Gaming evolution: The Game of Life

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

I have many fond memories of playing The Game of Life as a kid in my friend’s basement. Countless hours, and countless lives being a police officer, doctor, rock star and more. The game was simplicity itself to play, and as a kid living out exciting lives, having kids, and buying a house was often like a game of make believe, just with a bit more structure and a winner at the end of the road. The game actually goes as far back as 1860 with a version by Milton Bradley himself called The Checkered Game of Life, but the modern format that most people know came about in 1960. Taking on the popular format of Monopoly, Sorry, and other games Life is a simple roll and move game. There are some fun choices, like whether to go to college or not, what career to choose and what house to buy, but for the most part life is a game of consequences based on the spaces that you land on. Some of these spots on the board are fun, as players get married, and often fill up the back of their peg car with kids. Others are less fun, like a skiing accident that requires you to pay the player who’s the doctor, or the inevitable taxes space.

The fun of the game was not always in how it played, but in the stories that it spun. Players sat down at the game to see what happened just as much as they did to see who won. It took a while for modern games to really capture this story telling aspect, but a new game coming out this week packs a lot more decisions AND more story into the box. That game is The Pursuit of Happiness. It released at the German Spiel gaming fair last October, but is making it’s way to the U.S. this month. In The Pursuit of Happiness players start as a teenager, and round by round make their way to old age and eventually, death. The goal of the game is not to have the most money, as in Life, but to have the most long term happiness.

ThingsToDo — Project cards with different levels to accomplish.

The game really captures the theme by getting right down to every day life. There are cards that represent projects, possessions, jobs, and love interests. Players can select whatever action they’d like on a given turn, with the only restriction being life resources, the

complexities of every day living being boiled down to influence, money, ideas, and knowledge. Unlike The Game of Life which feels like a roller coaster ride, here you are charting out exactly how your character lives their life each turn. Do you want to be an artist with a giant comic collection and a yacht? You can do that! Do you want to be a politician who eats healthy and lives a life of solitude till and old age? You can do that too. It all depends on what cards come out, and if you have collected the right resources to make it happen.

All love interests are double sided card with a male and female version on opposite sides.

The cards themselves are not surface level. They have depth, and degrees, just like real life. You can buy bigger and bigger boats, but they require maintenance costs. You can move forward in your relationship, and even have a family together, but partners have expectations that you have to meet. You can change jobs or get promoted, but those have requirements too. This depth really gives the game a narrative arc because the planning and strategy that goes into each card has effects on other aspects of your fictional life.

The game in play. Actions on the right get you cards on the left, which in turn provide their own additional actions.

There are also group projects that multiple players can take part in, like being in a band, or running a restaurant together. The sense of choice in this game is immense, and consequently the stories of each game very wildly. To push the play in a certain direction each game has overall life goals that all players are trying for. While the game of life was a fun ride, and still brings me a lot of nostalgia, The Pursuit of Happiness is a game that is engaging both in how it plays and the stories that it tells.

I am really looking forward to the fun and sort of role playing that comes with this kind of theme. It can be fun to daydream a bit and play out a different life. Where The Game of Life happens to you, Pursuit of Happiness gives you fun and interesting choices that make this “what-if” theme a lot more compelling.

Mac Gerdts for President

Posted on August 19, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

The Rondel: A simple wheel of 8 choices that are selected each turn rotating clockwise.

Mac Gerdts is a prolific board game designer who is most known for his invention of the Rondel. This simple mechanism is one of the most inventive uses of a circle to come to the hobby since the infamous Game of Life spinner. Essentially, there is a circle with player markers on it. Each turn players select their action from any of the next three in the circle. Anything skipped over cannot be chosen again until a that marker makes it’s way around the circle again. Think of it kind of like a Merry-Go-Round of actions. This simple use of an action selection circle makes for wonderfully complex decisions. On the one hand, players want to do actions in the most efficient order as they go around and around. On the other hand, what you REALLY want to do on a given turn may require you to skip the other actions.

Bob — Pardon the art. The Goldilocks Problem.

There's a lot going on, but it's all dictated by the Rondel in the corner. — There’s a lot going on, but it’s all dictated by the Rondel in the corner.

The Rondel Merry-Go-Round of choice is a really brilliant way of giving the players important choices to make each turn, but not overwhelming them with too many choices at once. It also makes the timing of choices matter more than ever before. This solves the “Goldilocks Problem” of board game choice. If you give players too few choices on their turn, it can feel like the game is playing them. If you give them a giant menu of choices, play can bog down as players need to decide from a large array of possible actions. With the Rondel, players can make one of three choices, but these choices then inform what choices they have on their next turn.

Up until recently, every one of Mac Gerdts games featured this familiar circle of actions, with the actions themselves, the theme, and the ultimate goal of the game changing around that central mechanism. Imperial and Imperial 2030 take a chilling look at countries warring and conquering each other, while the players play investors that can control countries that they have a majority share in. Despite looking on the surface like Risk, this game is more about the manipulation and politics that happens behind the front lines. Navegador has players controlling trade ships navigating around Africa, and colonizing and trading on their way. Antike takes on the familiar Greco-Roman Civilization them and has players warring and building structure throughout the ancient world. At the heart of all of these is that strategic Merry-Go-Round, the brilliance of the Rondel.

Gerdts branched out recently with a big hit Concordia, his first game that did not feature a Rondel. Instead in this game Gerdts adopts the popular deck building mechanism. Players add action cards to their deck which dictate their future action choices. While it is a fantastic implementation of deck building, it is missing a little bit of that strategic timing that game with the Rondel. Still, here too Gerdts limits the choices a player has on their turn in order to keep the game moving and allow for on your toes thinking wrapped inside a strategic whole.

While he is German and in no way eligible to run for the US Presidency, he is most certainly my candidate for the Cardboard party. Perhaps politics, and the world in general could use a bit more clockwork thinking, one choice at a time around the Merry Go Round.

The semi-digital future: App integration in board games

Posted on August 12, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

Countless games have made the jump from cardboard to digital. Many of my favorites are available on the iPad or Android, from Carcassonne to Agricola, to Galaxy Trucker. However, many new games are experimenting with a new hybrid format, supplementing the traditional board game format with a tablet app. I have played several of these new format board games and each of them brings something different to the board game experience, depending on how the app works.

The app is central to One Night Ultimate Werewolf

One Night Ultimate Werewolf uses the app as a moderator, and narrator all in one. The dulcet toned Eric Summerer walks through which roles in this social deduction game do what. The cards are still essential for keeping track of the shifting identities and status of the players, but otherwise I would argue that the app is the game itself. This would have not been possible even a decade ago. There were many attempts at interactive technology in board games even then, from the VHS versions of clue, to a childhood favorite of mine, Omega Virus, which was a simple voice box that players could interact with by entering the number codes of rooms on the space station that they entered. But all of this pales in comparison to the One Night Werewolf app that can add and remove roles, and players with a few swipes.

In Alchemists players fill out their chart of elements by experimenting with different elements cards using the app

While One Night Werewolf uses an app to replace what could be a human element, Alchemists flexes more of what computers can do best, randomization. The game premise is one of logic and deduction. Players are alchemists who are studying various fairy tale like ingredients to determine their properties. When you combine two ingredients, the result can be positive or negative, and one of three colors. Each time you play the game, the combinations are different, and the results of any combination are handled by the app that each player can individually download for their phone. All players enter the same seed number, so the alchemical rules for the game are the same from player to player. This solves two major problems at once. For one thing, no one player has to set up this puzzle like aspect of the game, and potentially discover the answers for themselves and ruin the deductive fun. Secondly, each player’s interactions with this puzzle are handled on their own device so that only they gain the insight from their own experiment.

The app is not the whole game here, and there is plenty of player interaction as players claim action spaces on the board to gather these ingredients, test them on unfortunate students, sell them to wandering adventurers, and gather expensive rare artifacts on the side. However the puzzle that supports all these actions is handled elegantly by the app, and no two games are ever the same.

In XCOM: The Boardgame the app functions as a timer and director.

XCOM: The Board Game uses the app as both a director and a timer. In this co-op game the app tells players what to do, and what happens in terms of the board game “fighting back” against the players. It also counts down how long each player has to make a given decision, keeping the action moving and the tension high. This solves a common complaint about co-op games where players will discuss what to do and one player will drive the decision making of the whole team. By keeping everything directed through the app, but on a timer, each player must acts independently and this prevents the single player “quarterback” syndrome. Each player is also assigned a different role in fighting off the alien invasion, from the science officer who researches new technology to the commander who fight in combat encounters. The app certainly helps capture the spirit of the video game and gives this co-op a unique feel.

In Mansions of Madness the app handles the scenario and the players handle the decisions.

Finally there’s my favorite app integration yet, Mansions of Madness Second Edition. What was a clunky game with a lot of set up when it first came out in 2011 is now an eloquent and smooth experience, thanks to an app that runs the show. The app handles what tiles come out to build the environment that players explore. It presents skill checks for players to roll against and handles the results and their impact on the environment. There is still plenty of board game here, with players handling the dice rolls, decisions, inventory etc… But the app provides the music, the story, and most importantly the variety and ease of set-up that the first game could not have had. Over this past weekend different people played through the first scenario multiple times, and each time there were new wrinkles and wholly different mansion layouts.

I personally cannot seem to dig into the all digital versions of my favorite games. There is something missing, even in an excellent execution of a cardboard to digital transition. But these new hybrids are very promising indeed. These days, our iPad or our phones are always by our sides. And while I do value an escape to board gaming to get away from these digital companions, I enjoy when a digital app makes that on the table experience richer and more entertaining.

Gen Con 2016 watchlist

Posted on August 5, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

With Early August comes the advent of the biggest gaming convention in the United States, Gen Con. Each year publishers release hundreds of new game at the enormous convention that takes place in Indianapolis, Indiana. This year it has gotten so big that organizers even co-opted some of the space of the neighboring Lucas Oil Stadium. Crowds rush to grab the latest games before they sell out, Cosplay is everywhere, and special events are run throughout the weekend including tournaments, shows and role playing of all kinds.

Gen Con is on my bucket list to attend, but given that I am still recovering from Essen it was not in the cards for me this year. Nonetheless, I do have my eye on a few games, and wanted to share a few previews of what is coming out this weekend.

The unique card crafting system makes Mystic Vale stand out.

In terms of bring something new to the table, Mystic Vale is certainly unique. It is described as a “card crafting’ game, and takes this concept very literally as you insert new transparent plastic attributes into your starting cards, which act more like card sleeves. This makes a twist on the now well trodden territory of Dominion and other deck builders in that you are changing the individual cards in a very small deck vs just changing what cards make up that deck.Certainly and interesting concept, but I do worry a bit about taking all the cards apart and putting them away after the game is over!

The iPad does the heavy lifting in Mansions of Madness Second Edition

Mansions of Madness brings Cthulhu goodness to the convention with a new second edition. The original game featured one player setting up and running an adventure for the other players. Setup time was a big complaint as the game features lots of different cards and tiles, and if things weren’t set up correctly the adventure could break ruining the experience. This new edition continues the trend of board games going semi-digital by introducing a tablet or iPad app that handles the game master role from the original game. This means that setup time is drastically reduced, and players can all cooperate together against the “brain” of the game in the app.

Plenty of wooden chairs to arm oneself with

After years of having crazy tavern adventures in their RPG campaigns, The Dragon and Flagon looks to bring that chaos to a 3D board game space. The game embraces the environmental hazards of a classic tavern, with “rugs” that are cards you can pull out from under players, cardboard furniture that can be weaponized at a moment’s notice, and barrels that can bowl other players over. While it may not exactly be the most strategic, thinky kind of game it looks like a load of silly fun.

For those that do want something deeper and a bit more crunchy, Scythe is getting a lot of the buzz leading up to this year’s show. The game combines war, economics and resource gathering in an alternate World War I era setting where Mechs roamed the countryside. It is certainly a sight to behold all set up, as a lot of care and thought went into the pieces, which are different for each faction in the game. We have come a long way from the earlier board games with simple pawns, dice and a board, where now board games with board and pieces that are like a work of art are becoming the norm. This game was also a Kickstarter success story, where players invested over 1.8 million dollars in the vision and idea behind the game long before it came out, allowing the company Stonemaier games to put together a great end product.

The best news is that even if you, like myself are missing this great gaming event, all these games will be coming to local stores sooner rather than later. While Gen Con is the big release event for a lot of these games, the true test of time will be which games get into people’s hands after the show, and which ones we will still be talking about a year from now, when all of the glitz and glamour has died down, and the game must stand up on its own merit.

A Who’s Who of boardgaming: part 2

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

When you have favorite designers in the board game hobby, waiting for their next game can be a lot like waiting for a band’s new album, or an author’s next book. Today I want to highlight several designers that have a large following of fans, who devour each detail that gets announced about their upcoming titles.

Uwe after winning Jogo do Anno, Portugal's game of the year for his game Agricola. — Uwe after winning Jogo do Anno, Portugal’s game of the year for his game Agricola.

One designer who has built a particularly fervent fanbase is Uwe Rosenberg. His early designs were relatively simple, including the classic game Bohnanza about bean farming. The game can drive some players nuts, as the central mechanic is that you cannot re-arrange your hand of cards. You must plant or trade the beans you have from left to right, and you only have two bean plots at any given time, so the simple rule of not being able to rearrange your hand creates a lot of tough decisions.

Farming in Agricola, Uwe's biggest hit. — Farming in Agricola, Uwe’s biggest hit.

Uwe stuck with this harvest theme and struck gold with his much more complex game about farming, Agricola. Much of his output since this smash hit has been refining or re-implementing the theme and mechanics of that classic. Specifically, the ongoing theme of harvesting and effectively utilizing resources. From the livestock and crops in Agricola, to the Coal and fish in the harbor based game Le Havre, to the monestary based Ora et Labora, where monks craft wine and beer from their basic ingredients. Once, these games were called the Harvest Trilogy, but since new games keep coming out it has since been redefined as the Harvest Series.

He boiled the bigger Agricola into a two player game focusing on the livestock called Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small. He took the same concept to a fantasy realm and had dwarves that not only farmed but mined and went on adventures for resources in Caverna. Each game has its own interesting twists on just how the resource engine players build works. Just this year a new sort of greatest hits version of Agricola was released, proving that the classic still has a lot of staying power.

Stefan Feld, thinking of his next three games.

Another designer who has a lot of fans is Stefan Feld. Feld can be extremely prolific at times, like when he put out four separate games in 2013. His design style has been called “Point Salad” games, with the idea being that there are many ways to score points, but often they seem disparate, or unrelated to each other. They are fun games despite this lack of cohesion, because there is a constant point feedback loop, and what’s more fun than scoring points.

Often these different ways of scoring all revolve around a very original central mechanism. In his classic The Castles of Burgundy, players role dice to select properties off of a central board, and place those properties on their player board. The

Placing tiles in a dice based countryside in Castles of Burgundy

dice rolling and tile like puzzle is the central mechanic, but how each different tile scores is the variety. Ship tiles get you good which you can sell, farm tiles score exponentially when they have the same animals, mines get you silver which in turn can get you more property. Feld also often includes a negative factor that players must try to avoid while still excelling at scoring points. In Notre Dame, this balancing act is in trying to keep the rat population down while still scoring points. In Aquasphere players must keep the octopi from overrunning the lab, and in Bruges, there are 5 different kinds of disasters players must try to avoid.

Vlaada showing off his arena combat game Tash-Kalar

Vlaada Chvátil’s designs are extremely eclectic. Coming from the video game hobby, many of his games remind me of their digital cousins. They usually have difficulty levels, something that is common in Cooperative board games, to keep the simple AI challenging, but is not as common in competitive games. Vlaada’s games often have a beginner, intermediate and advanced mode simply because they are so mechanically dense. However, his games are also richly thematic and intuitive, and above all else, wholly original.

Galaxy Trucker is fun and easy to pick up straight from the rule book.

Nothing is more daunting than learning a game cold from the rules. After years of having done it, I’ve kind of gotten used to diving in head first, but when I was still new to the hobby a friend and I sat down to try to play Galaxy Trucker straight from the rules at a local convention. The tutorial style of the rulebook, with a first scenario laid out step by step, made it a joy to play, and we had no problems picking it up and having a great time.

Through the Ages is just as terrifyingly complex as it looks, I recommend starting with the beginner game.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum, I sat down to play Through the Ages, an epic civilization game by Chvátil, at a different convention. We had a player who was running the game to teach, so no daunting rules, but since it was a convention and we had all the time in the world to play the game, he insisted on playing the full expert game right from the start. Six hours later, myself and two other players who had known we were losing for the last four of those hours, quit the game in defeat. When it comes to Vlaada’s games, they are richly rewarding, but require a commitment to build up to the full experience, and we all learned this the hard way. However, Vlaada came out of nowhere this year with the Spiel des Jahres winning Codenames, a game that is so simple to play that you wonder how it wasn’t invented 20 years ago. So he does have range, and not every one of his games is in the deep end of the pool.

All of these designers have created their own niche and fan groups that know what to expect from their games. They are some of the rock stars of the board game world, with fans who will buy their next game based just on their name being on the front cover. Several of their games line my shelves, and while I usually wait and read the reviews before buying their games, I am always intrigued by what they will cook up next.

Why race horses when you can race camels?

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

In honor of opening day at Saratoga Race Course I wanted to talk about horse racing games. But I have a confession to make; I have never played a horse racing game. I realize this is a gap in my board gaming ways, and I intend to correct it before this year’s track season is over. However, there is a game I adore that captures all of the unpredictability of horse racing but with twice the sand and infinitely more pyramids. That game is Camel Up, 2014’s Spiel des Jahres winner.

Camels come around the bend. Snowcap (White) is ahead because it is on top, much to Blueberry and Colonol Mustard’s chagrin.

It won for good reason. Camel Up takes the format of other racing games and throws it out the window. Instead of each player controlling a single camel and vying independently to win the race, the game focuses on the more fun part of a day at the track, the betting. Each camel is represented by a corresponding colored die with either a one, two or three on each side. When a die is rolled that colored camel moves that many spaces. Simple, right? Except there are two twists that make all the difference.

For one thing, you don’t just roll the dice as in other games, instead, all the dice are placed in a cardboard pyramid at the beginning of each round or leg, of the race. The pyramid has special door on top so that when it is placed upside down it only releases a single die onto the table.This is brilliant because an extra layer of unpredictability to each die roll. Not only do players not know what number will be rolled, but no one can predict which die will be rolled.

The pyramid is flipped and ready to release a die by pressing the trigger on its side.

The second thing is the stacking of the camels. Unlike a lovely day at Saratoga, with horses running side by side, these camels stack on top of each other. And once multiple camels are on top of each other, if the bottom camel moves, the others get a free ride. This means that despite the fact that each camel can only move 1-3 spaces each round, predicting where any camel will end up after all the stacking and free rides is a difficult feat.

With these two elements, the stage is set to focus on the gambling. Players can take bets on any camel for any given round, predicting which camel will be in first after all the dice have been rolled. The earlier you take a bet, the more that bet is worth, but because of the many unknowns, it’s much more risky to bet on a leg early. Any bets where the camel was in 3rd or worst place lose money, but the loss is minimal to encourage some freewheeling silliness. However, multiple bad bets in a round won’t get you ahead of the other players.

Players can also play one of their 5 cards, one for each camel to bet on the overall race loser, and overall winner. This is a much more long term bet, but if you are the first player to guess right on either, there is a big reward. And to add just a bit more chaos to the mix, players can also place hazardous sand traps, and boosting oasis tiles on the track each round, to tweak the odds in their favor, and earn a few bucks each time any camels land on these tiles.

This all comes together to make for a fantastic half hour of hilarity and fun. This is certainly not a deep strategy game to ponder, and there is certainly a large dose of luck, but just like the track, when you put a lot of faith in one camel pulling ahead, and that investment pays off, it’s a blast. And when things go completely sideways, it can be just as fun, as you never quite know what’s around the bend, and what die is coming out of the pyramid.

One recommendation if you do seek this title out, is to make sure to name the camels. You’d be surprised how the narratives write themselves, and you start to think that Mossy Humps, the green camel, really is cursed to end up in last every time. Or who knows, out of your box, and under a different name, that camel could be a guaranteed winner.

Spiel des Jahres 2016 winners

Posted on July 19, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

The Spiel des Jahres 2016 winners have been announced!

For the Spiel des Jahres or family game of the year, the winner is Vlaada Chvátil’s Codenames. This comes as no surprise, as no game has been played more by my regular gaming group this year. The fact that players can jump in and out whenever, and that games only take ~ 15 minutes make this a perfect party game. I am excited to see Vlaada win such a prestigious award, since he has been one of my favorite designers for years, but most of his designs are at the deep end of the game complexity pool.

For the Kennerspiel des Jahres or Expert game of the year, Alexander Pfister and Andreas Pelickan’s Isle of Skye took the prize. This marks the second year running that this design duo has won this honor, having won last year with Broom Service. While the other nominees Pandemic Legacy and Time Stories were both more innovative titles Isle of Skye is a very solid choice for this award. At the very least, this ensures that expansions are on the way for this title, as its publisher will be eager to capitalize on the sales this award is sure to bring. Isle of Skye joins a host of other successful tile laying games which have won top honors in the past.

So congratulations to the winners and nominees. For a full list of nominees check out my earlier write up. Overall 2015 was a solid year for board games, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of 2016 brings to the table.

A Who’s Who of boardgaming: part 1

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

The board game hobby is full of eclectic designers, each with their own style of design, and preference for different themes. While I couldn’t possibly cover them all, I thought it might be fun to cover a few at a time and delve into what makes each one tick based on their previous designs.

Friedemann Friese is hard to miss in a crowd.

Friedeman Friese is certainly the easiest one to pick out of a crowd. In fact, when I visited Essen I saw him and his green hair bobbing through the crowds. His company is called 2F Spiele, inspired by his name, and most of his designs have two F’s in the game name, and the signature green feature prominently. Some of these F F games include:

Fearsome Floors

504 (that one is a bit hidden)

Green and F's are a running theme in Friedemann's games. — Green and F’s are a running theme in Friedemann’s games.

Fabled Fruit is coming this fall.

However, his most famous game at all, Power Grid, seems to be missing the F’s… Until you realize it’s original German name Funkenshlag.

Friedemann also borrowed Obama’s Hope style poster look for his game Copycat featuring his own mug on the cover, and also borrowed all of the elements of the game design. It was a grand experiment in putting elements from other games he loved in a blender and seeing what board game smoothie came out on the other side.

If nothing else, he is an eclectic designer who is not afraid of crazy ideas. His most recent experiment was sending out a game anonymously to various other designers and publishers and surreptitiously tracking their views on it given that it was not tied to him in any way. The result? People pay a lot more attention to your game when you are a known designer.

Another legendary name in board games is Dr. Reiner Knizia. This designer has a doctorate in math, and it shows in the scoring systems for his games, which are always very playful with how you count. In one of his more famous designs Tigris and Euphrates, your lowest score in any of the three categories is the only one that counts. In one of his many famous auction games, High Society, the highest score wins, but whoever has the least money is immediately eliminated.

In Tigris and Euphrates, only your lowest score counts. It becomes an exercise in balancing how you score vs focusing on any one thing.

Dr. Knizia has designed over 600 games and they are well known for being very abstract and a bit mathy. He is a prolific designer of auction games, and has found more ways to add a twist to the auction format than any other designer I know. However, because of the number based deterministic nature of his games, the theme often feels secondary at best, and while people will discuss strategy and how a game played out after the fact, there aren’t really narrative stories that emerge from many of his designs. One of his recent designers re implemented an older game of his to be about a revolution… between Ducks and Robots. Finally answering the age old question we have all been asking!

Ducks vs Robots, the centuries old grudge match!

In Rampage players destroy a city as godzilla like monsters. Yes it is as awesome as it sounds, and as crazy as its designer.

Antoine Bauza’s most famous design is the civilization themed 7 Wonders, however thematically his true passion seems to be Japan. From the very simple firework themed Hanabi, to the challenging co-ops Ghost Stories and Samurai Spirit, Japanese art and history ooze from his designs. Tokaido is an artistic love letter to travel in ancient Japan along the famous road between Kyoto and Edo, Takenoko take a more anime approach with farmers and a meddlesome panda, and even Terror in Meeple City (formerly Rampage) has Japan’s Kaiju influences.

Tokaido captures the beauty of Japanese art.

Martin Wallace has many fantastic historical games under his belt, including A Few Acres of Snow about the French and Indian war.

Martin Wallace made a name for himself with deep economic games that capture the spirit of industrialism. Brass tracks the growth of industry and transportation in Great Britain from the canal era through to railways. Age of Steam has players playing rail barons trying to build rail networks without losing a fortune in debt. He has a whole transportation trilogy Automobile, Aeroplanes: Aviation Ascendant, and Ships that all deal with the growth and development of each form of transportation throughout the different eras. That is not to say he is a one note designer, as he does have other less serious games like Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Invade the Earth, and the Cthulhu themed A Study in Emerald. But even in these different themes, you can sense many of the same design sensibilities.

Just like your favorite author, board game designers really put their mark on the games that they design. And it’s no wonder. While the production, playtesting and publication of a game takes a team of very talented people, the core design is the blood sweat and tears of one person. To spend so much time with a game, it inevitably becomes an extension of your passions and sensibilities as a designer. When players connect with a designer they will often give another game by that designer a second look. They may not all be surefire hits if you’ve liked a previous design, but chances are good that some of the same elements might be found in their next design.

On the table July 8th, 2016

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

As the weeks have gone by I’ve been playing some pretty strange and fantastic games. Here are the highlights.

Temporum has you and other players time traveling from the ancient past (the top of the board) to the distant future. Only one timeline or set of cards is “real” at any given time as you race to bring your influence from the past to the present, represented by the crowns on the side of the board.

Top Race have players racing around the board using cards that have the order and the number each different car will move that turn. The secret is playing the cards so that it benefits your car the most while other cars are stuck in the traffic of tight turns.

Camel Up the Spiel Des Jahres winner two years ago has players betting on camels as they race around the board. Camels can end up on top of each other, and those on top get a free ride when the ones below them move. Players roll dice out of the pyramid and the colored dice correspond to each colored camel. Naming your camels is highly recommended!

Pantheon has players spreading their foot prints across the world and building temples along the way. Civilizations rise and fall, so its a race to walk to the best places before the end of each round.

The Gallerist has players manage museums, from comissioning works of art, to attracting the right crowd. I clearly should never manage a museum because I was 100 points behind the nearest player... — The Gallerist has players manage museums, from comissioning works of art, to attracting the right crowd. I clearly should never manage a museum because I was 100 points behind the nearest player…

Castles of Burgundy the Card game has players playing cards as dice in order to build the best estate. The game condenses it's older sibling The Castles of Burgundy into a portable format. However, it still requires a big table even if it comes in a small box. — Castles of Burgundy the Card game has players playing cards as dice in order to build the best estate. The game condenses it’s older sibling The Castles of Burgundy into a portable format. However, it still requires a big table even if it comes in a small box.

Patchwork has players drafting tiles to create a quilt, with buttons functioning as the currency of the game. It is crucial to fill the board as much as possible, as each space un-quilted is negative points at the end of the game.

Stellar Conflict has players placing cards anywhere on the table in real time. After a minute players must stop placing cards, and then evaluate what happened by going through each card in numeric order and seeing where the lasers shot. Chaos ensues, and you'd be surprised how often you accidentally shoot your own ships! — Stellar Conflict has players placing cards anywhere on the table in real time. After a minute players must stop placing cards, and then evaluate what happened by going through each card in numeric order and seeing where the lasers shot. Chaos ensues, and you’d be surprised how often you accidentally shoot your own ships!

String railway has players placing tiles and connecting them with strings, the tracks in this strange train game. A string mountain and string river provide landscape, and players must navigate the increasingly crowded "board." — String railway has players placing tiles and connecting them with strings, the tracks in this strange train game. A string mountain and string river provide landscape, and players must navigate the increasingly crowded “board.”

I am always amazed by the variety in this hobby. Here are links to the games pictured for more information.

Temporum, Top Race, Camel Up, The Gallerist, Castle of Burgundy the Card Game, Patchwork, Stellar Conflict, String Railway.

Keep on gaming!

Hunt or be hunted: Hidden movement games

Posted on July 1, 2016 by Jeremy Olson

A derelict ship adrift in space. Danger around every corner, as aliens prey on defenseless humans. The only clue to their location is the sounds emanating from other parts of the ship. But if you can hear them, they can hear you.

Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space has all the trappings of the cinema classic Alien, right down to the heavy feeling of dread. And yet this tense experience is created without any of the tense music, claustrophobic cinematography or special effects. The game accomplishes this feat with just a hexagonal grid, some erasable markers and cards, but most importantly, its system of hidden movement. You see, in Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, each player plots their movements on their own hidden map, but outside of the occasional noise clue from other players, they can never be sure where other human players, or more importantly, where other alien players, are hiding.

The basics of the game are simple. Players pick a space on the map, with aliens moving up to two spaces, and humans moving one. If it is a white space, it is safe, and players announce that they have moved into a silent sector. If it is grey, they must draw a card, which can either be white, for silence, green, indicating that they can bluff and state any space as their location, or red, meaning that they must announce the exact space they just moved into. Aliens attempt to kill all human players, while humans try to sneak to the one of the four escape pods on the ship… and hope it doesn’t malfunction.

The map players use to plot their movement is a nice erasable whiteboard in the latest edition. The dangerous sector cards are pictured to the right.

But let me take a step back. While Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space is a fantastic hidden movement game, it benefits from several games paving the path before it.

Players move around the board via the different colored lines representing different types of transportation

The quintessential hidden movement game is the Spiel des Jahres winner Scotland Yard. In the game, one player plays Mr. X plotting their movements across a game board map of London using different types of transportation.

Mr. X plots their movements on this board, covering up each space with the type of transportation used.

These modes of transportation are the clues that all the other players use to track down Mr. X. It is a fantastic game of cat and mouse as the combination of transportation options used helps the other players deduce where on the map Mr.X is hiding. Once every few rounds Mr. X is forced to surface and show the other players where he is before the chase begins again, giving searching players a fighting chance if they got on the wrong track.

We played this game a ton when I was growing up, and I was always amazed at how fun it was, and how quick it played. However, one thing was for certain, it was always the most fun to play as Mr. X, and slip away from the other players. While hunting was fun, being the hunted was best, and we would fight over who got to be Mr. X from game to game.

pic1002844_md — Investigators stalk London looking for a killer.

Other later games expanded on this conceit of one vs. many and hidden movement. Letters from Whitechapel takes on the much more serious theme of Jack the Ripper, with the chase happening over four rounds where Jack has to get back to his hideout after committing the murder. Here players don’t have the direct clues of transportation method, but instead must split up and search individual spaces for clues, trying to determine the pattern and direction of Jack’s flight, and eventually corner him in later rounds. Jack has a few tricks up his sleeve to help with his escape however as he can use a limited number of stage coaches and alleyways to slip from encircling investigators when things get tense. Here, as in Scotland Yard, the role of Jack is especially fun, although cooperating with the other players during the hunt on can feel like a true crime investigation at times.

gw09_layout — Fury of Dracula expands the hidden movement formula with additional gameplay elements

Fury of Dracula, another hidden movement game now in its third edition takes the basic skeleton of Scotland Yard but instead has Vampire Hunters tracking Dracula throughout Europe. In addition to this change of theme, the game has a lot more going on underneath the hood, with combat encounters, item cards, and character abilities etc. The result is a very thematic game that truly feels like hunting down Dracula, but also a much more complex and longer game. It does give the hunting players a bit more to do than just deduce the location of Dracula, as now they need to prepare to fight him, and use their unique abilities as best as possible.

The different aliens (red) and humans (blue available. In the advanced game each character has a special ability to add an additional twist to the game.

Both of these games advance the formula set down by Scotland Yard in compelling ways. However, for my entertainment dollar, I really enjoy what Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space brings to the table. Here is a game that really feels like its theme, and does so much with so little. Most importantly, it puts both the fun of the deduction the other games have for the hunters, and the enjoyment of secret movement into the hands of each player. While it ultimately feels like a very different game from those I’ve listed, it has a lot of the same elements in a smaller timeframe. It also has some aspects of the social deduction games I have written about in the past as at the beginning of the game, just as in The Resistance, nobody knows which side each player is on. So in addition to the hidden movement the early part of the game has a lot of uncertainty about who is a threat, which just adds to the tension even more.

All of these games provide a delightful game of hide and seek in cardboard form, with different themes and gameplay mechanisms providing very different experiences. If you have not tried a hidden movement game, I encourage you to track down one of those above and give it a try. The discussions after the game as to how a player made their daring escape, or the successful hunt are often the best part!