Blog Archives
Reach Out and Slap Someone
A fairly long time ago, I spent a lot of time in the back of high school buses en route to various band competitions. This was before smartphones, and laptops were reserved for college students and first class passengers on airplanes, so we passed the time with Egyptian Ratscrew, a game about slapping cards as they were flipped over. I never understood the rules. For me, the only rule was to slap red-headed Hailey’s hand, because I was crushing like diamonds. Because diamonds are formed by intense pressure and infatuation, see.
And while I never ended up dating the object of my oddly manifested affections, I departed with some small fondness for slapping games. Which is why I’m going to tell you about Slap .45 even though it hardly warrants an introduction.
Rattle, Battle, Forever and Ever
There’s something to be said for brazenly occupying a niche nobody knew needed filling. For example, I was entirely unaware of my subliminal desire to outfit my own pirate ship with cartoon characters and kamikaze monkeys, agonize over lengths of rope and barrels of rum to afford the favor of the Pirate King back in port, and conduct naval warfare by chucking big handfuls of dice into a box — and then having their positions represent the chaos of battle.
I wasn’t aware I wanted this. Ignacy Trzewiczek was; and thus Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot took its niche by storm.
Chvátil Three
Just last month, if you were to tell me that Vlaada Chvátil was making a party game, I’d laugh you out of the room. I mean, I’d finish choking on my chocolate milk first, but then I’d laugh you out of the room.
Why? Well, because party games are about simplicity. About getting everyone involved, even when they aren’t particularly into games. They’re about appealing to both your hardcore enthusiast brother-in-law and your grandma who hasn’t played a board game since the winter of ’47 when her little brother froze to death because he wouldn’t stop playing checkers under the porch.
Vlaada Chvátil, on the other hand — and this is what I would have told you a month ago — is about convoluted designs that glow with the uncanny brilliance of an insane person. People don’t play Space Alert, Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends, Mage Knight, or Galaxy Trucker because they’re simple. They play them because they’re bonkers.
But that was the me of a month ago. Today I have been humbled, because I can’t stop playing Vlaada Chvátil’s version of a party game.
Cannons & Stock Exchanges
Every now and then, there’s a very small game with a heart that pumps very big ideas.
Guns & Steel is tiny. Not quite an appetizer since it usually clocks in at over an hour, but it’s a slender thing, only about fifty cards or so. And while the rules can be a little tricky to learn, that’s largely because it’s doing so much with so little. Each and every card, for instance, works double-duty as both resource and action, purchasing power and purchased opportunity. Once everything clicks, it slides from one beat to another as smoothly as a machine-tooled piston.
But that’s not the main thing that’s got me so impressed.
Real Archaeology, Inc.
There’s something jarring about Artifacts, Inc. And yes, I’m talking about how it feels downright peculiar to play a game about archaeology during the interwar period and not be pitted against the Nazi Paranormal Research Division in a hunt over land, air, and sea for the Spear of Destiny, where “Roll a d6 to keep your eyes pressed shut,” is the final challenge.
Instead, Artifacts, Inc. is an entirely pleasant game, one where rival antiquarians might occasionally become kind of snitty with each other, but otherwise behave and don’t go exploding or stealing each other’s stuff. Surprisingly, this works way better than it has any right to.
The Only Fake Artist in New York
Not too long ago, I wrote about a superb little ditty by the name of Spyfall, a game about asking questions in a vague yet informative manner so that one of the players — the SPY — would slip up and reveal themselves, while also ensuring that the other players wouldn’t jump to the conclusion you were the spy because your information was too wishy-washy. It was a tightrope social deduction game, simple enough that your curmudgeonly aunt could get along with it, but smart enough that the most jaded gamer would find something to love.
And now thanks to A Fake Artist Goes to New York, it’s back. In art form.
“See the Galaxy,” They Said
Dark Moon will never entirely escape its association with Battlestar Galactica — fair enough, considering it’s a retouched version of the print-and-play game BSG Express. Out with the Cylons and space-jet dogfights, in with the alien parasites and handfuls of dice.
The Race for Atlantis, Maybe
History Time! Around 3,600 years ago on the Aegean isle of Thera, during the height of the pre-Greek Minoan civilization, an enormous volcano went off. In addition to totally burying the settlement of Akrotiri beneath volcanic ash that would later become the principal ingredient in pencil erasers and cosmetic exfoliants, the resultant tsunami and altered weather may have also led to the weakening of the Minoan state, prepping them for invasion by the less-exploded Mycenaeans. Some historians even speculate that the complete disappearance of such an important settlement was the inspiration for Plato’s account of Atlantis.
Set around a thousand years later (landing us in Classical Greek territory), Akrotiri casts two players as a pair of humanity’s first archaeologists, scouring the uncharted Aegean Sea for treasure and ancient temples.
Shorthorn
When you get right down to it, Longhorn could be about pretty much anything. Hacking yottabytes of corporate secrets out of a protected server, for instance. Or gathering gems for your medieval patron, because apparently we love that crap. Instead, Longhorn woke up one morning and decided to be about stealing cows, swigging moonshine, and trying not to get a snake in yer boots.
It’s the very definition of pasted on, though I appreciate the effort to appeal to my Western sensibilities. Like most of the folks in my neighborhood I enjoy rustling cattle, have done so since I was old enough to balance atop a burro, so the setting would seem like a natural fit. Then I crack it open and discover it’s got just about nothing to do with a real cattle drive. More’s the shame.
Well, good news, because tacked-on setting or no, Longhorn is fine as cream gravy.
The GenConmen, 2015: Day Three
That first day of GenCon, all the early risers packed like upright sausages around the barred doors of the expo hall, it’s hard to fathom how it could get more crowded. Geoff even said that very thing about ten minutes before the doors opened for the first time. “I cannot fathom how this could get more crowded,” he said.
By Saturday, the fathoming gets real easy.
SPACE-BIFF! 