A Matter of Taste

Some people like a fine red wine (we'll call them 'wrong uns'), some prefer a warm, ruby ale ('ladies and gentlemen of taste and distinction'). Like everything in life, games are a matter of taste.

Some people like wargames with a rulebook as thick as a grown man's waist, some people like miniature games where the painting is as much part of the game as the combat. Some people like 'Ameritrash' games where the fun comes from beating your opponents to pulp through the medium of your own bodyweight in dice and some people (we'll call them LaGoTaD) like euro-games, where pushing an array of coloured cubes around more efficiently than your opponents is considered a good time.

As a designer, I tend to design games that are the sorts of games I like to play: fairly short euro-games with an occasional dice-fest thrown in for good measure. I thought it might be interesting to discuss my favourite games, what about them I like and how that affects my design.

My Favourite Games

• Carcassonne:
  Carcassonne was one of my first euro-games and is still one of my favourites. It's fairly quick (~30 mins), the card draw brings randomness so each game is slightly different and there is direct player interaction through trapping meeples and stealing cities and farms from your opponents. A good euro-game sells tens of thousands of copies. Carcassonne has sold millions. It's easy to see why. Weaknesses? Not much, though I suppose there aren't many strategies available.
• Race for the Galaxy:
  With a cool space theme and quick play time, Race has been a staple of my gaming for years. It's fairly complex to learn (thanks to the pictography) and there's not a huge amount of interaction between players, but there are many strategies available and the simultaneous player actions mean you can play pretty quickly if you know what you're doing.
  
• 7 Wonders:
  Another quick game with simultaneous player actions. There's a little trading between players, and the end of age scraps but it's mostly do you own thing again. Several strategies available, but you have to play the cards you're dealt so there's some randomness there and some interaction as you choose which cards to pass on.
  
• Thunderstone:
  I was really not excited by Dominion, I found it bland and featureless, but Thunderstone really grabbed me because of the theme and the tighter theme integration. And that's despite a significantly longer play-time. Thunderstone is the only deck-building game in my top five, and doesn't have any simultaneity, which probably contributes to the longer play time. As with many deck-building games, the selection of types of cards has a big effect on the game - it can make it great or painful.
  
• Puerto Rico:
  A classic euro-game. Very little downtime between turns (as everybody gets to act on everyone's turn) and an interesting role-selection mechanism. The longer play time means this doesn't get to the table as often as the others.
  

My Most Played Games (excluding ones I published!)

The games I've played the most is a similar list, but with a couple of notable differences:

1. Magic: The Gathering is an incredibly addictive card game. Again it has fairly quick game play (~20 mins) and a wealth of strategies (mainly because the manufacturer bring out new cards continuously with new rules). It's got a fun theme and the game is all about direct player interaction - to win you have to crush all your opponents into a fine dust.
2. Carcassonne
3. Race for the Galaxy
4. 7 Wonders
5. Hive: A very simple (in terms of rules) but engaging 2-player strategy game that feels a little like very quick chess. Terry and I could play this in around 10 minutes, so it was a common filler while waiting for others to arrive at games night when I lived down south.

As you can see there's a few things that tie my lists together: fast play time, multiple paths to victory and some player interaction. How does the current early incarnation of Codename: Vacuum measure up?

Codename: Vacuum

Codename: Vacuum is a deck building card game (similar to Thunderstone) with a tableau element (similar to Race for the Galaxy) and a space theme (again, RftG. I'm aiming to get the play time down to around 30-45 mins for players who know the rules, which has similarities with most of the games on my lists but without simultaneous player actions that might be tricky. So far no-one but me has played it more than once, so every game is a learning game and it's hard to tell how well I'm getting on towards that target. Vacuum has 11 scoring conditions available per game, of which only 1 per player plus 1 are scored in any game. The players choose which conditions will score - so this can vary from game to game (and in fact there are fifteen in total of which only ten are available in any game). So once I've balanced the scoring conditions, multiple paths to victory should be assured. Finally, there is direct player interaction (if you so choose), you can waltz over to your opponent's territories with an armada and capture them. Player interaction often slows things down though as one player stops to think how to respond to an unexpected assault from an opponent. I need to balance my desire for player interaction with my desire for short play time. On that note, I'm trying to think of ways to make the trade actions more interactive between players, but all my ideas so far would slow things down a lot :(.

It's getting to the table a lot now, at least two or three times a week, so hopefully it'll really start to take shape over the next couple of months.

Session Report: Headingley Games Club

On Thursday Dave and I went to Hugo's games club in Leeds. I was going with the intention of trying to play Border Reivers with a bunch of people and hopefully sell some, like I had done in London the week before.

It took us about an hour to get there (it's on the 'wrong' side of Leeds), and then it took us another fifteen minutes to find the place (my trusty sense of direction failed me after we parked the car) - fortunately, Dave used his army skills and managed to navigate by the stars or something and we eventually found the place.

We walked into the venue and found a large room full of people all playing Games Workshop games such as Warhammer 40K, Blood Bowl and Warhammer Ancient Battles. I never knew they'd done an ancients game - shows how out of the loop I am. Anyway, apart from a blast from the past this wasn't what I was looking for - we were directed upstairs. Upstairs was more like it, there were eight people playing board games, including Canal Mania which I've been meaning to play for ages. There was also a back room where a small bunch of people were playing Magic: The Gathering, which was a break from their normal game of roleplay wrestling. Urrrgghh. The less said about that disturbing idea the better.

Sadly for my playing Border Reivers idea, I recognised a lot of the people from Beyond Monopoly and Psychocon. So we volunteered to join in with a game of Puerto Rico that would be starting in around half an hour. With half an hour to kill, Dave and I set up a quick 2-player game of Border Reivers. This would be Dave's fourth game, so I was expecting some stiff competition now that he had got the hang of it.

It was a good game, I can't remember an awful lot about it, I got to the mine and held it for most of the game (though Dave did Ambush me there, killing my mine workers), and there wasn't much action on the fortified border. I managed to sneak around the fortified border, exposed Dave's soft underbelly, but he blocked me off to stop me taking too much advantage. Dave built all three of his cities, while I only got two built. In the end I won with an economic victory, 44 to 14.

Then we joined in with five others for a game of Puerto Rico. This was Dave's first game of the highest rated game on BoardGameGeek so we didn't play with the expansion (which I had never seen before). I chose a shipping to the old world strategy, while Nigel and Andrew (I think that was his name) went for cash, and through that buildings. I spent most of the game skint, which hurt later on as I was unable to build anything useful. In the end the three guys from the club whooped us - final scores: Nigel 49, Andrew 46, Corran 45, me 42 and Dave 36. Not a bad score for Dave in his first game against four seasoned players.

I'm not sure I'd go there again, it's a long way for a couple of hours of gaming, we spent almost as much time in the car as we did at the club.

In other news, check out this year's April Fools Day effort on BoardGameGeek. After last year's effort (the 'admin' screen) I didn't want to miss it this year, and Aldie didn't disappoint. Sadly the Crochet tab doesn't work, so I guess I'm going to have to shelve my plans for a nice gaming shawl.

Session Report: Paul's Games Night

Last night I went round to Paul's again for his weekly games night. He'd asked me to bring Puerto Rico this week, which I did, but I got there quite late, so I wasn't sure if we'd have time.

When I finally arrived I realised the others had waited for me! Bless them. With Vin still to come, we set up a quick game of Guillotine for the four of us: Andy, Greg, Paul and I. Andy got off to a great start (I think his first turn put him on three times as many points as the rest of us, thanks to a Double Feature card), and the rest of us spent the game trying to scupper him. Andy was delighted (he doesn't usually win), and even though I wasn't winning (or even coming close until fairly near the end), I really enjoyed this one again. It's funny, it's fast and it seats loads - great stuff. Final scores: Andy 24, me 19, Greg 18 and Paul 14.

During Guillotine, Vin arrived, so as soon as that was over we set up Puerto Rico, for a 5-player with all of us.

I love Puerto Rico, but I'm not very good at it. I recently looked at an online strategy guide for the first time, and with that in mind I tried a different strategy during this game, eschewing quarries, and instead trying to get loads of money together with an idea of building factories/wharves/big buildings. I met some of those goals (Factory), but Greg had managed to fill up his island far quicker than I was expecting, so I built the Residence big building in the final turn - but didn't even get a chance to get it occupied, hence missing out on most of the points. Greg's speedy finish caught a few of us out - so he won handsomely: Greg 35, Paul, 30, me 30, Vin 25, Andy 23.

Puerto Rico went surprisingly fast with a bunch of players who all knew what they were doing, so we had time at the end for another quick filler. We chose Diamant.

Lisa joined us for this one, and while we were playing I was bearing in mind Hugo's criticisms of Diamant. If you play the game purely as a press-your-luck game, only considering the likelihood of a second disaster coming out then I think the game would be a bit dull, but the bit I enjoy is trying to second-guess my opponents, and take the lion's share of the remaining gems on the way out. Is this a winning strategy? Nope. I don't think I've ever won, but every time I escape on my own and claim a few gems from the cards I get a little hit of 'I win', from choosing the right time to leave so that I don't have to share - and I still enjoy it. Paul didn't have any gems after the first four mines, but he still managed to beat me, so that'll give you an idea of just how bad a strategy it is :-) Final scores: Vin 28, Lisa 14, Paul 11, me 9, Greg 8, Andy 5.

Yet another great evening of games and top company, very entertaining. Highlights would have to be Greg's expletive outbursts and his apoplexy when I quoted from the Planetary graphic novel at him :-) Sadly, that's my last one before Christmas, so I've got four weeks of cold turkey.