What BOARD GAME(s) have you been playing?

charlest wrote:

Because you are essentially a member of a team and you are causing your team to lose for no reason other than because you don't want to lose alone.

From where I sit, if I can lose alone, or if there's a solo 'won more' winner, then there's a winner and a loser. I don't have a 'team', and if I'm drowning in the game, I wouldn't be shy about taking everyone with me. I'm willing to own up to being an asshole about this.

Dr. Mabuse wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: I soloed a 2 player game of Clash of Cultures while my wife finished up a grant application last night. I think it's my favorite game. This was the first game I've ever played in where I saw how devastating the cultural approach to the game is via religion. You don't have to do shit other than get one big enough city on the front lines, get into the religious government track as early as possible and get Arts and Culture, and then literally just steal the other player's hard earned city points/pieces every turn. The "can't culturally influence" from a city with an opponent's piece in it is a really nice, mean as fuck, rule. It has a lot of gameplay implications I hadn't thought of that make cultural influence better than it initially appears.

We should get another PBEM game going.

We should, along with another fast player. You know where to find me!

Sadly, I've only played DoW once. I'd really like to get it to the table again.

I really liked a lot of the ideas in it, but my initial impression was very biased because I wanted to like it too much to be objective. With a few more plays I'll be able to really tell if it works for me or not.

VonTush wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: "If I could add to your excellent analyze of the game and why and how to win in Archipelago, I think I would add this that I was expecting for you reach at some point in your demonstrations...

In Archipelago you need to win discreetely and not outrageously. You need to finally tune your victory, not being too obvious, not smash down your opponent under your feet with a huge gap of difference, let the others think they are still well in the game. At least This is what I think and discovered after quite some games."

So...If you're winning in Archipelago you have to disguise it to prevent other people from taking the game out of spite because of your success?

The essence of this is correct, yes, but the tanking wouldn't be out of spite but rather rational assessment of win chance. You need to maintain an equitable enough game state so that others won't tank and perceive they have a substantial positive chance of winning to keep the coop machine afloat. How you feel about that is up to you, I think it's a fascinating balance. Also, remember in Archipelago a huge portion of the points are unknown w/hidden objectives, so it isn't terribly rational to threaten to tank unless you're really getting your ass kicked.

As a non-betrayer I found that in Archipelago I was always doing the absolute minimum to keep the colonies alive, while in Dead of Winter I found myself doing as much as possible to keep the colony alive. In both cases I put my own needs first, but Dead of Winter has a more meaningful teamwork aspect to it that I enjoy. Also, I'm willing to overlook a few of DoW's flaws as I'm having a really solid time with it and the story it tells. I don't have a problem with the whole "2 hours into it you rolled bad and everybody died" aspect. I also enjoy Talisman, and I always shuffle in the Horrible Black Void ending.

Played The Fury of Dracula (GW) again and finally won as Dracula! Now with a handful of plays under my belt I'm finally figuring out some strategies that appear to work as the Dracula player.

This game I started in Paris because it was about the exact center of where the Hunters started, which was generally Iberia, N Europe, and E Europe. I did this because I wanted a Hunter to find an encounter early in the game and hopefully pull the other Hunters towards the center of the map. It worked. I was three towns away from Paris, moving towards Italy, by the time my first dropped encounter was found in France. The Hunters in the Iberian and E European regions made haste towards France to help narrow down the search with the Hunter who started in N Europe. Now on the northern border of Italy I stopped dropping encounters for a couple turns as I moved into E Europe so that my trail wouldn't be easily followed.

Once in E Europe I was able to breathe for a couple turns, which I used to Pass and cycle my encounter set to get me some handsome Vampires. I managed to drop 3 of them in E Europe before the Hunters began to close in again, and close in they did. I nearly got myself cornered at one point but a handy Bats encounter and a Mishap event card kept the Hunters at bay just long enough for me to sneak south towards Greece. I again waited for a turn or two while the Hunters started to move south and west again. I used that opportunity to move back north and east behind the Hunters, and a few turns later I dropped enough Vampires to win.

So it was a Minor Victory for Dracula this time. I had gotten to one Hunter with a Bite, but didn't manage to finish him off or really do much damage to the other two. I maybe could have fought harder to kill the bitten Hunter, but the Hunters had been heavily cycling weapon chits and event cards, so I figured the combat odds were not in my favor and settled for the Minor Victory.

@Gary - I did a bit of reading (that review you posted) knowing next to nothing about the game since I posted that comment...

It's interesting...But I guess I wonder if that is good design or not?
What it sounds like is the anti-Kingmaking, but rather than picking a winner a player can pick to make everyone winners/losers/equals. What it sounds like is a legal board-flip.

Now, I'd like to play the game to experience it at least once, but it isn't something I'm rushing out for.

The notion of willingly tanking in Archipelago seems like a rare occurrence that is talked about often due to its possibility but not its frequency of actually happening. I'm sure dick players have tanked the game when it didn't make sense for them to (i.e. they were within reach of winning) but those are problem players that you wouldn't want to play any form of Coop or Negotiation game with.

Just theorizing here...
So it sounds like there's three outcomes: 1) Board wins; 2) Sympathizer wins; 3) Individual player wins

It sounds like there's a 10% chance per player that there will be a Sympathizer (that was glossed from a comment on BGG so please correct if wrong). So, with 5 it is at best a coin flip?

So, if I'm content with everyone losing and taking the chance that there's not a Sympathizer in play outcome, where's the incentive for me to not contribute nothing or as close to nothing as possible?

I have that phrased so poorly...Let me try this again:

Assume that I'm content with an everyone loses scenario.
Assume that I'm content with just taking whatever odds it is that there isn't a Sympathizer.

Would the strategy of contributing a little as possible in the hopes that I'll have superior resources to achieve my VP requirements be viable? Assuming that I'm alright with no one winning or a Sympathizer winning?

That does of course mean that I'm assuming the other players will contribute what is needed to prevent the board from winning, but that of course is what would give me my resource advantage.

This is a topic I find interesting that probably deserves its own thread, but here's the calculation I see happening in a game like Archipelago:

I tend to assume everyone plays within game, pursuing Knizia's winning the game objective (if they don't, this genre SERIOUSLY doesn't work). At any point in the game, you assess some probability of winning the game, with an uncertainty distribution around that assessment (e.g. 14% +/10%). That fluctuates depending on what is going on the game state, if you're getting your ass kicked, how far away you are from the end of the game, etc. In normal games, that number could go down to zero/close enough that a great deal of your uncertainty covers zero, but there's nothing you can do in these kinds of games besides rage quit, which I'm not considering as a possibility. You play to the end and try your best to win, even with a 1% +/- 5% chance to win or whatever.

In Archipelago, I've never played DoW, you similarly go about your turns with some subjective assessment of your chance of winning, looking into the future, when the game ends. The difference is that you can threaten other players to end the game or refuse to cooperate unless you get benefits. Unlike normal games, the chance to win the game can be removed (or strongly hurt) by players with a low probability of winning. So players assessing themselves in a strong position (large perceived % chance to win) need to pay off players not doing well, reducing their chance to win in the process and increasing the opponent's chance.

What is stopping players from continually threatening to end the game, then, forever? Why isn't this rational like BGGers insist? It's not rational because at some point it is cheap talk. Remember, we assumed at the beginning of this game that players are playing with Knizia's trying to win within a single game goal. Sure, a player with a perceived 95% chance to win can threaten to tank the game unless she receives side payments, but we call that "cheap talk" in the social sciences. The threat of "I will make myself lose" is not credible with other players, who perceive that the player herself has a decent positive probability of winning, so they would call you on it. Then, as a rational player who has a chance of winning you swallow it and chip in for crises, etc, no matter what you promised. So what's driving continued play is the idea that all players *losing* the game is a certain 0% loss, which only desperate players who perceive they are near 0%, or near the end with little uncertainty about the result, will perform.

I haven't done any game theory on this and it's not my specialty, but my guess is that in equilibrium all players threaten to not help with the game state till everyone perceives an indistinguishable chance of winning from one another. That's why it's important to introduce a great deal of uncertainty into a game of this nature (secret objectives, in this case). Also, this analysis is of a game where a player can literally end the game whenever they want, not just hurt game state like these semi-coops actually have. Every player knows how they are doing on secret objectives, so every player who is doing well on their secret objectives perceives themselves as in the lead or with a decent chance of winning. Which means unless someone really is sucking they will not credibly threaten the loss option---it is just cheap talk for players doing reasonably well to do so.

Also, this shows you why this game completely breaks with players who are playing irrationally (spite) or, more importantly, who perceive being forced to give benefits to losers as normatively unfair to them in boardgames. Lots of people are like this, so I could see it being a huge problem. Because no one is able to completely buy themselves into Knizia's "no metagame" ideal. And if there IS a metagame over many plays, torpedoing a game can have a benefit to a rational actor to gain credibility---it's no longer cheap talk, and they can keep extracting side payments.

The final twist in Archipelago that makes everyone more likely to not threaten to tank is the knowledge that any of the other players secret objective COULD BE TO LOSE. So if you tank, that could be playing exactly into what the other player is trying to get you to do and you have a definite loss and that player a win. Still, this traitor mechanic is *not* necessary for the game to not end in a table loss every game among rational players.

BTW, I am not this boring to play games with, and I don't really play in this cold, rational "manipulating ambiguity" manner. But I do find these games to incorporate a much more complex and subtle understanding of how to win and interact with other players. If you want to read the famous game theory treatise on some of these cooperation issues, read Robert Axelrod's book, The Evolution of Cooperation:

www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Cooperation...dition/dp/0465005640

Finally, notice that a game with no real side payments and little uncertainty makes this type of game less and less fun, (I think) creating a more knife edged equilibrium toward "threaten until you are exactly equal in everything."

Yeah, that was too long and I shouldn't have posted it.

I played Abyss last night. It is very good, and it fits in the exact same space as Small World in that it is without a doubt a "gamers game" but at the most simple end of that spectrum while also being colorful and stunningly gorgeous. You can't see it set up and not want to check it out, and you can learn it in 5 minutes.

The coolest idea in the game is that the action you choose most commonly (explore, which kicks off the basic resource offer) will allow you to push your luck and greatly improve your chances of getting better resources, but each time you do this, you're potentially helping your opponents by filling up the stacks in the council, or... whatever the middle of the board is called.

The only problem is that I don't know how much it will hold up to repeated plays. The deck of lords (powers which are attached to VPs that you're buying and are more or less your ultimate goal) isn't very deep, If you play two games you'll probably see every single one. While the powers are all fun to have, there doesn't seem to be too many opportunists to combo them and really feel like you've built something, and even if you have, once you get your third key (which are on most but not all lords) your powers are lost. It balances, for sure, but it sucks a bit of the fun out of the game.

I definitely want to play it more, and I hope it holds up. It could be one of those games that gets significantly better with an expansion.

VonTush wrote: I have that phrased so poorly...Let me try this again:

Assume that I'm content with an everyone loses scenario.
Assume that I'm content with just taking whatever odds it is that there isn't a Sympathizer.

Would the strategy of contributing a little as possible in the hopes that I'll have superior resources to achieve my VP requirements be viable? Assuming that I'm alright with no one winning or a Sympathizer winning?

That does of course mean that I'm assuming the other players will contribute what is needed to prevent the board from winning, but that of course is what would give me my resource advantage.

No it wouldn't be because if I could tell you were doing that I start saying fuck you and do the same thing. Or the rest of the table says fuck you and whoever wins first player starts placing you last thinking you're the Rebel. We also start refusing to trade with you, I don't pick your guys up with my Churches and I don't pick your guys up with resources. Now you're on your own and either missing turns or further behind.

Played BoB:GP for the first time, solo. It's amazing how as US in SE I had to suppress enemies and making careful advance while in GP as Russian I have to throw bodies because their firepower is crap. All with slight tweak in proficiency and firepower value.

Excellent post Gary!
So, it sounds like one of those "Above the Table" experiences which is always a delicate line to walk. I'm not a fan of the AtT games like Coup, The Resistance...etc, but this one sounds more interesting since it isn't just a 5 minute filler. I have a friend that owns it that I'll need to start pressing to bring up to game day...And a few more in a row.

Charles...It's good to hear that there are "checks" to prevent my strategy.

As far as Dead of Winter...Meh...I'll wait and see.

Last night I finally got to try Coup for the first time. I liked it, although not as much as I like Resistance. I also won a copy of it in a raffle and I think my group will enjoy it.

Next was Pack 'n Stack, which is a unique little game about stacking stuff into the back of a truck. While not unpleasant, it's extremely gamey and dumb. A filler between fillers.

Finally I got a 3 person playtest in for City of Lycans, which went very well. Lots of feedback to implement.