Friday 29 July 2011

Aton smashing!

I'm always on the lookout for decent two-player games; there's the ever-present hope that I might find something that Charlotte or one of the girls doesn't hate (I know, I know, when will I learn), and, more realistically there are times at the studio when a half-hour of idling is just what's required to reset the head. So Sam is nagged on iChat, and if he isn't too busy, we might just squeeze in a quick game of something before getting back to the hard graft. Ahem.

My tireless searching has thrown up a few gems that fit the bill; Haggis is a superb two-player card game, and Coloretto with two is good as well. But sometimes only a game with an actual board will do. Pergamon is great with two, and very dinky (important in the cramped environment of my drawing-cupboard) but a little over the strict half-hour time limit, especially when you factor in the fiddly set-up. Through the Desert, same. TransEuropa? Board is too big, and not enough strategy. Hey, what can I say: I'm picky.


Now I can add Aton to the list of strategic, involving half-hour two-player experiences; and it seems, even after a first play, to succeed where others have failed. It's small and compact, very quick to set-up and play, strategic, with lots of interesting decisions, but enough luck to mitigate any hard feelings.
It's an area control game, with players placing pieces in one of four areas (temples) on the board. When a scoring round is triggered, the player with most pieces in each temple gets some points, with each temple offering different criteria. There is a theme, but it's so papery light as to be non-existent, and it doesn't matter; it's just red versus blue, and that's fine. The fun comes from the multiple possible strategies, and the presence of several instant win conditions - while you're busily persuing points, your opponent might just whip the entire game from under your nose by filling an entire temple; stay on your guard!
A deck of cards numbered one to four determines how many pieces you can remove, play, and where you can play them. Each round you deal four cards to yourself, and assign them to four slots on your side of the board. If you've dealt yourself four fours that's terrific. Four ones; not so good. More often you've got a single four in there, and then you have to decide whether to use it for placing counters (meaning you'll be able to place four counters), or for determining which temples you can place in (meaning temples one to four), etc. It makes for some tense decision-making.
Another of your cards will determine how many pieces of your opponent's you can remove (or sometimes your own). Counters you remove go into a track with nine spaces on it, and when that's full it triggers a scoring round.
This control over the scoring rounds makes for some added strategising; if you can just hold off triggering a scoring round for one more turn, maybe you can get a majority in that all-important 4th temple.
Given the overall elegance of design, it might not come as surprise that the game was created by Thorsten Gimmler, the guy behind everyone's favourite filler, No Thanks!
It came out in 2007, but is readily available online, and relatively inexpensive (£12+ vat).
This post is starting to sound like an advertisment feature, so I'm going to stop now. But if you ever have half an hour to spare and fancy a game, you know where to find me. I'll leave the board set up. JB

Monday 25 July 2011

I'm the Boss. And I'm Fired.

Various calendar-based shenanigans meant Games Night was moved to Monday this week, and while waiting for Sam (me) to turn up, Joe hosted Adam, Hannah, Quentin and Andrew in a warm-up game of No Thanks, which I believe Hannah won but it's several beers and fatigue levels later so I could be wrong. Put me right in the comments and I'll edit.

Anyway, that little appetiser out the way and we moved on to the main course, which tonight was the much-championed (by Joe) and much-derided (by me) I'm the Boss, the game of deal, counter-deal, and counter-counter-deal. In fairness to both of us our stances were exaggerated for blog-effect, but the truth of the matter was we were both right. The game does start out fun - if a little cagey - but turns in to a bit of a grind, especially the protracted end by which time we were all kind of praying for it to be over. My own plan of establishing a fantastic hand in order to dominate the last couple of deals were stymied by my lack of discipline. Adam had no such problems, and despite the repeated warnings of Andrew - "it's not Ticket to Ride, you know!" he hoarded cards, built a strong hand, and what do you know, dominated the last few rounds to clean up, taking first place ahead of canny Quentin.

Interestingly, it was really hard to call who'd won until we counted up, and as I found last time we played it, Hannah's early lead counted against her as people were reluctant to do business with the perceived chip leader, and I don't think I was alone in believing Joe was doing much better than he actually was. But overall, it did feel a bit of damp squib and I don't think anyone will be in a massive hurry to play it again.

Adam 50
Quent 49
Hannah 43
Sam 40
Joe 32
Andrew 24

Hannah had a date with a waste disposal unit so had to leave, and having forgotten her keys Adam soon followed her, keeping his ratio intact. It was left to the four of us to ponder over the intracacies of Reiner Knizia's Poison, still a bit of a mystery after several plays. So I'm not claiming total credit for my win, but win I did, though it was closer than it looks as Quentin and I entered the last round only a point apart:

Sam 14
Quent 22
Joe 34
Andrew 37

So possibly the last of I'm the Boss, but Poison remains a favourite. And Jonny already knows it!


The leaderboard...


PlayedPointsRatio
Adam10555.5
Joe1142.53.86
Sam9384.22
Andrew1130.52.8
Quentin417.54.37
Jonny415.53.9
Steve4153.75
Hannah14.54.5
Matilda11.51.5

Friday 22 July 2011

Quentin storms to top spot

It’s often been mentioned, and finally here it is: the leaderboard with the scores adjusted according to how long the game is, according to the length of time written on the side of the box (these figures taken from Board Game Geek).

I took the points from the Q system and multiplied them by 1 for every hour the game is supposed to last. So, for example, Poison (20 minutes) got 0.333, Tinners' Trail (75 minutes) got 1.25 and London (90 minutes) got 1.5. Using this method, there was no real difference in position in terms of Points Scored but the Points Ratio tally turned the table on its head!

Suddenly Quentin’s preference for lengthy, thoughtful games paid dividends. He’s only played two games, but since they’ve both been epics, he reaps the full reward of such dedication. Sam stays in third place while Adam’s many victories in short games suddenly don’t count for much. And Jonny rises to second, which is the least he deserves for being forced to learn a new game every week.

Meanwhile, I’m used to being near last in points ratio but 1.87 is low even by my standards. Joe also takes a big hit – falling to sixth. Next time I really must try to find a method of making us win.

The weighted by duration leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Quentin210.385.19
Jonny415.133.78
Sam724.293.47
Adam931.163.46
Steve410.872.72
Joe922.832.54
Andrew916.831.87

Wednesday 20 July 2011

Dig it

Seven fellows of stout mind and stouter body congregated around Joe’s kitchen table for this week’s games night. With so many people, two groups were formed and, as previously, Tinner’s Trail and Pergamon were set up as parallel games with Sam quite adamant that the copy of I’m The Boss sitting on pile of suggested games would remain unopened. Sam, Steve, Jonny and Quentin played Tinner’s Trail while Adam, Joe and myself settled down to play Pergamon.

This was Adam’s first game of Pergamon, but his deadly eye for an easily exploitable opportunity was on fine form this evening. He quickly accumulated a large pile of money thanks to some canny gambling on the funding round. Everyone put on some great shows, and at some point in the evening Joe put on an exhibition that was so good, he ran out of room on the board. This assured his win, despite a strong challenge from Adam. So successful were Adam and Joe as players that we ran out of victory points to count our winnings. Not exactly breaking the bank at Monte Carlo, but still impressive.

Joe 36
Adam 35
Andrew 27

In the second game, Adam’s tactic of gambling for extra funding back-fired and I thought maybe he might not come first. But Adam is Adam, and he had learned the basic maxim of archaeology: “Old things are good.” He boosted his otherwise average score by picking up seven bonus points in the last round for having the oldest exhibits.

Adam 33
Joe 30
Andrew 28

I’ll leave it for Sam to explain the excitement of Cornwall tin mining, and the mystical crisp that looked like a bird. But I can add the scores.

Steve 93
Sam 89
Quentin 82
Jonny 68


The leaderboard...


PlayedPointsRatio
Adam947.55.27
Joe937.54.16
Sam7294.14
Andrew926.52.9
Jonny415.53.9
Steve4153.75
Quentin27.53.7
Matilda11.51.5

Tuesday 19 July 2011

The Final Frontier

Since bagging a copy of the much sought-after Alien Frontiers, I've played a two player and a three player game, neither of which have totally wowed me or the other players involved. There seems to be a very slow build-up, while the first few colonies are laid, and the area benefits taken. Then, just as players players start jostling for majority on the map, and things begin to get interesting, the game ends.
Before I totally dismiss it as 'not for me', I wanted to play a full four-player game, and had heard of a place where I would find no shortage of willing participants. And so tonight, for the good of Games Night News, I girded my loins, and set out for the wilder, hairier shores of geekdom, the Area 51 monday night games club.
It is a fairly daunting place - I'm well out of my comfort zone among the hard-core geeks, and always spend the first 20 minutes fighting a strong urge to run.
Tonight this urge was more powerful still with the knowledge that I could escape to the warm comfort of Sam's for a four-player game of London; but I had made my decision, and was determined to stick it out.
After 10 minutes of looking over people's shoulders, watching them play all manner of terrifying-looking games ("More sex demon acolytes!" one woman cried as I hurried away), a game of Billabong (Australian rules draughts, as far as I could tell) ended, leaving three people looking for something to play, and I stepped in brandishing the box.
The four of us were Becky (a doctor), John (a german student at Manchester) and Luke (a physics student at Cardiff), with me teaching the rules, and within ten minutes we were off and running; AF remains one of the most straightforward games to teach.
So how was the fabled four-player game?
Well, as predicted there was much more jockeying for majority on the board, from early on. There was also a lot of semi-aggressive card-play, something we had largely ignored in previous games. It is always a fairly tight game in terms of points, but Becky got an early lead, and once she'd nicked my Alien Monument and had a full compliment of ships, her win was assured, with 11 points. I came second with 7, and I can't remember how the other two placed.
Everyone seemed to like it, especially Luke, who pronounced it more fun than Catan, but I'm afraid I remain ambivalent. It's too finicky, there's loads of chin-scratching about what to do with your dice and cards; the cards can have powerful effects on the colonies, but only really once the colonies are down there, and the pacing just feels . . . off to me.
There's a real vogue at the moment for games where you roll your dice and then decide what to do with them, whereas in a game like Stone Age, you decide what you're going to do, and then roll the dice - much simpler, and in the end, more fun.

Still, I did what I set out to do; I made it to Shell City, I rode the Hasselhoff - I'm not in any great hurry to return, but ohh my god Ascending Empires on the next table looked like so much fun - someone's going to have to get it or I might have to go back there!!

Friday 15 July 2011

If you find first boring...

After a slew of victories by Adam the Red Bull Racing Team of Tuesday nights (quite a long nickname, but accurate) the leaderboard is already looking a bit one-sided. So I returned to the figures, to see if there was some legitimate way I could change all that.

Last season I had toyed with the idea of a weighted score. This way, a player who always played against strong opponents would have their score increased, but I couldn’t get it to work.

This time, though, I think I may have cracked it. I took last season’s points ratio from everyone, and got an average of that (4.1411).

I then divided each person’s points ratio by that, so that Adam got 4.84/4.14=1.16 while Jonny got 3.1/4.14=0.74 etc.

Then I took each player's score from each game and divided it by this new number. This mean strong players’ score went down while weak players got a boost. For the most part, nothing changes, except in the first game, when Jonny came second. By this method, he actually won! Similarly, my close third in our game of Notre Dame was enough to nudge me into first! What a great system, I thought.

I can’t make it work properly for games where you have to score the least to win, but for the other games the leader board would look like this...


The weighted leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Adam4194.75
Andrew4164
Sam3144.66
Joe4123
Johnny2105
Quentin133
Steve122

I don’t know how long I’ll keep this method up, but it is interesting so I might. I’m not sure that Joe will approve, though.

I’m currently considering a different guest-scoring-system once a month. Just to keep things interesting.

Wednesday 13 July 2011

Once around the kitchen table in eight millenia

Six gamers gathered in the familiar surroundings of Sam’s kitchen for this week’s games night. A night that would encompass building step pyramids, the growth of London and colonizing new planets.

We split into two groups of three players with Sam, Jonny and Quentin giving themselves the task of rebuilding London after the Great Fire in Martin Wallace’s London. Meanwhile, I was up against leaderboard high-fliers Adam and Joe as we set up Alien Frontier: the game of space exploration according to the rules of Yahtzee.

Adam was new to the game, but quickly built up a fleet of ships (ie, dice) to expand his victorious empire. Joe could’ve stopped him, but he forgot he had a plasma cannon. Meanwhile, I underused my cards and played an unfocused game. The most fun was inventing advertising slogans for the various parts of the planet ("Come to the Heinlein Plains: Where the trading is always... one to one"), and describing them in the dulcet tones of a sales assistant ("Is this your first time at the Asimov Crater, sir?").

After the game ended, there was a brief autopsy on the game, and we found it lacking. It seemed to be all about the mechanism, and little to do with interaction. I wondered if it wasn’t simply too short. By the time all of the areas of the planet are colonised, there’s only a short period of battling for supremacy before the game ends. Joe decided it could go in his next trade, and it’s hard to disagree.

Adam 11
Joe 8
Andrew 7

Since, by this time, London was still only in the 1800s we began a game of Roll Through The Ages. Thinking back, we should’ve steered clear of another dice game after "Mr Boxcars" won at Alien Frontier, but instead we dug it out of the games cupboard and set up the game.

Adam, true to his laissez-faire attitude to the plague in Notre Dame, was adept at rolling pestilence, hitting myself and Joe. Mostly myself after Joe invented medicine while I discovered quarrying. Apart from that, my tactic mostly relied on expecting Adam’s luck with the dice to run out any second now. This didn’t happen. Joe had almost no food for most of the game, but still managed to come second.

Adam 35
Joe 17
Andrew 11

By now London had finally reached the twentieth century and the evening came to an end. I’ll leave one of them to write up their adventures in the big smoke before I add the leaderboard.

GNN Reports: On the other side of the table Quentin and Jonny were discovering what it's like to experience a game without Joe around to explain it properly. I covered the rules as best I could without really clarifying the theme very well. Then I jumbled up the decks during my 'example' hand and subsequently we had to replay the first round...

Anyway, despite some confusion over building and running cities, we managed to play the game and everyone got the hang of managing poverty so well we finished with equal points. But Jonny hadn't generated a lot of victory cards in his cities, and Quentin had been hampered by his card options in terms of making cash, and was left with three unpaid loans. Final scores:

Sam 65
Quentin 45
Jonny 43

A great result for me, but I'm sure at least partly down to my shortcomings as a game guide! Nevertheless both Jonny and Quent seemed to enjoy it so hopefully it'll feature again soon.

As for the leaderboard, such is the curious nature of the Q system, despite Adam coming first twice and Joe coming second twice, both see their points ratio dip slightly.

The leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Adam738.55.5
Joe728.54.07
Sam624.54.08
Andrew720.52.9
Jonny3134.3
Steve39.53.16
Quentin144
Matilda11.51.5

By the way, Adam did offer to have Roll Through The Ages as a non-leaderboard game. And he said this after he'd won which was very gallant of him. But when I saw it actually lowered his point ratio, I put it back in.

And I can't believe I forgot to mention Jonny's spicy nuts!

Friday 8 July 2011

Thursday Night News

The tapestry of the games calendar opened up another opportunity last night so come 8pm we found six of us sitting around Joe's kitchen table - regulars Adam, Joe, Andrew and Sam (me) along with one of the Monday Night Club, Steve. Making up the sextet was Joe's eldest daughter Matilda, making her gaming (and leaderboard) bow.

We kicked off with Trans-Europa. Everyone but Steve had played this before, and indeed Matilda had beaten her dad at it. If anyone thought this was indulgence on Joe's part they were soon relieved of that impression as Tilly won the first round, completing her routes before anyone else and leaving us - Andrew and I in particular - trailing in her dust. But come the second round Adam began to show dominance in what would be a winning campaign for him. Round three - won by me - pushed Tilly over the edge and the game finished with Adam in a comfortable first place:

1 Adam
2 Joe
3 Steve
4 Sam
5 Andrew
6 Matilda

Tilly wanted to stay and play 7 Wonders but bedtime intervened, so we were down to five as everyone set up their wonder and began the brain-drain of calculating which card to keep versus which cards to avoid passing on to one's neighbour and competitor. Joe had started collecting the green science cards early, and sitting to his right I found my hand filling up with science and I was forced to keep handing him the good stuff.

Come the end, however, Joe's focus on the sciences - despite scoring big - meant neglecting the rest of his game, and he slipped to fourth. One is tempted to mention the unwritten rule of 7 Wonders - diversification! - as his downfall, except that winning player Adam had no science cards at all. He'd pursued an aggressive route, taking army points off both Joe and Steve, and picked up points in every category BUT the sciences. Having followed a similar path I snuck into second:

Adam 57
Sam 52
Andrew 49
Joe 48
Steve 34

I'm not sure what happened to Steve, who's usually a good 7 Wonders player. He was on the other side of the table and my only interaction was heckling him for taking too long to choose his card...

As we debated our gaming options, Joe brought out a new card game called Mu and we gave it a trial run. It has a good reputation, but we found it a little unintuitive. It's a trick-taking game, and before each round there's a an auction to decide both Chief and Vice, both of whom decide a trump suit form the five available (the chief's trump trumps the vice's trump) and the Chief picks a partner and then has a predetermined target of 'pips' to win based on how many cards he or she used at the auction stage, while the vice and the other players try and stop him making that target. If the chief makes his target he gets a fabulous bonus to go with his pip score.

But wait. There isn't always a chief after the auction, trumps can be numbers not suits, and pips do not appear on every card. And if the chief doesn't make his target there is a penalty based on how many pips he failed by, according to a ranking system.

After our trial round (which Andrew, as Chief, and me as his partner, lost) the general feeling was that it was one to revisit with more time and fresher minds, so we rounded off the evening with a game of Poison.

To be honest I still don't really have a handle on the tactics of this game. The only thing I did differently last night was being more amenable to picking up one or two colour cards early in the game, thinking perhaps a few points was worth having more flexibility in how I played my hand. It might have been coincidence, but I managed to finish in second - first place was taken by Joe, who should have a hat with 'The Poison King" stitched on it. At the back end of the game Steve, who'd not played it before, manage to sneak ahead of Andrew by a solitary point on the final round.

Joe 19
Sam 21
Adam 24
Steve 36
Andrew 37

With a 1st/1st/3rd record on the night, Adam's grip on the leaderboard will give him cramp at this rate, but it was also a good night for Joe with a 1st/2nd/4th finish. The rest of us lagged behind a bit, with Andrew's 5th/3rd/5th not doing his points ratio much good at all. Still, early days. Maybe Adam will go on holiday for six months, or just get bored of winning and take up extreme sports instead...

The leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatio
Adam528.55.7
Joe520.54.1
Sam519.53.9
Andrew514.52.9
Jonny2105
Steve39.53.16
Matilda11.51.5

Wednesday 6 July 2011

"Your purples are still fine," the doctor insisted

Tonight was the first night of a fresh new season, and we opened with a double-header. We played Poison, which explains the return of the old “Your purples are fine” joke, but if that weren’t enough, that was preceded by Ticket To Ride which was also accompanied by the same joke whenever someone built a piece of purple-coloured track. You would think that, as time went on, this joke would wear thin. In fact, the opposite occurred, as we found it increasingly hilarious the longer we played.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Five players gathered around the table this Tuesday evening: myself, Sam, Joe, Adam and Jonny. First on the table was Ticket To Ride. This simple yet tense game of railway building across Europe was new to Jonny, but he quickly picked up the basics and charged into the game.

At the beginning, only Jonny and I were building railways. The other players were hoarding cards until they were almost holding a third of the pack in their hands, as if they were about to play the world’s most awesome hand in Rummy. At one point Adam had to put down his cards and massage his thumb because he was getting cramp.

I, meanwhile, was confidently picking off my short routes, until I noticed Jonny encroaching on the area where my long route would cross. I didn't have enough cards, so could only watch while he proceeded to cut off my major route. But I wasn’t hugely worried, since I could use my stations to fill in the gaps.

As it was, I made a schoolboy error, in that I didn’t keep an eye on Adam’s rolling stock. Before I knew it he’d reached the end of his supplies so there was only one turn left before the end of the game. Placing another station would be futile, and I couldn’t build, so I just picked up cards in my last go. In retrospect, I should’ve gone all cavalier and picked up some routes, hoping I’d get something I’d already done, and damn the consequences. But I didn’t.

Joe also made the same mistake, so the two of us were unable to finish our longest route. Sam and Jonny were able to complete all their routes, but you can’t compete against a man who has so many cards he can barely hold them. Adam finished all his routes, and then got the eight-link tunnel for the extra 21 points, before claiming the longest route as a final ten-point insult to anyone who may have doubted him.

Adam 131
Jonny 111
Sam 99
Joe 62
Andrew 51

After this, Poison was suggested as a way to round off the evening. Usually, Adam is quite bad at this game, but this time he played a confident and assured game. Jonny, again, was a newcomer but, once again, found his feet very fast.

Poison is a tense, but fun game. It seems to be full of opportunities to foil your opponents. Most of the game was carried out in a grim silence, as sums and potential sums were carried out in people’s heads before they put down their cards.

I started badly, and slowly worked my way back into third, while Joe started well but dropped back to fourth. Sam started and ended badly, while Jonny fluctuated, before finally ending in second. But no one could touch confident Adam, who didn’t incur any points at all for the last three rounds.

Adam 9
Jonny 29
Andrew 30
Joe 31
Sam 43

A strong start from Adam, as expected, but Jonny has come flying out of the traps to launch himself into second. A far cry from his previous season’s performance. The rest of us shared whatever crumbs we could grab.

Perhaps the only sober note of the evening was the news that Sam’s boy had had another nightmare. Again, on a Tuesday. It’s as if our weak puns and in-jokes are drifting up through the floorboards into his sleep and making him dream about the type of person he will become. The poor lad.

In the meantime, here’s the first leaderboard of the season.

The leaderboard...







PlayedPointsRatio
Adam2126
Jonny2105
Joe263
Andrew263
Sam263

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Final Final Score

After Adam gave the spreadsheet a second look, some duplicate scores were spotted so I thought a fresh post was needed for the final table. And he came up with a scoring system of his own. I've called it "A.B.S." for Adam's Binary System. Nothing to do with two stars orbiting each other: in this, the winner gets one point, the last place gets zero, and everyone else a fraction (decimal, actually) based on their score in the game.

Meanwhile, I donned sensible statician's gloves and worked out everyone's mean score. I can't explain it too well myself (perhaps Wikipedia can help) but basically, winning by a large margin is rewarded, because it deviates so far from the norm.

At least this spreads the victories around a bit more...

The leaderboard...

PlayedPointsRatioAbsolute Abs ratio % score % ratio mean z-score A.B.S. A.B.S. ratio
Sam301254.17108172.07524.5 17.48 0.4213.5 74.9%
Joe27121.54.586457.6 422.39 15.6 -0.338.1 44.9%
Andrew32114.53.57843 49.59410.31 12.82 -0.584.321.4%
Adam23111.54.84731 56.23 316.57 17.770.55 9.6 73.5%
Hannah1045.54.55231 46.2 105.55 10.550.65 4.1 82.3%
Quentin9404.44132 26.4 76.92 8.55 -0.232.1 41.7%
Chris520.54.1137 68.5 42.64 8.53-0.45 1.052.4%
Jonny618.53.1187 62.33 44.47 7.41 -0.610.516.3%
Steve4164104 2656.62 14.15 0.21.5 37.2%