1500: Make a Run

[Aside: Gosh. 1,500 daily posts. Good job, me. I’d celebrate, but I already had something in mind to write about today, sooo…]

Spent a pleasant hour or two teaching and playing Netrunner this evening. This is the third time I’ve had the opportunity to give this interesting game a go now, and each time I play, I like it a little more.

I think the best thing about it is the psychology aspect of it. Like a good game of poker, success in Netrunner relies as least partly upon reading your opponent, figuring out how they’re likely to act and taking advantage of it. When playing as the Corporation, for example, choosing which of your Remote Servers you’re going to install Ice in front of is extremely important: do you think your opponent will assume your most valuable cards — the ones they’re trying to steal in order to win the game — are heavily protected behind Ice, or will he see through the common bluff of leaving valuable cards unprotected as if they’re no big deal?

There’s a wonderful sense of tension in the game, on both sides, and the game is seemingly balanced in such a way as to encourage this feeling as often as possible.

In the last game I played today, for example, I was playing as the Corporation, and a victory on points was looking likely. My last Agenda card — the cards I needed to spend credits on to “advance” in order to score — was heavily protected behind three pieces of Ice, and I had enough credits to rez all of them without any difficulty. Moreover, I could see that my opponent James didn’t have the Icebreakers he’d need to defeat my pieces of Ice, so I was feeling pretty confident. I advanced my last Agenda until it was one token away from final victory for me, and then it was the end of my turn.

Naturally, James used this opportunity to make a final Run on my Remote Server, obviously hoping to pick up my Agenda and bring himself closer to victory, while denying me the win. He began with the Tinkering card, which made one of my already-revealed pieces of Ice into a type that his Icebreakers could deal with. Uh-oh. He also had enough money to power up his Icebreaker enough to crack through it and deactivate its subroutines. Uh-oh. James broke through the first piece of Ice without any difficulty, so I rezzed the next one — an infuriating little card called a “portal” whose main effect was to send James back to confront the first piece of Ice again. This would fuck him over nicely, since he didn’t have enough credits left to confront it again, but unfortunately his Icebreaker was of the correct type to bypass the portal without any difficulty.

This left the final piece of Ice for him to confront. My confidence had evaporated by this point, but I rezzed it anyway. It was pretty weak, but its subroutine would end his Run immediately — and best of all, it transpired that it was of a type his Icebreaker couldn’t crack.

My heart leapt. I had done it. I had fended off an attack that had got a whole lot further than I thought it was going to — and now I was going to win for sure. And win I did — and great it felt, too.

I’m starting to get my head around this game now, and I’m really interested to play it some more. It’s a big challenge — one false move, or an unfortunate draw of the cards, can leave you in serious shit or even with an instant loss if you’re not careful. But knowing the things to watch out for allows you to prepare for most eventualities — and if you’re playing against an evenly-matched opponent, it can lead to some genuinely thrilling faceoffs.

I’m not quite brave enough to approach the clearly experienced Netrunner players in the Monday night board game group as yet, but I’m definitely keen to play more. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to do so soon.

1471: Netrunning, Again

It was supposed to be one of our regular gaming evenings tonight, but two of the usual five participants were unable to make it, so the remaining three of us decided to try something a little different — concentrate on a single, two-player game and really get a feel for it.

The game was Android: Netrunner, which I talked about a short while back, and after tonight I feel I have a stronger grasp for the “feel” of the game and how it works.

In particular, what I’ve found interesting is quite how different the various factions play. The recommended starter decks — Jinteki for the Corporation player, Shapers for the Runner player — include an interesting balance of abilities, but can often see a game ending somewhat quickly. The Jinteki deck in particular is rammed with traps to set for the Runner player, most of which do various types of “damage” to him, causing him to discard cards and lose the game completely if he has to discard more cards than he has in his hand.

A key part of the Jinteki deck strategy appears to be making good use of these traps. One, known as Project Junebug, is particularly deadly in that it can be quite well “disguised” as one of the point-scoring Agenda cards by spending credits to “advance” it, then unleashed when an unsuspecting Runner hacks into it, only to discover an ambush waiting for him that does more damage than your maximum possible hand size early in the game. I won a game in this way this evening; my friend Tim likewise won one against my other friend Sam by making use of a similar strategy, though this time by simply setting two identical traps, luring Sam into the belief that one was an Agenda and the other was not, but actually revealing after the fact that both were deadly Project Junebug cards. Nasty.

Part of what is clearly the most interesting thing about Netrunner came out in our game this evening: it’s as much about reading your opponent’s psychology as it is about playing the optimum cards. In my game against Sam, for example, I left an Agenda card completely unguarded for a significant part of the game, building up defences in front of my other cards — including Project Junebug, which I then proceeded to “advance” in order to further cement the appearance that it was, in fact, an Agenda. By the time I laid some defenses in front of the previously unprotected Agenda and started to advance it, Sam was firmly of the belief that the more well-guarded card was the more valuable one — and from there, I was able to eliminate him easily.

Conversely, when Sam and Tim played one another, they tried different decks. Tim tried the Criminals Runner deck, while Sam went for the Haas-Bioroid corporation. It was quite hard to get a feel for how the Criminals deck played — it appeared to be quite focused on attaining a decent amount of wealth, which can subsequently be spent to enhance your capabilities during a “run” — but the Haas-Bioroid deck was a clear contrast from Jinteki. While Jinteki is all about bluffing and setting traps, Haas-Bioroid is all about setting up impenetrable defenses that are quite difficult for the Runner to get through. Conversely, a Criminals vs Haas-Bioroid match went on for significantly longer than the Shaper vs Jinteki matches we had previously tried — and rather than the games ending quite quickly, this matchup resulted in a much more protracted battle in which either side could have feasibly won.

I’m yet to delve into the more complicated side of building your own deck to play the game with, but even the differences between these starter decks are fascinating. I’m really looking forward to having the opportunity to play the game again and see how differently the other factions play to one another.

1450: Netrunning

Putting the more formal board game posts on hold for a moment because an idle mention of them during a staff meeting yesterday may have led to us doing a bit more board game coverage over on USgamer in the very near future. So yay for that!

I did want to talk a bit about a tabletop game, though — Android: Netrunner, which I got a copy of for Christmas.

Android: Netrunner is a two-player “living card game” based on the customisable card game of the same name from a few years back. (A “living card game”, for those unfamiliar, follows many of the same principles of customisable card games — primarily the ability to build your own deck of cards prior to playing a match — but provides additional cards through static, predictable expansions rather than randomly mixed booster packs) It’s a particularly interesting concept in that it’s asymmetrical — the two opposing “sides” in the game have very different goals, mechanics and even terminology.

The concept of Android: Netrunner is classic cyberpunk: anarchic, rebellious “runners” are attempting to undermine the powerful “corporations” who run the dystopian future in which the game is set. They go about this through hacking into the corporations’ systems to disrupt them from advancing their agendas; meanwhile, the corporation is steadily building up its defences against intrusion.

In gameplay terms, this means that the two sides have very different roles to play. The corporation’s role is primarily defensive and involves protecting particularly precious pieces of data from the runner player, setting traps and generally messing with the runner’s head. The runner, meanwhile, must build up their resources and equipment to such a degree that they can — hopefully — safely bypass the corporation’s security countermeasures and steal the precious “agenda” cards required to win the game.

I tried the game for the first time with my friend Tim this evening. We played several games, all of which were over relatively quickly. In the first case, I, playing the runner, was flatlined on my second turn for attacking what I thought was a safe bet to score some points, only to fall foul of a booby trap, lose all my cards and consequently be eliminated. In a subsequent attempt where we swapped roles, Tim successfully managed to acquire the seven points’ worth of “agenda” cards required to win, but it was a close-run thing — the server in which the last agenda card was hidden was heavily protected, and if Tim had played just a little less carefully he would have been obliterated by my security measures.

Obviously it’s very early days yet, but I enjoyed the game very much. The cyberpunk theme is much more than window dressing — the cards you play are all very much thematically appropriate, and the initially confusing terminology starts to make a lot more sense when you start thinking about what you’re actually representing when you play your various cards to the table.

It’s going to be a challenge to learn how to play effectively, though, I feel. It’s clear that being reckless can result in swift and merciless defeat very quickly, but this is good — it prevents games from dragging on way too long with a foregone conclusion, and instead allows you to gather everything up, shuffle your decks and try again with minimal fuss. This is exactly what this sort of game needs — not everything needs to come in epic packages of an hour or more.

Tim enjoyed himself, though, as did I, so hopefully we’re going to be playing it at least semi-regularly. I’m keen to try it with my other friends, too — I think it’s the sort of game that will be very interesting to observe how different people play.

1227: Cards of Love

One of the games I had the chance to try out during my recent trip to Canada was a charming little card game called Love Letter, the brainchild of Seiji Kanai and the fourth entry in AEG’s Tempest series of games that share the same setting. Today, my own copy of it finally arrived, so I thought I’d talk about it a bit. I know I already mentioned it a number of posts ago, but I thought I’d dedicate a whole post to it.

In Love Letter, players take on the role of potential suitors to the princess of Tempest. Unfortunately, grieving for her arrested mother — presumably an event which occurred in one of the previous games — the aforementioned princess has locked herself in the castle and is not receiving visitors, let alone missives declaring various eligible bachelors’ undying love for her.

Or is she? Fortunately, there is a selection of people around the castle who are able to get your sweet words of love to the princess, and it’s entirely possible that you might be able to get her to come out of her room, if only you can just get that message to her.

These people — including the princess herself — are represented by the 16 cards that make up the complete Love Letter deck. Each is marked with a number, which denotes how “close” that person is to the princess, and each number also corresponds to a particular type of character. All the “1” cards are guards, for example, while number “8” is the princess herself. Certain cards, such as the princess, her best friend the Countess, the prince and the king, only have one card each; others have several duplicates, with the most numerous being the guards.

A round of Love Letter runs thus: first a single card is removed from the deck, without anyone seeing what it is. Following this, each player is dealt a single card, which becomes their hand. On each player’s turn, they draw a card from the communal stack of remaining cards and either discard it or the other card in their hand. When a card is discarded, its special ability must be resolved. If a player discards the princess, they are out of the round as the princess has thrown their letter into the fire. Other cards are laid face-up in a stack in front of the player, allowing the others to see which cards have been discarded already, and thus deduce which ones are probably in the other players’ hands.

Knowledge of the other players’ hands is extremely important, as several of Love Letter’s cards have special abilities that can knock out players if you correctly identify their cards. Guards, for example, allow you to ask another player if they have a specific card in their hand, and if they do, they are caught by the guards and are out of the round. The Baron, meanwhile, sees you compare your other card’s rank with that of another player, and the highest rank wins. This has the unfortunate side-effect of also revealing your hand to the player you’re comparing against, so you’d better be sure you’ll win before pulling out the Baron.

It quickly becomes apparent after a short session that Love Letter is a game about bluffing. Certain cards are clearly designed with this in mind — for example, the Countess card, which is second only to the princess in terms of rank, must be discarded if the player has the prince or king as their other card, since they don’t approve of her. However, there’s nothing stopping you from discarding the Countess when you don’t have either of these cards in hand — purely to make people believe that you do.

The round ends either when all players except one have been eliminated, or if the draw deck is exhausted, at which point all surviving players reveal their hands, and the highest-ranked card wins a token of the princess’ affection. The cycle then repeats until someone gains the required number of tokens, determined by how many people are playing.

Love Letter is a simple production, but it’s, if you’ll pardon the phrase, lovely. It doesn’t come in a standard game box — rather, it comes in a charming little red velvet bag with the game’s name embroidered on it. The cards themselves are of decent quality and sport some lovely artwork, and the tokens of the princess’ affection are that kind of little coloured transparent plastic cube that look like they’d be delicious but will actually probably cause you to choke.

The game itself is ideal filler material, as it’s over and done with within about 15-20 minutes, which makes it a great pre-dinner game, or a great game to play while you’re waiting for one of the rest of your group to finish having a long poo or something. It’s also quite ridiculously cheap, though it is a tad hard to find at present due to its sudden explosion in popularity.

In the meantime, find out a bit more about it over at BoardGameGeek, the best resource for board game information on the whole Internet.

1220: An Open Invitation to My Friends in the Southampton Area (and Anyone Who Can Get to Southampton Relatively Easily)

Hello! This is a curiously specific post, I know, but looking at my frankly quite impressive board game collection, I realise that I’m keen to share it with more people than I currently do. Don’t get me wrong, I greatly enjoy playing with our regular board game group — this very weekend we’re taking a trip away to do nothing but play board games for several days — but as a group we have specific tastes that means certain games get to the table more often than others, and certain other games rarely get to the table at all. Everyone has different tastes, of course, so it would be good to try out these games on a selection of people — plus it’ll give me some practice in teaching them to people, as well as the opportunity to socialise with people a bit more than I do currently. (Part of the reason I wanted to move back to Southampton, of course, was so I could see my friends more often — something which I could probably do more of now I’m here!)

What I thought I’d do, then, is outline the games in my collection in one or two sentences each rather than detailed writeups, then if any sound interesting or appealing to you, dear Southampton-based friend, you can let me know and we can arrange an evening of gaming good times. Sound good? Of course it does. Let us begin, then.

Here’s what I have to offer you:

Advanced Heroquest: More complex version of Hero Quest. Explore dungeons, fight monsters, solve puzzles. Best played as a long-term campaign in which your characters grow in strength over time.

Agricola: A game in which you play a medieval German farmer. By carefully assigning your family members to perform various activities, you must build up your farm to be as successful and profitable as possible while ensuring you can still feed everyone. You will probably beat me at this.

Arkham Horror: A long, cooperative game in which everyone teams up to battle one of the Old Ones from H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Relatively complex, but a lot of fun — particularly if you enjoy some light role-playing.

Ascension: A “deckbuilding” card game in which you gradually acquire more and more cards which can be played to either buy further cards or defeat monster cards to score points. Simple to learn, quick to play but a surprising amount of depth.

Blokus: A simple, abstract game in which you have a selection of oddly-shaped Tetris-style pieces and must arrange them so that they only touch corners. Meanwhile, your opponents are doing the same, and whoever uses the most of their pieces by the time no-one else can put a piece down wins. Available in four- and two-player formats.

Catan: A building and trading game in which three or four players compete to settle an island. Acquire resources, trade with your opponents and attempt to be the first to score ten points. I also have the Seafarers expansion, which adds a few extra mechanics and more variety.

Catan Card Game: A two-player card game loosely based on Catan in which players compete to build the best kingdom before their opponent does.

Carcassonne: A simple to understand but highly competitive tile-laying game in which players compete to control the most areas of French countryside by the time all the tiles have been laid.

Cards Against Humanity: One of the best “icebreaker” games I’ve ever seen — in Cards Against Humanity, one player asks a question or provides a “fill-in-the-blank” phrase from a black card, while all other players submit their answers using white cards with various words and phrases printed on them. The answers are then jumbled up, and the one who asked the question chooses their favourite, who then scores points.

Chess: It’s chess.

Chez Cthulhu: A gang of Old One-worshipping slackers must make use of their items and spare time in order to gain as much “Slack” as possible without going mad… or while going as mad as possible.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects: A beautifully-designed game in which you collect various cards in order to construct Cleopatra’s palace. Similar in many ways to Ticket to Ride — see later.

Cranium Cards: I’m yet to play this, but it looks like a fun party game. Lots of vaguely cerebral, creative and improvisational challenges.

Defender: A board game adaptation of the ’80s arcade game. Yes, really. Not really the best game in the world, but I keep it around for novelty value.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark: While resembling a “dungeon crawler” (a la Advanced Heroquest above), Descent is actually more of a team-based strategy battle game. A team of “hero” players, each controlling one unique character each, take on the forces of the Evil Overlord player to complete various scenarios which can optionally be linked together into a story-based campaign.

Dixit: A simple game about creative descriptions, knowing your friends and bluffing. Each player is dealt a hand of unique cards with pictures on them. The player who is currently the “storyteller” secretly chooses a card and describes it with a word, phrase or sentence. Everyone else then picks a card from their hand they think relates to the sentence, then the storyteller shuffles and reveals them. Player then vote on which one they think the storyteller’s card was, with points being scored according to various criteria.

Dominion: A card game somewhat similar to Ascension in that you gradually build up a deck of cards as you play, but where instead of fighting monsters you are attempting to build up a kingdom. A lot of variety due to the fact the game doesn’t use all its cards in a single play — instead, a random selection is chosen for each session.

Dungeons and Dragons Adventures: The Legend of Drizzt: A simple cooperative dungeon crawler loosely based on the popular Dungeons and Dragons role-playing system. This is strictly focused on exploring dungeons and battling monsters rather than role-playing, however, and makes use of an easy to understand system that is quick to play.

DungeonQuest: A heavily-random, brutally difficult game in which four players compete to make it to the dragon’s lair at the centre of the board, nick as much treasure as possible then escape without dying in the process. Harder than it sounds. Not very strategic, but amusingly fun.

Flash Point: A cooperative game in which players control a team of firefighters as they attempt to rescue survivors from a burning building. Each player has their own special abilities, so collaboration and cooperation is a must.

Fluxx: A card game whose rules change as you play.

Gold Thief: A simple card game in which you use various “character cards” to add or remove to your personal stash of gold coins in an attempt to have the specific amount requests on a “goal card” at the start of your turn.

Guildhall: A simple, quick card game in which you must collect “sets” of cards with the same job on them in order to purchase cards with points on them. Each card has its own special ability that becomes more effective the more copies of it you have in your “Guildhall”.

Hero Quest: Super-simple dungeon crawler with a wide variety of quests that can either be played as one-offs or as a longer campaign.

King of Tokyo: A very silly dice game in which you play one of several B-movie-style monsters as they attempt to take over Tokyo. Shouting “RRAAARRGH” while playing is optional, but encouraged.

Last Night on Earth: A survival horror game in which one team of players controls the survivors in a small American town, while the other controls the zombies as they attempt to eat their brains. Several different scenarios give this one a good amount of variety.

Lord of the Fries: You are a zombie that runs a fast-food restaurant. Compete against your friends to be the first to create various dishes and score points.

Monopoly Deal: How do you make Monopoly good? Ditch all the rules, pieces and board and turn it into a card game with lots of screwing each other over. Simple, quick and fun.

Munchkin: A humorous card game based on the “kill enemies and take their stuff” formula of most dungeon crawler games. Not to be taken seriously.

Mystery of the Abbey: Cluedo for grownups. Taking on the role of a monk in the titular abbey, you must use your deductive skills to determine who the murderer is while going about your usual monkly duties.

Mystery Express: It’s Murder on the Orient Express: The Game. To be honest, I am yet to play a complete game of this, so I wouldn’t mind busting it out with some people who would like to learn it.

Pandemic: A cooperative game in which players team up to battle four virulent diseases that are taking over the globe. Like Flash Point, each player has their own unique special ability to contribute to the team’s effort as a whole.

Pit: A game in which you shout at each other in order to trade cards and attempt to be the first to collect a set.

Risk: It’s Risk.

Scrabble Dash: A simple word game in which you must be the first to lay down letter cards from your hand to make a word that meets the requirements.

Smash Up: A simple and hilarious card game in which you combine two “factions” together to make a single deck of cards, then use these factions’ abilities to smash the crap out of various bases and score points. The factions include zombies, pirates, ninjas, robots, fairies, dinosaurs, aliens and wizards. So yes, you can be robot pirates. Or dinosaur wizards. Or ninja fairies.

Shadows over Camelot: A cooperative game with a twist: one of the Knights of the Round Table might be a traitor secretly scheming to undermine the others’ hard work questing around the realm.

Space Crusade: The classic Games Workshop game in which up to three Space Marine players enter an alien spacecraft in an attempt to take down the forces of the Alien player and complete a specific objective.

StarCraft: The Board Game: A board game adaptation of the popular computer game that actually has relatively little in common with its source material save for the factions and units. In StarCraft, you’re competing against your opponents for control of the galaxy and its precious resources while attempting to wipe your rivals out.

Ticket to Ride: A fun, easy to understand game in which you collect sets of coloured cards in order to claim train routes across America and score points. Bonus points at the end if you complete specific routes on cards handed to you at the outset; penalty points if you don’t complete them.

Uno: Simple card game, popular with naked people on Xbox Live.

Warhammer Quest: Variant on Advanced Heroquest and its ilk. Warhammer Quest is quite heavily randomised, but a lot of fun and friendly to both individual sessions and ongoing campaigns.

Whack a Catgirl: An anime-themed card game in which you lure an adorable catgirl over to you with various “bait” items, then whack her over the head with other amusing items to score points.

#oneaday Day 907: A Party Game for Horrible People

I had my first chance to try out Cards Against Humanity tonight. If you’re unfamiliar with Cards Against Humanity, you can find out more and even print your own copy here.

Cards Against Humanity is a project that was initially funded through Kickstarter last year, but which has since gone on to make its money via direct sales of its core set and expansion. Unusually, though, the game is distributed under a Creative Commons licence, which means you’re free to download and print a copy yourself if you have the appropriate equipment to do so. It also means that you’re free to tweak, change and otherwise mangle it as you see fit so long as you don’t then decide to sell your modified version as an original work. Which is nice.

Cards Against Humanity is a very simple concept. The Onion AV Club described it as “Apples to Apples for the crass and jaded” and indeed the concept is almost identical: each turn, the “card czar” player (which changes every turn) draws a single black card that features a question or fill-in-the-blank phrase — this is the equivalent of Apples to Apples’ green cards — and players then submit a white card, each of which contains a word or phrase that could potentially fit whatever is printed on the black card. The card czar then shuffles them around so they have no idea who submitted what, and then reads them all aloud. After this, they choose which one is “best” by whatever arbitrary criteria they wish, and give the black card to the winning player as an “Awesome Point”. Play then continues until… whatever you like, really. You could play to a score limit, a certain number of cards or, as the game suggests, until the “Make a Haiku” card comes up. The exact rules are deliberately open-ended to encourage experimentation and a feeling of simply having stupid fun rather than rules lawyering. It’s a party game, not SRS BIZNZ.

It’s extremely simple and easy to play, and works with groups of four or more people. While the rules that determine who “wins” a hand are deliberately vague and arbitrary, after a few turns it becomes clear that there is a degree of psychology in play rather than simply everyone rushing to put down whichever card has the word “penis” on it. Does the current card czar find dick jokes funny, or would they rather you tried to do something clever? Would a surreal and incongruous answer make them laugh? Assuring victory is much more than simple luck, and sometimes you need to know when to give up on a hand and just submit your “worst” card for consideration in the hope of getting something better next time.

Cards Against Humanity is gloriously politically incorrect, but only occasionally explicitly obscene. A lot of the dark humour in the game comes from certain combinations of cards and the interpretations thereof rather than cards that are simply outright offensive. That said, there are plenty of white cards that are deliberately provocative — “Firing a rifle into the air while balls-deep in a squealing hog” is one particular favourite — but these are spread throughout more “mundane” offerings to balance things out rather than making the game a tiring journey through everything taboo. There are plenty of amusing pop culture references in the cards, too, though a few are a little too American for international audiences.

Cards Against Humanity is a great party game, then, that deserves to sit alongside titles like Balderdash and Eat Poop, You Cat! as a Fun Thing To Do After (or perhaps Before, depending on how late your host cooks) Dinner. I recommend getting some friends together and giving it a shot yourself as soon as possible, as there was plenty of mirth and merriment tonight, to the extent that one participant (whose blushes I shall spare) laughed so hard their drink came out of their nose.

#oneaday Day 725: The Godslayer is Still a Bit Peeved

I’m a big fan of Ascension: Wrath of the Godslayer on iOS. It introduced me to an excellent deck-building card game and provides some excellent transatlantic asynchronous multiplayer fun. Always a bonus.

I’d been intending to check out the physical version for some time but hadn’t seen a copy of it anywhere. Until today, that is, when I found not only the original Wrath of the Godslayer set, but also a new package known as Storm of Souls.

I shan’t get into the nitty-gritty of Ascension‘s mechanics here as those of you reading this will either already know what it’s all about or have the good sense to look it up for yourself. Suffice to say its a deck-building game with some superficial similarities to Dominion, but a much faster pace of play and a greater focus on “combat” of sorts, though not specifically against another player. Rather, all participants in the game compete against the game itself, and whoever does the best is declared the winner and the Lord of All Awesomeness, or something. There is a plot, but as tends to happen with many board and card games, it has little to no importance on how the game actually pans out.

For those already familiar with Ascension, Storm of Souls adds a few new bits and pieces. Firstly, it adds a bunch of new cards. These can be combined with Wrath of the Godslayer‘s cards to have games for up to six people at once. I haven’t tried this yet, but I can imagine it’s a very different dynamic to two-player games.

Secondly, a new Event mechanic allows cards to enter play that have ongoing effects. For example, one Event strengthens the Cultist “cannon fodder” enemies, making them more difficult to defeat but also making them worth more points. Others add modifiers to certain cards, some of which require you to think about the order in which you play your cards much more than in Wrath of the Godslayer.

Then there’s the Trophy mechanic. Rather than Banishing certain monsters, putting them out of the game forever, certain monsters can be kept as trophies and banished at a later time for various benefits. This adds an extra layer of strategy which is very welcome.

As with many deckbuilding games, the joy of Ascension comes in building good synergies of cards and then unleashing them in a vast combo attack that looks suitably impressive. While it takes time to build up to this point in Dominion, in Ascension you’re there within a turn or two, particularly if you pay careful attention to Events and the type of cards you’re playing.

So is the new version any good? Most definitely. Tonight has been an all-nighter of play, hence the lateness of this entry — haven’t been to bed yet! I hasten to add that it hasn’t been Ascension that we’ve been playing all night — we also took on Dominion and Last Night on Earth. Ascension was the clear favourite though, particularly as its setup is straightforward enough to make three games in a row a very practical prospect.

So, I shall certainly look forward to playing it more in the future, and if you’re a fan of the deckbuilding subgenre of card games, I suggest you check it out. And if you don’t want to splurge on the physical edition, be sure to check out the excellent iOS version — a faithful adaptation that is very well designed for the small screen and the mobile platform.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I better get some sleep…

#oneaday Day 637: Card-Carrying Lunatic

I like card games. I’m not sure why. It’s one of those things where something indefinably pleasant goes through my head when I think of holding cards, seeing (hopefully) gorgeous artwork and enjoying a game that (in most cases) combines elements of luck with skill and strategy. It may be something to do with the fact that, statistically, I appear to be better at card games than I am at some full-on board games — particularly Agricola and Power Grid, it has to be said — but I’m not sure that’s quite the right reason.

I’ve started playing a couple of good games on iOS recently. One, Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer is, I believe, an adaptation of an actual proper physical card game. It’s one of those games that initially sounded horrendously complex, with all manner of stats and numbers floating around to make lesser men and women tremble in their +5 Boots of Courage. But, in fact, it’s a rather simple game with very straightforward mechanics and, like the best games, it’s all about what you do with those mechanics that makes it interesting to play.

Essentially, the game revolves around building a deck of cards and making use of their various abilities to score as many points as possible. Points are scored by purchasing cards using the Runes stat, and by defeating monsters using the Power stat. Both Runes and Power are acquired by playing thematically-appropriate cards and adding up their totals to provide a pool of points to “spend” each turn — for example, Apprentices add Runes and allow you to purchase additional cards, while Militia adds Power and allows you to kick the bottom of monsters.

Points are acquired as you go along but also tallied up at the end of the game, so there’s an element of uncertainty as you go along — additional points are added according to the value of purchased cards at the end, while defeated monsters and cards with point-scoring special abilities grant their rewards immediately.

That’s about it — you buy cards, you kill monsters, repeat until the available pool of points is depleted. Then, if you’re anything like me, repeat until bored, which is, in my experience so far, a very long time away.

My experience with the iOS version has certainly made me curious to check out the physical version, though I hear its components aren’t up to much. Based on this and Dominion, which I do own a physical copy of and which seriously needs an iOS adaptation, however, I think I can say with some confidence that I enjoy deck-building games.

The second game I’ve given a shot is a slightly different deal. Shadow Era is more along the lines of a CCG like Magic: The Gathering rather than using the preset cards of Ascension. As such, there’s (arguably) a lot more variety, and the game involves a lot more in the way of direct conflict between players than Ascension does — the latter involves a number of cards which indirectly screw over other players rather than attacking them directly, while Shadow Era is an outright fight between the two participants.

I’ve only had one game of Shadow Era so far but it seems like a solid game, and props to it for offering virtual cards for either real money or, for the more patient, from in-game soft currency, or hard acquired through levelling up. I’ll report back further on it when I’ve given it a bit more time, along with Kard Combat, codesigned by Richard “Magic: The Gathering” Garfield.

#oneaday Day 622: Party Smart

I may be voluntarily indicting myself into the “I am an old man now” club but I have come to the irrefutable conclusion that You Do Not Need Alcohol to Have a Good Time.

Well, duh, you might say. We’ve been told that for years. But how many people really believe it?

I’m speaking purely from my own perspective here as I’m more than aware that plenty of people use booze as a form of social lubricant prior to slipping their conversational penis into the Vagina of Meaningful Interactions. I’m saying it doesn’t really work for me.

I thought it did for a while. At University, as most people tend to do, I drank a lot, mostly out of a desire to be sociable and fit in — even with seeing a close friend suffer from (and, thankfully, subsequently beat) a drinking problem. I quickly confirmed my early suspicions that I didn’t like beer at all, which precluded me from most Student Night promotions, and instead opted for spirits or alcopops.

Even with those, however, I found I had an obvious “line” which, if crossed, would switch the night from being “entertainingly blurry” to “unpleasantly blurry”. Sometimes I crossed this line by accident with just one sip too many; others I was goaded and cajoled into it by the company I was with at the time; others still I, like a child in some ways, wanted to “test my limits”. The result was always the same, however; a kebab on the way home, a longer-than-average dump during which I’d often almost-but-not-quite fall asleep, a night of disturbed sleep wondering whether or not I’d be sick (to which the answer was usually “yes”) followed by a morning of being sick, barely being able to move and always taking a bin into the bathroom with me in case disaster struck while I was the wrong way around to puke in a manner which didn’t require cleaning up.

Despite the inevitability of the above scenario, I still continued to do it. Drinks of choice changed — vodka and Red Bull being a favourite for probably the longest, despite its ludicrous cost — but the presence of social occasions did not. Drinks down the pub after a session with a club. Monday nights at the local grotty nightclub following Theatre Club rehearsals. And, of course, the occasional house party.

I used to hate house parties, but I’d still go. Most of them tended to devolve into me finding my “line”, stopping just short of it and then spending the rest of the evening looking longingly across the room at some girl I’d arbitrarily decided that night that I fancied, and then didn’t go and talk to for fear of her thinking I was a dick, a perv or quite simply just someone she didn’t want to talk to.

In short, then, in a good 8-9 cases out of 10, alcohol didn’t particularly work as the social lubricant it’s sold as. A few half-hearted “woo, I’m so drunk!”s do not make for meaningful friendships and relationships, and as such I’m pretty sure that most of my aforementioned meaningful relationships and friendships started and were best cultivated when sober. Sure, there were times when I’d gone out, got drunk and had a great time with said people — but as time passed, these got less and less frequent, and the booze became less and less important.

When I finally left university and started work as a teacher, the demands of the job meant that for the most part I didn’t have time to drink, let alone the inclination. I dabbled with having a stiff G&T upon coming home from the first school in which I worked — which was a nightmarish shithole conjured up from between Satan’s very buttocks — but it didn’t particularly help with the growing feelings of stress and depression I had, and nor was I expecting it to. I had an occasional G&T because it was a nice drink in the summer, and it happened to be one of the few alcoholic beverages which I didn’t hate the taste of.

Fast forward to now and I haven’t drunk for quite some time, and I don’t miss it. The last few times I drank wine or vodka or gin, the taste was not something I enjoyed, and it felt like it “burned” on the way down, leaving me with a slight lingering feeling of unpleasantness after just one sip in many cases. Certainly it was enough to put me off a university-style binge, but it’s also pretty much enough to put me off it altogether. It’s unnecessary for me, it doesn’t particularly help me open up to people — though it does help me act like a dick, but then, I’m in no hurry to be the butt of everyone’s jokes for being wasted — and, in more cases than one, I’ve seen what it can do to people, and that’s not pleasant.

In short, then, I think I’m knocking it on the head. This isn’t a strict teetotal policy or anything but I’m certainly not going to seek out alcohol or feel pressured into it on social occasions.

I’ve been away this weekend and heard the phrases “you need to be drunk” or “you need to drink more” uttered several times. No you don’t. Or, more accurately, Idon’t. No-one needs to be drunk. No-one needs to drink “more”. You should be free to enjoy a drink if you enjoy it, but it should not be a necessity.

If this has come across as in any way sanctimonious, that certainly wasn’t the intention and I apologise — I’m simply saying how I feel about it and what works for me in this instance. I’m certainly not judging those who do enjoy a drink and know their limits — and equally, I’m not judging those who have a genuine problem and are taking steps to deal with it. Everyone’s different, after all. All I’m saying is this: if you’re socialising with me or at a party I’m throwing (haha, yeah, right) then have a drink or two by all means — just don’t expect (or, worse, demand) than I join you.

And don’t throw up on my carpet.

#oneaday, Day 342: Family Games: The Addendum

Merry Christmas from California, everyone. Having spent the day playing a selection of games that various members of my family purchased for various other members of my family, I feel I should add a few picks to yesterday’s post.

First up is Apples to Apples, which is an entertaining, silly game that could easily descend into drunken arguments between consenting adults. For the unfamiliar, the game tasks players with picking a card from their hand which is “most like” a card with an adjective on it that is placed in the middle of the table. Players take it in turns to be the “judge” of what is the best fit—and can be persuaded by other players—and the first person to “win” four hands wins.

It’s very simple, not very strategic and silly enough for kids to join in with. Good stuff.

Next up is Fluxx, which is a card game that people who haven’t really got into the board game hobby probably won’t have heard of. But the beauty of Fluxx is that it is simple to understand and full of random stupidity.

The reason it’s simple to understand is the fact that there are only two rules to remember—draw a card, then play a card. Everything else comes out of the cards played. New rules, victory conditions, limitations on how many cards players can have in their hand, how many cards can be laid in front of them, the works.

It may appear to be light on strategy, but once a few rule cards have been played allowing people to draw and play more cards at once, picking the right order to use the cards becomes increasingly important. It’s also very easy (and satisfying) to screw over your opponents throughout the course of the game.

Most importantly for family games suitable for holiday consumption, though, games never last longer than half an hour and more typically last around the 10-minute mark. Because it’s so heavily (though not completely) based on chance, everyone has a shot at winning, and it’s difficult to figure out exactly how to be “good” at it. This certainly keeps things interesting, and prevents my Agricola situation, where I like the game but get tired of playing it because I can pretty much guarantee I will never win. I know, boohoo, right?

Anyway. Today has been a pretty nice day all told. I got a nice watch, a nice shirt and some nice chocolates. Niceness. As I said a few days back, I kind of miss the days when Christmas was exciting rather than exhausting, but at least I’m old enough to drink myself into a stupor in the corner if it all gets a bit too much now. And there’s always iPhone and PC games to jump into and hide if necessary.

Later tonight, I will finally be seeing Inception, which I have somehow managed to avoid all spoilers about, even though the statute of limitations appears to be up. Looking forward to it, as it’s a movie I’ve been meaning to see for ages and never got around to. I also saw Tron: Subtitle I’ve Forgotten the other night, too, which is worthy of an entry all of its own, I feel.

For now, merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Enjoy your hangovers.