The Tao of Gaming

Regarding the Essen thread: Michael wrote: "I'll believe that the L5R boardgame is coming when I see a physical copy of it somewhere. " True. I wasn't considering an L5R boardgame, just the other games they are promoting.

Larry recommended Peloponnes (and I did notice his review of it). As for his other points...

Endeavor is also quite good, for those who are fond of Euros.

For the games that haven't been released yet, I seek out the prototypes that you avoid, Brian, so I can attest that Fabrikmanager, Macao, Dungeonlords, Campaign Manager 2008, and Burger Joint are all very good. BasketBoss appeals to me, since it's an approach to sports gaming (a GM building a team where the players' abilities change with time) that I've tried a few times in the past with my own designs

First off: I only avoid prototypes while I'm at conventions. I'm perfectly willing to waste a few hours of normal gaming time on a prototype. (You may remember I tried the Leaping Lemmings prototype). So if you want to send me a copy of your great prototype, fine. (I have turned down a few review copies recently, but no prototypes).

• Endeavour (which I still think should have used the British spelling, so it shall be referred to here) has been bought by a local. So, done.
• I may buy Burger Joint. But I don't need more two player games.
• With BasketBoss, I'm in Larry's boat. (Almost exactly. I've designed a GM style teambuilding game (about soccer). Basically it was my response to Footmania, which intrigued but didn't fulfill the promise. And I played LEFL/EEFL (aka United aka Fireside Football) for years as a PBEM. So I'm interested in the theme as well... [Perhaps I should pull my soccer game out and take another look at it, but it wasn't terribly good.] Now I'm looking at the team-management games on the geek. Are any of them good? (I suspect there are more that aren't tagged as well, yet).
• Some expansions are possible (Roma, Le Havre, Agricola).
• Most of the other titles are still on a 'wait and see' basis.

Just as it isn't Christmas season until after Thanksgiving, you shouldn't speculate about Essen until October. So while I haven't been able to avoid it completely, I haven't really been looking at it. Hell, I haven't violated all the games I made in my last two orders (although I've managed to play most of them ... only Shadow Hunters and Say Anything untouched, and Arabian Nights only once).

But that doesn't stop lots of people from putting up their Essen decorations early, and while my general strategy of not being an early adopter has served me well, that's no reason not to window shop.

I'm glad to see AEG trying to break into board games, even though I have no reason to think I'll like their catalog (since, you know, I haven't investigated it until just now). There's a soft spot in my heart of L5R (although I haven't played much this decade).

JKLM's Ascendancy? Well, a space empire and whatnot in a few hours would be nice. But I went through the Civ in two hours grail search. Lots of dead knights, there. Some good treasures, but no grail.

So, this is the open question thread? Any games at Essen making you squee like a child? Fabrikmanager? That unknown game with 25 copies only? What?

It would be more revealing to say that Puerto Rico's way to win (as compared to Le Havre's) is front-loaded. What you have to do is defined in the early game, after which you are relatively free to do what you want. Whereas Le Havre's is endgame based. You are relatively free in LH, for example, to muck around with a variety of early strategies (with some constraints) as long as you load up on the coal once that starts.

I see no reason to consider Le Havre a "multiple paths to victory" game. So (contra Larry) I see no reason why moving this critical path to the front (and the corresponding freedom to the end) magically relieves Puerto Rico of the same charge. My gut is that Through the Ages is similarly front loaded.

If you want to say that PR isn't 'one way to win' because my description is too vague, that's a different charge. ("Focus on getting early income, usually via a high value trading good" isn't nearly as specific as "stockpile cole, convert ship"). Also, PR and TtA give you a greater percentage of "non-scripted" actions ... its not a binary decision.

I feel that LH gives you relatively few unscripted actions, in comparison. Certainly the fact that after 10 games of PR I was in no way tired of it speaks that it is more free-form.

And all those games are still interesting if everyone knows the secret.

As for the other comments, I've no idea if Automobile really falls into this category, or is just a pure tactical optimization game.

Update: The lesson, as always, is to "smoke the crack" to get comments flowing.

So Le Havre won the IGA.

Am I done with Le Havre? It certainly seems like it (haven't played it in four months). While I agree that it's a better design than Agricola, the relative sameness of the buildings (from game to game) means that its easy to exhaust the novelty ... and since I think there is one true path to victory in Le Havre, well, there you go.

Should Automobile have won? All my concerns for Le Havre count double against Automobile, but I've only played twice, so I could be wrong. (Note -- that was rhetorical humility only. I'm not wrong. After a few more plays the strategic interest will be sucked dry).

Should Dominion have won? It's tough to argue against a game that I've played several hundred times (online). Clever design (and novel), lots of fans. Theoretically a worse design than either of the other two games, but enough variety to overcome it, and probably the only game of the three likely to hit 25+ hours of enjoyment.

Of course, BSG surpassed that before Pegasus came out, so that tells you who I would have voted for.

Speaking of BSG (and I am, now) -- I've been thinking about Variants. I think I'd like to play with random destinations ... you randomly roll between using the Kobol card and New Caprica card during the sleeper phase. And I'd like to see Pegasus ship enter and leave the game; this mirrors the show, to be sure, but as it stands Galactica isn't rarely threatened with destruction. Off the top of my head, I think

• Pegasus should show up the first time a "Ship" card is drawn. (This also helps balance a hard game versus an easy one ...
• You Pegasus damage chits equal to "Distance - 1" every time you jump (So, jump 3, Pegasus takes two damage). Anyone on Pegasus when it is destroyed winds up in Sickbay.

I'm happy with the "Occupation authority destroys prepped ships" variant we tried, and I'd add two minor New Caprica fixes.

1. Destroyed ships are only revealed to the cylons (so humanity doesn't gain info when things are destroyed).
2. A "Basestars bombard" result adds a basestar in front of Galactica if there are none around (usually via a double nuke). Just to keep things tense.

Overall these change will make things harder for humanity, but given that our balance is at 50/50 that doesn't bother me (unless testing shows I've misjudged things).