inconsequential ruminations

Moritz Eggert’s eulogy for Gary Gygax is the best I have come across. You learn about the man and the early history of Dungeons and Dragons – which was my gateway into the hobby.

A transcript and a podcast are available.

Five came along to our regular games night for the first time in months, so we narrowly missed out on a game of Agricola with Chris’ stunningly improved set – more on that in another post. Instead I press-ganged everyone into playing Breaking Away. When they saw the poor quality of the components there were a few mutterings of “this isn’t going to be another Black Vienna is it?”, but I managed to supress the mutiny. Luckily this experiment worked out really well.

Breaking Away is an ingenious simulation of cycle racing. I tried to improve on the summary at the Geek, but failed, so here it is:

A luck free race game based on cycling. Players control a team of 4 cyclists. For each cyclist the player chooses one of his available movement allowances and moves that many squares. Once all cyclists have moved the expended movement allowances are replaced with new ones calculated according to the cyclist’s position in the peloton; being at the back of a group brings a high replacement value, being at the front a low one.
Sprint points are earned by being among the first 8 to cross the sprint lines so there is always a trade-off between slipstreaming (“drafting”) the other riders in order to build up high movement allowances and making a break for the front to be the first to cross the finish line.

It is surprising how these simple rules can simulate the essence of cycle racing so well, while still staying so playable. Sometimes your riders will be on fire, tearing away from the pack; at other times they will be desperately trying to stay in touch with the peleton.

Charles Vasey invited me over to try ESPAÑA 1936, one of the very few games he rates as a 10. Charles has impeccable taste, so I was keen to try it.

This new wargame from a Spanish designer, covers the Spanish Civil War – a war that I am keen to learn more about. Anthony Beevor, the author of Stalingrad, has written a book about the war that is next on my reading list.

There is a lot to like about this game. The components are gorgeous and the artwork really captures the the period.

The rules are clearly translated and only eight pages long. I read them in an hour.

This is a very streamlined system. It reminds me most of We the People or Twilight Struggle. Eurogamers wanting something more meaty should love it.

Espana 1936 is card driven, in that you have a hand of event cards. Most of these give you more troops, planes or tanks, but some give you reinforcement bonuses. There are a couple of important cards that can swing the game shape, but maybe not the entire result. If the Republicans can draw the cards that strengthen their militia and add another general, things get much easier.

It plays quickly – especially when you are up against a shark like Charles. As the Nationalists, he rolled me over with an auto-victory without too much trouble by the midgame – about two hours. As the Republicans I should have been more passive about attacking, to slow the game down, while being more proactive my defence. The Nationalists have far more and better troops, but the Republicans win if they can hang on to only three key cities by the tenth turn. A game that goes the full distance should take around three hours.

We only had one rules query. Charles attacked Santander and Oviedo simultaneously. I should have been able to reinforce Oviedo – even though in real life there are steep mountains on one side, the Atlantic on the other and only one narrow road. This bothered Charles, but I think the level of abstraction is acceptable. Avoiding this situation would either mean rewriting the core rules or putting in a special exception. Both seem overkill to me.

Unfortunately, you can only buy Espana 1936 right now from Spanish websites. Luckily an English version is in the works with naval rules and a few extra cards.

This is a fine game that captures the flavour of the war while staying very playable. I would like to play again – hopefully against someone easier to beat than Charles Vasey.

We met up with Chris Brooks and family on Friday morning and had breakfast in Russell Square. They are doing a lightning tour of Europe, so it was really nice of Chris to spare the time. His boys are growing up – Jacob is almost as tall as Chris.

Chris wasn’t impressed with the selection at Playing Games. It just goes to show how much bigger the hobby is in the US - as that’s the best shop I have found in the UK.

It was great to finally meet someone I have corresponded with over several years. When we next meet I hope we will have enough time to play some games.

I have been enjoying Facebook for quite a while, especially the status updates. Today I took updates to the next level with Twitter, which I am syncing to Facebook with TwitterSync.

Tonight’s session was a bit of a disaster. The guys were very nice about it, but we were really let down by two poor games.

Black Vienna

One of my favourite movies is The Third Man a 1949 film-noir classic, starring Orson Welles and set in occupied Vienna. Any game with this theme, even if loosely applied, is a must try for me.

Black Vienna has always had good reviews and ratings, even though it was published back in 1987. I suspect this is because of the out-of-print effect – where a games merits are amplified by the smugness of collectors. Luckily, Mikko made his own set and generously uploaded them to the Geek. It only took me 45 minutes to print and cut out the cards and slip them into card protectors.

I wanted to try it as it has a reputation of being a solid deduction game, but without being quite as complex as Sleuth. Greg Aleknevicus summarised these games in an old article at the Games Journal. Although Greg does not find the fragile nature of Black Vienna a problem, it shafted our evening. It is so frustrating to play for 45 minutes and find out the game has been ruined by a simple mistake. I warned the guys about this problem beforehand, but we were still stung.

I can see why this game is so popular as the level of deduction is pitched at an accessible, but skilful level. Sadly, for me, Black Vienna is too fragile. We have had the same thing happen in Sleuth, which makes me wonder if I have been too generous to it in the past.

Modern Art

Everything was going swimmingly, until we wondered why no one was selling pink or purple paintings by the third season. It turns out that Mayfair had packed my copy of the game with the wrong numbers of paintings:

• 18 Krypto
• 26 Yoko
• 24 Lite Metal
• 1 Christen P.
• 0 Karl Gitter

What a great evening – not.

My friend Steve has started a new blog called The Boardgamer Weblog.