September 2005 - Posts

• The littlest gamer

  A hearty round of congratulations are in order for fellow Lumbersmiths gamer Jason.  He and his wife were blessed last week with a healthy little girl they named Ava Rose.  For the record, she weighed in at 6 lbs., 7 oz. and is 18" long.  Her favorite games are Balloon Cup, Ticket to Ride and Yeti Slalom.  Jason and Amy had been hoping for this for a long time, and we couldn't be happier for them.     As an aside, I have a new baby on the way, too.  The delivery is scheduled for tomorrow.  Her name is Aurora, and I can't wait to play with her. Posted Sep 27 2005, 10:36 AM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: Potpourri

• Revenge in Gaming

  During our Die Macher game on Sunday, the subject of "revenge" came up.  That is, if given the opportunity to screw a fellow player, should you pass over the opportunity knowing the other player might retaliate?  Does the negative action act to harm both the players, or is it part of the strategy of the game that deserves to be employed?  One of the cards in Die Macher is called an opinion poll.  These cards allow the player to pick two actions from five options.  Each action affects a single player, and moves that player either up or down by a value of one to three.  So for instance, the actions may be: Opinion Poll Actions: * Move Black down two Move Blue down three Move Green up two Move Red down one Move Yellow up one   * Assume "Up" is good, "down" is bad ** Sample opinion poll card You may take two of the five actions, or simply take one.  So let's suppose you are Green in this game, and you draw this card.  It is still early in the game and no one player has a definite advantage over the others.  Do you a) Move Green up two and move another player down? or b) Move Green up two and decline your second action?   My answer depends on a lot of factors.  The two most important that I can think of:  a) Do I know the players I'm playing with, and are they particularly vengeful?  And b) What is the likelihood that the player will be able to exact revenge for my actions?   To break from the Die Macher question, I'll rephrase it as a Settlers of Catan question.  If you roll a 7 early in the game before any player has any advantage over the others, do you put the robber baron on someone?  Or do you play diplomatically, choosing to make no enemies?  First, it depends on who I'm playing with, or what kind of game it is.  In casual games I put the robber on the desert hex.  In competitive games, I'm 50/50.  If I see a great hex that will shut down other players, I'll hinder them with the robber.  Sometimes I'm afraid of retribution and I'll wait for another player to be the first aggressor before I take an offensive robber baron action.  But Settlers is different than Die Macher in one respect:  A player is almost guaranteed an opportunity for revenge.  Sevens are rolled frequently, so the chance is high that the player I screwed can exact revenge.  I might not want to be the aggressor.   In Die Macher, the ability to exact revenge isn't a given.  For starters, the opinion polls are acquired by a player with less frequency than sevens are rolled in Settlers.  And even if a player acquires an opinion poll, the blind nature of the actions on the card may not even allow him to exact revenge on the player who screwed him.  I don't know how many opinion poll cards say "Move Green down three", but I imagine it's only one or two cards in a stack of 20-30.  (it would be nice to know the exact numbers)  A player might draw a card that moves Green down only one or two spots, but in that case the "revenge" wouldn't be as harsh as the initial action.   Given the factors in Die Macher, the opportunity for revenge seemed low, so I chose to move the Blue player down three.  He protested, we debated, and moved on.  The next turn, he won an opinion poll that allowed him to move me (Green) down three.  The Blue player argued that all I did was hurt both of us, causing the other three players to have an advantage over us.  I construe that his ability to take revenge on me was a calculated risk, and that I was unlucky he was able to exact revenge.  Had he not drawn that particular card, I might have had an advantage over him for several turns.   My friend Brandon had some comparisons of this debate to the Prisoner's Dilemma in game theory, but I'll let him expound in a separate post if he wishes to.   I would love to hear some thoughts on the subject.  There is a link to comment below, and although it's a bit kludgy at the moment (too many clicks to comment - I'll be fixing that soon), feel free to chime in. Posted Sep 21 2005, 08:34 AM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: General Gaming

• More Thoughts on Die Macher

  Additional random thoughts on Die Macher:   1)  Playing a game about German political elections while Germany is in the midst of political election turmoil is surreal.  From reading the news articles, I can tell that Die Macher captures the flavor of German elections very well.  As one person on the Dallas Games mailing list said of the current headlines from Germany, "It's almost like a LARP of Die Macher!"   2)  Luck plays more of a factor than I expected.  While most of the game centers around careful strategy and planning, there are two facets of luck in the game.  a) Die rolling - There are some die rolls in Die Macher.  This is mitigated by the fact that the six-sided dice only have numbers from 0-3, and that each player will roll a number of dice throughout the game.  Except in extreme circumstances, a single die roll should not have a large effect on the game.  I found it to be nearly a non-factor.    b) Opinion poll cards - This was a big surprise.  Opinion poll cards could be extremely powerful, letting you trend two players up or down, depending on the specifics of the card.  This can result in HUGE swings of votes, unless the player draws an opinion poll that trends his own color down and his opponent(s) up.  This becomes more of a problem because the opinion polls are acquired using blind bidding.  You never know if the poll is useful until after you purchase it.  Twice in our game I paid a premium bid for an opinion poll, only to find that it trended me down.  As a consolation prize you may always roll dice to gain national party, but forking over $30k+ to gain a couple of NP is a waste.  Especially if you then roll poor dice and gain only 1 NP.  (been there, done that)  The luck of the opinion polls could have a large effect on individual elections, which in turn could affect the victory points in a significant way. 3)  The time flew by.  At no point in the game was I disengaged.  If another player was taking a long time to act, that gave me more time to evaluate the board and consider the future elections.  It's brilliant that the board shows not only the current election, but three elections out.  I may have a good idea how the current election will play out, but I can always be thinking about future turns.  There is always something to think about in this game, which makes time pass quickly.  More designers of longer games (and even shorter ones *cough [Hansa] cough*) should keep this in mind.   4)  One of the marks of a good game is it makes you think about it long after you've finished playing.  Two days later, I'm still thinking about it.   5)  A friend of mine asked me today "So did you like the game"?  I guess I talked a lot yesterday about the mechanics of the game, but I didn't clearly express my opinion.  Yes, I loved the game.  The length makes it prohibitive to play more than occasionally (as does the scarcity and price of the game), but I would love to play this game every few months.  It is as satisfying as any all-afternoon game I've played.  Who wants to sell me a copy?! Posted Sep 20 2005, 02:00 PM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: Boardgames

• Thoughts on Die Macher

  I've always wanted to give Die Macher a try.  For me, there has always existed a sort of mystique surrounding the game.  I believe it's partially because the BoardGameGeek URL for the game is game #1 (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1), and because I wanted to see how a game with a theme so spectacularly dull (German political elections) could be so highly regarded (it's currently listed as the 7th best game on BoardGameGeek).  I thought the BoardGameGeek convention would be my first shot at playing.  With three days of gaming to fill during the convention, I expected I would soon grow tired of 1 1/2 hour Euro games and would have plenty of time to try one of the "heavier" games.  As fortune had it Chris, one of the local Borders gamers, posted a message on the Dallas Games list that he would host the game for those of us who had expressed interest in trying it out.  So on Sunday afternoon I gathered with four other players (Chris, Eric, Arden and Shawn) to play my first game.   Chris, Arden and Shawn had played before, and Eric and I were new to the game.  I tried to familiarize myself with the mechanics ahead of time using the files on the 'Geek, but there are so many components it becomes hard to keep them straight without seeing them in front of you.  (Truthfully, it was hard to keep them straight even when they were in front of me.  Every round when we would get to the Contribution Cards phase, I would struggle to remember what the Contribution Cards were and what they did.)  Fortunately, Chris is one of the best game teachers I've met.  He did an admirable job of explaining the Die Macher rules, which were very complex.  As expected, it still took a couple of elections before I got a feel for the mechanics.   Here's the one-paragraph explanation of the game:  Each player is playing as one of Germany's top-five political parties.  Each party tries to win a series of seven regional elections, played out over six rounds (with two elections in the final round).  The players must manage a number of resources including money, media influence, opinion polls, party opinions and shadow cabinet actions to influence the votes for their party in each regional election.  At the end of the game, players receive victory points based on the number of raw votes they received in the elections, how well they influenced the national media, their membership in the national party, and how well their party opinions matchup with the national opinions.   If that sounds exciting...  Well, then there's something wrong with you.  That's about as dry a theme as you can get.  But surprisingly it makes for an excellent game.  There are many rules summaries over at the 'Geek, so I won't let this post become a rules description.     The first four regions in our game were high-scoring regions.  The first election was worth 32 points, the second 50, the third 48 and the fourth 42.  To kick-start the game, each player is allowed to secretly deploy resources to the board.  These resources can take the form of trend, rally markers, pure votes, media markers, or party membership.  I chose to put everything into the 50 point region except for 5 votes, which I put in the first region worth 32 points.  I thought this would give me instantaneous cash after the first round, which it did.  The second and third rounds went very well for me, as I got 30 votes in the second region and made a coalition with Eric (SPD) in the 48 point region, which got us the victory.   Coalitions are interesting in Die Macher.  Each player has 5 "program cards" that have a particular issue listed on them (like healthcare, social security, etc).  Your party is either "for" or "against" the issue.  Aligning your party's program with a particular region makes each rally marker you purchase there worth a greater number.  (It acts like a multiplier, together with your "trend" rating)  However, if your program cards match another player (minimum of 2), you may also form a coalition and add your votes together.  The other player can decline, unless three of your program cards match, in which case you may force a coalition.  That makes things interesting, since another player might force you to enter into a coaltion even though you don't want to.  Turn order becomes important in these circumstances.  Luckily, even turn order is available to be bought in this game.  (It's politics.  Everything can be bought.)      I chose to largely ignore the fourth and fifth elections because I was in poor position to capitalize.  Instead, I chose to focus on winning the last two elections, making sure my party's program matched up with the region.  Unfortunately, chaos ensued in the final two regions just before they scored, and my program cards suddenly didn't match up very well.  Rather than scoring close to 42 points like I had hoped, I scored a total of 10.  It was so wacky that in the sixth election, SPD (Eric) scored the full 20 points, CDU (Arden) scored 4, and no one else scored any.   In the end, Chris' FDP party proved to be too strong for the rest of us.  He outright won four of the seven elections, giving him a commanding lead in the vote total with 182.  His closest competitor was 140.  The round-by-round scoring is broken down below.   Overall, I thouroughly enjoyed my first play of Die Macher.  The company was great and the competition was fierce and lively.  There was a great debate about vindictivness in games that I'll save for another post.  Our total playing time was six hours with rules explanation, but it seemed much shorter than that.  The BoardGameGeek convention in November seems like just the right time to play again, so I'll keep an eye out. Final Scoring: Scoring Region Mandate Game End Round CDU FDP Grüne SPD PDS Victory points for: CDU FDP Grüne SPD PDS 1 19 13 5 28 32 Mandate Σ 104 182 109 140 133 2 9 50 30 0 50 National Media 15 30 40 32 55 3 8 48 48 48 0 Party Membership 40 83 55 63 66 4 42 9 0 0 42 Bonus 1st +10 2nd +6 - 10 - - 6 5 9 40 16 36 6 Matching Votes (Party program & national opinion) 27 67 55 47 50 6 4 0 0 20 0 7 13 22 10 8 3 Bonus +5 each security card - - - - - Σ 104 182 109 140 133 Final Standing 186 372 259 282 310 Posted Sep 19 2005, 10:55 AM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: Session Report, Boardgames

• The Barnes & Noble Game Shelf

  I dropped by Barnes & Noble today to acquire the first book of the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold.  My buddy Dan has been bugging me for months to read it, and I finally caved in and bought the first book.  Some of her stuff has won the Hugo award, so it has to be better than the sci-fi I've read in the past couple of years.  At the least it should hold me over until A Feast for Crows comes out.   Anyway, I was heading to the register when I noticed a section over by the Starbucks that had a sign poking up that said "Games Workshop".  For a while, Barnes & Noble has had a selection of family games for sale at most of their stores in Dallas.  In fact, that's where Christina bought me my copy of Perudo.  But Games Workshop?  In Barnes & Noble?  When I checked out the display, I was shocked.  In addition to some random 40k miniatures, they had copies of some pseudo-Euro games.  There were several "license" games like Warcraft, Civilization and A Game of Thrones.  They had a handful of Fantasy Flight Silver Line games like Citadels, Colossal Arena, Mutiny and Senator.  And sitting at the bottom of the display in all their monolithic glory were two copies of Twilight Imperium, Third Edition.  Wow!  I was disappointed not to find some of the more-accessible Euros like Settlers or Puerto Rico.  There were no Rio Grande games that I remember.  But it was certainly better than their usual display of family and party games.  It's nice to see our little hobby is becoming more and more mainstream. Posted Sep 14 2005, 02:19 PM by Jeff with no comments Filed under: General Gaming, Boardgames