The Dissastisfaction of Victory

Codenames BoxCodenames (2015) by Vlaada Chvátil is a wonderful game. You work in teams, you come up with clever clues, you talk with your friends about possible solutions, you laugh at hilarious possibilities, and eventually someone wins. It often doesn’t even matter who wins because the gameplay is so much fun.

Except that a few months ago I played a game of Codenames that fell flat, and it was because of the victory. You see, my team won because our opponents guessed the assassin word (“mass”). Poof! Instant loss for them, instant victory for us. But it wasn’t because of our hard work covering codenames with red tiles. It wasn’t because of our cleverness. We won because our opponents screwed up.

And it felt empty.

Mind you, I think the assassin is a good deterrent for the game. It introduces tension. It sometimes creates obstacles when you’re trying to pick out a good clue. But when the assassin actually goes off and someone wins because of it, that can feel hollow. Continue reading

Talkin’ ’bout My Degeneration

Scrabble FridgeThis week, NPR wrote about how the French Scrabble tournament had been won by Nigel Richards, a New Zealander who doesn’t speak any French, but who spent a few weeks studying a French dictionary. Don’t get me wrong, that’s an extremely impressive learning curve for Mr. Richards — one that I suspect classifies him as a sooper-genius. But otherwise I was utterly unshocked by the news.

You see, I learned a lot about Scrabble several years ago when I read an intriguing book about the game called Word Freak (2001), which talked about the culture of tournament-level Scrabble. What struck me most was how unlike casual play this tournament play was. Players obsessively memorized two-letter words, then three-letter words. They studied the Scrabble Dictionary to mind their Qs and Zs. 538.com famously described the results of high-level Scrabble play as looking like it’s “played in Martian”.

And that’s much of why I don’t think Scrabble is a good design.

It’s a degenerate game. Continue reading

Dissecting Dominion, Part Two: What a Difference a Box Makes

Dominion BoxContinuing my look at the original Dominion deckbuilding game.


This past Christmas I got a very generous present from my long-time friend Christopher Allen: a beautiful wooden box for storing my Dominion cards, complete with labeled dividers showing which cards went where. It’s a thing of beauty — and also a solution for a few different problems that I’d had with Dominion over the years.

The Problem with Dominion Boxes

Previously, I had a mighty stack of square Dominion boxes atop one of my book cases, running from the original Dominion (2008) to Dark Ages (2012) — with a few of the smaller boxes located somewhat nearby. Unfortunately, I always found the individual boxing of Dominion supplements to be troublesome. It might seem a silly thing to complain about, but boxes can have real repercussions for how you collect and play games (as I’ve written about in the past), and I think that’s particularly true for Dominion.

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The Tao of Board Gaming V

The Tao of Board GamingKoans I-III can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming I (December 2009). Koans IV-VI can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming II (April 2010). Koans VII-IX can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming III (October 2012). Koans X-XII can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming IV (May 2014).

XIII. The Problems of the World

The best gaming store in the world was located in an urban center that was peopled by progressives, anarchists, minorities, and other persons who sometimes felt the need to speak out against the establishment. Thus, the student of gaming who regularly attended events at that store sometimes found his route there blocked by protests arising from questions of social justice.

This was the case one day in the long winter when reports revealed that protesting in the urban center had turned into looting, vandalism, arson, and assaults. Sadly, this was not unusual.

Undeterred, the student of gaming set out for his regular gaming evening.

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The Tao of Board Gaming IV

The Tao of Board GamingKoans I-III can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming I (December 2009). Koans IV-VI can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming II (April 2010). Koans VII-IX can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming III (October 2012).

X. The Serious Gamer and the Silly Game

Once there was a serious gamer who enjoyed playing more thoughtful games. He loved riding the edge of the bankruptcy express in Age of Steam, and enjoyed tallying his precise incomes and expenses in Power Grid. If there was a game that could make your eyes water as you counted out the math or that could make you wince as you figured out your moves three turns in advance, the serious gamer loved it.

But then a new game appeared at the gaming club, where you took on the role of monsters. You flicked discs around, threw wooden vehicles, and collapsed buildings constructed out of cardboard and meeples.

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Patience Ain’t a Virtue (or: More Carpe-ing!)

ToledoIt’s been a long time since I’ve written a gaming rant, so here we go …


Last Wednesday, I played Martin Wallace’s Toledo for the first time in five years. Back in the day I reviewed it as an entirely adequate family game, but it didn’t thrill me. Now that I’ve played it again half-a-decade later, I think I can better explain why.

For me, Toledo’s main problem is that it depends on its players dutifully storing away cards, like a squirrel planning for winter. Sure, you could play your cards fast and furious, but that’s a recipe for losing. That’s because card play in Toledo stacks: you’re allowed to play as many cards as you like during a turn, provided that they all have the same value.

In other words, like most eurogames Toledo is ruled by the tyranny of efficiency: you have to figure out how to eke out the most efficient plays, to save a fraction of a turn here or a fraction of a resource there. Ultimately, those little efficiencies add up, and the player who has fractioned the most wins.

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Life Lessons from Board Games

Everything I needed to know about life, I learned from board games.

7 Wonders taught me that it’s good to hit someone before they hit you, and that it’s even better to go after a totally helpless opponent who has no aspirations toward conflict.

Aeroplanes taught me that we should wait around forever in the hope that multinational megacorps will eventually give us what we want.

Age of Steam taught me to take stuff from other people even if I’m going to put it to considerably worse use.

Around the World in 80 Days taught me that game titles can be very deceptive — or at least not good goals if you want to win.

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The Tao of Board Gaming III

The Tao of Board GamingKoans I-III can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming I (December, 2009). Koans IV-VI can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming II (April, 2010).

VII. The Tao Master Plays a Game

One day the Tao master joined his students in their game playing.

Though the students respected the master in all matters of Taoism, they thought themselves more proficient upon the playing field of games, and thus expected to better him here. And, if they were not entirely certain of their own gaming mastery, they were certain that their master’s kind and peaceful nature would keep him from truly seizing the advantage, as is required by a game winner.

So they played Dominion and were surprised when their master beset them with Curses and Ruins. They played Galaxy Trucker and were surprised when their master exactly equalled the blaster gun strength of pirates solely so that he could send them back at his students. They played Aeroplanes and were surprised when their master stomped their older airports to gain majorities in Europe, Africa, and the East alike. In all these games, their master was thoughtful but aggressive — and he won them all. Handily.

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The Problem with Naked Aggression

In Ye Olden Days, I used to rant on this blog. I complained about indie games and game boxes, about colors and player numbers. I whined about people whining and respectfully stated why I didn’t respect highly respected games. At some point it faded away — which is too bad because I at least enjoyed those pieces. So, today I’m going to return to that old style of writing and rant about something that’s been bugging me.

The topic is player aggression, by which I mean the ability to wantonly and freely attack another player, to crush their hopes of victory, to see their resources driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women (or men). For a long time, eurogames were afraid to approach the topic at all, but as eurogames have spread beyond Germany — in particular as they’ve mingled and reproduced with American games — aggression has slowly come into the field.

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The Tao of Board Gaming II

The Tao of Board GamingKoans I-III can be found in The Tao of Board Gaming (December, 2009).

IV. The New Release that Went Up in Smoke

There came a time when the interwebs began to fill with stories of a new gaming release. It was to be created by That Game Designer who everyone looks up to and it would be a return to The Classics of his Golden Age. When it was previewed in the city of Essen, there were those who, without irony, called it “The Next Puerto Rico” and when it was released in the city of Nürnberg, there were some who prophesied that it would achieve the premier spot on a Certain Website within the month.

Seasons turned and the game was announced in A Country that lies across the ocean from Germany, and then a release date was set. Some considerable time after that it finally appeared. Time dims enthusiasm, but there had been so much emotion already packed into this small game box that it was still purchased quickly and in quantity by those who cared about such things.

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