Games I Love: Dominion

I've been withholding final judgment on Dominion for a while now. The first few games I played, I wasn't really impressed. But the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. And at this point, after about 15-20 games of Dominion, I can honestly say that it belongs in my top tier of Euro games, along with Agricola, Puerto Rico, St. Petersburg, and Goa (I have updated the sidebar of my blog accordingly).

Dominion is a pure card game--there are no components other than the cards. And it is essentially a deck-building game...you start off the game with a few point cards and seven dollars worth of buying power. As the game progresses, you buy more cards to build up your deck. Early in the game you typically focus on acquiring action cards (that enhance your ability to buy things and attack your opponents) and more money cards, but later in the game, you typically want to spend your money on point cards. The game ends when the supply runs out of certain cards. To consistently win at Dominion, I've discovered that you must focus on the following areas simultaneously while playing:

• Look for card combos - The base set of Dominion contains 25 action cards, but in a given Dominion game, you only play with 10 of them. There are also a couple of expansions for Dominion (Seaside and Intrigue), not to mention more expansions that are slated to release this year. So you'll be playing with 10 cards from potentially several dozen to choose from. There are certain pre-defined groups of 10 cards that are listed in the rules, like for attack-heavy games, or action-heavy games, but I like to play with 10 random cards, because I really enjoy the dynamic strategy aspect of the game. Note: There's a free iPhone app called iDominion Lite that makes it really easy to get a random set of 10 cards from whatever Dominion cards (base+expansions) you have available. Anyway, since the card selection varies, you need to be on the lookout, from the very beginning, for powerful combos among the 10 cards you're playing with. For example, I cleaned up in a recent Dominion game with the Workshop (acquire a card costing 4 or less) and the Gardens (costs 4, gives you +1 point at the end of the game per 10 cards in your hand). I scooped up 8 Gardens with this strategy (they ran out fast once my opponents caught on to what I was doing), and I had 50+ cards in my hand at the end of the game.
• Cause opponents to respond to your actions (or vice-versa) - In many Dominion games I've played, things are going along at a rather mild pace, then one player buys a Province (most expensive card in the game, worth 6 points), and all of a sudden it's a mad scramble to grab Provinces until they run out. Another example was from my previous point, where once I started grabbing Gardens, everybody else started rushing to do so as well. Whether you're the trend setter or not, you must keep a close eye on what your opponents are doing in Dominion. Like it or not, once your opponents start buying Provinces, you have little chance to win unless you do the same, or perhaps something similarly lucrative (like 5-point Gardens).
• Control the game speed - Related to the previous point, you may find that you need to end the game quickly for one reason or another. Perhaps your opponents have the buying power to scoop up Provinces, while you do not. The game can end when either (1) all the Provinces run out, or (2) when 3 of any card stacks run out. In my game with the Workshop/Gardens combo, I never really increased my spending power, so I wasn't in a good position to buy Provinces. So after the Gardens ran out, I started using action cards that allowed for multiple buys to buy lots of cheap cards to run out two other stacks quickly. This had the added benefit of beefing up my deck to get me more Gardens points.
• Figure out the optimal money/actions > points transition - This might be the most important strategic element of the game. You'll typically spend the early/mid-game acquiring more money and actions to boost your buying power. At some point sufficiently before the end of the game, you'll want to transition to buying point cards. Figuring out the appropriate time to do this is key. If you start too early, you'll clog your deck with point cards (which are worthless until the end of the game). If you start too late, you'll be behind your opponents who have already been acquiring point cards. Identifying this ideal transition point is often a key to victory.
• Defend against attacks - One of the great things about Dominion is the player interaction facilitated with attack cards. Among the things you can do with attack cards are:
  
  • Steal money from opponents
  • Cause opponents to discard cards from their hands
  • Slow down opponents by stacking the top of their decks with worthless cards
  • Give cards to opponents that subtract from their score at the end of the game
  
  You'll typically only have a few attack cards at your disposal in a given Dominion game. But you must use them, and defend against them, appropriately. Some cards (like the Moat) will immediately neutralize an attack, while other cards can be used later in the game to reduce their effects (like cards that let you discard some of those negative point cards). Keep an eye out for ways to attack your opponents, and defend against them attacking you.

So that's probably a good start for Dominion strategies. I look forward to playing the game some more, and especially to playing with the expansions, as most of my games to this point have been with only the base set.

Games I Like: Caribbean

I've only played Caribbean twice, but I can already tell that it's a keeper. I played it once at Jason's place, and I just played it again at my place this past weekend. This is one of those games that involves getting into the heads of your opponents, and trying at the same time to not let them get into yours. :)

The game board is a nice-looking segmented map of the Caribbean Sea, and it starts with six pirate ships deployed at different places in the middle of the sea. Now, it's your job to bribe the pirates into picking up treasure chests for you from different ports on the various coasts that border the Caribbean Sea. While they're moving, pirate ships can not only pick up treasure from the ports, but they can also steal a treasure from a boat they happen to pass on their routes. The goal is to get the treasure delivered to one of your three personal "safe havens" in the sea. The first player to acquire a certain number of treasure coins is the winner...the number of coins differs depending on the number of players.

Here's where it gets good. You have seven tiles numbered -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. You must use these tiles to assign bribes to each of the six pirate ships in alphabetical order (their names start with A, B, C, D, E, and F). Your bribes are hidden from the other players. The seventh tile is used for tiebreakers (which themselves have a twist). After each player has decided on the bribe values, all the players reveal their "A" bribe. Whichever player assigned the highest bribe to the "A" ship gets to move it a number of spaces equal to the bribe (unless any other players used their "-1" tile, in which case the move is reduced by one for each "-1" played). If there is a tie, the players then decide whether or not they want to use their tiebreak. If none of the players use their tiebreak, nobody gets to move the boat. If only one player chooses to use his tiebreak, he gets to move the boat. If both players chose to use their tiebreak, the highest tiebreak value gets to move the boat. And if the tiebreaks are equal, then nobody gets to move the boat. After this, the same process happens for the "B" boat, then the "C" boat, etc. One more thing...since the boats move in alphabetical order, there's a chance that an earlier ship can steal treasure from a ship that moves later, which can often screw the guy who wins the later ship. After the F ship has been moved, another round starts.

All this to say, you really have to figure out where your opponents are planning to make their big bribes, and plan accordingly. And of course, plan for them to figure out what you're planning based on what you think they're planning, etc. etc. Our latest game was particularly brutal...Noel and Gabriel got to an early lead, and Terry and I had an awful start because we kept planning to do the same thing (and our tiebreakers tied multiple times!) But the two of us caught up eventually, and Terry ended up winning!

So in addition to having a nice-looking board and pieces, the game has a fun inter-player mechanic that keeps you guessing the entire game. Even though I've only played it twice, I highly recommend it. I imagine it would be fun for three players (both of my games have been 4P), but it doesn't seem like it would work all that well with two. I haven't played with the kids yet, but I'm thinking the bidding aspect of the game might be a bit advanced for my 5 and 8 year old.

Games I Like: Parlay

It's been a while since I've posted to the blog. I've got tons of things I want to post about, but not much spare time these days. So here's a quick Games I Like post. I found out about Parlay a few months ago from my friend Gabriel, who brought it over to play one night. I think of Parlay as a combination of Scrabble and Poker. The deck of cards is a standard 52-card deck (with optional jokers), but each card has a letter and a point value printed on it. Your goal is to make the best possible poker hand *and* the highest scoring word. The game comes with several rules for poker variants (draw poker, omaha, etc.), but so far we've only played it with Texas Hold 'Em rules. So you get two cards, and the community gets 5 more. During each "betting" round, instead of betting, you have the opportunity to throw out one of your two cards and get a new one. Since Texas Hold 'Em has four betting rounds, this gives you four chances to get "better" cards, where "better" could refer to higher cards or more useful letters.

After the last betting round, each player writes down the best word he can think of from the seven letters available. He also chooses whether he wants to Fold or Stay (and all players reveal their fold/stay status simultaneously). If a player folds, then he locks in the point value of his word for that round. If he stays, he is betting that he has the best poker hand. Out of all the players who stay, whichever player has the best hand gets double his word score, and potentially more bonus points based on the length of his word. Any other player who stayed scores zero points for the round. So if you have a great word (and/or a long word), you have to decide if you want to fold and get the base word points, or stay in, hoping you have the best poker hand, to score a bunch more.

I've really enjoyed the few games of Parlay that I've played, even though I've only won 1 or 2 (I tend to stay in with my poker hand more often than I should). Generally, I like games that successfully combine multiple other games in a novel way (Note to self: write a blog post on Yahtzee Texas Hold 'Em sometime). During our last Parlay game (which had six players), we thought it would be cool if there were some sort of betting component to the game, where you could bet points that you had already acquired, which would add a fun bluffing element to the game. If we think of something decent, I'll update this blog post with what we came up with.

My Goa Win Streak* Is Over

There's an asterisk on my Goa win streak (probably about 15 games) because I won many of those games by playing with the wrong rules. After discovering the correct rules, I went on to win several games in a row, but that ended today. The score of the 4P between Noel, Dave, Marc, and myself was (I think) 34NT-34DN-33DS-31MB. Close game, but Noel and I tied for first, and he won the tiebreaker with more money. I didn't acquire nearly as many extra actions in this game as I usually do. My board ended up being balanced as usual, but with the Expedition Cards box only promoted to the 4th row (it's usually my goal to have it promoted to the 5th). I also had 4 unique card symbols in my hand, which only got me 4 points. Also, I was one ship short of promoting one of my middle-row boxes to the 4th row. So lots of narrowly-missed opportunities for a win. My main takeaway from this game was the value of the starting player action space. I have always though that 4 was a preferable bid for it, and 5 was an acceptable bid, but 6 was too much. But after this game, seeing that I'm pretty sure it went for 6 in *every single round*, I may just bite the bullet and start bidding 5 for it instead of 4. Also, Noel got the red tile that gives you 4 free dollars every round, and he got it in the first round, which gave him excellent bidding power for the starting piece (which he acquired frequently). Noel won the 4 free dollars tile with a bid of 8, which was an *excellent* deal considering it made him 32 dollars over the course of the game. So to recap:

Goa Lessons Learned

• Starting piece is worth 5, maybe 6.
• First round acquisition of 4 free dollars is killer.
• A well-balanced approach can still lose if the extra actions aren't there.
  

Let's Talk About Settlers of Catan

Most people who have played or discussed board games with me know how I feel about Settlers of Catan. Let me preface all of the following opinions by pointing out that Settlers, released in 1995, was the game that brought Euro gaming into the mainstream. So I respect the game and its author for this accomplishment. But my respect ends there.

(Edit: To clarify, I'm writing this particular blog post from the perspective of an adult Euro gamer who plays the majority of his games with other adult Euro gamers. I'd like to write a series of blog posts soon with my specific game recommendations for hardcore gamers, casual gamers, and kids.)

I detest Settlers. I learned how to play back in 2002. Laura, Matt, and I spent a weekend playing the game, and all three of us unanimously hated it. We spent a lot of effort trying to change the rules (focusing mostly on the dice rolling) to make it better, but we failed. We agreed to shelve the game, declaring it a lost cause, and focused on playing other games. But a few years later, we became friends with Aly and Nelson, who were, at the time, avid Settlers players. Laura and I decided to give it another try. And for a good year or two, we played several Settlers games, and generally had a decent time with them, although I still felt it wasn't nearly as good as our at-the-time favorite Euro game, Puerto Rico. But after several consecutive games that were either excruciatingly boring, or ridiculously lopsided, I re-declared my hatred for the game, and haven't played since.

So why is the game so bad? I've tried over the years to articulate precisely what the problem is, and it's actually a rather complex set of reasons. Here are the four big ones:

• People Just Don't Know Better - The catalyst for my finally writing this blog post is the unusual amount of Settlers love I've been hearing the past few weeks from co-workers, twits, acquaintances, and others. I've felt like Sarah Connor trying to convince the world that the Terminator is real. "Seriously people, the game[Terminator] really sucks[is trying to kill us]...how can you not realize that??!" I understand that a lot of people consider Settlers a "gateway game", meaning that it's good for non-gamers as an introduction to Euro games. But once somebody discovers that they might enjoy Euro gaming, there are *so many* other games (see below) that blow the pants off Settlers in terms of tactics, strategy, skill, and overall enjoyment.
• The @!#%$ing DICE! - There is something to be said for dice games. Bluff (a.k.a. Liar's Dice) is one of my all-time favorite games. So is Can't Stop. And even Yahtzee is good every once in a while. Probabilities are a lot of fun to incorporate into some games. But it's my opinion that dice have no place in a strategy board game, short of facilitating some sort of minor mechanic that is not a core component of the game. There's just no way to develop a cohesive strategy in Settlers that won't get completely shot to hell by a bad series of dice rolls! I understand that people recommend diversifying your settlement placement to take advantage of the most rolls possible, but this strategy is still just as susceptible to utter destruction based on a particular sequence of dice rolls. It's just destruction at the hands of other players who received favorable rolls, as opposed to destruction at the hands of the dice themselves. I've also heard the suggestion of playing with a dice deck to ensure the probabilities are exact, but that's basically admitting that the game's current reliance on the dice mechanic is flawed, and must be fixed. Why not just play a game that doesn't need fixing in the first place?
• The Futility of Last Place - I've played a number of Settlers games where it was very apparent, very early, that one player was doomed to failure. I've seen multiple reasons for this, but the typical cause is a player whose settlements get cut off by other players' roads, thus dooming him to isolation. In this situation, the player's only hope of victory is the acquisition of development cards, which he will brainlessly purchase until he gets largest army and a bunch of victory point cards, or (much more likely), someone else wins. It's certainly possible to get a slow start in other games, but in my experience, the slow starter in Settlers *never* wins, and thus really has no motivation to continue playing. At least with lots of other games, slow starters have a fighting chance (and in the case of some games, like St. Petersburg, a slow start is often an indicator of a well-planned early game that can lead to victory!). Also, with most other games, the loss of the slow-starter can typically be attributed to a poor early-game strategy, whereas the slow starter in Settlers may very well have planned accordingly, but got screwed by bad rolls for himself and/or lucky rolls for his opponents.
• The Rolls That Never Occur - I played several Settlers games that went on *forever* because the 2 or 3 numbers that were on a certain good never rolled. What happens when bricks never get rolled? All the players die of boredom, that's what happens. You've got people who had a perfectly decent strategy set up having to completely abandon it so they can start doing 2-1, 3-1, or 4-1 trades to account for a good that's never rolling. And when all 4 people are having to do this, the balance of the game is completely shot, all because the dice decided that nobody is going to make brick. This is the perfect example of a scenario that gives me the feeling that I'm partaking in a giant waste of time when I could have been playing a game where my strategies and tactics aren't going to disintegrate based on factors completely out of my control.
  

So there you have it. I'm a hardcore Euro gamer who hates Settlers. I know there are more of us out there! And I'm pretty sure I won roughly 60% of all the Settlers games I ever played (probably 30ish games over those few years), so no, I'm not complaining because I lost all the time. :) And if you're reading this and you can't imagine hating Settlers, then you really, really need to try out some of the following games (Christmas presents are only 4+ months away!). Sure, most of them have some sort of luck component to them, but by and large, you'll be able to overcome any setbacks from bad draws/rolls/whatever with optimal strategic play, and you'll have much more fun doing it. Also, they're listed roughly in order of awesomeness, with Agricola currently holding my personal #1 spot:

EURO BOARD GAMES THAT DARREN LIKES WAY MORE THAN SETTLERS:
Agricola, Puerto Rico, Goa, St. Petersburg, Power Grid, Thurn und Taxis, Carcassonne, Cartagena, TransAmerica, Niagara

Agricola: Useful Metrics for Predicting Game Outcomes

After my two lunchtime victories today (ending a 4-game skid), I started thinking about different factors that could affect game outcome. Maybe it's the amateur statistician in me, but I think it would be cool to come up with some predictors for game outcomes based on several possible indicators, most of which are present at the very beginning of the game. As a start, I think the following could be huge factors in predicting game outcome:

• Player Order - Prior to today, Noel said he didn't recall ever seeing a game where the last player ended up winning the game. My second victory over lunch today took place with me as the last player in the first round. I do think, though, that as a general rule, the first player can maximize the possibilities of efficiency by having his pick of playing either a free occupation or taking a good resource space, like 3 Wood or Reed/Stone/Food.
• First to 3 Wood - In the game I won over lunch where I played last, I did happen to get the 3 Wood space, which is pretty rare. Noel took Reed/Stone/Food as his first action (to prepare for playing a certain minor improvement, I think), and Zoe and Dave both played occupations. I actually took 3 Wood and 2 Wood as my first two actions, which I've done several times in past 4P games. I should actually come up with an alternate strategy if other players start doing that, too.
• First to Family Growth - In both lunch games today, I was the first to do Family Growth. The way I see it, you're more apt to win the game if you're able to take more actions than the other players, and Family Growth as soon as possible is the most direct way to facilitate that.
• Most Actions - I'm pretty sure I took the most cumulative actions out of all players in our first game today. I'm not sure about the second, since Zoe had a card that let her potentially grab an extra action on the Take 1 Grain or Plow 1 Field spaces at the end of a round when nobody else had taken them (and she used this ability several times). Either way, I would love to start keeping track of this, but everybody (except maybe Noel and Dave) would probably refuse to play with me if I went that far with game analysis.
• Uncontested Food Engine - Again, in both games today, I was the only player to pursue a bread baking strategy. I have won games in the past where I was the only one gunning for animals (granted, that typically happens with less players). But it seemed to let up a lot of the stress of feeding when I knew I wouldn't be competing with somebody else for bread baking.

What other factors would be useful to track to determine game outcome predictors? I've been thinking it would be cool to get my feet wet with iPhone apps by writing an Agricola app that gives us cool info like this. I think I'll write another blog post soon about all the stuff my ideal iPhone Agricola app would do.

Agricola: Observations After My Fourth Loss in a Row

We played 5P Agricola tonight for Marc's birthday. He won with 52 points (happy birthday!), and I was second with 48. The other scores were all in the 20s as I recall. This was my fourth loss in a row. I can also say that this was a very balanced game for me, with probably only one major mistake (I'll discuss below). My only negative point was for no Boar. I was maxed out on family members, stone rooms, and fenced stables, and had no unused spaces. I also had a decent card points score (8). Marc's board and points were slightly less balanced, but he got a ton of bonus points that took him over the edge.

Marc played very well, having set up a ridiculously good food engine in mid-game. He had 5 or 6 food stacked up on each round waiting for him for the last half of the game! I never got a food engine going, although I did have a very developed board. I think the primary factor in Marc's victory, aside from his stellar play of course, was the fact that he got a Reed Hut in play very early (round 3, I think). This gave him that precious extra action before any of the rest of us (I was the first to do family growth, which I did in round 5 as a result of the "from round 5, family growth" space in 5P. The regular one came out in round 6). I didn't have any cards that gave me extra actions, or facilitated early family growth, and I think that was a key difference.

It also didn't hurt that Marc was the first player in the first round, which I'm starting to think has somewhat of an impact on the game. Perhaps it's not as significant as player order in Puerto Rico (I should write a blog post about that), but I think Dave (who was in last place) was hurt pretty badly by having to go last in the first round, as the occupations and the 4 wood (which are almost always taken first in 5P) were already gone.

Finally, I'll discuss the biggest mistake I made in the game. I think that when a player starts off with a clear edge, as Marc did in this game with the Reed Hut, one or more of the other players should keep an eye out for defensive maneuvers to hinder that player. In this game, Marc had renovated very early to stone. As a result, he was always grabbing accumulated stone. He was actually able to build two (almost three!) stone rooms at full cost throughout the game because of the accumulations of stone he was able to acquire. Looking back, there were plenty of occasions where I could have slowed him down significantly by taking some of that acquired stone, but I didn't. And I ended up needing stone anyway (since I eventually renovated to stone), so I should have been looking for that opportunity to slow him down. I'm really going to keep this in mind for my next game where a player gets an early edge on taking extra actions.