MacBoyce Gaming
New podcast - Imperial Steam.
Appologies for the weeks delay. Life got in the way.
Playing multiplayer games two player. Is player count on the box a reliable source?
Recently I watched the video below on YouTube, and as usual for Actualol it is both informative and entertaining. However, one section stood out to me, and that was on player count.
Firstly, though I am going to address the fact publishers put a wide player count on the box to increase the market appeal of the game, and often this something they shouldn’t do – they must know that some games don’t work with say five players or two players! Arkwright, my second favourite game of all time says 2-4 on the box and whilst yes it can be played with two, you’ll not have a very good experience. It is a four-player game, three at a push.
Le Havre says 2-5 on the box and woe betide anyone playing that with five. So player count is a tool used by publishers to sell games to a wider market.
You could then, as recommended in the video, check out the BGG (Boardgamegeek.com) recommended player count. This is come from people playing the game and their subjective opinion of what is the best player count. Above two players it is useful, and Arkwright does indeed show a “Best 4” on the community player count. It also has a 61% recommendation at two players, and here we have the main issue with the BGG ratings for player count – they fall over at two players.
Unless it is a two-player dedicated game, the way you play a 2-x player game with two will give you a different experience. Play Concordia on the standard 2-3 player map and the game is wide open enough for each player to do what they want without much interaction, and that would turn an excellent game into one that is as dull as dishwater. On the flipside of that, if you go for each other’s cities, if you compete for cards – snag that colonist your opponent really needs – then the game is excellent. Much better than waiting for an eternity to take your turn again in a five-player game. But who has played it what way and who has put their recommendations on towards player count on BGG?
There are some excellent two-player only games. Watergate, Jaipur, and the daddy of all two player games Fields of Arle, are just a few examples. There are also some that are just not good. However, if you happen to play only or mostly two players and decide to go for only two player games or listen to what reviewers or YouTubers say, then you are missing out on a bigger, wider, world of games. As always, it is best to do your own research, and if you are new to the hobby don’t believe everything you read. From player count on the box, to what others think is the best player count for a game.
Good ✅ Neutral ➡️ Bad ❎ views on Beyond the Sun.
After six plays here’s my Good ✅ Neutral ➡️ Bad ❎ views on Beyond the Sun.
Good:
✅ The use of the not-dice resource cubes. Makes for a challenging decision of what you use them for.
✅ Production. Oh how you really want to produce more then you get. Balancing ore versus population. Great.
✅ Events. Makes being first to discover a technology something you want to do.
✅ Immediate benefits on technology cards. A nice bonus.
✅ Balance of exploring space versus getting technology cards.
✅ Competition for both space and tech.
✅ Ignoring the issue below with the edge case cards, the general game is super smooth. Simple to teach and understand.
✅ If dual layer player boards are you thing then this game has them…
Neutral:
➡️ Setup. The resources cubes are a pain.
➡️ Action selection markers are too tall and skinny. Easily knocked over.
➡️ The game is expensive for what you get in the box.
➡️ I am not convinced there’s enough variety of events. Seeing the same ones often only after six games.
➡️ The main board is too big. A lot of this comes down to the issues in the ‘bad’ section. Specifically the poor use of white space.
➡️ Thematically it’s a little hit and miss.
Bad:
Hope you’re sitting comfortably as this might be ride…
❎ Graphic design is just not good. Specifically:
❎ Poor use of white space. There’s either way too much or way to little.
❎ Inconsistent use of typography. Tiny type faces combined with poor use of white space is bad. Like can’t read what the card says from sitting close to the board bad. Like cards have lots of space for bigger text but instead have lots of white space.
❎ Colours. Who signed off on having a shade of blue and purple so close to each other to be indistinguishable by colourblind folks? It gets worse as the designer said on Facebook this was because they needed different colours from those on the board to “avoid confusion” yet there’s red technologies and a red/orange player pieces! They even double coded the colours for the technologies.
❎ Wall of text event cards. Walls of text often presenting edge case rules. Some of the event cards are - in my and Mrs B’s opinion - just confusing and distract from the general smooth flow to the game. The reason we love Anno 1800 so much is how smooth it is. There’s very no wall of text cards or edge case rules.
❎ Planet cards are too small and very cramped. With ships on them they become unreadable quickly.
As far as “tech tree” games go, Anno 1800 is the superior one. By a fair margin. However despite the issues I have with #BeyondTheSun it’s a solidly enjoyable good game. You can try it out on BoardGameArena and I recommend you do!
Thoughts on Ark Nova after three plays...
Some somewhat subjective thoughts on #ArkNova after three plays. Overall I quite enjoyed the game, but I don’t quite think it lives up to the hype. Good enough to stay in my collection though.
The good:
✅ Solid rulebook with examples.
✅ Smooth rules. Doesn’t suffer the problem a lot of modern euros currently do where a load of extra ‘stuff’ is bolted on to the core mechanisms. So no need to teach or remember a load of edge case rules.
✅ Mostly clear iconography.
✅ Challenging decision space. Crunch comes from what you need to do, not remembering the rules.
✅ Visually appealing.
✅ Variable end game adds tension.
✅ Seems colourblind friendly to me
The neutral:
➡️ The central board is too big. It could easily be made smaller without sacrificing usability.
➡️ No text alternate for requirements one of the best things about Terraforming Mars is it clearly SAYS the requirements. The ‘partner zoo’ requirement, for example, isn’t obvious.
➡️ The scoring. Negative points after 2-3 hours doesn’t make you feel good about how you played.
➡️ End game scoring cards feel a little situational.
➡️ Upgrading some action cards feels like a waste of the upgrade action.
The bad:
❎ Some of the Sponsor cards are just too wordy and obtuse. Others just aren’t worth the space they take in your zoo. They’re far too situational.
❎ Because they’re only a small part of the massive deck that makes the above situational nature worse.
❎ Animals. Some have requirements that simply make them not worth playing unless you happen to be lucky and have the requirements.
❎ If you have a hand of naff cards you can be screwed out of a few rounds whilst you try to cycle them out. You can’t just sell cards from your hand.
❎ Massive central player board yet why the tiny icons on the reputation track?
Not played enough but I’m not sure the distribution of cards is quite right. Feels short on sponsors to me. However I get it, there has to be a lot of animals as the game is about buying a zoo. Your opening hand can have a rather large impact on how the game goes. Maybe ten would have been better than eight? I had a hand of cards that had nothing to do with the end game goals. My wife’s had a opening hand of animals with tough requirements.
‘Snapping’ is much more important than we gave it credit though. One good card is better than 2-4 bad ones.
Anyway if you’ve read this far and have played the game, let me know if I’m barking up the wrong tree. If you haven’t played the game and have ordered a copy, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. We did but play three was a tad rough (a lot of the ‘issues’ above showed up in that play)
Praga Caput Regni - Good to be back to two player euro gaming after a weekend away playing multiplayer miniature games! #PragaCaputRegni #TwoPlayer
When my wife saw the breadth of her domain, she wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. #BeyondTheSun
On the subject of accessibility. Tiny action spaces don’t help either. We’ve not all got perfect eyesight!
I can’t tell these colours apart. Designers and publishers, please check your games for accessibility issues!
The Deconstruction of Falling Stars
“How does this end?” - Captain John Sheridan
“In victory points!” - Kosh
Beyond the Sun passed me by at first. I followed my usual process of board game purchasing, watching a “playthrough” video of the game if one is available. There happened to be on for Beyond the Sun, and the game looked boring. Visually and the gameplay, so I passed on it. It then went to sell out.
I did take a punt on another game from 2020 after I watched a playthrough - Anno 1800. That game was pretty much a hit after the first game (and I suspect everyone has the same first game issue - “How on Earth does this game ever end?”) What is the connection to Beyond the Sun I hear you ask, or the voice in my head asks. Whatever!
Both games rely on a central “Technology Tree”. In Anno 1800 it’s your typical type of thing from the era. Beer, cigars, glass, bicycles. In Beyond the Sun it is more ‘spacy’ type things. Both games also have you taking one main action, so in theory, turns will be quick, and both games don’t have a set number of rounds but end when a condition has been reached.
After that, they’re not that similar, but there is that core “tech tree”
This post isn’t a review of Beyond the Sun - or Anno 1800 - just some observations on both. At the time of writing this post, I have only played Beyond the Sun once yet have played Anno 1800 double-digit times.
I enjoyed the first play of Beyond the Sun, but some design elements put me off. They are:
The board is too big.
There’s too much whitespace and the two main boards take up too much space. Making reachability and visibility an issue.
Text size and whitespace use.
Some areas have suitable bold text, other areas have text that is too small to read from a reasonable distance, and is an accessibility issue. Yet there is too much whitespace. They could have used that whitespace to increase the size of the text.
The action selection spots are tiny.
Why, on a board so big, are the worker placement spots, and the wooden action pawns are tall and skinny? This makes seeing the choices as the game goes on even harder than it needs to be. Oh and good luck finding your white action pawn on a white board!
The player colours!
Blue and purple of a similar shade? Unusable for colourblind folks, so I probably won’t ever be playing this game with four players. White as a colour on a board that is mostly white and black?
Not good.
Now you may be thinking that this game isn’t any good. I think it has the potential to be good. My grumbles are mostly down to the design and the UI/UX. That kind of thing should not be an issue in 2020 when the game was released. There are no excuses for this. There really are no excuses for colourblind issues in a game or other accessibility issues like tiny text.
“Zathras does not want you being confused”
There's no sand in my sandbox...
What is a sandbox? In computing terms, it’s a special place in memory and CPU that is isolated from the rest of the computer. In the real world, it is a box of sand that young children like to play in. In video games, it’s a game mode where the player has unlimited resources and can build or create as they wish - imagine Minecraft in Creative Mode.
Board games? There is no ‘sandbox’ yet the term “sandbox game” is thrown around a fair amount. What do reviewers and commentators mean?
For board gaming, the term ‘sandbox’ is often used to describe a game that gives the player a lot of choice or freedom of action, A Feast for Odin with its 60+ action spots and many different ways of scoring is held up as a ‘sandbox’ game. Agricola, on the other hand, isn’t classed as a ‘sandbox’ game. What is the difference?
I believe it all comes down to the difference between the game pushing you down a certain path or the game just telling you to get on with things and giving you tools to get to the goal but no guidance. After all, Agricola has a raft of worker placement spots available by the end of the game, but it’s already hit you over the head with hints well before then. The ‘do this or starve’ kind of hint. A Feast for Odin on the other hand? That game just goes: “Want help? Nah, get on with it, I’ll see you at the end of round 7, pal!”
So the latter gets labelled a ‘sandbox’ yet the former doesn’t. It is like the confusion in the video game world, where open-world gets confused with a ‘sandbox’. Minecraft in Survival Mode is not a sandbox, as there is a goal - defeat the Ender Dragon. Minecraft in Creative is a sandbox, as there is no goal. The player can set themself a goal, such as to build a fancy castle or a Redstone machine. But that isn’t the goal of the game.
A Feast for Odin has a goal, win the game by scoring the most points. Agricola has the same goal! All board games have a goal, they have to as the game must have a set end condition - be that the most points after a certain number of rounds, or to defeat the enemy pieces. Minecraft in Creative mode doesn’t have an end.
Language evolves, and language is imperfect, but the term ‘sandbox’ for a game with lots of choices and little player guidance isn’t the right term. But then again, I ain’t your dad, and so you can call that type of game whatever you want. That doesn’t mean the term ‘sandbox’ won’t annoy me.
On heavier games, player count, and purchasing...
My second favourite game of all time, as of writing this post, is Arkwright. If you have listened to my Top 5 Uwe Rosenberg Games episode, then my number one game of all time should come as no surprise - Fields of Arle. They both share a trait of being fairly heavy - OK, Arkwright is heavy - games. I like heavier games.
Both games physically weigh a lot, Fields of Arle even has a wooden organiser, but that’s not what I mean about weight. In the world of board games, “heavy” means complexity or decision space. This post isn’t going into that, other than acknowledging that both are considered ‘meatier’ games.
Arkwright plays best with four players, and here we have the issue with heavier euro games, player interaction. In Arkwright, you are running competing mills. Two players? No real competition, unless you always chose the same mills to run. That and it lacks the dynamics that four brings. See also Dominant Species: Marine, as an example. I’m not saying you can’t get heavy games that work well with two (see also; Twilight Struggle)
So we come to Barrage. I did show interest at the time of release, and something put me off. It bubbled back recently thanks to Twitter and yet again I started to show interest until a Heavy Cardboard play through showed me that Barrage also shines at four, and maybe three, but not two players.
I have enough games on my shelves that don’t get played enough, I don’t need more. So Barrage went back onto my list of games I’d love to play if they ever showed up at a game group night, but with 90% of my plays being with two players, it couldn’t justify the expense. However, it looks like Beyond the Stars may be back on the potential list. Wasn’t really into tech tree games until Anno 1800 came along and was a big hit (“Do you make sausage?”) and space as a theme is not my favourite.
This mentality, along with a strict budget, gets applied to almost every game I buy, even more so now my collection is large enough. I very rarely make impulse purchases and rarely back Kickstarter games too.
How do you work out what game you are going to get next? Budget? Theme? Kickstarter? Or throw care to the wind and get whatever you fancy? Let me know at @MacBoyceGaming (https://twitter.com/macboycegaming)
Image from Ricker on BGG boardgamegeek.com/image/503…
Watergate by Capstone Games and Matthias Cramer
Watergate - Finishing the trifecta.
Ok, so I have done a podcast about Watergate
I have done a YouTube video about Watergate
So it is now time to finish the trifecta by writing about Watergate.
Watergate by Capstone Games and Matthias Cramer
“In the two-player game Watergate, one player represents the Nixon administration and tries not to resign before the end of the game while the other player represents The Washington Post and tries to show the connections between Nixon and some of his informers.”
That’s the Board Game Geek summary of the game. Now in a previous blog post, I have said how I enjoyed Twilight Struggle but the length of the game killed the enjoyment as it was just too long for us to see any regular play. We replaced Twilight Struggle with Fort Sumter and that is a Very Good Game, but the theme and the board just don’t quite bring it to life for us so we have been on the lookout for a card-driven game that does light the fire in our bellies. Watergate could be the game.
For the first few plays, it was an easy win for the Editor, as I was making sure Mrs B understood the rules and nuances of the game. It’s our learning style, there’s only the two of us and open or shared info isn’t going to hurt. There’s a blog post on this site about the way we learn games and why we do it that way.
Play three was different. The nuances and rules understood we switched to playing for keeps and then every card play mattered. Do we use the event now, and lose the card for later? Do we use this Journalist or this Conspirator for its value and the risk of not having that response later? Do I move the markers or the evidence? Is Nixon going to push the momentum, does the Editor have any weakness on the evidence board? is Nixon at risk?
The last game - our fifth play - went down to the wire. The last card of the Editor won them the game. Had they played that card with a four value yellow earlier or used the event they would have lost.
Boom. Such tension, all in a 30-minute game. My view? Do you like card-driven games, you play with two players? Go get a copy, I wish I had done so sooner.
Oh and this card? Oh boy!
The Long, Twilight Struggle
I don’t remember 1974. I also only really have a vague memory of the latter part of the Cold War. I do remember Hasselhoff singing on the Berlin Wall.
Yes, these are both relevant to board gaming and relevant to two-player gaming. Why? Well, 1974 was the year President Nixon resigned because of the Watergate scandal and the Cold War and his speech on the long Twilight Struggle. Both a two-player only card-driven games.
Now I have owned and enjoyed Twilight Struggle and as of writing this I own Watergate but have not yet played it.
Twilight Struggle does a really good job of the push and pull of the USA and Russia during the Cold War. The history is there, the terror of pushing the world over the edge into global thermonuclear war is there - anyone for a nice game of chess? But, and it’s a very big but, a game of Twilight Struggle is long. Too long. Oh and some of the rules just didn’t stick in my head and so lots of games involved pausing to read up on the rules and that breaks the immersion.
In the end, the length and the fact we didn’t play it enough killed the game for us. I replaced it with Fort Sumter, a great game that takes 20 minutes to play. But thematically the start of the American Civil war isn’t the best fit for me.
Now whilst I was somewhat young in 1974, the Watergate scandal is interesting and getting the chance to play a recreation of it in board game form was a difficult thing to pass up. Yes, I am late to this Watergate game party but better late than never.
Everyone says it’s good and of course I’ll be playing Nixon for my first few games…
(The Long, Twilight Struggle being one of the greatest, if not the greatest, espisodes of Babylon 5)
On The Frustration Of Not Being Able To Improve
Not going to lie I love a big heavy game about farming, so you can imagine my delight upon hearing about it and then getting a copy of Hallertau, the next big box game from the master of farming board games himself - Uwe Rosenberg.
OK, so this isn’t a review of the game, I’ll give my one-line verdict here: If you like big-box Rosenberg titles then you’ll like Hallertau. Instead, I’ll be discussing my main frustration with the game and that’s me.
In the solo game, you’re aiming for a score over 100, now I’ve not played the game solo but I have played over ten two-player games and my score has never been close to the 100 mark. The picture attached is my highest score to date and to be honest, I think that was more luck than judgement!
The frustration comes from being able to clearly grok - understand - the rules as well as to grasp the general strategy, yet not seeing why I can’t improve my scores. I pull one lever or another yet nothing seems to make any real difference, my scores remain low. In fact, they seem to wildly fluctuate and I think that might also be another issue. Why are they fluctuating so much?
I see people online, or even friends, manage to get a score higher than my average only after a few plays. The real frustration here is the game isn’t that complex, as compared to my Rosenberg favourites like A Feast for Odin or my all-time favourite game, Fields of Arle. So it isn’t the rules or complexity of the game that is causing me issues.
Trouble is, it is making me not want to play the game and that is a shame as it really is quite good. So what do I do to get better?
Relaunch of The MacBoyce Gaming Podcast starts with a playthrough of a few rounds of La Granja No Siesta!
