Blog Archives
I Don’t Wanna Do Your Dirty Work
Whenever someone gets rosy-eyed about “the good old days,” it’s a surefire sign they’ve never cracked a history book. Ahh, the good old days, back when men were men, their eyesight obscured by forty thanks to sun damage. When women were women, dead at thirty from childbearing. When children were dropping like flies from preventable diseases, when ninety percent of jobs consisted of picking stones from dusty fields, when the nights were so cold that one curled about their steaming chamber pot for warmth.
At the same time, there are certain myths about human misery that simply won’t kick the bucket. Medieval people, for example, were not shabby peasants sitting around in their own filth. Even the poor bathed regularly, wore colorful clothes, and liked to attend dances and festivals. Reality occupies a strange middle ground. In the past, most folks were sicker, fed more poorly, and struggled daily against decay, but still strove to fill their lives with good and pleasant things.
Night Soil is not about most folks. Taken on its own, one might come away thinking that everybody padded their clogs with their own BMs. That’s because it’s about the dirty task of clearing Tudor London of human waste. Gathering poop, transporting poop, shoveling poop into the river — these are the game’s occupation. It’s a greasy, brown-hued business. I adore it.
Better to Live Under Robber Barons
Barony feels old. When we first played the new Royal Edition, my mind automatically sorted it into the early 2000s. It fits the period. The feudal setting. The perfect information. The simple rules. Even the emphasis on direct conflict. This is what Eurogames once resembled, before the endless recombination of systems into recursive engines and checklists of scoring criteria. Before everybody decided to chase that Vital Lacerda money.
But Barony is not old. Not that old. Marc André designed this thing a mere decade ago, in 2015. That’s a year after he gave us Splendor! The same year Trickerion: Legends of Illusion hit the scene!
As a not-quite-throwback, Barony is an interesting case study. In some ways it’s refreshing; in others, it’s mired in sensibilities the hobby has largely left behind.
Bottle Princess
Since all I play anymore is trick-taking games, it seems fitting that I should inaugurate the New Year by writing about two titles that have been occupying my winter break: Bottle Imp, the reissue of Günter Cornett’s 1995 classic, and Rebel Princess by Daniel Byrne, Gerardo Guerrero, Kevin Peláez, and Tirso Virgós.
What’s their unifying thread? Mostly that trick-takers are often accused of being “themeless.” Probably because they often are. But these are two examples of how to imbue a trick-taker with a tangible setting, and in the process aid players in remembering the import of all those individual plays.
Still Not a River in Egypt
It’s hard to imagine anybody improving on good old Tigris & Euphrates. At over twenty years old it still remains a monument of our hobby, a surprisingly fluid combination of setting and systems, simple enough to learn, incredibly difficult to master.
Yellow & Yangtze is Reiner Knizia’s attempt at besting his own classic. What’s there to change? A whole lot, it turns out. And much of it has to do with that staple of Tigris & Euphrates strategy, the monument.
SPACE-BIFF! 