Category: Games

One night, I went wild playing with Pandemic Hot Zone against myself.

I started with the solo-play variant published on Z-Man’s website and tweaked the difficulty upward by adding additional Epidemics, as suggested in a recent Boardgamegeek thread.

The first game with the solo-play rules as written was as easy as playing the base game.

I added a fourth epidemic for the next two games, both times with six crisis cards in the deck with the seventh crisis card turned face up to signify an Epidemic. I beat both plays easily.

Over the past year, we’ve had plenty of warnings before our various flareups of COVID, so having advance notice of an incoming epidemic isn’t a thematic game-breaker. So I amped it up to five epidemics, with two face-up crisis cards standing in for epidemics with the other five crisis cards in the deck. I barely beat this version.

I then had an epiphany – if I’m playing with face-up cards as Epidemics, then any card will do. I started to use the action reference cards as my extra Epidemic cards.

I played twice more, the first with seven crisis cards and the second with five crisis cards. I lost both games, but to test the concept, I did a couple of critical takebacks that allowed me to play through the end to confirm that there were foreseeable paths to victory if I had played more carefully.

Ultimately, this is a promising way to play the game solo. Z-man’s solo-play version is clearly superior to a setup where one is playing multiple characters. I’ve played 230+ games of Mottainai against myself, so I have some authority on this subject.

The key question to be answered in future sessions is whether I will use seven or five crisis cards. I suspect that the two fewer crisis cards make a harder game since the epidemics hit a little faster. (Keeping five crises cards would also allow me to eliminate the hand limitation and grounded flight crisis cards which constipate the gameplay.)

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Unfortunately, the answer is neither. I haven’t played any solo-play sessions of Pandemic Hot-Zone since I wrote this post. I played with the kids a couple of times, but they didn’t find it too compelling (they may be too young). Fifteen bucks isn’t a bad price for a night’s entertainment, but it didn’t turn out to be a great deal either.

Draw a card. Discard a card. Use the characters, problems, settings, and resolutions to create a very short story.

Rory Story Cubes is simpler with the roll of the dice, but it creates disjointed stories. Nanofictionary adds just enough structure to make coherent stories.

(Random hint, after watching a webinar on writing stories – add a second problem to compound upon the first problem to develop the narrative).

This game is not well rated on boardgamegeek.com, but those users lean towards heavy analytical experiences, not silly story games.

Despite its low rating, this game hits the mark. It has a simple goal and does it well.

I’ve tried many story games over the years. Nanofictionary’s seemingly obvious simplicity is proof of its great design. It finds the right balance between into formless narrative and rules fussiness, hitting the sweet spot.

Like many polished designs, it looks easy (a notion furthered by the crude illustrations on the cards). However, it must have taken an exhaustive exploration to create something that works so well but appears simplistic.

The Looney’s are not good at game development (see my scathing notes on Loonacy), but they managed to pull it off this time. Go check it out if you’re in the mood.

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A few years after college, I had an epiphany that all things around me are designed by another human. It should be an obvious notion, especially for an architect.

I am still awed whenever I ponder this basic fact. Almost everything surrounding us is utterly artificial.

The simpler it is, the more artificial.

Done right, it’s sublime.

This was a forum exchange on Boardgamegeek, that was worth reblogging because it touches on our gut instinct when encountering new things in a familiar field.

Yep. And I’ve spent decades developing my palate for games. I think I know what I will like on first taste.

the comment I was responding to.

I completely disagree with this sentiment. I had been a heavy gamer for a while before being completely underwhelmed by Glory to Rome (5 player) and Innovation (2 vs 2 team game) when I first played them. I had a similar experience with Taluva (4 player).

One of my gaming buddies who knew my preferences guessed (correctly) that I must have had bad experiences. He sat me down for a gaming session with two player Glory to Rome and Taluva. In both cases my eyes were opened and they now are among my favorites. My revelation on Innovation came later after I moved to Vegas, after all the folks on the forum continued to talk about the greatness of this game.

Part of the problem was the initial play setup that introduced me to these games. I couldn’t imagine playing a team game of Innovation even now, but I’d be totally down for a 5 player game of Glory to Rome now that I grok the game (even though it wasn’t an ideal introduction to the game). The initial dislike of Taluva was just a complete whiff on my part.

I mean, I wouldn’t give just any game a second chance “just cause”, but these three games were clearly misread by me even though I was already an established gamer.

Mottainai could count as a fourth example. By the time I tried the game as a print-and-play version, I was already calling Carl Chudyk (designer of Glory to Rome and Innovation) a minor deity. After trying it a couples times with my wife, I regarded it as just a pale imitation of Glory to Rome. Last year, I decided to buy a copy as a performative marketplace gesture to signal that I love Carl Chudyk via a direct purchase from the publisher.

Now that I had a new copy, I decided to give it another shot. Even so, it took about five plays to wipe Glory to Rome out of my head and grok the game on its own terms…and the rest is history.

Most of the time, I will know if I enjoy a game after the first play – hell, I usually know to avoid a game after reading the rules! But those rare exceptions makes me believe that having total confidence in one’s own palate a dangerous overreach.

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I wonder if my deeply religious upbringing is why I remain so tentative when making opinions. Prideful self assuredness was one quality that was not well received by my deity of that time. This constant self-questioning has enhanced aspects of my career, especially when it comes to critiquing designs (especially floorplans) and tweaking work processes. However, I also think it set me up to be a weak designer – creativity often requires one to go out on a limb and jump on it … and I’m just not up for that sort of exercise.

The Looney’s have good ideas.

They’re also great at franchising those good ideas.

But holy god, they are exceedingly mediocre at turning good ideas into good games.

Usually their development process is just good enough if you embrace the game on its terms (Aquarius, Nanofictionary). It’s telling that Zendo is the only great game to go with their brilliant concept of the Icehouse pyramids (and you could argue that Zendo barely a game).

When you make a habit of inhabiting the “good enough” zone, you’re bound to drop a deuce and this was a stinker. I have no idea what is the appeal of Loonacy, much less how it has managed to be published in its multitude of iterations.

I don’t regret the purchase, the game was on sale at steep discount and the pictures are pretty enough. I’ll keep the game around so maybe I’ll find out what I’m missing one day.

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We haven’t played this game since the initial plays a couple months ago. I should get my wife and mother in law to play a four player game with my daughter to find out what I might be overlooking. Or maybe not. Odds are pretty high that this will be yet another inhabitant in my big box of small un-played card games.

After another gushing post about Mottainai late last year, a friend on boardgamegeek responded.

I wasn’t really impressed by the couple of plays I had way back when but you make me think I ought to try it again.

Martin

This was my response:

To be fair, I wasn’t particularly impressed after my first couple plays of Mottainai. I remember trying the original print and play version and thinking this was a pale version of Chudyk’s earlier classic, Glory to Rome (GtR).

My recent infatuation with Mottanai has a bit to do with timing. I bought a copy of this game halfway into my season of exile between March and June of 2020. During that time I was playing quite a bit of of Innovation against myself, so I added Mottainai add some variety.

In this enforced solitude, it took several plays of Mottainai to banish GtR out of my head and grok this game on its own terms. At the same time, work got insanely busy so I went from primarily playing Innovation to focusing on Mottainai, because of the freshness of the new game and its ease of setup.

After work slowed down and I stopped traveling, I moved back in with the family. Now that I was with the kids again, I no longer had big blocks of free time. With little people running amok, I could only sneak in a hand when circumstances permitted. Thus, the simple single deck shuffle went from being a convenient amenity to a killer app feature.

This game is definitely an acquired taste. There is no sugarcoating the convoluted flow for such a short game. Because of the speed of this game, there is no time for a memorable silly experience as could be found in GtR.

The high randomness also masks the high skill in this game – it reminds me of my first couple plays of Innovation which were absolutely baffling and frustrating. That experience was such a turnoff that I avoided Innovation for a several years.

After this many plays, I continue to be impressed with the tight design of Mottainai. I don’t think there are any wasted aspects in the game (such as Legionary actions in two or three player GtR). Every card in the deck can be perfect when used in the right context. As I become more familiar with the game, I find more and more contexts where a given card would be “perfect”.

I can attest that the dominant strategy that I mentioned in my first review was indeed a product of personal groupthink. Even though I heavily relied upon that strategy in my first twenty plays, it has completely disappeared over the past eighty plays. It’s too slow if the opponent is actively pushing a fast game.

I’ve gotten a good grasp over fast build approaches to end (and win) the game in the blink of an eye, especially now that I have gotten comfortable with craft-builds. However, I sense there is room for slower strategies to counteract this. I think this requires getting better at selling a few items early in the game. This of course causes a delicious quandary since early sales removes materials which could have been used for crafting multiple works. At the moment, this approach to keep the fast builder honest is rarely successful, but I think I could make it work about a third of the time if I deliberately practice this strategy.

Hopefully Asmadi will get the Wutai Mountain expansion reprinted soon, cause I’m looking forward to exploring this last horizon in the Mottainai gameplay universe.

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Spoiler alert, I got my copy of Wutai Mountain, and it was glorious.

All in all, Carl Chudyk is a minor diety. We are lucky to live in his world.

Unfortunately for his games, I’ve taken to reading books lately. But at some point, I’ll be back, with a vengeance!

A few months ago, I earned the the dubious honor of having the most recorded plays of Mottainai and its expansion Wutai Mountain. Maybe I will write a proper review of this expansion one day, but its been a while so I decided to publish the jumbled notes I sketched out after this great accomplishment.

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If Mottainai is a knife fight, then Wutai Mountain is a bruising boxing match. This expansion is a bit swingier. The OM cards drain your hand which takes time to refill. If you play (and fill up) a powerful OM card, the final beatdown could be foreshadowed several turns before the inevitable. Such advance signaling is not as common in the base game.

The game with the expansion is considerably heavier than the original. Jumping from 3 to 4 (on the five point complexity scale on boardgamegeek) feels accurate. The expanded game is less heavy than Pax Porfiriana, but it now fits comfortably within the category of ridiculously heavy card game in a really small box.

I have to admit that plays 10 thru 25 were a bit of a slog. The extra heaviness got wearying after the initial novelty of the OM cards faded out. I almost stopped playing the expansion, but I hit a second wind where everything clicked and I burst through a wild run of plays over a single weekend. The OM mechanism is still ponderous, but my mind now groks its intricacies. It helped that I realized that one can win a Wutai game without ever completing an OM work (maybe up to a third of such games).

My personal boardgamegeek rating for this game has followed this trajectory, I started with an 8, dropped it to a 6, and have settled at a 7. I’m not sure if the expansion improves the base game, but it is a solid alternate game that uses Mottainai cards. This is not a must-have, and I would recommend playing the original fifty times before trying this out. Now that I’m standing on top of both play count lists at boardgamegeek, I’m not sure whether I would choose play the base game or the expansion more regularly.

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When I was shopping for a car after college, I decided to get an old Datsun sports car. I eventually settled on a 1981 280zx 2+2 with a back seat. Since I didn’t drink, the backseat got quite a bit of use since I was often the designated driver. Before I made that final purchase, I tried out an early model 240z, which felt like a completely different vehicle. I occasionally wonder if I made a mistake getting the Fat Elvis version, even though the back seat gave me the opportunity to transport four friends to Sacramento to watch Melt Banana.

Unlike the 280zx, my experience with Wutai Mountain was unfortunately all by myself, playing against myself. Even if I don’t play it more, this expansion be inextricably tied to memories 2020, navigating the lonely vagaries of this drawn out pandemic.

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The night after, I played both versions, twice.

It was relaxing to return to the base game. There are fewer unknowns to ponder in the base game without the OM deck. The patterns in a hand are much easier to analyze at a glance with the base game.

If someone wants an experience with wild variety, I see why they might prefer Wutai. After all, this is the point of the expansion. However, I’m not sure that’s what I want out of a cardgame.

Fortunately both decks fit in the box, so they are both always available.

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A couple nights later, I had another opportunity to play the base game and the expansion in quick succession.

I think my earlier analogy is correct. To take it to extremes, the base game is like getting on a Kawasaki to race around an oval track. Adding Wutai Mountain turns it into a meandering stroll through the woods.

Wutai constipates your hand in two ways – you need to have cards in hand to fill up an OM card when you initially play that card. And then having emptied your hand to stock up the OM card, you need to fill your hand back up. It’s not a bad dynamic, but it is a fundamental change from the base game.

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A few days later.

I’d say the appropriate aphorism is “more is more, but not necessarily better (or worse)”.

After two hundred plays, maybe I’ll come to consider Wutai as mean and nasty as the base game. However, currently Wutai has a expansive meandering quality that is enjoyable in its own way.

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I hit 250 plays for Mottainai and 50 for Wutai.

My final verdict is that is that Wutai does some cute things, but if I wanted to slow down Mottainai, I’d just play Innovation.

Mottanai is fast and viscous. That’s the raison d’etre of this game. I’ll keep Wutai in the box for easy variety, but it generally isn’t worth the loss of quickness and lightness. (I should reread the Italo Calvino’s first two essays in Six Memos for the Next Millennium).

The thrill of Mottanai is derived from the suddenness of the game end, which often comes as a thief in the night. One misstep can set up the sudden victory for your opponent. Delightful surprises reveal themselves. Swift game endings do not happen regularly in the expansion. Furthermore, the base game commonly scores as a tie, with the tiebreaker being whoever ended the game. This dynamic makes it important to be the person who ends the game, and it is often worth the risk the game prematurely even if you don’t have a guaranteed victory. Wutai’s final scores are generally lopsided which eliminates this delicious dynamic.

In any case, I suspect Wutai will end up like Nefarious, a game with a ton of plays in one year and not many after. Mottanai will remain a classic.

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I haven’t played this game in the past few months. The I Ching and reading books in general has taken up all my free time when I’m not playing with the kids. Mottainai is great, but not as fun as plumbing the craggy depths of my brain.

With the interminable confinement due to the pandemic, I indulged a fair bit for Christmas. Of the games “I gave” my kids, this one as certainly the highlight.

It is not a children’s game per se, but our six year old daughter picked it up immediately, same with my mother in law.

And also my wife, who exclaimed it was the dumbest game that I’d ever inflicted on her when I explained the rules to her.

We take our cards and play them out to a shared pile in the middle, in numerical order. No talking.

The beauty of The Mind is that it recreates the sensation of dread and anticipation you feel during an opponent’s final turn right at the end of a tight game – for the entire bleeping game!

I never conceptualized that it was possible for a game could create and maintain this tension. Certainly not a game with such a simple elegant ruleset. Of course, it is most likely works only because it is so simple.

Ultimately, I suspect this game will end up in Hanabi territory – taking numbered cards and simply doing something simultaneously absurd and sublime with it.

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In the months after writing this note, I have consistently brought it to the in-laws house during our weekly visits, and we have consistently not played it. Then again we haven’t played many games lately at their house. At home, my I Ching obsession has eliminated my entreaties to my wife to play games with me. So the high opinion of the design still stands, but it’s not getting nearly as much love as I would have expected.

Yeah, yeah, its a great game. It’s something that even our 6 year old plays well. It doesn’t surprise me that this game has sold 5 million copies.

My one quibble with the game is the scoring system. Clearly it’s an issue because the publisher changed it between the original release to the copy we just bought.

The original scoring system with the jockeying pawns looks a bit fussy, so I suspect that randomly pulling scoring gems from a bag is a better fit for the light filler mood of this game.

But better doesn’t mean correct.

I’m not the only one who is uncertain about the new scoring system. Otherwise the rules wouldn’t have included a variant where one merely earns set points for each place you finish.

I get the conundrum. Some puzzles are just harder than others. So there is already some randomness backed into the game, even if skill matters in the aggregate.

Which brings up the interesting design question, does adding randomness on top of randomness improve the game? Is it better to stack unfairness upon unfairness?

I don’t know, but I suspect we’re heading into philosophical territory about life, the universe, and everything.

I’ll give it 42 stars.

“Mass market title” only better” used to be a common cliche to describe eurogames.

But for real, this is Stratego, only better.

The joy and curse of becoming a connoisseur is realizing the inadequacy of your previous life.

However the pursuit of refinement has limits. After a few plays, I realized that the basic game is superior to the advanced version. The raw simplicity of this game is the race to opposite sides of the board with minimal interference.

I suspect the “legendary animals” variant (which is as clunky as it is themed) was thrown into the package because the publisher could not justify such a simple game in a big box.

However, I refrain from calling this game “over-produced” because this game only works because of this level of physical production. I don’t see how you can do a mini-version, even if the basic game is about as complex as Nine Men’s Morris.

This is a little filler that needs to be done up big.

Let the advanced gamers who desire unnecessary complication enjoy their legendary variant. The version that gets us to the real competition is most certainly the true game.