Dice Addict

Speed Circuit by Mail

2007-08-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

I worked up some play-by-mail / e-mail rules for Speed Circuit earlier this year. I play tested them against my-self earlier this month, made a couple tweaks and I've now got a couple test subjects for my first real trial.

My biggest concern with this idea was that I did not want to have to go back to each driver after the plot to see how they wanted to execute the plot. So went into the current rules set I use and started taking out things that allowed for reactions and changes after the fact (like emergency braking). I also ended up taking out dice.

I did it for a similar reason, I didn't want to have people end up in unexpected situations that forced them to roll dice they hadn't planned on, forcing me to make them roll in the middle of moving cars, slowing down the whole process. Also, rolling dice is a suspense thing in games, really. But the suspense gets leached out for me when you're doing play-by-mail. So I took out the dice.

The result, I think, is that this will be a subtlety different game then in-person Speed Circuit.

I'll report back in a couple months when I expect this first race to be completed.

Taking Tiles out of Tikal

2007-08-10T07:07:00.000-05:00

I suggested a while ago that a 2-player modification for Tikal might be to take some land tiles out of the stack. My hope was that this would create more competition for scoring resources by making the playing space smaller.

I was a little concerned about upsetting other play balance issues, so I took out 1 blank land tile from each letter group (7 total). I think it helped a little, but was too incremental a change.

It did make the board smaller. However, there were the same number of scoring opportunities so it did not force increased competition. I think it made it easier to poach some scoring chances because everything was closer together, but it did force you to.

On the other hand, it made the game go a lot quicker.

I think next time we try taking a random tile out of each grouping (excepting the volcanoes of course). That way we will be making scoring opportunities rarer and thus increase competition.

2007 Speed Circuit Report from WBC

2007-08-07T08:48:00.000-05:00

33 drivers competed for 12 spots in the finals grid over three qualifying heats from Portugal (Estoril) to South Africa (Kylami) to Canada (Montreal).

Two first round heats were won by Seth Kirchner and Jim Fleckenstein. Franklin Haskell would pick up the first of his two third place finishes. All three drivers would qualify for the finals with these finishes.

Finals qualifiers from the second round included first place finishers Doug Schulz, Jeff Cornett (improving on his second place finish from the round before) and Doug Galullo, second place finishers John Welage, Mike Aubuchon, and Robert Kircher.

Qualifying in the third and final round were first place finishers Terry Schulz and Scott Cornett (improving on his second place finish from the first round), and second place finisher Dennis Nicholson.

The finals race at Suzuka in Japan had a full twelve car field of 7 first place finishers, 4 second place finishers, and the best third place finisher.

There was some significant bidding for pole on this track, with Jeff bidding 8 ½ for the pole and Terry bidding 6 ½ to gain the outside of row one. Row two was populated with Jim and Doug G who each bid 4 ½. Seth and Scott populated the third row. Doug S. and Robert qualified on the fourth row. Dennis and Mike qualified for the fifth row. John and Franklin took the last row.

This finals began with fireworks when Jim miss-shifted off the starting grid to lose precious space going into the first corner and Doug S stalled on the grid to fall all the way back to the end of the pack with a damaged engine to boot. On the positive side, Terry took command of the race early by exploiting his 100 start speed to immediately gain two spaces over row-mate Jeff and began his second finals race in a row from the lead.

Doug G and Robert found themselves in position to challenge early in lap one when Robert miss-plotted heading into the sixth corner of the race. The amount of wear and skill chips he expended to stay on the track greatly hurt his future.

Terry plotted an excellent first lap from his lead position and continued to put pressure on the trailing cars. Terry had a 3 space advantage over Doug G after ½ a lap. Doug G., who tangled with Terry last year, blew a top speed test on the front straight, then miss-plotted in the middle of the back straight as Terry gained greater separation.

Terry maintained at least a 4 space lead through the remainder of the race's check points with minimal wear usage. Terry had 5 wear left mid-way through the final lap.

With this year's champion racing off into the sunset, Scott and Seth fought a tight battle for second through the last two laps. Side-by-side coming out of the last corner, Seth achieved greater speed to gain second by a space. Jim and Mike passed Doug G. and then dueled to the end for the final plaque. Mike led Jim most of the race up to the end of the last lap when Jimmy out accelerated Mike for fourth coming out of the last corner.

John managed to escape a raucous back marker fight to claim 6th place and the final laurel for the race. Despite nothing but pride on the line, the final three cars of the field fought tooth and nail for position on the final ½ lap and stayed in a tight knot through multiple spins and stayed on track through multiple naked-chance rolls. Jeff crossed the line just ahead of Doug G and Franklin who had been stymied in his come from behind strategy all race long.

It was a particularly sweet victory for Terry, who had been close several times before and had lead the finals race in the second lap of last year before tangling with Doug G and eventually retiring.

Speed Circuit Tracks for WBC

2007-07-14T21:02:00.000-05:00

I'm ready to announce the four tracks I will run for speed circuit at the WBC.

The qualifying tracks will be Kyalami, Estoril, and Gilles Villeneuve. Gilles Villeneuve (Montreal Grand Prix) is a new track. I'll run that one Saturday. Haven't determined running order for the other two.

The finals track will be Suzuka.

Play Testing Speed Circuit Rules

2007-07-12T08:20:00.000-05:00

I had a practice run last night at the new speed circuit rules that I will be implementing for the WBC in a month's time.

In the end, there really wasn't much to it.

The slipstreaming from 0 mph mod is one of those things that seldom comes up and was less noticed being ruled out then when we had to deal with its existence last year.

The passing table was not actually rolled on last night, but its more of a re-ordering-for-integrity then a rule change.

The order of movement tie-break change went over very well because of the track markings. The fact that there was a rule tweak on that end might have caused confusion, but because no-one really needs to know the rules anymore the rule effectively becomes find the grey border to the track and that side goes first. That worked real well.

The first corner sprint rule seemed to make sense to people, but did not seem to have an impact in this particular race. We had an 8 car field, which is probably on the lower side that I'll see at WBC. The fact that the spaces go away after that first corner also did not seem to confuse any body this race.

More on these rule revisions (and the over all WBC rule mods)

The WBC

Last Speed Circuit Rule Change of 2007, Promise

2007-06-26T20:39:00.000-05:00

Last week I alerted Speed Circuit fans to the mods I plan to make for the upcoming WBC tournament. Well, I have an update.

I've got a small change to the last order of movement tie-breaker. I long ago replaced the old inside-of-the-track rule with an inside-of-the-upcoming-corner rule. Well, I thought of a mod to that. Now we will use an inside-of-the-corner-you're-in-or-the-upcoming-corner rule.

We will use the inside of the previous corner to break ties for movement until the last row of spaces with an arrow from that corner. If two arrows from different corners overlap, we will use the upcoming corner.

This may all sound very confusing, but it will not be because of my other great idea. I'm adding a gray bar to the side of the track that gains the tie-breaker to the tracks we will run at the WBC. So you really don't have to know this rule, just stay next to the gray bar and you can go first.

Tikal

2007-06-20T15:47:00.000-05:00

Lots of people know and love Tikal, its really a very good game and a classic example of modern German game design with the whole 10 points to spend on differing actions every turn mechanic.

As usual I will not bog myself down in describing the game, other people can do that:

Rainy Day Games

Board Game Geek

I've never played the auction variation because I play rarely enough that I feel I like I should just do the basic version. I've also not felt like I needed something extra with the strategy. That said, I have found that the 2-player version of the game can be a little lacking.

The problem with 2-player is that you aren't forced to compete as much with your opponent for temples (and treasure to a lesser extent). I think this happens because two people can very easily use all their expeditioneers to simply cover "their" half of the board. When there are 3 or 4 people you are almost forced to try to steal control of temples from others.

What's the fix for that? Making the board smaller seems like the obvious play. However, if I take tiles out of the mix (thus reducing the size of the board) I will also be reducing the the length of the game. I'm not sure what affect that will have, but it should be worth a try.

I'll keep you all informed.

Annual Speed Circuit Rule Update

2007-06-19T10:02:00.000-05:00

I've made some draft changes to the Speed Circuit rules I'll run at the World Board Gaming convention this summer. Included are an interesting tweak, a correction of a modification from last year, a table re-configuration (with minimal odds changes), and a tournament structure change.

The Sprint

The interesting tweak was a suggestion from Christine Hancock, who has raced at WBC for several years. Having witnessed in person the mayhem that is the first corner at the Indy F1 race, she suggested that all front straights should be effectively 1 space wider at the very start of a race.

I like it.

That said, some tracks effectively already do this. [ See Estoril, Hungaroring, Kyalami, Monaco, and Ricardo Rodriquez. ] So we need not add a column of spaces to the front straight for any track that already thins right before or in-side the first corner.

Slipstreaming Adjustment

Last year I increased the range of possible start speeds. An unintended offshoot of this is that you can now buy a 100 start speed, push it to 120 and have someone get a slip when the car in front was at a standing start the turn before. That seems a bit wrong and also brought up, yet again, the fact that you can theoretically get a slip if you spin out right behind a car that goes 120 or more the next turn.

So the adjustment is that neither car involved in a slip can be plotted 0 mph the turn prior.

Passing Table

Blame Darin for this one. He's been harping on me to adjust this for years. I resisted for logical reasons I've gotten over. The passing table is now configured the way all the other tables are: good results are low and bad results are high.

The raw odds on this table remain unchanged, but when the passer uses more skill chips then the passee the chance of a collision will go down. This is the part that bothers me a little, but like I said, I'm over it. Really.

Long Live the Semi-Finals

I liked the semi-finals we ran last year. I really did. I liked the smaller 10 car fields of the last two races. I liked the greater challenge (even though I became a finals spectator last year). But, we also saw a drop off in attendance. Who knows what the other factors were, but having a semi-final does up the commitment level required for the tournament. So, out it goes. I didn't like it that much.

Full Speed Circuit Rules for WBC on my Speed Circuit Web site.

MTG Proxy Ante

2007-06-14T12:33:00.000-05:00

I've been playing a regular Magic game for years with a couple friends. We're old school so we like playing with ante related cards. We also have a closed universe because we started burning out around Ice Ages. We combined these two elements into what we call Proxy Ante.

We all go in on a box of cards.

Then we start playing like we are playing for ante. You remember those rules: after you deal a hand you place the next card off your deck in the middle of the table, winner gets the cards. Except, for each card dealt into the middle of the table, we draw a card out of the ante box and place that on top of it. We are really playing for those cards... the proxy ante. At the end of the game, that card from our deck goes back to us.

So, this way, ante cards can be used but none of us risk losing really nice, expensive cards. Although we all do have the possible problem that a card we want and like ends up out of play in the middle of the table instead of in our hand.

The other aspect of this system is that it introduces new cards into our limited universe without causing the usual arms-race problems. All proxy ante is marked on its face to show that it is legal in our limited (Ice Ages and before) format. In order to spread the wealth a little, while also rewarding good play, the winner of a game gets first pick of available proxy ante, not all the proxy ante.

In fact, we recently decided to up the ante by dealing out roughly 3 proxy ante for each real ante. In addition to allowing the winner to pick first, the winner also gets more ante then the rest of the table, selecting one more card then the 2nd place finisher and 2 more then the 3rd place guy, etc.

Phantoms of the Ice

2007-06-13T07:30:00.000-05:00

Also known as Slapshot. This hockey game is (I think) out of print but is a fun game if you ever see it.

Card based, each manager draws cards from three different piles -- goalies, defensemen, and forwards -- until they have a complete team of 6 players. Each player is rated 0 - 11, with 11 being the best players. On each subsequent turn you have three options: a) discard a player to the bottom of his pile and draw a new player from that same pile; b) draw a random card from an opponent's hand then give that manager a player from your team of the same type; or c) challenge an opponent to a game.

The games are basically modified versions of war. Each manager puts one of their players face down in front of them and the highest number value scores a goal. Each game lasting only long enough to run through your hands once (6 cards). There are some other rules, but...

The season ends when one team wins 9 games. The basic rules then call for a 7 game playoff between the top two teams to determine the champion. With no opportunity to improve your team between games.

So, I played again last weekend and had two thoughts.

1) I continued to test my main strategy in this game: bruisers rule. There are a handful of defensive players that are marked as bruisers. They play like normal players except that whomever they are matched up against during a game must be discarded and replaced afterwards. My feeling has always been that this is crucial, especially during a long play off series. If you can pick-off a team's best players in the first couple games, they have no way to recover from that during the playoffs.

At one point during this game I had two bruisers at the same time. While that did help me tear apart the roster of the best team during the first half of the regular season, one of my bruisers was also a "0" player so he was also a liability. I lost him later in the season and ended up with a better rated defensemen and eventually won the championship.

2) We tried something new at the end of the regular season. the problem with the 7 game championship concept is that it makes the end of the game unfun for the rest of the people who played.

So we tried a playoff involving all four of us (something that is actually suggested in our copy of the rules as an alternative). We also shortened the series to best of 3.

This worked well.

Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix

2007-05-24T08:49:00.000-05:00

I've seen this game floating around for a while and never played. I'm a bit of a Speed Circuit racing game snob. Every racing game gets compared to Speed Circuit. I can't help it.

But Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix is much more like Formula Motor Racing then Speed Circuit. Speed Circuit is a strategic simulation -- its really trying to be formula one racing. Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix and Formula Motor Racing are card games with a racing theme.

I'll be honest, I liked Detroit-Cleveland Grand Prix more then I thought I would. The mechanics are pretty interesting. First you are dealt a hand of cards. All but three cards in the deck tell you how many spaces to move 1 or more of the 6 cars around a track.

Then you bid for the cars in the race. At the end of the race money is paid back out based on your finish in the race. Repeat three times, guy with the most money wins.

The game seemed fun to play and not overly complicated. But I think the keys to winning are a little subtle. Obviously you want to "buy" cars that you have good cards for. But everyone else is trying to do that too. It seems obvious that you want to pay as little as possible in order to maximize your value as well.

Now I've found that bidding habits will vary greatly when different people play the same game, but we tended to never bid more then $60,000 for a car and that was rare. We were playing a 3 player game as well, which probably changes the dynamic greatly as there wasn't a ton of competition for cars. (We each raced with 2 cars each). But the payout for first place is 200,000. Second is $150,000, third 100,000. Forth - sixth end up with very similar payout amounts. So you might save 30-40 grand by not going high with your bids, but the difference between 1st and 3rd is 100,000 so why be cheap with car bids?

At some level you would think that card play was the key to a car's movement. I think the key to the game is actually found in the track layout. Each track has two features that can end up impeding a cars progress.

First the track varies in width from 1 to 3 spaces wide. The 2 and 1 wide areas of the track can very easily end up getting clogged and blocked by cars. This is important because it can provide opportunities to use cards in your hand that may not appear helpful on their face because they would move an opponent's car a lot more then your car, but if that opponent's car is blocked, and it would not get the full value of that move, then that card can become very helpful.

The flip side of that is making sure that you don't get your cars stuck in those situations. One interesting aspect of the game is that you end up getting a bonus card when you win a bid for a car. The card moves that car and only that car 10 spaces. Most other cards will only move a car 5 or 6 spaces and usually will move other cars in addition. So that 10 car is a big deal. When to use the card seems like an interesting strategic choice. I think one thing to look at for high value cards is using them so that you can leap ahead or through potential bottle necks before someone else gets you stuck in them.

Another track feature to watch out for are the places on each track where you can end up using 3 or 4 spaces to go the same distance on the track as someone who only used 2 spaces to go that distance. This feature is not as common as the track narrowing, but since the player of the card gets to decide how each car is moved, its a no-brainer to move opponents' cars through the "slow" lanes. As with track narrowing, this feature can be used defensively -- using high value cards on your turn to move your car(s) past those situations before an opponent can move you through the "slow" lanes.

Finally a thought on grid position. Another aspect of the bidding at the beginning of each race is that the cars are bid on in a randomly determined order. The first car bid on ends up being on the pole and so on. But no car ends up more then 2 spaces behind the leaders at the beginning of the race. For me that did not seem like enough of a difference to waste much time on. Usually my cards seemed more then 2 spaces better for some cars then for others, so I tended to bid on cars based on my cards not potential grid position.

One complaint before I go: the rules do not indicate whether the amount of money each team has is public or private. It makes a difference if I know that my opponent is 50,000 ahead of me instead of just suspecting he is. Sure you could probably figure it out if your memory is half-decent, but mine is not. Either way, the rules should say what is intended there.

Board Game Geek page

Quo Vadis?

2007-05-24T08:36:00.000-05:00

I played this game for the second time the other night. Shockingly designed by Reiner Knizia, I've really liked this game after two plays. It does seem to play a little better with more people. We played with 3 the other night and 4 the time before. I think you can play with as many as 5.

The more people in play the more you need to negotiate with others to succeed and the more partners you have to use in negotiations. I think that feeds on itself to make for a better game with more people.

I don't have any complaints about the game and certainly do not feel like I've figured it out yet (a good sign, in my opinion).

Board Game Geek page

Mavel Dice

2007-03-28T12:59:00.000-05:00

The dice used in Marvel Heroes are pretty cool for those of us obsessed with these kinds of things.

They are all 6-sides but heres what each side has on it.
0, !, 1, 1, 1+, 2

There are 2 different rolls made with the dice. A roll to determine the Trouble Level of a headline and rolls in combat. For combat the ! is considered a 0, for Trouble Level this is a 1. The 1+ is the best part though.

During either roll, different factors indicate wether "dice boosting" occurs during a roll. If it does 1+ means 1 plus roll another die. (No it does not continue forever, the 1+ is just a 1 on the second roll.)

The effect is that when dice boosting is in affect, a 6-sided die is providing a lop-sided flattened bell-curve to 4 possible results per die (0-3).

The Trouble Roll curves:

The Combat Roll curves:

Report on Proposed Rule Adjustments

2007-03-16T07:54:00.000-05:00

I proposed a couple rule tweaks a couple posts ago. I've tested them in solo play, but I think the thinking is valid.

The 3-player game:
Having the troubleshooting player's nemesis draw 2 villan cards worked really well I thought to keep a good number of villan cards ready for any challenge. I wasn't sure about the number of headlines in play. I definitely think the number should be reduced from the game recommended 6, but wether 4 or 5 is the right answer, I'm not sure. I played both, but I think that certain scenarios may make the number appear different.

The 2-player game:
First, the good news. I think having only 3 headlines on the board at once worked well. With villan cards, I don't know. Sometimes it seemed that drawing 3 was too many. Sometimes drawing 2 seemed like not enough. I think I'd err on the side of drawing 3. Nothing so boring as an easy challenge.

However, I re-discovered / remembered a more difficult problem with the two player game: the story track really does not work in the two player game. The problem is that its too easy to end up with a story track that does not have any plot cards that match a team in the game. That makes story actions essentially, the chance to draw 1 resource card. With all the other options out there to do, I feel like that option is reserved for when you really have nothing to do. I'd often rather bring a hero back to the ready position so I can get an extra plot point next turn and have more options for positioning next turn then have 1 resource card.

In summary, I don't like the two player game. The 3 and 4 player games, however, I enjoy.

But, there's more. I also found one annoying thing about the scenarios. There are a series of scenarios that bring a super-headline into play near the end of the game, triggered usually by a certain point total. With the game ending at the end of the same round, this scenario goes almost always unused.

The problem is that, if I'm in a position to trigger the pt total I'm, by definition, winning. If that's the case, it does not help my cause to put a big victory point opportunity on the board. However, if I wait and deliver my coup de grace the end of turn 4 or during turn 5, then I don't have to worry about it, because people have to move to the headline and then trouble shoot it requiring at least 2 turns AFTER the point total has been reached to act on the headline.

I'd toy with the idea of allowing 2 bonus turns after the end of a round in this scenario. But the only actions that can be taken would be to move a hero to the super-headline or to troubleshoot that headline.

I did that once in testing. But have no real conclusions from the experiment. Most of these headlines are pretty tough and schemable and you can't have a supporting hero, so if you have to troubleshoot with only 1 hero its a long shot at best. You might even want to go with 3 bonus turns. Or maybe a whole bonus round but with that headline being the only one on the table.

Scotland Yard

2007-03-07T11:20:00.000-05:00

Great, old game.

The basic principle is that you are either a criminal on the run or one of team of detectives trying to corner and capture the criminal. If the criminal out-maneuvers the detectives around London for ?? moves, they win. Otherwise the detective(s) win.

Obviously, I'm glossing over how the game works, but its deduction type game. The criminal is hidden for most of the game but is revealed periodically and leaves a kind of trail in what forms of transportation the criminal uses, but not exactly where they went. The detectives can then make guesses and cut off particular routes.

One issue I always though didn't quite work with the game was that you were supposed to have each detective play their own detective on the board. But the number of detectives on the board is probably the biggest factor in how easy or hard it is for the criminal. So I've always played the game with a set number of detectives and everyone who wasn't being the criminal put their heads together to collectively move the detectives on the board. In this way, the game becomes anything from 2-player to what ever size you think is workable as a detective group.

I've been playing with 4 detectives on the board lately because 5 detectives seems just way too hard. Even then, its been a long time since I saw a criminal get all the way to the end with out getting caught. Its more about how long can you last as the criminal then winning.

Despite the fact that the box says 3-5 players, I've played it 2-player very well. One thing that's fun is to play back-to-back games against one other player, alternating who plays the detectives and criminal. Then you compare how long you lasted as the criminal.

I actually think that would make a good tournament at a convention like the WBC. But I'm too busy running Speed Circuit for 4 days to do that.

Marvel Heroes proposed fixes

2007-03-01T10:26:00.000-05:00

Something I forgot to mention about Marvel Heroes... like a lot of multi-player games that can be played with only two, it works much better with more then 2.

There are two things that seem most affected by multiple players.

1) There are only so many trouble shooting areas on the board at a time. Since that is the main way to win the game, that's pretty important. However, in a two player game there are still 4 troubleshooting opportunities (2 per) which is as many as you can realistically attempt during a single round. However, in a four player game there are 6 areas. That means not only that you may not get to attempt 2 trouble-shooting areas even if you want to, you may get your 4th choice on areas to troubleshoot if you go 4th that round. That's a decent difference.

Perhaps I should try restricting a two player game to only 3 areas to work with, that would be the same 1.5 per ratio as a four player game.

2) When you fight a villan, the villans come from the hands of your opponents. While the power of the villan you end up fighting will probably end up being the same regardless of how many people you are playing. If you are facing 3 hands of villan cards instead of only 1 you can see how that might make the villan a bit harder to handle. The way the game tries to adjust for that is to have your opponent draw 2 villan cards when a challenge starts instead of the usual 1. However, in a four player game 3 villan cards are being drawn every challenge (admittedly not by the same players).

Perhaps I should try having the opponent draw three villan cards in a two player game and have the nemesis player draw two cards in a three player game.

I'll report back when I get a chance.

Marvel Heroes

2007-02-28T14:41:00.000-05:00

I got this game for Christmas and have played it a number of times solitaire. Its not really set up for "competative" solitaire play, but its a fun play. I actually think it takes a couple times through to get the hang of some of your different options.

I've liked, but its not friendly for marginal gamers (people who aren't hard core, but are willing to play some stuff with you) who aren't into the theme.

Game for 2-4 players. Takes a while to play, probably 3-5 hours depending on the scenario plus a good 10-20 minutes to set-up.

Each player gets a team of super heroes, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Avengers, or Spiderman +. Each team seems pretty well balanced, but definitely has differences and there does not seem to be a lot of obvious plays for each team. Some heroes definitely seem better suited to difference activities but there don't appear to be any really broken stuff (other then Storm as a supporting hero, but its not broken enough to make X-men dominant in my experience). You also get to play the arch villan of the hero team to your right.

There is a lot that can go on in this game but most actions boil down to trying to collect victory points by troubleshooting, well trouble, or doing other things to collect resources to use later.

Each round you start by determining the status of your heroes: ready (primary actors) or supporting (cheaper with other options available), you can also pick up allies to aid you as well. Then you spend 5 turns moving, troubleshooting, or gather resources for later.

Troubleshooting is the main game activity. Most scenarios can be won by collecting a certain number of victory points and this is how you do it. Troubleshooting essentially means that you send at least a ready hero to an area of NYC where some trouble is going on and try to quell the trouble. This usually means you end up in combat with a villan. Combat involves first picking between one of three powers that emphasis either attack, defense or wits. Then you roll dice against the villan who has also made some power choices. If you end up winning you get victory points, if you lose, that super hero is done for this round and maybe out of commission next round too.

The key though is resource allocation, how do you deploy your heroes do you go for broke on difficult troubleshootings, do you spend a lot of time collecting resources and building up the team or more time out there troubleshooting.

Boulder Games product link

Dice Addict

2007-02-28T08:59:00.000-05:00

This blog will be about my gaming habits. I will post here when I can and specifically try to focus on games, game reviews, stuff I'm playing and stuff I'm toying around with in my effort to pull new games out of my imagination.

Will focus mostly on German style games but may also delve at times into my old love of RPGs and perhaps even farther afield. I will not talk about fantasy football here. I have another blog for that.

The posts below this appeared originally on The Porch v.2 prior to its recent cob-web state.

Can't Lose Dice

2006-03-27T08:53:00.000-05:00

For those of us who spent much time as youth playing with dice... here's a set of dice that you can't lose with.

explanation courtesy of Ivars Peterson

Puerto Rico for 2

2005-12-03T08:56:00.000-05:00

... the game that is. I Love Puerto Rico but my usual number of players for games is two. So J and I created a 2 player modification that I think works pretty well. (If you haven't played Puerto Rico, this post will largely be lost on you.)

Puerto Rico is by design a 3-5 player game. One of the things that made this modification relatively easy is that the set-up for play is different for each of the 3, 4, or 5 player options allowed for in the rules. So following the continuems in the rules we came up with the following set-up changes for 2 players:

Everyone starts with 1 doubloon.

The first player starts with an indigo plantation, the second player starts with corn.

Start with 45 victory chips in the supply.

Start with 3 face up plantation tiles.

Use the same roles as for 3 players (everyone but the prospectors).

Start with 2 colonists on the colonist ship and 45 colonists in the supply pile. (35 seemed like too few, we were always running out of colonists before things got interesting.

The final modification was stolen from San Juan (the card game designed by the same author based on the board game). Because you can't really take any of the fole cards out of the game and their play is crucial to flow. Order of play for a round is as follows:

The governor begins, selects a role and everyone plays as usual. The other person selects a role and everyone plays as usual. Then the governor selects a second role for this turn and everyone plays as usual. Then the round ends.

If using the expansion buildings, specifically the library, Allow the library to double only 1 privaledge per round. So the governor in a two-player game who has an occupied library must decide which of the two role's the governor will select this round will have a double privledge from the library.

Enjoy!

Odin's Ravens

2005-09-22T07:58:00.000-05:00

The verdict is in. I like this game. I remember liking it when I first played it a couple of years ago. I now have my own copy have played it a bunch lately and confirmed my recollections.

Description and review from the Games Journal

Essentially a two-player, race game the auxiliary hand and magic way give you two other ways to use your cards every turn other then the obvious. This makes for some interesting strategy and competitive play.