Convention Report: The Gathering of Friends 2008: Covert Action, Metropolys & Big Points

By W. Eric Martin
April 19, 2008

One great thing about conventions is that you will often play games that you would never play in other circumstances. Someone will ask you to play a game with their group, and you’ve enjoyed playing with the person in the past, or you don’t own the game, or you own the game but have never unwrapped it, or you have just the right amount of time before dinner (assuming you eat at conventions), or you’re trying to avoid someone else who has asked to play something, or you’re competing in a contest to play with as many different people as possible. Whatever the reason, you decide to play this game at this time.

One awful thing about conventions is that you will often play games that you would never play in other circumstances for all the same reasons listed above. If nothing else, you get a column out of the experience.

Covert Action

When Frank DiLorenzo of R&R Games described Covert Action to me at the 2007 NY Toy Fair, my reaction was one of raised eyebrows and puzzlement. “And...? There’s more, right?” As sometimes happens when hearing a description or reading rules, I just didn’t see the game. Here’s the basics to see if it gels better for you than it did for me:

Players are randomly divided into two or three teams (blue, red, green) each round with the number of teams based on the number of players. You’re secretly dealt one of four roles: sniper, cleaner, bodyguard, or mole, each of which has a different function. For the descriptions below, pretend you’re dealt a blue card (meaning you’re on the blue team) in a six-person game with the red team being the enemy. Sniper – shoot the red sniper, shoot the blue mole (since he’s actually working for the enemy), or shoot the red cleaner (but only if that team’s sniper isn’t in the game) Cleaner – do one of the things that the sniper would do, but only if the blue sniper isn’t present this round (which might happen since only three blue cards will be dealt) Bodyguard – try to get shot by the red team, thereby protecting the blue sniper or cleaner Mole – try to get the blue sniper, blue cleaner or red mole shot, thereby creating a win for the red team Players receive their cards, then try to determine who is on their team and who should shoot whom. Once a single shot is fired, the shooter and shootee reveal their cards. Depending on whether all the rules were followed, the members of one team will win a score card that has the letter P, L, A or N on it. When one person has the score cards needed to spell PLAN, that player wins.

Now that I’ve played Covert Action, in a game that include CA designer Jacob Davenport, I understand why I wasn’t getting it: I’m an awful bluffer and I can’t read body language well – and those skills are essential to playing well. As I noted in my first impression of Criminals, a game requiring similar skills, I can’t keep a straight face when someone accuses me of something, whether or not the accusation applies, and I’m hopeless at spotting tells.

In our seven-player game, I would look at my card, try to process what I was supposed to do, then start looking around the table. You can see the color of each person’s card, but since the game includes moles, a player with the opposite color might be on your team. The other players were looking around as well, sometimes saying things like “So you going to shoot someone, Alfonzo?” or “Frank, you have to shoot Jacob!” Seconds later, someone would shoot, many times successfully. I was baffled by the process, but thankfully I was never dealt the sniper, so all I had to do was look daft – an easy job in this situation!

At one point, Jacob caught my eye and winked at me, and I froze: What color is his card? What color is mine? What role am I again? What could his wink mean? Is this an honest wink or a deceptive wink? On and on and on in my head. Then someone shot someone else and the round ended.

Amazingly enough, when one player won the game, I had been on enough winning teams to qualify for the second round of this two round tournament, so I got to bring my cloud of confusion to a new playing field. Kory Heath, co-designer of Criminals, was now at the table, and he proved to be a body language expert. He would glance at his card, scan the table, then shoot someone – score one for Kory’s team. Once, he shot me about ten seconds after I had looked at my card, which was the sniper for the first time. I guess my fear at actually being responsible for taking a shot was broadcast on my face, and he sniped me first with ease.

If you’re a fan of Werewolf or a poker player with some bluff-reading skill, you’ll probably get a kick out of Covert Action. Me, I need to stick to games that require more concrete skills. I might as well have been playing a game with Swedish speakers for all the good I did.

Metropolys

I previewed Metropolys on BGN in January 2008, after having played it once the previous October. Since I was trying to focus on new games and prototypes at the Gathering – games that I hadn’t played before – I should have avoided it. Instead, I played it twice for various reasons that run counter to my stated goals. I need to reiron my will…

If you’re curious about the rules, head to my preview. I stick by my earlier assessment of Metropolys being the most abstract title from Ystari so far. In many of the auctions, you need to be able to look ahead to the consequences of winning or passing in terms of which area might be claimed and therefore taken out of play. I passed too hastily in one game and only subsequently realized that throwing out my 13 would have guaranteed a spot for my 1 and a bonus score based on my hidden card, in addition to allowing me to restart the bidding.

One player whose judgment I respect despised the game and vowed to never play it again, claiming that it was broken for him. In retrospect, it seems more like he was playing with people who hadn’t grokked the game as they played out all their high tokens and left him with 3-5 and 13-15, which let him run the board and score tons of points. Sometimes it’s hard to separate a bad game from crummy players, and perhaps that’s what happened for him.

Some players expressed concern over the balance of the hidden scoring cards, claiming that certain ones were impossible to achieve. I’ll make my standard counter-claim: Play the game as many times as the publisher and designer, and see if you still feel the same way at that point. Experience does make a difference.

Big Points

Games that aren’t my style, games that I’ve already played – what else qualifies as a gaming situation to avoid? How about playing a game really early in the morning after you’ve vowed to go to bed because you’re so tired? With others who are equally tired? So tired, in fact, that you mess up the rules multiple times for a really simple game?

Schmidt Spiele has introduced a new line of games that bear the label “Easy Play,” and Big Points is one of those titles. The rules fill less than two pages and should be easily grasped by someone with the brainpower of an eight-year-old, but that’s regrettably more than is possessed by sleepy adults.

Big Points includes seven colors of disks: white, black, and five rainbow colors that have matching pawns. To set up the game, you make a snaky trail out of all the disks (mixing up the colors) with a staircase at one end and all the pawns at the other. On a turn, you move any pawn to the next disc in the trail that matches the pawn’s color; you then claim the closest empty disk either in the front of or behind this pawn. If you claim a black disk, you can use it on a later turn to take an additional turn or to move a pawn backward instead of forward. When a pawn has no colored disk in front of it, it’s placed on the highest empty step on the staircase, making each disk of that color worth 0-4 points depending on its height. That player also claims a disk of that color which serves as a reward. White disks are worth as many points as the number of different non-white disks you possess.

The four of us started the game three separate times because we discovered that we’d messed up a rule, yet we still bungled some of the rules, such as the one allowing you to move backward. No matter, Big Points has the simple appeal of a Cwali game: Everything is out in the open, as with Gipsy King and Floriado, and the rules can be explained in a minute or two (then re-explained as needed!), but the game play still has some juice in it. You want to optimize your scoring each move, yet the values of the disks will depend on the moves of the other players as well as yours, so you want to try to influence other players by creating implicit partnerships with them.

An interesting thinky game that resembles Tutankhamen and That’s Life! in terms of both layout and appeal to newbies due to ease of play. I haven’t tried the other Easy Play games from Schmidt, but Big Points is a great opener for the series.

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Comments:

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Wow, play a game as many times as the publisher & producer?  I don’t think I could quite stomach that… I enjoy variety and don’t see myself having the time to play that many times.  (This is assuming the publisher/designer spent a lot of time playtesting...) I suppose I should make a column out of this, but if a game doesn’t at least lead me in a direction of comprehension and improvement, it is indeed a broken game.  If I play once with a group and we all mess up, it should be possible for us to at least determine how we messed up.  (Your friend example seems to indicate they should be able to improve their game the next time around.) A game that requires 5 to 10 plays (if it isn’t very short) before it begins to be balanced and enjoyable isn’t worth my time.  There are other games out there that will grip my attention on the first try.  I may not play them well, but I will often start going over strategies in my head to try out next time.  Not to mention, the odds of me finding a group of people willing to play a game 5-10 times just to learn its intricacies is extremely low.  There will almost always be one or two newcomers to the table. So, I might consider a game “broken” if it takes too many plays until I can finally “grok” it and it becomes balanced. Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Apr 24, 2008 at 10:18 AM | #

No problem with what you said, Matt, except for your use of the word “broken”.  The “B Word” has a very specific meaning in the gaming community, signifying a game that is fatally flawed.  Maybe one strategy truly dominates or the game locks up easily or a game which is supposed to take an hour instead takes five.  It’s about the most serious charge that can be levied against a design and is, unfortunately, WAY overused.  So people tend to take the description very seriously and will usually object if the word isn’t being used according to its standard meaning.  To me, it doesn’t sound as if you would consider a game with too long of a learning curve to be “broken” for you, just one that’s more trouble than it’s worth.  Just a friendly comment, to forestall others who might object to your usage. Posted by Larry Levy on Apr 24, 2008 at 11:02 AM | #

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