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GeekNights 20100720 - Chicago Express and Roll Through the Ages
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.
- Rym's Thing - Shiv Design
- Scott's Thing - Laser Shoots Down Plane
Comments
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
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.
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.
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.
Nothing like Scorched Earth (which was great - Funky Bombs ftw) at all.
Out of curiosity, why the hating on games with random elements in the vein of Yahtzee?
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.
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.
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."