What about the games that survived the purge

 I’ve written a fair bit about purging games when we prepared to move across the country. But I forgot to write about what I didn’t sell or donate. So let’s look at what I’m actually keeping. 

Plenty of factors that I had to ask myself. Do I want to play it?  Can I get other folks to play it? How much storage space does it take up? How hard would it be to ever get again?

 

When I switched my thinking from what to get rid of to what the keep (which made getting rid of games a lot easier), the first thing I thought was that we were going to keep every Ticket to Ride map we have. Since I first got the US map in 2004, that franchise has been possibly my most consistent gaming experience. I can count on playing Ticket to Ride.

(And, no I don’t have all the maps. Far from it. But I have enough to keep us happy)

Ticket to Ride helped define my criteria. Family weight games that take less than an hour that I know folks like to play. Not every game checks every box but that was the basic idea. Generally, games for a family game night where bedtime is enforced.

(And smaller size did go a long way towards being a tie breaker. Storage space was the biggest drive towards this purge after all)

One criteria that didn’t get much traction was getting rid of games with the idea I could get them again. I had thought about getting rid of Take It Easy and Settlers of Catan’s and getting them again when I wasn’t worried about packing space. But I realized that was silly and wasteful. And my wife wouldn’t let me get rid of Catan.

What I did find myself asking was ‘would this game be impossible to get again?’ Which didn’t save a lot of games but that did save Discworld: Ankh-Morpork and Take It To The Limit.

At the end of the day, I still have a couple hundred games. It’s not like I stopped having a game closet. I’m just trying to have one that I’ll actually use.

Next Station: Tokyo is dot to dot brilliance

Last month, while waiting for some brake work to be done, I taught myself some games on Board Game Arena. Out of the four games I tried out, Next Station: Tokyo was the clear winner.

The core idea of the game is drawing lines between symbols. Which isn’t anything new and was frankly old hat long before Roll and Writes became a thing that thrilled publishers. (Dot to dot, anyone?) Next Station: Tokyo, though, has a really solid and interesting decision tree built into the idea.

The theoretical theme of the Next Station games is building subway systems in cities. In practice, the theming makes the Rolling Japan/America look like an 18XX game. The theme could have been about interstellar travel or computer hacking or neurological surgery or quilt design without changing a thing.

Not that I care but Next Station is more abstract than Chess.

The player sheet show a play area that consists of thirteen districts. The symbols are aren’t in a grid or even particular symmetrical but they are connected together a network of dotted lines. There are four starting symbols, each one tied to a specific color.

Next Station is a Flip-and-Write game. I’ve played literally dozens of Roll and Write games. Unsurprisingly, I found it controlled the randomness more than dice would have. There’s an eleven card deck that you go through four times with four different colored pencils/markers/etc. In addition to symbols (marking what you have to connect to), there are jokers and railroad switch cards (that let you connect from any point, not just the end points)

There are four different ways to get points. Routes are worth the number of districts they go through times the number of stations in the district where they have the greatest number of stations. (It makes sense when you have to do it) There are eight points on a green loop. You lose three points for every one you don’t connect to so they are really worth three points each. You get increasing points for having interchanges with three to five connections. And you get points for any interchanges in the outer districts (tourist stamps)

So… what makes this dot-to-dot game great? The answer is as simple as the game. You have to do your best to maximize the different ways of scoring with a reasonable ability to estimate your chances. Chasing after one way of scoring points will mean having to ignore another one. You can’t do everything. And the small deck gives a good idea of the odds of getting a symbol but it’s not a guarantee.

In short, Next Station: Tokyo takes a very simple and familiar mechanic and creates a deliciously tangled decision tree out of it. There are a lot more interesting choices and replay value than I was expecting.

I do want to try the London map and I hope more maps are coming.

Why do publishers hate Anthony Monday?

Until earlier this year, I hadn’t realized that John Bellairs had written three series of books for kids.  I’ve known about the Lewis Barnavelt and Johnjy Dixon books since I was their target demographic age but Anthony Monday was new to me.

Funny enough, I had actually heard of the first book, The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, back in those days. But I hadn’t realized it was by Bellairs  or that it was the start of a series. (I also hadn’t read it)

Unlike Bellairs’ other series, the Anthony Monday books don’t start out as gothic horror (although apparently they switch over to fantasy and gothic horror by the second book) Instead, Treasure is a straight up mystery, with the characters on a hunt for the eponymous treasure.

Brad Strickland, who has been empowered by either Bellairs’ estate or publisher to continue his work, has said that publishers don’t like Anthony Monday and aren’t interested in having him continue the series. So I went into Treasure with an eye for figuring out why that was the case.

Unlike either Johnny or Lewis, Anthony actually has living parents, plus a brother. Which just reminds me that, in fiction, orphans have more freedom to do whatever they want, the Batman factor. 

And Anthony’s relationship with his family is a big part of the book, particularly his relationship with his mother. Who is emotionally damaged and is emotionally abusive, although there is no doubt she loves all her family. Still, it’s understandable that Anthony’s elderly mentor, Miss Eells, openly serves as a surrogate mother figure for him.

The strong focus on Anthony’s emotional life makes him more nuanced and more layered than either Lewis or Johnny. It also makes him more flawed and more immature than either of them. This just helps the reader appreciate his growth and struggles.

Likewise, the villain in Treasure, as opposed to an evil ghost (You know, a _lot_ of evil ghosts show up in Bellairs’ books) Instead, he’s a nasty narcissist whose perfectly willing to hurt Anthony and his family for the treasure. I found him more emotionally striking than the evil ghosts.

I did find the actual mystery plot to be thin. The actual location of the treasure was so glaringly obvious that the protagonists should have checked it out early in the book, just on general principle. But the weight of the book was on Anthony growing so it doesn’t ruin the book.

So, why do publishers shy away from Anthony Monday? Is it because at least the first book is more emotionally challenging and less escapism? Were the mysteries just that meh? 

I do want to at least read the second book to see if Gothic Horror changes Anthony’s characterization.

Where I damn Streets with faint praise

Learning Streets on BGA felt a little like stepping backwards in time for me. It doesn’t feel like a game that is influenced by games designed fifteen, twenty years ago. It feels like one of those games.

Streets is a tile-laying game where players are building up a growing town by creating streets.  Each tile earns points when a street is enclosed (ending on both sides) based on the number of meeples it has and scoring  conditions based on the other building on the street.

There are touches that I like and add to the gameplay experience. You get a hand of tiles so you have choices. You are limited to five property markers (which is really the same as Carcassonne giving you limited meeples) The meeple redistribution rule is called the FOMO rule. 

If I had played Streets in 2004, I think I would have been more engaged with it. I wouldn’t have fallen in love with it but I’m sure I would have made an effort to get a physical copy. (To be fair, that was my reaction at the time to any game I thought was good)

I have asked myself why I’m so indifferent to Streets. I’ve certainly played lots of games that bring nothing new to the table and enjoyed them.  I think it’s because Streets limits how much you can pull off a big move by limiting the size of the streets and it limits the degree of conflict. Other people can get in on a street you’re working on but they won’t take points away from you. The most aggressive move you can make is ending a street to limit someone else’s points and using the FOMO rule to hog meeples.

And I asked myself, how does this compare to Carcassonne (from 2000, which is actually younger than I thought) because all tile-laying games need to be compared to Carcassonne. (Because Scrabble, which started the genre, gets no love) And I realized that Carcassonne does both the things I felt Streets doesn’t. Lets you go big and lets you have direct conflict. Seriously, for one of the major poster children of European family games, Carcassonne gives you room to be vicious.

Streets falling meh to me wasn’t because I’d seen it all before. I have gotten into lots of games that didn’t reinvent the wheel. Streets doesn’t bring enough stakes to the table. There’s absolutely nothing broken but the tension just isn’t there.

Spots is more than just rolling dice

I will be honest, I don’t feel I’ve explored or played Spots enough to really give it a decent commentary. I’m doing it because it lets me compare it to Alfred’s Wyke, a kooky and underrated abstract lol

Spots is a family dice game themed arijnd Dalmatians. You are trying to place dice  on cards that show cartoony Dalmatian dogs whose spots are different dice pips. And if that’s all there was to Spots, it would be instantly forgettable.

But, as you can tell by my foreshadowing, there is more to it than that. Spots is an action selection game. Players pick actions, which can be draw a dog card or roll two dice, then choose to roll one die. Not every action actually involves rolling dice!

Dice you can’t roll go in your yard (buried because we are talking about dogs here) If their value goes over seven, your yard and incomplete dogs get wiped.

First player to finish six dogs wins.

There’s more going on in Spots than I expected. While the direct dice manipulation is limited to bones that let you reroll, the different actions make the game a lot more interesting than I expected and I think a face-to-face play would be fun.

And, as I mentioned, it made me think of Alfred’s Wyke because both have action selection that only resets when you’re down to one action. Other than that, they have absolutely nothing in common lol

Alfred’s Wyke is an abstract that was originally published in Games magazine but got a second chance at life via Super Duper Games. It’s never been published and I bet that the game was designed using upside down Scrabble tiles. It’s a unique design that deserves more life.

I should see if Super Duper Games is still online.

And back to Spots and my actual issue with it.

However, I learned Spots via solitaire mode which has you play against an automata opponent. While not my favorite way to play, a good automata can be a lot of fun. In Spots, it’s roll a die, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for making informed choices. 

Some games just don’t work as solitaires. I know that having a solitaire mode has become a major selling point but sometime, the answer is just no.

John Kovalic is the Charles Schulz of gamer comics

Bundle of Holding (not to be confused with Humble Bundle lol) recently had a Dork Tower bundle. Which, of course, encourages me to contemplate John Kovalic’s Dork Tower. Because I am nothing if not predictable lol

Man, Dork Tower got started back into 1997. The world of gaming and the world of geek culture and the world in general were a different place back then.

 

Yes, I feel old.

(When did Knights of the Dinner Table get started? 1990? Now I feel really old)

As you probably know just as well as me, Dork Tower is a comic strip about a group of gamers and their friends. That describes a frightening number of comic strips due to the ‘write what you know’ philosophy. That said, between longevity and overall quality, Dork Tower stands out.

In fact, while there was a gap between me falling away from gaming magazines (and gaming magazines even existing) and discovering Dork Tower’s presence as a web comic, I’ve actually been steadily reading it for a big chunk of its existence. Which hasn’t been the case for Knights of the Dinner Table.

And I think the reason I have stuck with Dork Tower, sometimes without even realizing it, is that it is fundamentally sweet and charming. Knights of the Dinner Table reminds me of gamers I have known. I don’t think I’ve met anyone as nice as as the Dork Tower cast, although I have shared some of Igor’s bad habits. (It must be mine!)

That said, I have always found Dork Tower’s earlier portrayal of gamers and such as a marginalized group uncomfortable, even as an obvious satire. There’s too many actually marginalized groups out there for that to work as an ongoing joke. But Dork Tower seems to be moving away from that. In fact, my favorite character has become Stell, whose gaming life is her source of affirmation and acceptance.

While Dork Tower does feature power gaming and players completely detailing campaigns (I think that’s required in gamer comics), I will argue it isn’t as cynical as many gamer comics. I think there is more of a sense of hope and escapism in it. The characters’ angst doesn’t come from not getting what they want but wanting the world to be better.

Kovalic has frequently sited Charles Schulz as an important influence and it shows. Peanuts may a bleak world of suffering but Charlie Brown never stops hoping and striving. Matt is clearly a tribute to Charlie Brown but all of the characters reflect the aesthetic of Peanuts.

Dork Tower isn’t perfect. Not every joke lands and sometimes it can be schmaltzy. But its strengths outweighs its flaws.

Where I am mean to Draft Cider

I’ve been teaching myself some new games via Board Game Arena. I’ve been quite happy with some of what I’ve learned. But this won’t be about any of those games. 

Draft Cider.  I find downright it fascinating due to some of the innate problems in the design.

It’s a card drafting game that is played out over four rounds. You draft apple cards that have three traits: color, height and sweetness. (If you are working on collecting apples to make cider, I’m not sure what height has to do with it. But I don’t actually make cider so I have to plead ignorance.)  Depending on the number of players, you will draft eight or twelve cards over the course of the game. And, as you draft cards, you place them in eight different possible scoring areas.

And that’s the first core problem with the game. There are too many ways to score points and too few cards to explore or exploit them. Another serious problem is that the areas are wildly uneven.

The areas range from a maximum of twenty points to a hundred and forty four points. While it’s neigh impossible to get the latter, even the former takes luck to max out. More than that, there are enough placement restrictions that playing it without a computer enforcing the rules that I can’t see mistakes not happening. In general, the score in the areas are overly complex and kludgy, particularly for a game that is lighter than Sushi Go.

And you see such a small chunk of the deck, you are taking a blind bet on anything you do at the start of the game. You don’t have an effective way of assessing risk and knowing what is a good choice. And I enjoy lots of different luckfests and this is still too much for me. I don’t feel like I’m trying for box cars, I feel like I’m going over bad bookkeeping.

I’ve enjoyed a lot of drafting games and I think Draft Cider would benefit from half the scoring areas and a smaller deck. As it stands, it feels like the designer put complexity over meaningful decisions and fun.

All that said, it plays so quickly on BGA that I know I’ll play it occasionally, just to see if luck will let me shoot the moon. But, even that said, BGA also has Bandada which is just as short but actually rewards decision making.