Barnestorming #15- Smallworld: Underground in Review, Black Swan, Work for Love Hot

I like Smallworld alright, but I have zero interest in having multiple versions of one board game for *any* board game I can think of. Give me one game with tons of variety rather than a choice between two different versions of the same game. This seems to mostly be a Days of Wonder thing: see Ticket to Ride & spinoffs.

I'm not complaining, 'cause I just won't buy it, just saying that this kind of thing has far less interest for me than a real expansion would, especially since they have to include a bunch of *very* similar things to the base game in this expansion (races that are identical to powers in the base game, and vice versa).

I too would love to see Keyaerts just cut loose and go wild with the powers, but my feeling is that that isn't going to happen, 'cause there's too little wiggle-room in the "costs" of the powers (i.e. basically the number of tokens you get), so BGG would be in an uproar about "balance issues".

I don't understand how there was even a Dungeon Siege 2, let alone 3. These aren't games. They're screen savers.

I've been really surprised by the lack of Chaostle talk on the forums. The first I heard of it was on Wired's Underwire blog.

I am a lot more interested in Chaostle than anything Smallworld, so this caught my attention:

"Chaostle. Listen, I was playing this game last night and this mage was having the worst luck. She fell into a shark tank, wound up having to gift everybody else an upgrade, and got some bad vibes. She had a sharp turn of luck while fighting a Unicorn, however. She rolled to use her time warp ability, went into the future, and brought back a nuclear warhead that does 300 damage. Unicorn had like 35. It was freaking awesome."

A great bit of narrative: I love 'TURNS OF MISFORTUNE' like that. What I am wondering, though, is will the nuclear warhead thing, and other twists (which truly sound awesome) be funny more than once ? As a GAME does Chaostle have legs?

Me personally, I'm a pushover, I'll play anything. I love playing made-up games with my three-year-old son (last episode was kermit the frog action figure taking on and then befriending Heroscape monsters). Everybody won.

But Chaostle... I dunno.

A couple of reviewers on BGG wrote nice things about it. Then it was skewered (in a kind of wish-washy way) by undead viking video guy.

Sorry!...Parcheesi... plastic guys and 3-D levels... is it worth it?

What I have read about Chaostle is that it is alot lighter then Dungeontwister.
Some describe it as a roll & move mixed with chess. My bet is that it is too random/light for me, but it "looks" like a fun game.

I played SW:UG a week or so back and found it pretty good. Every time they add something new to the SW system I keep thinking it edges to being too much and ruining that simplistic core, yet they keep pulling it off and making it very interesting.

The relics and locations I really like because it makes the game more combative and aggressive. Instead of just finding and filling the easiest spots you have to go after these special items/locations otherwise the players that control them will start to pull ahead.

For me though, I really wish the games could combine a bit easier. I would have rather seen this released as big box expansion rather than making it a whole new game.

Dragonstout- I hear you. But from a business case perspective, it makes more sense for DoW to another full game. I've railed about all the T2R variations, but the fact is that it's a better sales proposition for the kind of customer they reach to do a new version rather than an expansion.

THe thing is, when games have multiple expansions it can actually be a barrier to purchase for someone coming into a game fresh. There's a sense that you've got to buy the base game and then all of these expansions to get current with it. With a complete, standalone game, it's easier for the newbie to say "OK, I'll take a chance on this current edition of the game.

AEG did this with Dragonspire for the Thunderstone line. And really, that's the model for Dominion too.

I agree with you- Smallworld, if anything, needs to get a little unbalanced. IF it had more of the wildness of Cosmic...

On Chaostle- Yeah, I think it's disappointing that more folks aren't talking about Chaostle. In some ways, it's this year's Magical Athelete. It's got that "worst game/best game" duality going on, it's roll-and-move, and it's incredibly simple.

But Scissors has a point, its longevity is sort of suspect and since it's so expensive ($80) it does have something of a question mark. I think it's a game my HFC gang would play fairly frequently, provided playtimes can come in around an hour. Which I'm not really sure they can with a large group, which could be an issue since it's not a game you want to play for two and a half, three hours.

I think it is a _great_ kids game though, defintitely.

As for comparing it Dungeon Twister/Chess like David suggested...not even close. Not even on the same pitch. It's barely a "hobby" game at all. It bucks so many conventions of "hobby" games it's not funny. It really is more in line with Parcheesi, Aggravation, or Sorry! But you've got upgradeable characters with multiple weapons, three skills each, and TONS of asswhipping. The brutal, return-to-start kind too.

It does some really neat things though, like how there's not special spaces on the board apart from this magical healing frog. All of the "special spaces" are handled with the die rolls and the Doom/Happiness charts. There's also an interesting checkpointing mechanic that keeps you from dropping all the way back to the beginning of the game and the upgrades are simple to grasp and worth pursuing...which means PVP. It also does away with needing any kind of counters, cards, or other administrative aids. All you need is the character card and the miniature.

I love it, but I do wonder about its legs in terms of repeated, frequent plays. It's more like the game you pull out quarterly and everybody says "oh hell yeah!" whent it appears.

I actually do like Chaostle, but a ton of folks aren't. Here is the design document for the game:

1. Start with Parchisi. 4 pawns per player, die for movement, capture and send back pawns you land on to start.
2. Add the house rule/variant for Parchisi where a pawn is sent back only part of the way when it is landed on.
3. Split movement in half so that half of the players are going clockwise, half counter clockwise.
4. Split the single parchisi path into 3 seperate paths. The shorter paths have gaps in them which require specific rolls in order to progress. Ensure that you can jump between paths every so often.

So far, it is a kind of abstract-y Parchisi variant.

5. Replace "land on" combat with a wacky 1-4 round combat system where you can attack another pawn within a certain weapon range. (Each character has 6 weapons with fixed range and damage. Once combat starts, roll a D6. If in range, you do damage.) Combat is quite simple, and functionally interesting.
6. Give each character 3 powers. Powers vary from extra damage or armor against certain classes to...throwing balls of dragon spit.
7. Add a funky table. Whenever someone throws a 5, they roll on this 8 page table. Something good or bad happens at random to that character. Some of the outcomes are extremely extreme, like someone steals your character. Or lose 1-6 turns.
8. Add a weird endgame thing where the first to arrive at the finish then has to spend 5-8 turns beating down the inner bailey wall to win.

It is the kind of game designed by someone who completely missed the last 20 years of progressive game design. Crazy, random, massively overproduced. Also, way too long at 2 hours. But rather stupid fun in its own way. Kind of like the Insane Clown Posse game.

(I hold that game in AMAZINGLY high regard. It is a nearly flawless distillation of core Talisman, simplified. And then amped with doses of ITP weirdness. For all of the horror of ITP's music, and the annoyance of the Juggalos, ITP has this oddly ornate mythology and characters than run through their stuff.

Even from a business perspective, the strategy stumps me. If you're shooting for the casual player who doesn't want to buy expansions, then surely that player also just wants one game, in which case you're just competing with your own game. I mean, the reason I'm not buying it is not out of some "principle", it's just complete lack of interest, and same goes for the Ticket to Ride spinoffs and Carcassonne spinoffs. I bought a couple expansions to Carcassonne, but I had zero interest in buying Carcassonne: The City, or Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers, etc., and the people I know who DID buy those, DIDN'T buy the original base game, so it's not like the game company made more money by putting out a million base sets. I know that Tom Vasel and other vocal people at BGG have like every Ticket to Ride version, but that seems like it's just a very vocal minority, and that most everyone is just choosing one single Ticket to Ride game.

But I guess it works for Hasbro and Monopoly & Clue & Risk, and that's even more surprising to me, so obviously I'm clueless about what sells.

In Ticket to Ride's case, it is valid to have more than one version...the base game is *perfect* for casual gamers. Just perfect. Then Europe is great for the "tweeners", those who have dabbled and want a little more than what the base game offers.

I plan on reviewing Small World: Underground in another week or two. I like the base game a lot (as I liked Vinci as well), so we'll see how the two measure up to each other.

Am I the only one who remembers that Everyday is Halloween was THE hit (or at least "the heavily promoted track") off that first Ministry record? Maybe it was a midwestern thing (I was living in Milwaukee at the time), but that 12" got *big* club play back in the day. The rest of the album was considered forgettable *back then*. That record holds up the test of time as well as any of that 80s synth pop does--not particularly well save as a time capsule snapshot of pop music at the time (ok, maybe save Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio," which will always be weirdly entertaining, at least to me)

I can see Underworld being a game for people who don't own the game, but play it every now and then. You might want to buy your own just to have it, but at the same time feel stupid for buying exactly the same. Tada - Underworld.

I've only tried Small World once on an iPad, but if I was to buy it I would consider Underworld simply because one of the guys I game with already own the base set and several expansions.

I saw Choastle at Gen Con. It is a beautiful game, but based on moofrank's description, I will likely pass. Hopefully I'll get a chance to play someone else's copy at some point, but I think this one would become a shelf toad at my house.

I just watched Black Swan last night and really enjoyed it. I was expecting something different (because I was going on snippets of info as I avoid most reviews and preview info), but thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the actors gave great performances. It may have been a little heavy handed with the metaphor of the story, but I still would recommend it as worth watching.

Barnes is right about Chaostle, Mr. Grant, in my opinion. It's a really, really Ameritrashy adventure through Sorry land. There's so much awesomeness in the box I cannot imagine how it can't be the hit of the year. Guy's sold 1000 copies of his 5000 copy original print run, and he's got an expansion on the way for Christmas.

Bits are awesome, gameplay is awesome, and with the fixes to the doom results so that you don't get stuck forever with bad dice rolls (looking at a tank-top wearing guy with a umbrella-toting pineapple glass) the game is totally wicked.

Not a super-thoughtful game, not a super-stupid game, but it's fun as hell. WAY better than Quarriors.

Seriously, you like it that much Pete? How does it rack up against games where roll & move, chance, and maybe PVP play a role?

I'm thinking Talisman, Prophesy, Tales of the Arabian Nights?

what's wrong with quarriors?

Mads- that's an interesting point. I've not thought about "standalone expansions" from that angle, but thinking like that (where you offer the guy that played someone else's copy of the original game another entry point that doesn't duplicate his friend's purchase) makes this particular release model even more sensible from a business case perspective.

That likely explains the rationale behind the T2R editions as well. Someone that doesn't want to buy the same T2R that their friend has might go for Europe or Marklin or whatever instead.

Dogmatix- I mostly remember "Every Day is Halloween" as a goth-pandering, silly, pre- Thrill Kill Kult track that isn't very good. It was right before "Twitch" though, when Al fell in with Adrian Sherwood and he made Ministry sound like, well, Adrian Sherwood.

Chaostle might be on my GotY shortlist. I like it that much. I love how it completely laughs in the face of modern game design, it's got this whole idiot/savant thing going on, and you can fall into a shark tank. It really challenges the idea of reviewing games from a very critical, academic perspective because it's not critically appealing or academic at all. It's just fun.

It does definitely need to be shorter though, I think I have a fix for it. Go to three staircases, not all the way around. It cuts off about an hour in a four player game, I think.

Again, Mike's right. It is a hair on the longish side, but honestly, it's not "too long" because it's fun the whole time; the problem is that you need to set aside time to play it. Our 5P game lasted just under 4 hours for a "first time".

It is a mutant lovechild of Sorry (the running in a circle to the end, trying not to get gaffled along the way), Talisman (Spells, powers, player interaction, common goal end-game of defeating the Chaostle), and Tales OTAN (because of the strong, funky-ass narrative). It's just fun. Don't know why I like it so much, but I was rolling the whole time. I mean...bad shit happens and it's bizarre how it turns out. It's funny, fun, and the only flaw, as Mike said, is that it can be a little on the long side.

It has been changed since the original inception, too, from when Frank played it. One of the main flaws was that you needed a roll to escape a shark tank, snake pit, or other foul device, and if you had shit luck, you could literally be stuck for an hour. This changed with the upgrade (which is downloadable and also in the new boxes) which mitigates that luck factor to the point that it's not certain doom.

Also, you don't have just one guy. You draft a pack of 3 adventurers (or less, for more players) to roam around the board. So it's not like if one guy gets hosed, you're sitting, dick in hand, complaining about boredom.

The idea is, in short, that you can either go the long way on the printed path or push your luck and take the stairs. You can only jump across chasms to spaces on the same level (height off the board) and so you need to roll that number or higher to make a jump. In some spots there's 1-space jumps that you need to land dead on or "leapfrog" over.

Then there's combat, and special powers...

It's just insanity. It's a blast, man. You just can't go in expecting to play Settlers or something, you have to go in knowing you're writing your own MAD Magazine/Mad Libs story of adventurers doing adventurous shit in an adventurous place. If you buy into that, you're going to have fun.

Three staircases would work.

There are some things that are great about Chaostle. It strips the non-interactive aspects to very simple: move this far, and random thing Y happens to you.

Thus, the actual game focus is on the encounters and raw attacking each other. And then it gives you multiple characters to deal with those options.

It is a weird inverse of the Talisman model.

That said, Sorry is not a bad game. Just way too long. The partnership Parchisi/Sorry update called Dog is actually a GREAT game. Roll and moves never get their due around the Euro or AT crowd. While there are a vast yawning abyss of terrible ones, there are quite a few good, and some outstanding ones. (Fast Food Franchise)

Quarriors is just random. It's OK, but it's like this:

Roll white dice and brown dice. White = money, Brown = Re-roll a die or Monster. Monsters help stave off others' attacks if they buy a monster with their rolls.

The problem is that it's too repetitive, and all of the "what do I buy" decisions are completely obvious.

It's OK. It's not bad, terrible, going to slash my eyeballs and pour iodine in just to stay awake bad, it's just not all that compelling for a guy like me. A lot of people liked it, but I wonder how many times it's going to get played before all those really cool dice get put back in the tin as another $50 wasted.

The biggest beef I had with it, really, was that the dice numbers are really small. I mean, I have excellent eyes, even for reading, and 2 T&T's in I had a little trouble with seeing the "2" digit in the middle of the yellow Vortex dice. It's akin to giving a red-blue color-blind guy some 3D glasses and expecting him to be able to see everything really clearly.

Frank, I'm all about Dog...that game is excellent. Definitely recommend folks pick up that one.

My take on Chaostle is influenced by my exposure to it at Trashfest--gorgeous, eye-catching, cool theme...but then I remember Steve Avery wandering by our table, telling us he'd been forced to miss six turns and had been out of the game 45 minutes so far. Uh...

I told him about that at Origins, Ken, and he said he SAW that here at F:AT and fixed that problem with the "amendments" that I talked about.