Gormongous

Board Game Daydreams

Recommended Posts

Many of us are passionate enough about strategy games to hold board game nights. We may even own a few games that are lucky enough to be played regularly. This is not the thread for those. Here we talk about the games that we love but will never convince anyone to play. Talk about your failure to convince friends or just spin a fantasy of the play session that will never be, whatever gets the vicarious juices flowing. I have two to start us off:

1) Britannia - this was the first hobbyist board game I bought, back in my early college years. I was just figuring out that my passion was for history, which the purchase of this helped spur. I had one awesome game that flamed out halfway through, during the Saxon invasion, and it has sat on a shelf ever since. I think the idea of different players controlling multiple factions as they move into and out of the British Isles may be the perfect way to alleviate snowballing and general "dudes on a map" ennui, while special mechanics and objectives for each faction give a great sense of acting out history without being deterministic. Sadly, the initial failure to finish has become notorious and my group is hooked on Dixit now, so unless I tempt three other people from my grad program it'll never happen.

2) Imperial 2030 - I actually was given this six months ago, so it's not quite a lost cause. Still, people look at it and see "future Risk", which is a definite disadvantage in a group that has already burned out on Risk: Legacy. Much like the advantages with Britannia, I found in a brief demo session with a couple friends that the stockholding mechanic allows for players who dislike confrontation to profit from the conflict of others while disincentivizing attempts to turn the tables or dogpile on the weakest. The little wooden battleships and tanks among the components aren't going to convince anyone of that assessment without a lot of pressure, though. But hey, it'll keep.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I love Imperial 2030. It's definitely one of my favorite board games. Back before I left San Francisco, for a couple months the Idle Thumbs crew had a weekly Imperial 2030 game. Now that I'm back in SF we haven't actually played it again yet but I'm looking forward to doing so.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My love for 1960: Making of a President is only matched by the total apathy towards the subject most of my close friends exhibit.

It does still get some use, but the play time and the fact its only 2 player restricts it significantly.

I really need to pluck up the courage and get on gametableonline and play a few games over the net, but i'm painfully aware that with any strict 1v1 game like 1960 the quality of a opponent can make a big difference to if someone enjoys a particular game(and at the moment i may a very poor opponent).

I probably don't help myself much in some respects, since i find the idea of reading up about tactics online before i play a game a bit distasteful. I think that feeling took root in my mind back in the days where i played a lot of Magic The Gathering, i hated the concept of "net decks". It has always felt cheap to me that someone could win a game with a tactic that came from a forum, and not from their own understanding of the games mechanics.

I'm resigned to this being pretty much par for the course now for any strategy game played online, but still something in my heart of hearts doesn't want it to be that way.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Twilight Imperium - This is a game I love and hate. I love the overwrought space opera theme. The game positively drips with it. I hate how much of an effort it takes to play.

I knew I wanted to play it the first time I saw it at a convention, but nobody I knew owned it. I even put an ad on Craigslist to see if anyone had the game and would let me play. Eventually I had to break down and buy it.

We've only played it three times and have never finished a game. We even set aside a full day for the most recent attempt. We had six players. We spent some time going over rules again at the beginning (since we play it so infrequently) and we took a break for lunch. One of the players finally had to bail after about 7 or 8 hours and the game broke up.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I daydream about Canal Mania being a great game, which I don't think it is. I want to love it for so many reasons, but can't. From the design notes for the first edition:

The initial inspiration for the game came during a visit to Llangollen in Wales and a walk along the Chirk aqueduct and through it’s adjoining tunnel. Right beside the aqueduct is a railway viaduct, which was purposely built taller than its rival transport and sported rather vulgar statues of the railway owners.

I love that the inspiration was a "fuck you" to railways, what they did to the infrastructure that started the industrial revolution, and their dominance of routebuilding games.

The game has some beautiful touches. The scoring track has a marker printed with the Stevenson Rocket, and when it reaches a particular date denoting the ascendance of railways, the canal network goes into decline. The players spend the whole game building up the life's work of some amazing, pioneering engineers who are named within it, then play out an end game in which it all becomes obsolete. There's something quite sad and beautiful about that, and it's a kind of context I've never seen in any other board game. Usually it's all ascent, struggle and dominance; playing out the decline of something seems quite unusual.

Unfortunately, there's much that isn't so great: It's basically a routebuilding game somewhat like Ticket to Ride, but uglier, more fiddly, and more complex. I've played it twice with friends, and it's bored people shitless in a way Ticket To Ride: Europe never does. Also, the name is historically derived, but the first thing about 50% of people do when shown the box is cover the C and snigger (Yes, of course I did it too).

The aesthetics are kind of troubling to people. It uses a hex grid, which outside of niches, I've heard referred to as "commercial suicide". Most of the game is brown and yellow. When laid out, it is not a friendly or approachable looking thing, nor very pleasurable to look at (It makes me uncomfortable to say that too, because the visuals are still refined enough that I can see that work and love has been put into them).

The game design feels kind of like it's got some fiddly expansions shoved in from the outset, but would be too simple if they weren't there. I'm glad I own it just because of what it is. It's a strange artefact of boardgames, but it'll never float to the top of the pile when we're deciding what to play.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
We've only played it three times and have never finished a game. We even set aside a full day for the most recent attempt. We had six players. We spent some time going over rules again at the beginning (since we play it so infrequently) and we took a break for lunch. One of the players finally had to bail after about 7 or 8 hours and the game broke up.

The time limit for TI rapidly reduces the more practice you get, we play a 4 player game in about 2.5-3 hours and a 6 player game in about 4-5 nowadays. It's a fun game!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
The time limit for TI rapidly reduces the more practice you get, we play a 4 player game in about 2.5-3 hours and a 6 player game in about 4-5 nowadays. It's a fun game!

I've had a similar experience with my gaming group. I also recommend using the simulated early turns rules from the Shattered Empire expansion, which cuts out about half an hour worth of largely uninteresting actions. The strategy cards from that expansion are also much better to play with, in particular the Imperial Strategy card. You can download the rulebook from FFG's website if you're interested in checking these things out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
You can download the rulebook from FFG's website if you're interested in checking these things out.

Thanks. I'll check it out. Though I think my gaming group would only roll their eyes if I brought TI up again.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Thanks. I'll check it out. Though I think my gaming group would only roll their eyes if I brought TI up again.

That's the problem, isn't it? Once a game has been labeled as a time sink, little can save it in a group's eyes, least of all the promise that it will play quick and smooth the fourth time through. It almost makes you want to hold off introducing your big finds until you're sure you can give the best impression possible.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

6th Fleet. It might be terrible, but I've had it since it came out, and it just seems so compelling. Ships. The Med. Nukes and supplies and bases and glorious Cold War gets Hot whatnot.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Stuff.

Fuck. I've missed Lambs AGAIN. I'll make it over again, I promise. Tonight would have been good as well, since we've had to close the campsite due to bad weather.

I dream about Boardgamegeek being easy to navigate.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And now the Road to Enlightenment kickstarter is beckoning to me, even though it would probably suffer the same fate as Here I Stand should I try and convince my group to play.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Fuck. I've missed Lambs AGAIN. I'll make it over again, I promise. Tonight would have been good as well, since we've had to close the campsite due to bad weather.

Ah, it's the first Thursday of every month, we'll always have a spare room or bed for you. Also, you should come over and play Cyclades sometime, which is too long and strategic to be a Gambling Lambs game, but great for an evening in with friends. I sometimes play with a programmer who is an excellent strategist, but not so sneaky, so people usually unite against him. This has led to several games that last about four hours instead of one, with ridiculous incomes for everyone. The last one finished with a kraken move consisting of about 15 spaces and 18 eaten ships (It usually does 2 or 3, tops).

At the weekend, I fulfilled a yearly boardgame dream with some friends by running the library at GameCamp. Here's a list of what we had for the day:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aqa3PNbPcH9xdExqdDdSb3I2TGhyZXJfUTM1RG5OaGc#gid=0

Carrying two big bags of that back from London today was a killer though. Also, the designer of Hive turned up, and he's a lovely man. After talking to us for a bit, he donated one copy to GameCamp and one to Gambling Lambs.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
or just spin a fantasy of the play session that will never be

- I had this silly fantasy of becoming a legendary Go player who goes on challenging Chinese mystics and kung-fu masters. The whole point is to play the game philosophically, not just as a sport - in correspondence with the teachings of feng shui - imagine playing a session of Go against a white-bearded sage on his isolated adobe within the mountains with a panoramic view to the surrounding areas, the sun shining, a spring rippling nearby...while drinking tea and smoking pipe on a lazy afternoon.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now