Angercast

I’ve added a new page for a podcast titled Angercast. It is done by some Something Awful forumers (a.k.a. goons) and myself. We talk about various board games and board game-related topics. As of writing there are two episodes uploaded, one introducing the podcast and the other discussing Mage Knight Board Game. Give it a listen, and I hope you enjoy.

A Journey into Advanced Squad Leader: Part 3

The fires blazed in the distance. The wind didn’t make anything better; gusts blew the inferno in all the wrong ways. Where once stood a building was now a burning rubble.

The fires were not the main concern at this point: it was the Russian infantry blocking my troops way to escape and victory. They may not have been as well-trained as my Finnish first-line, but their leader was more than adept at tactics. For every road I had to dash a squad through, there was a stream of bullets. For every cautious step I took to exit, the Russians had a leg ahead of me.

Two turns away from the end, I knew my defeat was certain.

I played my first non-Starter Kit game of Advanced Squad Leader a few days ago. Amazingly, there was an experienced participant in the hobby in my area, and we met up at a local game meet to play out Scenario 1: Fighting Withdrawal. It was a glorious event. My opponent brought (part of) his travel kit, complete with labelled bead boxes organizing all of the game markers and squad counters needed for my first game and more. Thanks to such sorting, set up went quickly, and soon the game was under way.

My goal was race through a gauntlet of Russians to the opposite side of a narrow map. I started with many of my troops high up in buildings in order to have a high perch to fire from while at the same time providing some cover fire for my guys on the ground. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and in retrospect it was a good idea, but needed better execution. I made the mistake of implementing Prep Fire-that is early fire, when I should of had my Finns wait until an opportunity appeared to fire at any Russians that peeked their heads out of hiding rather than hope to hit them while they were concealed.

I felt I did an okay job at first to dash across unguarded streets and such, but my momentum died down a few turns into the game as I let my enemy have too much leeway into positioning his troops into great defensive spots that had me cornered at any direction I tried to get past. While I was advancing, I soon saw I wasn’t advancing fast enough, and indeed by turn 6 out of 8 I realized there was no possible way any of the Finns could dash to the ‘finish’* line to win.

My opponent and I shook hands, had some post-game chat, and now I have ordered even more ASL products, for I know I am going to play this game as much as I can get away with. Luck is with me, the winds of fate are strong, and the blaze in the distance is becoming brighter; my passion for ASL has kindled. Hopefully the dice don’t change that fortunate weather too much.

*That was a horrible pun. I am sorry.

A Journey into Advanced Squad Leader: Part 2.5

Beyond Valor, the first module for ASL, has 14 or so sheets of punch-out counters. Each sheet is comprised of 1/2″ to 3/4″ little pieces. Doing some number crunching (approximately 8″x10″ sheet size accounting for in-between spaces between punch-outs and averaging 1/2″ and 3/4″ counters) there’s around 2,500+ counters in the box. There are not storage options that come with Beyond Valor. I purchased two dozen counter trays for storage. 13 of them were used to store the pieces. On and off sorting of these pieces takes hours and hours, but after all that time I was finally finished.

The point of this anecdote is that Advanced Squad Leader requires a lot of effort to get into, both in terms of learning the game and managing all of its components. This is perhaps why my journey to play this grand game has not been logged in a while. That being said, I’ve finally regained my motivation to learn ASL. I’ve been reading the manual, and I am approximately halfway through the first section of the rules–those for the basic game (i.e. no large guns or tanks).

Better than trying to learn the game from the text, for most of the purpose of the manual is to be a reference rather than a tutorial, I will be taught the game by an experienced player tomorrow. I am really looking forward to playing this game, for even its Starter Kit version shows real promise of a truly in-depth experience. This depth is why I invested time, effort, and money for Advanced Squad Leader. I hunger for a game of this caliber, and hopefully I shall be rewarded for my investment.

Wish me luck, I may need it.

A Few Videos Since My Last

A while back I made a video about Archipelago. Since then I’ve made three more session report videos, each one about a different board game than the last.

Earth Reborn

This is my favorite game. Enough so that I’ve written an extensive review and made the above video. It’s the most in-depth, tactical miniatures game you can find on the market.

1830: Railways and Robber Barons

A rather lengthy game that appears to be about building train companies, but it’s more about stealing siphoning money from train companies!

Roads & Boats

Not just a rare game, Roads & Boats is a great game about the logistics of transportation (with the occasional “screw your neighbor” tactics).

Archipelago Post Round-Up!

Lately I have had a new favorite board game, Archipelago. It’s a “euro” game, as in it’s a (mostly) non-confrontational economic game with lots of wooden pieces and such, but it has a lot of twists and clever mechanics that spice its gameplay into becoming something more than a dry simulator. Instead of reiterating all that I have said in various posts across communities I vist, I think I shall instead put my posts here!

• 7/30/2012 – This is my first mention of Archipelago. As you can see I was (and still am) a fan of the designer’s earlier works.

Christophe Boelinger, the guy behind Dungeon Twister and Earth Reborn, has been making a worker placement game called Archipelago. The rulebook got posted online today, and the concept looks amazing (also the icon for the island rebels is great). 

Archipelago is a worker placement game with tile-laying exploration, mechanics reinforcing negotiation (as in it’s totally cool to trade resources Catan-style), secret end-game conditions for each player, and well, a bunch of stuff. It’s basically looking to be a mix of Carcassonne, Caylus and Puerto Rico except with a theme. I’m hyped.

• 9/17/2012 – The hype begins! Of course, the hype is strained because the damn game released in Europe months before it got to me.

Archipelago, a worker placement game by Christophe Boelinger of Dungeon Twister and Earth Reborn fame, comes out in 8 days!
In Europe. Those in the US (like me) will have to wait until Halloween for our copy. 😦

• 11/15/2012 – The game arrives, and I play it almost immediately. I already have a good opinion of it, but my love for the game is just beginning….

Archipelago arrived at my door today, and I got to play it tonight. First impression: good game, really deep, I want to play more because I get the feeling I’m going to rate this as one of my favorites.

For a worker-placement euro-game that’s about colonizing an island during the Colonial era, I’m not really sure how to define this one. Archipelago is to worker-placement games as Mage Knight is to fantasy adventure games in that both are unlike anything their genres have seen while still being in the confines of their respective format. Also Archipelago may actually be as in-depth as Mage Knight. I can’t say for sure though, for Archipelago’s rulebook is far more comprehensible 

There is a ton of mechanisms blended together into Archipelago. There’s not just worker placement; there’s meeple placement and movement, exploration/tile-placement, dynamic markets, buildings with special bonus actions, cards with special bonus actions, events, secret victory-point/end-game conditions, open trading and negotiation, and a very real threat of all players losing the game to a rebellion if they don’t (semi-)cooperate to appease the native population. I’m sure I forgot a few mechanisms somewhere in there.

Just in case it wasn’t obvious, Archipelago is not a light game by any means. However, the rulebook goes a long way to clarify how everything works and the game’s mechanics fit together in a way that makes sense both intuitively and thematically.

The thing that stuck out to me was that teaching Archipelago and playing a learning game is a rather big undertaking. My first game of this took far longer than the average playtime, but I can see how understanding the game would cut down the playtime massively (kind of like how Mage Knight’s playtime can be 1 to 6 hours depending). Thankfully, there are 3 sets of end-game objectives that alter the length of play, so if one doesn’t have enough time to finish the longest variant of Archipelago they can try the medium or short game.

There’s a lot of stuff in Archipelago, and a lot of stuff to like. I am looking forward to getting more plays out of this in the next few days and hope to have a better understanding of this big game.

If Mage Knight and Puerto Rico were blended together (if you can imagine such a mix) you might wind up with Archipelago, a game that arrived on my doorstep today. I got a quick play out of it and I can say that I really like this game. Although a completely different game than the other two, you can tell this was designed by the same person who brought us Dungeon Twister and Earth Reborn. It’s very clever, very hybrid, and very in-depth. 

I may end up really liking this one. A lot.

GrandpaPants posted:

“How fiddly is the game? That was my main worry when I was reading the rules (which I have since forgotten), but I do remember that you had to do a lot of placing things in certain ways that when I read it, seemed like an awful lot of work. Maybe it is about as bad as refreshing the various bins in Agricola, but even that feels pretty tedious sometimes.

But Christophe Boelinge is a pretty underrated designer, so I hope that this is his big break.”

Much less fiddly than Agricola. The biggest possible fiddly-bit is the crisis resolution. The maximum amount of meeples a player can have is 10 (well, 20 in the 2-player game), so at most all you’re doing is turning 10 meeples sideways along with everyone else before you’re playing again, which is dead easy and super fast. Let me emphasize that getting 10 meeples in Archipelago felt like a very big undertaking, as getting meeples on the board is rather costly. The other possible fiddliness would come from disengaging (i.e. resetting meeples and stuff), and honestly that’s at most as fiddly as untapping your cards in Magic.

On paper all those meeples sounds like a lot of mindless movement, but in practice it’s a non-issue. Everything else is driven by some player choice and I wouldn’t call fiddly at all.

• 11/16/2012 – Pretty much every time I got to play Archipelago, it made me want to discuss it even more. Here I express a slight worry about a certain mechanic, but over time I’ve come to realize that its a non-issue.

In other news, I got another play of Archipelago in, this time a short game with five players.

There is one thing I can see as potentially fiddly yet am not too worried about, and that’s the Evolution Phase where as you refresh a row of cards there’s a chance thatmultiple domestic crises can occur (each new card draw can have that chance). Now, a domestic crisis requires knocking down all the meeples on the board and then everyone has to negotiate and make sacrifices to raise some or all of them up again. With five players, the chance of these crises happening multiple times increases dramatically from the two-player game.

Now there are two things that make this less of a pain than you’d think. First off, knocking down and raising up those meeples is not really required like it is in the main crisis phase, because everything resets right after the Evolution Phase. All you need is some way of keeping track of how many meeples are rebelling after everyone has paid up (a spare meeple on the population track could work for example). Second off, this is not a trivial part of the game. Every domestic crisis has the potential threat of causing all the players to lose (every rebelled meeple makes the rebellion marker go up by one, and if the rebellion marker every exceeds the number of meeples on the board, game over).

As a result of these two deterrents, crises during the Evolution Phase become less ‘oh shit not another knock down of a billion meeples’ and more ‘oh shit we’re running out of resources and tokens to actually stave off these fucking rebels.’ It’s actually quite brutal!

Overall? My initial impression of the game was “pretty good!” and is rising to “really good!” I’m going to try to get this played again tomorrow and hopefully reach a more final conclusion towards Archipelago.

• 11/17/2012 – Did I mention how my love for this game grew? Basically at first I didn’t think it super-awesome, but that changed over repeated plays.

Archipelago is getting better and better. I played two short-version three-player games today. I complained earlier that the short game feels like there’s a longer game meant to be there but it got cut in half. I take that complaint back. The game is very rich even in a short play; it’s simply that there is more pressure to figure out the scoring conditions players are hiding and try to gain as many points from such. There’s a ton of things you can do and very little actions you have to spend doing what you need.

I feel that the longer games would let you develop out the Archipelago, making it a more comprehensive play through the game but at the same time still maintaining a sense of pressure as I can definitely see the longer one plays the more dangerous rebellions get.

My favorite part of this game is the element of trying to read into peoples strategies to try and out-score them or at least place for points in the game element they are scoring before someone’s end game condition triggers (for instance trying to build at least one chapel if you suspect another player is holding the card that scores them). That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of worker placement, economic engines, and little wooden cubes. The game has all of that.

A brilliant moment came when one player snagged first for turn order, used one of my special action cards (giving me a little money) to sell all of his expensive goods at once (giving him a lot of money), and then used his worker placement pawn to build the final market he needed to end the game on his terms. Not only was the open objective to have the most money, but I was holding the secret objective to have the most money; giving him lead. I miscalculated actually; when I saw that player building markets I thought that was his scoring condition and not his end game condition. I was wrong!

It’s great to have that kind of quick, game-ending play plus the guessing-game potential of figuring out the opponent’s strategy versus yours.

In short, Archipelago is a quality worker-placement game and much, much more. I think the only euro I would rate higher is Dominant Species and possibly The Great Zimbabwe, and even then only DS if I’m playing a 6 player game.

GrandpaPants posted:

“In all seriousness, though, how weighty is this game? I have a tendency to gravitate away from heavier games since I hate explaining them (reading the rules, I already know I am going to hate explaining this game) and non-gamers tend to have a tenuous grasp on some game mechanics. I imagine it is not something that can be taught that easily, like Catan or Carcassone or something, but I’m leaning more towards Agricola? Am I correct in this assessment?”

Yeah I’d say it’s about Agricola-level, although I found that Archipelago is one of those games where it’s actually pretty easy to learn if you teach the game as you go through setup and the first turn. Don’t explain the victory conditions until you finish setup, since you don’t hand out the secret objectives until everyone has settled on their first hex. I’d even go as far to say that the game works well if you have each player do a different action so you can teach them one-by-one.

Normally I wouldn’t say this is a family game (certainly not Catan/Carcassonne simple), but you have a fair chance to teach this to a family if you take the rules step by step.

 

“Also, how prone is this game to analysis paralysis? The counterbalance on the neophyte vs experienced gamer is that the experienced gamer has a bad tendency to waste everyone’s time going in mental circles trying to figure out the best possible move when the difference between their choices are pretty minimal/circumstantial.”

I haven’t had too much trouble with AP yet. The thing I think that is a deterrent to AP is that there’s a lot of table-talk involved since negotiations are open. For whatever reason, this has made me not think to hard about my optimal strategy and worry more about what secret objective someone else might be holding onto. As far as neophyte vs. experienced gamer; I’d say Archipelago is more like Mage Knight in that the game goes faster with experienced players as they start to understand what a good move to make might be rather than being blinded by what at first seems a lot to grasp.

Another thing about Archipelago that kind of deters AP is that you don’t know exactly what things you need to win. With all but one of the scoring conditions being kept secret, optimal play in terms of the ideal meeple to place somewhere not really possible.

Could Archipelago be prone to AP? Probably. Is it more prone to AP than other games? I don’t think so.

• 11/23/2012 – The game tightens its grip….

Archipelago, much like I expected, is getting better with more plays. I wouldn’t say it’s a game where it rewards experience so immediately that a player with a couple of games under his belt will trounce newbies, but it is a game where you start to understand the intricacies of systems and the way things come together in a much better sense after your first play or two. 

The biggest ‘clicking’ moment for me was realizing how important trying to figure out what other player’s scoring conditions might be. In Archipelago there is one open scoring condition (called a trend) and then each player has a secret scoring condition that applies to all players, as well as on that same, secret card an end-of-game trigger. This leads to players trying to figure out why someone may be building chapels even if it doesn’t immediately benefit them through the open trend. “They must have the chapel scoring card! Wait, there’s an end-game trigger on one of the cards for when a certain number of chapels are in play. Maybe he has that and is trying to rush to end the game. Which is it?!” 

That being said, even if you do have a good guess of what people are trying to do, there’s a lot of straight-up euro-strategy involved in this euro. When to explore, keeping the rebellion suppressed, which resources to buy/sell; all of this and more is critical to the game. What’s really cool, however, is that Archipelago does all the good, meaty euro-stuff and more. 

I think one of the best parts of all of this is that these mechanics go well with the theme. The mechanic for exploration makes sense. That exploiting resources raises discontent with the natives makes sense. The dynamic market makes sense. 

So there you have it. Archipelago is thematic, strategic, and blends together the traditional euro with a game of intensity and depth like, say, Mage Knight, except Archipelago has a ton of player interaction. Need I say more?

• Sometime in December 2012 – My love for the game is reaching peak levels.

Played Archipelago twice since my last rant about it. My opinion is still that it is an amazing game; these plays haven’t changed my views.

First play was a long game which ended early due to a domestic crisis for a resource we had none of, resulting in an immediate game over–my first loss due to rebellion. I now have a much more immediate respect for the threat of a game over if players don’t pay attention to it, especially as the game wears on and people don’t watch the market.

Second play was a short game with family, which lasted far longer than average. Although teachable, I don’t think Archipelago is ‘light’ by any means and as such not entirely suitable to bring to a table of non-gamers. It’s almost as bad in that regard as Mage Knight.

• 12/??/2012 By this point my love for the game is at full, but I will concede to problems–if not flaws–players may encounter in their games of it.

Archipelago is pretty awesome, but I it falls under the ‘board gamer’s board game’ category (and only goes to 5 players if you’re group goes more than that). In other words, Archipelago has a lot of mechanics and interactions to worry about. If simple is more your thing, then I wouldn’t recommend this one.

• 12/29/2012 More session reports? This time, I come across what has been the most debated issue of the game: the traitor mechanic and the “everyone loses” condition. A lot of people online have complained that the game falls apart because it encourages competition but also requires cooperation. In my mind, the game walks this line fine and if players encounter an issue its more the group’s inability to get in the mindset to play Archipelago rather than the game being at fault.

Archipelago was interesting this time in that it was the first time I’ve had a game where the Separatist (i.e. traitor player) won. I think the chances of this outcome can vary greatly on whom you’re playing with. Archipelago is semi-cooperative, and quite simply if players ignore the “everyone loses except maybe a traitor” condition, it can very well occur! There is a lot to wrap your head around in this one.

• 1/14/2013 – By this point I’ve been called out on ranting about Archipelago non-stop. My posts are less of essays now and more quick notes.

Archipelago is a game I’ve talked enough about in this thread, but I’ll addend that the traitor mechanic can be awfully powerful (game-breaking, even?) for groups that refuse to take a break from exploiting their economies and actively try to stop the “everyone-loses” mechanic from triggering. I’m going to need to play more to find out if this is indeed going to end my joy with the game, but I certainly hope it does not.

• 2/2/2013 PA – Here why have someone who has had practically the opposite response to Archipelago that I’ve had, and as I am at this point head-over-heels infatuated with the game I felt compelled to make a rebuttal.

RiemannLives wrote: »

“we got to try out Archipelago Wednesday night. Was a 4 player game with some very picky players (one of em is a professional game designer, another has an absurd amount of experience with board games). But ones who in theory should like the game. I mean the game is a very long vaguely euro-looking economic game at first glance. That should totally be our thing. 

it wasn’t. the worst thing was that there are a couple interesting ideas buried in all the bullshit and horrible game design. If it was just a terrible game we could just write off the experience and ignore it. But after chewing over the problems for quite a while after the game I think it is bad enough that it needs a real overhaul not just some tweaking and there are too many good games out there for me to spend time fixing someone else’s. 

the biggest problem is of course the play length. Using the game-end cards where you need 7 of a thing (eg: markets) to end, it was pushing 4 hours. A game absolutely must have top not design, a lot of depth and great balance to be worthy of such an absurd game length. 

the single biggest problem is of course the asinine hidden victory point conditions. Unless everyone is just playing stupid (which, in a game this long, I suspect people often will as hour 3 rolls around with no end in sight and everyone just wants it to fucking stop) you are only going to be figuring out a couple of the victory conditions other players are holding. The total scores in the game are very, very low so even a single point is going to make the different between winning and losing. And it is pretty much guaranteed that about 1/4 of each players total score is going to be essentially random. And that 1/4 is probably going to be the entire difference between the player in first and the player in last. The entire margin of victory is just going to come down to some bullshit pointless time-filler decision someone made with no strategic thought because it turns out one of the players had the card that gives out VPs for that. 

Even with open victory point conditions (which is a variant in the book) the rebellion mechanic becomes a big problem. If you are not in the lead your best move, by far, is to drive the game to rebellion. Even if you are just in 2nd place that is the optimal play. It forces the lead player to spend resources reducing unrest in order to defend their lead, nets you resources (because most things that generate unrest are good for you, like taxation) and even if the game ends you weren’t winning anyway so everyone losing is preferable. 

It also shares a problem with Arkham Horror: far too much of the game is determined by the order of a random deck of cards. The Barbarian card is by itself fucking insane. Just off the charts good. But if that card happened to be available early and the assassin didn’t come out late that would just wreck the game. In our game, the barbarian didn’t come out till fairly late AND the assassin came out the very next turn (and was used to kill the barbarian of course) and it still just about took one player out of the game (he got burned into last place). Even if you do the sensible thing and tear up that card as soon as you open the box, too much relies on the order of that deck. Which of course means you are going to get people who got lucky on their card order saying “no way man the cards work just fine” without thinking about what is possible instead of what they personally experienced. 

and it is more than a little weird that this statement is a perfectly accurate description of one of the main game mechanics: “on the rebellion chart the little black dude is chasing the little white dude and if the black dude ever catches him everyone loses”. there is a lot of weird tone-deafness in Archipelago. “

Crazily enough, Archipelago is one of my favorite games! As such, I would like to contend some of the points you made. 

• Firstly,

the biggest problem is of course the play length.

the single biggest problem is of course the asinine hidden victory point conditions.

That is not how you use superlatives. 

• Play length. The game comes with three sets of objectives, and reading on what you said about your end-game condition, your grouped picked the longest variant possible. That’s like, the worst thing you could have done for your first game of it. The short game with four players takes about 90 minutes, and yes the long game with that same group will push four hours. 
• Victory conditions. Figuring out who has what card is a huge part of the game and one of skills that you develop with continued plays. Players who can figure out who’s holding what cards and utilize this knowledge (but most importantly make sure they’re ontop of the open scoring card) will get in the lead. This is something, sadly, that a player gets better with after repeated plays, and there are plenty of games that deliver an in-depth satisfying first play rather than needing two or three plays for it to really get going. 
• Rebellion mechanic. This is probably the most contested part of the game, and honestly probably the biggest barrier to enjoyment for people to get over when playing Archipelago. I think the best way to look at it is like a very brutal, Agricola-like harvesting mechanic. It taxes player’s resources who are in the lead, unless they go out of their way to build chapels which may very well be a worthwhile investment for crises anyways. Still, if people can’t get over the rebellion threat then Archipelago will not work for them. I like the threat of the rebels, but I can understand this being a ‘not for everyone situation.’ 
• Cards. Although you do end up paying whoever owns the card, most of the cards are usable by any player, with a few exceptions (Barbarian is one of them). As far as balance though, I honestly don’t see the Barbarian being immediately imbalanced (although undeniably very strong). Considering you have to occupy the region you’re burning and pay a coin for each resource being burnt, you basically have to be burning something you could be using on your own anyways (unless the player is using a town to block you out) AND you’re basically going to be overextending yourself as you move meeples to burn more stuff. Maybe it’s broken, but is that something you can really say for sure after one play?

I can’t argue with the game being tone-deaf. Archipelago is very much not politically correct  

As for why I like Archipelago so much (some of it probably comes from being a huge fan of the designer’s previous games…), I think ultimately I like the marriage of theme to mechanics and the amount of direct interaction that goes on compared to most euros. I like that you can openly trade with other players, even to bribe someone for turn order priority. I like that all these crazy cards are happening (and that they represent the evolution of the archipelago but come with a risk of crises as the islands change with the new cards), throwing a wrench into what would be a static design. I really like how tiles are being lain out, with meeples moving back and forth on them. It gives the game a spatial element and a sense of there really being an place you’re manipulating that I frankly don’t find with many euros at all. I like the guessing game of victory/end-game conditions, and playing off the hints and tells the other players are giving. I like the three different sets of objectives that allow for a short, medium or long game (and I really wouldn’t play the long game until I’ve had at least a few plays under my belt of short variants). 

In other words, I pretty much like everything Archipelago has to offer. Except the stuff like there being a Slavery card. Say no to Slavery  :B

Really though, it seems that everything I liked about the game seems to be everything you dislike, and I wouldn’t want to press that the game is for everybody (it’s not). I’m sorry your play didn’t work out for you, thankfully there are some other euros out that are very elegant and well-designed. Particularly for this year, CO2, The Great Zimbabwe, Tzolk’in and Myrmes stand out in my mind.

• 2/17/2013 – By this point Archipelago has seated itself as one of my all-time favorite games, even though I know at this point its not for everyone. Here is a session report of the game that led me to what is probably close to my current thoughts on the game.

After Mage Wars came one of the better game of Archipelago I’ve played. That game is one where you really need to have the table in a particular mindset that the game is both cooperative and yet not. For the medium game we played, everyone was indeed in that peculiar mindset and managing to collectively stave off everyone losing while at the same time competing properly against each other. Between the crazy mix of mechanics going into it, I’ve really come to feel that Archipelago less of a Euro and more of…something else. The game may have the basic foundation of euro mechanics, but the way the victory conditions and the rebels drive the game changes everything. I can’t say this is a game for everyone, but for those who can get into, Archipelago will shine.

 

I think that last line is ultimately my stance on the game as of this writing. Archipelago is not for everyone, but for those it’s for it’s a must-play.

 

Designs in the Dark, Missing Links

We know it.

We know that there is more out there than the designs we already have. There is unexplored game ideas waiting to be revealed.

Think of dark matter. It has been calculated that the known universe accounts for only a fraction of the mass out there. The rest is some unknown, dark matter. The analogy I’m trying to make is very simple; our known designs account for a very limited space of ideas. The rest of it is in the dark.

How does one know there’s missing designs when those designs have yet to be revealed? I would point to the “itch.” The itch is a very simple thing. The itch is a want to play something, a specific something. The itch is this craving to enjoy this something. When that itch cannot be scratched by what is currently known–when one craves something more–that is the design in the dark.

There is more to indicate that something is missing in design space, and it can be revealed by simple digging. All one needs to do is tweak and ask. Take a game that is already produced, tweak a design aspect (preferably one that scratches the aforementioned itch), and then ask “Does this design exist yet?” Doing this method will inevitably result in an answer of “no.”

Sometimes in this world of media overload, it seems like everything has been done before and nothing new will appear. Things are not what they seem.

In the dark, somewhere, lies novelty. Hidden gems and veins of design that when refined will result in wondrous materials.

Ultimately, the message of this post for aspiring designers is to never stop exploring. The message for those who consume media is to never think “this is all that’s out there.” If you crave something that isn’t there, know that it is only waiting to be discovered. We can know it.

A Journey into Advanced Squad Leader – Part 2

In the span of time from my previous post to this writing, I have played three games of the ASL Starter Kit #3’s first scenario. In all three games, I had underestimated the playtime and the match was left unfinished. There are a few qualities I have learned about Advanced Squad Leader since my initial impressions.

The first revelation I have had about ASL is that the game is surprisingly playable. Despite the third starter kit’s rulebook being bigger than 90% of my other boardgames’ rulebooks, the game does in fact, make sense. The sequence of play can be summed in minutes rather than the hours you’d expect. The core principles of ASL are straightforward; the complexity and depth of the game rises from the myriad of situations that can come to play.

After realizing how playable the game is, the next noticable quality of ASL is how long the game can go on. Although relatively short in comparison to many other war games, ASL does take up an entire evening to play with most of its scenarios. Include rules explanations (something I had to do each play so far), and the result is the reason I could not finish the first few games I had started. This length of play is acceptable for me, however, in that it would be a waste of rules and mechanics to have a shortened play. Why learn a game this in-depth if the experience is cut short? In other words, though ASL is a somewhat lengthy game, it deserves that playtime.

Despite me saying that the game is playable, however, there is a daunting hurdle to jump; going into the full game. I have only been actually playing with the regular rules so far, but the full game’s rulebook is still a monstrosity. Although the tome of the rulebook is readable, it is nonetheless massive and needs some serious investment to even dent! I think if I can breach the first chapter, things will go much more smooth, but until then, ASL has not revealed its final form, so to speak. Then again, if this game could remain popular after decades of play, I have doubts that the game will remain incomprehensible.

If I could sum up my impressions of ASL beyond “surprisingly playable,” I would relate the game to an onion. The shape of ASL stays the same, but as you cut into it you see layers and layers of content. And after a while you may start to cry….

A Journey into Advanced Squad Leader – Part 1

Some of you may–just maybe–have heard about Advanced Squad Leader (ASL for short) before. You might not have heard what it is about (World War 2 squad-level tactical combat on a hex grid). Most likely the thing you would have heard is how complicated the game is. For those not in the know, just how complicated is Advanced Squad Leader? In short, it’s an Everest.

There is a site that serves as a board game database called BoardGameGeek. On BGG you can rate the ‘weight’ of a game, a stat that is essentially the inherent complexity of a game. The stat ranges from 1 to 5. As of this writing, Advanced Squad Leader is one of only two games out of over 60,000 in BGG’s database with a weight rating of over 4.5 (the other being World in Flames) with at least 100 ratings, and of those two ASL is rated higher. There may be more obscure titles out there with more inherent complexity, but none quite so infamously complicated as ASL.

There is another thing one can learn from the stats of ASL. As of this writing, ASL is ranked 72nd out of over 60,000 games on BGG, meaning that many people consider this one of the best board games of all time.

This complicated masterpiece, ASL, is the latest step in my continual exploration of the world of board games. It took years, but it has finally gotten to the point where I crave the depth that I have heard that ASL provides (or at leas crave the chance to learn such an intricate game).

This will be a series of posts chronicling my experiences with ASL.

A week ago I acquired the Advanced Squad Leader Rulebook 2nd Edition and the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #3. The Rulebook is simply too much right now. It’s a monster, a three-ring binder with over a hundred pages of tiny font. I have been working my way through the Starter Kit with its only-28-page manual. I’m waiting for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend to end before I try to put this smaller game on the table.

There are a few things I have noticed with the little I’ve come to understand of the game. With the Starter Kit rules, things seem rather…old-school. That makes sense, considering ASL was first published in 1985 (and based off an even older game). What I mean by old-school is that there is very little in the way of flashy components, even by war game standards. I have been used to GMT-line games like Combat Commander and Fighting Formations, games with excellent production quality and elegant, clever rules. Most of the Starter Kit is just…standard. There’s no layer of mechanisms ruling over the core principles of the moving-and-shooting rules. Sure, there’s a lot of rules for moving-and-shooting, but the core game is based on…well…core game design. No cards, no gimmicks, just dice-counters, and simulation.

Don’t take this as a sign that the game isn’t complex. There’s a ton of intricacies in the basic designs that are there. And this is just the Starter Kit. The full game looks to be nothing short of simulation while still lying within the boundaries of board game.

The biggest gripe I have with the game so far is less with the game and more that the rules could have been written better. ASL is obsessed with acronyms. Combine the obtuse terminology with legalese writing (e.g. “section 1.3.2”) and you have a recipe for confusion. I’m somewhat disappointed that the best learning aid I have found on the game has been from the generous ASL fans who have decided to explain the game through tutorial videos.

All that being said, I think, just maybe, I have a hold on the rules to possibly push through a Starter Kit game (infantry only). I’ll write more as I go further into this ASL experience.

Wish me luck

Random Rantings: Dota 2, Guild Wars 2, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition…Board Games…

Wow, my last post was grumpy! I really don’t try to be so pissed about immaturity in gaming most of the time, but I think I reached critical levels of grumpy that day and just had to let my worst views of videogame culture loose on the world. Truthfully, I have problems with what I said. I’m still very much on the side of ‘games need to grow and mature more than they are right now and the current status quo is far from okay,’ but I’m disappointed with myself in how I presented my rant. It was far too confrontational and had too few bits of solid points that could be convincing to anyone on the fence. If anything, I probably alienated the few people who read this blog far more than I did get the reaction I was hoping for.

Anyways, while I don’t promise that I’ll never talk about my ‘games need art’ views again, I will try to keep a lid on the pot until I can properly elucidate my views.

With that said, I have plans for this blog other than to talk about art crap! I’ve been playing Dota 2, Guild Wars 2, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, and many board games and I have thoughts I on all of them! I want to make some extended blog posts (or maybe even video pieces) on all of these, but for now I’ll just write some short thoughts on these games.

Dota 2 is pretty damn fun, but its community is horrible. Honestly though? I can’t blame the community for being horrible, for Dota 2 does practically nothing to facility cordial play. Sometimes it can be an afterthought, but one of the most important things games should remember (especially multiplayer ones) is that their flow of play can engineer certain attitudes and behaviors of a community. Dota 2’s mechanics foster elitism and intolerance, and it’s a shame there’s little it does to try to counter this negativity.

Guild Wars 2, on the other hand, has some rather ingenious mechanisms to foster camaraderie and cooperation. If I could pin down what exactly this MMO does moreso than other games to encourage teamwork, it’s that you never have to do the dreaded ‘looking for group.’ Assembling a team in the game can happen, but it happens in a very organic manner. I think much of the reason I like Guild Wars 2 centers on this vein of natural player interaction. You will be playing with other people, but it will always be in a positive manner (i.e. no dicks stealing your kills).

Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is interesting in that it embraces player dickery. It’s amazing what crap that game pulls. Players can invade other players games without any consent in the matter. Players can drop items that make other player’s games harder without any consent in the matter. Players can leave deceitful messages. To be fair, there’s also opportunities for players to cooperate, but it’s interesting to see a game explore the dark side of player interactions in an online environ. It’s neat too, for Dark Souls uses these mechanics to compliment the themes and story of the game rather than these multiplayer mechanics being a mutually exclusive element. Oh, and this PC version of Dark Souls is going to disappoint fans of the PC platform that expect quality ports. Dark Souls is a functional port, but I know it will not be desirable to a lot of people. Play with a gamepad.

Board games. Oh my. Where do I begin? I guess I will just not talk about any particular game in detail, but will instead say something about what I’ve learned from board games that carries over to video games. Board games impressed on me two things. One: games can engineer the social interaction going on between players (something Dota has forgotten). You can make a game that will ruin friendships (just look up some stories about Diplomacy), or games that will bring the whole table together in laughter and camaraderie. Two: play with other people is less about the game and more about the experience. Yes, you may want to play certain games, but ultimately you want to tailor the games you play to the group you’re playing with. If a game doesn’t mesh with a group then no one will have fun, and no matter how good the game is by objective values, it was a bad play for people involved, which is what really matters. I feel a lot of video games forget these two aspects, and the combined lesson that you can tailor games to encourage a certain social setting. A lot of board games are judged on how the fun they bring to all players participating, while I feel video games can get away with a lot of designs that don’t encourage enjoyment for everyone involved.

So yeah, those are my thoughts of the moment. I want to elaborate on each of these points–on Dota 2, on Guild Wars 2, on Dark Souls, on board games–but for now I will just leave this blurb here as a promise that I haven’t given up on blogging. Until then, enjoy your games everyone!

Gaming, Grow Up

Heather Chaplin said something like this over three years ago at the 2009 Game Developer’s Conference at a rant panel. Nothing has changed for the better since then. Gaming, which may very well be beyond its infancy, is still infantile.

 

In case it didn’t seem obvious yet, this will be a rant, and it won’t be pretty. Really, I’m not holding anything back for this one. You have been warned.

 

Why am I doing this? Because I love games, and I nothing more than seeing the medium grow and reach new frontiers in ways we can create art. If I didn’t voice my disappointment, dissatisfaction, and overall discontent with the little games have grown, I would be accepting that games are not only infantile, but that that is okay. It’s not.

 

As gaming grows, there is less and less room for excuses for violent and absurd power fantasies being the dominant force in AAA games. Make no mistake, that’s what we have. Modern Warfare, Gears of War, God of War; say what you will about their polish in mechanics and play but these games are doing no favors in presenting a mature front for video games. Instead of showing that games can be meaningful and culturally significant, we’ve got the industry telling everyone that the best games can do is make the gaming equivalent of action flicks.

 

Worse is that, despite these high-production low-value games, there are games that do wonderful things with storytelling, characterization, and narrative. Games that do reach for that holy grail of ‘art.’ Shadow of the Colossus. Killer7. Braid. These are games that strive for something other than to continue the Oroboros-like self-feeding cycle of gaming culture and change the mediocre status quo. This would all be well and good, would we give more recognition to games that actually do push for growth.

 

No, instead we get a slew of naysayers mired in the power fantasies and B-grade plots who call titles of actual quality ‘pretentious.’ I’m okay with calling something pretentious when it’s justified. Instead we get children who stick to this blanket-term like an ostrich with its head in the ground calling something meaningful as only pretending to try to have meaning. It’s like seeing a grade-school intellect that glorifies Twilight calling The Sound and the Fury pretentious. It’s like valuing soap operas over Breaking Bad.

 

People, at least admit that you enjoy something that is trash, that is in the cultural ghetto. As much as I enjoy Mario, it is cut from everything but gameplay in the way that gonzo pornography is cut from everything but sex.

 

I’m tired of a medium that is so lacking in anything but B-grade fantasy. It’s like eating nothing but candy or watching nothing but children cartoons.

 

Don’t accuse me of wanting nothing but pompous art everywhere. I don’t want that, much like I wouldn’t want all movies to be depressing Oscar-grabbing dramas. But we need more Oscar-grabbers than not. The current ratio of Modern Warfare to Shadow of the Colossus is disproportionate to say the least. As a result we have so many people outside the gaming medium claiming games not only are not art but can never be art, and so many people who know that’s bullshit unable to defend what they love because so much of what we have is shit when it comes to being art.

 

Maybe you don’t care that games have so little in the way of ‘artsiness.’ Maybe that’s all too pretentious. Just know that you’re not enjoying a medium that is even close to the level of maturity or quality of film, theater, music, fine arts, literature, or anything before games. It’s not because games are new; it’s because no one wants anything new.

 

So please, be excited for something like The Witness coming out. Play Dear Esther and don’t whine that it’s not a game. It doesn’t have to fit the constraints of ‘game,’ whatever the fuck your definition is supposed to be. Our current games are not enough.

 

It is nothing short of tragedy that when I take a break from spieling this rant to enjoy title even a little refined, it can’t be a game that the masses appreciate. No, gaming’s mass medium is a child’s toy.