Ice Game Design Competition

by Susan Rozmiarek
Are you looking for more games to play with those cool, colorful pyramids from Looney Labs? How about checking out some of the entries for the Third Ice Game Design Competition?

Gamers who keep up with the Spielfrieks mailing list and BoardgameGeek will no doubt recognize at least two names from the submitted entries- Doug Orleans and David Fair.

Voting on the entries is open to anyone. More information on the competition and how to vote can be found here.

To B or not to B

by Susan Rozmiarek
This week and next I am trying to play some of the “B” games in our collection. I have four that I’ve never played – Buffy the Vampire Slayer Game, Böse Buben, Breakthru, and Battletech. I’m not sure our group would like the Buffy game. That might be one to play with the kids. Battletech is one of Ed’s old games and definitely not my cup of tea. Breakthru is his old game as well, but definitely has possibilities as I enjoy abstract games more these days. We picked Böse Buben off a prize table and it looks like a possibility as a filler.

RRGamers – 1/20/05

Since Ed was gone on a business trip last week and missed out on games, I was the Designated Parental Unit tonight, meaning I got to ferry Kevin back and forth from soccer practice and take Shea to a science fair. I did manage to get in one game.

Billabong

This is a very nifty checkers-like game of racing kangaroos. It comes in an irritatingly large box that is mostly air. The bits are nice, though – big, chunky, colorful wooden kangaroos and a big vinyl map. The map is a grid of spaces with a pond, or billabong in the center and a start/finish line. The kangaroos race around the billabong in a circle. You get to move one of your kangaroos each turn. The movement rules are the heart of the game and are quite clever. A kangaroo can move like the King in Chess, one space in any direction, or he can jump over another kangaroo. When jumping, he jumps in a straight line (orthogonally or diagonally) such that he lands on the other side of the kangaroo and ends up the same distance away from the other kangaroo as he was before. For example, if my kangaroo is two spaces behind the kangaroo I want to jump, my kangaroo will land two spaces in front of that kangaroo. The thing is, in doing so, the spot he lands on has to be unoccupied and he can only jump over one kangaroo at a time. He can, however, jump over as many kangaroos on a single turn as he is legally able, one at a time. A clever series of jumps can move a kangaroo quite a long distance. You are constantly trying to set yourself up for long jumps or series of jumps, while also trying to block opponents from being able to do the same.

Ed and I had both played this several times, but it had been a while. Mike and Adam were new to the game. They both made the mistake of stranding a kangaroo too far behind the pack. Similar to the game the Cartegena, you often have to work from the back, being careful not to leave pieces so far behind by themselves that they can’t take advantage of chains created by the other pieces. Now that they have played the game, I doubt either of them will let that happen again.

I like this game a lot. It’s simple, elegant and makes me feel clever when I spot a killer move.

Results: Susan-1st, Ed -2nd, Adam-3rd, Mike-4th

Austin IBM Lunchtime Gamers 1/21/05

Since I hadn’t played enough games to satisfy my hunger the night before, I headed down to Ed’s workplace to play with the lunch crowd there.

Big City

This was one of the games that hooked me when we first discovered German games years ago. Lavishly produced with all the molded buildings and with fairly simple rules, it was a perfect introduction to “building” games. The game has a nice mix of simple strategy and luck that makes it very enjoyable to new and casual players. The game is definitely better with fewer players, though, as planning becomes very difficult with more.

This was a very odd game of Big City. Very few streetcars were played. They were not a factor at all. I also got off to a very unlucky start. My initial card that matched the city section that I got to place was a park. Everyone else was able to place their section such that they got a two-section building score on their first turn. It set the tone for the entire game for me and I trailed the whole game. I almost beat Mark, but an evil factory placement by Jon towards the end rendered some of my cards useless and guaranteed me a last place finish. This playing was definitely not as satisfying as I remembered the game to be. I’m wondering if it was an aberration or due to the fact that my tastes have evolved from playing many, many different games over the years. I’m hoping it is the former.

Results: Jon in first by a mile, followed by Ed, Mark and me in last.

Session Report for January 13, 2005

by Susan Rozmiarek
This game session is brought to you by the letter "A."

I’ve always been very bothered by all the unplayed or seldom played games in our collection. This year, I’m hoping to address this in a way proposed by Jon Theys on the Spielfriek Yahoo group. My goal is to work through the alphabet, allowing two weeks per letter, and playing at least one game with a name starting with that letter. The focus, of course, will be on unplayed games and games that haven’t hit the table in a very long time. This will force me to take a close look at our collection in small sections. So tonight, I was hoping to get at least one “A” game to the table. I was pleased to actually manage three.

Geschenkt

First up for the early birds was this quick, new card game. People seemed to be raving about this one after the Essen game fair, but so far I am only mildly impressed. The part of the game I find most enjoyable is gambling about how many times a card that I want will stay on the table, allowing the chips to pile up for me to take. There doesn’t seem to be many meaningful decisions to make, just a bit of risk-taking. Nonetheless, even though I don’t believe it is quite deserving of all the buzz it has generated, I do find it to be a very simple, quick and pleasant filler.

Results: Marty +11, Mark -19, Adam -40, Susan -45, Mike -54

Aladdin’s Dragons

Our group played this Richard Breese game several years ago. We played a rule incorrectly, which soured everyone on the game, and it hasn’t seen the light of day since. It’s been so long that I can’t even remember which rule we goofed, making it an excellent candidate for an “A” game. We went straight for the advanced version with magic cards, as the basic version looked rather dull.

This game is simply gorgeous, with the board and cards beautifully illustrated by the talented Doris Matthäus. The currency in the game is treasure, represented by a pile of colorful, shiny, plastic bits molded into several different shapes. Very nice overall to look at, I must say.

The game’s main mechanism is blind bidding, which is repeated over and over. If you aren’t a fan of that mechanism, stay far, far away from this game. Believe me, you’ll hate it. I rather like it myself, but it is taken to the extreme in Aladdin’s Dragons. Detractors of the game in our group complain that the whole game is just guesswork, but I find it to involve lots of planning and bluffing. All the elements interlock and must be taken into consideration when planning the round and doling out your limited bidding chips. Aladdin’s Dragons actually reminds me a lot of Wallenstein. Yes, you read that correctly. Wallenstein. In both games, the heart of the gameplay is a big planning phase, where you have to try and predict what your opponents will do. You know in what order things will be resolved (well, only half of them in Wallenstein) and this order may be crucial to your planning decisions. Then, you sit back and watch things get resolved, with only a few decisions to be made during this phase. After that, you repeat the whole process again. The magic cards in Aladdin’s Dragons, which do various things, create a good bit of chaos, but they are fun. We played with the variant that has the two available magic cards each round face-up, so you not only know what you are bidding on, but also what cards people may have in their hands.

I really enjoyed this game and with three people, it played in about an hour. I wish I could get it to the table more often.

Results: It was a close finish with Francesca in first place and Peter and I barely trailing behind.

The aMAZEing Labyrinth

My son just loves this game, so it is definitely not underplayed at my house, but I thought it might be a good shorter game to play while waiting for the other tables to finish. While it looks like just a kid’s game, it is enough of a mental exercise to be enjoyable by adults as well. Each turn presents a little, tactical, spatial puzzle of trying to shift the labyrinth so that you have a path to your goal. I like it a lot.

Results: Francesca – 1st, Susan – 2nd, Peter – 3rd

Attika

Well, we never could get in sync with the other tables’ ending times, so Peter, Francesca and I pulled out Attika, a game we were all familiar with and all like. It’s nice sitting down to a game where only a quick rules refresher is needed.

Attika was a huge hit with our group when it came out. It was subsequently played to death and everyone got burned out on it. I hadn’t played it for almost a year so it was overdue to be played.

Since we had all played before, it was a fairly competitive game. Connection threats were recognized and nullified several times. Francesca ended the game by placing all of her buildings a turn before I would have been able. Peter was fairly close as well. I would easily tire of this game again, but bringing it out on an occasional basis is fine.

Some other notes about tonight:

Mark, Doug, Clark, and Weldon played a 1 hour & 45 minute game of Hansa (!) Doug claims that Mark was the one taking “forever” to move.

Das Zepter von Zavandor was played yet again. This game is a current “darling” of our group. I got to play it a few weeks ago and it is indeed an excellent game and not for the faint of heart. There is a bit of a learning curve and I got crushed. It’s one of those games that snowball, making it crucial to make good decisions early-on as it hard to catch up once you fall behind. There are several strategies to pursue and the variety of possible decisions creates a lot of turn angst. It is so popular with our group, that yet another Adam Spielt order has been organized to order copies.

Next week: Games that start with the letter “B.” This is starting to sound like an episode of Sesame Street.

Interesting Article by Lewis Pulsipher

by Susan Rozmiarek
Lewis Pulsipher, the designer of Britannia, posted this long and very interesting article, "An attempt to explain why (and how) boardgaming has changed in the past twenty years," on the BoardGameDesign Yahoo group. I found it on his website as well.

He makes a lot of observations about younger people and society today that are spot-on. He also has some other articles on his website that look interesting, although I haven't had a chance to read them yet.

One passage that jumps out at me on a personal level is this one:

"We are also seeing the effects of the "cult of the new". Something is necessarily better because it's new, in this view. Certainly, makers of general-market retail products seem to think "new" means more sales, so they tout "new taste", "new design", etc. on their boxes, even when they've made no practical changes. Occasionally this "new" strategy backfires, as in the "New Coke" fiasco. But even in gaming I understand that the "cult of the new" is reflected in very short shelf lives for games sold in hobby stores. And it appears to me that most Euro-style gamers get restless after playing the same game several times, and want to play something else. There are MANY more wargame titles available now than 20-25 yeas ago, but virtually none of them sells very well compared to that older time".

Moving on to the latest and greatest games, leaving yesterday's gems languishing behind on the shelves, is something that I'm always fighting. My group goes through new games with unbridled glee, and I'm easily swept right along with them. I own very few games that I feel I have fully explored, which is a real shame.

One fun (I hope) exercise that I'm planning to do this year was suggested by someone (Jon Theys?) on Spielfrieks. I'm going to go through the alphabet, two weeks per letter, and play at least one game with a name starting with that letter. When I first read this idea, I thought it rather silly. After looking at all the "A" games in my collection, I realized that this is an opportunity to get me to focus on some older games and gives me an excuse to get them to the table.