Rob Zacny

Episode 371: 3MA After Dark

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Three Moves Ahead 371:

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3MA After Dark

Three Moves Ahead is serious business. We spend weeks - sometimes months - planning stimulating topics and tantalizing shows. But this week it's time to unwind. It's time to pour some scotch, dim the lights, and talk about whatever's on our minds. For the first time ever, the Three Moves Ahead team is all on the show at the same time: Rob, Bruce, Michael, and Troy "I keep bookstores in business because I don't trust technology and hate trees" Goodfellow. Also, be sure to stick around after the show and get a glimpse of professionalism at its finest.

Scythe, Dominions 4, Board games

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Well, feel free to come to Wellington, New Zealand for a gaming session. But I'm somehow doubting that I am living in one the big clusters of your listeners..

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Really enjoyed the Duelyst discussion.  After bouncing off hearthstone after a half hour, I have put in 20 hours in the last two weeks on Duelyst.  I love this game!  It has tactical depth that was missing from HS.  Plus the one turn daily puzzles/challenges remind me of the chess problems from the newspaper way back in the day.  It is one of those "I have some time to kill let's play Duelyst.  Hey, where did the last 4 hours go?"

 

Also the 3MA bridge episode sounds awesome :P

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Great topic!

 

I have been interested in tabletop war games / board games for quite a while now but, surprise surprise, none of my friends are in to that scene. As an untested newbie I feel intimidated about trying to break into table top gaming and I don't know where to start. Can you recommend any good war games for beginners?

 

I live in Toronto and wholeheartedly endorse a 3MA game night. Even if I can't bring it with war games I can definitely carry on a long conversation about the Witcher 3.

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Come to Chicago! I take back the bad things I said about Illinois in the other thread.

 

Bridge isn't just a game for retirees, guys. There are a lot of young people (mostly math-y types, admittedly) who play it competitively. It's an interesting game with a lot of community conventions I would love to see make it into the board game world. That said, like Go, I think a bridge episode would mostly be a rehash of the chess episode. What about an episode about bidding, or 2v2, or cheating ( :( ) that discusses bridge in addition to other games?

 

Defense of the Oasis is an excellent ipad strategy-puzzle game. I paid $5 for it and got great value, and it's $3 now. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/defense-of-the-oasis/id380887857?mt=8

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Here's an tablet game for you: Desktop Dungeons. It's a puzzle-RPG with a great replayability and scaling difficulty. It took me around 50 hours to beat "official" campaign - though it was on PC and I've probably alt-tabbed from the game. But you won't unlock many of the player classes and items and dungeons and gameplay mechanics. The best thing is it's short, a single self-contained session can take 10 minutes or something, and it's not connected to metagame the way, say, XCOM is, so you just win or lose and forget about it. It's not cheap but there are no microtransactions.

 

Also when you register your game you can syncronize it with web-version and play it on PC.

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Love to see you guys in Boston :)

 

For CMANO, I learned through two sources:

Baloogan's tutorial videos: 

Uncle Mark's tutorial scenarios 1-6 in the Community Scenario Pack. (used to be only on the Matrix site but now they're more available)

The hardest thing I found in CMANO for an old Harpoon player was the setup of missions. There are a heck of a lot of options there, some far more important than others, but not a lot of guidance about which ones you really need to care about. The tutorial scenarios have popup messages explaining a lot of the process.

 

edit: sorry about the huge video thing, I didn't know the forum software would pick up the playlist link...

Edited by sekullbe

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Nice to listen to an episode without a particular topic in mind. I'd be happy if you guys decided to do episodes like this every once in awhile.

 

I've been playing a lot less board games lately. My interest in board game mechanics hasn't diminished, but after the initial excitement upon the discovery of the board gaming renaissance wanes, you enter a phase where you start to develop specific tastes about board game mechanics. Then it becomes trickier to find people to play games you're interested in because at this point in my life while I could play another game of Settlers of Catan and have a good enough time, it isn't so good that I want to carve out a couple of hours in my free schedule (not to mention all the planning and coordinating involved with other people) for it.

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Lovely episode!  Really, really enjoyed it!  Also, I just called my library and asked them to hold Gardends of The Moon for me -- so that will be fun.

 

As for a meet up/gameathon I'm in the Midwest (St. Paul, MN) but I would be more than happy to travel to Chicago.  But for Troy, MN is basically just southern Canada so there's that sales pitch for you.  Then, per the last episode, I know Bruce has roots in Chicago/Illinois and I believe Rob is also another Midwest ex-pat. 

 

Again, awesome episode!

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Loved the episode. Because you are all very knowledgeable, sometimes 3MA can come off a bit formal. This new format showed off a side that was a bit sillier that I enjoyed. The ending portion where Rob is saying they "might have been done for a while" discussing the fan meet was where it got weird and funny for me. Sticking it to the man was good. Who is the man? Who is the man.

PS also loved the TV talk at the end. Thanks for adding to my unending watch list Rob! Between this and Idle Weekend, you're killing me! (Gossip Girl notwithstanding)

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Come to Bucharest! We can reserve a boardgame cafe, bring a couple of laptops... It will be so cool  B) !!!

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Why don't Computer Game companies respect multiplayer?

 

I've been listening to you guys for a while and you've danced around this topic some, but Bruce fleshed it out more significantly in this episode. He was talking about his increasing desire to play board games (specifically board war games) because of an interactive human opponent. I also play board war games as well as strategy computer games and can report that I play a lot more board war games for exact that reason. With computer strategy games, you play the game for while against the AI, mostly to learn the mechanics and how to play the game well, but relatively quickly you are defeating the AI routinely and the game loses replay value. 

 

BUT! If the game supports an robust multiplayer experience then the game experience continues to expand and grow as you extend your capabilities against other human opponents. The best example of this so far is the Twilight Struggle boardgame port that was produced by Playdek. Bruce highlighted this when he mentioned playing around 200 games with various people through the UI of the game. It's an easy bet that he didn't play nearly that many games against the AI.

 

I have been especially frustrated with the Civilization franchise. I've played all the Civs over the years and by far the best multiplayer experience of all them was Civ IV. Soren Johnson clearly gets "it" and to me it seemed like that when he was writing the game he never forgot to make sure that the multiplayer would work and work well. Also his Offworld Trading company game is a fantastic Multiplayer experience.

 

However, Civ V is the complete opposite of this. It was clearly not designed with multiplayer in mind and the initial release played horribly in multiplayer. Even now, years later, the game doesn't really work that well in Multiplayer. Furthermore, it is disappointing to see the lack of discussion regarding Civ VI multiplayer in previews. The only thing I've read is that they are releasing a new "session" mode for Multiplayer that will allow a scenario-type playthrough that will take a couple of hours (as opposed to a full game which does take longer). No discussion on making multiplayer work more reliably or robust (especially when saving). The lack of information on Multiplayer capabilities will guarantee that I won't be purchasing the game until next year (or more), mainly because I got so burned by the Civ V multiplayer experience.

 

Overall, Civ is perhaps the clearest example, but the trend across computer games seems to be a reduction of multiplayer capabilities or lack of priority for development time for multiplayer UI or game modes. And the question that burns here is: Why is this?? It seems like solid multiplayer experiences in computer games are a top ask by the strategy gaming community and yet it is treated with indifference by computer game developers. You guys are much closer to the computer game industry than I am, what are your thoughts regarding this?

 

I should note that I've had very positive experiences with Amplitude Studio's Endless Space and Legend games (especially Space). But again, they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

 

Thanks for your time.

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I also enjoyed the more casual nature of this show, it was a nice change of pace. I'll definitely have to check out Occupied. I had it pop up on Netflix but I passed over it without so much as reading the description.

 

With Bruce playing wargames over multiple sessions days or weeks apart I'm wondering how that works with following through on a strategy. Do you take notes after a session so you can kick off right away or do you need to take time to survey the board at the beginning of each session before starting to play?

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For Troy's "good iPad game" request: Slay.  It's simple, but a fun little game.  Just beware of the trees; they're more dangerous than they look.

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Just to echo some of the other comments, really great just to hear what you guys are playing/reading/thinking about. Would really enjoy hearing a similar episode with some of the other regulars.

 

Also Troy - my "red-eye" games

 

Commander: The great war - WW1 Grand strategy

Vietnam '65 - you know already

Auro  - nifty little monster bumping game - deeper than it looks at first glance

Poytopia - condensed 4x game, basic but fun and quick

Dream Quest - deck builder, basic graphics but very deep strategy

Transport Tycoon - still waiting on that port of Sid Meier's railroad tycoon 3, this scratches the itch in the meantime.

 

 

 

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Just to echo some of the other comments, really great just to hear what you guys are playing/reading/thinking about. Would really enjoy hearing a similar episode with some of the other regulars.

 

Also Troy - my "red-eye" games

 

Commander: The great war - WW1 Grand strategy

 

Commander is fantastic in general, and it also has cross-platform multiplayer. It's perfect for the ipad. Other than that I always go back to King of Dragon Pass. Those are probably the best two ipad games.

 

And Washington, DC has a lot of gamer types. There's a pair of games from MMP that combine to make a company-level Market Garden. It's pretty great. If there were ever a half dozen dedicated people it'd be doable in a weekend with each of them taking command of a division. Or more if people split units up lower than division level. All we would need is space:

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1337498/where-eagles-dare

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I created an account for the sole purpose of begging you to do a bridge episode on 3MA. As a long time fan of all types of games, I've recently jumped back into bridge with a passion after learning the game from my parents two decades ago. Bridge seems almost tailor-made for the modern strategy gamer: teamwork and communication (bidding), tactics (finesse, hold up play), strategy (sacrifices, when to push for game, when to go for overtricks vs. play it safe) and a thriving metagame (bidding conventions). The big innovation (obviously this not recent, but feels unique among games now) is playing duplicate -- this means you are judged based on how you play the _same_ cards as other people. This leads to a game that has imperfect information (the cards your opponents have) but very little luck (you are judged based on how well you handle the _same_ imperfect information as others).

 

Well, obviously, I like bridge. I think your audience (and you) might as well.

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Thing is, crossruff, that's basically the same story as the chess episode. They would have to get on someone who would do it differently. And at least with chess, Michael is a fan. I don't think any panelists really get Bridge so an episode about the game would be more of the 'polite interview' type.

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On 11/8/2016 at 0:35 PM, cornchip said:

Thing is, crossruff, that's basically the same story as the chess episode. They would have to get on someone who would do it differently. And at least with chess, Michael is a fan. I don't think any panelists really get Bridge so an episode about the game would be more of the 'polite interview' type.

 

The solution to this of course is for everyone to extensively learn bridge.  (So I don't have to and then I can listen to it explained in such a way that tells me why the newspaper bridge column reads to me like secret WWII allied spy messages)

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@cornchipI think it's a different story from chess, even if the focus is simply on partnership play and bidding. But yes, it's challenging to do an episode without someone acting as an ambassador on the podcast.

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Thought I should drop by to leave a comment, as the last episode (arcen) asked for feedback... I enjoyed this episode, but I wouldn't like to see the format being used too often (once or twice a year perhaps) as there are plenty of other podcasts that already cover this format.

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I would welcome an informal chat episode 3-4 times a year or so. I would welcome a bridge episode as well. In general some oddballs every now and then sounds interesting to me.

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PS. I forgot to say I'd also happily listen to a Bridge episode. Would be really interesting to hear a new players views after learning the game for a month or something. I'm sure some of the Idle Thumbs guys were chatting about Bridge a few months back too, perhaps you could do a joint show? That would be a lot of fun :)

 

Actually, you should do another show with some of the Thumbs folk anyway.

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