Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Final preparations for WBC
The first four are among my favorite games; the last two are new to me, and I look forward to learning about them.
I welcome comments from others already at WBC or planning to go. Let me know what you're most looking forward to!
Games that even the in-laws can play
First of all, I gave my in-laws a copy of Trains Planes and Automobiles and took the opportunity to show it off in true family-game fashion. Although billed as a game for two to six players, I included an optional rule for seven or eight players. So with both in-laws, three sons, my wife, and myself, we launched into a seven-player session - the only shortcoming being that I had to provide a spare game piece from another game to accommodate the seventh player. I must say that as the game designer, I do very badly at my own game. I kept chasing stories in locations accessible only by automobile - Vicksburg, Ciudad Juarez, and Phoenix* - while others jetted around from airport to airport, racking up assignments. My oldest son Patrick overcame a late start and beat everybody to the final assignment to win the game. I have to say, we all had a great time, and I'm really hoping to be able to demonstrate this game in the Junior Events room at World Boardgaming Championships in Lancaster, Pennsylvania starting tomorrow.
So the in-laws' visit became a smorgasbord of boardgaming fun. The summer heat was never really a factor as we found great entertainment right in our own home and in the good company of family. And that's what vacations are really all about.
* Now, I should note that I'm perfectly aware that you can fly to any of these places today, and might even have been able to do so fifty years ago. But for purposes of making TPA interesting, I only put airports in about a third of all cities on the map, and provided rail service only to another third. So there are many cities on the map that, in the game, can only be reached by car. That's what makes it a challenge.
Monday, August 1, 2011
What doesn't work - Monopoly as a case study
Image courtesy of Hasbro |
[Now, we have to keep in mind that Monopoly is the best-selling boardgame of all time, a consideration that I will entertain in another post.]
What makes Monopoly take too long? The game-ending condition is, frankly, merciless: The game ends when all players but one have run out of money. This characteristic brings to mind the original Risk, also lengthy because it demands conquest of the entire map to end the game. In the case of Monopoly, there are other factors that serve to perpetuate the game as well. The number of developed monopolies that players build will drive the pace of the game. If there are too few monopolies, people end up moving around the board paying small amounts of rent and collecting $200 at every "Go." In that case, the total amount of money in play can gradually increase for everybody, and nobody approaches bankruptcy. By contrast, several high-rent monopolies on the board will drive people to bankruptcy quickly; so once players start building houses and hotels in earnest, sooner or later, somebody is going to go under.
My father-in-law pointed out a second aspect of Monopoly that he doesn't like that can be summarized as "the runaway leader problem." If one person is lucky enough to acquire and develop a monopoly long before anyone else, he can develop a commanding lead, to the point that no one can do any serious damage to him, and everyone else will be unable to develop their own monopolies or go bankrupt trying to do so. The game becomes an exercise in inevitability - watching one real estate empire swallow up all the little guys.
A third reason that Monopoly can fail to be fun is that it often devolves into a long series of roll-and-move with no serious decision-making. In the early game, players roll and move to acquire property with no real thought required. In the mid-game, as players assemble monopolies, they face decisions regarding how many houses to build vs. how much cash to keep in reserve. But once everybody's property is fully developed, the game boils down to one of dice luck - I win if you land on my hotels before I land on yours. If most of the game is dice luck, it becomes a laborious version of Chutes and Ladders.
But I think there's more to the game than that. I've come to realize that Monopoly is a game of property valuation. Once players decide that obtaining a monopoly - and especially, being the first player to obtain a monopoly - is the key to winning, then trading becomes very important. And therein lies the crux of the game. If I offer you Boardwalk and you already have Park Place, what do I demand in return? What should I be willing to give up for Mediterranean Avenue if I have Baltic Avenue? Should I take my opponent's cash reserve into account if the deal gives him or her a monopoly on which to build houses?
Once these deals are made, then the real estate landscape is in place, and your rent-collection profile is a product of the way you valued the property you took vs. the property you gave up. But again, at that point, once all the deals are done and everybody has reached an equilibrium point, we're back to dice luck. Who lands on whose property first?
Settlers of Catan, the quick, fun barter-economy game |
Let's consider what that "tipping point" might look like: If a player owned all the property on the board, the highest revenue configuration of 12 hotels and 32 houses would be hotels on the dark blue, green, yellow, and red monopolies and New York Avenue, and four houses each on Tennessee Avenue, St. James Avenue, the violet monopoly, and the light blue monopoly. In that configuration, the total rent for all property on the board would be $20,802. It might be reasonable to expect that if one player achieves half that revenue potential, then the game is close to a foregone conclusion.
So perhaps a new game-ending victory condition would be if any player achieves a total rent of $10,400 across all owned property. I haven't playtested this idea, but it might serve to make the end-game a little more merciful.
What started this essay as a consideration of perceived design flaws led to an idea to tweak a time-tested popular game. The fact that Hasbro managed to make fundamental improvements to Risk (discussed in a previous post) suggests that even the best-selling games might bear changes to fix the most compelling complaints.
*Although Hasbro lists Charles Darrow as the sole designer, there is significant research to suggest that Darrow based his submission to Parker Brothers on designs by several other people of a number of similar games, most notably The Landlord's Game by Elizabeth Magie Phillips.
Friday, July 29, 2011
What to pack for a vacation
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.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Thoughts on approachability
Image courtesy of Rio Grande Games |
I was very methodical in going through the rules myself and then reviewing them with Kathy. I think as we played the first time through, we agreed that we understood the mechanics of the game, and the goals, and even how to devise a strategy. The thing we found frustrating in our first play-through was the abundance and density of symbols on the cards and their varied significance. I think we went around two or three times on how the "Contact Specialist" worked. I'm sure veterans of this game are used to the conventions and know what to look for and how to apply the symbols to the game mechanics, but we were each struggling to understand what we were looking at as we played along. Both of us are confident, though, that's a game that we can learn and come to appreciate. I'm looking forward to trying again.
There's a lesson here somewhere for me as a game designer, I think. It's one thing to have a game that is complete in its rules integrity and components, that is a beautiful construct in both form and function, that aficionados come to appreciate for subtlety, nuance, and replayability. But what about a game's approachability to the novice? The analogy I think of is a mansion on a mountaintop. It can be a marvelous engineering construction, stunning in appearance, awe-inspiring in surroundings, luxurious in furnishings ... but if visitors have to climb a rock face to get there and appreciate it, not many people will try. So I'm coming to appreciate that even an intriciate, complex game needs to have a welcome mat, an entrance ramp, some way of introducing the novice to the game.
Agricola family board |
I don't know; am I asking too much? Is it reasonable that a gamer should struggle with a game the first time through, until they say, "oh, that's how that rule works," or "that's what that card does"? Every first-time player of Agricola goes through this, surely. It's not that I want to play simple games; I just don't want learning a new game to be a struggle.
Monday, July 25, 2011
The mystery of play balance
Friday, July 22, 2011
Arrival of Trains Planes and Automobiles
Trains Planes and Automobiles box art |
Assignment card |
Travel card |
Both my sons (ten and 15 years old) said several times that they really had fun playing the game. I think the gameplay is a nice balance of hand management, racing for goals while disrupting your opponent, and a little card luck as well. There's no run-away leader, as there are some balancing mechanisms for trailing players to take action to stay in the game. All in all, I have to say that I am pleased at how much fun TPA turned out to be, and the kids think so to. I think this can be a real "family game night" hit.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
World Boardgaming Championships coming in August
Even more than playing, though, I anticipate meeting people in the game design and publishing business. I'm fascinated by different philosophies that govern how people approach game design, and I look forward to engaging designers and developers in the industry to find out how the bring new titles from concept to market. Clearly the various categories and types of games require different emphases and approaches, but I'm curious to explore differences among the way people design and develop games even within the same genre. It would be particularly illuminating to find what distinguishes the makers of some of my favorite games (Z-man for example). I suppose I'd like to learn how best to design the kind of game I like to play.
Britannia, designed by Dr. Lewis Pulsipher |
I am already making long-range plans for WBC 2012. My intention for next year is two-fold: To run Trains Planes and Automobiles as an official Juniors Event at WBC, and to bring a playable prototype of my space-mining game for playtesting or perhaps even demonstration to a potential publisher.
It's good to have a focus.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Maybe Werewolf beats Resistance after all
Image used by permission of Indie Boards and Cards |
(c) Looney Labs Used by permission |
How popular was this game with the family? Well, my brother Brenden wants me to order a copy for him, and my brother Pete plans to order two copies - one for himself and one for his girlfriend, whose family apparently enjoys playing games. I feel as though I should get some kind of discount from Looney Labs on my next order from them for all the business we generated...
Friday, July 15, 2011
Social media
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
He who will not Risk
1980 reprint of the 1959 classic (but lengthy) Risk |
2008 Revised (and much more enjoyable) Edition of Risk |
In our three-player game, my capital was in Greenland, my son's in Australia, and his friend's in Argentina. My son easily took over Australia and moved quickly into southern Asia. In so doing he completed the "Control 18 territories" objective. His friend took over South America and a substantial chunk of North America. I sought my first objective by taking over all of Europe, and succeeded only on my last dice roll. So I was in a pretty vulnerable position even after my end-of-turn redeployment, and feared that my son's Asian army would roll into Russia.
My son smelled blood in Asia, however, and ignored me in favor of trying to take over the continent. His friend started the game with a strong holding in Japan, however, and would not fall, so my son's Asian campaign stalled. His friend sought to finish taking over North America, but he, too, could not complete the task. As a result, my European position remained unperturbed, which made my next decision rather straightforward - to take over Africa. Europe gave me five additional armies, and I started everything in central Africa, whence came the great tide. Once I'd conquered Africa, I agonized over whether to jump the Atlantic and attack Brazil to break up the South American stronghold - but that position wouldn't have been as strong (given the way I left my armies) as it was to attack the Middle East and shore up the defense of my eastern border. At the end of my turn, I'd taken over my second continent and thus completed my second objective ("Control two continents").
My son and his friend discussed the fact that I held everything from South Africa to Greenland and ought to be squeezed from both sides. It certainly would have made sense at that point in the game - after only two turns, when I held two objectives of three needed to win - to gang up on me and take apart my continental holdings. Strangely, however, the desire to control Asia still consumed my son, and after re-taking the Middle East, he turned away from European Russia and instead attacked his friend's holdings, east across the steppes. His friend then nearly took over North America at that point, but I held my ground in Greenland. At that point, my continental holdings still remained intact, and I started my third turn with 16 armies and seven cities. The next step was obvious. I attacked Brazil to obtain my eighth city and third objective, to win the game.
So I won in three turns, largely I think because my son and his friend allowed their own agendas (occupation of Asia and North America, respectively) to distract them from stopping me from winning. Nevertheless, I came away convinced more than ever that this re-vamping of Risk has breathed new life into an old classic and made it a fun game to play, far more fun that the original ever was.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Sacked in Citadels
A couple of weeks ago, our good friends Sheila and Keith invited us and our friend Jeff over for dinner and games. The five of us played Citadels (designer Bruno Faidutti, publisher Fantasy Flight Games), which turned out to be terrific fun. As it happened, Sheila had an extra copy, so we went home with Citadels as a kind of door prize. Later we learned that she and Keith had been playing two-player and really enjoying it, so we tried it ourselves this evening.
Citadels has become my favorite game of all - even over 7 Wonders. The brilliance of the game is in the role selection and sequential role resolution. When the five of us played, we all seemed to value the Architect most of all for the two free cards he'd offer - until someone would always select the Assassin and kill the Architect. That seemed to be de riguer in our session that night. So then people would shy away from the Architect unless they had some reason to believe that they wouldn't be assassinated. There was a lot of second-guessing, and at one point I had a particularly lucky turn when I selected the thief with the expectation that Sheila (who had six gold pieces) would select the Magician for his card-exchange ability (because she kept complaining about her cards). My bet paid off, and Sheila was set back more than a turn in building construction when I took her stack of money away. (If looks could kill .... :-) )
So, fast forward to this evening: Kathy and I decided to try the two-player variant ourselves, in which each player ends up with two roles. The brilliance of the two-player game is that you can usually narrow down your opponent's likely roles to two out of four possibilities. There is often a kind of, "you expect me to take the merchant, so I should take the bishop, except that you know I know you expect me to take the merchant, so you think I'll take the bishop, so I should take the merchant..."
Kathy's winning Citadel at the base of her wineglass |
I really, really like this game. I am surprised it has not caught on at PrezCon nor at the World Boardgaming Championships. Maybe I should do something about that.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Poor Man's Resistance
(1) this game of hidden identity and "social deduction" should beat Are You a Werewolf? hands down (no small feat, since I'm a huge Werewolf fan) and
(2) this game can be played easily with a small subset of a normal deck of cards.
The game is designed for five to ten players. Players secretly determine their identities as rebels (attempting to conduct missions) or spies (attempting to sabotage the rebels' efforts) as follows: From a normal deck of cards, select a number of face cards equal to the number of players such that a third of the cards (rounded up) are red face cards and the remainder are black face cards. Shuffle the selected face cards and deal them face down, one to each player. Each player looks at his or her face card to determine whether he or she is a rebel (black) or spy (red). These secret identity cards remain face down in front of the players for the remainder of the game.
One player is randomly selected as the leader. Players shield their eyes so that no one can see any of the others. The leader announces, "spies reveal," and the spies (only) open their eyes and look to see who their fellow spies are. The leader announces, "spies hide," and the spies close their eyes. The leader announces "everyone open," and all players open their eyes and begin the game. By this procedure, all spies should know who all the spies are (and therefore who all the rebels are), whereas each rebel knows only his own identity. Unlike Werewolf, this is the only occasion in the game when it will be necessary for players to cover their eyes.
The remainder of the game consists of a series of missions. For each mission, the leader assigns several players to participate in the mission. The number of people that the leader assigns depends on both the number of players in the game and the mission number to be executed; it varies from two to three players (in the first attempted mission) to three to five players (in the fifth attempted mission) and can be discerned in the table appearing in an image of the gameboard posted on boardgamegeek.
Once the mission team has been selected, players vote openly whether to approve or disapprove the selected mission team. [Edited for correctness. In my original post, I mistakenly indicated that the vote to approve or disapprove the mission team was done by secret ballot. - PDO]
If the mission team has been disapproved, the mission is aborted, the role of leader rotates one player to the left, and play resumes as above with the new leader assigning a new mission team to be voted on again by all the players. (Note that the aborted mission does not "count" as an attempted mission, so the number of players on the mission team does not change.) If five consecutive missions are aborted, then the game is over, and the spies win.
If the mission team has been approved, then the mission team members (only) each get one red non-face card and one black non-face card. From these two cards, each mission team member secretly selects a card to execute (black) or sabotage (red) the mission. Each mission team member turns in his vote face-down to the leader, who shuffles the votes and then turns them face up to determine whether the mission succeeds (all black) or fails (at least one red). There is an exception to the requirements for a successful mission: In games of at least seven players, on the fourth mission only, at least two sabotage (red) votes are required to cause a mission to fail.
If this was the third successful mission, then the game is over, and the rebels win. If this was the third failed mission, then the game is over, and the spies win. Otherwise, the role of leader rotates one player to the left, and play resumes as above with the new leader assigning a new mission team to be voted on by all the players.
The brilliance of this game relative to Werewolf is that it requires no referee (i.e. everybody gets to play) and - most important to me - does not eliminate players over the course of the game. Also nice is that it is only necessary for players to cover their eyes once at the beginning of the game to allow spies to identify one another (unlike Werewolf, which requires players to close their eyes in every round).
The reviews I have read and seen are quite exciting, and I look forward to trying this game out with a decent-sized group.
I should add that the original game comes with a small expansion set of cards that provide the leader with some additional "powers" to make the game more interesting, so there's motivation for buying the game regardless.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Release of the eagerly awaited Trains Planes and Automobiles
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Busted by blue bacillus
Blue outbreaks overwhelm our feeble efforts to control the disease. |
Pandemic really is a fun game, and the nice thing is that our kids will sometimes join us as well. I think this will become something of a family favorite.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Latest on the Eagerly Awaited Game
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Two-player Wonders
Kathy had the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus ('B' side), and I had the Statue of Zeus ('A' side). Interestingly, Kathy spent nearly all six turns in the first age acquiring different resource-producing structures, largely because the Mausoleum demands a lot of variety to build the three stages. I started early with a military strategy, which worked for the first age, but Kathy responded with two military cards in the second age, and stayed ahead of me thereafter.
Kathy's impressive array of blue civil structures at the foot of her wine glass |
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Chicago Cribbage - a new appreciation
Friday, May 20, 2011
Pounded again in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico with enhanced players' aids |
We each started with indigo, and for some reason I got completely wrapped up in the idea of maximizing my building points, even to the point of neglecting basic production. Kathy, meanwhile, seized upon what I thought was a rather clever combination to put together an impressive strategy. She was the first to grab a bonus-point building, the Fortress, relatively early in the game. Later she picked up the Hospice (one of her favorites) and the University (usually one of mine, yet one that I inexplicably declined to buy despite my building-focused strategy). Once they were occupied, it was clear that hers was a population-based strategy. Every Mayor, Builder, or Settler phase meant that she would get at least one more colonist. As a result, her Fortress racked up seven bonus points by the end of the game.
My ending position - lots of quarries and buildings, relatively little production |
I think in general my building choices were misguided almost throughout the game. I had two sugar plantations but never bought a Sugar Mill until it was too late. I mentioned that I never picked up the University, which I usually like to do. And I'm starting to take more seriously my friend Grant's contention that a fourth Quarry doesn't pay off. I've always liked it for the big building discount, but now I'm not so sure.
Kathy's strong finish - 34 shipping points! |
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Pandemic infects our family
I had read an intriguing review of the co-op game Pandemic (designer Matt Leacock, publisher Z-Man Games) that prompted me to put it on the top of my list, largely because it seems to work well for two players as well as for more. I went to Game Parlor Chantilly looking for it but was told that it was "between print runs," so they didn't know when they would get another one in. So, off to eBay I went to get a copy, used if necessary.
Success! It arrived last week, and right away I knew I would like this game. The production quality is very nice (no surprise, coming from Z-Man), with a strong bio-technology art theme as well as a cosmopolitan, world-travel flavor. I inventoried the game parts and came up short one Infection card, which hasn't noticeable affected the game play. (I contacted Z-man, and it looks as though they should be able to provide a replacement. The eBay vendor, Longhighdeepflyball, very graciously offered to refund my entire payment, but that seemed unfair to him and unnecessary, really.) I had only played one co-op game before, Castle Panic, which was great fun with the kids. I looked forward to trying out this highly-recommended game.
I was not disappointed. Kathy and I played our first session soon after it arrived. She played as the Scientist, I as the Operations Specialist. We played the Introductory game, in which all of our cards were face up and there were only four Epidemic cards in the Player Deck. We got the hang of the game without too much difficulty and really enjoyed the tension of racing against the spread of disease as well as the co-operative aspect of the game.
We recruited my 15- and 10-year-old sons to join us on Saturday, and because it was their first opportunity, again we played the Introductory game. Liam was the Scientist, Kathy the Medic, Corey the Researcher, and I reprised as Operations Specialist. We had a fair number of outbreaks, and the Player Deck started running low, but we managed to find all the cures and win the game. The kids really liked it.
Despite complaints I've read that the game tends to get repetitive, it seems to me that there would be a lot of replay value in two respects. First, each player plays one role for the entire game, so every game has the potential to be different, at least until you've played all the roles once or twice. Second, infections in a given game tend to congregate in the same regions over the course of one game (since every Epidemic causes the infection to "intensify," putting the same Infection cards back into play at the top of the deck). So I would imagine that each game provides a new regional challenge. We'll see whether my expectation bears out.
Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to trying it out at a more challenging level...
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Poor Man's Court of the Medici
Set-up
Remove one black king, one red king, and both jokers from a standard deck.
One player gets the 25 remaining black cards; the other the 25 remaining red cards.
Each player shuffles his or her respective cards and lays out four in the middle of the table to form an "Inner Court" of eight cards.
Each player also deals himself or herself a hand of five cards.
The player whose Inner Court has the higher total (Jesters treated as "one") goes first.
Card descriptions
Queens are treated as "Ministers," which are worth zero points but have special abilities.
Aces are treated as "Ladies-in-waiting," worth one.
Jacks are treated as "Jesters," wild cards from one to ten in value.
Kings are treated as "Dukes," worth 15.
All other cards are worth their face value.
Play
In a turn, a player plays a card from the hand to the table, then draws a new card from the deck to the hand.
Playing a card can take one of the following four actions:
1. Play a card alone to the table in front of himself or herself as part of the "Outer Court."
2. Play a card on top of an existing card - Inner or Outer Court, of either color - to build an alliance. (The card is played in an overlapping manner so that the value[s] of the card[s] beneath can still be seen.)
3. Play a card on top of an existing card so that the new total value of the alliance equals that of any other alliance or of a solitary card anywhere on the table to form a conspiracy. The alliance or solitary card whose value was matched is now discarded from the game.
4. "Plan for the future" by taking a card from the hand and placing it on the bottom of the deck, then drawing a replacement from the top of the deck.
Special abilities of cards
When building an alliance, a Minister may be used to discard all other cards in that alliance.
When building an alliance, a Lady-in-waiting may be used to disperse all other cards in that alliance as separate, stand-alone cards in the respective Inner or Outer Court.
When played, a Jester assumes a value from 1 to 10 declared by the person playing it at the time.
When a Jester is played to form a conspiracy, the person playing it may also declare a new value for one other Jester already on the table.
Game end
If both players "plan for the future" three times in a row, the game ends in a draw.
When one player has no cards in the Inner Court or when both players have no more cards to play, the game ends, and whoever has more points on the table wins.
I look forward to trying this out with my wife soon.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Mother's Day in the Museum
This 1991 title was a gift from one of my siblings many years ago, and it has become an old reliable family favorite in my house. Despite the title, this game is not at all a variant of the traditional and familiar Clue. Rather, the game is a terrific mix of co-operative and competitive gaming. Each player gets one chance to be the art thief, who by hidden movement attempts to make his or her way through the museum, steal paintings, and escape the other three players, who attempt to coordinate their efforts to catch the burglar. The player who escapes with the most paintings in his or her opportunity as the thief wins the game.
The non-thief players ("detectives") can coordinate their efforts and have at their disposal video cameras and motion detectors, but the sensors don't all work at the same time and they are not sufficiently numerous to cover all the paintings vulnerable to theft, let alone all the numerous escape routes by which the thief can exit the museum. The thief can disable cameras and motion detectors and even turn off the power to the entire security system, but he or she can get cornered if careless and end up caught red-handed by the detectives.
The really exciting aspect of this game is the hidden movement. Sneaking around as the thief, who is always vulnerable to discovery and capture, makes for very suspenseful play. The other players, meanwhile, feel as though they are fumbling around, trying to find the burglar somewhere in the huge museum with limited lines of sight and inconsistently functioning cameras. The advantage goes to the last player to be the thief, because that person knows exactly how many paintings are necessary to win the game. Our customary family rule, therefore, is that players take turns as thief from oldest to youngest.
As the oldest at the table on Mother's Day, I was the thief first. I made my way through a back window into the center room of the museum, where I disabled a camera, then stole a painting. Everyone knew basically where I was once the first painting was removed (they are each alarmed and so alert the detectives when "lifted"). I was able to make my way into the red room in the back of the museum - my favorite escape route, as it has two doorways for entrances and two windows for exit. It also happened to have two paintings, so - in full view of the camera in that room - I stole both paintings in the red room. Luckily for me, the detectives were moving slowly (due to low die rolls) and the first window I tried was unlocked, so I was able to escape with three paintings.
That turned out to be enough, as it happened. When my wife was the thief, I happened to stumble upon her after only two turns and caught her before she laid her hands on a single painting. Each of our sons ended up getting trapped in a room - in my youngest son's case, the power room, when he tried to disable the entire security system. So as the only successful thief, I won the game (and some notoriety for catching Mom on Mother's Day).
It was admittedly a success born of a little dice luck and a little lucky guesswork, but that didn't take away from the fun and the suspense of playing. We really like this game.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Two packages arrive
(c) Worthington Publishing Used by permission |
Take Stock is an intriguing card game in which players attempt to accumulate shares and manipulate prices of the stocks of five companies. There are four rounds of play, but we were a little constrained for time and took a while to fully understand the rules, so we only completed one round. Players can play cards to increase the price of a stock, accumulate shares of a stock, or attempt to manipulate the market with event cards that can cause stock splits, audits, crashes, etc. Scores at the end of each round are based on total asset value of stocks held (price times number of shares for each stock).
(c) Z-man Games Used by permission |
Overall the game struck us as a little odd, but we both recognize that we probably didn't fully appreciate how to play the game, so we are likely to try it again fairly soon. It meets our criteria for "outside games on a nice day" (i.e. playable on deck furniture), so it's a good candidate as the weather improves.