Rules issues make me struggle with Wilderness

 Wilderness is a free Print-and-Play Roll-and-Write game that has decent theming and bog-standard mechanics. While I like some of the thematic ideas in the game, its biggest selling point is that its free.

In Wilderness, you are filling an ecosystem with animals. You have to make sure that animals go into their right environment and you have to make sure that the predators are all fed.

In practice, you are drawing shapes on a grid. I have literally no idea how many times I've seen that. And there are some games built around the mechanic that I do enjoy so it's not a bad one. But by this point, you have to make it sparkle.

The grid has three different types of terrain. Water, fields, forest. You will be drawing animals of different shapes of squares on the grid and there are environmental restrictions. For instance, fish can only be in water.

Each turn, one die gets rolled. Consult the handy dandy table and draw the appropriate animal. Each animal is going to be the same number of squares as you rolled. Almost all of the numbers give you a choice of two animals to draw in with six being wild. You can draw an animal in the wrong environment but they will get crossed out and not count for either scoring or the food chain. 

Okay, here's the clever bit. Animals three squares or bigger are predators.  They must have a prey species touching them or they get crossed out. If they do have a prey animal, that gets crossed out. But the predators are worth more points so that's okay. And they can't share prey. Every predator needs their own supper.

The game ends when no one can make a move. (Some players may get more moves) All animals that aren't crossed out are worth their squares in points. Most points wins.

And here's where there are issues. The whole game, rules and all, takes up half a sheet of paper (you get two copies with every print out) and this is a case of needing more details. 

There are some rule ambiguities about who preys on what. The examples show storks eating snakes, which are the same size and also a predator. Which does happen in nature but I also don't think storks eat rabbits, which are smaller and a designated prey species. I could be wrong but that just highlights the problem. Not having clearly defined food chains makes the game confusing. Can the vulture prey on every other species or even another vulture? Common sense answers don't always give clear answers and a rule book should never depend on common sense.

Which is a shame because the food chain is what makes Wilderness interesting. As it stands, we have only eight different types of animals interacting on a small grid and we need some clarification on how those interactions work.

Wilderness feels like a work in progress. I think a game built around food chains and natural environments has a lot of potential.  I'd like to see Wilderness with a cleaner rule book and a slightly expanded variety of animals. (That's a dangerous path because too many could make things muddled but the game feels too limited as it is)

Look, Wilderness is free and low-ink and requires no construction after you print the page. I don't regret trying it. However, it needs a little work to become much better.

I have real concerns about Men of Tomorrow but there is value as a comic book history in it

 I had seen references to Men of Tomorrow by Gerard Jones for years. My understanding was that it was a history of early comic books from a publishing angle as opposed to a creator angle. When I finally got a chance to read it, I took that chance. And it turned out to be a wilder read than I expected. 

Let’s take care of the elephant in the room first. In the time since the book was written and I first heard about it, Gerard Jones was convicted and sent to prison for crimes that I honestly don’t feel comfortable discussing on a family blog. And that did color my reading of the book. 

And I do feel there is an agenda. I felt like every comic book creator in the entire book was depicted as being emotionally damaged. And, while Jones rightfully derides Fredric Wertham’s theories about comic books, some of his arguments about how comic books work sound very similar.

Okay. Is the book actually worth reading? Yes, it is.

The book is very anecdotal but is also very clear about that. In a lot of ways, it’s an oral history of the origins of comic books. The sources are very clearly laid out and when I cross referenced more factual elements, they matched up. (Of course, sometimes other sources cited Men of Tomorrow as their source)

The through line of the book is Jerry Siegal’s legal struggles with the ownership of Superman. (Superman is the only property discussed at any length and, yes, there is a lot less focus on Joe Schuster) That said, since that is already well known and documented, I found everything else more interesting.

For instance, I had never heard of Harry Donenfeld before the Men of the Tomorrow. And he was Superman’s original publisher so I’d have really thought that I would have. However, he was also a mobbed up publisher of racy magazines so I can see why DC Comics tries to ignore his existence. 

Interestingly, when I looked into Donenfeld more, I found out that he helped hundreds of refugees flee Nazi-occupied Europe and helped found the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Jones glossing over that just reinforces my impression that he has an agenda beyond historical information.

On the one hand, I think it’s important to approach Men of Tomorrow with a very critical eye. On the other hand, it covers a lot of information that the popular history of comic books leaves out. It has legitimate flaws but it is also an important work.

My only problem with Cursed Court is the theme but, sadly, that enough

 During a learning game of Cursed Court, one player said "Oh, so its like Texas Hold 'Em?" As soon as I heard that, I felt like that was actually the best one sentence description of the game.

The game consists of a board with a grid of nine characters who look like they spent a lot of money at a Renaissance fair, a deck of cards with three of each character and betting chips in player colors.

At the start of each hand, cards are dealt out face down between each player and one card is dealt face up. You can look at the two cards next to you. There are four rounds of bidding, with an additional face up card being dealt before each round.

The short version is that you are bidding on what cards you think are actually dealt out since there will be plenty of cards that remain in the deck even by the end of the round. You can outbid other players but you have a limited number of chips. Otherwise there wouldn't be a game.

There is more to the game than that but that's the basic idea. So, it also has an element of Liar's Dice as well as Texas Hold 'Em or has their shared elements.

Mechanically, I feel like Cursed Court holds together. Texas Hold 'Em has to count as one of the most popular games in the world, even if it has a different audience than other board games. Liar's Dice, in one form or another, has been around for centuries. Cursed Court has good bones.

However, I found that I wasn't very engaged by the game. When I read a comment on BGG that the game would make more sense as a game about a casino than a fantasy court, that really clicked for me. The theme and the mechanics do not mesh for me.

I don't mind a pasted-on theme and I love me a totally abstract game. The theme and the mechanics have to downright clash for me to have a problem and, quite frankly, that doesn't happen very often. However, in Cursed Court, the theme distracts me from the mechanics. If someone told me the developers fell in love with the art and just couldn't let it go, I wouldn't be surprised.

Cursed Court has a very good mechanical design, tapping into bluffing and deduction mechanics. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be interested until it gets a better theme.

Tile laying when my brain isn’t working

 As life and work have become increasingly hectic, I have found myself revisiting Potato Carrot Tomato as a quick, lunchtime game. 

I have written about Alexander Shen and how they have a real genius for creating games and puzzles that can be played in a coffee cup’s worth of time. And I’ve written about the need for brain fog games, games you can play and enjoy without concentrating on them. And Potato Carrot Tomato is a game where those two ideas come together.

It’s a solitaire tile-laying game consisting of fifteen tiles, plus some scoring tiles. Each tile has one to three sections. Each edge will always be a potato or a carrot or a tomato so the divisions are in the rest of my life, instructor hands-on environment, always diagonal. Edges don’t have to match, but you only get points if they do.

At the end, you will score each of your largest groups. The twist is that their values will be randomly determined. At the start, you will randomly determine which vegetable will be worth one point per symbol. At about the 2/3 mark, you then randomly figure out which one of the remaining two will be worth two points and three points.

Potato Carrot Tomato is, frankly, not a good game. In fact, it is easily the weakest Shen game that I will play on a semi-regular basis. I have found that my scores end up almost always being in the same general range, high fifties to low sixties. In fact, I feel that the game doesn’t actually offer real choices, more pattern recognition with the variation in scoring being luck-based.

There are a couple of other games I’ve found myself thinking about in regards to Potato Carrot Tomato as a brain fog game. Shen also has Blankout, which is also more pattern recognition than strategy. However, I think the patterns are prettier. And there is Dice Fishing D6, which is my ultimate brain fog game. There’s no real decision making but it’s a chill process tied up in a nice package.

Apparently, I’m in the mood for a tile-laying mindless activity. (For the record, I think Ambagibus requires some actual decisions and doesn’t count. It is a very chill game though) And I’m sure Potato Carrot Tomato will fade away again but it is helpful right now.

So who is this Sentry?

 I figure at some point before the end of the year, I want to see the Thunderbolts movie. Quite a few of my friends liked it. However, while I am familiar with a couple different versions of the Thunderbolts, I actually have read almost nothing about the Sentry.

So, I decided to correct that and read the collected edition of the original miniseries.

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I feel like I just read an homage to Alan Moore‘s version of Miracle Man. I also felt like I read a revision of Christopher Priest’s Triumph without editorial interference.

A Joe Shmoe wakes up to realize he he is the Sentry, a nigh omnipotent hero who is like the Silver Age Superman take to the next level. More than that, he helped the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men and more get started as superheroes. However, all of his history has somehow been erased.

The twist is that his arch nemesis, the Void, is actually him and that the Sentry had to be functionally erased from existence to keep the Void from, well, killing everyone.

I understand that the Sentry has gone through multiple interpretations and origins in the, by comic book standards, relatively short time he’s been around. One part that seems to have stuck is the idea that he was originally a junkie who drank the stuff that gave him his powers to try and get high. That wasn’t in the volume I read but it was hinted at enough that I wondered if it was missing an issue.

I am of two minds when it comes to the Sentry. Taken as a standalone work, it’s quite strong. I was interested and engaged the whole way through. The original series is a good story.

On the other hand, as part of the greater continuity of Marvel Comics, I’m not as keen. I’m not a big fan of works that say ‘everything you’ve read for decades is wrong.’ Twists like that are great in standalone works. You know, where they were planned from the start. On the other hand, revising hundreds of stories by dozens of different authors doesn’t work so well.

(Crisis on Infinite Earths, as a counter example, did work but it also did so by restarting everything, not by saying ‘oh, it was a lie all along’ Eh, it’s complicated)

Frankly, I think the Sentry is a really good character but interacts with the Marvel setting in a weird way. It sounds like making him work as a reoccurring character was a struggle. Like the Catcher in the Rye crossed with Spider-Man.

And, now looking at reviews of his later appearances, it sounds like writers just don’t know what to do with the character. Which, to be far, isn’t unreasonable. The Sentry is on a power scale beyond virtually any other Marvel character but, even more problematic, is in a different genre.

Still, I did enjoy this first story.

My October Gaming

September was one of the heaviest months I’d had in years, both for gaming and learning games. October was inevitably going to be a lot lighter and adulting made sure of it.

I learned:

One for Sorrow

Paper Pinball - Boss Fight

I try and learn a Roll and Write each month. I like the medium and it is a Godsend to Print and Play. Boss Fight is the fifteenth paper pinball game I’ve learned over the course of several years so it’s kind of cheat to count it as learning a new game. That said, it’s what I had the time for and I do enjoy the games.

One for Sorrow was a good find. There are times when In-Hand games are what you have the space for and I think One for Sorrow has a lot of potential.

I also found myself breaking out Potato Carrot Tomato, particularly as a lunch time game. It’s not a very good game but it does let my fidget and turn my brain off. Its far from the only game like that. It’s just the flavor I’ve been in the mood for lately.

Quite frankly, November might be better for gaming but because of Thanksgiving and Buttonshy has a couple of playtests coming up. And if it isn’t, I’ll still get some gaming in.

My October PnP

October wasn’t a super productive month as far as Print and Play projects were concerned. I knew work and adulting would start kicking in and I was not disappointed.

I made:

One for Sorrow

A Dragon’s Gift & expansions (latest round 2)

Ceramicus (contest entry)

Word Flower (contest entry)

Oppidum (contest entry)

One for Sorrow was my ‘big’ project for October and I was pleased with it. It stands a good chance of becoming part of my regular In-Hand gaming. Because there are plenty of times when I don’t have a table and don’t want to be on my phone.

However, the second round of playtesting was the real highlight of my crafting and gaming for the month. I didn’t get to play as much as I wanted to but it was all good.

I also wanted to make another copy of Ceramicus and decided to make a couple of other 9-card contest entries.

I expect November will also be crazy and that’s okay. I’ll still get in a little drafting and a little gaming.