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Categories: Enthusiasts
Games That Could Use Less Cthulhu
Categories: Enthusiasts
Games that could use more Cthulhu
Categories: Enthusiasts
Froggy Boogie - More Than A Glorified Memory Game?
Introduction
Froggy Boogie has gotten some rave reviews, something particularly noteworthy for a kids' game. So should you buy it for your kids? Will they like it?
The short answer: yes, as long as know what you're getting and who you're buying it for. Even though Froggy Boogie is at heart just a simple memory game, the combination with a race mechanic and the beautiful wooden pieces make this game a favourite with kids around 4-5 years old. Will adults like it? Personally I'm not a huge fan of memory games, so I find it gets a bit tedious after a while, but I am willing to join the odd game. In sum, adults may like to look at it, kids will love to play it!
Components
When you first open the box this is what you see:
(Picture by Sagrilarius)
One minor complaint I have is that the pieces still had a very strong paint smell to them, that took quite a few plays to dissipate.
Here is another picture of the wooden components. The eyes are individual pieces and fit loosely in the frogs:
Picture by Cerall)
On the bottom of each frog eye there is either a picture of a frog or a blank:
(Picture by Cerall)
So the pieces that come with the game are all top-notch, the box is sturdy, with one of the best inserts you'll find, and the design on the cover and back is nice and colourful. This game just asks to be played.
The Rules
The rules are straight-forward. To set up the game, place the large dual-coloured frogs in the middle of the table. These are the mommy and daddy frogs. In each frog place one eye with a blank, and one with a froggy on the bottom. Place the leap-pads around the frogs, and then put as many small frog pieces on the large lily pad as there are players.
The large lily pad is the beginning and end of the race. The idea is that it's nap time at the pond, but the little frogs don't want to go to sleep. They want to have a race. However, every so often the parents wake up and look to see if the little ones are sleeping. If they see them they make them stop and go back to sleep.
That's the story. To put that into action, the players take turns rolling two dice. You can see them in the bottom right of this picture:
(picture by cvandyk)
The dice roll results in two colours that will match the colours of one of the parent frogs in the middle of the table. The player then chooses one of the eyes of that frog and lifts it to reveal the bottom. If there is a froggy on the bottom, that means that he or she has been spotted and has to stay put. If there's a blank the frog gets to move to the next lily pad. Then it's time to boogie I guess!
My thoughts
So, here's first of all what's good about this game:
- Great components.
- Easy game play. Kids don't have to make choices between a huge number of tiles. They pick only one of two eyes each time.
- Little down-time.
- Good training in colour matching.
- Adjustable play-time. By removing one or more lily pads you can make the race shorter. This is good both for parents who find it tedious, and for kids with short attention spans.
If you want any more proof that kids enjoy this game, check out these pictures:
(Picture by Sagrilarius)
(Picture by Sagrilarius)
The down-sides:
- strong paint smell (At least in my copy)
- If players roll the same colours repeatedly it can give an unfair advantage. This is also the case when one player rolls the same result as the previous player. Of course kids still need to pay attention (and they often don't!), but this can make it hard on some.
- Kids will eventually grow out of it. Whereas with a game like pitch-car (to choose but one example) the fun lasts, with Froggy Boogie there will be many more interesting things to do after a certain age. The game might still hit the table once in a while, but it won't be as much of a hit.
- parents who don't like memory games (like me!) might be less interested to play.
In conclusion, this is one of the better kids' games out there, and despite some minor issues I highly recommend it!
Froggy Boogie has gotten some rave reviews, something particularly noteworthy for a kids' game. So should you buy it for your kids? Will they like it?
The short answer: yes, as long as know what you're getting and who you're buying it for. Even though Froggy Boogie is at heart just a simple memory game, the combination with a race mechanic and the beautiful wooden pieces make this game a favourite with kids around 4-5 years old. Will adults like it? Personally I'm not a huge fan of memory games, so I find it gets a bit tedious after a while, but I am willing to join the odd game. In sum, adults may like to look at it, kids will love to play it!
Components
When you first open the box this is what you see:
(Picture by Sagrilarius)
One minor complaint I have is that the pieces still had a very strong paint smell to them, that took quite a few plays to dissipate.
Here is another picture of the wooden components. The eyes are individual pieces and fit loosely in the frogs:
Picture by Cerall)
On the bottom of each frog eye there is either a picture of a frog or a blank:
(Picture by Cerall)
So the pieces that come with the game are all top-notch, the box is sturdy, with one of the best inserts you'll find, and the design on the cover and back is nice and colourful. This game just asks to be played.
The Rules
The rules are straight-forward. To set up the game, place the large dual-coloured frogs in the middle of the table. These are the mommy and daddy frogs. In each frog place one eye with a blank, and one with a froggy on the bottom. Place the leap-pads around the frogs, and then put as many small frog pieces on the large lily pad as there are players.
The large lily pad is the beginning and end of the race. The idea is that it's nap time at the pond, but the little frogs don't want to go to sleep. They want to have a race. However, every so often the parents wake up and look to see if the little ones are sleeping. If they see them they make them stop and go back to sleep.
That's the story. To put that into action, the players take turns rolling two dice. You can see them in the bottom right of this picture:
(picture by cvandyk)
The dice roll results in two colours that will match the colours of one of the parent frogs in the middle of the table. The player then chooses one of the eyes of that frog and lifts it to reveal the bottom. If there is a froggy on the bottom, that means that he or she has been spotted and has to stay put. If there's a blank the frog gets to move to the next lily pad. Then it's time to boogie I guess!
My thoughts
So, here's first of all what's good about this game:
- Great components.
- Easy game play. Kids don't have to make choices between a huge number of tiles. They pick only one of two eyes each time.
- Little down-time.
- Good training in colour matching.
- Adjustable play-time. By removing one or more lily pads you can make the race shorter. This is good both for parents who find it tedious, and for kids with short attention spans.
If you want any more proof that kids enjoy this game, check out these pictures:
(Picture by Sagrilarius)
(Picture by Sagrilarius)
The down-sides:
- strong paint smell (At least in my copy)
- If players roll the same colours repeatedly it can give an unfair advantage. This is also the case when one player rolls the same result as the previous player. Of course kids still need to pay attention (and they often don't!), but this can make it hard on some.
- Kids will eventually grow out of it. Whereas with a game like pitch-car (to choose but one example) the fun lasts, with Froggy Boogie there will be many more interesting things to do after a certain age. The game might still hit the table once in a while, but it won't be as much of a hit.
- parents who don't like memory games (like me!) might be less interested to play.
In conclusion, this is one of the better kids' games out there, and despite some minor issues I highly recommend it!
Categories: Enthusiasts
The Dutch Golden Age - Grey Actions
I have read the English rules but have no idea what the "Dice" cards do nor do I understand the Investment, Arts, Colony, and Spices references in the Grey Actions. Does this section mean that there are some specific Grey cards that can be used as if they were cards of a different color, or can any grey card be used that way, or does it mean something entirely different?
Categories: Enthusiasts
Airships - Wooden ship question
Am I to understand that I get the wooden ship only if I am successful at winning an airship card and not a expansion card? Also I have to hold on to it until it's my turn again to be able to use it. (Unless I turn in 3 bonus chips to get a second turn) So if one of the 3 other people playing get an airship card I lose it.
Categories: Enthusiasts
Pirates of the Spanish Main - 10 Mast Ships?
Alright, I've looked far and wide, and I haven't seen a single picture or description of those alleged "10 mast ships (that somewhat childishly glow in the dark, then again, I AM a grown child throwing out massive amounts of money for toys)" included in those special "Plunder Packs", I've looked through about half of the pictures on the geek before I feared I might lose the will to live if I kept looking at even MORE of those ships I'll probably never own, I've tried google with god knows what ungodly requests, I'm finished...
Could someone, ANYONE give me a link to a good picture? Also, could you tell me if those ships are actually (realistically) playable?
Any help would be appreciated.
Could someone, ANYONE give me a link to a good picture? Also, could you tell me if those ships are actually (realistically) playable?
Any help would be appreciated.
Categories: Enthusiasts
Torpedo Run! - Hey! That’s my battleship! (Torpedo Run!, a review)
This is one of several childhood favorites that I recently rescued from my parents’ basement.
Torpedo Run! is an action and dexterity game that was published in 1986 by Milton Bradley as part of their short-lived “Floor Wars” series. This game is vaguely similar to [GAMEID=2129], but instead of a medieval theme with players facing off as opposing armies, Torpedo Run! takes on a much more modern naval theme. Each player takes the role of a lone attack submarine, with the goal of sinking the opponent’s surface fleet before losing their own.
Rules
The rulebook is only five pages long, and of that only the last page and a half covers how the game is played. All of the rest is devoted to assembly of the ships, with highly-detailed diagrams showing exactly how everything fits together, so there is little to no room for confusion.
The rules themselves are fairly basic. Each player chooses a submarine and a matching fleet (one battleship and three small escort ships), takes a set number of discs (torpedoes), and then heads to either end of the enormous board. Once there, the ships are arranged in predetermined patterns and the submarines are loaded.
Someone says, “Ready…Aim…Fire”, and chaos erupts as both players start shooting simultaneously. Submarines must remain in their designated shooting zone, but can be moved anywhere within that area that a player wishes. When a player runs out of ammo, they gather up discs that are now scattered everywhere in the vicinity, reload their sub, and commence firing. There are no turns or rounds; this is a free-for-all.
The goal is to sink all of the opposing player’s ships by hitting all of the target spots. The first player to do so is the winner.
The rulebook does include two alternate game options: one that involves moving ships around, and one for solo play. Rules are also included for four-player team games, with the extra players acting as “ammo experts”, but all that position entails is picking up the loose discs and giving them to the shooter. While it might save the shooter a few seconds here or there, it’s the functional equivalent of playing a two-player card game with a “teammate” whose sole purpose is to draw cards for you. If you have more than two players, you’re better off just having a round-robin tournament. Anyone sitting out during a round can still collect the loose discs without being assigned to a “team”.
Components
The first thing you notice about this game is the gigantic box. The overall dimensions are a whopping 35” x 17” x 2 ½” (inches). Certain game companies, particularly Fantasy Flight, are known for making games with large boxes, but even the largest of those are dwarfed by Torpedo Run!. I have never seen any other board game come in a box even close to this big. What makes it even more impressive is that this was a mass-market game, not a limited run game or an oversized special edition version of an existing game.
It definitely would have been an eye-catcher sitting on the shelf in the games section of a local retailer, and that alone probably sold numerous copies, but I can’t help but wonder if the sheer size also lead to the downfall of the “Floor Wars” series. Milton Bradley likely had to pay a premium for taking up shelf space that could easily have held two or three smaller games. Plus, parents had a built-in excuse for not buying it for their disappointed children – it was too big to fit into the car and/or the child’s room (even if it wasn’t).
The sole reason for having such a large box is to hold the even more humungous board. It folded in two places, which made it nearly three times as large as the box when laid flat. With overall dimensions of 46 ½” x 34 ½” (inches), it’s obvious why they called this “Floor Wars” – few household tables would have any hope of holding it, so the floor is the best place for it.
The top side of the board was colored blue to look like the open ocean, and was covered with large, white gridlines (spaced just under 4” apart) to assist with placing the ships and to provide spaces to move into if you used that variation. Near each end was a thick white line that marked the limit of where players could move their submarines. They could shoot from anywhere behind the line, but could never cross it. Adding to the nautical theme is large compass rose in the center and a series of semaphores printed along both sides. I’m not familiar with their translations so I can only guess at their meanings, but based on how they are arranged they are likely just letters or numbers arranged in ascending/descending order.
Unfortunately, the cardboard used for the board was much too thin for its size, so warping quickly became a serious problem. Especially problematic was the warping that occurred near the folds, because not only did it cause the seams to split apart, it would also cause the discs to go flying up in the air and right over the top of the target ships. With a poorly-aimed (or well-aimed?) shot, you could even hit your opponent in the face. Initially, the warping could be played off as waves deflecting the torpedoes, but that only worked for a short time before the game became unplayable. Fortunately, you don’t need the board at all. Any decent-sized table or floor space will work as long as long as it is flat, smooth, and doesn’t have any major seams or cracks that would deflect the discs. A strip of masking tape can be used to mark the lines that submarines cannot cross, and the ships can be placed however you like just as long as the setup is approximately the same for both players. As an added bonus, without the board the entire game will easily fit into an average shoebox or similar-sized container with plenty of room to spare, which makes it infinitely more portable.
The ships and submarines are made of plastic and come in two colors, dark gray and tan. The smaller ships (5 1/2 inches long) each have one target slot at the bottom, while the battleships (14 1/2 inches long) have five each. On the top of the ships above each slot is a hole, into which fits the pieces that get blown off when a torpedo disc hits the corresponding slot at the bottom. The mechanism for launching the pieces is remarkably simple. Pushing the piece into the hole puts tension on a small rubber band, which in turn provides just enough force to hold a clip on the base of the piece against a small ledge. When a disc is fired into the target slot it bumps the base of the piece, pushes it off the ledge, and then the rubber band catapults the piece into the air. The “exploding” pieces create an excellent visual effect, and provide a nice instant reward for a well-aimed shot. They usually work correctly, but sometimes a piece will get snagged on the rubber band or it won’t get hit hard enough, so the piece only lifts up slightly instead of launching or it doesn’t trigger at all. While the former is usually easy to spot with a simple inspection of the ship, the latter can be frustrating because having one disc lodged in the target slot will almost always prevent others from entering it enough to actually trigger a hit. As the rubber bands get old you will sometimes see the same effect even when it does trigger properly. The game did come with a few spares, but at some point you’ll probably have to go shopping for more of the proper size. Craft stores and hobby shops are a good place to look, but resist the temptation to buy rubber bands that are significantly stronger than what came with the game. Although seeing pieces fly up and hit the ceiling, an overhead fan, or even a bystander can be good for some laughs, it can also quickly result in lost or broken pieces as they fly out of sight or come crashing back down on the floor.
The submarines are essentially just disc launchers. On top is a large round chute to hold extra ammo, and on the bottom is an opening where the shots come out. The firing mechanism is a simple rubber band powered slider; pull it back, take aim, and release to shoot. They work correctly most of the time, but since they are just molded plastic and not finely-machined parts they do have a tendency to backfire, especially at high rates of fire. It’s usually easy to fix by pressing the slider parts back together and reloading the sub, but it wastes precious time if you’re running low on ships and your opponent has a good aim.
The discs are made of hard, red plastic, and are slightly smaller than two pennies stacked on top of each other. The box shows 36 in the component list, but my copy is short a few. That’s no surprise considering how quickly they can get scattered (and lost) around the room during a game, plus the fact that this game is over 20 years old.
Gameplay
Games of Torpedo Run! play fast and furious. It rarely takes more than a few minutes even if players are aiming their shots carefully, but could be over in as little as thirty seconds with some practice. You often spend more time picking up all the little bits and pieces that have been scattered throughout the room than actually playing, but that time can be reduced significantly if you have a few other people around to catch them before they get too far away or slide underneath nearby furniture and appliances.
After a few plays, players will become more proficient at aiming their subs and could reach a point where upwards of 50% of their shots will be hits. That might seem like it would take the fun out of the game, but it really just increases the tension because every shot becomes that much more important. It also leads to some interesting anti-sub warfare. If you see your opponent lining up a shot and you time a shot of your own just right, you can actually block or deflect it. It usually happens by accident the first time, but with practice it becomes a viable tactic. A variation on that is to attack the enemy sub directly. You have a moving target, but if you do manage to get a shot into the sub itself it will be all-but-guaranteed to interfere with the next shot it takes, and might even cause a backfire!
Conclusion
Overall, Torpedo Run! is a fun action/dexterity game that can be enjoyed by both kids and adults. There isn’t much depth to be found here despite the presence of submarines (sorry, bad pun) and the best “strategy” is to have a better aim than your opponent, but it plays quickly enough that you can easily pull it out and play a few rounds in between other games or any time you’ve got a few minutes of free time to kill.
I had a lot of fun with this game when I was younger, and I’d really love to rate it much higher, but even the incredible satisfaction you get from seeing a ship “explode” with a direct hit plus the nostalgia bump can’t make up for the poor-quality board, the occasional malfunctions, or the fact that there are so many other games out there (filler or otherwise) that are just plain better.
Hardcore gamers will probably want to look elsewhere, but if anyone else happens to run across an inexpensive copy of this somewhere it’s still well worth getting even to try it out just once.
Rating: 6.5
:star::star::star::star::star::star::halfstar::nostar::nostar::nostar:
:meeple:
Torpedo Run! is an action and dexterity game that was published in 1986 by Milton Bradley as part of their short-lived “Floor Wars” series. This game is vaguely similar to [GAMEID=2129], but instead of a medieval theme with players facing off as opposing armies, Torpedo Run! takes on a much more modern naval theme. Each player takes the role of a lone attack submarine, with the goal of sinking the opponent’s surface fleet before losing their own.
Rules
The rulebook is only five pages long, and of that only the last page and a half covers how the game is played. All of the rest is devoted to assembly of the ships, with highly-detailed diagrams showing exactly how everything fits together, so there is little to no room for confusion.
The rules themselves are fairly basic. Each player chooses a submarine and a matching fleet (one battleship and three small escort ships), takes a set number of discs (torpedoes), and then heads to either end of the enormous board. Once there, the ships are arranged in predetermined patterns and the submarines are loaded.
Someone says, “Ready…Aim…Fire”, and chaos erupts as both players start shooting simultaneously. Submarines must remain in their designated shooting zone, but can be moved anywhere within that area that a player wishes. When a player runs out of ammo, they gather up discs that are now scattered everywhere in the vicinity, reload their sub, and commence firing. There are no turns or rounds; this is a free-for-all.
The goal is to sink all of the opposing player’s ships by hitting all of the target spots. The first player to do so is the winner.
The rulebook does include two alternate game options: one that involves moving ships around, and one for solo play. Rules are also included for four-player team games, with the extra players acting as “ammo experts”, but all that position entails is picking up the loose discs and giving them to the shooter. While it might save the shooter a few seconds here or there, it’s the functional equivalent of playing a two-player card game with a “teammate” whose sole purpose is to draw cards for you. If you have more than two players, you’re better off just having a round-robin tournament. Anyone sitting out during a round can still collect the loose discs without being assigned to a “team”.
Components
The first thing you notice about this game is the gigantic box. The overall dimensions are a whopping 35” x 17” x 2 ½” (inches). Certain game companies, particularly Fantasy Flight, are known for making games with large boxes, but even the largest of those are dwarfed by Torpedo Run!. I have never seen any other board game come in a box even close to this big. What makes it even more impressive is that this was a mass-market game, not a limited run game or an oversized special edition version of an existing game.
It definitely would have been an eye-catcher sitting on the shelf in the games section of a local retailer, and that alone probably sold numerous copies, but I can’t help but wonder if the sheer size also lead to the downfall of the “Floor Wars” series. Milton Bradley likely had to pay a premium for taking up shelf space that could easily have held two or three smaller games. Plus, parents had a built-in excuse for not buying it for their disappointed children – it was too big to fit into the car and/or the child’s room (even if it wasn’t).
The sole reason for having such a large box is to hold the even more humungous board. It folded in two places, which made it nearly three times as large as the box when laid flat. With overall dimensions of 46 ½” x 34 ½” (inches), it’s obvious why they called this “Floor Wars” – few household tables would have any hope of holding it, so the floor is the best place for it.
The top side of the board was colored blue to look like the open ocean, and was covered with large, white gridlines (spaced just under 4” apart) to assist with placing the ships and to provide spaces to move into if you used that variation. Near each end was a thick white line that marked the limit of where players could move their submarines. They could shoot from anywhere behind the line, but could never cross it. Adding to the nautical theme is large compass rose in the center and a series of semaphores printed along both sides. I’m not familiar with their translations so I can only guess at their meanings, but based on how they are arranged they are likely just letters or numbers arranged in ascending/descending order.
Unfortunately, the cardboard used for the board was much too thin for its size, so warping quickly became a serious problem. Especially problematic was the warping that occurred near the folds, because not only did it cause the seams to split apart, it would also cause the discs to go flying up in the air and right over the top of the target ships. With a poorly-aimed (or well-aimed?) shot, you could even hit your opponent in the face. Initially, the warping could be played off as waves deflecting the torpedoes, but that only worked for a short time before the game became unplayable. Fortunately, you don’t need the board at all. Any decent-sized table or floor space will work as long as long as it is flat, smooth, and doesn’t have any major seams or cracks that would deflect the discs. A strip of masking tape can be used to mark the lines that submarines cannot cross, and the ships can be placed however you like just as long as the setup is approximately the same for both players. As an added bonus, without the board the entire game will easily fit into an average shoebox or similar-sized container with plenty of room to spare, which makes it infinitely more portable.
The ships and submarines are made of plastic and come in two colors, dark gray and tan. The smaller ships (5 1/2 inches long) each have one target slot at the bottom, while the battleships (14 1/2 inches long) have five each. On the top of the ships above each slot is a hole, into which fits the pieces that get blown off when a torpedo disc hits the corresponding slot at the bottom. The mechanism for launching the pieces is remarkably simple. Pushing the piece into the hole puts tension on a small rubber band, which in turn provides just enough force to hold a clip on the base of the piece against a small ledge. When a disc is fired into the target slot it bumps the base of the piece, pushes it off the ledge, and then the rubber band catapults the piece into the air. The “exploding” pieces create an excellent visual effect, and provide a nice instant reward for a well-aimed shot. They usually work correctly, but sometimes a piece will get snagged on the rubber band or it won’t get hit hard enough, so the piece only lifts up slightly instead of launching or it doesn’t trigger at all. While the former is usually easy to spot with a simple inspection of the ship, the latter can be frustrating because having one disc lodged in the target slot will almost always prevent others from entering it enough to actually trigger a hit. As the rubber bands get old you will sometimes see the same effect even when it does trigger properly. The game did come with a few spares, but at some point you’ll probably have to go shopping for more of the proper size. Craft stores and hobby shops are a good place to look, but resist the temptation to buy rubber bands that are significantly stronger than what came with the game. Although seeing pieces fly up and hit the ceiling, an overhead fan, or even a bystander can be good for some laughs, it can also quickly result in lost or broken pieces as they fly out of sight or come crashing back down on the floor.
The submarines are essentially just disc launchers. On top is a large round chute to hold extra ammo, and on the bottom is an opening where the shots come out. The firing mechanism is a simple rubber band powered slider; pull it back, take aim, and release to shoot. They work correctly most of the time, but since they are just molded plastic and not finely-machined parts they do have a tendency to backfire, especially at high rates of fire. It’s usually easy to fix by pressing the slider parts back together and reloading the sub, but it wastes precious time if you’re running low on ships and your opponent has a good aim.
The discs are made of hard, red plastic, and are slightly smaller than two pennies stacked on top of each other. The box shows 36 in the component list, but my copy is short a few. That’s no surprise considering how quickly they can get scattered (and lost) around the room during a game, plus the fact that this game is over 20 years old.
Gameplay
Games of Torpedo Run! play fast and furious. It rarely takes more than a few minutes even if players are aiming their shots carefully, but could be over in as little as thirty seconds with some practice. You often spend more time picking up all the little bits and pieces that have been scattered throughout the room than actually playing, but that time can be reduced significantly if you have a few other people around to catch them before they get too far away or slide underneath nearby furniture and appliances.
After a few plays, players will become more proficient at aiming their subs and could reach a point where upwards of 50% of their shots will be hits. That might seem like it would take the fun out of the game, but it really just increases the tension because every shot becomes that much more important. It also leads to some interesting anti-sub warfare. If you see your opponent lining up a shot and you time a shot of your own just right, you can actually block or deflect it. It usually happens by accident the first time, but with practice it becomes a viable tactic. A variation on that is to attack the enemy sub directly. You have a moving target, but if you do manage to get a shot into the sub itself it will be all-but-guaranteed to interfere with the next shot it takes, and might even cause a backfire!
Conclusion
Overall, Torpedo Run! is a fun action/dexterity game that can be enjoyed by both kids and adults. There isn’t much depth to be found here despite the presence of submarines (sorry, bad pun) and the best “strategy” is to have a better aim than your opponent, but it plays quickly enough that you can easily pull it out and play a few rounds in between other games or any time you’ve got a few minutes of free time to kill.
I had a lot of fun with this game when I was younger, and I’d really love to rate it much higher, but even the incredible satisfaction you get from seeing a ship “explode” with a direct hit plus the nostalgia bump can’t make up for the poor-quality board, the occasional malfunctions, or the fact that there are so many other games out there (filler or otherwise) that are just plain better.
Hardcore gamers will probably want to look elsewhere, but if anyone else happens to run across an inexpensive copy of this somewhere it’s still well worth getting even to try it out just once.
Rating: 6.5
:star::star::star::star::star::star::halfstar::nostar::nostar::nostar:
:meeple:
Categories: Enthusiasts
Settlers of Catan, The - Availability Index
Ok, so I'm a math geek, let me just get that out in the open from the beginning. I've come up with an idea for analyzing the board before initial placement, and I wanted to get some feedback.
I took what I consider an "average" mix of purchases for a player over an entire game: 3 Dev Cards, 4 Settlements, 3 Cities, 5 Roads. I then calculate how much of each resource will be needed to purchase all of this: 9 Brick, 9 Wood, 13 Wheat, 12 Ore, 7 Sheep. Then, I fudge a couple of numbers and divide by 3 to get easier to use numbers:
4 - Wheat, Ore
3 - Brick, Wood
2 - Sheep
I think of these as "global demand" numbers for the different resources throughout the game. To compute how "available" resources will be throughout the game, add up all the dots on the board for each resource and divide by the demand numbers above. You end up with an "availability index" for each resource; the higher the index the more available, the lower the index the more scarce (and hence valuable).
The way you use this index is up to you. Personally, I think just having a clear idea of what will be "cheap" to trade for and what will be hard to trade for is very useful.
For example: say 2 of the ore tiles get bad numbers and 1 gets a nice number. Then ore should have a very low index because its demand is 4 and there is not much supply. Nabbing that nice ore spot should give you a lot of trading leverage throughout the game.
However, placing only on resources with low availability is not necessarily the way to go (you could end up with terrible numbers or a strange mix of resources like brick and ore).
I realize that as actual settlements and cities show up on the board, the true "supply" no longer is total dots on the board for that resource, but I think the concept is still useful. Also, if you have a particular strategy in mind that you are set on using, this may not be as helpful...
Comments? How would you use the index to influence your placements?
I took what I consider an "average" mix of purchases for a player over an entire game: 3 Dev Cards, 4 Settlements, 3 Cities, 5 Roads. I then calculate how much of each resource will be needed to purchase all of this: 9 Brick, 9 Wood, 13 Wheat, 12 Ore, 7 Sheep. Then, I fudge a couple of numbers and divide by 3 to get easier to use numbers:
4 - Wheat, Ore
3 - Brick, Wood
2 - Sheep
I think of these as "global demand" numbers for the different resources throughout the game. To compute how "available" resources will be throughout the game, add up all the dots on the board for each resource and divide by the demand numbers above. You end up with an "availability index" for each resource; the higher the index the more available, the lower the index the more scarce (and hence valuable).
The way you use this index is up to you. Personally, I think just having a clear idea of what will be "cheap" to trade for and what will be hard to trade for is very useful.
For example: say 2 of the ore tiles get bad numbers and 1 gets a nice number. Then ore should have a very low index because its demand is 4 and there is not much supply. Nabbing that nice ore spot should give you a lot of trading leverage throughout the game.
However, placing only on resources with low availability is not necessarily the way to go (you could end up with terrible numbers or a strange mix of resources like brick and ore).
I realize that as actual settlements and cities show up on the board, the true "supply" no longer is total dots on the board for that resource, but I think the concept is still useful. Also, if you have a particular strategy in mind that you are set on using, this may not be as helpful...
Comments? How would you use the index to influence your placements?
Categories: Enthusiasts
Britannia - Personal Impressions (NOT a review) of China: The Middle Kingdom
Personal Impressions (NOT a review) of China: The Middle Kingdom (Decision Games, designed by Tani Chen)
This is not a review because I have not, and likely will never, play this game (I only play my own unpublished games these days). You can't review a game without playing it several times. So these are impressions and comments.
As the box says, this is based on the Britannia system, old-school Britannia right down to half victory points and half increase points, and "Highlands" instead of "Difficult Terrain". As the designer of Britannia I'm especially interested in such games, and of course I hope they are well received, since I'm working on lord knows how many more of this type.
I'm especially interested because I've used my reduced-scale "gateway" system recently for Chinese history, and because I have one of the few copies extant of the original China Britannia, The Dragon & the Pearl (now out of print). I am by no means an expert on Chinese history, though I have in fact read something as obscure as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so I'll have some comments on the historical aspects of the game.
(By the way, it irks me when I see it phrased "Avalon Hill's Britannia", as it is here. As Avalon Hill rejected the game initially ("games of that era don't sell"), and H. P. Gibsons published it first (and provided the board and piece artwork to AH), and AH's main contribution to the game was to screw it up a bit, you can understand why I'm a little annoyed by the phrase. Why not "Lew Pulsipher's Britannia"? Meh.)
But most of my games now go toward simpler and shorter (1 hour 40 minutes for one played recently), not to larger, and this game is Larger. There are 46 countries and 24 turns (12 in each of the half-games). Time to play is listed on the box as 4-10 hours, which sounds about right from my experience (4 would be a quick half-game). It's the number of countries more than the turns that lengthen the game, which is why I try to keep the number of nations (as I prefer to call them) low in my shorter games, as well as down to 6 or 8 turns.
The game ambitiously covers Chinese history from 404 BC to 1949. I don't think the Britannia system suits the age of gunpowder--it was made to reflect gradual barbarian migrations--but only playing the game can reveal how well it works with European intervention and 20th century realities.
The unmounted 34" by 22" map strikes me as slightly garish. There are 46 areas, though 18 are "foreign" areas that only serve as jump-off points for invaders (for comparison, Britannia has 37 areas, more than this game's 28 in regular play). It is colored like a map in an atlas, with several different colors scattered about for areas (think of a map of US states), rather than like a map for a game, where each terrain is a different color. It's not a big deal, but seems a little odd, and contributes to a slightly cartoony or artificial look to the map as a whole.
Apparently the designer, who I'm told is a Chinese graduate of MIT, now a lawyer, decided to use only areas of modern China as in-play areas of the game. There are "foreign" areas along the borders, where invaders start, but they must leave those areas and get into China during their turn. This decision doesn't make sense historically. It means Taiwan and Tibet are in play, though for most of ancient and medieval times they were not part of China, but Vietnam and Korea are not in play, even though the former was held by the Chinese for many centuries, and the latter played a big part in the fall of the Sui and Tang--as it stands, no unit can enter Korea. Either all the adjacent areas should be "in play", or all (including Xinjiang, rarely occupied by the Chinese but part of China in the game) should not be. My solution in my game has been to use the heart of China (including Vietnam and Korea) and show a small part of Tibet and Xinjiang "in play". The other published China Britannia game, Dragon & the Pearl, shows the larger geographic area of this game, but all of it is "in play".
The 456 cardboard pieces are bigger than standard "wargame ghetto" half inch counters, perhaps two-thirds of an inch square. They are thinner than Britannia pieces, but fairly substantial. The wording on the counters is fairly hard to read, unfortunately, but there is a big colored banner with a number on most of the pieces that helps differentiate them. Everyone prefers larger pieces, but there are so many here that pieces the size of the new Britannia edition aren't practical.
The nation cards are very nice, five inches tall and three inches wide. If I were to use nation cards (I have a different system now), I'd like them to be this size and shape. They list appearance, movement order, sequence within the color, and point scoring. My wife observed that the thin font, over a light red background symbol, is difficult to read. There are 50 nation cards (four nations have two players controlling them, one after the other on the same turn), four special cards, and a sequence of play card.
The special cards need to be cut in half to provide two cards for each player. They are usable once per game. One card gives a +1 in one battle, the other causes a battle to be refought. These are like the cards I've used in Epic Britannia, Britannia Brevis (expansions that FFG is not interested in printing, at last report), and especially Frankia. They are tied to a color in Frankia, as they are in this game, whereas in the other two they're tied to a nation.
There are minor production glitches. Zhuge Liang, a famous general of the Three Kingdoms, is referred to thus in the historical booklet, but on the cards and in the rules he is incorrectly shown as Zhu Geliang. The Grand Canal, said to be red in the rules, is actually blue. And there's one place close to a 'four corners' where the map is clearly wrong in its connectivity compared with the rules (Henan-Jiungsu). I assume the rules prevail.
In general, the rules are easy to read (both in flow and in font size) and appear to be comprehensive, but that's always hard to tell until you actually play, isn't it?
A 15 page historical article (evidently from S&T magazine) by the game designer is a generally good introduction to Chinese history. I haven't figured out the author's assertion that the country has never been entirely ruled by foreign powers. I count both the Mongols and the Manchu as foreign powers, and if there was any part of the country not under their rule I can only think of Formosa (referred to by the modern name of Taiwan in the rules), though at one point it says at least one of these invaders controlled Formosa. Until fairly recent times I wouldn't even count this as part of China, and of course from 1895 until present it has been Japanese or Nationalist Chinese (Taiwanese), not part of mainland China despite the claims of the communists. There are no comments about the style or weapons of warfare, other than a sidebar about gunpowder. There are a few other inconsistencies in the historical notes. For example, the author says "the [Han] Chinese military was not powerful enough at that time to deal with the raiders because of the rebellion against the Qin dynasty and later due to government corruption", but from what I've read, the Han did more to crush steppe opposition than most empires, penetrating deep into the north on several occasions and reducing the powerful Xiong-Nu to tributaries for most of the Han period. The normal relationship was "Chinese bribe barbarians with tribute", but the Han reversed that.
The game uses the relatively new Pinyin translation of Chinese to English, rather than the older Wade-Giles. This is why "Peking" became "Beijing". I dislike Pinyin, because it isn't naturally pronounceable for an English person (I wonder if it was made for French?). Chiang Kai-shek becomes Jiang Jieshi in the new system! Tsao Tsao (which is pronounced with a ts sound) becomes Cao Cao in the new system. Bah. But I suppose use of Pinyin is inevitable. Modern names of provinces have been used in most cases.
The game is arranged very much like Britannia. There are very few starting armies for some nations, as few as two. It appears that there will be a lot of attacking, since many nations score for killing others, and since the attacker has the advantage. And a lot of nations may disappear quickly. Ten of the nations have an army maximum of 10 or more. 16 nations have a max of four or less. Five European nations do not get Increase, and four of them have no more than 3 armies. But these hit on a 3+ and are hit only on a 6.
Combat resembles standard Britannia except that attackers have one better chance of hitting than defenders. Highlands reduce chances by TWO. Europeans and Mongols (during the invasion) hit on a 3 and are only hit on a 6, and Mongols can overrun at 1:1 during the invasion instead of 2:1.
Increase of Population is the same as Britannia. There is no stacking limit as such, but overpopulation is applied by area, three for clear, two for highlands, after combat, any excess dying. This is the brake against huge stacks.
There are a few double moves (including a second Increase, however), and one triple move, the Mongol invasion.
Leaders are called "emperors" (which include Mao and Chiang), and there are only ten in the game. Unlike Brit, leaders cause the enemy to attack at -1, as well as the other usual leader effects on combat and movement.
One of the problems I've had in my China game is how to reflect the rapid fall of a major dynasty, possibly followed by fragmentation, possibly by another dynasty. This game uses a clever method for rebellions that is unfortunately rather random. I think it reflects history pretty well, but might be frustrating for players because of the dice rolling involved. A rebellion starts in one or more areas, determined by regional dice rolls (each of the areas of the main part of China is numbered for the rolls). Then adjacent areas roll to see if they join the rebellion, with the major dynasties having a "power factor" of 5, which means on any roll but a 6 the adjacent area joins the rebels!
This power factor is also the number of points scored if you wipe out a nation, and the number of armies you get as reinforcements. So this becomes very important, and is also an incentive for nations to wipe out other nations and so avoid the "Belgae survive all game in Lindsey" syndrome of Britannia. With 46 nations this might be needed. Clever.
There is no indication of the typical score for the game, so I can't judge how important the points for eliminating a nation may be compared with other ways of scoring. Scoring, by the way, is every third turn, except for such things as kill points (which are common). A scoresheet is provided.
Uprisings, not the same as rebellions, occur in empty provinces. But the rules don't appear to say what happens if there are no empty provinces.
The Three Kingdoms nations, successors to the Han, are all depicted, something I could not do in my smaller-scale games with relatively few nations. Yet the Mongol invasion is all in one turn, rather than in two turns! (The Mongols finished the Jin, in northern China, in 1234 seven years after Genghis' death; they conquered the southern Song 45 years later.) Insofar as I think it's important to show that the Mongols were not invincible or unstoppable, I'm puzzled by this choice.
Another oddity is the Great Wall. Any attack over the wall FROM EITHER SIDE gives an advantage to the defender. The Great Wall was a turf wall, like Hadrian's Wall in Britain, until the stone fortifications built in the 17th century. There are actually fortifications like this all over Europe. I have a map that shows the ones in Britain (Offa's Dyke is the obvious one after Hadrian's and the Antonine walls), and I've seen them marked southeast of the Caspian Sea! These walls were too long to be fully manned (even Hadrian's, far shorter than the Great Wall, only had a garrison at intervals). They were more a discouragement for cattle rustlers and the like: "how do I get the cattle back home with this wall in the way"? In China, the question was "how do I get my horse over this wall", even though armed men could get over fairly easily. Against a real invasion, the walls weren't worth much. Giving a +1 doesn't make sense historically (especially to those going from south to north!), but it's a way to emphasize one of the most famous man-made landmarks in the world.
I was puzzled by some of the nations included and not included. The Tungus, who I thought might be Tanguts of Xi Xia, turn out to be (Wikipedia) "Evenks", a nation I have never heard of but which is included in the game for 517 and on. They start with a very substantial five armies in Kazakhstan. I thought these might represent Celestial or Blue Turks. Well, no the Tujue (another name I didn't recognize, but which Wikipedia says is the name in Chinese sources) are in fact the GokTurks (another name Celestial/Blue Turks). They are in the game from 557, and are one army weaker than the puzzling Tungus, whereas in fact the GokTurks had a huge Central Asian empire that at one time dominated the area north of China.
The Nan Zhao (usually shown the old way on maps, as Nan Chao) are a Thai people who later migrated into Thailand. For some reason they start in Vietnam instead of Thailand or Myanmar. (By the way, why use this recently-adopted ethnic name instead of Burma or Pyu or another older name? I think using modern names for a sweep of history games is a poor choice.)
The Xiong-Nu are called Huns in the game, which I think is a disservice to players. Scholarly opinion has fluctuated on this question, beginning with the incorrect notion that there is considerable similarity in the two names (this is primarily in the transliterations). Similarities between Hun and Xiong-Nu culture can be found. There are no written records for these peoples, and we know virtually nothing about their languages. No one knows for sure, any more than we can know that the Rouran became the western Avars.
Finally, here's a very interesting note: playtesters are listed separately for the author and for the publisher. The author lists two [sic] playtesters, so do we conclude that he had three people including himself to playtest a four player game? The publisher lists seven playtesters. Perhaps they only listed the major players?
I'll be interested to hear how the game plays. After all, that's what counts in the end. Game balance is very difficult to achieve in these games, and harder here in the two smaller versions of the game, yet experienced players can provide the "invisible hand" that results in balance because they know what imbalances need to be rectified. I'd like a dime for every person who says Britannia is imbalanced, yet the current results database shows virtually perfect balance. You certainly cannot play these kinds of games once or twice and think you understand all the strategy or balance. Another reason why this is NOT a review.
It would be really interesting to hear comments from someone who has played both this game and Dragon & The Pearl, but the latter had a very limited distribution and is not, as far as I know, in print. (See http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1969.)
(Note for completists: there was also a very, very large Brit-like China game, Mandate of Heaven (120 BC-1949), being playtested by mail through a Yahoo Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/MandateH/?v=1&t=search&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=group&slk=17. Members only, and judging from the number of messages, the game is over.)
Lew Pulsipher
This is not a review because I have not, and likely will never, play this game (I only play my own unpublished games these days). You can't review a game without playing it several times. So these are impressions and comments.
As the box says, this is based on the Britannia system, old-school Britannia right down to half victory points and half increase points, and "Highlands" instead of "Difficult Terrain". As the designer of Britannia I'm especially interested in such games, and of course I hope they are well received, since I'm working on lord knows how many more of this type.
I'm especially interested because I've used my reduced-scale "gateway" system recently for Chinese history, and because I have one of the few copies extant of the original China Britannia, The Dragon & the Pearl (now out of print). I am by no means an expert on Chinese history, though I have in fact read something as obscure as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so I'll have some comments on the historical aspects of the game.
(By the way, it irks me when I see it phrased "Avalon Hill's Britannia", as it is here. As Avalon Hill rejected the game initially ("games of that era don't sell"), and H. P. Gibsons published it first (and provided the board and piece artwork to AH), and AH's main contribution to the game was to screw it up a bit, you can understand why I'm a little annoyed by the phrase. Why not "Lew Pulsipher's Britannia"? Meh.)
But most of my games now go toward simpler and shorter (1 hour 40 minutes for one played recently), not to larger, and this game is Larger. There are 46 countries and 24 turns (12 in each of the half-games). Time to play is listed on the box as 4-10 hours, which sounds about right from my experience (4 would be a quick half-game). It's the number of countries more than the turns that lengthen the game, which is why I try to keep the number of nations (as I prefer to call them) low in my shorter games, as well as down to 6 or 8 turns.
The game ambitiously covers Chinese history from 404 BC to 1949. I don't think the Britannia system suits the age of gunpowder--it was made to reflect gradual barbarian migrations--but only playing the game can reveal how well it works with European intervention and 20th century realities.
The unmounted 34" by 22" map strikes me as slightly garish. There are 46 areas, though 18 are "foreign" areas that only serve as jump-off points for invaders (for comparison, Britannia has 37 areas, more than this game's 28 in regular play). It is colored like a map in an atlas, with several different colors scattered about for areas (think of a map of US states), rather than like a map for a game, where each terrain is a different color. It's not a big deal, but seems a little odd, and contributes to a slightly cartoony or artificial look to the map as a whole.
Apparently the designer, who I'm told is a Chinese graduate of MIT, now a lawyer, decided to use only areas of modern China as in-play areas of the game. There are "foreign" areas along the borders, where invaders start, but they must leave those areas and get into China during their turn. This decision doesn't make sense historically. It means Taiwan and Tibet are in play, though for most of ancient and medieval times they were not part of China, but Vietnam and Korea are not in play, even though the former was held by the Chinese for many centuries, and the latter played a big part in the fall of the Sui and Tang--as it stands, no unit can enter Korea. Either all the adjacent areas should be "in play", or all (including Xinjiang, rarely occupied by the Chinese but part of China in the game) should not be. My solution in my game has been to use the heart of China (including Vietnam and Korea) and show a small part of Tibet and Xinjiang "in play". The other published China Britannia game, Dragon & the Pearl, shows the larger geographic area of this game, but all of it is "in play".
The 456 cardboard pieces are bigger than standard "wargame ghetto" half inch counters, perhaps two-thirds of an inch square. They are thinner than Britannia pieces, but fairly substantial. The wording on the counters is fairly hard to read, unfortunately, but there is a big colored banner with a number on most of the pieces that helps differentiate them. Everyone prefers larger pieces, but there are so many here that pieces the size of the new Britannia edition aren't practical.
The nation cards are very nice, five inches tall and three inches wide. If I were to use nation cards (I have a different system now), I'd like them to be this size and shape. They list appearance, movement order, sequence within the color, and point scoring. My wife observed that the thin font, over a light red background symbol, is difficult to read. There are 50 nation cards (four nations have two players controlling them, one after the other on the same turn), four special cards, and a sequence of play card.
The special cards need to be cut in half to provide two cards for each player. They are usable once per game. One card gives a +1 in one battle, the other causes a battle to be refought. These are like the cards I've used in Epic Britannia, Britannia Brevis (expansions that FFG is not interested in printing, at last report), and especially Frankia. They are tied to a color in Frankia, as they are in this game, whereas in the other two they're tied to a nation.
There are minor production glitches. Zhuge Liang, a famous general of the Three Kingdoms, is referred to thus in the historical booklet, but on the cards and in the rules he is incorrectly shown as Zhu Geliang. The Grand Canal, said to be red in the rules, is actually blue. And there's one place close to a 'four corners' where the map is clearly wrong in its connectivity compared with the rules (Henan-Jiungsu). I assume the rules prevail.
In general, the rules are easy to read (both in flow and in font size) and appear to be comprehensive, but that's always hard to tell until you actually play, isn't it?
A 15 page historical article (evidently from S&T magazine) by the game designer is a generally good introduction to Chinese history. I haven't figured out the author's assertion that the country has never been entirely ruled by foreign powers. I count both the Mongols and the Manchu as foreign powers, and if there was any part of the country not under their rule I can only think of Formosa (referred to by the modern name of Taiwan in the rules), though at one point it says at least one of these invaders controlled Formosa. Until fairly recent times I wouldn't even count this as part of China, and of course from 1895 until present it has been Japanese or Nationalist Chinese (Taiwanese), not part of mainland China despite the claims of the communists. There are no comments about the style or weapons of warfare, other than a sidebar about gunpowder. There are a few other inconsistencies in the historical notes. For example, the author says "the [Han] Chinese military was not powerful enough at that time to deal with the raiders because of the rebellion against the Qin dynasty and later due to government corruption", but from what I've read, the Han did more to crush steppe opposition than most empires, penetrating deep into the north on several occasions and reducing the powerful Xiong-Nu to tributaries for most of the Han period. The normal relationship was "Chinese bribe barbarians with tribute", but the Han reversed that.
The game uses the relatively new Pinyin translation of Chinese to English, rather than the older Wade-Giles. This is why "Peking" became "Beijing". I dislike Pinyin, because it isn't naturally pronounceable for an English person (I wonder if it was made for French?). Chiang Kai-shek becomes Jiang Jieshi in the new system! Tsao Tsao (which is pronounced with a ts sound) becomes Cao Cao in the new system. Bah. But I suppose use of Pinyin is inevitable. Modern names of provinces have been used in most cases.
The game is arranged very much like Britannia. There are very few starting armies for some nations, as few as two. It appears that there will be a lot of attacking, since many nations score for killing others, and since the attacker has the advantage. And a lot of nations may disappear quickly. Ten of the nations have an army maximum of 10 or more. 16 nations have a max of four or less. Five European nations do not get Increase, and four of them have no more than 3 armies. But these hit on a 3+ and are hit only on a 6.
Combat resembles standard Britannia except that attackers have one better chance of hitting than defenders. Highlands reduce chances by TWO. Europeans and Mongols (during the invasion) hit on a 3 and are only hit on a 6, and Mongols can overrun at 1:1 during the invasion instead of 2:1.
Increase of Population is the same as Britannia. There is no stacking limit as such, but overpopulation is applied by area, three for clear, two for highlands, after combat, any excess dying. This is the brake against huge stacks.
There are a few double moves (including a second Increase, however), and one triple move, the Mongol invasion.
Leaders are called "emperors" (which include Mao and Chiang), and there are only ten in the game. Unlike Brit, leaders cause the enemy to attack at -1, as well as the other usual leader effects on combat and movement.
One of the problems I've had in my China game is how to reflect the rapid fall of a major dynasty, possibly followed by fragmentation, possibly by another dynasty. This game uses a clever method for rebellions that is unfortunately rather random. I think it reflects history pretty well, but might be frustrating for players because of the dice rolling involved. A rebellion starts in one or more areas, determined by regional dice rolls (each of the areas of the main part of China is numbered for the rolls). Then adjacent areas roll to see if they join the rebellion, with the major dynasties having a "power factor" of 5, which means on any roll but a 6 the adjacent area joins the rebels!
This power factor is also the number of points scored if you wipe out a nation, and the number of armies you get as reinforcements. So this becomes very important, and is also an incentive for nations to wipe out other nations and so avoid the "Belgae survive all game in Lindsey" syndrome of Britannia. With 46 nations this might be needed. Clever.
There is no indication of the typical score for the game, so I can't judge how important the points for eliminating a nation may be compared with other ways of scoring. Scoring, by the way, is every third turn, except for such things as kill points (which are common). A scoresheet is provided.
Uprisings, not the same as rebellions, occur in empty provinces. But the rules don't appear to say what happens if there are no empty provinces.
The Three Kingdoms nations, successors to the Han, are all depicted, something I could not do in my smaller-scale games with relatively few nations. Yet the Mongol invasion is all in one turn, rather than in two turns! (The Mongols finished the Jin, in northern China, in 1234 seven years after Genghis' death; they conquered the southern Song 45 years later.) Insofar as I think it's important to show that the Mongols were not invincible or unstoppable, I'm puzzled by this choice.
Another oddity is the Great Wall. Any attack over the wall FROM EITHER SIDE gives an advantage to the defender. The Great Wall was a turf wall, like Hadrian's Wall in Britain, until the stone fortifications built in the 17th century. There are actually fortifications like this all over Europe. I have a map that shows the ones in Britain (Offa's Dyke is the obvious one after Hadrian's and the Antonine walls), and I've seen them marked southeast of the Caspian Sea! These walls were too long to be fully manned (even Hadrian's, far shorter than the Great Wall, only had a garrison at intervals). They were more a discouragement for cattle rustlers and the like: "how do I get the cattle back home with this wall in the way"? In China, the question was "how do I get my horse over this wall", even though armed men could get over fairly easily. Against a real invasion, the walls weren't worth much. Giving a +1 doesn't make sense historically (especially to those going from south to north!), but it's a way to emphasize one of the most famous man-made landmarks in the world.
I was puzzled by some of the nations included and not included. The Tungus, who I thought might be Tanguts of Xi Xia, turn out to be (Wikipedia) "Evenks", a nation I have never heard of but which is included in the game for 517 and on. They start with a very substantial five armies in Kazakhstan. I thought these might represent Celestial or Blue Turks. Well, no the Tujue (another name I didn't recognize, but which Wikipedia says is the name in Chinese sources) are in fact the GokTurks (another name Celestial/Blue Turks). They are in the game from 557, and are one army weaker than the puzzling Tungus, whereas in fact the GokTurks had a huge Central Asian empire that at one time dominated the area north of China.
The Nan Zhao (usually shown the old way on maps, as Nan Chao) are a Thai people who later migrated into Thailand. For some reason they start in Vietnam instead of Thailand or Myanmar. (By the way, why use this recently-adopted ethnic name instead of Burma or Pyu or another older name? I think using modern names for a sweep of history games is a poor choice.)
The Xiong-Nu are called Huns in the game, which I think is a disservice to players. Scholarly opinion has fluctuated on this question, beginning with the incorrect notion that there is considerable similarity in the two names (this is primarily in the transliterations). Similarities between Hun and Xiong-Nu culture can be found. There are no written records for these peoples, and we know virtually nothing about their languages. No one knows for sure, any more than we can know that the Rouran became the western Avars.
Finally, here's a very interesting note: playtesters are listed separately for the author and for the publisher. The author lists two [sic] playtesters, so do we conclude that he had three people including himself to playtest a four player game? The publisher lists seven playtesters. Perhaps they only listed the major players?
I'll be interested to hear how the game plays. After all, that's what counts in the end. Game balance is very difficult to achieve in these games, and harder here in the two smaller versions of the game, yet experienced players can provide the "invisible hand" that results in balance because they know what imbalances need to be rectified. I'd like a dime for every person who says Britannia is imbalanced, yet the current results database shows virtually perfect balance. You certainly cannot play these kinds of games once or twice and think you understand all the strategy or balance. Another reason why this is NOT a review.
It would be really interesting to hear comments from someone who has played both this game and Dragon & The Pearl, but the latter had a very limited distribution and is not, as far as I know, in print. (See http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1969.)
(Note for completists: there was also a very, very large Brit-like China game, Mandate of Heaven (120 BC-1949), being playtested by mail through a Yahoo Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/MandateH/?v=1&t=search&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=group&slk=17. Members only, and judging from the number of messages, the game is over.)
Lew Pulsipher
Categories: Enthusiasts
China: The Middle Kingdom - Personal Impressions (NOT a review) of China: The Middle Kingdom
Personal Impressions (NOT a review) of China: The Middle Kingdom (Decision Games, designed by Tani Chen)
This is not a review because I have not, and likely will never, play this game (I only play my own unpublished games these days). You can't review a game without playing it several times. So these are impressions and comments.
As the box says, this is based on the Britannia system, old-school Britannia right down to half victory points and half increase points, and "Highlands" instead of "Difficult Terrain". As the designer of Britannia I'm especially interested in such games, and of course I hope they are well received, since I'm working on lord knows how many more of this type.
I'm especially interested because I've used my reduced-scale "gateway" system recently for Chinese history, and because I have one of the few copies extant of the original China Britannia, The Dragon & the Pearl (now out of print). I am by no means an expert on Chinese history, though I have in fact read something as obscure as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so I'll have some comments on the historical aspects of the game.
(By the way, it irks me when I see it phrased "Avalon Hill's Britannia", as it is here. As Avalon Hill rejected the game initially ("games of that era don't sell"), and H. P. Gibsons published it first (and provided the board and piece artwork to AH), and AH's main contribution to the game was to screw it up a bit, you can understand why I'm a little annoyed by the phrase. Why not "Lew Pulsipher's Britannia"? Meh.)
But most of my games now go toward simpler and shorter (1 hour 40 minutes for one played recently), not to larger, and this game is Larger. There are 46 countries and 24 turns (12 in each of the half-games). Time to play is listed on the box as 4-10 hours, which sounds about right from my experience (4 would be a quick half-game). It's the number of countries more than the turns that lengthen the game, which is why I try to keep the number of nations (as I prefer to call them) low in my shorter games, as well as down to 6 or 8 turns.
The game ambitiously covers Chinese history from 404 BC to 1949. I don't think the Britannia system suits the age of gunpowder--it was made to reflect gradual barbarian migrations--but only playing the game can reveal how well it works with European intervention and 20th century realities.
The unmounted 34" by 22" map strikes me as slightly garish. There are 46 areas, though 18 are "foreign" areas that only serve as jump-off points for invaders (for comparison, Britannia has 37 areas, more than this game's 28 in regular play). It is colored like a map in an atlas, with several different colors scattered about for areas (think of a map of US states), rather than like a map for a game, where each terrain is a different color. It's not a big deal, but seems a little odd, and contributes to a slightly cartoony or artificial look to the map as a whole.
Apparently the designer, who I'm told is a Chinese graduate of MIT, now a lawyer, decided to use only areas of modern China as in-play areas of the game. There are "foreign" areas along the borders, where invaders start, but they must leave those areas and get into China during their turn. This decision doesn't make sense historically. It means Taiwan and Tibet are in play, though for most of ancient and medieval times they were not part of China, but Vietnam and Korea are not in play, even though the former was held by the Chinese for many centuries, and the latter played a big part in the fall of the Sui and Tang--as it stands, no unit can enter Korea. Either all the adjacent areas should be "in play", or all (including Xinjiang, rarely occupied by the Chinese but part of China in the game) should not be. My solution in my game has been to use the heart of China (including Vietnam and Korea) and show a small part of Tibet and Xinjiang "in play". The other published China Britannia game, Dragon & the Pearl, shows the larger geographic area of this game, but all of it is "in play".
The 456 cardboard pieces are bigger than standard "wargame ghetto" half inch counters, perhaps two-thirds of an inch square. They are thinner than Britannia pieces, but fairly substantial. The wording on the counters is fairly hard to read, unfortunately, but there is a big colored banner with a number on most of the pieces that helps differentiate them. Everyone prefers larger pieces, but there are so many here that pieces the size of the new Britannia edition aren't practical.
The nation cards are very nice, five inches tall and three inches wide. If I were to use nation cards (I have a different system now), I'd like them to be this size and shape. They list appearance, movement order, sequence within the color, and point scoring. My wife observed that the thin font, over a light red background symbol, is difficult to read. There are 50 nation cards (four nations have two players controlling them, one after the other on the same turn), four special cards, and a sequence of play card.
The special cards need to be cut in half to provide two cards for each player. They are usable once per game. One card gives a +1 in one battle, the other causes a battle to be refought. These are like the cards I've used in Epic Britannia, Britannia Brevis (expansions that FFG is not interested in printing, at last report), and especially Frankia. They are tied to a color in Frankia, as they are in this game, whereas in the other two they're tied to a nation.
There are minor production glitches. Zhuge Liang, a famous general of the Three Kingdoms, is referred to thus in the historical booklet, but on the cards and in the rules he is incorrectly shown as Zhu Geliang. The Grand Canal, said to be red in the rules, is actually blue. And there's one place close to a 'four corners' where the map is clearly wrong in its connectivity compared with the rules (Henan-Jiungsu). I assume the rules prevail.
In general, the rules are easy to read (both in flow and in font size) and appear to be comprehensive, but that's always hard to tell until you actually play, isn't it?
A 15 page historical article (evidently from S&T magazine) by the game designer is a generally good introduction to Chinese history. I haven't figured out the author's assertion that the country has never been entirely ruled by foreign powers. I count both the Mongols and the Manchu as foreign powers, and if there was any part of the country not under their rule I can only think of Formosa (referred to by the modern name of Taiwan in the rules), though at one point it says at least one of these invaders controlled Formosa. Until fairly recent times I wouldn't even count this as part of China, and of course from 1895 until present it has been Japanese or Nationalist Chinese (Taiwanese), not part of mainland China despite the claims of the communists. There are no comments about the style or weapons of warfare, other than a sidebar about gunpowder. There are a few other inconsistencies in the historical notes. For example, the author says "the [Han] Chinese military was not powerful enough at that time to deal with the raiders because of the rebellion against the Qin dynasty and later due to government corruption", but from what I've read, the Han did more to crush steppe opposition than most empires, penetrating deep into the north on several occasions and reducing the powerful Xiong-Nu to tributaries for most of the Han period. The normal relationship was "Chinese bribe barbarians with tribute", but the Han reversed that.
The game uses the relatively new Pinyin translation of Chinese to English, rather than the older Wade-Giles. This is why "Peking" became "Beijing". I dislike Pinyin, because it isn't naturally pronounceable for an English person (I wonder if it was made for French?). Chiang Kai-shek becomes Jiang Jieshi in the new system! Tsao Tsao (which is pronounced with a ts sound) becomes Cao Cao in the new system. Bah. But I suppose use of Pinyin is inevitable. Modern names of provinces have been used in most cases.
The game is arranged very much like Britannia. There are very few starting armies for some nations, as few as two. It appears that there will be a lot of attacking, since many nations score for killing others, and since the attacker has the advantage. And a lot of nations may disappear quickly. Ten of the nations have an army maximum of 10 or more. 16 nations have a max of four or less. Five European nations do not get Increase, and four of them have no more than 3 armies. But these hit on a 3+ and are hit only on a 6.
Combat resembles standard Britannia except that attackers have one better chance of hitting than defenders. Highlands reduce chances by TWO. Europeans and Mongols (during the invasion) hit on a 3 and are only hit on a 6, and Mongols can overrun at 1:1 during the invasion instead of 2:1.
Increase of Population is the same as Britannia. There is no stacking limit as such, but overpopulation is applied by area, three for clear, two for highlands, after combat, any excess dying. This is the brake against huge stacks.
There are a few double moves (including a second Increase, however), and one triple move, the Mongol invasion.
Leaders are called "emperors" (which include Mao and Chiang), and there are only ten in the game. Unlike Brit, leaders cause the enemy to attack at -1, as well as the other usual leader effects on combat and movement.
One of the problems I've had in my China game is how to reflect the rapid fall of a major dynasty, possibly followed by fragmentation, possibly by another dynasty. This game uses a clever method for rebellions that is unfortunately rather random. I think it reflects history pretty well, but might be frustrating for players because of the dice rolling involved. A rebellion starts in one or more areas, determined by regional dice rolls (each of the areas of the main part of China is numbered for the rolls). Then adjacent areas roll to see if they join the rebellion, with the major dynasties having a "power factor" of 5, which means on any roll but a 6 the adjacent area joins the rebels!
This power factor is also the number of points scored if you wipe out a nation, and the number of armies you get as reinforcements. So this becomes very important, and is also an incentive for nations to wipe out other nations and so avoid the "Belgae survive all game in Lindsey" syndrome of Britannia. With 46 nations this might be needed. Clever.
There is no indication of the typical score for the game, so I can't judge how important the points for eliminating a nation may be compared with other ways of scoring. Scoring, by the way, is every third turn, except for such things as kill points (which are common). A scoresheet is provided.
Uprisings, not the same as rebellions, occur in empty provinces. But the rules don't appear to say what happens if there are no empty provinces.
The Three Kingdoms nations, successors to the Han, are all depicted, something I could not do in my smaller-scale games with relatively few nations. Yet the Mongol invasion is all in one turn, rather than in two turns! (The Mongols finished the Jin, in northern China, in 1234 seven years after Genghis' death; they conquered the southern Song 45 years later.) Insofar as I think it's important to show that the Mongols were not invincible or unstoppable, I'm puzzled by this choice.
Another oddity is the Great Wall. Any attack over the wall FROM EITHER SIDE gives an advantage to the defender. The Great Wall was a turf wall, like Hadrian's Wall in Britain, until the stone fortifications built in the 17th century. There are actually fortifications like this all over Europe. I have a map that shows the ones in Britain (Offa's Dyke is the obvious one after Hadrian's and the Antonine walls), and I've seen them marked southeast of the Caspian Sea! These walls were too long to be fully manned (even Hadrian's, far shorter than the Great Wall, only had a garrison at intervals). They were more a discouragement for cattle rustlers and the like: "how do I get the cattle back home with this wall in the way"? In China, the question was "how do I get my horse over this wall", even though armed men could get over fairly easily. Against a real invasion, the walls weren't worth much. Giving a +1 doesn't make sense historically (especially to those going from south to north!), but it's a way to emphasize one of the most famous man-made landmarks in the world.
I was puzzled by some of the nations included and not included. The Tungus, who I thought might be Tanguts of Xi Xia, turn out to be (Wikipedia) "Evenks", a nation I have never heard of but which is included in the game for 517 and on. They start with a very substantial five armies in Kazakhstan. I thought these might represent Celestial or Blue Turks. Well, no the Tujue (another name I didn't recognize, but which Wikipedia says is the name in Chinese sources) are in fact the GokTurks (another name Celestial/Blue Turks). They are in the game from 557, and are one army weaker than the puzzling Tungus, whereas in fact the GokTurks had a huge Central Asian empire that at one time dominated the area north of China.
The Nan Zhao (usually shown the old way on maps, as Nan Chao) are a Thai people who later migrated into Thailand. For some reason they start in Vietnam instead of Thailand or Myanmar. (By the way, why use this recently-adopted ethnic name instead of Burma or Pyu or another older name? I think using modern names for a sweep of history games is a poor choice.)
The Xiong-Nu are called Huns in the game, which I think is a disservice to players. Scholarly opinion has fluctuated on this question, beginning with the incorrect notion that there is considerable similarity in the two names (this is primarily in the transliterations). Similarities between Hun and Xiong-Nu culture can be found. There are no written records for these peoples, and we know virtually nothing about their languages. No one knows for sure, any more than we can know that the Rouran became the western Avars.
Finally, here's a very interesting note: playtesters are listed separately for the author and for the publisher. The author lists two [sic] playtesters, so do we conclude that he had three people including himself to playtest a four player game? The publisher lists seven playtesters. Perhaps they only listed the major players?
I'll be interested to hear how the game plays. After all, that's what counts in the end. Game balance is very difficult to achieve in these games, and harder here in the two smaller versions of the game, yet experienced players can provide the "invisible hand" that results in balance because they know what imbalances need to be rectified. I'd like a dime for every person who says Britannia is imbalanced, yet the current results database shows virtually perfect balance. You certainly cannot play these kinds of games once or twice and think you understand all the strategy or balance. Another reason why this is NOT a review.
It would be really interesting to hear comments from someone who has played both this game and Dragon & The Pearl, but the latter had a very limited distribution and is not, as far as I know, in print. (See http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1969.)
(Note for completists: there was also a very, very large Brit-like China game, Mandate of Heaven (120 BC-1949), being playtested by mail through a Yahoo Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/MandateH/?v=1&t=search&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=group&slk=17. Members only, and judging from the number of messages, the game is over.)
Lew Pulsipher
This is not a review because I have not, and likely will never, play this game (I only play my own unpublished games these days). You can't review a game without playing it several times. So these are impressions and comments.
As the box says, this is based on the Britannia system, old-school Britannia right down to half victory points and half increase points, and "Highlands" instead of "Difficult Terrain". As the designer of Britannia I'm especially interested in such games, and of course I hope they are well received, since I'm working on lord knows how many more of this type.
I'm especially interested because I've used my reduced-scale "gateway" system recently for Chinese history, and because I have one of the few copies extant of the original China Britannia, The Dragon & the Pearl (now out of print). I am by no means an expert on Chinese history, though I have in fact read something as obscure as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so I'll have some comments on the historical aspects of the game.
(By the way, it irks me when I see it phrased "Avalon Hill's Britannia", as it is here. As Avalon Hill rejected the game initially ("games of that era don't sell"), and H. P. Gibsons published it first (and provided the board and piece artwork to AH), and AH's main contribution to the game was to screw it up a bit, you can understand why I'm a little annoyed by the phrase. Why not "Lew Pulsipher's Britannia"? Meh.)
But most of my games now go toward simpler and shorter (1 hour 40 minutes for one played recently), not to larger, and this game is Larger. There are 46 countries and 24 turns (12 in each of the half-games). Time to play is listed on the box as 4-10 hours, which sounds about right from my experience (4 would be a quick half-game). It's the number of countries more than the turns that lengthen the game, which is why I try to keep the number of nations (as I prefer to call them) low in my shorter games, as well as down to 6 or 8 turns.
The game ambitiously covers Chinese history from 404 BC to 1949. I don't think the Britannia system suits the age of gunpowder--it was made to reflect gradual barbarian migrations--but only playing the game can reveal how well it works with European intervention and 20th century realities.
The unmounted 34" by 22" map strikes me as slightly garish. There are 46 areas, though 18 are "foreign" areas that only serve as jump-off points for invaders (for comparison, Britannia has 37 areas, more than this game's 28 in regular play). It is colored like a map in an atlas, with several different colors scattered about for areas (think of a map of US states), rather than like a map for a game, where each terrain is a different color. It's not a big deal, but seems a little odd, and contributes to a slightly cartoony or artificial look to the map as a whole.
Apparently the designer, who I'm told is a Chinese graduate of MIT, now a lawyer, decided to use only areas of modern China as in-play areas of the game. There are "foreign" areas along the borders, where invaders start, but they must leave those areas and get into China during their turn. This decision doesn't make sense historically. It means Taiwan and Tibet are in play, though for most of ancient and medieval times they were not part of China, but Vietnam and Korea are not in play, even though the former was held by the Chinese for many centuries, and the latter played a big part in the fall of the Sui and Tang--as it stands, no unit can enter Korea. Either all the adjacent areas should be "in play", or all (including Xinjiang, rarely occupied by the Chinese but part of China in the game) should not be. My solution in my game has been to use the heart of China (including Vietnam and Korea) and show a small part of Tibet and Xinjiang "in play". The other published China Britannia game, Dragon & the Pearl, shows the larger geographic area of this game, but all of it is "in play".
The 456 cardboard pieces are bigger than standard "wargame ghetto" half inch counters, perhaps two-thirds of an inch square. They are thinner than Britannia pieces, but fairly substantial. The wording on the counters is fairly hard to read, unfortunately, but there is a big colored banner with a number on most of the pieces that helps differentiate them. Everyone prefers larger pieces, but there are so many here that pieces the size of the new Britannia edition aren't practical.
The nation cards are very nice, five inches tall and three inches wide. If I were to use nation cards (I have a different system now), I'd like them to be this size and shape. They list appearance, movement order, sequence within the color, and point scoring. My wife observed that the thin font, over a light red background symbol, is difficult to read. There are 50 nation cards (four nations have two players controlling them, one after the other on the same turn), four special cards, and a sequence of play card.
The special cards need to be cut in half to provide two cards for each player. They are usable once per game. One card gives a +1 in one battle, the other causes a battle to be refought. These are like the cards I've used in Epic Britannia, Britannia Brevis (expansions that FFG is not interested in printing, at last report), and especially Frankia. They are tied to a color in Frankia, as they are in this game, whereas in the other two they're tied to a nation.
There are minor production glitches. Zhuge Liang, a famous general of the Three Kingdoms, is referred to thus in the historical booklet, but on the cards and in the rules he is incorrectly shown as Zhu Geliang. The Grand Canal, said to be red in the rules, is actually blue. And there's one place close to a 'four corners' where the map is clearly wrong in its connectivity compared with the rules (Henan-Jiungsu). I assume the rules prevail.
In general, the rules are easy to read (both in flow and in font size) and appear to be comprehensive, but that's always hard to tell until you actually play, isn't it?
A 15 page historical article (evidently from S&T magazine) by the game designer is a generally good introduction to Chinese history. I haven't figured out the author's assertion that the country has never been entirely ruled by foreign powers. I count both the Mongols and the Manchu as foreign powers, and if there was any part of the country not under their rule I can only think of Formosa (referred to by the modern name of Taiwan in the rules), though at one point it says at least one of these invaders controlled Formosa. Until fairly recent times I wouldn't even count this as part of China, and of course from 1895 until present it has been Japanese or Nationalist Chinese (Taiwanese), not part of mainland China despite the claims of the communists. There are no comments about the style or weapons of warfare, other than a sidebar about gunpowder. There are a few other inconsistencies in the historical notes. For example, the author says "the [Han] Chinese military was not powerful enough at that time to deal with the raiders because of the rebellion against the Qin dynasty and later due to government corruption", but from what I've read, the Han did more to crush steppe opposition than most empires, penetrating deep into the north on several occasions and reducing the powerful Xiong-Nu to tributaries for most of the Han period. The normal relationship was "Chinese bribe barbarians with tribute", but the Han reversed that.
The game uses the relatively new Pinyin translation of Chinese to English, rather than the older Wade-Giles. This is why "Peking" became "Beijing". I dislike Pinyin, because it isn't naturally pronounceable for an English person (I wonder if it was made for French?). Chiang Kai-shek becomes Jiang Jieshi in the new system! Tsao Tsao (which is pronounced with a ts sound) becomes Cao Cao in the new system. Bah. But I suppose use of Pinyin is inevitable. Modern names of provinces have been used in most cases.
The game is arranged very much like Britannia. There are very few starting armies for some nations, as few as two. It appears that there will be a lot of attacking, since many nations score for killing others, and since the attacker has the advantage. And a lot of nations may disappear quickly. Ten of the nations have an army maximum of 10 or more. 16 nations have a max of four or less. Five European nations do not get Increase, and four of them have no more than 3 armies. But these hit on a 3+ and are hit only on a 6.
Combat resembles standard Britannia except that attackers have one better chance of hitting than defenders. Highlands reduce chances by TWO. Europeans and Mongols (during the invasion) hit on a 3 and are only hit on a 6, and Mongols can overrun at 1:1 during the invasion instead of 2:1.
Increase of Population is the same as Britannia. There is no stacking limit as such, but overpopulation is applied by area, three for clear, two for highlands, after combat, any excess dying. This is the brake against huge stacks.
There are a few double moves (including a second Increase, however), and one triple move, the Mongol invasion.
Leaders are called "emperors" (which include Mao and Chiang), and there are only ten in the game. Unlike Brit, leaders cause the enemy to attack at -1, as well as the other usual leader effects on combat and movement.
One of the problems I've had in my China game is how to reflect the rapid fall of a major dynasty, possibly followed by fragmentation, possibly by another dynasty. This game uses a clever method for rebellions that is unfortunately rather random. I think it reflects history pretty well, but might be frustrating for players because of the dice rolling involved. A rebellion starts in one or more areas, determined by regional dice rolls (each of the areas of the main part of China is numbered for the rolls). Then adjacent areas roll to see if they join the rebellion, with the major dynasties having a "power factor" of 5, which means on any roll but a 6 the adjacent area joins the rebels!
This power factor is also the number of points scored if you wipe out a nation, and the number of armies you get as reinforcements. So this becomes very important, and is also an incentive for nations to wipe out other nations and so avoid the "Belgae survive all game in Lindsey" syndrome of Britannia. With 46 nations this might be needed. Clever.
There is no indication of the typical score for the game, so I can't judge how important the points for eliminating a nation may be compared with other ways of scoring. Scoring, by the way, is every third turn, except for such things as kill points (which are common). A scoresheet is provided.
Uprisings, not the same as rebellions, occur in empty provinces. But the rules don't appear to say what happens if there are no empty provinces.
The Three Kingdoms nations, successors to the Han, are all depicted, something I could not do in my smaller-scale games with relatively few nations. Yet the Mongol invasion is all in one turn, rather than in two turns! (The Mongols finished the Jin, in northern China, in 1234 seven years after Genghis' death; they conquered the southern Song 45 years later.) Insofar as I think it's important to show that the Mongols were not invincible or unstoppable, I'm puzzled by this choice.
Another oddity is the Great Wall. Any attack over the wall FROM EITHER SIDE gives an advantage to the defender. The Great Wall was a turf wall, like Hadrian's Wall in Britain, until the stone fortifications built in the 17th century. There are actually fortifications like this all over Europe. I have a map that shows the ones in Britain (Offa's Dyke is the obvious one after Hadrian's and the Antonine walls), and I've seen them marked southeast of the Caspian Sea! These walls were too long to be fully manned (even Hadrian's, far shorter than the Great Wall, only had a garrison at intervals). They were more a discouragement for cattle rustlers and the like: "how do I get the cattle back home with this wall in the way"? In China, the question was "how do I get my horse over this wall", even though armed men could get over fairly easily. Against a real invasion, the walls weren't worth much. Giving a +1 doesn't make sense historically (especially to those going from south to north!), but it's a way to emphasize one of the most famous man-made landmarks in the world.
I was puzzled by some of the nations included and not included. The Tungus, who I thought might be Tanguts of Xi Xia, turn out to be (Wikipedia) "Evenks", a nation I have never heard of but which is included in the game for 517 and on. They start with a very substantial five armies in Kazakhstan. I thought these might represent Celestial or Blue Turks. Well, no the Tujue (another name I didn't recognize, but which Wikipedia says is the name in Chinese sources) are in fact the GokTurks (another name Celestial/Blue Turks). They are in the game from 557, and are one army weaker than the puzzling Tungus, whereas in fact the GokTurks had a huge Central Asian empire that at one time dominated the area north of China.
The Nan Zhao (usually shown the old way on maps, as Nan Chao) are a Thai people who later migrated into Thailand. For some reason they start in Vietnam instead of Thailand or Myanmar. (By the way, why use this recently-adopted ethnic name instead of Burma or Pyu or another older name? I think using modern names for a sweep of history games is a poor choice.)
The Xiong-Nu are called Huns in the game, which I think is a disservice to players. Scholarly opinion has fluctuated on this question, beginning with the incorrect notion that there is considerable similarity in the two names (this is primarily in the transliterations). Similarities between Hun and Xiong-Nu culture can be found. There are no written records for these peoples, and we know virtually nothing about their languages. No one knows for sure, any more than we can know that the Rouran became the western Avars.
Finally, here's a very interesting note: playtesters are listed separately for the author and for the publisher. The author lists two [sic] playtesters, so do we conclude that he had three people including himself to playtest a four player game? The publisher lists seven playtesters. Perhaps they only listed the major players?
I'll be interested to hear how the game plays. After all, that's what counts in the end. Game balance is very difficult to achieve in these games, and harder here in the two smaller versions of the game, yet experienced players can provide the "invisible hand" that results in balance because they know what imbalances need to be rectified. I'd like a dime for every person who says Britannia is imbalanced, yet the current results database shows virtually perfect balance. You certainly cannot play these kinds of games once or twice and think you understand all the strategy or balance. Another reason why this is NOT a review.
It would be really interesting to hear comments from someone who has played both this game and Dragon & The Pearl, but the latter had a very limited distribution and is not, as far as I know, in print. (See http://www.spiritgames.co.uk/gamesin.php?UniqueNo=1969.)
(Note for completists: there was also a very, very large Brit-like China game, Mandate of Heaven (120 BC-1949), being playtested by mail through a Yahoo Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/MandateH/?v=1&t=search&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=group&slk=17. Members only, and judging from the number of messages, the game is over.)
Lew Pulsipher
Categories: Enthusiasts
Imperial - May I sell bonds?
Hi guys,
May I sell bonds whenever I want or must I keep them all through the game?
Thank you all,
Jose
May I sell bonds whenever I want or must I keep them all through the game?
Thank you all,
Jose
Categories: Enthusiasts
Le Havre - Preview for the game
(This is mostly an translation from the text written on http://spiellust.blogspot.com/2008/07/vorausblick-auf-le-havre-von-uwe.html by me. It is now available in german, polish (thx pomimo) and english. It's a longer text of my impressions I got from the prototype which is more detailed then the "first impression post" and probably of interest to you. My motivation here is to make this game known to the english community and maybe to earn some geekgold to get me my avatar. As for an english version of the game I don't know if there will be one, but Z-Man published Agricola in english so one could possible hope that they would do Le Havre, if successful, too? We'll see...)
I've had the pleasure to test the new game from Uwe (see http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/308732) as a prototype and I'm going to tell you about it in the following text.
I'm hoping that I can hold the finished game in my own two hands to the Essen exposition (Spiel'08) - we'll see if this is going to happen.
short overview about the game
You take the part of an business man in the homonymous french town. As usual it's the goal of the game to make as much profit as possible.
This can be achieved by cash and by buildings/ships which are worth money. Those can be bought or build throughout the game, where as the latter is to recommend for a gain in most cases.
There are eight ressources in the game which you can gain and improve. But you should also look for your harbor laborers which you should support because there is a harvest equal to the harvest in [GAMEID=31260] where you should support those men. In a case of need you have to get a credit but this one isn't as bad as the "Bettelkarten" in [GAMEID=31260] because there are good ways to get rid of those credits. (Uwe himself told us that he gets in debt in ~50% of his games)
Core of the game is the harbor. New ressources are brought constantly into the storages. There is a storage for each of the basic ressources and with every turn of a player there will be two ressources added to those storages.
Once a player is on turn he can then choose to avail hisself to get those ressources from a storage (all of the ressources in this storage go to the players property and the storage is therefor empty again) or to use a building in the harbor.
Only three buildings exist at the beginning of the game. Those three allow the players to build other buildings. Throughout the game the player or the city acquire buildings and activate new options to all of the players.
materials of the game
The prototype consists of three game boards which had the storages printed on them (at the bottom). Additionaly there are also printed on the boards:
- a bank (left) which holds the cash currently not owned by players.
- an action bar (round fields) which tells the players whose turn it is and which ressources to add to the storages
- a deck of cards ("Rundenkarten", right) from which the top card symbolizes the coming harvest. On this card is printed how much food you have to support to your laborers - this demand is increasing.
- ships to be acquired (left) which makes it easier for you to support your laborers because those ships deliver food to your workers every harvest. Additionaly you can sell goods with them later on and make some cash.
The ressources to be held in the storages (and their improved counterparts) are:
- fish. Fish is a choice to get some food and can be improved to bouillabaisse.
- lumber is primarily a building material for buildings and ships but can be used for energy supply too. As an energy supply it can be upgraded to charcoal but it loses its meaning as a building material then (Have you ever seen building made of charcoal? If so, ever seen an insurance for this one?!)
- clay is the main component for the walls of a building und therefor needed for buildings. Modern buildings are no mud huts of course and so it's possible to improve clay to bricks.
- iron is used mainly for buildings and advanced ships and can be improved to steel, the most expensive ressource in the game, later on.
- corn is also a possibility to get the stomaches of your workers filled. But in contrast to [GAMEID=31260] you can't eat corn raw, you have to bake a bread out of it first.
- cattle is the best way to get harbors lucious. There is nothing like a good steak to do the job ;) Because of this cattle can be "improved" to meat. Additionaly you win the luxury good coat from this progress.
- coal is the best energy support early in the game but a bit hard to get because there is no storage for this one. It's role as an energy supplier is advanced if you improve it to coke.
- coat have been described as luxury goods by me. I did this because you can't build something from it. You can only improve it to leather or sell it. Then again leather can only be sold so these two are only in the game to be a source of cash for the player.
I previously meantioned buildings and of course those are also in the game! They are three card piles at the top of the game board:
Which building lies in which pile is chosen randomly at the beginning of the game. The only garantee you'll get is that minor buildings are always on top of heavier (more end-game like) buildings because every building has got a number and the cards in the piles are sorted. Clever!
Additionaly there is a pile of 6 special buildings which come into play at special harvests (depending on player number). Those special buildings change from game to game and add a bit of chaos into the game (some special buildings more, some less). Like in [GAMEID=31260] there are plenty of special buildings so you can play a lot of games until you have to use exactly the same ones again. The people who know [GAMEID=31260] and it's few minor occupations might get a grasp of what I mean ;)
Buildings who are bought/build lay in the middle of the table (if they're owned by the city) or in front of the player who owns them. What's left to say about buildings? They belong to three (at least?) different categories:
1. mercantile buildings
2. craftsmen
3. industry
This is important because other buildings might apply to this (e.g. the bank gives for every building points - which means cash - at the end of game. I think it was for mercantile and industy buildings - but I'm not too sure about it).
Additionally some buildings have special symbols on them: a hammer or a fishing rod. The building "Baumarkt" for example has both. Those symbols also apply to some other cards. Mostly they give you some benefit or additional ressources
I hope at this point every interested reader now has a overview about the materials in the game so I can go along with the gameplay itself.
a player's turn in details
At the beginning of the game every player gets a bit of starting cash, a token (prototype: House) for the action bar and another token (prototype: wooden disc) as an indicator to show which building he has used last. I will reference to those tokens as "House" and "Disc" in the following but I don't know how they'll look like in the finished game.
Afterwards all "cards" for the action bar are shuffled and then placed on the fields on the board face down. The three starting buildings are placed in the middle of the table (yes, the city owns them now) and the starting player moves his house on the first field on the action bar and flips it over so it lays now face up (those fields are put face up at the first time one steps on them and remain so until the end of the game - thus the last field is revealed before the first harvest).
The player now add two ressources to the storages, depending on which are displayed on the card. Then he looks if there is a coin displayed on the field. If there is, all players with credits have to pay a franc as interest to the bank (independend of how much credit they have).
After all this is done, the player now has the choice what to do. He can buy and/or sell buildings and/or ships and has the choice to either to empty one storage or to do a building action.
In the prototype he could do this in any order he'd like, for example he could sell a building, buy one then empty a storage and sell something afterwards. It was not sure if this will be equal in the finished game.
After all this, his turn is over and the next player is starting his turn.
But now let's take a look at the two possible choices a player can make in detail:
- Emptying a storage is easily described. The player just takes all the ressources of one kind.
- The building action has a bit more rules to explain. This is because you can only use a building on which is no disc (not even ones own). This decreases ones choice which buildings can be used a bit. If a player uses a building the disc is removed from the previous building and placed on the one he used just now - thus blocking other players from using it. On some buildings there is a price to be paid for using it. A player using his own building doesn't have to pay it but using a foreign building means you have to pay that player (or the bank) this price.
Some buildings deliever ressource or does allow the player to improve their standard ressources - mostly with a cost of energy to be paid again.
Le Havre shines here for the variety of different buildings and how the influence each other. I think you should plan to play a few games to get a grip of how the buildings interact with each other (I think I took something like two plays for it)
The additional action of buying/selling buildings does hereby occur more rarely than you might guess from the description above because cash is really seldom in this game! This is because on the one side player tend to buy buildings as soon as they get cash because they can hope other players to visit those - thus paying to them. On the other side cash is always a compensation for food.
After a few turns occured this way, more precisely after every seven turns, a harvest occurs. Now every player has to support their harbor laborers and therefor to pay food. This amount of food is decreased for every ship the player has because those deliver food to the laborers. Excess in food is not paid back to the players - looks like those extra ration are welcome to the laborer.
Positive for the players about a harvest is that natural ressources such as corn and cattle grow again. Everyone who has at least one corn or two cattle can take an additional one (but not accumulativ - this means four cattle still only result in one additional cattle).
The card for the harvest is then flipped and with this a new ship enters the game. Those exist in four kinds: wooden, iron and steel ships and even luxury liner. Those four enter the game in exactly this order.
Iron and steel ships are somewhat advanced wooden ships which can transport more ressources and such deliver more food.
If you get those earlier you save more food from harvest. A bit compensating for this is that later ships are worth more points - in my view this doesnt compensate the use of an early ship but I doubt it should compensate for it completely.
Luxury liner are somewhat different. One could think that an expensive ship is able to transport even more ressources and food but this is not the case. Luxury liner are surely what is called pomposity because they can't transport anything at all!
Maybe this is because of all those of the leisured classes who doesn't seem to like to travel between chicks, cattle and corn. Who knows...
Luxury liner are also different in the way that later ships are worth less points (instead of more).
So now I've told you the basic principles of the game but not when it ends. It ends after everyone has done exactly twenty turns which leads to a different number of harvests depending in the player number.
Le Havre has a "short play version" up its sleave which has lesser turns and buildings and therefor should be more quick. I have to admit I haven't played the shorter version and have based my opinion solely on the full play.
personal opinion
Le Havre is similar to [GAMEID=31260] in the way that it's a game which wants to be discovered. I have to decide each turn a tactical choice. Do I take the tempting storage A which is bursting of ressources or should I better improve my ressources in the appropiate building - which is free at the moment - because I want to build this great building/ship a bit later?
You are always stucked between short aims and those which aim for something later on. You should be able to change your aims quickly but don't forget to plan on something for later!
In the progress of many tempting storages you can see some players to not buy a ship at all until late - this is something I believe is fatal to that player because he then spends many more worthy actions later on to get all that food needed for his laborers without doing something else whereas the other player score important points.
Here is a point where I see a problem with Le Havre and a special kind of gamer. These are gamers who tend to take their time to fully analyse one turn and run down the game for the other players. My suggestion here is: think short about your options and then try one of the better looking options and learn from experience not analyse. This way it has the side effect that the game is fun for you and the others as well.
If you take this into consideration the downtime between turns is really short because every choice you make is just a short turn of a gearwheel in the mechanism of the game to your favor. Those gearwheels sometimes sometimes get stuck in this progress as for example an important building is blocked for you - in this case you should better develop an alternative way to make money or better already have one up your sleeve.
Maybe one or the other has noticed it somewhere along the way: I am really a fan of Le Havre. Those snappish decisions you have to take and the short playtime really animate me to shout "Let's do it again!". The game itself varies because of the building orders and the special buildings.
In some way you create your own economical realm with tactics and strategies to follow. Talking about strategies, I really appriciate that there are long-time strategies which look poor at first but pay out later on. I spot new tricks every game - even if its just an alternative way if the nasty player before me blocked me my building again.
From my side this is a sure recommendation for the game!
( so far it would be :star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star: from me )
(I could mention here that this is the second game I really like from Uwe. But I could also mention that I don't like Bohnanza without some specific expansion and even told him a crushing opinion about another prototype of his. The reason I don't write about this one for example is I don't like to write long a text about a game I don't like and which is not in a state where you can expect it to be published in something near what I've played)
I've had the pleasure to test the new game from Uwe (see http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/308732) as a prototype and I'm going to tell you about it in the following text.
I'm hoping that I can hold the finished game in my own two hands to the Essen exposition (Spiel'08) - we'll see if this is going to happen.
short overview about the game
You take the part of an business man in the homonymous french town. As usual it's the goal of the game to make as much profit as possible.
This can be achieved by cash and by buildings/ships which are worth money. Those can be bought or build throughout the game, where as the latter is to recommend for a gain in most cases.
There are eight ressources in the game which you can gain and improve. But you should also look for your harbor laborers which you should support because there is a harvest equal to the harvest in [GAMEID=31260] where you should support those men. In a case of need you have to get a credit but this one isn't as bad as the "Bettelkarten" in [GAMEID=31260] because there are good ways to get rid of those credits. (Uwe himself told us that he gets in debt in ~50% of his games)
Core of the game is the harbor. New ressources are brought constantly into the storages. There is a storage for each of the basic ressources and with every turn of a player there will be two ressources added to those storages.
Once a player is on turn he can then choose to avail hisself to get those ressources from a storage (all of the ressources in this storage go to the players property and the storage is therefor empty again) or to use a building in the harbor.
Only three buildings exist at the beginning of the game. Those three allow the players to build other buildings. Throughout the game the player or the city acquire buildings and activate new options to all of the players.
materials of the game
The prototype consists of three game boards which had the storages printed on them (at the bottom). Additionaly there are also printed on the boards:
- a bank (left) which holds the cash currently not owned by players.
- an action bar (round fields) which tells the players whose turn it is and which ressources to add to the storages
- a deck of cards ("Rundenkarten", right) from which the top card symbolizes the coming harvest. On this card is printed how much food you have to support to your laborers - this demand is increasing.
- ships to be acquired (left) which makes it easier for you to support your laborers because those ships deliver food to your workers every harvest. Additionaly you can sell goods with them later on and make some cash.
The ressources to be held in the storages (and their improved counterparts) are:
- fish. Fish is a choice to get some food and can be improved to bouillabaisse.
- lumber is primarily a building material for buildings and ships but can be used for energy supply too. As an energy supply it can be upgraded to charcoal but it loses its meaning as a building material then (Have you ever seen building made of charcoal? If so, ever seen an insurance for this one?!)
- clay is the main component for the walls of a building und therefor needed for buildings. Modern buildings are no mud huts of course and so it's possible to improve clay to bricks.
- iron is used mainly for buildings and advanced ships and can be improved to steel, the most expensive ressource in the game, later on.
- corn is also a possibility to get the stomaches of your workers filled. But in contrast to [GAMEID=31260] you can't eat corn raw, you have to bake a bread out of it first.
- cattle is the best way to get harbors lucious. There is nothing like a good steak to do the job ;) Because of this cattle can be "improved" to meat. Additionaly you win the luxury good coat from this progress.
- coal is the best energy support early in the game but a bit hard to get because there is no storage for this one. It's role as an energy supplier is advanced if you improve it to coke.
- coat have been described as luxury goods by me. I did this because you can't build something from it. You can only improve it to leather or sell it. Then again leather can only be sold so these two are only in the game to be a source of cash for the player.
I previously meantioned buildings and of course those are also in the game! They are three card piles at the top of the game board:
Which building lies in which pile is chosen randomly at the beginning of the game. The only garantee you'll get is that minor buildings are always on top of heavier (more end-game like) buildings because every building has got a number and the cards in the piles are sorted. Clever!
Additionaly there is a pile of 6 special buildings which come into play at special harvests (depending on player number). Those special buildings change from game to game and add a bit of chaos into the game (some special buildings more, some less). Like in [GAMEID=31260] there are plenty of special buildings so you can play a lot of games until you have to use exactly the same ones again. The people who know [GAMEID=31260] and it's few minor occupations might get a grasp of what I mean ;)
Buildings who are bought/build lay in the middle of the table (if they're owned by the city) or in front of the player who owns them. What's left to say about buildings? They belong to three (at least?) different categories:
1. mercantile buildings
2. craftsmen
3. industry
This is important because other buildings might apply to this (e.g. the bank gives for every building points - which means cash - at the end of game. I think it was for mercantile and industy buildings - but I'm not too sure about it).
Additionally some buildings have special symbols on them: a hammer or a fishing rod. The building "Baumarkt" for example has both. Those symbols also apply to some other cards. Mostly they give you some benefit or additional ressources
I hope at this point every interested reader now has a overview about the materials in the game so I can go along with the gameplay itself.
a player's turn in details
At the beginning of the game every player gets a bit of starting cash, a token (prototype: House) for the action bar and another token (prototype: wooden disc) as an indicator to show which building he has used last. I will reference to those tokens as "House" and "Disc" in the following but I don't know how they'll look like in the finished game.
Afterwards all "cards" for the action bar are shuffled and then placed on the fields on the board face down. The three starting buildings are placed in the middle of the table (yes, the city owns them now) and the starting player moves his house on the first field on the action bar and flips it over so it lays now face up (those fields are put face up at the first time one steps on them and remain so until the end of the game - thus the last field is revealed before the first harvest).
The player now add two ressources to the storages, depending on which are displayed on the card. Then he looks if there is a coin displayed on the field. If there is, all players with credits have to pay a franc as interest to the bank (independend of how much credit they have).
After all this is done, the player now has the choice what to do. He can buy and/or sell buildings and/or ships and has the choice to either to empty one storage or to do a building action.
In the prototype he could do this in any order he'd like, for example he could sell a building, buy one then empty a storage and sell something afterwards. It was not sure if this will be equal in the finished game.
After all this, his turn is over and the next player is starting his turn.
But now let's take a look at the two possible choices a player can make in detail:
- Emptying a storage is easily described. The player just takes all the ressources of one kind.
- The building action has a bit more rules to explain. This is because you can only use a building on which is no disc (not even ones own). This decreases ones choice which buildings can be used a bit. If a player uses a building the disc is removed from the previous building and placed on the one he used just now - thus blocking other players from using it. On some buildings there is a price to be paid for using it. A player using his own building doesn't have to pay it but using a foreign building means you have to pay that player (or the bank) this price.
Some buildings deliever ressource or does allow the player to improve their standard ressources - mostly with a cost of energy to be paid again.
Le Havre shines here for the variety of different buildings and how the influence each other. I think you should plan to play a few games to get a grip of how the buildings interact with each other (I think I took something like two plays for it)
The additional action of buying/selling buildings does hereby occur more rarely than you might guess from the description above because cash is really seldom in this game! This is because on the one side player tend to buy buildings as soon as they get cash because they can hope other players to visit those - thus paying to them. On the other side cash is always a compensation for food.
After a few turns occured this way, more precisely after every seven turns, a harvest occurs. Now every player has to support their harbor laborers and therefor to pay food. This amount of food is decreased for every ship the player has because those deliver food to the laborers. Excess in food is not paid back to the players - looks like those extra ration are welcome to the laborer.
Positive for the players about a harvest is that natural ressources such as corn and cattle grow again. Everyone who has at least one corn or two cattle can take an additional one (but not accumulativ - this means four cattle still only result in one additional cattle).
The card for the harvest is then flipped and with this a new ship enters the game. Those exist in four kinds: wooden, iron and steel ships and even luxury liner. Those four enter the game in exactly this order.
Iron and steel ships are somewhat advanced wooden ships which can transport more ressources and such deliver more food.
If you get those earlier you save more food from harvest. A bit compensating for this is that later ships are worth more points - in my view this doesnt compensate the use of an early ship but I doubt it should compensate for it completely.
Luxury liner are somewhat different. One could think that an expensive ship is able to transport even more ressources and food but this is not the case. Luxury liner are surely what is called pomposity because they can't transport anything at all!
Maybe this is because of all those of the leisured classes who doesn't seem to like to travel between chicks, cattle and corn. Who knows...
Luxury liner are also different in the way that later ships are worth less points (instead of more).
So now I've told you the basic principles of the game but not when it ends. It ends after everyone has done exactly twenty turns which leads to a different number of harvests depending in the player number.
Le Havre has a "short play version" up its sleave which has lesser turns and buildings and therefor should be more quick. I have to admit I haven't played the shorter version and have based my opinion solely on the full play.
personal opinion
Le Havre is similar to [GAMEID=31260] in the way that it's a game which wants to be discovered. I have to decide each turn a tactical choice. Do I take the tempting storage A which is bursting of ressources or should I better improve my ressources in the appropiate building - which is free at the moment - because I want to build this great building/ship a bit later?
You are always stucked between short aims and those which aim for something later on. You should be able to change your aims quickly but don't forget to plan on something for later!
In the progress of many tempting storages you can see some players to not buy a ship at all until late - this is something I believe is fatal to that player because he then spends many more worthy actions later on to get all that food needed for his laborers without doing something else whereas the other player score important points.
Here is a point where I see a problem with Le Havre and a special kind of gamer. These are gamers who tend to take their time to fully analyse one turn and run down the game for the other players. My suggestion here is: think short about your options and then try one of the better looking options and learn from experience not analyse. This way it has the side effect that the game is fun for you and the others as well.
If you take this into consideration the downtime between turns is really short because every choice you make is just a short turn of a gearwheel in the mechanism of the game to your favor. Those gearwheels sometimes sometimes get stuck in this progress as for example an important building is blocked for you - in this case you should better develop an alternative way to make money or better already have one up your sleeve.
Maybe one or the other has noticed it somewhere along the way: I am really a fan of Le Havre. Those snappish decisions you have to take and the short playtime really animate me to shout "Let's do it again!". The game itself varies because of the building orders and the special buildings.
In some way you create your own economical realm with tactics and strategies to follow. Talking about strategies, I really appriciate that there are long-time strategies which look poor at first but pay out later on. I spot new tricks every game - even if its just an alternative way if the nasty player before me blocked me my building again.
From my side this is a sure recommendation for the game!
( so far it would be :star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star::star: from me )
(I could mention here that this is the second game I really like from Uwe. But I could also mention that I don't like Bohnanza without some specific expansion and even told him a crushing opinion about another prototype of his. The reason I don't write about this one for example is I don't like to write long a text about a game I don't like and which is not in a state where you can expect it to be published in something near what I've played)
Categories: Enthusiasts
Ys - 2 player variant tweak
I've been playing a lot of Ys 2 player lately and it works fairly well. In the rules under the 2 player variant it says to use a neutral player with a value of 0, 1, 2 and 4. It goes on to say that you can increase this with skill level of the players. I've found a very effective set of numbers is 1, 2, 2, 4.
I always play with the "King's Favor" variant when playing 3 or 4 players but the rules state you don't with 2 players and I miss that but see it as understandable. However with the above distribution I've found you can effectively keep this variant in the game as well.
Take the rest of the neutral player's brokers and put them face down next to the board. At the end of each turn randomly select 1 of the neutral player's unused brokers and place it in the court. This creates a very nice mix with 0, 1, 3 as possibilities of brokers going over there. It's been interesting so far.
I always play with the "King's Favor" variant when playing 3 or 4 players but the rules state you don't with 2 players and I miss that but see it as understandable. However with the above distribution I've found you can effectively keep this variant in the game as well.
Take the rest of the neutral player's brokers and put them face down next to the board. At the end of each turn randomly select 1 of the neutral player's unused brokers and place it in the court. This creates a very nice mix with 0, 1, 3 as possibilities of brokers going over there. It's been interesting so far.
Categories: Enthusiasts
Arkham Horror - Two Questions and one recommendation for newer players.
Question #1. Sister Mary is at the Historical Society and the encounter says to go to the woods. If there's a monster and an open gate at woods. Does she encounter the monster? Does she get sucked through the gate? If she gets sucked through the gate on that turn, I would think she would have an outer world encounter.
- I played it that Sister Mary does not encounter the monster and she did get sucked through the gate and had an out world encounter on that turn.
Question #2. Sister Mary helps out with some science experiment at the University that blows up 3 open gates. Pete has traveled through one of the gates that Sister Mary blew up. Where does Pete come back to Arkham at?
Recommendation for people with no short term memory like myself: Take an index card and write down the following information before starting the game:
Number of Players =
Seal a gate = 5 Clue Tokens
Maximum # of Monsters = # player + 3
Maximum # of Outside Monsters = page 18
Too Many Open Gates = page 19
6 Endler Signs
- I played it that Sister Mary does not encounter the monster and she did get sucked through the gate and had an out world encounter on that turn.
Question #2. Sister Mary helps out with some science experiment at the University that blows up 3 open gates. Pete has traveled through one of the gates that Sister Mary blew up. Where does Pete come back to Arkham at?
Recommendation for people with no short term memory like myself: Take an index card and write down the following information before starting the game:
Number of Players =
Seal a gate = 5 Clue Tokens
Maximum # of Monsters = # player + 3
Maximum # of Outside Monsters = page 18
Too Many Open Gates = page 19
6 Endler Signs
Categories: Enthusiasts
Froggy Boogie - The Random Gamer at the Cottage Next Door: Game #10 Froggy Boogie
Mr. HomoLudens: Well, I just spent a week at a cottage north of Toronto and played some games. Oddly enough, BGG user Ender Wiggins (EndersGame) and his family were at the cottage next door, so we decided to let him and wife play too. Sometimes we even let one or two of his kids play. Yes, the man has kids, although they don't often appear in his many, many photos. We did not let him take any pictures of our games, because the man's made enough GG already.
Mr. Ender: There's nothing like being on vacation and discovering that the random person in the cottage next door is a fellow gamer. Froggy Boogie was Game #10 in the many game sessions (see [url=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/327734]the first here) that resulted from this amazing discovery.
Mr. HomoLudens: This game got played a bunch of times by the little ones. Every adult who sees the game says it's "soooo cute!" and I couldn't agree more.
Mr. Ender: I didn't get personally the opportunity to boogie with the frogs (definite Elvis inspiration here), because I was busy training fleas at the time (details to follow later). Young children do seem to enjoy this one, and it certainly garnered lots of attention from adults too (this one was played over lunch at church, on the Sunday), not surprising given the attractive components.
Mr. HomoLudens: It's really just a basic memory game, but I guess it's all in the packaging. One nice thing about the game is that you can adjust the length of play by taking out one or more of the lily pads. Certainly adults might find the game get a bit tedious after a while.
Mr. Ender: One lingering and slightly troubling thought: I'm not sure what to make of the fact that Mr. HomoLudens encourages children to boogie in a church building. But I imagine that he does so only with the full approval and endorsement of his wife, so perhaps it is to her that I should address this question. Maybe one of them was a frog prince or princess in a former life? Although personally I do think reincarnation is a load of phooey. To his credit, it has to be admitted that it takes quite some gumption and it's quite an achievement to be conscripting children of respectable church going folk and teaching them how to boogie with frogs at a strange church.
Mr. HomoLudens: Another kid's game that was played was [gameid=23890], which is pretty good too.
Mr. Ender: As well as [gameid=23890], the other childrens game that saw a few plays was [gameid=17329]. Aside from the deeper and more heavy games in his closet (e.g. War of the Ring), Mr. HomoLudens apparently has several excellent children's games on his shelves. Perhaps this is because he has children, although this hypothesis would need much more research to be confirmed. Currently the number of children's games Mr. HomoLudens owns exceeds the number of children he has. But a look at the glowing and pregnant Mrs. HomoLudens suggests that they are working to remedy this situation (perhaps they're expecting triplets, in which case expect to see a GeekList soliciting suggestions for good 8 player games!).
Mr. Ender: There's nothing like being on vacation and discovering that the random person in the cottage next door is a fellow gamer. Froggy Boogie was Game #10 in the many game sessions (see [url=http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/327734]the first here) that resulted from this amazing discovery.
Mr. HomoLudens: This game got played a bunch of times by the little ones. Every adult who sees the game says it's "soooo cute!" and I couldn't agree more.
Mr. Ender: I didn't get personally the opportunity to boogie with the frogs (definite Elvis inspiration here), because I was busy training fleas at the time (details to follow later). Young children do seem to enjoy this one, and it certainly garnered lots of attention from adults too (this one was played over lunch at church, on the Sunday), not surprising given the attractive components.
Mr. HomoLudens: It's really just a basic memory game, but I guess it's all in the packaging. One nice thing about the game is that you can adjust the length of play by taking out one or more of the lily pads. Certainly adults might find the game get a bit tedious after a while.
Mr. Ender: One lingering and slightly troubling thought: I'm not sure what to make of the fact that Mr. HomoLudens encourages children to boogie in a church building. But I imagine that he does so only with the full approval and endorsement of his wife, so perhaps it is to her that I should address this question. Maybe one of them was a frog prince or princess in a former life? Although personally I do think reincarnation is a load of phooey. To his credit, it has to be admitted that it takes quite some gumption and it's quite an achievement to be conscripting children of respectable church going folk and teaching them how to boogie with frogs at a strange church.
Mr. HomoLudens: Another kid's game that was played was [gameid=23890], which is pretty good too.
Mr. Ender: As well as [gameid=23890], the other childrens game that saw a few plays was [gameid=17329]. Aside from the deeper and more heavy games in his closet (e.g. War of the Ring), Mr. HomoLudens apparently has several excellent children's games on his shelves. Perhaps this is because he has children, although this hypothesis would need much more research to be confirmed. Currently the number of children's games Mr. HomoLudens owns exceeds the number of children he has. But a look at the glowing and pregnant Mrs. HomoLudens suggests that they are working to remedy this situation (perhaps they're expecting triplets, in which case expect to see a GeekList soliciting suggestions for good 8 player games!).
Categories: Enthusiasts
Zombie in my Pocket - Hot Zombie Love - ZimP Microbadge
[GAMEID=33468]'s good friend [url=http://boardgamegeek.com/user/tiggers]tiggers was kind enough to make a microbadge for the game. The perfect way to show others that you love wandering around in a poorly designed house (I mean, seriously, how many times have you seen the bathroom -right- off the foyer?), and smashing zombies.
You can check it out under my avatar, and you can buy it [url=http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/microbadge/5534]here.
How freakin' cool is that?
Buy one, or a bat's gonna poop in your eye (for -1 health).
You can check it out under my avatar, and you can buy it [url=http://boardgamegeek.com/browse/microbadge/5534]here.
How freakin' cool is that?
Buy one, or a bat's gonna poop in your eye (for -1 health).
Categories: Enthusiasts
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