Game Night 9/16/11

Attendees: the Mrs., Ana, Tim, and myself

Game: Stone Age

Tim's first play of the game, Ana's second. I was the pretty clear victor by mid-game, though the Mrs. wasn't feeling well and thus played to speed up game's end when she could. I focused early on agriculture, love shack, and end game population multipliers on the civ cards (5x10 bonus just on those).

Tim mentioned several times during explanation that the game seemed really complicated, but relaxed considerably after the first round when it became clear that the basic system was really pretty simple. As I mentioned recently with Memoir '44, even fairly basic designer games seem overwhelming at first simply because so much information needs to be imparted during rules explanation. Usually (this is the case for both of these games) all the mechanics fit nicely together and the game as a whole jells over the first few rounds of play.

Both Tim and Ana seemed to like Stone Age, and the Mrs. and I, who have played it quite a bit, still enjoy it considerably (well, I do anyway, I never know quite what she thinks of games, as she generally grows weary of them more quickly than myself!). Amongst strategy games that I own, Stone Age has been the most commonly played by our group, and I must admit I've been considering the possibility of having a Stone Age tournament staged over the course of a few days. There are certainly more than eight people who could participate which would lead to two qualifying games of four players with the top two finishers from each game advancing to a final match. I'd like to think I came up with this idea simply because so many people have been playing Stone Age, but I'm sure it will be suggested that it is due to my recent improvement at the game--I've actually been winning a fair amount after losing the vast majority of my early plays...

Spies & Wolves

Sure, there are lots of games I need to get to the table because I haven't played them in a while and some that are newly acquired and have yet to see play for the first time. There are, however, a handful of games that I've been craving lately, titles that I'm constantly looking to set up and play.

The first two I'll mention are somewhat light party style games but they both feature a conflict between an uninformed majority and a more organized and knowledgeable minority secretly working against the common good.

• The Resistance I love this game! The Resistance is a social deduction game in which the players are secretly either a member of the Resistance trying to carry out successful attack missions against an oppressive government, or they are secret government operatives, "the spies," attempting to sabotage said missions. Basically it is a game of lying, bluffing, deduction, reasoning, yelling, screaming, fighting, and the list goes on and on... In my mind the only downside to this game is people tend to take the in game conflict a little too personally and tempers can get a little out of control. Despite this, The Resistance is pretty much my first choice when the question is asked "What should we play?"
  
• Werewolf Another social deduction game, less tense and confrontational than The Resistance, but excellent in different ways. In Werewolf, many of the players are villagers, but a few of them are secretly werewolves who will pick off the innocents one at a time during the night. It is up to the villagers to discuss amongst themselves and attempt to deduce who is a werewolf, then lynch one person every day. With a little luck and good reasoning hopefully the chosen one is a wolf and not a simple villager! Werewolf is a great game largely because of the huge amount of different secret roles available to be played--some on the side of the wolves, some on the side of the villagers. Some roles (like the Seer) allow the player to get a peek of another villager's identity, some (like the Bodyguard) allow the player to protect another villager of their choice, some (like the Lycan) simply appear to be something different than they actually are, just to muddy the water a little more. Also a strength of werewolf--the game can reasonably accommodate more than 20 players at a time.

Next time I'll delve into a couple more games I'd like to get to the table much more often--the strategy games Stone Age and Ghost Stories.

First Play of Memoir '44 in 2+ Years

I got in a quick game of Memoir '44 the other day with my brother-in-law Mike. Though the game seems fairly simple in my mind, as I progressed with the rules explanation and all the little details about movement, die roll modifiers, terrain, victory conditions, etc., Memoir began to seem overly confusing and overwhelming even to me, the teacher! I feel like there is only so many minutes of explaining that can be done before a game naturally starts sounding overly difficult.

This time I kept the explanation as short as I reasonably could, although I did have to supplement that description a couple of times during the game to bring up rules I had missed (and actually forgotten about completely myself as I hadn't played this one in so long!). Setup of the game board did take a little bit of time as well, as Memoir '44 is a scenario based war game. Each time the game is played one scenario of a series is chosen, and each has completely different terrain and troop placement at the onset of play. One thing I should mention in reference to the rules explanation is that the opening scenario of Memoir '44 (Pegasus Bridge) does do an excellent job of simplifying things as only infantry units are used, thus allowing a game teacher to fully skip the details of artillery and armor units. After a couple more plays a scenario with these more complicated aspects can be added, and at that point their abilities will be in the context of the already understood game system and will be quite easy to digest.

Back to our game... The board was arranged and the basic explanation out of the way, so we jumped into action. The game has two basic driving forces: command cards, which indicate which units each player can control during their turn, and dice, which determine the outcome of combat between units. Both randomized cards and random rolls of the dice do lead to some frustration in the game as there can be very large swings of fate due to luck. This certainly was at least a slight issue for Mike as he had a couple of fruitless turns where he could not roll a hit on the dice. Since I had warned him that this was a possibility he seemed to take it in stride.

There was a fair amount of drama in our first play, with no obvious leader through much of the game. Finally, with us each one medal away from clinching victory, I played a card that allowed me to target any one of his units on the board (luckily for me there was one with only one figure remaining) and I disposed of it for the win. The Memoir rules recommend playing two games in succession, playing one scenario, then reversing sides and replaying the same scenario from the opposite perspective. Many of the scenarios are naturally imbalanced due to being based largely on actual WWII battles, so playing both sides of the conflict is needed to determine who did a better job in the scenario. As we were out of time, our replay of Pegasus Bridge will have to wait for another session, though I do feel that he enjoyed the game enough to play it at least a few more times, so that is good news!

Oh, and as a side note, that's two more games off the list, Say Anything & Memoir '44...

Game Night 9/9/11

This week's game night was our largest yet, with 14 attendees total. Half of us played a quick game of Say Anything while waiting for the other half to show. Everyone seemed to enjoy it, though the game is very light. I sell Say Anything as a more creative & interesting version of Apples to Apples, which I feel is a fair comparison.

Once the majority of players had arrived we jumped into Werewolf, since the game plays so well with large groups we felt that we should be sure to get a game or two in. In retrospect, I really wish we had been able to play some actual strategy games, but since the Werewolf games went very long, we didn't have the time for anything else. Next time we'll either have to start with strategy games or just make sure our sessions of Werewolf are much more concise! Giving this situation some further thought, I feel that there were two primary factors contributing to our overly lengthy and occasionally frustrating Werewolf games.

1. Though Werewolf is increasingly interesting with higher player counts generally, once you get up to 10-12 people in the same room playing the same game the general vibe becomes increasingly chaotic and it is quite difficult to keep players on topic. Looking at the Ultimate Werewolf instruction manual, it is suggested that the moderator choose a length of time for the first day of of play (perhaps 10 minutes), and if that time is exhausted without the villagers agreeing to lynch someone night immediately falls with no one dying. The warnings of time running out should be enough to get players to make some decisions, and even if the standstill continues and night falls, the game is still progressed by the wolves (quickly!) killing a villager. This day length could easily be extended to every day if necessary, and I think it is an excellent idea.
2. The other big delays with our Werewolf plays last night were due to uncertainty as to which scenarios to use with the number of people playing the game. At one point we had a scenario picked out and explained and then we realized that our player count was wrong and we needed to start over. The rulebook has several suggested scenarios, but very few for our typical group sizes. Before our next game night I'll need to put together several scenarios for each group size through a reasonable number (perhaps 14 or 15). This way we can just count players, pick one of the preselected sets of roles and play.

Though my impressions of Werewolf have been gradually getting more positive over the last few months, and the sessions last night were pretty interesting and enjoyable, the game is certainly not firing on all cylinders yet. The above fixes will hopefully get the game to the point where we can concentrate more on the actual strategy and interactions of the game itself and not be distracted by confusion and chaos. I'm already ready for another go, although I really want to play Ghost Stories, Le Havre, Stone Age, and Battlestar Galactica too! Too many great games, too little time...

The List: September 2011

I've been playing lots of games lately and have been thinking about blogging, but somehow that just hasn't translated to actual posts!

Back during my last flurry of blogging (oh, almost a year and a half ago now!) I posted The List of games in my collection that I had yet to play that year. I stopped paying attention to that after a while (wait, that doesn't sound like me, does it?), but I'm certain I never did get them all played. I feel that an updated version of The List is an excellent place to take stock of my collection as well as what games our group has been playing and which ones need to hit the table soon.

Games Never Played

Shogun
Lord of the Rings: The Card Game
Battlestar Galactica
Bang!
Merlin's Company (Expansion for Shadows Over Camelot)

Games Not Yet Played This Year

Alhambra
Memoir '44
Carcassonne
Metropolys
Wits & Wagers
Blokus
El Grande
Puerto Rico
Say Anything
Scotland Yard
Carcassonne: The Castle

It will take some work to get all these games played, not because there are a lot of them, but rather that a good half of them haven't been played for the very good reason that they are an awkward combination of number of players and lack of popularity. Some examples:

• Memoir '44 (2 player only, the Mrs. hates it, maybe too complicated for Abby still, though she's probably my best bet with this one),
• El Grande (best with 5, some of my core group don't like the game),
• Blokus (not that popular with anyone I know, including myself, though I may be able to get one of the kids to play with me),
• Puerto Rico (somewhat heavy, yet quite a ways down the list of heavy games I want to play--for instance, Chaos in the Old World, Agricola, Le Havre, all competing for the same time).

I'm sure I can fit Say Anything and Wits & Wagers into some large group setting soon, the Carcassonne games I'll probably be able to get Abby & Link to play, and Alhambra and Scotland Yard could both be good family games so making those a priority for the four of us to try together should get them out of the way.

I definitely envision getting all the never been played games to the table over the next few months:

• Merlin's Company will get played the next time people are up for Shadows,
• Shogun is best with 5 and I think I'll be able to rope the in-laws into playing it (perhaps this could be said for El Grande as well),
• Bang! could be another hidden role hit, I just need to read up on the rules,
• the only thing delaying Battlestar Galactica is getting the right group together with 4 hours to spend learning it, and
• The Lord of the Rings I see as a game for Abby and I so I'm sure as soon as I learn it she'll be up for playing.

I have no doubt I could get all these games played this year, the only question is whether it is worth it to pursue this goal when it may lead to fewer plays of games I do love already. If I can get half of them played quickly I'll probably decide it's worth a little push to get them all in, but only time will tell.

Next up on Splitting Eights: What games do I actually really want to play right now? Also, When in the world am I going to get my next The Resistance fix?

Is it Getting a Little Too Cool in the Shadows?

So, Shadows Over Camelot.

At first this one was a big hit with our group and we were playing it any chance we got. If we only had three players we wondered "Is the game really that bad with three? Surely we can make it work!" If we had a group of eight we would wrack our brains to figure out how we could still get it to the table with an extra player.

Really, this was just shy of obsession!

Lately, however, Shadows Over Camelot has started to lose steam due to two seemingly related problems:

1. Our group must have a pretty good handle on strategy in the game, as most recent games have been landslide victories for the loyal knights. There is little worry of defeat and therefore no tension in the game. Our last play we implemented the squire rule (wherein each knight starts with no special power, each only earning one after the successful completion of a quest), and the game did seem to get slightly more difficult, but not as much as I would like. However, adding difficulty to Shadows Over Camelot by taking away special abilities would seem to have the side effect of making the game less interesting and fun for the loyalists, so I'm not convinced that is the way to go at all.

I have recently purchased Merlin's Company, which may boost the difficultly of Shadows enough to make it engaging, but since the expansion adds both new difficulties and new abilities, I feel the net result will be too close to a wash to effectively add enough challenge to the game. The concept of the second traitor in Merlin's Company does have some potential, however, and perhaps adding that aspect could swing the game in a good (rather, evil) direction.


2. It has become increasingly clear that the traitor, while hidden, can only have a very minor negative influence on the game. Since I personally feel that the hidden traitor is the mechanic that makes Shadows an interesting gaming experience, if that role becomes irrelevant I can't see maintaining an interest in the game. Part of this is that there are few decisions a traitor can make that hurt the loyalists without being readily apparent to everyone at the table. For the most part the traitor either does something helpful, and stays undetected, or does something dastardly, and immediately gets accused of being the traitor.

Occasionally the traitor can draw a mercenary card and manage to fail a Saxon or Pict quest undetected, or play a really nasty Lancelot face down, shrugging it off as weak and ultimately sending the quest to defeat, or manage to gain control of Lancelot's Armor or the Grail, thereby depriving the knights of those artifacts' powers. These opportunities don't really seem to come up that often, however, and oftentimes a hidden traitor must be satisfied with holding a few useful grail or special white cards in their hand unused, and simply remaining undetected until game's end when he can flip two white swords to black.

Some Thoughts and Questions

*I'm aware that many consider optimal traitor strategy to be to clearly disloyal from the outset by simply placing siege engines every turn. Though this is certainly a valid strategy and quite powerful, I find having the traitor revealed early to be counter to what makes this game interesting in the first place--the probable existence of a *hidden* traitor.

*I would also like to note that typically we play Shadows Over Camelot with six or seven players, which may very well be one of the primary reasons the game seems so easy for the loyal knights.

*Obviously playing Merlin's Company, especially with the possibility of two traitors, could be helpful in fixing this game for our group, but I'm not sure if it will be enough. Certainly we will have to try this soon and see how it impacts play. Would simply taking the second traitor possibility and adding only it to a game make the traitor role more interesting?

*Is it possible that simply finding ways to make the game harder (squire rule, no Merlin special white cards to start, fewer white cards in opening hand, etc.) will increase the relevance of the traitor role? Certainly any way to make the game more difficult for the loyalists will make a traitor victory more likely, but will it make his decisions more interesting and meaningful during the game?

*Recently I've thought of a way to possibly make the game both more difficult for the loyalists and more meaningful for the traitor. I began by thinking about how useful it is for the traitor to have Lancelot's Armor even before he is revealed as the traitor. Being able to choose the worse of the top two cards and pretend that it was the better of them certainly gives the traitor an opportunity to impact the game. What if everyone had to do something of this sort every turn, thus ensuring that the traitor has a chance to do so? This led me to think of the progression of evil phase in general--it is pretty clear that unless an important quest is on the brink of defeat it is almost always the proper decision to take a black card rather than add a siege engine, lose a life point, or take a punch to the family jewels (the other three choices during progression of evil, obviously ;)

What if each player that chooses to draw from the black deck must draw three cards and either 1)play one special black card from the three and place the other two cards on the bottom of the deck, or 2)play exactly two standard black cards from the three and place the third on the bottom of the deck. To me, this solution is very attractive in so many ways:

-choosing to place a siege engine even early in the game may not be seen as obvious traitor behavior as drawing black cards is more dangerous than usual,
-more black cards come into play making the quests more difficult to complete victoriously but with some choice involved to allow loyal knights to temporarily avoid the worst situations, and
-the traitor is given more choices and a greater ability to cause damage to the loyal cause without clearly outing himself.

The three biggest possible downsides to this house rule that immediately come to mind are 1)all players must make more decisions and thus the game duration will increase, 2)some other parts of the game may have to be edited somewhat to be consistent, for example Sir Percival's peek at the top card special power may be too weak when he must draw three/play two instead of just drawing and playing the peeked at card, and finally 3)this rule *may* make the game more difficult than desired.

Ultimately we'll just have to try this house rule out a few times if it appeals to others in my group, but I would love to hear some feedback on what others think about it. Does the game simply work great right out of the box for you? Have you house ruled in other ways to make Shadows play better?

It is possible, of course, that this is just not the game for our group. The Resistance implements the hidden enemy/team idea very, very well, and I still have high hopes for Battlestar Galactica which I own but have yet to play. I hope that we can find a way to keep Shadows Over Camelot in regular rotation, however, because I do love the theme and the basic idea behind the mechanics.

Game Night II

Our second formal game night took place yesterday evening. Turnout was lower than the first go round as a number of people had to cancel last minute for various (nefarious?) reasons. The six of us have been crazy about Shadows Over Camelot of late so that was our clear first choice of game. I've been very high on Shadows thus far, but this session struck me as rather flat. This may, of course, been partially due to my lack of effectiveness as traitor, leading to my almost embarrassing defeat.

Is Shadows Over Camelot getting too easy?

I'll admit, my enthusiasm for the game has been dampened slightly after last night's session. As the traitor I felt I never had a great opportunity to crash the knights' party--largely because they were completely kicking evil ass the entire time! Not sure if our group is getting better at the game, it is altogether too easy with six players, or if the loyalists simply had an unfortunately (for me!) uninspiring mix of black cards during the game. Of course, it's altogether possible that I do simply suck as the traitor, but even if that wasn't the case I don't think I had a realistic shot of victory.

Quote from the game:

"I don't think there is a traitor. If there is, they really suck!"

Ouch.

Perhaps we need to ratchet up the difficulty by using squire rules (each player needs to win a quest before activating their special power) when we have 6 or 7 players. Or, we may still be communicating too directly and need to restrict strategy talk much more than we have thus far.

A Sliver of Hope?

There was one point late in the game where the siege engine total reached nine, only three away from an evil win. Looking back, this was clearly the best opportunity for me to reveal myself and make a play for the victory. I considered this move at the time but I felt it was a long shot at best as the knights were not being pressed anywhere on the board and had at their disposal almost limitless resources for fighting siege engines. As it turns out this long shot was probably my best chance to turn the tide during the game but I am almost certain it would not have been successful, and at the time it seemed a better strategy to bide my time and hope that a better opportunity would present itself.

Probably revealing myself immediately upon starting the session and placing a siege engine every turn would have focused more pressure on the loyal knights, but that strategy seems much less interesting than keeping hidden waiting to pounce at a moment of weakness. Ah well, perhaps I'll try that next time--it would make for an interesting and vastly different game experience to have that traitor vs. loyalist direct confrontation over the course of an entire play.

Anyway, our tendency to make Shadows into a three hour game meant that it was our only play of the night, so some smaller strategy games will have to wait until next time.