Scott Tepper: 2 Reviews and My 2 SDJ Cents

Continuing my series of games that you might not have played yet because they haven’t been translated into English, I present you with Deluxe Camping.  This 2006 release by Vincent Everaert and Asmodee made nary a ripple in the US, which is a little curious considering that it’s well produced, and lesser games have made bigger splashes.

Deluxe Camping is a land grab game that falls functionally somewhere between the pencil and paper game, Boxes, and one of my favorite boardgames, Domaine.  Surprisingly, Deluxe Camping is possibly slightly more thematic and less luck dependent than the latter, although the general mechanics are similar.

In Deluxe Camping the players are families trying to stake out the biggest and most attractive real estate in a camping ground.  Although it would have been nice had Asmodee splurged and given DC the Days of Wonder treatment, the game components are decent.  Each player receives a differently colored cabana(that must be punched out and put together before the first playing) and 6, 4 or 2 colored wooden trailers(depending on if you are playing with 2, 3, or 4 players).  The colorful gameboard depicts a campground, which is really just a rectangle segmented into 7x10 squares.  At the beginning of the game, 4 tokens representing a swimming pool, a Pain-In-The-Neck, and a couple of ice cream stands are placed on the board.  A supply of rectangular wooden sticks which represent fences are placed next to the board.

Before the game begins, the players place the 4 above-mentioned tokens on the board, which results in a different setup every time you play.  Then players take turns placing their cabanas and trailers on the board.  No more than one item can ever occupy a single square during the game.  After all trailers and cabanas have been placed, fences are placed on the lines between squares where 2 opponents have trailers or cabanas directly adjacent to each other. 

The object of the game is to claim areas by surrounding them with fences with only a single player’s trailers or cabana in the enclosure.  On a player’s turn, they have a maximum of 2 movement points(one square horizontally or vertically per point) which they may allocate between their own trailers and/or the Pain-In-The-Neck guy.  After movement is finished, if a player’s trailer is adjacent to an opponent’s trailer or cabana, you automatically place a fence on the line(s) between them.  Additionally, you get to place one fence anywhere on the board as long as it does not enclose an area that has no player piece in it, nor can it be placed within an already completed enclosure.  An area is considered enclosed if it is entirely surrounded, either by fences, or by the gameboard border, and it contains a trailer(or trailers) and/or cabana belonging only to a single player.

Once all of a player’s areas have been enclosed, they can no longer take turns.  The game ends when no one can take a turn(everything has been enclosed).  Then the players tally up their scores.  For each square a player has in one of their enclosures, they receive one point.  If you have the pool in your area, you multiply the squares of its enclosure by 2.  If you’ve enclosed one of the ice cream stands, you receive a 5 point bonus.  The Pain-In-The-Neck in your area will subtract 10 points from your score.  After adding up all the areas, the player with the most points wins.

So how does Deluxe Camping play? It depends on the number of players.  With only two players, DC feels more abstract-strateg-ey, each player trying to cagily best their opponent.  With 3, and even more so with 4 players, the game becomes a little more chaotic and kind of mean.  When you have 3 players taking turns before you get your next go around, all sorts of viciousness can pop up.  For example, a player’s trailer could be enclosed in a single square enclosure if her opponents work together and are so inclined.  Another diabolical tactic is to use your movement points to position the Pain-In-The-Neck next to another player’s camper, and then wall them in together.

Thus, when playing with multiple players, it’s important to be conscious of the meta-game.  If you jump ahead in claimed territory during the game, the other players may be inclined to work together to prevent you from making further larger scoring areas.  This is not the game to play with people who will hold a grudge. 

Aside from the weak title(I think there are many adjectives that would have made a better title with Camping than “Deluxe”), the potential mean-spiritedness of play that frequently arises in this game may be the main reason why American publishers never picked up Deluxe Camping.  A game where players can be ganged up to the point that a player can effectively be eliminated from play doesn’t fit the typical Eurogame model.  It is not unusual to see a wide swing of scores in a 4-player game, with one player only getting a handful of points while another player receives 3 or 4 times that many points.  When playing with 2 or 3 players, the scores are usually closer.

While the bits in the game are generally nice looking, I’m not terribly fond of the cabanas.  They’re made of a thick paper that’s not quite sturdy enough to hold the roofs to the walls by their punch-tab-slots alone.  Each time I take out the game we have to re-connect the cabana components because they pop apart during storage.  This should be easily corrected with a little glue, but even after many plays of the game, I still haven’t gotten around to it yet.

The 4 previous paragraphs may lead you to believe that I don’t enjoy Deluxe Camping, but the opposite is true.  I think this is a great game.  It’s quick and easy to teach and seems to appeal to both gamers and non-gamers alike.  More important, though, is that the game is fun.  The tug of war feel sensation as you struggle to acquire more territory, as your opponents are attempting to deprive you of it, creates a lively tension, and produces even livelier comments from players…provided you’re playing with good sports!

Deluxe Camping Overview

Components: good, language independent
Rulebook: in French, translation available on BGG
Rules explanation: 5 minutes
Game length: 45 minutes
Luck:  very small.
Plays differently with 2, 3, 4 players
Replayability: good
Spirit of the game: potential for meanness

Mini-Review of Megastar

We played Megastar, the Friedemann Friese game about bands moving up and down the music chart, for the first time this week.  This filler card game, like Raj or Coloretto, revolves around a single basic mechanic.  There are 7 musical acts on the radio charts represented by 7 different cards placed in a vertical line.  The rest of the cards in the game are duplicates of these 7 singing groups.  At the beginning of the game, 11 cards from the deck are turned over and placed to the right side of the band they match.  So some acts may start with no cards next to them, some may have several.

Everyone starts with 5 randomly dealt cards and places one of them face down on the table.  On your turn, you take the card you had previously placed face down, turn it over, and add it to the left side of the line of bands.  You then get to take any one of the cards on the right side of the band list and put it into your hand.  In addition, you draw a card from the draw deck.  Lastly, you take one of the cards from your hand and place it face down in front of you.  This will be the card you will play on your next turn.  So at the end of your turn you will end up with one more card in your hand than you did last turn.

If, during the process of your turn, the playing of a card results in 3 cards of the same act being to the left of the line of bands, or if there are no cards to the right of the band chart line when you need to take one, then a Countdown is triggered.  Starting with the band at the top of the chart(line), and then going down the line, a band is moved up the line the number of spaces equal to the number of cards it has on the left of the line.  Then those cards on the left are moved to the right side of the line.  A countdown usually results in at least a few acts changing their position, but can easily result in a large slide down of an act that was at the top.

The game proceeds till the draw deck is gone.  Everyone plays their last facedown card without drawing any new ones.  At this point, everyone will have 16 cards in their hand(13 cards with 5 players).  For every card you have that matches the top band on the chart, you receive 5 points.  For every card that matches the 2nd band, you receive 4 points, etc… The two bands at the bottom of the chart are worth zero points.  Everyone tallies up their points and whoever has the highest total wins.

The reactions to the game were mixed.  Everyone agreed that it was a decent filler, but some felt it was a little fiddly when it came to shifting and moving the cards.  It’s unusual in a game to draw cards both from the board AND from a draw pile during your turn, so we needed to adjust hand sizes a couple of times when we realized that players didn’t have the correct number of cards in their hands.  I personally had a problem at the end of my turn, when I was supposed to put a card face down that would be played on my next turn.  Maybe it was because it was later in the evening and I was getting punchy, but several times when I went to choose a card to be played on my next turn, I would start to play it on the board instead of face down in front of me.  I guess the habit of picking a card to be played immediately is just ingrained in me. 

All in all, Megastar is a nice filler.  Having to decide which cards to keep and which to play to affect rankings is a nice mechanic to build a game around.  I had pulled the game out upon the request from one of our group, “I want to play something where I don’t have to think too hard”, and Megastar fit the bill nicely.

My 2 Cents about the Spiel Des Jahres nominees

So the committee has announced the nominees for the 2007 Spiel Des Jahres.  The five contenders are:

• Der Dieb von Bagdad
• Die Baumeister von Arkadia
• Jenseits von Theben
• Yspahan
• Zooloretto

It’s not surprising that Yspahan made the list.  Having taught it to many families, I can see that it appeals both to the young and the old.  The randomness provided by the rolls of the dice prompts decisions that aren’t too difficult, but the overall game has a depth of strategy that is only apparent after repeated playings.  I think Yspahan is definitely in the running for SDJ.

While Dieb von Bagdad is very accessible to families, it’s probably a little too light to be declared the game of the year.  It’s a good game, but doesn’t have that oomph that will prompt people to want to play it over and over and over.

Jenseits von Theben, the most thematic of the bunch, is deservedly on the list.  This is a wonderfully thematic game, probably more so than any other game on the list.  Unfortunately, it also has the possibility of being completely unforgiving to a player through luck alone.  While it’s a very good game, I can’t see the committee choosing JVT as game of the year.

Zooloretto has a nice basic mechanic and is beautifully produced.  It is quickly learned, and moves along at a nice pace.  Zooloretto is definitely worthy of being considered for the SDJ, but it might be a tiny bit fiddly(the scoring of the vending machines and the stealing of other peoples animals seem a little tacked on to me, and aren’t easily intuitively remembered during gameplay without reference to the rulebook) to actually win.

Die Baumeister von Arkadia plays equally well with 2, 3 and 4 players, which it does so a little bit better than the other nominees.  It has very straightforward, easy to learn rules and presents a good but not overwhelming number of choices on a player’s turn. 

Coincidentally, I just taught and played DBVA to some of my friends this past week.  All of them really enjoyed it and all commented that they would like to play it again.  I think that’s the measure of a SDJ winner.  If I had my druthers, DBVA will win the SDJ, but I think both Yspahan and Zooloretto both have a good shot at the title as well.

Regarding games that didn’t make it into the final five…I’m not entirely surprised that Die Säulen der Erde didn’t make the cut.  It’s a good game, but the committee doesn’t normally choose SDJ winners that have language-dependent components, and DSDE has those event cards with necessary descriptive text.

I’ll bet Notre Dame was a close runner-up to the final five, but I think it is a little too complicated (you have to remember what the symbols mean and when an action is additive or not) to win the SDJ.

Wikinger had a good shot, but having basic and advanced rules probably knocked it out of the running.

Mr. Jack, and Medici vs. Strozzi would have been nice additions to the nomination list, but I can’t see the committee ever awarding the SDJ to a 2-player game.  Yes, I know Jambo was nominated in 2005, but it never had a chance of winning.

It’s nice to see an honorable mention go to Imperial.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it wins a special award for complex game, as Caylus did last year.  Imperial certainly deserves praise.

I’m sorry that Taluva didn’t make the nomination or even the honorable mention list, but it had a couple of things going against it.  It’s a pretty short game, and it’s basically an abstract.

Two games that I would have liked to have seen at least on the honorable mention list are Salamanca, which is a little fiddly with its scoring, and Hermagor, which is a little too meaty to actually win the SDJ.

So time(just over a month) will tell which of the 5 will actually become the 2007 SDJ winner.  I’m rooting for the little masterbuilder who could.  I think you can…I think you can…I think you can…

© 2007 Scott Tepper

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Comments:

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I don’t see why having basic and advanced rules would knock a game out of the running; both Mississippi Queen and Torres had basic and advanced rules.  But I guess those were a while ago. Posted by Doug Orleans on May 21, 2007 at 10:11 AM | #

Doug, I was a little too glib when I glossed over Wikinger.  It does have a couple of pretty unique mechanisms that helps it stand out from other games.  Regarding my rules comment...what I should have said was that the SDJ committee probably nowadays looks for a game that is confident in its ruleset from the getgo.  Some people feel that Wikinger is a better game with the advanced rules.  But for light gamers and families(because the SDJ is geared to a very wide audience), they might have a difficult time jumping straight into the advanced rules.  I think because of this, the SDJ committee couldn’t envision Wikinger as the SDJ winner. Posted by Scott Tepper on May 21, 2007 at 10:37 AM | #

OK, Scott, I wanna play all of the SdJ noms before Essen! We’ve already played Arkadia, so that’s one down… Posted by Mike Holmes on May 21, 2007 at 11:02 AM | #

There’s no path-making-finding game this year (a la Ticket to Ride and Thurn & Taxis and, a while ago, Elfenland), so I’m at a loss as to what to predict.  ;) I shall have to go and make more studies of recent SDJs. Posted by Ava Jarvis on May 21, 2007 at 01:28 PM | #

I enjoy Arkadia much more than Yspahan.  Of course, my wife’s unblemished win record (and therefore my less than stellar win record) in Yspahan doesn’t help.  :) Posted by Jon Theys on May 21, 2007 at 01:55 PM | #

I have a hunch that Yspahan will pull the SDJ this year.  The game is a solid finalist from a relatively new company which already has a reputation of putting out great games.  The complexity (or relative lack thereof) is about right and it has great distribution.  The game has a lot going for it. I am looking forward to trying Zooloretto and (based on what I have read) suspect that it will win if Yspahan does not. Posted by Greg Jones on May 21, 2007 at 04:12 PM | #

The denizens of the Spielbox forums tend towards thinking Zooloretto will win - not least because the whole deal with Knut the polar bear has raised interest in Zoos and such to ridiculous levels in Germany. Also, apparently the text on the SdJ website for the game sounds ‘gushier’ than for the others - as if it were the frontrunner. pk Posted by Patrick Korner on May 21, 2007 at 10:41 PM | #

The opinion here in Berlin among my group is that Zooloretto will indeed win the SdJ hands-down.  Otherwise, the nominees and omissions were no surprise, unlike previous years. And yes, Patrick, the Zoo downtown has been packed to see Knut!  Too bad my boys are still a little too young to appreciate it… Posted by Jeff Allers on May 22, 2007 at 09:23 AM | #

Jeff, is that opinion because your group loves the game, that it fits the SdJ mold the best among the nominees, or some things that they’ve heard?  I’m curious to hear the source of this excellent inside information! Posted by Larry Levy on May 22, 2007 at 11:22 AM | #

Ah, yes, I wasn’t very clear about that. It is the group’s opinion that it will win because they feel it best fits the SdJ mold. They all enjoyed the board game version and felt it added something to the card game, which was itself nominated some years back, I believe (and remember how Alhambra won as spiffed-up version of earlier nominee Stimmt So!).  I haven’t played it yet (we’ve all been too busy playing prototypes in preparation for this year’s Goettingen). That said, being caterers to deeper games, they all would like to see Yspahan win. Posted by Jeff Allers on May 22, 2007 at 03:14 PM | #

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