How does my love affair with Eclipse die?

There are several main reasons why you give up a favorite or cherished game...here are some ideas.

1. You've played it so much, there is nothing else to learn or appreciate
2. It turns out there is only one way that anyone should play the game
3. You find a new game that you love more
4. Your friends tire of winning/losing/playing the game all of the time
5. You tire of your friends who will play the game

Eclipse has a really fascinating system for keeping interest. Every game is subtly different, due to when/if certain technologies show up, which systems are found, and what discovery tiles are revealed. There's a gambling nature in each of those cases, where you feel like you might get lucky in how things come your way...and you cherish those feelings so much - it lessens those memories of those other times, where things were normal.

Even in the games where it isn't going your way, there's that nagging feeling of those golden fields from the games of yore. Games strive for that sweet spot - it obviously can't happen every time, but it needs to happen *just* enough.

There's a game that my girlfriend picked up, seeking a good 2-player game. A Few Acres of Snow is an interesting game, where each player essentially builds their deck and plays it out according to their needs at the time. One person plays the British, the other French...deciding who wins the war in early North America. It has a sense of flavor for the history of that time period, which is awesome. Sadly, when looking up a rules clarification on BGG, it turns out there is one and only one strategy for the game, and it generally means that the British win. I read through it, displeased that it existed. Oh, the problems of static games. Imagine if there was a perfect opening for white in chess...only we're just not smart/computational enough to see it.

There were games before Eclipse. My friends and I have a long tradition of Settlers of Catan (more specifically, Cities and Knights). Race for the Galaxy and its expansions took over more than a couple of game groups. Through the Ages took out Le Havre. But by and large, the "perfect" game comes along rarely. More rarely, that it comes along to wipe out an existing perfect game.

Friends - they drive games the most. You can play some games solo, but that's usually not the motivation when desiring to play a board game. At Spiele, I found vendors were pretty much interested in doing demos for groups of friends. 4 people, great! My cynicism is that there's a chance that at least one person in the game will feel that it's the perfect game, and will champion it to the others (as well as picking up a copy, of course). Maybe that friend is tired of the favored game coming to the table. Someone recently told me a story of a friend who ONLY wants to play Power Grid. They sit down to decide a game, and the only game that he will play is that one...the group usually concedes out of politeness, but he'll find himself looking for a new group eventually.

Or sometimes you tire of the group who will play the game. Maybe you need new blood, or you become exhausted dealing with a certain player's style - whining, bickering, politicking, analysis-paralysis, etc.

For me, it'll probably be #3 - maybe that's what everyone should hope for. A better game can be hard to imagine, but maybe someday...

Book Review: Characteristics of Games

I have a couple of books I *should* review first, as I've had them longer - The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design and Raph Koster's Theory of Fun. Instead, I'll cover a book that's been on my mind a bit.

"Characteristics of Games" was written by Richard Garfield, Skaff Elias, and Robert Gutschera - veterans in the industry. The most important bit about the book, is it seeks to define and categorize ideas so that they can be discussed in an accurate manner. This is more of a textbook, rather than an armchair read.

One of the up-front categorizations of games, is that they are a race or a brawl (or a mix). Races are straightforward - you run for win condition, with little or no interaction from other players. Brawls are more common in multiplayer games, where interactions and politics drive the action.

When first playing Eclipse (the most recent game discussed), it felt a lot like a race. Get the most VP. Some jockeying takes place, as you try to master the game in the most efficient way. Now, it almost feels entirely like a brawl.

• As you research, you grab techs that become no longer available for others
• You explore, attempting to take away expansion options from rivals
• Upgrading your ships is a form of politics - if your opponents don't feel like they can beat your ship designs, they are more likely to wage war on other players...or maybe you lure a fleet against you, and then do your upgrades and builds to crush for more VP
• Where you build is key for intimidation and attacking
• Who you exchange ambassadors or make alliances with, will shape the game

The victory point race comes a distant second to the political (and ship-fighting) brawl that takes place.

An early discussion that takes place, is the discussion of heuristics, or the method of play.  I can identify with their general point that players get enjoyment from mastering heuristics of a game. Flipping a coin to determine who wins a game isn't satisfying. There's nothing you've learned or done, that makes you feel more likely to win in the future. Figuring out strategies and tactics engages a part of the brain that says "this is good, this is fun".

Flipping back to Eclipse, as you play the game through, you learn different ways of playing the game. You think "Ah-ha! I think this Tier 3 explore habit is pretty powerful, especially when paired with this other thing!" Maybe you figure out how to run your economy better. You no longer wonder "how can anyone win this game by skill?" You still might not win, but it encourages you to critically think where you went wrong, and where you could improve next time.

Let's say you do get better at the game. Sadly, according to the book, you may lose more often as a result. As politics get involved, other players are more likely to pick on the perceived "winner", or at least the person who is most on track to win. (This only matters in more than 2-player games.) Maybe this requires more knowledge on the part of the players, better political skills (both overt and indirect) on your part, or to develop a new technique that is less subject to politics.

There isn't a lot of directly applicable material, if you are looking to become better at playing games. One part stood out to me, in the topic of kingmaking. Usually how it goes, is that everyone tries to take down the first place player. I'm borrowing from the book, but I won't spoil the exact math. A, B, and C are playing a game. Each player has decreasing accuracy with their ability to take someone out of the game. In usual games, B & C take their shots at A, while A takes a shot at B (the closest in skill/chances of winning). How did the math actually work out? A should take out B. C should try to take out A. B - this is the interesting part...should go for C, at least according to the math.

But the book in general is extremely approachable, if dry. I've skimmed over several topics here - the book has another 50+. The appendices offer more in-depth knowledge, and occasionally you'll think about picking up some new math skills. If you aspire to good game design, this book can help with any gaps in your background - and it's unlikely that you'll have Richard/Skaff/Robert on call to talk about these things in person.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the world!

Eclipse, Rise of the Ancients.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, Eclipse is amazing. Lots of replay. The expansion, Rise of the Ancients, came out last December...right as I was leaving for a wintery Iowa Christmas.

It felt like a tough proposition - Eclipse, a 4-hour game, during a week of family gathering...most games are short stints where people can jump out and jump in, depending if they need to wrap presents, go shopping, help cook, etc. It was played nearly every day, sometimes twice. Let's talk about the expansion!

Sometimes expansions to board games change the strategies of the base game so much, that there can be a huge disconnect. Or rules changes, that break up poorly thought-out play balance issues. Fortunately, RotA exists primarily to add more content. New races, more discovery tiles, more hexes, some variants, and the ability to play up to 9. Maybe a little bit of anti-missile mechanics, but minor.

The expansion adds 3 unique aliens, as well as the "humans" of the expansion...basically the other side of each alien card. I'll try to limit myself to just the facts...followed by some tips.

Alien Overview
The Enlightened of Lyra (aka, the Shriners) - they get points for building and holding shrines at the end of the game. There are mini-rewards for building clusters of shrines, but one of the coolest parts is being able to spend unused colony ships to re-roll combat dice.

The Exiles (Orbitals of Death) - skip star bases...your orbitals are your starbases. Sadly, no combat speed and only 3 upgrade spaces mean that they won't be half as cool. To make up for this, you start with a rare cloaking technology - they have to block your ship with 2 of theirs...which means pinning you is a lot harder.

The Rho Indi Syndicate are chancers. They have faster combat speeds like the Orion Hegemony, and they have a built-in -1 shield which doesn't take up space. They lose out with Dreadnoughts - can't build them. They start with star bases and Gauss Shield, but it's unlikely they'll waste another precious ship space on their small ships for Gauss. They raid and pillage the best though - 4 ship activations every time, instead of the 2 for the other aliens (or 3 for humans).

The Magellans are the generic race of the expansion - maybe the best alien race to play. Their ships and actions are stock (except for Influence, which is slightly worse). You can turn unused colony ships into any resource; ship part (and spent) discovery tiles are worth 1 VP for you, instead of nothing; you get a free discovery tile the first time you get 4 discoveries in the same row; and you start with the 6-Energy Fusion Source. Amazing.

Tips & Strategy
The Shriners and the Exiles are tough to love. Both encourage defensive turtling strategies, which is extremely tough to pull off. Offense has its advantages in Eclipse - being able to decide where and when something is going to happen is huge. Losing the shrines or orbitals means a loss of VP and/or production, making those systems especially valuable for those folks trying to thwart you.

The Rho NEED combat, hopefully every round. If they find it, it's a pleasant game in the top finishers. If they can't find combat, they are in last place. With all of that movement capability, it pays off to have a fleet that can move. If you can move 4 ships into every battle, with just one influence disc, it gives you incredibly flexible tactics. After awhile, with a hefty armada, you can bring in a swarm of ships into each major combat (minimizing your losses).

The Magellans have some benefits that really encourage a scout/bankrupt style for the Tier 3 hexes. Ideally, every Tier 3 hex you explore has a discovery tile on it. The return is pretty good...if you discard it, you'll get a VP in addition to the perk. How does this play out? Explore 4-5 times in the first several rounds, with the expectation of not keeping any of them beyond your home planet at the end of the round due to planned bankruptcy. You get to use your colony ships for materials or science. Seriously, this is an easy thing to do. You sacrifice one, maybe two turns of the 9 that you get to explore Tier 3. Everyone else is losing discs to settling hexes, making modest inroads on a developed economy.

Other races can do the same Tier 3 sweep, but Magellans pay off a bit better with their resource-generating colony ships and VP for discarded discoveries. To counter the sweep, explore around those players, and limit their turns 3-5 expansions to their bad Tier 3 areas. Their economy is going to be dicey, depending on what discovery tiles they get. Because they aren't settling, they will have more discs handy...difficult to attack, but more likely to not get first pick of technologies. You can also try to counter their sweep of Tier 3's, by doing the same thing. Tough to pull off as well, but if they aren't hitting Tier 3 hexes with discovery tiles...it is probably richer for you.

I probably have at least a couple more discussions about the game. Maybe next time, I'll even cover design. ;)

Follow-up: Eclipse (pre-expansion), and general discussion of game duration

I wrote about Eclipse last year, and promised a follow-up article. (Link.) This is extremely delayed, and has been sitting as a draft for too long. I'll do a real follow-up about the expansion...soon?

Since that article last May, I've probably played 2-3 games a week. It's blocked out the sun, in terms of other games.

The elegance is nice, and hasn't dulled the overall appreciation of the game. Each of the alien races (except for maybe the Eradani) feel interesting, different, and balanced. The Eradani start with two less tokens, a ton of money, and 3 fair technologies. Two less tokens is painful though - you start eating your free money from the start, and you'll hemorrhage the whole game. The biggest deficit is at the end, where you have to stop playing actions because you're out...and others keep going.

Big, 6-player games can result in player combat (and betrayal) almost immediately. (I think I was hit turn 2, once.) We've had discussions on betraying people early so you don't get stuck with the -2 at the end of the game...obviously someone will betray again before it's over. Probably.

2- and 3-player games are a bit less diplomatic. Most of the points are known, and 1st place is likely going to see a couple of incursions in round 8/9.

As you explore, you get some degree of choice of how explored tiles are placed. Fencing off your area is pretty strategic, until someone grabs the expensive wormhole technology, and then you fall to pieces. Likewise, exploring in a way that cuts people off from attacking you (except through the galactic center) means that the Galactic Center is a public target - everyone can reach it, but only one at a time.

Oh, Galactic Center. It's there in every game. Slow, bulky, minorly defended Galactic Center. Your early games, it probably doesn't get hit until round 7 or 8.  If you're ambitious, maybe as early as round 5-6. It marks a turning point in the order of the universe - it's a juicy target and a super-highway to other players. Gloves are off.

Depending on the players, you might see a lot of ships crashing rival systems. While I haven't seen a player-wipe yet, it'll happen someday. What usually happens is player A takes a high-value system from B, and then C could choose...attack B, or attack A...and A has more points. Which leads us into...

Game Duration
As players, we generally accept how a game ends. There's no question of "what happens tomorrow?" Eclipse ends the game at an arbitrary 9 turns. Settlers of Catan says 10 points. Through the Ages when you run out of cards.

In the case of Eclipse, ending at 9 turns is important. You spend the first half of the game, setting the stage for the second half. What necessary technologies show up, who gets them, where the resources pop up, and how bad/good luck is distributed...with that in play, you make the best of what you can. Honestly, anything past 9 hits the "eternal strife mode" where no one gains ground...much like Risk games of old - player wipe would be the only solution.

Organized Play at PAX

Have you played in events at PAX? If so, you have learned of the chaos that it is.

My three primary complaints:

1. Lack of preparation
2. Lack of organized play "best practices"
3. Lack of game knowledge

This isn't rocket science. It's not the first organized play event that has ever taken place. Magic has a pretty clean system - play in a couple of those events at PAX, you'd probably see a well-oiled machine.

• Judges are clearly defined
• The event staff have a process on taking match results, signing people up, dropping people out, etc.
• There are pre-published floor rules for tournament structure (in general)

I've played in several events spanning multiple Penny Arcade Expos. A Pokemon video game tournament (called off due to bad wifi), a couple of Race for the Galaxy tournaments, Galaxy Trucker, as well as a recent experience with Lords of Waterdeep (this one run by WotC volunteers).

Each of those events were flawed. I have a decently strong background in organized play, and part of what dragged me into it was the dislike of badly-run tournaments.

Talking about how bad things are and listing complaints is not necessarily a productive fix. Let's talk about general improvements, and assume there are lots of small improvements that I won't cover at this time...

1.  Each event should have a break-down of the basics of how the tournament goes. What the format is, how many rounds, if the rounds are timed, how people are assigned to matches, are there breaks, how do people make the finals, and what the prizes are.... (This sheet should be available for anyone signing up to play, and ideally something they can take away so they can refer to it before the event or between rounds.)
2.  A quick summary for the event staff on how pairings are done, how points are tracked between rounds, and how to handle breaks for the staff. Can players concede a round and still stay in? How long can a judge step out of an area?
3.  The head judge for the event should have knowledge of the game. If they aren't an expert in the rules, one should be found before the event. In no circumstance should players at the table have to decide "what's fair". (If they don't have expert knowledge, they should at least be good at running events, and have read through the 'rules questions' thread on BGG.

Players in these events are giving up multiple hours of their time at PAX to play in poorly conceived tournaments. You could just as easily have played a couple of games in the board game area, and had a vastly superior time.

Here's to hoping for next year...

Game Review: Eclipse

A space game! I love space games. 2-6 players is good - one of my game nights hits the 5-player mark, which limits the number of games available to us.

This was first produced as a Kickstarter game - sadly I saw it after it closed, and didn't get one of the few first-runs that made it into stores. The second printing is supposed to come out in April/May 2012.

My first feel of the game was that it was Through the Ages in space, which would be perfectly fine. Everyone has a scorecard that tracks their space civ - your bank of Science, Materials, and Money. It also keeps your blueprints for your 4 different ships/battlestations, as well as the technologies you've bought.

We played a 4-player game, all of us being humans. There's an option to play alien races with different powers, but we stuck with the basics for the first game.

It's a dense game, but good. There's a space map that is built as you explore - certain stacks of tiles go for the inner, middle, and outer rings of exploration. A map is useful for explaining locations of planets and ship fleets. (It's 2-D, not a brain-buster.)

Each player takes a turn, in clockwise order. You take one of your order markers and put it on an action on your scorecard...exploring, researching, updating your blueprints, moving markers around, building ships...etc. Sometimes you'll also put an extra order marker out from your scorecard onto the table, to take control of a system. Each marker uncovers more and more Money cost - if you settle a bunch of systems, you might start with quite a deficit, just starting the round!

You spend Research on picking up new technologies...finding better ship technologies (important for battles), reducing costs, finding more order markers...that sort of thing.

You spend Materials on building your military fleet, as well as some of your economy devices.

At the end of the round, after everyone is done passing, you gain Materials/Research/Money based on what you've developed. (It's a nicely elegant system.) Start player moves to the person who passed first...which can be a tempo decision in the early game, to get a better pick of the technologies. The game ends after 9 rounds of play...it took 4 novice players awhile to finish our first game, but we all had fun. Maybe we could have skirmished more, but fair for the first game.

This is definitely a game I want to add to my collection. The mechanics are nice, the game play is interesting, and the system is fairly unique. It's not a casual pick up game...but for one group of gaming friends, I'm betting it will be a regular on our occasional Thursday game nights.

(I'll do a follow-up of the games beyond the initial plays.)

Game Review: Eminent Domain

It's a space game - great!
It's a deck-building game - overdone!

Card games are awesome because they are pretty inexpensive to make. They also have to be innovative to stick out, but familiar enough that you don't feel like you're learning all of the rules by heart...it could flow!

I wish it had been better named. Eminent Domain exists as a specific phrase in the US system, where the state can take over property if it's in the best interests of...well, whatever. The game has NOTHING to do with it.

It was produced as a Kickstarter game for 2-4 players, and the second (larger?) printing is in stores now. You can still pick up some of the promos from the manufacturer - I found a store on ebay. $5 gets you 9 planets.

The game's premise is that as you go in a direction, your deck evolves in that direction as well. Research a lot? You'll get more research cards in your deck, thus pushing you to research more, because that's what you'll be drawing.

You start off with a basic deck - 2 Produce/Consume cards (which have almost no value in the beginning), 2 Colonize cards, 1 Military card, 2 Research cards, 2 Survey cards, and 1 Politics card (which gets changed into one of those previous types early.)

Each card in your deck has an Action listed on it, as well as one or two symbols from the basic cards. You get to play one as an Action to start your turn, and then take one of those five basic cards from the stock as a Role. So for example, you could play Survey, where its Action is "Draw 2 cards". You can also play Survey as your Role, taking the card from the center. To boost that Role, you can also discard cards from your hand to expand what Survey does for you...in this case, look at more possible planets.

Your turn ends, discarding all of the cards you picked up this turn, discard any number of cards from your hand, then draw to your hand limit. (Or just discard down to your hand limit.)

To add some interaction, the game also adds this: whatever your Role you chose for your turn, players can either do the same Role (with slightly less options) or draw an extra card. In a 2-player game, there isn't much to it...multiplayer adds some more choices.

Research is pretty awesome. As in, super great. When you buy a research card, you put it into your hand...helping you set up for next turn. At higher research levels, you can even buy cards that are worth extra VP.

In general, for your first several games, I'd recommend going either Military or Colonize for your method of taking over planets. Simplify your deck by getting rid of the ones you don't plan on using, as well as getting rid of Produce/Consume cards in the early game...you can get them again later. Plan on surveying up to 4-5 planets, and researching cards that give you some extra kick. Producing/consuming goods is complex, and difficult to manage when you have survey/research/colonize cards in your way as well.

Victory points come from consuming goods, settling planets, and adding special research cards worth VP to your deck. The game ends as a stack or two is gone, or when the VP chips are out.

Overall, it's a fair game. There are bits that don't feel like they flow for me...maybe it's just that I haven't played the same similar games to this. We've played by incorrect rules a couple of times (the designer haunts BGG, so there's a good chance to find an answer)...but I'll say this - if you answer someone's question regarding their confusion about the rules - IT ISN'T THEIR FAULT.

[design rant] As a designer or developer for a game, you have insight into the choices that went into the process of the game. YOU know that colonize was broken, and that you went back to the rulebook and changed one sentence to reflect a new difference between colonize and other cards. Saying something like "I wrote a concise and accurate rulebook, thus I didn't need to explain x" doesn't fly. You don't get to brush off their concern as if they're a lesser being. (And this wasn't even a question I asked on the 'geek.) This is a pet peeve of mine - you, the reader, don't need to embrace it.

After 15-20 games, I still feel like I haven't figured out the game. Somewhat refreshing, but irritating - I don't feel like I am playing the game well.  (The Utopian planets from the promos are...really useful to the game overall. Much better flow.)