Recap of Essen 2014

Over three months has gone by after Essen 2014. I have now completed to test out the haul I brought back. It seemed also a good time to go through the lot and write about the best and worst games in my mind and also games I’m eager still to get to the table. I’ll pick 4 from both group. The games are in alphabetical order as I cannot say which one like or dislike the most.

The Enthuastic, Suggest department

Aquasphere

The one Feld I bought in Essen. Lots of moving parts, lots of thinking. Planning is required and is rewarded. The first game we played had some rule misunderstanding and some rules were also omitted by mistake. I’m really eager to get this to the table. Time will tell if the game has longevity and will the playing time match the eagerness to play.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Just got another game in of CoMKL and it just is a great game. It is a perfect example of a game of today. The game play is pretty solitary but has some player interaction. The theme matches the game play and the playing time should be somewhere 60 – 90 minutes. I just read a great blog post about the route were going with board games. I concur on the points said there. Solo gaming might be becoming more important than additional players.

Imperial Settlers

I have now tried all four deck and I really like this game. IS is easy to explain and starts very fast. The however then slows down and thinking comes along. It goes from play anything you have to play everything you have. Solo play is very good but the game is best with two. The thing I like the most here is the quirkiness of the graphics. I was sold onto the game just based on them. Good thing that the gameplay was as solid as the graphics.

Mythotopia

This is probably the biggest surprise from the game I bought. I didn’t like Two Acres of Snow as it just didn’t go forward in your first play through. Mythotopia however was a blast to play. It is sort of deck builder but the variations the game has will keep it fresh quite some time. I will keep this in my bag until I get a few games more under my belt.

The Indifferents and trade aways

Bania

Bania is a family game from Mattel. I would describe it as training in futility. If all players are even somewhat similar to board games this game is not going to be any fun. All the moves players make keep the score tied and there is no way to get ahead without making a mistake. The worst thing is that the mistakes are easy to spot and nobody is willing to make them. Poor game.

Dice Brewing

The theme is good, the components are good but the game is lousy. The rules are written quite poorly and the gameplay isn’t very straightforward. I just didn’t get this game and I know that I’m not the only one.

El Gaucho

Dice and worker placement should keep me happy but alas this game was something I didn’t like. It was an ok game but all the time I played I didn’t feel anything. It was a dull repetition of actions with cute graphics.

Owacon

Deduction and worker placement, a rare combination. This thing could be considered more as a curiosity than a game. It is original Japan production which can be seen as the terrible graphical interface. The more I thought about this game the more I didn’t like it. This pairing however needs another try in different form.

The want to try section

Arkwright

Orleans

What else? What games did you like from Essen?

Gaming diary: Week 4

The roof gave in at our regular gaming attic so we had to relocate to a nearby bar. The incident happened prior not during the gaming night. The lighting was good in that cabinet we played but the CHL hockey match interrupted my concentration many times.

The big game of the night was Panamax. Well, the box is big and there is a lot components. Let’s start by saying that it took an hour to explain the rules. First time players all four. The game is about moving ships along the Panama canal. Panamax has a small relativity to the 18xx-series as there are corporations that have money and then each player has their own money. Money equals victory points and the player with the most money at the end of game wins.

The game play is rather simple as you can choose only from two options. There are many free actions that you can do during your turn but most of the time choose one from two. The available actions per turn is resolved by rolling 16 dice. While there are only two option each option is divided into three. So for each number on the dice there is an action. The first three are about moving the ships through the canal and the last three is about loading ships.

The movement through the canal is through lock and waterway movement. The interesting part of the game is the pushing and group forming of ships in the canal. As there is an maximum amount of ships allowed in one part of a canal players can from block that must be pushed forward. As the pushing is legal players with cunning positioning can gain huge advantages. Money is gained when ships are moved out of the canal. There are different types of ships but most of the time the companies earn money according to the pips shown on the cargo dice.

The other part of the game is about loading ships with cargo. Each player has dice that can be loaded to the canal. This is done is by choosing an action die and taking a contract card. The contract card has one to three cargo space shown on it and once player takes it he places his cargo dice on that card with the number showing on the card. Player never rolls his dice. The cargo dice are then immediately loaded into ships. The number is dependant on the action dice you took. Once you clear a contract card you gain a flag token.

Those four different flag tokens are quite crucial as they’re the main way to get free actions. Depending on the company once a flag token is placed on the company board there are several possibilities it can do, these vary from loading, moving and market actions. Market actions are quite easy, either increase your stock price by two or buy a share. At the end of the round each company first pays for all the cargo dice on the board and then pays dividends to the share owners. After three rounds game ends.

There is a lot going on in Panamax but it still feels quite shallow. The action pool is very limited and the pushing of the ships while fun can still bring aggrevation to players. I can’t say anything affirmative after the first play other than I should play it again very soon as I have the rules in memory. What I can tell you is that with your money you should buy another stock immediately, pay attention to the cost of cargo dice. There is no need to get dividends all three rounds, if the company passes round two dividends it is bound to have plenty of cash after round three. The designers of Panamax also designed Madeira. I can see the relation between these two as all the little things included in the game makes the game bigger. I’m not saying that little things make a big game but the illusion is there. I’m pretty sure that this game could be streamlined and playing time shaved off with few rule changes. I gave it 7 in BGG and I’m not really sure if it will go up or down with the second game.

On Friday I played Nehemiah with my wife. A biblical game of influence. Rather simple regarding available actions. Place a worker on a card or do an action with a worker already in a card. The thing here is that the cards are in a row and players must place the workers on the topmost available card. When they do actions they can do actions on the card above them if they have been done before. When the lowest row, fourth, worker does his action all the cards are discarded and a new set is revealed.

There are two types of resources, wood and money, that are first collected and then spent to gain influence in three different categories. Three separate scorings are done in between decks I, II and III. The difference with the decks is that they have more powerful actions later on. It was short and simple and I won. I didn’t dislike it, it was an ok game but there was a lack of growth in the game. It was just the same old, same old. The action selection while an ok idea never took off and stayed very bland all the time. There were some strategy in the placement of your workers when playing with two but not much. This is a family game and a short trip to wikipedia to find what the theme is.

We also started a board game developers club in Oulu. The first meeting was two people with a really different take on how to publish a game. I’m more of a hobby gamer, more complex, and straight to international markets and he was family gamer, simple and only for market distribution here in Finland. Both ways work as we both have games available for purchase. We talked about publishing and then explained the few ideas we brought along. I really hope that this club takes and I get to speak to other designers about games and designing them.

Podcasts I like

In November I asked myself what to do when you have no new ideas in your head? The answer then was that go back to your old ideas and see if they give something new to you. I want to expand that answer to include the sentiment that listening others talking about their game design and boardgaming generally helps you to come up with new ideas. The other useful thing about listening others talk about the things you like is that you can keep up with the news in the industry and also you might learn something new. I have a list of podcasts that I listen regularly. These listening session occur while driving to work (about 20 min) and walking the dog (about 40 min). The list I compiled for myself is something I have time to listen in during the workweek. I know there are a lot of them out there, just check BGG, but in my own perspective I find podcasts that contain things about game design, development and the industry in general the most interesting.

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Game Design

Ludology – http://www.ludology.libsyn.com/

Hosts: Ryan Sturm & Geoff Engelstein

In my mind the best podcast about game design and study is Ludology. Mostly because Geoff Engelstein and his musings on the topic. Ludology post new episodes in two week interval and old segments from the Dice Tower podcasts in between the new stuff. Geoff is the designer of Space Cadet series and Ares Project. The things discussed in Ludology have really resonated and many things have remained in my design “playbook” to try out. Strongly recommend to hear them out.

Building the Game Podcast – http://www.buildingthegamepodcast.com/

Hosts: Rob Couch & Jason Slingerland

This is my priority podcast when a new batch of episodes is downloaded into my phone. Rob and Jason are just two regular dudes who like to desing games. In the last few years I have been listening to them they have grown from wanting to publish a game to self-publisher and I really hope to see a signed game coming from either one of the hosts. The best thing about this podcast is they pitch a game each week to each other. The games are really rough but it doesn’t matter. They’re unpolished gems that they go through each week. Those pitches have given me many ideas also. The bad thing about this is that they don’t play many games other than their prototypes and it shows. Sometimes they’re so off base that it irks me quite a lot. However, the insight and humor is what keeps me coming back to this one.

The Game Design Round Table – http://thegamedesignroundtable.com/

Hosts: Dirk Knemeyer, David Heron & Rob Daviau

This is not purely a board game podcast as there are mobile game designers on there also. Rob Daviau is the designer of Risk Legacy and many others and Dirk Knemeyer has also published a few games.The episodes are however about game design and many things apply in both mobile and table top games so there are very good conversations in this one also. They also talk about development and producing games as Rob has a publishing company which will eventually come out with SeaFall. For me half of the episodes are a miss but the rest are pure gold.

Industry

Happy Mitten Podcast – http://www.happymittengames.com/

Hosts: Jeff, Lee & Kyle

This is my now not so secret pleasure. Happy Mitten Games is a publishing company that hasn’t yet produced a single game. Their first kickstarter is just starting. It has been very enjoyable to listen their journey from knowing nothing to learning a lot piece by piece. The quests for this show are very good and they bring a lot of interesting aspects to each area of publishing a game. Starting from design and going to distribution However, this is also a podcast that one should not listen for their played games. They’re basically novices in that regard too. They’re finding new games but their taste in games does not meet mine.

Plaid Hat Podcast – http://www.plaidhatgames.com/podcast

Host: Alex Eding

Plaid Hat is another publisher but they have many succesful games under their belt, Mice & Mystics, Summoner Wars and Dead of Winter for example. When they’re serious and stay on topic the podcast is a good one. When they let the designers talk about their games or the owner about the company I really like it. However, they have humorous segments that are just mind-numbing and really not that exciting. The podcast gives a nice insight into the company and in that aspect I listen it.

Board Game University – http://boardgameuniversity.libsyn.com/

Hosts:

These episodes are short and to the point. The episodes have a quest on that talks about their expertise in the board game industry. There have been many designer in there but also a lot of publishers and convention organizers and more. There was a pause in production after the summer but the episodes have started again.

News, Games & Reviews

The Dice Tower – http://www.dicetower.com/home.html

Hosts: Tom Vasel & Eric Summerer

This is the main podcast of the Tom Vasel Dice Tower empire. This is where I can get my news and reviews of games that I have heard but not played yet. Something the above podcasts couldn’t provide. There are segments in this podcasts that bring variery to the episodes and then each other week they do a top ten list in some topic. Those are not so interesting but overall the show is enjoyable to listen and it keeps my update. I just must remind myself that the taste in games for me and the hosts is vastly different. To see the whole podcast empire go here, most of mentioned belong to this network.

On Board Games – http://onboardgames.libsyn.com/

Hosts: Donald & Erik

This gives me mixed feelings. I like the feel and the topics they go through but they tend to go long and the episodes usually last around the 2 hour mark. This is too much for me and I tend to skip episodes that have a less interesting topic. They have great quests and very good reviews of newer games. In that respect On Board Games is on top of its game as they go through many new games. The newest kickstarter edition of this podcast is a real bore to me and I don’t even bother going through them.

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Those are podcasts that I somewhat regularly listen. What are your favourites? If there other game design podcasts out there I want to know.

Gaming diary: Week 3

Another week with some gaming gone. The regular gaming night started with a different take than usual as we tried out one of my prototypes, the trick-taking city building card game. For now I’m calling it Parks & Pavements as it has the same theme as my first game Councils & Contracts. I’ll dedicate a post for that game in the future.

After that the same five people started playing Chrononauts. Not very impressed with that game. It was in the vain of Fluxx. Draw a card play a card see the effect it does on the table. The game is about changing history and finding a set in your personal card that allows you to win. It is purely random as cards change hands and with more people you randomly rely on others to set your win. We had a good laugh in the first five minutes but as the game was 45 min long it overstayed its welcome.

Then we got to play a game I was longing to play. Louis XIV has been on my want to play list for about three years and finally I got it to the table. I briefly owned the german version of the game but once I heard the english version is in Oulu I got rid of it quickly without setting up my own copy. Sorry once again ansi for the missing piece.

Louis XIV is a set collection game with an area control mechanism attached to it. There are four turns in the game so it can be played pretty fast. At the start of turn you have (usually) five cards and you play four of them. With that card you can place your 2 or 3 tokens on the board starting with the number the card holds and then can place in adjacent places. The other thing is that you can take back your tokens to be used. When everybody has played the cards they’re resolved in number order. The player with most gains the most and depending on what side the tile is facing other can get something too. Through this resolvement you gain four different chits. With these chits you obtain special action cards which are also the main source of victory points.

The game comes down to timing and optimization. If you have influence tokens while your opponents don’t you’re in a good position. With three the game might be easier than the suggested best with four as the area influence aspect is not in full competition. However, you must have a plan that can be slightly adapted. The special cards are a big thing here. As a small compact game it had a lot going on. I liked it and was not dissappointed after playing. Those three games were the regular gaming night.

Additionally and fortunately I got another game in for this week. I got to learn and play Fields of Arle. Fields of Arle is the latest from Uwe Rosenberg. A 1 to 2 player game with a playing time of 1h per player. It is one of those resource conversion games that Uwe really likes to design. The theme behind the game is that players are building a farm and the land nearby. Each player has their own player board that opens up during the game as players cut peat from dehydrated moors and move dikes to claim more land.

There are 5 different resources that you track in your player board then seven more that come in token form. Those tokens are double-sided, one side basic other upgraded. Finally there are three different wooden animals and black cubes to represent peat. Ora et Labora is a good comparision resource and player board wise. Agricola and Caverna comes to mind when looking at the animals. Animal placement and breeding is however little different as open land holds two animals and dikes one. Exactly two animals in stalls and stables reproduce, so with three stalls with sheeps you can breed three sheep. There is also little bit of Glass Road in this as the buildings are similarly tiles and the same illustrations for people are used in the rulebook.

What’s somewhat new in Fields of Arle? Well, each player has four worker that they place each turn. There are nine turns and they’re divided into spring and fall. You have different set of actions that you can take in spring and fall. There are also travel destinations that are there to mostly to bring additional food to your farm and also to gain some points at the end of game. The last thing new in this game, compared to other Uwe games, are vehicles. Vehicles are crucial part of the game that you can buy during the game. Those vehicles are the used for the travel destinations mentioned but also used to upgrade the double-sided tokens to their fancy side, hides turn to coats, wool to clothes and wood to timber for example. You don’t obtain the upgraded goods right away but at the start of the next half-year. There is a lot going on in this game.

If I haven’t had played other Uwe games Fields of Arle would be superb game but now as the years have past and there is Agricola, Caverna, Ora et Labora and Glass Road I just don’t see this as a competitive game among them. The problems I have with this is that it is strictly two player game and it has very little player interaction. The interaction is not very strongly present in those other games but more people bring more worker placement problems. After knowing how to play the game it would be around 100-120 minutes to play this. At this stage of my life I very rarely have that kind of time to play a game casually, so it goes down to the kinda want to play status many games have. The resource conversion is vast and at some points useless. In Fields of Arle the feeding is simplified as you just need 3 food (and 2 peat per spring) each half-year to feed your farm. I always had abundance of those resources and didn’t feel any pressure to come up with those and could just focus on the actions that bring me points. To summarize, you can do too much Fields of Arle.

Beside the criticism Fields of Arle is a good game. There is nothing wrong mechanically and once you know how to play it it flows. There are new thing compared to other farming games and they’re interesting. It deserves a try but after that I don’t see many players sticking to this as you have better multiplayer Uwe games.

Prototyping: Cave, Men and something something

This will be the introduction for the game that has been lingering in my brain for over 2 months. I haven’t done any physical parts for it, mostly just planned how the game would start and what I need, components wise, to play the game. This post can also be seen as a introduction to how I start making games. I think it easier to show while doing as the ideas might just pop into your head while writing. Anyhow, lets start from the idea and concept.

This game is a solo game, but can be a base for a larger game. The extra motivation for this game comes from the want to participate in the 2015 Solitaire Print and Play Contest in BGG with this game. The entry deadline is 2nd of August so I have plenty of time to this. However, game design is fun, so the contest is really just an extra thing.

I had three things in my mind when I started thinking about this game. First is that I want the scoretrack to do something more than track points. To idea is based on the game Lords of Vegas. In Lords of Vegas you can freely move up the score track until a pointblock comes. This block means that you must earn an increasing amount of points to go forward in the scoretrack. A newer game AquaSphere has similar thing in that you need to spend resources to get beyond a barrier in the point track. My idea is that there are these block and when you cross them, by getting more and more points, you gain or lose resources. So at the first part of the game progressing through the game is made a little bit simpler as the game rewards you from scoring the points. Then in the middle game forward when you score points the game takes resources away from you making you thing that do you want to gain points. As a single player game the goal is just to get a high score at this point.

The second thing I wanted to somewhat implement in this game is a concept similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The game will have five different resources that also reprsesent the needs of your people. So at the first stage you need food to survive. When you have enough food you start thing about shelter. When you have those both then you want tools, then fire and finally culture. Gamewise this is tracked through a half-pyramid with a base of five cubes. So when you have two food cubes you can make a shelter cube. In my mind both of the mentioned mechanisms suit an evolutional game where progress is happening.

The third thing I want to implement is tile stacking, something I wrote about in an earlier post. I want to make double-tiles. Two tiles with two different actions together in a single tile. At this point I’m thinking about three different tile stacks that work as the game clock. The first stack would represent the exploration done after you start the game with two terrain types on them. The second stack would be a simple actions. The placement is done on top of a suitable terrain type. Most tile son this second stack would have a blank second tile. These blank tiles have two uses, first they block the actions below them and second they form a base for the third stack tiles. The third stack would be advanced actions and good victory point machines.

Like I said the tiles will work also as a game clock. When the first stack is depleted the game ends. The tiles also have another function on them. They’re double-sided and have a modifier on the face-down side. At the end of turn what is shown on top of the stack is something the player needs to address. That might be a loss of resources, workers or points. Additionally, they can have the effect to destroy themselves or other tiles from other stack, which makes the game go forward.

That’s basically the elevator pitch of the game. I’ll come back to this topic when I have made progress on it. At this point I’m thinking about the beginning of the game. I know the starting tile and resources what the player has. The next step is to make at least four viable action options to start the game and make them work.

Gaming diary: Weeks 1 & 2

My gaming year started on the 1st day and we played another game of Mangrovia with the wife. The game was really squeezed in while the kids were asleep. A theme that hopefully be somewhat recurring during the year. There’s nothing much to comment on this game, I won third time in a row and it is unlikely that this game will be played again as I now know how to play it properly.

On the 3rd we played Province. This is a two-player game in a small package. I hoped that it would be something we would play on our future travels, but it is not. While it has nice aspects in it, it still is a dry mechanical game that brings little joy to the gaming world. I’m not unhappy that I tried it but as it tries to be a small game it fails to be one. The things it does should be converted into a small box game and then it would be a just another euro. Not for me.

Then it was time for another small box game and a gift on top of it. I taught Wurfel Bohnanza. It was my number 40 and I said:

I stumbled onto Wurfel Bohnanza by accident and it was deemed somewhat a lousy game. Well after a few games I really liked it. The beans are there to remind you that it is part of the Bohnanza family but otherwise it is its own game. It is push your luck dice rolling game where you try to collect bean sets shown on a card, you have two at a time. In each card there are six orders which you must deliver in order with increasing difficulty (there a percentages on the cards showing the possibility of that order) to gain victory points. The innovation of this game is that all players can use your dice right after you have rolled them, they don’t have to wait for the final roll. This makes the game more interactive as you have to be part of the rolling. This is a great filler in my mind and on my want to buy list.

It is not on my buy list anymore, thanks to Kimmo. Now that we have played four games as a 2p game I still really like it. I have lost all four games so we will play this more in the future. It is a small box game so it can be taken with us out of the house. I definately can recommend this game to all gamers for a great filler.

What else? Well, I got a 2h leave from home and went to the regular gaming night. There where only four people there and I requested that we try out Singapore. Game that was on sale in Essen for 9€ but I bought it for 15, just because I’m a sucker that doesn’t know better. Anyhow, one word describes Singapore quite well and it is fiddly.

Singapore is about building Singapore. The game play is about tile placement and goods conversion. The theme is strongly overlaid and the game play is purely mechanical. First the player with the least points chooses the places where player can place a building tile, there are light and dark tiles. Dark tiles being slightly more powerful. Then in turn order each player places and pays a tile to board. The next step is to move your worker around the tiles, using roads, and take actions described on the tiles. The actions are mostly very straight-forward, convert two cubes to x money and so worth. The thing there is that one color, yellow, represent opium and that is something the cops randomly raid. So if you take an action in a dark tile you must take a disc out of a bag. If the disc is black then nothing happens, if it is white the police raid the player with most opium and black discs. That player loses money, or points when no money, for each opium cube and black discs. This can really affect your game as the money is tight and you need every cube you have. Optimization, you know.

I didn’t really enjoy playing Singapore. While I like mechanisms first there was just something monotone with the game. It didn’t really grow or inspire to play. So for that reason I’m taking the game box and making it a prototype box and reuse the components in other games.

Additionally, I must give yet another shoutout to my secret santa. My print and play secret santa sent me a great gift. I got Magic Realm! That game is huge and it looks and feels really great. All I now need is trip to Kuopio/Siilinjärvi and make an event out of it, as I’m sure there are few gamers that want to rate it.

Look past the Past, what is Now is important!

I’m back again. My last post was two weeks ago and it is time to get back in the saddle. The last two weeks however have been really interesting as I have got the chance to meet and know my second son. Gaming wise, I have not played less boardgames in a month for over 6 years than in the just ended December. Only 12 rounds played, last time I played around 12 games per month was when I was on our honeymoon in 2011.

Anyhow, this post will be about the past. It is mostly for myself to get this data somewhere but it also introduces my gaming habits to you. I have recorded games about 6½ years now so I’m lookin back and see how my gaming life has changed. Everything is based on the following chart.

In the chart above the Blue line is the unique games I played per yer. The Red line is the total amount of games I played during that particular year and the Green line is the ratio of unique/total. Just looking at the chart I can say that year 2014 had characteristics from previous years. I played 285 unique games, figure similar to 2013 but played 384 times similarly than in year 2012. The worst thing is that while I play a lot of games I have less and less repeat plays, if you take my most played game “Unpublished Prototype” the numbers are lower than those. For year 2014 w/o prototype plays it was 1,14.

The reason is simple for this. My son was born in September 2013 and after that I haven’t had the time to play as much as I wanted. The months prior this were few of my best months in gaming. All because we had time to play with my wife. However, I’m not complaining, I still get to play board games, and I now have to handsome sons.

I want to play, I want to play new games and that really shows. For a game to hit the table it really needs to be good, well there are some games with my wife that she likes more than me. In year 2014 the only games I played five or more times were Tichu and Glass Road. Tichu I really love and there are several gaming groups that I can play that with and Glass Road was a wife game.

My goal for this year is to play games more casually. Don’t worry about the numbers and try to get back enjoying games, play great games more and try to get another publishing deal. Attend Ropecon and Essen, visit my friends in Kuopio and play games with them. Keep blogging. Start introducing game-like activities to my first son and enjoy the time I get to spend with the family.