A little while ago Mock the Vote was rejected from the first company I submitted it to. Alas! The quest continues: I have some ideas for a way to bring it up to four players, which should make it much more approachable, and then I’ll try another company.

Still, it stings, and one of the reasons I find it hard to get my games off my shelf and into a publisher’s hands is all-too-familiar to me: the fear of rejection. I don’t believe the problem is that my games aren’t good. The problem is that “good” isn’t anywhere near good enough—good is easy to find. I have to not only have produced something special, but I have to manage to convince someone else of that too, someone who’s seen a lot of games, and is shoots down ideas that are just good for a living.

Wish me luck.

This is the account of a demo night I attended a few weeks ago. I got to try two games: Dreamscape and Mission: Red Planet.

Dreamscape is collectible. This is a shame, because this makes it very unlikely that I’ll play it, despite the fact that it looks very good. It’s published by Wizards of the Coast, and they were promoting the heck out of it at Origins.

To make matters even worse, it’s a miniatures game, which is a double shame: Your army is a maximum of 16 figures (could have been cards), and while the minis do look very attractive, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have been cards. (You move them around a tactical grid, which is very open, plenty of room for either minis or cards.) At such a small deck size, a CCG might have been conceivable.

The game looks neat, very fast-moving; on your turn, you can move all your units or attack with all your units. Between rounds you summon in more units to replace the fallen. You gain points for killing enemies and controlling squares near your opponent’s side of the board.

There are four “factions”: the evocatively-named Fear, Valor, Madness, and Passion. You don’t have to pick one faction; instead, the cost of units can be reduced (to a point) by units of that faction you already have in play. Mixing two factions looks very doable.

Units have special powers, of course, and it looks like they put a lot of thought and work into it. Which is a shame, because as I mentioned, I can’t envision myself buying any.

Mission: Red Planet, on the other hand, is an ordinary board game. The theme is steampunk colonization of Mars; it’s a very loose theme such as you would expect from your average Euro-game.

The gameplay will make you think of a cross between El Grande (vie for control of regions that are worth varying amounts of points; highest population controls the region) and Citadels (you have a hand full of roles; each turn you choose a role, which grants you certain choices in how you deploy your forces. Like Citadels, there is a strong element of preemption where the roles have a fixed order, and depending on the other players’ plans, going first or last can be a big advantage.)

The game is fun but not flawless; the selection of roles is very tight with lots of calculation, but there are “event cards” that can introduce dramatic and unpredictable scoring swings, which can be frustrating. It has the somewhat dubious distinction of being the first new board game I’ve played in a while where I thought “I’ve seen this before.” El Grande is a classic; if you like it and are looking for a slightly lighter, differently themed variant of it, give Mission: Red Planet a try. Otherwise, stick with the classic.

I’m not dead! I’ve been consumed with the much-anticipated Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft. To the unfortunate detriment of some of my other activities, most notably writing R0, Blizzard has created yet another home run sequel, a worthy addition to an already excellent game. It might even inspire a future article on what makes a great sequel.

Anyway, reader Ephraim Glass encouraged me to stick with the blog, the hobby, and the Invasion game, still in my mind. Step one was blowing off WoW tonight to visit demo game night at a local gaming store. I saw two games demoed. First was 10 Days in Europe. If you’ve ever played an old family game called Rack-O, it’s like that, but with a map instead of card ranks. I would recommend it to someone with kids–it’s light and you’d learn the geography pretty fast–but not of particular interest to adult gamers.

The main attraction, though, was a game called Beowulf by the prolific Dr. Knizia. The box looked immediately familiar–it’s the same size and illustrated by the same artist as the Lord of the Rings game. Although this game borrows elements from Lord of the Rings, it rings even more strongly of Taj Mahal.

Like Lord of the Rings, the primary resource is cards, which come in five categories (fighting, might, alliances, seafaring, and wit, plus wilds). Additionally, the game is laid out in a specific sequence of events where certain cards will be required and others will be available. This lets players plan out a long-term strategy.

The heart of the gameplay is in the auctions. There are about 9 or 10, and each one requires each player to bid two of the five types of cards. There are two types of auctions; in one, players go around the table bidding or dropping out, like in Taj Majal; the other is a one-secret-bid auction. In both cases there are a list of result choices ranging from great rewards (victory points, extra cards) to penalties (a VP deduction, a “wound” which must be healed by game’s end or be a large point penalty). For example, all of the outcomes of the Beowulf is Crowned King event are good–but some are better than others–while only the highest bidder in the Battle with the Dragon event wins out (gaining a large amount of VP) while the others sustain wounds. The order of preference is not always clear-cut, so the winner gets first choice, second place gets second choice, and so on.

There is a rather large element of luck–in fact, the relevant places on the board are clearly labeled “RISK.” In an auction event, this gives the player the opportunity to reveal two cards from the deck. If either one matches the ongoing event, the player gets to play them–for free. If not, the player has to drop out of the event and suffers a scratch as well (scratches are relatively easy to remove, but three add up to a wound).

Like Taj Mahal, there is a strong element of picking the right battles to fight–victory is achieved by not throwing resources into losing battles. Unlike Taj Mahal, the score comes linearly, not quadratically, and the makeup of your hand will make some fights much easier than others for you. This makes Beowulf much less cutthroat than Taj Majal. I like this about it, because I find winning cutthroat games not all that satisfying, and losing them can be very frustrating.

The balance hardly needs to be mentioned–it’s quality Knizia work and the luck factor is there on the table. The production values are nice; there aren’t all that many components but they all seem pretty sturdy. I’ll see if I can get myself a copy; it has lots of the calculating appeal of Taj Mahal without having to bury your competitors or hapless first-time inductees.