Revisiting a few new titles

Two more games of Campaign Manager, including one where McCain needed to sweep the last three states (since Obama was at 268 Electoral votes), and managed to win. I’m still pondering CM, always a good sign. By contrast, Thunderstone is weakening. I like  simply ending the game when the stone hits space 1 (not 3VPs), and not playing Humanoids, and I’m sure I’m not playing terribly well, but I have no real interest in playing better, and all the things that bug me loom larger.

I got in another game of Factory Manager, but now I’ve got a reasonable feel for it. It’s an odd auction, sometimes you want to bid more to affect how many tiles are for sale (since the # of tiles for sale roughly equals the number of remaining workers).  A unique idea, sort of related to New England’s “Bid what you like, but your price is your bid.” In a weird inverted way. Anyway, now that I see there’s something there, I’m willing to explore it for a few more games.

Another game of Powerboats — it’s a race game, alright.

I’ve been bringing Dungeon Lords to game night, and then not suggesting it. I vaguely think I should sell it, although I’d like to see the magic item variant first.

Recent Readings

I’ve gotten a lot of game-related books, so I figured I’d mention them.

Bridge

I have most of Mike Lawrence’s “Complete Book of X,” but didn’t have Overcalls. This was just reprinted last year, and updated, so that made it a no-brainer. Lawrence is a bridge instructor whose writings work well across a wide range of skill levels. (Meaning, I thought I understood the books when I read them 20 years ago, and I still get something out of them now). Interestingly, the modern methods section (new for this edition) seems reasonable, for the most part non-conventional, and I don’t think I’ve run into a single pair playing it. None of Lawrence’s books are for casual players, although there are a few ideas you can implement even with no partnership agreements (in particular, identifying death traps). It helps to have just re-read Hand Evaluation recently, since he spreads a lot of those ideas in his other books, but it’s good to have them called out.

For the technical play side, I just picked up Kelsey on Squeeze Play, a four-volume collection of work. As readers know, I’ve been stubbornly trying to find these at the table, and going through volume 1 (Simple Squeezes), I easily solve these … not at the table. To be fair, I did find a squeeze for a second overtrick while playing online this week. (If we had bid the slam, the squeeze would have made it). However, a simple finesse would have worked, too. (I think the squeeze was the superior play, in that it catered to the Queen being offside or doubleton, but I was mainly just playing for the squeeze). These aren’t as hard as they sound (or as exotic as Jeff’s articles), but again, probably not for any but the serious player.

Go — I picked up a dozen or so books at a charity auction. Unlike Bridge, I harbor no illusions that I’ll ever be good, but I played semi-seriously for a few years back in the 90s, and I’ve read a lot of go. But that mainly reminds me of Jamie Lee Curtis’s line to Kevin Kline in Fish Called Wanda. I now have a complete collection of  the “Learn to Play Go” series. If you already know how to play, you can easily skip the first few volumes (although I haven’t read IV and V). But it’s a good library book if you are interested. The Intermediate Power Builder series is based on a Chinese TV series for amatuers. (I have 200 channels of TV, and I can’t think of a single instructional show for any game … not even poker! Amazing. If someone put Caro’s Book of Tells on the discovery channel, I think you’d get reasonable ratings. And how much would it cost to produce these? Hell, the ACBL (or AGA, or USCF) could probably sponsor a TV show. I wonder if there are bridge lectures on youtube? (Well, I found a few videos, not sure if there are any lessons, but I did see several “Duplicate Bridge” items).

Anyway, the Intermediate Power Builder series makes me think I understand basic positional play, as long as I’m holding the book. Honestly, Go’s contradiction for me is that the positional play is so damn unintuitive. (The tactical play is complex, as well, but that’s no more intriguing than Chess). I went to a lecture at the Pittsburgh Go Club (on CMU’s campus) where they were going over a master game. After some move, one other amatuer asked the lecturer (around 2 dan, IIRC), “Well, why not one space over?” He hemmed and hawed, and asked a grad student (later described as “Possibly a professional player in a few years, but he promised his family he’d get his PhD first”). The grad student walked up and said “Because of this variation” and slapped down ~12 moves on the board. I’ve still never met someone who could routinely explain Go positional balance to a non-master. But if you want to pretend to know this stuff, this is a reasonable series.

Thunderstone followup

Played a few more games last night, and I think this has fallen into my “I don’t need to buy it” list. It just felt mildly irritating, and if I’m like that after only four plays, then I can hold off a while. That being said, some of the new cards we saw (Banish, Flaming Sword,Magic aura) did amuse me. But our first game was one of those that should have just been called after 15 minutes, and the setup/teardown time seems excessive. I mused that TS hit the “Anti-sweet spot” in length, in that it wants to be a touch shorter OR a touch longer. Perhaps I was just annoyed it wasn’t campaign manager….

Too many words — Deck Breakdowns

Each candidate has a 45 card deck. Basically symmetrical, with the exception that McCain is “strong” in defense and “weak” in economy, and Obama is reversed, and there are 3 special cards in each deck. Since this is a drafting game, examining strategy means knowing the decks. So, here’s the deck, along with my thoughts on it.

Just a note, whenever I say “Gain support” or “shift towards a position” it means towards the relevant position (“Strong” or “Weak” meaning “Economy” or “Defense” as appropriate). Minority and Majority mean the same as in the game.

3 Attack cards (Two “strong”, one “weak”) — Discard two cards from you hand, gain 2 support. And suffer “Going negative” penalty at the end of the turn.

5 Advertising cards (2 strong, 1 weak, 1 minority,  1 majority) — Gain one support and shift the state one position.

1 Advertising Attack — Gain 1 support in both defense and economy, suffer going negative penalty. (Note — this doesn’t cost two cards. I originally skimmed it and thought it did!)

6 Campaigning (4 strong, 2 weak) — Gain 1 support, draw a card.

2 Message Discipline cards — Discard N cards. Gain 1 support/shift 1 position in a different state for each card discarded. (1 “Support” card, 1 “shift” card)

2 Get out the vote cards — Shift a key demographic, draw a card.

2 Fundraising cards — one “Draw three cards”, one “Draw two cards, play one immeadiately”

2 Interview cards — Shift a state 1 space, then draw a card.

2 Issue control — Shift a state 2 spaces towards it’s minority position.

2 Microtargeting — Shift a state 1 space and alter the key demographic.

3 Speechs (2 Strong, 1 Weak) — Gain 1 support and alter the key demographic.

2 Media Support: Bias — Control which state is affected by breaking news. (Only the last media support card remains in play).

1 Media Support: Special — McCain’s special (“Don’t blame me”) allows McCain to not suffer a penalty for going negative. Obama’s special (“Running a clean campaign”) makes either candidate roll twice when they go negative.

10 Demographic Support cards — These are the same 10 groups in both decks. (“Gain the support of undecided voters in states where the appropriate demographic are the key voters”).

McCain’s Specials

“Stay the Course” — Discard a card from your hand, go through your discard pile and add it to your hand.

“The Game-Changer” — Discard a card from your hand, then go through your undrafted cards and add it to your hand. Remove The Game-Changer from the play.

Obama’s Specials

“No More Politics as Usual” — Remove this card from play, along with the last card played by the McCain Player.

“The Audacity of Hope — Discard any number of cards from your hand, then draw the same number of new cards, playing one immediately (and adding the rest to your hand).

Initial Thoughts

• The attack cards — This costs you 3 cards (but only four actions total, 3 draws, one play) to gain two support. Gaining four support in other times requires 4 actions as well (two draws, two plays), although campaigning cuts that down. You also suffer negativity, but if that tempo and penalty swings a state, it’s worth it. The advertising attack (gain one Def + one economy without discarding) is a huge tempo swing … push your advantage and keep your opponent from closing out their side. Of course, the die roll may undo your support.
• Media Bias — Not drafting at least one is a mistake. Controlling the breaking news is a big deal, and often worth several support and positions over the course of the game. If your opponent doesn’t fight you on this, you’ve spent two actions wisely. Each campaign’s “special” media card helps fight this, and obviously biases your attack card values.
• The minority advertising card is huge. If your opponent has a state near victory, you shift it once (presumably to your side of the issue, slap down the last support, and win the state.
• Drafting your “weak” issue is interesting, I’d probably pass the advertising card (because odds are you are going to be playing that as a delaying tactic, and you don’t want the state to go firmly towards your opponents issue), but the campaigning cards? Sure. The advertising attack, as mentioned above, is tempo.
• The campaigning cards only get you support, but provide a card draw. Very efficient, but sometimes you need the tempo of attacking support, demographics, and position shift. That’s what they cost.
• Issue control — Shifting two spaces means you can flip any state, and if it was borderline, you are now immune to your opponents minority advertising card winning the state outright on the next play. Worth getting one.
• Demographic support — I was originally quite sour on these, but I’m seeing a few points. If you’ve got a few ‘weak’ support cards drafted, these combine well with them (since they flip both sides).  They work well with attack cards or message discipline (or Audacity of Hope), since you’ll use them to fuel discards sometimes. They don’t work well with Oprah/The Governator (“Draw 2, play 1″) since the odds of drawing them at just the right time are weak. In fact, the personality fundraising cards (Oprahrnold) also hate the discard to activate cards…But the real issue is that a demographic support card is usually pretty easy to use. If you start with the card in hand, start with that state. When you win a state, check your support. (If you see your opponent just discarded his demographic, get that state into play now!) These cards are actually much more effecient than some of the others, bu there are limited returns. Haven’t analyzed the combo/state breakdowns, which is geeky even for me.
• A final (big) point on demographics is that you can take all the ‘decided’ spots, then hit the key demographic for the win. If you play them first, you don’t really cost your opponent time, since they’d have to convert the undecided anway. So use them for pressure (threaten a big state or multiple states) or to sweep.
• Microtargeting will depend on demographics, but I think these will become draftable (even as some demographic denial).
• Speeches — probably my least favorite gain of support, because altering the key demographic is mandatory, not optional. But we’ll see if I like these more when I start drafting more demographics.
• The “Draw 3″ fundraising card one of the most important cards. I just had a game where I got to 8 cards (via fundraiser), then got to draw a few cards via my opponent going negative, which gave me the fundraiser. I played it, leaving it as the only card in the discard. Then a “Support + 1 card” gives it to me, I play 3 huge cards, then sweep them back into my deck. Repeat. It’s tough to get this going to such a perfect level, but even with only a few cards in the discard pile this is a brutal tactic.
• McCain’s advantages — he can recycle one card fairly often, which gives him a media support edge (in a game where both players drafted one) or a fundraising advantage. The ability to ’sideboard’ a card protects against an unlucky draft, or he could hold off until he spots a weakness and pounce on it. Finally, his media special relies only on his deck (negating his negativity). Obama’s media card penalizes both players for negativity, so if McCain happens to not go negative, it’s really just a ‘cancel media bias’ card.
• Obama gets cardflow (with Audacity of Hope) and the ability to remove a key card (No more politics as usual). The latter can be used to remove McCain’s fundraising or media support, those are probably great uses.  If Obama gets both cards and his fundraisers he’d be in a good position to grab most of his deck into his hand for the majority of the game.

Campaign Manager Initial Thoughts

Campaign Manager 2008, Leonhard and Matthews latest mind virus, spent the last day quietly chittering into my ear. With rules so simple they border on the abstract, the game presents you with nothing but choices. After my first two games I felt a warm glow, drafting always torments me. But I had my suspicions, the same dark thoughts that led me to eventually give up on Twilight Struggle. We played Fairy Tale. “Ah, it’s just the drafting,” I thought.

Later last night, a third game of CM-2008, and the decision space exploded.
My efficiency draft (which had handily won my first two games) went up against a key-demographic laden Obama that threatened to sweep any
of the four active states (several in double-digit electoral votes). Media control, ignored for two games, was hotly contested and probably decided the game.  Several “Back and forth” card plays revealed some interesting effects.

And now the game sits perched on my shoulder, unseen by others, tossing random thoughts:

• What’s the relative value of an action, and how do you rate gaining support versus position shifting, versus card draws, versus key demographics.
• How many “Bombs” does your deck need ?
• You can have no key demographics, can you get away with having 4 in your deck? Five?
• Should a deck present a credible threat in your opponents platform? (Defense for McCain, Economy for Obama)?
• How can you induce your opponent to waste turns?
• If your opponent doesn’t deal with key demographics, can you go negative more or less often?

Apart from tactical thoughts, I want to go through the deck and look at the jokes and easter eggs. And talk to the little man whispering about swing states. In short, I find Campaign Manager compelling. There’s plenty of luck, at least as much as Twilight Struggle, but the game takes 40 minutes and often less. It’s not flawless, but it’s elegant.

More later.

Growing Gaming

Being a grouch, I don’t cover the entire “Growing the gaming group” aspect of the hobby that much. And when a local suggested that we’d do better by ponying up the dough ($5 a month, or maybe $10) to form a meetup group … well, the record will show that I scoffed. Hath we not a blog? BGG regional groups? And we’ve gotten several people over the last three years who noticed us via the blog (or BGG).

We’ve gotten over a dozen in three months via the meetup. Our monday nights have turned from one table, maybe two, to three or four crowded tables…

So, the lessons are: a) don’t listen to the grouch and b) embrace non-gaming based media.

The downside of intuition

I plan strategy intuitively. (I’ve mentioned this before). I could go with the reasons, but typically I study games away from the table (my musings here, sometimes by setting up a position and pushing pieces around, readings) and I find that my intuition generally works well.

And then there’s bridge.

There is a space for gut feeling in bridge, but also a space for technique. Here’s the funny thing, I study bridge technique. Quite a bit, actually. I’ve been working through Kelsey on Squeezes and while I didn’t ace the book 1 quiz, I got most of them right. (Those that I missed were typically choosing an inferior squeeze, like an ambiguous Criss-Cross Squeeze versus a positional).

Of course, it’s easier. Given two hands where I know there’s a squeeze, I can find it. But the number of squeezes (or potential squeezes) I’ve found at the table? A few. I play the first hand, and then suddenly realize (an hour or two later) that I’ve been playing on autopilot. I haven’t been consciously counting hands, looking for better plays, and whatnot. And the really annoying thing? I’ll say to myself “Slow down, think!” before the game. I just enter a zone and play. Often after a hand I’ll kick myself, realizing I had a better play.

My zone’s not bad, really. I’ve studied bridge quite a bit, so my intuition isn’t horrible. It’s “Solid intermediate.” But it’s not good, by any stretch.

Anyway, my goal for today is to “remain conscious” at the table. We’ll see.

Update — Well, I think I remained conscious, although I didn’t find anything really interesting as declarer. My defense was pretty good. (IMPs is much easier than matchpoints for defense). Really, the entire event was decided by grotesque mistakes.  So I’m glad our opponents made them. Winning is nice.

That twitter thing

… I may as well do it. If you know of anyone I should be following (like, all your accounts) then do tell. It will be a mix of quick game thoughts and random weirdness.

TaoOfGaming Twitter account.

Update — And I figured out how to get them to show up here, for those of you who don’t care!

I’m a wizard …

We had a power outage at work last week. For a programmer (without a laptop), that’s magic time. Walk the halls, chat up coworkers, and relax. But this outage was major–we heard the transformer pop and spent the first ten minutes scanning the city from our 9th story figuring out how big an area was out. Big.

Eventually, nature called. Like most restrooms, this one had no windows. I was worried about Grues and whatnot, but then I remembered — I’m a wizard. I took out my cellphone and popped it open — Light!

Later on, I wondered — Just how good a wizard am I? Let’s see (I grabbed Arcana Evolved instead of the basic book, just to mix things up)

Door warning — Yeah, my doors can send me a message when they are opened. No biggie.

Conjure weapon — To be sure, there’s a long casting time.

Glamour — check.

Predict Weather. Control Temperature. Darkvision. Loresight. Waterbreathing. Invisibility (sadly, there’s a saving throw  …). Remove disease.

Let’s stop pussy footing around with low level spells. I could hit most of them, and those I couldn’t are mainly because I don’t need to turn undead. (If I did, a shotgun would do the trick).

Scrying at a distance? How is this even a fifth level spell? Man, fantasy magic sucks. My kids do this every day. We’re starting to understand the language of plants, for my druid friends.

Flight? Check! Need to move around a few thousand pounds quickly? Material component — forklift. Speaking in tongues — babblefish is just the tip of the iceberg.

Now, can I do each and every one of those things? No, mainly because I lack the material components. But most of them are easy enough to get. I’d say right now the world is full of 10th level wizards, and has a fair number of serious mages, devoted to creating new spells, or turning exotic spells (known only to a few) into simpler versions that the masses of humanity can use.

I can send a nearly instantaneous message to anyone in the world. I can meet them in under 24 hours (assuming the town guards don’t dick me around). And nobody considers any of this magical, because we call it “Science.” Your average wizard has no idea how these things work, they just cast the spell.

Pretty amazing, that.

The Blogiversary

You know, I’ve been doing this for five years, and that doesn’t even count the original Tao of Gaming site (you know, the blue background, hosted on pyro.net, where I coded HTML by hand because that’s how we rolled).

Last night I got in another game of Homesteaders (4 player this time). Continuing my preferred strategy, I got a turn 1 market, then followed up with a T4 foundry and a T6 River Port (which lets you automatically convert a gold to livestock or copper). So I was rolling in Trade chits…one a turn and I almost never needed to convert.

That worked well, like I thought. Ignore steel at your own risk (the River Port was really just icing on the cake, although you do need at least one “advanced” good by mid game). Since I used almost none of my trade chits to buy, they converted to VP at an almost 1:1 ratio (selling excess steel in the midgame for money, and then selling goods at the endgame for VP/Money).

I also got a game of Pegasus in … since we had a new player, we just used the Kobol victory conditions (skipping New Caprica). In general, I think that my preferred form is 5 players, no Cylon leaders, and Kobol. Of course, we had two cylons off the deal, sitting back to back, and one of them was the Admiral (which we discovered after our first jump). So humanity lost.