This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.

GeekNights 20100720 - Chicago Express and Roll Through the Ages

edited July 2010 in GeekNights

Tonight on GeekNights, we have to boardgames to review: Chicago Express and Roll Through the Ages. (They're good, but not great). In the news, the NS2 Alpha is coming July 26th, Alien Swarm is here, and we attended a panel on the state of gaming in thirty years.

Download MP3

Comments

  • edited July 2010
    Boardgaming goodness tonight? Sweet!

    Geeknights 20100720 - Chicago Express and Roll Through the Ages

    Expanded Show Notes - Show Run Time: 50:07

    Time | Notes
    ---------+----------------------------------------------------------
    00:00:00 | Intro
    00:00:26 | Opening Chit-Chat
    | - The 'Eau de Hobeaux'
    | - The funk in the studio
    | - The definition of 'Hobo' vs 'Tramp' vs 'Bum'
    | - Scott and E. Honda biking over the bridge
    | - Street Fighter Tactics
    00:03:27 | News
    | = Natural Selection 2 Alpha is coming July 26th
    | - On taking time off work to play video games
    | = Alien Swarm and name confusion with other "Alien *" games
    | - Free Co-Op Robotron-like shooter
    | - Discussion of Steam's lack of server aptitude and the pain of updating games
    | = Attending a Y+30/NYC Gaming Meetup (www.meetup.com) panel on the state of gaming in thirty years
    | - Panel was good but didn't stay on topic very well
    | - Questions from the audience were weak
    | - Scott's Rules of Question Asking
    | - - 1. Your question will be a question - one sentence, must end in a question mark.
    | - - 2. Your question will be on topic
    | - - 3. Your question will not be about you, it must be related to the topic
    | - A lot of the panelists CEO-types and weren't well-informed on the current state of gaming world-wide
    | - As video games become more ubiquitous there will be a generation of people that rebel against video games
    | - Eventually the basics of gaming will become part of cultural/societal literacy
    | - One question touched on tabletop gaming, should have been granted more time
    00:19:43 | Things of the Day
    | Rym's Thing - The design of prison shivs
    | - Scott laments the lack of readers of BoinGBoinG
    | - No one reads any of the rest of the internet?
    | Scott's Thing - Solid-state lasers shooting down planes
    | - Tangent into space-based anime
    00:24:01 | Meta Moment
    | - Book Club - The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
    | - NS2 Alpha coming on July 26, Rym will be disappearing for that week
    | - Geeknights will not be present at Otakon
    | - Pax Prime is Labor Day Weekend, September 3-5, 2010
    | - - Geeknights will be in attendance
    | - - Egregiously Unrealized Potential
    | - - Game Mechanics and Mechanism Design
    | - - Other events TBA
    | - NYC Events
    | - - Aug 2 - Hack and Tell
    | - - Aug 7 - Mozilla Drumbeat
    | - Multiple events on Oct 8 - 10
    | - - NerdNYC Boardgame Night (Oct 8th)
    | - - 10-10-10 (Burning Wheel con in Astoria)
    | - - New York Comic Con/New York Anime Festival
    | - - Multiple Geeknights panels at NYCC/NYAF
    00:29:13 | Main Topic
    | = Chicago Express
    | - Recounting of board game night
    | - Game is flawed but has novel mechanics
    | - Goal is to have the most money at the end
    | - Players spend money to buy shares in different railroad lines
    | - Discussion of game's mechanics and how to best screw your partners in the rail lines
    | - Game can support a lot of high-level play but is not terribly balanced
    | - It is possible to mathematically eliminate yourself but not be able to end the game
    | - Fun game to play, but not highly recommended for purchase
    00:39:13 | = Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age
    | - Not related to Through the Ages
    | - Game is very similar to Yahtzee in its randomness
    | - Start with three dice, used to build resources (food, cities, developments, monuments)
    | - Game is very much like a group solitaire
    | - You try to score the most points before everyone else, but can't really have a major effect on anyone else
    | - Can't be made very interactive because it messes with the endgame
    | - Print-and-play expansion is available (Roll Through the Ages: The Late Bronze Age)
    | - Expansion changes scoresheets, making the ones that come in the main box useless
    | - Game is quick, easy to learn, and portable
    | - Neither game discussed is perfect, but both are good
    | - Discussion of the top-ten on BoardGameGeek
    | - Discussion of more tactics & stratecy for Chicago Express
    | - Reminder to game designers that game mechanics aren't copyrightable, so you can steal from the forgotten masters.
    00:49:09 | Outro
    Post edited by Techparadox on
  • I just played a few rounds of Alien Swarm. So good. It's just like when I first started playing NS.
  • Hansa Teutonica is a game you guys should check out. It's #37 at BGG (strategy category) and will likely jump much higher after Z-Man Games releases an English edition later this year.
  • I can't remember his name but I played Chicago Express last month w/ that same guy that always bring it at NerdNYC. I fell into that EXACT trap. My plan was to spend my cash and then watch my income grow, but I quickly forgot to reel it back and start saving. Midway through the game when I spent my last dollar the guy who owns the game looked at me like I was crazy and said "you do realize that money is victory points, right?" and I went "oh shit, I forgot." From that point on I didn't spend a dollar of my own money, and won the game by $30. I would love to try playing this game one more time but unfortunately won't be at the next 2 board game nights, or the september recess.
  • Oh my gods, I loved Alien Breed (fyi. remix!) back when I was growing up in the late 90s. That game, along with Liero and Cannon Fodder were the three games I would always secretly install on any computer I could get my hands on. The best usage I got out of this method was when I was forced to attend this megachurch every Wednesday/Sunday as my friends & I would always sneak away to find some computer in the building with which we were able to play on. I can't even begin to count how many hours of fun (and general sanity) were had in that way. /nostalgia

    Which, is a very roundabout way of saying that i'm super excited to hear of a update take on AB is now being developed. I hope you guys decide to review it whenever it comes out.
  • edited July 2010
    Wow, I didn't even know there was an old version of Alien Breed. I've only played Alien Breed: Impact on the 360, but it's also on Steam. It's been out for awhile. It's ok, but not great. I beat the first episode, but I wouldn't pay for another one. I will definitely check out the original. I haven't played much Alien Swarm, but I can already tell that it is way better than Alien Breed: Impact. Also, thanks to Andrew, I learned that Alien Swarm was an Unreal mod from back in the day, and that is definitely the game we say being played at Gaming for HOPE.

    Liero seems very worms-ish.

    Whenever anyone talks about Cannon Fodder, I always get very confused. I played a game with my friend on his old old Mac called Cannon Fodder, but that game was basically just a really bad version of scorched earth. I never played the popular game called Cannon Fodder, so I always just remember the old one. And even though it was crappy, it had one interesting mechanic. Basically, you had three buildings you had to place on the map. Two of them were worth points to the other player, but one was a hospital. You tried to block yourself with the hospital because they lost points for hitting it.
    Post edited by Apreche on
  • edited July 2010
    Liero was Worms + Scorched Earth in realtime with splitscreen - very crazy to play it with someone on the same computer. It also had LAN functionality but most of the times I played it on one computer with a friend. That being said, when I did have access to multiple computers at my private school I did initiate a frenzy of gaming with other students (and with Liero in particular) until someone let the cat out of the bag and the school became aware of it. Luckily I never got in trouble as by the time the school got hip to why so many students were staying afterschool, Liero & other such LAN games were so big that no one was able to trace it back to me. Oh the good old days..

    Scott, the Cannon Fodder I was talking about is completely different from the one you are apparently thinking of (it was a PC game for one). This game was involved leading a squad of soldiers around a map of enemies and you would have to point/click on said enemy soldiers to blow them up with whatever weapons you had/found.
    image
    Nothing like Scorched Earth (which was great - Funky Bombs ftw) at all.
    Post edited by ThirdWorldMan on
  • edited July 2010
    Scott, the Cannon Fodder I was talking about is completely different from the one you are apparently thinking of (it was a PC game for one).
    You're talking about the old game from Sensible Software, right? That screen shot looks damned familiar - I think I remember playing that on my parents' Amiga back in the day. T'was immense fun.
    Post edited by Techparadox on
  • I guess I never knew it originally was a Amiga game, but yes, that is the one.
  • edited July 2010
    Sensible Software did a huge amount of C64 and ZX Spectrum development back in the day and then transitioned from there into developing for the PC and Amiga in addition to some of the consoles. The Sensible Soccer series was the other huge hit they had. My dad was a die-hard Commodore user and at the time the rest of the world was using PC clones we were using an Amiga. It made gaming an interesting proposition because a lot of the stuff we picked up were UK imports, and there was actually a local newsstand that would get in copies of Amiga Format and Amiga Power imported from the UK (complete with cover-disk floppies!) that were a godsend when it came to being able to demo the games before buying them.
    Post edited by Techparadox on
  • Bump with better-late-than-never show notes in the earlier post.

    Out of curiosity, why the hating on games with random elements in the vein of Yahtzee?
  • RymRym
    edited July 2010
    why the hating on games with random elements in the vein of Yahtzee?
    Unless you're feeble-minded, there are no interesting decisions to be made in Yahtzee. It's a a solved game, and victory comes down to nothing more than luck. Random elements are fine: they keep a game from becoming stagnant (see the Puerto Rico plantations). But entirely random games are not fine: why not just flip a coin and save yourself the trouble?

    Granted, Yahtzee is a great game for kids before they solve it. It teaches valuable skills, and is fun. But once you're smart enough to know the optimal strategy, there's no point in ever playing it again.
    Post edited by Rym on
  • I can dig your explanation, especially since I haven't touched Yahtzee in years. I wasn't a huge fan of it to begin with and it was the game that all my ex-wife's friends wanted to play at their "let's all get together and act like drunken morons" events, which pushed it even further down the "probably not ever going to play it again" ladder.
  • If you liked Roll Through the Ages, you should check out To Court the King. It's Yahtzee meets Dominion.

    In To Court the King, everyone starts out rolling 3 dice and based on what you roll (a pair, three of a kind, all odds, all even, etc) you "buy" one of the game's cards. There are two types of cards; Cards that increase the number of dice you roll each turn and cards that let you manipulate the dice in different ways.

    It's a fun little game that even though it involves Yahtzee-like-play, there is strategy involved in choosing which cards you want to buy. It was a sleeper hit among my gaming group.

    Also, Imperial 2030 is a phenomenal game. Not only is there a rondle, but also like Chicago Express, players buy shares of the various countries. Whomever controls the most shares of a country gets to decide what that country does, whether it's build factories, attack another country, etc. Each country is worth a certain modifier, that you can increase based on how well the country is doing economically and militarily, and you gain victory points based on how many shares of that country you own multiplied by that country's modifier. As a result, one player may end up controlling multiple countries or may end up controlling none, but that doesn't mean you're out of the game. On the contrary, a player owning the 2nd most shares in multiple countries is more likely to win than the player who owns the most shares of just a single country.

    If you liked the shares aspect of Chicago Express, check out Imperial 2030. It's an updated version of Imperial, and in most peoples' opinions, it's a superior game.
  • Imperial 2030 sounds really good to me.
  • I think the Idle Thumbs guys talked about that game on their podcast once. It sounded really neat.
  • It really is a great game. You have to break away from the traditional Risk or other territory control mindset because territory control doesn't matter at all, at the end of the game. Controlling a country (or countries) doesn't matter at all. You are above countries. They are investments. They are a means to an end.
  • Looks like Chicago Express is getting an iPhone version soon http://boardgamenews.com/news/chicago-express-coming-iphone
  • edited August 2010
    Also,Imperial 2030is a phenomenal game. Not only is there a rondle, but also like Chicago Express, players buy shares of the various countries. Whomever controls the most shares of a country gets to decide what that country does, whether it's build factories, attack another country, etc. Each country is worth a certain modifier, that you can increase based on how well the country is doing economically and militarily, and you gain victory points based on how many shares of that country you own multiplied by that country's modifier. As a result, one player may end up controlling multiple countries or may end up controlling none, but that doesn't mean you're out of the game. On the contrary, a player owning the 2nd most shares in multiple countries is more likely to win than the player who owns the most shares of just a single country.
    So it's an investment game where people fuck with each other's investments? I like the sound of that.

    Also, the description on Board Game Geek makes it sound like it has a nice little cynical snarky bite to it: "The biggest investor in each nation gains control of that nation's government and decides what the nation will do."
    Post edited by TheWhaleShark on
  • Just posting this because I found it funny. Starting with the 2011-12 season, there will be a minor league hockey team called Chicago Express.
  • I propose we start a major league eating team and name it Roll Through the Ages
Sign In or Register to comment.