Asynchronous play in Board Gaming

 It is fair to say that nowadays emails have become more a matter of sending work-related messages and documents than, for example, social messages to friends, family, and acquaintances. This is the reality of modern internet consumption, based on fast-paced messaging and inanely brief video interactions. This can be plainly attested by the popularity of instant messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, as well as the addictively omnipresent TikTok. TikTok has in fact become so successful in what it does, that other services such as Instagram have incorporated elements of this video messaging format into their own platform.

 

Yet I am not here to talk about TikTok or instant messaging but to focus on an aspect of asynchronous gaming that has, to an extent, died out. Asynchronous gaming here refers to gaming conducted over a span of time and not necessarily contiguously. A good example would be the chess-by-mail that eventually gave rise to chess-by-email. In this manner of interaction, player ‘A’ has his or her turn and then emails the details of that turn to player ‘B.’ Player ‘B’ will then review the actions carried out by player ‘A’, perform his or her turn of play and send the details back to that player. The cycle is then repeated, over several rounds till the game is concluded.

There appears to be a debate when it comes to the definitions here. So to clarify my position on the matter I will define my understanding of the terms. Whenever I use the term Synchronous, I mean in Real Time. To further elaborate, all players engaged in synchronous play may share the same physical space and play immediately as soon as their opponent completes their turn. I qualified “may” share space because it is possible to play synchronously but still not share the same space as in the case of digital adaptations of Board games. This (synchronous) as opposed to asynchronous play, were Game Time is dilated over both physical space (players can not be sharing the same space or even be at the same location) nor do they participate immediately when their turn is up. Basically in the latter method, players may choose when and where to play their turn and when to communicate the outcome of their turn to their opponents.

 

As can be imagined, this method of play can last a long time. If you were to factor in the speed of traditional mail and further delays till either player sat down to play, document, and mail back their turn, it is not surprising that games lasted months if not years. The introduction of email did speed up the process making the entire game last far less than its snail-mail counterpart. Still, these games still tended to last a significant amount of time when compared to live, synchronous play.

 

In games such as Chess, asynchronous play via mail worked brilliantly, as it allowed either player to assess all potential moves and to consider diverse options in more detail. It was also, invariably, the product of its time. In today’s world where chess analytics have been passed on to ingenious computer programs powered by increasingly powerful computer hardware, asynchronous play does not make any sense. Agreed that players can agree not to use computer assistance to evaluate their positions, but it would all boil down to a tacit or formal agreement between participants.

 

So, while personally I would be inclined to write-off chess as a contender for asynchronous email-based gameplay, other more intricate boardgames have lent themselves to this model of play over the past two years. No need to recapitulate how universally felt the COVID-19 pandemic was over the past couple of years. Its effects are still being felt today as we speak. Still, the pandemic had the added effect of pushing board game enthusiasts online, seeking to marry virtual presence, emails, and other messaging options to fill the void left by the months of isolation and social distancing.

 

As can be imagined, there are still a substantial number of modern games which cannot truly be played asynchronously since they envisage some form of simultaneous actions. There are, on the other hand, those which follow the usual to-and-fro cadence which can make asynchronous play work. One game that comes to mind is Onitama. This is a two-player, chess-like game (played in a fraction of the time) that involves a rotating set of common moves shared by both players. 

Regardless of whether one decides to indulge in asynchronous play using some form of electronic messaging medium or not, there is still a strong commitment towards the method that needs to be embraced by all participants. Let us say just for arguments sake that you decide to play a game using this method, you would need to subscribe to the following: -

 

1.      It is likely that you would need a physical copy of the board game as this will allow you to play through each turn and visualize the steps that need to be taken.

2.      You would need a permanent space where to layout the board, somewhere where it cannot be knocked over or disturbed in between turns.

3.      Alternatively, should you not have the space, you would need to find a means to record the board game state in between turns, for instance by capturing a good image of the game state before putting it away.

4.      More importantly, you need to commit time to play your turn, record it in a clear manner and pass on the results of your turn to your opponent through the chosen electronic medium.

 

Of the points noted above, “4” is perhaps the most challenging. It implies that you are committed to respond to your opponent’s turn, say within a specified amount of time. If you fail to respond, this will mean that the game could be stalled, and this could lead to an eventual disinterest in playing further. The success of, or failure, of any asynchronous play depends strongly on the commitment of all players concerned.

 

Other games which have an element of imperfect information, such as games that involve the use of shuffled decks of cards, could in principle be played asynchronously but they would require an online platform to act as arbiter to each turn, while performing all the turn upkeep to keep the game flowing. One such online platform which shone throughout the various lockdowns is Board Game Arena. This gaming platform offers a plethora of boardgames that can be played following the asynchronous model. It also goes as far as to email notifications to players when their turn comes up. Players can then just log in, take their turn and log off to continue with their day-to-day activities. Again, even in this instance, point “4” mentioned earlier would still be very important, even if communication between players is automated by the platform. To use Board Game Arena, especially when it comes to premium games, it is sufficient for one player to own the game, other players can just join a session created by the owner and play. Prices to own a game on BGA are low and nowhere near the actual price tags of the physical boxes. This makes gaming on this platform incredibly attractive for board game hobbyists.

 

So, what does this tell us about the present and future of board games played using this asynchronous model? My take is that, while there appears to be a niche of interested players who might consider the proposition, it all boils down to whether more palatable or synchronous play is readily available. Personally, if I had the choice, I would prefer to indulge in synchronous play, but the truth is that finding time for such engagements can be difficult. The Internet has come a long way towards filling the gaps and providing virtual venues for asynchronous play but ultimately the longevity of this model of play still depends strongly on the commitment of those involved.

 

Some further reading and links

• A shortlist of android games that can be played asynchronously. https://www.slant.co/topics/2005/~best-asynchronous-online-multiplayer-games-on-android
• The Board Game Arena Website https://en.boardgamearena.com/
• A A link to the Board Game Geek listing for Onitama, a game mentioned in this article. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/160477/onitama

 

 

 

 

 

Worker Placement Games

Worker placement refers to a game mechanism whereby a player places a worker token, or meeple as they are also referred to, onto a specific area on a gaming board, in order to activate an action present on the Board. There have been several variations on this concept, and I happen to own a few games which embrace this game mechanism.

The first game that comes to mind is also one of my favourites. The game is Lords of Waterdeep, a game imbued with D&D theming, though I feel that the mechanism could be used with any theme. The game revolves around players taking on “quests,” drawing “intrigue” cards from a specialized deck and acquiring followers in order to complete quests. The followers, represented in the game by wooden cubes, symbolize any one of four factions including clerics (white), warriors(orange), rogues(black), and sorcerers(purple).  These followers together with a fifth resource, coin, are used to complete quests as well as purchase new buildings which provide additional actions on the board on subsequent turns.

The fixed locations on the map, together with the additional buildings purchased by the players during the game, are what offer the actions necessary to acquire more “followers” as mentioned above.

So, during a typical turn of play, each player will take one of a finite number of worker tokens and allocate them to specific free areas on the board and in the process execute the action found there. In most instances this will entail gathering followers and adding them to the player's pool. In some instances, rather than followers, players could end up gathering coin, quest, or intrigue cards. As soon as a player has enough followers to complete a quest, he can turn that quest in and add the associated points to his final tally. Intrigue cards when invoked during a turn (again as a result of claiming an associated action) usually take the form of follower gathering, either from a common pool or “stolen” from another player’s available pool.

In summary, Lords of Waterdeep offers diverse paths towards points scoring which make it a truly intriguing game. You get points for quests resolved, residual coin and followers left at the end of the game and for quests which are specific to the “Lord” assigned to you (randomly) at the beginning of the game.

Another intriguing game that makes part of my collection and which adopts a modified Worker Placement mechanism is Raiders of the North Sea. This game adopts a similar placement model but this time a player gets to take one or two out of a possible three actions. The first two possible actions are linked and involve both a “worker placement” and “removal” action. Alternatively (if all conditions are met) a player may decide to opt for a lucrative raid option. Raiding obviously scores the most points but requires the gathering of both food resources as well as crew members for your raiding party. There are not all that many turns in a full game, so each action taken becomes important making it a brilliant and challenging game.

At the end of a game, players will score points for raids conducted, any livestock, gold and iron tokens in hand as well as for active crew members on your raiding party. Players also get to score points for how far they might have progressed along the armoury track (paid in steel tokens during the game) and the Valkyrie track (paid in crew members who fall in battle during raids...a bit gruesome I know). Overall, this is a solid worker placement game.

Tokaido is another game that adopts a worker placement mechanism, but the action taken is reminiscent of leapfrog, whereby locations selected along the game track can only be selected from those just ahead of the leading player. Furthermore, the next turn is taken by the player whose worker is the furthest behind along the track at that given point in time. Tokaido offers interesting decisions, since points can be earned through diverse actions. For instance, there is a decision that needs to be taken on how far ahead you should jump on your next turn to attain a particular objective. This because, when you move too far ahead along the track, you reduce your point scoring opportunities later while also increasing those of your opponents behind you. Character abilities, which are significantly diverse, add to the variety in the game, since not all characters benefit the same from all locations along the game track. Having a good understanding of what the characters can or cannot do, can also help you to weigh your forward movements while obtaining the crucial points necessary to snatch a victory.

Another worker placement game, which many consider to be among the first to employ such a mechanism is Carcassonne. In this game which is principally “tile-laying” in nature, players take turns to lay tiles in specific configurations to create features they will then lay claim to. For example, I might get a city tile, place it adjacent to another, yet unclaimed, city tile on the table and lay claim to it by placing one of my meeples there. The catch is that before that feature is completed (and there are ways in which this is achieved), you may not recall or recycle the assigned meeple back into your hand. In this classic game, maintaining an adequate supply of meeples, in hand, goes a long way towards helping you build your point score. Having too many unused meeples on the other hand, is still not a good strategy since you are effectively blocking any further point scoring possibilities.

Good worker placement games do an excellent job of offering a finite pool of resources but many instances of decision making, each translating into opportunities to score points and possibly win a game.

In a subtle way, they teach players how to hone a fine balancing act based on retaining just enough meeples to affect the next profitable play, while at the same time ensuring that points flow in at a steady pace.

As you might have deduced by now, I tend to like this game mechanism in all its various forms. The main reason is that this is a mechanism normally linked to euro-style game systems that focus on player engagement as opposed to player elimination. I am not fond of the latter game mechanism as it inevitably entails having players fall by the wayside, doing nothing, till the game is finally over. Indeed, one of my favourite pastimes, as a board game hobbyist, is to find ways to adapt traditional board game rules, shifting them from player elimination to euro-style variants or co-op. Obviously the nature of that variation will strongly depend on the original game’s components and core game structure.

Over the coming months I will be proposing a few homebrew variants for classic, player elimination games. The first will be a homebrew version of a classic Sword and Sorcery game. I’ll reveal nothing else for now.

Back to worker placement games, the market has over recent years given rise to a wide assortment of games which embrace this mechanism to some degree. At their very core these games have a simple economic model, based on a limited supply of resources which are in their turn crucial towards winning a game. How these resources are released and collected is normally linked to two factors. The first factor is board actions, a worker is placed at a location on the board which triggers an action, once an action is triggered by one player it becomes unavailable to others until the end of a given turn. The second factor is linked to the nature of the point generation being embraced by a player. Normally, a good worker placement game offers diverse tracks along which a player can advance, gaining crucial victory points in the process. The assortment of these tracks is normally designed in such a way that no one track becomes the exclusive focus of final victory.

In fact, these games put emphasis on goal attainment as opposed to player confrontation. The message being that the “economic” success attained by a player is less about direct confrontation than it is about optimizing the various tracks that will allow further point scoring. In order to explain this a bit better I will focus on one of my current favourites, Raiders of the North Sea (RoNS).

In RoNS, players have various tracks they can pursue in order to earn crucial points towards victory. The core mechanism is the raid, everything you do in the game is geared towards conducting raids at several key locations on the board. Yet these raids necessitate resources in order to carry them out. You need to put together a crew, sufficient food and, later in the game, gold.

Yet while it is possible to obtain food directly from one location on the board itself, there are other resources available (normally through a raid) that can generate additional food to use on raids. In RoNS, this resource is Livestock. You can use Livestock at a location called the Longhouse to trade one livestock token for two food tokens. Yet in order to be effective on raids and earn more points, players need to recruit more crew members and further harden their crew’s skills through another track known as the armoury track. Players will, on occasion, loot metal ingots as part of their raids. These can be turned into armoury points by trading one metal ingot for two armoury points. Interestingly if you are not getting any iron ingots to trade for armoury points, you can still buy points on this track with coin, though at a slower rate. These points are then added to the overall attack score made up of the various attack scores of the active crew members. A higher overall attack score will in most instances lead to a higher raid score which goes towards a player’s final tally.

Another interesting track, which is highly thematic in my opinion is the Valkyrie track. As would have most probably been the case in real life, not all crew members on a raid would have made it back alive. Yet Vikings believed that there was nothing more honourable than to die in battle with a sword in your hand. They in fact believed that Valkyries would seek out the fallen on the battlefield and take up their spirit to Valhalla where they would live forever in the presence of their Gods. This is where the Valkyrie track comes in, each dead crew member generates points along the track, and these are in turn added to a player’s final score.

The longhouse itself, mentioned earlier, can also be a source of points. In fact, players can make offerings to the Gods at the Longhouse, exchanging loot obtained in raids for points. This might make sense especially towards the end of game where a player may not have enough resources to raid the final three locations on the map, the fortresses, but still have enough loot to make offerings at the longhouse.

This interplay of point scoring tracks and raids is what make RoNS so incredibly interesting in my opinion. It forces you to assess your situation repeatedly during each turn. You need to assess your strategy in the light of changes which accrue from turn to turn, as well as keep a close eye on the endgame which can be triggered by any player raiding and destroying at least 2 of the three fortresses on the map. More incredibly, the game does all this while never resorting to player elimination, no one is out of the game before the game ends and the points tallied.

Therefore, I find myself liking this game mechanism. Not only, but you can bet that I will try any game that has this mechanism at its core. As in the case of Lords of Waterdeep and RoNS, theming further accentuates the enjoyment because I like both. Still themes apart, worker placement offers me a lot of incentives towards committing my time to learning how to play and win.

One final comment on this mechanism is that designers are still finding new ways in which to incorporate it into their creations. In 2020, Dune Imperium hit the market with a new flavour of worker placement that somehow espouses confrontation between players. While so far, the nature of worker placement games has not been linked with player clashes (to some extent) this does not entail that we will not be seeing more games like Dune Imperium. In all likelihood similar worker placement games will eventually make it to the market, each offering a slightly different twist to differentiate.

As for me, I will obviously be on the lookout.

2021 the year of Virtual Board Gaming

So, this is the end of 2021, a year where we expected to move away from COVID-19 and hoped we would never again experience the strictures imposed by necessity the previous year. Boy were we all wrong!

2021 felt more like an unwanted and unappreciated sequel to a disaster movie of sorts. COVID never really went away, we just learned to wing it as best we could, donning masks and bathing our hands with copious amounts of hand sanitizer. All along restrictions came and went, some frowned upon, others accepted if only to regain some of the basic freedoms we lost.

In this scenario, keeping afloat mentally was challenging. Virtual get togethers became acceptable at first only to be shunned by a few of mostly weary friends and acquaintances who had had enough of all the social distancing. Yet, we must admit that technology did offer some respite from the social drought we had to endure.

As for board games the situation was dismal at best. A hobby which thrives on social interaction is bound to suffer on account of the very evident lack thereof. This meant that once again, as in my case, I had to turn to digital adaptations and virtual arenas where to engage with the titles I love. I also realized that doing so was even more daunting than I initially anticipated.

For one, I had to deal with the lag that comes with taking turns and following through with feedback. Indeed, there are some excellent websites such as boardgamearena.com and desktop applications like Tabletopia which are aimed at precisely this kind of interactions, but they all depend on the commitment of players to engage with the virtual board games. From my experience most players can be non-committal or bail out with not so much as an explanation. This phenomenon is common in other more mainstream games like League of Legends, where players are penalized for abandoning a game halfway through. This I think is only fair, given that repeat abandonment can dishearten even the most loyal players in the long term.

There is no cure for the above, mainly because the very impersonal nature of the medium makes the premise of abandoning a game quite acceptable for the casual gamer. Some gaming companies have taken ulterior measures to deal with the matter. Rather than penalizing a player they automatically engage a bot to replace the AFK (Away From Keyboard) player so as not to disrupt the game. While on the surface the solution may appear more congenial it is still sub-optimal at best. Most bots used in these games cannot truly replace the complexity and/or quirkiness of the human player.

Regardless, at times playing versus bots feels acceptable. As I see it, a bot will always be there, will wait patiently if I happen to pause a session and I can pick up from where I left off once I get back to the game. Human players may not be so amenable. Furthermore, most gaming bots come with various difficulty levels which allows you to finetune the difficulty to match your current skill level.

There is also an upside to playing digital adaptations, and that is that you get to play the board game at what is normally a fraction of the cost. Take for instance the game Scythe, currently the game retails at €66.99 + shipping on amazon.de so I would expect it to cost me around €80. Buying the digital adaptation during a sale on Steam set me back only €12 and I could get playing at a significantly lower price point. In the case of Scythe, which is a rather heavy game to learn, the digital adaptation allowed me to better appreciate the game’s mechanism and to determine whether I would really like to own a copy. As it turned out, I did not really warm up to the game, so at the end of the day I saved close on to €68 (if I got my shipping approximation right).

Yet to be fair even if I own the physical game, a low cost digital adaptation can offer a lot of gratification when you cannot sit down at a table to play with live players. In this vein I acquired a number of such titles (mostly during sales on Steam) and in most instances the adaptations were very well made and brought the games themselves to life. I need to mentioned the digital adaptations of Wingspan, Splendor, Tokaido and especially Raiders of the North Sea as being some of the best adaptations I have come across. All offer online, multiplayer options and very decent bots with varying difficulty levels, should you fancy a game without the hassle of chasing online players to complete their turns.

If it were to depend on me, I would be playing physical board games often, but the truth is that this has not been possible for quite some time. Maybe going forward the situation will change, and we will go back to playing more physical games and less digital adaptations, but for the time being the latter will have to do.

 

Family, Christmas, Board Games and Cards

Perhaps it’s because I am a child of the 70’s and 80’s but for me family gathering always included some from of communal games, which were either card games or board games. To be fair it tended to be more about card games using a standard deck of cards or two decks depending on the game.

I have a clear memory of playing such games as 7-card and 10-card Rummy, 31 which we called “Trent’un” as well as “Bella Donna” (mostly) and at times the “Bella Donna Ħalliela” variant. If we did not play cards then most likely we would bring out some other classic game like draughts or chess and the ever present Monopoly. I did own some kid friendly games like Haunted House as well as other abstract strategy games like Mastermind and Backgammon but these were not played when we met with the rest of the family. At Christmas time, Tombola was also a favoured party game which invariably came out with reusable cardboard tickets and an assortment of small tokens to mark away your numbers. However quite frankly, while on occasion I do believe to have joined in, I never quite liked that game which felt too random for my growing tastes.

I remember my maternal grandfather, God bless his soul, playing exceptional checkers at the table while family gathered round or occasionally dropped by to see how a match was progressing. I remember my aunts and uncles playing loudly and dare I say happily, dealing out cards and making memories together.

Since then a number of those players have left us but I’d like to believe that they somehow found each other in a better place and that they are still dealing out cards, chatting and laughing together just as they did when they were with us.

Regardless, the fact remains that these games served a simple socialising purpose. Family would gather round, cards would be dealt and everyone would forget all about his or her day-to-day and just share space, idle chit-chat and companionship. Maybe the years have gilded my memories making them appear more memorable but I think it is that feeling of home and family that have fed into my board gaming hobby over years.

You see, there is nothing simpler and perhaps sweeter than sitting around a table with people you really care about and then bring out a board game or deck of cards, which in a few whimsical hours, successfully brings everyone together. There will be winners, losers but more importantly there will be chat, banter, laughter…and that is priceless.

Indeed Boardgames can, and actually do, sharpen your wit and teach you a lot about yourself and others, but boardgames are meaningless bits of plastic and cardboard unless there are people, friends or family gathered.

Please do not underestimate what these games can do for you. For one they help us disconnect from all the technology and information overload we experience daily through our always-on culture. They help us remember that play defines us as a species, help us grow as individuals and brings us altogether through friendly competition.

This will be my last Blog before Christmas, so dear friends, wherever you are, whatever you will be doing this Christmas, may you have a blessed day. May you find the time to dust an old boardgame from your personal stash or whip out a deck of cards for a friendly round or two.

 

From the Heart I wish a Happy Christmas to you all.

Deck Building Games

Deck building games are a genre which found numerous expressions in modern gaming. While, as for most Euro style games, the objective is normally point scoring, you will find variants which have a more competitive model focusing on a "Last man Standing" objective. Deck building games all share a number of basic traits which can be listed as follows:-

1.    They are normally LCG's or Living Card Games were you play with a complete set of cards out of the box. This as opposed to CCG or Collectable cards games (Like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon) were players need to build their deck by purchasing several booster packs.

2.    Players will normally start with the same deck of (usually) 10 cards, divided between attack-type cards and purchase-type cards. These may be called by different names but their effect is always the same.

3.    There is always a "Market" from where you can buy better cards to add to your deck.

4.    Any cards you purchase from the marketplace are always sent to your discard pile.

5.    However once your active deck is all exhausted, the discard pile will then be re-shuffled into an active deck in order to allow continuation of play.

6.    In most instance, players will be trying to either reduce their opponent's health or life points to 0 or to gather as many points as possible before a game ends.

7.    On your turn you are expected to play all the cards in your hand if you can. While there may be some optional actions you may take, no cards are leftover (for successive rounds) unless they happen to be permanents put into play and which persist between turns unless otherwise removed through direct action.

8.    At the end of a turn, all played cards, with the exception of permanents, are sent to the discard pile.

9.    There will always be an option to banish or remove cards permanently from play. These actions are necessary to clean up a growing deck from all the weaker or undesirable cards.

 

The first deck builder I ever owned was Star Realms. This quite clearly embraces the "Last man standing" model I mentioned earlier. Players start off at 50 points each and 10 standard cards granting them either purchasing power (8 of these) or fighting power (2 of these). In Star Realms the theme revolves around space conquest so you will find a slew of spacecrafts belonging to diverse factions. In true deck building fashion you will not embrace one specific faction over another, though it does benefit your strategy if you build a deck around a principal theme (or faction) since there is a synergistic effect to be reaped. 

 

The marketplace is where the game happens. Players will normally have access to a market composed of 5 faceup cards fed from a common stockpile of cards. Furthermore there will also be two other types of cards available on the market (but separate from it) which either offer improved buying power or fighting power. These latter cards don't have synergistic or secondary effects but can prove essential to build up a good deck. Again they are mostly important at the beginning of a match, when players are still vying to acquire the better cards from the marketplace. 

 

Regardless of the factions, and very much in line with almost all deck builders I have ever played, you will find specific architypes that will always be there. Let me summarise them below. 

 

1. The Hard Hitters - These cards will produce fighting points. These cards are normally not about finesse, they are about getting those opponent life/health points down and fast. Furthermore in all probability they will also have a synergistic effect when playing them together with other cards of similar type. So for instance if I just play one Hard Hitter I might add 5 attack points to my final tally, but if I play a second one then that same Hard Hitter will now be good for 8 points.

 

2. The Health enablers - These cards generate life points and they exist precisely to counter the effects of the Hard Hitters. On your turn, playing these cards will generate life points which can ramp up your deck's resilience to the effects of Hard Hitters. 

 

3. The ATM's - I call these card types the ATMs because they are literally there to ramp up your buying power. You need these cards to be able to buy cards from the marketplace where the better cards are found.

 

4. The Shields - You will always have some cards that act as shields. Their main purpose is to stave off Heavy Hitters by absorbing the damage themselves. When they take a hit equal to their shield strength, these cards are not removed totally from play but rather move to the player's discard pile which will be recycled once the player works through his face down deck of cards.

 

5. Deck Thinners - Since you will grow your deck substantially throughout a game, you will definitely need something that purges the weaker cards from your deck. This is where the Deck Thinners come in. These are important cards to have in a balanced deck, especially towards the middle and end game.

 

 As mentioned earlier my first Deck Builder was Star Realms and as noted the five architypes are present in this game. The "Star Empire" faction are hitters but then have a secondary feature which leads to your opponent shedding cards before they start their turn. So essentially if you normally start a turn with 5 cards in hand, your opponent could use this faction to force you to start with 4 or fewer cards. The "Machine Cult" are a mix of Heavy Hitters and Deck Thinners. The "Trade Federation" cards are the ATM's of this game, they help you rake up purchasing power while at the same time also acting as Health enablers. Finally the Blobs can really turn up the combat heat with their synergies while at the same time aiding in removing the weaker cards from your deck. However while the Machine Cult cards come in handy at the beginning/middle phases of a game, the Blobs become a real threat towards the middle/end of a game since most of the serious hitters in their ranks can be quite expensive. It also pays off to work on synergy with Blobs, so the more Blob cards you happen to have the better.

 

Present in all of the above factions in Star Realms are the space colonies or bases which can primarily act as shields, or to boost synergies for their specific factions. If you can purchase enough colonies you can safeguard your health level (or "Authority" as it is called in this game) in the early to middle stages of the game in order to give you enough time to build your offence. 

 

I know of two other games which are very much like Star Realms but with different themes. The first is Hero Realms which is basically Star Realms with a fantasy theme. There are also some changes such as the use of Champions rather than colonies or bases which act as shields in the game. As in Star Realms you will also benefit from working out synergies between the cards acquired. 

 

In Hero Realms, the "Wild" faction is all about brute force and can come in handy towards the end of a match, synergies here are very important. The "Guild" will help you rake up the gold to buy stuff but quite literally needs the support of other factions in order to be able to bring out their better cards later in the game. The "Necros" are the hardest to use in my opinion but they are vital since they are effectively the Deck Thinner faction. The "Imperial" faction is the easiest to use and deploy early on, since they offer good defence and attack during the early game. However using them to finish a match can be tricky which is when most players will use combinations of other cards from other factions to seal the deal.

 

Cthulhu Realms is the third in the Realms series and this one brings Lovecraftian horror, albeit in a cartoonish manner to deck building. Here your goal is to rob your opponents of their Sanity by unleashing minions of the elder Gods at them. Very H.P. Lovecraft! You start off with a 10 card deck made up of Goons (attack) and Initiates (conjuring albeit purchasing power). There are four factions in this instance which will comprise a mix of entities (monsters etc.), artefacts (mostly boosting your entities) and locations (which act as shields or resource generators). Synergies here are also very important which means you have to be careful what you purchase from the ever present marketplace. One thing that Cthulhu Realms brings to the mix is the ability to choose in between options on the various cards in order to achieve a specific effect. This can be confusing to the first time players but it actually offers more flexibility and more diverse outcomes.

 

Obviously the above are one type of deck builder. The Ascension series of deck builders for example adopts a less confrontational approach to deck building. In a way, Ascension feels more Euro than the other games. While you still have the architypes and the marketplace and deck cycling, the focus is more squarely placed on point scoring. In fact in Ascension, players can gather victory (also called honour) points in three distinct ways. They can ramp up their attack to defeat monsters, they can procure champions that generate victory points on their turn, or they can ramp up their purchasing power to purchase high value cards with high victory point scores. 

 

While it may feel easy to just say stick to one strategy for point scoring in Ascension, in actual fact you cannot. Your strategy during a match will have to follow with whatever is on the market. If the market is flush with monsters generating coin wont help, you need fighting points. On the other hand if your marketplace is loaded with great value cards, having fighting points won't be as effective, though you still can get some victory points by using the untapped fighting points on the "Fanatic" card. This latter action will give you one victory point for every two untapped fighting points.

 

For some the mechanism used in Ascension may feel less rewarding or too impersonal. Regardless Ascension is a very popular series of games that has been around for over 10 years, so they must be getting something right.

 

Ask anyone who is in the hobby and they will tell you that Deck Building has gone through some interesting developments in recent years, thanks mostly to the creativity of some ingenious game designers. Shards of Infinity is precisely one such game. I personally think of it as the spiritual successor of Star Realms and Hero Realms.

 

In Shards of Infinity, players are still driven by the main objective of bringing their opponent’s health points down from 50 to 0, but it then also provides another means towards victory via the Mastery track. By reaching a Mastery level of 30, a player can still snatch a victory even if his opponent/s might have successfully kept their Health level up through various stratagems. Another interesting inclusion in Shards of Infinity are the Mercenary Cards. Some cards on the market, marked as mercenaries, can be activated without being acquired outright. While this may sound wasteful since you still get to pay their face value, it adds an element of immediacy or speed to the game by allowing the player to activate actions on a card right away. Doing so, however, will automatically banish that card (read remove it from play) the moment its effect is resolved. Shards of Infinity, in this sense, has brought some interesting concepts to Deck Building games.

To be fair new pure deck builders have become less frequent as at today. None have attained the following and fandom attained by the others netioned earlier. However this does not mean that the deck building mechanism is doomed or past its "best by" date. In fact many game designers have found ways to incorporate deck building into their new board games. This year for instance there are two games which have gained a lot of traction among board game enthusiasts and which have deck building stitched into their overall design. The First game is Dune Imperium and the second the Lost Ruins of Arnak. Both use deck building though the mechanism is intertwined with other actions that constitute the turns of a game. In fact these two games have so far scored very well on Board Game Geek, 8.3 and 8.1 respectively, and share some common traits though they have very distinct themes and artwork. Personally I ended up purchasing the former since I also happen to be a fan of Frank Herbert's Dune series. 

Personally, I love deck building games even though I have a mixed history when it comes to win rates in any of the games listed above. I like the card interactions, the way you can go about building your deck based on what comes out on the market. I particularly like Ascension because it focuses more on point scoring than on knocking players out of play.

As for player counts, most deck builders work best with 2 players. This goes for the various Star/Hero/Cthulhu Realms as well as Shards of Infinity. Ascension functions well at three and four players mainly because the focus is more on getting the points. Another aspect of Ascension I like is that all players remain in play till the end, so no one ends up out of the game twiddling their fingers. 

That's just about all I had to say about the subject. Should you wish to have a closer look at the games I mentioned above you can click on the links I included within the text and they will take you to Board Game Geek which is a very reputable website on all things related to Board games. 

 

Have a good one!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When is a game no longer a game?

So last Saturday I took my sons to a children's Christmas party. I got to choose the gifts they would receive and so I thought it was as good an opportunity as any to get Neil another junior board game adaptation (since getting him Catan Junior for his Birthday). This time it was  Monopoly Junior. 

The theme is cute and very child centric. It's intended for up to four kids and offers them such avatars as Scottie the dog or baby T-Rex. There are no Community Chest cards or mortgage cards. You do get Chance cards, though and ownership is stated by placing avatar markers on the places you buy. Also the site sets always come in pairs and the site rent is equal to the cost. You also must buy whatever unclaimed site you land on, there is no choice here. There is only one denomination for the in-game paper money and it carries a value of one.

So as you can imagine it's a very simple game, subject to dice rolls and with little strategy to delve in. My focus was more on getting him to go through the sequence of actions constituting a turn and to do so till the game is concluded. In principle the game should have allowed this without a problem. However, and this is perhaps an understatement, I forgot to take into consideration two aspects of of presenting a game to a young audience. The first is the time of day.

It was late afternoon, when under normal circumstances Neil's attention span wanes giving way to pre-sleep restlessness. Anyone with kids will fully understand what I am talking about here. It's that sense of false or pseudo energy that befalls kids just before sleep. It's what leads to to dash around the house for no reason whatsoever other than to burn what energy the might have in them...and reason gives way to a strange world filled with Alice-in-Wonderland rules that would only make sense to the Mad Hatter himself. So let's just say the timing was not right.

The first signal that something was amiss was when my boy stated that he did not need to listen to the rules, simple as they might have been, because he knew them. It turned out that he had played a similar game to the one tabled but with slightly different rules. Regardless, aided by a willing partner in crime, my better half Claire, we got down to playing the first few turns...then all hell broke loose!

You see the moment Neil landed on an unoccupied space which he had to purchase regardless, he began to grow frustrated. When he saw his mother earn some in-game cash because of a chance card, that frustration grew. Then when he saw in-game money change hands (again in favour of Claire) and that he was getting any, he exploded. I'm talking tears here, it was surreal. We tried continuing nonetheless for a few more rounds, or rather until he fell on one of my properties and he had to pay rent, then the tears and the reasons for them just became unmanageable even if I instantly wavered the transaction in the hope of getting him back into the game.

In a post-game analysis, Claire said that it was most likely that Neil played with an initial belief that the in-game paper money was actual real cash. So this might have exacerbated the emotional roller-coaster he went through when he saw the paper tokens move away from his stack. Well, it could be, though I personally am more in favour of the theory that he was just too tired to play and that this gave way to the episode we experienced. 

What this taught me is that you should never underestimate the mental state of your child going into a game. If you want to expose them to a new game then it would be best to do so in the morning or early afternoon latest. Also perhaps it would be a good idea to go over the main aspects of the game before actually engaging into active play.

This does not mean we will not try this game again in the future but for now we will set it aside hoping that we will manage to reap a better experience when it is next brought to the table. 

Until next time, signing off!