Goa for Two, and Two for Goa

Scrabblette is quickly becoming an experienced gamer as we explore my game collection trying to find out what sorts of games she likes. Last night I re-read the rules to Goa and we sat down and played it.

Goa is one of those games that hasn't had a really good turn yet - the only time I played it was against the kid and he thrashed me. I had somewhat miserable memories of it after that and didn't rush to get it to the table again.

My first impression is that it's really quite complicated. I wonder if the game couldn't be simplified in these ways:

• remove the auction. I suggest something like Vinci where there's a series of tiles and you can have the first one for free, the second for 2 ducats, the third for 4, etc. The auction feels like an unnecessary complication in this game, and it seems to add to the play time significantly.
• forget about ships. The cool aspect of the game is the spices, the ships are just there to make moving the spices harder.
• simplify the scoring mechanism. On the development track you get 1 VP for each spice used to upgrade, so why not have a VP track around the outside of the board that is updated as you score? The game has a lot of public VPs that can be calculated, but why force the players to do that?

OK, so with those suggestions the game would be significantly different, and appeal to a different audience. As it stands, Goa feels to me to be underdeveloped - Knizia would have taken a few more mechanisms out before he released it.

Nevertheless, it's a decent game. It kept me thinking quite a lot, but not full-time, hence my feeling that the game is too long. Tikal keeps me thinking all the time. Cosmic Encounter keeps me thinking none of the time. There's a high positive correlation between the amount of time I spend thinking and my rating of the game.

So Scrabblette started with the flag and placed it in such a way that no plantations were auctioned in the first round. I won 4 colonists and she won some extra actions. That suggested to me that I should found the cost 8 colony. Scrabblette had no source of spices and had to try to found the cost 6 colony, but failed on her first attempt. I advanced on the taxation track and Scrabblette advanced on the expedition card track, setting the foundations of our strategies.

I was in the stronger position as my colony could produce any spice, whereas Scrabblette was limited to red/black. That seemed to be a minor advantage which I needed to exploit. I advanced in all development columns just because I could. I increased taxation as well, and usually had more money than Scrabblette, allowing me to control the flag. When I did lose the flag I really missed the extra action (particularly in the round where I forgot to tax before the auction), so I got it back again whenever I could.

When it came to the final scoring I was showing 21 points in development, 10 in colonies and 1 in plantations, compared to Scrabblette's 15, 6 and 1. However Scrabblette had 3 points in expedition cards and 3 points for the most money, making the scores 32 to 28. A victory, but not the convincing victory I was expecting. I learnt to watch out for her when we played Taj, and she continues to show that she's a worthy opponent. What will she be like when she's experienced and knows the rules??

I should compare this victory to the way the kid defeated me. When I played the kid in May 2005 (so he was nearly 9 years old then), he got 22 points on the development tracks, 10 points for colonies, 1 for expeditions, 3 for most money and 3 for the mission... 39 points to my 29. That was a truly crushing victory. I think in that game we started with plantations so there were more spices in the game early, the economies were kick-started, and I refused to use the taxation track and he used his money to win all the auctions. I think I get the game now. I want a rematch.

Games as Discrete Finite Systems

When I was at university I studied maths (that's what we call it in Australia) and computer science. I eventually realised the maths I loved was combinatorics. I don't know enough about it to tell you exactly what combinatorics is, but some things you might have heard that could be included are:

• Conway's game of Life
• Eight queens puzzle
• Game theory
• Magic squares
• Graphs, directed acycylic graphs, trees
• Rubik's cube
• Polyominoes
• Towers of Hanoi

Although I don't necessarily know very much about those particular topics, that's the vibe of the thing. If you understand that sort of maths, it may seem obvious to you that I like computers and I'll always choose an integer over a float. Furthermore, Douglas Hofstadter and Alexander Dewdney are my idols.

Why is this relevant? Because I think I like games that are based on this sort of maths. Games such as Trias, Domaine, and Rheinlander have a simple finite underlying model which the players manipulate to try to score the most points. In these games there is overt conflict, but you're only susceptible to conflict because you didn't manipulate the model to defend yourself properly - you chose different moves which left you vulnerable.

The GIPF Project, and many other abstract strategy games (Gobblet, Quoridor), are very simple finite systems (except TAMSK which has that annoying continuous time thing happening), so I can get my head around them and love to play.

Word games like Scrabble and Milleranagrams and Lexicon I think scratch some entirely different itch, but deduction games like Mystery of the Abbey, Coda, Code 777, Black Vienna, are all about optimally narrowing down a finite set of possibilities. Hare and Tortoise is blatantly mathematical, which makes it difficult to find opponents!

What about games that suck? CyberKev (who this blog is NOT about) swears that Cosmic Encounters is analytical, but I find it to be mostly political so I don't really get the fun bit. Mall of Horror is the same game with better components. Even Fish Eat Fish, although it looks like an abstract, turns out to be a political game.

Other games that suck are ones that aren't finite, where there aren't even discrete spaces for you to move on, like Warhammer 40K, De Bellis Antiquitatis, Mech Warrior, and so on. Maybe they're decent excuses to play with toys, but I don't find them very interesting as games. Even games with large maps like Heroscape don't work for me, because there are too many possibilities and I don't feel like I'm manipulating a system.

And party games! Don't get me started on party games! Oh hang on... it's my blog, I can say what I like. Taboo, Pictionary, Cranium, all absolutely suck. You can't even get people to agree on the rules so the games are decided by screaming matches between the drunken participants. They turn out to be political games where the politics isn't even part of the rules. By the way, I find playing word games without a dictionary to be a political game as well - if there's any chance of arguing about whether something's a word or not the game ceases to be a game and becomes an argument. You've gotta have the dictionary to make sure there are no arguments. Scattergories! VOMIT!

So I think this is the best characterisation of my favourite sort of games that I've been able to come up with so far. Others that suit me are Puerto Rico, Vinci, Tikal, Torres... with so many good games, there's no time to play bad ones.

A Cosmic Encounter

We played Cosmic Encounter on Wednesday night at Book Realm. Cosmic is not really my kinda game, but forces conspired against me. You see Trevor had managed to buy the ancient 2nd edition complete with all expansions in useable condition for $A5, when it's worth up to $US300. We know this because Cyberkev is a Cosmic guru, so when Trevor and Cyberkev and RealmKeeper and Ozvortex and I sat down to play, I thought it only fair that we try out Trevor's treasure.

First discovery was that although the cards and special powers were present, the tokens and "who you have to attack" counters were not all there, so we cannibalised some bits from other games. We took the pirates from Cartagena and put them in the draw string bag from Ingenious to decide who should be attacked. I used influence markers from Go West as my tokens, and RealmKeeper and Trevor used pretty glass stones from Magic as their tokens.

I won't go through the specifics of the game, because I can't remember them, so I'll tell you about the special powers. I was Boomerang. This meant when you attack me, I get to attack you first. That seemed like a quicker way to die, to me, but as Cyberkev pointed out, it means you get lots more opportunities to capture bases which is how you win the game. Trevor was Skeptic, which meant that he was constantly telling people "I don't think you can win", and on several occasions they agreed with him and backed off. Cyberkev was Vulch, meaning that he picked up all of the used Edicts. So if you wanted to use something against him, you had to give it to him. Andrew was Delegator, meaning that he could change the primary player in conflicts. I found that so annoying that I didn't call him as an ally very much. Ozvortex was the Will, meaning he could choose the opponent and planet he wanted to attack. It didn't seem to help though.

So the Delegator was by far the most annoying. Realmkeeper got somewhat shafted because he had bad cards and after a couple of times where he switched someone's attack out from under them he didn't get invited back and wasn't able to use them up to get new ones. Ozvortex had a fist full of cards, and once I managed to take 4 of them as consolation. Shortly after, I compromised with him, and as giving me a base would have won the game for me, I convinced him to give me his whole hand instead. Both times, I got a heap of Edict cards, and had to spend time thinking about how I could use them to my advantage.

Eventually, as will happen with sort of game where it is so easy to pick on the leader, we had 4 bases each. I attacked Trevor on my turn, and he called for all allies. The Delegator joined in, and made Cyberkev the primary opponent rather than Trevor. We played our cards, and I was well and truly defeated, which I had expected because I had such bad attack cards. But I did have an Edict that said both of those attack cards were Compromises. That meant Cyberkev and I had to make a deal, so we traded a base for a base and shared the win.

I was pleased that it was Cyberkev I had dealt with there, as I thought he would take the win. Trevor might have refused, because he likes to fight. Ozvortex probably would have agreed, Realmkeeper could have gone either way depending on his whim. But I thought Cyberkev would find it very hard to refuse a chance to share a win. As it was, I think he considered his chances of winning some other way, and decided that sharing a win with me was his best outcome, on average.

So that was my second game of Cosmic, what do I think? Well my 6.5 rating at BGG remains unchanged. It's an alright game, but I just can't get into the negotiation of allies. Sure, I could try to be charming or friendly or loyal or intimidating or whatever to try to gain support, but I know that most people I play with will ally with me based on their best interests, not my personal skill. So it was no surprise to me when all 5 of us had 4 bases, because nobody was stupid enough to let someone else win. We might as well shorten the game and play for 1 base each. I definitely prefer analytical games, where I can harness the resources of my massive brain to crush my opponents... or not.

Coincidentally, on Thursday night we played Mall of Horror which requires much the same negotation skills as Cosmic. Sadly I was so tired on Thursday night because I couldn't sleep Wednesday night because Cosmic Encounter had pumped me up so much, that I was flat all through the game. I made a bad mistake to get my gunman killed, and fell out of contention 2/3 of the way through the game. Mall of Horror is another game that I would play again, but wouldn't rush to.

Probably my favourite of this genre of game is Ca$h'n Gun$, maybe because you can always chicken out when you've got guns pointed at you, and that means you only die if you're not careful, and the game becomes a struggle to balance caution and greed. Also it's a bit quicker, so there's less time spent negotiating, and it's funny to shoot kids.