Dave wins first All-Oberheu Catanonline Game

Played cousin Richard Oberheu and Bob Oberheu in Catanonline tonight, and won a big one: 10 to 5 to 3. Drew 2 victory points, and managed to sneak the longest road away from Bob for the win.

Was a difficult setup, particularly for Richard. He and Bob focused on getting Ore in their starting setup (normally a good thing), ended up short Brick, limited their ability to build outwards. There was some good trades, and they tried hard to block me out when I got to 5 points, but for no effect! :)

The game was notable for the lack of the thief, I think it only came up 3-4 times. Also, it was really quick, probably 25 minutes for the match. Good game guys!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2/1 Update: Bob won a tough one tonight, same three players. He built a devastatingly long road to grab the final two points for a 10-7-5 point win. I had the five. Sigh. Good game Bob!

(Note to Rich - don't trade Brick to a guy with 7 points and a development card showing, when he can connect a 7-piece road and make it an 11-piece road with one play, and you only have an 8-piece road!)

2/11 Update: After several more games against Rich and Bob the results have been mixed, and now Bob is tearing ahead in the rankings. Rich is piling on a lot of games, and has passed me already with over 120. My ranking has been taking a beating lately.

Gathering of Friends 4

It's that time again - it's been over a year since our last Gathering of Friends. We've had three GOF events, and they've been great fun. The GOF events have featured:

1. Tournament-style play with a prize
2. Diversity of players
3. Variety of gameplay types
4. Large numbers of players

With spring only 2 months away, Saturday March 4th looks like perhaps a good time for our gathering?

My thoughts about the GOF4 format revolve around the same 4 points as usual, but I have been tinkering with the following idea:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GATHERING OF FRIENDS FOUR ~ Tournament Rules

1. GOF4 will be a tournament format, with players playing a series of games in different categories, and scoring points for wins and in some cases second or third place. At the end of the evening, points are totaled, and the player with the highest total wins a prize!

2. Game session will begin at 1 o'clock on Saturday, and the latest games can be started will be at 8 o'clock (with finish time 10:30pm at the latest).

3. Twenty or so games will be available to play, in 3 different categories. Categories are based on number of players, for example 2-player games, 3-player games, etc.

Players must play at least three total games to qualify for prize, with one game played from each of three categories:
a. One 2-player game
b. One 3-player game
c. One 4 or 5 player game

4. Players will be awarded points based on their finishing position in each game played.
a. For winning a 2-player game, 4 points will be awarded.
b. For winning a 3-player game, 9 points will be awarded, with 3 points for second place.
c. For winning a 4-player game, 16 points will be awarded, with 6 points for second place, 1 point for third place.
d. For winning a 5-player game, 25 points will be awarded, with 9 points for second place, 3 points for third place, 1 point for fourth place.

5. Tiebreaker - at the end of the evening, in case of a tie, it will be broken by: total number of wins, then total number of games played, then total number of players defeated.

6. Players may play a maximum number of games in each category:
a. No more than four 2-player games, no more than 2 against the same opponent
b. No more than two 3-player games, if possible with different opponents
c. No more than two 4 or 5-player games

Players may play as many total games as they wish, but are required to play at least one game from each of the three main categories. For example, a player may choose to play 4 two-player games (e.g. Chess twice, Stratego once, Twixt once), 1 three player game (e.g. Settlers), and one five-player game (e.g. Risk 2210).

7. Matchmaking:
The spirit of the matching process will be to create games with equal skill levels whenever possible. This will insure a fair process for generating points, and will also better determine a champion by generally making winners play winners (similar to a "swiss" matching system in competitive chess play).
a. The first game of the day will generally be a 2-player game. Winners from these games will be matched in their second game in a 3 or 4-player game, and winners from these games will be matched in their third game in a 4 or 5-player game. Open positions in these games if there are not enough winners available will generally be 2nd place players if possible.
b. Non-winners will have the choice to play another 2-player or 3-player game for their second game, will graduate to a game with more players immediately after their first win (if possible).
c. In general players will be matched whenever possible against opponents that they have not played against during the first three rounds. Later rounds, players will be matched based on point totals to ensure a higher level of competition and equal play.

8. The maximum possible points scored would be:
Four wins in 2-player matches (4x4):16 pts
Two wins in 3-player matches (2x9):18 pts
Two wins in 4-player matches (2x16): 32
Total points possible: 66
Time required to play 8 games, approximately 9 hours (assuming times listed below, plus four 15-minute breaks).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are the games I have been thinking of for the categories, and average game time. Please leave comments about your thoughts on these titles!

2-player games
1. Fischerandom Chess, 10-minute timer, 30 min
2. Stratego, 30 min
3. Computer Baseball, 30 min
4. Twixt, 30 min
5. Lost Cities, 30 min
6. Pente, 30 min (Mike S. will need you to bring this)

3-player games
1. Carcassone, 60 min
2. San Juan, 45 min
3. Mississippi Queen, 45 min
4. Alhambra, 60 min
5. Metro, 45 min
6. Cartagena, 45 min
7. Through the Desert, 60 min

4-player games
1. Settlers of Catan, 120 min (Mike S. and Doug: will need your copies)
2. Puerto Rico, 120 min
3. Acquire, 120 min
4. Nexus Ops, 120 min
5. Ticket to Ride, 90 min

5-player games (optional, instead of 4-player)
1. Castle Risk, 120 minutes+
2. Risk, 120 minutes+
4. Power Grid, 120 minutes (Kevin's or Doug's copy)
3. Risk 2210, 240 minutes (Kevin's copy)
5. Shogun, 240 minutes

Thoughts?

A Capitol Idea!

During my last visit to Tab's over the January 1st weekend, we played a number of different games.

Perhaps the biggest hit was a new one for me, called Captol. Designed by Alan Moon (New England, San Marco, Ticket to Ride) and Aaron Weisblum back in 2001, I had been eyeing this game since then. It's rated in the top 200 on the 'Geek, has great looking wooden bits, colorful board, cards, an interesting (and controversial) scoring track, and a good theme (City building in ancient Rome? I'm in.).

Problem, like many designer games, this one it had a small print run (German games often only are printed in 3,000 to 5,000 unit batches). I never pulled the trigger back in 2001-2 and bought a copy (back then I only really knew about Funagain, not sure if there ever were other online game stores), and it disappeared off the radar. When I discovered sites like Fairplay, Thoughthammer and the like, they were all out of stock. Fortunately, as I mentioned in a December post, I was able to find a used copy on Funagain and I grabbed it.

The basic concept of Capitol is this: you represent a faction of a Roman noble family, intent on developing your section of Rome. You earn points by the number of developments (measured by quantity of buildings and their stature (height)), and their level of luxury (measured by public works, represented by a fountain symbol). There are four phases to the game, and each of the nine zones on the board are scored, with the majority faction scoring the bulk of points, but a small number given for second place. Each turn is played in rounds, with players playing cards to develop buildings off map, complete them by symbolically adding roofs, placing them on the board in their zone by playing a zone card with the appropriate location symbol. Once players have developed, completed and placed their buildings, the game enters and auction phase where players use remaining cards in their hands to secretly bid for various improvements.

I introduced Kim and Austen to the game on Saturday, and Kim loved it. We showed Dad and Tab how to play on Sunday, and ended up playing two games. They all loved the game so much, Dad and Tab were trying to figure out whether they could buy the rights to the things to get it republished!

The game combines many different interesting elements, and has the classic winning formula for German games:

1. It's playable in less than 90 minutes
2. It has interesting bits, and "tactile" appeal (stacking little wooden blocks, putting roofs on them, placing them on the board, seeing the board develop colorful stacks of different height buildings, watching Rome "develop")
3. Cards, area control, generous ties in scoring (if two tie, they both score the points), auctions
4. Tough, even agonizing decisions (do I play this last card, or save it for the auction? Is it of high enough value to keep? Should I draw more high point-auction cards, or more zone cards? Should I bid high in the first auction, or save my cards for the more valuable items at the end?)
5. Everyones involved constantly, little downtime

I won the first game, Tab one the second, and the score was really close (everyone was seperated by 2 points, something like 42-40-38-36), where one different play at any point in the game by anyone could have made the difference.

I love the fact that the game gives you just enough control of your own destiny to make you feel like you could have made a different play at some point and perhaps won, but not so much control that you can hyper-analyze each position for the best possible play. There is what I consider to be an almost perfect mix of tactical and strategic play in this sense.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Interestingly, I am not sure if there is enough "meat" in this to satisfy the Northampton group, as we've been playing heavies like Puerto Rico or Power Grid, or light-weights like San Juan or Alhambra in our last couple of meetings. I don't believe we've played ANY area-control games yet (Kevin has asked about El Grande, but we've yet to take the plunge). And the four-player limit might make this more difficult, as PR plays great with this amount, and few of our group has played more than 3 times except Kevin and myself.

Do-it-yourself gaming

Discovered this interesting site, devoted to "do-it-yourself" gaming. Click this think: http://www.runestoneit.com/~dseagraves/index.html

Apparently, they have over 300 game designs that you can build with common gaming objects and an inkjet printer. I've had a lot of success with prining gaming aides, but not a lot of experience with printing my own titles.

Here's the link to an interesting one using legos!

http://www.hypernews.org/HyperNews/get/Blox.html

Wikipedia: German-style board games

There's a well written article on Wikipedia (which is a site that everyone should bookmark, it's an excellent free internet encyclopedia, no advertising) about "German-style" board games. I highly recommend reading it, here's the link:

Wikipedia: German-style board games

Here's a good example, quoting from the section on characteristics:

"The following characteristics are typical of German games:

• Variable number of players - The games are designed to be played with a wide ranging group. Typically the minimum number of players is only two or three, and the maximum might be four or five or even more.
• Simple, clever rules - The rules for most games are only a few pages and simple to learn. Novel mechanisms such as auctions, rotating roles, special cards, and trading are often incorporated. The "roll-and-move" mechanic of games like Monopoly is almost never seen. If a monetary system is included at all, it is usually very simple.
• No player elimination - The games usually continue until some defined set of criteria is met. At that point, a winner is determined. Players don't get kicked out in midgame by running out of money or armies."

I also discovered an interesting link to a website containing over 15,000 english and german games on the wiki, www.luding.org.

Boardgameseeker.com

Check out this site: www.boardgameseeker.com!

It will compare prices for you from all the major online boardgame retailers of your favorite games! The disparity between retailers is pretty amazing. For example:
Caylus, the #2 ranked board game in the world? Put it into boardgameseeker, here's what you get:

Game	Price	Merchant
caylus	$32.25	Time Well Spent
caylus	$32.47	ThoughtHammer
caylus (rio grande/ystari)	$34.80	Boulder Games
caylus	$34.95	RC Hobbies
caylus	$34.97	Card Haus
caylus	$35.95	Fair Play Games
caylus	$39.95	Fun Again Games
caylus	$40.95	GamesInABox

That's a big difference (19% less?) between the highest and the lowest sites. Granted, we know funagain is always a little higher, and this price does not include their "funagain points", or factor in shipping costs...

But its a great way to get a snapshot of who has the best deals on the web! (thanks to www.boardgamenews.com for the tip)

Kevin finds the ZONE in PR

Well, Kevin found his game. He wins another game of Puerto Rico in what turned out to be a really good day of football and gaming. Turns out he's won more PR than just about anything we've been playing since I introduced everyone to German games a few years back.

Kevin, Caleb and Kyle made their way up from Northampton for a great day, which included football (can the Steelers just put the Colts away already?), food, Nexus Ops, PR.

I'll let Kevin tell the whole PR story, but suffice to say that he won it in a tiebreaker with Caleb that went down to money (another tie, they both had zero), then remaining goods (Kev had 6, Caleb 4). Final score, 49-49-48-47. I had the 47, but I can't say this wasn't a fantastic game.

Nexus Ops was a learning game for the three of them, and Caleb managed a win after I blew a die roll on the penultimate turn. I need 4+ on a six-sider to plasma blog one of Calebs infantry and score a final point, and I missed. Caleb then one on the next turn, having controlled the monolith for most of the second half of the game, and some smart play of his secret missions. Kevin got hosed with 2-3 basically unplayable cards early in the game, and he also suffered when Kyle and I pushed into his territory early, and he had no mines close to his home space.

He finally did force me to withdraw, but was not in position to defend his home territory or attack Caleb in the center to deny him the win. Caleb played the 4-point Dragon Jump(tm) card and swooped in on Kevin to secure the win on the final play.

Nexus Ops is a nice little 60-80 minute game with experienced players, perfect for this type of setting. Also, a good warmup for PR which lasted closer to 2 hours in our learning game (although I rarely am able to get PR down to less than 2 hours it seems).

Kevin: time for you to write about your clever victory as Shipper + Office?

Gaming at Tab's: Jan 1st

Finally getting around to writing about our gaming experience at Tab's at the end of the year. Sitting in a hotel room in CT (here for 2 days for a work meeting), so after checking in with Tam and the kids, playing my Tigris and Euphrats turns (I have 4-5 games going at any one time), it's time to record a few thoughts.

First off, the games. We played: Capitol, Cosmic Encounter, Star Wars: Epic Duels, Star Wars: Queen's Gambit, Civilization, and Through the Desert.

---------------------------------------------

Through the Desert, we played two 5-player games, with Dad, Austen, Kim, Tab and myself. I love this title, and after 20-30 games, I feel like I have it figured out. If you're not familiar, the game is very simple. Each player has 4 or 5 caravan leaders, each in their own color. These single units are the starting points for chains of camels that stretch across a hex-board. Each turn, a player may add two camels to the chain, choosing from available colors.

As the chains are extended in length, players pick up points for "water holes" (which are removed), scoring 1 to 3 points, or link up to oasis hexes (which remain on the board), scoring 5. Players race to acquiring valuable water holes or encircle oasis spots to prevent each other from scoring.

Portions of the map are irregular, and may be enclosed fence-like by caravans that cross from edge to edge. Water holes enclosed this way are immediately scored, and 1-point is earned for each hex enclosed (this can be a large way to score points, although it is times consuming, and can only be completed by a single color, and no player's camels can be inside the enclosure, limiting the size and possible locations).

The final way to score is by having the longest caravan in any color, scoring 10 points, 5-points for each player for a tie.

The game is fascinating, because there are many small tactical fights that appear all over the map. There are races to reach oasis spots, where spaces to reach can be limited, especially if the small color is involved (equal colors of caravans owned by different players may not come in contact with one another, thus limiting available hexes). There are battles for control of good fencing locations, since the points that can be scored this way are so large. There is also conflict over 3-point water holes, and races to have the longest caravans.

After the last piece of any color is played on the map, the game immediately ends, and all points are added. Bonus points are figured in, and highest total wins.

Strategy

Ultimately, there are two simple ways that I've been using in my games to win. Caravan length, and efficiency.

With only two moves per turn, and many ways to score points, the most obvious method to score would be to chose the best point spots on the board, and build on them each turn. Since there is no hidden information in the game, the most obvious plays are generally made each turn by both players. However, the beauty of this game is that what is most obvious is not always the most effective way to win.

First, caravan length. Even after multiple plays, there is so much going on tactically in the game that it doesn't often occur to players that the longest caravan's are an extremely important factor. Ten points for the longest in each color means that there are a total of 50 points available to both players. If each players wins 2 colors, and tie for the 5th, the game would come down to a missed play, or timely block on the map. But generally, one player wins 3 colors (4 in a blowout), and the other 2. This makes the point split 30 to 20.

The difference of 10 points in this split is almost impossible to overcome!

In a game with zero hidden info, the likelihood of players making up a 10-point deficit by the equivalent of four 3-point water holes, or more than two 5-point oasis squares is impossible. Their attempts to enclose a really large area for points play into your hands, as they are effictively handing you four caravan lengths (a 40-10 split)! Assuming you score as many holes and oasis spots as your opponent and don't make any mistakes, you should win every game by the third caravan's points.

Second, and most important: efficiency.

Accomplish four objectives twice with your two moves.

The four objectives?

First, snap up an adjacent or at most 2-distant water hole (hopefully a 3-pointer). Second, move the caravan in the direction of a nearby oasis while grabbing your water hole. If the move positions you towards an anchor point for an enclosure, you've accomplished a third objective. And if you have the lead, or are establishing the lead in a particular color, you are accomplishing a fourth objective.

As long as the majority of your moves accomplish these 4 things each turn, you should win each game in a landslide.

Next: A Capitol discovery.

Entertaible

Science Fiction? Nope. This is a photo of the new 30" LCD screen by Phillips, called the Entertaible. Here's a clip from their press release:

"Entertaible allows the players to engage in a new class of electronic game which combines the features of computer gaming, such as dynamic playing fields and gaming levels, with the social interaction and tangible playing pieces, such as pawns and dies, of traditional board games."

It's still in prototype form, but you can imagine in 10 years this being a common item in homes. Perhaps board game manufacturers would release computer versions of their standard titles in this format. Imagine if it was internet connected, and you could play multiplayer as well. Check out more on the press release here.

Update: They actually registered the domain "www.entertaible.com", although the link takes you to another Phillips site. Also, here's another photo from the show floor.

Puerto Rico: the Official PC Game

Very cool news! Eagle Games has taken on Puerto Rico for the computer. At under $30, it promises tough AI play against 4 opponents, or online play against real people. No graphic shots as of yet, but check this link for more information.

Interesting that it's being marketed as the highest rated game of all time, which it certainly is. Although certainly not for the faint of heart, it is a fantastic game.

There are several free methods of playing PR, the most popular being Brettspielwelt.de, a high production pure english title is very welcome. 

NPR Story: Monopoly vs. Settlers

National Public Radio has a excellent brief story about the differences between Monopoly and Settlers of Catan you should hear! Check it out here.