The Mine Shaft Gap

Venue: Brian’s place.
Present: Brian, Andrew, Brad, Pat, Richard, Alex, Paul.
Played: Princes of Florence, Settlers of Catan, HM#418, Clans, Sex.

This week’s entry is also tagged as ‘game design’, since I got participation from the guys in a playtest of my latest game invention. More on this below.
A few other games got played too. Pics as usual by Brad.

Princes of Florence: Andrew, Brad and Brian underway with this one after dinner. Seemed to go quite quickly, but was probably over in about an hour.
Brian won.

Settlers of Catan: A, B and B’s second game for the evening.
Andrew won this one, with Brian and Brad left back on 6.

HM#418: This title is actually code for a new game invention I’ve been working on. Although I think the possibility of idea theft is low, I’ll keep certain details obscure here for now, since if it does sprout flappable wings I’ll be serious about trying to see it through to publication.
The code btw just stands for “home made”, game no. 4, iteration no. 18. ie., this is the fourth game invention I’ve brought to the state of playable prototype (don’t ask about the other 3!). This one I’ve been working on since about June 2006, and it has gone through 18 iterations of the rules set, with accompanying “virtual” playtests. A virtual playtest is simply a walkthrough of the game using a spreadsheet to track turn actions, etc. of four hypothetical players each with slightly different strategies. This is achievable in this case since there is no hidden player information in the game.

The spec is a modern Euro-like game, ideally suited to 4 players (although adjustments to come later to support 3 and 5), about resource management with financial control, and turn order timing. Comparisons that come to my mind include Puerto Rico and Goa, although it is not modeled on, nor has anything more in common with either. Of course, if it can made to be anywhere near as good as either of those games then I will have achieved a stellar success…!

Anyway, I was delighted when Richard, Alex and Pat agreed to be guinea pigs for this. I had finally got the mechanics (ie., the various mathematical ‘instruments’ in the game) to behave with stability, and until reaching this point at least, it wasn’t ready for a human playtest. I read recently someone’s account of their own thought processes in game design (don’t remember who now; maybe Friedemann Friese?), who said that after the first cut or so they reach almost a binary decision of ‘no; forget about it and move on’, versus ‘there could be something in this’. One of my main objectives tonight was to get from these guys a similar opinion – should I stop wasting my time, or keep working on it? And the sense I got was more the latter, which was reassuring, even though there’s a lot of work to do to get to the next iteration.

To summarise player strategies and outcomes, Pat focused on maximizing the output of only the core engine for vps and money in the game, eschewing the distraction of some of the other abilities and benefits that could be acquired. Richard’s strategy was similar, although he did dip into one of the improvement purchases, which he later aborted and therefore suffered some time wastage. Alex and I on the other hand experimented more heavily with the more “orthogonal” game benefits as an alternative means for gaining vps, and these strategies might have been more successful if the game had run a few turns longer – maybe.
I was actually pleased with the timing of the game – still too long, but typically coming in at about 10-15 minutes per turn. This was one of my main worries, since Paula and I had tried it the night before, playing two separate “characters” each, and it soaked up an enormous number of hours, averaging about 25-30 minutes per turn.

I got lots of good suggestions on what to change and simplify, and will try to work on these over the coming weeks and months. One of the more intriguing suggestions came from Pat, about converting the commodity sale track instead into various market boxes. I’ve already got some thoughts about how this might work in an interesting way, and I’m keen to get editing!
Anyway, for the record: 40 minutes rules explan., almost exactly 2 hours to play through 9 turns. The game end was somewhat artificial, since one of the instruments in the game (number of commodity-producers) was out of kilter.
Pat won, with 41 points; Richard 2nd on 40; Alex on 30; me on 28.

Clans: The last game for Brian, Brad and Andrew before Andrew left.
Don’t know the results of this one.

Sex: Richard recently pointed out that the name origin of this game is in fact Latin, not German, so what I had been writing as Sechs, is in fact, Sex.
This is definitely the game of the moment for 6. We played the same rules again as last week, in which a misere hand can score no more than 72 points.
A few low-scoring hands this time around, with Alex scoring a zero in one round, and me a zero in the next! That was one hand in which I should have called misere, but under peer pressure I avoided it. Doh!
45 minutes.
Results: Richard: 342. Brian: 327. Pat: 312. Paul: 293. Brad: 282. Alex: 263.

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Nick, Brian, Richard, Brad, Pat, Alex, Paul.
Played: Carcassonne, Loopin’ Louie, Canal Mania, Mare Nostrum, Aqua Romana, Sechs.

We started with seven players tonight until Nick left us after one or two games. The title of this post is a reference to my best performance tonight: 2nd-last in Sechs.
Pics as usual by Brad.

Carcassonne: I think this was just Brad and Alex, as I did the take-away food run.
Don’t know the result.

Loopin’ Louie: I arrived back home with a bag of Thai food to be told by Pat, “you’ve just missed Loopin’ Louie…”.
I didn’t even know he was coming.
Crazy toy game bought and brought by Nick.

Canal Mania: Boats on tracks
Another variation on the train game. “But this is canals,” said Pat. OK.
Straightforward enough, and I felt like I had the hang of this pretty soon. I started in the middle of the board, which seemed like a good idea at the time. The game proceeded well and I made sure I shipped cubes as often and as efficiently as I could. I had the lead for much of the game, although Pat kept pace, and Brian was not far behind. I also used up the brown canal tiles (aqueducts and tunnels - the high-scoring ones) quickly, which probably wasn’t such a good idea, and I had a high rotation on the engineer cards.
But on the last turn, Pat pulled in an enormous forty-odd points on cube-running alone. This was a classic case of not watching closely enough what your opponents are doing. Pat had gradually built a comprehensive canal network across the south, with cubes accumulating in every city and town he touched. With all cubes having to run after the last turn, he naturally made a motza.
A good game experience overall, although I think naturally of Age of Steam, and that Canal Mania is close but not quite as compelling.

22 minutes rules, 95 minutes game time.
Results: Pat: 140. Paul: 108. Brian:95.

Mare Nostrum: Coincidentally I was just thinking about this game on the same day, and how I’d be keen to play it again soon. Oh well; this one ran in parallel to Canal Mania, and you can’t do two things at once. Richard, Alex, Brad and Nick played the expansion with the mythical creatures. Apparently this turned them all into pacifist gaylords, too afraid to attack each other.
40 minutes rules, 113 minutes game time.
Results: A win for Richard, but with Nick apparently on the cusp for some turns before the end and Alex too a turn or so away from claiming a win.

Aqua Romana: Acquiescence
Pat suggested this, citing that it hadn’t had a decent showing when it was first acquired. Both Brian and Pat began tentatively, while I used double loops and crosses to maximise all four of my aqueducts close to home.
But Pat used the bonus tiles (from Master Builders turning corners) to great effect, causing the eventual closure of two of my pipelines that could easily have run to 12 spaces or more. These two tracks hence yielded a mere 7 and 3 points respectively. Bummer. And congratulations to Pat.

10 minutes rules; 40 minutes game time.
Results: Pat: 34. Brian: 22. Paul: 20.

Sechs: Second week in a row for the perfect six player card game. This time we played a variant on the Misere rule, in which the Misere players’ scores can be no more than 8 x no. cards played.
This made no difference to me, although I felt compelled to call Misere on 4 of the six hands dealt. No doubt at least one of these calls was a bad one, but what do you do when you get dealt a K,3,2 in one suit, 8,4,2 in another, a 7 and 3, and a lone Jack? I seemed to get the same deal every time, with variations only in the suits!
Anyway, I still like the challenge of this, and would also suggest it as a high preference. Of course, ask me again in 6 months time and the story might be different…

46 minutes for 6 hands.
Results: Brad: 348. Brian: 337. Richard: 325. Alex: 318. Paul: 282. Pat: 271.

Venue: Richard’s place.
Present: Brian, Richard, Brad, Pat, Alex, Paul.
Played: Finstere Flure, Schwarzarbeit, Blue Moon, Goa, Nexus Ops, Katzenjammer Blues, Sechs.

Six players again tonight, dividing easily for game options available and coming back together for cards at the end.
Pics as usual by Brad.

Finstere Flure: The starting five were wrapping this up just as I arrived. About half an hour.
Results: Pat won, then in order Alex, Brian, Richard, Brad.

Schwarzarbeit: Dubuious deduction and careful card-watching for particular players
A curious little deduction game by Friedemann Friese, very loosely themed around illegal immigrant workers in the games publishing industry. Actually the ‘illegal workers’ part kind of works, but the only reference to the games industry is in the names of workers. No doubt Friedemann’s little joke with his audience has been commented on before, but for those who haven’t seen it, the game consists of character cards who’s first and second names start with the same unique letter of the alphabet, eg., Friedemann Friese (although that’s not one of them). Those followers of FF’s work will be aware of his penchant for choosing similarly alliterative game titles (in particular with ‘F’s), so one shouldn’t be surprised with the cute embedding of his personal trademark within the game like this. I didn’t pay close enough attention to the first names, but the surnames were all (or mostly) well-known game designers. I recall seeing Knizia, Rosenberg, Moon, and Henn, for example. But no Friedemann or Friese for the ‘F’ card, ‘though.
Anyway, the rules and game play seemed a little strange at first, but the results gradually became more clear as we worked through the draw deck. You accumulate points by recruiting worker cards that eventually prove to be non-illegal, but get even more by denouncing those that prove to be illegal. Brian seemed to go crazy with denouncements, but only one of these proved to be false. So despite the penalty suffered for this one slip-up (and a bonus for me to be the first to act on it), he was able to comfortably claim the top spot at the end.
17 mins rules, 48 mins game play.

Results: Brian: 21. Pat: 18. Paul: 17. Brad: 10.

Blue Moon: Reiner’s 2p predecessor to Blue Moon City was played by Alex and Richard, in parallel with our Schwarzarbeit game.
66 mins total. Richard: 3, def. Alex: 1.

Goa: The way of the sextant
After some to-ing and fro-ing, three of us happily settled on the resource generation and management intricacies of Goa. I was especially keen to try and improve on my past performances by paying more attention to the sextant cards this time around, a strategy that seemed to work well for Pat in previous playings. The early part of the game was unremarkable in terms of outcomes, although I did begin to sense that Pat was already edging away. He was earning a slightly disproportionate number of first-turn wins (and hence bonus actions), and was already running a high turn-over of sextant cards.
On the other hand I was frustrated that I couldn’t get more of these myself and make them useful, and found myself once again chasing commodity production, colonist cards, and the colony tiles. Brian seemed to be keeping pace with me on colonies and advances, although he’d chosen a completely different strategy - race up (or rather down) the money advance track, and stay liquid for the tile auctions.
The second half of the game got gradually worse for me - I think I won an average of less than one tile per turn in each auction, and scored maybe a total of two bonus actions through limping ahead on the advance tracks, etc. I resorted to trying to get roughly equal advances across the board, which I realized later was mathematically and obviously dumb with respect to points scoring. In the mean time, Pat went from strength to strength, and despite one brain-melting turn (I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take so long to make a game turn decision before!) was at the bottom of three of five tracks, had all four colonies, and had sextant cards coming out of the proverbial. The result is almost too embarrassing to report here.
17 minutes rules rehash, 98 mins playing time.

Results: Pat: 61. Paul: 39. Brian: 34.

Nexus Ops: Insectoids and other translucent critters doing three-way battles across different terrain types.
90 minutes in total.
Results: Brad: 12. Richard: 10. Alex: 10.

Katzenjammer Blues: A quick filler for Richard, Alex and Brad while us Goans finished off.
None of the players were overly impressed with the experience, and unfortunately bad puns followed. According to Richard, Alex won by whisker. Pat said that if it was any consolation, he thinks that KB is a dog of a game. Sigh.

Sechs: I assume this is the correct spelling of the game that I (and I’m sure others at the table) had been referring to as ‘Sex’. This is a neat trick-taking card game that works with exactly six players. The rules are nowhere to be found on boardgamegeek or other obvious sites, so for the record I recount them here quickly.
Use a regular deck of cards with two jokers, which both have the value 7.5. Aces may be played as the lowest (1) or the highest card in their suit. Six hands in the whole game, with each player having one turn dealing. All 54 cards are dealt at the start of each hand (9 each), and in clockwise order from the dealer’s left, each player in turn first declares whether or not they intend to play a misere hand. Play then starts again with the dealer’s left, who leads any card they choose (or they may pass). Following players in turn may choose to play a card to the trick or pass. If they play, they must follow suit, including a joker if they have one (and if they choose to play it). There is never any trump suit. The winner of each trick takes the cards won and arranges these face down so all players can see the count of won cards. The hand ends at the end of a trick in which a player has no more cards left, and the score for each player is then tallied. If a player has not played misere, they score the product of their won cards times the number of their played cards (ie., 9 minus how many they have left in their hand). But here’s the catch: If they’ve won 10 or more cards (not tricks), first they remove whole sets of nine cards so that they have a remainder of nine cards or less, and this remainder is their won cards number. So the maximum a player can reach in any one round is 81 points, and this is a perfect score. If a player has called misere and succeeded in winning no tricks, they score exactly 9 x no. played cards. A misere caller who has won one or more cards during the hand has bust and will score zero points for the hand. The highest score at the end of sechs hands is the winner.
This was an intriguing game of trade-off and group-think, and right up to the last hand looked like it could have been won by any player.
66 minutes.

Results: Pat: 360. Brad: 350. Richard: 336. Alex: 336. Paul: 322. Brian: 314.

Venue: Paul’s place.
Present: Brian, Richard, Brad, Pat, Alex, Nick, Paul.
Played: Carcassonne, Indonesia, Blue Moon City, Tichu, Cosmic Eidex, Fairy Tale.

Lots of good game titles played tonight, but I can only report on the one game I actually played. Here anyway are the results of all, including as usual the cool pics by Brad.

Carcassonne: The starter for the early arrivals. All over in about 25 mins.
Results: Pat: a win, although I don’t have the final number. Alex: 94. Brian: ~70. Brad: ~21.

Indonesia: Diversify
A long-awaited first playing for me, and l could tell as Pat went through the rules that this was going to be my type of game. Economic development on a big scale, trading optimisation and merger valuations press all the right buttons, even if I’m not particularly good at these compared to other players. And the “aesthetics” are nice too - I really like the artwork and the fonts used on the map board and the company tiles, etc.
I went early onto rice fields, Brian into spice production, and Pat (predictably) into shipping. Some crafty placement of cities severely hampered Brian’s capacity to expand, while Pat’s shipping monopoly kept the cream floating all his way. Brian tried to break this monopoly by investing in shipping in about the third turn, but this was short-lived as a subsequent merger put the new shipping company back into Pat’s hands anyway.
It turned out that it was me who eventually forced the main competition to Pat in shipping, and Brian favoured my lines over Pat’s in order to reduce the perceived wealth differential that he seemed to be gaining. And although my expanding rice industry and burgeoning shipping line(s) seemed to be doing quite well, I had difficulty in diversifying my holdings any further. A mid-game spice pick-up was swallowed up one turn later by a corporate raider I couldn’t compete with. In the end I think it must have been my inability to gather holdings in the higher value commodities that kept me down, because it was only at the game end when I discovered I was so far behind. Until then I actually thought I was much closer to Pat’s score.
Despite coming last in this, Indonesia enters my hot 10 and my top 10 straight away. Put me down for the next playing.
40 minutes rules, 180 mins playing time.

Results: Pat: $3050. Brian: $2570. Paul: $2415.

Blue Moon City: Nick’s contribution for the second time. With Richard, Brad and Alex.
1 hour total, incl. rules explan.
Results: Alex wins (four tokens in the tower).

Tichu: Nick was talked into staying for another game, and teamed with Richard against Alex and Brad.
Four or five hands played. Spot on one hour again.
Results: Brad + Alex: 640, win over Nick + Richard: 260.

Cosmic Eidex: Another card game – one I’d not seen before.
No information here, except for Brad’s picture, and that Richard won.

Fairy Tale: As above!
Richard: 50. Brad: 42. Alex: 41.