GamerChris

The Boardgame Design Project, Part 6: Playtesting Version 2

Chris Norwood — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:28:00 GMT

It's been a little longer than I intended since my last update to this series, but I'm going to try and catch up to where I am now with the development of Acute Care. In the last article, I described most of the changes I made after my first few playtest games, but there was still a little more...

Hour-by-Hour

A nurse's day tends to have a certain pattern to it. And in order both to make the game more interesting and more realistic, I decided to introduce some elements into that mimicked some of the real time stressors on a nursing unit.

Between 7am and the end of the 10 o'clock hour, every patient must be Assessed. In real life, this would incorporate actually performing a general head-to-toe assessment, documenting it, and just to sort of lump it all together, also some of the time involved with the big medication pass at 9am. In game terms, every starting patient has a little token on it, and if you don't spend 2 extra actions to remove it before 1100, their acuity increases by 1.

Then, between 1100 and 1300, every nurse must take lunch. That means spending 3 actions in any one hour or losing one of their action cubes for the rest of the game.

And then after a couple of "free" hours in the afternoon, the nurses have to do their end-of-shift prep, which would include things like 6pm meds, writing shift summaries and other documentation, and preparing to give report to the oncoming nurse. Mechanically, this requires spending just 2 extra actions to complete your prep or suffering -3 Quality.

Getting It Back to the Table

With new cards and mechanics all ready to go, I was able to get back into some playtesting. Both alone in simulating 2- and 3-player games and with actually playing a few games with other people, I was pretty pleased with what I saw. Keith also helped me a lot in grinding out some 2-player games using his own copy of the prototype.

What it Does Well...

As of right now, the thing I'm most pleased with is actually how much the game mimics a day on a nursing unit . It just sort of feel right from a narrative perspective: the tension of having so much to do in the morning, and then having to work together to cover as everyone gets down to lunch, and even the slight afternoon lull is actually pretty realistic.

From a cooperation point of view (since it was the primary design goal), I think it's also going pretty well. The playtest games I'm in are almost always filled with discussions about who needs help, what things we should focus on, and often, what things we can let slide.

The Big Problem

The main thing is that the game is still too easy. It's tense and feels almost out of control early on, but it's still manageable, and then by the time the lull happens, enough patients have been discarged, transferred, or otherwise removed from play that they have tons of actions to take care of most everything and still pour effort into Quality Improvement.

So, the real problem is that there just aren't enough patients in the late game to make it challenging.

In our post-mortem sessions, one thing that was brought up was to change the Acuity of the starting patients.  Based sort of on "reality", I had each player start with one Acuity 2, two Acuity 3, and two Acuity 4 patients before now. But in just a couple of turns, you can discharge the Acuity 2 patient and not even have to do their assessment, which sort of nets out to only taking 3 actions to do (again, a no-brainer).  I haven't exactly figured out what the Acuity of the 5th patient should be yet (3, 4, or 5), but I've got them all available in the new prototype, so I'll just try to playtest it out.

Another issue was the number of new patients in the Event Deck. In the last version, I basically had 2 new patients per player in the deck.  But I hadn't really thought that through, because the deck also includes 1 Code Blue per player, which eliminates one of their patients.  And it also includes some Transfer to CCU cards, which give them another chance to remove a patient. So, in adding it all up, there was a net of less than 1 new patient introduced per player throughout the game. To work on this, I'm upping the the new patients to 3 per player, and along with making it a little harder to discharge that first patient (by increasing their Acuity), I'm hoping to tighten up the game through its later turns as well.

Some other issues that I've identified dealt with most of the cards that directly gave Quality Keys, which seemed either too easy to achieve or were just no-brainers to spend your actions on, and the Complication Deck, which definitely adds in more stress when you don't care for patients, but also seems to "miss" a lot in reality.

The Next Goal

So, where do I go from here?

First, of course, I'm going to continue to playtest and revise the game as needed. But the next big thing I need to do is to actually, formally write the rules. Up to this point, I've been going on what's in my head, what's written in this blog series, and a few things like turn order and player options on the game boards I've been using. But both for the sake of my current and future playtesters (sorry, Keith) and just to make sure that I'm being more coherent in my thought process, I really need to get a document created.

And then I'll post it here, for all of y'all to finally be able to read and, just hopefully, get a better idea of what Acute Care is all about.


The Boardgame Design Project
The Boardgame Design Project, Part 1: Design Goals
The Boardgame Design Project, Part 2: Brainstorming Mechanics
The Boardgame Design Project, Part 3: Wrapping up the Conceptual Phase
The Boardgame Design Project, Part 4: Prototyping and the First Playtest!
The Boardgame Design Project, Part 5: Making Revisions

Picture of the Week - Week #6

Chris Norwood — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:31:17 GMT

This week's featured picture is from my first play of Strasbourg last week. Here you'll see three of my meeples arranged in a diagonal line and surrounding the 4-value special building in order to achieve two of my contracts...

Let me talk then some about my experience with this project so far. I really like how it has already helped me focus on my game photography and be more cognizent of it when playing games each week. My biggest frustration, though, is the freaking lack of adequate lighting!

Since most all of my gaming happens at my FLGS, I'm sort of at the mercy of the lighting there, and while there's some variation from table to table around the gaming space, on the whole it's pretty crappy everywhere. I can do a lot in editing the images to lighten and brighten the images, but there's often unwanted side effects like the overexposure you can see on the top of the little bishop-cylinder-thingy and oversaturation of the color in some of the yellow and orange meeples in this image. And often, you just can't make up for the lack of focus and detail that happens in poor lighting.

I've always had a pretty good eye for composition in my pictures, and at the old store, where the lighting was excellent and bright, even my old point-and-shoot camera took some pretty awesome shots.

I don't know that there's anything much I can do about it, though, since I'm not going to tote around a lighting setup to game night or anything extreme like that. Maybe someone out there has a tip for me, and I'll continue to be selective about the tables I play at (even though this was from a "good" table and still has trouble). But even some guys in my game group were mentioning how I had started off being negative about some of my PotW selections, and I just wanted to share the frustration that's been contributing to that.

After 5 or 6 weeks now, how do y'all think it's going? Any comments?

Eminent Care of Manhattan Java

Chris Norwood — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:44:00 GMT

I covered the voting and special event portions of our 5th Anniversary party last week, but never got around to actually talking about the games I played, so here's my attempt to catch up on that...

Eminent Domain [BGG]

David and Michelle were there last week for the first time in a long while, and hopefully some changes in their schedule will allow them to return to us more often. After catching up for few minutes, I recommended that we play Eminent Domain, which they had missed completely in their absence. Sean also jumped in at the last minute to fill out the player capacity.

I chose to go all Warfare, and got a little lucky early on in Surveying into 2 Prestige worlds. I started off like gangbusters, but then (as you often do) got a little stalled out in the mid game. I wanted to do a little more researching, but realized that it wasn't really going to happen in the shortness that is the 4-player game, so I just tried to power through and do my part to run out the Warfare stack while Sean took care of the Research track and Michelle cleared the Colonize cards.

Despite researching a few level 2 Techs, Sean couldn't put together much of anything else to score points. David had done a few points of trading to get a little closer to me, but I still pulled out the very low-scoring win.

Time: 44 minutes
Score: Norton 20, David* 15, Michelle* 12, Sean 12
Ratings: Norton 8.5, David 8, Michelle 7, Sean 9

While 4-player may be my least favorite way to play Eminent Domain (because there's so little chance to build up your "engine"), I still like it a lot. And I think that everyone else had a good time as well, so hopefully I'll get to play it with David and Michelle (and Sean, of course) again sometime.

VivaJava [BGG]

So then on I went with the playtesting portion of the evening. Specifically, I wanted to try out the "Intern Inspansion" variant that makes VivaJava playable with 3 & 4 players (since it was originally designed for 5-8 players). It didn't go very well because I though that I had totally broken the game, but later found out that the rules surrounding a couple of elements about it had already been changed based on other recent playtests, so my input was less valuable than I had hoped it would be.

Time: 70 minutes
Score: Norton 33, Keth 24, Tom 11
Ratings: Playtest

VivaJava is right in the heart of its Kickstarter campaign, and if nothing else gets you to check it out, how about this?

Acute Care

From there, Keith and Tom both wanted to give Acute Care some playtesting love too. It went pretty much like the other recent ones have, which is mostly good. The first half of the game always feels really tight and exciting, but then near the end, once you've discharged or otherwise gotten rid of a number of patients, it gets a little too easy.

The cool thing is that I think we did a pretty good job of identifying a few particular cards that need to be changed or removed, and a way to tighten up the whole game some by tweaking the starting patients a little.

Time: 37 minutes
Score: Nurses (Norton, Keith, and Tom) - 6, Acute Care - 2
Ratings: Playtest

If nothing else, though, I'm pretty happy with the timing of the game right now. It really does seem to model the course of a real day on a nursing unit. Plus, it looks to be in that 30-45 minute range pretty consistently (with 3 players at least), and if I do say so myself, seems to pack a pretty good punch both of tension and difficult choices into that amount of time.

Now I just need to actually write down the rules sometime soon...

The Manhattan Project [BGG]

To finish off the evening, we played another of MInion Games' new games, The Manhattan Project. Several of us were really excited about the theme of the game (the race to create "The Bomb"), and I was pretty blown away by how cool it looked as well.

Basically, it's a perpetual-motion worker-placement game, where on each turn you either place a worker on the board (and as many of your own buildings as you want), or you pick up all of your workers. You have to collect raw uranium ("yellowcake"), turn it into enriched uranium or plutonium, construct buildings, research the bomb, build and maybe test your bombs, and still keep money flowing somehow to finance everything. Plus, the game has some really cool interaction both indirectly (blocking spaces on the board and timing when you do certain things) and very "in-yer-face" ways (like bombing their buildings and deploying spies to use them for yourself).

As you would imagine, there's quite a learning curve going on, and in general, we all seemed to spend too much time building up our infrastructure rather than converting over to actually making bombs (which is the only way to get victory points). I was really the only one who invested time and effort into messing with someone else (I bombed two of Sceadeau's buildings), and that seemed to definitely give me a little advantage over him in the end game.  More than anything else, it gave me a little advantage in timing, both to choose the bombs I wanted to create and then to get them built just a turn or so before he would have finished his and won.

But everyone seemed to have a pretty good time with it. Tom was actually the next most aggressive, and while he wasn't in the position to win immediately after I did, he had made more actual progress than anyone else up to that point.

Time: 86 minutes
Score: Norton* 49, Tom* 31, Sceadeau* 29, Kenny* 0, Matt* 0
Ratings: Norton 8, Tom 7, Sceadeau 8, Kenny 7, Matt 7

There's a lot of game here for 86 minutes of play, particularly since I think we all realized that we were probably wasting at least some time, and it was just our first play. While there's not necessarily "multiple paths to victory" here (since you have to build bombs to win, I do still think that there'll be a lot of room for choosing which mechanisms in the game to most engage with to do so. I had a lot of fun with it, anyway, and I'm really grateful for Minion Games passing on this as a review copy. Hopefully, I'll be able to get in a few more plays sometime soon and write a full review.

The little worker dudes are just so freaking cute!
Other Games Played

Ascsnsion: Storm of Souls
Time: 70 minutes
Score: Sean 95, James* 77, Shawn 56, Stacy* 51
Ratings: Sean 10, James 9, Shawn 10, Stacy 8

Blood Bowl: Team Manager
Time: 50 minutes
Score: Rory* 47, Alton 44, Mark* 35, Matt* 29
Ratings: Rory 8, Alton 9, Mark 8, Matt 8

Carnival
Time: 60 minutes
Score: Stacy* 4, Sean 2, Shawn 1, James 1
Ratings: Stacy 9, Sean 8, Shawn 9, James 6

Dungeon Petz
Time: 104 minutes
Score: Sceadeau 76, Ian 48, Chris* 47, Kenny* 47
Ratings: Sceadeau 1,000,000 (not an approved rating, btw), Ian 9.5, Chris 8, Kenny 8

Lancaster
Time: 55 minutes
Score: Matt 74, Mark* 62, Shawn* 55, Ian 50, Alton* 25
Ratings: Matt 8, Mark 7.5, Shawn 7.5, Ian 8, Alton 8

Launchpad 23 (Looney Pyramids game)
Time: 25 minutes
Score: Sean* 4, Shawn* 1, Stacy* 1
Ratings: Sean 7, Shawn 5, Stacy 5

Pastiche
Time: 65 minutes
Score: Michelle 53, Chip 38, Brett* 34, David* 32
Ratings: Michelle 8, Chip 8.5, Brett 8, David 7.5

Sentinels of the Multiverse
Time: 37 minutes
Score: Heroes (Chris - The Visionary, Jay - The Wraith, Matt T - Tempest, Sceadeau - Bunker, Darren - Fanatic) - Win; Omnitron (on Wagner Mars Base) - Lose
Ratings: Chris 8

Stone Age
Time: ??
Score: Chip 173, Alton 154, Stacy 126, Ian 91
Ratings: ??

Strausburg
Time: 46 minutes
Score: Sceadeau* 75, Matt* 48, Chris* 44, Ian* 22
Ratings: Sceadeau 9, Matt 8.5, Chris 8.5, Ian 9

Thurn and Taxis
Time: ??
Score: Chip 21, David 19, Alton 17, Michelle 16
Ratings: Chip 8.5, David 9, Alton 10, Michelle 7.5

* First play for that Person

Related Articles at GamerChris.com:
Eminent Domain Review
The Hypermind Boardgamers Turn 5!

Keith: Do you ever get that "not so fresh" feeling?
Tom: What? You too?

Picture of the Week - Week #5

Chris Norwood — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 22:10:38 GMT

I'm choosing something a little different this week as my Picture of the Week. This one's got people in it!

Specifically, Keith and Tom are discussing something over our playtest of VivaJava. As I snapped the picture, Keith was apparently saying something either profound or relevatory, because Tom is clearly either surprised or has had his interest piqued. The lighting is great and the game in front of them is clearly displayed, and darn it, I just like it!

Keith: In the but-tocks, sir.
Tom: Well, that must be a sight. I'd like to see that...
<Fade to black>

The Hypermind Boardgamers Turn 5!

Chris Norwood — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:41:00 GMT

Just over 5 years ago, I reached out to a few local gamers on BGG and some of the regulars already hanging out at my FLGS to start a weekly boardgame group. On January 16, 2007, we met that first time to play Settlers of Catan and begin our exploration of what has now amounted to over 483 different games.

So this week was special in that we celebrated the 5th Anniversary of the Hypermind Boardgamers (even though it was technically last week, but we delayed the party to accomodate the attendance of a charter member). In addition to our regular gaming and all the food-eating, I also reported some of our statistics for 2011 and we completed our voting for our favorite games of the year. So to start with, here's our "top 25" most-played games of last year:

Most Played Games	Total Plays
1) Race for the Galaxy	57
2) Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer	22
3) Factory Fun	21
4) 7 Wonders	20
5) Eminent Domain	19
6) London	16
6) Lost Worlds	16
7) Alien Frontiers	15
8) Agricola	13
8) Cities	13
8) Letters from Whitechapel	13
8) Lord of the Rings LCG	13
8) Puerto Rico	13
13) Homesteaders	10
13) Macao	10
13) Ra	10
16) Chronicle	9
16) Thurn and Taxis	9
18) Forbidden Island	8
18) Kingdom Builder	8
18) No Thanks!	8
18) Tribune: Primus Inter Pares	8
18) Troyes	8
23) Catacombs	7
23) Fresco	7
23) Memoir '44	7
23) Pandemic	7
23) Parade	7

Race for the Galaxy continues to top our list for the 4th year in a row, even though its plays continue to decline. All of our Games of the Month! (7 Wonders, Factory Fun, Fresco, Puerto Rico, London, Alien Frontiers, The Lord of the Rings LCG, Lost Worlds, Troyes, Letters from Whitechapel, Homesteaders, and Catacombs) were represented on the list, which is really cool and is sort of the whole point of the GotM! program, I suppose.

Overall, we played 674 plays of 184 different games, which is actually down a notable amount from last year. And through our entire 5-year history, we've played over 3145 plays of 483 different games, which I think it pretty freaking awesome! (For more game play stats, you can go here for raw data.)

Normally, I also report our highest-rated games of the year as well, but I ran out of time and just didn't get all the data entry completed. But I'll try to finish that up in the next week or two and get back with it.

But speaking of our favorite games, we also continued our tradition of voting on our top games in the year-end survey! Note that games listed as previous winners are part of our Hall of Fame, and were not eligible for voting...

Favorite Filler
What is the game you would recommend as quick fillers to start or finish the evening, or to fill in the gap between longer, more involved games (5-30 minutes, on average)?

Chronicle - This was my personal choice, and really, was the clear standout for us in the "really short card game" category. It's relatively familiar as a trick-taking game, but the variable scoring conditions and card powers really shake it up and make it very interesting and replayable.

Runners Up: Yin-Yang, Lost Worlds
Previous winners: Liar's Dice, Race for the Galaxy, No Thanks!, Parade

Favorite "Gateway" Game
If you were going to introduce someone new to the modern boardgaming hobby or just looking for a lighter strategy game, what would be the top game you would choose?

Kingdom Builder - Kingdom Builder has had a pretty mixed receptiopn in the boardgame community, but we're pretty happy with it here in Burlington. Especially as the light/"gateway" game, it's really solid (especially with Sceadeau's variant, which I consider indispensible at this point). It wasn't at the top of my list (that would have been Survive, actually), but I still have a lot of interest in continuing to explore it more, which is really nice in a light game.

Runners Up: Survive: Escape from Atlantis, Traders of Carthage, Pastiche
Previous winners: Ticket to Ride, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Forbidden Island

Most Thematic Game
Which game seems to have the best incorporation of setting and theme?

Letters from Whitechapel - I'm assuming here that people are thinking more of the "theme" of the chase rather than the actual killing of prostitutes. And if so, then I totally agree.

Runners Up: Space Hulk, Lord of the Rings LCG
Previous winners: 1960: The Making of the President, Twilight Imperium (3rd edition), Bang!, Memoir '44

Game with the Coolest Mechanics
Which game had the most elegant, innovative, or all-around best game mechanics?

Belfort - Belfort is a mash-up game that brings a ton of different mechanics to the table and integrates them really well, so I can see how it was a good choice. Personally, I focused more on the "innovative" part and gave my top vote to Risk: Legacy (regardless of how "good" I may actually think the game is).

Runner Up: Eminent Domain, Catacombs
Previous winners: China, Agricola, Tobago, Macao

Favorite Game of the Year
Of all the games you’ve played this year as part of the Hypermind BoardGamers, which is your favorite?

Letters from Whitechapel - There was little doubt in my mind that Letters from Whitechapel would be our Game of the Year! It was the biggest "phenomenon" of the year in our group, and much like Macao last year, was a game that often ran 2+ hours but still saw 2 and even 3 plays on some nights. I understand that for some out there, it's not "their" kind of game, but as I said in my review, it was just so consistent at delivering a fantastic and tense experience almost regardless of who was playing, and I'm very proud to have it as our Game of the Year.

Runners Up: Puerto Rico, Space Hulk
Previous winners: The Princes of Florence, Race for the Galaxy, Tribune: Primus Inter Pares, Macao

One other little tradition that I've done every year (I believe) is to create a collage using images from games that we played in the last year. I'm not giving anything away for doing it this time, but if you want a challenge, take a look below and see how many you can get. Without cheating (like, say, looking them up on BGG or Google), Chris Ingersoll got 46 of them (I think?) right. But you can also check yourself if you get stuck on a few. And feel free to comment with how many you were able to get!

55 Games from 2011! Can you name them all?
Previous Anniversary Reports:
4 Years of Gaming!
Happy 3rd Anniversary, Hypermind BoardGamers!!!
Hypermind BoardGamers Year Two Wrap-Up!
Hypermind BoardGamers Year One Statistics!

The Somewhat Late "What I got for Christmas" Article...

Chris Norwood — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:48:39 GMT

December is a pretty big month for me to get games. Between my wedding anniversary (on December 16) and Christmas (including the BGG Secret Santa program), I have a lot of opportunity to pick up games from my wishlist. And between having a couple of family gatherings bleed over into January and then having to exchange a couple of duplicate games in for others, I've only recently completed my game-getting for the holidays. And in all, it's a pretty great haul...

I've already played Rattus, Chronicle, Belfort, Biblios, and Sentinels of the Multiverse. Onirim was on my list mostly for the solo-play options, so I'll try it out as soon as I have some time to myself. The Resistance shouldn't be hard to get to the table, but I'm going to have to plan a bit to arrange games of Merchants & Marauders and A Game of Thrones. (My idea for AGoT is to have a special Saturday in the ole' game room dedicated to it, so let me know if you might be interested...)

But for a number of reasons, these weren't the only games that I've gotten over the last couple of months. Whether I've got them as review copies, made trades on BGG, won them as prizes, been given them to playtest, or just bought them in one way or another, I also picked up:

Ticket to Ride: Asia Map Collection (actually my gift to Gwen)
Kingdom of Solomon
The Manhattan Project
Venture Forth
Loopin' Louie
De Vulgari Eloquentia
Lord of the Rings LCG: Khazad-dum Expansion
Pocket Rockets
Chaotic Connections
Black Friday
Mousquetaires du Roy
Rory's Story Cubes: Actions
VivaJava prototype

So, I'm gonna be busy. Heck, I've got a stack of rulebooks on my nightstand that I still need to read, and game night's gonna be packed for a while.

Anybody want to play some new games?

VivaJava is Live on Kickstarter!

Chris Norwood — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 19:48:50 GMT

At midnight, the VivaJava Kickstarter campaign was launched!

Designer T.C. Petty along with Chris and Cherilyn Kirkman from Dice Hate Me Games are now seeking Kickstarter funding to produce their latest game. At this point (just 14-15 hours in), they've already reached around 30% of their $15,000 goal with $4,541 in funding so far.

From their description on KS, here's a "taste" (see what I did there?) of VivaJava:

"In VivaJava, players send their researchers to hot spots around the globe to gather the perfect bean. This may bring them into contact with other players who are also on the hunt, creating a crucial choice: Go it alone and continue to research, or join forces with that opponent, hoping to combine beans from both player's bags and share the score with a superblend. Going it alone with research can often prove useful as players spend time in the lab developing abilities that grant them an advantage. However, in VivaJava the bold taste of victory will go only to those players who are able to balance solitary research with cooperation amongst their fellow gamers."

One thing that has me really excited is to finally see Chris' whole graphic design theme, which comes off as really cool and quirky, especially in the sample blend slate for the Geekspansion (featuring a spoof title, "Twin Perks").

If you think you might like the game or just want to support T.C., Chris, and Cherilyn, head over to Kickstarter and give 'em some love!

Check out the:
- VivaJava Kickstarter page
- Official VivaJava Website
- BGG VivaJava page

Here's the prototype "Best-seller" list and blend slate cards, which are being replaced by the cool-as-all-get-out blend slate pictured above...

Picture of the Week - Week #4

Chris Norwood — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 02:25:01 GMT

I wasn't terribly happy with my photos from last week, but of all of them, I think that this image from Belfort was my favorite:

If you want to support me with some thumbs, you can find it here on BGG.

Risky Belfort Java

Chris Norwood — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:35:40 GMT

This was a week of returning for the Hypermind Boardgamers. In addition to our sick folks getting all well and coming back, David and Michelle were able to rejoin us due to a new school schedule for this semester. As far as my actual gaming went for the night, it was very similar to 2 weeks ago, but still a heck of a lot of fun. It all started, once again, with a playtest of...

VivaJava [BGG]

So, my second play of VivaJava. I was definitely a lot more on top of the rules this time and did a much more coherent job of teaching them, along with a few new rules tweaks that had been made since last time. We actually had 6 players involved (the game can handle from 3-8), 3 new and 3 returning.

The game itself went pretty well. We identified a pretty big potential issue with timing, but worked through it with minimal disruption. One of the big decisions in the game is how you balance your effort beween researching (to get some special powers to enhance your creation of coffee blends) and then actually making new blends. In both games so far, I've sort of blown that balance. Of course, one time I had a total disaster in blending and didn't even make the Best-seller list (which are the blends that actually score), so that set me back pretty badly as well.

In the end, Keith almost pulled out the win with some end-game scoring from a Flavor card, but came up just a little bit short in getting all the beans he needed to fully fulfill it.  He and Sceadeau tied, but Sceadeau had the tiebreaker.

Time: 84 minutes
Score: Sceadeau* 32+, Keith 32, Michelle* 24, Stacy* 24, Norton 20, Chip 17
Ratings: Play Test

We're less than a week away from the Kickstarter launch date for VivaJava (January 25), so keep an eye out here and at Dice Hate Me Games for more information!

Risk: Legacy [BGG]

This was week 5 in our Risk: Legacy campaign. So far, everyone except Chris and I had won a game (with Kenny winning the last 2, actually), so we sincerely hoped that some Chris would sign the board before the end of the night. In the little starting ritual to the game (which I won't give spoilerish details about), I ended up with the Enclave of the Bear faction and started with my base in Peru.

On the first turn, I just consolidated South America. On round 2, I moved into North America a little ways, which was currently inhabited by Kenny. Unfortunately for him, after he failed in moving against Chris in Europe, I swept through and destroyed him on the following turn, getting me both of his coin cards and, for a short moment, putting me 1 point from the win.

My first big moves...

Keith then pushed in from Asia and took away Kenny's base from me. I regrouped over the next couple of turns, eventually turning in 4 coin cards for a Victory Point, but then came to a point where I and Chris were both in a position to potentially take Kenny's original base and win the game. Even thought it was a long shot, I took the initiative to throw down all 7 reinforcements I got that turn and headed north. I lost a few armies along the way, but then faced Keith in Alaska with 5 armies each for the win. The dice were very much with me, but a missile or two was spent to guarantee at least parity in losses. I knew this was my last chance, so even as my armies dwindled, I continued to fight. Eventually, it came down to a 1-on-1 battle; just two dice going into the tower and 1 coming out on top. I rolled well, getting a mighty six... but unfortunately, so did he. And since Defenders win ties, my game was lost. Chris then swept in on his next turn to conquer the decimated base and win the game.

Failure!

Time: 50 minutes
Score: Chris 4, Norton 3, Keith 1, Sceadeau 1, Kenny 0
Ratings: Chris 6.5, Norton 6.5

This game was a little bit more satisfying to me. Mostly, it seemed to be due to us taking a little more time to build up and be reasonable with our decisions rather than going all crazy with all-out attacks. I mean, sure, that's what I did at the end, but it was after having pulled back on a previous turn and then waiting another turn or two to rebuild.

And while we still don't know who the "big winner" will be for the whole campaign, so far I'm pretty clearly the "big loser", being the only person who hasn't won and gotten to sign the board yet. Yay for me.

Belfort [BGG]

Belfort is our Game of the Month! for January, but this was the first chance I've had to actually play it during its "reign". Despite owning it for a period of time, Kenny had never played, and Chip had only played once before (if I heard right), so we started with a full rules explanation (which I need to work on a little more, by the way). Sceadeau was punching out a game and reading its rules nearby, so while he didn't play, he helped Kenny out to get his head around strategy.

I'm still doing a good deal of that myself, actually (since this is only my 3rd play), so I was sort of stumbling my way through my first few turns as well. Thankfully (for me at least), Keith and Chip were even more inefficient in their first few moves (Keith actually sort of dug himself a hole with his first building choice). Kenny, meanwhile, was swimming in cash and looking pretty.

What I did do pretty well all game long, however, was to consistently develop my workforce. Between the recruiting space on the board and then later with an Inn, I held majorities in both Dwarves and Elves pretty much all game long. It's not really necessary to get that many more workers, but I like how it sort of opens up the last few turns to be a little less tight.

In the end, I was nearly able to close the gap and take the lead away from Kenny, but he had the advantage of turn order going into the last turn and used it to claim the Wizard's Guild, which let him move/switch control of one building to/with another city area, which really screwed me over in scoring and let him keep the win.

Time: 117 minutes
Score: Kenny* 44, Norton 41, Keith 29, Chip 24
Ratings: Kenny 7.5, Norton 7.5, Keith 7, Chip 7.5

I really like Belfort and all that you're doing in it. It's not too terribly heavy and you never feel quite as pressured as you do in something like Agricola or Macao. But there's still a lot of chance to build up some nice strategy and make a few cool moves through the game. I also find that it's actually not too terrible to recover from a bad turn, especially if the result of your turn is to mostly invest in getting lots of resources. Money is always tight and I need to focus more on managing that in the future, but I feel pretty competent in the rest of the game.

The only issue I and my group seem to have with it right now is that it seems to be more than just a bit on the long side. One game played with some new folks on the first week of the month lasted a totally ridiculous 3 hours, which would have been simply torturous. At 2 hours (which 2 of my games have been), it's starting to wear out its welcome a little bit. If it could fit into the 60-90 minute timeframe, it would be absolutely freaking awesome, and I really hope that we all get comfortable enough with it that something along those lines would be reasonable.

In looking at the game and what you do, I just can't figure out what's taking so long.  For a worker-placement game, there are relatively few things you can do in that phase.  I guess that the Action phase is pretty wide open, maybe, and I suppose that all the things you could use your resources on could be a little overwhelming. But you've only got a certain number of cards in your hand and 5 guilds on the board to work with, so it still doesn't make sense to me.

One thing that is definitely true is that the guilds on the board do make a huge difference in the game. The Bandit's Guild, for instance, totally changes the importance of turn order (especially in scoring rounds), since you obviously want to go before the person choosing it so that they can't steal your stuff and interfere with your building plans for the turn. And as in this game, the Wizard's Guild is almost ridiculously powerful in the 2nd and 3rd scoring rounds. Maybe these interactive guilds are just a little too disruptive, or maybe we just introduced them too early in our learning curve of the game. I don't know, but maybe I'll be a little more selective in what I choose next time around.

Regardless of why it's happening, I've been very surprised at the very low interest that people in the group are taking in it as Game of the Month! Going in, I though that a number of people were solidly behind it, but then it seems to be lucky to get played even once each week. Based on the whim of the calendar, it's actually got 2 more weeks to go, though, so maybe it can make a turnaround.

Other Games Played

Ankh-Morpork
Time: 54 minutes
Score: Lisa* - Win; Chris, David, & Shawn - Lose
Ratings: Lisa 8, Chris 9, David 7, Shawn 8.5

Ascension
Time: 47 minutes
Score: Chris 83, Shawn 67, David 64
Ratings: Chris 10, Shawn 10

Carnival
Time: 21 minutes
Score: David* 4, Shawn 1, Chris 0
Ratings: David 6, Shawn 8, Chris 6

Deadwood
Time: ??
Score: Chip* 26, Keith* 21, Stacy* 20
Ratings: Chip 6, Keith 6, Stacy 6

Dungeon Petz
Time: 100 minutes
Score: Sceadeau* 43, Michelle* 36, Rory* 30, Kelsey* 27
Ratings: Sceadeau ?, Michelle 6, Rory 8, Kelsey 6

Kingdom Builder
Time:  45 minutes
Score: Rory 62, Kelsey* 49, Shawn 32
Ratings: Rory 7.5, Kelsey 8, Shawn 9

Pastiche
Time: ??
Score: Chip* 61, Stacy* 48, Shawn 38
Ratings: Chip 8, Stacy 8, Shawn 8

Sentinels of the Multiverse
Time: 19 minutes
Score: Chris (Legacy), Jay (Fanatic), & Shawn (Ra) - Win; Grand Warlord Voss (in the Ruins of Atlantis) - Lose
Ratings: Chris 8, Shawn 7.5

Unspeakable Words
Time: ??
Score: ???
Ratings: Rory* 9, Kenny 8, Darren* ?, Kelsey* 9, David ?

* First play for that Person

Sentinels of the Java Kingdom & their Legacy of Care

Chris Norwood — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:25:00 GMT

Okay, it's catch-up time. I've got 2 weeks of game night reporting to do and another game night looming this evening! Let me do what I can to remember what's happened and give a few thoughts...

~~~ January 3 ~~~

VivaJava [BGG]

I've been really excited to get prototype to the table ever since I first heard Chris at Dice Hate Me Games talk about it. It's got a coffee-industry theme, which I've found is not a particularly big draw among my game group, but also brings a lot of innovative elements to the table. It's really designed for 5-8 players (even though it does have a 3-4 player version included), and its core mechanic involves dividing up into teams each turn to produce a new blend of coffee that will enter the market. The strength of the blend will determine the spot it has there, and even though it will degrade some each turn, it may continue to give you points for a number of turns afterwards.

Instead of creating a new blend, a team could instead choose to research their coffee-making powers, increasing in a number of various tracks that will give them extra beans or be more selective about which beans they include in new blends or other such stuff.

The main thing I was doing with the game was being a blind beta playtester, to see how well the written rules were working to teach the game. And for the most part, they did pretty well. I had a few notes, but generally understood the game about as well as I do most published games (making the mandatory mistake or two in teaching/playing the first time). The worst thing at this point was really just the formatting of the rules, which made it really hard to look things up quickly when we had questions.

As far as actually playing the game, however, I did very poorly.  The game went over fairly well, but I think that my fumbling over rules and spending too much time looking through them may have had a negative impact on our play. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it back to the table tonight (with some new tweaks, by the way) to get a better feel for the actual gameplay.

Time: 71 minutes
Score: Keith* 23, Chip* 23, Rory* 20, Shawn 20, Norton* 16
Ratings: Playtest

And if you missed it, of course, one picture of this game was my Picture of the Week last week.  With some help on Twitter from Dice Hate Me Games and the designer, T.C. Petty, it even went to the front page on BGG! And even better than that, the picture also helped stir up some interest in the game itself, which jumped up to #10 on the Hot List at one point! Woo hoo!

Risk: Legacy [BGG]

After brewing it up all over the place, we sat down for our next installment in the Risk: Legacy campaign. Unfortunately, we've got a bit of a dysfunctional situation going on surrounding Australia, where both Keith and Sceadeau have major cities there that they can use to start the game. Neither is willing to just write it off (despite even some moves to make it less attractive from some of the new Scar cards used this week but which I won't spoil further), so they each started in their own city there. Keith then started the game by moving over and wiping Sceadeau out, but pretty much devastating himself in the process.

I could and should have started over in Asia, so I could have swooped in and won the game on the first turn, but something between not being fully aware of that option and thinking that it would have been a really weenie thing to do made me start over in South America instead. Chris started in Europe and worked for a couple of turns to shore it up, while Kenny took Africa and then started (for some unknown reason probably most related to many, many games played 20 years ago) to pick on me rather than Chris.

As in at least 1 or 2 other plays of the game, Chris should have won when he turned in a few cards, took his 5-army bonus from holding Europe, and blazed a trail for Australia. But as has been his luck before, the dice turned on him completely and he came up way short. However, depleting Keith's defenses set the stage nicely for Kenny who, after conquering my base on the previous turn, turned his eye east and rolled to a quick victory by grabbing both Sceadeau's and Keith's bases to get the win.

Time: 39 minutes
Score: Kenny 4, Chris 2, Norton 1, Keith 0, Sceadeau 0
Ratings: Chris 6.5, Norton 6.5

As I mentioned in my initial thoughts on Risk: Legacy, it's still Risk at its core. And perhaps even worse than that, the changes they made in tying the win to Victory Points make it sort of weaker than real Risk. It certainly makes it quicker, but it has also (in our games, at least) also promoted this rather uninteresting series attempts by one player after another to just make an all-out run for the win, the result of which is quite random and dependent on whether or not the dice are with him. So, in general, it's been far less strategic and a lot less satisfying.

And in our game, I'm really afraid that it's turning into "the player starting closest to Australia will win". Because if Sceadeau and Keith continue to start there, that's 2 victory points waiting to be taken once they devastate each other.

Kingdom of Solomon [BGG]

This was the first 4-player game of King of Solomon that I'd played, so it was cool to actually see the Tribute space in play (which gives 1 of each resource to the player who chooses it). Keith used a really neat strategy based almost entirely on selling to the market, and he would often even use 3 of his workers to claim the Tribute, then selling all that he got from it for 25 points or so.

I don't remember what I did, but I'm pretty sure that it involved being High Priest. And even though I made a huge run at the end, Keith was still just a little bit too far ahead to catch...

Time: 119 minutes
Score: Keith* 167, Norton 164, Matt* 144, Stacy* 140
Ratings: Keith 8. Norton 8, Matt 7, Stacy 8

I wrote my full review after playing this game, so check it out for lots more information about Kingdom of Solomon!

~~~ January 10 ~~~

Acute Care

I managed to start off last week with a playtest of Acute Care. Brad was totally new to it, but Sceadeau had been involved in the total violation of my first version. Sort of to continue to test out the same approach he took last time, Sceadeau made it his business to systematically ignore as many patients as possible. But in some crazy twist of fortune, he continually drew Complication cards that didn't apply to his patients. I'd strategically choose to ignore one little patient on a turn and get hit with something bad, but the worst that his 4 nearly-critically-ill patients would do was complain about needing a new newspaper to read!

Still, we managed to win.

Time: ??
Score: Nurses (Brad*, Norton, & Sceadeau) - Win; Acute Care - Lose
Ratings: Playtest

I'm definitely starting to see a few specific cards that I'm going to remove or change, but otherwise, I'm liking how Acute Care is working out. The timed events (assessing the patients, going to lunch, and prepping for shift change) add both a nice pressure and some nice flavor to the game. The complication cards, even when they don't actually hit to do bad things, at least make it feel more dangerous to ignore patients.  Sceadeau wasn't crazy about the scoring mechanic that I've chosen, but it's a start, and I think in general, it's pretty decent.

More than anything, I just don't know how much harder I need to make the game. We were mostly tit-for-tat all game long, but then won convincingly due to a couple of cards that gave Quality Keys at the end. The auto-loss is set at 5 Deficiencies, but I haven't come close to that yet. And despite feeling like we're under a lot of pressure, I don't know that it's actually too difficult to win right now.

My assumption is that I need to make the "hard" mode really hard to appeal more to gamers, but then I also wonder if that would totally turn off the more healthcare-centered people that I'm also targeting. But I'd still have "easier" levels to play, so maybe that's okay. I don't know, but I'll keep testing it and thinking about it...

Sentinels of the Multiverse [BGG]

The only game I actually took pictures of last week was Sentinels of the Multiverse. No one else had played it before, and I realized a little too late that I really needed to review the rules a little bit more myself before trying to teach it again.

We chose to fight Citizen Dawn on her "actual" home location of Insula Primalis. For heroes, we chose: Tempest (Adam), Fanatic (Brad), Absolute Zero (Chris), Haka (Sceadeau), and Bunker (me). Right from the start, we had a big question about a card in the Fanatic deck, but thankfully, we interpreted it correctly.  One of the biggest challenges to playing Sentinels of the Multiverse defintely seems to be this almost-constant need to interpret cards and understand card combos.  But while the cards and rules could certainly stand to be a bit more clear, I think we also made it more complicated by reading a little too much into some of the effects, since the designers have been pretty clear that the most obvious interpretation of the cards is almost always its intended effect.

As far as the game goes, we didn't really have that hard a time with it. It was pretty cool when CItizen Dawn got all glow-ey and invincible, and when a T-Rex jumped out and ate one of her minions that we were trying to keep alive (since she loses her invincibility when a certain number of minions are in play). The volcano exploded all over us a time or two, minions and dinosaurs came and went, and Haka went off on Citizen Dawn and splashed damage all over the rest of us to nearly knock her and some of us out. In the end, we took her out with me at just 1 health remaining and some others pretty seriously wounded as well.

Time: 56 minutes
Score: Heroes (Adam* as Tempest, Brad* as Fanatic, Chris* as Absolute Zero, Norton as Bunker, and Sceadeau* as Haka) - Win; Citizen Dawn - Lose
Ratings: Adam 7, Brad 7.5, Chris 7.5, Norton 7.5, Sceadeau ?

Once again, and while I still have some question about the balance and overall quality of the mechanical gameplay, Sentinels of the Multiverse was just a blast to play! I'll probably always play the "Advanced" version of the villains in 5-player games from now on, but theme-wise, the game continues to be spot-on. I'm still early on in the "discovery" phase of being surprised by what villains, locations, and even the heroes can do, so I'm a little concerned that it will lose a little once I've gotten through that, but it certainly seems to have a ton of replayability to me right now.

Kingdom of Solomon [BGG]

In this play of Kingdom of Solomon, I went pretty clearly for a Temple-based strategy. I think that I took 5 temple tokens to secure being High Priest, but then built several other temple sections for points, especially in the last turn or two. The "big move" that clinched the game was when I, as the starting player, claimed the Altar space (which lets you be start player).  That let me complete all but one space in the temple and have first shot at constructing one of the small buildings, as well as knowing exactly how many resources I could sell at the market.

Time: 52 minutes
Score: Norton 176, Sceadeau* 142, Brad* 81
Ratings: Norton 8, Sceadeau ?, Brad 7

As I said in my review (and in addition to another excuse for a shameless self-linking), I'm really impressed with the viability of different strategies in the game. And while every player will probably do at least a little bit of everything, there's a ton of room to specialize in one or two areas and work out the balance that you want to explore that game.

Other Games Played

I don't really have time to list all the stats for these games, but here's what else was played over the last 2 weeks...

Airships
Asara
Ascension
Bazaar
Belfort x2
Carnival
Eminent Domain
Jab! Realtime Boxing
Kingdom Builder x3
Lancaster x2
Mondo
Pandemic
Yspahan

* First play for that Person

Picture of the Week - Week #3

Chris Norwood — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:57:36 GMT

I had a really bad picture-taking night at game night last week. Thankfully, I took some pictures of a game that Samantha got for Christmas on another night, and they turned out pretty well. The name of the game is Pallina, and it's sort of a chunky, Kerplunk-like game with bamboo cage and wooden balls. I'd send you to thumb it at BGG, but it's not actually in the database...

And just to clarify, this series is about spotlighting gaming photography. Feel free to comment on the pictures themselves, the game, the photographic technique, or whatever else you want to. I would especially appreciate ideas or tips to make my pictures even better!

On My Radar - Gunship: First Strike

Chris Norwood — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 22:12:00 GMT

Over at BoardGameGeek, I recently stumbled upon an upcoming game that I'm pretty excited about. It's a relatively light space combat game called Gunship: First Strike by Steve A. Wood and his fledgling company, Escape Pod Games.

From the website, here's how it's described:

If you like the drama of sci-fi space combat, when the battle depends on getting those Shields online, fighting your way through the enemy fleet, and hitting the bullseye with your last Torpedo to win the day, you’ll LOVE Gunship: First Strike!

Gunship: First Strike is Escape Pod Games’ core release in a planned series of tactical space combat games. Players fight to win battles in a futuristic civil war with a variety of ship types. From the agile and speedy Fighters, to versatile Gunships and powerful Assault Carriers, every battle is a well-balanced slugfest that comes right down to the wire!

Gunship: First Strike is…
■ a Card Game that utilizes Dice and Boards in a new and exciting way
■ a Space Battle between 2 players that lasts between 30 and 45 minutes
■ Customizable, Innovative and Highly Expandable
■ Well-Balanced. Most games are won by less than a handful of Hit Points
■ Flexible. A great game to start the night or to have fun playing all day in Campaign Mode
■ perfect for players who like to blow things up with a variety of ship-mounted Heavy Weapons!

Steve has actually been working on this game, in one form or another, for over 19 years, and it's pretty clear to me how much a labor of love it is for him. The things that really stand out to me about Gunship from what I've read and heard so far are:

Customizable gunships, where you get to choose the weapons you want and assign armor and such where you want it
It seems to have a really strong theme, but is still abstracted enough to be more on the quick and cinematic side
I'm not sure if it includes the set-up time of customizing your ship, but play time is supposed to be 30-45 minutes!
He's already working on a free campaign system, and there are lots of expansions planned to flesh out this rich sci-fi theme even more

The big thing to keep an eye out for is the launch of its Kickstarter campaign on February 15. And if you want more information about Gunship:First Strike, you can check out their homepage, their BGG page, facebook page, follow them on Twitter, read the rules, and listen to the episode 27 of House Rules (which is a really nice interview with Steve).