inconsequential ruminations

War of the Ring - Shadow Win

Iain — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:51:18 +0000

War of the Ring is one of those rare games that has stayed interesting for years. Complex, thematic games are the stickiest for me. I have enjoyed every game I have played.

Click on the thumbnail below for a photographic session report. We played one crucial rule wrong – every Nazgul gives a hunt reroll, whereas in fact there is only one reroll, no matter how many Nazguls. I do not think it changed the final result, but it speeded it up.

As you can see, we finally gave up with figures and used cubes and disks from other games – a major improvement. I’d pay good money for a full set of properly coloured cubes and disks.

Wargameroom

Iain — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:41:16 +0000

After listening to the latest Point2Point podcast, I tried out Wargameroom this weekend. I am very impressed. It has to be the best bit of Java coding I have ever seen. The game files are tiny and load almost instantly. The user interface is very intuitive and the game rules are enforced. This cuts down on the play time – especially as you never have to roll back mistakes. Most importantly for me the games are cross-platform, as I run Linux at home. There is one minor bug in the Linux implementation, as that the occasional text box is hidden, but otherwise it is perfect.

Many games are available:

Apparently the next game in development is FAB: The Bulge.

The game maps are usually abstract simplifications of the original maps. I prefer this as the removal of extra decoration really cuts the game down to the fundamentals and makes the software run faster.

I played Hannibal as the Romans and got absolutely stuffed. Hannibal was about to besiege Rome with a massive numerical advantage. The guys lurking around in the Wargameroom chatroom play to a high level. At least I learnt how to play the game, even if it was the hard way.

The CC:A implementation looks really slick too. I want to give that a try soon if anyone wants to challenge me.

It is great how the enforced rules actually end up teaching you the game, as it is easy to forget or misinterpret rules in games this complicated.

A few things could be improved.

No PBEM support. I cannot see how this could be built in without impacting the real-time experience.
You cannot run a server behind a firewall without doing some port forwarding. It is not difficult, but this must scare non-technical people off. A dedicated Wargameroom server would make this easier.
You cannot see the game map without connecting to your opponent. You can work around this by starting two instances of the game and connecting to yourself, but that was not obvious enough for me.
A minor bug in Linux to do with displaying text boxes.
The website is very basic. A nicer looking front page, wiki and forum would not be difficult to setup.
The website is very slow. For some reason the wargameroom.com links are slow, but the underlying patmedia.net links are fast.
The website chat is very basic. Again it would not be hard to improve upon.
The source code is closed. If it were open then other skilled volunteer developers might extend the framework to support more games.

Despite these minor quibbles, I have joined the Wargameroom via a donation. It’s the least I can do considering this is a one man show. Bruce Wigdor has done an incredible job.

Burn the rope

Iain — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:23:19 +0000

Burn the rope – with sound turned on.

I found this over at Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan’s video games blog.

April Catch Up

Iain — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:01:42 +0000

The Geek is offline again, so now is a good time to update.

Agricola

Chris got the most amazing set of Agricola figures and resources in a math trade, all handmade in polymer clay. Apparently the guy who made them only traded them as he had made another set. As Chris’s English cards are laminated, it is probably no exaggeration to say that this is the nicest English language set in existence. Playing with another set will never be the same.

The game itself is still very enjoyable. I have played three times, twice with three and once with five. It is good with all numbers and is holding up well. The cards do bring a lot of variability. I am really looking forward to playing with the more player-interactive decks – as they could fix my only reservation.

I went down to Crawley to play with Michael Longdin and his friends and had as good a time as ever. My opinions of the games might be biased by the fact that Michael (almost) always wins.

Tribune: Primus Inter Pares

This was rated the top game in the Essen Fairplay rankings. I thought it was fine, but uninspiring. At least it was short and sweet. Mike Siggins and Michael think it is too short, but that is easily fixed.

Year of the Dragon

Michael rates this as his favourite game of 2007. Michael loves Age of Steam too, so he obviously likes unforgiving games. This is the second game I have played of Stefan Feld – who also designed Notre Dame, another bitch of a game.
I quite enjoyed it, but I agree with Rick Heli, that there is very little narrative feeling.

Before the Wind

This was the third, short, tight game I played in a row. I think I am playing too many games in this format. This was the most tense game of the three for me and the one I enjoyed the most. Also, the cards are very attractive, somehow balancing a modern and ancient look.

I find auction games like this really difficult to fathom. I suppose I need to work on my understanding of Game Theory or something. I might enjoy this game more if I could only figure out a strategy.

Brass

The best game of the day was Brass. I had a lot of problems reading the rules beforehand, so was delighted to have Michael teach it to me. After rereading them and two plays, I think the problem is with the layout of the rules. Martin Wallace was aiming for a Settlers of Catan style rule book, with the basic game in a short pamphlet with the detailed rules coming later. I did not like this approach with Settlers and I hate it here. The game is far too complex to understand without examples in the right places. Hopefully the rules will be completely rewritten, and blind playtested, for the new reprint.

Despite the awful rules, the game itself is excellent. I listened to Martin Wallace explaining his background in history and economics in a recent interview at the Pulp Gamer podcast, and this shines in Brass.

Hammer of the Scots

I played this with Steve at his house in Kingston and we had a great time. It is far simpler than I thought it would be. Wizard Kings is at about the same level. There are only eight pages of rules and it flows very nicely. If you have already played, then I recommend you try Above The Fields to play-by-web. The interface is a bit clunky, which would make learning the game a nightmare, but, if you have a good grasp of the rules, you will be fine.

Age of Steam – France

This is a good beginners map, and it plays well with three. Unfortunately this was Steve’s first game and, predictably, he got hammered. The last hour was totally boring for him. I hope I can persuade him to try again – as this is a fabulous game if played quickly and by people who know what they are doing.

Gary Gygax

Iain — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 23:03:18 +0000

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.