Introducing Game Night

Recently I've begun implementing a new organization strategy for board game sessions. In the past the process went something like this:

1. Decide what variety of game I'd like to play. Type will determine the number and type of players I'll invite to participate. Heavy Strategy vs. Light Strategy will often involve a different set of people, and if Party Games are the thing a larger group will need to be summoned.
2. Invite friends and await response. Actual turnout is critical to implementation of the Gaming Plan. If the appropriate type and number of players can attend, The Plan goes as intended. If condolences are extended, however, the session will either have to be postponed or the content adjusted to those that do show.
   

This is clearly the top-down approach to game session planning, and though it does often lead to an enjoyable time, there are many instances where guest lists have to be adjusted or different games need to be selected to fit the group.

My new strategy is to plan a game night to which I invite essentially everyone I know that 1) has shown any interest in board games and 2) lives within reasonable proximity of my house, and then commence to play whichever games happen to fit the needs and desires of those that can attend. Advantages to this method are legion:

• I don't have to limit those invited due to particular gaming plans. The plans are made after people show up and we can determine exactly which titles will be best. 3-4 players probably means a strategy game, 5-8 may mean a party game or splitting up for a couple of strategy games, 9-12 could entail a big game or two of something that handles large numbers of people, like werewolf, followed by some smaller groups playing smaller games.
• It doesn't put pressure on anyone in particular to attend to have a successful outing. If I invite 3 people to a game night and 2 can't make it, obviously this will derail plans. The basically limitless invite list means that for any given game night a number of people may be busy or out of town and the event itself goes on without missing a beat.
• It is virtually impossible for me to involve everyone I know who may be interested to regular micro gaming sessions. Game night allows me to invite people who are not in 'the inner circle' (wait...there is no inner circle!) and keep them involved and interested in the hobby. One of my gaming goals is to meet and develop a local group that has a life of its own--ultimately other people independently interested in games, with their own collections, and hosting their own game sessions. I'm still a long way from that Utopian dream, however!
• Finally, (though I'm sure there are many other nuances that I cannot, or will not, fully enumerate here) game night will hopefully become a regular occurrence that anchors my gaming life. Good company, lots of games hitting the table, and new players being introduced to the joys of board games will hopefully be a hallmark of game nights far into the future.

The Mrs. still doesn't fully understand why I like the concept of a big meet up for board games, but perhaps this brief discussion can better illuminate my motivations. Well, that's all for this time out--happy gaming!

My Games of Spring 2011

Early 2011 has been very sparse on the gaming front, as regular boardgaming has yet to materialize. My strategic energies have largely been focused on fantasy baseball and the construction of my Magic: the Gathering cube, a collection of a few hundred fun cards that can be drafted into decks and played on the fly. This is a way to play Magic that essentially creates a board game out of it--everyone involved comes to the table with nothing and builds their own deck from the common group of cards that gets presented to them. I've wanted to organize my cards in some way similar to this for a long time but only recently found guides online explaining clearly how to do so. Hopefully another month or so of trading will result in a cube that is complete enough to play.

Fantasy baseball is always good fun, though my team this year has had a very bumpy opening. I've picked up several pitchers off the free agent market that have completely tanked after joining my team. This has resulted in my team holding onto last place in both ERA and WHIP in my league and pretty much knocked me out of contention for the top few spots. Hopefully a few more weeks of strong performances will start to get me more competitive. My hitting is doing pretty well and I've filled some holes in my line up with free agents that should be productive moving forward.

Neither magic planning or fantasy baseball is enough to really scratch that gaming itch, so hopefully I'll actually start getting some magic games and some other strategy boardgaming in soon--I still have high hopes for this to be an amazing gaming year! [Despite, of course, all of the accumulated evidence to the contrary to this point in 2011... I try not to let evidence get in the way of a happy thought though, so I'll continue to ignore it for now.]

As always, thanks for reading, and hang in there until my next post which should be titled something along the lines of 'My Gaming so far in 2012.'

Blind Learning: Playing Unknown Games on BrettSpielWelt

I play board games on a very regular basis online via BrettSpielWelt (BSW), a German site with full implementation of a number of popular strategy games including Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Pandemic, and Dominion. I've learned each of those four games in person and only later played the online versions. Recently, however, Tom and I have taken to a new strategy for gaming on BSW, namely learning games we've never played before by starting them up on the site and playing through them with no previous knowledge of the rules. For lack of a better term I've been calling this technique 'blind learning.'

The Games...

For instance, several weeks ago we tried the simple 2-player strategy game Drachenherz. Simply by observing what the game system will allow us to do and analyzing the results of our actions we have been able to decipher the vast majority of the game (actually, with this title we're pretty sure we understand the complete rule set without having actually read any of the rules.)

After Drachenherz we jumped into Atlantis, a somewhat more complicated eurogame. Tom seems to have understood this one a bit better than I as he defeated me both of the time's we've played the game. I understand the basic concept and goal of Atlantis, but it will certainly take me at least a couple more plays to fully understand the rules governing the game, and to then actually start to develop an effective strategy.

Our latest attempt at blind learning a game through BSW was a fairly basic worker placement title that has been getting quite a bit of praise lately called Stone Age. This game was significantly more complicated than Drachenherz, yet considerably easier to learn than Atlantis. I'm not sure if this latter fact is due to Stone Age being a simpler game or perhaps just more intuitive. It is also possible that Stone Age is simply more similar to other games I've played (namely Agricola, which also involves worker placement) and therefore easier to understand right from the beginning.

My Thoughts...

• With blind learning alone I'm fairly certain it is possible to fully understand how to play any given game on BrettSpielWelt. Some details required to play the actual physical board game, however, may not be fully clear from simply playing online. The most obvious incidence of this phenomenon is in game setup. In Pandemic, for instance, the player deck of cards has to be constructed in a particular way that may not be fully understood with only BSW play as reference. The particular rules governing how many special event cards to include and how to select them, and when and how to distribute the epidemic cards seem to require some reading of the rules.
  
• Combined with reading the actual rulebook after playing through a game several times, this method has great potential as a way to learn new board games before I buy. With the traditional way of learning a new game (buying, reading rules, playing through game to understand) it can often take a great deal of effort to comprehend how the rules translate into game play. Using this blind learning technique I can experience game play (though without fully understanding it) and only then read the rules to clarify what I've already experienced.
• Blind learning a game on BSW is strategically much different than playing a game I already know. In a known game I begin the session with formulating some amount of strategy, which then gets honed and reworked as the game unfolds. In the first play of an unknown game on BSW the key to success is less based on your strategy (no knowledge of rules = no initial strategy) and more based on how quickly you can learn the basic rules of the game by paying attention to actions and results on the board. As some of the rules are understood some basic strategy begins to be employed based upon that limited understanding, and is drastically revised as game knowledge increases. The skills needed to succeed at unknown games are significantly different from the most important skills involving more familiar ones.

I do love the first few plays of a new game, and also greatly enjoy playing games tens and even hundreds of times fine tuning strategies and more fully appreciating the nuances of game play. The chaos, confusion, and ultimately the challenge of being thrust into a completely unknown game, however, is also a great deal of fun, and fits very nicely into the beginning of that game play progression.

Is this for everyone? Certainly not. But most people don't even really like board games in the first place. For me I'm excited to continue to explore blind learning on BSW.

Some Strategy in Carcassonne

I've managed a fair amount of game play over the past month, including ongoing weekly games online, a several day trip to Vermont while Toph was visiting from Kansas, and a few other odds and ends.

I've been playing a good deal of Carcassonne--3 games in VT (winning all 3 I might add!), a couple with my family (Abby & Link both enjoy the game), and a pair last night with Ben online.

Though I feel I am decent at the game I'm still developing a more aggressive strategy. It is altogether too easy to just go with the flow here and work on your features to score points. Though it is important to develop creative ways to score in Carcassonne, it is even more crucial to control the way the board layout unfolds as the game goes on. For instance, controlling how open and/or segmented the farms play out depending on if you're focusing on them as a central strategy or not is very important. It is easy to just let farms develop randomly as the game progresses, but a huge layer of strategy is lost when you do so.

When it comes to scoring points mid-game in Carcassonne (here I'm disregarding the farmer points scored during endgame), I see three levels of sophistication:

• 1) Beginner When a player first learns the game they try to build big features and score as many points as possible for them.
• 2) Intermediate As a player grows more familiar with the game he begins to appreciate the power of weaseling in on other players' features. That huge city your opponent has been building for the first half of the game can be completely neutralized if you can get one of your meeples into the action before the city is completed. This strategy is especially powerful if you can wait for an opportune moment and weasel in your BIG meeple to wrest full control of the city before it is completed.
  
• 3) Advanced Even more powerful at times than the strategy in #2 is simply placing tiles near your opponents' features that make it more difficult for them to score those features. This strategy is particularly useful because a) it doesn't require you to tie up one or more of your meeples in the attempt to neutralize an opponent's feature, and b) rather than simply getting a share of a completed city as in #2, you can tie up your opponent's meeples in a feature that may never be completed throughout the duration of the game. This is huge, as it is crucial to success in Carcassonne to have a good flow of meeple placement--if you are not cycling meeples onto the board and then back to your supply you will almost certainly lose. If you can force your opponent to have 2 or 3 meeples on the board in positions that are nearly impossible to close, you gain a massive advantage over the course of the game.

So yes, I'm loving the game and look forward to playing it enough to get a good feel for the three expansions that I have severely underutilized--Traders & Builders, Princess & Dragon, and Abbey & Mayor.

Gaming in May

May was a bit of a down month (as was April, at least compared to the first quarter of 2010) as far as my gaming was concerned. The month featured a couple of big gatherings for party games, one at my brother-in-law's place in Vermont, and the other here at the Todd Residence. The former consisted of a big game of Time's Up won by the Mrs. and Emily, a couple of games of Ca$h'N Gun$ (the Mrs. and Mike the two winners), and a three player session of Ghost Stories in which Tom, Emily, and I emerged victorious (despite playing on Nightmare difficulty) The latter game night featured a nine player game of Pit (which I didn't realize until mid-game is actually only an eight-player game), and another session of Time's Up, this time with three teams of three. I liked the 3x3 configuration for this one, and amazingly enough the game ended in a three way tie at 40 points each!

The Mrs. and I had another couple over with their son to play games. After one big game of Dixit, the grown-ups attempted a play of Ghost Stories, but we had to cut it short due to lateness of hour.

The Mrs. and I played a couple of games while we were visiting my Mom's and we couldn't manage to recruit my sometimes lame gaming family to play anything. One was Ghost Stories on Nightmare which we lost in epic fashion, and my latest expansion for Carcassonne (Abbey & Mayor...thanks darling!), which the Mrs. won by a landslide.

I did manage to keep up a weekly online game throughout the month, so that is a big positive. At various times myself, Tom, Ben, Trevor, and Toph all participated. Most frequent game played in May was Puerto Rico, which I'm really loving despite really not being very good at it at all, followed by Pandemic. Everyone seems to be enjoying both games and I look forward to delving further into those two and adding to the variety as we continue our weekly meetup.

My final bit of gaming in May is my return to Magic: the Gathering. I played a fair amount about a year ago when Shards of Alara, Conflux, and Alara Reborn were the newest sets, and I built a couple of decks. Now I have the full Zendikar block to play with and there seems to be some pretty fun stuff in there.

I haven't had much of an opportunity to play yet, mostly I've been tossing around ideas and trying to come up with a fun standard deck to play, and I've been trying to sell off the more valuable of my standard legal cards before they rotate out and lose value. Really one of the tricks to maintaining the value of one's collection in Magic is to try to sell or trade cards while they still hold strong value, and acquire others that are either older and are poised to better maintain price, or are brand new and will be tournament legal for another year or two. I have certainly sold some cards I would rather keep this time around, but I can always reacquire them a year down the road once they're a lot cheaper.

Besides building a new deck for standard tournament play I've been working on two EDH (Elder Dragon Highlander) decks. This is a format that I love (from very limited play, of course, but I love the idea!), and it tends to be a very inexpensive format to play. Because of this I'm able to maximize the play value of my limited card pool and can convert a few expensive cards into a decent stack of EDH staples.

Looking forward to June, I intend to play a bunch of magic, continue my weekly online board game night, and get to playing a whole lot more strategy board games! Also, perhaps I'll write a little more often in this ol' blog. My fan is demanding higher output, so I'll try to write just a little bit more than I have these last couple of months...

Three More Games Off The List

Besides Chaos in the Old World that we got to the table just over a week ago, I've played a couple more of the games on my list.

Dave and I have played several games of Neuroshima Hex! over the last few days, with Dave undefeated thus far. The game can be frustrating because as you draw your army tiles often you don't get a good mix of units and action tiles or attacking units and modules. When you draw two of your five battle tiles in the same turn no good can come of it! There are lots of tactical decisions to be made in this one, but certainly poor draws can really take you out of a game.

Dave read about a variant where you separate the unit tiles and action tiles, then shuffle each pile and choose how many from each deck to draw from during the game. This would avoid much of the imbalanced part of the game and greatly increase the chances of drawing generally useful hands.

The Mrs. and I played a game of Alhambra this afternoon. Alhambra is a fairly quick-playing light strategy game for 2-6 players. It did win the Spiel des Jahres in 2003, and the Mrs. enjoys it, but it's never quite clicked for me. Half of the game is acquiring currency cards and using them to buy tiles, and the other half arranging those tiles in a way to build your own personal Alhambra. By purchasing and placing a majority of different types of tiles you score VPs that will eventually lead to victory (or not so much as was the case for me today!) After losing to the Mrs. today and to Dave a number of times recently, I'm starting to think that I have simply lost the ability to win at board games!

The (Updated!) List:

• Through the Ages -- I'm slowly working through the rules for this one and taking notes to boot. Eventually we'll get this one to the table, but it's taking quite some time to digest the rules, and since there are three increasingly complicated ways to play leading up to the full game (and I'm only learning the simple game currently), this is a process that might take a while.
• For Sale
• Fury of Dracula
• Scotland Yard
• Puerto Rico
• Caylus
• Blokus
• Memoir '44
• Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation
  

Chaos in the Old World

Finally brought Chaos in the Old World to the table Saturday night. Dave, Monica, the Mrs. and I worked through the rules and made it through a couple of rounds before we called it a night. Armed with a better understanding of the rules, we met up again the next night, minus Monica, and played through a full game.

Dave & the Mrs. seemed to think poorly of the amount of luck in the game (because of die rolls as well as card draws), but I feel that the vast quantity of decisions in Chaos in the Old World more than makes up for this. One of the major benefits a board game gains by having luck elements is a need for players to adjust strategy as conditions change unexpectedly. This is certainly a quality I enjoy in games, and after one play I think there is an appropriate amount of luck present. (Though, of course, this opinion is subject to change, and certain other players in the room may strongly disagree!)

There is a lot going on here: players can win either by advancing their own personal victory dials to a certain level, or by achieving a certain threshold on the common victory point track. VPs themselves can be gained both through having a strong military presence in a region (by dominating the area), or by corrupting a region with one's rather weak cultist figures (eventually ruining a region and gaining large numbers of VPs). In Chaos, players must balance their personal victory goals with paying close attention to the other players' goals as to block them from advancing too quickly.

As in El Grande (another area control game), there does seem to be a disadvantage in building a strong early presence in the game, as the other players are very motivated to take down the leader. I felt in this first play I established myself a little too early as the leader and paid for that fact throughout the mid-game. Dave, through some good late-game die rolls and maximizing his victory dial bonuses, ended up the winner, but if one roll during the last turn would have landed differently the game would have gone an additional round and anyone could have been victorious.

I eagerly await our next play of Chaos in the Old World, as it is a deep and intriguing game, both very thematic and seemingly well balanced.