Game Spotting 106 - Board Warp

Check out this GeekList. How many game boards can you recognize once they've been passed through a crazy Photoshop filter? Some you might be able to guess by color, by shape, or by patterns. Some are easier to see at high resolution, and some at low. I had fun with this. A few I had to stare at a while trying to twist my brain into different thinking modes. I might have gotten 20. One I figured out after submitting my answers.

How many can you get?

From My Radar to Yours?

I've been watching the following lesser-known games with great interest. I'll pass them along to my readers in case you might have missed any of them.

Ascendancy: I'm not a huge fan of 4X games, but this one has grabbed my attention. It claims to be playable in an hour. It has a variable phase order, asymmetric races, and secret "focuses". Some of the playtest images look very striking. Are those glass beads filled with colored sand?

Conflict of Heroes: Awakening the Bear! - Russia 1941-1942: The first of the Conflict of Heroes series, this may be the most accessible and gorgeous hex-and-counter wargame ever made. In a mere 12 pages (including cover, index, and unit/card description page), the stunning rulebook includes infantry, machine guns, mortars, artillery, trucks, tanks, hidden units, close combat, spotters, mines, smoke, fortifications, barbed wire, arcs of fire and unit/vehicle facing, elevation, opportunity fire, and unit/vehicle hit counters (eg suppressed, pinned, stunned, immobilized). Almost everything you need to know is printed on the ¾" counters. This is the game that might bring all the wargame-curious folks into meatier wargaming in a way that even ASLSK #1 could not. The designer has solved the IGOUGO problem without over-simplifying the system (Memoir '44) or abstracting opportunity fire into something unrealistic (Tide of Iron).

Ideology: The War of Ideas: This is far from new, but its upcoming reprint prompted me to check out the rules. Each player controls a nation with a different ideology (Capitalism, Imperialism, Fascism, Communism, and Fundamentalism) and appropriately different advantages and disadvantages. Each home nation competes to control other independent nations through cultural, economic, and military means. The amount of conflict in a nation determines its value. Players can attack and/or withdraw from nations, which might result in loss of control and subsequent changes in value. Players can also develop advances including WMD (worth a VP, unless you use them against another player).

Municipium: If it was only the terrible Valley Games rules and the suspiciously poor Mike Doyle board, I would have no interest in this game. The fact that it's a Reiner Knizia design and that there has been some interesting feedback are the only things keeping me on the hook. I'll probably end up re-writing the rules from scratch.

Neuland: I'm not a fan of Roads and Boats, but this one sounds fun. I did re-write the rules for this one already. The original rules were confusing and described the game's systems incredibly poorly. I feel bad for the average person who might buy this game and have to learn it from the rules in the box.

Senji: 6-player Diplomacy in 90 minutes? I have a feeling that most people who play this game will choose not to use the 4-minute sand timer to limit the negotiation phase, particularly since you might want to talk to several opponents and that you can do it in secret. The interesting twist of this game is that each player has cards for family, military support, and trade. You can offer cards--even those you have acquired from other players--as collateral for your deals. You can hire various samurai each of which has a special ability. A lot of potential here.

The Traders of Carthage: A light card game (with a board) with some planning and a little bit of screwage. Could be a good filler for our group.

Wealth of Nations: Another gorgeous game and rulebook. This is a raw no-luck commodity game. Players build industries to produce commodities, which are used to build other industries and to produce other commodities. Players can buy and sell commodities from the markets, or buy, sell, and trade with each other. Buying from the markets increases the price (a la Power Grid). Selling to the markets decreases the price. Competition for industries is spatial.

Hit Points

While the concept of hit points is typically associated with role-playing games, they are very common in other game genres, particularly adventure/dungeon-crawl games and collectible card games. Hit points are supposed to represent the amount of damage you can take before you die, but the abstraction is a poor one.

Let's look at D&D. There are 3 different standard game elements that affect hit points: class, level, and constitution.

Your class (or profession) determines the type of die used to roll for hit points. For example, wizards use a 4-sided die, thieves use a 6-sided die, and fighters use a 10-sided die. This represents how good each class is at fighting.

Your level (or experience) determines how many of those dice you roll, one additional die at each level. This represents your character getting better at fighting.

Your constitution is a measure of your physical endurance, giving you extra hit points per level. This represents how innately tough your body is.

Putting these into practice makes for some pretty comical results. A 10th-level wizard is as good at "taking damage" as a 4th-level fighter. A character with a high constitution (+4 hit points per level) gains enough additional hit points at 10th level (40) to equal a maxed-out 4th level fighter. An average 10th-level fighter (55 hit points, no constitution bonus) can stand still and take 16 successful average hits from a short sword before dying, while a 1st-level wizard would drop after a single blow. It requires more healing to bring a fighter to full hit points than it does a wizard. And why is it that class and level determine how good a character is at "taking damage", but have no effect at all on how easy they are to hit in the first place?

For 30 years, I've accepted all this knowing it was fundamentally silly.

In reality--or as close to reality as a fantasy world can get--any 2 humans, for example, are roughly equal in the amount of actual physical damage they can take. Having a more rugged body (constitution) would improve this, but would have minimal or no effect as you gain more experience. Being better at fighting should result in taking less damage in similar circumstances as long as you are able to use your abilities.

This last point is very important. A devastating blow against a wizard might be fatal, while only scratching a fighter. However, if both were just standing there, the same blow should have similar effects. In the case of most magic, your class should be negligible. Why should a fighter be hurt less than a thief by a fireball or a magic missile?

We've come to accept the classical hit point system, but would it really be that much harder to adopt something that makes a little more sense? I'm not proposing that the D&D system be revamped; TSR does that often enough as it is. I am suggesting that [board] game designers should consider new paradigms.

For example, the current system involves rolling a d20 to attack, adding any class, level, weapon, and feat modifiers. If you match or exceed the target's armor class, you hit. Then you roll the weapon's damage--which might be a d6 in the case of a short sword--and add any strength and weapon modifiers.

I think that the better the target is at fighting, the lower the chances of doing high damage. The current system relies on the lower probability of a hit, but uses the same damage system. If we build the damage into the roll, it almost comes out naturally. For example, if you exceed the target's armor class by 0/1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8, the base damage might be 1/1/1/2/2/3/4/5/6. This has the effect of decreasing the damage amount as well as the chance to hit as armor class increases. Of course, such a system would require each weapon to have its own table, but with modern role-playing, character sheets are already computerized and auto-filled-in. Such tables would also allow various weapons to have non-linear damages, such as my short sword table above.

Should a wizard in chain mail take damage identical to a fighter in chain mail? Of course not. Your class and level should affect your armor class. The abilities of a fighter to not be hit and to turn potentially nasty hits into minor ones is a skill that comes with the profession and experience. A 5th-level wizard in chain mail might have an AC of 15, while an equivalent 5th-level fighter might have an AC of, say, 20! Using the above short sword example, an attack roll of 21 would do 4 HP to the wizard and 1 HP to the fighter.

What if they are both just standing there? In this case their combat skill is not factored into their AC. They would both have an AC of 15, and would take equal damage from equal attacks. Other things could also affect AC: what weapon(s) you are using, the directions various enemies are attacking from (eg flanking), being slowed or stuck in something (eg mud, web, entanglement), using the environment for cover (eg doors, pillars).

And what about spell damage? In the current system, a character with more hit points is less affected. But if fire, for example, should affect all humans equally, then class and level should not be a factor, although some characters may have special protection and/or special abilities to avoid/resist it. A group of characters with different classes and levels that fails a saving throw against a fireball should all be equally hurt by it.

In summary, what I am suggesting in this D&D example is that all characters have approximately the same number of hit points, and that they do not go up in large increments with experience. Some people are frail and others are tough, but not enough to justify 4 HP versus 80 HP. I would perhaps start each character with 20 HP, and allow them to assign "slots" to make themselves tougher, both at creation time and as they gain experience. This should be a difficult choice, equivalent to increasing an ability score or gaining a feat, and should be 1 or 2 HP maximum (ie dedicating a large amount of time to working out or whatever). I would cap hit points at about 30. Of course, this would require changing the entire weapon and spell systems.

Think about how silly the current hit point system is, and dare to challenge it in your designs.

Pandemic Marathon

On Tuesday night, we played five 2-player games of Pandemic in 3½ hours. The only meta-rule we allow is that no player is required to play the same role twice in a row. This just helps mix things up a bit.

Each game was played with 5 epidemics. We won four of the five games. I'm not sure if this means that we should be playing with 6 epidemics or not. Our previous two games using all 6 epidemics were crazy.

I absolutely love the distribution of the special powers in the various roles. Every time I think that a given role--or combination of roles--is best, another gets its chance to shine. The Researcher/Scientist combo is an obvious one: pass cards easily, cure diseases easily. However, this combo is weak on navigation, so you have to work fast to beat the explosion. The Medic/Dispatcher combo is just pure fun: keep the diseases under control, get to cities where cards can be passed.

Our one loss was using the Dispatcher/Operations Expert combo. These guys have super navigation skills, and little else. They have to use their flexibility both to pass cards, and to keep things under control. In most games I play, it seems there's a point where you think you are close to winning, and you simply decide to stop putting out fires and go for the final cure. This decision is particularly tough to make with this combo.

After 34 games of Pandemic, it's still not getting old.

Some say the decisions are obvious. So far, we have found lots of different creative ideas come up in our discussions of plans. I've rarely felt that there was only one best move.

Some say the game is too random. The setup is random, all the infection cards drawn up until the first epidemic are random (but known not to be any of the already infected cities), and every epidemic city is random. However, the fact that the discard pile is shuffled and placed on top of the draw pile is the brilliant stroke that gives semi-predictability. The one thing I dislike about Arkham Horror is that everything in the game (gates, monsters, encounters, items, events) is random.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out this excellent GoogleTalk given by Matt Leacock, Pandemic's designer.

Bob Day

I finally got to go to Bob Day again. It only happens once a month. In February, it coincided with ASL. In March, it coincided with D&D. Well, at least I skipped playing games in order to play games.

The quote of the day: One particularly quiet moment was punctuated by, "You can't kill your babies!" from over at the Agricola table.

Hanging Gardens

Thanks to Rick Thornquist--a surprise guest--for teaching Hanging Gardens. I had previously translated the German rules for BGG, and it played out exactly as I imagined. The cards work very well, even when placed several layers deep. I was all caught up making lots of space to plant, as well as nice shapes to grow, but the game seemed to end too quickly to take advantage of it. I think this means that you must play with much less long-term planning, going for the tiles as quickly as possible. Not a bad game, but it's not going on my want list.

Stone Age

Thanks to Tery Noseworthy for teaching Stone Age. Again, I had previously translated the German rules for BGG. In this case, however, I made a subtle but very important error which confused a lot of players. Sorry about that! The file has since been deleted, as the official rules are now available. It's a light resource/economic game that, again, is a little light for my tastes, though I'd play it again.

Im Reich der Wüstensöhne

Thanks to Bob Scherer-Hoock for teaching Im Reich der Wüstensöhne, which I believe means "In the Land of the Desert Sun". It's a derivative of Entdecker. Players travel the desert building oases and claiming water, camels, rumors, and goods. The rumors affect the prices of the goods, giving the game some of the flavor of a stock game. Again, just ok.

Game X - Dominion

Everyone's favorite game [not] to talk about. Thanks to Eric Martin for teaching this. After the first couple of turns, it wasn't grabbing me at all. By the end it really grew on me; I wanted to play again. In fact, I would have purchased a few copies right then and there if it had been for sale. Valerie Putman has recently released some information. It’s simpler than Race for the Galaxy, and as addictive as Pandemic. It’s sure to be a hit with anyone who enjoys CCG-like games. This was my favorite game of the day.

Kingsburg

I had previously played a handful of Kingsburg games using this excellent Java application. It was just about as quick face-to-face. I like everything about the game, except the fact that, when a player blocks you, most of the time it's only because he wants that space for himself. In other words, the player interaction (ie screwage) is serendipitous or unintentional, depending on your point of view.

Game Y

Thanks to Emanuele Ornella (Oltremare, Il Principe) for teaching Game Y, another prototype. Like his previous titles, this game has some unexpectedly inter-connected mechanisms, forcing you to think in multiple dimensions while making choices. It might be a little heavier than it seems. I'm not sure yet.

Felix: The Cat in the Sack

Thanks to Evan Tannheimer for teaching Felix: The Cat in the Sack. It feels a little like an auction version of Nobody But Us Chickens. A reasonable light filler.

Huang Di

Thanks to Bryan Johnson for teaching Huang Di, yet another prototype, although this one is being published shortly. It's a resource/economy game with players trying to build up sections of the Great Wall. Building patterns of your own walls, represented by cards in your hand, earn you bonuses. Having majorities in wall row sections, entire rows, and building the top wall piece at each section end earn you victory points. There are only 4 action cards, 3 of which you can play each round. But each has multiple action types. Optimizing your own economy, while dealing with the ever-changing public resources and wall configuration, is quite a challenge.


Edit: I forgot that I also played Kingsburg. Added above.

Anatomy of a Score Track

No game requires a score track, but we all know that pictures speak louder than words...and numbers. Score tracks are basically bar graphs showing each player's victory points in such a way that you can easily see the relative positions. This can play an important part of the decision-making process.

You are behind. Is it the proper time to take a risk in order to catch up? You have a choice of 2 good actions. Is your choice going to be partly based on on which player(s) it adversely affects, and their current victory point status?

While most games with score tracks implement them reasonably well, none get good marks in all my categories. Some games use tracks to manage non-scoring information (eg Through the Ages). Everything below still applies to these.

Zero

In almost every game with victory points, all players start out with 0. If the score track doesn't have a 0 space, then all the scoring markers have to start off the board (eg Aton). This is really lame.

If you don't start at 0, and can never have a score of 0, then this rule does not apply.

Length

Score tracks should typically have 50 (0-49) or 100 (0-99) spaces. Stopping at 65 or 80 creates that awkward situation where you have to do modulus math. For example, you have 75 points and just scored 22. 75 plus 22 is 97. 97 minus 80 is 17, so you place your scoring marker on 17. Maybe...

Did your score track end at 79 and start at 0? If so, then your calculations are correct. If they ended at 80 or (exclusive) started at 1, then you are in trouble.

Wrapping the score track more than once is unacceptable (eg Carcassonne) even if the game includes indicators for such states. Make the track longer than a typical game requires.

Odd-length score tracks are only valid when the highest position (potentially with a little slop to break ties) is a winning condition (eg Around the World in 80 Days).

Size

Each space on the score track should be able to comfortably hold a number of scoring markers that you would reasonably expect to be there. They should not have to be packed together on such a small space that you can't tell which space they are on.

In some games, players cannot co-exist on the score track (eg Torres) so it doesn't matter as much. In some games, the scoring markers are meant to stack (see Markers) to save space (eg Vinci), or for turn order purposes (eg Thebes, In the Year of the Dragon people track).

Pitch

Pitch is the distance from the center of one space on the score track to the center of the next. Pitch should be constant across the entire score track. You may wonder why I don't say that each scoring space should be the same size. That's because size can change while still keeping pitch (see 5's and 10's).

Score tracks are most beneficial in games where players score small numbers of points over many, many turns. Score tracks should provide as many cues as possible to help with this process. One of these is pitch. Every time you score 3 points, you should be moving your scoring marker the same distance. Games that have varying pitch--even if done for other good reasons--take away this cue (eg Taj Mahal).

Obvious

It should be obvious what is and what is not a space on the score track. There should not be "spaces" that are not spaces (eg San Marco). There should not be strange artistic distortions at the start, end, or corners of the score track (eg El Grande).

Art

As I've always said, form should enhance function, not hinder it. Many games go way too far trying to be artsy. This can even infect the score track. Spaces contain dark, rich patterns that only serve to obscure the numbers, if they exist (eg Amyitis).

Numbers

Every space should be numbered. I can't say this enough. Every space should be numbered. Not everyone scores in the same way. Some players just count off their points: 1, 2, 3, 4. Some pick up their scoring marker, look at the current value, add the new points, and replace the marker. If the current space has no number, and the spaces around it are crowded with other scoring markers, then you have to either look farther and count it out, or move things around.

Additionally, the numbers should be highly readable. Fancy and thin (eg Ys) typefaces don't get the job done, nor do colors that don't stand out against the background (eg Caylus).

5's and 10's

Every space that is a multiple of 5 should stand out. Depending on the length of the score track, multiples of 10 should stand out as well.

There are many ways to do this, some of which can be used in combination for good effect: larger text, bolder text, brighter text, different-colored text, different-colored background, different-patterned background, larger space (see Pitch).

In this way, even when a space on the score track has one or more scoring markers on it, you can still easily make scoring adjustments without having to see the numbers.

Straight

Ideally, a score track should be straight. This works fine when the game requires few spaces (eg Liberté), but is impractical for most games. A reasonable compromise is to wrap the score track around the outside of the board. The brain can easily "unwrap" this shape to see the 1-dimensional bar graph.

Winding (eg Alhambra) and wiggly (eg Torres) score tracks are bad. They disrupt the linear flow of the 1-dimensional space, and make it more difficult to tell in which direction to move each scoring marker.

Markers

Scoring markers are manipulated often. The must be easy to pick up, must fit well on the scoring spaces with other scoring markers as the game requires, and preferably should stack. Alhambra-style scoring markers are about the best size and shape I can think of. The worst scoring markers ever conceived are those in Railroad Tycoon.

My Dream Score Track

I'd like to see a score track designed so that the scoring markers do not cover the numeric text. The spaces themselves would just be empty boxes with appropriate colors and patterns. The numbers would appear on tabs that stuck out from each space toward the center of the board. These tabs, of course, would be properly differentiated on the 5's and 10's.

Pandemic

Pandemic has been on my want list since the day the blurb for it was posted. It's one of those games--like Dune, Khronos, or King of Siam--whose concept alone is enough to get me excited. And that excitement continues after 3 plays.

The components are top notch. The box is super sturdy, perhaps the thickness of Mission: Red Planet, but made of the same materials as more standard boardgames. The cards are thick and coated, but not sticky. They aren't cut as perfectly as playing cards, but they shuffle well enough. The board is smooth, almost glossy, but not plastic feeling. The bits are nice, if a little chunky for the playing surface. But other than setup (all players and a research station in Atlanta), there's rarely too much to handle in one location. I didn't get a look at the insert; it had been discarded before I arrived. I'll try my best to salvage it when I get my copy of the game. My only minor gripe is with the role cards. They all have a dark purple background with a small colored pawn making it a little difficult to tell who's who from across the table.

The system for the spread of diseases and Epidemics is inspired. One card per city in the player deck and the Infection deck: My intuition would have been that this wasn't enough. Putting the discard pile on top of the draw deck after each Epidemic: My intuition would have said this was too likely to leave much of the world untouched. But it all works very well, and keeps the tension high all the way through.

I would describe the infection system as semi-random. Cards are drawn from a shuffled deck, each causing a new disease cube to appear. If a 4th cube of a given color is to be placed, then a cube of that color is placed on each adjacent city instead. This is called an Outbreak and can potentially cause a chain reaction of Outbreaks.

However, at any given time, you do know things. There are 9 cards in the discard pile from the setup. As each card appears, it cannot be drawn again until after the next Epidemic. Once an Epidemic occurs, you know you will be drawing all the cards that were in the discard pile before you draw any new cards. Each Epidemic can only occur in a city whose card has never been drawn before (from the bottom of the deck). So it's a constrained kind of random. You can make plans, even beyond dealing with the current situation.

The 5 player roles (Medic, Scientist, Operations Expert, Researcher, Dispatcher) are all fun to play. In my 3rd game, I was the Dispatcher. His special ability is that he can move other players, and can also move any player to another player. My first thought was that it wouldn't be as fun because you are essentially letting other players do the important and/or fun stuff (treating/curing diseases). So very wrong! Being able to continually put people exactly where they need to be in order to use their respective abilities is a very fun part of the game. In fact, the Dispatcher role may be the one with the most cooperative nature since his use requires the most planning and agreement. I would play that role any time.

I would recommend Pandemic to anyone who doesn't vomit at the sight of wooden cubes. The copy I played tonight had already been played 9 times in its first week. In fact, Z-man sold out the first print run in less than a month! How often does that happen?


Pandemic image by clloyd09