Battle for New Jersey Preview

Note: This is a preview. The game is not yet published, so much of what I say might change, and I was asked to not divulge anything too specific about the system.

Note 2: The designer of the game (Teemu Vilen) is a member of the guild and thus there might be some bias. I’d like to think there isn’t much, but you never know. Also, I let Teemu read this before publishing.

Battle for New Jersey is a game set in near future, where colonizing aliens have landed on earth in order to strip the planet of its resources. I guess they could be characterized as evil, but that would be shortsighted. But not to worry, a small group of humans have banded together to use their disparate skillsets to take back their neighborhood.

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Using Games to Assess Future Employees

Last year our company (small software venture) underwent some changes and we needed to hire more people. How does one go about that? We had hired people before, but people we knew. This time there weren’t any apparent candidates we could cherrypick from. So, we put out a notice and waited for people to answer.

As a small company and with little reach for our notice, we didn’t get many applications, but some. We chose two to be interviewed. How does one assess people based on an interview? After all, we’re a small company and can’t really afford any dead weight.

My proposal was to test them through games.

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Formula D Review

Note: This is not about the Street Racing version of the game. This is purely about the Formula version, where everyone is playing basically the same car.

Formula D is just what it says on the tin. Its Formula cars racing. But you don’t have to like the sport to enjoy the game. I definitely don’t like the sport, but I do enjoy the game very much. Same applies to other people I’ve played with. Its a push-your-luck game with a strong feel for the theme.

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Looking at Things from Other People’s Perspectives

Recently it was announced that the former Team Star City Games (the professional MtG team sponsored by the largest reseller of MtG-related stuff in the world) had switched to being sponsored by Channel Fireball, which already had its own team. One of the results of this change was that the team no longer had a name and this age of social media, they went out and asked people what name they should use. They got some fairly good answers, such as ProsBloom, which I would have enjoyed (it being another iconic combo from the early days of magic, just like [scryfall]Channel[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Fireball[/scryfall]).

Then there were answer like [scryfall]City of Traitors[/scryfall], [scryfall]Act of Treason[/scryfall] and [scryfall]Dark Betrayal[/scryfall].

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Zombie Dice

One of my pet peeves with boards games is too much randomness in games which take a long time. With high variance, its possible that I spend most of a long game doing pretty much nothing. This has happened to me in Arkham Horror many, many times, where I feel like I can’t contribute at all after taking an early hit and then spending most of the game half-dead and without equipment. Also, I very much dislike games where an early mishap means I can’t ever catchup.

However, this applies only to long games. In short games, which will be over shortly anyway, this is actually beneficial. Losing early doesn’t mean I’ll be just an onlooker for the rest of the game, which can last for hours. I might have things to do, but if I know I will never catch up, that’s not going to make the game fun for me.

… and then there’s Zombie Dice.

In Zombie Dice, you are a zombie and you are out for brrRRAAAIIINS!! Gladly, these are not the stupidest zombies. They have the ability to somewhat discern the dangers presented by their prey. On the other hand, that doesn’t really stop them that often.

The game is played with thirteen dice, six of which are common prey (green dice), some are pretty dangerous (yellow dice) and some are vey dangerous (red dice). Each dice has brains on some of its sides. This is what you want. You’re goal on each of your turns is to collect as many brains as possible without taking too many hits from shotguns (another one to three sides of the die, depending on the color). The dice also have footprints on them on some sides. Those you reroll.

Zombie dice

By Lauri Maijala

Your turn goes as follows: Take three dice at random and roll them. Move all the brain dice to one side and all the shotgun shots to another side. Then replenish the dice randomly and roll again. You can stop after any roll and get points equal to the number of brains you have. However, if at any time you get three shotgun wounds, you lose all your brains and its the next player’s turn.

So, all in all, a very basic push-your-luck game. However, since this only takes minutes, its great. Basic strategy is pretty simple, but there definitely is decision making. It isn’t just a pure luck game. You need to know when to roll the dice and when to stay where you are.

I like it. Its quick, its fun, it has nice flavor. Not very in-depth, but no need for that in such a short game. It doesn’t take much room, so you can take it pretty much anywhere, although the container is pretty big and awkward compared to the contents, but its also a great tool for the game.

Aki’s New Year’s Resolutions

I think New Year’s resolutions are a pretty stupid idea. Humans are weirdly programmed. Generally its enough to talk about something we want to do. People who share their goals don’t reach them as often as people who don’t. You get some of the sensation of accomplishment simply from talking about it and for most people that’s enough. Actual accomplishments require actual work and that’s hard. Today’s culture is much more about instant gratification than hard work.

Although that’s clearly a generilization, you should not – under any circumstances – make New Year’s Resolutions.

With that in mind, here are mine.

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It Must Be Winter

Living in Finland makes our yearly gaming cycle quite interesting. During summer we have lots of time but it spend mostly on other things at the cost of gaming. We tend to drift towards random gaming of oneshots, Magic and board games since the group we can get together is different each time.

But now it is winter and the time for campaigns.

It think that winter as the fuel of longer rpg campaigns comes with the free time that we had while we where studying. Evenings are dark, it’s usually freaking cold and the weather is bad. Not that we would take part to any outdoor activities anyway but at least during winter we have an excuse. Continue reading

More on Terra Mystica (and Just a Bit on Eclipse)

We played it again yesterday, as some people seem to like it and some people want to try it.

My earlier assessment still stands. I played with the Auren and again knew exactly what I’d do throughout the game. Some details might have become imporant only later, but mostly the decisionmaking was done up front and not much changed. I also knew I couldn’t win right away, although I did try to make an effort to. This was because there weren’t much points available from the turn tiles due to their very poor order. This gave a definite edge to those players who had points available to them on their boards, which meant they would get a headstart I couldn’t match with my points from the cults.

.. but today I’m talking about something else.

What the people making Terra Mystica got right, was the gameboards. At first, it seems a bit crowded. Especially after all the pieces are there. However, after I was explained what everything means, it was very easy to read and everything just made sense. Eclipse also had a very good layout, although its graphics are quite repulsing in their grayness.

The gameboards often include some instructions, but they aren’t necessarily placed very intuitively. On this Terra Mystica shines. Also, its very language independent with only the name of the race written in too languages.

This is where games need to go. Besides M:tG, I don’t really play any games very regularly, so it always helps that there are easy reminders to get me quickly back into the game. They also help new players understand how the game works.

Of course there will be a part of the audience who feel all this dumbs down the games, but they fail to see the big picture. Lower bar for access brings more people to the hobby. There will always be the hardcore games, like Twilight Imperium or various Martin Wallace designs. Not all games need to be like that. We don’t need to scare new players with 12 hour sessions of games they barely understand if we can make things easier to learn.

Terra Mystica has a lot of options, but due to the way they are presented, they are easy to get and easy to remember.

Design Gone Too Far

Recently (a few weeks back) I played Eclipse and Terre Mystica. Both respected games. In fact, both are top 10 games on BGG. Both are also pretty new.

I have a problem with these games, but I should be clear that these thoughts stem from a limited amount of gameplay. There is a chance things get better with time, but right now, these two seem to be missing the point somewhat.

Lets start with Terra Mystica. We played it twice. First I played the hobbits and then the giants. In both case, even though I didn’t have any game experience, once I sort of understood the rules, I knew exactly what I should do. The game isn’t long in the sense of turns, but I shouldn’t be able to do this. There just should be more variance or more choices. Right now, the game doesn’t offer much of a challenge, if most of my turns are just playing out a plan I formed before the game even really started and not having to evolve the plan at any point.

Eclipse, on the other hand, felt like it was all about seizing the opportunities. I couldn’t plan anything. Each round was just testing the waters. It felt a bit like push-your-luck game but with way too many pieces. I won the game, but I didn’t feel like I earned the win in any way. It just happened, because I had better luck with exploration and my neighbor couldn’t get the technology he needed to make a surprise attack. That’s it. Just blind luck with only very shallow decision making.

This was the simpler version where everyone plays humans. There’s a more complex version with alien races. The problem with that is that since the alien races have specialties, they are even more dependent on luck. Whereas humans can get pretty good benefits from all planets, these aliens need a very specific set of circumstances to thrive. Since they can’t really build those circumstances without the key components, they are much more subject to the underside of variance.

Perhaps this isn’t even new. Maybe the older games managed to hide it better, but do I do like to feel I have some sort of control, like I have to think on my feet. Many games give me this feeling. At least if my decisionmaking isn’t that important, let the game end quickly. If I have poor draw in MtG, at least I don’t have to wait for two hours to see the game to its end.

Partly this is due to the lack of interaction. Terra Mystica often favors trying to stay out of other players business, because others will benefit from you building next to them. In Eclipse, you can fight other players, but that’s unproductive, slow and expensive, and therefore a poor tactic which should only be resorted to when no other options exist.

Apparently the designers have taken certains lessons from earlier games to heart, but have just gone too far. You need both some control and some variance to be a good game.

(Note: Before actually playing Eclipse, I was proud Finns could produce such a well-received game. I kept thinking whether I should actually write this, but then again, it would be disingenuous to talk only about the Danish(?) game which only highlights part of the problem.)