I am in another season of Through The Ages on MeepleLeague. It doesn't seem like it is going so well. In one game I really boxed myself into a corner by relying on Stonehenge for early science. It gives a big burst of science at the start, and I didn't manage to get a good way to get science production, relying on the fixed amount Stonehenge gave me. Then I got pinned into a spot where I had enough science to play an Age 2 science tech, but I was falling behind in military too. If I catch up in military my science will take even longer to get online, but if I build science I might get beat up.
My situation was precarious. I had seven cards in hand, and 11 Strength. Two opponents had 18 Strength each. I had a couple of 4 Strength cards, so I figured I was safe for a single turn and I could go for science. After all, the first opponent that aggressions me has no chance, and they should know that. Are they really going to toss away resources just to set up the second opponent to wreck me and take all the profits?
Yes. Yes they are.
I ended up going the science gambling route and it was a catastrophe. I stopped the first aggression, but the second one blew up the science I had just built and also all my happiness. The first opponent, the one who I thought wouldn't hit me because why give the other leader a huge bonus, set me up for continual tragedy.
In retrospect I don't know if my gamble was right or not. It sure worked out badly, but that doesn't mean it was wrong to try. If I just plug away at Strength I am still behind, and I don't know how I am ever going to get my infrastructure caught up. If I am aiming for first place I think the gamble is right - assume that player 1 is greedy and won't toss resources for no purpose. But if I am aiming for 'not last' then my play was terrible.
I suppose this is the sort of spot where you have to know your opponents. Some people will be happy to have my stuff get wrecked because that eliminates one competitor, even if it doesn't help them directly. Some people don't want the other player to grab all my stuff and run away with the game.
In any case I scooped up Ghandi so it will be extremely costly for people to continue to beat me up and take all my stuff. I won't win, that much is sure, but maybe I can manage to squeeze out 'not last', and that is about all I can hope for when every single urban building I had was burned down in a single turn.
Lesson learned: You still have to get science production going, even if you happen to have a bunch of science sitting around.
Also, don't fall behind in strength. Culture is for suckers.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Flap flap
Wingspan is a new game I just ran into last night. It was the sort of game that I needed to play a second time right away because I had to know if my thoughts about strategy were correct. This is a good sign.
The easiest comparison I have to it is Terraforming Mars. However, I think Wingspan actually does it better, and that is saying a lot since I have been playing a ton of TM and I want to play more. The main points of comparison are that they are both engine building games with a mix of group and solitaire elements, and they both have extremely strong thematic elements that speak to a lot of research.
Wingspan is a game about running a bird sanctuary. You collect types of birds, and then have to put them in your sanctuary by collecting food that they like. Each bird has a bunch of different attributes that interact with point generation but they also have a special ability of some sort, and these special abilities form your engine. You can set it up so you have specific actions that are extremely powerful, and then use them to generate a ton of points.
The cards are beautiful and show great attention to scientific detail. Birds have habitats, nest types, wingspans, and other attributes to keep them unique, and the pictures and flavour text really bring it all in. It also does a great job making the mechanics fit the theme, which I appreciate. I think the numbers in the game are quite well done too, as we consistently ended up building engines that did powerful stuff, but the game ended just a touch before we could do everything we wanted to. There was always a sense of urgency and desperation on the last few turns trying to squeeze out every last point, and I quite liked that.
There were a couple of issues. The first is the readability of text and icons. Black text on dark brown is tough to read at a distance, and the icons are small. There was a lot of people picking up bird cards and staring at them to make out what the card did and its attributes. While I do like the pictures of the birds on the cards, I would really appreciate the designers shrinking the pictures by 30% and increasing the size of the font and icons to help people see the cards from further away.
The second issue was a balance issue. Most of the cards work equally at any number of players. They do stuff on your turn, so whether it is 2p or 5p is irrelevant. However, there are a few cards that do stuff on your opponent's turns, so when there are a lot of players those cards are extremely powerful. Certain ones seemed completely crazy powerful in large games, especially when dropped on turn 1. A normal good card might generate 5 resources over the course of a game, and you would be happy to play that card. One of these 'on opponent's turn' cards could handily generate 15 resources over a game, and that seems completely out of line.
I like the theme of these cards, and I am sure there is a player count where they are completely fine. Unfortunately if you play with a lot of players the game looks like it will hugely favour the person who gets one of these power cards in their opening hand. I am not so much a fan of that.
Still, this balance concern is just a fact of life in games like this. Just as a TM player can choose Interplanetary Cinematics and drop down Advanced Alloys, Aquifer Pumping, Nuclear Power, and Strip Mine on their first turn and waltz to victory, some bird draws in Wingspan are a huge engine right out of the gate.
Wingspan is a ton of fun. I am sure bird enthusiasts will enjoy the flavour, and even someone like me who pays no attention to that stuff generally can enjoy how well the fluff is baked into the crunch. Also I can't stress enough how important it is that the engine building have an appropriate investment and payoff timeline in this sort of game and Wingspan does that to perfection. There might not be a lot of variance in the general way the game plays out, but there are tons of small decisions and little tweaks you can make that will be different each time, so I suspect this game has a lot of plays in it for me.
The easiest comparison I have to it is Terraforming Mars. However, I think Wingspan actually does it better, and that is saying a lot since I have been playing a ton of TM and I want to play more. The main points of comparison are that they are both engine building games with a mix of group and solitaire elements, and they both have extremely strong thematic elements that speak to a lot of research.
Wingspan is a game about running a bird sanctuary. You collect types of birds, and then have to put them in your sanctuary by collecting food that they like. Each bird has a bunch of different attributes that interact with point generation but they also have a special ability of some sort, and these special abilities form your engine. You can set it up so you have specific actions that are extremely powerful, and then use them to generate a ton of points.
The cards are beautiful and show great attention to scientific detail. Birds have habitats, nest types, wingspans, and other attributes to keep them unique, and the pictures and flavour text really bring it all in. It also does a great job making the mechanics fit the theme, which I appreciate. I think the numbers in the game are quite well done too, as we consistently ended up building engines that did powerful stuff, but the game ended just a touch before we could do everything we wanted to. There was always a sense of urgency and desperation on the last few turns trying to squeeze out every last point, and I quite liked that.
There were a couple of issues. The first is the readability of text and icons. Black text on dark brown is tough to read at a distance, and the icons are small. There was a lot of people picking up bird cards and staring at them to make out what the card did and its attributes. While I do like the pictures of the birds on the cards, I would really appreciate the designers shrinking the pictures by 30% and increasing the size of the font and icons to help people see the cards from further away.
The second issue was a balance issue. Most of the cards work equally at any number of players. They do stuff on your turn, so whether it is 2p or 5p is irrelevant. However, there are a few cards that do stuff on your opponent's turns, so when there are a lot of players those cards are extremely powerful. Certain ones seemed completely crazy powerful in large games, especially when dropped on turn 1. A normal good card might generate 5 resources over the course of a game, and you would be happy to play that card. One of these 'on opponent's turn' cards could handily generate 15 resources over a game, and that seems completely out of line.
I like the theme of these cards, and I am sure there is a player count where they are completely fine. Unfortunately if you play with a lot of players the game looks like it will hugely favour the person who gets one of these power cards in their opening hand. I am not so much a fan of that.
Still, this balance concern is just a fact of life in games like this. Just as a TM player can choose Interplanetary Cinematics and drop down Advanced Alloys, Aquifer Pumping, Nuclear Power, and Strip Mine on their first turn and waltz to victory, some bird draws in Wingspan are a huge engine right out of the gate.
Wingspan is a ton of fun. I am sure bird enthusiasts will enjoy the flavour, and even someone like me who pays no attention to that stuff generally can enjoy how well the fluff is baked into the crunch. Also I can't stress enough how important it is that the engine building have an appropriate investment and payoff timeline in this sort of game and Wingspan does that to perfection. There might not be a lot of variance in the general way the game plays out, but there are tons of small decisions and little tweaks you can make that will be different each time, so I suspect this game has a lot of plays in it for me.
Sunday, October 13, 2019
End it all now
Some wins are better than others. Today I won a game in my online Thurn and Taxis league because one of my opponents decided to end the game despite being solidly in last place. I spent a lot of time thinking about my final turn because I saw that position coming. The player in last was so far behind that even closing the final route and claiming their seven carriage put them last by a big margin. In theory there might be some set of events that gets them out of last place if the game keeps going, but it seemed far fetched.
I had the chance to close my route and get a solid lead, which locks in my victory if the person in last ends the game. If the person in last decides to keep the game going, this almost certainly gets me second place instead, because I don't get to do anything useful on the following turns and someone else does.
If I keep my route open, I have a shot at first place if the game continues, but this gives someone playing after me the chance to close a crappy route, and then they get first place instead if the person in last ends the game.
I find these kinds of calculations really frustrating. Sometimes it is just something like 'Is this opponent going to gamble to try to advance, and make a crazy play for first?' which isn't great, but isn't so terrible. At least I can try to figure all that out. But how should I play against someone who is totally screwed, but has maybe 1/1000 chance of getting out of last if they keep the game going? Are they the sort who never gives up, and never surrenders? Or are they the sort of person who values their time and who won't continue a game that is obviously over? That is the sort of calculation I can't do anything with in terms of game theory.
In the end I decided that the person in last was so far behind they were just going to end the game and be done with it. I closed my route, got a few points, and the game did indeed end. I don't feel great about it though. Knowing that I locked in the victory because someone decided it wasn't worth trying anymore isn't quite the glorious victory march I had envisioned.
But I do want to advance, so I guess I will take what I can get. :) I have a first and two seconds now, so advancing is totally plausible. I usually end up needing three first place finishes to advance in these things though, so I am not all that optimistic. (I figure most of the time two firsts and two seconds should do it, but I have been beaten with two firsts and two seconds most of the time I have gotten there, whatever the odds are.)
I am curious what other people think of the etiquette of ending games when you guarantee yourself last place. How much of a chance of improving that position do you need in order to stick in a game? Personally my answer is anything greater than zero - I won't give in until there is truly no way out. How do you behave in that situation?
Thursday, October 10, 2019
Broken swings
Even though regular work on my game FMB ended years ago, every so often I have occasion to revisit it and look at my work with fresh eyes. Recently I made some changes to get rid of a particular strategy that was both a little too good and also not terribly interesting. The key card I had to deal with was
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Every attack you make this turn gets a +2 bonus.
Simple enough effect, and really powerful. Attacks are resolved by generating a random number from -2 to +3, and with only 6 possible results a +2 bonus is enormous. On a normal turn you get to make 4-5 attacks, which gives you a total +8 to +10 bonus. A 2 cost card should give you about +9, so this is totally fair and reasonable.
The problem is that many other cards grant extra attacks. For example, the two below.
Berserk
Cost: 0
One of your units makes an additional attack this turn.
Chain Lightning
Cost: 2
Make a Strength 2 attack against 3 different units.
Both cards are perfectly fine and fair on their own, but if you save up cards and bust out these two in combination with Demonic Rune then you have a *huge* swing turn. I don't mind swing turns, in fact letting people set those up is a big part of the fun, but this swing turn has some problems. First, it is way too big. It can easily kill 80% of the opponent's army in a single turn. Second, there isn't anything an opponent can do to stop you, or to play around it. You save up a pile of cards, and on any given you turn you can just blow up their entire army. Lastly, it doesn't interact in cool ways with the board or unit positioning. If you get to do something really powerful, it should depend a lot on board state and previous choices. Unfortunately, this works the same way every time.
Berserk and Chain Lightning are good, no alterations needed there. It is Demonic Rune and its global buff that needs to go. I figured I should try to make the card interact with the particular way I set up the game's components, and I came up with an idea. Those random numbers generated to resolve attacks range from -2 to +3, so the game has a deck of 24 cards for each player with 4 copies of each result in it. You 'roll' a result by drawing a card, and reshuffle the deck when it runs out. This setup keeps individual rolls random, but this makes sure you don't just roll a bunch of low numbers and lose. The new version of Demonic Rune uses this.
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Shuffle up to 4 cards from your discard pile back into your attack roll deck.
The idea here is that you can always just use this card to get a bunch of +3s in your deck if you want. However, you can also wait until your deck is completely empty and then stack it full of +3 results. This way you can know for certain that you hit on 4 consecutive attacks, which can be really useful just for planning, and interacts in powerful ways with certain other effects.
Hopefully this change makes the way people use cards feel better. I like the huge variety in the deck, and I didn't enjoy how much the game revolved around just getting as many attacks as possible in a single turn and blowing everything up. There are so many cards that tinker with positioning, speed, and unit capabilities that it was kind of sad to watch them all fall by the wayside in pursuit of pure murder.
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Every attack you make this turn gets a +2 bonus.
Simple enough effect, and really powerful. Attacks are resolved by generating a random number from -2 to +3, and with only 6 possible results a +2 bonus is enormous. On a normal turn you get to make 4-5 attacks, which gives you a total +8 to +10 bonus. A 2 cost card should give you about +9, so this is totally fair and reasonable.
The problem is that many other cards grant extra attacks. For example, the two below.
Berserk
Cost: 0
One of your units makes an additional attack this turn.
Chain Lightning
Cost: 2
Make a Strength 2 attack against 3 different units.
Both cards are perfectly fine and fair on their own, but if you save up cards and bust out these two in combination with Demonic Rune then you have a *huge* swing turn. I don't mind swing turns, in fact letting people set those up is a big part of the fun, but this swing turn has some problems. First, it is way too big. It can easily kill 80% of the opponent's army in a single turn. Second, there isn't anything an opponent can do to stop you, or to play around it. You save up a pile of cards, and on any given you turn you can just blow up their entire army. Lastly, it doesn't interact in cool ways with the board or unit positioning. If you get to do something really powerful, it should depend a lot on board state and previous choices. Unfortunately, this works the same way every time.
Berserk and Chain Lightning are good, no alterations needed there. It is Demonic Rune and its global buff that needs to go. I figured I should try to make the card interact with the particular way I set up the game's components, and I came up with an idea. Those random numbers generated to resolve attacks range from -2 to +3, so the game has a deck of 24 cards for each player with 4 copies of each result in it. You 'roll' a result by drawing a card, and reshuffle the deck when it runs out. This setup keeps individual rolls random, but this makes sure you don't just roll a bunch of low numbers and lose. The new version of Demonic Rune uses this.
Demonic Rune
Cost: 2
Shuffle up to 4 cards from your discard pile back into your attack roll deck.
The idea here is that you can always just use this card to get a bunch of +3s in your deck if you want. However, you can also wait until your deck is completely empty and then stack it full of +3 results. This way you can know for certain that you hit on 4 consecutive attacks, which can be really useful just for planning, and interacts in powerful ways with certain other effects.
Hopefully this change makes the way people use cards feel better. I like the huge variety in the deck, and I didn't enjoy how much the game revolved around just getting as many attacks as possible in a single turn and blowing everything up. There are so many cards that tinker with positioning, speed, and unit capabilities that it was kind of sad to watch them all fall by the wayside in pursuit of pure murder.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
A dragon
My DnD group has a dilemma. We have been clearing out Gardmore Abbey, slowing wading through hordes of zombies, gnolls, minotaurs, and demons. The current dungeon is finally clear, with one notable exception: A dragon.
The other inhabitants of the dungeon told us that the dragon is terrifying and they would never try to attack it, but that doesn't actually tell us a lot about whether or not we can just walk in there and beat it up.
Trouble is, unlike many monsters in DnD, dragons have a vast range of power. If I am going up against a lich, I know that it is bad news unless we are level ~13 or so. If we are fighting a gnoll, I am not worried, even if we are all level 1. But a dragon? It could be a baby, easy for our level 6 party to wipe out. It could be a serious challenge. It could also be so powerful it kills us all on its first action. No way to know!
In fact, we have had all three types of dragons in my campaigns with Naked Man. One dragon that ran away after it took a single bowshot for 3 damage, one that was a tough fight at level 4, and one that could have ravaged an entire country if it felt like it. In all cases though, it was a dragon... and we had to guess whether or not we can take it on.
I wonder if the people who wrote this module thought about this. Did they intend for 'its a dragon' to terrify us so we give up immediately? Did they figure we would just walk in and brawl it, thinking of it as a fair and reasonable encounter? I have no idea what they intended! I suspect they thought that 'its a dragon' would give us a sense of the challenge of the beast, but it sure left us without a clue.
So now we have to decide if we will be sneaky and try to steal from the dragon, walk in and try to negotiate with it, or go with my favourite - ambush it and kill it before it kills us. In this module we have ended up fighting every single monster to the death, so I see little reason to imagine that this pattern will suddenly change. If we are going to fight it to the death, might as well start the fight with a surprise round, right?
The other inhabitants of the dungeon told us that the dragon is terrifying and they would never try to attack it, but that doesn't actually tell us a lot about whether or not we can just walk in there and beat it up.
Trouble is, unlike many monsters in DnD, dragons have a vast range of power. If I am going up against a lich, I know that it is bad news unless we are level ~13 or so. If we are fighting a gnoll, I am not worried, even if we are all level 1. But a dragon? It could be a baby, easy for our level 6 party to wipe out. It could be a serious challenge. It could also be so powerful it kills us all on its first action. No way to know!
In fact, we have had all three types of dragons in my campaigns with Naked Man. One dragon that ran away after it took a single bowshot for 3 damage, one that was a tough fight at level 4, and one that could have ravaged an entire country if it felt like it. In all cases though, it was a dragon... and we had to guess whether or not we can take it on.
I wonder if the people who wrote this module thought about this. Did they intend for 'its a dragon' to terrify us so we give up immediately? Did they figure we would just walk in and brawl it, thinking of it as a fair and reasonable encounter? I have no idea what they intended! I suspect they thought that 'its a dragon' would give us a sense of the challenge of the beast, but it sure left us without a clue.
So now we have to decide if we will be sneaky and try to steal from the dragon, walk in and try to negotiate with it, or go with my favourite - ambush it and kill it before it kills us. In this module we have ended up fighting every single monster to the death, so I see little reason to imagine that this pattern will suddenly change. If we are going to fight it to the death, might as well start the fight with a surprise round, right?
Tuesday, October 1, 2019
A proper ending
Two weeks ago we had a DnD session where my group, GMed by Naked Man, wrapped up a couple of big plot lines that we have been pursuing for some time. We had gotten ourselves into a series of gladitorial combats for prizes and fame, with our longtime rivals destined to meet us in the finals. These rivals have been around since the first session our group played 2 years ago, and we were looking forward to finally wiping the smirks off of their faces.
It was never going to be as simple as that, though. The evil cultists had a plan to unleash a horrible undead monstrosity on the people watching the event and cover the world in darkness. As good drama demands, just as we finally had our rivals on the ropes and victory was assured, the undead beastie smashed into the arena, ready to eat everything in sight. We joined forces with our battered rivals in a desperate bid to stop the monster.
Our bard had a strange ability, granted to him some time ago, where he could draw on the life forces of people around him to empower his spells. Seeing as we were surrounded by thousands of spectators he used this opportunity to see just how magnificent a scene he could create, and draw mightily from the thousands of people in the arena to Fireball the undead beast.
The GM announced "The Fireball does 8 extra damage."
That was not quite the splash we had all hoped for, needless to say. We slew the undead monster, and then turned to our rivals to finish what we had started... or at least to claim victory. They laughed, told us it was obviously a tie, and walked off the field. "See you next year!"
Again we were struck with a sense of disappointment. After all that buildup, the competition is just over, and that entire story arc ends with "See you next year."
That is the sort of ending that makes a player not bother being invested in a story, no doubt.
(This where all the people that say "Dude, your GM sucks!" in response to my blog posts get to feel vindicated.)
But the next day we got an email from Naked Man saying that he was dissatisfied with the way everything happened and he wanted to redo the fight from the moment of the big Fireball. There was some resistance to this, and although I don't love retconning things, I really wanted a better resolution so I signed on.
The next session we began again where the bard drew on thousands of people to empower his Fireball, and a gigantic, continuing inferno appeared in the middle of the battlefield. The undead monster promptly died, and within the fire we saw a portal open to the Elemental Plane of Fire. The fire started to increase in size, and it became clear our bard had accidentally torn a hole in the world that was expanding!
Now *that* is the kind of result I was hoping for!
I hucked Dispel Magics at the conflagration trying to hold it back, but I could only make a dent in it. Our bard sang at it desperately trying to undo the damage. A powerful entity of some sort showed up to help him, because it thought that this might well destroy the world. Fire elementals began to wander through the portal and we had to try to drive them back in while also closing the portal and preventing the apocalypse.
Our rivals ran away like cowards and left us to save everyone.
Finally we stopped the expansion of the fire, dealt with the elementals, and stopped to catch our breath. Those of us with healing magic tried to help all of the injured people, while my character Levitated around the arena shooting fire at things and yelling about being the champion.
Since our opponents had left the arena without anyone being declared the victor, it seemed clear that we had claim to having won the tournament, so we grabbed our giant pile of gold for winning and stormed out to the taverns where I spent my time telling everyone about the cowardice and incompetence of those recently considered our rivals.
An epic ending, in every sense.
The finale of this arc went from letdown to celebration. We figured things out, saved the town, saved the world from our saving of the town, and finally got to stick it to those jackasses once and for all.
(This where all the people that say "Dude, your GM rocks!" in response to my blog posts get to feel vindicated.)
I don't normally look to retcon stuff like that. Just roll with it, even if it kills everyone. However, this was a bit of retconning that I totally approve of. It is hard to instantly figure out what the best thing to do is, and it is sweet to be able to make it happen when you do come up with the proper comeback late at night.
And now my endless taunting of our rivals might even set up a later meeting with them. I do so like to give old enemies a chance to come back and take another shot at us.
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