W. Eric Martin: Another Tour of Duty / Playing the Unplayed

In early December 2006, I wrote a column about game donations to U.S. soldiers in the Middle East. Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard from individuals with three of the four units and want to share their letters as a way to say thanks to everyone who donated from 6am Gamers and Unity Games. Identifying information has been removed to protect their privacy. Letter #1:

Letter #2:

Letter #3:

And I know that others have sent games as well, including a few New England folks who contacted me about donating, then sent care packages of their own. The makers of Khet have also sent games abroad, as can be seen in the image below from the Innovention website:

Soldiers in Iraq arm themselves with mini-lasers from Khet

The holidays might be over, but with that kind of enthusiasm from those on the receiving end, another game shipment or three seems in order. So from now until the end of January 2007, I will use 100% of the funds received through the Boardgame News donation page to purchase games for soldiers overseas. I’ll pay all of the shipping costs myself, which means the size of my donation will depend on the size of yours. I’ll remind readers of this fund-drive over the next couple of columns.

Anyone who wants to donate games (or anything else) on his or her own should visit AnySoldier.com, then select “Click HERE to Search AnySoldier.com Contacts.” You can enter search terms, then check out the descriptions of requested items by unit. You must check mailing addresses the same day that you ship a package in order to minimize loss due to troop movements.

Game play during the second week of the year knocked another three titles off my unplayed list: Leonardo da Vinci, Star Wars: Clash of the Lightsabers, Glory to Rome, and Rocketville. Yes, Rocketville. Let’s start my comments with the most reviled title of 2006.

Rocketville
No matter what else he designs, Richard Garfield’s place in gaming history is secure thanks to Magic the Gathering. That said, Avalon Hill’s publication of Rocketville in early 2006 gave Garfield’s reputation a huge hit. Response to the game was awful, with only the Rocketville banner ads on Boardgamegeek receiving more jeers. (I never saw the banners thanks to the Geek’s ad blocks, so my mind remained untainted.)

At my most recent game group, with a half-hour to kill before someone else arrived, I suggested giving Rocketville a try. The two guinea pigs on hand, who don’t mainline the Geek like some folks, had still heard enough about the game to respond, “I heard it was horrible.” “Exactly,” I said, “that’s why we need to try it ourselves and form our own opinion.”

I had read the rules earlier that day and taught them the game in a few minutes. We finished our three-player game in 30 minutes and dubbed Rocketville “not horrible.” The fourth gamer of the evening, who arrived during the closing minutes, noted that we even seemed to be enjoying ourselves. Whodathunk?

So why does Rocketville have such a craptacular rating on the Geek? For several reasons, none of which applied to the three of us:

1. Oodles of blind bidding. The blind bidding mechanism has a lot of enemies, and 36 rounds of blind bidding gives those people enough time to develop a full head of rage. We focused more on the hand-management aspects than the blind bidding. By watching the hand size of other players, you could often predict when a player would bow out of bidding to draw a card, which meant you could go low and still win. This lessened the feel of blind bidding in my mind.

2. Political promises. Rocketville was marketed as a game about politics. “You’re running for mayor and are trying to win votes from the town districts,” crowed the ads. Players expected the second coming of Die Macher and were disappointed by the blind-bidding-driven area-majority game they encountered, where theming seemed to be an afterthought.

3. High expectations for deep thought. Given the promotional push and the hope in early 2006 that Avalon Hill still had something to offer the serious gamer, players wanted a deep strategy game and instead encountered something light and confectionary. Rocketville is a family game, pure and simple, and we played it in that spirit. We never spent more than 30 seconds on a turn, so the game never dragged. We knew it had awful ratings, so we didn’t expect much of anything and were surprised to find the game better than its press. I would still avoid playing with five players (and possibly even four) since more players equals less control, but I’d be fine playing it again with two other speedy Sams.

Star Wars: Clash of the Lightsabers
I had played this game back in 2000 or 2001, but since I had no records of the playings on the Geek, these count as fresh blood. Yes, my system makes no sense, but when your brain tells you to do something, it’s hard to argue.

Leonardo da Vinci
This game has received a lot of press since it appeared in mid-to-late 2006, but I sat on my copy for a few months before finally breaking it out. I uncharacteristically goofed one major rule, messing up the purchasing system so that everyone had much less to work with than they should have had. We’ll have to give it another go soon.

Glory to Rome
I’ll save this interesting card game for next week, when I profile Cambridge Games Factory and talk about a few of its games.

Next week, exactly what I wrote in the previous line…

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