Cooperative Tile Laying Games

As I was reading the rules of Hacienda the other evening I realised that the rules of the game would influence how the players laid out the tiles. "Realised" is too strong a word, maybe I just began thinking about that. This idea has been floating around my head since learning Key Harvest, and it's inspired by Key Harvest's rule that your largest group scores one point per tile and your second largest group scores 2 points per tile. That simple rule encourages you to make your groups of tiles the same size. And as the rules point out, that's what Keywood, the ruler of Keydom, is trying to encourage. Keywood understands that the rules are a mechanism by which the players can be coerced to form a pattern of the designer's understanding. In that sense, by competing, the players cooperate to form a pattern of the style intended by the designer.

In Hacienda the goal pattern is long chains of land tiles with herds attached. However large herds don't score much, whereas connecting to markets does, so the herds tend to be small. Well, it depends on the map I suppose, but there are certainly times when it's much better to make more small herds. The rule that land groups only score if they contain 3 or more tiles prevents players from laying a single land tile near a market and attaching a herd to it - players tend to have only a few land groups.

Consider what would happen if we changed the rules of Carcassonne so that everybody who has a meeple in a city scored it. Joining into a city would about as good as before, but everybody in the city would be trying to complete it, compared to just those players who are currently leading in the city. This slight change in motivation would probably lead to more completed structures and fewer ugly gaps in the map.

Other tile laying games where the players cooperate to form a pattern include:

• Architekton - except, as mentioned in my previous post, there is motivation to make the pattern ugly.
• Attika - you're encouraged to play your group together and not build many settlements. If only that would work for me!
• Ingenious - players generally form clumps of one colour, until the blocking starts. Ending the scoring track at 20 rather than 18 would cause slightly larger groups of each colour.
• Java / Mexica / Torres - in these games the rules are more complicated because there are more types of tiles and Mr Kramer has more complicated intentions for you. I just realised Hacienda is very much like those games, though a bit simpler.
• Santorini - does a good job of encouraging the players to form that lovely Greek island landscape with very simple rules.
  
• Go - OK, so nobody explicitly designed Go as far as we know, but the rules create some beautiful structures. Sometimes it's really messy, too.
• Taluva - the desire to place your towers and temples causes settlements in the mountains. Quite simple rules generate gorgeous mountain villages. I don't understand what there's not to love about this game.
• Gheos - This is an example of a game where the rules completely fail to generate a nice map. A player builds a continent with a civilisation and the next player tears it down. It's like building sandcastles with your 3 year old son - nothing remains for very long. This is probably the major reason the game didn't work for me. I *like* the cooperative nature of tile-laying games, and Gheos is all about breaking things.
  

New Games Played at ConVic

ConVic is a weekend-long games convention hosted by unhalfbricking.com in Melbourne twice a year. Scrabblette, the kid and I went down for the weekend - the third time that the kid and I have been. Every time we go we have a better time as we know more of the people from the previous time and are less stressed about dealing with Melbourne :-). This post is about the new games played on our trip, but I would like to mention what great guys brendanm, karlsen and aaronseeber are for giving us lifts around town.

Tier Auf Tier - For some reason I was enchanted by the pictures of this game and imagined it would be super fun. Instead, it was just a bit ho-hum. I tried my best to make life difficult for my opponents, but the structure seemed to be a bit more stable than made for a good game. However if a cute little kid asked me to play with them, I would.

Ingenious: Travel Edition - Scrabblette demanded that I buy this when we were visiting Mind Games in Swanston St. It is a lot more convenient than the big box of the standard game, and we played while waiting for dinner in an Italian restaurant. The scoring track could be better - sliders would have been much nicer.

Streetcar - I played a 6 player game of this which lasted a bit too long for my tastes, but with fewer players I think it would be OK. It seems to be very much my sort of game, but I found the other players interfered with every plan I tried to hatch, and I just got frustrated. Scrabblette says I should buy it, I say I might when I've learned to like it.

Flaschenteufel - I have played this before, but we used the wrong rules. We USED to play that whoever had the bottle scored all of their points negative, which meant people regularly spent the whole game negative. This time we played that only the kitty scored negative, which didn't scare Brendan at all as he manipulated the cards so as to claim the last 5 or so tricks, and the kitty was a minor inconvenience in comparison. THAT obviously wasn't right either. aaronseeber suggests that maybe the bottle means you score negative for the kitty and nothing for your tricks. We'll try that next time.

Himalaya - I've played this before as well - the first game I every played against CyberKev, and I remembered it fondly. This time I remembered that the other players kept ruining perfectly sensible plans, and my opinion of it dropped a little.

Axiom - aaronseeber was the brave man who tried to understand the rules of this game and explained it to me. It certainly is a brain-burner. We spent a few turns discussing what good and bad moves were. Then Darren came along and started discussing with Aaron how best to beat me. When they missed a potential attack by me I decided to win while I still could and claimed the victory to their shock. I'd like to play it again - it's quick and intriguing - but I might eventually end up disliking it.

Race For the Galaxy - Just like San Juan! Yeah, but with a crappy theme and more complicated. Yes, there was something interesting in there, but I'm not really a huge fan. I had the military starter hand and implemented a military strategy fairly effectively, but lost to aaronseeber's produce / consume / buy VPs strategy. Meh... I'd play it again.

Key Harvest - I really really wanted to play Key Harvest, so I put it on the table and as I hoped, some people came. This was a game I added to an order to get free shipping, and although I researched it pretty carefully I wasn't sure I was going to like it. It has strong connection elements, but I wasn't sure about the sales mechanism. It turned out I did like the sales mechanism (quick summary - I choose what's for sale and set a price, you can pay me that much for it, or I can pay the bank that much) as I set high prices which reflected what the field was worth to me, and when people paid it I felt I'd screwed them down. Brendan played a very good game and I think I beat him by a point. I like Key Harvest a lot.

Kingsburg - This is another I've done research on, and I suspected I'd like. I was right, and I like it even more than I expected to. I was taught by Neil from Albury. I was wary of the invasions, and pursued a defensive strategy which worked just well enough to win the game. I'm thinking about getting it - it's good, but is it good enough to be played regularly?

Pandemic - This was my number one priority to play, and when I had the chance I grabbed Randy and made him teach me. We played very quickly so as to finish before the Take It Easy tournament, and as Randy was the experienced player he made a lot of suggestions which I followed. He was the dispatcher and I was the researcher, and we won almost comfortably. I did like this, and will get my own copy if I can. It will be a good solitaire game, though I suspect as with most cooperative games it will suffer from the "do what the most experience guy says" syndrome.

Caylus Magna Carta - I didn't like Caylus much, but since Agricola came out I can see that it did some good things. I figured that if they could put the good things into a much shorter game it might work. Y'know... I really really hate the provost. If he just moved at a constant rate that would be OK, but I do not like the mechanism of being able to pay to move him backwards. That costs both games 2 or 3 rating points from me. Magna Carta was better than Caylus, but I think I still only rate it a 5.

Tri-Virsity - This is a rummy game with letter cards where your melds have to be words. Scrabblette suggested I buy it, and we've played three games of it already. It is a bit frustratingly random, as one player can go out on their first time and another player can have a fistful of consonants, but it's OK.