Thoughts on the original Blokus Junior

 My son and I recently sat down and tried out Blokus Junior. His real love is video games but we do get in the odd board game now and then. 

Having already played Blokus, Blokus Duo and Blokus Trigon (I don’t count Blokus 3D since it’s a rethemed Rumis by a different designer. Great game but not the same umbrella), I can honestly say that I feel that every game since the first one is better than the original Blokus. Yup, Blokus Junior has kept that trend.

The Blokus family is a set of abstract strategy games that are part of what I think of as ‘stones on the board’ design strategy. (Yes, Go had a big impact on my life, thanks for asking) Every game in the family is built around the idea of trying to cover more of the board than your opponents with different shaped pieces. You always have to touch the corners of your own pieces, but you can never touch the sides.

From what I have read, newer additions of Blokus Junior are actually the same as Blokus Duo just with larger pieces. We have one of the older additions, where each player has two sets of twelve pieces. so, I have gotten to experience the actual different game.

And having a simplified set of pieces does create a different game. Heck, just having two singe-square pieces makes a big difference in your strategy. Blokus Junior is honestly a simpler game with simpler patterns.

To be honest, one of the virtues of the Blokus family is how simple the basic rules are. You can explain the game to just about anyone in a minute or two. At the same time, the family offers a rich decision tree. Just because the rules are simple doesn’t make the choices you make simple.

So I don’t know how necessary it was to make an even simpler version of the game. I will honestly say that I think Blokus duo is stronger than the original Blokus Junior. (Blokus Trigon remains the best and one of the strongest three-player abstracts I have ever found) 

Having said that, we still enjoyed Blokus Junior, and we would happily play it again. Personally, I found it interesting to play with such a different set of pieces. I first played Blokus… decades ago? Eeep! I enjoy the change up. And I like how Blokus Junior continues to have the starting positions in the middle of the board. The starting corners in original Blokus is one of its biggest weaknesses.

Just because there are better games doesn’t mean Blokus Junior isn’t a good game. Indeed, there are all too many worse games. Frankly, the simple game of Blokus Junior isn’t a bad choice for a school night after homework when thinking isn’t the sharpest.

If you are dealing with a very limited storage, space, or if you only want a collection that is the best of the best, I would recommend just picking up Blokus Trigon. But if you like abstracts and have room for variety in your collection (and can find a used copy), Blokus Junior will be rewarding.

Abstract game or art project?

Some board games make good art activities for younger kids. And, at least for me, abstracts are the games that seem to do the best job at it.

Two occurrences in about a week’s span really brought that home for me.

First of all, I learned that our son’s kindergarten teacher uses both Blokus and Blokus Trigon in the classroom. Not as the games but as cooperative activities. I found out about this by our son pulling out my copy of Blokus Trigon and saying that they had a copy at school :D

The second was when our son decided he wanted to have a board game night with daddy and started pulling out my stack of GIPF games. (TAMSK is stored elsewhere due to its size and I don’t have LYNGK, in case your curious) And gosh darn it, didn’t he find the games interesting to manipulate and make patterns with, ZERTZ and DVONN in particular. He actually paid attention to the rules of DVONN but wasn’t interested in actually playing it :D

It makes sense that abstracts are good for this kind of play. Games with tiles and chits and cards and such don’t have the same ‘artifact’ appeal. Glass beads and stones and balls and pyramids and such are actual physical objects with all the dimensional and tactile elements that go into being just that.

I am hoping that this eventually turns into actually playing the games :D

Abstracts and kids

Some board games make good art activities for younger kids. And, at least for me, abstracts are the games that seem to do the best job at it.

Two occurrences in about a week’s span really brought that home for me,

First of all, I learned that our son’s kindergarten teacher uses both Blokus and Blokus Trigon in the classroom. Not as the games but as cooperative activities. I found out about this by our son pulling out my copy of Blokus Trigon and saying that they had a copy at school :D

The second was when our son decided he wanted to have a board game night with daddy and started pulling out my stack of GIPF games. (TAMSK is stored elsewhere due to its size and I don’t have LYNGK, in case your curious) And gosh darn it, didn’t he find the games interesting to manipulate and make patterns with, ZERTZ and DVONN in particular. He actually paid attention to the rules of DVONN but wasn’t interested in actually playing it :D

It makes sense that abstracts are good for this kind of play. Games with tiles and chits and cards and such don’t have the same ‘artifact’ appeal. Glass beads and stones and balls and pyramids and such are actual physical objects with all the dimensional and tactile elements that go into being just that.

I am hoping that this eventually turns into actually playing the games :D

What is an abstract anyway?

Okay. Since I am in an abstract set of mind, on to the next topic I’m musing. What actually is an abstract?

When I first started being interested in abstract games, I had a brutally strict definition. A two-player, perfect information game that has no random elements.

Almost immediately, that definition ran into problems. Stratego, for instance, has hidden information. And a game like Blokus can play up to four players. Okay, so we are going to take away perfect information and no random elements and using Total Determination with no player count. That should take care of it.

Then I saw people writing about how games like Ingenious and Qwirkle are abstracts because they have no theme. But wait! You draw a random hand of tiles! It has a definite random element! But having no theme trumps that? Is the definition of abstract just mean no theme? 

Okay. I see the reasoning behind that argument. I mean, that is kind of the actual definition of abstract. But that means that Poker and Rummy are abstracts and, while that can be argued, that’s not really the way that anyone’s mind works. 

We have reached the point where I’m saying ‘I don’t know what an abstract is but I know one when I see one’ And really, every game has some element of abstraction going on. So, it’s more of a degree than a binary yes-no. 

The game that actually really got me thinking about this is Hey, That’s My Fish. It does have a random setup but after that, it’s perfect information all the way. And it has cute little penguins and fish but those could be replaced by plain pawns and numbers. It doesn’t fit the pure definition I had at the beginning but I don’t think anyone would argue it’s an abstract.

So what have we learned? That vague and arbitrarily definitions lead to nebulous answers. Plus, abstracts apparently require a board, have either no or minimal theme, and favor choices over luck.

Alas, some abstracts won’t convert non-lovers

I have been spending perhaps an unhealthy amount of time dwelling on abstracts and abstracts I that folks who get hives from abstracts will still enjoy. Well, at least in my own arrogant opinion. Nine times out of ten, my reasoning probably breaks down to ‘I like it so you should too!’

However, there are some abstracts that I like that I’m absolutely convinced that only abstract lovers would enjoy. None of ‘Hive is the abstract for abstract haters’. Some games are ‘you don’t like abstracts? Yeah, you won’t like this’.

There doesn’t seem to be a formula to this. If simple and accessible were what it takes, Edward de Bono’s L-Game would be the gift for converting folks to abstracts. Each player gets one piece and there are two neutral pieces. Block your opponent from making a move and you get to win. But the game is so dry with the potential for the endless stalemates, I consider it more of an intellectual exercise in minimalism than a game.

Amazons, on the other hand, is a game that I think is cracking good. (I don’t actually know where that phrase comes from. I just stole the adverb from Bertie Wooster.) You move your queens on a ten by ten board, blocking off squares with every move. The board grows smaller and smaller and if you can’t move, the other guy wins. 

Amazons is a head cracker of a game and a really smart design. But it seems to be only the darling of abstract lovers. I can’t put my finger on exactly why I know but I can’t see myself trying to convert someone to abstract games with Amazons.

(Okay, maybe the fact that it is such a brain burner is a reason)

Then, there is the likes of games like Alfred’s Wyke, which is a weird abstract lover’s weird abstract. You either remove or add tiles in order to control a grid and there are five different types of moves. And you can’t use a move that’s been used in the last two turns.

Honestly, I have never found a game even remotely like it. It’s never been published outside of a magazine article and the website Super Duper Games has probably given it any exposure it’s had. It’s brilliant and almost unheard of and just plain weird. This is a game I’d struggle to get other abstract lovers to like.

A lot of the abstracts I’m interested in are games that I think folks who aren’t into abstracts can still enjoy. I’m an Everyman of abstracts for the most part. But apparently there are some exceptions.

Thoughts on abstracts you can get in while adulting

I wanted to write about abstracts that I like since being an adult doesn’t give me the time to pursue Go. (To be fair, having hobbies other than Go also didn’t give me time to pursue Go) Games that I think would click with folks who don’t normally play abstracts. But when the list hit the double digits, I realized I was never going to come to an end.

I did notice two things about the games I was choosing. They had short playing times, really under a half an hour as a rule. Second, each move tended to be dynamic and really change the board.

As a comparison, take Checkers. Someone much smarter than me once said that a game of Checkers is slowly working your way to making one big move. I think Checkers is a brilliant game and there’s a reason it has stuck around for centuries. But I don’t enjoy it. Even more so than Chess or Go which I can break down into individual pieces, Checkers is one big picture with lots of tiny pieces that I can’t hold together in my head.

Is Checkers a good game and one with a surprising amount of depth? Yes, particularly when you actually use the the rule that if you can capture, you must capture. But it is not a game I really like or have time to understand. If I had that time, I’d spend it on Go.

In contrast, I’ll use Pentago as a counter example. As a Tic Tac Toe variant, it’s one of the simpler abstracts I enjoy and it takes probably five minutes to play. Place a stone and turn one of the quadrants. Have five stones in a row at the end of your turn and you win.

In Pentago, every move has a dramatic effect on the board, particularly seeing as how you are actually moving the board itself. The board is small enough that the patterns you form aren’t overwhelming. At the same time, there are enough options that the game isn’t a simple formula like actual Tic Tac Toe. It does make your brain work.

Pentago isn’t my favorite abstract (although I’d always be willing to play) but it is one that feels like a classic abstract while still having modern innovation. It exemplifies what I’ve found I’m looking for in an abstract. And it’s one I can get other folks to play.

I know that pure abstracts aren’t for everyone. But I think that there are games out there that are accessible and fun for a large audience. And I love Go but I don’t have the time for it. But there are abstract games that I do have time for. And there are games where those two things come together.

Adulting made Go to hard for me :’(

Go was a huge milestone for me. Not only is it one of the most genuinely brilliant games ever created and incredible training for your brain, one of my major gaming groups started out as a Go group before becoming a more general gaming group. (My decision to bring Blokus Trigon so we could have a three-player game had a lot to do with that transition)

And I haven’t played Go in years and I don’t see that changing any time in the near future. And that’s because GO IS _HARD_

Seriously, a good game of Go is something that you should set aside an afternoon for and try not to go in with your head cluttered by other stuff like responsibilities and exhaustion. Adulting makes Go more difficult!

I realize that if I had played Go long enough and with enough dedication, I’d have started to have some understanding of Joseki, which might have helped some of the strainof play. Joseki are patterns that are considered optimal for both sides. In other words, Joseki can help you with the minutia and focus on what really are the critical moves.

I view Joseki as understanding the game to a subconscious level, although I know that’s not what it really means or is. But being able to use Joseki denotes a deeper understanding of Go, one that I’m in no danger of reaching.

Instead, my abstract journey has led me to more short-form abstracts. My mind still craves patterns and decisions. Just ones that can fit in adult life.

How my opinion of Mapple has changed

My, what a difference seven years makes.

Seven years ago, I first discovered and wrote about Mapple. And, at the time, I was fairly disparaging. My opinion of it now is a fair bit better, thanks to having a lot more PnP experience under my belt.

Mapple is a free game, really a free family of games, from Cheapass Games. And it is a really easy build. You just have to print off one of the four boards, add coins for pieces and you’re done. The rules are even on the margins.

Every board was made for a convention and each map is actually of the city where the convention was held. Well, most of them are. Each map is broken down into areas.

Both players get a quarter, two dimes, three nickels and four pennies. One player is heads and the other one is tails. You take turns placing coins in spaces, with only one coin per space. The clever is bit is that if your opponent has a coin of lower value next to where you placed your coin, you get to flip it and make it your own. Game ends when you run out of coins and you get a point for every space you’re in. Most points wins. A full game is doing that twice so everyone gets to go first.

Okay, Mapple is a perfect information abstract. If you don’t like those at all, it won’t change your mind. If you only kind of like them, it’s a real quick one so it’s not a bad choice. In fact, I like how every game is ten turns so you know how long it’ll take from the start.

Every board has more than twenty spaces and there are four boards so Mapple has enough variety that it shouldn’t get formulaic or predictable too fast. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s solvable but you get four boards to solve.

Okay, why has my opinion of Mapple changed? I still think it’s an okay game but not a life changing game. However, in the last seven years, I have looked at and, more importantly, played a lot more PnP games.  I am now comparing it to its own pool of games. And it’s does pretty well by that standard.

When you’re actually buying a game, you want some serious replay value. You want a good return for your investment. Here’s a dirty little secret about PnP games. It’s more okay to not get a ton of play out of them, particularly ones where you just print off one page. 

And I’ve honestly gotten more play out of Mapple than I have games that I paid for. I like stones on the board abstracts. I find Mapple a relaxing little exercise. It isn’t a life-style game that I’ll play forever. But I will play it enough to make to worth my while.

[I do feel like I need to compare Mapple to Coin-Age since they are both tiny games that use coins as the central pieces. Here’s my comparison. They’re not really alike. Coin-Age uses the coin flip, creating a random element and a much more dynamic game. It plays out differently. I like the idea of Coin-Age more but, at least these days, I’m more drawn to playing Mapple because it’s more restful]

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120655/mapple

Atlanteon is an abstract is basically just good enough

I hadn’t thought about Atlanteon for years until I was looking through my abstracts. And now I want to play it some more :D

In Atlanteon, each player has eleven tiles numbered zero to nine, plus a king tile that’s also a zero. They take turns placing the tiles on a five by five grid that has three neutral castle tiles that they took turns placing at the start. When a tile is surrounded on all four sides by other tiles or the edge of the board, it’s scored. Whoever has the most value in tiles around it gets it. Opponent-claimed tiles still count for their player for claiming the tiles they’re next to.

Atlanteon can end in three different ways. You can win by capturing your opponent’s king or by capturing all three neutral castle tiles or by capturing eleven tiles and having your king on the board. 

I’ve skipped over some rules (you place a disc in captured tiles but don’t get to do that for the two white castles and the black castle has its own, quirky set of rules and there are tie breakers for capturing tiles so I think it’s impossible to tie the whole game) but that’s the basic idea of Atlanteon.

While the game has the theme of undersea warfare, the theme has absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay. Atlanteon could work with just about any theme or no theme at all. A cyber punk hacking theme would have done pretty well and given us better artwork to boot.

I’ll be honest. There’s nothing particularly special about Atlanteon. It’s a little quirky but the overall structure is basic stones-on-the-board, count-the-numbers. However, it ticks off a number of boxes for me.

It’s a short abstract, probably around fifteen minutes, and it’s a dynamic one. With only eleven moves each, every move count and every move changes the board. Atlanteon isn’t a slowly developing game. It’s a knife fight in a phone booth that someone just tossed a hand grenade in.

And there is the simple thing that the game works. All the pieces fit together and it all balances out. And the variable starting positions of the castles helps keep Atlanteon from getting too formulaic and too quickly solved.

Last of all, I own the thing. I got Atlanteon when I was in my buy everything stage. I don’t know if I’d buy it now but it’s not leaving my collection. It’s not a brilliant abstract but it’s a nice little snack of one. It’s comfy.

Atlanteon is a workman-like game that honestly isn’t anything special. It’s definitely not one of Knizia’s best games. Wow. I went this long before mentioning it’s a Knizia. But it does what I imagine he set it out to do. Be a quick little game with real if light choices.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216/atlanteon

Abalone - a perfectly good abstract I have no interest in

I was actually introduced to Abalone  by a  D&D buddy before I got into designer board games. (He was the same guy who would later introduce me to Carcassonne and Puerto Rico so has serious mentor credit) At the time, I thought it was a really neat game. But that opinion hasn’t really held up. Although, it’s really about my tastes than the game’s fault.

Abalone is a perfect information abstract. The board is a hexagonal marble board with special grooves so you can roll the marbles from one hole to another. You can push up the three marbles when you make a move. The goal of the game is to push six of your opponent’s marbles into the gutter on the edge of the board.

The game was apparently inspired by sumo wrestling and it’s really easy to see that. However, it also reminds me of just playing marbles and trying to shoot your opponent’s marbles out of the circle :D

Abalone is a very methodical game with a lot of discrete moves. At the level of play that I got to, there is a strong focus on defensive play, setting up marbles in groups that couldn’t be pushed and waiting for your opponent to make a mistake. And once a mistake was made, games tended to turn into a death spiral for whoever made that mistake.

What that ended up happening was that my plays of Abalone tended to be very slow with very static boards, punctuated by a few exciting moments. 

However, my tastes in abstracts shifted towards ones with very dynamic game play where individual moves could really change the board. Games like Hive or the Gipf Project took my fancy and have held onto it. Plus, I’ve also come to really love abstracts that aren’t perfect information or totally determined, like Ingenious or Qwirkle.

There are still games that are slower and more discrete that I really enjoy. Go is the prime example of that but Go is also an example of a board that is constant developing. There’s no going back in Go. And I also like the Blokus family, which is also an example of a constantly developing board.

None of this makes Abalone a bad game. Intellectually, I think it’s a very good game. It’s just not one that interests me.

And I also know that if I had played Abalone more, I probably would have come to understand and appreciate it more. I also understand that are alternate starting positions that would address some of my issues with Abalone. AND you can play with more than two players which also might have changed the experience for me.

The game that really killed Abalone for me was Oshi. It has similar ideas but a much more wide open board. To be brutally honest, Oshi is a lighter and definitely simpler game. Abalone clearly has more depth. By many measurements, Oshi is the worse game. But I have more fun with it.

I can see how Abalone is a good game. I just don’t have any interest in it.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/526/abalone

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23935/oshi

Abstracts for a teenager

I was included in a request to suggest games for a smart teenager who likes chess and strategy games. While other folks handled the strategy end, I decided to focus on the abstract end for my suggestions. 

I had fun making the list and I thought it would be fun to share what I wrote:

I’m going to tackle the abstract side of the question, since I like abstracts. Most modern abstracts tend to play faster than Chess or Go, by the way.

Hive - This is a chess-like game of insects trying to surround the enemy Queen. The pieces are thick, chunky tiles and they create the board as you add them. It’s been around for years and still have a strong following.

The GIPF Project - A collection of pure abstracts by Kris Burm. I’ve played all but LYNGK (which came out this year) and I enjoyed all of them (although I didn’t care for the first one GIPF, as much) I’d recommend YINSH and ZERTZ in particular. And, to the best of my knowledge, the names don’t mean anything.

Pyramid Arcade - This is a tool kit of games from Looney Labs, the folks who made Fluxx. They all use nifty plastic, space-age looking pyramids. I’ve been having fun with the pyramids since 2004.

Ingenious- A domino game that uses hexagonal dominoes and the same scoring system as Tigris and Euphrates. It does have a random luck of the draw but it was my favorite game for a while.

Qwirkle - Scrabble without a board and using colors and symbols instead of letters. This is Carrie and my favorite game to play together and we have played it a lot over the years.

I’ve also heard very good things about Santorini, which involves building towers with special powers but I haven’t played it yet. I also have to give a nod to Puerto Rico for family gaming.

Pikemen: a traditional game done in pyramids

Since I've already written about Martian Chess, I feel like I should also talk about Pikemen, the Looney Pyramid game that most closely resembles Chess.

Pikemen first came out in 1997, which makes it one of the older pyramid games. (I personally mark 2006, when Treehouse came out, as one of the major milestones of the pyramid system) And, more than any other pyramid game I've played, it is the one that most closely resembles a classic abstract.

The game is pretty simple. Everyone gets a set of pyramids, made up of all three sizes (they come in big, medium and small, by the way) The number of pyramids and the board layout depends on the number of players. You can even use some quickly rhombus-shaped pieces for unusual numbers, like three players.

On your turn, you can do two different actions. You can align a pyramid, pointing it in any direction (including up and the diagonals) or you can move a pyramid. Pyramids can only move in the direction that they are pointing and realign after they stop. They can move any number of spaces but they can't jump over another piece.

But they can capture. You can capture any piece if they are on their side, in the moving and attacking position. However, if a piece is pointing up, it is defending and can only be captured by a larger pyramid. So a big pyramid that's pointing up can't be captured at all.

Every captured pyramid is worth points, one to three depending on their size. The first player to get to twelve points wins the game.

There are two rules that make a critical difference in the play of Pikeman (because games about moving and capturing pieces are pretty common but all too many aren't that good) First of all, being able to reorient a piece after moves is big. It effectively gives you two moves in one, which makes the game a lot more dynamic.

Second, you don't play until someone runs out of pieces. You play to twelve points. That definitely makes the game shorter than it would be and it also helps make it more dynamic. Pikemen isn't about defending. It's about attacking.

Like I wrote earlier, Pikemen feels like a much more traditional game than most of the games in the Looney Pyramid system. If someone told me it was adapted from an earlier, nineteenth century abstract, I wouldn't be surprised. It's also not the kind of abstract that I personally go looking for. After I got into Go, I've been more interested in abstracts build around placement than movement.

All that said, Pikemen is a solid game. It offers plenty of choices and surprisingly dynamic play. Not every pyramid game has to invent a new kind of wheel. Some can just offer good play.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20269/pikemen

A knife fight in a phone booth that keeps shrinking

I really like Branches and Twigs and Thorns more than I should. It's one of the slightly obscure Looney Pyramid games. By slightly obscure, I mean it isn't one of the big ones like Volcano or Treehouse or Zendo but it's generally agreed that it doesn't stink.

Admittedly, one of the things that is a blow against Branches and Twigs and Thorns is that it was originally billed as the pyramid version of Go and that is a comparison that it just can't live up to. Go is a colossal game in so many ways. Branches and Twigs and Thorns is a quick little abstract that has only sixteen spaces on the board per player.

So let's not compare it to Go. Let's call Branches and Twigs and Thorns a quick little abstract that has a bit of a knife fight in a phone booth going on. And when you look at it from that angle, it looks a whole lot better.

Branches and Twigs and Thorns is a two or four player game that uses either a checkerboard or half a checkerboard, depending on the number of players. Depending on the number of players, the game begins with placing one or two roots and one or two nulls. After that, players take turns placing one of their fifteen pyramids in open spaces.

Branches and Twigs and Thorns takes advantage of the fact that the pyramids are pyramids by requiring you to leave them on their side so that they're always pointing. They must always be pointing to either a root or another pyramid. They can never point to a null.

If you are pointing at a root or one of your own pyramids, everything is fine. However, when you point at another player’s pyramids, they gain points equal to the size of your pyramid and you lose points equal to the size of their pyramid. And the board is so cramped and claustrophobic that someone is eventually going to have to break down and point at someone else's pyramid.

The game ends when you fill the board, which is going to use up all the pyramids as well, by the way. At that point, whoever has the most points is the winner!

Most of my games of Branches and Twigs and Thorns have been two player. Those games have felt like both players were trying to get the other player in a Go ladder.

I once described Branches and Twigs and Thorns as having one or two major decisions per game. I was wrong about that. Branches and Twigs and Thorns is a game that has one or two confrontations. All of your decisions are working up to that confrontation. It's not just a knife fight in a phone booth. It's all about being the one who is able to stab the other guy.

Branches and Twigs and Thorns isn’t a life changing, amazing abstract. However, I do like how it’s a fast, little dynamic game, every move quickly pushing you towards that inevitable confrontation.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17298/branches-and-twigs-and-thorns

Martian Chess showed me the secret of the pyramids

Martian Chess was the first game that really got me into the Looney Pyramid system.

At the time, a lot of my experience with Looney Labs have been through Fluxx and Aquarius. Which are still games that I do enjoy but the pyramids and Martian Chess definitely opened up a different side of the company to me.

Fluxx is, of course, a very random game and Aquarius, while it is solid, is still very light. Martian Chess, on the other hand, is an abstract with no random elements whatsoever. It has some definite depth and strategy.

I did a fairly detailed review of the game about eleven years ago (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/82875/game-changing-pieces-and-shifting-ground) but here's a general overview. You have three different pieces with different movements, up to the Queen who moves like a chess queen. Captured pieces go in your score pile with the most points winning.

Ah, but there's a clever bit and it's a good one. No one owns any particular pieces per se. Instead, you own part of the board and every piece on your part is under your control. (And, no, you can't capture your own pieces. Thanks for trying) So every piece you use to capture then belongs to an opponent. 

Oh and there are a wide variety of board layouts to accommodate different numbers of players. Personally, I prefer a simple four by eight two-player game but it's cool how many options there are. The boards made out of rhombuses are neat.

All that said, the sparkle has worn off Martian Chess for me since I wrote that review in 2005. It became too easy for games to descend into almost null moves, making stalemates. (I have read suggestions on how to deal with that, including the first player to eighteen points winning, since they have the majority of the possible points and will win anyway)

I also got into Go which changed my tastes in abstracts. I came to like stones on the board with the flow of the game always mov my forward more than moving pieces.

I also went on to learn other pyramid games that are, quite frankly, better. Volcano, as a clear example, is another pure abstract that is a better game and makes better use of the unique nature of the pyramids.

Still, Martian Chess is an interesting game. Players owning the board, not the pieces is a very neat idea. And it did help me get into the pyramids, which has never stopped being rewarding.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19803/martian-chess

What board games am I learning to play online?

While I am sure that I am going to go back and take a look at all of these games more carefully, I did want to comment on the games that I'm learning online right now.

The big one is Terra Mystica. After enough of my friends have told me how much they like it, I decided that I really needed to give it a go. And fortunately, there is a fan site online that will let me try playing the game.

That said, learning Terra Mystica through turn-based games on an unofficial site is probably going to be one of the hardest ways to learn how to play the game. Looking through the rulebooks and instructional videos, Terra Mystica looks like the love child of Small World and Settlers of Catan on after a heavy dose of steroids and getting sent off to college.

But that's not too different than how I powered through learning Reef Encounter last year and that was totally worth it.

I have a feeling that I am really going to like the game but I also have a feeling that, for people who know how to play the game, my first several games are going to look like I've suffered a severe head injury.

I have also slowly been playing through some learning games of Marco Polo on Yucata. It is a dice placement game, where you use your dice to gather resources and money in order to travel and fulfill contracts. Oh, and everyone gets a really amazing special power.

I think a major mistakes that I've made in my first few games is that I have obsessed too much about travel and not enough about everything else. I've ended up stranded in cities that I can't get out of.

I'm closer to understanding Marco Polo than I am to Terra Mystica but I still have a ways to go. I'm still waiting for the switch to flip and for the game to really click in my head.

Finally, 7 Steps was just added to Yucata and I've been getting several learning games in. One of the designers is Michael Kiesling, long time collaborator with Wolfgang Kramer, which is a pretty good pedigree.

It's an abstract about placing and stacking discs for fun and points with cards for special placements and bonus points. It is a metric ton lighter than the other two games and I'm already getting a good idea not just what the rules are but how to actually play the game.

Reminds me a little bit of Ingenious, which is one of my favorite games. And it's fast enough that I can see myself playing it a lot on Yucata. However, there's no denying that it is not going to be the experience that Marco Polo or Terra Mystica are going to be.

Both Marco Polo and Terra Mystica routinely show up on peoples best of lists and 7 Steps isn't going to do that. Simply put, it's just not as good a game.  However, its light and easy play does mean I'm going to get quite a few games of it in.

Oh, As long as I'm rambling about boardgames, I've also come very close to buying Machi Koro. I've seen it for sale at a number of places and, unlike Terra Mystica, which I've also been tempted to buy, it's one that I can see us being able to play after the toddler goes to bed.

However, on the one hand, we have plenty of games that we are struggling to find a time to play. And, I am tempted to get the deluxe edition so that I get the expansions all in one go. So, even though it's tempting, Machi Koro is not likely to be picked up anytime soon.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120677/terra-mystica

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/171623/voyages-marco-polo

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161537/7-steps

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro

http://www.yucata.de/en