I participated in a Goldfish Draft this week. This is actually the second that I was part of, but the other one had nothing much of interest as far as my results went. One of the other participants, though, managed a comfortable win thanks to a serious combination that ended up in him gaining over 10193 extra turns!
(I know I haven't made the post about the previous Goldfish Draft that I said I would. I got bogged down in too many options, and frankly it looks unlikely that I will ever get back to it. Oh, well.)
The draft went passably well, but the results never quite managed to hit high gear. There's some nice combination potential but the key cards to make it all come together (a [mtgcard Stolen Identity] would have done very nicely) never quite materialised. In retrospect there were a couple of poor drafting decisions also, although not that many.
Here is what I ended up with; first the A deck:
[mtgcard_image Fastbond] [mtgcard_image Glint-Eye Nephilim] [mtgcard_image Gisela, Blade of Goldnight]
[mtgcard_image Anthem of Rakdos] [mtgcard_image Chandra Ablaze] [mtgcard_image Elbrus, the Binding Blade]
[mtgcard_image Liege of the Tangle] [mtgcard_image Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind] [mtgcard_image Timberwatch Elf]
[mtgcard_image Liliana of the Dark Realms] [mtgcard_image Borborygmos] [mtgcard_image Titanic Ultimatum]
[mtgcard_image Soul's Fire] [mtgcard_image Norin the Wary] [mtgcard_image Goblin Chieftain]
Quite a lot of gold in that selection! And this was the B deck:
[mtgcard_image Wheel of Fortune] [mtgcard_image Silverblade Paladin] [mtgcard_image Black Lotus]
[mtgcard_image Crypt Ghast] [mtgcard_image Sword of the Ages] [mtgcard_image Szadek, Lord of Secrets]
[mtgcard_image Extraplanar Lens] [mtgcard_image Ghave, Guru of Spores] [mtgcard_image Goblin Sharpshooter]
[mtgcard_image Underground Sea] [mtgcard_image Bayou] [mtgcard_image Goblin Bombardment]
[mtgcard_image Sarkhan the Mad] [mtgcard_image Searing Meditation] [mtgcard_image Crypt Rats]
I'm still working out the play sequence; I believe I'll exceed a million, and am hopeful of getting past the billion mark. I've no idea how much higher, if at all, I can go.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Risk
I played my first game of Risk today. Well, it was actually some computerised knockoff, but as far as I can tell the rules were the same and the map almost identical (although the names differed). It's never been a game I really looked at before; I'm mostly uninterested in multiplayer (i.e., more than two player) wargames as a result of early experiences with Diplomacy, and one even worse one with Machiavelli that would have been the last time I played games of that kind. I'm not temperamentally well-suited to games where breaking alliances is a key part of the play.
(I also have issues with games where much of the play lies in convincing players to adopt the courses of action that you wish them to. I'm all for setting up a situation through gameplay that shapes the desirability of their options, but it ceases to be fun for me when such facets are overshadowed by the persuasiveness of others (or myself). I enjoy tactics and strategy, but not negotiation and persuasion.)
This was a three-person game, and fortunately (from my point of view) there was no real attempt to do much negotiation. We had a random start, each claimed a continent (more or less), then fought out the rest. I was fortunate enough to win as a result of a couple of things, in particular being able to claim two continents early on with a very small combined border (this was where the map differed from the official one, and I think it is a flaw in the version I played). The other part was an overly cautious player adjacent to one side of that, enabling me to get away with glass cannon tactics far longer than I should have.
I don't want to comment on the quality of the game so much -- although obviously it plays fairly well -- but rather on the difference that I feel the computerised version made. None of us had played it before (whether physically or on computer) so we were all on even status there. We each got caught out by some interface issues, not understanding the attack rules and troop transfer mechanism at first. If we have been playing a boardgame as such we could have simply worked out what was going on and resolved it, but since here the computer was in control we had to live with the consequences of these errors. This may well have been ultimately significant, as that player I described as being overly cautious was, I believe, caught out by this several times, finishing their move early as a result of selecting troop movement.
But the difference that struck me afterwards -- and maybe I'm wrong about this, but it feels right -- is how little real investment there was in the results of battles. It was pretty much just "click-click-click", with win or loss following. Whereas if we were clustered around the board, dice clutched tight as we tried to infuse them with winning energy, making each individual roll... I think it would have been a lot more engaging. By streamlining that process away the game was quicker and easier to play... but I think it also lost a good deal of player involvement as a result. There was still the overall board position to consider and play for, but the narrative of the battles was lost.
I'm not sure that anything could be done about this, mind you. But it feels like something to keep in mind when producing a computerised version of a board game: What aspects of the experience are being lost, and if they are important, is their some way to provide a similar experience?
(I also have issues with games where much of the play lies in convincing players to adopt the courses of action that you wish them to. I'm all for setting up a situation through gameplay that shapes the desirability of their options, but it ceases to be fun for me when such facets are overshadowed by the persuasiveness of others (or myself). I enjoy tactics and strategy, but not negotiation and persuasion.)
This was a three-person game, and fortunately (from my point of view) there was no real attempt to do much negotiation. We had a random start, each claimed a continent (more or less), then fought out the rest. I was fortunate enough to win as a result of a couple of things, in particular being able to claim two continents early on with a very small combined border (this was where the map differed from the official one, and I think it is a flaw in the version I played). The other part was an overly cautious player adjacent to one side of that, enabling me to get away with glass cannon tactics far longer than I should have.
I don't want to comment on the quality of the game so much -- although obviously it plays fairly well -- but rather on the difference that I feel the computerised version made. None of us had played it before (whether physically or on computer) so we were all on even status there. We each got caught out by some interface issues, not understanding the attack rules and troop transfer mechanism at first. If we have been playing a boardgame as such we could have simply worked out what was going on and resolved it, but since here the computer was in control we had to live with the consequences of these errors. This may well have been ultimately significant, as that player I described as being overly cautious was, I believe, caught out by this several times, finishing their move early as a result of selecting troop movement.
But the difference that struck me afterwards -- and maybe I'm wrong about this, but it feels right -- is how little real investment there was in the results of battles. It was pretty much just "click-click-click", with win or loss following. Whereas if we were clustered around the board, dice clutched tight as we tried to infuse them with winning energy, making each individual roll... I think it would have been a lot more engaging. By streamlining that process away the game was quicker and easier to play... but I think it also lost a good deal of player involvement as a result. There was still the overall board position to consider and play for, but the narrative of the battles was lost.
I'm not sure that anything could be done about this, mind you. But it feels like something to keep in mind when producing a computerised version of a board game: What aspects of the experience are being lost, and if they are important, is their some way to provide a similar experience?
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