The Tao of Gaming

I'm just waiting for my copy of Flying Colors, Horatio.

The thread over on BGG begs the question. I doubt it will take off. I mean, we may see gains, but I don't expect the rest of the world to smack themselves on the forehead and go "Boardgames! Of course!".

That being said, I'm moderately hopeful that recent growth will continue. I mean, the internet lets people find like-minded people, and some of those who get nostalgic and look up games from their childhood may eventually stumble onto the geek (great site, not the greatest name from a PR standpoint) and get hooked.

In other news ...

Regarding Alexfrog's bgg thread on the War of the Ring Expansion, all I can say is "You had me at toning down the Witch King." I trust Alex's analysis (he's been right more often that I have whenever I've noticed a disagreement, and played WotR an order of magnitude more often). I'm almost certain to pony up for this. Right now I describe War of the Ring as "A game I like that isn't balanced and doesn't work, really." It would be nice to just shorten that to "A game I like."

Rio Grande is picking up Friedrich? Good to know. I don't think it's a purchase, but I'd like to play and this may get me a chance.

Has anyone played the Mare Nostrum expansion yet? I like the review I've seen, but haven't played in a few years, and want more info. [I'll probably buy it no matter what].

Finally, is anyone having problems viewing this in IE? I use Firefox, but I look at it with IE and text disappears (until you select it). Drop a comment.

As I was driving home, the news was discussing an immigration speech the President gave. Given recent discussions about the utility of game theory, I was reminded about some thoughts I had on this a while back. Warning — very little to do with games. Feel free to skip.

The problem with the current situation is that the incentives all align to do nothing. The employer doesn't want to rat out the workers — he wants cheap labor. The workers don't want to get deported. Fortunately, game theory has a solution — turn this into a prisoner's dilemma. But how?

Say that the current fine is $10,000 per illegal employee. (I don't know what it is, but it's a nice round number). The solution is to give half that amount to the person who fingers the employer, including the illegal employee. Suddenly the two sides aren't so cozy. Remember, that unlike many of the cases in nature, etc, this is a single shot game. If the employee defects (calls the Feds), then the employer can't retaliate. Also, as the number of employees grows, each has to be concerned that another employee is willing to sell them all out for a large payday. (Sure, you may not rat yourself out for $5k, but would you rat yourself out for $50k? That's a large chunk of change to have in Latin/South America ... more than you'll earn in several years).

As an added incentive, give the illegal employee a guest worker permit (in addition to the money) and employers would have to be fools to hire illegals (that weren't relatives or some such).

[I'd personally combine this with immigration reform, but that's not a game-theoretic issue].

Update: The rest of the money can go into the general gov't coffers (or wherever it goes now), but allocating some as a pool for hiring new enforcers or paying bonuses would give the responsible agency (DHS now, I guess) some incentive, too.

Yesterday I made the trip up to The Game Ranch, courtesy of the wonderful hosts. While half of the compound played Conquest of the Empire, we played several older (but recently re-released) games and the totally new Kreta.

Nothing much to be said about Ra or Traumfabrik. We also played the new version of Rheinlander. Quick thoughts? Same melody, nicer orchestration. Seriously, the old components were horrible. Face2Face overproduced their version, but you can read the board at a glance.

After cleansing the palate with Liar's Dice, Steffan Dorra's new "deepthink" game, Kreta hit the table.

You have an area control where you can build along edges and corners (affecting multiple areas) and combined with the 'role selection' idea. Each player has their own deck of roles. Most roles add or move some influence, but one scores and lets everyone pick up their played roles.

Providing differences are random setup of tiles and dealing out 11 scoring cards that indicate which regions score (and in which order). Each card scores multiple regions (adjacent to an edge/corner). MWChapel's review covers the bases admirably, no need to rehash all the details.

The interesting, potentially problematic twist is that after scoring, the active player can choose to discard the next scoring card and take a random card off the deck. This adds randomness to the game. Big swinging randomness. But the rest of the game has none. The luck strikes an odd note, but I'm not sure it's dissonant. More investigation required!

Anyway, after our five games it was time to make dangerous journey back home, which claimed the lives of several sherpas. So I may not make it back as often as I'd like, but thanks to the Rozmiareks for having me.