Ridere, ludere, hoc est vivere.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Busted by blue bacillus

Kathy and I tried a two-player session of Pandemic on Tuesday afternoon.  This was, I think, our fourth or fifth game, and we're definitely still getting the hang of strategy in keeping the diseases under control.  Our first two games were two- and four-player Introductory games, which we won easily enough.  I think we won our first two-player Normal game as well.  We started to think the game was a little too easy - until we lost our first three-player Normal game a few weeks ago.

Blue outbreaks overwhelm our feeble
efforts to control the disease.
Well, our suspicions that this game really isn't as easy as it looks were confirmed.  In our latest effort, Kathy's Dispatcher and my Scientist were foiled despite our early discoveries of cures of the red and yellow diseases.  While we scrambled through southwestern Asia and Europe to treat the black and blue diseases, consecutive outbreaks in Toronto and Chicago consumed the entire supply of blue cubes and ended the game in defeat for the Centers of Disease Control (CDC).

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

My publisher tells me that they are awaiting delivery of the mapboards, the last component to assemble my Eagerly Awaited Game.  I haven't heard a peep about marketing other than the intent to release the game at the Origins Game Fair if they get the boards in time.  They don't want to kick off the website until they know they're ready to deliver, so we'll see what the actual release date is.  Once it's out, I intend to make sure everybody knows about it!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Two-player Wonders

My wife and I have finally got the hang of the two-player rules for 7 Wonders, currently my favorite game to play.  We played a session this afternoon, right around the time we made the transition from iced tea and iced coffee to wine and beer.

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
My fallback was going to be the blue civil buildings, but she raced ahead of me in those as well, in large part because she had such a variety of resource production as well as the benefit at each stage of her wonder of getting a free building out of the discard pile.  She was very aggressive about building blue civil high-point buildings - and keeping them out of my hands - as well as completing a set of three green technologies.  With all of that, she completely overcame the Mausoleum 'B' side's disadvantage of low point potential and beat me 58 points to 51.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Chicago Cribbage - a new appreciation

Kathy and I had an occasion that required a portable game yesterday, so she brought several options, and I settled on Chicago Cribbage, which I reviewed here once before.  In our previous games, we'd explored each of the Chicago cards in isolation as to optimum opportunities for play and the poker aspect of reading one's opponent's face to consider whether it's time to play a "gotcha" card like "Reverse Counting" or "Trade Hands."

In yesterday's session, another tactical consideration emerged - the use of Chicago cards as response actions.  Two combinations came up in yesterday's game.  First, we realized that the negative effects of a "Reverse Counting" card can be mitigated by playing "No Fifteens" when one's own hand would otherwise score heavily in fifteen-point combinations.  Now the order of play is important.  We'd already realized that a "Reverse Counting" is most effective when played on the dealer, who will count negative for both his hand and the crib.  But since the dealer's opportunity to play a Chicago card comes after his opponent's, he has the opportunity to respond with a "No Fifteens."  

Second, we'd already recognized that an advantageous situation in which to play "No Fifteens" is when one holds a hand that scores well but has no fifteens.  So a logical response by the dealer to "No Fifteens" is to play "Trade Hands," so as to take advantage of the opponent's well-prepared hand and otherwise-well-played "No Fifteens."  

Now that these counter-moves are evident, they become considerations for the non-dealer as to whether to play a Chicago card for which the dealer still holds the counter-card.  Similarly, that means that the counter-cards might be held in reserve rather than played aggressively.  

I'm finding that this conceptually simple variant on classic cribbage has layers of depth that I hadn't originally appreciated.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Pounded again in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico with
enhanced players' aids
My darling wife and I went to our old favorite, a two-player variant of Puerto Rico (designer Andreas Seyfarth, publisher Rio Grande) this afternoon.  Our games are typically a cocktail-hour custom, so our Puerto Rico set-up includes a couple of extra player-enhancing components.

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
My building strategy worked to the extent that I obtained two big buildings - the City Hall and the Customs House.  Now, the City Hall makes sense in a building-focused strategy and gave me five points at the end.  But the Guild Hall was gone by the time I was ready to buy a second big building, so I settled for the Customs House, which did me very little good since I wasn't producing much and therefore wasn't shipping much.  I was gratified that my wife didn't get it, though, because it turned out that she out-shipped me like crazy.

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!
So in the end, as it happens, my building strategy was for naught.  We tied in building points, and her bonus points were almost as good as mine.  But because her plantations were twice as productive as mine, and because she had the Harbor, she had over twice as many points from shipping as I did.  The final score was Kathy 61, Paul 43.

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

In another of my unintentional series of knock-offs using a deck of playing cards, I was recently acquainted with the two-player card game Court of the Medici, and it wasn't long before I came up with a way to play the game using a standard deck of playing cards.  (I will add that reviews of the physical quality of CotM are very good, so playing the game this way means you miss out on the artwork of Richard James and the Z-Man production quality.)

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

One of my wife's requests for Mother's Day was a family game.  Now, in my family, negotiating a consensus on a game to which everyone agrees is not easy.  I gave our two younger sons a list of 60 four-player games that we owned, that my wife likes, and that are age-appropriate for my youngest (ten-year-old) son.  I told them that they could each eliminate up to twenty games from the list.  That left twenty or so from which Kathy could choose.  She settled on three options, and from those the boys agreed to play Clue: The Great Museum Caper (designers John Labelle and Thomas and Dave Rabideau, publisher Parker Brothers).  (Surprisingly, this was not an easy process.)

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

This week the postal carrier brought two packages.  One was the long-awaited and just-released Boots on the Ground (designer Sean Cooke, publisher Worthington Games), pre-ordered last fall, which I will describe in a subsequent post, once my son Liam and I have a chance to break it in.  The other new arrival was Take Stock (designer Simon Hunt, publisher Z-Man), which I bought on sale from Tanga.com and which my wife Kathy and I tried out the day it arrived.

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
What seemed odd to us and took a while to understand was the round-ending trigger conditions.  A player has to run out of cards, or the price of one stock has to rise to a certain level, or the "Market Closed" card has to turn up from the event deck.  (This game-ending card is placed 11th from the bottom at the start of the game.)  Except in the last case, a player has to willingly force the end of the round.  When we played, we were preoccupied with increasing our portfolio value and so didn't try to end the round.  In retrospect, however, I can see how the goal might be to gain a reasonably significant lead against the opponent(s), then force the end of the round to lock in a leading score.

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.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Farming family style

Now that the weather is nicer, Kathy and I like to game out in the backyard.  Of course, deck furniture doesn't make for a lot of table space, so our options are limited.  One discovery we made last year is that we can play two-player Agricola family-style (meaning, without occupations or minor improvements) and just squeeze it onto the available surfaces.  And still have room for cocktails.

Family game board section
It's actually been a little while since we've played Agricola, and a long while since we've played it family-style.  I must say that this is a really elegant game when stripped down to its essentials.  There is very little left to chance, and you really have to know what you're doing against an experienced player.  (In the case of Kathy and me, we are nearly equally matched.)

In today's game, Kathy went long on major improvements.  She got a fireplace very early and fed her family a lot of sheep throughout the game.  She picked up the well about Round 8 or so, and very late picked up the stone oven just for the points.  She also renovated to a three-room stone house in the last round.  For my part, I got the grain farming going and picked up the clay oven early, so my family was eating a lot of baked bread for most of the game.  I got a jump on building rooms to the house and grew the family, and hoarded wood to build a lot of fences for animal breeding.  I never picked up a fireplace or cooking hearth, however, so I could never cook animals or vegetables.  I did pick up the basketmaker's workshop when I renovated to a four-room clay hut.

In the end I won by a single point, by virtue of having two leftover reed to gain a bonus point from the basketmaker's workshop.  It was anybody's game all the way through, and we were both happy with the way we played.  This is still one of my very favorite games of all.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

My top ten card games

Inspired by Dice Tower Episode 206, Chris Norwood (GamerChris) recently posted his favorite card games.  Since inspiration begets inspiration, I thought I'd explore the topic myself.

Before I get into my top ten list, I'll mention that the definition of a "card game" might be ambiguous. I think Alhambra qualifies, for example, because the card play (among four suits or "currencies" of a range of values) drives the purchase of the tiles that are placed for scoring. But I wouldn't include games that just "have cards in them," like Agricola or Clue, because card play isn't the primary aspect of the game (even if they are essential to the mechanics). I'm not sure how to write the definition of a "card game," but I'd be curious to know people's thoughts on which games are close to the frontier between card games and "other games" and how you decide on which side of the boundary a game falls.

My honorable mentions would include:

Chrononauts: A goofy title from Loony Labs that my wife really seems to like. I prefer Martian Fluxx, but this one is also a likeable game.

Incan Gold: I'm always fascinated by the way teenagers play push-your-luck games, so this is a fun one to play with my kids. I never know what they're going to do.

Guillotine: The artwork in this Wizards of the Coast title still makes me chuckle.

Triumvirate: A recent discovery that I am only beginning to appreciate

Mille Bornes is a nostalgic favorite that has fond memories going way back to when I was growing up.  It was a family favorite then and still sees the light of day from time to time even now.

So, my top ten card games:

10. Alhambra: I used to dislike this game because I thought it had a "run-away" aspect to it, in which an early leader was hard to catch. That is, until I thought I'd run away with a game in the PrezCon semifinals and then lost somehow in the final scoring. Perhaps I completely misplayed near the end, but I prefer to think that my worthy opponent had a more subtle appreciation for the game and how to score big without leading in many categories.

9. Munchkin: My kids have taken a sudden recent liking to this game, and I like anything I can get my kids to play. Another good one for laughs.

8. Empyrean, Inc. This is a regular go-to game for my wife and me, a surprise hit we received as a gift. We love this game so much that we started to wear the cards out, so I bought a backup copy.

7. Martian Fluxx: A genius little game from Loony Labs. What a crack-up.

6. Down in Flames III: Zero!: A very clever card-play mechanism for air combat

Image courtesy of
Rio Grande Games
5. Race for the Galaxy:  This is a game I want to like more than I do. My wife and I found all the symbols confusing and frustrating, and we haven't played it since. Having said that, I'd still like to try it with a fresh (patient) group and find out why people rave about it.  (San Juan is worth mentioning here as something we explored as an alternative to RftG, but I think we found it a little simplistic and perhaps disappointing. We kept thinking, "Why don't we just play Puerto Rico instead?") 

4. Battle Line: Great mind-bending game with my wife, except that she always wins.  What is up with that?

3. Condottiere: I haven't had a chance to play this nearly as much as I'd like. I fell in love with it in just one session. I wish I could play it a lot more to fully appreciate it.

2. Pacific Typhoon: Very fond of this game with a bigger group of people. I love the historical photographs. Very clever game-play structure that motivates some pretty lively negotiation.

1. 7 Wonders: Currently my favorite game of all. I will play this at the drop of a hat.  Will Wonders never cease?

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Poor Man's Triumvirate

I read Chris Norwood's recent post on Triumvirate, and it intrigued me enough to learn about the game.  I'm always on the look-out for new two-player games to try out with my wife.  On boardgamegeek.com, I found Ender Wiggin's review, which was sufficiently descriptive that I was able to reproduce the game play with a modified deck of regular playing cards (in true cheapskate fashion).

The premise of Triumvirate is that the players are playing cards to represent political machinations to place Caesar, Pompey, or Crassus on the throne as Emperor of Rome.  When one of the three nobles becomes Emperor, the game ends, and the player who has secretly pledged greater support to that noble house wins the game.

To assemble a knock-off for Triumvirate, I removed all the clubs, all the tens, and the two jokers from a normal deck of playing cards.  The three remaining suits - spades, hearts, diamonds - represent the three Roman noble houses of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.  The face cards in each suit are used to track the progress of each faction, so that when spades (or hearts or diamonds) wins a hand, the Jack of spades (or hearts or diamonds) is turned face up.  When spades wins a second hand, the Queen of spades is turned face up, and when spades wins a third hand, the King of spades is turned face up to indicate that the "leader of the house of spades" has won ascendancy as Emperor of Rome.

The Ace through nine of spades, hearts, and diamonds are used to win tricks on behalf of the three suits.  When three tricks are won in a single suit, that hand is over, that suit wins the hand, and that suit's next face card is turned face up to represent progress in that suit toward becoming Emperor.  The four, six, and eight of each suit are also eligible to use as "pledges" for the players each to secretly support one of the three factions.  At the end of the game, players reveal the cards they have pledged in each suit, and the player with the greater total in the "winning suit" wins the game.

The details of how to play each hand and how to win tricks are well described in Ender Wiggins review on boardgamegeek, so I won't belabor the mechanics here.

Kathy and I tried two games on Tuesday evening.  The first game was a learning game as we got familiar with the mechanics.  The second game gave us a little more appreciation for the tactics of vying for ascendancy and throwing support behind the faction you think will win while undermining your opponent's efforts to advance the faction to which you think he or she has pledged the most support.  In the end, we both agreed that it is an interesting game, but we didn't get as excited about it as we have about other games.  We'll probably try it again some time, but it won't be on our short list, at least not right away.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

SJW: Stuart's Raid (or, "I don't need you. I can lose all by myself.")

Monday my friend Paul R. and I got together for another session of Stonewall Jackson's Way at Game Parlor, Chantilly, VA.  We decided to try the micro-sized Scenario 3, "Stuart's Raid," dicing for side in the first game then switching sides and playing again.

General J.E.B. Stuart
Source:  www.sonofthesouth.net

From the game notes:  "This scenario simulates J.E.B. Stuart's 22 August cavalry raid against Pope's lifeline, the Orange and Alexandria Railroad.  This is a very simple scenario and should take only a few minutes to play.  Again, this is something of a hypothetical scenario as Stuart's raid actually encountered little opposition."  The three-day episode runs 22 - 24 August 1862 and occurs primarily in Fauquier County and northern Culpeper County, Virginia.  The Rappahannock River forms the boundary between the two counties.

In the first game, I had the Confederates, which consisted of F. Lee's cavalry brigade and J.E.B. Stuart, normally a corps commander but in this case simply an augmenting headquarters unit.  My Union opposition consisted of two cavalry regiments, 1st Maryland and 4th New York.  My objectives were to damage railroad stations at Catlett's Station and Warrenton Junction and to occupy Waterloo or White Sulphur Springs at the end of the three days.  Inflicting Union casualties also counted toward Confederate victory, whereas suffering Confederate casualties counted toward a Union victory.

The Confederate cavalry start the scenario on the north side of Wellford Ford on the Hazel River, about three miles west of its mouth on the Rappahannock.  Union cavalry start in White Sulphur Springs and Foxville, north along the Rappahannock on the far (east) shore.  Scenario restrictions prevent the Confederates from crossing the Rappahannock downstream of the Union position (unless it is at Kelly's Ford, a good seven miles south of the Hazel River, rather the long way around to the objective rail stations).  On the first day of the raid, scenario restrictions also prevent the Confederates from conducting an extended march and prevent the Union from moving at all.

My initial thought on reviewing the scenario was that if I had good dice rolls (for movement points) on the first day, I could swing north of the Union forces, cross the Rappahannock at Waterloo three miles north of White Sulphur Springs, then head for the Warrenton Branch Railroad and follow it east toward my two objective stations.  As it happened, my first roll was quite poor, and I feared that I would make insufficient progress on the first day.  Rather than leave the Union forces unmolested, I figured that F. Lee's brigade, which outnumbered the 4th New York three to one, could force its way through at White Sulphur Springs, bloody half the Union cavalry, and shorten the route to Warrenton Junction.

My thinking was seriously flawed.  My advantages of leadership and manpower were largely nullified by having to attack across the ford, and although I forced the enemy's retreat and occupied White Sulphur Springs, I ended up disorganizing my cavalry and exhausting my troops for the day.

On the second day, I gained the initiative but had to conduct an extended march by virtue of my troop's fatigue from the previous day's fighting.  As it happened, my die luck was poor, and I lost a third of my manpower from extended marching with a disorganized force.  Retaining the initiative, I elected to conduct a second extended march, seeking to regain lost ground toward my railroad objectives.  Again, poor die luck led to loss of another third of my original manpower on the extended march while disorganized, leaving me with but a third of my original manpower, and that completely exhausted.

And hereupon we realized the fatal error I had made.  In order to damage a rail station, I needed at least two combat factors (i.e. at least two-thirds of my original force size).  So here I was, having conducted a day of battle and a day of extended march, only to leave myself with a force too small to damage either of my objectives.  A quick analysis of the victory conditions led us to conclude that even if I wiped out the Union forces and occupied Waterloo or White Sulphur Springs at the end of the third day, the Union would win for having protected both railroad stations.

Thus I managed to lose the game without my opponent having to move a single piece.  If that's not an indictment of my cavalry operational skills, I don't know what is.

Next post:  We switch sides.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

She beat me again at Battle Line

Kathy and I broke out Battle Line again Sunday evening.  I had some pretty strong Tactics cards to work with, but on at least two occasions, I didn't use them early enough, and she managed to win flags that I was positioned to take if I'd used my Tactics cards more aggressively.  She ended up beating me pretty soundly, five flags to two.  I really, really haven't figured out how to win this game (at least not against my wife), but the great thing about it is, I love playing it.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Seven Wonders and Maori

Friday evening had two friends over for dinner and games.  Since it was Good Friday, Kathy made fettuccine with shrimp.  Jeff W. brought white wine; Rebecca E. brought strawberry chocolate mousse.  My ten-year-old serenaded us on the cello.  So how do you follow a meal like that?

With the seven wonders of the ancient world, of course.  Jeff had played 7 Wonders once before, but it was Rebecca's first time, so the first game was a learning opportunity (and a refresher for Jeff).  Rebecca had the Lighthouse at Alexandria, Jeff had the Pyramids at Giza, Kathy had the Statue of Zeus, and I had the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.  It was a great learning game, with very close final scores.  Kathy won the first game, in part by using the special ability of the Statue of Zeus to build the eight-point Temple for free.  Interestingly, no one played any significant number of green science cards in that game.

Lighthouse at Alexandria
Image courtesy of Repos Production
My experience with 7 Wonders is that once everybody has played the game one time through, all subsequent games go much quicker, and everybody seems to have a handle on what they're doing.  That was certainly true Friday night.  We randomized the wonders again for the second round, but Rebecca and Kathy ended up with Lighthouse and Zeus respectively again, and Jeff and I ended up trading Pyramids and Mausoleum.  Since everyone had neglected the green science buildings in the first game, I decided to try to capitalize on them in the second game and see how well I could do with them.  I ended up doing rather well in the sciences (two full sets of three for a total of 26 points) but grossly neglected my red military (minus six) and blue civics (one building for six points).  Rebecca, however, completely dominated the game, with strong showings in military, civics, and guilds (including the Strategist Guild, which earned her nine points - in no small part to my terrible military performance).  So, not bad for Rebecca her first time out.

We wrapped up the evening with Maori (designer Gunter Burkhardt, publisher Rio Grande), a game I learned in a pick-up session at Congress of Gamers a year and a half ago that has become a favorite in my family.  Each player places tiles (or "discovers islands") in his or her own array (rather like Alhambra), but with a unique tile selection mechanic.  Sixteen tiles are arranged in the center of the table, around which the players move a canoe to determine which tile to choose.  A particularly desirable tile that can't be reached for free can be obtained by spending shells (the currency of the Maori, presumably).  The objective is to obtain the most points by discovering islands with trees, huts, and completed leis, and having the most canoes and shells at the end the game.

The nice thing about Maori (pronounced MOW-ree, according to my 15-year-old Liam and dictionary.com -- not may-OH-ree, as we had thought) is that it is relatively easy to teach.  Strategy is pretty straightforward, from the standpoint of trying to commit one's tile placement in a way that maximizes the opportunity for points, while at the same time positioning the canoe that moves around the tiles in the center of the table so as to minimize the opponents' opportunity to gain the most valuable tiles.  Our game started with a lot of high-value tiles early on, with a dearth of point-scoring tiles toward the end.  It made for a rather challenging finish for all of us, and it looked as though Jeff had a very solid position to win the game, but it turned out that I outscored him by two points, primarily owing to have a completed lei (where he did not).

Most important, everyone had a great time, and we look forward to playing both these games (and others, I expect) again soon.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Incan Gold and Game Theory

We had a family session of Incan Gold (or, more precisely, my home-made knock-off) this afternoon.  An interesting development came up when my wife Kathy and I had bailed out of an expedition, and only my two sons Liam and Corey remained to explore the ruins.  One instance each of three different monsters had been turned up, which meant that there was a very real possibility that a second monster of one type would appear and scare the remainder of the party out of the ruins at any point.  But then an artifact showed up, and a very interesting stand-off ensued.  By the rules of the game, if there are two or more people in the expedition, neither gets the artifact, and it stays on the card.  In a subsequent turn, if exactly one of the remaining two people decides to return to his tent, he gets all treasure left on cards from previous turns - including the coveted artifact.  If both players turn back, neither gets the artifact, and the round is over.  If both continue on, both continue to share discovered treasure but risk encountering a monster and losing everything.

What followed was an almost comical staring contest between the two of them to try to figure out whether the other was going to stay or return, and therefore whether to return (in hopes that the other was staying, which would leave the artifact to the returning player) or stay (and keep any subsequent treasure for oneself).

The decision to turn back or to continue is simultaneous among remaining players, so the result is a fairly classic game theory problem, in which the outcome of a decision depends upon an opponent's simultaneous unknown decision.

Own decision  Opponent decides to stay  Opponent decides to go
Stay          Turn over another card    Opponent gets artifact
Go                  Get artifact          Nobody gets artifact


Since "Turn over another card" is mutually risky or mutually beneficial but in no case advantageous for one player over the other if both players stay, then game theory would conclude that the only logical decision would be to go.  But if both players decide to go, then neither gets the artifact.

The piece that's missing in my decision table above, however, is that if either player stays, another card will be turned over, to the risk or benefit of the player(s) staying.  So there might be an advantage to staying if a player perceives a potential treasure greater than getting the artifact.  But that's really unlikely, in fact, so the stand-off will typically end up in both players going back and neither getting the artifact. Having said that, however, the game actually plays unpredictably, and perceived risk and reward tend to rule over cold logic.

We've really come to like this risk management game.  I'm apparently way too conservative, however.  I came in last today, and Corey (10) beat us all.  (I seem to recall that he ended up with the artifact more than once, by the way.)

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Intrigued by Incan Gold?

I just learned that my son Liam - the teenager who couldn't stop and who lost all his loot to the monsters in every round of our first game of Incan Gold - taught the game to his little brother and his friend yesterday afternoon, and the three boys had a great time playing it.  So I guess that means he wasn't put off by the game after all.  Good sign!

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Poor Man's Incan Gold

I read an entertaining review yesterday of Incan Gold (designers Bruno Faidutti and Alan Moon, publisher Fred Distribution's Gryphon Games).  I really like risk management games (also known as "push-your-luck games"), even though I'm pretty bad at them.  (I got eliminated early in the Can't Stop tournament at PrezCon, which my buddy Grant G. won.)  In the case of Incan Gold, players advance into an ancient ruin to find and share treasure but risk encountering monsters that can force them to drop their loot and run.  At any point, each player has an opportunity to take his share of the loot back to his tent, which guarantees that he keeps what he has but means that the players who continue get a bigger share of whatever additional treasure turns up.

I found the mechanics and components to be straightforward enough that I could recreate the gameplay (if not the artwork) with simple gaming components.  From a normal deck of playing cards, I assembled the two jokers, the twelve face cards, and one each of black ace, two, three, four, five, seven, and nine, and red ace, three, four, five, and seven.  Each player gets a different colored pawn, and a set of poker chips serves as gold treasure.

In my version of the game, the aces and number cards represent treasure.  Black cards are worth their face value in gold (with an ace representing a value of one).  Red cards are worth their face value plus ten (so that the red seven is worth 17).  Jokers represent single artifacts worth ten each.  Face cards represent monsters.

[What follows is a description of the rules of the game, but the review I read illustrated them nicely and with a touch of humor.]

The game consists of five rounds.  Each round starts with the deck being shuffled and a card being turned face up to start the journey into the ancient ruin.  If it is a treasure card, the players divide the loot equally.  Now, players have two piles of money over the course of the game.  One pile is their "loot bag," which is where they add found loot but is also what is at risk of being dropped if a monster scares them away.  The other pile is their tent, which is where they dump their loot bag when they decide to leave the ruin and keep what they've found.  Treasure in the tent can never be lost.

When treasure from a treasure card is divided evenly among the players, any remainder is left on the card.  Each player now has an opportunity to decide to go back to his tent and keep the money in his loot bag, or to keep going deeper into the ancient ruin in search for more treasure.  This decision is simultaneous among all the players.  The way it is executed is that all players take their pawns and put both hands under the table.  All players then place one closed hand on top of the table.  When everybody is ready, all players open their hands.  A hand with a pawn in it means that the player has decided to go back to his tent; an empty hand means that the player has decided to continue with the expedition.

If any players decide to go back to their tents, they divide evenly among themselves any treasure that had been left on any cards so far in the expedition.  Then they move all the treasure in their loot bags to their tents, and they are done for the round.  If any players decided to continue with the expedition, they place their pawns on the table next to the face up cards, and another card is drawn and placed face up alongside the last one.

If the card drawn is a face card and it is the first face card of that suit (spade, heart, diamond, or club), then nothing happens.  Players again decide whether to continue or to turn back.  If the card drawn is a face card and it is the second face card of that suit, then all players who are still in the expedition lose all the treasure they have accumulated in their loot bags, no one gets any of the treasure left on any cards, all the cards are shuffled into the deck, and the round is over.  (Players that had previously left the expedition and returned to their tents suffer no loss.)

The Jokers represent special artifacts.  When a Joker is turned up, poker chips representing ten gold are placed on the card.  An artifact can't be divided among players, so if more than one player is still in the expedition, the ten gold stay on the card.  Later, if exactly one player leaves the expedition and returns to his tent, he can retrieve the ten-gold artifact along with all the other treasure still on cards.  If two or more players leave the expedition simultaneously, none gets the artifact (because they squabble among themselves), and it stays on the card.

A round ends when all players have returned to their tents or when a second monster (face card) of a suit is turned up and scares everybody out.  After five rounds, the player with the most treasure in his tent wins.

My son Liam, my wife Kathy, and I tried out this home-made knock-off of Incan Gold yesterday evening, and Liam bolstered my working hypothesis on teenagers and risk assessment.  He was always still in the expedition when the second monster of a suit came up, so he ended up with no treasure after five rounds.  I ended up winning because I adopted a thumb rule of bailing out of the expedition when three different suits had turned up; in my mind, the risk of getting a second monster of any of those three suits was generally too high to justify hoping for more treasure.  Often, I was the only one to leave the expedition, so that meant I got all the leftover treasure on the cards at that point for myself as well.

As I looked at the card distribution, I noticed that most of the treasure cards are prime numbers or at most the product of two prime numbers.  I find that significant because the intent of the designer seems to have been to try to have some remainder to leave on the card after the treasure is divided among the players, at least more often than not.  (There is no six-, eight-, 12-, or 16-gold treasure card, which would frequently divide evenly among a typical number of expedition members.)  The interesting effect is that as the expedition progresses, the motivation to bail out becomes stronger; not only does turning back allow a player to keep what he has in his loot bag and avoid the risk of a monster, but it provides the added "carrot" of picking up some or all of the leftover loot on the previous cards.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Agony in Alexandros

Image courtesy of
Rio Grande Games
My good friend Grant gave me Alexandros (designer Leo Colovini, publisher Rio Grande) for Christmas a few years ago.  Kathy and I had played several times, and I won perhaps every game we played, so it sat on a shelf for some time since then.  Now that she has been waxing me at Battle Line, she proposed we try Alexandros again.

I really like Alexandros.  It's not like any other game I know.  The map depicts the extent of the empire of Alexander the Great in Asia, divided into equilateral triangles, a little over half of which are blank and the remainder each having one of five icons reminiscent of Hellenistic Greece - an urn, a horse, a lyre, a soldier, or a temple.  Each player represents one of Alexander's generals, who seek to govern provinces in Alexander's empire and collect taxes.  The player to collect the most taxes wins.

The game includes a deck of 55 cards, each of which features one of the five icons that appear on the board.  Over the course of the game, Alexander will traverse and conquer his empire, and his path establishes boundaries of new provinces.  Alexander's movements are influenced by the players to the extent that the available cards allow, so there is some opportunity to control where the province boundaries are set.  Players each have four Macedonian guard pieces that can be used in combination with cards from their hands to conquer provinces once they are completely enclosed by boundaries.  Players can elect to levy taxes, but when any player does so, all players get points for their governed provinces simultaneously.  So it is important to try to govern the most profitable provinces (those containing the most blank triangles) before levying taxes.  Provinces can also be taken from other players by card play.  Guards can be removed from one province and, in a separate action, used to occupy another.

In our most recent game, I occupied a large province early on and started levying taxes to jump to an early lead.  I committed guards to other, smaller provinces, while Kathy accumulated cards because there was little else she could do in the early stages.  I continually levied taxes and increased my lead, and it looked for a while as though I was going to run away with the game.  But with a big hand of cards comes a lot of options, and Kathy soon established a much stronger position.  Around mid-game, she took one of my larger provinces and occupied a couple of others as well.  Then she was the one to start levying taxes.  The game end can be triggered when one player exceeds 100 points, and it was right around the 55-point mark that Kathy passed me and never looked back.  I had spent so many actions placing guards and levying taxes early on that I never accumulated cards for any kind of hand strength, so I was in no position to catch up to her.  She ended up beating me by over 20 points.

Alexandros provides a whole different game-playing challenge, and I can see that I still have a lot to learn in the way of tactics and nuance.  I also hope to have an opportunity to play in a three- or four-player format, where I'm sure gameplay can get even tighter.

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Embattled in Battle Line

Image courtesy of
GMT Games
In the last two weeks my lovely wife has beaten me twice in hard-fought games of Battle Line (designer Reiner Knizia, publisher GMT), one of my acquisitions at PrezCon last February.  In fact, since I brought Battle Line home, my wife has won every game we've played.  My buddy Grant Greffey had introduced me to Battle Line years ago, and I was intrigued at the time, though I didn't buy it right away.  More recently, trolling boardgamegeek for ideas for games suitable for spouses, the name Battle Line came up more than once.  So at PrezCon, I saw that GMT was selling it for $15 and snapped it up (along with another game that I'll post about later).

The main deck consists of six suits of ten ranks of "Troop" cards representing various troop types from the Hellenistic Greek period.  The eponymous "battle line" consists of nine "flags" against each of which the two players each commit up to three cards in an effort to construct a superior "formation" and win the flag; three adjacent flags or five total win the game.  The superiority of one formation (three-card set) over another depends on their pattern; a "wedge" formation (three-card "straight flush") beats a "phalanx" (three-of-a-kind) for example.  Grant describes Battle Line as "nine hands of three-card poker," but I think that description sells the game short.  The real genius of the game is that the deck is never re-shuffled.  As a card is committed to one position in the line (i.e., one of the nine "flags"), that card becomes unavailable for any other position.  The real skill in this game seems to come in knowing where to commit and where to keep one's options open.  If I can prove that you can not come up with a better formation ("hand") than mine for a certain flag (based on cards that have already been played elsewhere on the table), then I win that flag immediately.

The game also has a ten-card deck of unique "Tactics" cards that can modify a position in the line to one's advantage.  A player can choose to play a Tactics card in lieu of a Troop card, sometimes to devastating effect.  Some Tactics cards are wild or semi-wild cards.  Some allow shifting cards on one's own or one's opponent's side of the battle line.  Some change the heirarchy of formations or conditions for winning a specific flag.  The only limitation on playing Tactics cards is that you can't play one if you've already played more Tactics cards than your opponent has.

The fascinating thing is that Battle Line has a very martial theme, so I really didn't expect it to appeal to Kathy.  She really didn't expect to get the hang of it, either, but was willing to try since she's such a good sport about trying new games.  Well, apparently she got the hang of it just fine.  All three of our sessions have been close (more or less), but her timing with Tactics cards is downright uncanny.  More than a few times did I think that I had a flag won only to have her snatch it from me in the nick of time.

Next post:  Another game with a Hellenistic theme - and another loss to my lovely wife.  (What is up with that?)

Monday, March 28, 2011

Punked in Puerto Rico

Image courtesy of
Rio Grande Games
Well, my wife did it to me tonight in a two-player variant of Puerto Rico (designer Andreas Seyfarth, publisher Rio Grande).  I had a pretty good corn shipping strategy going, and then went long in sugar and eventually coffee.  But I think I overdid it with the Hacienda and filled up my island plantations too quickly with other crops that didn't really pay off.  I only had one quarry, which made it difficult to construct buildings.  She wasn't producing many goods until she got tobacco going.  Along with the Office, her tobacco sales made it possible for her to buy the Fortress, the Guild Hall, and City Hall (?).  Despite my shipping like a fiend with my Wharf, her big buildings enabled her to outscore me 52 to 43.

I'll blame the rum...