First Mentions on Usenet, 1993 - 2002

First review of Magic: the Gathering

Shawn D. Marier
Mon, Jul 26 1993

First there were card games, then there were collectable trading cards, now we have a collectable trading card game. When I first heard about this game a few months ago I was a bit concerned. I personally do not like trading cards and feel that for the most part they are a waste of money. So my feelings from the start toward this game were a bit negative ...

The game is quick to learn, and the starter deck comes with a small 36 page rule book. I learned the basic rules in about 2 minutes, and only needed to pick up the rule book for a few strange situations ...

The real nice thing about the trading card aspect of the game is that every time you play a new opponent you should get to see cards that you have never seen before. This will keep the game fresh and exciting, if not expensive as you try and find the perfect cards to defeat your opponents.

Over all I give this game a very high rating, the art is wonderful, the game is very enjoyable. Hopefully 'Wizards of the Coast' will come out with a collectors set in the near future so that us collectors of SF/Fantasy art will be able to see all 300 pieces of art.

First review of Settlers of Catan

Dirk Bock
Fri, May 26 1995

... The flaw in its design is, IMHO, that you do not have any control which tiles produce what, when, and for which player(s). This doesn't seem too bad at a glance, but due to the fact, that you may be excluded from the "valuable" parts of the board by not being able to build roads in the beginning, a player may become cut off from the race for victory quite early ... In our games such a situation, a single player losing after about half an hour and just waiting for the rest of the game (up to two hours), occurs in about half of the games.

I would describe the situation something like: you need skill to win "die Siedler", but you've got to have luck in the first stages not to lose it.

But apart from that flaw, which could, again IMHO, tolerated in a game lasting less than one one hour, Die Siedler von Catan *is* fun and satisfying to play.

First Review of El Grande

Jonathan Degann
Fri, Apr 12 1996

... There is considerable fun as you kick your opponents out of regions,
or launch a surprise attack from the "tower" (the 10th region) into
a region of your choice.

I enjoy it every time I play it.

First Mention of Gipf

Daniel Blum
Mon, Aug 18 1997

Mayfair had their usual range, including LOTS of Siedler items - Seafarer,
the card game, everything but the Seafarer 5/6 player expansion (and no,
I don't have any more of those, sorry). They had pretty good prices on
the Siedler stuff, too. They had two new abstract strategy games -
Balanx and Gipf. Balanx had a cute tilting board but struck me as a
gimmicky Chinese checkers variant. Gipf's box had mostly overblown piffle,
so I passed on it as well. Unfortunately there was no way to play either
of these unless one found a partner and rented a copy in the open gaming
area (Mayfair had a table in their booth, but it was occupied all weekend
by a huge 3D Siedler board).

First Comment on Princes of Florence

Greg J. Schloesser
Tues, Apr 25 2000

DIE FURSTEN VON FLORENZ: Without a doubt, the hit of the show.
Fabulous. Played twice and taught a half dozen other groups how to
play. Buy it!
Jay ... are you listening? Is it to late to release this one in
English?
Initial rating: 9

First Comment on Carcassonne

Carl-Gustaf Samuelsson
Fri, Nov 3 2000

We found a table and a German girl joined us for a test of "Carcassonne". An easy, but quite clever tile laying game. You build up a map with the tiles with roads, towns, meadows and monasteries. You try to control them by playing one of your 7 followers on them and when an entity is completed, you score it and take back it (if it hasn't become a farmer, which is scored at the end). We were sure it would be a great filler for the late game evening, so I found a copy for 23 DM.

First Play of Puerto Rico

Stan Hilinski
Tues, Jan 29 2002

I mentioned this on Spielfrieks, but a guy in a group was sick for about a
week, and since he had nothing better to do, he constructed a homemade
prototype of Puerto Rico based entirely on photographs and Mik's
description ...

Normally I'd say nothing here about the experiment. except for
one thing. Our lame wannabe copy of Puerto Rico was received with complete,
total enthusiasm. At our next Friday gathering, the original five showed up
just to do it again. I have not seen anything close to this since Princes
of Florence hit our table last year. It is all they want to play ...

Yehuda

Weekend Gaming

Most people just glance over these Weekend Gaming posts, so I can say anything I want and no one will know.

Books

Let's start with what I've been reading - actually re-reading. I always need to re-read once in a while anything by William Gibson, and Tam Lin by Pamela Dean.



Gibson is the writer we use to prove to the rest of the world that science fiction can first and foremost be good fiction. And Tam Lin is just something lovely and literate that strikes something in me. Soothing.

El Grande

For lunch on shabbat we hosted Nadine and Adam from the game group, Zeke who used to come to the game group occasionally, and some other nice folk.

After lunch we played the classic El Grande, which Nadine has wanted to play again for some time. Zeke didn't mind playing it either, and Adam had never played.

I started out not worrying about intermittent scoring, which left me behind a bit in points but better in position. So at the first scoring, I pulled out in front by about ten points. The others caught up some and then I pulled ahead more by the end of the second scoring round, about fifteen points.

It ended with another catch up and pull ahead, with me ending at about 106 to 93, 91, and 88 (roughly). Still pretty close, actually, although I feel I played pretty tightly, and area control games are my thing.

Go

Nadine then left to go to the shiur with Rachel, after which Adam and I would meet them to play Puerto Rico. Adam asked to play Go, which I was thrilled to oblige.

I had thought I was already advanced enough to graduate from the 9x9 board to the 11x11 board, but apparently I'm not. We started off giving Adam a two stone advantage and the game ended very closely. For a new player, he is quite strong. Some forced battles in the corner, and I lost with 36 points to his 45.

In the second game he only received the first move advantage, and aside from one wrong move on my part, I played a slightly better game. Of course, the one wrong move - not securing a double eye for a territory that I needed, but felt that I could just get later - was a fatal mistake. I noticed it immediately, and would have asked fro my move back, but I wanted to see what would happen. I watched for fifteen moves as he forced my moves in some other area of the board until he finally looked back at that location and then took the spot that I should have. So I lost again. Very nicely done on Adam's part.

Go is a great game.

Puerto Rico

We met up with Nadine and Rachel for Puerto Rico, still the best game in the world despite a wee problem of imbalance when a new player plays. Adam made some mistakes - perfectly reasonable ones for a new player - which resulted in Rachel being able to capitalize on them for some huge bonuses. I struggled along, but without much hope.

The strangest move was when I, with a Harbor, took Captain, which was practically begging for Adam to monopolize a coffee boat (he had a monopoly in coffee). I did this just to prevent Rachel from having continuous access to free boats in order to stop her from shipping her four corns every round. But Adam wouldn't bite, since he wanted to trade the coffee.

For a change, we tried to play with minimal advice given, which was nice.

Link

A forum site for tabletop sports games. Not that I've ever played any, or likely ever will.

Yehuda

Linkety link

Do you guys like these linkposts?

Deep thoughts on game design

1. Creating Passionate Users gets down on cognitive seduction:

Is Sudoku seductive? Is chess sexy? Is crafting code a turn-on? To our brains, absolutely. But while most of us don't use the word "seductive" in non-sexual contexts, good game designers do. They know what turns your brain on, and they're not afraid to use it. They're experts at the art of "cognitive arousal", and if we're trying to design better experiences for our users, we should be too.

2. Patrick Dugan's King Lud IC is aimed at that other genre of gaming, but his articles cross the fields. Same with Ralph Koster.

Strategy

3. A nifty strategy article about El Grande on BoardGameGeek. If their site was responding, I could provide a link. Update: it's here.

Mainstream Press

4. NYT article on Travel Blokus (signin may be required)

Usually my husband loves board games. He was the one, after all, who packed our Carcassonne tiles in a Ziploc bag to take along to France.

But Blokus rubs him the wrong way. He says he dislikes the very aspect of the game that appeals so much to the rest of us, the fact that winning requires excellent spatial skills. A successful player is strategic enough to envision various ways the 21 different geometric shapes could be linked together to keep marching across the board even as they block an opponent's progress.

Yehuda

A Mad Game Club

There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and Steve and Dan were arranging a game of El Grande at it: Tim was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using him as a cushion, resting their elbows on him, and talking over his head. `Very uncomfortable for Tim,' thought Alice; `only, as he's asleep, I suppose he doesn't mind.'

The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it: `No room! No room!' they cried out when they saw Alice coming. `There's PLENTY of room. El Grande is a 3-5 player game!' said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table.

`But we've already started,' Steve said in a petulant tone.

Alice looked at the board nearest them, but there was nothing on it but the castillo. `I don't see any caballeros on the board,' she remarked.

`There aren't any,' said Steve.

`Then it wasn't very civil of you to say you've started,' said Alice angrily.

`It wasn't very civil of you to sit down without being invited,' said Steve.

`I didn't know it was only YOUR game,' said Alice; `there's room for more than three.'

Dan opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he SAID was, `Your turn to play a power card.'

`Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they've begun playing.' And she lay down a 13 on the table.

`Do you mean to go first with that card?' said Steve.

`Exactly so,' said Alice.

`Then you should play what you mean,' Steve went on, laying down a 14.

`I do,' Alice hastily replied; then she looked at the card and gave a start. `At least--at least I played that card to go first--that's the same thing, you know.'

`Not the same thing a bit!' said Dan. `You might just as well say that "I win what I play" is the same thing as "I play what I win"!'

`You might just as well say,' added Tim, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, `that "I play when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I play"!'

`It IS the same thing with you,' said Dan, and here the conversation dropped, and the party played cards in silence and began placing caballeros, while Alice thought over all she could remember about winning at El Grande, which wasn't much.

Dan was the first to break the silence. `Who's winning?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken more caballeros out of his pocket, and was looking at them uneasily, shaking them every now and then, and holding them to his ear.

Alice considered a little, and then said `I am. My caballeros are on the board, and all of yours are in the teapot.'

`Last place again!' sighed Dan. `I told you the teapot expansion wouldn't suit the game!' he added looking angrily at Steve.

`It was the BEST expansion,' Steve meekly replied, pouring the caballeros from the teapot into the Castillo.

`Yes, but some crumbs have got in as well,' Dan grumbled: `we will count those as mine.'

Steve took his caballeros and looked at them gloomily: then he dumped them all into the castillo, and looked at the teapot again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, `It was the BEST expansion, you know.'

Alice had been looking over the board with some curiosity. `What a funny map!' she remarked. `It tells what year our caballeros live in, and doesn't tell what countries they are in!'

`Why should it?' muttered Dan. `Does your watch tell you what country you live in?'

`Of course not,' Alice replied very readily: `but that's because it stays the same country for such a long time together.'

`Which is just the case with MY GAME,' said Dan.

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. Dan's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. `I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could.

`Tim is asleep again,' said Dan, and he poured a few caballeros upon its nose.

Tim shook his head impatiently, and said, without opening his eyes, `Of course, of course; just what I was going to play myself.' And he lay down a 22.

`Have you won the game yet?' Dan said, turning to Alice again.

`No, we are only halfway through,' Alice replied: `how would I have won?'

`I haven't the slightest idea,' said Dan.

`Nor I,' said Steve.

A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many games are put out here?' she asked.

`Yes, that's it,' said Dan with a sigh: `it's always the middle of an El Grande game, and we've no time to put them away between whiles.'

`Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.

`Exactly so,' said Dan: `as the caballeros get used up.'

`But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.

`Suppose we change the subject,' Steve interrupted, yawning.

`I want a new turn,' interrupted Dan: `let's all move one place on.'

He moved on as he spoke, and Tim followed him: Steve moved into Tim's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the position of Steve. Dan was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice had a much worse position than before, as Steve had just recently thrown all of his caballeros into the bushes. Meanwhile, Dan was playing on a different board altogether.

Tim went on with his turn, moving his pieces onto and off of his spoon, for he was getting very sleepy; `and that's why all of the pieces in El Grande begin with an M--' he began.

`Why with an M?' said Alice.

`Why not?' said Steve.

Alice was silent.

Tim had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by Dan, he woke up again with a little shriek, and continued his turn: `--that begins with an M, such as Caballeros, Castillos, Cats, Cantelopes, and Cabbage patches. Have you ever won El Grande with a cabbage patch? Very difficult thing.'

`Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, `I don't think--'

`Then you shouldn't talk,' said Dan.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; Tim fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put Tim into the teapot.

`At any rate I'll never play THERE again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest game club I ever was at in all my life!'

(apologies to Lewis Carrol. From "Alice in Wonderland".)