Archive 22.7.2015 - 7.2.2016

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

What I consider worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

Hoplomachus: Origins has had me in its grip with its solo trials for a few days now. These are less of a full solo game and more like small scenarios with the challenge to break them - to find a solution by combining gladiators, tactics, and moves that can reliably defeat the scenario. Very quick to play and the AI for the opponents is surprisingly effective despite its very low complexity. It's quite fun and can be played quickly in between other things.

"We are the people!" came to the table for the first time with Juliana yesterday. As with my first solo round, however, only for the first decade, because that already shows all aspects of the game for the first learning, but does not immediately overwhelm you with the full program. With this game, I hope that Juliana's interest remains, because it is really very well made. It is essentially a mix of resource management with a bit of area control mixed in and - for the East - a good dose of State of Siege. Both sides play very differently, the West plays an economic development game with integrated attacks on the East with ideology and standard of living, the East is constantly fighting for survival and trying to put out all the fires, so in principle classic scarcity management. The West wins through the dissolution of the East, the East only has to survive until the end to win. From these very asymmetrical approaches and goals, a exciting tug-of-war between the two German states then results. The whole thing seasoned with a historical theme. Very cool.

zeromq/netmq: A 100% native C# implementation of ZeroMQ for .NET was completely unknown to me (the C# version, not ZeroMQ), but it is a really exciting project for .NET enthusiasts. Directly in .NET without external libraries or even servers, you can build various 1:1, 1:N, N:1, N:M communication structures with diverse behaviors (Pub/Sub, Broadcast, Req/Resp, Fifo - basically everything that ZeroMQ can do). It makes a very good impression (ok, no surprise, it is after all an implementation of the original ZeroMQ in C#, and ZeroMQ was absolutely brilliant for its purposes). And of course, it is interoperable with the original ZeroMQ.

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected and uncommented here.

My first COIN (Counter Insurgency) game is Cuba Libre - and it came to the table for the first time yesterday. What a great system. It is complex with many elements, but the material (board, player aids, sequence of play aid) makes it easy to follow the flow of the game and not forget in the middle whose action it is, who is next and what they are allowed to do. Thematically, the game is also very well connected with the mechanics - the Syndicate builds casinos and grabs money where they can, but are relatively locally active, the Directorio forms many smaller cells across the island and tries to disrupt both sides and position itself in many parts of the country, Batista squanders his money (which he gets from the USA and the Syndicate) on massive police and military actions against the rebels and Castro's side tries to convince the regions of the revolution and to motivate as many regions and cities to oppose. My game was Castro against the rest (controlled by bots) and unfortunately was not successful - the Syndicate had corrupted the country too much. The bots showed quite well the character of the other factions. Ok, the whole thing took 5 hours, but it was also the first game. Next time it will run more smoothly. And there will definitely be a next time, the game is simply fantastic. And I am already looking forward to the upcoming expansion and the two upcoming COIN games about the Gallic Wars and the American Revolution. Cuba Libre only has about 56 cards, so I am already thinking about translating them - then I would also have a chance to play it with Juliana. More complex than our usual gaming fare, but worth it.

After a long break, I played Sentinels of the Multiverse again. It's still a really entertaining game. But I'm increasingly noticing that while it's a lot of fun, keeping track of various effects in the paper version really takes away my desire to pull out the cards, so I prefer to play it on the PC or tablet instead. Which is a shame, but I notice even in the digital version that there are moments of "oh, I didn't think about that modifier anymore," and in the paper version, it becomes really annoying. Even the many markers don't really help. On the other hand, it's a purely cooperative game without decisions for the opponent, so it can also be well implemented on a computer. For a solo game, this is perfectly fine and much more convenient.

I received Hostage Negotiator a few days ago and tried it out. A very interesting implementation of an exciting topic. It has the classic wargame structure: decide on a plan and the dice tell you whether the plan succeeds. The chances for this are not particularly good. Therefore, it reminds me of the State of Siege games like Soviet Dawn or Cruel Necessity, where it is the same. Here, too, you always have to keep an eye on the risk, but luck plays an even greater role than in the SoS games. Therefore, I don't know if it will stand the test of time alongside Soviet Dawn (which is even faster to set up) - but it has the advantage of higher variability. Compared to Space Hulk: Deathwing, it stands up well in my opinion, the box is also small, a series of expansions bring variety, so it will at least have a place as a travel pack. And it will certainly spend some rounds on the table.

Soviet Dawn is another State of Siege game. This one was included in C3i 27, a real bargain. Thematically very dense, as with all State of Siege games so far, the playtime is much shorter than in Cruel Necessity. I like it very much, despite the dice fest it is already noticeable that you have a chance, but only very narrow. Thanks to the short playtime, good chances to hit the table more often, just because I find the theme (early Soviet Union after the revolution) exciting. Nice solo game for in between.

Junior General is a very interesting website with many (free!) paper "miniatures" for classic miniature-based wargames such as Professor Sabin's Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World. Easy to produce (print, fold, glue, done) and give the battlefield a 3D feel with minimal time and money investment.

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

Polis: Fight for the Hegemony was recently available at a real bargain price (15 Euro) at the Spiele-Offensive, so I just couldn't say no and grabbed it. Polis is a game that balances interestingly between war game and Euro game. The mechanisms are very clearly Euro - but the structure has strong echoes of war games, specifically the more strategic "1000 Miles View" variant, in which individual moves refer to large actions (entire troop movements on land or sea). The whole thing is designed as a pure 2-player game with a great map, many wooden parts, project boards for the special abilities that some cities can achieve, an event stack that stamps its mark on each round and a stack of combat cards, through which wars are processed. Also a 4-sided die for adjusting market prices (yes, trade is an essential part alongside the wars, just like diplomacy) and rolling siege successes. The whole thing gives a pretty interesting mix - the first learning game was only a snapshot of the overall game (scenarios are offered that are played faster than the full game), but it already gave good insights into what to expect. And after that, I'm really eager to get the game on the table more often - even solo could be interesting, although the wars are decided by card choice, there's still a bit you can do to make it usable in solo play. Everything else is open and thus easily playable "left hand against right hand". What excites me: how well the historical background (Sparta against Athens after the end of the Persian Wars) is captured and depicted. Athens has sea supremacy, Sparta is superior on land - but this is only reflected in who of the two starts a battle. Wars are not directly disastrous with huge losses, but instead are much more geared towards prestige gains, only occasionally losing one or two phalanxes or galleys. Opponents always have the option to flee (pursuit by heavily armored hoplites was not really practical, giving up the formation would have been their end), albeit with a loss of prestige. Taking over cities is much safer to accomplish through bribery and inciting civil wars than through sieges, so trade - as a supplier of silver and raw materials for troops - plays a very central role. Cutting off trade routes can strongly block one side (especially Sparta, as its trading ports can be captured by Athens). Wheat to maintain one's own poleis usually has to be traded, so again a strong focus on trade, which can of course be strongly impaired by sea and land blockades. Athens usually wants to cut Sparta off from trade to weaken them, while Sparta wants to break blockades and gain access to trading places and rather seeks the military conflict (and in the early game definitely wants to control Sicily). A beautifully designed asymmetry of the participating polis, without overloading the whole game massively with special abilities. Instead, the asymmetry is integrated into the game setup, area and resource distribution (and very small imbalances in the rules, see starting fighters). Great.

Currently, I am dealing with the Macedonian armies and the strategies of Alexander the Great for reasons (Great Battles of History: Alexander). Apparently, excerpts from the History of the Art of War by Hans DelbrĂĽck are still one of the best first points of contact to learn more about this topic.

Great Battles of History: Deluxe Alexander I need to read through, as the box should arrive at my place soon. I just don't know how to occupy the table in the living room for several hours without causing marital crises ...

Here are some interesting reads from this week that I didn't want to link to separately, collected here without comments:

What I considered worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected here and uncommented.

I finally managed to bring Mage Knight Board Game to the table for a solo learning game. Still with reduced walkthrough rules to get a feel for the ruleset first, then next time I'll dive into the full walkthrough rules. There are quite a few corners to consider, and unfortunately, the setup is a bit more involved (though not much worse than, for example, The Gallerist). I still need to come up with something for organization. But overall, it's already an impressive game. I like these more puzzle-oriented cooperative or solo games, and the theme definitely appeals to me. This will definitely be repeated. And I'm also looking forward to the re-releases of the expansions, especially the Lost Legion and the brand new expansion, which offer a lot for solo play.

Here's what I found worth reading this week and didn't want to link separately, collected and uncommented:

7 Wonders: Duel I pre-ordered for Essen and then - because of my cancellation - had a colleague bring it for me. As with Tides of Time, I'm fascinated by the idea of a two-person drafting. Here, especially interesting is the open drafting - you see the opponent's choices and at least parts of the upcoming cards. Then there's a reveal mechanism like Jaipur, where you have to be very careful not to give the opponent too many options and interesting side paths to win with military or science. Buildings build on each other and form chains like Progress and then there are the Wonders of the World, which all offer powerful effects. And the scientific achievements, which can provide decisive advantages for a player. All of this in a compact package with manageable playtime and - despite the many options - quite compact rules. I already like it after the first practice game and I hope that after a few games Juliana will too.

Tides of Time I bought because microgames always fascinate me, especially when there's actually a real game behind them. It's also a drafting game, and even for two players, although drafting often doesn't work so well with two. But here it really fits well and the game offers surprisingly many decisions where you really have to think. It requires much more consideration than other typical fillers, but it still plays very quickly. It also has a compact box (could be even more compact with standard cards instead of the monster cards that Pegasus chooses for "Microgames") and a really compact setup that also fits on café tables. Cool. Because of the really good illustrations, I even forgive the huge cards.

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is a regular guest on the table, at least when I play solo. Not every round is remarkable, even though the games are usually fun. But yesterday, I sent my renovated Ent deck into the race for the first time, this time against the first scenario of the Black Rider. And the result was impressive. The deck didn't run smoothly at all - only a few Ents, only one of the Ent Grave events (where you can take all Ent cards from the top 5). No Shadowmane for Gandalf. So not really optimal - and yet the deck held up extremely well. The situation never really became dangerous, the black riders (though also with a lot of luck, none of them got their mount) were not a real threat, as I could almost always pull them out of staging to block them cleanly and then shred them with a few Ents. Thanks to some Quick Knots, the Hobbits were always available to send them to hiding tests and in case of emergency they could be improved with Ents. And Treebeard was soon there as a solid defender and quester and additional resource source. The switch away from Treebeard as a hero to Gandalf definitely gives me a good piece of control over the player deck, which helps a lot with a sluggish start of the deck - especially with poorer development in the first rounds, the old version was quickly overwhelmed and here I had to face 9-11 threat in the lineup very quickly. A really nice deck and I think I can let it run against the whole campaign.

The Gallerist hit the table for the first solo game today. Wow. It's almost like work. But it's a lot of fun, even though I made way too many mistakes in the first solo game - the game system was already quite recognizable. The actions make sense and are thematically very well founded, which makes learning much easier. And the best part: it's really fun. The two hours flew by. This will definitely be repeated.

Selection for the next big game that Juliana and I learned together was over the weekend The Golden Ages and we have the first learning game behind us. It was still a bit bumpy, the game has significantly more moving parts than anything we have played so far. But it was fun and the structure is quite logical. You just have to think about a few things during the change of epochs. All in all, however, a really beautiful game with a lot of possibilities and variable setup, that should keep us busy for a good while. But I don't think Progress will be dethroned so quickly.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Progress: Evolution of Technology has become a total hit with Juliana in recent times. We've practically played it every day, even 2-3 times a day during the time I was sick. And we're both still having a great time with it. The advantages of the game are manifold, but apart from the interesting theme, the highlights for us are that all actions make sense in the context of the game theme. Cards that build on each other are logically connected (in most cases, at least), and the improvements that come along are indeed connected to the card. Additionally, the cards themselves have no text except for the name - you don't have to read long to understand what's happening, everything is marked with clear symbols. On top of that, all the cultural improvements you earn are clearly visible on the player board. The same goes for the position in the cultural areas (prestige, population development, and military) on the additional board. The available aids are easy to use and understand. All of this helps to ensure that you can really just play casually without being held back by questions of understanding (especially for Juliana, the language difference is crucial). On top of that, a really exciting game theme for us, and our evening entertainment is secured. We've now reached 1-1.5 hours, although we always play with the fourth age. Milestones and philosophers are not yet included in the program, but it might become interesting soon, but with 20 games together, we haven't yet felt that we've exhausted the base game.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It) — Bad Words — Medium is an interesting article about what the author sees as the core problem of social media, which is ignored by the operators: abuse, or (since "abuse" doesn't translate trivially) the antisocial behavior of many in these media, which drives away normal users and turns some networks into pure self-promotion machines for press organs. The latter part of the article, about the digital revolution, is then somewhat too dreamy.

What I consider worth reading during the week and did not want to link separately, collected and uncommented here.

The Lord of the Ice Garden I backed and received through Spieleschmiede. And the game is a visual masterpiece - great graphic design and excellent miniatures. Plus, it's a very interesting game with a truly non-trivial solo variant that actually retains a lot from the original game. However, it's very high in complexity, it will take a few more rounds until I really understand it to explain it to someone. But it offers a combination of worker placement and area domination together with variable player abilities and upgrade options like I've never seen before. Absolutely wow.

Holy Smokes, Per6 is officially out!

Quelle: The Night Larry Wall Unveiled Perl 6 | 10 Zen Monkeys

Hero Forge Custom Miniatures has an online designer with various configuration options for game figures. Not exactly cheap, but if you really need a figure for a game, it might still be worth it.

Actually, I only took Jaipur as a filler for free shipping. But within a few days, it clearly became the most popular game among us. A significant point is certainly that the theme and game go well together. The actions usually make sense and are understandable. In addition, there are only a few different actions, and only in slight variations. However, based on this, there is quite a tactical competition with occasionally quite mean snatch actions. And a good dose of luck, which always leads to the luck turning again. One of the few games where Juliana not only asks to play it afterwards, but also wants to play it several times right away. Really a great filler game for two players, ideal for one or two (or three) rounds while waiting for the food or having coffee in the city. And perfect for travel, as it is small, robust and comes with quite manageable requirements for space on the table. It will probably replace the Valley of the Kings as our filler game. Oh, the game I actually bought, the one I took Jaipur with? I haven't played it yet. We were too busy.

Yesterday, I tested Dungeon Dice for pub suitability. It passed. At least in the base version. The main problem with the game is still the fragmented manual, but I've now gotten the overviews from BGG and will print them out, which should make things run much more efficiently - this will also make the expansions interesting again. The second problem is the endgame when everyone has almost won - but we had a mistake in the game because I, being a fool, forgot the "magical artifacts are glory points" rule and ignored the "trade 5 equipment dice for a magical artifact" rule. Because with these two rules, you can build a pretty good alternative path to the hunt for red monsters and thus ensure a bit more excitement than just "who kills the first red monster". In addition, this also makes trading artifacts and equipment more exciting again and helps players who are lagging behind. Well, that's the problem when you don't play a game regularly, you forget things. And for regular play, Dungeon Dice simply has the problem that it really only becomes fun with 3 players, as both combat and trading are rather flat with two players (cooperation against one's own goals is not particularly useful). But all in all, it's a really nice dice game where dice luck is not always controllable, but catastrophic consequences can be avoided with a bit of skill. It's actually just right for the pub table because the components are totally robust.

A few weeks ago, I picked up The Golden Ages at Schwerkraft because I'm interested in civilization games and it promised to deliver the goods in less than 2 hours. I finally got to play it. Naturally, as is often the case with new games, left hand against right hand. The right hand surprisingly won, even though the left hand was clearly ahead for a long time. And the game is great - I play many games against myself to learn them, but I'm relatively rarely really enthusiastic about the game itself, because it's quite cumbersome to play against yourself. But here, each player is given goals early on through their starting civilization and their future technology that point in a certain direction and thus provoke a rather asymmetrical build-up. This is complemented by a really smooth game system in which you don't have to keep track of much and each action is self-contained, so that you never get the feeling that the game is "fiddly". The only downside is that the setup is a bit time-consuming because you fill your tableau and empty it during the game (unlike in other games), so you have to assign technology tiles. But once you've done that, the next time will be faster - and with more than one player, you can build up in parallel. Including setup, my test game lasted 3 hours and was very exciting. It will definitely hit the table again.

Progress: Evolution of Technology was on the table again today with Juliana (well, the game was on the table, Juliana was sitting in front of it...) and off we went into the fourth age. Wow. What a game. We are still very enthusiastic about it. It is by far the most complex game we play together and it does take a bit out of you, but it's a lot of fun. This time I won, but only by a narrow margin (45 to 42). So far, we have only included the fourth age, we have not yet taken the other two mini-expansions, the game is already difficult enough as it is. A really great civilization developer that focuses on the part that is interesting to me - the technology tree.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Pergamon arrived yesterday (well, earlier, but we were on vacation) and hit the table today. A nice spiral around archaeology for the Pergamon Museum. It was a real bargain - actually no longer available, but a remainder of the English version was still available, the game for 7.50 - I couldn't say no. And it was worth it. A very interesting mechanism for obtaining funds for excavations, constantly "richer" excavation sites, an interesting mechanism where exhibitions slowly fade, and all this with great components designed with lots of love. And the game goes quickly, every single move is just a simple action, but combined with a lot of predicting what the opponents will do. Love it!

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I considered worth reading during the week and didn't want to link separately, collected and uncommented.

Long time no programming language links: Haskell for Mac is an interactive programming environment for Haskell on the Mac (as the name suggests). Interesting, as it offers a kind of notebook interface with which you can interactively develop code, try it out directly and visualize the results. Quite interesting for playing around with Haskell, but I don't know if it's worth 25 dollars - especially the sandboxing enforced by Apple can quickly become annoying. And since it requires Yosemite, I won't be able to try it out anyway.

Kashgar: Händler der Seidenstraße I got it because it was cheap (12 Euro) and the mechanics interested me: deckbuilding and engine-building. And the game implements this very well. Thematically, you are a spice trader on the Silk Road and have to manage your (usually 3) caravans. Each player starts with the same number of caravans, but each is slightly different from the starting options. This makes the game a bit asymmetrical, which I generally like. In addition, there is a really sophisticated deck builder in the form of caravan management. You win by optimizing your caravans to optimally fulfill orders. And the whole thing fits thematically very well - every person in the caravan has coherent actions available. The first game was really fun, it plays very smoothly after a few rounds, as there are only a few building blocks that you have to learn beforehand - the rest is on the cards. Through the optimization of the caravans, you have interesting long-term strategic options, through the several caravans you have short-term tactical options (which caravan you activate depends on what orders are currently on display and what the opponents are currently doing). In addition, there is an optional expansion for more interactivity, with which you can sabotage opponents' caravans. Really nicely done and completely under the radar, the game.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Pandemic: The Cure has just been released and is already in my closet. And already played - the Generalist on Easy level was of course easy, but a good way to get to know the game. And it's just fun to roll all those dice. I think it will soon come to the table in the group, I'm still looking for a quick game as a digestif - Nations Dice Game was actually a bit too heavy, but maybe this will work. Especially since coop as a digestif or starter is never wrong.

Here's what I found worth reading this week, collected and uncommented:

Every now and then I come across interesting projects that were completely unknown to me before. This time it's The Decktet Wiki, a wiki dedicated to the Decktet, a new deck of cards with a somewhat unusual structure: each card can be assigned to multiple symbols and there are not just 4, but 6 of them. Based on this, there is a large number of games that creatively use this deck of cards.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game Treebeard was once again on the road with Merry and Pippin. But in "Blood of Gondor," it turned out that an adventure that starts directly with a siege is rather stupid if you mainly use Hobbits. And if there aren't enough allies outside and the few that are there face the adventure, it's quickly over. Then it went back to Ithilien, but things didn't go well there either - except Treebeard initially showed himself to be a great Ent, thereby gathering the opponents, who unfortunately could not be attacked through the secret path and thus became more and more numerous, eventually overwhelming the group. All in all, not a good day for Middle-earth. If a deck just can't find its key cards, things just go badly - there's not much you can do about it, as even drawing cards helps only to a limited extent. Sometimes I wish there were 4 of each card allowed, like in Magic. And for the Ents themselves, the density of Ent cards still needs to be increased so that things run more smoothly - at the moment, I still have too many compromises in there (for example, own Ent healing instead of the Elves I use and better defense - both will come with the next adventures, but at the moment it's stuck there).

Something new again: VivaJava: The Coffee Game: The Dice Game. Juliana loves coffee, I love games, so you can kill two birds with one stone. Nice dice game with surprising depth for a Yahtzee variant. The Al Gusto expansion in the box brings even more variations, but the base game itself is already quite nice. Of course, there is a lot of luck involved, but you can help with suitable (unlockable) abilities. Depending on the variant, there is more or less direct interaction in the game. Really nicely done. Instead of the pencil-ticked score counters, I use player mats and small markers to move. It has given us a lot of fun, and apparently we have only made a rough rules violation (the thing with the abilities that give out markers is not quite clearly explained in the rules - you can only use these things once or twice per game).

Cruel Necessity hit the table for the first time today. Wow, that's a tough nut to crack. Definitely far outside my usual gaming experience and a really interesting system that can be easily modified if it becomes too frustrating (or too easy - but I don't think that's likely). The setup based on historical events gives the dice rolling a thematic framework. But the dice can also quickly become a source of frustration when the Parliament just can't seem to accomplish anything. There are only very few ways to influence the dice. Apart from that, my first Victory Point game - and that's also an interesting experience, smelling game components that smell like burnt wood is not something you encounter every day.