Wall Street Journal Validation

A July 2nd article in the Wall Street Journal by Weekly Standard writer Jonathan Last discusses war-strategy games. Mr. Last summarizes the history of board and computer war-strategy games (such as Sid Meier's Civilization series) and a number of Avalon Hill classics (such as Diplomacy).

The article is interesting enough, and provides a nice history of these games for the casual observor. But what I find interesting is my reaction: I immediately forwarded the article to the gaming group (including Al, Steve and Steven). Given that there isn't a thing in the article that these folks didn't know already, I asked myself "why?" And the answer I came up with is sort of interesting.

But first, let me note that this reaction isn't that unusual. Within hours, a BoardGameGeek user posted a forum message alerting other gamers to the article. Similar articles in the past have also generated a quick posting at the Geek.

I think that these types of articles provide a kind of validation to embarrassed gamers. Let's face it: non-mass-market board gamers are a relatively small group. While the Internet and places like BoardGameGeek make us feel more "plugged in" and less like social outcasts than 20 years ago, we're still a little out of the mainstream. How many people at work play golf? How many watch football? How many belong to a book group? How many play poker? Now, how many play boardgames that aren't available at Target or Wal-Mart? Most of us don't even know how to describe our hobby. "My friends and I played games on Saturday.... No not really like Monopoly or Life ... more 'adult.' .... No, not *that* kind of 'adult.' ... Oh never mind."

Now, reduce the number of people in your hobby even further by being a wargamer. Most coworkers can understand a colleague who plays a game like Settlers or Puerto Rico as being an eccentric gamer -- similar to people who play competitive Bridge or Scrabble. But I rarely discuss my wargaming hobby with my workplace friends. (The one exception would be describing Kingmaker to a coworker who asked where I learned how to navigate office politics.)

Articles like Mr. Last's confirm that we're not completely relegated to gaming in our basements and weird geek-conventions. We're right there in the mainstream (or at least on page W9 of the Friday Journal). He even used the term "grognard" in the article.

I wasn't forwarding the article to Al to let him know that Henry Kissinger played Diplomacy -- Al already knew that. I was sharing some validation of our hobby -- and us.

San Juan Sunday

Gillian and I pulled out San Juan by Rio Grande for a Sunday-night game. San Juan (published in 2004) is a card adaptation of another Rio Grande game, Puerto Rico, which was published in 2002 and is the top-ranked game at BoardGameGeek. I bought San Juan in February 2007 (at Amazon, for $28.60). Gillian and I were taking a cruise in March, and I wanted to get a quick, easy and portable game that we could play in the airport, on the plane and/or on the ship.

The game is all of those things and is often recommended as a "girlfriend" game -- having a minimal amount of conflict. In fact it's sometimes criticized as being multiplayer solitaire. Unfortunately, while that makes it a good girlfriend game (and Gillian considers it one of her favorites), I find it a little boring. We've only played it about a half dozen times since the cruise (mostly with just the two of us, but once with Al and Linda). This was the first time we'd played it since last August.

The rules are online, for anyone who wants to check it out. There's also a free online Java version that allows you to play against up to three AI (computer) opponents.

Certain card combinations can generate big victory points in San Juan, and one of my favorites is to combine the Smithy, that reduces the building cost of production buildings, with the Guild Hall, that gives extra victory points for each production building. That's the combo that I was able to build tonight, giving me 12 bonus points and a total of 34. Gillian's favorite strategy is to build the Chapel, which can also produce a number of bonus points. She wasn't able to get it built in time, however, so she finished with 25 points.