Dale Yu: Nickled and Dimed to Death

Well, in what is becoming a sad tradition for me, here is another “me-tooâ€? post for the weekly column.  After reading about 80 “Five and Dimeâ€? lists on BGN, the ‘Geek, Spielfrieks and a few other gaming mailing lists, I decided to try to compile my own list.  But before I show you my list, let me take a bit of time to recount how I currently track my games…

This task is somewhat complicated by the fact that I no longer keep any records of my gaming.  I used to be of those gamers who would religiously mark down each game played, when it was played, who it was played with, how long it took to play the game, any notable strategic ploys or interesting points, what color I got to play, the final scores of the game, my overall rating of the game, the other players’ ratings of the game, and whether I wanted to buy it or not (or if I already had it!). 

The time that I chose to keep records also coincided with the rise of BSW.  For better or for worse, I was amongst the first wave of English-speaking gamers to get involved in BSW – you know, back when Englishtown had fewer than 50 citizens!  In some ways, BSW made game recording a bit easier because it already tabulated your totals for games played as well as an indirect recording of your opponents.  If I cared about such things, BSW could also tell me what win percentage I had at particular games or against particular opponents.

The addition of BSW did complicate matters somewhat.  Now, I had to decide what was a game for the purposes of the list.  I used to play some games PBEM (play-by-email) – I still fondly remember the days of playing Acquire via email using a sweet text template devised by Stephen Glenn.  I also had some experience with turn-based games of E&T on the Geek.  I had never counted those games on “the listâ€?.  BSW, though, presented a new challenge.  Since the games were real-time, I often felt that I was getting a true gaming experience.  As such, I counted my BSW games as well as my face-to-face games.  This practice, however, was not universally accepted, as I can recall quite a number of spirited arguments on Spielfrieks about whether those games counted or not!

After about a year or three of doing this, I realized that I was pretty much wasting my time.  I almost never looked at the data that I was collecting, and even when I did look at it, what was I going to do with it anyways?!  I remember my highest yearly total of games played was close to 850—even if it took only 30 seconds to record each game’s information, that was over 7 hours of secretarial work per year!

So I went cold turkey and stopped bringing my notebook with me.  IIRC, I started this in early spring of whatever year it was (likely 2004).  I did OK at first, enjoying my carefree gaming lifestyle.  It was somewhat liberating to not have to make sure that I had my trusty spiral notebook available (or at least my Palm Pilot!) to record my gaming statistics.  I can still remember having some small panic attacks at the Gathering of Friends that year—it felt like at least half of the people there had some sort of note-taking system in place.  It didn’t help that there was a hidden contest that year that required you to keep track of who you played with!  So though I was no longer keeping records for my own purposes, I still had to record each game played and each opponent in order to turn in that information at the end of the week! 

I managed to make it thru that week without any permanent psychological damage, and since then, I really haven’t even felt the need to make a comprehensive list.  There are still some exceptions though – I did specifically make a list over Christmas break of the games that I played.  But the main motivation for this was to be able to recap the games played for my BGN article. 

I fully realize that most gamers are probably closer to the obsessive-compulsive end of the spectrum—so having another avowed gamer telling you that record-keeping is bunkum probably doesn’t go over that well.  If it’s any consolation, I’m just as neurotic as you about meeple color (yellow).  I also have a very particular method of bagging wooden bits using a multitude of specially chosen plastic baggies of varying sizes.  I also have a particular system for keeping the cardboard sprues once the chits are punched out.  I prefer my games of like size and shape to be stacked with each other.  But I don’t record my games anymore.

So here’s my Five and Dime* list.  This would be “Five and Dimeâ€? in the very loose sense because all I have to go on is my increasingly faulty memory of gaming.  It is also complicated by the fact that most of my gaming comes in spurts now (mostly at invitational events).  I often find myself so busy with friends and games at these events that I often don’t remember what I’ve played there (OK… the alcohol contributes somewhat to that as well). 

Quarters

Age of Steam

This is still my all-time favorite game.  In this broad heading of Age of Steam, I lump in all the expansions.  My guess would be 25 plays this year.  Surprisingly, I can only remember two games of “vanillaâ€? Age of Steam.  One game was at Gulf Games where I taught two players the basic game first—but only so that we could move onto AoS: The Moon right afterwards!  The other game of basic AoS I played was quite memorable for a rash decision and surprising bankruptcy (surprising because it was by a true AoS veteran!). 

Offhand, the variants I remember playing this year are:  Moon (at least 3x), Ireland, Japanese Task Force, Western US, Korea, France , Italy, Bay area, Reunion Island (at least 3x), South America, China, 1830s Pennsylvania, Disco Inferno, Soul Train, Sun, London, 20,000 Rails Under the Sea, as well as a few yet-to-be-released prototypes.

This is one of the few games that I am willing to state right now that I don’t see myself as ever getting tired of.  The main reason for this are the varied expansions—each of the games usually only tweaks one or two of the main rules, leaving you with a familiar framework for play while causing you to change your approach/strategy to the game. 

Voltage

This one is easy.  I’ve now assisted my brother for over a year in demoing his games.  I’ve stood in for him at GenCon, Origins, and BGG.con to help man the booth and sell some games.  If asked, I’ve even signed some games for persistent patrons!  (In case you are interested, when asked to sign Brian’s games, I happily sign it with “Dale Yuâ€?—but since I’m a doctor, the signature is so illegible that I guess the recipient is hard-pressed to figure out that the game has in fact not been signed by the designer but instead permanently defaced by the designer’s smart-ass brother.) I used to feel that this was an inferior design to Desert Bazaar, but after repeated plays, this little two-player card game stands well enough on its own.  It has more subtlety to play than at first glance.

Dimes

Desert Bazaar

See Voltage above for explanation.  I’ve never signed a Desert Bazaar though.  I was asked to pose for a picture holding up the game for some German/Czech/other European magazine writer at GenCon, but I never figured out if that got published or not.  But us Asians are all brothers, right?

Monte Rolla

This is Ryan’s favorite game.  I’d say that it’s out on the kitchen floor at least twice a week.  While Ryan is often happy to play the game by himself—rolling the dice and moving the pawns for all four colors—he often asks me to play along.  For the first half of the year, I’d conservatively estimate that I played this once a week!

Monza

This is one of my kids’ favorite games.  They will often play this one on their own, but this is one that I’m always willing to play when asked.  I’ve been amazed at how the kids have been able to improve with their long-term planning over the course of the year.

Tichu
This old standby is still one of the convention favorites for winding up the evening.  I would guess more than half of my nights at Gulf Games, Great Lakes Games or the Gathering of Friends wind up with a game of Tichu.  My usual partner, Valerie Putman, and I have had a fairly good run of it in 2006 despite an extraordinary amount of passing misadventures… (I mean, really, what are the odds that both you and your partner pass each other eights?!  Or that you and your partner manage to pass each other matched cards in three consecutive hands?!)

Nickels

Terra Nova

I know that I’ve played this one more than five times…. In fact, the first day that I played this, I remember getting it in three times!  I have really grown to like this game for two or three.  With fewer players, I think the strategic elements of the game really shine.  There isn’t much downtime between turns, and it really gives you a good chance to make long term plans (that will take two or three full turns to accomplish).  Additionally, because of the increased amount of planning that you can do with fewer players, I think it also causes the game to have a bit more tension because it becomes more strategic as opposed to tactical.

Viva Topo!

Another one of the kids favorites—though they haven’t been quite as good at picking up the strategy here (compared to Monza).  Both of my boys still choose to escape the board too soon, but they’re learning to take more risks!  This is another game I’m always happy to play—with either kids or adults!

Iliad

I really like this game with four or six.  The partnership aspect of this card-game works very well for me.  There is a nice balance for the player: at times the games call for full-out aggressive play while at other times you need to learn to sit back and minimize your losses as you rebuild for future turns.  I probably hit five plays of this at the summer Gulf Games alone!

To Court the King

This was the “filler hitâ€? at GoF.  By this, I do not mean that it was the best short game at GoF, but it was certainly the most prevalent.  At the larger game cons, you often find yourself sitting down with a table of players and someone wants to play a game.  This game was short, easily taught, and shiny/new at the Gathering which meant it was on the table often.

Ticket To Ride (all forms)

I know that I’ve played this at least five times… though possibly not more than once on any of the boards.  I remember playing basic, Europe and Marklin at the Gathering.  I also remember the most bizarre game on the home-brew Lyon board at Gulf Games where four of the five players all chose starting cards in one quadrant of the board!  I’ve never had a game with such a congested start.  Finally, the highlight of the year was likely smoking Alan Moon on my super-secret extremely-limited-special-edition board version of TtR: Switzerland.  I almost lost to his strategy of taking tickets for the first fifteen turns consecutively—but in the end, I showed him how much he knew about his own game!

Diamant

I played it more than five times, but would be happy not to play it much more.  There’s nothing wrong about it, but this one just doesn’t grab me.  I can still see myself playing it more than five times in 2007 if only because it does fit a nice niche when you’ve got a bunch of people around and need something to occupy you for 10-15 minutes.  Tsuro and Exxtra are also going to be candidates for this niche this year.  Of course, the new Essen releases “Going to the Bathroomâ€? or “Getting up to get potato chips and a popâ€? also provide similar entertainment value FWIW.

Die Saulen von Erde

After Through the Ages, this is my next favorite Essen release.  Of course, I don’t own this one, so that has hampered my ability to play it.  I think I managed five games of this—four in person when I was with Brian—and one online at BSW (again with Brian there).  Though there isn’t anything particularly original about the game and its mechanics, it just seems to work very well as a whole.  There is enough randomness in game setup due to the cards that keep it from getting stale or repetitive.  This is one that I’m eagerly anticipating my own copy!

Payoff Machine

This is the ultimate game of “man against machineâ€?!  This is a mid-70s game where you try to get marbles to come out of a tower made up of six revolving sections, each with a different pattern of holes in it.  OK, the game itself is quirky and gimmicky!  But the excitement of hearing those little balls rattle around in the tower as you anticipate them coming out is not to be missed!

Mykerinos

A great little game from Ystari.  Though I fear the game may possibly have one superior strategy (which I’m not going to divulge at this time because it’s still a theory in progress), the game packs in a good punch for the 45 minutes you invest in it.

Honorable Mention

Through The Ages

If I had more than two months with the game, this would be on the 5+ list.  In fact, I’ve managed to get it on the table four times since Essen.  Hell, if I had managed to go to Essen, I’m sure that I would have played it at least once there as well!  Though I’ve still not played the Full Game, this is another game that looks like it will have serious longevity for me.  It’s not the type of game that will come out every week, it certainly scratches my occasional “need a long meaty gameâ€? itch.  Other games that might have fit in that category are Roads and Boats, Revolution! or Die Macher—but at the current time, I’d choose TtA over this without much contemplation.

Khronos

I think that I’ve had three plays of this one… I really like the idea of the game and am fascinated by the temporal relationship between the three different boards in the game.  I will admit that I will likely play this game only with three from now on because my games with four or five have been disappointing due to enormous amounts of downtime.  Even with that caveat, I still also think that there is a slight imbalance towards the player who gets to go first due to the scoring rules.  Despite all that, I still can’t wait to get this one on the table again because I liked the mechanisms and theme so much!

Dirty Pennies

Finally, time for the controversial part of the list.  These are games that I played once and frankly have no desire to play again.  In all fairness, some of my opinions may not be indictments of the game itself but rather the situation in which I ended up playing the game that caused me to not enjoy the experience…

Fury of Dracula

I am, without a doubt, the crappiest FoD player ever.  I couldn’t roll dice to save my life.  I played in a game at the Gathering with four other gamers who I very much enjoy playing games with—I think that everyone else had fun (and in retrospect, I enjoyed the experience)—but I’d be just as happy never playing it again. 

Magic: The Gathering

OK, I must admit that I already had to go thru a 12-step plan to wean myself off of MtG.  Luckily for me, I got in and out of Magic in the early days…. My entry to the game was around Beta/the Dark and I stayed in only until Ice Age/Fallen Empires.  In that short time span, I was totally addicted to the game; I played all the time, I bought cards every week, and I probably even had dreams about building decks!  Luckily, there was still a secondary market for cards when I got out, and I think I may have actually made a small profit on selling my cards when I got out.  Since that day that I sold the cards, I hadn’t even touched a MtG card.  Then, at Gulf Games, I got roped into a quick game of MtG 9th Ed, using two of the single-color prebuilt intro decks.  I played it and found that it didn’t do anything for me at all!  I’m not sure who’s happier about that—myself or my banker!

Shadows over Camelot

This cooperative game is definitely not for me.  I find that many cooperative games turn out to be a group exercise led by the most dominant personality at the table.  My one experience of this game proved to be no different.  I know plenty of gamers that love this one, and I’m glad that most of them know that I don’t like it so that I don’t have to tell them that I don’t want to play with them.

Cleopatra

Apologies to Days of Wonder for getting two games on this not-so-august list, but I can pretty much say that my one game of this was amongst my worst gaming experiences of the year.  I was extremely tired when we played it, which didn’t help matters… After an extremely stunted rules explanation (given by two or three different people), we then spent the first half of the game playing while the kibitzers standing around the table continually tried to play the game for us.  As a result, I basically enjoyed no part of the game.  I’m fairly sure that it’s not the fault of the game because there was nothing in the game that seemed awful, but nothing memorable either.  I might actually try this again if asked, but to the best of my knowledge, no one in my regular group owns this one, so it’s unlike to come up.

Conquest of Pangea

Didn’t even get through a whole game.  We started this one and quickly realized that one player had managed, through not much fault of his own, to become stranded without a way to make new bits or expand.  We re-read the rules to make sure that we hadn’t missed anything, and once the table had agreed that we were playing by the rules, we aborted the game.  All of us had been so soured on the game after realizing that someone could be completely shut out like that that we decided to play something else.  And since that time, the game has never been suggested again.

Tempus

In my first and only game of this, we discovered the “three cities or lessâ€? anomaly which completely ruined the game for me.  We were left in a situation where our options were severely limited and that provided us no way in which to attempt to catch the leader because we couldn’t attack her due to the rules.  My dis-satisfaction with the game grew afterwards when we looked up the game on the ‘Geek for possible errata.  In a number of threads, it became apparent that the rule was added in AFTER playtesting was complete (in a post made by Martin Wallace himself).  To me, it’s mind-boggling that anyone would produce a game which had already had a fair amount of playtesting, then throw in a rule at the end of development!  In any event, that experience pretty much ruined the game for me and I feel fairly confident that I’d rather not play games than play Tempus.

Nimbali

This is a children’s game, produced by Haba, and designed by Reiner Knizia.  Sounds good, right?  You wish.  It’s no more than a simple roll and move.  Blech.  Played it once.

CRAZY DALE’S GAME BAZAAR

Two games this week!

This week I offer up Nimbali.  Please ignore the above short description of the game, and take this great Haba game home to add to your collection of bright yellow boxes!  Or maybe you have a Reiner Knizia collection that needs completion.  $12 and it’s yours.

I also offer Space Dealer (Eggert Spiele).  I have two copies, and that’s one too many because I don’t see myself playing this with more than four.  Also, it will be difficult to play with more than four because the colored bits are identical in both of my games!  This particular copy has been played twice and is complete.
$35 plus shipping.

If you are interested in either/both, contact me in the comments below or at BGNAdvisor at gmail.com

Until your next appointment,
The Gaming Doctor

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