Friday 18 March 2016

Strange Currencies

Tonight Chris, Ian, Andrew and myself (Sam) converged at my house to delve deep into the mysterious game of Tesla vs Edison: War of Currents. This game re-imagines - or more accurately retells - the early days of electricity, with various dignitaries of the inventing and finance world competing to establish themselves, turn a quick buck, or more ideally, turn several slow ones.


You'll begin the game with one luminary and get a second before the real action begins. You can play a luminary on a turn for an action or, at a push, play both of them together for a more powerful action.

The board shows a bunch of stuff. On the top side is the USA circa 1880, with it's many cities of varying sizes just itching to be supplied with power. On the bottom side is a bunch of tracks showing the progress of the technology levels of the two currents (AC and DC) and the bulbs they power, plus a fame track for the currents themselves and a fame track for the player's companies (essentially functioning as turn order). Finally there's the stock value of the companies too: you can buy shares not only in your own company, but anyone elses. Doing so increases its value; selling stock decreases it.


So you've a bunch of choices too: start a project on the map, which will push your stock value up. Increase your technology level (doing so allows you to build in bigger, more rewarding cities) buy and sell shares, muck about with the various fame tracks or partake in some good old propaganda, which steers public perception away from one current and toward another.


Additionally, the luminary you choose to use also effects how your turn works; not only do certain luminaries give you advantages on certain actions, your starting luminary has a special power that is advanced to all of your luminaries (you buy more as the game progresses). At the end of the game the value of all your shares in the current market price decides the winner, with cash in hand the tie-breaker.


The basic concept is quite straightforward really and the game is rich in theme. It also looks lovely. Where it fell down - and this may be entirely due to our first-play status - was the finer points of how rewards were calculated on various actions: we realised near the end we'd conflated two different rules and were overly rewarding companies when buying their shares. A simple player aid could fix that though, and although Chris was not hugely enamoured of it, the rest of us were hopeful of playing again soon:


Sam 480
Ian 336
Chris 324
Andrew 240

After that fairly hefty beast we needed something light, so we broke out another new game (to us) in About Time, which has fairly complicated rules and board we completely ignored in favour of just reading the cards out. Everyone guesses which year the events on the cards occurred in, and the closest guess wins. Chris surged into a lead and Andrew somehow pegged him back, while I managed a joint second place despite being by far the most historically inaccurate:


Chris/Andrew 7
Ian/Sam 5

About Time only took about 25 minutes but after the epic debut of Tesla midnight was fast approaching, and we called it a night.


20 comments:

  1. An intertesting game. I was too concerned with building up a network, and ignoring the stock market. As such, perhaps I missed the point of the game. Would like to try it soon, though. Preferably with a player aid to tell you when things are multiplied by the phase number, and when they're not.

    But surely the highlight was when we were thinking about which games designers this reminded us of. With all the flavour text, I wanted to say the guy who made High Frontier, but couldn't remember his name.

    It was Ian who prompted me with "Eklund?" and then we all sat and marvelled at how far Ian had come on his gaming journey of discovery.

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  2. Yes, I think we've all done Ian a real service.

    Andrew I think Tom Vasel said the stock market was the whole game and everything else was almost (I paraphrase) irrelevant. I wouldn't go that far; being involved in the network building at some level feels important, especially if you go the route I did where I tried to get all my own stock.

    But the stockmarket is definitely the hub around which the game revolves.

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  3. I knew prior to playing that getting stocks was the whole point but still didn't do it.

    I'm sorry I wasn't keen but I found the mechanics a little clunky and the stock market too over bearing. It's a lovely looking game though and I was hoping for better experience.

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    1. I think we all found the mechanics a bit hard to digest at first but it was a first play. I agree with you the stock market is more central than the board layout suggests though - it just looks like a scoretrack!

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  4. Also something to remember for next time is that when you sell multiple stocks of one company that the money you get for them decreases with each sale as they are punted down the stock market.

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    1. I seem to remember Ian getting the top price for all three stocks that he bought of mine....although this could just be a trick of the mind because it was my stock plummeting!

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    2. Right - you're right, I misunderstood your point. We didn't do that. We also forgot that luminaries come with a share drawn randomly.

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    1. I was playing About Time - the card in the picture :)

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    2. Ah! sorry I thought it was some obscure gaming reference.

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    3. You're asking me??? I was a disaster at this game!

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  6. I assume you had Tesla's Hotel Room by The Handsome Family on a loop in the background throughout the entire game . . . or was it Our Friends Electric?

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  7. We had OMD and the Thompson Twins.

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  8. Well. An opportunity missed, I feel.

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  9. Ach! My 80s UK music knowledge is shamefully lacking. It's not sung to the tune of California Girls by the Beach Boys, is it?

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  10. No, though I'm sure that was considered.

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