Cannes

I played Cannes, the new Splotter release. It's been characterized as
"Roads and Boats"-lite, and while it certainly shares several
qualities with R&B, it stands nicely on its own without supplanting
R&B or feeling less interesting than R&B.

The theme is about making movies, which require a variety of resources
(computers, people, and beer, which produce special effects, scripts
and stars, in various combinations) in multiple stages. There are
multiple types of movies (sci-fi movies, action movies, and the
amusingly translated "girlie movies" aka chick flicks) which require
different resources. This part of the game is interesting, but not
especially novel.

The really clever part of the game is how you access the resources and
production mechanisms. There are hexagonal tiles, which players
control the layout of, and then each player has five rods which they
use to form a "network" of connections between tiles. Only those
tiles connected to one's network are usable. This means you have to
carefully layout tiles and gradually change your network as your
resource and production needs change, all while other players are
impinging on the same space. Further, only a limited number of
resources can be retained between turns.

The play is very tense, and the timing of the endgame is interesting.
Like in Roads & Boats, the key to doing well seems to be to set up a
production "machine" as quickly as possible, and then run it longer
and better than the other players. Of course, other players may
attempt to interfere with your machine. Overall, the tension and
interaction was very nice, and the theme was engaging and fun, though
one player found the production hierarchy a little non-intuitive.

The components are also worth mentioning, as they are somewhat nicer
than many Splotter games in the past. They aren't quite up to the
major German publishing standards, but they are very nice all the
same, particularly more so than Roads & Boats.

I look forward to playing this one more, and if this sort of
production game is interesting to you, I highly recommend it. The
network mechanism is very new feeling, so I can't quite compare it to
anything else I've played, which alone makes this game worth trying.

Just back from Essen, first comments

Well, I just got back from Essen, and thought I'd post some quick
comments. This is my second time to Essen, and you can href=http://www.mkgray.com:8000/essen/>read about my trip in 2000, if you want. This year,
I was only there for the end of Thursday and all of Friday and
Saturday. The "buzz" of the fair was Friedman Friese's new game
"Fische Fluppen Frikadellen", in which players can switch between
tables and multiple copies of the game. I didn't get a chance to play
this, but it seemed very well received.

I'll discuss other games below, but another nice thing about Essen
this year was I knew far more people there. It was great to see Scott
Alden, Greg Schloesser, James Miller, Mik Svellov, and many others.

Trias

This game of plate tectonics from Gecko Games was featured in the Doris
& Frank booth, and though the art was by Doris, the game was not by
Frank, but Ralf Lehmkuhl. I was very impressed with this game, and it
seems to have a variety of interesting options and the continental
drift mechanics are very nice. I'll try to write more later, but the
basic idea is one is competing for control over the new continents
that are being formed. On each players turn, they have some control
over the drift, and then action points to do things such as force more
drift, reproduce, move, and the like. Very nice. The only negative
comments I heard was that it was a bit dry, but I didn't find it so,
and unless players are very ponderous, it moved along at a good pace.

color=f8f0ff>ad acta

This small production game has a theme that seems hard to make
interesting: paper pushing. But, the game is quite fun, and lends
itself well to its theme. Each player runs an office, and documents
get pushed around and processed by various offices before being filed.
Precise timing of this processing is key to the game, as different
documents score different points depending on when the are filed. The
game is all about queue management, as documents come in to offices on
a last in first out basis. A few special action cards mix things up
nicely. Some found parts of a little too chaotic and hard to track,
and I see where he's coming from, but I very much enjoyed and
recommend the game.

color=f8f0ff>ZooSim

This is a beautifully produced new game from Cwali, where players
produce competing zoos, attempting to attract the most visitors. This
game has a few nice mechanics that interlock nicely. Players
participate in a series of blind auctions for tiles which are layed in
a domino-like fashion, and compete for dominance in several categories
(types of animals and trees) as well as receiving bonuses for creating
path loops. I like auction games, so that part appealed to me, but I
found the other aspects very engaging as well. The art is also very
nice, though some speculated that people might assume it was a
children's game because of it. In any case, highly recommended.

color=f8f0ff>Canal Grande, FFF, Cannes, Age of Steam

These 4 also got a lot of good buzz (highly rated in the Fairplay
booth, and spoken of highly by those who'd played), but I didn't get a
chance to play them. I picked them all up except for Age of Steam.
I'll comment more once I play them.

color=f8f0ff>Rumors

Many people commented to Friedemann Friese that Frisch Fisch should be
republished. He commented on a certain irony in this because
apparently it took several years to sell out, and only once it had
completely sold out did an upsurge of interest start. The possibility
of another publisher doing an edition of Frisch Fisch seemed to be in
mind, but nothing specific, of course.

I also heard some other folks mumbling about the possibility of
Friedeman doing a new game for Alea. Would the box be green?

Nothing in the way of details, but a new Reiner Knizia "big" game from
Hans im Gluck is supposedly going to be out at Nurnberg, and
presumably this is the Egyptian game Chris Lawson mentioned last
month.

I'll post more later, with photos...

Going to Essen

Despite having lots of interesting topics to write on, I haven't had
the time to write here lately. Hopefully, I'll get time to write
about Lord of the Rings: Sauron, Roads & Boats, and some Lord of the
Rings: The Confrontation strategy.

All this will probably have to wait though, since I'm off to Essen,
and presumably that will be the most interesting thing to write about
for a little while. I hope to have some stuff up here early next
week.

500 games

This past weekend, I hit the 500 mark for games played this year.
There was some discussion of people's current games for the year on href=http://groups.yahoo.com/group/spielfrieks/>spielfrieks, and I
thought I'd include my post here.

Games played: 502
Different Games Played: 216
New to me games: 120
Number of people played with: 187

While there are some games I enjoy a great deal, what I really enjoy
is variety. Despite this, I've already hit 10+ and 5+ for many games
this year, though a great many games that have been played once (131)
or twice (42).

The games marked with *'s are the "few or no plays before this year"
games.

My 10+ list so far: Geister*, SpinBall, TransAmerica*,
Electronic Catchphrase, Crokinole, Call my Bluff.

My 5+ list so far: Knockabout, For Sale, Hamster Rolle*, Industrial
Waste*, Puerto Rico*, 6 nimmt!, Pente, Zirkus Flohcati, Alles im
Eimer*,
Hick Hack in Gacklewack, LOTR:TC*, Battle Line, Mause Rallye*,
Pueblo*,
Speed.

But, I've decided I personally like Joe Huber's "happiness" number
better than just the straight number of plays. By that metric my top
games for the year:

1. Puerto Rico (8 plays)
   
2. TransAmerica (17 plays)
   
3. SpinBall (24 plays)
   
4. Lord of the Rings (4 plays)
   
5. Industrial Waste (8 plays)
   
6. 6 nimmt! (7 plays)
   
7. Crokinole (15 plays)
   
8. Traders of Genoa (2 plays)
   
9. Electronic Catchprase (16 plays)
   
10. Geister (31 plays)
    
    
    
    
    
11. Battle Line (5 plays)
    
12. Call my Bluff (10 plays)
    
13. LOTR:TC (6 plays)
    
14. Pente (7 plays)
    
15. Code 777 (3 plays)
    
16. Pueblo (5 plays)
    
17. Euphrat & Tigris (2 plays)
    
18. Medina (2 plays)
    
19. Haste Worte? (3 plays)
    
20. Hamster Rolle (8 plays)
    

where I expect Lord of the Rings will go up once I get the Sauron
expansion, I expect LOTR:TC will hit 10 plays, and I hope to play a
little more E&T. Puerto Rico will probably remain at the top.

This year, I've been good at TransAmerica, For Sale, and Puerto Rico,
while I've been less skilled at Alles im Eimer, Hick Hack in
Gacklewack and Zirkus Flohcati.

Squint

I decided to pick up the new game "Squint" from Out of the Box this
past weekend, and got to play a few games. I was reasonably pleased.
The very basic idea is Pictionary-like with cards with various
squiggles, circles and lines which you have to use to "draw"
with. There are three difficulty levels and you determine each time
which to use by a die roll. After a couple of games this way, we
found the hardest ones were the most enjoyable, so we played with just
those, and that works very well. Next time, I may use the variation
of allowing the person who is "drawing" to do any or all of the words
on the card. That way, they can go conservative and do the easier one
for fewer points or the harder one, or try to get multiple one's
guessed.

Overall, as a party game, very solid.

ABCNews article

ABC News
href=http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/hobbies020903.html>
has a story on obsessive hobbyists, and includes a bit on the
associate dean of the Rice school of engineering, Tony Elam, who is an avid
(>4000 games) board game collector. He likes Puerto Rico.

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation

I was recently in St. Louis, and decided to stop by a local game
store, "The Fantasy Shop", which I had seen mentioned on r.g.b. It
turned out to be heavily weighted towards comics and RPGs, but with a
handful of German-style games. It also turned out that luck was with
us and the store was having a "Moonlight Madness" sale that night from
11pm-1am and everything was 20% off. One of the things I decided to
pick up was the new Knizia Lord of the Rings game for two players.

I've played it a few times now and am very pleased with it. In basic
mechanics, it is not unlike Stratego with the addition of special
powers and cards which change the effectiveness of some of the units.
There are many special powers to keep track of, but after an initial
play the powers are reasonably easy to keep track of.

Another key feature of the game is that with a few exceptions, pieces
only ever move forward, which in addition to pushing the game to
conclusion and avoiding stalemates, introduces some very interesting
tactical choices. Often, a players best move would be to do nothing
or move a piece backward.

The result is a game with a opportunity for careful strategizing,
bluffing, and long term planning. It further has the quality that a
single fatal error can easily cost you the game, but those errors are
easy to avoid, in your next game, giving a steady improvement in one's
skill. Further, it appears that doing well at the game relies heavily
upon recognizing when your opponent has made an error (not always
obvious) and successfully capitalizing on it (not always easy).

It is possible that with enough plays it will reduce to a simple
bluffing and luck game, but I expect it will hold up for quite some
time to some varied strategies. With novices, I think the light
player has a bit of an advantage, but am not sure that will be
sustainable with experienced players.

Reviews and Descriptions of Play

I don't know why, but the practice of giveng a description of play
followed by a often extremely brief evaluation and calling that a
"game review" has been bugging me lately. I've never been especially
fond of this approach, but for some reason it's been something I've
noticed a lot lately. If I'm going to like a game because of its
mechanics, I will be able to tell that from a brief description just
as well as from an in depth description. Knowing that there are
auctions for priveleges is sufficient. Knowing there are three rounds
of 6 auctions in which a variable number of priveleges which each
player can win at most 5 of is excessive and often distracting, until
I'm actually going to play a game.

Similarly, I'm more interested in people's opinions of a game, why
they liked and why they didn't, and I don't think every detail of play
is necassary to understand that. Sure, I need to know that there's
simultaneous actions to understand that a reviewer thinks that "the
simultaneous action selection seems to make the game very random", or
something, but a one or two paragraph description is sufficient,
rather than a regurgitation of the rules. Further, I'd much rather
have opinions on how the play feels and how the various rules combine
than know what they specifically are.

For example, in Ra, the fact that different auctions are not just
worth different amounts to different people (as in most auction
games), but also may effectively cost dramatically different amounts
for different people is an important part of why I like the game. The
fact that there are 3 rounds and monuments aren't scored until the end
and some tiles go back at the end of each round doesn't matter in my
evaluation of the game.

Slow Summer

Well, it's been a slow summer. In July and August, so far, I've
played 54 games, less than half the usual rate, so as a result, I've
had less to say here. Even more so, I've played very few new (to me)
games this summer. A lot of TransAmerica, SpinBall, Puerto Rico, 6
nimmt! and a variety of other new-ish and older favorites, but not a
lot new. Just recently I picked up Lord of the Rings: The
Confrontation and like it, and I'll put some comments here after
I play it a couple more times.

Great Games, Hot Games, and Replayability

Often, when I introduce new players to these games, I'm asked "Which
is your favorite?" or something equivalent. Usually, I don't have too
much trouble identifying a handful of "favorites", but it raises a
question of how to rank games. One obvious issue is how to compare
games of dramatically differing lengths. An outstanding 10 minute
game is going to be a very different experience than an outstanding 2
hour game, which is a different experience from playing the
outstanding 10 minute game 12 times in a row. What might make some
reasonable metrics?

Ratings. One way to do it would just be to rate games, say
from 1-10 or from 1 to 4 stars. The problem with this is it tends to
be fairly variable even for one individual. That is, sometimes a game
may be an 8 and other days it might be a 6. Further, it doesn't
really catch the difference between games of different lengths. You
could try to incorporate length in somehow, but that doesn't
distinguish between the short game that you want to play over and over
and the short game that you enjoy a great deal, but only once in a
while.

Number of Plays. I've got my games
that get played a lot page. This obviously works fairly well, but
has a natural bias towards shorter games. I would guess that most of
the truly great games (to me) will make this list someday, but for
some of the longer games, it will take a while. Further, a number of
great but not-quite-as-great games make this list because they are so
short.

Total time playing. This seems like a pretty good measure, but
it has bias against the short games. If I make the decision to play a
game 15 times, that implies it is pretty good. Two plays of a two hour
game doesn't to me imply it is better than the 10-minute game I play
15 times.

Replayability. This is a metric which I define as "the number
of 1 month periods in which the game has been played". This means a
game which gets played 7 times all at once and is never played again
gets a "1". On the other hand, a game that gets 2 plays and then is
played again once a month for the next 5 months gets a "6". This
works a little better than number of plays, but also tends to favor
short games.

Happiness. Joe Huber suggested this formula: take a rating of
a game, subtract a baseline, and multiply it times the total time
spent playing a game. It avoids the bias against long games by
including length in the calculation, and mitigates the bias against
short games by introducing the rating. Overall, this is probably the
"ranking system" I'm most fond of. So, without further ado:

Top 20 Games of All Time. RoboRally, Battle Line, Lord of the
Rings, Settlers of Catan, Vinci, Traumfabrik, 6 nimmt!, Schnappchen
Jagd, Bluff, Euphrat & Tigris, Pente, Ra, Princes of Florence, Puerto
Rico, Can't Stop, Medici, Bohnanza, Industrial Waste, Ricochet Robot,
Basari.

The list doesn't change all that frequently, but it certainly does a
little bit.

Of course, then there's the notion of "what's hot now", and a little
tweak to the happiness formula to incorporate "newness" and number of
recent plays. This year's "hot" games for me have been: Puerto Rico,
SpinBall, Industrial Waste, TransAmerica, Crokinole, Lord of the
Rings, Alles im Eimer, Pueblo, Haste Worte? and Hamster Rolle.