Kim and I went to Origins for our second year this year (I had gone myself one year previously), and once again we both had a great time. We got to play a lot of new stuff, as well some old favorites, and while some of the new titles were disappointing the overall experience was very positive and it's always good to get out, put some faces to names, and try some new stuff. Anyway, here is a report on what we played and what we liked and didn't like.
Before Origins: Mark Geary brought over a copy of 1826 (France) on Sunday and we played a 3-player game. I was underwhelmed. It wasn't bad, really, but I've always loathed those 20% last shares, and the H-trains combined with a large map and a small number of stations per company created a much less dynamic game. I'd suggest simply throwing out the hex-based trains and replacing them with the standard versions, but then the main innovations - the Electric and TGV trains, which behave more like "normal" 1830 trains - would be lost. Hmmm, maybe that means they weren't so innovative after all. Anyway, my impression was it's too long, the map is too large, I hate 20% last shares, and it was just not unique enough to make it worth the effort. Not bad, mind you, I just can't think of a reason to give it 8+ hours of my life again over the better commercial games in the series (IMHO 1830, 1853, 1856, 1870, or 2038).
At Origins, starting Wednesday night:
Successors: Both Kim and I played this, and we both liked it a
lot. It's got a fairly significant random element for a game of its complexity,
but it's a lot of fun to play. I've really gone for the We the People game
system in a big way of late, I think because it's such a near-perfect trade-off
between simulation accuracy, strategic depth, replayability, and complexity. We
had 4 players, and I started off in Thrace and Egypt. I forsook Legitimacy in
favor of VP's (I didn't have any of those pesky Royal Army units), and was able
to rapidly build up a strong power base while combining my generals and
crushing one of my neighbors. I would have won easily, but forgot that Thrace
contains no major cities, and so all my garrisons up there became isolated when
I moved my troops out for a showdown in the East (and as a consequence lost two
provinces plus control of the Hellespont). I had massed quite an army, but the
Perdiccus player drew a couple surprise cards that really nailed me and my army
was largely defeated. In the end, I'm not sure it was wise to abandon
Legitimacy; I drew a "Gift of Oratory" card, and had I not burned my Champion
status attacking early, Ptolomy's Prestige plus the 5L bonus the card gives for
a turn could have been a dramatic swing. On the other hand, without eliminating
the competition early my VP position would not have been nearly as strong. I
ended up 3rd and kind of out of it, but that's fair enough given I had a good
shot in the mid-game. Anyway, a very enjoyable game in my opinion, and a good
crowd. Kim also enjoyed her game a lot, and thought she had a chance of winning
until she lost a few legitimacy points in an ill-advised battle and had
Alexander's body stolen from her when her Royal Macedonian units went on strike
... she did recover the body, but was too weakened and had it stolen again and
quickly buried for a legitimacy win.
Middle Earth CCG: Thursday was my Middle Earth day. I played
Lidless Eye sealed in the morning, and Challenge deck in the afternoon. I
really enjoyed the MELE Sealed last year, but this year it was kind of a wash.
I got an absolutely dire selection of cards along with the Khamul fixed pack
(and no cards to use on my Ringwraith). In fact, my card selection was so bad I
almost dropped out before I started. I went on to win one (of 5) and made a
couple games close, but in general it was not all that enjoyable. On the other
hand, I thought it was a really good crowd this year. I had several bad
opponent experiences last year, but none this year - everyone was very
sportsmanlike and friendly. The Challenge Deck was much more entertaining. I
got the Alatar deck, and did quite well in the 3 rounds I actually played (MELE
Sealed went 10AM-5PM, Challenge deck started at 6PM, I had to bail due to
exhaustion around 11PM - remember I'm still on Pacific time here). Again in the
Challenge Deck tourney, my opponents were great and I had a particularly brutal
game against Chris Cable and the Radagast deck in which virtually every
significant character was eliminated (including Alatar, thanks to the new
wizard elimination rules). The final score when time was called (we had cycled
a deck and a half) was 14-12, and I won only because the Radagast deck is so
faction-heavy he couldn't score them all. I didn't find out who won, but the
Adunaphel deck came in 3rd, pretty respectable for a deck that is supposed to
be unplayable (if you believe what you read on the Internet). I like the
Challenge Decks a lot, and they are great fun and, well, a real challenge to
play well. They really show off the strength of the game. My only complaint is
with the format: you really should just count wins rather than score for a
victory margin, and have a single-elimination playoff in case of ties. The
unfortunate weakness of the Swiss scoring system really shows through here (why
should it be worth significantly more to crush a weak opponent than to squeak
by a hardened veteran?). I also had a minor complaint that there was no
official lunch break during the MELE tourney! Nonetheless, overall a positive
experience.
Before the tournament we were graced with a "complete" list of errata which
weighed in at only one double-sided sheet. Sounds good, but of course it was
woefully incomplete with lots of important "clarifications" that are really
errata omitted. However, I am happy to report that the dire state of the rules
did not effect my enjoyment of the tournament in any way, as I was never called
on any rules I was unaware of or didn't understand. Then again, I could have
called people on some of the more obscure rules problems but didn't (mainly the
resource-during-the-site-phase thing). I still believe ICE is headed in the
wrong way here, and although the Balrog sounds cool, a consolidated 2nd Edition
rule book should be absolutely their first priority. Regardless, despite the
fact that I personally feel there are serious problems here, I did not run into
any problems.
There was some additional information on The Balrog there: ICE
had sort of a mini-proof sheet there with much of the art for the set. It
displayed the usual inconsistency - some stunning pieces (Rumors of Rings) and
some total losers (Strider). Also as usual, there were many more good pieces
than bad. There was an additional hint that perhaps ICE might go to an
all-Challenge deck format for the Balrog; that is to say, the Balrog set would
be fixed-starters entirely, with 2 different starters and NO random
distribution! If this pans out, it would be awesome. MECCG has been a great
game burdened with the collectible tag for far too long.
The Elrond's House game, an upcoming offering from ICE which
was supposed to be a somewhat MECCG-based non-collectible board-card game was a
no-show, which was very disappointing - one of the events I was looking forward
to. Orcs & Trolls also was nowhere to be found. Moral: don't count on
pre-release games that are offered as events actually being available.
Kim played Trainsport: Austria (thumbs down, mainly for a
total lack of player interaction and the awful tie breaking rule) in the
morning and Lords of the Sierra Madre in the evening. Lords of
the Sierra Madre came away with a marginal thumbs up; the main mitigating
factors were somewhat excessive complexity and the fact that while the
Americans have a strong position and a good chance of winning, the Mexicans get
to have all the fun. Still, Kim enjoyed the game and I'm looking forward to
playing myself.
On to Friday:
Friday was the Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage tourney mainly. I've started playing this relatively recently and every time I play it I think "wow, this is a great game" (Successors gets the same reaction, by the way). I lost as the Carthaginians in the first round in a tightly-run affair that saw a very strong Carthaginian start which destroyed several consular armies, but was never able to properly gain a foothold in Italy. Because of this, the Romans were able to hang on and really turn things around for a strong finish. During the last few turns, every time it looked like the Romans were about to nail Carthage once and for all, Hannibal pulled off a daring naval move to win a land victory and postpone the inevitable. In the end, I lost mainly because I was unable to effectively convert PCs and because I misused my Carthaginian flunkies. Again, I had a great opponent and the game was very enjoyable.
Kim won her first round as the Carthaginians by simply destroying every Roman army in sight (Rome had about 2CUs and had lost half of Italy when they gave in). The middle game was still quite tense, and I gather that both Hannibal and Scipio Africanus died in the same battle! (this was due to a pre-eratta reading of rule 8.9; this has since been clarified and both leaders would have survived). She went on to lose in the second round in another good game.
I was then able to fiddle around with a copy of For the People, Mark Harmon's new game using the We the People mechanism. It covers the Civil War, and while retaining the important Event Card/OC/PC/General core, it diverges again to add more politics, focusing on the National Will, and more military options, including the ability to move formations of different sizes (Army, Division, Battalion, Cavalry Brigade) with different capabilities and different transport modes (road, rail, sea). The map has a lot more spaces than either of the previous games and obviously the terrain is wildly different from Hannibal. The other important factor is the National Will; if your National Will goes to zero, you lose. I didn't make it through the combat rules (just dice, no battle cards), but I assume that is the main way to lose National Will. The other way is to have to deal with incompetent but well-connected generals. McClelland is particularly dire - as incompetent as they come but with a huge political rating and a commensurately high cost in will to replace. How did he get there in the first place? Generals start face-down and unknown until they reveal themselves (in combat presumably, but as I said I didn't get there). Anyway, it looks like another real winner and I'm on my way to pre-ordering it. This whole mechanism is a great one and I hope to see at least a few more games that use it.
At this point we got a short demo of Avalanche Press' new Airlines (for those of you who may be confused, this is not the Alan Moon game of the same name). I was very curious about this one since it seemed to be a serious game on a theme that is underused, Avalanche has been hawking it in the General for some time, and the components were quite impressive. I've developed a phobia of over-produced games by companies I've never heard of, and sadly Airlines did nothing to appease this. It's a draw-one play-one card game. Need I say more? Despite a huge amount of chrome, simulation value is nonexistent (don't let talk of the fact that it was developed as a tool to help Delta Airlines fool you), the whole thing is largely random, and if that weren't enough, you have to score each time round the table, the scoring mechanism is error-prone and fiddley, and the whole thing takes forever to start looking even vaguely interesting. In the entire demo, I literally had nothing to do! Two thumbs down - give 'em a third thumb down for looking so good and being so expensive. At $12 it might be passable, relatively mindless entertainment, but at $40 it's about four times too expensive. And there is a first expansion almost out already.
The final game for Friday was Columbia's Victory: the Blocks of War. It should be said that many years ago I played Avalon Hill's Napoleon (originally from Columbia, and back in print from them again now) and liked it a lot. Perhaps Blocks of War will appeal more to the Risk/A&A set, but I found it to be too simplistic for my tastes. There's just not a lot there except a lot of dice. The whole concept was intriguing enough to get me interested in some of Columbia's other more involved games, but Blocks of War was, well, uninspiring. The key problems were the extremely restrictive stacking limits combined with very tight terrain and the unusual decision to treat all strength points identically (i.e., it costs the same to build 1 step of infantry and 1 step of battleships). While they promised that there would be additional expansions featuring more scenarios and maps, the game as shipped (and not cheap at $40) is desperately in need of something more.
Kim also played in Fare Competition, a game in beta playtest from Wolfhoud Games. It's about competition in the Airline business as you might expect, and was yet another thinly disguised Monopoly knock-off. Kim gave it two thumbs way down. The Origins people really need to clarify when an event is for a game that is unpublished, in playtest, may not be available, or otherwise is not in final form or not on the market. Save us all some grief.
Saturday was 18xx day. Kim played in 1834, a game from Prism that is currently in playtest. I played Carl Burger's 1831. The bad news first: I found 1831 pretty weak. Sort of like a bad Tom Clancy book, it has every good idea Carl came up with, without regard for playability, balance, or cohesion. It's a behemoth of a game, very much the Advanced Third Reich of 18xx games (this comparison holds up in a surprising number of details). Now, admittedly, for some this will appeal and the mechanisms of 1831 are fine; I won't claim that the game doesn't work. That having been said, it takes an eternity to play, the vast majority of which is down time (I estimated that as a quick player I had 5-10 minutes of activity per hour, and that was with just 4 players); many mechanics have little or no additional gaming value, while adding unnecessarily to the downtime (the whole freight vs. passenger service distinction adds little but rules complexity and playing time and was rightly abstracted out by Mr. Tresham the first time). Despite all this effort to make the game more "realistic", the core of 18xx has so little simulation value that 1831 ends up failing there too, with odd rules for buyouts and mergers, the same unrealistic rules for train availability (actually worse, since the number of freight, passenger, and mixed trains at each level is very limited and it's very easy to get locked out of the train you need), and the simulation-wise ever-problematic stock market. And so, for me, 1831 becomes a game that when compared to the better games in the series (1830, 1856, 2038) mainly just takes a lot longer to play because of all the details you must micromanage. Now, for a certain type of gamers this provides enjoyment (heck, I used to be in that group), but for the rest of us, this is one to avoid.
Kim had a much more positive experience with 1834 from Prism. Her report was that it added enough new stuff to be distinctive and different, and the stuff was well thought out and had gaming value. New concepts included buyouts, instantaneous floating with partial capitalization, several variable starting location companies, good rules for bankruptcies, ferries, different train types (like 2038, different on the flip side), and bonuses for connecting specific cities at specific times. Kim was quite enthused and ready to play again. Mr. Lehman is always a good host and a good time was had by all. The rumor that came around to me was that Mr. Tresham wants to license only a single 18xx game per year, and Mayfair swears up and down that they can release 1832 and 1850 this year (pardon me for being slightly skeptical given their track record), so 1834 may have to wait for a while, which is a shame. I played 1832 at Origins last year and was underwhelmed - it's not bad, but from what I've heard of 1834 I'd easily take it first.
What I ended up buying:
Whiskey Settlers & Cheops (Mayfair): So I'm a settlers fan. The Whiskey Settlers is gorgeous, with irregular hex tiles and wonderful graphics. An amazingly attractive set, and at $60 only about $10 more than I paid for my original settlers "way back" in 1995. Cheops, on the other hand, has some problems. Nothing a color copier and your existing set won't rectify, but how several hexes ended up blank on the final product boggles the mind. Still, it's only $10, and the new pyramid-building rules are interesting.
GIPF (Mayfair): Relatively cheap at $20, and it has received a lot of good press including a Spiel des Jahre nomination. Haven't played it yet, but it looks like checkers and I hope I wasn't taken ...
Lords of the Sierra Madre (Decision Games): Kim played this one Thursday and won, so she got a $15 gift certificate from Decision Games. While she thought it was long and maybe a bit too complicated, the underlying mechanism was quite interesting and I'd heard good things about the game, so we bought it. I'm eager to give it a try, but the length and complexity remain a problems. Maybe I'll have more luck than I've been having with Republic of Rome.
1825 (Mayfair): Despite marginal experiences with 1831 and 1826, I did remember how much I enjoyed 18xx games (and how underrated I thought 1829 was), so I picked this one up in the hopes that as a smaller, simpler, 4-hour game it might get some play time.
Babylon 5 CCG Promos: I picked up a few B5CCG promos that are hard to get. In retrospect, I wasn't really happy about his because one of them was Defense Treaty, a fairly powerful card. The whole price-gouging rarity thing annoys the hell out of me already, all we need is really hard-to-get promo cards that are quite powerful. Ugh. I find my CCG time being slowly eroded, and one can only hope that by this time next year CCGs will have been edged out entirely by boxed games. It's not that CCGs don't provide gaming value that boxed games don't or can't, it's just that I have become truly appalled at how much they cost and all the companies' apparent lack of development experience and concern for players.
Monsters Ravage America (AH): Looked good, good theme, seemed fun from watching some others play, Avalon Hill has really won me back as a customer recently, and we had a few "AH Bucks" from Kim's first-round Hannibal win, so we bought it.
Now, on to a few overall observations on the convention itself:
- A note to game masters: Please clarify game length up front and make sure everybody is in for the duration! Mark Geary, a friend of ours, runs a 2038 game every year. He does this despite Prism's games just so that he can guarantee a complete game, since the Prism games get cut to a time limit. Due to some misunderstandings, a couple players bailed after only two hours, which rather ruined the game. One player in my 1831 game also bailed halfway through. This is really bad when this stuff happens, and a lot of games tend to get grossly unrealistic duration estimates. Anyway, something to be aware of.
- Andon Unlimited really needs to get some local publicity. The Columbus Dispatch will run info on your event if you ask them to, and I was surprised to see info on lots of minor events but nothing on the biggest game convention in America! You never know who would come if they just knew about it, and getting information to the local news isn't much effort.
- That having been said, the Columbus location is really excellent. No traffic problems (except for the big Red, White, and Boom Friday night), plenty of decent fast food with a good selection, and a good facility.
- The dealers' room and demo area was much improved this year, with better lighting and a more game-friendly environment (less ambient noise, better tables, and more space).
- A down side was that it was very difficult to find info on when and where the guests where going to be. Since they are a big attraction, this really needs to be posted prominently somewhere, either in the program (it was there, but hidden away) or at the entrance to the dealer's area.
- Oh yeah, and several of the AH events were scrambling to find games. We only had two copies of Successors by pure chance - we brought ours from California, and Kim had to run home (45 mins. round trip) to pick up our copy, while another player just happened to bring along a copy. The Hannibal tourney the next day was short copies also.
- There was a nice web-page sign up this year, and while this was very nice (and secure too), I hope next year they will soup things up even more - with faster feedback and an easy way to edit your selections (if you get cut out of events or into an unusual assortment of your backups). Ever since I started preregistering, getting into my first choice of events has not been a major issue, but still a slightly more advanced form would be a huge plus. Still, just getting the web sign up form was very helpful. It would also be very nice if there were an easy way to inform GMs you will not be attending their events; the scheduler put me in both my first choice (1831) and second choice (1834), and since 1834 took only 4 people, it would have been really nice to be able to correct this and let somebody else sign up.
That's it! Kim and I both had a great time, and thanks to everyone who put in time, ran games, and were gracious opponents. I hope to see everyone again next year.
© Chris Farrell
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