No time for love, Doctor Jones

Thebes
Designed by Peter Prinz

In Thebes, players take on the role of competing archaeologists who are trying to earn fame and fortune by discovering ancient artifacts from long-dead civilizations.

Gameplay

The board depicts a map of Europe and North Africa, set at the beginning of the 1900's. Spaces on the board include major cities such as Paris and London and ancient ruin sites ranging from Mesopotamia to Greece to Egypt. Players move between these areas, collecting research, supplies, and team members from modern cities, and then using these resources to dig for artifacts among the ruins.

Four cards rest face-up on the board. While the cards have different functions, each has two common elements: the city where that card can be obtained, and an amount of time (in weeks) it takes to pick up the card.

The edge of the board contains a 52-week time track with a token representing each player's progress throughout the year. Every action takes a variable number of weeks, so the players will rarely occupy the exact same time slot. The track also determines the players' turn order; the person currently "earliest" in the year moves first, which means the order is constantly changing.

Each turn, a player can make one movement action, moving anywhere on the board -- spending one week for each "hop" traveled -- and then perform one of three actions:

- Pick up a card located in the current city, spending the number of weeks shown on the card.

- Dig for artifacts. If a player is at a dig site and has any knowledge about the civilization in that location, from one to twelve weeks can be spent on a dig expedition. The amount of time spent digging increases the number of tiles the player draws from that dig site.

- Discard and replace all face-up cards. A player must be in Warsaw to perform this action.

There are several different cards, each important in its own way:

- Knowledge - These colored "books" represent research performed on a specific civilization. The more knowledge a player possesses, the more tiles that can be drawn from the dig bag during an expedition. There are also General Knowledge cards that count as any color (but take longer to research) and Rumor cards that act as one-shot Knowledge for a single dig.

- Legislature - These are straight "victory point" cards. Picking one up has no effect until scoring at the end of the game. However, the points awarded by each Legislature card increases exponentially as more cards are collected by any one player -- a single card isn't worth much, but eight or nine will award a player with a flood of points at the game's end.

- Shovels and Research Assistants - These represent supplies and staff. Possessing shovels allows a player to draw extra tiles from a dig bag, while research assistants act as bonus research of all colors.

- Automobiles and Zeppelins - These allow a player to move around the map more quickly.

- Exhibitions - These cards have colored dots representing artifacts from different civilizations. If a player possesses the right combination of artifacts, these cards can be collected simply by going to the city on the card and spending the requisite number of weeks exhibiting the artifacts.

Digging allows a player to draw tiles from one of five canvas bags, representing the different dig sites. Each bag contains several artifacts, a few "bonus knowledge" tiles, and several empty sand tokens. The number of tiles drawn is determined by the level of knowledge of the civilization, as well as the number of weeks spent digging. A small cardboard wheel is supplied for each player, printed with a cross reference between knowledge points, weeks digging, and the number of tiles drawn.

Artifacts and knowledge drawn from the bag are kept by the player, while any empty sand tiles are returned to the bag. This means that over the course of the game, each bag will gradually contain fewer artifacts, reducing the likelihood of good returns from a given dig.

The game ends after a predetermined number of years. Once the last player's token has passed the year-end mark on the time-track for the final time, scores are tallied. Each artifact collected from digs has a point value printed on the token. Add in any points given for collected Legislature and Exhibition cards. Finally, compare amassed knowledge: the player with the most knowledge points of each color gains a bonus 5 points (which can have a huge effect if a single player can master two or three -- or more -- knowledge categories). The player with the most points wins.

Review

As you may have gathered from my previous reviews, I tend to avoid very heavy games, rarely wanting to delve too deeply into a huge multi-hour boardgame or deep economic simulation. Because of this, when the game's owner began introducing the rules for Thebes, I held my breath as the dozen or so different types of cards in the deck were explained.

However, the complexity began and ended with the cards, and the rest of the rules turned out to be quite streamlined and intuitive. While each player will amass a huge number of cards throughout the course of the game, almost none of them have to be "used" -- most are simply a display of available resources. Each turn is a simple "move and act" process, so once a player understands the individual cards, there's not much else that has to be memorized.

Gameplay flows quite well. The time-based turn system is quite innovative, and it allows for some unique strategy -- for example, if you're a few weeks behind the other players, you can sometimes perform a few quick actions all in sequence before anyone else gets a turn. It's also very easy to figure out when the game will end, so strategies can be formed to fit one or two last digs or exhibitions in before the end of the year.

The only downside to the variable turn order system is that when performing a very long action (say, a 12-week dig), it may be a long while before a player will get to act again. During my second game, I initiated some very long digs -- at one point, I got up, went to the restroom, bought a cookie from the newsstand, and sat back down… and it wasn't even close to being my turn yet.

I am quite impressed by the different strategies that are available to the players. Gathering several Legislature cards can allow one to run away with the game (as I gleefully discovered during our very first session), but only if the other players don't stop it. Doing early "quick digs" may only allow a few draws from the dig bags, but with the best chance of drawing artifacts. A slower, research-heavy strategy can allow a player to draw an insane number of tiles from the bags, but the bags won't be as well-stocked because the draws are made later in the game. And Exhibitions are always a strong option for a player lucky enough to hold the correct combination of artifacts.

If there's one element of Thebes that doesn't appeal to me personally, it's the complete lack of player interaction. In true Euro-style, there's no way to directly interfere with anyone else's actions. At best, you can try to swoop in to grab a desirable face-up card before an opponent, or try to perform preemptive digs to try to deplete the dig bags. Once it becomes apparent that an opponent is in a position to win, there isn't much that can be done to stop him, even through collaboration by the other players. Your only option is to take a few risks and try to boost your own score before the game ends.

While the design is solid, the physical game components are very hit-and-miss. The board is serviceable but not beautiful, and the cards are thematically appropriate but can sometimes be hard to read at a distance.

However, the other bits and pieces add a lot to the game. The wooden player pawns, which have more than a passing resemblance to Indiana Jones, are perfect for the setting. The "dig wheels", which determine the number of tiles drawn during a dig, are both attractive and useful. The dig bags, in particular, are a very fun element -- reaching into the bags to randomly draw out valuable artifacts (or, more often, worthless colored sand) is much more exciting than it has any right to be.

My initial impression of Thebes is very favorable. The theme is original and meshes very well with the gameplay, while the rules are easy to learn without sacrificing depth. The strong balance between random factors and strategic elements is perfect to keep the game interesting without being too dry for more casual players to enjoy.

I can definitely see why Thebes was nominated for the 2007 Spiel des Jahres award, and I look forward to my next opportunity to play.

June game round-up

Hillary and I met up with our local group last night, and I got through four different games in about three hours. Most were pretty lightweight, so I figured I'd just write a quick paragraph on each rather than trying to review four games (three of which were completely new to me).

Incan Gold is a fun little filler game that we'll sometimes break out while waiting for more gamers to arrive. Players take on the role of archaeologists who are searching for treasure and valuable artifacts hidden inside an ancient Incan temple. Unfortunately, the temple is also full of dangers, such as poisonous spiders and rockslides. Gameplay consists entirely of a "press your luck" style decision every turn (no whammies!), where each player must either hightail it out of the temple and keep what he's carrying -- and pick up any undistributed treasure on the way out -- or press on further and risk losing everything to one of the aforementioned hazards. Incan Gold is not a deep game by any means, but it's a quick and fun distraction. It can also support up to eight players, which is great when you have a larger gathering of gamers that wants to play together before breaking up into smaller groups for more involved games.

Fresh Fish is an odd spacial management game unlike anything I've played before. The board is a nearly empty grid of undeveloped lots, starting out with just four marketplaces (power, fuel, fish, and... board games). Players must claim land and build factories to supply the marketplaces. The closer a factory is to its corresponding marketplace, the better a player's score -- however, distance must be measured along the road. This is tricky, because the road hasn't been built yet! Placement of the road has a few rules: it must touch every factory and marketplace, and it must have access to any claimed but undeveloped lots. Also, road tiles are only placed when they have to be -- for example, if there's only one open exit from a marketplace left, the road has to go there. At the end, the player with the lowest total distance to market, minus the money he has left (low scores are good), is the winner. This game is pretty darned confusing the first time through. Our session had several new players, and none of us really understood how road placement worked until we were well into the game. The whole thing made my head hurt, but I'd like to try Fresh Fish again now that I (sort of) comprehend how everything fits together.

Witch's Brew is a light card game where players score points by creating potions. Each player has an identical "deck" of character cards and must choose five of these each turn to form a hand. The beginning player shows a card (for example, "I am the Wizard!"), and play goes around the table with all other players either passing (if they don't have the card that was played), stealing the role ("No, I am the Wizard"), or conceding the role ("So be it!"). The player winning the round gets to perform that character's action, while anyone who conceded gets a lesser reward. Roles generally allow players to collect gold and ingredients in various ways, or to manufacture potions from these materials. This was my first play ever, and I'm already a big fan. The game mechanics are unique and clever, and the theming is excellent. Games tend to flow very quickly, and newbies should have no problem picking up the rules. Witch's Brew would be a perfect "gateway" game for most non-gamer friends.

Scripts and Scribes is another short card-based game that revolves around suit collection. There is a deck containing five colored suits (along with gold and Popes). Players take turns drawing five cards from the deck, deciding what happens to each card: three go "up for grabs", one stays hidden and goes into the auction stack, and one stays hidden and is kept by the drawing player. After the drafting round, the auction stack is turned up card-by-card, with players bidding gold cards in an attempt to improve their hands. Each of the five suits is won by whichever player has the highest total points in that suit. Suits are worth a certain number of points, which can be altered throughout the course of the game by playing Pope cards. I'm lukewarm about this game after a single play -- there's nothing inherently wrong with the mechanics, but there weren't any unique elements that I hadn't seen before in a dozen other games. You try to draft well, make smart purchases in the auction, and then someone wins. Scripts and Scribes is fine for what it is -- a simple filler game -- but I doubt I'll be begging for anyone to pull out the box when other games are available.

Burning at the stake would be more fun

One of the guys from our gaming group brought Joan of Arc last week, and boy, was that a giant, festering three-hour turd of a game.

Yeah, it's going to be one of those reviews. Buckle up, kids.

I'm not going to waste time giving an overview of the game like I normally would. Just know that it's a medium-weight territory control game, hampered by the worst design decisions, most poorly-written rules, and largest amount of "dumb luck" moments of any game I've played in recent memory. That's all you really need to know to enjoy my review.

Let's start with the rules. The English rulebook is only eight pages, which you'd think would make for a nice, simple, streamlined game. Instead, the game's owner brought pages of printed-out errata from the Internet, and we still had trouble making sense of some of the mechanics. There was a lot of flipping back and forth to find a given rule, and huge amounts of information seem to be almost willfully omitted. Keep in mind my group contains several serious gamers, who have no problem understanding much heavier-weight games.

A lot of the comprehension problems stem from the fact that there is very little text on the game components, presumably in an effort to make it cheaper to publish internationally. The deck of "battle cards" consists of yellow number cards (simple: you add the number to your attack roll) and several different "special" red cards. Each of these red cards has a completely unique (and often complicated) function, yet there is no text at all on the cards themselves -- not even the name of the card. You have to find the picture of your card in the rulebook and figure out what it does. Some cards even have a table or two that you'll have to roll the dice against, but none of this is printed on the card itself.

The game itself seems like a cumbersome mishmash of mechanics pulled from different games. Each turn starts with the players voting on "War" or "Peace", which you'd think would have a pretty big impact on things, but it really just determines the number of attacks you can make and possibly cause an extra Event. Then there are the Events and Foreign Intervention. These are both completely random mechanics and there's usually very little player response that can occur -- it's more a matter of "roll the dice and see who gets screwed".

Then there's the meat of the game: expanding and conquering territories. It's pretty standard: each player can use some Battle cards, then you roll the dice and add the result to your battle cards and any defensive fortifications. The higher number wins.

You may have noticed that I've said "roll the dice" quite a bit. Virtually every element in Joan of Arc is randomized. I'm not opposed to a bit of luck-based play in lighter games, but for a multi-hour game that claims to be strategy-based, the number of random factors is ridiculous.

Here's a list of completely random elements:

• Turn order (100% random, HUGELY important in this type of game)
  
• Events (randomly changes gameplay for a turn)
  
• Foreign Intervention (random chance to lose a territory)
  
• Battle Cards (random deck, determine your battle strength/abilities)
  
• Combat (roll dice, pray)

We played this stupid game for nearly three hours and didn't even get to finish. I think maybe somebody won, but by that point I was happy just being done with it.

If you read my blog regularly, you know that I've never bashed a game so completely (the only other boardgame I've enjoyed less is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and that's a distant memory that I won't be revisiting with a review). However, Joan of Arc contains exactly zero redeeming factors for me.

To paraphrase Spinal Tap: How much more could this game suck? The answer is none. None more suck.

If you're looking for a light-to-medium weight territory control game, skip this one and pick up Small World (my review) instead. You'll be getting a fun, accessible, streamlined product, rather than a horrible jumble of half-formed game design.

Guest review: Diplomacy

During Play On Con last weekend, Hillary and I went looking for late-night gaming. A full seven-player game of Diplomacy was starting up, and we were invited to play. I had a crushing headache at the time and bowed out in favor of a quick nap, but Hillary stayed on to fight her way through the all-out warfare and cutthroat politics.

She wrote up a nice review of Diplomacy from a newbie's point of view, and so I present it here...

__________

Diplomacy is a strategy/war game that is very easy to understand, but can be very hard to play, depending on your skills and the skills of those you are playing with. There is no luck element to this game and the outcome relies solely on the interactions of the players.

Here's how the game goes:

There's a map of Europe. You draw markers to decide which country you are and get a predetermined number of units (the same for everyone). You can do a handful of things each turn: move a unit, hold a unit, support another unit's move, support another unit's hold, and convoy a land unit to another land via a ship in the area. On each turn, you write your orders and then hand them in to one person who makes sure they get executed correctly. Every "year", there is a spring turn and a fall turn. The number of units you get in the spring is determined by the number of supply centers, cities marked by a star on the map, you had in the previous fall. If you ever have 18 supply centers in your possession, you win. Simple, right?

Keep reading.

Here comes the fun part -- I mean that both literally and ironically. What makes Diplomacy Diplomacy is the negotiation of treaties, the forming of alliances, and the inevitable betrayal of said alliances. During the "writing orders" phase, players go off to the side or leave the room to negotiate with other countries. This is what makes the game truly interesting, because you have to decide what you want, how to get it and who to trust. A game of Diplomacy can get very cutthroat depending on the players and the circumstance. In the game I played, I had to leave for about 20 minutes because of an emergency with my hotel room and when I came back, one of the players was eliminated and looked rather put out. The player who had been the main impetus for this happening apologized by explaining why he did what he did and then saying "sorry you got screwed". He added "you've got to check your friendships at the door with this game."

My idea, for about 2 turns, became to figure out any way I could to screw this particular player because he was cutthroat and he was absolutely going to win. That idea went away when I realized that I was terrible at the game because I lack any ability to visualize military tactics or any notion of how to be cutthroat. So instead, I became said player's bitch. He told me what orders to execute to bother another country, and I moved wherever he needed me to, even if that meant that he took supply centers from me. I probably didn't live up to the group's expectations for the perfect adversary for the 7 player Diplomacy game some of them had been wanting to play all weekend, but I honestly gave it my best shot -- I am just not cut out to be a diplomat.

Some games like this can end up being a "kingmaker", where you figure out you're not going to win, so you then have to figure out which "horse" to back. Diplomacy doesn't necessarily have to be that way for a couple of different reasons. First of all, In the game I played, it was considered completely acceptable to say "I can't do anything else" and put all your units on hold indefinitely. In addition, the game can be voted a draw by all players left in the game, which is what the last 3 players decided upon long after I left the game.

Pros:
Easy to understand, different from most games, no blowing on dice or crossing your fingers, and involves "the human element" more than any game I've played.

Cons:
It's LONG (I played for at least 3 hours and the game went on long after I left), not for the sensitive soul, and requires a very specific skill set for planning moves and "negotiating" with other players.

Overall impression:
Diplomacy is very cool and I understand why it is highly rated on BoardGameGeek. I had a blast despite realizing after 2 or 2.5 hours that I could not play this game well. I actually really like how much it involves the human element -- every game could turn out very differently depending on who you're playing with, what their aim is, etc.

Conclusion:
If this game sounds like the type of thing you would like, step up to a table next time you see someone get out the box. If it doesn't, step away from the table and go grab your Apples to Apples box, you hippie pansy. If you're not sure whether or not this sounds like fun, grab a chair and some popcorn and watch the drama unfold... if you like what you see, join them next time.

One last note:
The fact that this is essentially the "anti-Hillary" game and I still had a lot of fun definitely says something. I wish I could play again, but I am solidly in the "step away from the table" crowd given that I am a sensitive soul, am not good with military tactics, and my attention span lasts all of 30 seconds. I don't think you'll ever see me near a game of Diplomacy again... unless it's with popcorn.

Play On Con 2009 wrap-up

As I mentioned in my previous post, Hillary and I had an absolute blast at last weekend's Play On Con 2 convention, held at the Alta Vista Hotel and Conference Center in Birmingham. It wasn't a huge con (estimate was around 250-275 paid attendees), but there was rarely a lack of things to do, people to talk to, or games to play.

I touched on the traditional gaming side of things in my last blog entry, but I wanted to write about some of the other experiences we had over the course of an amazing weekend.

On Friday night, we cleaned up at the Blackjack table during the charity casino event. Over the course of two hours our chip totals stayed fairly static, so we decided to go "all-in" on the last hand. The dealer busted, and we cashed out for some pretty good prizes.

Next up was the Chick Flick Trivia Pajama Party. Neither of us know a damned thing about chick flicks, so we attended more for the spectacle than a desire to actually participate. We both surprised ourselves by answering one question each for our respective teams: me with my unexplainable (and somewhat embarrassing) knowledge of "Spanglish", and Hillary with her spot-on Thriller dance from the scene in "10 Things I Hate About You".

Saturday was all about gaming for us. Morning featured a live-action game of Wiz-War, complete with life-sized board, costumes, props, and oversized spell cards. I heard a few people mention that it was their favorite event of the entire weekend, and I can't disagree. Hillary entered the game as a wizard and did very well; I ended up helping the organizer by handing out kill trophies and occasionally entering the map as a summoned bat or fire imp, yet I had no less fun than the participants.

The evening capped off with a hypnotism show in the main programming area, which drew a lot of laughs. Sadly, none of the participants was ordered to act like a chicken.

As everything moved upstairs for the night, we discovered that a few events had been delayed or canceled without notice, causing us to miss a couple of things that we'd wanted to attend. I was a little bit annoyed about the nighttime programming breakdown (hence my unhappy Twitter post that night). I mentioned it to a director, and he was very understanding and apologized profusely (so much so that I felt kind of bad about bringing it up).

Sunday featured a patio picnic and hula hoop party, complete with live surf music. Daikaiju was awesome, as expected. I wish they could have performed a longer set, but they were playing the con as a courtesy and were double-booked for a "real" show later that evening.

The main programming for the evening was a Rock Band tournament. This was not a question of "how good are you at Rock Band" -- there was a Guitar Hero event for the score whores earlier in the day. This was "how much of a spectacle can you make of yourself?", and the answer is "huge". Great costumes and an energetic crowd made the event truly memorable, with a Jimmy Buffett cover band ("James Tiberius Buffett and His Enterprising Young Men") coming out on top.

Monday morning brought a Dance Dance Revolution tournament, which attracted an impressive three participants. Note to organizers: maybe no physically-taxing events on the last morning of a con. It was decided that the three of us were all winners for actually being awake and ready to dance after such a long and sleepless weekend, so we just played DDR for fun until we could barely stand up.

This did not take long.

A "con in review" session and a short Memorial Day ceremony on the patio overlooking the city wrapped up the weekend nicely for the walking zombies who made it through the weekend.

To keep from going over-the-top with praise for the con, I should definitely point out two significant (as compared to the Saturday night programming breakdown) problems that arose over the course of the weekend.

The hotel had opened up a jazz club sometime after the convention organizers booked the place, which meant that nighttime programming on Friday and Saturday had to be moved upstairs. This wasn't a huge issue, but the upstairs areas (especially the RPG/boardgaming area) sometimes felt cramped. Also, it would have been nice to have the restaurant and patio available for gaming or audience-friendly programming.

A somewhat larger issue was the hotel's Sunday double-booking with a local hip hop radio station's "Wet 'n' Wild Pool Party". We had more problems with this conflict, because the downstairs areas became extremely crowded, and the participants of the party kept wandering into our events. There was a bit of culture clash too, but we gaming nerds tend to be very open and accepting, and I didn't hear of any real altercations between the two groups.

Despite these problems, the Play On Con directors and staff were extremely friendly and helpful, and someone was usually on-hand to help or answer questions. The weekend was a shining example of the old "when life gives you lemons" proverb, and the con staff handled every obstacle masterfully.

This post has grown much longer than I originally intended, so I'll wrap it up.

I will say that we've already preregistered for Play On Con 3 sometime in 2010 (dates and location should be announced in the coming weeks), and I strongly urge our gaming friends not to miss it.

If you haven't been convinced yet, let me offer two little words that might do the trick:

Free alcohol.

See you next year!

16 reasons you should have attended Play On Con

Hillary and I spent the holiday weekend at Play On Con 2009 in Birmingham. If you're not familiar with Play On Con, it's a small (but growing) gaming-themed convention that just finished up its very successful sophomore event.

I'll do a more extensive write-up of the weekend later, but I wanted make a quick post to say that POC2 was the eleventh convention I've attended, and it was far and away the best experience I've ever had at a con.

I know a lot of our friends were on the fence about attending and ended up not going. To give just a taste of what you missed, here's a list of games, contests, and tournaments that we played over the course of the weekend:

• Blackjack (charity casino)


• Chick Flick Trivia (and pajama party!)


• Live Action Wiz-War


• Pandemic


• Arkham Horror


• Citadels


• Diplomacy


• Balloon Cup


• Virulent


• Scarabs and Scorpions


• Gamer Triathlon (Suicide Chess, Dice, Memory)


• Bang!


• Munchkin Bites and Star Munchkin (tournament)


• Small World


• Dance Dance Revolution (tournament)


• Rock Band 2

Quite a list, huh? And it doesn't include the programming we attended... or all the events we missed because we were too busy gaming (there was an entire floor of the hotel dedicated to nighttime parties and drunken revelry that we didn't even venture onto).

I'll give a more coherent look back at the con once I've recovered a bit (I'm still rocking an awesome sleep/nutrition deficit), but hopefully just seeing the sheer amount of gaming opportunities available will inspire you to attend next year.

Tell me what's on your mind

(Hmm... I think maybe my title references are getting a bit too obscure.)

Last night Hillary and I met up with the area boardgaming group, and we got to try Power Grid for the first time.

I'm not going to post a full review, since this is a heavier-weight game than I've been covering, and a single play isn't enough to get a solid feel for it. I'll just give some quick thoughts.

The first thing I noticed is that there's a lot to remember. Even the experienced players were referring to the game turn cheat sheets pretty often. The actual decision-making mechanics are pretty simple though -- there's an auction phase, a resource-buying phase, and a building phase. We've done all of these things before in various games, just not necessarily in the same one. At the end of each turn, players' powered cities pay off, and there's a "maintenance" phase that evolves slightly as the game progresses.

The only real criticism I have from my first play is that it's incredibly easy to get behind early on, and it seems very difficult to catch up. I was struggling to upgrade and fuel my power plants while trying to save enough cash to expand. Meanwhile, the lead player was able to throw around cash like a... cash-throwing-around machine. It's frustrating to find yourself in a deep hole fifteen minutes into a two-hour game.

The game mechanics attempt to balance uneven games by rearranging turn order (the lead player has to go first in bidding and last in building), but in my game the leaders were always able to extend their lead just enough that there was no real hope of catching up.

I definitely want to give Power Grid another spin and see how possible it is to catch up after poor decisions (or bad luck) early on. The theme is solid and the mechanics are engaging, so nobody will have to twist my arm to get me to play this one again.

On another note, we also played Incan Gold, which is becoming one of my favorite "filler" games. It often gets panned for being too simplistic -- the only decision players face each round is "stay" or "leave" -- but the games I've played so far have been quite fun. It's kind of like Apples to Apples: ridiculously simple, but everyone is laughing throughout the game. I should write up a full review in the near future.

PlayOnCon

I really didn't mean for this to turn into a boardgaming blog, but it's what we've been into the last few weeks. Maybe I'll surprise everyone and give my thoughts on the finales for Lost, Dollhouse, and Star Trek in an upcoming post.

PlayOnCon is coming up Memorial Day Weekend. It's a gaming and "fandom" convention in Birmingham and was apparently fairly successful last year. I'll probably spend most of my time in the open gaming area (24 hours of random boardgames), but I'm looking forward to the programming as well.

Aside from several panel discussions and gaming events, Daikaiju (a crazy psycho-surf band from Huntsville) is playing on Sunday night. After seeing them at WorkPlay, I can wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone who enjoys fun, high-energy music.

A draft of the programming schedule is now available. There will also be 24-hour open gaming, room parties, and more.

Today is the last day for preregistration, but weekend and daily passes will be available at the door for a slightly increased price. I know a ton of people following my blog are Birmingham-area gamers, so hopefully a bunch of you will come check it out!

Generic reference to the bad guys on Deep Space Nine

I wrote up a review of Dominion last week and forgot to post it. Oops. Hillary and I also got to try out Zooloretto with our local gaming group, so I'll get a quick review of that one up too.

Gameplay:
Dominion is a medieval-themed card game where each player attempts to build the best personal deck by buying cards from various face-up supply piles in the center of the board. Gameplay flow is simple: play an action from your hand, buy a card from the supply area (which goes into your discard pile), and then discard both your hand and all cards played this turn, drawing five new cards to replace them.

Yeah, you read that right. You chuck your entire hand every turn. Use it or lose it. I was a bit confused when the rules said that any card I bought from the supply area would immediately go into my discard pile. It didn't take long before the dynamic made sense, though; as soon as a player's draw deck is empty, the discard pile is shuffled to form a new deck. Since players are going through cards so quickly, all purchased cards will end up in the draw deck within a few turns.

Ideally, you want to find a balance between buying Treasure cards (the currency that allows you to buy everything), Kingdom cards (which grant special abilities or bonus resources), and Victory cards (which score points at the end but are absolutely useless when drawn into your hand). Everything you buy ends up in your deck, for better or worse.

Winning conditions are simple. Once any three supply piles are empty, or as soon as the high-scoring Province supply deck is gone, the game is over. Players go through their deck counting up Victory Point cards, and the player with the most points is the winner.

Review:
The rules are clear and simple; no complaints there. We figured out the gameplay flow within the first few turns of our initial game and rarely had to consult the manual while playing. The language on the cards is very clear, and it's easy to tell a Kingdom card's benefits at a glance.

There's not much to say about the physical components; you get several decks of cards that are fairly standard CCG-style quality. The artwork is decent (but not spectacular), and the cards are visually distinctive enough to tell them apart at a glance. The game box contains a plastic tray that keeps the individual card types separated -- it works well, but future expansions might complicate this a bit.

I've heard complaints that Dominion suffers from the "game playing the player" syndrome, and I can't completely disagree. In a given hand of five cards, the best play is often obvious. Still, with sixteen supply piles on the table, there are always decisions to be made. Maintaining a good deck balance is key -- victory cards are useless when drawn into a player's hand, but they directly determine the winner. It seems contradictory to say that a game offers so many options every turn and yet lacks strategic depth, but this has been my experience so far.

My main problem with Dominion is that there isn't much player interaction. You're building your own deck, and your actions (other than the occasional "Attack" card) don't affect your opponent. The supply piles are large, so there's no danger of resources running out until toward the end of the game.

It would be nice if there were more options for interfering with your opponent's plans. I can imagine situations where an obvious winner would emerge halfway through the game, yet the other players would be powerless to do anything about it.

I posted a draft version of this review over on the SA forums, and several posters mentioned that Dominion works much better with three or four players. After seeing how well Pandemic scaled down for two players, I had hoped that Dominion would do the same.

Having been absolutely blown away by Small World (admittedly a very different type of game) barely a week ago, it would take a lot to impress me; Dominion isn't quite there yet, but I'm optimistic for future plays. And replayability should be high, since the game comes with 25 different Kingdom card types, of which only 10 types are used each game.

I'll report back once we've tried a game with more players, but for now I give Dominion a very reserved "thumbs up".

Disney rides would be better with Berserking Skeletons

Hillary and I met up with the Birmingham group of boardgamers again this week. One of the attendees had brought his copy of Small World, which was just released this month. I'd read favorable reviews of the game, so we quickly jumped into the group and gave it a try.

Gameplay:
Small World is a light civilization-style territory control game with a few minor wargame elements. I've been told that the game is basically an updated, fantasy-themed cousin of Vinci (which I've never played, so that description didn't mean much to me).

Each player takes on the role of a civilization, one of several fantasy races (orcs, giants, humans, tritons, etc.), each having its own unique ability. Each race is also randomly paired with a special attribute that grants another ability (such as Merchant, Flying, or Diplomatic). The attributes are fairly powerful, and can create very effective combinations with a race's built-in ability.

The gameboard is a colorful map consisting of a few dozen regions, several containing symbols that denote natural resources. Although not laid out in a hex pattern, the board reminded me a bit of Catan; each region is distinctly a field, or a mountain, or a swamp, etc. Scattered around the map are remnants of a "dying" civilization that once controlled the area, but otherwise the lands are clear and ready to be settled.

Players colonize and conquer by placing the unit tokens for their race on the map. Taking a clear area requires two units (barring any special abilities), while conquering an inhabited area, or one with a mountain, will take more. The simple rule of thumb is "two units plus one per piece of cardboard already on the space" (a piece of cardboard being any token: an enemy unit, a defensive emplacement, or a mountain).

Combat is neither random nor contested -- if enough units are used to attack, a player can force enemy units out of a space and take it. For the final move of a turn (usually when only one or two units are still available), a player may roll a die and add the result (0-3) as "bonus" units, only useful for determining the attack's outcome. When a stack of units is defeated in battle, one is removed from the game, and the rest are returned to the owner to redeploy among other territories. This causes attrition among each civilization as battles are fought, since most races can't replace a unit token once it is lost.

At the end of each player's turn, that player receives victory points based on the number of spaces currently controlled, plus any bonus points granted by special abilities (for example, Humans get an extra victory point for each field they control, while Orcs get a bonus point every time they conquer an occupied region).

A key game element is the ability to "decline" a civilization and choose a new one. When declining a civilization, each unit stack is reduced to one unit, and the civ can no longer move, use special abilities, or conquer territory. However, the race still scores points for the controlling player as long as it continues to exist. A common strategy is to make a quick land-grab with a populous or unusually mobile race, put it into decline, and then choose a more combat-oriented race to either defend the now-declining civilization or simply start conquering more territory while the declining race continues to score points.

Gameplay seems to run about 60-90 minutes. With five players, our first game lasted around two hours, but the second was over within about 75 minutes. Each game only runs eight rounds (at least for the five-player version), so at any point you've got a good idea of how far into the session you are, and how much time you have left to set up a win.

Review:
After two games of Small World, I have to say I'm very impressed. The random combinations of races and attributes keep the game fresh, and the combat dynamic is so light and simple that conquering territory never becomes cumbersome. At first I was worried that the imbalance between the different race and attribute abilities would be a problem, but this wasn't the case in the sessions I played. Civilizations move up a "stack", and players can pay victory points to take a more desirable combination that's a bit further down. Even if a player lucks out and gets a very powerful combination, chances are good that there's something else on the stack that can counter or defend against it.

Player interaction is moderately high. While there's no way to immediately respond to another player's action, you can directly affect their units and territory on your own turn. For example, during one game Hillary controlled nearly half the board and had a great race/attribute combination. It was obvious that she would win handily if left alone, so I started a new civ as a heavily militant race and blitzed through her borders, conquering nearly her entire territory within a couple of turns. (I'm lucky I didn't have to sleep on the couch that night.)

I do have a few minor complaints about the game design. The first problem concerns turn order. There's a distinct advantage to going first, especially later in the game when removing enemy units (and their potential to score points) is as important as capturing your own territory. Since players score at the end of their own turn, moving earlier in a round is beneficial -- especially during the last round. I've already seen a suggested rules variant for fixing this (keeping victory points visible and ordering turns from lowest to highest current point total), and I'd be interested in trying this out to see if it balances the game a bit better.

My other complaint is that the gameboard gets very busy, and it can be hard to keep track of everything that's going on. The unit counters don't have very distinct color schemes, especially when a race is in decline (tokens are flipped over to a "grayed out" side). This can make it difficult to spot units of different races and count up victory points at the end of a turn. It would have been nice if the designers had given each unit counter a unique race-specific colored or patterned border.

Aside from this, the game components are well-made and the artwork is appropriate to the theme. The cardboard counters are thick and seem like they'll hold up well during multiple plays. The game's plastic box insert keeps all of the dozens of tokens separated perfectly, and hopefully other game publishers will use it as an example of how to design built-in component storage.

Most importantly, the game is fun. After finishing our initial two-hour session, the owner of our copy asked "Do we want to play again?", and the answer was a quick and unanimous "Yes!". I can't think of too many hour-plus games that get this kind of reaction.

Overall, Small World is an excellent game, and I would have already bought my own copy if my wife hadn't already threatened to kill me for buying Dominion this week.