extent of Alexander's empire, and the roles of the players as generals fits with the historical fracturing of his empire. Beyond that and the Hellenistic iconography, the game is fairly abstract. The decision space isn't very large, but it can be a brain-burner.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
Boardgame landscape 76 years ago
Last year I wrote about the shortcomings of Monopoly as a case study for game design. I caveated my criticism of the game with the observation that it is still among the best-selling games of all time. One reader commented that there might not have been a lot of competition for Monopoly when it first caught fire as an American staple. Re-reading that post inspired me to have a look at what boardgame options were available back when Parker Brothers introduced Boardwalk and Park Place to the gaming public.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Labor Day weekend gaming
We marked the three-day Labor Day weekend celebrating American workers with several boardgaming sessions. (In other words, we commemorated work by playing.)
Friday evening, Kathy and I had our friend Theresa H. over for a game of Puerto Rico, one of our very favorites but one that we seldom get to play in its original three-to-five player form. The three of us ended up very close in shipping and building points, but Kathy won with a strong showing of bonus points from the fortress and city hall.
Image courtesy of Rio Grande Games |
Saturday, September 1, 2012
Thought processes and algorithms
I was recently asked to help design the Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithm for an iOS app based on a boardgame with which I am familiar.
[I admit to a pet peeve regarding the use of the term "AI" to represent algorithm-driven characters and players in computer games. I consider Artificial Intelligence to be much more sophisticated than simple state-driven rule sets. Few if any computer and video games are truly artificially intelligent. But that's okay. I accept the terminology for what it is - adulteration of the English language. There. I've said it. Now I can let it go.]
[I admit to a pet peeve regarding the use of the term "AI" to represent algorithm-driven characters and players in computer games. I consider Artificial Intelligence to be much more sophisticated than simple state-driven rule sets. Few if any computer and video games are truly artificially intelligent. But that's okay. I accept the terminology for what it is - adulteration of the English language. There. I've said it. Now I can let it go.]
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Worker placement gold standard - another Agricola session
It seems that I can never talk about worker-placement games without comparing them to Agricola (designer Uwe Rosenberg, artist Klemens Franz, publisher Z-Man), which I guess was my first introduction to the genre and the one nearest to my gaming heart. It has become the standard against which I measure all other worker-placement games. Tonight, Kathy and I decided to drag it to the table again, and this old favorite still satisfies as much as it ever did.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Worker placement - comparison and contrast
My wife Kathy and I have played two worker-placement games in the past three days, and we've come to form very different opinions about the two of them.
Friday we played Belfort (designers Bamboozle Brothers Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim, artist Joshua Cappel, publisher Tasty Minstrel), which I'd put high on my wishlist based on a number of strong recommendations. The appeal of Belfort is clear - it combines a number of Euro-game elements in a rather interesting format. DiceHateMe Games called it the Game of the Year for 2011. There is some area control going on, resource optimization, construction - all the things you expect in a Euro game these days.
(c) Tasty Minstrel Games Used by permission |
Friday, August 24, 2012
American battleships at Midway
Wednesday afternoon, my friend and colleague Frank H. and I got together after work for our re-match in Midway (designers Larry Pinsky and Lindsley Schutz, publisher Avalon Hill). We first clashed over the Pacific in June, when I played the Americans and Frank the Japanese. This time, we switched roles, so that I commanded the forces of the Imperial Japanese Navy and Frank those of the United States Navy.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Lemming luncheon
My wife Kathy, my eleven-year-old son, and I inaugurated one of my WBC acquisitions this evening -- the light-hearted Leaping Lemmings (designers John Poniske and Rick Young, artists Rodger MacGowan, Leona Preston, and Mark Simonitch, publisher GMT). This fox-and-geese variation is actually a symmetric game, in which each player has a faction of lemmings seeking to evade the eagles, whose control rotates among the players.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
The game time conundrum
This isn't a new problem, but it's a problem that has recently really come sharply into focus. I've been playing plenty of two-player games at home, and several multi-player Euros with friends. But a number of other games and genres have caught my attention on which I'd like to spend more time and energy:
Friday, August 17, 2012
WBC: Acquire and acquisitions
Early in our game of Acquire. I had a majority holding in Worldwide (the purple hotel to the right), but that wasn't enough to prevail |
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
WBC: Designers' forum
One of the great things about a convention like the World Boardgaming Championships is having the opportunity to interact with fellow designers. The open gaming room at WBC was practically an informal design laboratory of demonstrations and playtesting.
My friend Keith F. and I had only the briefest chat with one of my favorite designers, T.C. Petty III, whom I met at WBC last year when he was demonstrating the semi-cooperative Viva Java, a game that has already seen its successful Kickstarter campaign and has a Dice Hate Me release expected this month. T.C. is working on a couple of ideas that sound characteristically original and off-beat. It will be fun to see what creations find their way to production out of his unique perspective on game design.
TC Petty III's Viva Java Image courtesy of Dice Hate Me Games |
Sunday, August 12, 2012
WBC: Wooden Ships semifinal and final
I was pleased to qualify for the semifinal in the World Boardgaming Championships Wooden Ships and Iron Men tournament. The previous year, I'd lost in the semi-final to Evan Hitchings, and as it happened, this year would provide the opportunity for a rematch.
Semi-final: Frigate frenzy
For the semi-final, we were each given the opportunity to choose from among three orders of battle:
Semi-final: Frigate frenzy
For the semi-final, we were each given the opportunity to choose from among three orders of battle:
- Two elite-crewed American frigates, including one 44-gun ship
- Three crack-crewed British frigates
- Four French frigates - one crack and three average
Friday, August 10, 2012
WBC: When ships were made of wood
The Wooden Ships and Iron Men tournament has become an enduring staple of my experience at World Boardgaming Championships. My post a few days ago described my loss in a one-on-one engagement, but I enjoyed a fair degree of success later in the competition.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
WBC: "Ethics in Gaming" revisited
At WBC on Thursday last week, Joel Tamburo hosted his annual seminar on Ethics in Gaming. This was my second opportunity to attend.
I arrived a little late and found myself in the middle of a conversation on the interpretation of rules
ambiguities. Not entirely a matter of ethics, the question on the floor seemed to center around whether an unaddressed action in the rules should be allowed (because the rules don't prevent it) or prohibited (because the rules don't allow it or provide for it). Peter, an attorney, likened the question to that of Constitutional interpretation, whereby some people hold that rulings on Constitutionality ought to depend on the intent of the founders at the time that they wrote it, as best we can determine from other writings at the time. Others hold that interpretation of the Constitution necessarily changes with the times, and so it is with game rules: It doesn't matter how the game designer wanted you to play the game; what matters is how the players want to play. So, then, the question became, does the designer's intent matter?
Signing of the Constitution of the United States U.S. Government. Public domain |
Monday, August 6, 2012
World Boardgaming Championships: Wonders, ships, and farmers
Last Thursday, I arrived at the World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with a "flexible plan" (which is just one step above no plan at all) of how best to enjoy this annual trek to the highlight event of the Boardgame Players Association.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)