Two new games and a second play

game night

After a week of no gaming and adjusting to the work routine again (it’s amazing how having a week off throws you out) Diego and myself met up on Friday to play some games.

There were others invited but they had life going on to prevent them from joining us.

We started off with a learning game of Parks.

Parks had not even been on my radar of games to buy. But over Christmas an opportunity came up to buy a copy so I did.

I have to say production value wise Parks knocks it out of the park! This is Stonemaier level of production quality. A great insert, trays you take out to hold the resources. Wooden pieces. And the cutest animal tokens ever. Each a different animal.

Parks

I love the art on the cards. The game looks beautiful on the table.

During setup and our dramatic reading of the rules I was thinking how are we ever going to buy park cards or do anything in the four rounds, or seasons as they are called in the game? The action track or whatever it was called seemed too short. But it does grow by one space at the start of the subsequent rounds.

One of my tactical mistakes of the game was letting Diego keep the camera for a large part of the game. It was basically giving him free points.

We both got a lot more done in the game than I thought we would. It was very quick to learn, and play. We both really liked the game. And yes sooner than later the expansions will be popping through my letter box.

Oh Diego won.

Our second game was a new push your luck dice game called Can’t Stop that I got.

Can’t Stop

What a fun dice game. It worked at our player count. And I can’t wait to play at the higher player counts. I’ll write a bit more in my research post for my cyberpunk game project, because this game was bought for that.

But the history books will reflect that I won the game.

Our final game of the evening was Terraforming Mars the dice game.

I thought this worked well as a two player game.

It did initially feel like a learning game as I’d only played the game once before.

Terraforming Mars the Dice Game

We soon picked up the iconography on the cards.

It felt like an awful long time in the game from the initial production that I did a production run. I’m not sure if that was a good or bad thing. I’m also undecided if it’s a good thing to do frequent/regular production runs in the game. More plays will help with this tactical decision.

Like Can’t Stop I’ll be talking about Terraforming Mars the dice game in the research post.

Sadly it’s no longer John Carter of Mars, but Diego of Mars as he won.

It was great to be sharing these games with Diego. I had a fun evening.

Hack the planet!

#YourTurn, Cyberpunk Dice Game, Game Design Project, Game Dev Diary, Prototype

In the inaugural post of this “game design diary” I promised to write about why I chose to develop a dice game that has a cyberpunk theme.

This is that post.

I love the genre of cyberpunk. Whether it’s books, films, anime, graphic novels. I love it.

As I’ve mentioned many times in the past I was a teenager during the 80’s. I grew up with the home computer boom. I was part of the home computer boom.

I learnt to code on my ZX-81 and Oric-1. Later on a PDP-11 and BBC Model B’s at college.

But that was me. I spent a lot of time bathed in the glow of the cathad ray tube of my tv typing away.

It can’t be stressed how amazing and wonderful a time this was. Every month there seemed to be a new home micro released trying to tempt you to part with your money. Computer games were exploring what a game was. Not only mechanically and gameplay wise but also theme wise.

I loved the movies Wargames and Tron.

Whilst studying in Brighton I came across William Gibson and cyberpunk in the form of his novel Neuromancer.

I loved the dystopian setting of mega corporations, hackers as lone wolf guns for hire.

Then I stumbled upon the Shadowrun series of books. Wait cyberpunk with fantasy elements! Wow!

Then I came across anime and manga, particularly the amazing cinematic and ground breaking Akira. Then there was Ghost in the Shell.

Hackers hit the cinema.

More recently (the last ten years or so) I came across Netrunner and the Android universe. Netrunner captured the whole cyberpunk genre so well, especially the runner (aka hacker) going up against the mega corporations and hacking their servers. It was fun having to play both sides in a game.

We have had some cool tv series and movies such as Tron Legacy, and Mr Robot. Black Hat was more action than hacker.

Somehow cyberpunk is meant to be this dystopian future with mega corporations running things. Law unto themselves. But somehow that seems to be now! I love how it has the little guy, usually a hacker as the hero fighting against the corporate big guy.

Inside me is this counter culture, anti-establishment rebel. Cyberpunk feeds that inner me.

So that is why I’m going with a cyberpunk theme.

Myths and trains

Fenland Gamers, Game day, game night

Friday morning was the last morning of my visit with Nathan.

Usually I get a whole morning with him before setting off after lunch. But this time I had to leave before lunch so I was back in time for a Teams call.

Leaving earlier meant I was back in time to attend the Fenland Gamers club night. But more importantly able to try Cyclades.

It’s been on my wish list for yonks. I even backed the Kickstarter for the second edition (granted at the $1 level to get me access to the backerkit) last year.

So what did I think of Cyclades?

I enjoyed it.

I liked the bidding mechanic for the gods and your place in turn order for taking your turn. Which then determined where you were next round in the bidding order.

But did I like it enough to buy the second edition?

Now that is a tough question.

I have Kemet (first edition plus expansions), Cry Havoc, and Scythe. Those three were good enough to fight off Inis taking one of their spots. And I did like Inis just not as much as the others.

And I think Cyclades is falling into that same situation. I like it but enough to get rid of one of the three already mentioned? If you asked me to play one of them right now, I think I’d still go with one of the three over Cyclades.

So it looks like I’ll leave it to Ben to buy the new edition of Cyclades and play that when it arrives (Q4 of this year?)

Saturday saw Jeff and myself meet up to try the 18xx roll and write Arabella. Which had arrived that morning.

I’d only heard about Arabella days earlier via a tweet on X/Twitter. It intrigued me. However nowhere seemed to be selling it. Unless I wanted to import it. Luckily there was a copy in the UK going on the bgg marketplace. Which I snapped up.

When it arrived it was still in shrink.

When I read the rulebook I thought wow this is going to be on the heavier side of roll and writes.

There was one hiccup to playing Arabella. When I told Jeff it was an 18xx inspired game he was apprehensive about it. He is not a fan of 18xx games.

I’d never played an 18xx game before. So this was going to be a way for me to dip my toe in to the 18xx water.

For this first game I went against the advice of the rulebook and didn’t use the AI to add a third player. I want to be able to just focus on the game and not have the overhead and distraction of running the AI.

It is interesting that there are no setup adjustments for player count. Well not if you discount the placement of cubes during setup.

Arabella didn’t disappoint.

It is on the heavier side of the roll and writes.

I really enjoyed it and surprisingly so did Jeff.

It had the feel of an 18xx but not the drawback(s) according to him. Particularly the share side.

We both agreed the wooden dice are ok, but would it have hurt to use plastic ones?

The rulebook is ok. Slight grammar errors. Plus it was not clear that the white dice are your starting dice. But I’m giving a little leeway as the designers are east European I believe, and it could just be a translation issue.

The game does start slow as you start to build your railway, but boy does it ramp towards the end.

Arabella is also a very mathy game! Especially when running your trains or calculating the share dividends.

I definitely need to play this with more players. I think it’s going to be a very different experience.

We followed up with a game of one of Jeff’s Christmas presents Star Trek Away Missions.

This is a fun two player Star Trek game. I played the Federation with a ST:TNG crew, whilst Jeff played the Borg.

It was the intro scenario we played.

So basically I needed to complete at least five mission cards over the three rounds to get my objective points at the end.

This is a skirmish like game or shares some of the mechanics. Players take turns activating a character in their squad/team. The game that comes to kind with that activating mechanic is Star Wars Imperial Assault or Last Days.

There is hand management as well to consider not only for your mission cards, but also for m

Because the game is played over three rounds it is very quick.

I liked it and would play again.

New Dice Bag

accessories, dice masters, Dicemasters, first look

At the start of December or it might have been mid December. Any way it was in December before Christmas I decided to treat myself to a new dice bag to use with Dice Masters.

I had been tempted by the handmade ones by Jocelyn. Who just happens to be one half of the rather great Dice Masters podcast A Double Double and Dice. You remember me mentioning them in the past. That’s the podcast that reads out my comments! So I’m not biased at all. Honest.

Anyway the dice bag I ordered from Jocelyn arrived this morning.

I really like this dice bag.

It’s very personal to me. The reason being when you order you select one of the many themed material patterns that Jocelyn has on her Etsy page for the outside (I went with the rather tasteful spider web pattern). Then I chose the what I refer to as lime green lining for the inside.

Once the order was placed Jocelyn contacted me to confirm my material choices. Which I confirmed.

I like that touch. Seeing images of the two materials next to each other gives you an idea if they work or not. Luckily for me I thought my choices did.

One design choice of these dice bags that I really like is the use of ribbon to close the dice bag over cord. I think it looks better and does the same job.

The included note was a nice touch. It’s little things like that, and the confirmation of materials that make great customer service, and have you ordering more.

I’m really happy with this dice bag. My only issue is I don’t have enough money to get all the various patterns of material I want. There are a lot of cool ones.

If you want to get your own dice bag from Jocelyn you can get it at Jocestitch on Etsy.

Did you cheat?

father son gaming, Game day

Not much gaming got done on our last full day together.

We played two new games that I wanted to try with Nathan. Those being High Score and Viva Java the coffee game the dice game.

I’m not going to go into much detail about them here. I’ll save my discussion about them for my game dev posts.

Nathan won High Score. Although I think he may have manipulated the dice once or twice!

Viva Java I won.

After the games I finished off our tea of roast lamb. The gravy was amazing. And I thought the lamb went really well with my 5 or 6 bean stew that I made. Sadly a combo Nathan did not get to enjoy as he doesn’t like beans.

Our lunch has been curry wurst a German street food I belief. Basically it’s bratwurst with a curry sauce, with some chips. The origins of the curry sauce recipe goes back to after the Second World War where legend goes a German lady was challenged by a US soldier to come up with a recipe/sauce using ketchup.

After tea was spent watching season one of Reacher. Which Nathan hadn’t seen before, followed by the start of season one of Jack Ryan.

It was a chill day with my son. Just what I needed.

I’ll do anything for money but I won’t do that!

father son gaming, Game day

My first full day with Nathan saw a favourite of his (and mine) Star Wars Outer Rim with the Unfinished Business expansion hit the table.

I think the last couple of visits we’ve not managed to get Outer Rim to the table. So it was nice to get this to the table again.

Nathan started setting it up. And by that I mean he put the outer rim segments together before asking me to finish off the setup.

Setup and tear down is a doddle for me. I have seperate deck boxes for the various decks, baggies for the tokens and standees.

Nathan chose Boba Fett (again, as a Renowned Smuggler) and I went with Doctor Aphra (Living Legend).

Through out the game I felt Nathan had the credit advantage, and he did manage to upgrade his ship twice. Whilst for the whole game I never upgraded my ship.

Play was interrupted for a roast chicken thigh and Yorkshire pudding tea.

After the food break I seemed to edge ahead by completing two of my three ambition objectives before Nathan had completed one of his. But a late surge from Nathan meant we were both racing to complete our final objective and win the game.

Sadly a good dice roll by Nathan on a final job I needed to complete to get me the funds to trigger my final objective denied me that one more turn I needed, as he finished his final objective on his next turn after I completed the job.

It was a fun afternoon and evening spent with Nathan in the Outer Rim.

A blast from my past

father son gaming, game night

Despite reports of artic conditions, and that ever mythical snow down South. I made it safely to Nathan’s. Mum needn’t have worried. But she wouldn’t be a mum if she didn’t worry. Even when their eldest is so advanced in years.

We played a couple of games during the evening.

The first an all in game of 7 Wonders Dual.

It was rather cramped on the table. But that didn’t stop us from playing.

We were pretty rusty on the rules, particularly for the two expansions. So we were frequently referring to the two rule books.

I had decided to go all in on a science win. Whilst mid game Nathan had found out that a senate victory was possible and was going for that, along with a possible military victory as a back up.

In fact Nathan could have won with the senate victory if he hadn’t moved one of his cubes. Instead I got a science win after Nathan miss remembered the win condition. He thought it was seven symbols, when it was in fact six.

Later after some sleeving of the cards in the LoTR LCG Fellowship of the Ring saga I taught Nathan a card game from my early years called Trumps. It’s also known as Knock Out Whist I believe.

I spent a lot of time playing this game as a teenager.

Whilst at secondary school we used to play it during tutorials. Officially we weren’t meant to be playing it. But our tutor group was a bit on the rebellious side. Led by our tutor!

I also played it a lot with my dad’s aunt, Aunt Joan. It was most likely her that taught me the game. Which I then took to the classroom.

As a two player game it’s ok. It’s quick. I even used the dogs life rule for Nathan after he failed to take a trick on one of the early rounds. I shouldn’t have done that as he then got the win. On the penultimate round we both got a trick each. So we cut the deck to see who won. Sadly for me that went Nathan’s way. So he chose trumps for the final round of one card.

Afterwards I continued sleeving cards and getting the recommended player decks constructed ready for us to play the game.

Oh our evening meal was spaghetti bolognaise.

Hopefully a good week ahead

father son gaming, life, the universe, and everything, still alive

Things change. It’s the only thing that we can count on in life. Well that and the other two, death and taxes as the saying goes.

Things are going to change on the work front once again. For the better? Who knows?

In the meantime I have nine days off.

The plan is to go visit Nathan for a couple of days.

Obviously I’m taking the LoTR lcg and the Fellowship of the Ring saga.

But alongside that I’m taking some dice games with me to play as research. In that pile are Seasons, Viva Java the dice game, High Score, Yahtzee, Farkle, the Knizia books, Age of War, Hellboy the dice game, and hopefully Strike! (if it arrives in time).

I’m really looking forward to seeing Nathan and playing games with him. It’s been way too long since my last visit.

New Year, New Games

game night

My first gaming of the new year took place Friday. It was meant to be Wednesday but a monkey wrench was thrown into that plan. Such as the community centre not being open when Dave and I got there!

But five of us met up last night to play some games. Between us we had enough games to choose from that would outnumber an average persons game collection.

After some catching up it was time to choose a game to play.

Jonathan wanted to try Cascadia and it was a game I was interested in trying to.

Cascadia

There was such a great gaming moment when Charlene cost herself 24 points by joining her two groups of bears together to make a single one. It was a classic moment of “oh shit, why did I do that?”

I have to admit this was a nice drafting game. Not the heaviest of games. I like the variety of scoring cards that influence what you draft during the game on the animal side. Plus you have other means of getting points based on the terrain tiles. It gives some variety in the tactics and the way to get points.

Ben took the honours.

After Jonathan left we had a game of Stich fur Stich.

It’s a weird combo of mechanics. Think deduction with trick taking!

A player randomly chooses a character and a weapon who did the crime (?) from their set of tiles. This pairing secretly decides trumps for that round.

The players then play a card from their hand. The person that chose the tiles then declares who won the trick, but not why. The other players then try and work out what the two trump tiles are.

The other players then secretly select the tiles they think are trumps, show them to the person who knows and they say yes or no if the guess was right.

The trick taking repeats until all cards are played.

I scoring for the player who chose the trumps is based on how long it takes the others to all guess the trumps plus the tricks taken. Whilst the other players score on the number of cards in hand when they guess correctly and tricks won.

It took a round or two to warm to the game. Especially when Charlene “broke” the game on the first couple of tries by guessing right first time!

I’d be interesting to see what Jonathan thinks of the game. He does like deduction games.

Charterstone Saturday

Saturday saw games three and four of the Charterstone campaign finally happen.

There had been a long pause since starting it due to diary conflict!

Somehow I won a game! I think it’s my first win even taking into account the aborted campaign I played a couple years back.

It really is interesting to see stuff we never saw in the aborted campaign. So there is still moments of mystery for us who took part in that previous campaign.

At the end of the second game we did set a date for the next session.

We finished off with FTW!

Another new card game from Ben’s collection. He does have a knack for finding interesting and fun filler card games.

It was enjoyable. An interesting combo of keeping your highest value card and trying to get rid of the rest of your hand. At the end of the round you score your highest value card in hand minus the total of your remaining cards in hand.

Two great days of gaming. And a great way to start off the new year.

I blame Scott Rogers

#YourTurn, Cyberpunk Dice Game, Game Design Project, Game Dev Diary, Prototype

The inspiration bug that Scott Rogers ignited with his book Your Turn! is kicking in.

In the past I’ve given constructive feedback on my friends games that they have created. Whether that’s Jonathan and his Streets of Commonville, Jeff’s evolution themed card game, or Byron and one of his prototypes. Whether that feedback was any good or useful is open to debate.

However up until now I’ve never felt tempted to create my own game.

But now it’s time to put up or shut up!

The slightly less portable game prototype kit

I’ve put together a portable prototyping kit. It’s not exactly the suggested list in the appendix A of Your Turn! It’s 90% of the list, with some additional bits scavenged from a completed copy of Pandemic Year One. Plus a couple of bits don’t fit into the case I purchased.

I have the genesis of an idea for a game.

I want to create a cyberpunk themed dice game.

I like dice games. Heck we know how I feel about Dice Masters, dice versions of board games, even roll and writes. So it’s only natural I’d want to create a game that uses dice in some significant way.

There is no way you’d describe my knowledge of dice games as encyclopaedic.

At the moment I’m entering a “research” phase. Where I’m trying to expand my knowledge of dice games, and how dice can be used within a board game.

As part of my “research” I have a small list of dice games I want to get or try. Plus one or two in my collection that I haven’t played I want to get to the table. There are others in my collection that I want to revisit.

I’m going to try and get one or two of the games before I visit Nathan next week. He’s the ideal person to try them with.

Nathan will also have to suffer me wanting to try one or two games from the two Knizia books on dice games that I have. In the name of “research” obviously. You can see my current research reading list at the end of the post.

Ideas are already slowly coming through. So I’m making notes of them as they surface.

I have some mechanics I like and think I want to include such as the Yahtzee push your luck, I split you chose, and the Free League mutant year zero stress dice mechanic (particularly the Alien rpg) that uses push your luck in another way.

In the next post I’ll look at why cyberpunk as the theme.

Bibliography aka Reading List

  • Tredd, W.E. (2013) Dice games new and old: how to play dice games over 50 including craps. Cambridge: Oleander Press.
  • Knizia, R. (2010) Dice games properly explained. Place of publication not identified: Blue Terrier Press.
  • Knizia, R. (2019) New tactical games with dice and cards. United States: Blue Terrier Press.
  • Rogers, S.A. (2023) Your Turn! The Guide to Great Tabletop Game Design. Indianapolis: John Wiley and Sons.