1960: Making of the President: One of the designers is Jason Matthews of Twilight Struggle fame. This game is obviously mechanically inspired by Twilight Struggle but looks to have some potentially important advantages:

• 90-minute playtime (vs. 180)
• Cards have a secondary value, putting a number of “rest cubes” into a Shogun-esque bag, ready to come up and be helpful later. This balances the inherently higher power of certain cards vs. others.
• A cost (political “momentum”) for your opponent to use his own event if you play the card
• Fewer “gotcha” cards that can cost you the game if you don’t know about them beforehand; important cards to know about will be explicitly mentioned in the rulebook
• Published by Z-Man vs. GMT; will probably still be overpriced, but better produced.

And the theme looks only slightly less compelling. This could be a real winner.

Cuba: A bold choice for a theme–like making a movie set in some random town in Morocco in 1944. Will it stand up to comparison with Puerto Rico? Unfortunately all the excitement and reading of the rules can’t tell us how the game will feel to play. Exciting and tense? Or like a random mashup of the mechanics of Puerto Rico and Pillars of the Earth? My unsubstantiated hunch is that this will be forgettable.

Municipium: Well, it’s Knizia, so there is cause to be hopeful. On the other hand, Dr. K is hit-and-miss even for his fans, and the publisher (Valley Games) doesn’t have a track record. Is this the next smash hit? Or is the Doctor unloading a medium title on a rookie publisher?

Valley Games is also publishing two other original games in the near future, Container (looks dull) and Supernova (looks interesting). Both seem to have gathered quite a bit of attention.

Kingsburg: Pointed out by reader Beaker–thanks! After 1960 this might be the game that looks most appealing to me of the upcoming titles. I like the mix of resource and risk management  (some will complain about luck) and important timing decisions. I may forgive it the fact that it contains yet more cathedrals to build.

Agricola: I have no idea why anyone is excited about this game. The theme–I am not making this up–is that you are a dirt farmer in 1600’s Germany who lives in a tiny shack with his wife. Your goal is to build up a prosperous farm. Are you excited yet? It’s designed by Uwe Rosenberg, the creator of Bohnanza, which I guess is in its favor.

Im Jahr des Drachen: (In the Year of the Dragon): By the designer of (awesome) Notre Dame and published by Alea. Alea is batting 8-for-11 in their big box line but 1-for-4 in the last 4. Can Notre Dame and this pull them out of the slump? I’m curious and cautiously optimistic.

Amyitis: Ystari could make the rules of Coloretto fill an eight-page rulebook. On the other hand some people seem very enthusiastic. I’ll let them try it out.

To decide who goes first:

• Pick a spot on the board
• Grab a marker from every player and drop them all on the board
• Closest marker to the designated spot goes first

Mini-Reviews:

Vikings: Lots of fascinating, quirky, novel mechanics. The trouble is I think they have all been added together to come up with a very ordinary game. Verdict: 2+. I would play again.

Conquest of the Fallen Lands: Neat mechanics in a solid, elegant game. I see a big flaw in that it can be possible for a player to get “stuck” with little to do for many turns at a time. I would feel uneasy about demoing it to new players for this reason. Verdict: 2+++. Would definitely play again, but someone else has to take the blame for suggesting it.

Quo Vadis?  The name means “Where are you going?”, evidently a Biblical allusion. “Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” Negotiation is the heart of the game, and for such a game, it plays very quickly. There’s opportunity for treachery and betrayal, but it doesn’t seem to be integral–our winner won without it. I suspect it has great value as an icebreaker or to play with new folks, but less replay value than most games. Verdict: 2++.

Here are the design goals I have for Invasion. Hopefully, my intuition and playing-in-my-head has taken taken the game most of the way and playtesting and brainstorming can finish this into a great, enjoyable design.

Summary: Area-control game with emphasis on risk management and bidding for opportunities.

Weight: Light, just north of filler. I would like the playtime to be 20-30 minutes.

Players: 3-5. If it can fit a 6th without descending into chaos or dragging that would be great. Likewise, if it happens to work well with 2 that would be gravy. If tweaks to the map are required to make it work with 3 or 5 that would be OK but inelegant.

Feel: The game should feel chaotic–players should be able to plan for the current turn and a general strategy for the future, but not specific actions for next turn. However, the feeling should be chaos: “Events are going to come up that we’re all going to have to deal with” rather than favor “I got a bad roll, player B got a good roll.”

Inasmuch as it would be possible for a player to get a good roll or bad roll, it should be a deliberate risk-management choice: for instance, a player is falling behind on score so he narrows his focus to a certain small area, ignoring all others. Then in the unlikely event that region is scored several times in a row he can win; more likely, his hopes don’t come true and the plan falls flat.

Here you go. First, most of the components (not pictured: the Move/Deploy deck and the smaller size of scoring tokens)

A close-up of the game board, showing off my sketchy photographic skills as well as my sketchy graphic design skills:

In my defense, I deliberately put as little effort as possible into the graphic design of this first prototype to avoid emotional attachment. Here’s the “playmat” where the state of the turn is tracked… you can see that this whole thing is a work-in-progress…

And finally, when I was looking through the components I happened across my old idea for a board: hexes that could be arranged into any one of several shapes. In theory, this is a far superior design for a board, because it adds to the variety of possible games and is generally far more versatile. In practice, I can’t get as excited about the hexes as about the world map. Also, I kind of think that coming up with a good map is my job as the designer… the players shouldn’t have to do that work.  Besides: Expansion!

Just in case you were interested. Luckily:

• I have a day job
• Buying fiddly things makes me happy
• Many of them aren’t used up and can be applied to another prototype

And the list:

• $3.50: 9″x12″ foam board
• $5.50: 20″x30″ blue foam board (cut up, only about 1/3 used)
• $2: printing
• $17: plastic centimeter cubes (I got 1000–they’re hard to not get in bulk. And will be easy, I hope, to use for other games.)
• $2: blank white cards
• $7.50: Utility knife for cutting foam board (High-quality; should last for years; I could have got a cheap one for $2)
• $2: Dice (approximately–6 are used, plus a couple that I had laying around as generic counters)
• $4.50: small zinc washers (scoring chits)
• $3: large zinc washers (scoring chits)
• $4: gold spray paint

Total: $51, about the cost of a new game. (And this discounts probably $10 worth of bits I probably won’t end up using–colored paperclips and cardstock.) I’m definitely not complaining; I’ve had a great time putting Invasion together, I plan to have a great time refining and playing it, and I’m very pleased with the way it looks and feels. And maybe this will be the one that wins me the SdJ. Just reflecting a little on what goes into it.

Columbus Day is just around the corner! I’m taking the day off work.

Did Columbus discover America? Certainly not. People had been here for thousands of years before he arrived.

Did Columbus discover America for the Europeans? Well, probably not–the Norse were in Newfoundland probably and Greenland definitely before Columbus.

What Columbus definitely did was bring back the idea that the New World could be exploited. And without European exploitation of the rest of the world, where would we be? Certainly without such fantastic games as Puerto Rico, Goa, and Taj Mahal, just to name a few. So let’s pause for a moment to remember… well, I’ll call him Lolumbus, in honor of the fact that rape and exploitation is actually nothing to base a holiday around.

Notwithstanding! Speaking of exploitation, I have finally finished the prototype of Invasion. The tables are turned, and aliens are exploiting Earth. The Earthlings try to fight back, but not with much success.

The story of the design is this: The original design for the game had about 7 separate decks of cards, one each for each of seven different game mechanics. Well, it turns out making cards is actually kind of a pain, what with creating a custom script to output a PDF, printing them, cutting them out, sleeving them… and I was in eternal procrastination mode. Well, then I bought these awesome plastic centimeter cubes in 10 different colors from an educational supply place (highly recommended) and it made me want to finish the game so I could play with them. But how to make those irksome cards? I was thinking about ways to substitute a die roll for the card draw when it finally occurred to me: the die roll is better because all the possible outcomes are right there, no need for players to be surprised when a card comes up! The dice are color-coded so you roll them all at once and then put them in the appropriate place on a playmat (printout taped to foamboard).

Photos will follow in a day or two.

Notre Dame: After two more plays, this is definitely at least as good as I thought it was. 3+++.  It’s easy to pick up and surprisingly subtle. Once you have the basic hang of it, the myriad ways timing is important become apparent. The comparisons to Puerto Rico are very apt. People speak glowingly about the prettiness of the pieces, which are indeed pleasant, but I’m more impressed by the scoring chits. Scoring might otherwise be fiddly, but the chits come in ultra-convenient denominations of 1, 3, 5, and 10, with plenty of each to go around. The presence of the 3-valued chits is particularly welcome and saves a lot of changemaking.

Yspahan: I had been pretty enthusiastic about trying this game out. But I downloaded the rules and the computer version and I’m not so sure. In particular, I can’t tell what you’re supposed to do well during the game in order to get a good score. I’ll reserve judgment until I play an over-the-board game at some point, but I don’t think I’m going to run out and buy a copy any more.

Caylus: Got it in the mail today; hope to play at some point this week. I have high hopes; it looks like it features the same timing challenges and balancing of resources that make Puerto Rico, Notre Dame, and Caylus Magna Carta so much fun. The original rules for Caylus are a notoriously tortuous pamphlet–one can be forgiven for thinking it’s a hard game to learn. But also included in the box is a single-sheet description of the rules–front and back, in a large font–with apparently no omissions, everything right there.

A variation of the Pirate Riddle from intrepid reader John Rhoadhouse, on honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrrr.

First, the pirates have a new constitution. The first pirate makes a proposal. regarding the distribution of treasure. If half or more of the pirates vote for a proposal, it succeeds. Otherwise the proposer is executed and the next pirate down the list makes a proposal. Pirates vote based on the following priorities:

1. Life–a pirate will vote for whatever will save his or her skin.
2. Treasure–the more, the better
3. Bloodlust–life and treasure being equal, pirates will vote in the way that will see as many of their fellows killed as possible.

So, the riddle: Our salty pirate crew of 10 has fallen upon hard times and has a meager treasure of only one gold coin, which cannot be cut or split up. How many pirates will die? In general, for n pirates, how many will die?

Hint: Solve the case where there is no treasure at all.

Quick link for the title: Meeples’ Choice. Go check it out…

The two most prestigious awards for Euro-games are the Spiel des Jahres (SdJ) and Deutscher Spiele Preis (DSP). (Roughly, “Game of the Year” and “German Game Prize”.) I put very little stock in either award. The SdJ is awarded by a jury, and like the Oscars, seems to go to an inappropriate choice more often than not. Supposedly it’s aimed at a more family/”light” market, but then what are (relatively) thought-heavy brainburners like Tikal, Torres, and El Grande doing on the winners list? Zooloretto, the 2007 winner, is totally forgettable, as is Elfenland. Villa Paletti is a dexterity game that won out over Puerto Rico.

By contrast, the DSP is awarded by more-or-less open voting. It has many fewer embarrassments (Puerto Rico won 2002) and most of the winners are at least defensible. Having played both Notre Dame and Pillars of the Earth, I can say that I greatly prefer Notre Dame, but at least Pillars isn’t painfully mundane.

But I want more. In particular, I think that fact that Tikal beat Ra in 1999 is a grave injustice. I had almost despaired until I happened upon the Meeples’ Choice Awards. Of particular note:

• Ra and Lost Cities selected in 1999, Tikal not even mentioned
• Puerto Rico and LotR: Confrontation selected in 2002
• Torres is absent, as is Alhambra
• Bohnanza selected for 1997

I like how three co-winners are chosen every year. (It’s worth noting that the years are broken a little differently than the SdJ and DSP. Apparently it’s by publication year for Meeples’ and award year for the others; for example, Caylus was the 2006 winner for DSP but 2005 for Meeples’ Choice. In fairness, I should note that they have the benefit of hindsight; the awards for years previous to 2001 were given retroactively. But with BGG top 50 favorites like Shogun, Taj Mahal, Tikal, San Juan, and Torres not present, I can’t fault them with crowd-following. (The snub of Taj Mahal is the only choice I really disagree with; I prefer it to Citadels. The other two for that year, Princes of Florence and Carcassone, are both very strong; 2000 was a tough year.)

Based on winners I have not played, my Radar has been updated with Age of Steam, Attika, Louis XIV, and Wyatt Earp.

Sorry for the long absence. I demoed Notre Dame this week and Silk Road two weeks ago. I thought Silk Road was OK, if a bit underwhelming for the $50 price tag. Then I played Notre Dame, which is fantastic and $10 cheaper. Reader Fu Leng is right: Life is too short to play merely good games.

Notre Dame: People are saying this in the same breath as mighty Puerto Rico and that’s tough company–and it speaks very well of this game that it holds its own. The two mechanics at the core of the game, action-drafting and building up resources in a triangular fashion, work very well. We played it with 5 new players–two had read the rules, three totally new–and finished in 75 minutes including rules explanation. (To be fair, we’re all seasoned gamers.) It’s lighter than Puerto Rico or Caylus Magna Carta but fills a similar niche; I much prefer it to Pillars of the Earth. If it has a weakness, it’s that player interaction is minimal. Verdict: 3++, maybe 3+++.

Silk Road: You know that feeling in Settlers when you roll a 7 and have to hit someone with the Robber, but don’t have a clear choice? OK, imagine that every turn of the game. Silk Road is packed with decisions but not only are they difficult, they’re made with limited information and don’t matter much. Production quality is fine but wasteful; inexplicably, they’ve opted for, say, wooden money chits (where every other game in the Universe uses cardboard), pushing the cost of what’s actually a small game up to $50. Look, people, for $50 I can get Memoir ‘44. It’s a playable game that I wouldn’t say no to playing in the unlikely event someone asked me to. Verdict: 2