Matt Carlson: Game Club Update – Pillars of Fish

We’ve had a run of nice weather lately, but that hasn’t stopped a healthy attendance at our weekly boardgame club at school.  After spring break, we had a surge of new folks coming by, running in the high teens with a solid mix of both genders.  I think some of our diversity is coming from girlfriends (or at least girlfriend candidates – high school relationships are always quite “interesting) who come by a few times before finally consenting to play a game.  There is a weekly Apples to Apples game which helps to keep up the social level of the group, but this past week must have been Mayfair week as I enticed a pair of girls into a game of Hey, That’s My Fish while another group of five players were busy constructing a cathedral in Pillars of the Earth (with its recent expansion).

This is the second week we’ve got the Pillars expansion to the table and it caught on fairly quickly.  Our 90 minute time limit means we only got 4 out of 6 rounds played for our learning game but fun was had by all.  The expansion provides room for a fifth or sixth player and has a nice mechanism for preventing too much player marker favoritism from the bag.  (Pillars of the Earth has a common action-selection mechanism where player tokens are selected out of a bag and then that player may pay to place the marker onto the board.  If they can’t, or choose not to pay, it is set aside and can be placed for free later, after others have chosen.  In either case, the next marker removed has a lower cost for placement.) The expansion has only two of each players’ markers placed in the bag with the remaining player marker set aside.  Then, when the a player’s first marker is actually placed on the board, that player’s marker is set into a queue.  When everyone has placed two markers, the remaining markers are put onto the board in reverse order of player placement.  So, if you get to place the first marker, you will also be choosing last.  The last player to get a marker onto the board gets to place their third marker before everyone else.  In larger games (4+ players), some of the later placements are only marginally useful, so guaranteeing a decent placement or two for every player is a good thing.  The expansion includes more areas to for action placement as well as a new use for workers.  One whole area is dedicated to converting workers into points.  Three or four workers can gain you a point while six or seven can give you two points.  A great additional source for point competition that seems fairly balanced.  The additional action areas would also be useful in smaller games (4 or less) as it will give players more choices for their later actions in a turn.  Sometimes there simply is no good spot for a player’s third action, more options give those decisions some actual worth.  This also helps to mitigate any particularly nasty action-marker draws from the bag, one of the most common complaints I hear in my adult gaming groups.  In any case, the gamers at school have picked up on the rules to Pillars of the Earth and I foresee it continuing to be popular through the end of the school year.

There were two female students hanging about this week after the rest of the students had broken into gaming groups.  Sensing my chance, I pulled out my deluxe version of Hey, That’s My Fish by showing off the cute little plastic penguin figurines.  One girl quickly grasped the concepts and she and I soon were locked in a battle for territory while the other contented herself to less aggressive play.  I won the first learning game and we played again.  In the second game the more aggressive player and I locked horns and ended up giving the entire game away to the other, nonconfrontational player.  Despite a complaint that the game “made her head hurt” the winning player was able to be convinced to play one more time.  The aggressive player to my right would have been happy to play for the rest of the gaming time.  The last game was fairly close, but I managed to enough triple-fish tiles for the win.  I followed up the penguin-themed game with one of my favorite new-gamer games, No Thanks!  We played a few rounds and then it was time to clean up and head home.  Fun was had by all (I believe) and I fully expect to continue to have high attendance for the rest of the year.

It occurs to me that one big reason I was able to draw these two young women into playing was the cute little penguin figures.  (I’m not being gender-biased here, several times during the game I pointed out my penguins were better dancers, and then proceeded to demonstrate it.  I’m not immune to the lure of cute little pieces…) Hey, That’s My Fish is about as abstract a game as one could wish, use generic tiles and nice polished rocks for the penguins and it could hang with the best abstracts around.  By simply pasting a cute, fun theme on a game with limited rules we have a fairly robust game that can attract new gamers to the table.  I highly recommend the game, and it plays fairly well even with the younger set (ie. grade school/pre-teens.) While its been awhile since I played the original, I love nice solid penguin figures of the deluxe set.  (Oddly enough, I think the deluxe version of the game is better for younger kids as the penguins in the deluxe version are quite durable.  As a filler-type game, the deluxe version is a bit expensive, but if you compare it to some of the German kid games with wooden bits the price is very good.)

Other abstract games that have good thematic bits include Shear Panic (more cute animal figures) or possibly even Thud (although one really needs to have read sufficient Terry Pratchett to appreciate the small amount of theme in the game Thud.) I know the Dvonn abstracts have been widely heralded as great games (and I own a few) but they don’t excite me much.  I think my main problem with abstract games is that they don’t stimulate the creative side of my brain.  Some can get around this simply by using more creative pieces.  The cute plastic figurines are one method, but even introducing colors helps a lot.  Ingenious and Quirkle are both pretty abstract, but I enjoy playing them as they have enough color to keep my mind engaged.  Tsuro is abstract but the pieces and board are fancy enough (and the game is short enough) to keep me engaged.  Even Ted Alspach’s comic here on BGN were just implying that abstract games can be a bit dry on them mind.

So, call me biased but I prefer a theme even on my abstract games.  I don’t see why a good theme can’t be worked into many more abstract games.  I know it would increase my interest.  Anyone have differing/supporting opinions?

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