The Allure of the Dungeon Crawl

I think every boardgamer wants to be a dungeon hero at some point.  I know I was just fascinated with HeroQuest when I was younger.  I solo-played my copy over and over.

And yet I just don't remember all that many good sessions.  More recently I have owned and played Return of the Heroes.  It too was good, but just not great.

And do you know what killed my enjoyment in the end?  Combat Modifiers.  I hate the damn things.  I understand their thematic allure, but I think they are just boring as piss.

I don't care if the hill gets me +1 defense.  I don't care if the barbarian rolls 1 more die.  I just wanted to kill something dang it.  Instead I spend time calculating what the rules say I did.

I feel the same way about Memoir 44 and Conflict of Heroes.  Both were solid thematic and easy to enter wargames.  And both wanted me to remember different rules about trees and hills and roads.  Blah.  That is anti-fun.


Probably the only interesting dungeon crawling I've done recently is Catacombs.  There isn't a ton of story.  There is combat goodies, without friggin' modifiers!!!  The most there is are a couple occasional "Deals 2 damage if hits" conditions.  But that's all she wrote.

And yet it all works out fine.  In particular, the whole way arrows and ranged spells work is genius.  You get a small little arrow disc you can shoot from near your character.  That way you can hide behind a pillar and shoot around it.  Brilliant!

I also like the way teamwork plays out.  You can bounce a teammate around a corner and then let them take a nice pop-shot at the archer hiding behind there.  A nice little one-two punch.

I'm not sure it will withstand the test of time in my collection, but dang it, it's going to have a soft spot in my heart for getting rid of combat modifiers for much time to come.

Euchre vs Spades - The Suspense

Had a fun week of playing cards at lunch.  Heck, I always have a fun week of playing cards at lunch.  A couple days in particular though highlighted a sharp divide between Spades and Euchre for me.


Euchre

My team was down significantly.  We had to make two loners in a row, or a loner without help.  (We play 6-player bid euchre)  My partner calls a regular loner, so I overcall with a no-help.  I get 7 of my tricks, but need the eighth one to fly.  I have a lowly 9, someone keeps a king and nails me.

Now, did I do anything wrong here?  Nope, not at all.  Was there any thought at all to playing my cards?  Nope, not at all.  Was it still fun?  Yea.  But on to spades.



Spades

Today we come to the last hand and our opponents are up by two tricks.  My partner makes a huge bid, forcing the other team to bid Nil to stand a chance.  His partner now has to not take all the bags and cover him.  So he's forced to somehow walk a thin line of playing high enough to cover, but not high enough to take slop.

Turns out the covering partner had to trump in one two many times.  Late in the hand I lead a 4 of spades, the covering opponent throws off, and my partner plays the 3 of spades.  The Nil bidder was forced to take it with a 5 of spades.

Now, again, he didn't do anything wrong.  And I wouldn't even say his opponent did anything wrong.  But somehow it was just a much more enjoyable experience.  Maybe some of that is because I won... but I hope that I'm at least somewhat objective about it.  No, I think the real difference was the conflicting goals that the covering Partner had in Spades.  He had a real challenge set out for him.  Two mutually exclusive goals of not taking too many tricks but not letting his partner take any tricks.  It just squeezed a lot more skill and interesting decisions into the game for me.


Still, too bad 6-player spades sounds rather crappy.  Oh well, on to next week!

Taming the Collection

With my first offspring soon on the way I've been trying to trim back the collection a lot.  I still want to play some games with my wife in the next few years, but maybe I'm just trying to be more realistic.  In particular, I don't see new, long & complicated games getting played.  Although, there is a silver lining.  I do get to move a few games classified as "Kids games" into the play room.

So in my current collection, there is only one game I haven't played.  That would be Amun-Re.  I'm thinking about trying it out with some family this weekend.  But I have a conundrum.

I believe the stupid bid-bounce mechanic would drive me nuts.  If you're outbid, then you *have* to bid on something else.  I realize this might encourage higher initial bids, but it almost sounds like a random event to determine what province you actually end up with in 5 players.

And the thing is, I've played Vegas Showdown many times.  It's a very solid game.  And it works by allowing re-bids on the same item.  So does Homesteaders.  So why does Amun-Re need this annoying mechanic?  I don't usually like house-ruling respected games, but what would happen if you allow re-bids?

Well, I know a couple power cards would need removed, but only a couple.  Other than that, would it really break anything?

Grr, we'll see if I get it to the table, and then we'll see if re-bids are allowed in the end...

Equilibrium Playtest

GenCon rekindled some PnP interest for me.  I got to try out a few prototypes too, and so I decided it would be a good time to revisit some of my designs.  I sat down tonight for a round of Equilibrium.

Early Game

I started right off with nailing the "First Pair" score cards in my first two hands.  Nice boon for me.  I followed it up with the permanent "+2 Draw" to let me really control what I paid with.  Notice I didn't actually signal what colors I was collecting.  This left my wife in the dark for quite awhile so I counted on her trashing a nice spread of cards.  Unbeknown to my wife, I was trashing all the yellow out of my deck setting myself up to score blue or red later.

My wife played the "Discount Score Cards" as her first card.  Then she started alternating between score cards for Red and attack cards to reduce my deck.  I think she made me trash and extra 7 cards over the course of the game.  So even though she didn't know what color to hit, she was still making me pay.  Unfortunately for her though, I knew she was going Red and started sniping the red out of her deck.

Mid Game

I played a "7+ of 2 Colors" to delay giving Ang info for another round, but then I finally had to signal a color.  I did about 3 blue score cards back to back.  I had the nice large hand size to work with though, so I could weed out the yellow while going lightly on trashing blue.

My wife was a score card machine.  Dropping more and more red.  And then even the hard to achieve "12VP for 11+ of a single color".  Her early discount meant she could play far more score cards than I since they were each subtly cheaper for her.

Last Plays

My last play was a gambit "Guess Opponent's Blue".  Ang never actually signaled if she was collecting a second color, but I noticed a lot of yellow down and remembered feeding a lot of blue back into her deck.  So I went with "7" as my guess.  The turn after that she drops a "7VP for 9+ Blue" right on top of a "+3VP if Successful" so I thought my guess would be way off.

Scoring

I slimmed my deck all the way down to a lean-mean 18 cards.  Exactly 7 Red to nail my "7+ of 2 Colors".  And 10 Blue so enough to score all my own score cards.

Ang had to stop earlier than she wanted since she knew I'd been sniping her Red.  She actually went a turn longer than I, but still ended with a bigger deck due to her discount permanent and the number of attack cards she'd played.  Turns out she hit *exactly* 11 Red for the big 12VP bonus, AND exactly 9 Blue for the extra 10VP from her earlier gambit.  (But the 9 was just in range for my guess to pay off)

After tallying the scores, Ang had 2 more positive points than I, but my deck was 4 cards smaller so I won a very close game by 2 VP.  (If I'd guessed one lower, ang would have won.  If Ang had had 1 less Red or Blue in her deck, then I would have won.  If I'd had one less Red in my deck, Ang would have won.  It was all razor thin to me.)

Thoughts:

I had a lot of fun.  Our strategies were sufficiently different, and yet reached very similar scores.  You can tell our skill has come up since we both managed to collect exactly the cards we needed in our remaining deck.  Some of that is closely counting cards, but even then you can't exactly know.  You have to guesstimate how much your opponent is trashing of what colors as you go.  It's an engaging and intriguing exercise to me.  And that's how I like it.

GenCon is Over

So I spent a lot of time cataloging my adventures over on BGG.  Here are the series of links:

http://boardgame.geekdo.com/geeklist/57400/isas-gencon-2010-days-0-1
http://boardgame.geekdo.com/geeklist/57438/isas-gencon-2010-day-2-better-annotations
http://boardgame.geekdo.com/geeklist/57455/isas-gencon-2010-day-3-gettin-sleepy
http://boardgame.geekdo.com/geeklist/57480/isas-gencon-2010-day-4-its-over

Hit of the show?  Probably Ascension.  It was a great take on the deck-building genre.  In particular, the rules are a little simpler and the setup time is vastly reduced.  It seems quite balanced to me although I haven't gotten a chance to play it much yet.

The bigger hit was getting to see all the publishers and designers who showed up.  That was quite the treat to put faces to a lot of names.

Now only a year left until it starts again.

Ack GenCon Crazies

Only a week to go!  I'm scrambling to get things done at work.  And still keep track of all the game swaps I scheduled at the convention.  Lordy lordy!

I've got to play a bunch of stuff recently, but none of it new to me.  That's far from a bad situation.  Especially since many of the recent games have been solid.  I'll give a couple contrasts here:

High Society - I've always liked For Sale better.  And I've even liked Money better now that I've finally gotten to try it.  I like the idea of not knowing how long the game will last.  But High Society takes that aspect to an extreme.  It just ruins the ability to plan much.  It went on the trade pile after this last play.

El Grande - Well, it's still a classic.  I got to play my own copy a second time.  I think I've got an original release.  The King is a little small, but the friggin' cubes are massive.  The play is just as chaotic as I remember it.  With plenty of take-that and score changing.  And yet, it always seems to get across that "epic" feel.  I think I like it so much just because it's got that special "epic" feel in the minimum amount of time necessary to achieve it.  (About 2 hours.)  I'll be holding onto it and breaking it out a few more times for sure.

Revisiting: Carcassonne the Castle

I now have the dubious honor of buying the same game 3 times.  And everyone of those was a deliberate purchase for myself.  What's even crazier is that I have sold this game twice because I didn't want it anymore.  Not because it was a good deal.  I mean, I've probably lost a good $10-$15 per copy, so let's put it at a $40 game for me now.  What is it?

Carcassonne the Castle

Why do I keep getting rid of it?

1. I maybe kind of like vanilla-carc better.  I sure as heck got carc'd out for awhile.  I had the big-box+Castle+H&G.

2. My wife doesn't think it's as pretty when it's done.  And, I've got to agree with her in general.

3. I was buying new games and needed the shelf space.


So why do I keep getting it back?

1. I enjoy playing it.

2. I keep thinking about the damn thing.


So, here I am on my third copy.  Of course we had to play it.  And you know what?  I think I liked it better than ever.  It was nice and close.  I really like how the bonus tiles add some hard thought to scoring, and then once you get them they can guide your long term strategy.

I think the Keep is just the right level of complication.  I like how much of your score is hidden at the end.

Yea, I just like the damn thing.  So sue me.  Now if only "The City" was simpler.  The whole wall thing there just seems bonkers.  And there's no fun bonus tiles to run along and collect :(

Of course, if I want to be honest, I think I'm on my third copy of Quo Vadis too.  I suppose I have a love-hate relationship with Knizia.