inconsequential ruminations

I read an interesting article by Matt Horn about system games at Gamefest Weblogs.

According to this article, system games are:

“where each person develops a region of their own and decides which path to take to (ultimately) victory. Other players do the same, without any real regard for what each other is doing.
Games like Mull & Money (Industrial Waste), Puerto Rico, San Juan, Princes of Florence, and Anno 1503 all qualify, in my mind, as systems games.”

I don’t like the term “system games” much, although I can’t think of anything better offhand.

It’s an interesting observation about this type of game. There are some good replies too, particularly from Scott Low.

We played Tichu again last night. If anything, we enjoyed it more this time. My partnership called Tichu constantly but failed with three out of five – I made one and lost one. The winning partnership called Tichu once and got it.

It’s very tense and enjoyable with lots to think about. If you like traditional card games like Bridge, Spades or Oh Hell (Prediction Whist), you will love this one. The partnership element adds a lot.

I am glad I paid GeekGold to get the FAQ translated. I would have hated learning it otherwise.

I found these while snooping around Technorati.

• Gaming in Adventures
• netFrantz

Bruno Faidutti has just posted his Games of the Year. He is one of my favourite designers and his website is probably my favourite gaming destination after the Geek. I hope Bruno’s new site is finished soon, as I am looking forward to updates to his Ideal Games Library, which has been quiet for too long.

I bought Tikal, San Marco and Don pretty much only because he awarded them his GOTY and I enjoyed them all. I also loved Pirate’s Cove and Age of Steam. Although I have not bought them yet, I probably will eventually.

History bodes well for Ticket to Ride and his other selections. Raja in particular looks good. I already have Perudo, so Coyote is probably a miss, but Nuggets looks interesting – it is only €12.50 at Spielenet, so maybe.

I just finished a game of Medina at Ludagora. I came last as I was just trying to work out what was going on. Unfortunately, the only workable rules available online are at BSW and even they are not too clear.

It is skilful, but I do not want to buy it. The trick is to restrict your opponents’ space, while being the last person to snap up valuable buildings and bonuses. This does not appeal to me, although I appreciate the skill. It reminds me of the slightly dishonourable tactics of bicycle racing, where the idea is to is to slipstream behind the leader, using his effort to break wind resistance, waiting until the last second to overtake for victory. This is similar to Medina, where you have to wait for your opponents to build up buildings and then to pounce on the bonuses at the end, before board spaces and pieces run out. In addition, the theme does not fit the gameplay enough for it to inspire my imagination. I am sure it would play very smoothly face-to-face and the components look good, but it does not look like a must-buy.

The PBW interface of Ludagora was easy to understand, even in French, and looks good. Encouraged by this, I have started a game of Hare and Tortoise.

I feel bad about it but I just resigned from a game of play-by-web Go with Mikko.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that PBW Go is excruciatingly slow. I resigned on move 199 and the game was only about 75% complete, although it was already obvious that Mikko would win by a landslide. Each move only takes you a tiny way towards your goal, but picking up the game from cold to take a move requires a lot of concentration and time. Eventually I was making stupid errors because I just could not be bothered to think for 10 minutes for every move. When you dread having to take a move, you know it is time to bail out.

The second is that my passing infatuation with Go has been like a teenage crush – short-lived and shallow. I have seen the amount of study that goes into becoming even an intermediate player and have pulled away from the brink. I just do not enjoy beating people in mental combat that much.

I hope the last two paragraphs did not sound too negative, because I have enjoyed learning about Go. I always knew it was a profound game, but now I appreciate the kind of thinking and strategy that goes into it. It was also a pleasure to play with Mikko. He gave me lots of good tips and coaching.

I will definitely play again face-to-face, and occasionally on a real-time online server like KGS when I am in the mood for a fight.

Thanks to Marc Orchant and his highly informative Office Weblog, I’ve managed to score a Gmail email address. These have a geek cachet as gmail is currently invitation only – an interesting marketing ploy from Google. Gmail itself looks very nice. Exactly the sort of quality you would expect from Google. Hotmail and Yahoo don’t stand a chance, except from user inertia – which will be considerable.

I’m not sure what I am going to use it for as I am pretty happy with Mailblocks. At least I have managed to reserve my name in Gmail (iain@gmail.com is impossible as Gmail usernames have to be six characters minimum).