inconsequential ruminations

I just returned from a week’s rowing holiday on the North coast of Scotland – a wild, fierce place.

None of the guys were gamers, and packing had been too hectic to be able to print off any piecepack rules, so I contented myself with some general gaming.

Go
To my surprise, my host used to be a regular Go player. He lived in Japan and had weekly Go lessons for six months at a proper school. Apparently he has a handicap of seven kyu, which he thought was very average, but which sounds pretty reasonable to me. He was very happy to play with me and taught me quite a bit. Hopefully he’ll pop over after work occasionally and give me some more lessons. I think I’ll buy a cheap, compact Go set, if such a thing exists. Maybe I’ll be able to persuade him into some more exotic abstracts, especially if I can buy a Go set with pieces that can stack.

One of the girls on the trip enjoys crossword puzzles, so I managed to persuade her into a couple of paper and pencil word games out of New Rules for Classic Games. Both went down very well.
Crossword Squares
This is played on a 5×5 grid. Players in turn call out letters and try to build words by entering them into the grid, the longer the better. It’s so simple and so good, I’m amazed it’s not more common.
Jotto
Each player writes down a five letter word with no repeating letters. In turns, they then attempt to guess their opponent’s word, by calling out five letter words, the opponent then tells them how many letters are shared by the guessed word and the target word.

Suit Yourself
This Nim-like card game, came from A Gamut of Games. I admire it, as it requires look-ahead thinking, but it was not fun.

Fictionary
This was the hit of the holiday. Everyone laughed a lot. I think the guys who refused to play regretted it and were quite envious. I’ll definitely play this one again. A true classic.

I am enjoying the discussion on the Board Game Geek a lot these days. Compared to Spielfrieks and rec.games.board, it’s more focussed around specific games and less about general gaming discussion, which I prefer.

I am reading it through SharpReader and the Geek’s RSS feeds.

I was offered Galaxy: the Dark Ages in a trade for Verrater, which I thought was a good deal. Galaxy had lukewarm reviews, but that this was mainly from people who thought it inferior to Titan:the Arena or Grand National Horse Racing, its simpler ancestors. I have not played either, so I thought I’d give it the benefit of the doubt.

The theme is of a galactic power struggle between different worlds, welded onto a card game – a strange mix. Epic themes fit best with large, complex games; so naturally, this is a large, complex card game. After playing it, I can see how a relatively simple base game was blown up to this galactic scale.

The basic card play, ignoring the fiddly extras, is classic Knizia. Broadly, this is a good thing, but once you have played a few of these games, it’s difficult to feel excited by them. Maybe I’m a just jaded old-timer?

Good

• Plenty of backstabbing and tension as the Worlds columns disintegrate into the void.
• Great theme. I wish there were more sci-fi German games and fewer archaeological ones.
• No rules ambiguities (but see the next point).

Bad

• The rules are very wordy.
• Complex, it is impossible to learn without a reference sheet.

In summary, there is much complexity for only average strategy. Instead of our normal dummy round, for learning, we had to play an entire dummy game. On reflection, I should have got Grand National Horse Racing instead, but now we have spent the time investment to learn it, we will probably stick with the richer gameplay of Galaxy.

I subscribed to the new Spiel-by-Web Yahoo Group. It led me to a good geeklist for Play-By-Web games, which are my favourite way of playing board games by computer. Real-time board games, like at BSW, require too much of a time commitment. It’s tough to abandon a game halfway through, because your baby is crying…

The first thread at Spiel-By-Web discusses what makes a good PBW game:

• Games where players complain of a lot of downtime, in other words deeply analytical games with few and long turns. e.g. Tikal, Torres, Java. Although some wargames require 30 minutes per turn, which is too long for me.
• Games with a lot of bookkeeping e.g. Wallenstein
• Games with simultaneous action selection e.g. Lord of the Rings – The Confrontation
• Interactive turn sequences do not work well e.g. Puerto Rico
• Auctions do not work well e.g. Princes of Florence

I also joined a game of Wallenstein, with the guys from the Yahoo Group (including Mark Johnson). I am impressed with this implementation. It’s surprising how stripped down a game can seem when all the card shuffling and piece moving are removed.

I have finally given up and subscribed to a $10/year whitelist spam filter. A sad day. Someone has to cure the spam problem, or email will be ruined. Probably only Micro$oft have the clout to do it.

I just got my blog comment spam as well. Hopefully TypeKey will fix it.

I am not normally sad enough to play solitaire board games on a Saturday night, but Ness is ill, there’s nothing on the TV, I’ve read all my favourite websites and my PC is in too poor condition for video games. In desperation, I remembered Mikko’s recent posts about his initial experiments with piecepack solitaires, which inspired me to have a go at Galaxy Express, a runner up in the Solitary Confinement competition.

The rules summarise it well:

Galaxy Express is a solitaire game for the piecepack about delivering shipments between planets in the distant future. It is a game of strategic planning and clever movement. Carefully move your starship to each of the planets, in the proper order, while refuelling as little as possible.

The planets are coins and the starship is a pawn. The universe is an 8×6 board, formed from 12 piecepack tiles. Starships can move from one edge of the board to the opposite, rather like the 1970s video game, Asteroids.

I had to think a lot, and managed to complete the game and get 115 points on my first attempt. According to the rules this is a good score. I think I was helped by lucky initial placement, which meant that all the planets had at least one shared axis with another planet.

I enjoyed Galaxy Express a lot; in fact it resurrected my dire evening. What I particularly enjoyed was the wraparound board. This reminds me of the Toric Scrabble variant, in New Rules for Classic Games. The name and concept come from the Toroidal Universe theory.