Session Report, in which I confirm that It's Alive is fine the way it is

The latest Jerusalem Strategy Gaming Club session report is up. Games played: Havoc, Power Grid, It's Alive x 2.

We enjoy Havoc after a break, and I try a few variants for It's Alive, only to discover that the game is fine the way it is.

10 Spoof Board Game Commercials

To make a spoof commercial about a fake board game, all you need is a basic idea and a little artwork; the jokes and bad acting write themselves.

Mush Mouth - Stupid game ideas like this actually exist in the recycling bins of game publishers.



Number Scrabble - Demonstrating that obvious adaptation ideas don't always work. Letter card games that play like rummy are no better.



Smack the Lion - Those wacky Japanese.



Grand Theft Auto: The Board Game - Applying real world violence to a board game is a little too obvious.



Communist Monopoly - These guys had a similar idea a decade earlier than GTA, and it still seems fairly old.



NAMBLA - This one is probably offensive to most people, as is the organization.



25 Years to Life



Muttonopoly



Chess For Girls - One of several board game commercials done by Saturday Night Live. Actually makes a decent point.



Ball Buster - This was a real game, believe it or not. I don't think the commercial is a spoof.



Blackout

To make up for the previous entry which was a real game, you can view Blackout. It's a little too racy for my blog.

Greatest Quotes from Soccer Players

My favorite: - Fussball ist wie Schach, nur ohne Würfel. (Football is like chess, only without the dice.) - Lukas Podolski

source

Puerto Rico With a Few Switched Buildings

Rachel, Nadine, and I played a game of Puerto Rico with a few of my lesser played buildings in place:

- Aqueduct: I find this building problematic. It is too powerful, dominating the the shipping game early on. And it also makes the game less interesting, providing only one real avenue for winning success for the player. Which bugs me.

As a result, I changed it to allow either extra indigo or sugar production but not both. But I couldn't convince either Rachel or Nadine to use this change. They said, "what harm could it be to play it as it's written?" I agreed to let them try it for one more game.

Guess what? Rachel played it, and, despite playing against a tobacco monopoly, a coffee monopoly, and both of us having Factory and Wharf, she dominated the game, winning 67 points to 53 and 50 points. I rest my case.

- Bazaar 2/1: Return a VP or barrel to gain an extra colonists (Mayor) / Return a colonist or VP to gain an extra barrel (Craftsman) / Return a colonist or barrel to gain an extra VP (Captain).

This is a difficult building to use well, but I used it pretty well (I lost the game anyway, so maybe not well enough). I took Mayor a number of extra times in the early game, and then traded them for extra barrels and VPs in the later game.

- Salvage Yard 3/1: +1 doubloon / barrel tossed out (except corn). Rachel used this to good effect once, earning 5 gold (with that Aqueduct). Once was enough. It's a nice building if the other buildings aren't unbalanced.


I also played the game Griddly Games: Baseball, sent to me by the publisher to review. That's an upcoming post.

Yehuda

Some Thoughts on Solomon's Stones

Solomon's Stone's is a simple abstract game from Solbenk. They sent me a copy to evaluate and review, which I did. My take was that it looked like a nice game for casual players and non-gamers, but held more interest as a puzzle for gamers.

Rules Review

On your turn, take any number of stones from a single row or column. Last person to take a stone loses.

First Analysis

Our first idea was to look at smaller triangles of size N. I.e.

O

(N = 1)

O
OO

(N = 2)

O
OO
OOO

(N = 3)

and so on, trying to solve the simpler patterns. Clearly, if a game of size N is a win for the second player, then a game of size N+1 is a win for first player, who removes the largest row or column, thereby reducing the game to N.

Game N = 1 is a win for second player.
Game N = 2 is a win for first player, who reduces the game to N = 1.
Game N = 3 is a win for first player, who takes stones A1 + C1 (top and bottom left on above diagram).

This didn't seem to be forming any patterns; N = 4 was not immediately obvious. One of my group members claims to have solved N = 4 and N = 5 as first player wins, but I didn't hear any more on the subject. That was a month ago.

The publisher wrote to me that some people tried to solve the game using symmetrical moves, but that this wasn't ultimately successful.

Second Analysis

I thought a bit more about it this weekend.

Let's start with some new terminology. A(N) is an arrangement of N pieces on a Solomon's Stone board such that all N pieces are on different rows and columns. E.g. for A(7) there is only a single possible arrangement:

O
XO
XXO
XXXO
XXXXO
XXXXXO
XXXXXXO

The stone in row 1 must be in column 1. The stone in row 2 must be in any column that the stone in row 1 doesn't occupy, which must be column 2. And so on.

For A(6), there are 127 possible arrangements:

I. There is one solution for A(6) if the stones occupy the first six rows, and it looks similar to the above diagram.

II. There are two solutions for A(6) if the stones occupy rows 1 through 5 and row 7. Row 7's stone can be placed either in column 6 or column 7.

III. There are four possible solutions for A(6) if the stones occupy rows 1 through 4 and rows 6 and 7. If row 6's stone is place in column 5, row 7's stone can be placed in column 6 or 7. If row 6's stone is placed in column 6, row 7's stone can be placed in column 5 or 7.

The pattern is now obvious. For the shape:

XO
XXO
XXXO
...

The first row has two possible choices. For either choice, the next row has two possible choices. And so on, leading to 2^N possible arrangements.

Continuing from above,

1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 + 64 = 127 (or simply 2^(N+1)-1)

First player loses for A(odd), while second player loses for A(even). One winning strategy is therefore to force your opponent to play an A(odd) position. If you see a position which can be reduced to A(odd), you win. Let's call this position R(1). R(1) is a position that can be reduced in one play to A(odd). All A(even) positions are R(1).

You should not leave your opponent in R(1). In fact, you want to try to force your opponent to leave you in R(1).

Unfortunately, I believe that a savvy opponent should always be able to, rather than leave you in R(1), remove a necessary stone for your A(odd) configuration. Seeing as there are 127 possible A(6) configurations, not to mention A(4) and A(2) configurations, you may be able to set up a fork situation, so that your opponent cannot block both A(even) positions at the same time.

At least, this is where I got to in my thinking over the weekend. With a board as small as Solomon's Stones, it's possible that I'm overlooking a simpler solution.

Yehuda

Shavuot Coming

Tonight and tomorrow are prep time for the Jewish holiday of Shavuot starting tomorrow evening. Literally "[The Festival of] Weeks", practically it's a one day (two days outside of Israel) festival of dairy products, flowers, staying up all night learning, and reading The Book of Ruth.

No gaming this past shabbat.

Yehuda

P.S. Requesting a reminder of where they would be meeting, Tel Avivs Tal Aviv tells Tel Avivs Aviv Tell Tel Avivs Tal Aviv tell Tel Avivs Tal Aviv Tel Aviv Tel Avivs Tal Aviv

Roundup: Three Years of Twenty Third Week Posts

How I Plan to Take Over the World

A parody of Frank Ohara: Talking to Monopoly

How I Became a Professional Blogger; at least, I was a professional blogger for several months. Maybe I will be again, someday.

24 Reasons to Live in Israel

Top Ten Boring Things in Top Ten Lists