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GeekNights 20100615 - Bidding Games

MrPeriodMrPeriod
edited June 2010 in GeekNights

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss board games with bidding like Hoity Toity and For Sale. In the news, Nintendo and Microsoft have lots of new announcements from E3.

Comments

  • Victor FrostVictor Frost
    edited June 2010
    *GASP*
    Post edited by Victor Frost on
  • CremlianCremlian
    Mr. Period FAIL.
  • ......
    Howdy sir punctuation. How has life been for you?
  • GreyHugeGreyHuge
    I AM SHOCKED AND APPALLED.
  • TechparadoxTechparadox
    edited June 2010
    Interesting - show is posted to Libsyn but no update on iTunes yet. I'll check it again in the morning.

    [edit] and now it's up.
    Post edited by Techparadox on
  • AprecheApreche
    edited June 2010
    Interesting - show is posted to Libsyn but no update on iTunes yet. I'll check it again in the morning.

    [edit] and now it's up.
    Everything is now completely automated for us. Libsyn, ID3 tagging, forum posting, tweeting, the whole thing. The one mistake I see I have already made is that the forum post does not contain a download link. I am correcting that as of now. Anything else?

    I guess I can add an automated feedburner ping to speed up the RSS/iTunes uptake.
    Post edited by Apreche on
  • AxelAxel
    edited June 2010
    If there was ever any doubt in my mind that Scrym and I have completely different tastes, it was permanently gone when I heard them mock Majora's Mask. Seriously, what entertains you that you don't find Majora's Mask freaking awesome?
    Post edited by Axel on
  • AprecheApreche
    If there was ever any doubt in my mind that Scrym and I have completely different tastes, it is permanently gone when I heard them mock Majora's Mask. Seriously, what entertains you that you don't find Majora's Mask freaking awesome?
    Having the clock fucking reset when I'm in the middle of doing my business. What is clever and unique on paper proves to be annoying and tedious in reality.
  • AxelAxel
    If there was ever any doubt in my mind that Scrym and I have completely different tastes, it is permanently gone when I heard them mock Majora's Mask. Seriously, what entertains you that you don't find Majora's Mask freaking awesome?
    Having the clock fucking reset when I'm in the middle of doing my business. What is clever and unique on paper proves to be annoying and tedious in reality.
    Or maybe it just means that you're slow, because I was playing that game when I was nine or ten and I had no problems getting my business done before the three days were up. Also, you can just cheat and slow down time...
  • KoholintKoholint
    Yeah if you use the song to slow down time and plan ahead at all, the moon shouldn't be a problem.
  • AxelAxel
    Yeah if you use the song to slow down time and plan ahead at all, the moon shouldn't be a problem.
    Yeah...I dunno, the time was never a problem for me. I guess if you had no idea what you were doing and were being extremely exploratory, it might run out. But I've been slow in that game before and never run out of time...
  • AprecheApreche
    because I was playing that game when I was nine or ten
    When you had nothing better to do.
  • lackofcheeselackofcheese
    edited June 2010
    Interesting - show is posted to Libsyn but no update on iTunes yet. I'll check it again in the morning.

    [edit] and now it's up.
    Everything is now completely automated for us. Libsyn, ID3 tagging, forum posting, tweeting, the whole thing. The one mistake I see I have already made is that the forum post does not contain a download link. I am correcting that as of now. Anything else?
    It isn't on the "latest episodes" part of the main site; that's definitely a problem.
    Post edited by lackofcheese on
  • OmnutiaOmnutia
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    Broadcast sound desks could do this live. They should show this video to all the sound technicians in South Africa.
  • AxelAxel
    because I was playing that game when I was nine or ten
    When you had nothing better to do.
    Or when I knew that there was a new Zelda game coming out from the magazines I had read about it and waited patiently for it to come out, and then happily rented it. If we rented games that weren't fun, I would just stop playing them.
  • MattMatt
    edited June 2010
    I think part of my problem with Hoity Toity was that each color player has different strength cards. Yeah we picked colors randomly, but we didn't know the strength of our color coming in. Every player has the same total amount of money when you add up their money cards, and every player has theives of different priority. If you knew, say, what the highest possible money card was, you know that color holds a free pass at the auction house that you can hold until something truly valuable comes out. If you know you have the ultimate thief, you should be playing it more often. In addition, if you knew who held the big dollars, and what the real valuable items where, you could guess when the big money is coming out, and try to thief it. We didn't see a whole lot of thief action in the auction house because of this. I think it happened twice?

    The first game I played that night, Chicago Express, also had some really cool bidding mechanics. I know there are a million train games out there so I'm not sure if they are all like this, but this is the first one I had ever played. The game runs like this: shares of four different rail companies are auctioned off to start the game. At the end of every turn, the company pays out its current value, divided amongst the shareholders. In order to increase the value of companies, you must spend your turn either extending the rail line or building houses along it. The other option for your turn is to start an auction for a company share.

    The twist is that extending the rail line costs money, and you can only spend from that company's bank. The company bank only has the money that was won from auctions of its shares. Basically, if only you hold shares in a company, it's not going to have enough money to grow across the country, and will never pay you very much. You need to form alliances by allowing other players to own shares in that company as well, so you can cooperatively get the rail line to large-payoff cities such as Pittsburgh or Chicago.

    The game ends after a set amount of turns or after two companies no longer have any shares to sell, and the winner is the person with the most money in their personal bank. So basically, the strategy is to have your hand in the cookie jar of what you feel will be the most successful 2 or 3 rail lines. As opposed to my failure in the other bidding games that night, I won this game by winning auctions early, blowing all my cash by midgame, and then saving every dollar that came in from that point on. I spent most of my late turns starting up auctions for companies I had no interest in, meaning the players would be taking money out of their personal stash late in the game, but the game ended before they got their big payoff.
    Post edited by Matt on
  • MattMatt
    Upon further inspection it turns out this is a description of pretty much every rail building game ever made. I've got to play me some more of these.
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    I forgot about the bidding in Monopoly. Which means that my thing of the day isn't quite correct. Monopoly game over in 21 seconds:


    All you need to do is, on the first roll, say you won't buy a property, and the other person bids for it. Make sure they win the bid, but have to spend all their money. On their turn, they land on Community Chest and have to pay 10 dollars. Bankrupt. Game over.
  • AprecheApreche
    All you need to do is, on the first roll, say you won't buy a property, and the other person bids for it. Make sure they win the bid, but have to spend all their money. On their turn, they land on Community Chest and have to pay 10 dollars. Bankrupt. Game over.
    Yeah, I saw that video a few days ago, and the first thing I thought was "they're playing it wrong."
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    Can you mortgage a property if you only own one of that colour? Maybe my plan wouldn't work.

    Still, quite a funny video.
  • AprecheApreche
    Can you mortgage a property if you only own one of that colour? Maybe my plan wouldn't work.
    I'm pretty sure you can mortgage any property at any time. I will check my rules when I get home.
  • Luke BurrageLuke Burrage
    Well, I think bidding, winning the bid, then having to pay out money you don't have is the quickest way to end a game.
  • MattMatt
    Can you mortgage a property if you only own one of that colour? Maybe my plan wouldn't work.
    I'm pretty sure you can mortgage any property at any time. I will check my rules when I get home.
    Yeah you can definitely mortgage a property even if its the only one of that color. The only time a property can't be mortgaged is if you have buildings on it. Those have to be sold off for 50% of their original build cost before you can mortgage the property itself.

    If you start having to sell buildings, you know you're fucked, cause that's just money down the drain.
  • RymRym
    If you start playing Monopoly, you know you're fucked
  • MattMatt
    touché, salesman
  • TechparadoxTechparadox
    edited June 2010
    Expanded show notes!

    Geeknights 20100615 - Bidding Games

    Extended Show Notes - Total Run Time 1:00:35

    Time | Notes
    ---------+----------------------------------------------------------
    00:00:00 | Intro
    00:00:25 | News and Chit-chat
    | - Vuvuzela and other sports annoyances
    | - Boardgames and a possible Korean Spa get-together
    | - Scott's fungus
    00:10:13 | - E3 & videogame discussion
    | - Nintendo made some games...
    | - too bad none of them are new IP.
    | - But some of them fall in the "aww, hellz yeah" category!
    | - Metal Gear on the 3DS!
    | - The Kinect (a.k.a. Microsoft's Tech Demo)
    | - How one's gaming changes with time (re: party games)
    | - Gaming Seasons
    | - 3DS and Kid Icarus
    | - Predictions on 3DS Usage
    | - Gaming and Media Backlog
    | - Donkey Kong
    | - Epic Mickey
    | - Goldeneye
    00:27:39 | Things of the Day
    | - Rym - Goldeneye Standoff
    | - Scott - Hayabusa Space Probe Returns
    | - Rocks vs. Crystals
    | - Space Exploration
    00:33:49 | Meta Moment
    | - Book Club: Carl Sagan's Cosmos
    | - Connecticon 2010 info in the mix
    | - Pax Prime Panel info in the mix
    | - NerdNYC Recess on 19 Jun 2010
    | - Video Stuff is in the hopper
    | - Geeknights Weekend Gaming - pay attention to the forum!
    | - A tangent on Civ IV
    00:38:48 | Main Topic
    | - Bidding Games (or, how to win an auction!)
    | - Everyone in NYC should check out NerdNYC Boardgame Nights
    | - Bidding as an addition to Dominion?
    | - "For $ale"
    | - Gameplay in For $ale
    | - "Hoity Toity"
    | - By the creator of Settlers of Catan
    | - Gameplay in Hoity Toity
    | - Discussion of bidding as a game mechanic
    | - Bidding Strategy for incremental bidding
    00:59:34 | Outro
    Post edited by Techparadox on
  • AprecheApreche
    Expanded show notes!
    Are you typing those by hand, or is there some program you have that is doing the formatting?
  • TechparadoxTechparadox
    edited June 2010
    Hand formatted and typed up in Notepad++ before copy & paste into the code block. I make notes with timestamps on a scratch pad on my way to work and while listening to the podcast on lunch. I ganked the layout from another podcast's show notes because it fit well in a monospaced font, so now I essentially have a template that I just fill in. I've seen hacks for Mac apps like Audio Hijack Pro that'll let you copy the timestamp from the recording onto the clipboard so you can paste it into show notes, but I've not found anything that'll automate the whole process - and doing it longhand (so to speak) gives me a way to kill time when the afternoon gets slow. If I get totally bored I might knock out an app to accept input and format it accordingly, but work has been keeping my activity level above that line for a while now.
    Post edited by Techparadox on
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