Descent Second Edition

Fantasy Flight are forgiven for every other pile of chromed up, pedestrian playing, lacking in imagination, poorly playtested, piece of donkey do from the last three years because this game is genius. The system is so stripped down from a rules read through it looks shallow, but game play is just so tense and involving unimpeded by 10,000 chits or Terrinoth waffle (its there but the table looks less like a town centre pavement after pub closing and more like a mission). For once the design hits the spot, game first, chrome second. This is the grail Dungeon crawl - the rules are simple, 15 minutes setup per encounter and and an hour or so play per scenario. Plus there is a campaign, with incremental development for both Players and Overlord. At no point does the game stall and at the trackable information is at just the right level - its possible to keep it all in view and mind yet theres enough going to provide depth to the story and meaningful choices for all participants. A huge improvement on Descent - which was damn fun to begin with. Where there was grind there is now flow, where every encounter went on longer than a Frankie Howard death scene now there is one decisive, bloody and brief tipping point...

A code of conduct for boardgamers

Repeated from BoardGameGeek - a code of conduct for boardgaming. I am reprating it here so that I read it from time to time (1) I will always finish the games I start and assist with the clean up when the game is done. This includes bottles, cups, cans, and other things around the game table. (2) I will not consistently take longer to decide my move than everyone else at the table. It is better to make a suboptimal move and consider it a lesson learned than to hold everyone up. It is okay if occasionally I say, "oh man, I'm going to need a minute to think about this one" when I hit a really interesting puzzle. But that's the exception, happening maybe a couple times per game, not the norm. (3) I will not eat foods that make my fingers messy while playing. I recognize that games are a dear possession and that my pop stains and "cheesy" prints may not qualify as adding value to a prized possession. (4) If you are teaching a game I already know, I will not interrupt you. It is your show. If you've overlooked something, and it becomes clear that you've moved on and are not just going to come back to it, I will politely remind YOU, "remember the rule about ...." and you can explain it. I won't just jump in and add my own commentary whenever I want. (5) If you are teaching a game I don't already know, I will be quiet and listen. If I have questions that seem like the kind of questions you'll get to in due course, I'll try to hold them. (6) If I decide that I no longer have any chance of winning, I'll play for style points. I mean, for place, or for score. If you decide that you no longer have any chance of winning, you can do whatever you want (just please don't leave). If you decide to knock me out and crown player X the winner just for the fun of it... I will be disappointed, but that is your choice. As Reiner Knizia allegedly said, "the goal is to win, but it's the goal that is important, not the winning." Whether I actually won or not is irrelevant except that it provides feedback about whether my choices were good ones or not. The feedback helps me improve my game, which is one of the finest pleasures of gaming. And here's the thing: the feedback I'd get is the same either way whether I won a game or I lost it only because of douchebaggery. In either case it is evidence that I probably played well, and should probably keep doing more of that. (7) I will try to contain my compulsive habit of straightening the pieces on the board until everything is so nice and perfectly straight. I'll try, really I will. (8 ) When you make a play that hurts me, I won't take it personally, and I will never try to make you feel bad for it. Sure, I may moan and groan a little, but it is all in good fun. Conversely, I pledge to always make the best moves I can think of; whether it hurts you specifically or not. That's my job as a player. I hope you deal with this well, almost all real gamers do. (9) If I realize I made a blunder, and the next player hasn't gone yet, and I know exactly what move I want to do instead, then I'll ask you if I can change my move. I won't try to change the past if the next player's already gone. And I won't ask to take it back and then make you wait while I decide all over again what to do. Better to just accept it as a lesson learned and move on. It's good to make sure that when I lose I'll have something to blame it on. (10) If I realize you've made a blunder, I'll ask you: "Are you sure?" I don't like game outcomes to be determined by who blunders the least. The exception is if fixing your blunder is injurious to a particular other player (not me). I think that would be very irritating to said player. If others at the table express that they prefer we not help each other in this way, I'm fine with keeping my mouth shut. I'll probably move tables after this game, though; it's just not the kind of vibe I like. (11) If you are new to a game and you ask for advice about what to do, I'll offer you my best advice, and make sure to point out the fact that, actually, I almost always lose, so you might want to take my advice with a grain of salt. (12) If I realize I'd forgotten about my staffed quarry when I built two turns ago, I might ask, "Hey. Is it okay if I take the extra doubloon that I should have saved?" I won't assume that you'll say yes. And I will NOT say, "If I'd known that, I would have bought this building instead, so when we crafted I should have an extra indigo meaning that the boat should have been full when...." (13) I will perform my actions in the open. I won't just drop my hand into my discard pile and announce "and I buy a Province!" Or, when paying five blue cards to build to Miami, I'll fan the cards, not stack them. I assume that you'd like to be able to see for yourself that my actions are legit. I think it's totally reasonable for you to want to see this -- we all make mistakes. I know I have accidentally "cheated" many times and I definitely want to get caught if I do! (14) If we realize a rules error was made, that benefited player X or hurt me, I will vote that we just let it stand. It can be very difficult, and often impossible, to reconstruct what the game state "should have been". Better to just move on, even if "it's not fair." If we realize a rules error that helped me, I will apologize and volunteer some penalty that seems appropriate. We can agree on a penalty, be it money, points, or whatever, and move on. Finally, if a rules error hurt a particular player, we can volunteer some simple compensation to that player and move on. (15) Sometimes if we realize a rules error, it may make sense to just decide as a group that we're playing a variant, and stick to that change. But this is for the table to decide! I won't whine, "That's not fair, you let HER add a guy there even though it was full!" (16) I will not complain that "You never told us that rule!"; even if you really didn't, (but you probably did). (17) I won't get mad at you if you don't adhere to the same code of conduct I do. If your behavior is *really* far from it, though, I might just quietly decide to try not to game with you again. Fair enough? (18) I will shut my cell phone off as to prevent interruption unless I have a VERY important call I am expecting and that is quite rare. (19) I will not cry "I never get good dice" just because my first die roll in a game was not what I wanted it to be. (20) I will try not to pass judgment on a game until it's completed. I will also try to comment on the good parts of the game, or the parts that I liked about it. I will not use this as an opportunity to expound on all the reasons the game sucks. I have an opportunity to express my tastes in game ratings. (21) I will show up at the designated and agreed time frame so the game can start on time. I recognize that by being late I am inconveniencing all of the other players that have given up their time to play this game. If I am going to be late, I will call the game organizer and let them know. I will not be offended if they decide to start without me. Their time is obviously as valuable and important as mine. (22) I will be open to trying new games and playing what the organizers and other players are proposing. I understand some people may not be as enthusiastic about my favorite game in the whole world. If the game being proposed is not one I enjoy, I will resolve to try it and be positive, or excuse myself from playing the game. I recognize that my attitude can have an effect on the other players and their enjoyment of the game. (23) Most importantly, I commit to having fun. Games are a leisure activity and should be engaged in with a sense of fun and adventure. I hope that my commitment to the fun and social nature of gaming is contagious enough that I encourage this behavior in others. I want to be an ambassador to this rewarding and entertaining hobby. (24) I will be very respectful of game components. Most board gamers are very protective of their games, especially collectors. Not only do they want to keep their games in good condition, a lot of them are hard to come by and can be very expensive. Some games, for example, have many cards. I will not bend, tap, rub or do anything that will mark or damage the cards.

New releases 070712

In stock now ‘Spielbox issue 3’, which includes 2 new monsters for Dungeonpetz. ‘Power Grid : Baden Wurtemburg and Quebec’, these maps were previously only available in either the limited edition ENBW Power grid (a 1,000 copies were made for the German power company, and to my knowledge its the only game from Friedman Friesse which has not come in a green box) and the Canadian version of Power Grid (‘Megawatts’). I have tired of waiting for the Rio Grande edition so have imported some German copies and I will provide a rules translation. These maps are only being printed once. Arriving next week ‘Milestones’ , designed by Stefan Dorra (‘Pergammon, Kreta’) and Ralf Zur Linde (‘Finca’) and published by EggertSpiel. Is an intriguing looking game where players are collectively building into the countryside but use their own rondel style board to take actions and gather resources. Given EggertSpiel’s recent record of picking winners (‘Village’, ‘Speicherstadt ’ , ‘Santiago da Cuba’ and ‘Pergamon’) I am going to be ripping the cellophane from a copy as soon as it arrives on Wednesday ‘Empire Express’ is a entry level Crayon Train game designed to be played in 90 minutes. ‘The Accursed Dead’ is the third battle pack in the Bloodquest Cycle for Warhammer Invasion LCG. Ted Alspach’s latest edition of ‘Ultimate Werewolf’ can accommodate up to sixty eight players – one for the end of the evening at a gaming convention. Specials Last year I made a strong recommendation that you should look at ‘The Gnomes of Zavendor’, this is a very good market manipulation and goods conversion game. The parts work together very well, with lots of subtle approaches to victory available - the market mechanism is novel and there’s real opportunities to manipulate it for short and long term gains .Its nicely produced with the largest start player marker I have ever seen. Given the mechanics this might have sold better without the fantasy theme (Industrial revolution springs to mind) - however it’s a worthy torch bearer for the Zavendor series. I have picked up a job lot of the German edition (its language independent, i will provide English rules) and am selling it at less than a third of the RRP. Don’t miss this! Restocks Biblios, Flash Point Fire Rescue, Tribune, Star Trek Catan, Haggis, Eclipse Recommendation I think that half way through the year I can make a safe bet that ‘1989 : Dawn of Freedom’ is going to sweep every 2 player gaming award for 2012. It’s a variant of ‘Twilight Struggle’ set in the year the wall came down. It’s actually a little simpler to play than ‘TS’ , the map is a little more claustrophobic and the scoring is a little more volatile, befitting the rapid swings that took place in the year that the Iron curtain fell. I have played it three times in the last week and it is completely engrossing as the Democrat desperately tries to survive the early attacks of the communist player and then as the Communist tries to cling to power in as many countries as possible

Back from holiday and raring for cardboard

After a month of voluntary cardboard abstinence (my wife took on a long holiday) I am viewing my gaming shelf with a sharp appetite. Two games, in particular, are screaming 'Play me!' - both are from GMT and both are sequels (of a sort). 1989, is a variant of Twilight Struggle, with a twist that the scorings are resolved with a card battle similar to 'We the People/Hannibal'. Early reports are very favourable. The second is 'Virgin Queen' and this might take a little longer to get to table with its requirement for 6 players and complexity. I am also hoping to to start writing again on the blog and this brief entry is a baby step in that direction

Eastbourne part two

My most fun game of the weekend was 'Moongha Invaders' - a dice festing blattathon - it's possibly the best light Wallace game I have played; a curio hybrid of chance and the distinctive action selection method that Wallace uses so well in his more serious euros. The difference between this 'entertainment' ( to borrow from the distinction Graham Greene used between his serious novels and lighter fare) and his other simpler output is that 'Moongha' has no constraint to shoe horn the design into a marketable theme and the game has playfulness and exuberance oozing out of the design , both graphic and game play wise. My own copy is sitting in shrink at home, and with the game commanding well over $200 on the secondary market, its only going to get played if everyone wears white gloves , in a a germ free bubble.

My 7th play of 'Santa cruz' convinced me that it's an also ran, a shame as I always have high hopes of the HIG Nuremburg release. As a four player family game it's passable - with less it's poor and with the minimum number it's a shocker. Traded, and Kingdom Builder appreciated that little bit more.

I played 'Dungeon Rampage' twice it has a neat core mechanic and premise that just does not seem to work though into an enjoyable game - Dungeon experiences should be tense affairs, with death lurking around each corner. In both games no one came near to death, and the winner was the best at running away.

Also played twice was 'The Manhattan Project' it is a pleasant worker placement game with nothing new to add to the cannon, there are some interesting but seen before conversions. And were it not for the contracts to deliver spices and cloth to Genoa being Nucler bombs that need 4 workers ,five uranium six money and a bomber I don't think i'd want to play it again. The worker placement and removal is the best part of the game, and I am sure the potential for some take that will add spice for some gamers.

After Moongha highlights for shorter games were a game of 'Vegas Showdown' and 'Navegador' - the more I play 'showdown' the more I like it , a perfect light medium 'entertainment'.

I have not played 'Navigador' for a year (i hotched up 10 games in six months) and loved my revisit, which turned into a ship sprint - I won with no ships but a lot of factories and churches, which I thought I wouldn't as the speed of the game meant I had to miss the Market and really on worker/prvilidge to make cash with the prvilidges grabbed as often as possible. My eleventh game felt as fresh and interesting as game number one.

The two most enjoyable gaming experiences were reserved for games released in the nineties - 'Foppen' is a 1995 trick taking card game- how this is not in print today is beyond me as its fantastic, up there with 'Bottle Imp' as trick taking game of simplicity and ingenious design.

The other experience was an eight hour game of 'Age of Renaissance' - i love having the time to play longer games and its four days since we finished I am still thinking about what I could have done better.

Eastbourne AKA BoardgameVille Sur Mer

I only attend five conventions a year (well six if you include a Saturday morning visit to Expo) and one is held in Essen and the other four in Eastbourne. I used to travel to cons in University Campuses, bypasses, the Chernobyl exclusion zone to game because that's what I was there to do to the exclusion of all else (especially excluded were sleep and vegetable consumption). Nowadays I don't want to game for more than 10 - 12 hours a day, and the other 12 -14 hours needs to be spent in some comfort and with more to look at than Nissan's whizzing past at 70 miles per Hour or at some post industrial wasteland. And how wonderful it is that Eastbourne with its Victorian gentility serves up four gaming weekends a year - two for Counter Magazine readers and writers to get together and two for London on Board members to go gaming crazy. The bi-annual events sit just in the off season in March and November in hotels that sit next to each other on the seafront. Both are intimate affairs - LOB sees 50 attend and Counter about half of that. The low number count (LOB is limited to 50 which gets booked up within days of it being announced, Counter is just not publicised) means you get to know nearly everyone over the course of a weekend, and the low numbers creates a very friendly atmosphere. There are some big differences LOB and Counter weekends - With the later dedicated to the 'cult of the new' and LOB to the 'cult of fun' - I would guess I am in the youngest 15% at Counter but in the oldest 10% at LOB. What Eastbourne (and most seaside towns) offers is a perfect gaming break ; every few hours I can walk along the front - clear my head, perhaps even sample the ice cream then head back to the table refreshed.

Through a glass darkly, or more dumb hobby predictions

My ability to see through crystal balls is not up to the most boss eyed of fairground forecasters. My predictions for awards (SDJ and IGA) are always wrong; I thought kickstarter would have died by now...I could go on. It would actually be better to discard this blog post to the trashcan – however I can’t help but make a couple of observbations/predictions.

The first is that the market for vanilla ‘build a deck’ games has peaked and is in decline. The evidence for this is both personal and business, on a personal level it’s that I decided not to open a copy of the last Dominion and Thunderstone expansions – on a business level it’s because I had a lot less orders for both Hinterlands and Heart of Doom than previous expansions. The evidence is pretty clear on Boardgamegeek as well – ‘Hinterlands’ has 800 or so listed owners , about half as many as second least owned Dominion expansion (Cornucopia) and its not caused by the quality – by most account it adds a lot to the game.

So why didn’t I open a copy? Simple really – the expansions have come out so quickly I have not had time to catch up with the old ones, I like Dominion but I think you really have to love it and play it most weeks if you are going to get your money’s worth out of the expansions. With Thunderstone it’s been even worse with expansions seeming to come out every other week, again I am a fan but am at least two expansions behind so have passed on the last two and won’t be opening Thunderstone Advance when it arrives on Tuesday. Ascension and Nightfall seem to be following a similar pattern sales wise as the Big Two and woe betide any new deck builders that come to market –Rune Age , for example ,seems to have stopped selling entirely.

It is s a difficult choice for Publishers – do you cash in and flood the market with as many expansions as possible whilst the game is hot? Or do you spread it out so that fans don’t reach saturation point? They have, sensibly gone for the cash in.

Two ‘deck builders’ that have bucked the trend and sold by the truck load in 2011 are of the new breed – hybrid deck builder/boardgames. Trust Wallace and Chavtil (the two most innovative board gamers designers operating today IMHO) to be the deck building mechanic innovators. And if these two almost simultaneously came up with the next stage of deck building evolution then it’s quite likely there are other hybrids games in the pipeline. If not the trend of 2012 it could be 2013.

The second trend is a Malthusian prediction – gaming is growing as a hobby by, I’m guessing, single digit year on year percent, games being released is increasing by a bigger number – accoriding to Counter magazine there were 550 new boardgames released in 2011. Now the Malthusian comparison is a little ropey already, he saw incremental changes in food production and exponential population growth, but missed the exponential advances in farming production as I may have underestimated gamer’s wealth and willingness to purchase games. So, and you saw this coming, my prediction that we are in for a bit of a crash in games output might be flawed. But bare with me – a lot of the increase in games sales and the ability of the market to stand the amount of releases was because of middle aged affluent gamers (mea culpa)who spent the last twenty years increasing their collections into the hundreds, if not thousands of games. A lot of new gamers are younger and if not income challenged certainly don’t have the space to house 200+ game collections. My perception is that a lot of younger gamers are running smaller collections and are being quite choosy about what they buy – and rightly so. In London a 400 games collection might cost £10,000 to purchase, but needs a room to house it which won’t have a lot else in it – the true cost of maintaining a large gaming establishment is many times the cost of the games.

And of cause there is the starving elephant in the room – the economy. A lot of gamers have less to spend on games, in previous decades the hobby rode out recessions but the hobbyist of old did not have a fifty game a year habit – in 1981 kicking back from the 10 essential game purchases was a impossible for a gamer, in 2011 it’s not too much sweat kicking down to the 10 essential purchase from the 50 in 2010. I think this might be the killer of games on the margin. What puts a game on the wrong side of the margin? It’s not going to be a bad game – its just going to be no more than good, even very good. I own a lot of games that I have played 3 times, that if they were in a collection of 10 would have been happy to play 50 times, prime examples that spring to mind are Assyria and Lords of Vegas – they might be better than good, but get pushed to the side of the shelf in the search for the new or the need to play an old great. This is very much a personal perspective (though a few friends share this view) – looking at 2011 games I have opened a lot less than in 2010 and 2009 and 2011 is the best year of the three. Moreover, I am quite relaxed about the prospect of not playing a lot of the games on the margin; Salty Ocean, Quebec, Strasbourg for example than I would have been in previous years.

Please take this all with a liberal dosing of salt, I am in danger of extrapolating my changing game ownership pattern to the market and, from a business perspective drawing conclusions on insufficient evidence – however I feel a change coming on and its be fascinating to see how the hobby develops over the next couple of years