So that was Winter Stabcon 2014 and jolly good it was to.
Now need to remember what I played so I can review it....
Nexus Ops - a sort of fast paced tactical game of violence (seriously it's all about the violence) in pursuit of vps. Good game - I liked the general feeling of mayhem and violence that emerged. With 12 vp's to win one person went from last (2vps) to winning in one turn by holding back his scoring cards and burning them. Not sure if that was a bug or a feature.....
A Study In Emerald - I generally like Martin Wallace games - in fact I own more of his games then any other designers (it helps he produces a lot of games). This was one I was very interested in - since the art was done by friends of mine and it's based on a great story by Neil Gaimain A study in Emerald. I'm not 100% sold - it's a rather odd game - and I suspect people have to have played it multiple times to get it. It certainly came with a horrible data dump of rules leaving you going 'huh?' a lot - and no obvious first moves to ease you into the game. Played it twice but I'm still not sure......
Caverna - Agriculla with dwarves. Its so cute. But despite it being ace - and I think better then Agriculla I'm not sure if it offered anything new.
Glass Road Unlike this game by the same man - which is a master piece of good UI design and swift game play. Normally his games take hours - but he's managed to pour all of the game play into a much smaller pot and remove all of the fiddling about. Only downside - it's a very expensive game for what you get. It's £10 cheaper then Caverna but with caverna you get a ton of wooden bits and quality boards. Talking with people in the know it was about £10/£15 more then we'd expect from what is in the box. On the other hand I played it three times over the convention.......
a brief history of the world is only brief in comparison to the older longer version. But it was good and fun - although there is a slight oddity. You get one historical empire an epoch - and the person doing worse picks first. And not all empires are equal - so the Roman are really strong. This leads to the position where you kind of want to go into the final round doing badly and certainly not first......
las vegas A very simply and lovely dice rolling game. With a hunk of luck - a hunk of skill - and a lot of messing other people (and sometimes your self) up.
village A very lovely game of medieval life in a village - including the fact that your often trying to work people to death....... I keep thinking "I should get this".
ad astra sold to me as settlers in space without the random - it's really is. However the removal of the random actually makes things feel more chaotic. So in settlers you role dice - in Ad Astra everybody puts in 3 action cards but they affect everybody. But I had no idea what people would do - so it was utter chaos.........
And of course story telling games (did not work so well this time - not sure why) and games oh I poo cat that broke people. It turns the phrase "mother fucking batman" becomes very literal very quickly........
I got a cheque to buy Caverna for my birthday - but it's delayed hitting the shelves and now I'm wandering if glass road would be a better buy if I was going to buy something. If it's a little more expensive - but it's a present it's still a good buy.
Showing posts with label stabcon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stabcon. Show all posts
Monday, 6 January 2014
Monday, 8 July 2013
Stabcon play test
So Stabcon play test....
Only managed to get one play test in
over the weekend and I'm trying to work out the feedback.
So it seemed to take a long time –
about 3 hours – however we were very distracted due to the
environment but that felt to long. What is odd is I don't know what
caused that – previously the game has felt like a two hour game but
now suddenly it's running longer again. There don't seem to be a
sticking points – things bang back round to you pretty quickly.
The new rules about only being able to
play 3 cards per a combat worked – there were more combats rather
then a single big one, and there were times when cards would not save
you. The attacker gets a bit of a choice – do they use a card
which might not be needed or waste there opportunity to play it. And
the combat tracker was generally well received – needs work as it
was rough but it's good to have.
Managed to get some feedback from
somebody who's opinion I wanted as he not only plays a lot of games
but has been involved in game creation before – his response -
“it's a good game – you'd never sell thousands but you'd sell a
hundred.” He had no real rules comments – slight worry that the
rich get richer but he felt it was very slight and balanced by the
fact going later in the turn is an advantage. So I've got about the
right level there. Also felt that once you were out of cards then
you were a target – and while the card you got was helpful maybe it
was not enough......
Some suggestions...
If you are below a certain level draw
back to that level.
Draw two and pick one.
Change to discard unhelpful cards and
draw new ones.
Some combination of those.
Concerns with this one are – getting
more cards mid game would devalue getting a handful of cards. Would
also encourage people at the start of the turn order to just burn
everything out. The current rule is very simple and does not slow
things down – inserting a choice (pick one or discarding one) would
slow things down.
More feedback about design – which
is not something I've spent a lot of time thinking about to be
honest. Useful stuff like “make the bonus defensive on a hex not
be in the middle but around the edge of the hex as a pattern”.
Also came up with a new card this
morning +2 attack but only where there is not a heart indicator.
Which is powerful but makes hearts slightly more useful.
So this time round what I want to do
is......
Improve the combat tracker
Add in that one card – and remove
something from the deck to make it happen.
Do some maths that looks at the number
of spaces on the board vs the number of heads on cards and trys to
estimate how many terms the game should run for.
And time a version of the game to see
how long it takes – both in number of turns and also in time.
Stabcon!
This year stabcon was boiling - scorching. But that was an excuse for ice cream - so it all worked out well. :-)
New games I played this time round......
The village - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1040
A very lovely worker placement game based around a medieval village and how your family builds up it's own reputation in the village – with the rather unique mechanic that as time goes on the older members of your family die and get immortalised in the village chronicles. Specifically worth noting for the excellent board design – once you've got an idea of the rules and started playing – everything you need is there. Has an expansion that adds a pub. :-)
If you want a good game without a violet theme then well worth picking up. I would say that the only downside is that there is not much player interaction – you mainly do your own thing with a little bit of racing to get your Meeples into the good places in the graveyard. However for some people that's a positive feature.
Lancaster - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9691
One off the unplayed shelves – Hurrah! Almost the opposite of the village since it's a worker placement game themed around war where you spend a lot of time kicking each other out of jobs. Very good – lots of interaction and even has a mechanisum where you vote to set the laws which affect what gives your victory points. For example in a lot of game spare resources get turned into VP's – here you vote if you want that.
Infinity Dungeon - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1255
Another off the unplayed shelves – Hurrah! And one I'd brought especially to take to stabcon for late night gaming. So it's a story telling game – which means it's more a way to get people to be inventive then a game. Indeed this game takes that to a new level with the fabulous rule that once you have escaped a certain number of rooms then the game is over and you've won but the person who had the most fun won the most..... It worked very well – without any of the confusion that Aye! Dark Overlord has been known to cause and we all laughed. Like most story telling games you need a certain sort of person to play them - and if you get the wrong person it all falls apart. We had the right sort of people - so our mad cap group of 'heroes' slaughtered and looted and drove there train around a dungeon with a great deal of aplomb. :-)
Did get a play test of giant stone head - but that will be for another day.......
New games I played this time round......
The village - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1040
A very lovely worker placement game based around a medieval village and how your family builds up it's own reputation in the village – with the rather unique mechanic that as time goes on the older members of your family die and get immortalised in the village chronicles. Specifically worth noting for the excellent board design – once you've got an idea of the rules and started playing – everything you need is there. Has an expansion that adds a pub. :-)
If you want a good game without a violet theme then well worth picking up. I would say that the only downside is that there is not much player interaction – you mainly do your own thing with a little bit of racing to get your Meeples into the good places in the graveyard. However for some people that's a positive feature.
Lancaster - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9691
One off the unplayed shelves – Hurrah! Almost the opposite of the village since it's a worker placement game themed around war where you spend a lot of time kicking each other out of jobs. Very good – lots of interaction and even has a mechanisum where you vote to set the laws which affect what gives your victory points. For example in a lot of game spare resources get turned into VP's – here you vote if you want that.
Infinity Dungeon - http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1255
Another off the unplayed shelves – Hurrah! And one I'd brought especially to take to stabcon for late night gaming. So it's a story telling game – which means it's more a way to get people to be inventive then a game. Indeed this game takes that to a new level with the fabulous rule that once you have escaped a certain number of rooms then the game is over and you've won but the person who had the most fun won the most..... It worked very well – without any of the confusion that Aye! Dark Overlord has been known to cause and we all laughed. Like most story telling games you need a certain sort of person to play them - and if you get the wrong person it all falls apart. We had the right sort of people - so our mad cap group of 'heroes' slaughtered and looted and drove there train around a dungeon with a great deal of aplomb. :-)
Did get a play test of giant stone head - but that will be for another day.......
Sunday, 6 January 2013
Stabcon Play test
So the 2013 winter Stabcon has been and gone and it's been the the traditional mess of games, drinking, terrible breakfasts, and lack of sleep. Seriously it is a fabulous convention and I would do my best to convince everybody I know who likes board games to go. Maybe it's my use of the term 'Broken on the Stabcon' that does it? So what did I play?
Aye Dark Overlord made me laugh like a drain and involved the most outright unpleasant story we have ever done.
cards against humanity remains a Stabcon late night favorite as more people encounter just how fucked up fucked up apples to apples can be. Any game which generates the phrase "I can't believe I pulled out Anal beads and only came second" has a lot going for it in my book....
I brought and played a copy of ugg-tect which caused large numbers of people to look at us strangely as we bashed each other with inflatable clubs and grunted
Somebody showed me how to play space alert which as promised delivered insane miscommunications and cock for hilarious results and I'm now looking forward to getting my copy of the unplayed shelves.
Article 27 was excellent and involves lost of shouting and negotiations and gavel banging.
struggle of empires which was probably the heaviest game I played that weekend as Prussia rampaged around the European Theatre but only coming second to Russia's massive international empire in the sun.
Spartacus a game of blood & treachery which for a board game linked to a TV show is cracking even if it did drag to the end as we all tried and failed to win but were massively knocked back in the process and I think it needs a house rule that if anybody gets to 12 influence the game will end that round no matter what else is done.
I finally played discworld ankh morpork and found it very good and certainly managed to feel discworld in a really good way -the secret victory conditions certainly worked.
Go Goblin Go was a nice enough race game but I'm not sure I'd play it again - even if it is funny you expend rocks to move your goblin by pelting them from the seats.
guildhall was a nice little card game that seemed confusing - but soon made sense and involved a certain amount of opportunistic dickery which I'm very fond off.
Article 27 was excellent and involves lost of shouting and negotiations and gavel banging - no really it comes with it's own gavel.
I seem to have a bit of a blank spot on Friday night as I only seem to recall playing struggles and cards against humanity. Did that really take up 10 hours?
I've got a production based blog post brewing following several conversations at Stabcon but that can wait till I'm more human.
Something very unexpected happened at Stabcon while I was play testing Giant Stone Head - a total stranger stopped by the table - looked at stuff - and suddenly went "I've read your blog!". Turns out he was googling for Stabcon and this blog popped up. That was odd - somebody I don't know reading these ramblings.
The play test went well - 4 person - about 2 hours although there was a lot of faffing - 5 turns. It went a little odd as two players decided to simply beat each other to death rather then go after victory points which meant I rather ran away with it - despite saying things like "by taking this card I've put a giant target on my back". But that felt like player decision making rather then rules oddness. I mean if I decide to spend my entire game of Agricula making pretty patterns with fences rather then getting victory points there is not a lot a designer can do about that.
On reflection I saw two possible areas of concern The first is running out of space for Giant Stone Heads really can knacker you - especially since at the moment you don't get anything. I can see a simple fix for that - if you are unable to place any giant stone heads you get a card for each giant stone head you are unable to place. It does not happen that often but if somebody is in a stuck situation. The second was that with a hand size of 7 the build card that gives you 8 cards seems very poor. I can see two possible options - the first is to raise the hand limit - the second would keep the hand limit the same but increase the number of cards to 9. The best 7 out of 9 cards is more attractive then 7 out of 8.
I suspect the first change will go in - not sure about the second needs some consideration.
Aye Dark Overlord made me laugh like a drain and involved the most outright unpleasant story we have ever done.
cards against humanity remains a Stabcon late night favorite as more people encounter just how fucked up fucked up apples to apples can be. Any game which generates the phrase "I can't believe I pulled out Anal beads and only came second" has a lot going for it in my book....
I brought and played a copy of ugg-tect which caused large numbers of people to look at us strangely as we bashed each other with inflatable clubs and grunted
Somebody showed me how to play space alert which as promised delivered insane miscommunications and cock for hilarious results and I'm now looking forward to getting my copy of the unplayed shelves.
Article 27 was excellent and involves lost of shouting and negotiations and gavel banging.
struggle of empires which was probably the heaviest game I played that weekend as Prussia rampaged around the European Theatre but only coming second to Russia's massive international empire in the sun.
Spartacus a game of blood & treachery which for a board game linked to a TV show is cracking even if it did drag to the end as we all tried and failed to win but were massively knocked back in the process and I think it needs a house rule that if anybody gets to 12 influence the game will end that round no matter what else is done.
I finally played discworld ankh morpork and found it very good and certainly managed to feel discworld in a really good way -the secret victory conditions certainly worked.
Go Goblin Go was a nice enough race game but I'm not sure I'd play it again - even if it is funny you expend rocks to move your goblin by pelting them from the seats.
guildhall was a nice little card game that seemed confusing - but soon made sense and involved a certain amount of opportunistic dickery which I'm very fond off.
Article 27 was excellent and involves lost of shouting and negotiations and gavel banging - no really it comes with it's own gavel.
I seem to have a bit of a blank spot on Friday night as I only seem to recall playing struggles and cards against humanity. Did that really take up 10 hours?
I've got a production based blog post brewing following several conversations at Stabcon but that can wait till I'm more human.
Something very unexpected happened at Stabcon while I was play testing Giant Stone Head - a total stranger stopped by the table - looked at stuff - and suddenly went "I've read your blog!". Turns out he was googling for Stabcon and this blog popped up. That was odd - somebody I don't know reading these ramblings.
The play test went well - 4 person - about 2 hours although there was a lot of faffing - 5 turns. It went a little odd as two players decided to simply beat each other to death rather then go after victory points which meant I rather ran away with it - despite saying things like "by taking this card I've put a giant target on my back". But that felt like player decision making rather then rules oddness. I mean if I decide to spend my entire game of Agricula making pretty patterns with fences rather then getting victory points there is not a lot a designer can do about that.
On reflection I saw two possible areas of concern The first is running out of space for Giant Stone Heads really can knacker you - especially since at the moment you don't get anything. I can see a simple fix for that - if you are unable to place any giant stone heads you get a card for each giant stone head you are unable to place. It does not happen that often but if somebody is in a stuck situation. The second was that with a hand size of 7 the build card that gives you 8 cards seems very poor. I can see two possible options - the first is to raise the hand limit - the second would keep the hand limit the same but increase the number of cards to 9. The best 7 out of 9 cards is more attractive then 7 out of 8.
I suspect the first change will go in - not sure about the second needs some consideration.
Sunday, 8 July 2012
Stabcon games
Stabcon the twice yearly Stockport based gaming con has been and gone - and it was good. There was the normal madness and drinking and this time we got to play perhaps one of the funniest games of "Aye Dark Overlord" ever which almost made me pass out. I was laughing so hard that in infected and crippled another player..... It's not really a game - it's just an excuse to tell stories - just like Baron Munchhausen....
But a stabcon also means new games.
Manhattan Project
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63628/the-manhattan-project
A worker placement game - based (loosely) around making nuclear bombs. It was fun - I'd certainty play again - and it does have the cutest little artwork ever. However nothing really new.
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1044359/the-manhattan-project
The Castles of Burgundy
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/84876/the-castles-of-burgundy
A very good game that uses dice well - in that the dice define what you can do but no matter what you roll you get to do something (helped with with a good chunk of manipulation things). Want to play this again - was tempted to buy it.
Trajan
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102680/trajan
By the same person who designed The Castles of Burgundy - and proof that he has a very strange brain (oh and is the person who created the odd but excellent The Name Of The Rose that I want).
This game takes the "action roundel" and does something very odd with it.
In your normal action roundel you have a set of actions around the wheel - a counter somewhere on the wheel - and can move forwards a number of spaces to do that action. Often with the ability to mvoe further if you need to. This is one from the very playable game Antike - http://boardgamegeek.com/image/212148/antike.
So Trajan does two very odd things - a picture will help here.
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1162199/trajan
You have six spaces and 12 counters in six colours. On your turn you select one of the sets of pieces and move round the board putting one in each action space - where ever you place your final counter - that's the action you do. So in that picture - if you selected the pieces near the boat icon - you put one piece in the two columns , and another in the helmet and that's the action you'd do. If you picked the two columns (with five pieces) you'd go round putting in pieces till you got to the ship and then you'd do that action.
Which is pretty confusing (and very based on Macala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala) and hard to plan ahead.
But I've no mentioned the colours - those are related to bonus tiles. So in that picture - you see a tile with bread on it and a little orange dot and a green dot at the top. If after moving your bits around you can get an orange block and a green block in that space AND that's the action you do then you get that bonus tile - which generally does funky stuff (including free actions) and provides victory points.
Which made my brain drible out of ears trying to a) work out what I wanted to do and b) the impact on future turns. Because it's all about setting things up - I need to move a yellow there - and then an orange that activates that - so I'll drop a orange here on the way past to do that - and then next turn take this action which will allow me to take that action and do the bonus. This of course assumes that's an action you actually want.... I strongly suspect that this was the root cause of me getting so significantly drunk on the Saturday night as I needed to cool down my brain.
Ace game - I'd of brought that if there was a copy there - even if I've no idea who in Leeds would play it with me without either breaking down and crying or suffering horrible analysis paralysis.
We did get a play test of giant stone head version 3.01 - and it was broadly good. However oddly enough it's made me want to change some other pretty fundamental stuff as I try and smooth out the game and stuff that got added in to solve problems is pulled out. But the details on that can - I think wait to another day as this is long enough already. But not to long as I'll need a copy for this coming weekend and my friend from Amsterdam who is really going to look at the new version and go "what have you done!
But a stabcon also means new games.
Manhattan Project
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/63628/the-manhattan-project
A worker placement game - based (loosely) around making nuclear bombs. It was fun - I'd certainty play again - and it does have the cutest little artwork ever. However nothing really new.
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1044359/the-manhattan-project
The Castles of Burgundy
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/84876/the-castles-of-burgundy
A very good game that uses dice well - in that the dice define what you can do but no matter what you roll you get to do something (helped with with a good chunk of manipulation things). Want to play this again - was tempted to buy it.
Trajan
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102680/trajan
By the same person who designed The Castles of Burgundy - and proof that he has a very strange brain (oh and is the person who created the odd but excellent The Name Of The Rose that I want).
This game takes the "action roundel" and does something very odd with it.
In your normal action roundel you have a set of actions around the wheel - a counter somewhere on the wheel - and can move forwards a number of spaces to do that action. Often with the ability to mvoe further if you need to. This is one from the very playable game Antike - http://boardgamegeek.com/image/212148/antike.
So Trajan does two very odd things - a picture will help here.
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/1162199/trajan
You have six spaces and 12 counters in six colours. On your turn you select one of the sets of pieces and move round the board putting one in each action space - where ever you place your final counter - that's the action you do. So in that picture - if you selected the pieces near the boat icon - you put one piece in the two columns , and another in the helmet and that's the action you'd do. If you picked the two columns (with five pieces) you'd go round putting in pieces till you got to the ship and then you'd do that action.
Which is pretty confusing (and very based on Macala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala) and hard to plan ahead.
But I've no mentioned the colours - those are related to bonus tiles. So in that picture - you see a tile with bread on it and a little orange dot and a green dot at the top. If after moving your bits around you can get an orange block and a green block in that space AND that's the action you do then you get that bonus tile - which generally does funky stuff (including free actions) and provides victory points.
Which made my brain drible out of ears trying to a) work out what I wanted to do and b) the impact on future turns. Because it's all about setting things up - I need to move a yellow there - and then an orange that activates that - so I'll drop a orange here on the way past to do that - and then next turn take this action which will allow me to take that action and do the bonus. This of course assumes that's an action you actually want.... I strongly suspect that this was the root cause of me getting so significantly drunk on the Saturday night as I needed to cool down my brain.
Ace game - I'd of brought that if there was a copy there - even if I've no idea who in Leeds would play it with me without either breaking down and crying or suffering horrible analysis paralysis.
We did get a play test of giant stone head version 3.01 - and it was broadly good. However oddly enough it's made me want to change some other pretty fundamental stuff as I try and smooth out the game and stuff that got added in to solve problems is pulled out. But the details on that can - I think wait to another day as this is long enough already. But not to long as I'll need a copy for this coming weekend and my friend from Amsterdam who is really going to look at the new version and go "what have you done!
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