I Poison My Games with Expansions

I love game supplements. If there’s an expansion for a game that I enjoy, I’ll buy it instead of a new game every time. It’s a blasphemous offshoot of the Cult of the New: I want to see what’s new and exciting in the euro field, but I prefer to do it from the comfort of my familiar, well-loved games.

And when this works, it really works. I’ve recorded exactly two games with more than 100 plays: Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (2013) and Dominion (2008)Both are picture-perfect expandable games that have huge variability without changing the complexity or core values of the game.

Conversely, I’ve recently realized that I also poison my games with expansions. I have multiple well-loved games on my shelves that I’ve stopped playing because the last expansion I put into the box made the game either less fun to play or more complex to teach. Race for the Galaxy (2007) suffered from expansion #3, The Brink of War (2010), which introduced a “prestige” mechanism that was just one complexity too many. It’s only been brought out one or two times since that expansion went in. 7 Wonders (2010) might have suffered the same fate after expansion #2, Cities (2012). went into the box, as it added punitive take-that mechanics that made the game not-fun for players who ended up on the short side of the taxation stick, but fortunately I had the presence of mind to toss that bad expansion out. Carcassonne (2000) recently didn’t go on a family trip, because I thought that the inclusion of the first two expansions made it too difficult to teach to newcomers, even if I do think that’s the perfect balance for thoughtful play. Eminent Domain (2011), complete with Escalation (2014) and Exotica (2016), almost suffered the same fate due to my own intimidation at the multiple rule sets, but I eventually pushed through to relearn how variable ships and mining worked and was able to successfully bring it to the table, but it was a near thing and the huge piles of technology cards still caused problems.

In other words, though I uncritically purchase new expansions for my best-loved games, I think it actually would serve us all to be critical about what expansions we buy, because some can increase our enjoyment of those games, while others can be silent killers that consign their games to never leave their game-shelf homes behind.

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New To Me: Spring 2016

It’s been a weak quarter for new gaming for me. Because of a business trip and a vacation, I missed out on about a month of my normal gaming. Still, I managed to get in plays of almost a dozen new games, expansions, and variants — just barely enough to people a new New to Me article. 

As usual, this listing is games new and old that I’d never played before, rated according to how much liked them. Continue reading

New to Me: Winter 2016 — So Much Very Good!

Winter of 2016 was a somewhat unusual season of gaming for me. I played some new games and some older games that were new to me. Though I didn’t play any games that I ranked as truly great, there seemed to be more than the usual share of games that were Very Good — so many, in fact that I broke the category in two. Overall, it was certainly a strong season for gaming!

The Very Good

AquaSphere ThumbnailAquaSphere (2014). What a peculiar name, and it’s a peculiar theme too, with its board of a big underwater base. I think those two elements and the garish art put me off AquaSphere for a while, despite my love for Stefan Feld’s games. But, it turns out the theme is appropriate, because you’re programming robots. I actually ended up being  pleasantly remindedof Nautilus (2003) — a game that I wanted to be much better than it actually was because of its fun underwater theme.

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Anatomy of a Genre: Role Civilization, Part Two: The Empires

Glory to Rome I.VA few weeks ago I kicked off an investigation of a small genre of games that I call “role civilization” games. These are “role selection” card games that were inspired by San Juan. My initial article defined the genre through four mechanics that all debuted in San Juan: phase (role) selection; card building; multipurpose cards; and card economies. 

This week I’m going to continue my look at the genre by seeing how it’s evolved since the advent of San Juan and by investigating two Imperial successors to the game. 


A History of Role Civilization: 2004-Present

Andreas Seyfarth’s San Juan (2004) could have dramatically changed the board gaming field. Not only did it make the very popular mechanics of Puerto Rico (2002) more accessible, but it also introduced a new style of dense filler that played quickly in a short period of time while still allowing for real strategic decisions. Unfortunately, San Juan was held back by the fact that Alea games tend to be somewhat underproduced and until very recently didn’t get supplements. The best San Juan ever managed was a few mini-supplements in Treasure Chest (2009), one of which reappeared in the second edition San Juan (2014).

Despite that, a few related games trickled out. Continue reading

A Deckbuilding Look at A Few Acres of Snow

A Few Acres of SnowIn my deckbuilding article on Eminent Domain, Jessey mentioned Martin Wallace’s A Few Acres of Snow as another game that integrated deckbuilding as part of a larger game. Now that I’ve played it, I agree — it goes even further than Eminent Domain in using deckbuilding as a mechanic rather than as a genre of game.

The Game

A Few Acres of Snow is on the one hand a wargame. Like Martin Wallace’s densest wargame, Waterloo, the most obvious victory requires the capture of specific villages. However from there it opens up into a more common Wallacian euro-warfare design, where the combat actually happens through the play of cards. There’s also a fair amount of additional resource management, as players build up their holdings of villages and towns. In some ways, it reminds me the most of Wallace’s Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, as both games center on the play of cards which are full of symbols that enable actions.

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A Deckbuilding Look at Eminent Domain

Eminent Domain was one of the many deckbuilding games that was released in 2011. However, it really stood out in the field, as it was one of just two games that totally innovated how deckbuilding worked (the other being dicebuilder, Quarriors).

The Game

All of the deckbuilder games to date have treated deckbuilding as a genre of games — that is, they all use deckbuilding as the sole focus of a game. Beyond that, they tend to use many of the core ideas from the first deckbuilder, Dominion, including buys, draws, actions, and money. Eminent Domain is the first game that I’ve seen that steps widely away from those concepts, by instead treating deckbuilding as a mechanic. Sure, you find deckbuilding concepts in Eminent Domain, but they’re not the core of the game, which has just as strong of a focus on role selection, and which even wanders into 4X territory (well, maybe 3X: eXplore, eXpand, and eXploit).
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My Fives and Dimes: 2011

Games that you played five or ten times in a year (five and dimes) have been used as a barometer of the board gaming world for years. Here’s what made my five and dime board gaming list in 2011:

Dominion — 19 plays

My winner for the year was Dominion, which made 19 plays, many of those after the releases of Cornucopia and Hinterlands. This also made Dominion my most-played board game ever, with its 94 tabletop plays edging out the 93 plays across all variants of Ticket to Ride.
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