Best Laid Plans of Mice and CONAN (Imperial, Power Grid... sorta)

When speaking of analysis paralysis in boardgames, the compliment must be paid to Ouch that he is the one least frequently affected.

We have a term in our group for choosing actions/moves with a minimum of thought; to act on instinct and gut feeling rather than belaboured machinations:

The term we use is "Conan Brain" or "Conan Play".

Like the loinclothed, bulgy barbarian of Ron E. Howard's creation, Conan brain-based play is direct, straightforward and accomplished with a minimum of fuss. It is often helped by an egg-timer.

This week, Ouch (as dictator) declared that we would attempt to play two games at once with Conan brain-style play. The games he chose were Power Grid and Imperial. I'll pause a moment for all the alarmed gasps from hardcore hobby gamers to die down.

The WAGSters Code (currently unwritten) demands that we try as gamely (pun intended) as possible to follow the dictat of the dictator. So, we gamely set up both Power Grid and Imperial adjacent to each other on the same table and gave it a shot.

We abandoned the concept after one turn. Neither game lends itself well to long pauses between turns - Power Grid in particular requires player interaction from every player in every phase. Imperial is only somewhat better, given the nature of the investor card and keeping track of bonds. We decided that this concept of simultaneous play, while interesting as a thought exercise, might be better conducted in practice with games that are more suitable - games that have long periods of downtime while one player decides actions and the others are doing nothing.

The idea of simultaneous play is not without merit. Certainly it would give our brains a good work out. We should attempt it again in the future with games that are famous for downtime - Tikal, perhaps, maybe paired with multi-player wargame like Shogun or Conquest of the Empire.

In any case, we played a relatively rapid game of Imperial. I did my best to think with Conan Brain. I had originally planned to try a three power strategy of trying to get Germany, England and Russia, but somewhere along the line I lost any chance of England and ended up with a bumper crop of Austria-Hungary and Russia.

Using both nations together to split up the Balkans, Greece and Turkey guarantees a huge development base, and their position on the map allows for simple, one front wars, unlike Germany, which often gets sandwiched between France and Russia (occasionally Italy) .

I made one attempt at taking over England but was promptly slapped down, so I shrugged and gobbled up Russian and Austria-Hungarian bonds like they were hotcakes. Ouch and Shemp seemed content to steal countries from each other, so aside from a pre-emptive invasion of Northern Italy (which they both held bonds for), I did very little but build up my two empires and snatch small snacking portions (Sweden, North Sea, Baltic) from England and Germany when I could.

By the time they noticed that I had two powerhouse empires which weren't constantly attacking each other and made a play for higher bonds to wrest control from me, I had enough capital to buy 50%+ of the available bonds in both nations and cement my control. I then made threatening overtures toward Germany (I had no German bond) and Italy, which kept things hopping on my warfronts, while simultaneously taxing and building factories as often as possible.

Although I had pulled fairly far ahead in the endgame both Ouch and Shemp made a creditable effort to catch up. I think the final scores were 181 for Kozure, ~155 for Shemp and ~120 (?) for Ouch. I ended the game with Russian pegging the 25 power point x5 spot, with a lot of nations still languishing in the x2 range.

Strangely, this ended up being almost the opposite of my intended "three separated nations with a smattering of other investments strategy".

I'm liking Imperial more and more with each play. It may displace Power Grid and Tikal from my number 2 and 3 positions in my favourite Euro game rankings. I appreciate that the turn order is mutable but straightforward, and even the initial starting player is determined by bid. I also enjoy the limited wargame nature of the game combined with the economic aspect.

This also marked the first time I have destroyed a factory during an invasion of Italy. In this case, both my opponents several held bonds in Italy, while I only owned a 1 or a 2. As destruction of a factory can slow down the power point progress of a nation, it can be very useful to use against nations where you have no investment.

"Fusion" games (Mission: Red Planet, Space Dealer, Beowulf)

To a certain extent, all new games owe a debt to previous ones... whether it's an elaboration of an old game mechanic, a variation on a theme, or a refinement of a game system. However, recently we've played games which seem to wear their inspirations so prominently that they feel more like combinations of other games, rather than wholly original works. Three such games are Mission: Red Planet, Beowulf and Vegas Showdown. I've started calling these "fusion" games, for whatever reason. I have nothing against this sort of game! As long as the result is fun, and different enough from it's sources to be worth pulling off the shelf, I'm happy to play them.

I thought it would be fun to combine them into a gaming session. JayWowzer was in attendence this evening (though Bharmer was not), and he brought along Space Dealer. Space dealer is definitely NOT what I would classify as a "Fusion" game... I haven't really played anything like it! Still, themes are meant to be broken, right?

Mission: Red Planet (Citadels + El Grande)

We started off with Mission: Red Planet. I drew the mission card with a bonus for having the most astronauts on Mars, so I decided to make that my guiding principle for the game. I figured I would pick the roles offering the most astronauts, and then use the prospector a few times to maximize their use. That didn't happen.

Maybe I'm missing something, but an earlier irritation of mine came back: there is something odd (and unsatisfying) about the number and types of roles! The penalty for playing the prospector (only placing one astronaut, no other ability), is simply to strong to allow a player to use him twice. If the powers of the other characters were of wildly different strengths, then I could see swallowing the penalty in order to get the powerful ones back, but as it is all the roles are normally usefull at all times. If I have the soldier left, I'll remove another player's astronaut, if I have the temptress, I'll convert another player's astronaut. Changing the destination and blowing up a ship are both usefull and disruptive. The scientist has it's place. etc, etc. All are useful, but none so much that I would pick the prospector twice to see it three times (for example). So, the game becomes: which one or two roles will I use twice, and when will I make the switch (which follows that every game will see each player play each role once over the course of the game)? That's too bad, because it seems like it would be interesting to build an alternate strategy out of recycling the same characters to achieve a specific goal.

Anyway, I played the scientist early, and it netted me a second mission card (have an astronaut in each of the eastern regions). I focussed on fulfilling those missions, but watched as my spaceships routinely got redirected to other regions (seriously, it happened several times). I actually quite enjoy this aspect of the game. This is area control done with a healthy dose of chaos, but it is fun as long as it's played fast. I found myself mostly in competition with Jaywowzer in the East, and since my ships kept getting redirected I was constantly in competition with Luch in the north-west (a region I had no interest in, yet which had nearly half my astronauts!!!). Shane had free reign of the south-west and Luch was sitting quietly in the center all on his own (two ice regions). Kozure had his eyes on the north and south poles.

When the dust settled, Shemp was the winner by a nose. He had 37, Kozure and I had 35. Things might have been different if Jaywowzer and I hadn't placed astronauts in Luch's center regions on the last turn... he had a major bonus for any regions he solely occupied (not a card either of us were familiar with. We'll be more careful in the future).

Space Dealer

We followed with Space Dealer. I'm not going to get into detail, but this is an odd one. Players each have a ship and a home base. They each develop their home base in order to be able to produce resources. They then take their resources and deliver them to another player's home base in order to sell them. Victoy points are aquired by 1) being the player to have sold the goods another player's base needed, and 2) having a section of your base receive what it wants by another player.

Therefore, you win by building a base others want to deliver to, and by beating other players to satisfying the needs of other bases. Nothing terribly special yet.

The game stands out because of the way it deals with time. A game will always last 30 minutes, because it comes with a CD which must be played along with the game. When it ends, the game ends. Secondly, each player gets two sand timers. When they want to take an action, they place a sand timer on the item they want to build/ move or use to produce a good. When the timer ends, the effect happens and the timer can be moved to another location. In other words, there are no turns. There is no downtime. No time to analyse, so no analysis-paralysis.

Does it work? I have no idea. In our first (and only) game, I committed so many mistakes that it was embarrassing. I would place my timer on resource production, only to realize that since my ship was gone all the resources would go to waste. I would put my timer on a new section for my base, only to realize I couldn't fit it anywhere. I'm pretty sure others were doing the same. It was fun, in a wacky sort of way. There was tension in trying to orchestrate things to produce the right goods and then send your ship to the other player's base before the guy across from you could do the same. A few times I would be waiting with my hand next to the timer, staring at Kozure's across from me, watching the sand go down to see who would make it first to Luch's base and satisfy the request (since you have to focus so much on what you are doing, it's not uncommon to go through the trouble of producing something and start delivering it, only to discover it's no longer available or someone else is trying to do the same thing at the same time). Anyway, it was fun and definitely a change of pace.

Beowulf (Lord of the Rings + Taj Mahal)

We finished up with our second playing of Beowulf. We corrected a rule we played incorrectly last time: players can risk once EVERY TIME an auction comes around to them (we were playing that each player could only risk once per auction). Still not that familiar with the board, but certainly it helped to know roughly what was ahead. With the risking system properly implemented, the tone of the game really changed. The first circular auction (Grendel's attack) was a brutal, long battle which saw players risking turn after turn. I've read that the odds of failing a risk is roughly 30%. I think that it must be less than that (15-20%, perhaps?). That, or we all were quite lucky throughout the game! Either way, risking featured so prominently this game that it seemed our hand was roughly 50% of what was necessary to win any hotly contested auction. It was dramatic and exciting, and certainly fun, but also very luck heavy. Knowing Knizia, there is a way to win at Beowulf without risking too much, but it probably takes a much sharper player to win that way. Right now, I'm seeing this as a game where you stack the odds in your favour and hope things pan out (this is an aspect of RA which I really like... that you play the odds and do your best, but things can play out in unexpected ways despite your best layed plans. Despite this, the better player will win most of the games)

I actually had a lot of fun. Certainly, Kozure seems to know something we don't, because he won this second game as handily as the first! I limped into the end and managed a second last place (as opposed to my last place showing last time). He seemed to always work it out so that he'd have the right resources at the right time. He had his share of lucky draws, but so did the rest of us. I hope the risks stay fun, and don't become an annoyance (I know, I know, that those who play this game a lot say that this can all be controlled to a certain extent. I'm even willing to beleive it. Like Ra, percieved chaos is a frequent complaint levelled at the game). It only mention it because there was SO MUCH successful risking this game that I can't imagine the next would see less. I feel that risking should hurt a little more often, to make the decision to risk a little harder, but we'll see.

It was too late to play Vegas Showdown, but I'm sure we'll see it again soon. Thanks to JayWowzer for coming, and for being our connection hot new games!