blind spots

As my gaming tastes evolve, the types of games that catch my interest change. I find that as I gain "expertise" and "experience", my vision actually narrows, in a way. You can say I know what I want so I automatically tune out from games that I know I won't like. That's a good thing - it means I know how to enjoy my hobby in the best way that is suitable for me. On the other hand, because of this I miss games which are in my blind spot. I automatically dismiss them when I come across them, or sometimes I don't even venture anywhere near them to hear about them.

There are some German games from the 90's and early 00's that I quite like. Games like The Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Ra, Taj Mahal. Games from that era are simpler than the kind of games I pay attention to nowadays. Sometimes I feel that recent games are all getting more and more complex. However this is not entirely true. There are actually still games of similar complexity and style as those from the 90's to early 00's - roughly the Catan (1995) to Carcassonne (2001) era. The problem is I now automatically tune them out! Most Reiner Knizia games are still of this light-to-medium weight as the C-to-C era, e.g. Qin. There are also games like The Palaces of Carrara. If these games came out 6 or 7 years ago, I probably would have been much more interested. Nowadays games that spark my interest are those like Archipelago, Robinson Crusoe, Clash of Cultures, Ora et Labora. Recently when I read the rules to Entdecker (2001) and La Citta (2000), I found that I miss the games from that era. I have played Entdecker before. I suddenly itch to play some C-to-C- era games again. I wonder whether this is the syndrome of pop songs during one's youth being the best. I got into the hobby in 2003, so the C-to-C games are the equivalent of songs that I grew up with.

Taj Mahal

The Settlers of Catan

It is quite ironic that I have a nagging feeling that C-to-C games are better - lean and mean, and not overburdened with superfluous chrome and unnecessary complexity - and yet whenever I come across a game of that style, I can't muster the enthusiasm to read more about it. In the case of Alien Frontiers, I have played it, and liked it, and would happily play again, but I don't make plans to play it again. You can definitely draw an analogy between boardgamers and drug addicts. You may start with simple games, but soon they become unsatisfactory and you need something stronger. After you've played a lot of a certain type of game, you start to feel restless and you need to seek out something different. I've certainly moved from C-to-C games to heavier Eurogames, although I sometimes feel heavier is not necessarily better. It's the need to try something new that drove me to try an 18XX game 18TN, a not-low-complexity wargame Rommel in the Desert, and a CCG game (okay, strictly speaking it's LCG) Android: Netrunner. It is also why I recently bought Conflict of Heroes. So far all these ventures have been successful. I did enjoy myself. I have not really ventured deeply, so there is a lot more for me to explore and learn. I consider myself lucky. There is still a lot of mileage in my boardgaming hobby. There is no shortage of games that I enjoy, whenever I have time and opponents. And I haven't even gone anywhere near RPG's and Go.

Alien Frontiers

18TN

The need to try something different helped to create my blind spot over C-to-C games. The other blind spot I have is crowdfunded games (a.k.a. kickstarter games). I do think there aren't many outstanding crowdfunded games, and that's why I rarely bother to read about them, but there are good ones. Alien Frontiers is one. Also Fleet, and Vanuatu (gosh I miss this).

Vanuatu

Having fellow gamer friends who also buy games helps to alleviate this blind spot problem. Well, unless they have the exact same tastes as you do. I certainly have been introduced to some very good games only because one of my fellow gamers bought them.

Ultimately, blind spots is not really a big deal. I already have more than enough games to keep me entertained. There are simply too many good games out there and it's impossible to play every single one of them. But I will continue to try to keep an open mind. I won't try to play everything, but being willing to try games that sound iffy means sometimes I am pleasantly surprised. Such discoveries are part of how I enjoy boardgaming.

why After The Flood makes me uncomfortable

Not that I dislike After The Flood. If asked to give a yes or no answer to whether I like the game, I’d probably say it’s complicated. And it’s not really just about After The Flood. It’s about the type of game in which there exists a mix of deep economy and high-impact warfare. There is a mix of constructive and destructive elements. It’s like you need to spend much effort building your own sandcastle, and in the same game someone will try to kick your sandcastle, and you have to do the same to them. It makes me a little nervous and uneasy, because I get that unsettling feeling of “that’s not very nice”. I am more at ease with straight conflict games, like Axis & Allies games, Sekigahara and Hammer of the Scots, and mixture games where the build element is simpler, e.g. A Few Acres of Snow, Wallenstein. In the latter, despite there being an element of what you have built getting torn down, at least you are less emotionally invested. I also don’t mind much the warfare in games which are primarily about development but has just a little confrontation thrown in, e.g. Endeavor and Age of Empires III. The warfare is mostly localised or is limited.

I guess one of my favourite games, Through the Ages is a game with a mix of intricate development and destructive warfare. It doesn’t make me nervous only because I always play against my wife and we play in a less aggressive way (military being used mainly for events and colonisation, and rarely for aggressions or wars). Civilization (Fantasy Flight) is this type of game, and because of the threat of war, I always need to play with an “at war” mindset. I need to be at least playing defensively, even if I don’t plan to attack others.

After The Flood

Well, that’s one theory about why After The Flood makes me nervous. However, that does not fully explain why Tammany Hall and Confucius can make me quite nervous too. So my other theory is that I play these games in a PBEM-like (Play-By-E-Mail) manner, and they are mostly open information.

When there is much time for me to ponder between turns, I find that I think too much, and end up worrying too much. I play too conservatively, because I see all the risks and I don’t dare to gamble. I expect the worse, and sometimes over-prepare, because I dare not hope for my opponents not doing their worst to me. Over-preparing means I am forgoing opportunities. I spend my resources on defensive play, some of which end up being unnecessary.

I often play these games as 3-player games with Allen and Han, and they all feel like knife fights in a phone booth. When there are three powers of roughly equal strength, it is nervous to see which two will gang up to eliminate the third, and only after that settle the fight between themselves. It doesn’t always happen, but the possibility is always there. I’m either poor at playing this metagame (not sure if it’s an appropriate way to use this term), or I’m unlucky. It is important to not appear too strong, if you don’t want to get ganged up on. However it is also bad to allow yourself to become too weak, lest you end up never being able to catch up, or another player trounce on you in order to push himself further forward. I find that I often do well in the early or mid game, only to crash and burn towards late game. There seems to be something seriously wrong with my pacing, no matter which game.

It is probably the combination of (a) being a 3-player game, (b) being a PBEM-like game, (c) being a mostly open information game, and (d) being low-luck, that makes some games quite unsettling for me. I have played some Axis & Allies Anniversary against Han before, and despite meeting criteria (b) and (c), those were 2-player games and there is some luck. Those games were very exciting and nerve-wracking, but I wouldn’t associate them with “uncomfortable”. In three player games, I sometimes feel Iike I am in a 1 vs 2 situation, because I keep expecting the worst.

Tammany Hall

Uncomfortable is not necessarily bad. It keeps you on your toes. It makes sure you pay attention and do your best. These games are exciting. Probably a little stressful, but they really engage you. You just need to know what to expect. Anyhow, I probably need to learn to relax a little.

All this came to me during an online turn-based game of After The Flood that I have just completed. I’ll be writing a session report on it.

boardgaming in photos

13 Jul 2012. Playing Taj Mahal at OTK Cheras. This is classic Knizia, and it has been quite a while since I last played. We had 3 players, and I was the only one who had played before. I should be the stronger player since I taught the game, but Allen completely dominated this game. He made many province-to-province connections, and also kept the 2VP bonus card throughout most of the game. He kept competing for princesses so that he could hold on to the 2VP bonus card. We never managed to wrest it from him. I really need to relearn the tricks to this game.

Taj Mahal made me miss the Eurogames of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. There are not many such games nowadays, I feel. These games don’t have many rules, but they have good strategic depth and they have good player interaction. The hot Eurogames nowadays seem to be much heavier rules-wise. There are more moving parts and more components, but in terms of strategic depth, are they really that much better than these older Eurogames? I’m not sure. I wonder whether the designers of these newer Eurogames have lost focus a little. Are they adding some not-very-necessary aspects to games and forgetting the purer aspect of strategic richness (as opposed to richness in theme, number of choices, number of moving parts)? More choices may not mean more strategic depth. “More paths to victory” may not mean more strategic depth. When playing Taj Mahal, and later Santiago, I was suddenly reminded of one of the signs of greatness in Eurogames - crafting strategic depth with a minimalistic ruleset.

5-player Santiago at OTK Cheras. It had been ages since I last played. I thought I could teach the game by referring to my concise reference sheets (I have a copy on my phone), but I ended up doing a lousy job, confusing even myself. Thankfully Jeff was there to save the day. Santiago is an auction game and a bribery game. Players bid for plantation tiles, place them onto the board, and then try to bribe the irrigation guy to expand the irrigation network in the direction they want. Plantation tiles not irrigated will spoil every round, initially having ownership cubes removed, and eventually the tiles themselves get flipped over to the wasteland side if still not irrigated. You score based on the size of a plantation multiplied by your cubes on it. E.g. the white player scores 10pts for the bigger banana (yellow) plantation - 5 connected tiles x 2 white cubes.

I thought I did rather poorly, not being able to get into many big plantations. I thought I was surely going to end up in one of the last two positions. To my surprise I came second. I think a decision in the late game to pay dearly for a pea tile and then to use my personal irrigation canal to keep it from spoiling was what saved me. Every player has one personal irrigation canal for the whole game, and only one player will get to use it in any round. So it is valuable and must not be wasted. I invested much in that particular round in order to boost my presence in a large pea plantation. Thankfully it was worth it. In Santiago the key is to focus on getting yourself into big plantations. Small plantations are rarely worth the trouble.

Santiago was a satisfying experience. However I suspect if it were published today, I would have completely ignored it, dismissing it as too simple. I think I am losing sight of what a good game should be like. I should rethink this.

14 Jul 2012. Roll Through The Ages on the iPhone. I thought I did exceptionally well when I scored 71pts (Late Bronze Age expansion used), but when I checked my records, I found out that this wasn’t even in my top 3. My previous highest record was 77pts. And I’m pretty sure even 77pts is not uncommon.

The chart is wrong. This part of the app has always been broken. I don’t know why they never bothered to fix it. Thankfully the actual score calculation is correct. the red parts are showing penalties (disasters), but I should not have so much red showing. I only had 3pts deducted the whole game.

My developments. Empire was nice. 10pts for the the development itself, plus 1pt for each of my seven cities.

20 Jul 2012. Playing Gosu on BoardGameArena (BGA). This is the discard pile. Impressive, isn’t it?

I played against Han, and this game really went back and forth. I had a good hand in round 1 and beat him soundly. Then in round 2 he made good use of the trailing player bonus. Many of his cards were powered up because he was the trailing player. He got many powerful cards played, and also decimated my army. It was a crushing defeat. In round 3, things didn’t look so good for me. I decided to concede this round to conserve my strength for the next round. In round 4, it was my turn to enjoy the trailing player bonus, since Han was leading 2:1. However he only needed to win one more round to win the game. I needed to win two rounds consecutively. Thankfully I managed to make good use of the trailing player bonus. I won round 4, and managed to stay in a strong enough position to be able to win round 5 without the trailing player bonus. I did not win by much in the last round.

Gosu continues to be an interesting and relatively quick card game. It’s not really that big in the combo aspect. It’s much more about making difficult choices among the many goblins you can choose from, and making the most out of the goblins’ powers based on your situation. In that sense it’s a quite tactical. The more strategic view is picking the goblins to keep in your army for the long haul, e.g. those with good activation powers.

mechanism that don't click

Mechanisms are never the only reason that I like or dislike a game. Let’s get that straight up front. I have never given much thought to whether there are certain game mechanisms that I particularly like or dislike. I recently realised that there are some mechanisms that I tend to dislike. The strange thing is, despite generally not liking certain mechanisms, quite often I find games that I like which use such mechanisms. In fact, there are so many of them that I probably can't even call them exceptions, I probably have to call them big minorities. So I question myself whether I really dislike these mechanisms. On to the rambling...

• Stock holding - Games where you don't directly control a company (or entity), and instead multiple players can gain stakes in a company. I prefer a more straight-forward ownership model - what's mine is mine, what's yours is yours. Somehow the concept of players being one type of entity, and companies being another, puts me off-balance. Maybe I get too attached to my companies. I think I didn't like Greed because of this, but I was probably also biased by my very poor performance. Chicago Express (especially the iPhone version using the original name of Wabash Cannonball) allowed me to explore the stock holding mechanism. I now understand better how it works. I don't find it particularly fun, but I appreciate how it cleverly creates many interesting interactions among players - leeching others' effort when you are a minority shareholder, intentionally ruining a company when others have a bigger stake in it, etc. I am half hesitant to try 18XX games and Imperial because of the stock holding mechanism. I don't mind it in Gheos though. I guess the many possibilities for dramatic plays in Gheos make up for it.
• Area majority - This often feels like shifting cubes around and doing an exercise in efficiency. You are often trying to have majority in as many areas as possible while spending as little effort as possible. El Grande felt so-so. Struggle of Empires is OK, maybe because there is the warfare part and also the alliance mechanism. Wars of the Roses is OK, because of the secret-planning and guessing. I love China, and how quick yet clever it is. Yet it is essentially a form of area majority game. I can't explain why I don't mind the area majority here at all. I also like Tikal, Java, and Mexica. Maybe I like how they are very open and allow you a lot of creativity. I like Louis XIV well enough. It's actually also an area majority game. Gosh... I have given more examples of area majority games that I like than those I do not like or am neutral towards. Another one that I like is Die Dolmengotter. Okay, now I really sound like a defendent lawyer presenting incriminating evidence against his client. Wait, San Marco was so-so to me. In the Shadow of the Emperor was alright. The theme lifted it up from just average. Tammany Hall is OK. I feel the story. Dominant Species is just above average for me, I might like it more if not for the area majority.
  El Grande, one of the first (if not the first) area majority game.

• Blind bidding / secret planning - Sometimes I feel that in such games unlucky guesses can totally ruin your position, so instead of feeling that it's my own fault for assessing other players' intentions incorrectly, I blame luck. Wars of the Roses is guilty of this and area majority, but I still like it. (I think I'm starting to enjoy contradicting myself...) For Sale is a very popular game, but it has never quite clicked with me because of the blind-bidding aspect. Category 5 / 6 Nimmt has this too, but I like it better. Maybe I feel there is more control. I found Grimoire, Fuzzy Tiger and Pirate's Cove so-so. I didn't like Niagara, but simultaneous bidding is not the only culprit. Witch's Brew was OK, maybe because there seemed to be more information avaible to make better guesses, and also it was not as easy to get screwed by bad guesses. I remember I also enjoyed Aladdin's Dragons for the same reason - there is some control and there is a reasonably good basis for making guesses.
• Deck building - I like Dominion, but never saw it as a very big deal. I have never actively sought to try other deck-building games. There are so many such games now. Dominion is innovative and is very successful. Since I am perfectly contented with just playing Dominion, the many other deck-building games out there just feel unnecessary to me. I don't even bother to read up about them. Admittedly I don't actually dislike deck-building, just that I like it much less than most people.

For games that I do like, I can’t find any similar mechanisms among them. No particular mechanism stands out. No particular theme stands out. I do tend to like heavier games. I like economic games, and games where you build something up, where you feel you have achieved something by the time the game ends. Through the Ages, Agricola, Le Havre, Race for the Galaxy all have these. These are quite general preferences though. I guess to me the mechanism used in a game is just a tool. It is the overall package that is important, not the tool or tools used.

do computer versions spoil the game?

I'd like to talk about computer versions of boardgames which have AI's or computer opponents that you can play against. I'm not talking about computer interfaces for human vs human play, be it real-time or play-by-e-mail. I am of the opinion that these computer versions will generally spoil the game for you. In the past I have not really thought much about this, but now I'd like to look into why these computer versions spoil the original boardgames, at least for me.

The first time I noticed this happening was with St Petersburg. It was quite popular when it came out, and I think it even won the DSP award, probably the most prestigious gamer's game award. Then there was a computer version released. I played against the computer AI's a few times, not really a lot, and soon the game lost its shine. It became very mechanical to play.

Something similar happened to Yspahan, which I also own the physical boardgame of.

I learned to play Kingsburg solely from the computer version. I think I only played one game, and I was turned off by the experience. I had no urge to try again, or to try a physical copy.

Here are the reasons that I can think of that computer versions can spoil a game:

1. Overdose - If you play too many times within a short period of time, you'll just tire of the game very quickly. Does this mean that if you only play the physical copy, you'll also tire of it after the same number of plays? E.g. by the 10th play of a game, you'd feel that you've explored all the strategies there are to the game. If so then it may be a problem of the game. But I think having too many plays within a short time can make you sick of a game. Overdose.

2. "Solvable" - Now I don't mean solvable as in there is a sure-fire way to win a game given a certain start condition. I mean "solvable" as in at any point in a game, based on the information that you know, there is always one ideal move you should make. It may or may not be obvious, but of course if it is obvious, then the situation is even worse. If an AI can be programmed to play a game competently, then maybe there isn't really a lot of depth to the game. If it only take some calculations and some card-counting to write a competent AI, then it may mean the game can be easily analysed for ideal moves given any game situation. It may mean that there aren't really any meaningful choices to make. There is always a best move, even if sometimes it takes some time to work it out. That's no fun.

   There are good AI's for Chess. I don't think Chess is a game without depth. But I think some AI's written for some modern Eurogames are not as complex as Chess AI's.

   I have not looked at the program codes for the AI's, so I'm just making unfounded claims here. My gut feel is that generally the existance of a competent AI for a game (often Euro games) means that the game is actually not very deep. The shallowness of the game is exposed. I'm sorry to say this about Euro games, as I'm actually mainly a Euro game fan.

3. Too fast - I'm not sure how to explain this. This may not make much sense. I think you will enjoy playing a game with 3 other human players for 1 hour, more than playing a game with 3 AI players for 15 minutes, even if every single move in these two games are exactly the same. Same setup, same results. This sounds absurd. You waste 45 minutes and you like that more?! Maybe it's the human touch, the human interaction. Maybe you feel you are playing against smart opponents and not dumb programs. You think about what your opponents are thinking, and not how the programs are written. Your human opponents can be more unpredictable. You spend more time, but you are enjoying the time exploring the possibilities in the game, not hurriedly trying to solve a math problem. Playing against AI's feels so mechanical.

Surprisingly, I could actually go back to playing the boardgame versions of St Petersburg and Yspahan and still enjoy myself. That was some time after my last vs-AI games, so I have pretty much forgotten most of the tactics and the bitter taste. I needed a little effort to remember the strategies and to rediscover the games, and I enjoyed these. The strategies came back easily, and I was soon playing quickly. And yet I still enjoyed the games. I wonder whether I am simply prejudiced against AI's.

There are counter examples. I have played Blue Moon against AI's, and it didn't sour the game for me at all. The AI is pretty good. I don't know how the programmer did it. I am quite impressed. Yet the AI's tactics didn't feel formulaic. Admittedly sometimes it makes strange moves or bad moves. At least them seemed so to me. But overall playing against the Blue Moon AI was challenging and enjoyable.

There is now an AI for Race for the Galaxy too. I have not tried it yet, and am hesitant, because Race for the Galaxy is one of my favourite games, and I don't want the AI experience to spoil it for me. I may never get around to trying this AI. Anyway, this is one game that my wife is usually willing to play.

Although I think computer versions of games (those with AI's) spoil the games for me, I think computer versions which just provide an interface for human vs human play are very handy. The Ticket to Ride implementation is done very well. It does all the tiresome train-placing, card-holding, card-shuffling, map-checking for you. You can play a game in less than a quarter of the time when playing a physical copy. Dominion is another good example. The computer takes care of all the card shuffling for you, which is a lot of effort saved.

So, computer good. AI bad. Not because they are incompetent (like many PC games AI's are), but because they expose how shallow some of our hobby games actually are, or because sometimes humans are just so hard to please.

hidden information

When I pondered the mechanisms for randomness in boardgames (and cardgames), another topic came to me and I thought it would be interesting (well, at least to me) to explore the mechanisms for hiding information in boardgames. When I say hidden information I mean information that is known to one or more players but unknown to one or more other players. I am not referring to information that noone knows.

So, what kind of information is hidden in games? (maybe I should call this secret information) Money (e.g. St Petersburg, Modern Art), available strength or power or choices (Tigris & Euphrates, San Juan, Ingenious, Reef Encounter), identities (Werewolf, Citadels). Having hidden information in a game increases unpredictability, because you don't know what hand your opponent has, and you have to guess based on known information, or how he/she behaves. Sometimes you make moves which are not directly beneficial to you in order to confuse your opponents about your true intentions. You bluff. Bluffing is crucial in Poker. Having hidden information adds some chaos in games, and spices things up a bit. Sometimes it is necessary to prevent a game from becoming a tedious mathematical exercise, to avoid analysis paralysis. Sometimes it is the core of the game. Werewolf would not be a game at all if the villagers know who the werewolves are. In Citadels, the core of the game is choosing characters. When the hand of cards reach you, you can tell what are missing, and you'll know what characters the players before you may have chosen. After you choose a character, you pass the remaining cards to the next player, and he or she will have slightly less information to work on (one card less). When you choose a character, you can think about what information you are releasing to the next player, and how he or she will react to that. However I have not gone to that level of depth of play myself. I just think of what bad things they can do to me if I don't take so-and-so card, or what good things they can do to themselves if I don't take another so-and-so card. In Vinci, where victory points are open information, sometimes people complain that this causes analysis paralysis in the final round when all players are trying to calculate all the possible combinations of moves that can increase their own score and decrease their opponents' scores.

Some types of information are hidden in some games but not in others. E.g. money. In Medici, money is open information. In fact money = victory points because the winner is determined by how rich you are. Everyone knows exactly how much everyone else has. You know who is leading and who you need to be wary of. In St Petersburg, money is hidden, so sometimes you really are not sure how much money your opponents have and whether they'll be able to afford the craftsmen / buildings / nobles / upgrades available on the board.

There are also situations where some information is known to more than one player but not to others. There are some games with very interesting combinations of hidden / open information and how information is communicated. In Cluedo and Mystery of the Abbey, which are both deduction games where players gradually collect small pieces of information and use an elimination process to find the murderer, each player starts with a roughly equal amount of information. During the course of the game, the players try to extract information from others, while also trying to release as little information as possible to others. As the game progresses, it becomes harder and harder to remember what information you have released and to which opponent, or what cards each opponent is holding (so that you can avoid asking the wrong question which will only give you information that you already know). In Lord of the Rings, a cooperative game, with the Sauron expansion, the hobbits will not know what cards Sauron is holding. They also cannot see what cards each other is holding, although they want to communicate this information to one another so that they can plan together to beat Sauron. However, Sauron is right there at the table listening to any information exchange. This poses a tricky challenge to the hobbits.

Some games have more hidden information, some have less, or none. Theoretically, games with little or no hidden information will tend to require more skill and are more challenging to master. Think of Chess, Go, the GIPF series. Games with more hidden information will tend to be more chaotic and tend to be lighter games. E.g. Ca$h 'n Gun$, Poison. However, in practice, having much or little hidden information is not really a big factor in determining whether a game is heavy or light. The more dominant factor is randomnes / luck. Blokus is an open information game. You can see exactly what pieces your opponents have left. Yet Blokus can be played in a very relaxed way. It can be played with much thinking and planning too. I guess it is very much up to the players. Coloretto is also an open information game, but is a light game. This is because of the luck / randomness introduced by the card draw. Monopoly is also open information (I think). Gulo Gulo and Villa Paletti are open information games, but you'd hardly associate them with Chess. On the other hand, Tigris & Euphrates has hidden information, i.e. your hand of 6 tiles, which is often crucial when it comes to the wars or the civil wars (more layman terms for the official terms used in the game - external and internal conflicts). Yet it is quite a deep and challenging game.

What are the mechanisms for hiding information?

• Cards - This is probably the most handy way of hiding information. You can hold many cards in your hand, even for games like Ticket To Ride where you will often have many many many cards. Just imagine playing Ticket To Ride using tiles instead of cards. It would be a nightmare. For almost all card games, cards are used as a mechanism for hiding information. There are exceptions, like Coloretto.
  Cards are the most convenient way of hiding information. This is Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper

• Tiles - Scrabble, Mahjong, Ingenious, Acquire. For some, you have a rack on which to put the tiles. Tiles are often required to be of a certain shape, so that they can fit onto the board. Otherwise using cards would probably be a more convenient and cheaper way of hiding information. Pieces in Lord of the Rings - The Confrontation can probably be considered tiles. They stand up with the text side only visible to the controlling player.
• Tokens - Order tokens in A Game of Thrones are placed face down on the board. The backs of the tokens show which player they belong to, but other players will not know the order placed. Aladdin's Dragons also uses tokens in a similar fashion.
  A Game of Thrones. The command tokens are the round ones seen on the map (face-down, only showing the player colour and icon), and also on the lower right of the photo (face-up, showing the actual commands).

• Blocks - I'm mainly thinking of block war games like Hammer of the Scots, Rommel in the Desert and Crusader Rex. Your blocks have information only on one side, the side facing you. You only reveal your blocks when you are about to start a battle. Blocks are also a nifty way to keep track of information, i.e. the strength of your troops. Near the four edges of a block are different numbers of pips, indicating the strength level of the block. The block stands upright, and the edge on top incidates the strength level of the block.
  Crusader Rex, a block war game.

• Screens - Tigris & Euphrates, Aladdin's Dragons, Reef Encounter, Keythedral, Modern Art, Samurai, Samurai Swords. Many of Richard Breese's games feature screens. One advantage of screens is they can be used to hide different types of components - cubes, tokens, tiles, coins. They provide an area where you can just drop these components, without needing to arrange them neatly like Scrabble tiles or cards to make sure they are not visible to others. You can just carelessly drop them behind your screen. The bad thing is if you are too careless and tip over your screen... oops!
• Time / Memory - The (not unlimited) capacity of the human brain in memorising and tracking information is a mechanism for "hiding" information. When playing Tigris & Euphrates, technically you can watch and track what cubes your opponents collect. But it is so tedious that people just do not bother. Instead, you just get the general feeling that a certain opponent has many cubes of so-and-so colour but not many of another colour. In Modern Art, you can track how much money everyone has, because every everyone knows who paid whom how much and for which painting at every auction. But how many people actually do that? In many games, victory points get this type of treatment too. There is some tracking of victory points, but you are not exactly sure who is in front and who is trailing. In Carcassonne, you do track your points throughout the game, but the farmer scoring at game end usually has a big impact, and there is also scoring for incomplete features at game end, so sometimes you can't be sure exactly who is winning. This helps to discourage detailed calculation. Most people prefer not to bother and just play from the gut. In Through the Desert, you can track and calculate the scores of everyone at any one time. This is a open information game too. There is no score track provided, but you can calculate the scores if you want to. But most people don't bother. You just use your general gut feel to tell you who is doing well and who isn't. That's the beauty of the laziness of the human brain.

One game mechanism that is related to hidden information is blind bidding. E.g. players secretly bid an amount of money for a particular privilege, like being the start player for the round. Some people don't like blind bidding. I don't hate it, but I'm not particularly fond of it either. I guess it makes me feel a lack of control, and makes me feel I have to make a blind guess. There is blind bidding in Modern Art (bidding for a painting, of course), Aladdin's Dragons (bidding for the right to use a location), Die Macher (turn order), Felix: The Cat in the Sack (in this case, "blind" in the sense that you don't really know what you're getting), Samurai Swords (turn order), A Game of Thrones (the right to claim the throne, fiefdom, espionage, and contribution to protect the realm from the wildings).

After writing this blog entry, I realise that the amount of hidden information has little correlation to whether I like a game of not. I had thought I'd prefer games with less hidden information.

fascination about war

Why do people like to play wargames, or war themed games? Why do people like to play games about killing people, destroying things? Why do we let children play with toy guns, toy swords? Michelle doesn't allow me to have any toy guns in the house, not even when I made my home-made version of Ca$h 'n Gun$. I had thought about buying RM2 toy guns from the nearby shop, but Michelle said I can use my finger as a gun and toy guns are not necessary. Who am I to argue with the boss.

And yet there many wargames and war themed boardgames (and toy guns and toy swords too). There are many people who like these boardgames. Why this fascination about war? Are we glorifying war? Sun Tzu's Art of War is worshipped by some in the business world. There are many people interested about historical battles. There are people re-enacting battles, like battles during the American Civil War. There are war movies. There are lots of computer games about warfare. Are humans just naturally violent and competitive?

I must admit I myself have an interest in warfare and historical battles. Not exactly a die-hard fan that can tell the difference between a Panzer and a Tiger, but at least I know these are German tanks during World War II. Before I became a true boardgame hobbyist, I played boardgames now and then, and at the time I thought Axis & Allies (about World War II) and Samurai Swords (about Sengoku Jidai or warring period in feudal Japan) were the best boardgames around. I thought the best and most challenging boardgames were all about warfare. I bought Advanced Third Reich, a hex and counter wargame (i.e. a true wargame by the common definition in the boardgame hobby), and to my surprise it was much more complex than Axis & Allies, and it was totally beyond me. I made two or three attempts to read the rulebook, but never succeeded. I haven't even started reading the scenario book. So, my copy of Advanced Third Reich is now yellowing, and even some pieces have been damaged by my daughter Shee Yun (this incident triggered me to move all boardgames to the upper shelves), and it is still unplayed. At that moment I thought these wargames were the pinnacle of boardgaming. To some die-hard fans of wargames (known as grognards), they probably are.

People who play war games (I'm using the term loosely here to mean any games with a war theme) will explain that they are not violent people, that they are pacifists; and I believe this is true. Some people say they play war games out of interest in history. Some people say when they play war games it is in memory of the people who had gone before us, who had sacrificed their lives for others. Some people have other reasons for this interest in war games.

I like war games for the intellectual challenge. When a nation or a people is at war, it is the most desperate situation for them. They exhaust all means of defeating their enemies. Desperation brings out the genious in people, in new technology (like computing and radar during World War II), in new tactics. Desperation also brings out the worst in people, in the ruthlessness and immorality of means to defeat one's enemies. The ends justify the means. To me, playing a game (not necessarily a war game) allows me to explore all means (well, at least within the rules) of defeating your opponent(s). It's a game, so it's OK to be nasty and ruthless and pitiless and evil as long as you are still following the rules. It's an avenue for doing something you probably wouldn't do in real life, or probably would not have the opportunity to do in real life (like directing a war effort). So, there is fun in a role-playing sense, pushing infantry across the board, driving tanks over your enemies' dead bodies, bombing Tokyo with your fleet of bombers, and also killing William Wallace (the Scottish independence war hero depicted in the Oscar-winning movie Braveheart), sacking Constantinople, burning Rome, assasinating a daimyo (Japanese feudal lord) with a ninja, etc.

Having a war theme is not necessary for creating competition and intellectual challenge. In fact there are many challenging and very good Eurogames that are not about war. Well, almost all Eurogames are not about war. War themed games are not popular in Germany, the birth place of Eurogames. However, a war theme does add a unique flavour to a game. There is this excitement, and anxiousness or nervousness, and tension. We're talking about life and death here. What can be more serious? Also war games can give a primitive kind of satisfaction, of being able to crush your opposition by brute force. I guess there is still a bit of cro-magnon man in us civilised modern humans. And of course if you win by clever maneuvers and good planning, it satisfies the part of you which is the intelligent and civilised modern human.

Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge is one of the recent war games that I have played. This is a battle between the Germans and the Americans and British in Europe during World War II.

I have learnt a lot of history from war games. It would be lame to justify playing war games by saying that it teaches history. People don't play boardgames to learn history. Those who say so are just giving an excuse. Learning some history is just a fun "side-effect". I learnt from playing Hammer of the Scots that a lot of details in the movie Braveheart are plainly wrong. Fabrication. The movie is based on a true story, based on history, but they didn't tell you how much was made up. Fiction. Thankfully I learnt this after I have watched the movie, because it is one of my favourite movies. If I were a historian watching the movie, I'd probably cringe and cry insolence. I learnt about World War II in the Pacific arena through Axis & Allies: Pacific and Pacific Victory (and maybe Axis & Allies: Guadalcanal too later). I have read about this period through a Japanese comic series Zipang (by Kaiji Kawaguchi 川口开治, translated as 次元舰队 in Chinese). It is very interesting to me how these two different games portray the same period of history in their own ways. Sometimes I wonder what my grandparents were doing during that time.

War games is just one type of boardgame. I don't play only war games, and I am happy that there are many other themes and many interesting mechanisms in boardgames. But war games will always be one type of boardgame that I enjoy. I don't see myself getting into hex and counter wargames, or miniature / tabletop wargames like Warhammer or DBA (I don't even remember the full name, but it is also a game with beautifully sculpted and painted miniatures). But I'll probably keep buying new releases in the Axis & Allies series. I just won't expect my wife to be playing these with me. She had nightmares about ashigaru spearmen chasing her after we played Samurai Swords.

Final food for thought: Chess is a war game too.

long or complex games

The boardgame style that I like most is Eurogames. They are usually short (mostly 45 minutes to less than 1.5 hours). Their rules are usually concise and streamlined. There is usually meaningful decision making. Most games have some luck element (some more-so than others), but it is usually not a dominating factor. In most cases you do need to strategise and plan smartly to win. These are the strengths of Eurogames. One of their weaknesses is sometimes there is a disjoint between the gameplay and the theme. Sometimes the games feel like a mathematical or logical puzzle or exercise, and it seems any theme can be applied to it. The theme seems to be needed to enhance the playing experience and the imagination, rather than the game itself being designed with the theme or story in mind. This is one of the complaints some people have on Eurogames, and I think there is some truth in it.

I'm getting a little off topic here. Coming back to the length of Eurogames, most of them are relatively short and are suitable for playing casually, like as a family game. However there are some longer and more complex Eurogames too, e.g. Age of Steam and Power Grid. Most boardgame hobbyists tend to gravitate towards such games, because they are willing to invest more time and effort to learn and to play these games, and they gain more satisfaction out of these games. Among American style games, there is probably a higher percentage of longer games. There are some of these that I like too, like games in the Axis & Allies series, and Hammer of the Scots.

Axis and Allies (2004 version)

"Long and complex" is relative. My "long and complex" games are games that can last from 1.5 hours to 5 hours, and their complexity is about the complexity of Hammer of the Scots. To hardcore wargamers, this level of complexity and this type of game duration are peanuts.

So why do I like some of these longer and more complex games? Some of these longer games can really tell a story - how the German offensive surged and then dissipated in Axis & Allies: Battle of the Bulge, how civilisations rose and fell in History of the World. Sometimes you create your own story - how Japan conquered India, Moscow and Alaska during World War II (Axis & Allies), how William Wallace (Braveheart) was trapped and killed before he ever started his rebellion (Hammer of the Scots) (of course, that would probably make a short game). You can really immerse yourself in the story and the experience.

Longer games also allow longer term planning and strategising. You decide on a strategy and try to execute it. You watch the game unfold and see the impacts of your previous moves. Sometimes twists of fate force you to adjust your plans. Sometimes your opponents' moves force you to change tactics. The momentum picks up, the table turns, the tension builds as your mind races to consider the emerging opportunities and approaching dangers. Playing through a long exciting game can actually be a tiring experience, but it is also very fulfilling. You really get into the game and get very involved and very attached.

I have played a complete game of A Game of Thrones only once, with Han, Chee Seng and Ricky. This game is based on the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels, the first book being A Game of Thrones. Players are great Houses (clans) in the fictitious land of Westeros, and vie to win by conquering a specific number of cities, or to control the most number of cities by the end of Round 10. Battles are very simplistic and deterministic, so diplomacy, collaboration and treachery (at the right time) becomes important. In this game, players plan actions secretly, then reveal their planned actions simultaneously, and only after that they execute the actions. So, there is also an element of bluffing, of double guessing your opponents.

In our game, I played House Baratheon (yellow, in the south east), Han played House Tyrell (green, in the south west), Chee Seng played House Lannister (red, in the middle) and Ricky played House Stark (white, in the north). Bloodshed started early between Han and I. After losing an infantry to him early in the game, I became obsessed with attacking him. His House had become my sworn enemy. Chee Seng fought mostly with Ricky. There were fewer battles between them, but some of these battles were larger in scale. After a few exchanges, Ricky backed off back to the north a little, in order to consolidate more power to prepare for a major strike. Chee Seng inconspicuously conquered the Greyjoy lands (islands, to be more accurate). Greyjoy (black) was supposed to be played by the fifth player, but since we only had four, this House was just a passive House. Then, to everyone's surprise, Chee Seng struck out and conquered 7 cities, and won an instant victory. We had not been watching his army positions closely and allowed him to win early.

That single game of A Game of Thrones was a very involved game. I enjoyed the tension of trying to out-guess your opponents, and also the tension of who will blink first and betray his ally. Treachery is only a matter of sooner or later, because afterall there can only be one winner.

This post is getting long. I'm splitting it up.

weekend gaming

After returning from Taiwan at the end of 2004, I continued my boardgame hobby - playing games, buying games, and reading about games on the internet (and now writing a blog about boardgames). Unfortunately, I never managed to build up a regular gaming group like I did in Taiwan. When I first came back, Michelle was my most regular opponent. We played a lot together. The frequency of gaming was affected by the arrival of our children, Shee Yun in March 2005, and Chen Rui in December 2006, but Michelle is still interested to play and enjoys playing. At least I don't think she is just humouring me. But of course now the girls, and rest, come first. She is not crazy like I am about boardgames. I can still continue reading about boardgames on the internet until midnight, even if I have had a tiring day at work. She wouldn't give up her precious sleep for boardgames.

When I first returned to KL, I had known Han via Boardgamegeek for about half a year, and we have exchanged a few emails, but we have never met in person. We first met at a small public gaming event organised by Edwin Wong of Pan Global Insurance. I thought I had better meet this guy in public first before inviting a stranger to my home. Who knows what kind of weird people can be found on the internet. He probably also thought the same about me. This was the first time in my life I made a friend through the internet, and this sure sounds weird knowing that I was over 30. Han turned out to be a pretty decent guy, and since then we have been playing regularly, usually on Sunday afternoons at my place. Recently we switched to Saturday afternoons, to match his wife's yoga lessons.

21 Jan 2007. Han and Chee Seng playing Marvel Heroes.

We don't make our weekly boardgame sessions a fixed activity, although they turn out to be more or less fixed. We still do confirm on a weekly basis whether that week's session is on. Sometimes we invite other friends. However lately it has been mostly just the two of us, and sometimes Michelle too when she is not busy with the girls or asleep. The benefits of a regular timing is we can always plan other events around it. Not that we must always have a session every week. Sometimes we skip a week or 2 (or more) because of other events / plans. I like regular sessions because I can always look forward to the next session.

Throughout the roughly two and a half years of more-or-less regular weekend gaming, Han and I have tried many different games. I find that there are many games which we have only played once. Although we do play often, strangely we never seem to be able to catch up with the games we buy. Maybe we should buy less. Or maybe we should play more!

Han and I have slightly different tastes in boardgames. Han's favourite type of game is American-style games, which have strong emphasis on theme and flavour and story (e.g. Marvel Heroes, War of the Ring, Hunting Party, Star Wars: Queen's Gambit). He likes fantasy and role-playing elements in games. I tend to like Euro-style games, which tend to focus on gameplay mechanics (Princes of Florence, Puerto Rico, Settlers of Catan). Rules are usually quite simple and streamlined, and games are usually not too long, in the range of 45 - 90 minutes, and yet players get to make many meaningful strategic and tactical decisions throughout the game. This works out well, because our game collections complement each other and we get to play more different games.

My weekly boardgame sessions are something I'm always looking forward to. Although we tend to only have 2 (or at most 3) players, we still enjoy the gaming a lot. Lately I am a bit out of steam in trying to convert friends to regular boardgame players. I have not been trying as hard as before to invite other friends to our sessions. Maybe I should launch a "recruitment drive". The other way to is start training and brainwashing our children (Han has 2 boys, I have 2 girls) to be our future gaming group.