Eight people playing games on a very rainy Tuesday night in late January. I can hardly think of anything I'd rather be doing.
Mike, Tim, Carrie, Rita, KC, Eric, Chuck, and myself split into two groups, with the first three on the list and myself in the Temple of Conspicuous Consumerism (my family room). The other group played Power Grid on my new France map, Tichu, and perhaps one or two other games. We played Gardens of Alhambra and Mess'o'potamia (apologies to The Daily Show).
Gardens looks like a fairly simple game of the Carcassone stripe. You put down the tile from your one-tile hand next to an existing tile on what is essentially a square grid board, and then draw a new one. There are unbuilt structures at the intersections, and when these are surrounded they score. Each tile contains from one to six "trees" on each side of the tile, with each player's color represented, so that when you are helping yourself you are almost always also helping someone else. Whoever has the most trees surrounding the structure gets the points, between 1 and 5, multiplied by the number of different players who where contending for the structure. Thus, a 5 building surrounded by three different colored trees is worth 15 points. If there is a tie for the most, they cancel out. It is even possible, although very unlikely, for a player who hasn't got a single tree to get the points, although this would require three players each placing exactly the same number of trees. In our game, the ties were always between two players and so no points were awarded in these cases.
In fact, this rule is what makes the game interesting. It is possible to make plays that will both help you and stifle scoring in a nearby space, and it is finding these results that make the game fun. Since you only have one tile in hand, and the number of trees on each side of the tile is the same, parsing the board is really pretty easy to do, although we did seem to take a while to try to figure out optimal moves most of the time, largely because the tile wasn't as optimal as one might like. There is a variant that gives each player three tiles in hand, and I think that this might actually speed things up when an optimal play is possible.
In our game, Tim and I got out to an early lead with some good scores of 15 and/or 20 points, with Mike bringing up the rear. Carrie made an excellent run at the end, good enough to get within one point of Tim's victorious score, while I stalled badly and ended up a good ten points back.
This is one of those games that reminds me a lot of Samurai, and the scoring algorithm would make it very interesting for three players despite the lack of other scaling features as found in a game like Samurai (where the board gets smaller with fewer players). The structures are placed randomly on the board at the game's beginning, so every game feels just a little bit different. I liked it quite a bit, and I'll give it a very solid Play Gladly on the Lietz Scale with a potential Will Kill To Play rating if the fun level stays high in future games.
Next up was Mesopotamia from Phalanx Games. Think Roads & Boats with a discovery element and a much more significant luck factor, but also a whole lot shorter and less complex (and cheaper). The idea is to build huts using your meeples wood gained from forest hexes, which produce offering tokens and allow for making more meeples (a process known as "doinking"). OK, I made that last part up. There are also rock quarries that produce rock used to build holy places that generate mana and to increase the amount of mana you can save up. You take the offering tokens to the central temple and spend mana equal to the number on the token. Once you get all four offerings in to the temple you win.
In doing all of the above, you get to move your meeples a total of five spaces in a turn (that's all moves combined, not moves per meeple). Moves include picking up resources, stealing resources from anyone with less meeples than you in a space (forcing a certain amount of defensive moves), discovering new hexes, and building the temple by taking a rock resource there. Next, you can either doink, build holy places or huts in plains hexes, or take a Wacky Random Effect card. Finally, you get mana for every holy space that you have the required number of meeples on.
The components are quite nice in this game. The hexes have a funky whirlpool/sunburst outline so that they interlock, which I found to be a great alternative to the usual "straight edges that create chasms at inopportune moments" style. The rocks are actually white garden rock, the wood are little matchsticks on steroids, the meeples and huts are nice painted wood pieces. The rules are pretty straightforward, although there was at least one error on the otherwise useful player aid card regarding the requirements for successful doinking. God, I love that word, it's almost as good as "gobsmacked," which actually sounds a bit dirtier.
I found play to move along nicely with four players. I felt like there was actually less downtime than with Gardens, which is odd considering that you have several steps to each turn in Mess. Sure, it's a game of the "get stuff to build stuff to get other stuff to get points" variety, but it's short enough and there were enough choices that I enjoyed playing. I really liked the components, I felt they added a lot to the game.
It's important to not let anyone get the run of one corner of the board to themselves, however, and that was exactly what was happening with Mike around the midgame. Despite making a sequencing mistake early on by trying to doink in areas with huts that also had offerings (apparently they smell bad and ruin the mood), Mike was doing quite well, and I was a bit concerned that he was going to walk away with the game at the end. I played a card that stole a single mana point from him that delayed his victory by one turn, and that was just enough for Tim to play his card that gave him two extra points, enough to run in his last offering to steal the win from Mike. I was about two turns away from a win, largely because I spent several turns looking in vain for a little rock and only finding Iowa (plains hexes). Over, and over, and over. Of course, at the end of the game when I was looking for a plains hex, I found rock. Harumph.
At game end, everyone liked it to varying extents but Mike, who hated it. This really surprised me, as Mike loved Roads and Boats, and this felt a lot like that, at least the early part of the game (I disliked the later part of R&B, as it was so easy to make sequencing mistakes that made me feel pretty stupid). Mike felt that he had played optimally and had gotten screwed out of the win by a couple of card plays. I agree that the cards add a luck element, but whether or not you draw a card is up to you and doing so prevents you from getting the opportunity to build or doink. On the flip side, it gives you something to do if nothing else comes up. I'd play with the variant where you don't shuffle the discards in the future, as it makes drawing cards early a dicier prospect when the other actions have a bigger effect. When Mike feels that he'd have had more fun and gotten the same result by turning over a card, that's usually a sign that he didn't like it much (see todays Gathering of Engineers entry from me for a discussion of why I disagree with this specific assessment).
Me, I liked it quite a bit. I felt in most cases that my play choices were fairly obvious, but that wasn't always the case. The threat of having someone steal resources you are carrying forces a safety in numbers strategy, and having choices as to whether to use your rock to build holy places or increase your mana is nice, although only around five holy places got built, everyone choosing to up their mana from three to seven as quickly as possible. Again, the components are sweet, perhaps one of the best looking games I've seen. We finished in about 75 minutes, including explaining the rules (and looking up a few, as some of the requirements for building can be a little obtuse).
I'll give this one a Gladly Play for now, but I don't expect the rating to jump up higher. The luck elements do have a big effect on the game, but for a game that claims a 45 minute playing time on the box I don't believe it's anything close to a deal killer. This is really the first Phalanx title I've bought that I'm really happy about, not a good sign as I must own seven of their games (Revolution, Prince, House Divided, Age of Napoleon, Alexander, First World War, plus Mess), but they have such great production values that it's hard to say no. Given that a very basic rules question for Revolution has repeatedly been ignored by their staff, I would not have bought this game had not others in our group had a good experience with it.
As an added bonus, the plastic insert is actually made for this specific game, something new for Phalanx. I hate throwing those out, but in a lot of cases I'm much better off with baggies in a huge box.
Thanks to everyone for coming over. I'm sure Eric will detail the outcome of the other games on his Inculaba site (Incubala? Incubus Latte?) After a very long Monday for me that included 14 hours out of the house capped by me running rehearsal for a choir of high school aged Unitarian girls whose parents have taught them to question authority at every opportunity, it was nice to have such great company.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Monday, January 23, 2006
Command & Colors: Ancients - First Impressions
I P500 most GMT titles (other than monster games or games with exceptionally high complexity), and this was one I was really leery of preordering. I own both Battle Cry and Memoir '44, both very closely related to this title. The earlier games cover the American Civil War and ETO WWII respectively, and I don't know that either period is well represented in either game.
I liked BC to a point, although I wondered why they even bothered with Cavalry. The problem was that you really had no reason to put your units in harm's way. M44 addressed this problem with the addition of objectives, but you still had the problem of basically throwing your units into the meatgrinder and hoping they would survive. While this can be a faithful simulation of some situations in WWII (Omaha Beach is an excellent example), it doesn't make for a particularly interesting or competitive game. I actually found M44 to be even more luck dependent than BC, and it has gotten into my "sell" pile despite really nice production values. I have never played the original game, nor am I aware of what the differences between it and its descendent titles are.
GMT, being a wargame company, isn't quite so good with euro-style production values. I think that part of the problem is simply that they don't have the contacts or volume to make plastics cost-effective, and that's OK. What they ended up doing with C&C:A is using wooden blocks with stickers on each side. This is a cost effective idea compared to plastics, but on the other hand you really don't need to have four blocks to make up a unit if you can realign the block to represent depleted strength, so it could have been even more cost effective to use somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the block count.
Another somewhat bizarre idea was to use small blocks for foot units, medium squares for mounted, large for elephants, and rectangular for chariots and leaders. I understand that by making mounted units a different size, they become easily differentiated on the board, and the same goes for the other large blocks. What is a mess is trying to figure out the differences between the various light units (archers, slingers, light infantry, auxilia) on the board. The symbols are all quite small and I am still having trouble differentiating between auxilia and light infantry after a couple of practice games. Making things even more complicated is the use of different art for the Carthagian and Roman units, so that means there are actually eight different stickers just for the light units! Medium and heavy foot have at most four types, and these are easily identified, the main problem is the lights. I do think that the huge elephant counters do a great job of representing just how enormous these beasties looked on the battlefield, so that was money well spent. Note that unlike Columbia Games' titles, the blocks don't hide what units are, the stickers are on both sides.
The rest of the components are pretty much right on. The rules are pretty well written, and introduce several new concepts (see below). The player aid cards have a tremendous amount of info on them, but I suspect they could have put a terrain key on the side that explains what dice symbols are effective against what units. M44 does a great job of this by including the terrain info on extra cards. I also would have liked to have the various situations for leader loss checks as well, this doesn't take up a lot of space.
The cards are very nice, with minimal artwork (the M44 cards do nothing for me), and some require so much text that artwork is a secondary concern at any rate. I am a bit confused by exactly what the helmet on some of the cards actually allows me to do (is it only to allow detaching a leader from a unit? That seems kind of lame, but I haven't worked too much with it yet). So far, the cards seem pretty clear and I haven't had to look up what they do in the reference section of the manual yet.
The new rules differ in a few ways:
1) Battle Back. Now you have to worry about whether or not you give your opponent a free shot when you attack up close. If they aren't forced to retreat or wiped out, a unit in close combat may be able to battle back. This makes going after the very strong heavy or medium foot units a risky proposition.
2) Retreats. First, units retreat by "moves" not by spaces. For light cavalry with their move of 4 spaces, a single retreat flag may result in being sent right off of the board, and two retreat flags almost certainly will do it. I suspect these units will mostly shoot from a distance. Second, you can ignore at least one flag result with some units based on type or whether or not they have two or more supporting units near them. This makes keeping a coherent line extremely important.
3) Leaders and Cards. Some cards allow you to activate a leader in a particular area of the board along with a string of adjacent units. Again, cohesion is a big deal now.
4) Evasion. Light units and most cavalry/chariots can now choose to retreat a couple of hexes in exchange for ignoring sword, flag, and leader results. Very historical, and an excellent choice for light cavalry to avoid being run off of the board entirely.
5) Ranged combat. Pretty much exclusively only available to light units (there is a Roman "war machine" unit). In most cases, movement reduces the effectiveness of ranged combat. A few units can attack from three hexes away, but otherwise this game requires closing with the enemy.
6) Elephants. Tons of rules for these, my favorite is that if an elephant is required to retreat it has a decent shot at damaging pretty much everyone nearby. Cavalry and chariots aren't too fond of them, the horses get a tad nervous. One hit, though, is enough to take out these big boys, so you want to pick your battles with them. There are other special units (warriors, essentially medium foot with attitude; war machines, and chariots, all with special rules).
In play, these new rules make me feel like you are rewarded for effective tactics, unlike M44 where I felt like the card draw and the rolls were the primary factors and tactics were not as important to win. A cohesive line, effective use of your light units and cavalry, special units, evasion, use of leaders, all of these things play a big role in whether or not you can win. I was very nervous about trying out this title, as my last attempt to give M44 one last shot resulted in me deciding to sell it, so I'm quite happy to have a good first impression despite wishing that GMT had gone with a different unit paradigm than the earlier titles of multiple pieces per unit.
I've played the first two stock scenarios (P500 orders got four bonus scenarios), both featuring the Syracusans against the Carthaginians prior to the Punic Wars with Rome. The first game, essentially a learning scenario with no elephants or terrain, is a walkover for the Syracusans, which is a shame. A learning scenario should be a bit more balanced, although it is useful if you are familiar with the game and playing a newbie (hint: let the newbie win by giving them the Syracusans).
The second scenario, Crimossos River, is a bit tough for the Carthaginians, as they have half of their army on the other side of a river that they must ford, and that takes time and cards. This game was a thriller (at least as much as you can have playing solitaire). The Syracusans have a lot of heavy foot, and they were doing much damage to the Carthaginians. When they did lose battles, the units managed to hang on by their fingernails. At one point, the Carthaginian medium foot had gotten across the river and were causing a lot of damage to the Syracusan heavy foot, and the game was on the line with Carthage only needing one more VP to win. Seeing that there was little to lose, Syracuse attacked from both flanks: on the left with a heavily damaged cavalry unit, on the right with two ranged attacks. Both managed to destroy the units they were fighting, giving Syracuse the two VP it needed for the victory. I love that sort of come-from-behind win (even if I lose as a result), and I was quite happy to see it happen in this game. Of course, this was a single playing, but it does bode well for whether I'll like the game on a regular basis as opposed to me considering selling it.
The one thing I still hate is that it seems to take almost as much time to set up as it does to play, and I've separated out the various units into baggies. A big help would be a list of needed units with each scenario, not just the diagram on the map which is nice, but I always forget something. Of course, playing an actual opponent would help out here, as you'd have two people setting up, but it's still a bit onerous. This is a problem in general with all of these games, and the blocks do make it a bit easier to handle the individual pieces.
So, there you have it. This looks like a great light wargame with a strong euro feel, aided by the best rules I've seen (both in terms of organization and special rules) in this series. If you don't mind blocks instead of plastics, and you wish that BC or M44 was a better game, this may be the ticket for you.
I liked BC to a point, although I wondered why they even bothered with Cavalry. The problem was that you really had no reason to put your units in harm's way. M44 addressed this problem with the addition of objectives, but you still had the problem of basically throwing your units into the meatgrinder and hoping they would survive. While this can be a faithful simulation of some situations in WWII (Omaha Beach is an excellent example), it doesn't make for a particularly interesting or competitive game. I actually found M44 to be even more luck dependent than BC, and it has gotten into my "sell" pile despite really nice production values. I have never played the original game, nor am I aware of what the differences between it and its descendent titles are.
GMT, being a wargame company, isn't quite so good with euro-style production values. I think that part of the problem is simply that they don't have the contacts or volume to make plastics cost-effective, and that's OK. What they ended up doing with C&C:A is using wooden blocks with stickers on each side. This is a cost effective idea compared to plastics, but on the other hand you really don't need to have four blocks to make up a unit if you can realign the block to represent depleted strength, so it could have been even more cost effective to use somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the block count.
Another somewhat bizarre idea was to use small blocks for foot units, medium squares for mounted, large for elephants, and rectangular for chariots and leaders. I understand that by making mounted units a different size, they become easily differentiated on the board, and the same goes for the other large blocks. What is a mess is trying to figure out the differences between the various light units (archers, slingers, light infantry, auxilia) on the board. The symbols are all quite small and I am still having trouble differentiating between auxilia and light infantry after a couple of practice games. Making things even more complicated is the use of different art for the Carthagian and Roman units, so that means there are actually eight different stickers just for the light units! Medium and heavy foot have at most four types, and these are easily identified, the main problem is the lights. I do think that the huge elephant counters do a great job of representing just how enormous these beasties looked on the battlefield, so that was money well spent. Note that unlike Columbia Games' titles, the blocks don't hide what units are, the stickers are on both sides.
The rest of the components are pretty much right on. The rules are pretty well written, and introduce several new concepts (see below). The player aid cards have a tremendous amount of info on them, but I suspect they could have put a terrain key on the side that explains what dice symbols are effective against what units. M44 does a great job of this by including the terrain info on extra cards. I also would have liked to have the various situations for leader loss checks as well, this doesn't take up a lot of space.
The cards are very nice, with minimal artwork (the M44 cards do nothing for me), and some require so much text that artwork is a secondary concern at any rate. I am a bit confused by exactly what the helmet on some of the cards actually allows me to do (is it only to allow detaching a leader from a unit? That seems kind of lame, but I haven't worked too much with it yet). So far, the cards seem pretty clear and I haven't had to look up what they do in the reference section of the manual yet.
The new rules differ in a few ways:
1) Battle Back. Now you have to worry about whether or not you give your opponent a free shot when you attack up close. If they aren't forced to retreat or wiped out, a unit in close combat may be able to battle back. This makes going after the very strong heavy or medium foot units a risky proposition.
2) Retreats. First, units retreat by "moves" not by spaces. For light cavalry with their move of 4 spaces, a single retreat flag may result in being sent right off of the board, and two retreat flags almost certainly will do it. I suspect these units will mostly shoot from a distance. Second, you can ignore at least one flag result with some units based on type or whether or not they have two or more supporting units near them. This makes keeping a coherent line extremely important.
3) Leaders and Cards. Some cards allow you to activate a leader in a particular area of the board along with a string of adjacent units. Again, cohesion is a big deal now.
4) Evasion. Light units and most cavalry/chariots can now choose to retreat a couple of hexes in exchange for ignoring sword, flag, and leader results. Very historical, and an excellent choice for light cavalry to avoid being run off of the board entirely.
5) Ranged combat. Pretty much exclusively only available to light units (there is a Roman "war machine" unit). In most cases, movement reduces the effectiveness of ranged combat. A few units can attack from three hexes away, but otherwise this game requires closing with the enemy.
6) Elephants. Tons of rules for these, my favorite is that if an elephant is required to retreat it has a decent shot at damaging pretty much everyone nearby. Cavalry and chariots aren't too fond of them, the horses get a tad nervous. One hit, though, is enough to take out these big boys, so you want to pick your battles with them. There are other special units (warriors, essentially medium foot with attitude; war machines, and chariots, all with special rules).
In play, these new rules make me feel like you are rewarded for effective tactics, unlike M44 where I felt like the card draw and the rolls were the primary factors and tactics were not as important to win. A cohesive line, effective use of your light units and cavalry, special units, evasion, use of leaders, all of these things play a big role in whether or not you can win. I was very nervous about trying out this title, as my last attempt to give M44 one last shot resulted in me deciding to sell it, so I'm quite happy to have a good first impression despite wishing that GMT had gone with a different unit paradigm than the earlier titles of multiple pieces per unit.
I've played the first two stock scenarios (P500 orders got four bonus scenarios), both featuring the Syracusans against the Carthaginians prior to the Punic Wars with Rome. The first game, essentially a learning scenario with no elephants or terrain, is a walkover for the Syracusans, which is a shame. A learning scenario should be a bit more balanced, although it is useful if you are familiar with the game and playing a newbie (hint: let the newbie win by giving them the Syracusans).
The second scenario, Crimossos River, is a bit tough for the Carthaginians, as they have half of their army on the other side of a river that they must ford, and that takes time and cards. This game was a thriller (at least as much as you can have playing solitaire). The Syracusans have a lot of heavy foot, and they were doing much damage to the Carthaginians. When they did lose battles, the units managed to hang on by their fingernails. At one point, the Carthaginian medium foot had gotten across the river and were causing a lot of damage to the Syracusan heavy foot, and the game was on the line with Carthage only needing one more VP to win. Seeing that there was little to lose, Syracuse attacked from both flanks: on the left with a heavily damaged cavalry unit, on the right with two ranged attacks. Both managed to destroy the units they were fighting, giving Syracuse the two VP it needed for the victory. I love that sort of come-from-behind win (even if I lose as a result), and I was quite happy to see it happen in this game. Of course, this was a single playing, but it does bode well for whether I'll like the game on a regular basis as opposed to me considering selling it.
The one thing I still hate is that it seems to take almost as much time to set up as it does to play, and I've separated out the various units into baggies. A big help would be a list of needed units with each scenario, not just the diagram on the map which is nice, but I always forget something. Of course, playing an actual opponent would help out here, as you'd have two people setting up, but it's still a bit onerous. This is a problem in general with all of these games, and the blocks do make it a bit easier to handle the individual pieces.
So, there you have it. This looks like a great light wargame with a strong euro feel, aided by the best rules I've seen (both in terms of organization and special rules) in this series. If you don't mind blocks instead of plastics, and you wish that BC or M44 was a better game, this may be the ticket for you.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Broads and Ruts
Roads and Boats is one of those games that has achieved legendary status, pulling down well over $300 on eBay for a used copy. The funny thing is that I suspect that few of the people who want to get it have ever actually played it, putting it in the same category as wargamers who want a copy of Pacific War or Wacht am Rhein.
With many of our group off at the Gamestorm special session, Mike, Eric and I sat down to finally give this title a try (at least for me). I will admit, this is a game that intrigued me, but the price tag even when it was in production and available at retail lost me completely.
I won't go into the details of how the game works, other than to say that it falls quite firmly into the category of "create this to grow that to take here to build this to do this other thing that gets you points". This kind of game is pretty much a Maybe Something Good, Maybe Something Bad experience. What is different is that the game is deep. There are a lot of choices once you get going, and the number of "Doh!" moments, at least in our first game, were something to behold.
We played the symmetrical map with the three rivers coming out of a central group of mountains. This map is supposedly easy on beginners, it certainly was fair as everyone had exactly the same amount of stuff to work with. We all started out with the standard Woodcutter/Sawmill/Breed Donkeys opening, and we all went for the Clay/Stone Factory pairing. Then it all went vaguely pear shaped.
I had a lot of trouble with remembering exactly what the heck I was supposed to be working with to build various things. For example, I built a paper mill in the central mountains, thinking that this was somehow a good idea, mainly in order to get the ability to build carts or rafts on the tech tree. You don't need the tech tree to build either carts or rafts, of course, so I found myself wondering just what I would buy on the tech tree. The wrong thing, as it turned out, as I got Big Mines which let Mike get a bunch of free gold off of me. Then, of course, I build a raft factory, when I should have done the rowboats and built a rowboat factory. Sometimes, I am dumb as a post, and this game brought that feeling out in spades.
It went on like that. Realizing I had wood instead of lumber, or that the oil derricks did indeed need research when I had seconds ago researched new shafts. I also managed to figure out about 3/4s of the way into the game that I could keep Mike from stealing my stuff if I build a freakin' wall. Ugh.
About three hours in, I realized that we were all hopelessly slogging around the board doing one dumb thing after another, although I do admit that I had a pretty good truck factory going on the far bank of the Sea of Dug where no one could reach me. Getting fuel back over to make coins out of gold, that was the tricky part, especially as I didn't have a good place to do this. Of course, getting the oil derrick helped, but by then I couldn't get gold out of my big mine because the first five pieces out were iron.
You get the picture. It wasn't pretty.
By the end of the game, at least while we were all still making more than a token effort (the last few turns were for formality alone), it was taking quite a while to think out what had to go where, what had been moved, what hadn't, what we really should have done, and it was a mess. I understand there are some suggestions for tracking these things, and I wish I'd used them more often. Still, figuring out your optimal move led to barely tolerable downtime stretches for all involved.
This game feels a lot like the computer game Civilization (the earlier versions, I hated III). I can spend an entire day starting from scratch with that game, and then it gets to a point where it feels like work. I almost never finish any of the games I start, which is mildly frustrating as I always loved to get the spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Same with this game. The early part is a blast, with managable goals and interesting puzzles and I really like it. The late game was just too much.
This is all stated with the caveat that this was indeed, in every sense of the word, a learning game. Learning the rules (we screwed up several), how the various elements interact (Doh! Doh again!), and what you have to do to keep from giving away the bank. I'd be very interested in playing with two, or even solitaire, as I think this game is a great puzzle (although I'm not really into $300 puzzles, to be honest). I don't know that I'd play with three again, certainly not with four, unless everyone could play briskly once things got hairy. The problem, of course, is that with such a long game, and so many interesting long games that my group likes, and the rarity of this particular title, I don't see it coming out enough to warrant the effort. Perhaps at a Sunriver retreat if Dave and I are doing two-player games for an evening.
Regardless, thanks to Mike for hosting. I'll miss the next regular Tuesday (it's a bit too far away for my road rage to handle), but the following week I host and then off to Mike's for the annual Super Bowl party. Go Seahawks!
Damn, now I've jinxed them. It don't take much.
With many of our group off at the Gamestorm special session, Mike, Eric and I sat down to finally give this title a try (at least for me). I will admit, this is a game that intrigued me, but the price tag even when it was in production and available at retail lost me completely.
I won't go into the details of how the game works, other than to say that it falls quite firmly into the category of "create this to grow that to take here to build this to do this other thing that gets you points". This kind of game is pretty much a Maybe Something Good, Maybe Something Bad experience. What is different is that the game is deep. There are a lot of choices once you get going, and the number of "Doh!" moments, at least in our first game, were something to behold.
We played the symmetrical map with the three rivers coming out of a central group of mountains. This map is supposedly easy on beginners, it certainly was fair as everyone had exactly the same amount of stuff to work with. We all started out with the standard Woodcutter/Sawmill/Breed Donkeys opening, and we all went for the Clay/Stone Factory pairing. Then it all went vaguely pear shaped.
I had a lot of trouble with remembering exactly what the heck I was supposed to be working with to build various things. For example, I built a paper mill in the central mountains, thinking that this was somehow a good idea, mainly in order to get the ability to build carts or rafts on the tech tree. You don't need the tech tree to build either carts or rafts, of course, so I found myself wondering just what I would buy on the tech tree. The wrong thing, as it turned out, as I got Big Mines which let Mike get a bunch of free gold off of me. Then, of course, I build a raft factory, when I should have done the rowboats and built a rowboat factory. Sometimes, I am dumb as a post, and this game brought that feeling out in spades.
It went on like that. Realizing I had wood instead of lumber, or that the oil derricks did indeed need research when I had seconds ago researched new shafts. I also managed to figure out about 3/4s of the way into the game that I could keep Mike from stealing my stuff if I build a freakin' wall. Ugh.
About three hours in, I realized that we were all hopelessly slogging around the board doing one dumb thing after another, although I do admit that I had a pretty good truck factory going on the far bank of the Sea of Dug where no one could reach me. Getting fuel back over to make coins out of gold, that was the tricky part, especially as I didn't have a good place to do this. Of course, getting the oil derrick helped, but by then I couldn't get gold out of my big mine because the first five pieces out were iron.
You get the picture. It wasn't pretty.
By the end of the game, at least while we were all still making more than a token effort (the last few turns were for formality alone), it was taking quite a while to think out what had to go where, what had been moved, what hadn't, what we really should have done, and it was a mess. I understand there are some suggestions for tracking these things, and I wish I'd used them more often. Still, figuring out your optimal move led to barely tolerable downtime stretches for all involved.
This game feels a lot like the computer game Civilization (the earlier versions, I hated III). I can spend an entire day starting from scratch with that game, and then it gets to a point where it feels like work. I almost never finish any of the games I start, which is mildly frustrating as I always loved to get the spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Same with this game. The early part is a blast, with managable goals and interesting puzzles and I really like it. The late game was just too much.
This is all stated with the caveat that this was indeed, in every sense of the word, a learning game. Learning the rules (we screwed up several), how the various elements interact (Doh! Doh again!), and what you have to do to keep from giving away the bank. I'd be very interested in playing with two, or even solitaire, as I think this game is a great puzzle (although I'm not really into $300 puzzles, to be honest). I don't know that I'd play with three again, certainly not with four, unless everyone could play briskly once things got hairy. The problem, of course, is that with such a long game, and so many interesting long games that my group likes, and the rarity of this particular title, I don't see it coming out enough to warrant the effort. Perhaps at a Sunriver retreat if Dave and I are doing two-player games for an evening.
Regardless, thanks to Mike for hosting. I'll miss the next regular Tuesday (it's a bit too far away for my road rage to handle), but the following week I host and then off to Mike's for the annual Super Bowl party. Go Seahawks!
Damn, now I've jinxed them. It don't take much.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
MLK Wargaming
Were MLK alive today, he'd have spent his birthday playing wargames.
OK, maybe not, but since Chuck had the day off, we decided to celebrate with a couple of shorter wargames. On the table were two sessions of Twilight Struggle and one half-session of Bonaparte at Marengo.
I was extremely high on TS after my first ftf playing with Chuck. However, we did get one essential rule wrong, and we wanted to see how it would go with the correct rules. In our first game, I took the USSR again, starting with more focus on the battleground countries in Europe. I had a great start on the Space Race (including the Nazi Scientist), and despite an initial hand with mostly US cards, I got lucky on a couple of rolls at the end of turn 3 with the Arabs invading Israel, and won on points.
There has been quite a bit of concern on CSW that the USSR has a marked advantage in this game, and Chuck had played a few solo sessions that made him think that this was indeed the case, so we tried one more game. This time, I took the US, and was in decent shape going into turn 4, with the USSR up by only 4 points. Then I got...The Hand.
Here is where TS falls down. If you get the wrong hand at the wrong time, it doesn't matter what has happened before, you are going to be in a lot of trouble. This was one of those hands. First off, I had four, count 'em, four scoring cards (Africa, CenAm, SouAm, and Mideast). My other four cards were two 1's, two 2, and a 3, plus the China card. I had no advantage in any of the areas, and so I got SouAm out for my headline. Making things considerably worse was Chuck's headline play of Red Scare, which reduced the OPs of each of my cards by one, leaving me with at most eight OPs for the entire turn (you must play all scoring cards, so at best I play China for 3, then 2+1+1+1). The Defcon was at 2, so I couldn't even coup in battleground states. Chuck scored 15 points in that single turn.
While I will admit that this is an unusual distribution of cards, it did demonstrate that the scoring card mechanism is broken in this game. I suspect that the designers thought that knowing you have a scoring card is an advantage, so having to play them and lose any other activity is compensated. However, once you have more than one it is almost impossible to do anything to improve your position if you are behind in any areas. Even though Chuck didn't score anything in Africa or SouAm, I still had to play both of those cards, losing OPs or events in the process.
Chuck believes that this problem is particularly bad for the US, who has a shortage of good events early in the game and is already at a disadvantage. I haven't played as much as him, nor analyzed the deck as thoroughly as he has, but I tend to agree. In two games, I have gone from thinking this was the best CDG yet to thinking that this is up there with 30YW, perhaps the most poorly developed game that GMT ever put out.
To be fair, I have run into a similar problem in Hannibal, where I lost a game largely because I drew a hand without a single 3 card with one 3 general in Africa, sadly out of position. My opponent figured this out quickly, sent Africanus to Carthage, and won without me being able to do a single thing. However, I have played 30+ games of Hannibal, and this was the only one that felt like the game turned on such a freakish draw.
At any rate, I will hope that the designers recognize that the scoring card mechanism is broken and needs tweaking. I think the answer may be some sort of "mulligan" where if you draw a certain number of scoring cards you randomly discard down to two (or some number), draw new cards to replace them, and shuffle the cards back into the draw pile. I don't think just bidding will help this problem.
We then went and had lunch, and returned to try out BaMarenge, the dance of luuuuuuuv. BaM.
BaM is a "luckless" block game with some big differences. Rather than just having blocks in a given location, they are assigned to either reserves in that locale, or block approaches, each of which has different characteristics with regard to defense against different types of units. I actually like this "approach", although to be honest the map is a bit hard to parse. The roads and many of the terrain features (which dictate the qualities of approaches, but otherwise don't play a role in the game) show up much better than the approaches, and it requires careful examination of the board to see what the true situation is.
The blocks are actually sticks with the type and strength of the unit on one side of the stick. Since units may be assigned to an approach that faces you, all of your units are placed face down, so no one can see them. Also, the sticks can be accidentally rotated very easily, making it far too easy to spin your units and expose them unintentionally.
The rules are, in essence, very simple, but the movement rules get very fussy. Like most block games, you activate "groups" to move as a unit. However, movement along roads is complex. To start with, each unit moves three spaces along the road, and each unit counts as a single group. However, the movement phase is broken up into three subphases, with only one unit allowed to cross an approach along a road per subphase. That means you have to remember which unit moved when in the turn. To make things worse, if you move along a primary road exclusively, it doesn't count towards the three units/groups you can move/assault with in a turn.
Sound complicated? Try getting this information from the rules. I've owned various synthesizers over the years, and the ones coming out of Japan are typically written in "Japanenglish", which is to say that they try to explain complex technical features with faulty English. These rules are pretty close. They are poorly organized, and overexplain some very basic ideas. An entire paragraph to explain how to say that you are going to use artillery to defend - just the declaration, mind you - is a bit much.
This feels a bit like whining, as most wargames fall into this category. In fact, I read the rules for a Richard Berg game (Carthage, his most recent Ancient World game), and was startled by how much the rules assume that you've been playing wargames for a long time. This game went exactly the opposite way.
The Austrians are supposed to either knock the French's morale down far enough while keeping their own up, or else manage to get to the other side of the board and take some particular spaces. Since you can only activate three groups/units per turn (other than primary road only movement), it can take a while for the Austrian offensive to get started. The French have the problem of a) being randomly assigned to specific spaces on the board, and also not being able to even activate them until someone is knocking on the door or things are well under way. This is the only luck in the game, but it can be a doozy... the key to an Austrian victory is based on where the strength 3 French infantry is and whether the Austrians can guess where they are.
In our game, after a couple of abortive starts, Chuck got his single artillery into position (which essentially forces the French to retreat from that locale or take unrequited losses), and got his cavalry moving along the primary roads, which are essentially on the flanks of the board. I had a couple of French units holding the line a bit too long, but since you can't just retreat (the French will get pushed off of the board if they do that), it is important to make at least a few token stands early. When Chuck had to leave, we were about half way through the game, and with Chuck halfway up the map. The French were still a ways away from demoralization (you lose one point for every combat loss you take, and the French start with 17), and the game might have gone either way.
I think that my initial evaluation of the game as "eh" was strongly influenced by the poorly organized and written rules, the component problems, and the confusion we had in the first hour of play. I also think that the short play length, minimal luck, and other factors make the game feel almost like a puzzle instead of a game. I'm concerned that, random initial placement aside, that there is an optimal Austrian strategy. All of that included, I do want to try the game again. A player aid sheet to help clear up the fussiness of movement (combat is very straightforward, other than the cavalry pursuit rules) would help a lot.
Because of an HOA meeting (God, I love HOAs) this week, I did not attend the regular Tuesday session at Matt's. However, we are having a Third Saturday of the Month session, so I'll have another report then.
OK, maybe not, but since Chuck had the day off, we decided to celebrate with a couple of shorter wargames. On the table were two sessions of Twilight Struggle and one half-session of Bonaparte at Marengo.
I was extremely high on TS after my first ftf playing with Chuck. However, we did get one essential rule wrong, and we wanted to see how it would go with the correct rules. In our first game, I took the USSR again, starting with more focus on the battleground countries in Europe. I had a great start on the Space Race (including the Nazi Scientist), and despite an initial hand with mostly US cards, I got lucky on a couple of rolls at the end of turn 3 with the Arabs invading Israel, and won on points.
There has been quite a bit of concern on CSW that the USSR has a marked advantage in this game, and Chuck had played a few solo sessions that made him think that this was indeed the case, so we tried one more game. This time, I took the US, and was in decent shape going into turn 4, with the USSR up by only 4 points. Then I got...The Hand.
Here is where TS falls down. If you get the wrong hand at the wrong time, it doesn't matter what has happened before, you are going to be in a lot of trouble. This was one of those hands. First off, I had four, count 'em, four scoring cards (Africa, CenAm, SouAm, and Mideast). My other four cards were two 1's, two 2, and a 3, plus the China card. I had no advantage in any of the areas, and so I got SouAm out for my headline. Making things considerably worse was Chuck's headline play of Red Scare, which reduced the OPs of each of my cards by one, leaving me with at most eight OPs for the entire turn (you must play all scoring cards, so at best I play China for 3, then 2+1+1+1). The Defcon was at 2, so I couldn't even coup in battleground states. Chuck scored 15 points in that single turn.
While I will admit that this is an unusual distribution of cards, it did demonstrate that the scoring card mechanism is broken in this game. I suspect that the designers thought that knowing you have a scoring card is an advantage, so having to play them and lose any other activity is compensated. However, once you have more than one it is almost impossible to do anything to improve your position if you are behind in any areas. Even though Chuck didn't score anything in Africa or SouAm, I still had to play both of those cards, losing OPs or events in the process.
Chuck believes that this problem is particularly bad for the US, who has a shortage of good events early in the game and is already at a disadvantage. I haven't played as much as him, nor analyzed the deck as thoroughly as he has, but I tend to agree. In two games, I have gone from thinking this was the best CDG yet to thinking that this is up there with 30YW, perhaps the most poorly developed game that GMT ever put out.
To be fair, I have run into a similar problem in Hannibal, where I lost a game largely because I drew a hand without a single 3 card with one 3 general in Africa, sadly out of position. My opponent figured this out quickly, sent Africanus to Carthage, and won without me being able to do a single thing. However, I have played 30+ games of Hannibal, and this was the only one that felt like the game turned on such a freakish draw.
At any rate, I will hope that the designers recognize that the scoring card mechanism is broken and needs tweaking. I think the answer may be some sort of "mulligan" where if you draw a certain number of scoring cards you randomly discard down to two (or some number), draw new cards to replace them, and shuffle the cards back into the draw pile. I don't think just bidding will help this problem.
We then went and had lunch, and returned to try out BaMarenge, the dance of luuuuuuuv. BaM.
BaM is a "luckless" block game with some big differences. Rather than just having blocks in a given location, they are assigned to either reserves in that locale, or block approaches, each of which has different characteristics with regard to defense against different types of units. I actually like this "approach", although to be honest the map is a bit hard to parse. The roads and many of the terrain features (which dictate the qualities of approaches, but otherwise don't play a role in the game) show up much better than the approaches, and it requires careful examination of the board to see what the true situation is.
The blocks are actually sticks with the type and strength of the unit on one side of the stick. Since units may be assigned to an approach that faces you, all of your units are placed face down, so no one can see them. Also, the sticks can be accidentally rotated very easily, making it far too easy to spin your units and expose them unintentionally.
The rules are, in essence, very simple, but the movement rules get very fussy. Like most block games, you activate "groups" to move as a unit. However, movement along roads is complex. To start with, each unit moves three spaces along the road, and each unit counts as a single group. However, the movement phase is broken up into three subphases, with only one unit allowed to cross an approach along a road per subphase. That means you have to remember which unit moved when in the turn. To make things worse, if you move along a primary road exclusively, it doesn't count towards the three units/groups you can move/assault with in a turn.
Sound complicated? Try getting this information from the rules. I've owned various synthesizers over the years, and the ones coming out of Japan are typically written in "Japanenglish", which is to say that they try to explain complex technical features with faulty English. These rules are pretty close. They are poorly organized, and overexplain some very basic ideas. An entire paragraph to explain how to say that you are going to use artillery to defend - just the declaration, mind you - is a bit much.
This feels a bit like whining, as most wargames fall into this category. In fact, I read the rules for a Richard Berg game (Carthage, his most recent Ancient World game), and was startled by how much the rules assume that you've been playing wargames for a long time. This game went exactly the opposite way.
The Austrians are supposed to either knock the French's morale down far enough while keeping their own up, or else manage to get to the other side of the board and take some particular spaces. Since you can only activate three groups/units per turn (other than primary road only movement), it can take a while for the Austrian offensive to get started. The French have the problem of a) being randomly assigned to specific spaces on the board, and also not being able to even activate them until someone is knocking on the door or things are well under way. This is the only luck in the game, but it can be a doozy... the key to an Austrian victory is based on where the strength 3 French infantry is and whether the Austrians can guess where they are.
In our game, after a couple of abortive starts, Chuck got his single artillery into position (which essentially forces the French to retreat from that locale or take unrequited losses), and got his cavalry moving along the primary roads, which are essentially on the flanks of the board. I had a couple of French units holding the line a bit too long, but since you can't just retreat (the French will get pushed off of the board if they do that), it is important to make at least a few token stands early. When Chuck had to leave, we were about half way through the game, and with Chuck halfway up the map. The French were still a ways away from demoralization (you lose one point for every combat loss you take, and the French start with 17), and the game might have gone either way.
I think that my initial evaluation of the game as "eh" was strongly influenced by the poorly organized and written rules, the component problems, and the confusion we had in the first hour of play. I also think that the short play length, minimal luck, and other factors make the game feel almost like a puzzle instead of a game. I'm concerned that, random initial placement aside, that there is an optimal Austrian strategy. All of that included, I do want to try the game again. A player aid sheet to help clear up the fussiness of movement (combat is very straightforward, other than the cavalry pursuit rules) would help a lot.
Because of an HOA meeting (God, I love HOAs) this week, I did not attend the regular Tuesday session at Matt's. However, we are having a Third Saturday of the Month session, so I'll have another report then.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
New Look
Trying out a few new looks over the next few weeks, as Blogger has many more themes to choose from now than when I first created the blog. I'm shooting primarily for readability over style, and the Dark Dots theme looked just a bit too retro for my tastes.
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