Convention Report: The Gathering of Friends 2008: Change Horses & Other Reports

By W. Eric Martin
April 17, 2008

Naturally I’m not the only one writing about games discovered and played at the Gathering. In addition to columns by a number of fine folks on BGN, you can read additional reports from:

• Brian Bankler, who demonstrated his awesome Race for the Galaxy prowess on a tired BGN editor

• Brian Leet, on a blog seemingly reserved for Gathering coverage

• Curt Carpenter details a number of games on a Geeklist on BoardGame Geek, including the beauty that is Jamaica – I agree that the artwork on the cards is a joy beyond the game itself

• Dave Chalker, designer of the mucho fun Get Bit! and poster on Critical-Hits.com

• Derek Croxton, whose name – I am embarassed to say – I don’t recognize

• Doug Garrett, of the podcast Garrett’s Games and Geekiness

• Lorna Wong has compiled a fine Geeklist

• Ravindra Prasad, aka Snooze Fest, has a Geeklist of his own

• Sophie Gravel from Filosofia Games, who got to show off the new edition of Chinatown in anticipation of its release later this month

• Sterling Babcock offers a Geeklist of his own, although it leaves out the details of our mammoth 18-hand game of Tichu

• Ted Alspach, who apparently creates a comic strip related to games and perhaps even a game or two of his own

• Trond Braut, who made a gallery of two dozen photos, including one with a bold gray box to obscure a prototype

• Walter Hunt, sci-fi author and owner of a fine first name

Change Horses is a horse-racing game, of which many have been published, but the goal in this one is to have your horse come in last. While two to five can play the game, each race will always have six horses – each with their own letter and color – and the ownership of the horses is secret. Each player starts with a deck of 15 movement cards that show all the possible combinations of two colors.

On a turn, you secretly select cards from your deck to bring your hand to three cards, then everyone reveals their cards simultaneously; in turn order, each player plays a card. If the number of cards played for a color is even, the horse doesn’t move; otherwise it moves a number of spaces equal to the number of cards played (1, 3 or 5 depending on the number of cards/players). The game ends when players run out of cards to play or one horse crosses the finish line. When this happens, the owner of the horse in last place wins.

The game includes a family version, in which player order is determined semi-randomly – the player going last in a round is first next round while other positions are determined randomly – and an advanced version in which players bid for turn order from a supply of carrots. Going last can be a huge advantage since your card can switch a horse from moving three spaces to none or from no spaces to five, and as a result many players have dumped all over Change Horses, claiming that early plays in the round are irrelevant and the final player has all the control.

While I’m speaking from only one game’s worth of experience, I feel confident dismissing these concerns are bunk. You can see which cards everyone has the opportunity to play, so you already know at the start of a round what’s the highest possible movement for your horse. Given the plays by others, I felt that I knew who was playing which colors by the second and third rounds. (Choosing your cards based on this knowledge is another opportunity for smart play.) Each player also has two special action cards that allow plays outside the norm, and I think only two of them were played in my game as players forgot they were an option. (I certainly did.)

I would likewise guess that most people played Change Horses with the full complement of five players, which probably isn’t the best situation for the game. As I mentioned in my first BGN column, conventions tend to pack games to their limit to the detriment of the gaming experience. Just as Colovini’s games should never be played with the maximum number of players, as that inevitably reduces each individual’s ability to control his fate, having all but one horse claimed in Change Horses doesn’t allow you to throw off moves or consider all the possible moves that will follow yours. (I’m still waiting to see labels along the lines of “more strategic with 2-3, more interactive with 4-5” on game boxes to ward off bad first plays.)

Perhaps I feel defensive about the game because I used to belong to the same game group as Bruce Whitehill (before he moved to Germany and got married!) and view him as the affable uncle-type who always provides an interesting gaming experience. Bruce wouldn’t lead me wrong, would he? (Caveat: He did make me play Buzzword.)

More than that, though, as I noted in a column on hidden depth first plays often don’t show off a game at its best. Players think they know how to play or make assumptions about how to play, then they fail and they blame the game rather than their lack of knowledge about the game. Yes, games sometimes hold no more strategy than “roll well and hope others don’t stop you,” as with two kids games I recently played, but more common are games that you dismiss as lacking strategy because you don’t care to look for it. All that said, maybe I’ll be proved wrong on Change Horses after a few more plays – if others are willing to give it that chance and play again with me!

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