Memorial Day Gaming

Over the years, it's become a little bit of a group tradition to play games over Memorial Day Weekend. By far, the biggest Memorial Day Weekend game-fest was 2004, when (in addition to several smaller games) we played Napoleon in Europe on Saturday, Mare Nostrum on Sunday and Joan of Arc on Monday. (St. Joan's feast day is May 30th, so we often try to fit a Hundred Years War game into the mix.) We've already fit two sessions into this weekend, and there's a chance we'll work in one more.

Saturday afternoon and evening we played Here I Stand. Andrew's Hapsburgs scored an autovictory in Turn 3. The Hapsburgs started the game by launching two major attacks into Drew's France. Steve's English also piled on, while Jeff's Ottomans made the usual push into Hungary. Meanwhile my Protestants got off to a good start in the religious struggles in Germany, as Al's Papacy struggled. The Hapsburgs also arranged a marriage that brought the Venetians in as their allies.

In Turn 2, the Ottomans made it to the gates of Vienna, but were stalled as a Janissary revolt near Istanbul cut their supply lines. The Hapsburgs and English worked a truce with the French that yielded Bordeaux to the Hapsburgs. This allowed the Hapsburgs to focus their energies in the New World, where they conquered several native peoples and founded several colonies. They also gained the Genoans as allies. Meanwhile the Reformation largely stalled, despite the Papacy being forced to devote resources to defending against a French army in Florence. Meanwhile Henry VIII moved through three wives before Edward was finally born.

In Turn 3, the Ottomans reached an official peace accord with the Hapsburgs, but Barbarossa's pirates continued to harrass Hapsburg and Papal shipping. As the Reformation came to grinding halt, the Hapsburgs and English launched expeditions to the New World. The Hapsburg victory came when they arranged yet another marriage, bringing the Scotts in as their allies. This gave Andrew enough keys to score the autovictory.

Today (Sunday) Andrew, Al, Drew, Steven and I played Power Grid. The gameboard is a map of the US. Players buy power stations (using an auction mechanic), the resources to power them and connections to US cities. Powering cities provides income that allows the players to buy more and expand. The game is very popular (currently ranked #5) at BoardGameGeek, so I was happy to give it a try. The components are nice (although the map is a little ugly). I was pleasantly surprised that the bookkeeping is fairly easy. And the mechanics introduce a lot of factors without a lot of fiddliness. So I did enjoy the game. I do think that the game would be far less interesting with three or four people, however. I also managed to win, which indicates a serious flaw somewhere in the game design.

I'm a Loser

A new NBER paper by Steven Levitt and Thomas Miles concludes that there is an important skill component in poker. The two economists look at year-to-year results in the World Series of Poker -- an annual tournament that's open to anyone willing to pay the entry fee. They find persistence in players' performance, which indicates that skill is important. If poker was purely luck-driven, players who finished near the top one year should be randomly spread out the following year; but they're not. This result doesn't surprise me; many of the games I play have a luck component (such as dice and cards), but that doesn't mean that skill plays no role. (As an interesting aside, Leveitt and Miles point out that several studies find that there is virtually no persistence in the management of mutual funds.)

Seeing this study was somewhat timely, as I've been thinking a lot this week about my (lack of) skills as a gamer. A few weeks ago I was describing the Avalon Hill game Diplomacy to a colleague at work. He was surprised when I told him that not only was I not a strong player, but that I had never won a game. It reminded me of a discussion we had about a year ago, when he asked me what games I was "good" at. And I had a hard time naming one.

I'm twelve years younger than my brother, Dennis, and, growing up, he never took it easy on me when we played games. I was OK with that. In fact, (aside from helping a new player with the rules and basic strategy) I don't understand people who are afraid to play to win. (Being rude, of course, is a different matter altogether.) I learned early on, as a child, that I had to be able to enjoy playing a game -- win or lose.

Perhaps that "just enjoy the game" attitude handicaps me in some way; maybe it robbed me of a "winning attitude." But I really don't win all that often. So, when my friend asked me what games I'm good at, I was stumped. For the sake of discussion, the definition of good might be that you win more than your "fair share." So, you'd expect an average player to win a two-player game 50% of the time or a four-player game 25% of the time. Since I'm usually the rules guy in my group, I can think of a few games (such as Kingmaker) that I "know" better than most people, in the sense that I know the rules, the cards, and the odds. But (at least for me) that doesn't seem to translate into victory.

Pressed for an answer, I told my colleague that I was "good" at Avalon Hill's History of the World. My recollection was that I had won that game more than my "fair share" of times. Then I started playing History of the World at GamesByEmail with a mixture of long-time friends (such as Al, Steve, Jeff, Andrew, Tom and Mike) and some strangers that I met at BoardGameGeek. From November 2010 through mid-May 2011, I managed to lose 15 straight games. A couple of them were close-run things that could have gone in my direction, but most weren't. Zero for freakin' 15 in the game that I thought I was "good" at.

Which is a long was of saying that I finially won game number 16 by sneeking out a one-point last-turn victory over Tom, who is good at the game despite that fact that he's over 30 years younger than I am and just learned the game last fall. Maybe it's because he doesn't have an older brother.

First try of APBA Soccer

As hoped, Dennis, Teresa and Mom bought me APBA Soccer for my birthday last week. Patrick and I were able to give it a quick try last weekend, with Patrick taking 2010 Barcelona and me taking 2010 Inter Milan. Barcelona won 1-0.

My first impressions are mixed. The good news is that it's a nice enough game. It definitely feels like you're watching a soccer game. Note, however, that I said "watching." It's probably the nature of the sport that, unlike American football, where the coach calls plays, once you set your starting 11 and pick a formation, your job is done until you feel the need to switch.

One exception, that I feel is the most creative part of the game, is the "clutch points" system. Each team starts with a certain number of clutch points. Better teams start with more, so, for example, Barcelona starts with 10. These points can be "cashed in" to alter the game. For example, a few minutes into our game, I cashed in 5 clutch points so that a red card on my center back would be "discussed by the referees" and turned into a yellow card. Patrick used 5 points for his goalie to make a great save.

Part of what makes APBA Baseball so enjoyable is its elegance. Roll on the card; look on a chart. Eighty percent of the time you'll know the result without even looking. But part of the problem with APBA Football, Hockey and Basketball was the amount of bookkeeping required. At some points the amount of calculating and re-calculating in those games makes it feel like you're doing your taxes. Every lineup change requires re-calculating various numbers. The bad news is that APBA Soccer does require a new set of calculations every time a lineup change occurs. The good news is that lineup changes are less frequent in soccer than in the other sports.

My biggest complaint about APBA Soccer is the awful rulebook. The rulebook is poor from a technical standpoint, an editing standpoint and an aesthetic standpoint. I plan to write a full review at BoardGameGeek, but the rulebook looks like it was typed -- literally, on a typewriter -- and then copied. Several parts are unclear or missing. So, while the author felt the need to explain the positions (something I'm guessing anyone who would buy the game would know), he or she didn't include such simple instructions as how to restart the game after an injury. Finally, while not everyone gets as worked up as I do about missing commas before independent clauses, there are parts of the rulebook with missing words and non-sentences.

APBA also made the decision to downsize their tables, presumably to save money. The irony is that, when I discovered APBA in the 1980s, I had a small budget and good eyes. I would have gladly made do with smaller boards in exchange for a lower price. Now I have more money but bad eyesight, and I really miss the big boards.

I'm looking forward to playing some more this weekend.

St. Louis Maroon Knights FC -- Week 2

This is a continuation of the football season started in the previous post.

Fresh off of our 2-1 victory in Kiev, the Maroon Knights headed back home to prepare for week two. The team looked good on the pitch, but the front office discussion was glum. The signing of Park Lee had drained the bank account, and since there would be no income from the away match, we had to start by laying off the team's assistant manager.

Equally important, the medical staff reported that Welsh midfielder Cecil Bowen's knee was hurt in the first match. Since the team only has five middies on the roster (and no one from the youth squad seems ready to make the leap), manager Angus Collins couldn't play the 4-5-1 formation in the second match versus Bucharest. Instead, striker Jory Cornish got the call, and the team went with a 4-4-2 formation.

A total of 13,500 fans showed up for the home match against Bucharest. Cornish had two solid chances in the first half, but couldn't convert. Instead Bucharest went up 1-0 in the 42nd minute and then made it 2-0 in the 63rd. Guyaese wingback Samuel Buxton sliced the deficit in half with a tally in the 68th minute, but Bucharest responded two minutes later with another goal, making it 3-1. Park Lee made it a one goal game in the 81st minute, but the Maroon Knights couldn't notch the equalizer. The game ended 3-2.

The inury to the 32-year-old Bowen might have been the difference, as it forced the Knights to play out of their prefered formation. And, while Bowen appears ready to come back for next week's game against Istanbul, the medical staff reports that American midfielder Owen Jessup is llikely to be out of action. Collins will need to decide whether to stick with Cornish as a striker or to play someone out of position.

After two weeks, the league table is as follows:

Club	W	D	L	GS	GC	Pts
Bordeux	2	0	0	9	3	6
Paris	1	0	1	6	4	3
St. Louis	1	0	1	4	4	3
Kiev	1	0	1	3	3	3
Bucharest	1	0	1	5	7	3
Athens	0	2	0	3	3	2
Marseille	0	1	1	2	5	1
Istanbul	0	1	1	3	6	1

St. Louis Maroon Knights, FC

One of the amazing things about BoardGameGeek is the number of self-published board games available. It's not surprising (to me) that many serious boardgamers are wanna-be boardgame designers. It's the same as every teenager with a guitar wanting to be a rock star, every English major wanting to write the next great novel and every movie nut believing he's a director.

BoardGameGeek makes it fairly easy for amatuer designers to post their game materials and solicit feedback. I've tried out a few of them. For the most part, these games are fairly rough, but, I suppose you get what you pay for. (One exception that I discovered last year was the very-fun Delve: The Dice Game.)

A couple of weeks ago, Luke Morris (Geek handle Hamster of Fury) emailed those of us who requested it a preliminary version of his game Footy Manager. The game allows one or more players to manage the front office of a soccer (football) club. Unlike other soccer games, such as APBA Soccer or All Time Championship Soccer (another self-published game), the game doesn't focus on the play-by-play of the matches. Players spend about half their time managing the team's roster and about half playing the games. The player's team starts as the lowest-ranked team in the fourth division of a fictional soccer league. Working with a paltry amount of money (and a roster of fictional players), the player tries to win enough games to work his way into promotion. The games themselves are OK, but the real fun is the "role playing" aspect of following your fictional players through their season/careers. It reminds me of following my fictional bomber crew in the 1981 Avalon Hill game B-17: Queen of the Skies or my fictional squad in the 1983 Victory Games game Ambush.

I started a game a couple of weeks ago, but Luke made some (much-needed) changes to the injury charts (and a few other tweaks). So I started anew this afternoon. Here is a short summary of the first few weeks for the St. Louis Maroon Knights FC. (Note that Luke uses British pounds as the game's currency, but I'm using $s instead.)

The marketing deparment was able to land a $2 million sponsorship deal with Barclay's, which gave me enough seed capital to expand our stadium's capacity to 18,000. It's a long way from a Premier League stadium, as only 5,000 of the capacity is seated -- the rest is standing room.

I also hired some staff. Having learned my lesson the first time through, I hired a full medical staff to help with injuries and a youth team coach to help feed new players into the roster for next season. (This is a lot cheaper than trying to buy players off of the transfer list.) I also hired assistant managers and coaches to help with training. This left me with only $1.6 million in the bank.

Speaking of the transfer list, most of the players were far too expensive. Henrik Jacobson, a 32-year-old keeper was available for $5 million from second-divsion club Turin, and first-division club Lyon wanted $3 million for Swiss wingback Thomas Hurlimann. Then I saw that 27-year-old Korean striker Park Lee was available from third-division club Bremen for $1.5 million. Lee was much better than my top strikers, so I drained the bank account to sign him -- putting my 30-year-old striker Jimmy Swales on the transfer list cheap. (I was able to move him to fellow fourth-division club Paris for $75,000.) That left $175,000 in the bank as I headed to Kiev for the first match.

Kiev is ranked 4th (of 8) in the fourth division, so the manager decided to play a 4-5-1 formation and hope for a tie. Attacking middie Johnny Shanks put the Knights up 1-0 in the 68th minute, and Park Lee made it 2-0 in the 81st minute. Kiev scored one in injury time to make it 2-1, but it was too little too late.

The first home match will be next week against Bucharest. In the meantime, I'll need to check the injury report to see who's unavailable. Hopefully a big crowd will show up, because we need the money.