Wednesday, January 22: Day 10

Day 10

Wednesday was a two-session day.  First session I played Saint Petersburg again, but turns out we had learned the wrong way on Tuesday, so it felt like an entirely new game.  Second session, I was teaching Elfenland to four other players.  It revolves around collecting all 20 towns pieces from all over Elfenland by way of 7 different transportation types, with each road only allowing one kind of transportation a round. 

Tuesday, January 21: Day 9

Day 9

Having looked at cooperative games on Monday, the class returned to traditional one-player-wins games on Tuesday.  I spent the period learning how to play Saint Petersburg, a game based on the Russian city roughly in the time of Peter the Great.  The point of the game is to game the most VPs, but early-game strategy heavily emphasizes ruble production, because the buildings, nobles, upgrades and workers that earn you the most victory points also cost the most.  It was very simple once you got the hang of it, but in the beginning it wasn't made clear to us how you made money each turn, which gave our teacher a pretty large head start on us all. 

Monday, January 20: Day 8

Cooperative Games

On Monday the class took to playing a multitude of cooperative games, which differ from other games in that the point is to win as a group (or one of multiple groups) instead of as an individual player.  I was asked to teach 1812: The Invasion of Canada again, because it pits the American Regulars and Militia against the British Regulars, Canadian Militia, and Native Americans. 

The other difference that day was the fact that the teachers were playing the game with the new players instead of sitting out.  So, I got to play as the American Regulars, and as the end of the game period drew to a close, we ended the game in a tie; each side had three opponent forts/cities. 

Once we finished our cooperative games, we broke out into groups playing random games, and I was able to teach three other people Stone Age, an interesting blend of resource-gathering, survival, and development, set of course, in the Stone Age.  The game ended when class let out, leaving us with a game that could have gone any direction. 

Thursday, January 16: Day 6

Day 6

Day 6 found me learning to play Stone Age, a game of tribal expansion and development, and Cuarenta, which means 40 in Spanish and is the official card game of Ecuador.  Cuarenta was a very difficult game to learn, and after a few rounds, my group decided to teach Hearts to the one guy who didn't know how to play. 

Stone Age

 The point of Stone Age is to have the most victory points by the end of the game, which can happen in one of two ways: when you go through a stack of buildings, or when you go through the entire deck of civilization cards.  Players take turns being the Chieftain during the different rounds, and each player assigns their villagers to tasks.  The villagers can be tasked with rolling for resource production, procuring tools, building huts, hunting for food, developing agriculture, creating more villagers, and advancing their civilization. 

Wednesday, January 15: Day 5

Day 5

As it turns out, I didn't show up to class on Day 4; I slept through my alarm, because I had worked the 4-8am shift Tuesday morning.  So I returned to class on Wednesday, ready to learn more games.  But when they had a shortage of games to teach, I was able to volunteer to teach 1812 to a group of people, which turned out to be a lot more fun than I thought it would be.  I had been anticipating to play along with the people I was teaching, but I found out that as the teacher I should be outside the game and help each side strategize and plan.  This was news to me, because when I had learned Ticket to Ride earlier, my teacher had played with us.  However, I was surprised by the strategy shown by each side and how fun it was to play the advisor to both sides of the conflict.  The two guys and two girls I was teaching decided to play guys vs. girls, and while the girls' American troops were initially beating the guys' British troops, the guys managed to pull off a bluff of an attack in Buffalo, enabling them to maneuver into position and take Pittsburgh, one of the American spawning points.  This was the first time I had seen this done successfully and with no hope of recapture by the Americans.  It was really impressive, especially because they had enough troops to attack remaining American troops in the area, after taking hold of the spawn point. 

Monday, January 13: Day 3

Day 3

The process of game designing.  

Class today started off with a discussion/lecture with Greg Bush and Phil Chase, two game designer friends of Prof Arnoys.  While only laymen, Phil has had two of his games published, and the five generation of their jointly-authored game is currently in the publication works, to be released sometime around this year's GenCon. 

Greg and Phil talked about their interests in gaming, what game types appeal to them personally, their favorite games, and most importantly, about the development process of games and how most games go through five to seven generations while in playtesting before being published.  The advice they gave to the rest of us laymen was thoughtful and encouraging, but also realistic; they didn't sugarcoat the fact that many, many games don't make it to publication. 

Once Greg and Phil were done talking, they had us break into smaller groups to try out some of their initial generations of the games they had put forward for publication.  I participated in playing the first generation of the game currently being published, The Fires of Rome, which turned out to be a lot more complicated than I had originally thought it would be.  There are two main strategies one can follow: kill the most people and destroy the most valuable sections of the city, or save the most citizens and entreat the gods with rescued priests for special bonuses.  We played a few turns of Fires of Rome before Greg and Phil decided to pack up and leave, at which point we all splintered off to play other games from the class hoard we have to choose from.

1812: The Invasion of Canada

I chose to play 1812: The Invasion of Canada with Rachel and Jason, a game centered around the American, British, Canadian and Native American conflicts along the Canadian border during the War of 1812.  Out of the five factions to choose from, I played as the British Regulars and the Native Americans, Jason was my ally as the Canadian Militia, and Rachel played against us as both the American Militia and American Regulars.

I have to say, the game mechanic that intrigued me the most was the randomness of the turn order each round; you would draw a colored cube out of a bag, determining as you go the order in which the two sides' factions moved troops and shaped the conflict.  The most effective way I found to offset the random turn order was to integrate troops as much as possible, because during each faction's turn they can move whatever units are in an army so long as one of the units in that army is of their faction; thus, more integration equals more troop movement, more conquest, and more victory cities/forts falling to your banner. 

In fact, I was so intrigued by 1812 that I signed it out for the night and signed up to teach it on Day 4.  After a night of playing two games and evaluating each sides' force pools and deck of cards, I determined that 1812 is best played with 2-3 players, is manageable with 4, but gets drawn out and slow with 5; I'm hoping to teach tomorrow's group with 3 if I can, but no more than 4.

For more info, check out the class page for my 1812 entry!  再见！

Friday, January 10: Day 2

Day 2: 

After the icebreakers and get-to-know-you games of Day 1, in Day 2 we jumped right into recognizing strategies by playing Settlers of Catan, but with a few twists.  Prof Blankespoor has been playing Settlers for years, and being a game designer hobbyist, came up with a few of his own iterations for the classic European-style expansion game.  He provided the class with range of different options to choose from to play during Friday's class, from individual islands (where you got to choose your production probabilities beforehand), to set board arrangements (some with player-specific strategies, some with equalized settlement configurations), to team playing (some in one game, some in two games, varying with 2-3 teams).  My group of four guys (myself, Jackson, Gabe, and Nick) decided to play the two-team Settlers on an expanded 5-6 player regular Settlers board; what follows are the strategies and rules of thumb that we all found to be most helpful. 

Complement your partner.  

While it is good to compliment your partner, this isn't what we mean here.  By complementing your partner, both number/probability-wise and resource wise, you create a larger pool of probable income, meaning that on almost every turn at least one of the two is picking up something.  For instance, if your partner places his first settlement on an 8, a 5, and a 9, then you look to build one of your settlements on a 6, a 4, and a 10.  You would then be smart to go for a 2, a 3, and then a repeat number, letting your partner go for an 11, a 12, and a repeat number of his choice as well, thus ensuring your team picks up something on every turn.  Likewise, his choice of Wood, Brick, and Sheep means you want to settle on Ore and Wheat.  The combination and intertwining of these two kinds of complementary is critical.  This leads to the our second finding:

Flash flood your resources/Specialization.  

We found that one of the more effective ways to play was for one partner to repeat a number (typically a 4, 5, 9, or 10) for both Wood and Brick, or for both Wheat and Ore, meaning that every time that number is rolled, the would instantly get either a Road (or 2/4 of a Settlement) or 2/5 of a City.  This type of production is most effective when one player specializes in building Roads and Settlements (majority Wood and Brick production) and one player specializes in building Cities and Development Cards (majority Ore and Wheat production).  In this way, partners have a good idea of what to feed their partner when blind-trading after they roll the dice on their turn, which brings us to our third piece of advice:

Pay attention to your partner's production.  

If you have no idea what your partner has been picking up, then you will have no idea what he needs you to trade him during the blind trade.  This is the trickiest part of Team Settlers, and while specialization helps some, partners need to be aware of each others short and long-term goals.  For instance, if you know that you've recently rolled number where your partner picks up a lot of Wood and Brick, trading him a Sheep or Wheat might be better than an Ore, especially if he has a Road built leading to a new intersection.  However, if he already has all five Settlement pieces out on the board, it would be prudent to feed his City parts, because he can't settle until he has an open Settlement piece to place.  If you pay attention to your partner's production and have a fairly good idea of what's in his hand, then you're ready for the fourth and final rule of thumb we came up with:

Block your opponents' ability to settle/produce/expand.  

Once you have a decent grasp of your partner's expansion/development capabilities, it makes it easier to blind-trade him something that allows him to block an opponent from expanding.  If your opponent can't expand, he can't increase his production as much, which in turn leads to him building fewer and fewer points per round, widening the gap between your teams in your favor, which eventually leads to your team's victory.  Block their expansion.  Game.  Hook, line, and sinker. 

That's all for now; ta ta!