This past week I was at the world boardgaming championships. Just like the last 2 years I met new people, had great social experiences, and played a lot of games. Unlike the last 2 years I have no new plaques to bring home and put on a shelf to collect dust.
My performance this year was characterized by incredible consistency. I made the semi finals in every single game I wanted to. Then I played in those semi finals and got 2nd. It is clear that I am pretty good, but apparently not great, at everything.
As is often the case in 4 player euro games the semi finals consistently had 3 strong players and 1 weaker player and the weaker player threw the game to one of the strong players - usually the one to their left. This was the case in 4 of my 6 semi final games. In the fifth game I just got beat straight up, and in the sixth I had a win locked up except a normally really tight player had a brain fart and tossed the game to someone else.
I feel okay about this. I really would have liked to make some final tables but I feel like my play over the course of the week was consistently strong and my results show that I am good at many things. I will get those event 1st place wins eventually, considering how often I end up having reasonable shots at them.
One thing I am extremely pleased about is my finish in Agricola. That game is absolutely chock full of sharks and I smashed two of them in my heats. I won so handily that I didn't even have to play the third heat. In my semi final I built a crazy vegetable engine with Gardener, Schnapps Distiller, Schnapps Distillery, and Wine Closet to get me an early vegetable. My people don't need food, they can survive just on alcohol alone! Ferris beat me by 2, but I clobbered the other players real good. That landed me with a fifth place overall and I can't complain about that. I was close to final tabling and I feel good about my play. There was just one critical point where I didn't build my room but took 2 reed instead, and this meant that I didn't grow on 7, but instead managed to grow on 8 and 9. I don't know for sure that I did the wrong thing, but at the time I thought I probably should have grown on 7, if only to block Ferris from doing the same thing.
Puerto Rico has been consistent for me for the past 3 years. In each year I did great in the heats, got into the semi, and came in 2nd. At least this year it wasn't my team game so I didn't feel like I let everyone down by failing to win. And this time I absolutely had the game if my cross position opponent took builder, which was his best play both selfishly and also from a position of wanting the guy who eventually won to not win. It would have been better to lose to me by 1 than to lose to the eventually winner by 8!
I want to have a better plan to get points for my team next year. The games I have been playing so far have a ton of positioning and random player variance and nobody is going to be good enough to just make the finals each year. There are lots of good players and although skill matters, I would rather be the person to the left of the noob than be the best player at the table. I am considering playing a few hundred games of Seven Wonders Duel to get good at that and to try to grab a trophy there. I like the game and it would be nice to play something where if I lose I have only myself to blame.
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Battle with a door
In my last DnD session we had quite the kerfuffle with initiative. The problem was that we kept swapping in and out of combat time and then had to keep figuring out what initiative was again. This is a real issue with turn based combat, though normally you just navigate a single switch from simultaneous to turn based time and then you are good to go.
The situation was our party had opened a door into a room with several hidden enemies in it. We made our Perception roll to notice the hidden enemies and so combat began. Normally this would be fine - we fight, and either we die or they die.
But not this time! This time we cast Darkness, and our singular party member who can see through the darkness began shooting arrows at the enemies. The rest of us just hid as rushing out past the darkness into unknown foes seemed foolish. The enemies, not wanting to run into the darkness against unknown foes, just sat there. After a couple rounds of getting peppered with arrows one of the enemies had the bright idea of running up to the door that my group had opened and closing it.
So now combat isn't happening anymore. The two groups are back on either side of the door. The enemies wanted to ready actions to shoot us if they could see us, and we wanted to do the same. But both sides sitting there for extended periods readying actions doesn't work at all well. It makes for a very silly situation when finally somebody breaks the stalemate, that is for certain, and once you have had multiple rounds of everybody reading actions and nothing happening it feels like you have to break combat time.
But then what do you do to get back into combat time? Cancel all readied actions, for sure, then reroll initiative, I guess? But who goes first is a total mess, because nobody can do anything until somebody opens that door. And the person we wanted to open the door... do we just start at their initiative? Roll after the door opens? It is all a mess.
What ended up happening is quite beyond the basic rules. One of us opened the door, the other moved into their space simultaneous with the door opener moving back. Then the person moving forward grabbed an enemy and dragged them into the water in the room ahead of us. Our third person rushed into the room, I used my readied action to turn them into a giant crocodile, and the crocodile ate a dark elf. We broke at least three rules in that single turn.
And then we spent awhile rolling dice while a crocodile got stunned by a mind flayer but still kept that pesky dark elf in its jaws. And our monk had fun drowning a dark elf and then swimming away from a giant octopus. It was funny though - we spent half of our time in that fight passing turns, reading actions we knew wouldn't go off, and the other half actually doing fun stuff. It feels like we should police ourselves, somehow, and insist that nobody take powerful actions that lead us into stupid rules situations.
Normally I would yell about my solutions to this mess of swapping back and forth to combat time. But I just don't have one - it is an ugly consequence of turn based combat and I don't see a way out.
The situation was our party had opened a door into a room with several hidden enemies in it. We made our Perception roll to notice the hidden enemies and so combat began. Normally this would be fine - we fight, and either we die or they die.
But not this time! This time we cast Darkness, and our singular party member who can see through the darkness began shooting arrows at the enemies. The rest of us just hid as rushing out past the darkness into unknown foes seemed foolish. The enemies, not wanting to run into the darkness against unknown foes, just sat there. After a couple rounds of getting peppered with arrows one of the enemies had the bright idea of running up to the door that my group had opened and closing it.
So now combat isn't happening anymore. The two groups are back on either side of the door. The enemies wanted to ready actions to shoot us if they could see us, and we wanted to do the same. But both sides sitting there for extended periods readying actions doesn't work at all well. It makes for a very silly situation when finally somebody breaks the stalemate, that is for certain, and once you have had multiple rounds of everybody reading actions and nothing happening it feels like you have to break combat time.
But then what do you do to get back into combat time? Cancel all readied actions, for sure, then reroll initiative, I guess? But who goes first is a total mess, because nobody can do anything until somebody opens that door. And the person we wanted to open the door... do we just start at their initiative? Roll after the door opens? It is all a mess.
What ended up happening is quite beyond the basic rules. One of us opened the door, the other moved into their space simultaneous with the door opener moving back. Then the person moving forward grabbed an enemy and dragged them into the water in the room ahead of us. Our third person rushed into the room, I used my readied action to turn them into a giant crocodile, and the crocodile ate a dark elf. We broke at least three rules in that single turn.
And then we spent awhile rolling dice while a crocodile got stunned by a mind flayer but still kept that pesky dark elf in its jaws. And our monk had fun drowning a dark elf and then swimming away from a giant octopus. It was funny though - we spent half of our time in that fight passing turns, reading actions we knew wouldn't go off, and the other half actually doing fun stuff. It feels like we should police ourselves, somehow, and insist that nobody take powerful actions that lead us into stupid rules situations.
Normally I would yell about my solutions to this mess of swapping back and forth to combat time. But I just don't have one - it is an ugly consequence of turn based combat and I don't see a way out.
Sunday, July 15, 2018
Hating those postal workers
I am partway done my Thurn and Taxis league games and all is well so far. Last season I won my way up to league 2, and I was concerned that this would prove an extremely difficult test. I am sure I have played less T&T than most of my opponents, as I have only played in the online leagues and the heats and semis at the world boardgaming championships.
But my worries were unfounded, or so the evidence suggests. I won 2 games so far, one of them an absolutely brutal smashing 31 - 18 - 12 - 6. I rewound through the game to see if I constantly just mized into the best cards for me and it didn't seem outrageous. I suspect that the reason for my domination was that I got a bunch of perfectly solid routes and did all the things, and some of the stuff my opponents had to do to not trash their routes were really bad. I definitely threw some plays in the trash, with a bit of meandering about the board, but it was at worst a solid play with a bit of waste. I never had a 7 route that only put 3 houses on or anything like that.
T&T is one of those games where I can't quite figure out how to play properly. I know that really good players win very consistently and yet it so often feels like I win or lose based on the exact card I need flipping up at the start of my turn. Clearly skill mitigates much of that randomness, but how precisely you do that isn't something I can articulate. I am doing well in a competitive league though so clearly something in my brain knows how to play T&T. I just can't tell you what it is I do!
One thing I have noticed this season is defensive plays that I would not have expected. In particular I have seen people scooping up a second copy of Pilsen that they have no intention of playing just to jam the other players from completing their rainbow. It also prevents red/orange completion to of course but that is less common and so far less important.
You can see this on the board above - if you take all the copies of Pilsen then nobody can get to Lodz and thus cannot get the brown component of the rainbow. That is good an all, but the question is does it actually make you win? Tossing away an action is worth roughly 1 point as games mostly give players about 16 turns, which is 24 actions, and the winner gains about 45 points. So the question becomes: Is losing 1 point worth it when you cost other people points?
Mostly what you will cost other people is 4-5 points for completing their rainbow, but the trick is that they can mitigate this. Instead of focusing on the rainbow they can aim to complete other colours instead. Swapping to a plan of completing beige when Lodz is blocked is a fine way to gain points, particularly since most of the beige towns are low priority. Considering this you will have to assume that the real effect of your action is far below the 4-5 points they technically lose.
The other problem is that you might not succeed in your block. If you have to place Pilsen as part of a route (and you bloody well need to, if you have two copies of it in your hand!) then the second time through the deck people will end up with another shot at it. The only way to crush people really thoroughly is to keep those copies of Pilsen in your hand until the deck reshuffles and that is going to destroy your game to a far greater extent than a single point. If you lose your point randomly stealing a card from other people but they manage to get their points later in the game anyway you are losing.
I think the best way to think about this is that a Pilsen block costs somebody about 3 points. You aren't even necessarily sure which somebody, and you also usually don't know for sure that it costs them 3 points. That is a pretty rubbish play, in my mind. You don't win 4 player games by losing 1 point to randomly punish another player for 3 points, particularly when the punish isn't certain. Somebody else is going to play greedy, dodge your punish, and beat you.
However, I do think that there are places where you can maximize your investment. For example, if somebody grabs Lodz early in the game on spec you can snatch the last Pilsen and put them in a bind. Either Lodz clogs their hand until the deck reshuffle, which is awful, or they chuck it and waste their own turn. This is a much bigger punish and you can target it at the person who you think is the biggest threat. Of course I don't think strong players will usually let themselves get stuck in a position where this sort of block is viable.
Generally I see the option to flush the up cards and generate a new pile to draw from as a much more powerful option if you want to hate people. It is often possible to ditch multiple key cards at once, and if you do it right you can hit several people at once. You don't keep the cards hidden safely in your hand of course but you can get more of them, and it might be just the move you want to do anyway.
Thinking about this I have decided that I shouldn't bother trying to punish people unless the punish is responding to specific board state and targetted. Randomly snagging copies of Pilsen (or Lodz, or Sigmaringen, or whatever) just isn't worth it unless you are going to get good use out of that second copy yourself.
But my worries were unfounded, or so the evidence suggests. I won 2 games so far, one of them an absolutely brutal smashing 31 - 18 - 12 - 6. I rewound through the game to see if I constantly just mized into the best cards for me and it didn't seem outrageous. I suspect that the reason for my domination was that I got a bunch of perfectly solid routes and did all the things, and some of the stuff my opponents had to do to not trash their routes were really bad. I definitely threw some plays in the trash, with a bit of meandering about the board, but it was at worst a solid play with a bit of waste. I never had a 7 route that only put 3 houses on or anything like that.
T&T is one of those games where I can't quite figure out how to play properly. I know that really good players win very consistently and yet it so often feels like I win or lose based on the exact card I need flipping up at the start of my turn. Clearly skill mitigates much of that randomness, but how precisely you do that isn't something I can articulate. I am doing well in a competitive league though so clearly something in my brain knows how to play T&T. I just can't tell you what it is I do!
One thing I have noticed this season is defensive plays that I would not have expected. In particular I have seen people scooping up a second copy of Pilsen that they have no intention of playing just to jam the other players from completing their rainbow. It also prevents red/orange completion to of course but that is less common and so far less important.
You can see this on the board above - if you take all the copies of Pilsen then nobody can get to Lodz and thus cannot get the brown component of the rainbow. That is good an all, but the question is does it actually make you win? Tossing away an action is worth roughly 1 point as games mostly give players about 16 turns, which is 24 actions, and the winner gains about 45 points. So the question becomes: Is losing 1 point worth it when you cost other people points?
Mostly what you will cost other people is 4-5 points for completing their rainbow, but the trick is that they can mitigate this. Instead of focusing on the rainbow they can aim to complete other colours instead. Swapping to a plan of completing beige when Lodz is blocked is a fine way to gain points, particularly since most of the beige towns are low priority. Considering this you will have to assume that the real effect of your action is far below the 4-5 points they technically lose.
The other problem is that you might not succeed in your block. If you have to place Pilsen as part of a route (and you bloody well need to, if you have two copies of it in your hand!) then the second time through the deck people will end up with another shot at it. The only way to crush people really thoroughly is to keep those copies of Pilsen in your hand until the deck reshuffles and that is going to destroy your game to a far greater extent than a single point. If you lose your point randomly stealing a card from other people but they manage to get their points later in the game anyway you are losing.
I think the best way to think about this is that a Pilsen block costs somebody about 3 points. You aren't even necessarily sure which somebody, and you also usually don't know for sure that it costs them 3 points. That is a pretty rubbish play, in my mind. You don't win 4 player games by losing 1 point to randomly punish another player for 3 points, particularly when the punish isn't certain. Somebody else is going to play greedy, dodge your punish, and beat you.
However, I do think that there are places where you can maximize your investment. For example, if somebody grabs Lodz early in the game on spec you can snatch the last Pilsen and put them in a bind. Either Lodz clogs their hand until the deck reshuffle, which is awful, or they chuck it and waste their own turn. This is a much bigger punish and you can target it at the person who you think is the biggest threat. Of course I don't think strong players will usually let themselves get stuck in a position where this sort of block is viable.
Generally I see the option to flush the up cards and generate a new pile to draw from as a much more powerful option if you want to hate people. It is often possible to ditch multiple key cards at once, and if you do it right you can hit several people at once. You don't keep the cards hidden safely in your hand of course but you can get more of them, and it might be just the move you want to do anyway.
Thinking about this I have decided that I shouldn't bother trying to punish people unless the punish is responding to specific board state and targetted. Randomly snagging copies of Pilsen (or Lodz, or Sigmaringen, or whatever) just isn't worth it unless you are going to get good use out of that second copy yourself.
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Bragging
My Agricola league is winding down, and I have a bone to pick with the game. In my best game of the round so far I won 57-43-35-34. A big win, for sure, and my highest Agricola score to date. Naturally, it included the Braggart.
Braggart is one of those cards that wrecks games. In the game I linked I had 8 improvements out, and while one of them was pointless that only cost me a single action for 2 points. The rest were all fine on their own. At the end of the game the Braggart got me 7 points, and if you subtract the 2 points I lost by putting down additional improvements the Braggart is still worth 5. That is just too much, especially for a profession that I was able to slap down on the last turn of the game and that my opponents could not play around or predict.
I didn't even manage to maximize the Braggart, only because on the last turn of the game I wasn't able to get down my 9th improvement, the Herb Garden. It just isn't appropriate to have one card generate that many points just because I did the thing I wanted to do anyway: Build lots of stuff.
In this game the Braggart didn't really matter. If I hadn't had it I would have ended with a score of 53, still a full 10 points above the next person. Still, if it had been close it would have been crushing for people to watch me suddenly rocket to victory with a card you can't stop.
In my other game which is still ongoing (so no advice please), my opponent just dropped the Braggart for 7. They might even ratchet it up to the full 9 points. I was absolutely certain of victory before that happened, and now I am worried. I was ahead by 21, and now the number is 14. My opponent having a ton of wood to do a massive fence action means that 14 is not nearly big enough a cushion for my liking. I went from a crushing victory to counting which cards they could have that beat me. It just isn't right that I keep looking at games, analyzing who is winning, making plays to keep the people on my tail away from victory, all the while knowing that if somebody happens to have the Braggart all my calculations are out the window.
Even if I lose the game where my opponent dropped Braggart I am still guaranteed to advance this time. I have three wins in, including the one linked at the top, and also this one where I managed to hold onto a 38 - 35 - 34 - 31 victory. That game I feel like I just didn't play well, as my food plan didn't come together. I had to take 2, 2, and 3 food even though I played two food based professions. I am not sure what I should have done, but obviously it wasn't what I did. Nobody dropped the Braggart though, so my plans got me a reasonable close victory. (If you do have criticisms of my choices in the game, do let me know, I am curious.)
My final victory came in this 47 - 36 - 32 - 29 win. I played Stonecutter and then dropped all the stone things. One opponent played the Braggart for 9 points, but my lead was so big that I won anyway. Of course if they don't have the Braggart they probably finish at about 32 instead of 36, and if I have the Braggart I could easily get to 54. So them having the Braggart instead of me was likely worth me winning by 22 instead of me winning by 11.
I understand that a group of Agricola experts I know uses the rule that Braggart must be your first profession if you draft it. Once you have played another profession you can't Braggart. I like that idea because dropping it early means people can try to take improvements away from you and your early play doesn't help you get resources or compete for rooms and people. It is a massive tempo loss. Also people know how many points you will have and can make plays with that in mind. Still often worth it, based on your cards, but at least it doesn't completely upend games on the final turn.
The Braggart is such a mess. Sure, I beat it twice, but in both cases it was an absurd card and totally flipped the board when it landed. That is reasonable for a card you have to play early and which doesn't generate tempo, but ridiculous for something that lands at game end. Plus even if it didn't let the players who dropped it win, it still made the person dropping it come a clean second instead of fighting for 2nd/3rd/4th. I wish boiteajeux didn't include it in the set, no doubt about that.
Braggart is one of those cards that wrecks games. In the game I linked I had 8 improvements out, and while one of them was pointless that only cost me a single action for 2 points. The rest were all fine on their own. At the end of the game the Braggart got me 7 points, and if you subtract the 2 points I lost by putting down additional improvements the Braggart is still worth 5. That is just too much, especially for a profession that I was able to slap down on the last turn of the game and that my opponents could not play around or predict.
I didn't even manage to maximize the Braggart, only because on the last turn of the game I wasn't able to get down my 9th improvement, the Herb Garden. It just isn't appropriate to have one card generate that many points just because I did the thing I wanted to do anyway: Build lots of stuff.
In this game the Braggart didn't really matter. If I hadn't had it I would have ended with a score of 53, still a full 10 points above the next person. Still, if it had been close it would have been crushing for people to watch me suddenly rocket to victory with a card you can't stop.
In my other game which is still ongoing (so no advice please), my opponent just dropped the Braggart for 7. They might even ratchet it up to the full 9 points. I was absolutely certain of victory before that happened, and now I am worried. I was ahead by 21, and now the number is 14. My opponent having a ton of wood to do a massive fence action means that 14 is not nearly big enough a cushion for my liking. I went from a crushing victory to counting which cards they could have that beat me. It just isn't right that I keep looking at games, analyzing who is winning, making plays to keep the people on my tail away from victory, all the while knowing that if somebody happens to have the Braggart all my calculations are out the window.
Even if I lose the game where my opponent dropped Braggart I am still guaranteed to advance this time. I have three wins in, including the one linked at the top, and also this one where I managed to hold onto a 38 - 35 - 34 - 31 victory. That game I feel like I just didn't play well, as my food plan didn't come together. I had to take 2, 2, and 3 food even though I played two food based professions. I am not sure what I should have done, but obviously it wasn't what I did. Nobody dropped the Braggart though, so my plans got me a reasonable close victory. (If you do have criticisms of my choices in the game, do let me know, I am curious.)
My final victory came in this 47 - 36 - 32 - 29 win. I played Stonecutter and then dropped all the stone things. One opponent played the Braggart for 9 points, but my lead was so big that I won anyway. Of course if they don't have the Braggart they probably finish at about 32 instead of 36, and if I have the Braggart I could easily get to 54. So them having the Braggart instead of me was likely worth me winning by 22 instead of me winning by 11.
I understand that a group of Agricola experts I know uses the rule that Braggart must be your first profession if you draft it. Once you have played another profession you can't Braggart. I like that idea because dropping it early means people can try to take improvements away from you and your early play doesn't help you get resources or compete for rooms and people. It is a massive tempo loss. Also people know how many points you will have and can make plays with that in mind. Still often worth it, based on your cards, but at least it doesn't completely upend games on the final turn.
The Braggart is such a mess. Sure, I beat it twice, but in both cases it was an absurd card and totally flipped the board when it landed. That is reasonable for a card you have to play early and which doesn't generate tempo, but ridiculous for something that lands at game end. Plus even if it didn't let the players who dropped it win, it still made the person dropping it come a clean second instead of fighting for 2nd/3rd/4th. I wish boiteajeux didn't include it in the set, no doubt about that.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)