How do you split a cookie between two people? One person cuts, the other one chooses. Great.

OK, Solomon, help me out with this one. I wish to assign starting positions on, essentially, a map board. Assume that the map board has no particular symmetry and, in particular, no rotational symmetry. Resources may be unevenly distributed. Furthermore, I would like to adhere as closely as possible to the following parameters:

• From 3-5 players will be choosing locations. Each player will choose basically one location.
• It’s OK if the locations are not quite equal, but no position should be hopelessly bad. In particular, it is not OK to have every player choose one location and then randomize who gets what location.
• Two players should not be able to collude to give one of them an excellent location.
  (Likewise, there should be no frustration that an inexperienced player has inadvertently handed out a gift.)
• It should not take too long–nothing very mathematical. The Settlers of Catan initial settlement placement is the outside limit for how long this should take.
• Since this will take place before a new player gets to see the game, it should be possible for experienced players to offer meaningful advice to a new player without having to worry about who among them will be helped or hindered by the placement.

If you can’t guess, I’m fishing for ideas to see if this basic layout can be made to work. I think it would be a lot more flavorful than a clever board with rotational symmetry for 3, 4, or 5 people; yet I still want the basic balance I’ve come to expect from Euros.

Over the last few months, I have developed a satisfied feeling. I feel like I have explored the breadth of hobby boardgaming. I don’t remember how many years ago I first looked at BoardGameGeek’s list of top-rated games, but I remember feeling overwhelmed. There were just so many of them, and Settlers of Catan, the game which had been so far above any board game before, rated only twenty-somethingth!

Now, I have played many dozens of board games including many of these widespread favorites, and I understand why people love them. I know many of the important ideas that cross across games and their history. I know some of the important designers and publishers and a little bit about the publishing industry.

To be sure, I have not explored the depth of the hobby, and this is also a good feeling, because I like learning, and I like playing new (or new-to-me) games. Being done would suck! Certainly there are a couple dozen great games and a hundred or so I’ll enjoy still out there. But I know where to look to find them, what to look for, and what I know to avoid because I won’t like it. And new stuff is still being published, which is great, of course! But I feel “caught up” in a way that I never could with, say, books or music–I feel like I have a grasp of the gaming zeitgeist, despite the fact that I wasn’t paying any attention between 1995 and 2004.

I picked up about 6 games at Origins, and readers qualistarian and Fu Leng picked up even more on their own. (And we got a few more that we couldn’t resist after, not to mention demoing them at the FLGS…) I’ve finally had the chance to play all or most of them–many weeks later–and I don’t want to bore everyone (including myself) with a full review of each. So, get ready to drink from the firehose:

Lost Cities: It’s required to say “I hate this game!” at least once per game, or you lose 10 points. Despite this, I love it. Verdict: 3+++

Hive: Incredible depth for such simple rules. There’s a lot going on and a lot to learn. The lack of luck makes it feel “heavier”; since nothing totally unexpected is going to happen, everything can be planned, and a failure to win is a failure of planning, right? Verdict: 2++

Coloretto: Fast. Lots of decisions. Easy rules. Deeper than it looks. Engaging. Highly recommended. Verdict: 4 (my only 4 other than Ra)

Twilight Struggle: Awesome and with surprisingly easy rules. Dripping in an exciting theme. Who would have thought that I could find the domino effect so engaging. Fly in the ointment? The three-hour playtime and the fact that it’s two-player only. Jury is still out.

Santiago: Solid game with a fascinating bribery/persuasion mechanic. There’s no other game except Settlers I can think of where you’re engaged in such tense, albeit nonviolent, negotiations with the other players. Verdict: 3+

Princes of Florence: We put off playing this game for a long time; it looks painfully dry and slow-moving. Looks are deceiving. The theme works well and the game is fast-paced and exciting for everyone. There are definitely multiple paths to victory and no other game so well emphasizes the idea that “there just isn’t enough time to do everything you want.” Verdict: 3++

Colosseum: I played this before I played Princes of Florence and thought it was OK–probably a 2+. Halfway through my first Princes game I said “I am never playing Colosseum again.” I have no idea how this got printed in a world that includes Princes of Florence, because Colosseum feels like a pale imitation. Verdict: 1++

Ingenious: Light, but with lots of opportunity for strategy, and fast-playing. Also very pleasing to look at and play with the pieces. The box is certainly much heavier than the game. Verdict: 3++

Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation: It only looks like Stratego. There are a lot of fascinating little nuances and although I’m usually really horrible at bluffing games, I seem to do OK. The theme, complete with unbalanced forces, works very well. Verdict: 3+++

Thebes: The internationalization and minor rewrite of Jenseits von Theben. I have never before seen the theme (archaeology) of a Euro work so well with the game. First, you run around Europe learning about ancient civilizations, then you try to make it to said civilizations before your rivals do and get all the best artifacts for themselves. There’s a tense, exciting balance between learning enough to make good use of your digging time, and getting there before all the good stuff is gone. There’s a lot of luck, probably comparable to the amount in Settlers, which is OK with me but I can see people being frustrated. Verdict: 3+

Caylus Magna Carta: Variously nicknamed “Caylus Lite”, “Caylus Jr.”, “Baby Caylus”, or “My First Caylus” even though 1) it’s certainly not a “light” or children’s game and 2) we’ve never played the original. Despite this, it’s definitely a lot of fun, with lots of decisions to make. Verdict: 3

Shogun: It’s a wargame! No, wait! It’s a Euro! The mechanics look cool but the playtime looks daunting. I’ve only played half a game so far. Verdict: Jury is still out. My guess is that it will end up with a high 2 but I might be surprised.

No Thanks!: Fun. Light. Hard to say no. My particular favorite part is how far you push your luck passing around a huge card that’s a big hit for everyone else but safe for you. I prefer Coloretto but might suggest this to keep people from getting sick of it! Verdict: 3

Zooloretto: Definitely looks and plays like a bulked-up Coloretto. Unfortunately, one of the neatest parts of the game–the tension of making stacks that are good for only you–is much diluted, since additional extra animals of a kind don’t hurt, and having too many animals of the kind you are collecting can hurt you. Not a bad game, but nowhere near the front of my list. Verdict: 2+

I love this new rating system because it frees me from having to decide how good a game is, which is a subjective judgment anyway, and lets me focus on how much it makes me want to play it, which much more concrete and useful at the same time. For instance, I can rate Ra 4 and Go only 2+ without having to worry about slighting such a deep, subtle, elegant, and history-steeped game. If these ratings were “poor”/”awful” to “great” and I had to rate Ra an A+ and Go a C, I wouldn’t feel right doing that.

In related news, after my second play, Coliseum gets a 2+. Frustrations: It’s not very apparent how how well you do in the early rounds helps your final score; you can’t do very well unless you sit down near the beginning and think about your complete 5-turn plan; and relatedly, there’s a lot of potential for analysis paralysis, not only regarding your score but also other players’ scores and when it’s safe and unsafe to trade with them.

Three gunfighters, named A, B, and C, are having a rather contrived gunfight. Here are the rules:

• The fighters shoot in turn: first A, then B, then C, then (if more than one is still alive) back to A, and so on.
• On a turn, a fighter gets to shoot only once, at one opponent.
• A hits the target 1/3 of the time. B hits 2/3 of the time. C always hits.
• Fighters are allowed to shoot at the ground or otherwise intentionally not hit any target.
• If all fighters intentionally miss in a row, the last one to do so is eliminated. *

What is A’s best strategy?

Extra credit: Generalize for different accuracies.

*This rule is not usually given as a part of this riddle, but it is necessary to avoid degeneracy while working out the solution, and (as you will see if you try to generalize) is particularly important if all of the fighters have accuracy over 50%. I chose it arbitrarily; it could be replaced with any rule that keeps everyone from intentionally missing forever.

I present to you this scale which I shall use to rate games until someone convinces me to use something better, or I tire of it. It is not dissimilar to a 5-point or 10-point rating scale, but this should explain what the different ratings mean to me.

Axioms: These ratings pertain to a hypothetical game which I have definitely played until the novelty wears off (probably 3-5 plays) and which I have played once in the previous month, so there is little or no “geez, I sure miss X” factor.

In addition, a rating may be specific to a particular number of players. For instance, I might say (if I were very confused or , perhaps, heavily bribed) that Monopoly is a fine game for 4 players (rating 3) but pretty unpleasant with 5 or 6 (rating 1+)

4: How did we get a month without playing this? I’m chomping at the bit to play it again.

3: I would suggest playing this game again.

2: I wouldn’t suggest playing this game again, but if someone else did, I would not be opposed.

1: I would be opposed to playing this game again in the absence of bribery, cajolery, or the presence of a girl I was interested in.

0: I played this a month ago? I would not play this game in any circumstances.

In addition, intermediate attitudes can be expressed in terms of zero to three pluses after the number. For instance, 2+++ is a game I would be close to suggesting myself, were it not for some flaw in the game or the presence of a similar game I like more; a flat 2 I would agree to without argument, but if it were much worse I wouldn’t, and under bad circumstances I might beg off as tired/need to go home/etc.

And to rattle off some games that have been on my mind:

4 Ra, Coloretto

3+++ Puerto Rico

3++ Poker, Bridge, Settlers of Catan, Hey! That’s My Fish!

3 Power Grid, Goa, Bohnanza, Epic Duels

2++ Carcassone, Shadows over Camelot, Ticket to Ride

2 Tigris & Euphrates

1 Bang!, Risk

0++ Monopoly

I am running a single-elimination tournament with 64 players. The seeding is random. Assume the teams are totally ordered in skill (no two have the same skill, and the “is more skillful than” relationship is transitive) and that the more skillful team wins every game.

The tournament determines the most skillful team, of course. After it’s over, how many games are needed to determine the second best team?

Play against AIs. Nowhere near as good as the real thing, but when it’s 2:30 AM and you gotta have your fix, it’s available here.

http://snapper.rooms.cwal.net/games.html

The interface is very nice. The AI is decent but has a couple weaknesses that can be exploited:

• It won’t call Ra with the intention of buying the lot with its non-highest sun. This means you can often get some good bargains on lots of 5-6 decent tiles early on each epoch.
• It doesn’t take into account the value of holding onto a high-powered sun into the next round. For instance, if the Ra track is all-but-one, it would rather buy a single Pharaoh or River with its 13 -valued sun than either hold out for a good lot or be willing to take its 13 into the next epoch.

I intended to post this as the first article when I got back from Origins, but somehow it fell through the cracks. I would ordinarily not be attracted to Exalted: War for the Throne because it looks so much like Risk, but I wanted to try it out for the redoubtable J. Vogel, a fan of the RPG.

Time: 1-3 hours. The people I demoed with confirmed that they had seen very short games as well as games where a balance of power was reached, forces built up, and the game ended up taking a very long time. I think this is a problem–I want to go into a game knowing about how long it’s going to take, and a two-hour swing is a big deal. In particular, in almost all cases “three hours” translates to “the rest of the night.”

Central mechanic: Massed armies in regions, like Risk. There are differences: you can attack from nonadjacent regions (using “ranged attacks” and “sorcery”). The attacker is not at risk for casualties but has only one attack per turn, so the attack isn’t taken lightly.

Theme and mechanics integrated nicely. I haven’t played a lot of Exalted but I recognized the “Charms” (magic techniques) and artifacts and it looks like they pulled this off pretty well. The foundation is a wargame where soldiers are moved from region to region; Charms grant special abilities that can be used every turn, while “Event Cards” are one-time special powers that can be used in or out of combat.

There are two resources: money, which is used to pay for units, and Essence, which can give temporary boosts to offense and defense or power Charms. They seem to be of about equal value.

(If you were looking for cinematic, over-the-top personal combat, that’s not really included.)

Luck: Uncomfortably heavy. The resolution mechanic is taken straight from the game: roll a certain number of d10; 7-9 is a success and 0 is two successes. In an attack, both attacker and defender roll; defender’s successes are subtracted from the attacker’s and the difference is the number of casualties. It turns out that this is not only a lot of dice to roll, but the variance is very high. Attacks can go unexpectedly fall completely flat, even if you have invested a lot in them, and likewise seemingly small threats can bite hard with a lucky attack and bad defense roll.

Elimination and near-elimination. Not unexpected, but: once you’re out, you’re out, and if you lose most of your territory, you’re crippled until someone decides to put you out of your misery. There’s not much of a chance to have a serious impact on the game if you lose most of your territory or forces, but you’ll be asked to keep playing to avoid tipping the balance of power…

Defense = numbers. This worries me the most. The more armies you have in a region, the more difficult they are to kill. This makes the game feel “unbalanced” to me.

Verdict: Let R be the your rating on an arbitrary scale for Risk and E be your score for the Exalted RPG. Then your rating for this game will be (2R+E) / 2.9. (The quotient is 2.9, not 3, to reflect the “neat” aspect of bringing the games together.) Then penalize yourself 10% for every person less than 5 who would be difficult to find to play. (This is not a game you can occasionally get nongamers to play–especially not after the first time.) It’s not an easy sell, but a group of Exalted fans who like Risk as well will probably dig it.

Suggested and written up by reader Nevin; I have cleaned it up a little, but the ideas are his.

Synopsis: A hybrid of Coloretto and Ra, showcasing the fundamental idea of both: that different cards have different values to different players.

Setup: From a Ra set, remove all the gold, three floods, and one of each civilization tile. The suns are not used; the board is only used for the Ra track.

Play: As in Coloretto, there is one “row” of tiles for each player that can hold a maximum of three tiles. On your turn you may either pull a tile from the bag and add it to a row, or you may take one of the rows and be out of the round until all players have taken a row.

Gods only count for (2, as usual) points and cannot be used to take tiles as in Ra.

Disasters do not have their ordinary function and do not count against the “three tiles per row” limit. They count only after the third epoch, at which point each player scores -1 for having 1 disaster tile (of any kind), -3 for 2, -6 for 3, and so on.

If you pull a Ra tile, add it to the Ra track and draw another tile. If the Ra track fills up, as in Ra, the epoch ends immediately (players who haven’t taken a row yet are out of luck) and is scored exactly as in Ra. The game is over after the third epoch.