Paradice: Art as a Game

Thought Jugglers

I received an email from Michael Sklaar, president of Thought Juggler. Thought Juggler appears to be a company that does in-house gaming combined with selling games, kind of like what SimplyFun does. In contrast to SimplyFun, I don't think Thought Juggler sells their own games; I couldn't figure out which games they sell.

Paradice

Anyway, Michael sent me a link to See Through Games, whose game is called Paradice by John O'Neill (BGG).

From the theme, the rules, and the beautiful components, it is obvious that this game is focused very deliberately as being art through the medium of a game. Your job is to either waste the forests and deactivate the forest spirits, or to bring the humans together, literally and figuratively, eye-to-eye. But your roles may reverse at any time, in which case you may suddenly find yourself winning from a formerly losing position.

As far as the game itself goes, there are some mixed reviews on BGG (mostly negative, I'm afraid), and the game is selling for $189 through eBay, which seems kind of excessive even for pretty components. Still, there are other games in the world selling at that price point, usually those aimed at the business market crowd (e.g. Cashflow 101).

Zertz

Saarya and I got in a game of Zertz after shabbat ended. It was a nice game.

I became concerned as the game began that there might be a readily understood "perfect" play for Zertz, wherein both sides simply avoid any jump opportunities until one person wins the game by virtue of placing the last ball. This is because any move that is good for you is really, in fact, better for your opponent. Therefore, you have to do the least damage on every move.

However, owing to the fact that the last player wins by placing the last ball, somebody has to disrupt this stalemate by sacrificing one of the less desirable balls early on in favor of disrupting this type of play. I think that if such perfect play exists, at least it is probably not going to be readily discerned.

In our game, we made a lot of cautious plays for a while. Eventually, I saw the opportunity to give away a white ball in exchange for isolating two balls, a white and a black, off a corner.

We exchanged another ball here and there, until I figured out a way to give away one ball in exchange for a four ball gain, again through isolation. I thought the game was in the bag for me.

Unfortunately, I left a board where Saarya could take two more white balls while giving me more balls that I didn't really need. Naturally, I hadn't seen that coming, and as a result, Saarya ended up winning.

Yehuda

Didn't We Agree That It Was Next Week?

Have you ever extensively prepared for dinner guests only to be informed at the last minute that you had gotten the week wrong?

If anyone in Jerusalem is hungry tomorrow night (or the next or the next), stop by for some food.

Tichu

Instead, Friday night dinner was just myself, Rachel, Saarya, and Tal. Since it was a winter evening, which meant an early dinner, we also finished early. I tentatively proposed to Rachel that we all play Tichu. She usually only plays Puerto Rico, which Saarya and Tal don't play, but she has occasionally played Bridge.

To my surprise, she agreed to try it, seeing as it was quick, she was in a good mood, and it would include all present in a mutual activity. Saarya had played once before, and Tal had played President and was certainly capable of playing this.

I only asked Rachel to play one hand to see if she liked it. After one hand, which was mainly working out the rules and kinks, she asked to play again. After that one, she said that she was finally getting it. We ended up playing four hands in total.

Tal liked it, and Rachel did, too. Not crazily, but enough that, at the end of game night if there is not enough time for Puerto Rico, she may be willing to be roped into a hand or two of this.

On the flip side, I think I've pretty much "got" the game at this point. While I foresee that I will continue to enjoy it, as I still do Hearts and so on, I don't know how much more "game" there is for me to learn about this game.

There's still no partnership card game like Bridge.

Zertz

The next day before lunch I tried Tal out on Zertz. She took to Yinsh, didn't take to Dvonn, and, like me, was not particularly intrigued by Gipf.

After two games, both of which I won fairly easily, she's not too keen on playing it again, and I'm still interested in learning more. My victories were, in both cases, more a result of her not seeing what I was planning than in any deep play that would ensure me a victory. I need to play some better players to see how deep the game really goes.

Game News

A year and a half ago bradley's almanac covered this game in a blog post, but for some reason it only showed up in RSS today. The game is What Shall I Be?, the exciting game of careers for girls, and it's quite instructive. There was a boy's version, too.

An article in Reuters about Go on the Internet. I'm not sure why that's new news.

And lastly, I want to share with you this advertisement from our local Jerusalem Anglo mailing list:

For Sale - Ideal for anarchist or revolutionary

Bedframe and several matresses for sale.

The frame is metal in good condition unfortunately,
but the paint has peeled off and there are some
encouraging signs of rust. There is a choice of three
mattresses, a spring mattress which sags in the middle
and two foam mattresses with somewhat torn covers.

This bed is ideal for an anarchist or revolutionary or
any anti-establishment sorts. A couple of nights of
sleeping in this bed will ensure a completely
different outlook on life, leading to greater world
peace.

I am willing to sell for a nominal fee, or will barter
for any books written by Marx or Engels, or anything
published by the Free Democratic Republic of North
Korea.

Thank you.

Yehuda

Zertz

Puerto Rico: Still the best game in the world.

Friday evening we had over two families: the family of a friend of my daughter, Tal, and Nadine and son. One of the son's of the first family was interested in learning a game, and Nadine and Rachel were happy to play Puerto Rico, so he got his first introduction to new games via Puerto Rico.

While Puerto Rico is the best game in the world, it's not usually my first choice for new players, as it is a little more complicated than some of the other games, especially the longish set up time.

Once the boy got into it, however, he loved it. Unlike usual, we kept Nadine in check a little; she has a habit of explaining and offering advice for most every move when a new player learns PR. I instead gave the bare minimum, explanations here and there about what the buildings do, and a few warnings about some egregious moves he was going to make. Other than that, he played, and ... won. Yes, 50 to Nadine's 49, Rachel's 43, and my 39.

I was thwarted on almost every move and got almost no cash the entire game. Everyone else was able to sell when I wasn't. Harsh. When this happens, even I admit that it is a bit of a failing in a game when despite good play, you can end up with nothing to show for it. Even Rachel began to feel a little sorry for me.

The boy's initial purchase as first player was a Hospice, and he won against good players, so that will teach you. It helps when all the corns come up early. I manage to get a Harbor, but the big buildings were all gone before I could get them, and so actually bought a Large Warehouse for the first time in a year or so (the Small ones were gone, and I couldn't afford a Wharf). Rachel and Nadine, both corn players, both got Factories, but Rachel was producing Coffee along with two others, while Nadine had a Tobacco monopoly.

So, still the best game, but not perfect.

When it comes down to it, there are two types of games: games where the better player always wins, in which case it's no fun because the other player has no chance of winning, and games where either player can win, in which case it's no fun because better thinking and playing offers no reward. Ipso facto, games are not fun.

Zertz: A terminating abstract game

Zertz is my fourth game of the Gipf series, a series of six modern abstract games by Kris Blum. All the games come in futuristic looking boxes with otherworldly landscape designs on them, and the pieces are marble-like plastic with a heft. his contrasts with most designers' abstract games where they aim for wooden or metal pieces.

Along with the six games, Kris tries to claim that the games can be played interlockingly and with other games by means of "potentials", which basically means taking the pieces and using them in other games. The whole idea is grand and ambitious, but essentially silly, in my opinion.

However, he does have these six abstract games, and of the four I've played, so far three are quite good.

The one I didn't like was Gipf, the first and namesake of the series. This is because the gameplay is rather pedestrian, without any real "wow" factor, but mostly because the game doesn't terminate. With correct play by both parties, players continuously add and remove pieces from the board, or move them around (like Abalone), wating for an opponent to make a mistake. If they don't no one can win. Nope, not good.

The first game that I played was Dvonn, and it's the one I like the best, so far. Dvonn is a strange game of filling in all the locations with stackable disks in the first part of the game, and then stacking them in the second part of the game.

The first part appears to be very random, although there are plenty of things to take notice of while you are doing it. The second is quite interesting, as the person who ends up with the highest stacks with their color disks on top wins. A few other interesting rules make the game deep. And the game is guaranteed to terminate, because each move reduces the playing field until no more moves remain.

The second game that I played, and the highest rated on BGG was Yinsh. Yinsh is a nice terminating abstract game which plays like Othello on drugs. Instead of only flipping your opponent's pieces, you flip all pieces. Every time you make a line, you remove one of your own controlling pieces, thus making it harder to compete. This auto-balancing mechanism works great, and the gameplay is very interesting. The game terminates if the board fills up, at which point the winner, or a tie, is determined. Although, in practice, someone always wins before that happens.

I played Gipf third, and didn't like it, as I mentioned.

The latest in my collection is Zertz, which I acquired Friday, and I mentioned in my last post.

In Zertz, the board is built out of a hexagon of disks. Each turn, you either add a ball to the board and remove a disk on the outside of the space, or jump a ball with another and capture the jumped balls. Multiple jumps occur, as in Checkers, so it is not surprising to discover that the game is quite like Checkers in tactics. Checkers on drugs would not be too far off the mark. (You know, where you force them to jump you so that you get two jumps in return).

Each time you place a ball and remove a disk, you are reducing the area, so the game works its way toward termination. When you jump, you don't limit any area, but you capture a limited supply of balls, and so that also works toward termination. And owing to the winning conditions and ball distribution, once all the balls are captured, someone perforce has won. So the game must terminate.

And it's a good game. It's closer to Dvonn than Yinsh. It has few pieces, but readable depth, so can involve some analysis paralysis, but since the game is limited in length, you simply accept the length of the game as such.

I like Yinsh, and it's a very good game. It has a bit of a "wow" factor, much more than Gipf, but not as much as either Dvonn or Zertz, which are games that start with a great number of possibilities and then diminish.

I played twice with Saarya. The first game he won fairly easily, and I despaired of ever beating him. But the second game I took a bit more time to analyze and managed to execute two "Checkers-like" sacrificial plays that won me the victory.

I'm not going to go into more tactics right now, as they were fun to discover, but I will probably go into them more in future posts.

Hmmm, I think I need to discuss terminating vs non-terminating games sometime.

By the way, you can buy all six games of the Gipf series at once here.

Yehuda

Secret Santa Gift Arrived, and I got ...

Yay! It was sent surface, which explains it's delay, and in fact it arrived within a month and a half, which is impressive. Even surface shipping, the shipping price was high.

The games are Mykerinos and Zertz. Here's hoping they live up to their reputation. Thank you for the gift, my mysterious benefactor (and I'll pretend to ignore the name of the sender that was slipped in the box ;-) ).

We have a lot of kids this week, and guests for Friday night including an entire family and Nadine and son. Might get to a game after dinner, we'll see. In any case, I'll be reading the rules for the new games.

Speaking of reading rules for unplayed games, I have one other unplayed game, Middle Earth CCG. I bought the ten box of starter packs challenge decks. The small rulebooks included are fairly inscrutable, so I need to find a better explanation somewhere. Ah well, I'm still going to be working on Netrunner for a while, so it can wait.

And last, Rachel shows signs of weakening regarding playing Go with me, so she may yet give in. I expect that if she does, she will surpass me in very little time.

Shabbat Shalom,
Yehuda