Family Game Mainstays

Because of a recent vacation, I haven't played any games in the last couple of weeks with anyone outside of my immediate family. And that means playing games that my elementary-school-age daughters enjoy, and that my wife and I can tolerate. Here are four of our mainstays:

Zooloretto (designed by Michael Schacht) – Zooloretto is too simple a game for the Appalachian Gamers to enjoy, but it is just fine for kids. Although my daughters are sometimes more interested in producing baby animals than in developing a winning score, this is a game in which the kids can sometimes beat the parents.

The mechanics of Zooloretto are quite simple. On his turn, a player can spend his cash to perform an action, or pick a random tile and place it on a truck, or claim a truck and the tiles on it. Once a player claims a truck, he is finished for that round. The goal of the game is for players to collect animal tiles, and fill zoo enclosures with animals of one species. Animals that can't be fitted into an enclosure will count against a player at the end of the game, but players can pay cash to get rid of unwanted animals.

Players can also buy an animal from another player's zoo, but we play a variant that ignores that rule (If I bought a baby panda from my daughter's zoo, the screams would be fierce and the tears copious). There is a strong luck element in the game, but it is not entirely brainless. You need to pay attention to what animals other players need so that you don't accidentally fill up a truck with tiles that will give them the game. Zooloretto plays in forty-five minutes or less, and we can sometimes play two games in an evening.

Small World (designed by Philippe Keyaerts) – This fantasy conquest game is another favorite. Players choose fantasy races with various abilities and then set out to conquer the world. The combination of colorful races, and random ability tiles means that the game never grows stale. My daughters like the Amazons because of the game's art work, but my wife likes choosing the right combination of race and abilities to get a maximum return. Small World takes the longest time to play of all the games mentioned here, but one of our games will seldom last much more than an hour.

Ghost Stories (designed by Antoine Bauza) – This cooperative fantasy/horror game is difficult to play well. But my daughters don't mind losing when we lose as a family and not as individuals. And they like examining the horrific artwork on the deck of ghost cards, and they enjoy it when they kill a particularly difficult ghost (or remember a rule or strategy that Daddy forgot). We tend to lose this game a lot (even when I don't make the game unnecessarily difficult by botching the rules) but we keep coming back for a rematch with Wu-Feng, the master of evil ghosts.

The Adventurers (designed by Fredric Henry and Guillaume Blossier) – I think of this game as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Competition. Each player is an explorer or mercenary trying to raid an ancient booby-trapped temple for all the treasure he or she can carry. If you are too slow or unlucky you will get crushed by a rolling boulder, or fall into a lava pit, or get washed over the falls of an underground river. But get out alive with the most treasure and you win.

The game is quite simple because players have two basic actions: move or pick up treasure. My daughters don't die very often in this game because they tend to play cautiously, and they run for the exit without bothering to collect too much treasure. That strategy can actually work when Mommy falls into the lava pit (quite often) or Daddy lags behind and gets smooshed by that boulder (once in a while). We can get through a game of The Adventurers in fifteen or twenty minutes, and it is easy to play a couple of games back to back.

Occasionally, I can get my daughters to try heavier fare, and my wife likes Agricola so much that she persuades our youngest daughter to try it. But these are the games that get pulled out the most when the gamer group includes people whose ages can be counted with a single digit.

Ystari Games plans to start taking reservations for its forthcoming Mousquetaires du Roy in September 2010 – check out this preview on BGN for details about the game – and as an incentive for buyers to purchase the game at Spiel 2010, Ystari's Cyril Demaegd says "we'll release the game in Essen with a special gift for our buyers. Each buyer will be given a special 'fifth Musketeer' (Treville) with his figurine and player sheet. With Treville, players will be able to play with six players (or to replace another musketeer, of course)."

In addition, says Demaegd, "We'll give away a really cool T-shirt of d'Artagnan. Stocks will be limited, so reservations will be mandatory."

(Obligatory disclosure: I was paid by Ystari Games to edit the English rules of Mousquetaires du Roy.)

What's a good way to generate publicity for an upcoming game? Survey the gaming populace and invite their opinion on important topics. Stronghold Games did just that for its version of Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, asking people whether the game should include a whale (as in the original Parker Brothers version of Survive!) or a giant squid. (Did I say "important topics"? Never mind what I said...)

In the end, the whale reigned supreme, besting the giant squid in two matches out of three. The giant squid put up a good fight, though, and to honor its valiant effort to become immortalized in plastic, Stronghold Games has decided to offer the giant squid as a bonus for anyone who preorders Survive: Escape from Atlantis! Says Stronghold's Kevin Nesbitt, the piece will come "with special rules for inclusion in the game simultanously with or instead of the whale."

Under Stronghold's current preorder system, only 500 preorders will be taken and preorders can't be taken from outside the U.S. (Stronghold has not yet launched the preorder window for Survive.) To accommodate those outside the U.S. who want to see a giant squid destroying boats and chomping on helpless swimmers, Nesbitt says that "the Survive: Escape from Atlantis! – Giant Squid Expansion will be made available for purchase at Essen in limited quantity. This will be a separately bagged expansion from the base game. These will be made available on a first come, first served basis."

For a first look at Survive's whales and squid, check out the CGI rendering below:

Game name:  K2 Designer:  Adam Kałuża Publisher: Rebel.pl Publishing — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Polish game retailer Rebel.pl is making the leap into publishing, with Basilica (described here) being one of its releases and the board game K2 from Adam Kałuża being the other. Here's a lengthy description of K2 from the publisher:

K2 is the second-highest mountain on Earth as well as the second deadliest. It's known as the Savage Mountain, as it kills one person for every four who have reached the summit...

And K2 has never been climbed in winter.

Now your team stands in its shadow, ready to climb for fame and glory. You know the dangers of K2 all too well: Extreme weather with frequent and deadly storms; exposed, steep, tricky routes; and lack of oxygen await you on your way to the summit. You will test your climbing skills to the death, trying to outsmart the ever-changing weather and always worrying about the acclimatization of your two mountaineers. Also, there are the other teams ready to take the glory for themselves.

K2 is a board game in which each player controls a team of two mountaineers, trying to climb to the summit of K2 before the other players' teams, and descend before the mountain kills them. Every player uses the same deck of cards. Every turn, players simultaneously choose three of their six cards from hand to play. Cards let them move their climbers or give them always needed acclimatization points. You can also use movement points to set up a tent which helps with acclimatization, but naturally the tent stays in one place throughout the game.

Whoever played the most movement points on their cards takes one of three face-up risk tokens (which penalize players movement and/or acclimatization points by 0-2 this turn), then the players in order move and acclimatize their mountaineers. After that, every player adjusts the acclimatization level of his climbers, taking into account the weather for this day (turn) and the acclimatization penalty from the field a climber occupies. If acclimatization drops to 0, the mountaineer is considered dead and all the victory points he's won so far are lost.

At the end of a turn, you draw three cards from your deck and move the weather pawn to the next day on the weather tile. During the game, the decks will be gone through three times and all six weather tiles will be used. (There are three spaces with different weather on each of them.) Planning, hand management and risk analysis are important elements of K2 play. Another important thing is choosing the path for your climbers as the other mountaineers can block your way, which can be devastating if you are high or if bad weather comes.

K2 is a board game for 1-5 players, with strong interaction and a low luck factor that lasts up to 60 minutes. The theme is very well represented by the mechanisms, including such elements as changing weather, lack of oxygen and death of the mountaineers. The result is an exciting match for gamers and non-gamers alike. The game includes a double-sided game board with two different routes to the summit (easier and harder) and two sets of weather tiles (for summer and winter).

The easy side of the K2 game board

Game name:  Basilica Designer:  Łukasz M. Pogoda Publisher: Rebel.pl Publishing — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

Polish retailer Rebel.pl has released localized versions of a number of games – including Dungeon Lords, Jungle Speed, Ghost Stories – but now Rebel.pl is making a move into publishing original game designs, with two titles on its release schedule for 2010. One of those two games is Basilica, a two-player design by Łukasz M. Pogoda, and here's a game description from the publisher:

Basilica presents the duel of two medieval master masons who are ordered to build a medieval cathedral together, plan its layout, and oversee work at the construction site in tandem.

Tiles placed on the table form the plan of the cathedral. These tiles, distinguished by four colors, represent different elements of the cathedral. Later, the players place pawns on the tiles – these pawns are the teams of builders: foremen, masons and carpenters, who will make the design a reality. The players strive to achieve two goals: to lay their cathedral tiles so as to create the largest possible areas representing a single architectural style, and to have more pawns in these areas than their opponent.

The passage of time in the game is represented by a special King pawn, which moves along the scoring track. Every few moves, the King pawn comes to a space indicating a royal visit to the cathedral. During each royal visit, the progress of work is assessed and Victory Points are assigned to the players. The number of VPs each player is awarded depends on the size and number of the areas controlled by their pawns. The more areas the player controls, and the bigger these are, the greater the reward for the player. At the end of the game, the winner is the player who has claimed more Victory Points.

Stronghold designer Ignacy Trzewiczek, who is part of Portal Publishing, posted a fun explanation on BoardGameGeek of how good the game is and why Portal finally decided not to publish the game while insisting that someone else should. I'll publish a more detailed preview of Basilica in the near future.

Game name:  Era of Inventions Designer:  Anthony Daamen Publisher: Quined Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

The only info on this title comes from coverage on Bordspel.com of the Chocolatl opening day events held by Quined Games. Erwin Broens mentions that Era of Inventions is a working title for this economic development game.

Update, Sep. 2, 2010: Quined Games has now posted more information about this release. Here's a brief game description from the publisher, part of which is translated from Dutch:

Explore the lives and minds of Alexander Graham Bell, Karl Benz, the Wright brothers and other pioneers of invention and experience the thrill of the industrial revolution. Be there when the cash register, the sewing machine, the typewriter, the telephone, the gramophone, the camera, the car, the steam engine and the plane are all invented again in Era of Inventions. This time you will be the inventor who creates, patents and introduces these inventions to the markets and the world!

Factory card, back and front

The goal of Era of Inventions, which lasts 8-10 rounds, is to gain as much influence in the industrial revolution as possible. In each round players use several actions to drive their business forward and gain influence, such as building factories, buying or producing raw materials, or inventing devices and bringing them to market. Time is short, so your actions are limited. The player who best handles his action discs, money, materials and development will carry the most influence in the game and ultimately find himself the most influential inventor!

Game name:  Really Friendly Sharing Designer:  Ted Alspach Publisher: Bézier Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

As described on BGN, designer Ted Alspach previously announced a bonus Age of Steam / Steam map called Sharing for those who order the Essen 2010 Map Pack through his Bézier Games. But philanthropist that he is, Alspach has decided that mere Sharing is not good enough – after all, you share train lines with others, but the game still has only one winner. For those who frown on such things, you'll be delighted to know that you can flip over that nasty Sharing board and instead share a communal hug around the game board for Really Friendly Sharing. Here's Alspach's description of this sugary confection:

What if Steam / Age of Steam were a truly cooperative game, like Shadows over Camelot without a traitor? Or if no one had to die in Clue, so you could just mosey around that neat mansion talking to your friends? Or if there were no diseases in Pandemic, or no ghosts in Ghost Stories? Wouldn't that be fun? Sure, it would!

Ted Alspach's Really Friendly Sharing is for 2 to 10 players who don't have some horribly recessive competitive gene. In Ted Alspach's Really Friendly Sharing, you work as a team to build a railroad. Many of the aspects that cause unnecessary tension in Age of Steam have been removed, like money and the AoS auction, so you can focus on laying track, making deliveries, getting VPs and having fun!

Really Friendly Sharing is available only for Essen preorders of the Bezier Games 2010 Map Pack – which now consists of eight maps, six of them mounted! – and is a great way to wind down after a super-competitive gaming session. Put a win in your column by playing Really Friendly Sharing!

The Games of Stefan Feld, Part 2

In my last column, The Games of Stefan Feld, Part 1, I talked about the originality underlying Stefan Feld's designs, highlighting four of his publications from 2005-2007. This time around I'm going to look at his more recent fare, from 2008-2010, and again discuss what I think makes them really stand out as innovative and original designs.

In this article, I'm going to be covering Stefan's four most prominent designs from the period. If you'd like to talk about a game that I left out from 2008-2010, I invite you to make use of the comments, below.

New Feld: 2008-2010

The Name of the Rose (2008). Because of Feld's amazing record with alea, every time I play one of his games from another publisher, I wonder, "Was this originally intended for alea?" This one certainly has the right depth, and there aren't any alea games like it, so who knows. In any case, in The Name of The Rose, you're trying to catch a murderer. Actions you take over the course of the game increase or decrease the evidence against one of the monks. The trick is, you're secretly one of the monks. At the end of the game, everyone tries to guess who everyone is. Correct guesses increase evidence and then the the secret player of the monk with the least evidence against them wins.

It's a little convoluted, so let me say, whew!

Unique Elements. There are two types of deduction in The Name of The Rose. The first is who-dunnit?, but the mechanism that's used is what I actually call "anti-deduction" (induction?). As in Android (2008) and Tobago (2009), the guilty party isn't selected at the start of the game but is rather decided by the actions of the players. So, it's not really deduction at all, but it is an interesting and new sort of gameplay, and as seems typical for Feld, he published just as other games of the same type were appearing. The real deduction in The Name of the Rose is figuring out who each player is. That really comes down to Clans (2002) "on speed" type gameplay, and isn't that unique. I think The Name of the Rose might not have gotten a lot of attention because the core unique element of "anti-deduction" isn't as amazing as the stuff in some of Feld's other games, but that may just be me.

Macao (2009). Feld's newest alea game and his newest dice-rolling game is nonetheless different from the ones he's done before. Here you've got a pretty standard formulaic resource-management game, but your resources come from die rolls and must be stored away from future use. There are also elements of trade and connectivity to keep you thinking in lots of different directions.

Unique Elements. Much like Notre Dame (2007), in Macao, I feel like Feld took a pretty staid category of game--resource management and formulaic resource usage--and turned it on its head in approaching it in really different ways. The die-rolling is the most obvious difference, but it's really the way that resource availability differs over time that makes that original. You're literally creating a chronological supply chain and because resources don't carry from turn to turn, you're trying your best to keep complementary supplies together in the same timeframe. Rarely for Feld, this game has a distant predecessor--Neuland (2004)--but it still stands out as quite innovative.

The Pillars of the Earth: Builders Duel (2009). I was surprised to see Feld's name on this licensed game related to a game by another designer. It didn't seem like the type of work he usually does, and indeed I don't feel like it stands out as well as his other works. This is a two-player resource-management and building game where the main action is controlled by cards that the players claim.

Unique Elements. The most unique element of the game is the duel. When players choose their action cards, they do it in such a way that there must be one card of overlap. The players then "duel" over it. I love the idea of enforced conflict in a two-player game, and think that's an innovation worthy of Feld. On the other hand I find the way that it's managed here very artificial: players basically have to select lines of cards from a 3x3 grid that overlap. The actual duel doesn't warm my cockles either. You flip two-sided tokens in the air, revealing values. Definitely an innovation, but IMO not a particularly worthwhile one. (Feld offers up a variant where you instead use resources to get to the better side of a token, which is probably an improvement.) Don't get me wrong, I think this is a good game, it just doesn't stand out for me like the rest of Feld's work.

The Speicherstadt (2010). Feld's newest game just hit the stores in the US a few weeks ago, and is what got me thinking about Feld's game enough to write this article. In some ways it's a formulaic resource-management game, just like Macao, but here you're putting together specified sets of resources to win VPs at the end of the game. You purchase goods, VP formulae, and other elements through an auction, where you first place markers to determine bidding order then give those players the opportunity to buy those items in that order, but with costs being higher the more players there are "waiting after you".

Unique Elements. I love the idea of Dutch Auctions, but they're pretty hard to pull off in board games. Reiner Knizia's Merchants of Amsterdam (2000) offers them straight up and always strikes me as a disaster waiting to happen, as players wildly lunge for the auction clock. Faidutti & Cathala's Queen's Necklace (2003) offers a calmer approach, where prices dropping from turn to turn, but the "auction" is set up in such a way that each player usually has one option to buy each thing.

Conversely, The Speicherstadt is super clever and, yes, innovative. Effectively what happens is that players create a stack of Dutch Auction costs, then unwind that stack to see who will actually pay. If one marker is down, that player gets it at "1". If two markers are down, the first one gets it at "2" or the second can at "1". Etc. Not even The Speicherstadt acts quite like a Dutch Auction "really" does, but I think it's a really neat and innovative approach to the issue.

Around the Corner

When I kicked off this topic in my last column, one of my basic theses was that Feld's games don't really have any commonality. I largely stand by that, but after walking through eight of them, I can start to see some common design elements. First, he seems to enjoy chaos more than most designers, whether that be dice-rolling, the movement of a joint resource, or the very important drawing of cards. Second, he seems to enjoy forcing interactions upon players. I think that's the most obvious in his two-player games, but The Speicherstadt fairly naturally does the same thing, while there's explicit (die-rolling) conflict in Rum & Pirates, implicit fighting for position in The Name of the Rose, and somewhat more subtle forced interactions in most other games.

As has been the case for the last few years, I look forward to seeing what Stefan Feld will do next.

If you have any comments on these games, or ones that I opted to leave out, I encourage you to offer them up down below.

And if you want to see what else I've been doing recently, I'll point you toward my review of Cornucopia over at RPGnet.

Game name:  Small World: Be Not Afraid... Designer:  Philippe Keyaerts Publisher: Days of Wonder — 2010

Days of Wonder will release a new smallish expansion for Philippe Keyaerts' Small World before the end of 2010. Here's a description from the publisher of the Be Not Afraid... expansion:

There are many frightening inhabitants of Small World, but to survive you must Be Not Afraid...! This new expansion for Small World includes a nasty lot of five new Races including Barbarians, Homunculi, Pixies, Pygmies, and greedy little Leprechauns. You'll also get five new Special Powers which allows you to leap over regions to conquer new lands. Be Not Afraid... requires the original Small World board game to play.

I've seen an estimated release date of November 2010 listed by retailers, but nothing official from Days of Wonder yet.

Solving crossword puzzles and playing games has been touted in the media as a way to prevent the onset of brain degenerative diseases. Here's one such claim on the Alzheimer’s Association website:

Mental decline as you age appears to be largely due to altered connections among brain cells. But research has found that keeping the brain active seems to increase its vitality and may build its reserves of brain cells and connections. You could even generate new brain cells.

This turns out to be only half the picture. In research published in Neurology and reported on by Business Week, while it is true that "mental activity may slow declines in thinking and memory during normal old age...folks who loved these pursuits actually displayed a hastening of their mental decline once symptoms of dementia began to set in." Here's an excerpt from the Business Week article:

The researchers found that increased cognitive activity among normal individuals – things such as listening to the radio, watching television, reading, playing games and going to museums – meant that they were less likely to experience cognitive decline over several years.

Specifically, for each gained point on the cognitive activity scale, the rate of mental decline fell by 52 percent over 6 years.

But the opposite was true for those who did go on to develop dementia – in that case, people who had loved mentally challenging activities actually showed a quicker mental decline after the illness took over. In fact, the rate of decline accelerated by 42 percent for each point on the cognitive activity scale, the researchers report.

There goes my plan for avoiding dementia...

Game name:  Kaigan / Inotaizu Designer:  Kenichi Tanabe Publisher: Ascora Games — October 2010
Featured at: Spiel 2010

The number of good games entering the market from self-published designers is staggering, and the sad part for gamers is that all too often we don't even become aware of these titles, much less have a chance to play them to see whether they fulfill the designer's promise. Sometimes, though, such a self-published game will trickle down from one gamer's hands to another until someone finally decides that the gaming world needs to see more of this design.

Such is the case with Kenichi Tanabe's Inotaizu. Former BGN columnist Scott Tepper played a friend's copy at a convention, then managed to snag the game from a prize table as something had triggered in his head. Now, months later, the renamed Kaigan will be the first release from Tepper's Ascora Games with a Spiel 2010 debut.

Map game board, showing the rounds, actions and endgame points

Kaigan is themed around Tadataka Ino's efforts to survey and map Japan starting in 1800. The players work for Ino, and they have surveyors in their employ to map the shoreline and bring honor to them. To start the game, ten map tiles are placed on the map game board in pairs; each map tile has a value of 2-4 along with an artist, government or travel icon.

Each of the five rounds starts with players taking turns to place action cards on available spaces on the central game board. Any space already holding an action card or bearing a preprinted action symbol cannot be covered. After placing a card, the player can claim the actions in any row that hasn't already been claimed by placing a colored marker in the left-hand column. (This row may or may not contain action cards placed by this player.) This player is now finished for the round, and the other players continue placing cards until each person has claimed a row. In a three-player game, the bottommost row is not used.

Game board showing pre-printed actions, spaces for action cards & the artistic, government and travel tracks

Once everyone has claimed a row, players resolve the actions by moving down the columns from top to bottom, starting with the leftmost column. Each card has a main action – spend Ryō to place surveyors on map tiles or map markers on map tiles where you already have surveyors, earn Ryō, buy Honor points, advance on the artistic or government track – but a player can ignore this action to take a card's secondary action: spending two Ryō to place or move one Surveyor on a map tile. Preprinted actions allow no secondary action, and a player can also choose to skip an action and do nothing, if desired.

After all the actions are complete, Tadataka Ino comes to lend a hand to his assistants, rolling two or three dice and placing a neutral map marker on each tile in the column that matches the die roll. Any map tiles that now bear a number of map markers equal to the number on the tile score. Artistic and government tiles earn players points equal to the value of the tile, and each map marker on such a tile advances that player one space on the respective track at the bottom of the game board. Travel tiles earn a player points equal to the value of the tile and the number of his markers on that tile; in addition, the player advances on the travel track equal to his markers present on the tile.

Players receive income equal to the sum of their placement on the artistic and government tracks, and after the second, fourth and fifth rounds players earn honor based on their position on these tracks. After the fifth round, players receive a bonus based on their relative positions on the travel track. Additional bonuses are divvied out for the player holding the most Ryō as well as for all surveyors and map markers still on map tiles. (Tadataka Ino gives points for effort – work hard!) Whoever has the most Honor points after five rounds wins.

Best of luck to you on this new venture, Scott – and try not to get too hoarse when teaching Kaigan at Spiel this year!

Michael Keller, who runs the Game Designer Wannabe blog, is putting out an appeal for logo designs for his forthcoming game publishing company, Visible Hand Games. The designer of the winning logo will receive one copy of every game that Keller ever self-publishes – and if VHG never gets off the ground, the winner will receive one copy of a Keller prototype of his choice.

A peek at Keller's own attempts at logo design shows that this contest is a good idea. Stick to your strengths, and all that. The deadline for entry is September 30, 2010.

Previewed game:  One Against All, All Against One in Mousquetaires du Roy

German publisher Kosmos has released a number of board games over the past few years that originated as text – Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, Pillars of the Earth, The Swarm – but by no means does Kosmos have a lock on ludic interpretations of fiction. In late 2010, French publisher Ystari Games will reveal its first novel-to-game adaptation with the release of the semi-cooperative game Mousquetaires du Roy (which translates as "The King's Musketeers"). Why semi-cooperative? Because in the regular game one player works against all the others, but the game also includes rules that allow all the Musketeers to compete against the game system.

Here are the basics of Mousquetaires du Roy, which is designed by François Combe and Gilles Lehmann and based on Alexandre Dumas' novel Les Trois Mousquetaires: Most of the players take the role of one of the famed Musketeers – Athos, Aramis, Porthos or the hero d'Artagnan. As in the novel, they're trying to recover the jewels that the Queen gave to her lover, Duke Buckingham, so that she can wear them at an event brought about by Cardinal Richelieu. The jewels were originally given to the Queen by her husband, King Louis XIII, and should she show up without the jewels her infidelity will be revealed. The Cardinal knows this and wants to bring about the Queen's downfall, so he brings in a special agent of sorts, someone who will obstruct the Musketeers and create distractions that the Musketeers must counter. This agent is Milady de Winter, ex-wife to Athos, and she's played by one player who works against all the others. If Milady can keep the Musketeers from returning the jewels in time – or if she completes one of her other missions – then she wins the game.

The Musketeers have their work cut out for them as they must prevent the death of d'Artagnan's beloved, Constance, and prevent the King's troops from completing their siege of the city seaport of La Rochelle – all while working to bring the jewels back from England so they can once again find a place around the Queen's neck. Should they fail, she'll find a noose around her neck instead. Can the Musketeers work all for one and save the Queen?

Each Musketeer character card shows the number of life points he has, the values of his gentlemanly skills (Erudition, Nobility, Gallantry and Panache), his combat strength, his special manuever in combat and his special ability. For example, as ex-husband to Milady, Athos can never be attacked by Milady's powerful henchman Rochefort or else he'll know who is behind the threats plaguing the Musketeers. Each Musketeer starts the game with a hand of Adventure cards, which are divided into Skill cards (boosting a Musketeer's existing skills), Combat cards (boosting that ability), and Character cards (representing special individuals from the story who can provide unique bonuses).

The game board shows important locations from the story: La Rochelle, the Louvre, the Bastille, Paris, Richelieu's quarters, and so on. In the upper left corner lie the time and money tracks, along with the Arsenal, which holds equipment and upgrades that Musketeers can purchase – but they start with a measly three pistoles, so they'll need to do good deeds to build up the purse before they can really boost their abilities.

Mousquetaires du Roy lasts at most eleven turns, with Milady winning if the time token reaches the ominous head of Richelieu at the bottom of the time track prior to the Musketeers reclaiming and delivering the jewels. Milady also wins if she kills Constance in Paris, brings about the fall of La Rochelle or brings information about the Queen's infidelity to light. Each turn Milady secretly chooses to travel to one of six locations, most of which will provide her with a special action if the Musketeers have not located her by the end of the turn. She can also draw or play Treachery cards to create unfavorable playing conditions for the Musketeers.

Each Musketeer has three actions available, and they can play in any order, allowing them a lot of flexibility in terms of how they'll tackle the threats presented by Milady and by the ever-present threat of running out of time to preserve the Queen's honor. They can draw Adventure cards, move among the locations, trade cards with one another, defend La Rochelle or tackle the challenges and adversaries that await them in Paris and the Louvre.

In these latter two locations, Milady plays adversaries (and possibly a trap) to accompany specific Paris and Louvre cards that Musketeers can overcome only through the application of skills. Thus, one Musketeer might visit Paris to use his Nobility to remove a challenge, while another visits later to duel an adversary.

Duels are carried out through these blue and red dice shown here, with Muskeeters playing combat cards to boost the number of dice they roll, up to a maximum of six. Each Muskeeter and most of the adversaries have a special fighting manuever, and if the dice show this combination, then that duelist automatically wins, causing the opponent to lose a life point. If no one achieves their manuever, then you compare swords against shields to see how much damage each duelist delivers. If no one takes damage, then each side removes a die and they roll again, with duels continuing until someone takes damage or else no dice remain. Most adversaries have only one life point, making them easy targets for the Musketeers, but some have more, including Rochefort, who requires five hits before he's eliminated.

If a Musketeers loses his last life point, he must return to the Vieux Colombier hotel to recuperate, costing him an entire turn to get back to fighting speed. While life points are primarily lost through duels, Musketeers can also sacrifice themselves in battle at La Rochelle to keep Milady from gaining an edge there. While in La Rochelle, a Musketeer can lay down a Combat card to represent power in staving off the King's attackers. At the end of each round, Musketeers roll dice equal to the combat strength on display in La Rochelle, while Milady rolls 1-4 dice based on the current turn number. Whichever side has more swords pulls the La Rochelle token towards its side of the playing area. A Musketeer can sacrifice a life point to cancel one of Milady's swords, but similarly she can visit La Rochelle to permanently remove one of the Musketeer's Combat cards.

A playing of the prototype

In the Louvre, each turn that the challenge card stays in place brings the Queen closer to shame. If the Musketeers clear the card in the first two turns it's present, for example, they earn Epic tokens that will aid them in their central quest to return the jewels. After the third turn, the Queen's reputation slips a notch, and after the fourth her rep drops two more spaces, with Milady earning a treachery card to further future mayhem. A new challenge card is then revealed, with the Musketeers needing to cushion the Queen once more.

The quest for the jewels takes place on two double-sided game boards set on the upper middle portion of the gameboard. The Musketeers must fight through waves of adversaries laid down by Milady, sometimes not knowing the strength of their opponents and sometimes facing foes who don't weaken in duels after ties. Their gentlemanly skills are also required, and on occasion a trap will spring unexpectedly to cause more damage. The four stages of this quest represent the trip to England to reclaim the jewels and place them back in the hands of the Queen, and Musketeers will be hard-pressed to focus on this quest – central though it may be – due to all the other complications Milady can engineer.

Note that the figurines in the game will come unpainted

That said, victory in La Rochelle or a trumping of Rochefort can put a "One for all, all for one!" card in the hands of the Musketeers, a trump card of sorts that can pull victory from Milady's hands by giving the Musketeers more time, granting more Epic tokens or buffing up the Queen's tarnished reputation. Hang together, Musketeers, or else Milady will most assuredly see that you shall all hang separately!

(Disclosure: Ystari Games hired me to edit the English rules for Mousquetaires du Roy.)

What is your PopulistGamer score?

So, what exactly does the title mean -- what is a PopulistGamer score (PGS)?   Well, it’s a term that I just coined myself in the past 24 hours, and it refers to how many of the most “popular” games you have played and you have ever owned.  It’s a very subjective term and uses the Boardgamegeek.com user ratings to decide what games are popular.  I am using the number of users who have rated the game as the metric to decide popularity.  I like the fact that this metric uses the votes of gamers (I am making the assumption here that most Boardgamegeek.com users are gamers) - so it is a much better reflection of popularity than sales numbers - which could be skewed by all sorts of things.

Under this system, the most popular game is Settlers of Catan – which has 24,344 user ratings.  The average rating of the game is not important in deciding the popularity of a game… just the number of users who have rated it – which, to me, shows how many people have played the game.  For instance, some low-rated games such as Monopoly (average rating = 4.50) and UNO (average rating = 5.27) make the list of 100 most popular games, while some of the highest rated games such as Brass (8th by rating), Steam (13th by rating), Command and Colors: Ancients (15th by rating), Age of Steam (16th), Paths of Glory (19th) and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage (20th) do not show up in the top 100 by popularity.  That's right - 30% or 6 of the top 20 rated games on BGG do not qualify amongst the 100 most rated.

While the list of the 100 most rated games is certainly always in flux (as users are rating games all the time), it is surprisingly stable at ranks 80 and above – very few games burst on the scene and get more than 5,000 ratings.  No game from 2010 yet has enough user ratings to break into the top 100 list.  In fact, Small World (#25) and Dominon: Intrigue (#86) are the only games on the list from 2009, and Dominion (# 7), Pandemic (# 9), Stone Age (# 30), Battlestar Galactica (# 39), and Le Havre (# 58) are there from 2008.

As only 7 games have made this top 100 list over the past 2.5 years, the list definitely reflects a long-term view at the hobby.  After all, games that have been around longer have a much better chance of being rated by more BGG users!  So, if you are fairly new to the hobby (less than 5 years), your score is likely going to be quite low as you may not have had the chance to play all these games and/or the need to buy all of the older games.  Also, it takes a somewhat skewed view at the overall population of games:  If nothing else, it tells you if you're a big fan of the Settlers of Catan series and of the Carcassone series or not - as 9 games in the top 100 belong to one of these two properties.  That being said, the top part of the list is IMHO a pretty good view of the gaming landscape for the past 15 years, and there are not many games not represented amongst these 100 that I would feel are essential to being a very experienced gamer.  Looking at the top of the list, 7 of the top 10 are in amongst my all-time favorites.

Before I go any further, I’ll have to give thanks to Joe Huber (himself a talented game designer) for planting the idea in my head.  His initial question only looked at the top 15 games by popularity – but I have expanded the question to the top 100 games to get a better survey of the games that more people play.  The question that the PGS looks at is: How many of the 100 most popular games have you played and how many of them have you owned?  So, how do you figure out your PGS?  Easy… First, you look at the top 100 games by number of ratings on BGG.  (I’ve typed out the list below as well)

 

As of August 31, 2010 – games on Boardgamegeek.com by number of user ratings

1. Settlers of Catan (24,344 ratings)

2. Carcassone

3. Puerto Rico

4. Agricola (15,685 ratings)

5. Power Grid

6. Ticket to Ride

7. Dominion

8. Citadels

9. Pandemic

10. Lost Cities (12,162 ratings)

11. Bohnanza

12. Race for the Galaxy

13. Tigris and Euphrates

14. Arkham Horror

15. Caylus

16. Risk (10,290 ratings)

17. Ticket to Ride: Europe

18. San Juan

19. El Grande

20. Roborally

21. Alhambra (9,180)

22. Chess

23. Bang!

24. Memoir ‘44

25. Small World

26. Ra

27. Scrabble

28. Shadows over Camelot

29. Monopoly

30. Stone Age

31. Magic: The Gathering (8,098 ratings)

32. The Princes of Florence

33. Acquire

34. Thurn and Taxis

35. Carcassone: Inns and Cathedrals

36. Blokus

37. Munchkin

38. Tikal

39. Battlestar Galactica (7,064 ratings)

40. Through the Desert

41. Apples to Apples

42. Saint Petersburg

43. Modern Art

44. The Settlers of Catan Card Game

45. Samurai

46. Ingenious

47. Guillotine

48. Lord of the Rings

49. Hive

50. Twilight Struggle

51. The Pillars of the Earth

52. Galaxy Trucker

53. Battlelore

54. Coloretto (6,023 ratings)

55. Catan: Cities and Knights

56. Carcassone: Hunters and Gatherers

57. Carcassone: Traders & Builders

58. Le Havre

59. Hey! That’s My Fish!

60. Mr. Jack

61. War of the Ring

62. For Sale

63. A Game of Thrones

64. Descent: Journeys in the Dark

65. Catan: Seafarers

66. Twilight Imperium (Third Ed.)

67. Zooloretto

68. Diplomacy

69. Railroad Tycoon

70. Clue

71. Axis and Allies

72. Goa

73. Go (5,033 ratings)

74. Formula De

75. Fluxx

76. Shogun / Wallenstein

77. Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization

78. Amun-Re

79. Battle Line

80. Carcassone: The River

81. Category 5 / 6 Nimmt

82. Kingsburg

83. UNO

84. Notre Dame

85. Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game

86. Dominion: Intrigue

87. The Settlers of Catan: 5-6 player expansion

88. Stratego

89. Age of Empires III: The Age of Discovery

90. No Thanks!

91. Scotland Yard

92. Backgammon

93. Betrayal at House on the Hill

94. Pirate’s Cove

95. Attika

96. Heroscape (Master Set): Rise of the Valkyrie

97. Fury of Dracula

98. TransAmerica

99. Blue Moon City

100. Torres

 

Then, you count the number of games that you have played on this list.  This number divided by 100 is your PG-Played score.  Next, you count the number of games that you own currently or have owned in the past – this number divided by 100 is your PG-Owned score.  To get your overall PGS – multiply the Played score with the Owned score. As of today, my PGS is .7735.  (Played: .91, Owned: .85)

Finally, you can look at the list of games to make some interesting observations… I’ve played 91 games on the list, the ones which I haven’t yet played (and the short reason why) are:

#14 Arkham Horror – I once tried to learn the game, but gave up after we weren’t yet playing after over two hours of going of the rules, boards, cards, etc.  And given that first exposure to the game, I've not been keen to try it again

#25 Small World – I really didn’t like Vinci and saw no reason to move onto Small World – the boardgame – I do own this on the iPad and have played it there.

#39 Battlestar Galactica – I HATE co-operative games.  I avoid them for the most part.

#53 Battlelore – I have Battle Cry and that pretty much meets my needs for 2p wargames like this.

#61 War of the Ring – I took this off a prize table somewhere, but never could find an opponent for it - so it went on the sale pile at a later date still in shrink.

#63 A Game of Thrones – I watched my brother play a disastrous game of this and have not been interested since

#85 LNOE – theme just doesn’t scratch an itch

#93 Betrayal at House on the Hill – same as LNOE – just not interested

#94 Pirate’s Cove – I played a near final prototype of this at the Gathering, and that one play was more than enough for me.  As such, I’ve never played the final version.

Also, interestingly, I’ve owned #61 War of the Ring and #63 A Game of Thrones but I have never played them.  I managed to sell both off n the past year as it was becoming clear that I wasn’t going to ever play them.  The games that I do not own (and never have owned) are:

#9 Pandemic

#14 Arkham Horror

#24 Memoir ‘44

#25 Small World

#28 Shadows over Camelot

#37 Munchkin

#39 Battlestar Galactica

#53 Battlelore

#54 Coloretto

#66 Twilight Imperium

#85 LNOE

#93 Betrayal at House on the Hill

#94 Pirate’s Cove

#97 Fury of Dracula

#99 Blue Moon City

So what does this tell us?  To be honest, I'm not sure.  But it’s a neat exercise to go thru and see how well versed of a gamer you are.  I went ahead and asked a few of my gaming friends to calculate their PGS as well...

Dale Yu (repeated for reference): .7735.  (Played: .91, Owned: .85)

Joe Huber (world famous game designer):  .4902  (Played: .86, Owned: .57) -- Man, with all the games that I thought Joe owned, I'm surprised by how few on this list he has ever owned! 

Larry Levy (esteemed BGN columnist): .3909 (.83 played, .47 owned) - edited because Mr Levy can't answer the question correctly on the first try

Greg Schloesser (previous BGN columnist): .8820  (.98 played, .90 owned) -- in case you're wondering, the two games that Greg hasn't played on the list are Carcassone: Inns+Cathedrals and Go.

Tom Rosen (not-quite-as-white-haired-a-BGN columnist): .5952 (.93 played, .64 owned)  -- Tommy has not played Bang, Shadows over Camelot, Axis and Allies, Fluxx, Scotland Yard, Betrayal at House on the Hill, and Fury of Dracula

Derk Solko (one half of the BGG.com supertwins): .5640  (played .94, owned .60)

Scott Alden (the better half of the BGG.com supertwins):  .9400 (played .94, owned .100!)

So, what is your PGS? How do you stack up against the gamers above?

 

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor

 

From an August 30, 2010 post by Steve Kupferman on The Torontoist:

Ben Castanie's new Koreatown café, at 600 Bloor Street West, just east of Palmerston Avenue, will emphatically not have free Wi-Fi. In fact, laptops and their attendant air of isolation are completely counter to what Castanie is trying to do. "I just don't want people sitting staring at their screens," he says. Then he starts explaining the system of categorization he'd used to organize his café's library of 1,500-plus board games...

The games on offer include many old favourites, but the catalogue runs far deeper than just the basics. Castanie is particularly proud of his selection of "Euro games," so-called because they tend to be designed and produced in countries like Germany and France. Euro games are characterized by their simple rules, and their lack of player elimination. They're considered quick and easy to learn, and they lend themselves to casual play. Settlers of Catan, a German game, is one particularly popular and well-known instance of the genre.

Head to the Snakes and Lattes website for business hours and pics of the interior shelves. Bring back something warm for me...

Reviewed game:  Vlaada Chvátil Sneaks Out a Tiny Game

Italian publisher dV Giochi has announced that it will release German language versions of its two werewolf games – Lupus in Tabula and Lupusburg – at Spiel 2010 in October. Lupus in Tabula is dV Giochi's version of the familiar Werewolf party game, while Lupusburg, which is designed for 4-8 players, throws a werewolf in the middle of town. Here's a description of that game from the publisher:

The village of Tabula, once famous for its case of lycanthropy, has become a rich town. But the people haven't changed their nasty habits!

At night, someone goes around howling, turned into a Werewolf, while someone else has dedicated himself to stealing from houses, searching for precious treasures. During the day, the Burgomaster tries to bring order back to the town's inhabitants – but what if he is really the Werewolf in disguise?

Dutch publisher White Goblin Games has posted preorder information on its website for four Spiel 2010 releases, with bonus items listed for each title that's purchased via preorder or at Spiel 2010 itself. The games and the bonus items for each title are:

• Inca Empire – four sun event cards (BGN preview)
• Norenberc – eight bonus tiles (BGN preview)
• Khan – four golden yurts (BGN preview)
• Rattus: Pied Piper – four character cards, "containing none less than the likes of Robin Hood, Dracula, Joan of Arc and Merlin" (BGN preview forthcoming)

White Goblin Games has promised to make the rules for all four games available in the coming weeks, with preorders being available until October 17, 2010, whether for pick-up in Essen or shipment. White Goblin has also released a video teaser for Inca Empire that shows the bonus sun cards in the closing seconds:

Game name:  Ingenious Designer:  Reiner Knizia Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games — November 2010 (2nd ed)

U.S. publisher Fantasy Flight Games is relaunching Reiner Knizia's multi-award-winning game Ingenious with a new look and redesigned components. For those not familiar with the game, each player has a hand of domino-style tiles with a colored symbol on each half of the tile. As you place tiles on the board, you score points for the number of identical matching symbols in rows that touch the tile that you just placed. Reach 18 points in a symbol, and you take another turn immediately – but the goal of the game isn't to have the highest score or to get rid of all your tiles first. Instead, you want your lowest score along the six symbols to be higher than the lowest score of your opponents.

According to Fantasy Flight, the "updated components include new tiles, new score cards, scoring pegs, and tile racks." The new version of Ingenious is expected to be available in November 2010.