Merry Christmas!

Just a brief one this week. I'm now down in Bristol for the Christmas break with the in-laws and the entirety of my family. I'll be taking it easy for the week, just having some nice chilled out time with The Wife and The Daughter before my enforced exile begins when I drive home on my own on Sunday.

I've not brought any prototypes with me, just a few games: Carcassonne (which has already seen some action last night), 7 Wonders (popular with the in-laws), X-Wing Minis (popular with the brother-in-law) and Love Letter and Hanabi, which are pretty easy sells. Gaming is more popular with the in-laws than my family, though my sister has asked for Carcassonne for Christmas (yay!).

Of course, I've asked for a couple more games for Christmas, so if Santa has judged me to have been nice then I might be on the receiving end of Coup and Galaxy Trucker :)

Anyway, I hope that those of you who celebrate Christmas have a wonderful holiday full of festive family gaming and I hope you are equally blessed by an overgenerous Santa. You'll have to let me know what he gave you!

The (Erroneous?) Need for Speed

Some of my favourite games are quick ones. I've played well over 200 games of Carcassonne & Magic: The Gathering, over 100 games of Race for the Galaxy and getting on for a hundred games of 7 Wonders. What do they have in common apart from being great games? Speed. They can be played quickly enough that you could play several games back-to-back. And in the days before The Daughter, The Wife and I would frequently play these games over and over.

One of my stated goals for Codename: Vacuum is to make it quick to play, so that if I ever get it to the point where it's a great game, people will be inclined to play it over and over. Over the last few months, even playing with Dave and Chief (who've both played over 40 games of Vacuum) the play time was around 25 minutes per player (50 minutes for a two-player game, 1:15 for a three-player game). Not only did I struggle to juggle my hours at work to fit these games in, in my mind this was failing to hit the sweet spot. I can play a two-player game of Race for the Galaxy in 20 minutes. I can play a three-player game of 7 Wonders in less than half an hour - these games benefit from simultaneous player actions, and as a result can be very fast with experienced players who don't suffer from analysis paralysis. That is hitting the sweet spot in my personal opinion. So over the last couple of months I've been trying to tweak the rules to Vacuum to pep it up a bit and decrease the play time.

The August version of Vacuum was finished in time for the inaugural Newcastle Playtest session at the beginning of the month, and since then I've been crafting the re-written rules ready to give my friend Paul in York an updated version of Vacuum, replacing the version I gave him back in April. Paul was up in Newcastle a few weeks ago to visit us and meet The Daughter, and during the visit I asked about their experiences with Vacuum. Apparently it had been played a number of times, but one of the major criticisms was that at around 45 minutes per player (!) it felt too long for what it was. No doubt! Clearly it needs knocking up a notch.

Well, we're in York for a few days this week for The Wife's work, so we're staying with Paul and his family, experiencing the wonders of his Games Night (which I used to attend twice a week regularly back when we lived in York). I've done the new rules, and though I didn't have time to make a new copy of the game, I can give him my copy, complete with new rulebook, and then I'll make myself a replacement on my return (once the pressure's off!).

I've now played the August version three times, once with two new players at the Playtest meetup (the impromptu second one, I missed the inaugural one), once with Dave a couple of weeks ago and once with Chief last week. The first of those games (with the simple rules) lasted about 45 minutes - 15 minutes per player. The second lasted 34 (17 minutes per player) and the third only 20 minutes (10 minutes per player). Awesome!

Or is it?

After I played with Dave a couple of weeks ago he expressed concern that the game was too short now. It felt less epic to him and he missed the chance to fully explore his chosen strategy (which is inevitably raining plasma doom on my inocuous backward empire with a wave upon wave of overly aggressive Armadas). His fear was the shorter game would strip several strategies of their usefulness, since you wouldn't have time in the game to get them started before the game's swift conclusion.

This week I played with Chief. He won. For the first time in approximately forty games. Dave and I were beginning to wonder if it would ever happen. Was he intentionally taking it easy on us? Did he have a phobia of winning games? (what's that even called?) Had he been lobotomised as a child, and had the winning parts of his brain removed? It turns out none of these. He won. He beat me at a game I'd designed. And he did it in 20 minutes. Schooled.

Dave's thoughts on his epic victory, after finally crushing the designer at his own game? He felt the game was too short!

I'd really enjoyed the game. We'd been flying through it. Each player's turn regularly taking a handful of seconds. Almost no downtime. It felt like playing Race for the Galaxy against The Wife or 7 Wonders with Terry and Andrew. Blisteringly fast. On top of that, Chief had chosen the Exploration strategy (which can be quite slow) and had got as far as Proxima Centauri, which is quite an achievement as it's particularly hard to reach and requires a real concerted effort to get there. "Ha!", I thought, "See Dave, even in twenty minutes, Chief managed to reach Proxima, the shorter game isn't too short."

Then Chief pissed on my chips and agreed with Dave that the game was too short. He enjoys the chance to explore a wealth of strategies and diversify your deck - possible in the longer game, but not in the new shorter version.

So here's a question. I've reduced the game length to my 'ideal' length. I enjoyed the feel of it the three times I've played it. But the two guys who've played it more than anyone else, who play it week in, week out at work, both don't like the changes. Do I cave in and extend the game again, to increase the epic feel, and the wealth of strategies you can explore in a single game? Or do I stick to my guns and ride with the shorter game, possibly admitting that the only two people who will regularly play the game with me might not be the target audience for the game?

I'm going to have to play the shorter rules a few more times, with Dave and Chief if they're up for it to see if they come round to the shorter game, but also with more people, to see if Dave and Chief are in the majority or the minority...

In other news, the second Newcastle Playtest Meetup is this Tuesday in The Bridge Hotel again. I'll not be there, but don't let that put you off!

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: Games With Dave

Dave came round on Tuesday night for another night of games. This time we went back to Space Hulk, which we started playing when we started doing these mid-week games nights, but we hadn't played for a few weeks.

I'd had the lion's share of the Space Hulk wins so far, but Dave was keen to visit me with pain and retribution. So we started the fourth campaign mission, with Dave playing the Space Marines first. The map for this one is symmetrical, with the marines try to get from the bottom of the map to two rooms near the top (one on each side) and hit them with a flamer. I decided to harry Dave from all sides - so I used all the Genestealer entry points, those in front, to the sides and behind. My reinforcements came in dribs and drabs from all sides and kept Dave's Terminators under attack, but I'd chosen the wrong strategy, and as I killed of the last non-flamer marines, Dave's two remaining flamer marines simultaneously hit the two targets winning him the first round.

I chose a conservative strategy for the second round, with me playing the Space Marines, and set off slowly making for one of the target rooms. Dave however had a brainwave, he only needed to keep me from one of the targets - so he concentrated his waves upon waves of Genestealers on the other side. He managed to kill one of my flamer marines just before I hit the first target, but by then he had such a wall of Genestealers I couldn't fight my way through, and eventually my second flamer marine bought the farm. Damn. 2-0 to Dave. Nice work.

It wasn't too late so we decided to slip in a quick game of Carcassonne before we called it a night. This time we used the river expansion, which Dave had never used before. I got off to a decent start, claiming a decent chunk of real estate for one of my farmers, and as the game went on not even Dave's Monastery Alley was able to get him enough points to beat me. Final scores: me 119, Dave 85.

At least I won something :-) Another great night of games. At the end Dave offered to pop along to Leeds with me tonight, and we agreed to go to the pub for a couple of pints on Sunday. I promised to make the new Jorvik prototype to take along with me - trying out the that idea Dave had ages ago.

In other news it's been a bit of a rollercoaster week for me on the games side. I've been (and am continuing to be) very busy making games, Border Reivers is rolling off the presses at a phenominal rate as I try to get as much done as possible while The Wife is away. I've now got six finished copies (two of which have been claimed), and I've another six which I will have finished apart from the tiles today or tomorrow. I've sold two copies this week, and I'm off to Hugo's games club in Leeds tonight to try to play it and sell some more tonight. Unfortunately I've also had a sale in America fall through when he realised just how bad the exchange rate is. I've also heard from the UK Games Expo - where I had hoped to release It's Alive! I was told a couple of weeks ago that they had no space - but now they have roomd for me - yeay! Unfortunately, (nothing comes without a down-side this week) it's more than twice the price I thought it was - so it's not an easy decision to make. Hmm.

Session Report: Dinner & Games at Paul's

Last night we went round to Paul and Lisa's for dinner, and both adult games (not as dodgy as it sounds) and kids games with their daughter, Ellie. After playing shop with Ellie and the most amazing toy cash register imaginable, a fantastic feast for dinner and bedtime stories we settled down to some adult games.

I'd brought Codename: Monster on the off chance someone would want to play it and both The Wife and Paul were keen. So we set it up and I explained the game to Lisa who hadn't played it before. The first game was won by Lisa, while the second was won by The Wife. Final scores: Lisa 51, The Wife 44, me 43, Paul 37 and The Wife 57, me 45, Paul 38, Lisa 34. In both cases the person who completed their set won, which is not always the case.

Next up was Carcassonne, The Wife was keen to play, both Paul and I consider it our favourite game and Lisa had never played with four and was keen to try a more populous game. We played vanilla Carcassonne, and with the official farmer scoring rules (I usually play the rules in my edition which are wacky and involve 4 points per). I got off to a very slow start (I was on 7 points about three-quarters of the way through the game), while the others raced ahead, with The Wife getting to 50 points before the final pieces were scored. Fortunately I acquitted myself much better in the final reckoning, but not well enough to win. Final scores: Paul & The Wife 59, me 56, Lisa 53.

We had time for a few more short games so we chose to introduce The Wife to Diamant and Guillotine - both favourites at Paul's Monday night games. First up was Diamant, which we played a couple of times. The Wife and I were scarily in tune - both running away fairly early to capitalise on left-over jewels, while Paul and Lisa both brazened it out to the bitter end. We had lots of runs during the two games where all five disasters came out very early on which makes for risky play. Final scores: Lisa 42, The Wife 39, Paul 35, me 25 and Paul 28, Lisa 23, The Wife and me 20. My tactics again fail to work for me. Must get some balls.

We ended the night with a couple of games of Guillotine. It was my destiny to get sorely creamed it seems. After failing to win a game all evening I was utterly lamped at Guillotine. Still, I really enjoyed it - that's my only real criterion for game quality, if I get crushed and still enjoy it's a good game. Final scores: Paul 27, Lisa 18, The Wife 17, me 9 and Paul 20, The Wife and Lisa 17, me 11.

It was a great evening - thanks Paul and Lisa.

Session Report: My Games Night

On Saturday I hosted another games night at my house. We seem to have got a good list of attendees, as even with a few last minute cancellations we still had plenty of people for games.

Karen and Jochen were the first to arrive, and while we were waiting for others to arrive we started a game of vanilla Carcassonne. I usually get stuck into the farming early on, but this time I didn't and as expected the fields all filled up quite quickly. In my experience the farming is claimed very quickly, especially with more players, and once I was a couple of meeples behind I couldn't be bothered to get into the escalation game of continually raising the number of farmers you've got. Karen and Jochen both farmed quite hard, with Karen left without meeples to place on a few occasions later in the game. I did quite well with cloisters, and alright with cities, but come the end the farmers carried it with Karen winning, Jochen coming second, me third and The Wife last.

While we played Carcasonne, Dave and Pip had arrived, and they had a quick game of Lost Cities while waiting for a few others to arrive. After we'd finished Carcassonne, we set up a game of Ticket to Ride, which I'm beginning to lose a bit of interest in. I loved it the first time I played, and I've played it a lot since, but now it's beginning to pale on me - I'm not sure why. Anyway Karen, Jochen and The Wife were keen, so we set it up. I chose to keep two of my initial tickets (Los Angeles - Miami and Portland - Phoenix), and started trying to connect along the bottom of the map. The Wife and I fought a bit, firstly with me blocking a route she needed, and then she returned the favour. I got both routes completed by about two-thirds of the way through the game, and at around this point both Karen and Jochen went for extra tickets. Karen and The Wife were competing over the longest route, while I was just trying to claim some of the longer sections for the extra points. I managed to end the game, and I'd caught everyone by surprise, so they weren't really able to use their last turns effectively. In the end I won, since I'd managed to sneak the longest route, and I'd completed two expensive tickets. Karen and Jochen cames second and third, with The Wife bringing up the rear. This wasn't like her at all - she usually trounces me!

While we'd been playing Ticket to Ride, Paul and Rebecca had arrived and played Carcassonne with Dave and Pip, and now we were all finished we swapped around a bit. Dave and Paul wanted to play Border Reivers, so we set that up, while The Wife requested Codename: Monster, so the others played that 5-player.

Border Reivers started off badly for me with Dave winning a free army on his first turn, and then choosing not to spend money on reinforcements. I spent heavily (as is my usual strategy) and was largely unsuccessful at the beginning. Dave managed to get the mine, while Paul fortified his area of the board. I found myself in a position that several people have emailed me about - how to beat someone who saves rather than spends. I've always maintained that a saver is vulnerable to a spender as the spender will get more reinforcements and can attack with cards and armies. Which I did. I attacked Dave at the mine and managed to wrest it from him, and simultaneously used Insurrection to attack one of his cities. With Dave on the back foot I started looking North to Paul. Paul had been spending too, though he was less lucky on the dice rolls, so I didn't have to worry so much about him from an economic victory point of view. I started saving, and attacked Paul's border forcing him to spend more. In the end I won an ecomonic victory. The boys seemed to enjoy the game too.

With the other table all gamed out, we pinched Monster back, and played a couple of games of that, with Paul winning both.

Another successful games night!

A Very Busy Saturday

Saturday was a very busy day - and all of it games-related. First of all I had to post a copy of Border Reivers to a customer in the States who had missed the free shipping offer, which I did on the way to my local games club: Beyond Monopoly. At BM I arrived, dumped my stuff, said hello to a few people, and then looked for a game. Hugo of Bode Gueims was free, and a guy I'd not met called Peter was too. Peter didn't have a preference for what to play, and Hugo wanted to play Border Reivers (good man!), so we set up a three player game with the variant board layout.

Peter got off to a good start, and started building up a strong economy, both he and Hugo were playing defensively, so I took a risk and went for the mine, to supplement my meagre economy. With a bit more money coming in I could start to play a bit more aggressively, and I took the fight to Peter, who had decided to fall back so he had less land to defend. I destroyed one of his towns, and using the money I stole of him, got in a position where I thought I could win the game in a few turns. Hugo and Peter continued to spend heavily, but the left their counter-attacks too late (Hugo did manage to destroy my town in the final turn), and I ended up winning.

I had to leave early, as I was off to Leeds for a meeting at 3, so we decided to have a quick game of Villa Paletti with a young lad who's name I didn't catch joining in, which I hadn't played before. It was a fun dexterity game, with players trying to increase the height of a tower by moving pieces from lower down to the top until it eventually collapses, a bit like a very brightly coloured Jenga. The first game finished too early, so nobody won, so we had time for a quick second game. This won by someone, but I've forgotten who! Perhaps Hugo will fill in the blanks in the comments! I enjoyed Villa Paletti, it compares well with the other dexterity games I've been introduced to recently, but it's not as good as Pitch Car.

I then rushed out of Beyond Monopoly after only two and a half hours, and caught a bus to Leeds where I was meeting an artist (in the comic book vein), to get an idea about how much it would cost to get him to do the artwork for Monster. I met the artist in a cafe, got some coffees in, and started to explain the plan. First I showed him a copy of Border Reivers to show him I wasn't doing a crappy job at the production end. Then I explained the various components, and what I had in mind for artwork for each one. He seemed interested, and suggested some other ideas for the artwork in places, which was good, as a second opinion is always useful. After a long pause for another round of coffee, we played a game of Monster there in the cafe. Then came the crunch point. He said, that if he was doing this for a proper company, then the bill would come to around a grand, far more than I could afford to pay, but, he liked the game, loved the theme, and liked what I was trying to do with it. We discussed a bunch of things that could either reduce the price or act as sweeteners for him. The result? He's going to do a quick sketch of one of the components, and is definitely interested. Yeay!

As if that wasn't enough games-related goodness for the day, I'd arranged a games night for that evening. So I rushed home, did some tidying and cleaning up and then my guests started to arrive. Guy and I set up a game of Lost Cities while Dave, Pip, Paul G and Rebecca set up Ticket To Ride. Guy and I played and couple of games of Lost Cities, and just as we were finishing the second game Roman arrived. So the three of us set up Power Grid, as Roman wanted to play it again. Our 3-player went on for a while, so the others had a game or two of Carcassonne, trying to join up for a 7-player of Pitch Car. We played a few games of PitchCar, firstly with all seven, then with six as Guy went to look after the baby, then, after most people had left and The Wife had returned we had another four player with The Wife, Paul, Rebecca and I. Finally, Paul and I played a couple of games of Carcassonne with the Inns and Cathedrals expansion.

What a day. It was great to get to Beyond Monopoly again and get the rematch of Border Reivers in against Hugo. It went very well with the artist, and then a really good games night, with a whole bunch of friends, some of whom I'd not seen in ages. I need more days like that!