Premier League Soccer Game

I've been an amatuer game designer nearly as long as I can remember. I started 40 years ago -- making up my own games using a deck of cards when I was bored on Sunday afternoons at Grandma's house. I can recall playing Kingmaker for the first time in 1976 and then making up a simplified version the next day at school. A group of friends and I spent much of 7th grade English class playing my version of the game. Al and I developed a space exploration game (what today would be refered to as a 4x game) in 1983 that went under several names, including The Carl Sagan Game and Mercantilism. For much of the 1980s and early 1990s, Mercantilism was our group's most-played game. We probably would still play it, but Twilight Imperium has much the same feel (plus cool plastic pieces).

During the 1970s I created a number of sports games, including baseball, football and hockey. The baseball game was eventually replaced in 1981 by APBA, and the football game was eventually replaced in 1982 by Strat-o-Matic. The hockey alternatives, however, were always weak. I played dozens of games of Strat-o-Matic Hockey and APBA Hockey over the years, but wasn't impressed with either of them. So, my hockey game never really disappeared during this time. In fact, Rick, Fred, Al, Doug, Mike and I had a hockey league for three years using my game.

As I've mentioned before, both boys are really into soccer, especially the English Premier League. I've been trying to learn the players, and last week I came up with the idea of redoing my hockey game as a soccer game. So far, the game is a success; Patrick and I played three games last weekend pitting my Chelsea against his favorite Manchester City. Man City won the first game, 2-1, with a pair of goals from Carlos Tevez. (Frank Lampard notched the sole Chelsea tally.) The second game was all Chelsea; Didier Drogba's two goals combined with one each by Lampard and Nicolas Anelka for a 4-0 score. In the third game, Lampard and Tevez traded goals at the beginning of the second half, but Drogba's 60th-minute goal proved the difference-maker in a 2-1 Chelsea win.

So far the game is getting the stats right. Obviously the correct people are scoring, and given the final table from last season, it's not surprising that Chelsea would dominate (although interestingly enough, Man City did win both matches in the real season last year, with Tevez scoring two of their three goals). There are parts of the game that seem awfully repetitive to me, but to the extent that Patrick represents the target audience, the market research is coming back positive. Right now I'm working on adding yellow and red cards. The next step will be to sort out how formations will factor into the game.

Anyone willing to playtest should let me know.

Sunday Descent

The boys and I finally had a chance to try out Descent yesterday. I had ordered the game back in March. We were all excited about trying it, but didn't really have a chance until yesterday. We had hoped to try it on Saturday with Al and Drew, but once Steven and Jeff were available, we decided to switch to another Fantasy Flight event game, Twilight Imperium.

Descent is a dungeon crawl game with 3D pieces that clearly owes a lot to Milton Bradley's 1989 classic, HeroQuest. Up to four players take the role of heroes, while another player controls the dungeon's monsters. I had picked up Heroquest in a trade in the fall of 2007 (in exchange for the WWI plane combat game Sopwith). The boys and I tried HeroQuest a few times and enjoyed it, but the copy I traded for was missing a few pieces. Descent also has more variety in terms of heroes, monsters and quests.

We had a good time playing yesterday. The game bogged down a little bit, as each of the boys was trying to control two heroes. This was probably a bad decision since we were still learning the rules. I think we will definitely enjoy the game once we're up to speed on the rules.

Space ... The Final Frontier

The gang got together for some gaming yesterday. We had originally discussed attending The Geekway to the West gaming convention, here in St. Louis, but our schedules were a little full. We decided to save the money and check out the game room at Al's new place.

Since we had a full day, we decided to try out Twilight Imperium (3rd Edition) by Fantasy Flight Games. TI3 has become one of our favorite "event games" since Al bought it a couple of years ago. Al, Steven, Drew, Andrew, Jeff and Patrick played. (I helped Patrick out, since it was his first game, and I also served as "Rulebook Guy.")

The game is set in space. Each player represents a race of beings that builds ships, expands, takes over more planets, researches techonology and expands some more. It combines the stock mechanics of most "civilization" games, such as a technology tree and lots of plastic pieces representing lots of different types of units. It also has a few Euro elements, such as trading and strategy cards (that are similar to the role cards that are in various Euros).

The game is a lot of fun, but its downside is the time it takes to play. We started setting up at 4 PM, took our first turns about 4:45 PM, took a 45-minute dinner break about 7 PM and finally quit about 12:30 the following morning. The winner is the first to reach ten victory points, and we had a three-way tie for six when we called it. We've only finished one game -- ever -- and that took about twelve hours. We might be a little slow. (After all, our group does have the person who invented "fake thinking.") But I can't imagine a group of five or six finishing this game in less than eight hours. I found a fun video on YouTube that is a a stop-motion video of a three-player game.

Can War be a Game?

An article in Monday's Providence (Rhode Island) Journal describes the anger felt by members of the Nipmuc and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes regarding the forthcoming Multiman Publishing game, King Philip's War. King Philip's War (also known as Metacom's War) was a series of battles between English colonists and a group of Native American tribes during 1675-1676. "King Philip" was the nickname given to the leader of the Native American tribes.

I know that I'm not alone among wargamers in that (more than once) I've been a little embarrassed describing my hobby to non-gamers. Most non-wargamers are used to games being about making money, searching for treasure, building cities or traveling across the globe. In short, any violence (such as that found in Clue or Risk) is very abstract and/or cartoonish.

For most folks, games are either tests of abstract thinking skills with little or no theme (such as in chess) or a thematic means of escape (such as in Monopoly). Wargames are not abstract -- they clearly have a theme. But it's hard for most people to understand how a theme based upon death and destruction might provide escape for anyone other than a psychopath. I don't think that I'm a psychopath, but I do understand the confusion they have.

So, what is the appeal of wargaming? I've met a few wargamers over the years who don't notice the theme -- and view wargames as very complex versions of chess. But 99% of the wargamers I've met (in person and online) have two things in common: (1) they enjoy history, and (2) they enjoy thinking about how different decisions might have caused events to unfold differently. Thus, most wargamers enjoy wargames (such as GMT's Here I Stand) and other games ( such as Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium) that combine the battles with diplomacy, research and resource management.

Wars and battles have always made for fascinating turning points in history. So it's natural that history buffs often become wargamers (and visa versa). A good historical boardgame (as some wargamers prefer to call them, in large part, I suppose, because it sounds less violent) can take you back -- or even better, put you in the role of Lincoln, Grant or Lee during the American Civil War; Henry VIII, Charles V or Martin Luther during the Reformation; or Ike, Patton or (yes, even) Hitler during World War II. Facing the decisions they faced doesn't force you to share their beliefs. (I find it amusing that my son Andrew loves his Jesuit high school, yet enjoys playing the Protestants in Here I Stand.)

So what do I think of the unhappy Native American tribes? I think much of their confusion sits in the convential use of the word "game." In normal usage, a "game" is trivial. A game depicting King Philip's War might be understood to trivialize an important time in their histories. My guess is, however, that the "game" will introduce several hundred people to that important time, and (far from trivilizing their tribes) it will generate new-found respect. But I understand their confusion -- I sometimes feel it myself.