Hot
As a Christian, just from the review alone I find Blasphemy worthy of its name, if not just for its obscene $100 price tag.
The funny thing is the game really isn't that blasphemous and like I said, if you took out some of the PG-rated lampooning (it never even hits PG-13) it could pass for a "life of Christ" board game...if I were a Christian, I don't think I'd be all that offended by it. I've seen/heard much, much worse than Jesus walking the plank on a pirate ship. But yeah, $100...whew, that is pretty offensive.
As for GARIBALDI I think it's probably better than SCOTLAND YARD, easier to play/manage and shorter than FURY, and probably a little more cerebral than FURY. FURY is still the ultimate game in the genre, but I'd probably pull out GARIBALDI over SCOTLAND YARD. One thing that makes GARIBALDI different is that it's a point A to point B game- it's not just evasion. That makes it pretty interesting. And I swear it'd be the perfect model for a VANISHING POINT game.
I'm more the Smokey and the Bandit type for race movies, and that gives me an idea -- a tracking game in which one player is the Bandit, one player is Sheriff Buford T. Justice, and the other players take on the roles of Snowman and the other truckers who are running interference.
Garibaldi may be brutally difficult for the Garibaldi player. (I've done that twice, and felt massively screwed both times. ) I definitely prefer it over Scotland Yard, and....it is shorter and simpler than Fury. Fury is still better.
I am amused that you bothered to review two games that each probably have sold copies in the low hundreds. If that. I doubt ANYONE would bother to collect all four. (I'm safe from that as long as a copy of Life: Twists and Turns doesnt magically turn up.)
I am quite taken with Sodbusters for all of its flaws. There was a company called Urban Systems in the 70's that did all of these reasonably interesting Eco-themed games. Sodbusters feels like the long lost country cousin of a couple of these---and generally a little bit better.
I think it is hard for Garibaldi...it seems like he's really got to capitalize on those hint markers and actually use them to fool the Austrians by doubling back and obfuscating the "real" path to get far away enough so that he has some freedom. Without all the cards and events to fall back on like in FURY, it makes it much more of a cat-and-mouse game.
Yeah, SODBUSTERS is one of those games that's really screwy and probably pretty bad if you break it down along standard aesthetic and mechanical lines...but it's fun, it has the right mix of simulation and abstraction, and it's actually pretty challenging. What can I say? It's a decent farming game.
Full disclosure- it was Frank's copy of BLASPHEMY that I played. When we got to Swamp Castle, he had it already laid out and ready for play. I walked into the room (which also houses Frank Branham's Celebrity Gaming Hot Tub) and my eyes about popped out. The game is ridiculously overproduced, like the designers saw WADJET or a Zoch game and said "like that, but more". When we were done, I felt bad about ragging on Frank's $100 indiscretion so I said "That was a very nice collectible."
Wadjet. I had finally put that game out of my mind for good. Why did you have to remind me?
Wow, now you're talking like Robert Martin.
In one of my groups, we have a very sophisticated and structured method of game determination that is also a closely guarded secret. But sometimes certain members pick some pretty awful stuff. But agreeing to play anything and "grin and bear it" are part of the deal. Sometimes we have the most fun playing really, really horrendous games. I think some of the most fun Robert ever had playing games in his life was when we played the MIAMI VICE board game.
The thing is, playing shitty games with cool people is a hell of a lot more fun than playing great games with shitty people. I had more fun playing BLASPHEMY and even that damn LIFE game than I did playing RACE FOR THE GALAXY. Or SENJI for that matter.
You're spot on about LIFE. The original is indoctrinating enough, even without any explicit credit card propaganda. A couple of friends and I broke it out about a year ago on a whim, and all I could think of afterwards was how relentlessly bourgeois the thing was. It really is a tool to help kids shape their idea of a good life into the pattern of middle-class whiteness, where everyone rolls along in the family car on the same happy suburban highway to retirement and death. Most kids' games are pretty themeless, and even Monopoly has a quirky playfulness to it that disarms whatever worldview (if any) is in there. LIFE is just an ugly catechism.
I'm credited as a playtester for SODBUSTERS, but the playtest feedback that I provided was pretty useless. To my great discredit, I think that I recommended that the game be Euroized. In retrospect, I'm glad my advice was ignored.
At the time (this was years ago), my problem with the game was that it had event cards that were so harmful that they were the farming equivalent of HORRIBLE BLACK VOID. I now see the wisdom of having stuff like that in the game, but I didn't then.
The thing is that farming *can* be an appealing theme for this style of game because it makes sense that a single bad season can ruin you, or that an improbable oil strike on your land can make you filthy rich. The margin between complete failure and spectacular success is greater than just a few victory points.
What's charming about SODBUSTERS (unless it has changed a lot since I played it) is that it's like something from an alternate universe where Eurogames never happened. It makes no concession at all to the mannered austerity of the Brown Cube School of Game Design. Still, there are only 5 pages of rules.
I'd like to try it again. I don't know whether it's good or not, but it's certainly different.
Sodbusters is unashamedly random and capricious. It is also surprisingly well developed. There are little things like a ever-growing Tom Nook-style ball crushing mortgage, and an interesting, if slightly clumsy land-buying system.
Once you understand all the little rules nuances, they all make sense.
Of course, the game basically comes down to a gigantic roulette game. You place a bet every time you plant a crop or buy an animal, and you usually get a higher return X turns later.
There is one glaring flaw in the game. The rules allow you to immediately repay your mortgage at the start of the game and go propecting. This is such a huge advantage that I would always do it. That means that the first two turns of the game and the entire mortgage system are kind of superfluous. (Fix: Don't allow mortgages to be repaid during the first year. )
I think I did that, actually. I may not have paid off the mortgage in the first year, but I did it very early. I knew that cash would be tight for a little while as a result, but I thought I was prepared for that. I was wrong. An HBV-style event came my way and I didn't have the cash on hand to replace whatever I had lost, so I had screwed myself big time.
This was a long time ago, so maybe I'm misremembering.
Sodbusters?
SODBUSTERS?
You have got to be kidding me. Couldn't the game have at least looked interesting?
--Mike L.
Oh, man. I've been waiting a long time for a game featuring Jesus on Jesus action. I'm so disappointed.
Actually Garibaldi the man is actually quite famous in England because there's a popular biscuit named after him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garibaldi_biscuit
They're so ubiquitous over there that reading the review was the first inkling I had that Garibaldi biscuits aren't eaten the world over.
I have to ask though ... whats' M.U.L.E.?
M.U.L.E. is a computer game that's like a great economic Euro with some Ameritrash elements (random events, aliens, screwage...), plus some computer-gaminess - making quick decisions before a timer runs out. Dan Bunten (later Dani Bunten) designed this game about a decade before Klaus Teuber ever dreamed up Settlers.
Tamburlaine- of course, you're completely right...the thing is, I don't sense anything really pernicious in the intent of the original LIFE other than it was clearly designed with a certain naive worldview, probably by people who never really considered any alternatives to white suburban life. With this new edition, the Visa corporate sponsorship just makes it all seem more wicked and evil. It's funny, in the picture Bill used if you look you don't see any Visa stuff and the bank card doesn't even have Visa logos. It must be a preproduction box before they got the sponsorship. But in the published game, the bank cards look just like Visa cards and there's Visa stuff all over the place.
Juniper- I thought that was you listed in the rulebook. You're dead on, one of the things that's cool about SODBUSTERS is that it's like the last 20 years of game design never happened. There's _nothing_ that smacks of Europhilia at all.
Matt- I think we actually do have Garibaldi biscuits here...I know we get Pim's...
I think of Garibaldis more as a currant delivery system than a biscuit. They are about 90% currants, 10% flavourless brown stuff holding the currants together. I am interested to learn more about the man who inspired them.
I'd also be interested to hear about your game selection method. It's something we have been experimenting with in our group - trying to make sure everybody gets a chance to choose a game they want to play.
Citadel, I can't divulge how we do it exactly because it's very much like the stuff they hide in the Masonic lodge. But basically, it is a very specific selection structure that involves astral cycles, offerings of supplication, and scintillation. I can say no more.
Try this- give everybody in the group one night to choose every game. They can subject others to whatever they want, the core rule being "no bitching".
Michael, I like the rodeo format. No offense, but sometimes reading 4 to 5 pages about a single game can be as tortuous as trying to write it. This was just the right amount for less than spectacular games (either good or bad). And you've reminded me I haven't worked lately on my own cut-throat version of a farming game. I've got some contemplation on pig-raising to do.
BillN
Garibaldi is a game I have mild interest in. I like the layout of the map in that it's a relatively long and narrow tunnel with a destination as opposed to, say, FoD's map in which Dracula really could be anywhere and going anywhere. I'm guessing Garibaldi plays more like an inhibiting strategy game.
But, though I think it looks like a good game, I think it still might be too much of a redundancy for me to actually purchase considering I own less than 40 games and 2 of them are Scotland Yard and FoD. Or are Garibalidi's differences significant enough to separate it from these other games of hide-and-go-seek?