I've posted this elsewhere, but I thought maybe it might be interesting for you folks too. A long time ago I came up with this list of rules I try to follow when I play boardgames. I know not everyone agrees with every point on this list, but it works pretty well for me. Over the next few weeks I'll go into depth with each commandment and explain what it means to me, and why I think it's important to keep in mind. Enjoy!
I. Thou shalt have fun.
II. Thou shalt strive to be friendly and polite to other players so they might have fun as well.
III. Thou shalt keep thy mouth firmly shut when tempted to comment on other players' moves unless asked specifically for help. Presume not to know better than other players, regardless of thy experience in the game.
IV. Thou shalt not hold grudges against any player from game to game, regardless of perceived slights, persecutions, and other misfortunes.
V. Thou shalt be mindful of a game owner's concerns and treat their property with the utmost respect and care at all times.
VI. Thou shalt always play to win, regardless of the the hopelessness of thy situation in a game.
VII. Thou shalt attempt to introduce others to thy hobby by being a patient and friendly teacher.
VIII. Thou shalt not refuse to play a game unless thou hast played said game at least twice.
IX. Thou shalt always be gracious in both victory and defeat at the conclusion of a game, regardless of the game's final outcome.
X. Thou shalt strive to seek out new games to learn and play. Be not content to just play thy favorite games... expand thy horizons and help others to grow as well.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
REVIEW: Eminent Domain
EMINENT DOMAIN
GAME DESCRIPTION
Designed by Seth Jaffee
Published by Arclight and Tasty Minstrel Games in 2011,
still in print
COMPONENTS, PACKAGING
& PRESENTATION (20% of overall rating)
Eminent domain is primarily a deck-building card game, and
as such the cards take center stage here.
There are five decks of cards used in the game: the Action/Role cards
that make up the majority of a player’s deck, Planet cards that the player
acquires over the span of the game and places in his tableau in front of him,
and three Technology decks that players may purchase cards from to add to their
decks or, less frequently, their tableau in front of them. The cards are all beautiful to look at and
extremely functional. However, the
quality of the cards leaves something to be desired. They are very thin and prone to creasing, and
after a few plays some of my cards already had obvious signs of wear at the
corners. When opening my copy of the
game for the first time, two of my cards were irreparably creased merely by my
attempt to get the cards out of the shrink-wrap they came in. TMG was gracious enough to send me a
replacement for one of the cards free of charge (I hadn’t noticed I had two
creased cards when I emailed them for the replacement for the first one), but I
wish I hadn’t needed to take that step in the first place. Also, I am not much of a fan of sleeving
cards, especially in deckbuilding games where constant shuffling is the norm,
and so the wearing edges of the cards are a serious problem for me.
On to the rest of the components, though. There is a central board that most of the
Action/Role cards are placed on at the beginning of the game, and it is well
designed and of excellent quality. I
suspect that if you decide to sleeve your cards, they might not stack well on
this board, although I have not done so myself… this is just a suspicion. The box that the game comes in is very good
quality, although the insert included is unnecessary and almost totally useless
(I threw mine out almost immediately).
Once you get rid of the insert, the game fits easily back into the box,
and there’s enough extra room that “baggie junkies” (of which I am occasionally
accused of being) will have lots of room to nerd out their copies to their
hearts’ content.
The game also comes with a number of plastic ships, which
are essentially a form of currency and are massive overkill. They could’ve just as easily been die-cut
counters and been just as functional, but there’s no denying how neat they look
when you have a bunch of them sitting in front of you. They’re of three different sizes, which I
understand comes from repurposing an older mold, and they look really cool,
although they’re a bit hard to pick up at times. There are also some die-cut victory point
tokens that are functional (think Race For The Galaxy here), some very high
quality painted wooden disks to represent the goods planets may produce,
die-cut starting planet cards and player reference cards (I’ll get back to
these in a minute). All of these other components are of very high quality.
The graphic design of the game overall is superb. The game is easy on the eyes, and although
the typeface on some of the cards could be a bit bigger, the cards have so
little variation in general that it’s a non-issue. The rulebook is well produced, of good paper
quality and easy to read.
Overall, the component quality is decent, but unless you’re
a card sleeving maniac, you’re going to get frustrated with the quality of the cards
after a few plays. I wish the publishers
had spent a little more money on the cards and a bit less on plastic
ships. It’s unfortunate that the low
card quality offsets the overall wonderful look of this game.
COMPONENTS, PACKAGING
& PRESENTATION: 5.0/10
RULES &
PLAYABILITY (30% of overall rating)
Once you crack the rulebook, most of the game starts to make
sense immediately. The rules are very
well written and easy to understand, and the mechanics all work together
seamlessly. This is a well designed game
that plays smoothly and requires very little reference to the rulebook once the
first few turns have been played. I love
game designs that have few mechanics to remember but lots of player options and
this is one of them. The player aids are
a brief moment of sheer brilliance: not only do you have all the information
you need to play the game on them, but they serve as an unobtrusive method of
determining the start player of the game.
How this has not been thought of before is beyond me, but I hope it’s
used in other game designs in the future.
The iconography on the cards is very good, although there
are a couple of game concepts that are occasionally difficult for new players
to grasp. For example, “+1 colony”
usually means placing the card underneath a specific planet, but because that particular
mechanic appears nowhere else in the game, it can be tough for new players to
remember exactly what that means.
The game has a reasonably low learning curve. There are really only two or three concepts
that a player has to wrap his brain around before he’s off and running, and it
usually only takes a few minutes to make sure that happens. Learning the game straight out of the box is
relatively easy, and so it’s an accessible game for new players.
RULES &
PLAYABILITY: 8.0/10
GAME EXPERIENCE (40%
of overall rating)
This game is an absolute joy to play. It moves extremely quickly with almost no
downtime… sometimes it moves almost too quickly. In the games I’ve played, it’s not uncommon
for a player to finish his turn, the next player to start his, and the previous
guy is still trying to figure out what he’s doing in response to the last one.
There is very little potential for analysis paralysis in
this game. Usually the hand of cards you’ve
got will indicate which action and role you will be taking on any given
turn. This does not mean, however, that
the game is devoid of meaningful choices.
On the contrary, how your deck is built over the span of the game is half
the game itself. Unlike many other
deckbuilders I’ve played, customizing and streamlining your deck to the
particular strategy you’re pursuing is a basic tactic rather than an afterthought,
which means each turn you’re building your engine toward future turns in a very
efficient way. This makes the play of
the game very rewarding: you get to see your engine ticking along (or
sputtering, if you’ve failed), and you just know you actually accomplished
something, win or lose.
If there’s one flaw in Eminent Domain’s play experience, it’s
that there is very little social interaction in this game. That’s not to say this is a “multiplayer
solitaire” game… one of the key strategies of the game is watching what the
other players are doing so you can piggyback on their deck strategies at
crucial moments. Just blindly following
a tried and true deck concept might work, but it won’t work as well as an alert
player’s deck that can capitalize on the opportunities given by the other
players around the table. It does create
a rather quiet gaming experience though, which some folks might find a bit off-putting.
As much as I like this game, I do have to admit that there
seems to be very little originality in the design. It works well, but anyone who’s ever played
Glory To Rome or Race For The Galaxy is going to recognize some mechanics that
have been lifted directly from those games and plopped into this one. While that’s going to turn off some people,
to me it seems more like a refinement of those mechanics into a
better-functioning game overall. This
game just works.
GAME EXPERIENCE:
8.5/10
REPLAY/OWNERSHIP
VALUE (10% of overall rating)
The first time I played Eminent Domain, I got my butt handed
to me. Instead of turning me off to the
game, I immediately wanted to play again… and again, and again. This game has an addictive quality to it:
each game you see something else that looks like it might work, and you
instantly want to give it a go and see if you’re right. Because the game moves so quickly, and
because there are many different options to pursue each game, this one’s got a
ton of replayability. It’s too bad the
cards will look so worn after a few plays, and that definitely hurts the game
in the “bang for the buck category”… but hey, maybe you can try to think of
that like some people think of dog-eared pages of a well-loved book. If you don’t mind sleeving cards, you’ll be
fine.
The game definitely has a few good strategies that will
become easily apparent once you’ve played a few times, but because there can be
so much variation in what the other players are doing, the game doesn’t feel
solvable. It scales well with two, three
or four players, and so I see this being a game you won’t have a hard time
getting to the table.
REPLAY/OWNERSHIP
VALUE: 9.0/10
OVERALL RATING:
76/100
FINAL THOUGHTS
I really like this game.
It feels like the next step in the evolution of the deckbuilding genre
of games, has a ton of depth, looks nice on the table, plays fast enough that
it doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is satisfying once the game is over. I just wish the component quality was
better. Making a deckbuilder with
low-quality cards is a bad idea, no matter how smooth the game design is, and
you shouldn’t expect players to sleeve cards.
Overall, though, this game replaces Race For The Galaxy and Glory To
Rome for me… it’s that good.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
REVIEW: Panic Station
This year I asked for games for Christmas (don't know why I
didn't think of that before!), and I was elated to get this one as my first
game gift of the holiday. Even better, I
had a game night planned for the very next night, and we got it to the table twice. Here's the lowdown:
GAME DESCRIPTION
Designed by David Ausloos
Published by Stronghold Games and White Goblin games, 2011
(still in print)
COMPONENTS, PACKAGING AND PRESENTATION
The game comes in a hinged tin which is pretty visually
appealing, although I really am not a fan of non-standard sized game containers
in general. This one's not too bad,
though, and the insert is functional, although it does not appear to have been
designed for this specific game… I could be wrong about that, though. Inside are a rulebook (more on THAT later,
but here’s a hint: YIKES), a bunch of wooden disks, a sheet of stickers to
apply to said disks, and a heap of cards.
One point of irritation right out the gate: if you're going to make me
apply stickers to my pieces, fine... but don't make the friggin' stickers the
exact same size as the pieces I'm supposed to attach them to, especially when
the pieces themselves aren't perfectly cut!
Occasionally irregular wooden discs with perfectly round stickers...
what an absolute joy a huge pain in the ass to
work with. Ugh. Anyway, cards are average in quality, and the
artwork is decent and easy to differentiate.
There's some pretty dubious iconography going on, though not nearly as
off-putting as games like Race For The Galaxy, the standard bearer for games
with confusing icons. If I need to roll
a three or higher on the die for a card to function, putting "+3" on
the card doesn't work for me. Overall,
though, I'd say the component quality was acceptable, and the groovy tin pushes
it slightly above average.
COMPONENTS RATING: 5.5/10
---
RULES & PLAYABILITY
RULES & PLAYABILITY
As has been well documented on BGG, the rulebook that comes
with this game is nebulous to a fault.
Although the basic concepts of gameplay are fairly straightforward,
there are MANY times when a situation could come up that the rules are not able
to clarify. Furthermore, straight out of
the box the game might be considered broken if the people around the table get
into too much of a “groupthink” situation.
However, there are revised rules easily available on BoardGameGeek (see link above) that fix almost
all of the problems the rules have, and some wonderful users have created a
file for those rules that can be printed out and cut such that it effectively replaces
the original rulebook entirely. With
these revised rules, the game plays very smoothly and has very little room for
confusion, although there are a couple of mechanics that can be difficult to
remember at first (for instance, how to determine if a player has been infected
or not). Overall, though, the game plays
pretty well… once you have the revised rulebook. Unfortunately, I have to rate the game based
on what I actually got in the box. This
rating will improve significantly in future printings, I’m sure, but for now…
sorry.
RULES & PLAYABILITY RATING: 3/10
GAME EXPERIENCE
Once you get the rules hashed out, playing the game is a BLAST. If you’re the Host, you’re trying to stay
under the radar juuuuust long enough to infect someone at a crucial moment and
turn the game in your favor, and if you’re a Human you’re constantly giving
everyone else around the table a wary eye, all the while trying desperately to
avoid waves of Parasites that are randomly sweeping through the
station. It captures the paranoia of
other games like Battlestar Galactica and Shadows Over Camelot perfectly, and
distills it down into a simpler game in a much shorter play time. Because the mechanics of the game are so
simple and straightforward, there’s very little to interfere with the vibe of
the game, which is where this game really shines. This game is all about the vibe… if you have
people in your gaming group that aren’t able to tap into that, you might have a
less-than-ideal play experience, but I think that’s going to be the exception
rather than the rule. The sparse
mechanics lend themselves well to creating the right mood around the table, and
once the card trading starts, no one feels safe. Well done!
GAME EXPERIENCE RATING: 8.5/10
REPLAY/OWNERSHIP VALUE
There is very little depth to this game mechanically
speaking (although there is a mini-expansion for the game that might improve
that somewhat), but because of the randomized layout of the station itself and
the fact that anyone could be the Host in any game, this game definitely has
some legs in the right game group. If
you tend to play the same games with the same people week after week, I would recommend
playing it before you buy it if possible… but even if it’s not, it’s a
reasonably-priced game ($20 - $30, depending on where you buy it), so it’s not
like you’re going to be throwing a ton of money away if your group doesn’t
enjoy it. Otherwise, if you’re more of a
“travelling gamer” like me, I think this is a must-buy. It’s one of the rare games out there that
plays well with six players, can still get done in an hour or so once everyone
knows the rules, is easy enough that you might even be able to get some non-gamers
to play it occasionally, and creates tension around the table that can’t be
duplicated in that time frame by any other game I know of. It’s a perfect end-of-the-night game for any
game group, when everyone’s a little tired and doesn’t want to burn their
brains anymore. In short, this one
depends on your situation, but I think it’s a worthy addition to any game
collection.
REPLAY/OWNERSHIP VALUE: 8/10
OVERALL RATING: 62/100
This is a solid game, and once it gets reprinted with an
updated rulebook, it’s going to be even better.
As long as you’ve got the right group of people sitting around the
table, this one’s going to be a hit.
However, buyer beware: you’re going to have to do some digging to get
that updated rulebook, or else you’re going to spend a lot of time frustrated
while teaching the game. Use the link I
provided above, download the updated rulebook (and maybe a player aid or two),
and have a great time.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Introduction: who I am, what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it
Hello! My name is Bill Corey Jr, and I'm a board game junkie enthusiast. I was born in 1973, and I have been a part of the gaming community nearly all my life, having grown up in and around Lake Geneva, WI (the former Mecca of gaming, back in the old TSR days). I play RPGs, CCGs, and videogames (although not as much as I once did), but my real passion is with "designer" boardgames. I have a rotating collection of about 150 board and card games, and I have a dedicated game room with a walk-in game closet in my home. I am also one of the organizers of the Gaming Hoopla convention and am a game designer as well, having successfully sold one of my board game designs (at the time of this writing it is still unpublished, but hope springs eternal). I have worked at the major game conventions for many game companies over the years, including Koplow Games and Mayfair Games. So, as you can see, I'm hip deep in my dorkdom, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I was encouraged to start this blog by a friend of mine, who thinks I'm a better writer than I think I am. More importantly, she once told me that the only way to get better at writing is to write. I am suspicious of such a simple answer to a question that's eluded me for years, but hey, she's a writer, so she probably knows more about it than I do. Of course, now I sort of have to consider myself a writer too... but only if I stick with it, I guess. She also said it's important to write about something you feel passionate about, especially at first... and so here we are.
The focus of this blog is probably going to be game reviews... mostly board games, but occasionally other types too (videogames, RPGs, etc). I might occasionally throw in a rant here and there about game design, sportsmanship, or etiquette, and if I'm feeling really froggy I might even take a shot at satirical humor from time to time... but mostly it's gonna be reviews. Note that I am NOT going to go into a rules breakdown for each game I review. I might list a few key rules if they impact the review itself, but there are tons of other resources out there that can teach you how to play pretty much any game that's published, and I'm not going to reinvent the wheel typing it all out again.
When I think about whether I like a game or not, there are a few different areas of a game that I consider important, so each of my reviews is going to focus on those areas and give each area an individual rating from 0 (absolute garbage) to 10 (perfect, without room for improvement). However, even though each area is important to me, they are not all equally important. At the end of the review I'll give an overall rating for the game based on the different areas' scores, but they'll be weighted differently. Here's a breakdown of how it'll work.
GAME DESCRIPTION
I'll try to remember to list the game's designer, publisher, in- or out-of-print status, and a link to a boardgame's entry on BoardGameGeek if applicable. That way if you want to dig a little deeper, you'll have everything you need right there at your fingertips.
COMPONENTS, PACKAGING AND PRESENTATION (20% of overall rating)
This will consist of the physical "bits" that you get when you buy a game. It'll cover the quality and attractiveness of the pieces, cards, boards, the box itself, the usefulness of the insert in the box, whether the game can easily be put back into the box once it's been opened and punched, the graphic design of the various components, and the rulebook (although the rules of the game themselves will be rated under "Playability" below... this just factors in the artwork, readability, editing, paper/printing quality, etc of the rulebook). A game has to look at least halfway decent if I'm going to want to bother playing it, and this will be my opinion of all of those factors taken as a whole.
RULES & PLAYABILITY (30% of overall rating)
This rating will be made up of the design of the game itself: game balance and design, rules clarity, player aids, helpful or annoying iconography, and so forth. If a game has an obnoxiously steep learning curve, this is also where you'll hear about it (probably because of a shortcoming in one or more of the above elements). This area does NOT cover how much fun a game is, however, nor does it cover whether the game is worth owning or playing repeatedly... those are a part of Game Experience and Replay/Ownership Value respectively. This area is purely about the mechanical aspects of the game: does it work the way it's supposed to, and can the players figure out how it works reasonably easily?
GAME EXPERIENCE (40% of overall rating)
Have you ever played a game and at the end felt like that was two hours of your life you were never going to get back? Yeah, me too. This area measures how much fun the game is to play, how rewarding and satisfying the overall playing experience is. A game can be mechanically brilliant, but if it's no fun playing it, what's the point? That's not all there is to it, either. If a game features excellent opportunities for social interaction with the other folks around the table, suffers from excessive downtime, has unavoidable analysis paralysis, or too many fiddly bits to keep track of, those things all affect the experience of playing the game more than they do the mechanics of the game, so they'll be factored in here. In short, this is an abstraction of how enjoyable your time around the table with the game is.
REPLAY/OWNERSHIP VALUE (10% of overall rating)
This is a kind of nebulous term that covers a few different things. Most notably, it covers whether or not the game is worth owning or not. This factors in replayability, "bang for the buck," and long-term strategic depth. If a game can be "solved" within one or two plays, then owning it loses a lot of its allure... whereas some games seem to demand play after play to unlock new potential strategies. However, because not every game needs to be owned by every gamer, and because sometimes it's hard to get any game to the table over and over again, this area is weighted less than all the others. A low rating here doesn't make the game bad... it makes the game less important to own your own copy of.
So there you have it. If you have any comments about my rating system, I'd be interested to hear them... although I'm probably not going to be changing it anytime soon. If you disagree with the weighting of the four ratings, it shouldn't be hard to adjust them to your own tastes.
Happy reading, everyone!
I was encouraged to start this blog by a friend of mine, who thinks I'm a better writer than I think I am. More importantly, she once told me that the only way to get better at writing is to write. I am suspicious of such a simple answer to a question that's eluded me for years, but hey, she's a writer, so she probably knows more about it than I do. Of course, now I sort of have to consider myself a writer too... but only if I stick with it, I guess. She also said it's important to write about something you feel passionate about, especially at first... and so here we are.
The focus of this blog is probably going to be game reviews... mostly board games, but occasionally other types too (videogames, RPGs, etc). I might occasionally throw in a rant here and there about game design, sportsmanship, or etiquette, and if I'm feeling really froggy I might even take a shot at satirical humor from time to time... but mostly it's gonna be reviews. Note that I am NOT going to go into a rules breakdown for each game I review. I might list a few key rules if they impact the review itself, but there are tons of other resources out there that can teach you how to play pretty much any game that's published, and I'm not going to reinvent the wheel typing it all out again.
When I think about whether I like a game or not, there are a few different areas of a game that I consider important, so each of my reviews is going to focus on those areas and give each area an individual rating from 0 (absolute garbage) to 10 (perfect, without room for improvement). However, even though each area is important to me, they are not all equally important. At the end of the review I'll give an overall rating for the game based on the different areas' scores, but they'll be weighted differently. Here's a breakdown of how it'll work.
GAME DESCRIPTION
I'll try to remember to list the game's designer, publisher, in- or out-of-print status, and a link to a boardgame's entry on BoardGameGeek if applicable. That way if you want to dig a little deeper, you'll have everything you need right there at your fingertips.
COMPONENTS, PACKAGING AND PRESENTATION (20% of overall rating)
This will consist of the physical "bits" that you get when you buy a game. It'll cover the quality and attractiveness of the pieces, cards, boards, the box itself, the usefulness of the insert in the box, whether the game can easily be put back into the box once it's been opened and punched, the graphic design of the various components, and the rulebook (although the rules of the game themselves will be rated under "Playability" below... this just factors in the artwork, readability, editing, paper/printing quality, etc of the rulebook). A game has to look at least halfway decent if I'm going to want to bother playing it, and this will be my opinion of all of those factors taken as a whole.
RULES & PLAYABILITY (30% of overall rating)
This rating will be made up of the design of the game itself: game balance and design, rules clarity, player aids, helpful or annoying iconography, and so forth. If a game has an obnoxiously steep learning curve, this is also where you'll hear about it (probably because of a shortcoming in one or more of the above elements). This area does NOT cover how much fun a game is, however, nor does it cover whether the game is worth owning or playing repeatedly... those are a part of Game Experience and Replay/Ownership Value respectively. This area is purely about the mechanical aspects of the game: does it work the way it's supposed to, and can the players figure out how it works reasonably easily?
GAME EXPERIENCE (40% of overall rating)
Have you ever played a game and at the end felt like that was two hours of your life you were never going to get back? Yeah, me too. This area measures how much fun the game is to play, how rewarding and satisfying the overall playing experience is. A game can be mechanically brilliant, but if it's no fun playing it, what's the point? That's not all there is to it, either. If a game features excellent opportunities for social interaction with the other folks around the table, suffers from excessive downtime, has unavoidable analysis paralysis, or too many fiddly bits to keep track of, those things all affect the experience of playing the game more than they do the mechanics of the game, so they'll be factored in here. In short, this is an abstraction of how enjoyable your time around the table with the game is.
REPLAY/OWNERSHIP VALUE (10% of overall rating)
This is a kind of nebulous term that covers a few different things. Most notably, it covers whether or not the game is worth owning or not. This factors in replayability, "bang for the buck," and long-term strategic depth. If a game can be "solved" within one or two plays, then owning it loses a lot of its allure... whereas some games seem to demand play after play to unlock new potential strategies. However, because not every game needs to be owned by every gamer, and because sometimes it's hard to get any game to the table over and over again, this area is weighted less than all the others. A low rating here doesn't make the game bad... it makes the game less important to own your own copy of.
So there you have it. If you have any comments about my rating system, I'd be interested to hear them... although I'm probably not going to be changing it anytime soon. If you disagree with the weighting of the four ratings, it shouldn't be hard to adjust them to your own tastes.
Happy reading, everyone!
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