The Impossible Games: The COIN Series

I'm not going to explain the title right off the bat, since I do want speculation to build up as you read the reviews of the three games (and one on the horizon) that currently make up the COIN series of 'war games'. It could be a variety of different reasons: maybe they are hard to play, maybe they have unclear rules, maybe they are just a bit too long! As per usual, I won't explain myself until the very last paragraph, but no cheating! I don't want you to skip ahead just in order to see what I'm driving towards: just a bit of patience and it will all come clear. With that in mind, let us proceed with the review!

Before I truly begin, one thing needs to be kept in mind when dealing with these games: unlike most wargames, the COIN games deal with conflicts that are likely to have been lived through by a large part of the population, especially for the insurgency in Afghanistan and Colombia. The subject matter also is filled with breaches of human rights and indeed these breaches of human rights are mechanisms within the games themselves (through the use of Terror operations to sway popular opinion). As such, many people will rightly find these games problematic. Having had friends go to Afghanistan as part of the coalition forces, I found that particular game problematic and it was a real worry for me that the games would be careless or reckless in the way that it portrayed these rightfully very emotional conflicts. I was happy to see that all of them had a degree of tact when dealing with the conflicts and this is the reason why I don't have issues playing them, but I fully understand why some people might. I would thus be honoured to hear the opinions of anyone that finds the games too objectionable to play, just to hear their views on these controversial subjects.

The COIN series of games is a series made primarily by Volko Ruhnke in collaboration with other designers (Jeff Grossman in the case of Cuba Libre and Brian Train for A Distant Plain). Volko previously designed fairly standard, although interesting, card-driven games: the standard yet tactically interesting Wilderness War, which uses a fairly standard CDG base as its main mechanism, although it does add interesting elements in the way in which the seasons and terrain is used within the context of the French-Indian War: the design is very evocative of how the major avenues of invasion for both sides (mostly the rivers of the region).

The other design by Volko is the rather controversial Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?. I won't go in-depth on the reasons why I found this game deeply flawed, both in terms of the political aspects that it tried to portray as well as the mechanisms present in the game, but here are a few points that stood out to me in terms of game design.

One thing that will tie in with my reviews of the COIN series games is how Labyrinth attempts to portray the asymmetrical aspect of warfare in the context of the war on terror. The basis of it is that the terrorists need to roll dice in order to perform pretty much anything within the game, while the Americans only need to roll dice when attempting to stabilize governments. This is problematic in game terms for a couple of reasons: as the terrorists, rolling for even the most mundane tasks means that you can feel like you have wasted entire turns. There are ways to mitigate the luck but since there are so many dice involved throughout the game, the potential for feeling like you have been given a bad hand due to unlucky dice is ever-present (in a game where deck-luck is already a major problem, as befits a game that takes its cues from Twilight Struggle).

Even for the American side, the situation is not ideal, since although most things can be done without a dice roll, the only action that pushes you towards victory is handled by dice rolls. No matter how good your setup is, the dice can still screw you and then you are forced to do exactly the same thing next turn. This is unlike Twilight Struggle, where if you screw up a coup or realignment, there's always the possibility of attempting to find your points elsewhere.

With the above in mind, you would think that any games based on a similar system would inherently suffer from the same problems, but it is clear that after Labyrinth was published, Volko Ruhnke made a deep analysis of what elements of his game he wanted to keep and what he wanted to do away with. Some of the most troubling aspects of Labyrinth were thus removed: although both insurgents and conventional forces would act differently, the excessive dice rolls had to be removed. Some things would be kept, though: especially the active/underground system for guerrillas, that models the difficulty in finding insurgents unless they poke their head up.

One more important change had to be made and I feel it was likely done in order to create a game that would handle more than 2 players.

Now, there are some CDGs out there that already handle more than two players, with Here I Stand and Virgin Queen being at the forefront, but for me those designs never really had the appeal that Twilight Struggle had. Both HIS and VQ do not have enemy events firing if you play a card for ops: this is both a fallback on the original mechanisms for CDGs (For the People and We the People used a similar deck mechanisms) but as well as that, they create less of a headache when a particular event could affect more than one faction. In Twilight Struggle, any enemy event will directly harm you while providing a bonus for your enemy: in a 4-player game, an enemy event could cripple a third player and not affect the player that allowed the event to fire, obviously something that is less than ideal.

So how do you combine a 4 player + experience with the event mechanism of Twilight Struggle? Well, the answer for Ruhnke was to create a completely new system! The system that Ruhnke designed is, if you'll excuse the pun, quite revolutionary.

Instead of each player having a hand of cards, the cards are played in the deck one by one, with the players being able to see the current card and the next one. The order of play is shown on each card using an initiative track, but only two players can play each card. The first eligible player gets a choice to either play the event (with most events being 'double-sided' and thus having a negative or positive effect for a particular faction), or play the cards for operations in as many areas as he wants, either with or without a special action.

Once the first player has made his choice, the second eligible player gets the choice to play the card, with his actions limited by the choices of the first eligible player: if the first player played the event, the second player can play the card for unlimited operations and a special order. If the first player chose to do operation with special orders, the second player can either fire the event or play for operations in a single area, while onn the other hand, if the first player did not play a special order, the second player can only play the card for a limited operation only. Players can also decide to pass (and the reason for doing this will become clear).

The system above is interesting because it allows the first player to block the event if he thinks it will harm him excessively. it also allows him to negotiate with the second eligible player to fire an event that is potentially beneficial to both: this really increases the potential for negotiations and double-dealing within the game.

There appear to be a couple of flaws to this system, however. For a start, luck of the draw seems to be a big factor, with whoever is first having a notable advantage over everyone else. This is handily fixed by another rule: if a player plays on a card, he is not eligible to play on the next card. This leads to interesting cases in which there are two cards, one after the other, that could potentially be good/bad for you: having to decide which you want to play (and which you want to potentially block) is an interesting situation.

The other issue is that being first appears to be explicitly better than being second: this is handily fixed by the fact that each faction has to spend resources for every single area in which they have an operation, thus limiting the number of operations you can do. Skipping, of course, adds additional resources (as well as propaganda cards, explained later), which means that you never get into a situation in which you can never play a card, although obviously it is still a less-than-ideal situation.

The most interesting factor of all the COIN games is the fact that each game features 4 factions that all play completely differently from each other. Although this is present within VQ and HIS as well, COIN goes further. In those two games, usually most sides will have a similar menu of actions, with additional special actions given to certain factions. On the other hand, COIN games both distinguish between COIN forces (which field conventional troops/police) and insurgent factions (which are composed of guerrillas). Analysing deeper, even individual insurgent/COIN factions act in very different ways from each other, with operations being (usually) the same while each faction has its own special orders.

The different factions, as well as acting differently and providing different playing styles, also have vastly different winning conditions. For some factions it might be to build bases, for some to create popular support/opposition to the government, while others just wish to make money. In many cases, the winning conditions are not mutually exclusive, which leads to interesting interactions since your winning condition might be (directly or indirectly) related to someone else's winning condition.

Winning conditions don't automatically win you the game, however. Winning is only assessed when a propaganda card is played. Although this does allow players to prevent someone from winning even if they surpassed their winning condition, it does lead to strange situations in which you can do unstoppable plays on the very last card: this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that propaganda cards are meant to be distributed evenly within the deck, so players know when to expect one, but it still leads to weird last-card plays. Rules are usually in place, however, to restrict the actions on the very last propaganda card, or otherwise the game would be excessively swingy (for a game that is already pretty swingy).

As well as providing a sudden-death victory check, propaganda cards are also used to provide resources to all of the factions (with each faction usually having different ways in which they can  gather resources), as well as providing a convenient 'tidy-up' phase.

The events within the different games tend to be very powerful, although this is truer within Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain in comparison to the first outing of the series, Andean Abyss. As well as regular events, there are also momentum events (which last until the next propaganda) or capabilities, which last until the end of the game (and are pretty much necessary in order to win as certain factions).

Having gone through the common mechanisms in each game, what does each individual game have to offer? Andean Abyss is the first game in the series and centers around the marxist insurgency between the government and FARC militia in the 1990s. I have no great knowledge of this particular conflict so I won't attempt to analyse if the game is true to the conflict, but it does seem to provide a well-researched, even-handed approach to the conflict, although it does not in any way attempt to recreate a completely accurate, historical simulation of the insurgency.

The game does pose some hard choices, however, especially when it comes to the question of the government collaborating with the AUC (the anti-marxist, right-wing terror group). As the government, the AUC are useful to keep the FARC in check, but eventually they have to be dealt with as well, lest they become too powerful. I don't know if this accurately reflects what happened in real life or not, but it certainly creates a powerful faction dynamic. I also have second-hand reports from Colombians that stated they thought the game portrayed the conflict correctly, but since I don't have first-hand accounts of this I can't account for their veracity.

All in all, Andean Abyss is an amazing game, although it has a few issues. The government and FARC factions are very difficult to play, with the former being difficult because it is almost impossible to win using it without reading the strategy tips present in the AA playbook, while the latter just feels like an up-hill struggle. The aim of the government is keeping everyone in check and playing capabilities so that before the last propaganda card they can overpower everyone for the victory, while FARC usually aims to cripple the government economically. Another issue with AA is that many of the events are just not worth firing (although this is largely fixed in Cuba Libre and A Distant Plain).

Cuba Libre is based on Castro’s Cuban Insurgency during the late 50s. When I first heard of this game, the one thing that worries me the most was that it was going to be too similar to Andean Abyss: there would be the government, the marxist militia, the money faction and a control faction against the marxists. Fortunately, the game proved to be anything but a simple copy of AA, Although there are similarities between the marxist and government factions between the two games, the similarities end there.

The Government in Cuba Libre feels like they are fighting a losing battle: getting support is hard, their alliance with the US is eroding (which makes all their operations cost progressively more) and there are plenty of enemies that want to destroy them. Unlike in AA, the government in CL wants to aim for the quick win: crushing the uprising before it can even have a chance to spiral out of control. The government has no capabilities within CL and thus their ability to deal with insurgents just gets worse and worse over time as they run out of the few resources they have.

The Marxist faction in CL, the 26 July Movement, has similar aims to FARC in AA but has much higher popular support, which means that they can rally insurgents to their cause surprisingly easily. On the other hand, it is harder for the 26 July faction to receive resources, thus making it still a challenge to win.

The other two factions are Directorio Revolucionario, which act as a separate insurgency to Castro's one, something that causes it to clash with both the government and Castro's forces. The most interesting faction in the game is, however, the Syndicate, which is like the Cartel but acts in a completely different way. While the Cartel in AA is nominally allied to the FARC faction, in Cuba Libre the Syndicate is more closely aligned with the government, since they can only expand their casinos where either they or the government have control.

On the other hand, for each area controlled by another faction in which they have a casino, the Syndicate has to pay the controlling faction resources as part of the 'skim'. It leads to an interesting symbiotic relationship between the government and the syndicate, in which neither wants to deal the first blow against the other although they both know that ultimately they will have to.

Overall I enjoyed Cuba Libre more than Andean Abyss: it is a tighter, quicker game that has more interesting faction dynamics when compared to Andean Abyss.

A Distant Plain is the third game in the series and centers around the Afghan insurgency during the 2000s. As I've stated before, I had misgivings about this design, both due to personal reasons and the fact that I thought Labyrinth had handled the conflict badly previously, without the same level of care that both Cuba Libre and Andean Abyss seemed of have. When I actually managed to get a game of it, however, I was blown away. This wasn't necessarily due to how the conflict was handled (there are some cards in the game which seem to be less than tactful, although nothing that really stands out as out-and-out bad), but simply due to how playable the game was.

A Distant Plain provides a very different experience when compared to the other games in the series. Instead of having a single COIN faction, there are now two, nominally allied to each other, although each with very different aims and objectives. While the role of the government is still present, ADP also has a coalition faction: they don't have resources themselves (representing the near-limitless resource of the USA), but if they use government forces as part of their action, they have to spend government resource. Another interesting dynamic of the coalition is that their victory condition is having support (something that strangely the government does not need) as well as having the fewest troops on the board as possible while still keeping up the support. For every piece that they have off the board, they gain an additional victory point: this naturally leads to the coalition to surge troops in, create support and then attempting to surge out, which is not an easy task.

The government largely only cares about patronage, which would be described as systematic corruption in the west but really represents the government giving hand-outs to supporters in order to be able to maintain power (something that without these payments they would unlikely to be able to keep). It does sort of tie in with how tribes/ethnicity plays an important role in Afghanistan,

The next faction is of course the Taliban, which is the main insurgent faction in the game. The Taliban faces a number of a challenges: the fact that they are facing both the government and coalition means that they can be found and destroyed easily if the two factions combine together to perform a 1-2 punch. On the other hand, the Taliban can move freely within areas of Pashtun ethnicity as well as create bases of operation in Pakistan from which they can build up their forces and then attack. Overall, however, the Taliban aren't very much different from the other main insurgent factions in the other games.

The last faction is the Warlords, which is where the game starts to break from its adherence with reality. The warlords are represented as a united faction, but really they are a hodgepodge of local bandits, ex-northern alliance members and various other factions, some of which are anti-Taliban, some of which are anti-government. They are similar to other green factions in that they can grow poppy fields, but their victory condition is not only based in gaining money in order to win (since in AA and CL the secondary winning condition, gaining bases, is tied to the profit-making). Instead, they just want to ensure that the provinces of Afghanistan are not controlled by any other faction (which seems to account partially for the fact that it's not a unified faction, although still feels faintly gamey in places).

Overall, A Distant Plain provides a truly different feel and just in terms of playability, it stands as the top offering currently available within the series. This is only surpassed by the next volume, Fire in the Lake, which is based on the Vietnam War and thus features conventional troops and irregulars on both sides (something that I am looking forward trying).

So these are the three games in all of their glory. If I had to give out that truly stood out to me, it would be A Distant Plain simply due to the relationship between the coalition and government: it created such a natural unease mixed with a need to rely of each other I hadn't felt in many other games. I have gone through some of the issues with the game during the review itself, but the biggest problem that I have is that I simply cannot play the game enough, mostly because it is impossible to find people to play it. The game sits dangerously close to the boundary between regular games and wargames: finding one wargame interested in it is easy, but finding 3 others? Almost impossible. Hence the title. I have only managed to play each game in the series once and trying to find other players is truly like pulling teeth. Still, the games are wonderfully playable, although at times they suffer from luck of the draw (especially if suddenly an event appears which disproportionally helps a player right at the end of the game, which has happened to me). Overall I can't help to recommend them and if I had to give a rating to the series as a whole, I would give them 4 out of 5 angry scowling King Philips. The review ends here, but please excuse me while I write a trap paragraph to catch anyone skipping to the end of the review.

The reason why the games are called impossible games is that you are a cheating bastard that can't follow goddamn instructions even when I try to clearly give directions on how the review should be read! Shame on you for skipping right to the end just because you were curious! Aren't you interested in my analysis of the games? Are you just that curious? Shame on you! Now go back and read everything like you are meant to! Zero out of five angry scowling King Phillips for you!

Guns of Gettysburg

You might not know it if you haven't been a regular in the board game thread within the Something Awful forums, but I love reading history. My main focus of study is the 19th century and, more precisely, the American Civil War: this is one of the large reasons why I have an avatar of General Burnside with the caption "So dreamy..." (well, that and a personal joke about me having a fetish for people with sideburns, don't ask). Having been born in Italy and living in England, it might be difficult to understand why I would have an interest in the ACW, but reaching back into the furthest reaches of my memory, I think it had something to do with playing an old Amiga game called North &  South, which had delightful cartoon Northern and Southern armies, along with having a boat-load of ACW playmobil toys. I don't understand how those toys had any kind of market within northern Italy, but there you go.

I was a teenager by the time I got a chance to watch such old war classics such as Waterloo and Gettysburg: I don't really want to discuss the merits of those particular films but they did strike a chord with me. By now, I've read countless books: although I don't really dip my toes in the Napoleonic era too much, the exploits of 19th Century America are still of a great interest to me.

Guns of Gettysburg is a game that I've been waiting for ever since I heard and began playing Napoleon's Triumph. Napoleon's Triumph, as you might know, is probably one of my favourite games ever, combining some of the elements of Euros and wargames in quite a unique mixture. The levels of bluffing, maneuvering, attacking and counter-attacking make NT one of the all-time great games for me and the only that annoys me about it is that I just can't seem to play it enough. So, quite naturally, when I first heard that Bowen Simmons was making a game similar to Napoleon's Triumph but based on the battle of Gettysburg, I couldn't help but feel excited.

Unfortunately, Guns of Gettysburg was a long time coming. The game got delayed and although I was disappointed at the prospect of never playing it, there was always a part of me that hoped it would finally come out. At the start of 2013, as the Something Awful thread posted about which games they eagerly awaited for 2013, I half-jokingly mentioned Guns of Gettysburg. This was, surprisingly, only a couple of weeks before the kickstarter got announced. Reading about the kickstarter starting was an unexpected joy.

For many reasons, both financial and personal, I did not join the kickstarter: for a start, US kickstarters tend to be very, very expensive for UK residents (the only one I've shelled out for is the one for 18OE, and that's only because I believed that the game itself would never hit retail). The wait until the game hit the retailer was excruciating, but finally my favourite online retailer finally had it in stock (I even managed to make him reserve a copy for me). I bought it as soon as it was available and within the week it was within my hands. I couldn't wait to get it on the table and so the badgering of anyone with even a remote interesting in wargaming began.

The first hurdle was placing the stickers on each of the blocks: unlike Napoleon's Triumph, each block in Guns of Gettysburg is more or less unique and as such, it has its own sticker. The entire army, replacements and all, had to be stickered, something that took me at least an hour of careful application. Fortunately, a spare sticker sheet had been handily provided in case I screwed something up: with my butter-fingers, this inevitably happened.

Another difference from Napoleon's Triumph was the size of the box and the size of the board. The NT map is a gargantuan affair, while the Guns of Gettysburg box and map are relatively smaller (although the map will still take an ample part of a table).

The layout of the rules was immediately familiar for anyone with knowledge of NT, but for the first time in a long time, some of the rules and sentences did not make immediate sense to me. It is unfortunate to say that there were more than a few occasions when, after reading a sentence, I immediately thought "wait, what the hell does that even mean?" and had to re-read the sentence in question several times before I finally understood what it was attempting to say. Overall, however, the game seemed slightly easier than NT, with only some of the concepts (organisational requirements and multi-hour turns, to name a few) that seemed difficult to understand. I felt confident that I could teach this game to another even if he hadn't read the rules.

This, it was clear, was a bit foolish on my part. Although I think I've got most of the rules right now, there were several rules that I completely forgot about in my first few plays, all of which were pretty critical to the flow of the game. Guns of Gettysburg, however easier in comparison to NT, is still a difficult, complex game with many rules that are easier to miss during the course of the game.

Exploring the comparison with NT further, there are many changes within the game that distances both the aesthetics and gameplay from its predecessor. For a start, as beautiful as the NT map is, one of the main concerns I heard from people that played the game was that it was very difficult to read the various attack penalties printed on the board. For me personally, it was almost impossible for me to read the locale unit limits due to my poor eyesight.

Guns of Gettysburg fixes a lot of this by forcing blocks to always be on approach (as befits the 'long line' fighting of the Civil War as compared to the Napoleonic-style of congregating units in big corps), terming them to be 'positions'. Positions can hold up to three blocks and the relative facing of a block is determined by where the block is relative to the dividing line. Another much needed innovation is that the terrain effects that affect that position are now in front of the block, making it immediately possible at a glance to determine what terrain will affect a particular fight.

The most notable difference between the two games is that Guns of Gettysburg blocks all start at strength two (with only Union cavalry being strength one). Guns of Gettysburg blocks, however, are assigned to different divisions/corps, some of which are qualitatively better than others. The way this is reproduced is by how blocks are reduced when they take casualties.

Instead of going straight from two-strength to one-strength, the owner of a block that needs to take a reduction picks up two replacement blocks with the same division/corps name as the one taking the reduction and then lets the other player randomly decide between them. Replacement blocks can either be reduced two-strength or reduced one-strength, with specific corps/divisions having more reduced two-strength replacements and thus being more likely to go to reduced two-strength rather than reduced one-strength. Reduced two-strength blocks, however, always reduce to reduced one-strength, while the latter blocks are always eliminated. The above might sound confusing but in effect is not too difficult to understand once you get to grips with it.

From a designer standpoint, the above rules is present for two reasons: one, it allows different blocks to be qualitatively better, as stated before and two, it allows for an element of fog of war that would otherwise not be present in the game. Within NT, this is done by the starting setup and different starting strengths: within Guns of Gettysburg, the chaos of the battle will mean that eventually you will be unable to determine if what you are facing is weak one-strength units or fresh two-strength ones.

Movement within the game is limited to moving from one position to another, although changing facing can be done without counting towards the movement limit. One of the main differences is that units exert a field of fire: it is not possible to go through a field of fire unless attacking and it's not possible to exit an enemy field of fire unless withdrawing (which in this game is a separate move  action from regular marches).

The main difference between the two games, however, is the combat system and this is where another element comes in: battle tokens. In order to represent artillery within the battlefield, Guns of Gettysburg makes the use of battle tokens which are played when an attack is declared in order to either help bombard the defenders or provide defensive artillery fire. Placement of tokens is limited by the aforementioned organisational requirements: usually you have to match specific tokens to specific divisions/corps, which means that it's important to make blocks from the same division/corps stick next to each other.

From a design prospective, this is actually quite an elegant rule: it forces your units to stick organizationally together in an organic way, without forcing you to explicitly keep them together. There are no rules that mean that you have to keep the blocks near each other, but if you split them apart in an emergency, you aren't able to make use of their artillery tokens, making them less effective than if they had stayed together.

The combat system is one of the major ways in which the game has been overhauled. After declaring an attack, the defender places his battle tokens face down in positions that have a field of fire. After he's done, the attacker places his tokens, with every three cannon symbols knocking out an enemy artillery token. After the attacker is done, any remaining defensive artillery causes one reduction per three cannon symbols in the defense, with ridges potentially providing more.

Once the artillery phase is over, the leading units for the attack/defense are shown and various modifiers are given to find an end result (much like NT). Some of the modifiers are things like fighting on a steep position, or flanking threats or even, for the confederates, a +1 for simply attacking. A result of 1 or above is a victory for the attackers. If the result was at or below -2, only the attacker takes a reduction, between -1 and +1, both sides take a reduction, while on +2 only the defender takes a reduction. Attackers that lose are forced to retreat immediately, while defenders have to perform a mandatory retreat during their own turn.

Another element that I have not discussed before and which relates to withdrawals is General Orders. Within NT, command and control is modeled through the use of a limited number of actions for corps/independent units, with the Allies having less options than Napoleon's army. Within Guns of Gettysburg, the command and control system does not limit the number of blocks you can move, but limits HOW you can move them. At the end of your turn, you can give one of three General Orders for your next turn: attack, hold or withdraw. You can only attack during attack General Orders and likewise, you can only withdraw during Withdraw General Orders.

This means that there is always a level of uncertainty, since a position that you thought was tenable could suddenly collapse and since you didn't give the correct order last turn, there's no way you can protect it! Fore planning and ability to spot trouble before it happens is very important in this game, especially since units cannot move unless they withdraw/attack if they are within the field of fire of an enemy.

One of the most difficult aspects of the game is multi-hour turns, which also tie in on how reinforcement works. Bowen Simmons, rather than give a 100% historically accurate reproduction of a battle, has stated several times in the past that he prefers to give the players the essence of the battle, the reason why the battle is different/important/interesting. For Austerlitz, this was the importance of the French reinforcements and the uncertainty of where the Allied attack was coming from.. For Marengo, this was the initial bottle-neck followed by the open battle.

For Guns of Gettysburg, the main essence of the battle is uncertainty. Neither side knew where exactly the enemy was, or how far they were away, or how soon their own reinforcements were going to come. Neither sides had even planned to fight at Gettysburg in the first place! This uncertainty is reproduced in the game through the use of double-blind reinforcement schedules: each hour, you draw a reinforcement token which tells you both if you get a reinforcement or not and from which road the reinforcements come if you do. Reinforcements can either come in off-road (in which case you bring them in next to the board edge all at once) or on-road, which allows a block to move up a road as many spaces as it wants as long as it doesn't enter an enemy field of fire. The latter, however, is limited to one block per hour.

This, however, causes an issue: lets say that the Confederates get lucky and get lots of reinforcement early on while the Union player barely gets any. If the objectives were in a fixed placed, this would undoubtedly make the job of the Confederate easier. However, if the situation was reversed and the Union player had lots of reinforcements, then it would be almost impossible for the Army of Northern Virginia to win. These sort of imbalances are prevented by allowing the union player to move the objective markers if he gets less reinforcements than the Confederate player, making it possible to keep the game more or less balanced even in extreme situations. The game is won when the Confederate player controls an objective and the Union player cannot attack anymore (either due to night starting or the union player running out of battle tokens, since at least one has to be used in order to be able to attack). If the Union player manages to last three days without the above occurring, then he wins.

Since turns in Guns of Gettysburg are still hour-long, this might suggest that games would ordinarily last THREE TIMES as long as NT, but this largely is not the case (although generally games still last longer than NT games). This is due to the aforementioned multi-hour turns, which can be called if neither player has called an attack general order in the previous turn. Multi-hour turns allow for increased movement and allow you to draw additional reinforcement tokens and this section alone accounts for a large degree of complexity within the system: it's necessary to track when a reinforcement appears in order to determine how much further it can march etc. Still, multi-hour turns do seem to do their job in speeding up the gameplay considerably.

So, in general, how does Guns of Gettysburg stack up to Napoleon's Triumph? It is clear, from the start, that there is one critical element that distances the two games. While Napoleon's Triumph is noted for its complete lack of random elements, Guns of Gettysburg brings to the table not one, but three distinct randomization mechanisms: reinforcements schedules, battle tokens and reduction system. For that alone, it is clear that die-hard fans of NT might be slightly dissapointed when approaching Guns of Gettysburg, but even taking that in consideration, the randomness of the game is far lower than most other wargames.

As well as that, some of the randomization allows the game to have a much higher replay-ability factor. Although it is possible to play with the historical reinforcement schedule, the fact that the schedule is different from game to game leads to remarkably different games: one game, the Confederates might have their back against the wall while in another, the Union could be pushed back almost immediately. The only thing that made games of NT different was how the Allied player dealt with his initial setup.

Some other issues with the game center around the relative immobility of units: there are penalties in calling a withdrawal which can lead to units staying static in a position until they finally attack (something which is especially true for the Confederate player). Due to defensive fire causing reductions (while attacking fire only knocks out enemy artillery or gives modifiers to combat), a botched attack that faces a lot of artillery can literally destroy an entire division/corps in one blow and with defenders getting their artillery back, it can often be a fatal blow.

Although the objective system is balanced against reinforcements received by either side, there's no morale collapse like in NT. This can lead to weird scenarios in which the Union fight to retain objectives which have ended up in relatively silly places: the field in front of the Angle or the Peach Orchard, which for some reason HAVE TO BE TAKEN BACK even though there's a nice safe defensible ridge behind them.

Lastly, as stated at the start of this review, the rule book can be difficult to digest and there are some rules which are very, very easy to miss in the first playthroughs. However, anyone with even a passing familiarity of NT should be able to understand them relatively easily especially since some of the systems (especially the one for combat) are much easier than the relevant system in NT.

Even when taking in consideration the minor niggles above (which to me are minor, thanks to the immeasurable bias that I have towards this game), the game does one thing well: reproduce if not the actual battle of Gettysburg itself, but the feeling and 'quiddity' of the battle. General Orders, the qualitative dominance of the Confederates, the numerical dominance of the Union, the uncertainty of the reinforcement schedule, the flanking line battles, the desperate charges, the killing fields created by artillery placed on ridges, the restrictions created by rough terrain, they are all elements which add up to a surprisingly realistic simulation of a civil war battle.

This game doesn't reproduce THE Battle of Gettysburg, but it reproduces a possible battle, one coloured by chance and by your own choices. Maybe this is the time when the Union managed to hold the field North-West of Gettysburg! The possibilities are end-less and they are not tied down by a strict adherence to history. This is something that would seem sacrosanct to a wargamer and history fanatic but in this case, it doesn't matter. This is what exploring alt-history should feel like and in this alone, the game delivers.

I cannot overstate how happy the mere existence of this game makes me. Although mechanistically I feel the game is weaker than NT, it does not seem to matter since all of the rules contribute so much in creating such a unique feel within the game. And although in good conscience I cannot rate it as highly as NT, the era depicted in Guns of Gettysburg is of such interest to me that I cannot help but be naturally biased into liking it more. In terms of my chief interest in boardgames, that of visual storylines, both game deliver in abundance, with the battle lines of Gettysburg eerily reminiscent of many of the battle maps present within the ACW books that I've read.

It is impossible for me to truly be objective about this game. Maybe if the issues with this game were larger and more obvious, then maybe I would not rate it as highly, but they seem so minor to me that they are completely negligible. It's even difficult for me to end this review, as I love this game so much, but I am filled with the fear that maybe the words of praise are only said due to my own inherent bias towards the game and era. Maybe my score, which is 9 scowling King Philips out of 10, reflects this bias, but I really hope this will not be the case when you finally get a chance to play the game and thus confirm how wonderful this game is.

The Most Thematic Game Ever and the Importance of Rulebooks

Upon reading the title of this particular post you might have had one of two possible reactions: either you had a deep sense of deja-vu, almost like you have read those particular words before, or otherwise you immediately started declaring me a hack and a charlatan, since I've obviously used those exact same words before in relation to another wonderful game, Tigris and Euphrates.

I must now admit that my piece on that wonderful game was nothing more than a shock piece, one of those well known journalism tricks in which they try to catch your attention by presenting a shocking headline in order to draw you into buying a shitty tabloid newspaper. It was, however, interesting to argue that a game such as T&E (as it's known by its friends and close relatives) is one of the most thematic games ever, due to the apparent lack of theme that the game presents at first glance.

I've gone over it before, but I have a real thing against pigeonholing particular genres or games simply due to their surface qualities. It's the sort of thinking that ends with assumption that 'of course Agricola is non-thematic, it's a Euro!' and other such idiocies. Theme does not need detract from the rules of a game, while on the other hand, rules shouldn't detract from the theme. Shockingly, for once, the answer is truly in the middle: a mixture of features seems to me to be the crucial point in which theme and rules merge together to produce games with true lasting appeal.

The game that I will talk about today has that appeal, so much appeal that it literally burst out of the seams in terms of theme and rules: this game, as you might have guessed from my last spoiler-update, is Pax Porfiriana.

Pax Porfiriana is a card game designed by Phil Eklund, noted developer of the complex brain burner High Frontier. The setting of Pax Porfiriana is pre-revolutionary Mexico, when the country was still under the iron fist of the dictator Porifirio Diaz. Each player takes the mantle of an Hacendado, powerful landowners within Mexico that had both the political and military clout necessary in order to shape the country to their own needs.

The aim of each Hacendado is simple: take control of Mexico by any means. This can be done in several different ways (although in terms of rules they are all handled in similar ways): an Hacendado can either lead a popular revolution, or he can conspire with the Americans to annex Mexico, or maybe lead a military coup, or simply suck up to Diaz enough that he is named his successor.

The above is done by gaining prestige, which comes in four different flavours: command (to allow you to do a military coup), revolution, outrage (American outrage, in this case) or loyalty. When a topple occurs, you total your prestige in a particular category and compare it to Diaz's current score and the scores of your two weakest opponents. If your value is higher, you win!

Prestige can be gained in different ways: you can hire specific partners which have that prestige (which can range from important people to newspapers or even inventions), or you can have enterprises which have a certain prestige attached to them. The other way to gain prestige is when other people play cards against you: this usually cripples your economy but does gain you prestige sometimes as a recompense.

This is where the genius of the game comes in: it is possible to play these cards against yourself: sure, you might get a negative outcome (or sometimes, not at all), but you will gain prestige out of it. Strangely enough, this doesn't feel gamey at all, but rather something that would have fitted right in with the sort of Machiavellian schemes that would have happened at the time.

Let's give some examples: it is possible to buy plantations. When enough unrest is created at plantations, they revolt, giving the 'liberator' revolution prestige. It is possible to make a revolt happen in your own plantation, thus allowing you to get the revolution prestige: the oppressor, working behind the shadows, suddenly becomes the liberator.

The truly wonderful thing about this game is that it can create a narrative from every single card play: sending troops to your opponent's enterprises in order to extort money from them, selling guns to various revolutionary groups, creating unrest in order to stop others from getting money, it's all there and it all fits. It also helps that all the cards have a little bit of flavour attached to them: it's enough to allow a true narrative to be created behind every action.

Another factor that helps the theme is that the Hacendado of each player is slightly different. There are some Hacendados which follow the life of the Revolutionary better than the one of the loyal servant, but the rules for each aren't overbearing, it's just small differences which end up creating a huge difference.

As well as that, the game has huge replay potential: you never use the full deck of cards (which is up to 120 different, unique cards), but simply a portion of them: no two games are going to be exactly the same.

If I was to compare this game to any other game out there, I would follow the choice made by someone else and say that the game bears a resemblance to Munchkin. Now, you might rightly think that this is not necessarily a good comparison, but the fact is that Pax Porfiriana is a minutely, perfectly and expertly balanced, playable and rules-strong version of Munchkin.

The game has a lot of 'fuck you' elements and the end game can be somewhat of a 'screw the leader', but there always seem to be ways to be able to do something: it's almost impossible to completely blame the luck of the draw for losing like it is possible in Munchkin.

Going back to the theme, it is really the details that make this game what it is. It is possible to send Mexico into depression within the game, a situation in which certain industries will cost money rather than make money. Each type of regime can affect the game in remarkable ways. The flavour text of each card really gives a glimpse of how historically important certain characters/groups/families were at that time. Pax Porfiriana far surpasses any other game I've played just in terms of pure adherence to rules and even only for this it would garner a recommendation from me.

There are, however, issues with the game: first, the cards in the games are very visually busy and it can be difficult to parse all the information present within them since some of the important elements within them are so stylized. Although I personally like the look of the cards, I have heard comments that consider them ugly, so I guess the design isn't everyone's cup of tea.

Secondly, this game has probably one of the worst rulebooks I have ever seen (wondering where the second part of the title was coming from, where you?).
This rulebook makes the cardinal sin of placing necessary rule explanations within a glossary at the end of the book, thus requiring going to it in order to read fundemental rules in the game.

This is an issue that irritates me greatly since it plagues a lot of the games I like. Vlaada, for all his virtues, does create some truly annoying rulebooks, for example. Through the Ages is probably THE most awful rulebook ever due to its decision to split the rules in different sections of the game (since the game can be played in one of three difficulties).

Finding rules in such a rulebook thus becomes an exhausting endavour of trying to remember in which specific section that particular rule is, which is enough to send anyone crazy especially for such a complex game like Through the Ages.

Other rulebooks by Vlaada suffer similar issues, although not to the same extent. Vlaada rulebooks tend to do two things that lead to them being annoying to find things in when you need rule explanations: first of all, they are divided into different sections as explained above: secondly, they are designed to be enjoyable to read. You might wonder how the second is a negative, but sometimes the indexed nature of a wargame rulebook is preferable since it makes finding specific rules (or referring back to them) a breeze.

Going back to rulebooks in general, I think that poorly thought out rulebooks can put people off from trying an awesome games simply because it's tedious to learn how to play it through the rulebook alone. Rulebooks are often as important as the design of the game itself: if people can't learn to play your 'perfect design', then surely the game is a failure no matter how good the design is?

Going back to the Pax Porfiriana rulebook, another thing that should be avoided is placing your own personal political views in the design notes of the rules: it might put people off so why bother?

Overall, I would strongly recommend this game. The way that it implements the rules and theme is truly something else and cannot be reasonably compared to any other recenet release. The game plays fast (except if there is a depression) and provides both complexity but also ease of play once learnt: easy to learn, hard to master would truly fit as a description of it. Pax Porfiriana receives 5 out of 5 angry scowling King Philips.

Podcast

For anyone that isn't part of the SA thread, here's a link to podcast involving me and some other SA members: http://angercast.tumblr.com/post/52775446612/angercast-episode-001-april-episode-introductions

As for blog posts, keep watching this space. I've been busy lately (went to a con where I only played 18XX for the entire weekend), but regular blogging with restart shortly!

One of the Most Thematic Games Ever

This article is going to be more of a review of a game that I really, really like. It is a  game which I think is at the top of the pile for me not only because of the rules it uses as part of its experience, but mostly because of the wonderful, wonderful immersive theme that it brings to the table. This article is meant to be an attempt to get readers to understand the way that my mind works in relation to games and the way that I like to interact with rules and theme in order to bring me enjoyment. Now, I don't expect for everyone that reads it to completely agree with me: I would actually be shocked if everyone tended to agree with everything I say, but what I do hope to do is make you think about the subject of theme (which I already touched on before) in a slightly different way as you read about the two games that I will review in this article.

So, if the first thing you thought upon reading the title of the article was 'Vlaada', well, you might be surprised that this article will not review a single Vlaada game. Let me get something straight: overall I think that Vlaada's game are a wonderful fusion of rules and theme that is pretty unprecedented in most other games.

Dungeon Lords does in some way make you think like a dungeon keeper and every little rule has a particular thematic explanation to support it (although I have spoken to people that don't think it's enough like building a dungeon because it's not enough like D&D/Descent/etc: you can't please everyone).

Dungeon Petz feels like managing chaotic pets that might not do what you want them to do at any given time. Space Alert feels like you are in a rapidly disintegrating spaceship attacked from all sides. Galaxy Trucker feels like you are in a rapidly disintegrating spaceship attacked from all sides.

Through the Ages feels exactly like the games of Civilization that you play on the computer, even though the mechanisms are completely different and there isn't even a map. Bunny Bunny Moose Moose makes you feel like you are a complete idiot. All of them wonderful games (well, I don't know about the last one) and all of them perfectly suited to their theme. Unfortunately, I am not going to talk about any of those games, as appropriate as they might be.to this particular topic. If I mentioned any of those, the connection to theme would be too easy to explain. I want a challenge.

The game I want to review in this article is going to be Tigris & Euphrates. Merely by reading that, some readers might have punched their screen in disgust. 'A Reiner Knizia game being called thematic? You have gone too far Tekopo, TOO FAR!'. If you bear with me though, I hope to explain some of the thought processes that have me reached the conclusion that this is possibly one of the most thematic games available, although it hides it's thematic roots very well.

First of all, a brief explanation of the game for those that haven't had a chance to try what is rightly called Knizia's masterpiece. Tigris & Euphrates is a game based on Mesopotamia, the land of the two rivers: each player is in control of a dynasty within the region, with each player have 4 different kinds of leader (unlike most games, it is symbols that denote one player from the other rather than colours). Scoring is based on 4 different colours, with the winner being decided by who has the most in the colour that they have fewest points in (so, if your distribution is 4-5-6-6, your score would be 4). You gain points by having your leaders on the board and either expanding your own kingdoms or conquering other kingdoms: one novel feature of the game is that players don't exclusively own each kingdom, with shared ownership being possible as long as your leaders are a different colour from another player's. All expansion and conquest is done through the laying of tiles on the board. There are a few further features in the game (monuments, internal conflict as opposed to external conflicts, how combat works etc) but this small explanation has gone far enough, considering the aim was to give a brief overview of the game.

Reading the above, you might think that there isn't a lot of theme present: you play tiles on a board and (a bit like Acquire, if two kingdoms touch there is a conflict. How can laying down a tile possibly be compared to actually waging war or taking over a kingdom diplomatically? You might think that there is too much detach from playing the tiles and actually doing the actions that a ruler in those times would do. You might think that having to place leaders on the board and them taking up a space is way too abstract and gamey. And you would be right. If you look at Tigris & Euphrates at that level, the themacity of the game is not present, but the thing about Tigris & Euphrates is that it's not attempting to portray the world at such nitty-gritty level, but actually at a much higher, more simulation-like level. And it's at that level that the theme really starts to kick in and you appreciate the game as more than a simple Euro in which you want to get the highest score possible.

I was able to appreciate this level after I ran one of my Tigris and Euphrates game on a forum. By the end of the game, I had collected all of the updates, turn by turn, each showing the two actions that each player had chosen on each of their turns. For fun, I decided to turn all those pictures into an animated GIF in order to see the progression of the board. What I saw astounded me. The board developed in an almost organic way, each tile-placement almost like a shared decision by the players. You could see kingdoms grow, collide, collapse and then be reformed. Once mighty kingdoms would leave a few lonely tiles on the board (I've forgotten to mention that tiles can be removed from the board if you lose a fight), remnants of a once mighty civilisation that was now no more, lying in the dust Ozymandias-style. Even those remnants would eventually be scooped up by the next big empire. Large empires that had made too many monuments would be greedily attacked by their neighbours and quickly taken apart. Small kingdoms that hadn't had space or time to expand would be attacked by their larger neighbours, only for those neighbours to be destroyed from within either by internal strife or disasters (a type of tile that a player can play in order to create a dead-zone that doesn't count as any tile). Singularly, each placement of the tiles did not seem to drive the narrative necessary in order to have a thematic game, but taken in aggregate all the tile placements by all the players created a shared narrative that seemed to capture the essence of the era much more powerfully than many wargames I have played.

Upon noticing the above, the level of detail present in the game in order to adhere to theme seemed to increase, in my eyes: farms (as represented by blue tiles) can only be placed on river tiles, representing the need for flood-waters to fertilise the soil. The setting up of trade links from one place to another is also represented through the use of treasures. Internal strife is based mostly on religion (a powerful force during those times) while external strife is fought with the relevant colour/theme, be it religious power, farmyards, markets or even armies. It doesn't take long to realise that the placing of each tile doesn't always represent the placing of actual buildings/structures, but also the spread of influence from your kingdom.

Apart from this high-level theme, there is also a very compelling game underneath: a game about being cut-throat, striking when you are strong and trying to shore up your defences when you are weak. The interaction between players is cut-throat, with anyone attempting too much to keep to themselves likely to be beset from all sides if they aren't careful defending their kingdoms. The shared kingdoms can also make it difficult to expand your kingdom without also helping other people. The fact that you are scored on your lowest points in one of the four categories means that you can't just concentrate on a single strategy to win: you have to be flexible. The overall package of the rules really works to give a fulfilling, tactical experience.

In terms of negatives, the game is very much a Euro, much like most, if not all, Reiner Knizia's games. As much as I attempt to show that it has a wonderful sense of theme above, die-hard ameritrash players might find it difficult to find the theme within this game as I described it (although largely this is one of the reasons why I decided to write this review). When I say to people that I think that Tigris & Euphrates is thematic, many times they think I am joking, even when I attempt to explain the thought processes behind this analysis. The main issue is that Tigris is not traditionally thematic: it doesn't match with our commonly held assumptions of how a thematic game should feel and look: it looks like a Euro game with it's different colored cubes and tiles. Other issues present within the game is that, for a Euro, luck can play slightly too much of an element: it is perfectly possible to end up without any tiles in a colour you require and although you can re-draw as an action, if you fail to re-draw what you want, you are still in the same place but now missing an action. The game can also snowball if the players aren't careful, but usually aggressive play can prevent this. If players aren't aggressive enough, though, the game can end up being about who gets the luckiest with the tiles but hopefully as players get more confident they should quickly realise that sometimes it's best to be aggressive.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't really expect everyone to agree with my analysis of the game above and I would actually be interested in hearing anyone that disagrees with the points above. I hope, though, that this piece does showcase slightly better the way that my mind works and some of the reasons why I would give Tigris & Euphrates a very well deserved 5 angry scowling King Philips out of 5.

Randomness

And by that, I don't mind Monkey Cheese kind of stuff, just in order to clarify things from the get go. Now, a lot of people might have realised that randomness is not something I particularly enjoy within a game, but I don't think that statement is actually correct: randomness can be an important, even crucial element within games and without it many games that I play and enjoy today would not be anywhere near as enjoyable as they are. The crucial element is that randomness needs to be managed through the proper construction of rules in order to allow it to supplement the game rather than completely supplant every aspect of the game. It's a difficult balance to find and there are many, many games out there that instead of working out this balance just replace every mechanical resolution within the game with randomness since they are unable (or unwilling) to find alternatives. One example that nowadays I find almost inexcusable is the use of X+ to hit systems (i.e. systems in which you need to roll a certain number or above in order to perform an action/hit a monster/etc). We have been using such combat resolutions systems for a very long time now and superficially they are a very easy way to work out combat resolution. Unfortunately, the modularity of this  system is also it's downfall: although it can be used in a variety of different games, games that have this system will largely feel homogenous as well as being mechanically unexciting. To me, it's the hallmark of a designer that had a great idea for his game, mostly in terms of the setting, but didn't really have the knowledge or experience to develop a resolution mechanism unique to his system.

Departing a little bit from my rant against X+ to hit systems, let's first of all understood why randomness is included within games in the first place. Randomness, for example, affects drastically the replay-ability of games. If we think of a single board game session as an exercise in which we have a defined start state and end at a end state that is decided by the events throughout the game, it is clear that if a game always ends at an end state very similar from session to session, the replayability will be low. If one particular strategy is overwhelmingly more powerful to the extent that the player that does that strategy will always win, then it is likely that players will soon stop playing the game since it has simply become an attempt to reach that premium strategy and nothing else. There are some badly designed euro games that fall precisely within this trap. It is clear, then, that in order to be successful a game requires a way in order to make it possible to reach diverse end states, all of which are possible to achieve while playing the game. The two main ways to diversify the end state have usually an element of either of the following (there are possibly more elements but these seem to be the most prevalent to me):

The first element is the unpredictability of the actions of other players. This element is usually strongest in games that have little randomness, like for example worker placement games like Caylus or Agricola. Political manipulation games also feature this element strongly, although the unpredictability can be sometimes manipulated by cutting a deal that is mutually beneficial to both players (of recent games that I've played, Tammany Hall features this element). Unpredictability can be used as a replacement for randomness, especially within games in which there is an antagonistic selection of resources/worker spaces/etc.

The other element is of course randomness. Randomness helps to diversify the end state of games in several ways, with the most important being the inability to be sure if you can fulfill an action or not (where I define stuff like hitting a monster for damage as also being an action). Unlike the former element, where you might be unable to perform a desired action due to the actions of others, with this element you are unable to perform actions due to random chance of not being able to perform them. Every roll of the dice or draw of the card branches the path towards the possible end state, because if you don't deal with the monster THIS turn you will need to plan to deal with him the next!

It is important to note that in order to make a game truly re-playable and enjoyable through many, many games, a mixture of the two elements above is important and to lean too much towards one side can actually be detrimental (although not all of the times). A game which entirely relies on the first element might find it's re-play value curtailed after a group that has been playing it develops too much of a meta. I define meta here as an almost group-think element that can be constructed within groups after repeated plays in which the group accepts (correctly or incorrectly, it does not actually matter which) that there is only a particular way to play the game. Some of the strongest examples of this I've found within 18XX games, games are almost devoid of randomness entirely except for the starting order and thus rely on player unpredictability in order to remain interesting in subsequent plays. There are many 18XX games in which my group has developed an Accepted Method of Winning, usually to the detriment of our playing experience, since the sessions spent playing that particular version of 18XX homogenize into one, with the only memorable games being the ones in which a new strategy manages to break the meta.

On the other hand, games can stray too far into using randomness as a crutch in order to boost the re-play value of a game. If a game is too random, players can feel like choices within the game become meaningless since even playing the game at the peak of your abilities can lead you to be last. It's at this point that an important distinction needs to be made: is the game being played PURELY for the experience (as all games are meant to impart a certain experience to the player) or are they being played in order to test the strategy//intelligence/skill of the player?

Let's note that neither of the objectives outlined above are necessarily wrong or bad. Board games don't necessarily need to provide a challenge or be tactically interesting in order to fulfill their purpose as entertainment (although for some that will be an important aspect of playing games, as it is usually for me). What is important is that the designer of the game has internalized this choice and thus bases his design decisions on what he wants the game to achieve. I've seen plenty of games on, for example, Kickstarter which purport to be tactical, strategical, skillful and then when you actually look at the rules for the game in question, it's almost entirely luck based. It's the divergence from the purported objectives of the design and the actual outcomes of the mechanistic rules of a game that can cause a game to ultimately feel unrewarding.
On the other hand, I usually find that games that are up-front about being experience generators are more successful in their design. Tales of the Arabian Nights is not the greatest of games but I find that it hits its intended function perfectly: although the game features a win condition, it is a second thought compared to the experience and stories generated by the game (and which is why I was shocked when someone suggested skipping the text when I played the last game of this, it seemed so counter-intuitive to the objectives of the game). This is also one of the reasons why a simple house rule to Arkham Horror (having someone else read cards to you) can make the game much more of an experience simulator. It is important to note, however, that in the end all games are intended to provide experiences of some sort: what is important to note is if there are other aspects to the game apart from the experience by itself.

Going back to ways in which randomness manifests itself, it might have been apparent from previous posts that I have made that I have a strong interest in wargames. Usually a strong interest in Euros seems to preclude an interest in wargames since the latter are so random and in most cases you might be right. My common way to answer this dichotomy is to point out that wargames are essentially games in which the aim is to always stack the odds within your favour: this can be done by ensuring that your attacks are likely to succeed while forcing your opponent to make though decisions that might potentially backfire if they go wrong. Although this is true in most games, within wargames this aspect tends to be more organic due to the number of individual units in question and the range of actions that each of these units can take. Being a wargame, however, is not enough: the system behind the wargame is also important. As much as I like games like Here I Stand, I absolutely detest the combat resolution present within the game, which is just a simple X+ to hit with very, very limited modifiers. Although stacking the odds in this system is important, the outcome can be wildly unpredictable that it almost becomes meaningless. Better systems usually involve Combat Resolution Tables, which in Paths of Glory, for example, attempt to reduce all possible factors within combat to a single dice-roll. You may ask how this changes probabilities in comparison to multiple dice rolls, but since the result of the dice is not binary (hit or miss) and instead a table is needed to look up the result of the dice roll , it is possible to have a much more finite control over the probabilities within your game. A smaller range of possible values will make your game less luck-based: differences in the ranges between small and large formations might make it more or less possible for a small formation to beat a large one: a CRT system allows a developer a much better control of how much the designer wants to make the uncertainty in dice rolls a part of his game.

It's this control over probabilities that I find lacking in most systems that use X+ to hit: there's no way to be able to manipulate the probabilities of dice to your advantage. If the ways are small and insignificant then largely the player's actual actions are going to have a very small impact on the game, with the result instead being decided by how lucky/unlucky a player is.

Although largely I have talked only about dice randomness, it is also important to speak briefly about card randomness. I usually prefer the use of cards over the use of dice in determining randomness: one of my preferred ways involves the need to shuffle decks or not, an element used to great effect by deck building games especially. A great example of this that I'm very familiar with is Card Driven Strategy games: there are many different designs within this genre of wargames but usually the ones that I find more fulfilling are the ones in which several reshuffles of the deck are necessary, which brings in elements of deck management to the game as you want to get enemy events out of the deck in order to stack the deck in your favour. On the other hand, decks that do not get reshuffled tend to be more random in terms of what cards affect the game: a great example of this is For the People, an otherwise excellent CDG that slightly suffers from the fact that you only cycle through the even deck once. Another example of card randomness is when cards are used as random events: I have already gone through this in my review of Yedo when comparing the game to Dungeon Lords. Both games use random events but a measure of forewarning in Dungeon Lords allows the player to have a chance to change his plans, something that in my opinion ultimately enhances the gaming experience.

One important positive aspect of randomness is that it can level the playing field:: it allows inexperienced players to play with experienced players at a level field that ensure that the game remains competitive throughout. I think this is an important aspect of randomness but I find that the length of the game can be equally important: if a game lasts too long and is too random, no matter how level the playing field is, it's gonna be unrewarding even for newbies, especially if early luck snowballs into ultimately winning the game. I find that shorter games do not tend to have as much of a problem with needing to limit too much randomness because the game is over quickly enough to prevent people from dwelling too long about having lost due to random luck.

To end an article that has been going on for far, far too long, I think randomness is an important aspect of game design, but it does need to be tempered in order to prevent it being the only memorable thing about the  mechanics of your game. It is still helpful to point out, however, that like in all things, a degree of balance is important: take, for example, Agricola. It's possible to say that the success of this design is partially due to the occupation/minor improvement cards, which can add some variety to the game and can even change the dynamic of a session completely depending on which decks are chosen. Randomness, unlike what some of the more die-hard euro fans suggest, is not something that needs to be removed: it's something that needs to be managed.

Yedo: Or, the Allure of Confirmation Bias and the Dangers of First Play

I played Yedo recently and I had a pretty bad time, even though I earnestly said at the end of the game that I had liked it. First of all, it is important to note something: it is very easy to categorize games in terms of how well we play them in our very first outing. I have fallen into a tendency to be much more favourable of games in which I won in my first outing as opposed to being beaten badly, but in recent years I have attempted to reach a more objective viewpoint on this matter. I am starting to actually view games in which I do badly more favourably, since it means that they have more strategic depth than it is at first apparent to me and therefore would eventually be much more fulfilling. The problem seemed to be, however, that my first experience of Yedo was not only mired by the fact that I had played badly and hadn't understood the strategy of the game, but also because a terrible string of unavoidable bad luck had pretty much put me out of the running in the mid-game and only a subsequent string of good luck managed to keep me in the running at all. My trained instinct, however, was not to blame the game but my own mismanagement of the resources I had available to me: the game was, after all, a worker placement game and therefore, from my own prior experience with the genre, I was conditioned to think that any troubles that I had throughout the game was of my own making. After all, there are plenty of situations in Dungeon Lords in which a random event seems to be aimed specifically at screwing your own personal strategy (since I usually go for a monster heavy strategy, the random event in this day is Monster Strike, which is an extra mini-payday).

I therefore filed Yedo, after that first play, in the mental category of "bad experience due to own mistake, try again while avoiding previous issues". This particular category is one in which I'm not completely sold on the game since the experience was so bad the first time around (I put Agricola in a similar category because of a single dickhead that I played the game with), but that I had to at least give another go since I was sure that the experience was not representative of a standard playthrough of the game.

So, what exactly happened in this first experience that soured me to the game? Well, for a start, let's describe how Yedo plays (for anyone not interested in my 'theory of board gaming reviews' crap, THE REVIEW STARTS HERE). Yedo is a pretty simple worker placement with a separate auction mechanism at the start of each round. The main way to get points within the game is through the use of missions, which are very reminiscent of Lords of Waterdeep although, unlike LoW, the resources you build up in order to accomplish these missions are almost never used up. Instead, in order to accomplish the missions, you are required to have certain weapons (of which there are 8, with you only able to have 4 at the same time), or have Geisha's (which give you additional points but apart from that do nothing else), or use up a blessing or have workers on specific spaces on the board. Missions give you points based on their difficulty (more difficult missions require more resources/workers) and also have bonus objectives that give you even more points/money. The other type of scoring in the game is based on bonus cards that give you points based on having the most of a particular resource.

The auction at the start of each round allows each player to bid on getting a certain type of resource: although some of the resources can be gained in the worker placement part of the game, most items in the auction have a 'draw 3, keep 1' mechanism. After everyone has taken something in the auction, the worker placement part of the game begins, which is fairly standard, each space having only a limited amount of slots. Workers can be placed either to complete missions or do a specific task within the space and usually a space has more than one option available. The placing of workers is done by a changeable turn order (think Caylus), where everyone places all of their workers and then each player resolves one in turn. Additional difficulty is created by the presence of a watchman, who goes around the board capturing any workers present within the area he's currently patrolling: his movement can be affected by several intrigue cards which are also very reminiscent of LoW in terms of how punishing they can be.

Comparisons to LoW present within the game are obvious and it is useful to compare the two games in terms of how they stack up against each other. In terms of theme, I think Yedo has LoW pretty much beat: each mission has an accompanying flavour text which helps the player understand what the mission actually entails: instead of collecting cubes that are meant to be adventurers and somehow mysteriously losing them once the quest is completed, the buying of Geishas, weapons and having your workers in specific places feels more natural and usually the things that you need fit the nature of your mission. LoW does the latter as well, with specific missions requiring specific adventurers but since the adventurers just feel like random Euro resources (white cubes, red cubes, whatever), you never really feel like you are getting into the spirit of the game. 

So, what did I actually stumble against in my first play of Yedo? Well, I got into a situation in which I couldn't get one of the weapons necessary to complete most of my missions and since all the weapons of that type had gone in the discard pile, I would have to wait before I could get what I needed (or get lucky and find the intrigue card that allowed you to look through the weapon discard, but that didn't happen). I had one mission I could complete, but it required two workers to be in two different places. Turn 1, I placed my worker on one of the spaces that I needed, securing the one that everyone had seemed to use more often first, only to get shut out of the second place, meaning that it was impossible for me to complete the mission. No one had ever played on that particular space prior to that round so not knowing the game very well, I didn't prioritize  that space: the other players that had blocked me out hadn't done so intentionally, but had just happened to need that space for one of their own missions during that round. I chalked it up to not knowing the game very well and since I didn't have the money that was part of the reward for completing the mission, I sacrificed a couple of victory points in order to get enough money (going broke in Yedo is very, very crippling). 

The second turn came about and I was set to complete the mission when unexpectedly someone played a card that made the watchman go the other way, preventing me from placing workers in one of the spaces I needed without him getting captured. The player in question hadn't played this card in order to screw me over directly, but simply because he needed to do his objectives which otherwise he would be prevented from doing. Another turn in which I was forced to spend VPs for money and in which additionally I lost one of my workers.

The third turn I was prevented YET AGAIN from completing the mission by a random event card that closed one of the areas I needed: I do not know if there was a way to view upcoming events (answers in the comments please), but it meant that I had yet another turn in which I lost VPs in order to get enough money to do anything in the next round.

At the time, I chalked all of the above to a mixture of bad luck, not knowing the game and playing badly and I kind of forgot about it until one evening in which I got into an interesting discussion with one of the people I play regularly with. I had told him my experiences with Yedo and when I got around with outlining the above, he confirmed to me (where you wondering what that part of the title was about?) that my experiences of the game weren't singular to me and that he actually thought were failings of the game. Rethinking it in my own mind, I couldn't help but agree with him. Although partially it was my fault for getting into the situation above, there were several issues that I might have not picked up if my first experience hadn't been so disastrous. For example, one of the issues with the game seemed to be that one of the critical parts of the game, the worker placement, was largely luck driven due to the lack of information that players have concerning the likely placement of workers by other players. It's impossible to know what spaces each player needs to complete his missions: in most standard worker placement games, it is at least possible to ascertain roughly what a player would be going for, but in Yedo this information is completely lacking, making it impossible for someone to judge if they should prioritise one space over another when attempting to complete a mission: spaces that were hardly used in the early stages of the game might become required depending on what missions the players have. This lack of knowledge has impact in all aspects of the game: it's impossible to know what weapons someone will need or what annexes (think buildings) someone requires. It is also nearly impossible to know what kind of action/intrigue cards someone has, or even what bonus cards he has. There's a fundamental lack of information from which to make informed decisions throughout the game. In this aspect, the game is even worse than Lords of Waterdeep, since in the latter game, since you choose from an open choice of quests, people more or less have a knowledge of what you are going for. As well as that, since you don't need workers in specific places in order to complete quests, the ways of countering someone are obvious, since you just need to prevent them from getting resources.

Although in both games you can get screwed by other players, within LoW the interaction is more often direct than indirect. It often occurs within Yedo that you get screwed not because of someone directly wanting to hinder you, but to hinder you in indirect ways through the following of their own objectives. 

My opinion of Yedo had thus changed, but largely it had been an opinion that I originally had formed but had been afraid to express: after all, the game had been lauded by many people, many of whom I respected in terms of their opinions towards board games. My own mental training had also prevented me from making that snap judgement and it was only the confirmation of my negative experiences that had finally allowed me to express my negative views of the game. Like all things in life, there can be a degree of peer pressure in evaluating games and due to my own nature, if my opinion of something is radically different from the norm, I usually think that it's an issue with my own opinions rather than the opinions of others.

So what are my ultimate thoughts about Yedo. It's difficult to say: I think this truly is a game I have very mixed opinions about: there is a lot to praise about the game but after some analysis, I can't avoid but see the obvious weaknesses of the design. I was willing to try it again after I had played it the first time but the situation now is that I honestly don't know if I would be willing to play it again: the possibility that I might experience the same issues as the first time (and the confirmation that others had experienced the same issues  and they weren't strictly speaking an exception) meant that I now feel reluctant about wasting time in a game from which I might only get to experience negative situations. I think there is enjoyment to be found and if you tend towards the more thematic part of the board gaming spectrum, there is the potential for a lot of replay-ability  even considering the (apparent to me) weakness of the design.. I thought originally that Yedo would be like LoW but with tighter, more euro rules, but it is apparent that it actually goes the other way and this, although not a good thing for my own tastes, might be just the right fit for ameritrash (if you'll excuse the use of the word) players.

Think about it: the game has a fairly well implemented theme while attempting to produce euro-like worker placement elements: for someone that enjoys worker placement games but doesn't necessarily like euros, this would seem like a unique, almost perfect fit. It does what Lord of Waterdeep attempted to do and although like LoW it tries to disguise its thematic roots, it provides a stronger theme without just copying most of its rules roots wholesale from other Euros. 

It is therefore not possible for me to either recommend Yedo or not, because that recommendation is so strongly based on the personal tastes of the player. If, like me, you prefer games in which you have enough information to make informed choices, this game won't be for you. My own rating for this game would be 2.5 scowling King Philips at most, but that score is meaningless: the people to which this game is aimed at will score it higher and rightly so. There is only one true recommendation that I can make: try the game for yourself and only then decide if you agree or disagree with me.

18XX Games

This is not going to be more a review, but more of a general overview of this particular genre. First, some disclaimers: I don't find trains particularly interesting and I'm not a huge fan of economic games which rely on stock manipulation, yet 18XX has a draw for me that is unsurpassed by any other game out there, ever. One of the reasons why I like these game has been explained in a previous post that I made on this blog, the one about Visual Storylines or whatever the name de jour is for that particular part of boardgaming. I will try to explain the exact spots that seem to really hit my 'fun button' when I play 18XX and the reason that I got into these games in the first place. Some of the terms I will use in this post will not be understandable by someone that hasn't played the game, but even without knowing what they mean, I will attempt to explain the base concepts of the games so please don't think that you need to have played 18XX games in order to fully understand my reasonings.

My track record (GET IT?!) with train games has never been that great. I played Ticket to Ride and although I liked the game for what it was, it never really resonated with me like most of my favourite games have. When I picked up Tigris & Euphrates during My Eurogame Epiphany (since the first time I played it I was an ameritrashers and just couldn't understand why people liked it so much), it immediately hit me how ingenious, how charming, how absolutely wonderful the game was. On the other hand, I played Ticket to Ride a couple of times and although I could see the potential for strategical thinking, it was not the sort of game that made me jump out of my chair and exclaim its greatness to all that could hear. My second train game was Steam (or maybe Age of Steam): I pretty much detested this game completely. The entire game felt counter-intuitive, with the mechanism that hitting more towns and thus have a more inefficient route would get you more points. I also felt it had a large runaway leader problem that you could do nothing much about: if you were on the wrong side of the board at the start it was nearly impossible to catch up once behind (although you could rightly point out that this is an issue with 18XX games as well, especially the long ones, but I will speak about this particular point in more detail later). As well as that, the game felt somehow detached from the theme: it didn't feel like you were running a company somehow. In other words, the game soured me to further attempts to play train games and for a long while I was resistant about trying anything that involved trains.

My first contact with 18XX games was through the meetup I attend: there was also a sub-set of the group that every Tuesday, religiously, would play what appeared to me the same game again and again. I only became aware of the group since one of the people in it was interested in wargaming and since that was my primary interest at the time, I was always curious about why he would play the same boring train game again and again. I used to joke about him playing 18XX games as well and, remembering my attempts at playing Steam/AoS, I was reluctant to play it even when they offered to teach me. One day, wanting to try something new, I decided to give it a go and thus I played 1846 for the first game. I loved it! I don't know why, but I completely loved it. What fascinated most of all was the collaborative aspect of track building: instead of having your own track in 18XX there is a collaborative track that everyone can use (although some cities can be 'tokened out' in order to prevent other players from going through them). The end of the game was thus always a collaborative effort in which the individual decisions of all the players were put together in order to come to the end result. The decisions weren't even random: they all consisted of shared decisions making based on which companies you owned, their position on the board and the rational choice if to go for early cash or concentrate on more long-term enjoyment. It reminded me a lot of what I liked about wargames: the shared competition between two players in a wargame always shaped the board differently depending on their decisions and here it seemed to offer that particular part of wargames but more than 2 players involved. If anything was the definition of visual storylines, 18XX would be it.

Another aspect that interested me about the game was the interest in history that each 18XX game so obviously tried to explain. Yet again, this is one of the reasons why I play wargames: along with being interested in military history, it is interesting to think about the kind of decisions and mind-frame that the commanders at the time would have held, although even a fraction of this is present within a game. For 18XX games, the games allowed me to immerse myself in the world of the Robber Barons and both understand their mind-frame as well as the kind of possibilities that were present in those days. The game does a good job at showing the possible dangers of an unrestricted market and the goal of the game, to make as much money as possible, can be used to explain why someone would decide to run unsustainable companies. 18XXs in general are games in which you almost always want to get as much money as possible as quickly as possible and fund later purchases by starting EVEN more companies: it seems to slot into place and gives you a real sense of roleplaying one of the gilded age capitalists: you don't care about how well the company runs, the only thing that matters is your own personal treasury. The fact that you can own more than one company also helps to strengthen this feeling. Going back to the history bit, I also like the fact that all the companies in the game are based on real life train companies that actually existed. It feels better to be the owner of the New York Central with shares in the Baltimore & Ohio rather than owning Made-Up Company A and Made-Up Company B. The fact that the companies start in pre-located spaces also lends them with an air of uniqueness. Overall, although it doesn't always look like it, 18XX games drip with historical theme.

Another important aspect about 18XX games is that choices in these games matter and there's pretty much no randomness in the game at all (about the only random thing is the turn order). All choices in this game are like small little butterflies, creating hurricanes in the far distant future that might affect the game in surprising ways. These do not only affect what the board will eventually look like, but as well as the stock position of each individual company as well as how much cash/shares each individual player will have. I don't think I've seen a game yet in which singular choice within the game can have such far-reaching consequences.

Another important aspect about 18XX is the re-playability. This is present both within individual games and for the genre as a whole. In terms of individual games, for ones that don't have predominantly stronger companies, it is possible to attempt myriad combinations of major companies and privates: there's a great deal of experimentation possible if nobody is overly familiar in the game (once a game starts to become more familiar there is a level of groupthink involved in terms of strategy that can detract from the game). As well as that, there are hundreds of different versions of 18XX and the differences between each are sharp enough to lead to remarkably different playing experiences with each different game. Some center around having smaller minor companies and merging them together into a bigger company (1861, 1824 and 18EU), some of them are mostly concerned around stock manipulation (1830 comes to mind), others are more interested in making the player run only a few companies, but run them well (1846 especially but all partial capitalisation games in general). As well as that, 18XX games allow you to travel the world: there are 18XX games for a wide variety of countries and regions, each attempting to showcase some of the conditions that would have affected the development or railway companies within that particular region. If you know the general rules of 18XX it is usually easy to pick up another one, since the rule changes tend to be minute (although this does lead to the problem that once you have tried a large variety of them like I have, it is difficult to remember which specific rule is present within a particular game). This large variety of games means that people can have surprisingly different tastes when it comes to 18XX games: I prefer full capitalisation games in which many companies can be viable and with cities that are not overwhelmingly better than others (which is why I like, while one of the players I game with prefers partial capitalisation games in which some companies are overwhelmingly better than others: it's a microcosm of tastes within a niche genre of boardgaming.

Another aspect of 18XX games is that they are highly adversarial: the games are well known for having more experienced players ruthlessly drive less experienced players bankrupt. There is a wide variety of ways in which you can screw over the development of other players but thankfully, most of these are avoidable: it is certainly true that a mistake that you do in one game will not be repeated in the next (unless you just can't learn from your mistakes). The level of nastiness in this game is so high that you really have to play the game with people that are not going to take it too seriously (which thankfully I was able to). This level of direct confrontation is yet again reminiscent of wargames for me, although there are collaborative elements as well, as sometimes working together can be more beneficial for both parties involved rather than continually screwing each other further.

Of course, all games come with their faults: for a start, 18XX games can suffer from a very pronounced 'rich get richer' situation, which is entirely intentional. The only way to make money is to buy shares in yours or other people's companies and  the only way to buy the is to have money: this is one of the reasons why getting as much money as possible as early as possible is so important in many of these games. This however does mean that some games can have a runaway leader or create situations in which some players still have to play the game even though they don't have the remotest chance to win. Kingmaking can also occur, although some 18XX games suffer from this much more than others. Other issues with the games is that often, due to the niche market present for these games, many of the games are not professionaly printed: although this isn't an issue for me, many can be put off by the ugly, colour-clashing visuals of the game. As well as that, it is very hard to get into your hands any copy of any game (although some, like 1830, are easier than others). It took me about a year to get lucky enough to find a copy of 1870 on e-bay, so finding a good quality version of the game can be hard.

The game itself can be too dry for some people and the fact that it's often easier to use a spreadsheet to calculate the end scores can also scare people away. The final rounds of a game of 18XX also tend to be repetitive as people run their routes (which by this stage are unlikely to change) again and again until the bank breaks (which signals the end of the game in many 18XX games). It is clear that some people will be driven away from 18XX games for these reasons alone, along with the length of many of these games as well as the brain-burn that occurs when playing any of them. Going bankrupt can also be highly demoralizing as you lose everything that you worked for, although thankfully most 18XX games immediately end if even one person has gone bankrupt.

Overall, if you have the chance, I would strongly suggest that you give 18XX games a chance: some of the most unlikeliest people have now become permanent members of our little 18XX group and we are always looking for anyone else interested in playing. Unfortunately, the only game of 18XX that you are likely to find is 1830 and due to the fact that 1830 was one of the first few 18XX games that were released, I find it has a few issues that make it difficult to play, especially for a group in which everyone is a newbie. Better starting games include 18AL/18GA, 18MEX, 1889 or 1846, since they all have more restricted trackbuilding or mechanism which help newbies through their first game (18AL especially so). Unfortunately, it can take years to order/find a copy of those games, even second hand.

I can't really give a score for the genre as a whole, since all of the games within it are so diverse (and some I actively dislike). To wrap up though, I think starting to play 18XX did manage to radically change my perception of train games and euros as a whole: it reminded me that along with euro-like characteristics, I also crave the direct confrontation and communal maps which are present within wargames and as such, 18XX are the perfect combination of characteristics. I hope that at least some of my enthusiasm for these games has transferred over to you, since I would like nothing more than see this tiny niche-within-a-niche interest grow, as unlikely as it might be. It would be a shame to see this genre of games die out and I hope that the future will, along with an expansion within boardgames as a whole, also see an expansion within 18XX as well, although professional publishing seems unlikely due to how badly the reprintings of 1830 et al went for Mayfair. Still, one can hope.