A Dark And Quiet Room

Whose turn is it?

Without further comment:

One
Two
Three
Four

Doubtless there will be more.

So.

One of my guilty game pleasures is Heroscape. Honestly, as a game snob, I really shouldn’t like this game. But I do. I think part of it is my history with miniatures wargaming, which this allows me to enjoy again.

The other is eye candy.

Seriously.

Check out these pictures to see what I mean:

A massive castle
Ice and bridge
Bridges and lava

The pieces lock together so that you can build whatever battlefield you want. The units themselves range from elvish archers to dragons to robots and more. It’s everything my geeky little heart could want.

More importantly, for this post, my children also love it.

In particular, I’ve noticed that Isaac, even at age six, does quite well at this game. He seems to intuitively grasp concepts like a pinning force, flanking, and pincer movements. So, yesterday, I decided to play a game of Heroscape with just him, discussing strategy and tactics along the way, and see how he did.

We talked through some things along the way, including force selection, and I was laying out my battle plan to him for a while to illustrate my two dicta for the day:

1) Always have a plan.
2) Always be ready to change the plan.

However, I was careful to allow him to make decisions, based on some of the basic principles that I was laying out. I want to be clear on this point: Isaac played the game essentially alone.

Which is why, when I say that I won by the skin of my teeth, I want you to be impressed.

Specifically, at the end of the day, I had a solitary Viking warrior to my name. The rest of my army had been completely slaughtered to secure my victory.

Indeed, the entire game came down to one exchange between my last Viking and Isaac’s last samurai.

I won, but I had to work hard for it.

I’m so proud.

I just added a new section to my links: Play by Web games. This is a fairly loose description, including Play by Email and various Java games. These are various boardgames that have been ported to the Web. When a site includes multiple games, I have listed them all, unless the list is too long. Feel free to leave comments with additional sites to add to this list.

Because I like Blue Moon, here are some strategic notes by Shannon Appelcline.

For those who have played Samurai, you should really check out Mike Doyle’s ongoing redevelopment of the components. It is very pretty.

Perhaps one of these days I should write about the Blue Moon card game. In the meantime, for those who care, here’s a link to a strategy article by Shannon Appelcline:

Strategy of a Game: Blue Moon, Part One: Hoax & Vulca

God is merciful. Arianna opened her eyes on Friday and is seeing fine. We’re still using the eye drops to make sure that she stays clear of infection, but she seems to be doing fine.

As a result, we were able to play our postponed game of Blue Moon City, wherein I came in dead last of four players. Indeed, Arianna nearly won. So, she is definitely much better than before.

This post has pictures of the final gingerbread Tikal set, which I referenced here.

Without further ado, a blog post about a woman making a Tikal set out of gingerbread.

For those of you who care, this is the first in a series discussing the game design of Carcassonne. Good stuff…if you care.

If not, then it’s still good, but you won’t care.

I feel like I should actually add something original to this blog. You know, something more than links to other people’s writing. That would be a good idea. But, today, I’m only thinking about how incredibly jazzed I am that I finally have my very own copy of PÃœNCT . Yay!

GeekList: Intelligence Report on Subject #M33P135: The Meeples.

This be funny.

For those who don’t know, a “meeple” is a little human-shaped game piece, particularly from the Carcassonne game series.

So, rather than sitting here, feeling sorry for myself while I try to hack up a lung, I have decided to be productive. Yes, productive! And so, I will talk about games. Specifically, I will talk about the GIPF Project. I’ve been babbling about this series for a while on this blog, so I figure that perhaps I should explain why I think that this is a big deal.

The GIPF Project is a series of six abstract strategy games, designed by Kris Burm, a gentleman from Belgium. In order of their release, the games are titled as follows:

GIPF
TAMSK
ZERTZ
DVONN
YINSH
PUNCT (to be released in October 2005)

Some people have complained about the names. “What does TAMSK mean?” Well, I’ll answer you when you tell me what “Chess” and “Go” mean. In the case of an abstract game, I figure that an abstract name is appropriate.

Now, many of you know that I am a game nut, but these games are special.

First, each of them are quality abstract game designs. Each has a brief, elegant ruleset which results in deep play. However, each of them stand out as having unique mechanisms unlike many other abstract games. For example, in GIPF, you make your moves by pushing your pieces in from the edge of the board, shoving others with you. The only control of the center that anyone has is by using lines of pieces extending into the middle. To give another example, in TAMSK you move pieces around the board, dropping rings on each space as you pass. When a space fills up, it is no longer passable. (This is similar to the lightcycles from TRON, if anyone out there knows what I mean.) This is only moderately impressive. However, the clever bit in TAMSK is that each of your pieces is a 3-minute hourglass, and the sand is running. Run out of time on a piece, and it is dead in the water. Each of the other games demonstrates equal creativity.

So there is beauty of function in each game.

Second, each game has a certain beauty of form. Probably the game that best exemplifies this for me is ZERTZ. The game does not really need to use marbles; checkers would have sufficed. However, there is an elegant beauty about the marbles that adds a special something to gameplay. In addition, the box art from each game seems to be able to express something of the character of the game. YINSH uses a windstorm as box art, and its play does tend to feel open and breezy. Contrast this with ZERTZ’s icebergs breaking off from a glacier into an arctic sea.

So there is beauty of form in each game.

But there’s more.

Back in 1997, when Kris Burm released GIPF, he announced the beginning of the Project. He also announced that, when completed, all six games would be able to link together into a larger game. The central game would be GIPF, and the other games would each have a corresponding special piece, called a potential, that could be used in GIPF. Each potential has a special power that is thematically related to the game that it represents. So, for instance, since TAMSK is all about time, the TAMSK potential allows its user to take an additional turn.

Of course, you may not want your opponent to use his potential. So, you may challenge his use of the potential. If your challenge is successful, his potential vanishes into thin air. But how do you make a successful challenge? It’s simple, really.

Just play the related game.

That’s right. Set aside the GIPF board, pull out TAMSK, and play. If you win, then your challenge succeeds. If your opponent wins, then his potential works.

So, each game can function on its own but, with the potentials, they can also be welded together into an ubergame, requiring dexterity of mind as you slide from game to game.

This is also a thing of beauty.

So far, Burm has released the potentials for TAMSK, DVONN, and ZERTZ. A third expansion, not yet released, will contain the long awaited YINSH and PUNCT potentials. Once this expansion is released, the Project will be truly completed.

Some people might think that playing the entire Project sounds like torture, but, to me, it is nearly the perfect game. Each game requires a different sort of thinking, so it is like playing out an extended a battle of wits where the opponents grapple in a changing landscape of shifting environments.

Maybe I’m just masochistic. Or maybe, it’s because I can appreciate beauty where I see it.

(If you’re still curious, and not just bored, here is a poetic review of the Project, released when YINSH was released. This was the article that finally communicated to me the niftiness of the Project.)

And the name is…

PÃœNCT

Hooray!

The GIPF Project is a triumph of modern abstract design, and I’m glad that Kris Burm has managed to achieve his lofty goal.

(Well, actually he still has to provide us with YINSH and PÃœNCT potentials, but I’ll allow that to pass by for now.)

This should be available by the Essen Game Fair in October. I’m greatly looking forward to it.