Interviews with Ameri-Titans, Volume 1: Rob Daviau

Rob Daviau (along with Craig Van Ness) of Hasbro has designed several games that, despite their mass-market heritage have become instant classics--many of them featured right here on Fortress: Ameritrash such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroscape, Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, Risk: 2210, and many others. Rob graciously agreed to give an interview for Fortress: Ameritrash, to find out what makes the mind of an AT-oriented game designer tick.



Thanks for agreeing to do the interview, Rob--you've got a lot of fans on Fortress: Ameritrash, myself included. First of all, can you give us some background of your gaming history?

I was always a gamer but primarily a role-playing gamer. I discovered D&D while at camp back in 1981 and was hooked. I was 11 at the time so it was a nice segue between my kid days of gaming into my teen days of gaming. After that it was always and off and on affair with games (again, usually rpgs) up through my late 20s when I got this job.



How did you come to work for Hasbro, one of the biggest gaming companies in the world?


A little bit of "right place, right time" and a little bit of being the right person for the job. Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers had just been merged into one location and there were some openings. One was for a designer with a writing background, which was me. I had been an advertising copywriter for 5 years, had written some rpg articles, but also had a board game design aptitude. I was originally hired to work primarily on the adult game line (Taboo, Trivial Pursuit, etc.), games that had a lot of copywriting to them.



Who are some of your favorite game designers? What games are you playing now?


I'm always reluctant to name designers as I don't want to offend anyone I accidentally leave out.

I like a variety of Eurodesigners, roleplaying designers, and Ameritrash designers. I find that Eurogames tend to impress me in a "why couldn't I think of something that elegant" sort of way but Ameritrash games move me in a "wow, that was a rush" sort of way. My head is Eurogamer and my heart is Ameritrash.

In the past month I've played... Crokinole, Pitchcar, Bonkers, Game of Thrones, Ursuppe, El Grande, History of the World, a variety of standard card games, some games I'm working on here, Heroscape (testing new scenarios), Guitar Hero II, Candy Land (with my 3 year-old son), and Carcassonne. Probably more but that's all that comes to mind.



Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit, published under the Avalon Hill brand in 2000, is absolutely one of my all-time favorite games; it really captures its theme very well, better than many, many other games. Can you give us some insight on what was involved in the development of that game?


This was primarily Craig's game. I was around for some playtesting and I think I came up with the Jedi splitting their attack dice idea but it was almost entirely Craig's. I get flattered yet embarrassed that this gets attributed to me as I love this game but had so little to do with it. Oh wait, I came up with the name (I think my favorite name I've come up with for a game.)



You were also involved in the development of both Star Wars Risk games,and both are easily among the best of the Risk variants. I especially like the thematic elements that were grafted on to the system and more importantly, the much cleaner and shorter playing time. Can you talk about what went on during the development of those games, and your goals for each?


Sure. This is where my rpg background comes in handy. I always like games that tell a story, where, the next day it almost sounds as if you are recounting a movie or a tv show or a book.

That's why I like Ameritrash games; they tell a story. So the goal was to tell a story, a Star Wars story. A "what if" Star Wars story. There were a lot of questions at the start as to which trilogy was going to come out first (or if they were going to be one giant game) so we sort of worked on them at the same time, going back and forth. The first thing to establish was whether it was going to be about land battles with a space battle accent or about space battles with a land battle accent. Since it is easier to understand owning planets rather than owning a section of space, we went with the former.

At that point there were several rounds of trying to figure out how ships worked. At first they were abstract things that just came in for one invasion or one battle but it was hard to understand, not very powerful, and just not worth the card spend. Eventually we went to the physical representation of the ships and that started to make sense.At this point we focused on the Clone Wars version for release with the film.

Given the timeline it was easier to balance the game to always have four armies (plus it was a new thing for Risk). This game was being designed in the year before Revenge of the Sith came out. At this time, movies can change quite a bit so having four armies in play gave us the easiest route to rebalance things if we had to make a change because the movie changed. It was a tremendous relief to see the final movie and realize that what we had put into the game really matched what was on-screen. (That is one small reason why The Queen's Gambit works so well - it came out a year after the movie so it could match the feel shot by shot.)

The hardest thing to wrestle with was Order 66. We went through a lot of iterations on that before settling on the final version.



What are some of the challenges involved in working with licensed properties?


As I said above, you are sometimes working on a game at the same time the movie is being shot so there is a little guesswork in determining what the final movie will be. But, for the most part, games are abstractions that high the key points of a movie or TV show and those key points usually don't change much during development.Personally I like working with licenses as it lets me know the narrative tone and theme that I should be hitting.



Many of the games you've been involved in designing have featured what I like to call "asymmetry"--whether it's variable player powers, or starting positions, or something similar. How much more challenging is it to design these games with an eye on balance than one where all players start out equally? Do you feel that asymmetry increases replayability?


I think that asymmetry increases narrative. If everyone is playing a slightly different role or has slightly different powers or has slightly different goals then a story more naturally develops as you have character, motive, enemies, etc. It probably is more of a balancing issue but its just the way I approach things.Again, my goal is to create little stories/movies that are driven by players and their goal to win.

That is why I love, love, love reading Betrayal at House on the Hill game sessions on bgg. Most of those are little short stories that are only vaguely related to the gameplay. I think that Betrayal at House on the Hill is my favorite creative project that I've ever worked on. It came from the inventor, lived with me for about two years, and then went on to WotC.



I didn't realize you worked on Betrayal! When you talk about games that are "dripping with theme", Betrayal at House on the Hill is as 'dripping' as it gets. Can you tell me about your involvement with that?


House on the Hill continues to be the single-most satisfying creative project that I've ever been part of. I worked on it, in various ways, for almost two years and loved every minute of it.A lot of the mechanics of the game are mine...you know I feel odd claiming anything about that game because I was so impressed (and still am impressed) with Bruce Glassco's original vision.

It's a game that has to be played by the right people -- if you are too competitive you'll get frustrated with the inevitable rules/rooms/haunt holes that will arise. The game went to WotC just as I was about to get into some major playtesting. I wasn't surprised that the haunt books had be published twice; it is just too much to test and get right the first time.

My favorite thing that I put in (except I think there was a typo in the final game on these cards or they weren't written as I first had them or something...) were the two event cards where you give and receive an item through a mirror. They were two different versions of the same event. In one, you lose an item card back to the deck as you pass it through the mirror. In the other, you can an item card from the deck as you get it from the mirror.

I don't remember if that's how the final cards worked.I knew that, in most games, one or the other card will show up, but not both. And if it is both, it is likely to be different players. And if it is the same player, it is highly unlikely the cards will come out in the order that I wanted (lose an item, then gain an item). And even if that worked, it is highly unlikely that the same item card will be returned to the deck and drawn again.

But...

I knew that there could be one game, somewhere, somehow, that a person loses an item to the mirror. Then, later in the game, just when they need that item, it get returned to them by their past self. And if that moment happened, the players would never, ever forget that gaming moment. Ever.



Both you and Craig did some great designs under the Avalon Hill brand, and I think that the line suffered once you guys were no longer involved with it. Was there ever talk of your working again on any of the newer AH titles?


Avalon Hill went to WotC back in 2002 (I think) so its been a while since we've worked on it. WotC is on the other side of the country and have dozens of talented designers. I mean, when you have Richard Garfield designing your games, you're in good hands.



Can you give us some tidbits about some upcoming projects from you? What's the "next big thing" from Hasbro?


I can't talk much about what I'm working on but let's see if I can talk in a general sense. I've been working with some of our big family brands and seeing what can be done with them. I did Clue DVD last year (and Trivial Pursuit for Kids DVD) and our Monopoly Tropical Tycoon DVD game will launch later this year (or maybe in 2008). Not all of this work will involve DVDs but I'm playing around with some classics, which is both daunting in some ways and rewarding in others.



Rob, thank you for your time. Both you and Craig have brought American-style gamers a lot of great games to enjoy over the past decade, and we look forward to more!


Look forward to making more.

The Beast Within

The recent article by Ken Bradford, A View of Villany touched a personal nerve with me and really got me thinking. Not about the great villains that have been presented in AT games over the years but more about why the role of a villain in a game is such an appealing one. Because let's face it - by a certain standard virtually every game role available in a good AT title is a villain to some extent. With occasional, notable exceptions such as Arkham Horror the genre virtually demands that players betray, maim, pillage and slaughter their opponents whatever dubious moral justification is offered for one side being the "good guys".

I can't remember exactly when I became interested in genuine military history as opposed to make-believe battles in RPGs and miniatures games, but it must have been before the first Gulf War when I would've been around 17. I can recall sitting with some friends watching the news and discussing in some detail the weapons deployed against each other and the likely (and predictable) outcome of pitting T-72s against Challenger tanks and Apache Helicopters. Before that I can also remember creating and playing historical Vietname War scenarios in Overrun! with a friend on his C64. This interest continues to this day - I have vague Grognard tendencies in my choice of games and I'd probably play a few more wargames if I didn't have a bent toward multiplayer games, or could find anyone to play them against, or didn't find most of them of a level of complexity better suited to computer simulation.

On the other hand I can remember when I first took against the horror of war and violence. It was while studying the poetry of Wilfred Owen at school, aged about 15. I took against the apparently pointless and unnecessary violence embodied by the First World War, and indeed most other wars, to the point where I became a sworn pacifist and really quite an annoyingly self-righteous hippy wanker.

I've since recovered from that extreme position and recognised that violence is sometimes necessary and on very rare occasions, legitimate. However much of my adult life I've struggled with the apparent contradiction of being against war but fascinated by militarism and military history. I found some sort of reconciliation after reading the excellent book Dispatches, a journalistic memoir of Vietnam from which I took the message that warfare is at once terrible and yet glamorous. And it seems to me that until we can recognise this, and perhaps find something to replace combat in the collective psyche, war will continue to dominate the world, like it or not.

But as usual, I have digressed to some extent. You see, I love being really nasty to other people in games - it's one of the prime reasons I pick AT games out as being favourites. I absolutely delight in games where you can pretend to co-operate with someone and then pull out and stab them in the back. I get an immense thrill out of games where you can make plays which suddenly and unexpectedly put your opponents position back by several turns. I have a fantastic time rolling the dice and grandiosely sweeping enemy figures off the board. Destruction is fun. Betrayal is good. Wholesale slaughter is awesome.

But only in games.

This is stuff I'd never, ever do to people in real life. I'm a nice guy, basically, who likes to please people and shies away from genuine conflict. I'm absolutely convinced that the reason I enjoy being such a bastard to people when I play games is because it allows me to express the less pleasant side of my personality - and let's face it, we've all got one (with the possible exception of Mr Skeletor who might not have a pleasant side to contrast it with) - in a way that doesn't really hurt anyone else. For me, this is the catharsis that's replaced the glamour of conflict in my system and allowed me to behave like a sensible, civilised human being most of the time.

I can't help but wonder whether deep down, this isn't part of the appeal for other AT gamers and Grognards too. It would undoubtedly help explain why playing the villain is such an attractive role - the more dastardly you get to be in the game, the greater exorcism of your own darker feelings you get in return. Which brings us on to Eurogamers and the oft-commented tendency amongst that crowd for passive-aggressive behaviour. Could it be that this is because pushing little coloured wooden cubes around a table doesn't help much in letting off steam? So some of them, who perhaps haven't found other constructive or harmless ways of dealing with those sorts of feelings, decide to get it off their chests by adopting the passive-aggressive stance when challenged?

I just realised this article has gone way beyond a focus on games. Ah well, I've started so I'll finish.

So here's another idea to chew over. As anyone who's played a particularly intense and vicious game of Diplomacy will know, deciding to be really nasty to other people in board games isn't always a safe option. Handled badly it can really, really upset your fellow gamers and lead to the sorts of situations which make board flipping incidents look trivial. To be comfortable playing games which absolutely require you to be really horrible to each other you need to be playing with a certain set of people - people with whom you have a good enough understanding that everyone knows it's just a game, but people that you're not so close to that real-life issues can be dragged into the equation. In other words you don't want to play these games with strangers, vague acquaintances or family - you want to be playing them with good friends. That's my preferred gaming environment. I can't speak for my fellow AT fanboys but I do pick up the idea that Eurogamers have a greater tendency to game at clubs or with family members. Maybe if they tried playing games with a crowd where everyone knew each other well enough not to be bad loosers, whatever happened, they wouldn't have such an issue with player elimination and other elements of ultra-competitive games.

Mr Skeletor’s Mailbag, 11th June

It’s late again and I have an elastic band around my head, slowly cutting off the circulation to my brain. So lets get straight in:

Mike “arselicker” Dowd writes:

The AT revolution seems to be one of dice and badasses. The contributors seem predominantly male and badass. My question is – Do chicks fall into the equation as far as the ultimate AT gamenight is concerned? Should chainmail bikini’s optional or required?

Your loyal henchman,

Mike Dowd

Loyal Henchman? Is that you Beastman?

Females don’t fall in anywhere when it comes to game nights I’m afraid. F:AT’s own Ubarose is supposedly a chick, but I have never seen her boobs to confirm and so remain skeptical. I sometimes suspect Franklincob is a chick, but he is more likely one of those Tai transvestite hookers with a redneck accent. Barnes certainly bitches like a chick, but I don’t think that counts. Thadd Orclover from FFG is a chick, but she is paid to like them so doesn’t count. I’m struggling to think of any other AT chicks on this or any other planet and am coming up with zilch.

No, I’m afraid Beastman Mike that chicks as part of the equation of the ultimate AT gamenight = 0, Unless you all pitch in and hire some hookers or something. Chicks just don’t seem to dig AT, it could be because it tends to be as sexist and misogynistic as an El Roth movie, or because women have shitty taste in games, but the truth is most likely because it tends to be played by middle-aged childish nerds, and despite what 80’s teen comedies claim, no chicks want to shag nerds.

Emmanuel “Amen” Denis writes:

Dear Mr. Skeletor,

Next Friday I will host the first boardgame session at
my church (and hopefully many more will follow), with
my churchgoing fellows. Now the problem is that nobody
in the church knows any of the games we all like on
fortress ameritrash. What kind of games should I bring
to this gaming party?

Please let me know your input.

Thanks,

Manolito

Tsk, tsk, did you confess to your local priest that you read this blog? You know each Mr Skeletor article you read is worth 2 Hail Mary’s penance!

I’m struggling to think of any good AT games for a church group to be honest. AT tends to be complex, long and themes which may be inappropriate for church, so it’s a tough one. Nexus Ops is perhaps the best one I can think of with the least offensive theme. Roborally is a good choice. Heroscape could be OK except that it is a pain to cart around and punk kids will nick the bits. Conquest of the Empire might be a good choice, though people may object to the war theme. You could put a case forward for Fury of Dracula, after all the players are working for God trying to exorcise a great evil, but it depends on how “Churchie” the Church group is and if they will buy it. Reiner’s Lord of the Rings is a good choice but not really AT. Warrior Knights might be passable were it not for the fact people may find Corrupting the Church offensive. Marvel Heroes is non offensive but a shocker to teach.

To be honest I think you may be best off teaching them Eurogames. Yes I too can’t believe I just said that.

If you have any mail for this section, address it to fortressat@gmail.com with “[mailbag]” in the header.

Battlelore: Under the Havoc Staff

If there is one thing that Days of Wonder annihilate their peers in, it’s marketing. They may only have a few releases a year but by God, if those releases don’t sound like the greatest gifts to gaming ever I don’t know what does. Battlelore currently stands as their greatest example of the hype machine – despite simply being the 4^th ‘redevelopment’ of the very popular Command and Colors system, it promised to be everything from a mass combat war game system to a role playing game to a miniatures game to a naked lesbian orgy. It’s the current reigning champ of AT games based on Board Game Geek ratings, but does it hold up?

Components

The game is pricey, but you do get a lot of stuff in the box. The first thing that hits you is what at first appears to be the amazing plastic inserts. Everything has its own special place for storage, and it makes for a lovely display piece, except that most of the minis get squashed into a little compartment which badly warps them. It’s fucking ridiculous – some guy obviously spent a lot of time and money designing this thing, did 90% of it and then just seemed to say “Ahh fuck it!” and crammed the remaining stuff in a little section, rendering the whole thing useless. Now normally I couldn’t give a shit about inserts – most are either very cheap looking or generic, and so I toss them out without a second thought. In this case however the insert seems to have had so much work put into it that it feels like part of the game’s cost went into it, so when I throw these useless things out it feels like I’m wasting money. Still, it does sound rather anal to be spending such a long paragraph ranting about an insert, but as you will see the design of things being 90% "there" and then not finished properly is a reoccurring motif for this game.

The minis are cute but nothing special. The humans look a little bit squat and ugly, but you’re not paying Games Workshop prices and you get a ton of them so you can’t complain. One of the most exciting things about the game for me initially was that the game came with flags which told you what side the miniature was on – this meant that the miniatures could be used for either side, so you could have one scenario where all the humans were on one side, and then swap the flags on some of them for the next scenario so that both teams could have humans. Sounded great in theory, but in practice I have yet to see it used – none of the provided scenarios ‘swap’ miniatures between sides, and you get so many of each type that it feels like both sides get more than enough anyway. I would have rather they dropped this aspect and provided the miniatures in 2 sets of colors (one for each side) to make the board more lively, currently everything is a drab grey. Apart from these complaints the miniatures are fine.

The cards are lovely with nice artwork, the dice are wonderfully wooden (I prefer wood dice to plastic) and the counters and overlays feel solid. Everything comes pre-punched to cater for the laziest of asses out there.

Finally we get to the “massive” 80 page rulebook, which the game seems to wear on it’s sleeve with great pride. It’s really a case of a sheep in wolfs clothing though – 80 pages makes the game seem deep complex and involved but it’s mostly padding, you could condense the rulebook into 8 pages easily. This approach is a double edged sword – on the one hand the rulebook looks great, and goes into such minute detail that even the biggest drongo who has not played anything more complex then hungry hungry hippos should be able to comprehend the game. On the other hand experienced game players (like moi) will find themselves having to inject caffeine straight into their veins to keep themselves awake while reading the tedious and terribly obvious descriptions and examples, especially in the first half of the book. The book also over explains some rules to the point where it gets confusing, (much like this review!) – “bold” is a good example, it’s a simple rule that gets explained in so many different ways that it ends up sounding a lot more complicated than it really is. Sometimes less is more.

Setup

The game has a medium setup time, mainly due to placing the miniatures out, 4 per unit. The fact all of the miniatures are grey doesn’t help matters at all. Normally this amount of setup time isn’t a problem, except that the game is fairly short (1 hour max) so you feel the setup time more than you normally would.

Theme

The game centres on the 100 year war, but gives it a fantasy twist, having different nationalities instead be different fantasy races, and introducing magic and giant creatures. Interestingly it’s not quite fantasy fair, but rather is presented in a more fairytale or “disneyish” way with very colorful cutesy-poo artwork. Unlike most typical fantasy games things like blood, darkness and death is unseen and indeed wouldn’t fit, the violence being very cartoony. It seems to be more heavily inspired by Shrek than Lord of the Rings, which gives the setting a very unique flavor and suits the game really well. Graphic design wise the game is spectacular and beautifully presented.

Basic Gameplay

I assume most people by now have played the Command and Colours system (CCS) in one of its forms, it’s a rather simple and surprisingly popular system that even has old grumpy grognards fawning all over it in its CC:Ancients form. In case you are from mars and have never played a CCS game, the basics are you play cards to move your troops in different sections of the board then roll a number of dice depending on the color of the unit, trying to roll the color of the target to score hits. It’s very quick and clean and works well for boardgames – but the problem here is that battlelore is trying to push it into more of a open system, and I’m not convinced CCS is robust enough to handle it, as I’ll get to later.

The basic game doesn’t change much of the CCS formula, like CC:Ancients this version differs from Memoir ’44 in that it emphasizes movement and formations over terrain advantage, which makes the game feel more deep and tactical. However as terrain is less important, this also has the effect of making each scenario feel similar to the last one, so while the game feels more involved then memoir it doesn’t take long for each game to begin to feel samey. As in all other CCS games the luck factor is very heavy – while I’m not one to complain about luck, it does get tiring when every element of the game involves luck in some form. On the flip side this does make the game excellent to play with newbies, as they have a good chance of winning based on luck alone.

Victory is achieved by killing of a certain number of your opponents units depending on the scenario. Like Memoir, the scenario balance is up the shit, with one side often having an obvious advantage over the other. It is recommended that people play a game then swap sides and play again; tallying their total victory medals, but this has always come across as a cop out to me. There seems to me to be no reason why the designers don’t simply adjust the number of kills each side needs to win to reflect the scenarios imbalance apart from sheer laziness.

The other curiosity for me is why the designers dumbed down the dice system from Memoir ’44. Memoir ’44 dice system allowed different odds to hit different things – squads had a 50% chance of being hit, tanks were more difficult, and artillery were hardest of all to hit having only a 1 in 6 chance. It made each of these unit types feel quite different. Here however no matter what you attack – be it a heavily armored red unit or paper armored green until - you have the exact same chance to score a hit against it, and the designers basically spend three die faces to do what could have been easily achieved with one. Some may argue this is a big non issue, but to me those two wasted die faces could have been used to bring a bit more flexibility into the system, which is something Battlelore sorely needs as its going to be its biggest hurdle.

You see Battlelore in my opinion works as a very solid if unspectacular boardgame, but it is far to rigid to be this amazing system Days of Wonder are claiming it will become. It’s not the simplicity of the game that’s the problem, after all Heroscape is a very simple system that has an incredible variety of troops that feel and play different, it’s that too many of the systems variables are fixed – the color of a unit dictate the amount of dice it rolls, unit movement is fixed based on color and if it’s mounted or on foot, there is no characteristic to make a unit harder or easier to hit, and so on – basically it seems the designers have not left themselves enough room within the game mechanics to bring forth the amount of variety and big ideas the advertising and hype machine is claiming, but maybe I’m being too skeptical. Lets take a look at the ‘advanced’ features of Battlelore and see what they bring to the table.

Races

The game comes with a sampling of two races: dwarves and goblins. Dwarves are always Bold (a state of morale) and goblins are always frightened (another state of morale) and get a rush attack which is useless to their green units. That’s it.

Upon reading this, one thing sprang immediately to mind: Big fucking deal!

Say what you want about Warhammer and it’s sludgy, over complex, archaic and way overpriced system, but at least in that when you play a dwarven army it feels like your playing a dwarven army, which in turn plays and feels very different to a goblin army. These dwarves are simply bold humans. Apart from being a really poor design choice, as keeping units in bold is one of the main challenges of the game, and dwarves negate that making them boringly straightforward, it really shows a lack of imagination and scope. These races don’t present a new way to play, they are just fiddling around the edges of the mechanics as an excuse to sell the game as more than it really is, and demonstrate firsthand why I am so skeptical of this system becoming as great as it claims it will be.

The irony is getting the different races to play differently would have been quite easy – just copy what Combat Commander and a host of other different wargames do and give each race it’s own specific command card deck. The dwarven deck could have had less movement on their cards (as dwarves are slow) but some defensive bonuses or other such cards. The goblin deck could have allowed goblins to move en mass, making up for their weakness in combat, thus making them a swarming army. There was a lot that could have been done, but instead the main movement mechanic remained unchanged (despite the fact that we have seen it 3 times before!) and the designers simply slapped some minor rules on.

Because of this, and the way the victory conditions work with each side needing the exact same number of kills to win, as it stands I can’t see there ever being a fair dwarves vs goblins army fight. The dwarves would simply steamroll the goblins even if the goblins were given twice the numbers – after all each army would still only be able to move the same number of units per turn, as dictated by their cards. I simply cannot believe how disappointing these races are, and I sure hope DoW have something big up their sleeve because this shit just don’t cut it.

Creatures

Now this is more like it. Creatures are special figures that are each unique and have their own special powers. They remind me a lot of heroscape really, and the beauty of them is that they each play differently from the others and feel a lot more thematic and less mechanical than the races do, especially the earth elemental, which is quite a clever unit. This is more along the lines of how the races should have been treated and as they stand are the strongest aspect of the game. They aren’t perfect however, and I have two main criticisms:

Firstly, the rules have a number of holes when it comes to creatures, even forgetting to tell you how to recruit them at start up! Quite unforgivable considering the 80 page rulebook.

Secondly, killing creatures is too much of a crapshoot, involving 2 sets of rolls to kill them. This means that a lucky roll will knock off a creature on turn one, while other games will have the creature run rampant with the player unable to land a blow. Creatures really should have been given lifepoints, to allow the attacker to wear them down gradually and give the owner more control over their fate.

Apart from these issues creatures are a lot of fun, and I wish I could have more than one per side.

War Council and Lore

This is the big selling point of the game, and its bit of a mixed bag. At the start of the game each player gets to pick different characters (who can each be from 1 to 3 levels of strength) to make up his war council. One character slot can be a creature as explained above, and another can be a commander, who will increase your hand of command cards to allow you more flexibility in issuing orders to your troops. The other four characters give you access to spells / special abilities in the form of lore cards, which you can cast during the game. It’s a great idea, but it didn’t seem to get followed through properly so doesn’t work as well as it should (remember the 90% there analogy I brought up with the insert?)

For starters instead of each player getting their own deck, they share a common one built up of the character types chosen by each player. This means that even if you chose a wizard, you may not get any wizard spells in your hand all game! Worse, your opponent might get them, which he can freely cast himself (though at a small penalty if he doesn’t have the proper character.) This means that forward planning with the lore deck is almost impossible, as you cannot know what cards you will get during the game.

The other problem is that not all war council characters are created equal, with some being clearly better than others. It doesn’t make much sense to take a level 3 warrior for example, who only has 1 card that is effected by his level. On the other hand a level 3 priest is a natural choice if you want to win. As it stands the war council choices could have been balanced a bit better. The same applies to the Lore cards themselves - each card has a ‘lore’ cost, which is a currency used for casting spells, but again I’m not convinced the lore costs are all that well balanced. The popular example are the cleric cards “Hills Rumble” and “Forrest Frenzy”, which at 7 lore each are clearly better than say the theif’s “Sneak Attack” despite that costing 9.

Another disappointment is that the 4 different lore decks (wizard, priest, warrior and thief) play a little too similar to my liking. In fact lots of cards appear in multiple decks just under a different name. It kills the flavor for me and demonstrates yet again just how limited the system currently is.

Overall it is an interesting aspect of the game but the heavy level of randomness it employs and the overall lack of strategic planing they allow simply ends up making the whole game too luck based, and by this stage you feel as though the game is playing you rather then you controlling it.

Conclusion

Battlelore is the McDonalds of AT games; looks good in the adds, is convenient and does the job when you want something quick. But it doesn’t taste all that great, isn’t very fulfilling and as yet doesn’t live up to the promises it makes.

As it stands I’m disappointed - the game is too simple, too heavily influenced by luck and I feel the system is too inflexible to match its claims, but with the expansions on the near horizon we will soon be able to tell if my hunch is right. I have the first expansion "Call to Arms" on my desk and am about to bust the shrink as soon as I hit "send", wish me luck!

Recommended for those who:

Are new to AT games and don’t want to deal in anything heavier.

Only play games that go for no more than an hour.

Like to jump on bandwagons early (get in before there are too many expansions to catch up on!)

Not Recommended for those who:

Are looking for a bit of weight and depth.

Are looking for a good system with which to invest heavily in – this is no where near as robust as a miniatures game.

Are an experienced AT gamer with lots of games already (there probably isn’t enough here to keep you interested.)

Overall it’s not bad game and good for the ocasional play, but not all that great either. Doesn't deserve it's current hype or praise in my opinion, but I'll refrain from overall recommending it or dismissing it and simply sit on the fence.

The Weekly AT Snapshot - 6/8/2007

Michael Barnes was a Problem Child



After Michael Barnes almost singlehandedly destroyed the boardgaming hobby earlier this year, we at Fortress Ameritrash decided to do a little checking up on him. You can never be too careful these days, especially where villains are concerned. What we found should come as a surprise to nobody. The picture above shows Michael at the tender age of 5 at the Axis & Allies World Championship. Some things never change...

This week's snapshot was submitted by the elusive "Powdered Toast Man". Will his true identity ever be revealed?

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A View of Villainy

Ya know, my daddy used to say, every man's got a devil, and you can't rest until you find him. Whatever happened back there with you and your girlfriend, I cleared that building. Hell, nothing happens in this town without my say-so. So I'm sorry if I spoiled your wedding plans, there, friend. But if it's any consolation to you, you have put a smile on my face.

Top Dollar, "The Crow"

Some people might say there's something wrong with me.

If a game has a villain role, I am generally drawn to it. If I can wreak havoc, destroy cities, maim the goody-two-shoes, then I'm all in.

I'm probably not alone in this fascination; note how often writers of novels and comic books will make their villains by far the most interesting characters in the piece. There's probably a bit of catharsis there in that for all of us.

In many Ameritrash games (and some, though very few Eurogames) there are often opportunities to play "the bad guy". Generally this arises from the heavily themed nature of Ameritrash games. After all, a favorite trait of AT tiles would have to be narrative, and by extension, theme; and what interesting narrative doesn't have conflict with diametrically opposed entities, one side we would often deem "evil"?

Euros on occasion do have "villains", but it is rare (playing as Sauron in Knizia's selfsame-titled expansion for Lord of the Rings is the most obvious example). In your typical Euro, we are all architechts or corn-growers or nobles with nothing better to do than curry favor from the provost...all of us a quite bland avatar that is far removed from villainous overtures. Imagine a film where the "villain" brought the Builder to town too early for the other nobles to capitalize...ooooh, intrigue!

So, in celebration of villainy, I thought I'd list some games with villainous roles for the players to enjoy. Please add more, and *especially* if you know of Euro-style games that feature such roles.

Rage CCG: Rage's second expansion was entitled The Wyrm and was dedicated to playing the vile forces of darkness, including deranged werewolves with names like "Longtooth Soulkiller". You could also play "Victim" cards such as Busfull of School Children or Red-Headed Stepchild and go to town on them. I spent the majority of my time after this set's released playing Wyrm packs with evil vampire lords and dominatrix Black Spiral Dancers in them.

War of the Ring: Though I can sympathize with the plight of the Free Peoples, I must admit to a satisfying feeling crushing the spires of man and turning their Fool's Hope into dust. As the Witch King leads an assault on Minas Tirith, you are likely to catch a "big ol' smile on my face".

Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit: Playing as the Trade Federation has one very real benefit--the opportunity to turn hordes of Gungans into orange goo. Though the game itself does not label a particular Gungan as Jar Jar, believe me....everyone chooses one. Everyone. And tries to kill it as soon as possible.

Star Trek CCG: I didn't really play this one for long, but my very first deck I built had nothing to do with completing missions but was instead a Klingon deck that satisfied itself building huge fleets and destroying every Outpost in sight. Believe me, after that I could finish my missions whenever I felt like it.

Fury of Dracula: I've heard it said that people are either "Dracula" players or "Hunter" players. Based on my visceral thrills eluding the hunters, laying traps for them at every turn, and trying to sink my fangs into the luscious Mina by the light of the moon, I'd have to say I figured out pretty quickly which one I was.

Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition: Though the Yssaril race are not *explicity* designated as villains, it's pretty telling that most people refer to them as "The Gollums". Plus, their racial benefit involves them holding fistfuls of cards which are generally used to blow up your ships or assasinate your leaders when you least expect it. Oh yes, precious.

Netrunner: That Runner guy always has annoyed me. I mean...the guy is STEALING stuff. This makes him a hero...how? Rectify the situation by putting his brain on ice...literally.

Axis & Allies: The Axis were the world conquerers...and while it may be fun to recreate your favorite scenes from "Pearl Harbor" (that's fun, right? RIGHT?) it is also quite a bit of fun sending tanks into the heart of Russia and island hopping with the Japanese fleet. In fact, Japan plays completely differently from all the other countries, allowing you to maximize the use of many of those cool bits you oohed and ahhed over when you first opened the game.

Fortress: America: Why do you hate America? Find out as you send your forces (apparently led by Saddam himself if the box cover is to be believed) into the heartland of America, where you hope to destroy Democracy, Freedom, and Britney Spears, though not necessarily in that order. Bonus points for mocking cries of "Wolverines!"

Mutant Chronicles: Siege of the Citadel: Though you might be helping your "good guy" corp troops when you're doing it, chewing through the opposing Corporations as the Legion player feels oh so right. Your Ezoghul draws a bead on them. They whimper softly..."Mommy?" You cackle with glee.

Star Wars CCG: The entire game was built upon having a Light and a Dark deck. It's pretty telling that I'd have maybe three builds for Light but boundless ideas for Dark. In one game I got to chop up a bunch of Ewoks with Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith....freakin' awesome. Other highlights include blowing up planets, delivering a soft-serve frozen Han to Jabba, feeding whiny Skywalker to the Rancor, and too many more to list.

Doom: The Boardgame: The Cyberdemon is a killing machine capable of dealing with both Karl Urban AND Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in mere seconds. Give the big guy mad props, yo

Hammer of the Scots: While there's something romantic about leading Wallace into battle with cries of "FREEEEEEDDOMMMM!", there's also something satisfying about laying some King Edward smackdown on the rebellious Scots. "It's good to be rid of shit," indeed.

MLB Sportsclix: ...what? Hey, you *can* play a team made up of mostly Yankees, you know.

Mr Skeletor’s Mailbag, 5th June

If it’s constantly late then it’s really on time, isn’t it?

Gary “used car salesman” Sax writes:

I recently read a thread on BGG where a player described his
experience trying to get negotiations of any sort going on the BSW
Eurogames engine (w/Wallenstein) and being rebuffed by silent players
telling him to not take the game so "seriously." While the player may
have been a tad overzealous in contacting them (tracking them down and
doing it on BGG), the responses from a number of people in the
community were quite puzzling, accepting and even supporting this type
of gameplay for these games. Statements like "well, it's up to the
players and that there are two types of way to play these games."
Additionally, there were some interesting suggestions that in fact the
status quo for these games online at least *should* be no
communication between players.

They seemed to suggest that at least a decent portion of the community
does not like to play even negotiation type games with negotiation!
Even the thought of trying to play Game of Thrones without any
negotiation completely baffles me. I've played gunboat Diplomacy, of
course, and found it ok but nothing special. But my question is
this--why would players even bother to play negotiation/conflict games
if they don't want to do any negotiation or have any player
interaction? Has the Euro community fallen so far that it is even now
seeks to play more free form open negotiation games without
interaction? Why do you think that would be? What would motivate
players to get online or ftf and play GoT or to a lesser extent
Wallenstein without player interaction? Why wouldn't they just play
another game of whatever multiplayer solo play game they are
interested in? Any thoughts on what could be motivating this? Has
anyone seen this happen?

-Gary Sax

Who know the inner workings of the Eurosnoot mind, Gary? After all these are a people who would rather be building camel trains through the desert rather than nuking the fucking thing into a sea of glass. Strange people indeed.

Forgetting the cube nancy boys for a second, it has always struck me as strange that some games feel like they are meant to be played loud and boisterous, while others feel like they should be played in silence. It would certainly not feel ‘right’ to be negotiating and pointing out moves to other players in a game of Samurai, but that feels like the norm in a game of Twilight Imperium.

I think this has to do with where the origins of the game lies. Forget Euros for a moment, those things are simply the current flash in the pan pop music of the boardgame world, and lets look at the classics. I think you can broadly group old games into two categories – old school AT (such as risk and monopoly) and old school abstracts (such as chess and checkers.)

Old school AT were lighthearted affairs that involved playing with many people, socializing, and begging, threatening or crying your way to victory. Risk was just as much about talking the other players out of attacking you as it was taking Australia. On the other hand abstracts were normally two player affairs, and were much more about the matching of wits and the testing of minds. That is why they were played in relative silence, and why pointing out a move for the other players is frowned upon. Thus were born the two different play types, or as the nerdlingers would call them , two different ‘social contracts’.

These game types are the ones that resonate the most with the wider community, and are our first exposure to gaming in general. Therefore when we play modern games we bring these old experiences and feelings to the table, which in turn dictates out behavior. In other words, Samurai feels like it fits the chess mould more, so I play it like I was playing chess, in silence. On the other hand Twilight feels more like risk, so I play it with full negotiation.

Now assuming that what I wrote above makes sense and isn’t a bunch of It’s-Midnight-and-I-need sleep bollocks, the answer to your question is simple. These people who want to play interactive games minus the interaction grew up with too much chess and not enough hungry hungry hippos.

Well that’s my theory, I open the floor to the rest of the AT crackpots to come up with their own. If you have any mail for this segment write to fortressat@gmail.com with “[mailbag]” in the header.

Plastic Nazis

I'm not sure where game manufacturers get most of their plastic from nowadays, but wherever it is Fantasy Flight Games must be keeping them in business. It seems every major new release from that company has to come attached with tons and tons of little plastic pieces. And why not indeed since FFG is the premier publisher of Ameritrash games around and little plastic pieces is what Ameritrash fans seem to demand. So strong is this link between plastic and AT that a number of people seem to have decided that the presence of plastic miniatures is the defining feature of Ameritrash, rejecting commonly held older AT classics like Dune into the bargain. War of the Ring actually has "215 Figures" as a sales tagline on the box.

Now don't get me wrong - I have nothing against plastic. As an ex-miniatures gamer I can well understand what sculpted pieces bring to the table in terms of visual spectacle. AT gamers are supposed to be interested in theme and good miniatures can really add to the thematic appeal of a game - I can't imagine for example that Space Hulk would really be quite such an intense game if you couldn't see those many-armed monstrosities galloping down the corridor toward the marines. The fact that you can easily differentiate the armaments of your marines whilst still having them look like a squad is a big plus, and it's immensely satisfying when one of those big guns goes off on a room full of 'stealers. It's no co-incidence that Space Hulk is one of the few games for which I've actually bothered to paint the miniatures.

However it's important to understand that miniatures are only one part of the thematic appeal of a game. For the production quality to really add to the theme all the components need to be well produced and designed. Take the reprint of Conquest of the Empire for instance - comes with a ton of quality plastic components but I can't help but feel the board art looks cheap and tacky - and thereby reduces the visual impact of having all those little men and horses sweeping across the Mediterranean. In a recent podcast I mentioned that I thought one of the reasons for the long standing popularity of a number of GW titles was the fact that they were an early adopter of high production standards in boardgames and this isn't just down to miniatures, it's good design across the board (excuse the pun). Look at the pieces in the original Fury of Dracula - everything is dripping with late Victorian and/or horror theme and this is undoubtedly part of what makes it one of the most thematic games of all time.

Anyway, to get back to the point, what bugs me about plastic in games is the fact that it's now seen as such an essential part of the appeal of a game that plastic often gets used when cardboard might well have been a much better idea. I've just got me a copy of War of the Ring which, while a great game, is possibly one of the worst offenders in this regard. To find out why, let us compare a few instances of plastic against cardboard (and sometimes wood) and see where the card can come out on top.

The first point is information density. There's a reason why Grognards so love their cardboard counters and it's not because wargame publishers are on such tight margins that they can't afford to risk using plastic pieces. You can record a lot more information about what a piece can do on a cardboard chit than you can on a plastic piece. In fact we'll go further - you can record nothing about what a piece can do if it's moulded in plastic. Look at a player aid card from Twilight Imperium - all that stuff in the bottom right could've been recorded on cardboard pieces. Admittedly this is a pretty minor example but I'm sure that sometimes modern designers limit the amount of differentiation between units in a game because they know that they can't print different statistics onto the plastic pieces they need to include to sell the game. In War of the Ring the information could have included the country to which the piece belongs, information so vital that many WotR players have painted the bases of their miniatures with an appropriate colour. Sure, FFG could have moulded all the pieces in different colour plastic but this would have added massively to the cost of the game.

Which brings us nicely onto point number two. Plastic costs. Alongside War of the Ring I also ordered Twilight Imperium and its expansion which cost me a whopping sum of money. Most of this goes on the plastic miniatures included in the game and what really annoyed me is that I shelled out for the expansion where the bulk of the cost goes on another two sets of plastic player units that I'm never going to use - my gaming group doesn't even consist of eight people, let alone eight people I'm going to convince to spend the whole night playing Twilight Imperium. This made me so cross that I actually considered writing to FFG to ask if they I couldn't just pay to have them send me the non-plastic components from the expansion in a bag, since the cards and such from the expansion are considered pretty much essential to get the most out of the game. What stopped me in the end was the realisation that it'd probably cost them as much to have a staff member do this for me and ship it from the US as it would for me just to buy the bloody expansion in the first place - that and the fact I was behaving like an anally-retentive fool.

Another thing you can't do with plastic is stack a number of pieces in a small area. This is another major problem in WotR which has a number of small board spaces in which very large armies can potentially gather. Although the designers foresaw this and included a number of cardboard counters in the game the trouble is that each nation has three different types of units (regular, elites and leaders) and it's not uncommon for units of different nations to end up in the same space, plus room may have to be found for character figures, so the discs don't really solve the problem. This is probably the biggest problem for plastic in general. I've come across it in so many modern games that it'd be wasteful to finger them all - it's cropped up from time to time in just about everything I've played from FFG, Eagle Games and Days of Wonder.

Plastic is also very bad at recording hidden information. There's an old game called Survive! from the US which is now regarded as a family AT classic. It's become hard to find and fairly expensive. Over here in the UK the game was republished as Escape from Atlantis and a number of things were changed including replacing the wooden pawns from the original with plastic ones. As part of this change a hidden value on the bottom of each pawn was removed, resulting in a significantly less interesting game and one which is now common as muck and cheaply had off Ebay. I can't help but to speculate that this change might have had something to do with the fact that it would have been much harder to get this information onto the plastic pawns in a way that would have been both readable and hard to rub off - no such problem with wood. There are a whole number of games I've played in which the precise strength or nature of a piece is hidden from the other players through the simple expedient of turning a cardboard counter face down or stacking other counters on top if it - Titan for example, or an obscure but brilliant wargame called Air & Armour. This sort of thing just isn't possible with plastic and leads to an important and interesting mechanic being closed off to designers who want to produce AT games for the modern market.

Another thing I'm going to complain about in what has become a disproportionately long rant is that plastic can, instead of adding to the visual appeal of a game, end up looking naff. A disturbingly large proportion of modern plastic components seem to be made of a slightly rubbery compound instead of the hard, brittle plastic that we used to see all the time. At first I thought this stuff was being used because it would break less easily, but snaps seem to be just as common and long spindly bits on the figures, such as the gun barrels on all the types of figures in Memoir '44, bend and end up looking extremely cheap and silly instead. It's also easy to have badly moulded figures that not only look horrible but make the process of differentiating between pieces doubly difficult.

There's another point - the final one - differentiating between plastic pieces can be very hard. Again, this is the reason why WotR players feel the need to paint the bases of the figures from different nations. They actually look different from nation to nation but because they're the same colour and there's so many of them on the board at once, telling them apart in practice is a real pain. Anyone tried playing Talisman with unpainted figures? You'll have the same problem. I can remember being quite impressed with the idea that your playing piece in that game was a full-colour card of your character that stood upright in a little plastic stand. That conveyed all the thematic information that I needed for that game.

Anyway this has become far longer that I originally intended, especially considering that I'm not actually saying plastic is bad. This is really a plea to publishers and designers, please, please, please design and produce games with interesting mechanics and practical components first and foremost before you start thinking about the satanic lure of plastic.

The Weekly AT Snapshot - 06/01/2007

MTV Games is Proud To Announce Reprint of Fan Favorite "Civilization", in an Exciting Updated Form!

For Immediate Release

NEW YORK, NEW YORK. June 01, 2007

MTV is proud to announce the reprint that gaming fans around the world have been clamoring for! Once a hit in college dorms around the nation, "Civilization" has long since been out of print. MTV is excited to announce that they've partnered with both the original game's creators and none other than Snoop Dogg himself to bring gamers the classic version of the game with all the "fo rizzle" modern updates you could ever ask for!

The new game will move the setting from the Mediterranian Sea to downtown Compton and will include all new graphic design from MTV's most hip and talented artists, creating a totally proactive gaming experience that will be in yo' fizzle for rizzle!

Snoop Dogg is understandably excited about the new release and had this to say: "Yeah yeah, that's the real shizzle, my nizzle!"

Shizzilization will be the first board game to be rated by the ESRB, and will be rated "M" for Mature.

(Today's AT Snapshot comes to us from Murray 'Muzza' Grelis. Thanks, Murray!)