A minimalist blog, with a pretentious title, about strategy board games.
Phillip Lerche is running an excellent AoS PBEM site. I am currently playing on the Western US map. It’s surprising how well AoS works by email, considering the complexity and interactivity of the turns. Phillip’s web graphics make a big difference.
Phillip is also playtesting a London Underground map. It would be great if Warfrog published a working version.
Almost every other boardgames blogger has done a year review, so I had better not be left behind. Looking at the Five and Dime lists at Spielfreiks and rec.games.board, I get a real feeling of gaming inferiority. How do these people get to play so many games? On top of my work, sport, friends and family I can only squeeze in a few hours a week.
My gaming year has been wrapped up in this blog. I started it around Christmas 2003. After two blogging software fiascos, I have ended up with WordPress, and I am very happy with it. It just works. I am enjoying the boardgames blogging scene in general. Much more signal and less noise than anywhere else.
It is interesting to see how Spielfreiks and rec.games.board have gone downhill this year, as people have flooded to the Geek. In the last six months of 2003, Spielfrieks had 10,375 messages. The last six months of 2004 had 5,849. I do not know how rec.games.board has performed in comparison, but I get the impression it has been damaged less than Spielfreiks. I suspect Spielfriek’s accidental change to a private group, making subscription harder, has caused some of this decline. However, the main reason has been the quality of the tools for discussion at the Geek. GeekJournals, GeekLists and discussion at individual game entries have taken over. I would like to think blogs have had an impact, but I doubt it.
From a personal viewpoint, my own gaming group has suffered as my most enthusiastic local gaming friend has left town. On the other hand, every few months I get to go to visit my friend Michael and play all the latest games. He is always ahead of the curve. It is a longish drive, but worth it for tough competition and good company.
Were far more games released in 2004 than before? It certainly seems that way. I have always been amazed at how many games are released onto the market, but last year’s Essen was unbelievable. I would be fascinated to see statistics of the numbers of games released at Nuremberg and Essen combined over the years. Since I started in the hobby, only in 2000, releases seem to have escalated exponentially.
Onto the games I discovered this year:
Hits
It was a good year for big games. More importantly, it was also a good year for Play-By-Web and Play-By-Email. Overall, Age of Steam is my Game of the Year.
Misses
Light and middleweight games suffered. I think I am getting a little jaded.
I aim to consolidate my collection. I want to weed out the average games and bring in stronger replacements, or serious classics. There is no space for mediocrity – that sounds almost like David Brent. I might try the Board Game Geek’s new trade manager. It is a pity I cannot search British traders only.
Games I plan to buy
2004 was a good year. I love gaming and have no intention of stopping soon.
My brother and I played a little piecepack game called The In Crowd yesterday. It won the Group Projects piecepack games design competition.
The theme is of a playground popularity contest, and the mechanics remind me of Quo Vadis. The board is a pyramid of piecepack tiles. Each player takes two suits of coins representing kids. The cooler the kid, the higher the value of the coin and the more voting power the coin has. Kids (coins) vote other kids up the popularity pyramid.
It plays well enough, although I do not think I will play it again. It is quite strategic, but at 40 minutes it takes too long for what it is and Quo Vadis does the same job better. I think Clark Rodeffer, the Group Projects judge, gave it bonus points as it can be converted into a four player game using two piecepack sets or the 4 Seasons Expansion). One little annoyance is that the v1.0 rules do not explain what happens in the case of ties – everyone slinks away. It is a pity this could not be fixed before publication.
Although I sound negative about The “In” Crowd, it was an enjoyable experience and I would recommend at least trying it out. One unexpected pleasure from the piecepack is in just trying lots of games out. I never thought it would be so enjoyable to play a game and then discard it so quickly. My brother enjoyed himself and we will be doing more of this in future.
Yesterday, my brother and a friend separately suggested an afternoon of gaming. Another friend was available, so I jumped at the chance to try out Die Macher. It cost around £10, including postage from Germany, when it was on sale, about six months ago. It took us this long to play, because we never normally play on weekends and it is far too long for our normal weeknight slot. After this first playing, I think I got a real bargain.
For once, the summary section at the Geek does its job well:
Die Macher is a game about seven sequential political races in different regions of Germany. Players are in charge of national political parties, and must manage limited resources to help their party to victory. The winning party will have the most victory points after all the regional elections. But there are four different ways of scoring victory points. First, each regional election can supply ten to eighty victory points, depending on the size of the region and how well your party does in it. Second, if a party wins a regional election and has some media influence in the region, then the party will receive some media-control victory points. Third, each party has a national party membership which will grow as the game progresses and this will supply a fair number of victory points. Lastly, parties score some victory points if their party platform matches the national opinions at the end of the game.
What this does not tell you is how excellently the theme fits the game mechanics. Even though the theme sounds dull (I hate party politics), it helps players understand the mechanics and is always believable. The theme is definitely not fraudulent.
Die Macher is also very interactive. It was interesting playing this so soon after playing Antiquity. Both are deep, layered games, but Die Macher is a rollercoaster ride of trying to manage your opponents, which is only fitting in a game about politics. Maybe because of this interaction, it also feels like a much more conventional German game than Antiquity.
Die Macher is a long game. The rules explanation and setup (admittedly with lots of talk about windsurfing and kite boarding) took an hour. We played for another three hours and only managed four out of seven regional elections. Having said that, the first region took almost as long as the rest combined, as we were learning the game flow. Happily, everybody enjoyed it and wanted to play again another time. Die Macher may be the gateway game for my group into longer games and weekend games sessions.
There are a few rules ambiguities. I may markup my rules with the clarifications in the FAQ. There were no serious language issues, but English language score sheets are a good idea. Unfortunately, the recent Board Game Geek upgrade disabled files this weekend, so I could not print any. I hope it is fixed soon. Rick Heli’s turn reference sheet is excellent.
