Design Part II: Rise of the Machines

“We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” – Carl Sagan

Well said, Carl. Okay, okay, I’m still talking about design stuff here, but after writing this post, I had to come back to the top here and offer a disclaimer that there is less design talk here than originally promised. Next time, Gadget. Next time.

So alone. So very very alone.

There is no argument about it, we are living in a Renaissance Age for board games. There have been huge evolutionary strides in the world of design (and of gaming in general) and games of every type are infiltrating the mainstream. Sure, video games are leading the charge here and when most people hear the term “gamer” they think of the guy staring at a screen with an intense focus powered solely by Mountain Dew, shouting into his headset. That’s not really my scene, but I recognize that it’s a vital part of the culture at large. More and more, some of the games we know about are sneaking out into the non-gamer world. Someone commented on an earlier blog post that their Target carried Ticket to Ride. I was very pleased by this. Facebook has an app in the works for Thunderstone. Ascension is already an app for tablet users. This is actually something mildly distressing to me, that so many games that require physical presence are being converted to remove the social aspect of it. There are valid reasons for this happening. First and foremost, price. As I am learning, games are prohibitively expensive to create. Publishing can be a very fickle business. Were it not for things like Kickstarter, someone looking to self-publish more than some print-and-play PDFs would be taking a huge risk with a lot of money. Secondly, technology marches on. As a culture we are becoming increasingly immersed in (and dependent upon) on modern technology. My 4 year old daughter knew how to use an iPad to do the things she wanted to do at 3. I think I could probably turn it on. Probably. All studies indicate that more people will be accessing the internet through their tablet or smart phone by 2015 than people using actual computers. I’m no exception to this. Until very recently, I had a phone with…let’s say a very poor education level. My girlfriend’s kids were bewildered at the lack of a touch screen or games. It died after years of faithful service in harsh conditions, and I joined the modern world where my phone is concerned. I know I am doing approximately 2% of what my phone is capable of doing. Computers won’t go completely by the wayside. I can’t imagine trying to update the blog from my phone. I know I *can*, but ugh. I’m getting pretty far off topic though, so time to rope it back around. Part of design nowadays is wondering how your product is going to translate to that medium, because if you want the game to be ultimately successful in reaching a lot of people, you’re going to have to consider electronic versions of your game. Some games, I feel while mechanically they would work fine online, you would miss a lot from the social experience. A couple of games stand out in my head.

A Game of Thrones is currently my favorite war game. Not just because I’m a huge A Song of Ice and Fire nerd either. Though I totally am. I haven’t picked up the 2nd Edition, and it’s unlikely that I will, it doesn’t seem that enough has changed to warrant the investment. I’ve heard many comparisons to Diplomacy, though I have not played that one myself so I can’t really speak to the comparison with any personal experience. For those of you unaware of the series or the game, SHAME ON YOU. Once you’ve been suitably punished for your negligence, come on back. I’ll wait.

I can’t even look at you right now, but I’ll go on for the people in the know. The game is based off of the fantasy book series by George R.R. Martin. In it, control over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros is fought over by the six noble families of the land. Each family has their own feel and starts in a different position on the map. Any game mechanics that can duplicate some of the joy I feel when I play Chaos in the Old World rock. While not so radically different as the Ruinous Powers,  the families do play differently enough to create a completely new game experience every time around. The most interesting part of this game (and why I brought it up) comes when it’s time to take actions. Players discuss their plans for the turn. They will forge alliances and temporary truces, make agreements to move out of the way, or give support against a greater foe, etc. The orders given to your armies are given in the form of cardboard chits that are placed facedown on the board. After all orders are given, they are all simultaneously revealed. Time to see who actually lives up to the agreements made just minutes before. In my personal experience, I’ve lost count of the number of betrayals. The number of plans that went through as agreed upon I can count on one dynamite-maimed hand. Your mileage may vary, especially if you aren’t friends with a bunch of duplicitous a-holes. Anyway, I could totally see this game being played on a computer, but I’m very glad it isn’t. Yet, anyway. The social aspect of this game is a crucial element. The game could be played without it, but I can’t imagine it would create anything akin the same feel.  Knowledge of the books isn’t necessary, but I find it adds a little flavor to the game.

One of us always tells the truth. The other one tells nothing but lies.

The other game that immediately jumped to mind is Battlestar Galactica, which is one of my all-time favorites. I should also mention I have a penchant for masochism. In Battlestar Galactica, all of the players are co-operatively trying to spare humanity from total extinction by running like hell from the genocidal Cylons. The problem is, one of the players is secretly a Cylon and working against the other players. Every turn, the humans have to make choices about how to deal with various problems and the choices are always Bad or Also Bad. If there were any good choices, it would be entirely too easy to out the rat bastard toaster and move on with your life. Forced to swallow only bad choices, it creates a lot of tension among the humans, and whenever choices are made, everyone is trying to decide if the bad choice made was truly the lesser of two evils, which creates a very real sense of paranoia. This bit of fun is compounded by the notion that the humans start with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, so when the humans start fighting among themselves, another bad choice can easily spell their doom. You can throw someone you suspect to be a traitor in The Brig, which limits the influence they have on the game. It also limits the help they can provide, so if an innocent human is imprisoned, it seriously hampers the humans, who already had it bad to begin with. A savvy Cylon player often has to do nothing but sit back and watch the humans eat each other. Again, this is a game I could see being played in an online format, but the social aspect is even more important than in A Game of Thrones. Body language is important in BSG. Being able to convincingly act as stressed as the rest of the players when you really don’t have anything to worry your robotic heart over is a coveted talent. Also similarly, knowledge of the series isn’t required, but it adds a considerable amount of flavor to the game. It’s also a bonus that my girlfriend totally loved this game.

Both of these games I could see on a PC, but I think both would suffer huge losses from doing so. Online gaming will not replace physical presence entirely (at least hopefully not in my life time), but there’s no doubt that this is where the industry is going, which is something that needs to be considered in your own designs.

Next time: More actual design-y stuff.  

 

Making the Game

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” – George Bernard Shaw

So, one of the reasons I started “Pretty Sneaky, Sis” was to talk about game design. This will mean a number of different things to different people. Over the next couple of weeks (and I am going to seriously work on getting back to regular updates) I am going to type words on a screen about what it means to me, and hopefully generate some thoughts with myself or candid conversation with my four faithful readers (p.s. I love you guys!) Today I start with my history in game design, future posts will talk about various concepts related to design, and even some ideas I have bubbling for the future.

I would imagine that everyone who loves games as I do turns their thoughts to making a game of their own at some point. For me, it started as a little kid with a big imagination, a set of colored pencils and some poster-sized sketch pads. I made a board game with no real point but to get to the end of the board, not much more depth than Chutes and Ladders. There were two paths to take, one was much longer, but with many less hazards.  The other was shorter, but had a trap-filled hall (complete with blood stains and poorly drawn skeletons) that required a lucky roll to get past. On either path was a key that you had to collect in order to unlock the door at the end of the board which opened to… a second board. I always felt that board games ended too quickly, I guess.  The second board had lots of treasure spots that you could pick up upgrades (written on index cards) to your pawn on. Why would your pawn need upgrades? How else are you going to defeat the dragon on the last space of the board? I am now filled with an urge to swing by an art supply store and return to my childhood holding the hands of the children currently in my life.

It was this or D6 system Star Wars. We made our choice.

My next foray into game creation would happen in the sixth grade. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness” was what was happening with me and my pack of nerds. We never actually conspired to make a role-playing session ever happen. What we *did* do was spend an inordinate amount of time making characters to fight each other and draw pictures of. That’s what I remember most about sixth grade. It was the year I had my first girlfriend (Hi Amanda!), and the year that I was creator of a  mutant character for every animal in the core rulebook. In hindsight, Palladium is a horrible system for quick build characters as disposable as toilet paper, but it’s wonderful in how universal it is. All of the Palladium system games were more or less interchangeable. In the Palladium universe, you can have a mutant elephant wizard ninja superspy who travels to multiple dimensions in a Veritech Alpha. I never did that myself, but my attention span as a sixth grader was limited to min-maxing my combat stats, drawing pictures, and talking trash with my friends. I do not feel a sudden urge to go looking for an old copy of the TMNT RPG. Tangentially related, I was recently notified of (another) reboot to the movie franchise, this time taking more after the original Eastman and Laird source material. Darker tone and all that. I liked it way back then, we’ll see what happens. I didn’t think the recent TMNT attempt was unwatchable, but there’s certainly room for growth and improvement. 

Nothing even 0.01% as cool as this, I assure you.

The above didn’t really have anything to do with game creation though, just game playing, which eventually inspired us to try to make our own game. Joe, Jason, Matt, Eddie and Chris, otherwise known as JJMEC Games, was going to self-publish Wild Side, the cyberpunk RPG that would put us on the map of the industry we didn’t have a solitary clue about. Think Shadowrun, if Shadowrun were made by a group of pre-teens. Simply awful. Not to us, of course. We had binders with our hand-drawn logo on it, and were working on what could very loosely be called a sourcebook. How terrible was it? We had one available character class. One. Our level 1 characters started with 500 hit points. The most devastating weapon in the game, something akin to a supercharged, shoulder-mounted cannon inspired by the Ghostbusters proton pack…did 5D20 damage. Wildly fluctuating damage range, and at its most deadly, did 20% of the health of a level one nobody.

The above illustrates how easy it is to get lost in the glitz and glamour of your ideas. Given, both times were the ideas of kids, but I was by no means a beautiful unique snowflake. I’m sure tons of other kids were scribbling down their ideas and millions of games have been lost to the black hole of not following through. Sadly, some of those kids grew out of it. Some of them were discouraged by the plethora of good games presently existing and didn’t feel they had anything to add. Some of them got into the mathiness of it all and stuck with it until they gave an adult shape to their ball of creative clay. I’m not sure where I fall as a designer. (an upcoming post!)

When you  look deeply into the board gaming world, you realize just how much further down the rabbit hole goes than you imagined. There are games for almost every genre you can think of, using every mechanic you can think of. It can be a bit daunting for someone who wants to jump in that end of the pool. It’s easy to come up with a game idea, scribble on some paper and play with some equally enthusiastic friends. When you’re taking it to the world, there’s a lot more to be considered. You have to find your audience, you have to know what has come before to appeal to that audience and how your game stacks up against theirs, if it offers anything new or interesting. You have to make sure that your game hasn’t already been designed. True story: I was once excited about a fantasy novel idea that I told a friend about, who informed me that I had more or less described the entire storyline of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Once you overcome these considerable hurdles, there’s still a ton of work to be done. Extensive playtesting to make sure that your game isn’t immediately broken by an oversight. Weighing trying to self-publish versus approaching publishers. When I met Tim Fowers running demos of Wok Star, I was impressed with his game and his attitude about making it happen, but it wasn’t until much later that the scope of what he was doing dawned on me. This said, we also live in the age of Kickstarter, which has to be one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my lifetime, and really makes the publishing question a lot more difficult to answer.

Next time I’ll talk more about the games that are, the games that aren’t, and the games that should be. If you’re a game designer, or an aspiring one, or just someone who wants to join the conversation, feel free to comment.

ALSO: Someone told me that due to my blog, they bought a game I talked about. That’s another first, and totally bad-ass. So, go me or something.

I’m not even supposed to be here today.

“He that seeks trouble never misses”

I was very excited when my copy of Five Fingered Severance arrived at the house. It’s the first game (but hopefully not last)  I’ve been given for the purposes of reviewing/blogging about; which gave me a feeling of something akin to credibility. I cracked it open, looked over the rules, and made arrangements to play. With that credibility came a responsibility. Let’s get right to it and talk about this game.

Employee of the Month candidates.

With the exception of the title, I’m going to carefully avoid making a bunch of Clerks references. Five Fingered Severance, if nothing else, oozes with theme. The concept is pretty basic. The players are all workers at a convenience store on its last day of business. You’re all being fired at the end of the day, that’s unavoidable. So, in the face of this tragedy a revenge plot is born. Justice can only be served by Sticking It To The Man (TM) Via Petty Theft. This is important, not only to the gameplay/mechanics, but also to the mindset of the game. Everything acts under the assumption that the players are a group of ne’er-do-wells, riff-raff and scallywags. Everyone’s going to be fired by the end of the day, so the only appropriate response is to trash the joint, right? And what hooligan hesitates to rat out one of the other wage-slaves, so that the boss will go harass them while you “flavor” the coffee? The more you embrace the a-hole teenager mentality, the more you can relate to the game. Stealing everything that isn’t bolted down, avoiding anything that looks like it could be responsible (unless the boss is standing right there), telling off the clueless customers in the store (they are legion) and fingering everyone else for your crimes against common decency.

The components are pretty good for a publisher not called “Fantasy Flight Games”. The cardboard chits are sturdy, and keeping consistent with the themes above, a lot of the art-based humor is low brow, like “Get Layed” brand potato chips (SEE WHAT THEY DID THERE?). There are (2) six-sided dice, though I could only ever figure out use for one. The rulebook is well-written and pretty clear on how the game goes. The cardstock used for the Event deck and Character cards is a good thick cut. Physically, the game isn’t flimsy. If you take decent care of it, it should last a long time.

Setup is pretty quick. You lay out the board, shuffle and deal random characters and seed the board with things to steal and a few tasks and/or customers. The longest set up was the first, and it wasn’t bad, even with the punching and bagging. I like an easy setup. One of the reasons Epic Thunderstone is gaining such popularity is that with the exception of the first game, it eliminates almost all of the setup time. As much as I love Battlestar Galactica, setting up that game feels like it takes forever, and that game is already really long as it is.

You actually *want* these guys in the store.

Onto gameplay, which is pretty simple. On a player’s turn, you draw and resolve the top card of the Work Marker deck, which populates the store with customers, opportunities to create mischief (called “slacking”) actual productive things to do, and events that shake things up, either by moving the Boss, or creating a rush of people, etc. After that step, the player has two actions to take from a list of actions you can perform, ranging from pocketing goods from whatever area you are in, storing your ill-gotten gains in your locker (rendering them safe from getting caught on your person), insulting or assisting customers and even legit work. You know, the thing you’re being paid to do. In addition to these, there are Plot cards which can be played before, after and in between other actions. The game plays pretty quickly, which is another point in its favor. There are two end game mechanics, and neither of them take a long time to occur. The game ends when A) only one player is left still working (all other players have been fired) or B) the Work Marker deck runs out. A player is fired when their Heat total reaches 30 or greater, Heat is gained in a number of fashions, like the other rapscallions talking smack about you, insulting customers (which gains you points) or getting caught with stolen wares by the Boss. Heat is reduced by being helpful to customers and actually doing some of the work in the store. A low Heat score will give you a nice amount of points at the end as well, so it’s not just a stall mechanic.

The Boss is the “x-factor” as it were. As exuberant as you are about showing off just how badass you are by creating as much trouble as you can, you are still intimidated by authority figures and don’t dare to engage in any rebellion around him. When the Boss occupies the same space as you, you cannot steal things, insult customers or slack off. Additionally, if he enters your space while you have unstored goods, there’s a chance that you’ll get caught, which will result in the confiscation of your stuff and your Heat total rising. Oddly enough, the gun you can steal from the Register area, if caught with it, does not equal an automatic firing. The Boss can be moved a number of means, some of the Work Marker cards move him, and he can be sent specific places or called to specific places by player actions. However, the Boss can only move once per player turn, so careful timing is required if you’re trying to set someone up, or avoid getting busted. However, with the knowledge that he can only be moved once per turn, you know once he has moved for the turn, you are pretty safe to return to your life of crime. Similar to the Boss, you can’t steal things or slack off in front of customers. You can help them or insult them, either of which removes them from the board, freeing you to return to your villainy. Some of the customers have special rules, which have to be looked up in the rulebook. This is a minor quibble, I was annoyed that I had to reference the rulebook each time one of these customers was interacted with. It would have been better to find a way to put the rules on the cards themselves, but it was likely a restriction of card space.

Each player is a different character and each character has different abilities. This is another thing I like in a themed game, and one that I believe helps to create replay value. While not as pronounced as the Ruinous Powers from Chaos in the Old World or the characters from Battlestar Galactica, the variety of abilities helps create a new experience with each play. I haven’t given much thought to the balancing of these abilities. For example, one of the characters has the ability to insult a customer anywhere in the store (normally you can only insult those you share a space with) which doesn’t do much of anything if the store has no customers.

Pace of the game flows nicely, the turns breeze by, and I can’t imagine this game lasting more than 90 minutes, even with a full comp of players. I will definitely say that the game improves with multiple players. When played as a 2 player, it comes down to just trading blows; when we played with 3-4, it was immensely more enjoyable.

Of course, no game is perfect, and there are a few things that take away from an otherwise fine game. First is the clutter. The game starts off pretty clean, a few things to do, a couple of people to make fun of, maybe some slacking avenues, but the mess quickly escalates as the jobs start piling up and the customer density starts resembling scenes in Dawn of the Dead. Before long, there’s so much to do that you really can’t keep up with it. The board runs out of room to put cards, customers are everywhere. This is due to the risk to reward ratios in the various tasks. Actually working reduces your Heat, but doesn’t generate points. Insulting customers gains points, but also increases Heat. Stealing stuff, and timing it so you aren’t caught, provides points while potentially not getting any Heat, so this is the “correct play” most often and players will dodge the other choices on the board in favor of shoplifting, which leads to the clutter. In the end, you have two actions per turn, an innumerable array of options to use them, but nowhere near enough time. This can cause decisions to become circumstantially forced and rendered meaningless.

The game is light-hearted and fun. The rulebook is funny, the art is good for a few laughs and the title alone is enough to warrant interest. While not extensively deep, I suspect there are deeper strategies that I look forward to discovering in more plays.

A big thank you to Minion Games, who provided the game for reviewing, taking a chance on someone new to the blogging game. :D

Taste the Rainbow

A kind of synthesis, but with some elements that perhaps you wouldn’t have expected in advance. I always like that when that happens, when something comes that is more than the sum of the parts.  – Evan Parker

Has it really been over a month since my last update? Yikes. Crazy happenings and personal life (along with the impending Holidays) have kept me very busy lately, but I’ve got to get back to entertaining the three people who read this blog! On with the show!

A number of months ago, a friend introduced me to a game he’s been playing. He advertised it to me as “a free online game that plays like Magic: the Gathering but with 12 colors”. Well, I like Magic; I like Free, so why the hell not? I go over to Elements and register to start playing. Quick, easy to understand, a good time killer. These were my initial reactions to the game. Odds are, it would only allow me a little bit of play before requiring a purchase to unlock the bigger, better parts of the game, right? Nope. Every aspect of the game is available to every player without monetary contribution. That said, I will probably make a donation for the costs it takes to keep their servers going. Let’s talk a little about the game.
 

Nope. Go break some other game.

I’m going to make the semi-dangerous assumption that anyone reading this blog knows the basics of Magic: the Gathering. Certainly, this game draws a lot of inspiration from Magic, and a knowledge of how the game works will be helpful in getting a quicker grasp of Elements. The most glaring difference between the two games is that Magic has their themes all bundled into five colors, while Elements leaves each theme to its own group,  For example, in Magic, the color black is symbolic of death, decay, and evil in general. All black cards have black mana (the currency of Magic) costs. Elements has different card sets for “Death”, “Darkness” and “Entropy” and each of these have their own currency (called quanta) to be paid. Elements has a whopping 12 different themes to mix and match, Entropy, Death, Gravity, Earth, Life, Fire, Water, Air, Light, Darkness, Time and Aether. I won’t waste a lot of your time going into what each Element does, you can find out yourself when you go to play.
 
Another difference is that your available currency stacks turn over turn. In Magic, what you can play is limited by how much mana you can generate in a single turn. In Elements, any unused Quanta goes to a reserve to be used in later turns. In some strategies, this allows you to sacrifice a turn or two to make an especially powerful play later. There are no specifically multi-colored cards in Elements, though there are cards are better when used in conjunction with other colors. For example, the Mind Flayer card is a Water creature with the “Lobotomize” ability, which allows him to remove an ability from another creature in play. This ability is activated by the paying of Aether quanta, so if you don’t have a way to generate Aether quanta, you are left with a substandard creature with no abilities.
 

Periodic Tablephiles, turn ye back now. There's naught for you here.

Each player has a set of 3 slots, designated for a Weapon, Shield and Mark. Your Mark generates 1 quanta of its color per turn, ensuring that you are never without at least that basic currency. Weapons will all deal some damage at the end of a turn, and most of them have abilities you can activate. Shields provide protection in a variety of forms. Some damage attacking creatures, some allow only certain types of creatures to attack, some reduce the chance for an attacking creature to hit by some percentage, etc. You have 2 rows for your permanents (your quanta producing cards and other non-creature goodies, and 3 rows for your creatures.
 
Each player starts with 100 life, but don’t let that number fool you into thinking you’ll have time to enact some crazy combos, there are a number of fast blitzy decks out there that will make short work of those life points. Similar to Magic, you lose the game if you are reduced to zero life, or if you go to draw a card and you can’t because your deck is empty.
 
Elements is fantastic for a free game to scratch a Magicky itch, but it’s not perfect. Here are some less than awesome aspects of the game. 
 
1. The Grinding. Oh, the grinding. You start with a limited number of cards. You can play against bots for an ante of Electrum (the game’s money) and if you win, you collect an Electrum prize based on how much health you had at the end of the game, and a random chance to win some cards or money. It takes a lot of bot grinding to get you to a point where you are making significant improvements to your deck, and that’s within just one color. If you want to branch out, you either have to sell your existing cards for the money to buy into colors you want, or keep grinding until you have enough money to buy in without selling. After a while, this becomes less of a problem, unless, like me, you want to have every card so you have complete flexibility in whatever you want to build. 
 
2. Beating on your friends is difficult. Not a huge complaint, but PVP is synchronous only (barring the Arena, which plays by special rules). So, if you want to see how your deck fares against your friend, you both need to be playing at the same time. Also, with specific player PVP, there are no rewards, to prevent people from creating dummy accounts for their main account to endlessly whack on for money and cards. 
 
3. There are only how many cards? Elements doesn’t have a HUGE assortment of cards to pick from. There are enough to build a number of interesting decks, but it doesn’t really compare with Magic, which has thousands of cards. Elements is also free. This issue is mitigated through a number of means, first, there are cards that you can only gain through winning games or winning them in a daily chance to win a card. Also, each card has two forms. You can pay a (farily hefty) fee to upgrade a single card to its improved version. The improved versions are typically less expensive to play, or have better stats, or in some cases, unique abilities. Upgrading your cards also provides a decent gift for your tireless grinding. It’s not an entirely stagnant card pool, since I’ve been playing, I’ve seen new cards introduced. 
 
4. It’s the same everywhere you go. Inevitably, you are going to come across decks that employ tactics that you just hate. That’s going to happen in every game of this nature. For me, it’s resource denial. My eyes instantly roll with an annoyed sigh while my cursor clicks the quit button as soon as my opponent starts playing things that destroy my quanta generating cards. What annoys each person changes with the person, so there’s opportunity for everyone to be annoyed! Hooray! Just remember, that you annoy as you are annoyed. While you are irritated that some guy on the internets keeps hiding behind shields and using stalling tactics while a combo is arranged, someone else is also frustrated that you packed your deck full of creatures that can’t be targeted by spells while they sit on a handful of spells designed to help keep creatures under control.

5. You can’t trade with other players! Minor quibble, but I wish you could.
 

A peek at the ACTION!

That’s about it for my complaints, and none of them are enough to keep me away from the game. If, like me, you enjoy Magic and also free games, give Elements a chance, you won’t regret it. Look me up (username: agentindanger) for a game sometime!

Fair and Balanced Reporting

“Variety is the spice of life”
 
I know I said I was going to blog about 7 Wonders, but honestly, I’m not ready to do that yet. I’ve played all of one time and was taught by someone who was either on crack or hadn’t slept in 4 days and had more Red Bull in his veins than blood. It’s been described to me as “the best game you can play in 30 minutes” and is beloved by all of the internets, so I owe it to some misguided sense of integrity to give it a few more plays to get a good feel for it. I’ve spent a lot of time here talking about board and card games. When I started this blog, it was with the intent to talk about games of all types, and I haven’t done that really, so today I am branching off into the electronic to talk about some of my favorite video games.
 
When it comes to video games, I think the term “gamer” takes on a different meaning. I think it still roughly encompasses all people with video gaming as a hobby, but with the introduction of playing games online, the general idea is someone who is playing an MMO (massive multiplayer online) like World of Warcraft or a FPS (first person shooter) like Halo. Honestly, these hold no appeal to me. The only FPS I have ever enjoyed was Turok: Dinosaur Hunter for Nintendo 64. I would probably enjoy World of Warcraft. A little too much, which is exactly why I will never invest into it. I’ve known people to lose themselves in these games, to play for hours, days, weeks, eschewing other responsibilities and even social interactions with other people. I understand that the game can be used as a social outlet, but only with other people who are in the box with you. Call me old school, but I can’t overemphasize the value of real human contact. Even in a post about video games. As a teenager, we gravitated towards multiplayer games for our consoles, and even on the single games, there were plenty of times we’d all hang out and watch the game, take turns playing or discuss while it was being played. I’m getting a little far off topic here, time to talk about some of my favorite games.

His clothes may weigh more than he does, but he's still a badass.

 
Final Fantasy Tactics is probably my favorite video game of all time. It was the first game I got for the Playstation. It’s a grid-based tactical RPG with a great storyline, something the Final Fantasy chain is kind of known for. I’ve played through this game no fewer than 5 times, and each time I played through, I tried to make it a little more difficult for myself. The first time I played, I just played normally. The second time I didn’t play any of the special characters, as many of them are just better than anything you can hope to make. The third time, I played using only Monks. This wasn’t actually that difficult, as the Monk class and its abilities are actually pretty bad ass. After that I played using only Mages. This was really hard for about half of the game, but once I broke into good spells, the game fell apart. After that came only Geomancers, which was fairly difficult, as they don’t have many healing options available. A friend of mine said that he was working on beating the game using only Dancers. Which I suspect would mean running from enemies until they eventually die from poison or another nasty status effect. My single complaint about this game was its lack of multiplayer options. When we heard that it was being re-released onto PSP with a multi-player mode, that alone prompted myself and several friends to invest in a PSP. I played the Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance but was unimpressed by it. I didn’t play the third title in the FFT brand. There have been a number of other games I’ve enjoyed in the genre, but none so much as this. The Disgaea series is fun and brought some interesting twists to the genre involving terrain and leveling up your gear in addition to your heroes, but the series is very silly as a whole and try as I might, I can’t turn my brain off to the story. Suikoden Tactics was almost a direct ripoff of FFT’s mechanics, but the story was abysmal. I played through and never looked back. I would love a true sequel to the original, complete with a mature storyline, but I don’t think it’s in the cards. I would also play a game like this that used 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons mechanics. I’ve recently caught wind of a playerhack called Final Fantasy Tactics version 1.3, which supposedly takes my favorite game and makes it exponentially more difficult. I can’t wait to give it a try. 
 

Yep. He looks exactly like Jake Gyllenhaal.

My awesome girlfriend who is awesome also likes video games. We’re still looking for the happy middleground on games that we both like. She said she liked “questing games” I had Final Fantasy 7 on my PS3, so I had her start that. She quit before blowing up the first Mako reactor. Let’s be honest, she quit before naming Cloud. One combat in, she said she didn’t care for “waiting her turn to attack”. Suffice to say, I will not be trying to win her over on Tactics. OK, so I dig into my brain for another game I loved for her to try and downloaded another blast from the past: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Man did I love that game. At the time, the graphics were gorgeous (they still aren’t bad), gameplay was fun and the score was awesome. Yeah, the dialogue left more than a little to be desired, but what an awesome side-scroller! She was going to love it! She played it for longer than she did FF7. I’ll give her that much credit. This also, wasn’t her cup of tea. She’s currently playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I’ve finally got some ideas of what I’m going to push next, and I’m torn. The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was a great game. The puzzles were interesting, the combat isn’t too intense, and it’s really cool visually watching yourself perform the dizzying feats of acrobatics with short bursts of time travel to save you from bad jumps. It also has one of the best endings in all of video gaming. Dark Cloud 2 offers lots of questing and a decently engaging story that’s kid-friendly. In its weird video-gaming way, it encourages building. Both of these are solid titles that I will likely introduce to her, but what I ultimately decided on was…
 

Why so serious?

Kingdom Hearts is a better game than it had any right to be. Like most people, when I heard about the concept, I thought that Square had skipped a groove and that nothing in life would ever be good again. Why would you make a game blending Square characters and Disney characters? When had Disney ever been involved in a good video game? (Immediately after writing that sentence, I remembered that I enjoyed Aladdin for Sega Genesis and The Lion King for Super Nintendo) I was super skeptical. It was a huge undertaking. This was going to take childhood favorites from multiple generations and place them in stories outside of those that made them childhood favorites in the first place. There was so very much to go wrong here. I don’t really remember why I decided to give it a try, but I am very glad that I did. Yeah, the protagonist is a young kid with impossibly spiky hair. It’s still a Square game, after all. The Keyblade is as bad a weapon concept as the Gunblade from Final Fantasy 8. I don’t understand why the Gummi ship needs to be a playable thing. Failing those very minor quibbles, this game turned out to be fantastic. The story is very imaginative and takes meticulous care in constructing the the Disney locations in a way that makes them feel like their movies. They even went as far as hiring as much of the original voice talent as they could. Production quality in the game is top notch. The gameplay is fun and feels a lot like the newer Zelda games (which is why I think this one will take with my girlfriend). When Kingdom Hearts 2 came out, I didn’t hesitate to buy it, and I’m excited about news of a Kingdom Hearts 3.
 
This all said, I’ve got a sizeable post here and so much more I want to talk about! Next week I’ll have some of my other favorites. What are some of yours?

AGR III: Chaos in the Old World. -or- It’s about damn time.

“We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.” – Oscar Wilde

What a perfect quote for this post. In what now feels like ancient history, I’m coming back to talk about my first experience with Chaos in the Old World, a game I pretty much instantly fell in love with. I’ll start this off by saying I’m not historically a fan of the setting of this game. Warhammer never held much appeal to me. I’ve never been able to really get into any miniatures games. With my inner circle of nerds, this tends to make me the odd man out. I tried Clan War when it came out, being in the thrall of Legend of the Five Rings at the time, I played Mageknight a handful of times (though I am guessing that miniature games purists will decry that it doesn’t count) and once I wrote up an army for a Warhammer Fantasy campaign…and never actually played. No Malifaux, no 40K, nothing. My friends swear that if I gave it an earnest try, I’d love it. They could be right, but getting over that hump has proven very difficult. It’s an expensive hobby to get in to, requires a very specific type of play area, and whereas it’s not the only game guilty of this, takes a lot of time to play. These are barriers that are very difficult to overcome for me, but I’m sure eventually I will give in and give it a try.

Back to where I was, I was setting up a game of Thunderstone, when a friend of mine approaches me and asks if I would like to play Chaos in the Old World. I ask him what it’s about, and he tells me that we play as a collection of evil gods trying to corrupt the world, but only in our own style, and not the styles of the other gods. Intrigued, I abandon Thunderstone to learn more. I’ll admit, when I saw the Warhammer logo, my brain winced reflexively, but was quickly mollified by the Fantasy Flight logo. I haven’t played all of Fantasy Flight’s games, but I haven’t played a single one I didn’t enjoy.

Yep. Pretty much.

I’ll start with some of the base mechanics then get to the goods.  In the base game, there are four Ruinous Powers (which you have to admit is a cool name).  The game has several end conditions. The first god to spin their accomplishment dial to its final space (accomplished by completing tasks specifically to your god’s agenda). The second is to score 50 Victory Points, primarily obtained through the corruption and subsequent destruction of the world. Third is to destroy five of the board’s regions, and lastly is for the deck of Old World cards to run out, signaling that the commoners have successfully resisted the collapse of their society among the conflict of four gods. Three games in (with many more planned) I have not seen the people escape their thorny doom.

OK, now onto what makes this game awesome.  Each of the gods has a playstyle that is distinctly their own. In three games, I have played as three different powers and had vastly different experiences. The Old World deck, which determines how the people try to stave you off changes each time, adding further replayability. Being a Fantasy Flight game, the materials are top notch. This game didn’t make me want to get into Warhammer, but the flavor of this game was so potent that it inspired me to venture out in the wastelands of the internets to learn more about our fearsome foursome. First up is Khorne, the Blood God. All this guy cares about is murder. He advances his special victory dial by killing as many opposing figures in different areas on the board as he can. Khorne’s playstyle is straightforward and brutal. Some argue that he is unfair, as he’s not playing the same game as the other three (Khorne doesn’t care about corruption, only about killing things), the other three have to alter their strategies to deal with him. Having only played a handful of times, I would counter that while Khorne is pretty straightforward, and his existence can make things really difficult for the other players, it’s not too difficult to play around him. A successful Khorne player is largely indiscriminate about who he butchers, so unless he’s got some grudge against you, just run away. Other players may do the same, and it’s in his best interests to see who is most likely to win the game and focus on chasing them that turn. If that’s you, well, there’s a tax to be paid for doing so well, and sometimes that tax is paid in skulls. Khorne also doesn’t get to play the numbers game like the other players and is forced to rely on dice for his success. Even the most cunning Khorne player can be laid low with bad luck. After Khorne, we have Nurgle, the lord of disease. Nurgle’s worshippers are all plague-ridden. Nurgle does not make his followers well, but he does ease their suffering. Due to his twisted patronly stance, he’s often referred to as “Grandfather Nurgle”. Nurgle’s focus sits on the regions of the board marked Populous, where he can infect the greatest number of people. Unfortunately for Nurgle, these are also high value areas, so the odds of him being left alone are pretty slim. Nurgle’s dial is the longest, which makes his victory via dial pretty difficult, but he’s arguably the best at setting up camp somewhere and holding off intruders. From Nurgle, we move to Tzeentch, (pronounced “zeench”) the Changer of Ways. Tzeentch’s thing is magic. He gains power by corrupting places where powerful magics have occurred. Tzeentch is very interesting to play as many of his powers involve movement, allowing him to be fluid, where Nurgle is stagnant. His warriors are not powerful, and his magics are subtle in their potency. Tzeentch is constantly moving, constantly changing, which is par for the course for he who weaves the threads of fate. Lastly of the four we have Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, who glories in lust and decadence. Slaanesh gains power by corrupting areas with people of influence. His orgies literally destroy cities. He is similarly limited like Nurgle as to where he needs to focus, because it puts him at a disadvantage to not to corrupt areas without nobles. Slaanesh takes the party with him though, once Sodom is destroyed, he brings all of his entranced nobles to pick the celebration right back up in Gomorrah. The Horned Rat Expansion allows for a fifth player to play as the verminous Skaven. As they are not a true Ruinous Power, they are not interested in corruption, but they are all about destruction and making sure everyone knows they were responsible when cities fall.

This showed up when I google image searched "Tzeentch"

The replayability of this game is pretty amazing. Each god is balanced in a unique way and feels flavorful while completely different from the other gods. It deftly juggles competitive and cooperative as you fight to advance your own unholy agenda while helping the others to keep runaway leaders in check. After playing this game for the first time, I immediately played it again, and when I got home from the convention, I looked into acquiring it for myself. The nerd level might be a little high, so be gentle when introducing to non-gamers. I found Chaos in the Old World to be all kinds of awesome and find myself constantly trying to schedule new plays. I strongly advise anyone to grab it or find a friend with it.

Tags: Chaos in the Old World

Why Kids Need Games: A Teacher’s Perspective

The following is something I swiped from the forums at BGG, and I think it’s important reading for game-enthusiasts and parents alike. Thanks to MScrivener, the poster who started this. Enjoy.

I may be sermonizing to the saved here, but I gotta get this off my chest:

I just finished reading a lament about the ever shrinking wall of boardgames at places like TRU (inside a larger thread about hot clearance deals.) Like the poster, I grew up going to a TRU and KB where there was a whole wall or aisle of boardgames, and it was not All Monopoly All The Time. It was Axis & Allies, it was DIPLOMACY, it was games that made me the geek I am today. (This was, of course, long before the present board game renaissance and the ubiquity of so many great FLGS’s.)

But I began pondering this decline of the board game section in TRU and noticed that it was proportional to the growth of the video game section.

That makes me sad.

Not because I hate video games. But because as a public school teacher, I see kids absolutely STARVING for social interaction with adults. And as fun as video games are (I’ve been addicted to WoW like everyone else), they just do not provide even remotely the same level of social interaction as a board game.

The decline of the board game section and the rise of the video game section at the local mega-store is because people have voted with their dollar, and like any sane business the local mega-store has adjusted. Many of those voters are parents. After all, it is so much easier to let Johnny isolate himself in front of the PC or the TV or the portable hand-held than to sit down with him for the time it takes to play Settlers of Catan.

Granted, this is more endemic than just the social versus anti-social nature of board versus video games. I see kids with so many ways to isolate themselves from each other – they are so plugged in, so wired up, that many of them don’t even know how to have a normal conversation. And academically, if you can’t have a normal conversation, you can’t have an intellectual discussion. You can’t write a coherent sentence, much less a compelling analytical paper.

One of my solutions, as a teacher, is to bring out the games.

In my classroom I use games constantly as teaching tools–not just board games, to be clear. We role-play, we simulate, we get down to the nitty-gritty what-ifs, and we compete and cooperate. I think learning is the ultimate act of play, and I think the more playful I can make something, the less it seems like a struggle, the more lasting an impact it will have on my kids. Games create experiences, and experiences are far more profound conduits of new learning than a lecture or a worksheet.

But every year the highlight is when I whip out the Diplomacy (while teaching Art of War and Machiavelli), and it spawns a sudden interest in board games. Then, a chain reaction: all sorts of kids (not just the geeky, socially awkward ones) bring in games from home to play during conference period ( our version of study hall).

“Scriv, I have this great Jurassic Park game where you are chased by Velociraptors, can I bring it in?”
“Scriv, have you ever tried Apples to Apples?”
“Yo Scriv, I’m gonna pwn you in this game!”
“Hey Scriv, my mom got me this Star Wars game a long time ago and I never opened it. Would you be interested in trying it?”

And we play.

And here is the most amazing part. I have been keeping an unofficial tab on those kids who have been gaming with me regularly this school year, and have noticed a marked improvement in their grades.

Now obviously, I can’t attribute this necessarily all to board games… I mean there is not a lot of intellect or academic wherewithal to be gained by playing Sucking Vacuum, (which was out in my room this morning.) But there is something to be said for the SOCIAL impact of board gaming. Because I sit down with them and play too (when I am not giving make-up tests, or conferencing with a kid about his writing.) And suddenly there is this adult laughing and joking with them in a way they had forgotten is possible.

And I hear things like,
“Man, I wish I could get my Mom to try this game.”
and
“Yeah, we used to be a pretty big game family, but for some reason we just stopped when my sister went to college.”

They WANT to play! They LOVE interacting with each other! Kids are social! They don’t want to shut themselves in their room and be ignored! They want to think they can beat their dads at wargames, and get their mom to giggle at silly card games! They want our attention! And every time they don’t get it, they put their little white earbud headphones back in their ears, flip out their cellphones to check for text messages, and withdraw from the world just a little more.

Again, I suspect most of you on here who are parents or teachers get this and don’t need to be told. And I don’t want to be didactic. So consider this more of an overall cultural plea – a very small arrow shot in a larger war for the hearts and minds of the kids of this country. (And I really do only have a bow and a sword in comparison to the mega-arsenals I am fighting against.)

I love my students. I want them to go on to become sane, happy, healthy members of the human race. Wherever they end up, I hope as they become adults they figure out how to face their fears so they can participate in cultural activity that illuminates rather than anesthetizes them. When I play board games with my studets, when we interact socially and playfully together, when we get silly, when we strategize with and against each other, when we analyze and strive for the prize of victory points, when we think, and we frown, and we grin and we toss our cards onto the table in triumph, it is then that we become more than the things we own, the identities we’ve adopted or been assigned by society, the players of a board game, we become more than student and teacher, than teenager and adult.

We become players in a much, much bigger game.

So those of you who have teenagers in your life, here is my challenge: It’s time to play.

Some follow up on this… I mentioned this to a friend who is an anthropologist. She tends to see things in these bigger cultural categories, and so her comment was that all cultures have social rituals and/or traditions that they use to transmit values and social rules and expectations to the next generation, and that board gaming is an example of this kind of social ritual. I thought it strange at first to think of gaming as a ritual, but then I realized there is definitely something ritualistic about it…

She further said that was some recent evidence that, at least in the United States, interaction with technology (watching tv, playing videogames) has replaced many social rituals where this transmission of values and social rules would otherwise occur, and that parallel to this is a widening gap of values between generations (she pointed to the difference in values between Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers.) Her words were, “a generation orphaned by TV, followed by a generation orphaned by computers and videogames.”

Her explanation for the hunger I’ve witnessed in kids to play boardgames was a manifestation of the natural desire of human beings to receive that transmission wisdom from previous generations.

Geek Report: Archon 35 Part II

“The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.”
 
That quote is about as far from accurate as you can get for the game of Thunderstone.  Unless the true adventurer isn’t concerned with winning the game, that is. I’m not new to Thunderstone. When I joined the GenCon Demo Team for AEG in 2010, Thunderstone took my sweet, innocent DBG cherry. In fact, in a statement that I’m sure will bring my credibility as a game blogger into scrutiny, I played my first game of Dominion just a few weeks ago.  Both are fine games that appeal to different parts of my gamer brain, but I didn’t play Dominion at Archon, and I’m still talking about my experiences there. I ran a number of demos for Thunderstone, a tournament, and then played in a custom setting that was some of the most masochistic fun I’ve ever had with this game.

 

Thunderstone ca: 1986

First, let’s talk about the basics. As with every DBG, you’re starting with a basic deck of underpowered cards. You add better cards to the deck over the course of the game that you can use to accomplish the win condition, which in this game is determined by Victory Points gained from defeating Monsters.  Thunderstone’s setup consists of four random Hero stacks and eight random Village stacks. Heroes are adventuring types with better combat values and abilities than your starting cards, and the Village cards represent other adventurer’s staples like weapons, food, light sources and even hirelings. The Dungeon deck is home to Monsters, Traps and other nastiness.   Heart of Doom, Thunderstone’s fifth expansion, is scheduled to come out later this month. Between the base set and the 5 expansions, the replay factor is huge. 

On any given turn in Thunderstone, you can take one of three available actions. You can go to the Village, where you enlist Heroes and outfit them for battle. This is also where you can take your Heroes to level up, provided you have the XP to do so. If you choose not to go to the Village, you can go to the Dungeon, where you will try to murder whatever hapless creature is unlucky enough to stumble across your path. Your fault for being a Monster, chump. Maybe next time don’t be so Monster-y.  The third action you can take is to Rest, where you may destroy 1 card in your hand and pass the turn. Resting is one of the things I like a lot about Thunderstone. In Dominion, there are certainly avenues to destroy your own cards, but they are through actions that must show up at the right time. Sometimes a hand comes up that you can do nothing profitable with, and you simply lose a turn. In Thunderstone, when that unfortunate hand comes up, you can choose to thin your deck by eliminating one of the useless cards clogging you up. Knowing what (and more importantly when) to Rest is a key skill in Thunderstone.  In all 3 cases, you reveal your whole hand at the beginning of the turn and discard all cards at the end of the turn. There are no secrets in Thunderstone.

Thunderstone is a relatively simple game to grasp, and even the more seasoned techniques will avail themselves pretty quickly. Veteran players might chuckle when I say that I didn’t understand why Trainer was good my first couple of games, and avoided things that killed my Heroes, even when I had a handful of Militia. There is still some luck involved, though I feel confident saying that playskill is a crucial element to success in Thunderstone. There are different layers of strategy; being able to recognize the value of cards as situations and settings change per game is key. Some cards are weak in some games and very strong in others. Knowing which cards are good, why they are good, and how many to buy (there can be too much of a good thing) are also important skills that build with time.  Thunderstone also provides a little bonus satisfaction when your deck performs the way you planned it to. It’s just a flavor mechanic, but I personally find myself a little more excited about defeating my victory points rather than buying them.

Yeah, sure he's dangerous. But he's also full of sweet, gooey, delicious XP!

Thunderstone has become one of the favorites at our game nights. It never plays the same way twice and rewards strategic deck planning. One of the things I enjoy most about this game is that there is rarely one clear path to victory. Different people will take different approaches and their rewards will better reflect their own mental investment. Last night I played a game where 5 players, one of which had never played a DBG before. All took different approaches to their deck and no one did poorly. Typical of other DBGs there is little to be had in terms of player disruption, but this is the nature of the beast. Thunderstone also lends itself well to custom variants, or especially fun, memorable settings. Epic Thunderstone is one of these variants which looks pretty fun, but I don’t have much experience with it. If you are interested in buying into Thunderstone, I strongly advise buying more than the base set. While the base set was good, the packaging was terrible. AEG corrected this with future expansions.  
 
After the tournament at Archon was over, Jeffrey Dohm of Steamfortress Victory, a fan of Thunderstone, introduced me and a few other unfortunate souls to a particular set-up he called “The Extinction of Sumeria”. I encourage Thunderstone fans to give it a try, but understand before you go in, this game was brutal. We limped past the finish line laughing at the misfortune of the others (and ourselves) every step of the way. I plan to use it as the final table for future Thunderstone Tournaments.
 
“THE EXTINCTION OF SUMERIA”

Heroes: Outlands (Conan), Selurin (Mako), Gohlen (Subotai), Amazon (Red Sonja)

Village: Feast, Glowberries, Goodberries (Conan needs to feed before battle), Sage (Conan needs to heal), Frost Giant Axe (Duh), Fortune Teller (Witch), Claymore (Also, Duh), Tavern Brawl (Conan like to smash!)

Setting: Doomgate (Where Thulsa Doom lives)

Monsters: Dark Enchanted (Conan kills snakes), Dragon, Dragon-Hydra (Conan eats dragons), and Cultist (Thulsa Doom’s people)

Traps: Draconic, Death

Guardians: Guardian of Revenge (Doom)

Special Disease deck. Enjoy. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Next up comes Chaos in the Old World, which I had an absolute blast with.

Tags: Conventions, Thunderstone

Geek Report: Archon 35 Edition Part I

“Life’s a game, all you have to do, is know how to play it.”

This past weekend was Archon 35, a sci-fi/fantasy convention local to St. Louis, MO. Readers familiar with Archon will know that while there is certainly a lot going on game-wise, Archon’s reputation is first and foremost as a party convention. A few thousand drunk nerds collected in a little bubble in Collinsville, IL. I’ve been attending Archon for a number of years, and I’ve had a blast everytime. The first (and only) time I ever drank so much that I couldn’t remember pieces of the evening the day after happened at Archon. It was the first year that the Rings drinks were introduced at Archon, though they’ve become infamous since. The Rings are a series of high-potency shots inspired by the Legend of the Five Rings game. One ring for each Element, there is a Fire shot, an Air shot, an Earth shot, a Water shot, and there was supposed to be a Void shot. The Void materials were in the creator’s hotel room, but after watching me down four double-sized shots back-to-back, an onlooker exclaimed that I had to finish my “Journey to Enlightenment”, so we took a bit of each Ring and combined them. It was purple. It did not taste anything like grape Kool-Aid. This was where the memories start to blur. Shortly thereafter, I was separated from my friends and they eventually found me in the dance hall, getting down to “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, which was something that had to be told to me, as I didn’t recall it myself in the slightest. It goes without saying that my liver exacted its revenge in the wee hours of the morning. (Don’t drink, kids). This particular Archon I was acting as game instructor (and stayed sober). Although Archon is without fail a menagerie of interesting characters and costumes (I myself wondered what was going to happen when Slave Leia and Prisoner Leia ran into each other) worthy of a great deal of discussion, I’m here to talk about the games. I played a number of games, some old with new spins, some new with old spins (if such a thing is possible). This will be my first multi-post topic, as if I were to give all of the games their proper due in one post, it would be a gigantic TL; DR.

Why is this guy awesome? Because he doesn't sparkle.

The first game I played is Nightfall. Nightfall is one of the newer contenders to the DBG (Deck Building Game) craze that is sweeping the nation. I’m going to assume that most of the people who would read this blog are familiar with the genre, but for those that are not, here’s a basic description of how the games work. Everyone starts with their own small deck of cards. Almost invariably across games in this genre, these cards are of lower quality than the other cards you will encounter during the game. I’ll note here that while Nightfall is no exception to this, the cards in your starting deck all have a self-removal clause that takes them out of your deck, rather than forcing the player to be proactive about thinning out substandard cards. I go back and forth on whether or not I like this as a mechanic. It’s nice that you don’t have to take time away from your objectives to clean out garbage cards, but on the the other hand, knowing how to efficiently get rid of your bad cards is a learned skill with games of this type. Back on topic, there will be a random assortment of cards available for purchase by all players to add to your deck, allowing it to do more things. However, the more cards you add to your deck, the less likely you are to draw into any one specific card you need. Typically, in popular DBGs, like Dominion or Thunderstone victory is had through the acquisition of cards with Victory Points, whenever the game end mechanic triggers, the player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

There are a few things that make Nightfall stand out against the others. First is the victory condition. In Nightfall, there are no Victory Points. The object of the game is to beat the ever-living crap out of the other players, which you accomplish by deploying various Ghouls, Vampires, Werewolves and Hunters to engage in a bit of the old ultra-violence. One could argue that Nightfall is an evolved descendant of Lunch Money. Your various Denizens of the Night (TM) fight the other players (and each other) until the end game mechanic, a deck of special Wound cards, runs out. Then, you count up Wound cards, the person who has the least number of them is the winner. It’s a direct PvP (player vs. player) deckbuilder. An interesting part of the Wound mechanic is that when you suffer Wounds, the cards go into your deck. As anyone that has played any DBG will tell you, dead cards are among the worst punishments that can be inflicted on you. Nightfall works around this dilemma in an interesting fashion. At the end of your turn in the Cleanup phase, you refill your hand to five cards. At that point, you can discard any number of Wound cards from your hand and draw TWO cards for each Wound discarded this way, which will give you more powerful and productive turns. In short, the worse of a beating you took, the greater chance you have to make a comeback and turn the tables. Yeah, you could discard a lot of Wounds and end up replacing them with more Wounds, but at that point you probably know where you stand in the game.

Jokes about his membership in "Team Jacob" may result in loss of limb.

The second aspect of the game that makes Nightfall unique is the Chain mechanic. Each card you purchase has 3 moons in the upper right hand corner, one large moon (primary) and two small (secondary) moons. All 3 moons are different colors. The only way to get cards into play is during the Chain phase. The active player may start a Chain by playing one of the cards in his/her hand. If that player wishes to play more cards they have to link the cards in a specific way. The primary moon of the card you wish to play must match colors with one of the secondary moons of the card that came before it. This means that when you are deciding what cards to buy, it’s pretty (read: vitally) important that you think about your ability to include that in your chains, as well as your opponent’s. Yes, your opponent’s. See, another interesting thing about Nightfall is that there is no down time. When you decide that you are done playing cards in your chain phase, the chain passes to the player on your left, and they play as many cards onto the chain as they life before it passes to the next player, etc. When the last player has played everything they want to play in the chain, the chain effects start happening in reverse order, starting with the last player and working their way back to the active player. You could conceivably be playing on everyone’s turn. It is very easy to overextend yourself in Nightfall, and sometimes tricky not to do so. Getting caught up in Big Chain Fever is rarely the best move, but it sings a siren song.

Combat is played out very similar to Magic: The Gathering. Your minions all attack, and your opponents have the option to block man-to-man. The defending minions only soak up damage, they do not strike back. Any damage carried over the health of your defending minions is applied in Wounds. There are also actions that provide one-time effects when played, rather than the minions. The actions tend to be a little more flashy and pack a little more punch, but they do not stick around to take punches meant for your face. At Archon, I chose to teach the Aggressive Wound variant. The biggest complaint to the game I’ve come across is that the base rules lead up to a lot of gangpiles and kingmakers. One person has a lead (real or imagined) and the table tears him to shreds. The variant calls for individual wound decks rather than a community wound deck. When you wound another player, you give them Wounds from your deck, and when a player runs out, the game ends and the winner is still determined the original way. This variant places a greater emphasis on deck efficiency and smart combat strategies and lessens the impact of politics on the game. With the game being won by being the least wounded player at the end, I am of the opinion that strong defensive cards are of a greater value than other cards. They also tend to attract less attention than powerful attack cards, but again, these are just my opinions, your mileage may vary.

You know what this game needs? Fireballs. Also, some color symbols would be sweet.

Nightfall isn’t a perfect game, but there isn’t much to complain about. People with color-blindness may have difficulty with Nightfall, and I wish that they would have addressed this early. Other games with color-coding like Ticket to Ride use symbols as well as colors so that no one is left out.  The first few turns are invariably slow. There are things that players can do to speed them up, but there’s almost nothing that can be done about the first two turns. Fortunately, the game moves fast enough to get into the action quickly, and because Minions are forced to attack every turn, there’s really no opportunity to stall. Outside of the first turns, the game moves quickly.  The depth to the game is subtle. My first two games, I bought cards with strong numbers and abilities, completely oblivious to the lack of synergy between them. Needless to say, I was defeated easily as I imposed harsh limitations on how many cards I could get into play. The more I play the game, the more I appreciate the skill it takes to stay ahead of the pack, to make choices not only based on what you can play, but what your oppoenents will play into you and what you will play into your opponents. A savvy player can focus on cards with secondary moons that don’t match up with what the next player has been buying, thus limiting their ability to put cards into play after you.

Nightfall has one expansion out, entitled Martial Law. A second expansion, Blood Country, is due out later this month. Following the designer on Twitter, I know that they are currently in playtest for “Nightfall 5″ which means that a third expansion is already in the can and waiting for an opening in the production schedule.  Nightfall is a fun game, and a completely different feel from the other DBGs I’ve played. The game supports up to 5 players, and whereas it plays fine at 2, I think the sweet spot is 4-5.

Over the next few days, I’ll recap more of the Archon gaming experience, touching on Thunderstone, Chaos in the Old World (squee!) and 7 Wonders, as taught to me by someone who may or may not have been on crack.

Tags: Conventions, Nightfall

A peek into the FUTURE

This upcoming weekend is Archon 35, a sci-fi/fantasy/gaming convention. I’ll be working there offering demos and tournaments for the games Thunderstone and Nightfall. With any free time I may have, I’m going to go check out DICEGRINDER and the Zombie Squad seminar, and try to get the scoop on any cool games. I’ll be taking notes for future updates. If you’re attending the con, come by and say hi! Hope to see some of you there!