When I Turned 40

When I turned 40, I realized that everyone I had ever thought was smart knew and did everything that made them smart by the time they were 40.

And I realized that I was one of those smart people. I'm as much of an expert in my own fields as they are, or were, in theirs. What I thought was unobtainable skill and knowledge was only fortitude, attitude, and practice. When I turned 40, I was no longer in awe of anyone.

When I was younger, I never did anything truly ambitious because I thought I would never be as talented as those other people who did those kinds of things. When I turned 40, I realized that someday I'm going to think about doing something ambitious and realize that it's a younger man's game, not for someone old like me.

And so here I am, at 40, willing and able to do all of those things. No one else can do them any better than I can. And to think, some of you may be smart enough already to figure this out by 30. Or 20.

Now I realize why old people can be crotchety. They've earned it. By the time you're 40, no one else has the right to tell you what's best for your own good.

Session Report, in which I enjoy playing Magic and Le Havre

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Tribune, Le Havre, Pillars of the Earth + expansion, Magic: The Gathering x 3.

I enjoyed my games of Magic and Le Havre.

jergames.com

Ladies and gentlemen:

http://jergames.com is back in my hands (lost from my hands in Dec 2005). And I only had to ignore a dozen autobots that were promising to get it for me for $100 around the time it began to become available. I simply waited and it cost me $10.

Now to figure out what to do with it.

Yehuda

Board Games for 12: Pit, Battlestar Galactica

12 players generally means "split into three groups of four", unless you like party games, which many of us (at Friday night dinner) don't. But I still wanted something quick and slightly strategic to bond the group, so Pit is the natural choice.

I usually play Pit with two standard decks of playing cards, but I had acquired the actual game at some point so I decided to use it. Unfortunately, the actual game only plays for up to seven, so that meant Team Pit: pairs of players divide the cards and then not only have to trade but periodically coordinate. It works fine. it worked fine.

After that we played six-team Battlestar Galactica, a game I hadn't played yet (neither had half of the other people). My partner left before the game started, so it was 11 of us.

Battlestar Galactica is a good game for those that like that sort of game. I don't like that sort of game, but I didn't hate playing. I thought it was ok. The other cooperative games I've played were Shadows Over Camelot (several times) and Pandemic (once). They were, also, both ok.

It's a cooperative game with hidden traitors, where the traitors don't have to stay hidden long, unlike SoC where the traitor needs to stay unrevealed to cause the most havoc. It's also a dice rolling, card picking game. The danger of cooperative games with random elements where you "play against the board" is that it can feel like the game is playing you more than you're playing at all. And that's the way it felt here.

It didn't feel like what we did mattered very much; if we drew nasty cards, we were going to lose. If we drew nice cards (or nasty cards that simply didn't apply to our particular situation), we were going to win. Whoopde do. In our game, we drew nice cards and sailed along, and then some nasty ones, finally, when the traitors started revealing (including me). By then it was 3 hours after the game started, we were nowhere near ending, and we decided in favor of the traitors.

With ten other players deciding what to do on their turn, I fell asleep a few times. I had to wake up once in a while to toss in a skill card.

For those of you who like random elements and dice rolling, and some theme and hidden traitors, you'll probably like the game, as you pray that certain cards are not drawn at just the wrong moments.

Cardboard Games vs iPad Games: 7 Reasons Why Each Are Better

7 reasons why cardboard games are better than games on a tablet computer

Design Limitations

Any framework, no matter how robust, enforces design limitations. Companies will produce APIs for game design, piece handling, board creation, and so on, but no matter how grandiose, a designer will always be stuck in the thinking that the framework provides.

No one would have designed Mousetrap if games had to be on a flat board with pieces and cards.

To be fair, a limited framework can actually be beneficial to game designers, up to a certain point. By narrowing those things that are possible, you eliminate the overwhelmingly empty space that paralyzes decision-making. Otherwise, like Powerpoint for presentations, every game begins to look the same.

Changing the Game

The magical thing about games and play is that you can change rules, or give handicaps, whenever you want. Start the game without a pawn, add an extra row of spaces, or combine two games with jumping jack interludes. The point is the fun, and you control what you want.

A programmed game ensures that everyone, everywhere, plays by the same rules, which is great for worldwide competitions, but not great for creativity and spontaneity. Or for undoing a move.

Who Owns It?

As we all should already know, when it comes to digital products, it's no longer clear who owns the product. It's easy to trade or sell games. You own them; no one can revoke their license or erase them from your machine, and they won't disappear if you upgrade the computer.

Furthermore, you know that no one is tracking how many times you play, who wins, or what you do.

Speaking of Upgrades

With cardboard, the power, operating system, and so on can't crap out on you. They don't use electricity; in fact, every time I read a story about hurricanes or power outages, invariably it mentions families huddled together over candle light playing games. Battery life only lasts so long, and the same goes for compatible operating systems.

You Spent How Much?

You will probably save money in the long run if you buy many inexpensive games for your tablet, but the initial cost of owning a tablet is nothing to sneeze at. Cardboard and plastic are cheap. You can get a lot of games for $500, or even $100. And that doesn't include the cost of the games and hardware and software maintenance.

Resistance is Useful

Dexterity and skill games are not the same on a table, iPhone, or whatever, however prettily they simulate the effects. You can't gain marble-shooting skills without marbles.

Ooh, Shiny

While gadgets are cool, so are tactile pieces that stand up on a board. If you're going to spend $500, there are some awesome Chess sets that cost that much and are beautiful. And in two years, they'll still be worth $500 or more, whereas your virtual games won't be worth anything at all.

7 reasons why games on a tablet computer are better than cardboard games

Portable Game Library

One cardboard game is portable, but 1000 cardboard games are not. It's pretty cool to think of having the right game for any occasion in your game pocket.

No More Missing Pieces

A great number of games stop being played because the pieces go missing, or the board warps, or the rules get lost, ...

Infinite downloadability can be handy.

Computer Processing

Some of the best games take 6 hours to play simply because of the need to check charts, roll dice, calculate values, and so on. Figuring out all the paths on a board can take a lot of time; it would sure help if you could get the value of a route by hovering your mouse over your route.

Furthermore, you don't have to worry about messing up the rules or forgetting all of your options. Complex games often play in about a quarter of the time on a computer.

Of course, playing on a computer allows you to play with enhancements and features that you simply can't do offline. Terrain that changes, pieces with random abilities, timed effects, hidden properties, and so on.

Essentially, board and computer game hybrids. That's the cool stuff we've all seen in the promo videos.

Low Barrier to Publish

Getting a cardboard game to market is painstaking, time-consuming, and costly. You can spend upwards of $50,000 on print runs, and then still have to negotiate with distributors, retailers, artists, marketers, and so on.

Not all of these costs will disappear, but the Internet is famously a low barrier to game creation and distribution, which should equal a whole lot more designs making it to the public (and a whole lot of crap to sift through to find the good ones). Better yet, a game with a flaw can easily be patched.

Remote Players

As already proven, while nothing beats face-to-face gaming, it's nice to have the option of including remote players in a game session. A tablet game, reproducing the board in multiple locations, should make this possible.

Saved Game States

When you have 15 minutes to play, you're generally stuck with 15 minute games in the cardboard world. A tablet makes it easy to fold a game up to save for later.

Record Keeping

Detailed personal record keeping is automated on computer assisted games. Keeping records is not only an affectation, but an important element in thinking about how you "play against yourself" over time, rather than win or lose each game independently.

And, on the flip side of what I listed as a drawback for tablet games, when everyone plays by the same rules, worldwide record keeping, comparisons, and tournaments are possible, and you don't all have to travel to the same place to have them.

Session Report, in which we try Steam, and actually we all try out new games.

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Homesteaders, Robo Rally, R-Eco, Steam, Cuba.

I review Steam, and we all try out new games.

Board Games, Like CCGs, are Cardboard Crack

Ten years ago, hordes of game geeks left the CCG scene because it was "cardboard crack": it sucked away tons of time and money all to get the latest fix. The hordes turned instead to board games. Nice, simple, replayable, buy-once-and-it's-yours board games.

These same hordes spent the last ten year spending even more time and money to get the latest board games. Every year, they bought dozens of games, played them twice, once, or not at all, and then anticipated the next game and the next purchase.

The amount of time and money they spent over the last ten years on an endless series of newer board games probably equaled or exceeded what they would have spent on CCGs during this same period. The question is: who had more fun? Those that continued to play CCGs all decade, or those that denounced them as cardboard crack and went on to spend their time playing that endless series of board games?

Probably both teams win.

The constant need to buy what is anticipated as later and greater is called "the cult of the new". The best ten games of 2009 are not really better than the best ten games of 2000. For those that bought the best best games every year, the enjoyment came from the anticipation, the acquisition, and the new experience of each game, not from the solidity of the game itself. Familiar games, like familiar songs, electronics, or movies, may be nice, but they're familiar.

Was that really the best use of your money? Unlike songs, many movies, and some books, the best games reward reuse by being different every time you play them. (In fact, one game genre fits that description pretty well: CCGs.)

Of course, someone has to buy, play, and review the games for the rest of us to know which of those games are most likely to be the ones we'll want to replay. When do you - non-journalist - stop looking at what you don't have and enjoy what you have?

If the answer is never, at least stop looking down on others who enjoy the same thing you do.

Two Perfect Games for Two Perfect Groups

Thursday evening I roped one of Tal's friends into trying out Dominion. Tal had played once before, and her friend had played Magic once upon a time. They were looking bored, and it looked like the perfect pitch opportunity.

It was. We played with only the basic set, and I won easily. Then I heard from Tal this evening, while talking to her while she was on the phone at the friends house, how much he loved the game. I think there may be an immanent purchase.

Friday evening I had several guests over for dinner. After we ate some of them, the ones that were left were Nadine, Bill, and Shirley from the game group, Ksenia, a visiting Polish student, and Natalie, a visiting German student. I'd roped Ksenia into a few games so far, and Natalie claimed that she always won at The Settlers of Catan. I needed a meaty - but not too long - game for six players. Over Nadine's initial objections, I picked Antike.

First play for Natalie, Shirley, and Ksenia. We played from around 11:15 until 1:30 (I knocked the required number of cities down one from what was suggested, as usual, to a mere six) and it was a fantastic game; even Nadine ended up enjoying the experience. It was our first six-player game, and the first time that the "5 cities" cards ran out, which dramatically changed the strategies.

We played on the Arabian board. I had fleets sailing around Greece. Bill and Shirley bumped around each other around Saudi Arabia, and Nadine played cautiously in the middle out of Israel. Ksenia had the southeast corner in Africa, and Natalie the southwest corner in Asia.

We only needed six points. Nadine race ahead furthest to five points, but then got stuck. I wiped out her fleets and Ksenia took out all but three of her cities. Even after doing that, she still had a good chance of winning the last point, as was gaining a coin every round and had two gold producing cities remaining, which gave her the chance to get the bonus point at the bottom of the Know-How tracks.

Bill built a few temples on the sea, so I wiped out all of his fleets, in the hopes of getting to conquer them. I got one, and gained my fifth point. I was one round away from winning myself before Natalie won; well, actually Ksenia wiped out my second temple, so I couldn't get my third temple right away anymore, which put me back to two rounds from winning (build ships, attack Bill's other temple).

Natalie managed to avoid nearly all confrontations, and she never attacked anyone.

All in all, a fun, fine, and close game. The genius is that it is not the conquest, but the points you need to win. So when you lose things, like cities and ships, you adjust your strategy to another path to victory; you don't lose points.

I highly recommend the game as a better alternative to Risk.