Yeah, I still love Ingenious

Okay. I decided to participate in a recent geek list about favorite games: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/274188/what-your-favorite-game-and-why-no-repeats-no-nega

It is actually a really tough question because, frankly, the answer can change depending on my mood and the situation. Catan and Go are in the running because both are games that were instrumental in getting me into the hobby. Dominion and Race for the Galaxy provided hours upon hours of play in my most regular gaming group. Six and Qwirkle were a big part of my wife and me getting to know each other.  I play Onirim almost daily these days.

But I ended up going with Ingenious, although I dearly love and would cheerfully play all of the games I mentioned in the last paragraph. There was a time in my life when I was playing it almost constantly, thanks to the BSW website. I do really like the game.  But that’s not why I still think of it as my favorite.

I really like abstract games and Ingenious gives me a really top notch abstract experience in a very manageable time frame. While the board is small enough to make the game a knife fight in a phone booth, there’s a lot of interesting choices. When you have Tigris and Euphrates scoring, that can either mean trying for balanced play or crushing your opponents’ chances in just one color. You can choose to be make the game unbalanced and try to control that imbalance.

But here’s the thing. Ingenious is the game that broke me out of the idea that abstracts had to be perfect information. You randomly draw a hand of tiles but you can discard and draw a new hand if you don’t have any tiles in your lowest color. The random element is very manageable but still adds a lot of uncertainty and replay value to the game.

It has honestly been a while since I last played Ingenious and I know it would take a few plays for me to find the groove again. However, I know it’s a game I could get back into playing all the time and it definitely changed how I see abstracts and games in general.

Abstracts for more than two

As I have written many times, one of the misconceptions I had when I was first rediscovering board games is that one of the key parts of an abstract was two players. You know, like Chess or Checkers or Go or Tic Tac Toe or such. 

But that was one of the first rules that got tossed out the window. (No random elements was the hardest one to give up but the never-ending arguments that Qwirkle and Ingenious are abstracts wore me down)

Good old Blokus was a big factor in that decision. Definitely doesn’t have a theme, no hidden information, totally deterministic. And not only does it play up to four players, it plays best with four players.

And it’s not like it’s that new an idea. Chinese Checkers and it’s predecessor Halma date back to Victorian times and they play more than two players too. If you count Ludo/Parcheesi as abstracts (I mean, Backgammon is considered an abstract), we can talk about multi-player abstracts going back centuries.

Still, making a game for more than two players requires more decision space so everybody has a fair shake. It’s not a coincidence that the original Blokus has all four colors start in the corners where they develop some board space before meeting other colors while Blokus Duo has you in each other’s grill from the start.

Frankly, the more players you add to a game, the harder it can be to make sure everyone has an even playing field. And since abstracts tend to have simpler rule sets, that can make it more difficult. The random or hidden elements that can level the playing field aren’t there as much. It’s clearly not impossible but it makes it rarer.

Sometimes, the question isn’t if an abstract can be played with more than two. Without a special board, three-player Martian Chess is down right dreadful, for instance. So, it’s not enough that multi-player is possible. It also has to be good.

So, yes, multi-player abstracts are out there. And, like all things, not all of them are worth finding. But there are some good ones.

7 Steps doesn't quite step high enough for me

After several games of 7 Steps on Yucata, I still haven't decided if I like it or not.

It's an abstract placement game with some luck of the draw, not unlike two of my favorite games, Ingenious and Qwirkle. One of the designers is Michael Keisling made history with his collaborations with the great Wolfgang Kramer and Reinhard Staup is no slouch either. So 7 Steps seems like a game I'd go for.

However, I really feel like the luck of the draw is significantly more powerful in 7 Steps and the actual gameplay becomes more and more resticted.

The gameplay is very simple. You get a hand of seven tokens that are in seven different colors. On your turn, you place the tokens on spaces that match the color. You always have to place your first token on the lowest possible space but you can begin stacking tokens up so you can be forming a staircase or tokens on your turn.

You get points equal to the height of the tokens that you put down. If you get less than eight points, and draw a card from one of two decks. One deck gives you scoring bonuses and the other gives you ways to break the placement rules. Then you get to discard discs before drawing up your hand.

The game ends when someone can't draw their hand to seven and whoever has the most points wins.

One thing that makes the game interesting is that it has a modular board. Seven puzzle pieces. The basic side has every piece as one color and the advanced has them all mixed. I also learned that you don't have to put the pieces in a circular pattern but in other shapes. That said, I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Breaking up the puzzle pieces like that seems to increase the random factor.

Okay, let me get one issue I have with the game clear. I'm very colorblind and it is not even remotely colorblind friendly. Three of the colors are virtually identical to my eyes and a fourth one is very close. Using the mixed board side is virtually unplayable for me. (Pictures of the physical version look not as extreme but, seriously, seven different symbols would have been that hard?)

Still, the color issue aside, the placement restrictions have too often left me with moves that only involves placing one or two discs. And the board can change enough between turns that trying to plan ahead often fails. Spaces and even whole colors can become effectively dead.

The bonus placement cards can help overcome that and can help set up big moves. However, I always feel like I am making them up on the turn as opposed to working my way up to them. And the fact that you really need the cards to make the game work indicates how restricted placement can be.

I do enjoy the individual puzzles that every move gives me enough that I'm still playing the game. However, playing on Yucata means I don't have to own the game and it isn't taking up any precious face-to-face gaming time. Ingenious and Qwirkle have proven themselves to be games I can keep playing for years and have a definite place on my game shelf. I don't think 7 Steps will follow in their footsteps.

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

A few simple print and play projects to dabble in

Since I just wrote about Print and Play games, I figured I'd should write about a few very simple projects, ones that don't require more than a printer and a pencil or some dice. Projects with a really low entry point.

First off, lets look at an abstract game that doesn't require anything more than the printed board and a pencil or pen. Hex.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/4112/hex

Hex was independently invented by two different mathematicians in the 1940s, Piet Hein and John Nash (yeah, the Beautiful Mind guy) It has one of the simplest rule sets you're ever going to find for boardgame. You play on a hexagonal grid, placing stones or drawing your mark on the individual hexes. Each player is assigned to parallel sides of the board and the goal is to connect your sides.

In other words, take the basic idea of Tic-Tac-Foe and scale it up by a thousand.

A few interesting facts about Hex. One, while 11 x 11 seems to have become the standard board size, there's no restriction on how big or how small the board can be. Two, it has been conclusively proven that it is impossible for there never to be a draw in Hex. Third, Hex popularized the pie rule. That's when the second player on their first turn can either make a move or switch colors.

Out of the three games that I'm going to talk about, Hex is oldest and really the best. However, it is also a very unforgiving abstract. The better player will always win unless someone is hitting them over the head with a hammer.

Quite frankly, if you don't like abstracts and you want at least a little bit of luck in your games, then you're better off giving Hex is a miss.

The next game that I want to recommend is Reiner Knizia'' Decathlon. Yes, I don't seem to be able to write about or games without mentioning Reiner Knizia. It will happen someday though, I promise.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6955/reiner-knizias-decathlon

The Decathlon is a series of little dice game, each one for a different event. While they all can be compared to Yahtzee, each one has its own twists and has at least a little to do with the actual athletic event.

Different folks have formatted in ways over the years. Still, all you need is a print out or two of the rules and scoring sheets, plus eight dice and a pencil to keep track of the score.

It's not Knizia's best game but it is his best free game and a fun little dice chucked. If you're even a little interested, it's super easy to try out and you can even play it solitaire.

The last game I want to mention is Pagoda, which is an abstract that uses dice for the pawns, with a little dice rolling thrown in for good measure. It was originally a published game but the publishers have now released it as a free game that you can make yourself.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3213/pagoda

You play Pagoda on a circular board that shows the bird's eye view of a mountain with a pagoda on the top. Your goal is to have your five dice trace of line from the bottom of the mountain up to the top and back down again.

What makes the game interesting is that the pips on the dice determine if the dice is a worm, a goat, a human or Buddha. You start off with one worm, two goats and two humans. However, every time a pawn dies, you reroll it to reincarnate it.

(The six is the Buddha, by the way, who you can only achieve by reincarnation. The Buddha is not placed on the board but is considered to be on any one space. So, if you somehow ended up with five sixes, you would automatically win.)

While I would not consider Pagoda to be as strong as either Hex or Reiner Knizia's Decathlon, since it can end up bogged down, I do really like the reincarnation mechanic. It gives the game very unique feel. Plus, it's pretty good for a game that you just have to print out one page for the board and add ten dice.

As I mentioned before, print and play is very much a niche in the gaming hobby. Some projects can end up being quite a bit of work and many projects can end up not being worth playing. However, there is enough out there that can be fun, even without a lot of work.

How much fun can I have with a Checkers set without laying Checkers?

One of the reasons I've been thinking about game systems is because I've been thinking about much you can do with a magnetic travel Checkers set.

See, while it isn't as amazing as a deck of cards, there are a shocking amount of games you can play with nothing more than to checkers set. Really, an eight-by-eight board with two different colored pieces is some of the most basic components you can get. Checkers is one of the ur-games of history.

A lot of these games aren't new. Some of them have been around for centuries as well, like Fox and Geese, which I understand is good for bar bets, as long as your opponent doesn't know it's been solved. And there are a lot of Checkers variations, some of them regional and some of them just people being wiseacres. (Diagonal checkers, where you turn the board 45 degrees?)

But I'll be honest. I'm not a big Checkers fan. Part of it comes from being taught it too young and not being taught a couple key rules (that you must make a capturing move if you can and that the game can also end if someone cannot make a move) 

When I was old enough to understand that there was some real depth to Checkers, I was already into games like Go or modern abstracts like Hive or ZERTZ, dynamic games that made Checkers seem slow and plodding.

Really, the game that really makes me seriously think about using a travel Checkers board is Lines of Action. It's a game about connecting all your pieces and you can only move the exact number of spaces as the number of pieces in that line.

Seriously, it's an excellent game that uses nothing but a Checkers board and feels nothing like Checkers. Truth to tell, if that's all I used a travel set for but I got to play Lines of Actions a lot, I'd be happy.

(Oh, Focus by Sid Sackson. That's another great game you can play with a Checkers set. Also doesn't feel like Checkers, by the way)

Of course, our son is two so I'm really going to end up playing Fox and Geese long before Lines of Action :D

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2083/checkers

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/10213/fox-and-geese

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3406/lines-action

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/789/focus

https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/11169/checkers-set-game-system

Game systems and abstracts

I am a big fan of game systems and I also like abstracts a lot. I think that it's hard not to like game systems if you don't already like abstracts.

Game systems, a collection of bits and bobs that can be used to play multiple games, tend to fall under the umbrella of abstract pretty easily. After all, if the pieces can be used for a bunch of different games, they can't be too unitasker. Yes, I just stole a concept from Alton Brown (he probably stole it from someone else anyway) and completely misused it.

Of course, the most important game system out there is the deck of cards. (I don't think anyone can argue that point and come out sounding rational) This would make poker and rummy and bridge all abstracts. Which could be argued but I think that makes the term abstract too vague and universal.

Random elements, hidden information and bluffing are all iffy categories when it comes to defining abstracts and card games tend to have all three. Then again, everyone says Qwirkle and Ingenious are abstracts and they have all three too. 

Kind of makes me wonder if we need to break abstracts down into more categories, the way I've seen Euro games and German family games broken down. Of course, an important factor in defining a category of games is who the intended audience is and what they want out of the game. Would games-you-can-lose-money-playing be a category? Then poker and chess belong together :D 

But when you look at game systems like dominoes or checkers or Looney Pyramids or Piecepack, they tend towards abstract games. But since the abstract ideal is a minute to learn and a lifetime to master. If one game system gives you a lot of games that are easy to teach but still interesting to play, that's a good thing.

http://www.looneylabs.com/looney-pyramids

http://www.piecepack.org