The Legend of Korra is better than every Superhero movie/show ever

All right everyone.  I know what you’re thinking:  Alex is weird.

That’s fair.

But you have to believe me on this one.  If you’re a longtime reader of my little bloggy blog, you remember when I hailed Avatar: The Last Airbender as a rare show that did Star Wars better than Star Wars.  Now the sequel is out, and it’s doing superheroes better than superheroes.  The Legend of Korra is set in a few generations beyond the original series.  It’s set in a steampunk-esque city where benders are on the verge of being outlawed and the world is no longer as simple as it was when Aang was the Avatar.

Here’s what I mean by ‘better than any superhero movie.’  It’s a clearer vision of what superhero stories set out to do in the first place:  tell an inspiring story about the trials and tribulations of an exceptional individual tasked with using his (her!) gifts to do good in the world.  I loved The Dark Knight as much as the next fool, but since when did superheroes need to be tortured?  Since when did it become necessary to plumb the psychological obsessions of those who are gifted?  Superheroes don’t need to be interpreted into reality, they need to exist in a world unto themselves.

The Legend of Korra does what superhero movies in the postmodern world can’t:  it takes the traditional superhero story for granted.  Of course heroes are good and villains are bad.  Sometimes it takes children’s stories to reteach us what had become murky by ‘mature’ entertainment.  The Legend of Korra is just that:  an antidote for the gray we’ve outlined our heroes in.  You root for Korra because she’s a hero.  You want her to beat Amon because he’s bad.  There’s not much more that needs to be read into the situation. As long as it’s well dramatized (it is), then it ends up being the sort of stand-up-and-cheer entertainment that you want from a summer blockbuster.  It’s taking epic back to the Saturday morning serials where it began, and belongs.

First, to clear up some misconceptions:

1.  It’s not Japanese:  It’s animated by a Korean team that definitely capitalizes on the popularity anime currently enjoys in our nation’s youth, but the rest of the production is American:  most importantly, American writers:  most notably a couple of Family Guy and King of the Hill veterans.  Unlike most poorly translated anime that defies logic, this show is clear and concise, excellently paced and the animation boasts top-notch choreography.

2.  It’s for kids, but that doesn’t make it lame:  Good kids’ entertainment is hard to come by, and when it’s done right, it’s good for the soul.  Legend of Korra is a little more teen-focused but that doesn’t mean they’ve abandoned the purity of the original or darkened its themes.

3.  It’s not Yu Gi Oh or Pokemon or all those other weird concepts that get popular via toy/trading card sales and somehow appeal to kids’ desire for utter bizarro-worlds.  The commonest shortcoming of most high-concept movies and TV shows is that they sell their premise over their story.  Star Wars eventually fell prey to this unfortunate tendency in its prequels, abandoning themes and situations that naturally appeal to people in favor of hyper-popular fantasy tropes that become pervasive simply through a steady flow of marketing dollars and fan enthusiasm.  Legend of Korra never overextends its premise (people who can psychically control the four elements) and sets it in a vibrant and well-realized Asian fantasy world that’s easy to comprehend and fun to explore.

The themes are currently running parallel to movies like The Incredibles.  Turns out progress comes at a cost, and petty people can get the better of the gifted ones by organizing against the exceptional ones.  The enemy is a city of faceless citizens who value equality over goodness.  Beauty is exceptional and the struggle between the Benders and the Equalists is surprisingly well-crafted and profound.  It’s a bold-lined cartoon interpretation of the problems of modernity and the curious condition of sacrificing a few good people for the comfort of the many.  There are many parallels.  My favorite interpretation comes in a line from the masked, despotic leader of the anti-Beinding Equalists, pointing out that Bending was the cause of all wars, a typical false apologetic among anti-religious fear-mongers.

Also fun are the fairly conservative and traditional (for the hybrid Buddhist/Shinto mythology they inhabit) airbending family the new Avatar comes to live with.  Their austerity provides a great counterpoint to the city’s decadence.  They even pray before dinner.

The Legend of Korra continues Avatar’s tradition of good dialogue, interesting mythology and top-notch animation.  It’s in the top 5 best shows on TV.  Good, clean, simple fun that will surprise you with its artistry, characterization and engaging plot.   Don’t count it out.  You’re going to love it.

Dominion: The Greatest NBG of all

I’m going to go ahead and roll out the post on what I consider to be the greatest NBG of all:  Dominion.  I’m sure board game enthusiasts would disagree, but that’s why they’re enthusiasts and not normal people.  I’m sure some brodudes and chicks wouldn’t be interested, but that’s why they’re brodudes and chicks.  Go play poker and act cool.  Dominion is a game that transcends categories.  It is both accessible and cult.  Original and familiar.  Strategic and basic.  Confrontational and peaceful.  It’s endlessly customizeable around a stable frame.  It’s always the same and always different.  There is no one way to win, there are hundreds of ways to win.  Dominion is a rare game that hits that Goldilocks balance between the extremes of strategic depth and casual play and manages to allow you to play it both ways.

In Dominion, you are building a deck of cards.  Like most NBGs, the goal is to collect Victory Points, but here Victory Points come in the form of cards.  Actually, everything in the base game comes in the form of cards.

When you start the game, you will set out three decks of victory point cards (worth 1, 3 & 6), and three decks of treasure cards (worth 1, 2 & 3).  Next, lay out a deck of Curse cards that have a -1 on them (oooooh, creepy) and a little card that just says ‘trash’ on it.  Next, you will randomly select 10 different kinds of action cards.  These cards have a picture on them and some instructions. You lay out 10 decks of action cards, one deck per type of card selected.  So here’s how your table will look like this:

yeeessss.  YESSSS!  Feel the power!  Feel the potential!  Okay, so it just looks like some kind of cheesy D&D or Pokemon game or something right?  WRONG!  This is about the be the most fun game you’ve ever played so listen up people.  And spit out that gum!

Now, each of these cards has a cost associated with it.  The Victory point cards, for example are worth 1, 3, and 6 victory points, but they cost $2, $5 and $8 to buy.  You use your money cards to buy victory point cards.  At the end of the game, whoever has the most victory points wins.

You’ll start your deck with 7 coppers (worth $1) and 3 Estates (worth 1 VP).  That’s your base capital, and Dominion is essentially a capitalism simulator.  You’ll shuffle your deck, lay it face down on the table in front of you and draw 5 cards off the top.  Depending upon the amount of treasure you’ve pulled into your hand, you can now buy a card.  You can buy a treasure card, a victory point card or an action card and draft it into your deck.  You can only buy one card per turn (to begin with) and cannot split your cash.  Once you’re done buying, you discard all the cards in your hand, treasure cards and all, including the card you just bought, face up on the table, forming your discard pile.  Then you draw the next five cards off your draw deck, wash rinse and repeat.  Once you exhaust your draw pile, you will take your discard pile, shuffle it and place it face down, forming your new draw pile.

As you continue doing this, your deck will grow with each new card you buy.  Note that you  do not actually ‘spend’ money cards, they go back into your discard pile just like everything else, so you’ll get to use them again.  Note that victory point cards, though worth points at the end of the game, don’t do anything for you when they’re in your hand.  So if you draw a hand full of victory point cards, then you’re not going to be able to buy anything.  Certain action cards will eventually allow you to ‘trash’ cards, but we’ll get to that in a sec.

Action cards – these cards are what make this game so brilliant.  You can, if you want, just use money to buy more money to buy victory point cards, but that leaves you at the mercy of probability, since your hand is only as good as the cards you draw.  It doesn’t matter how many Golds ($3 cards) you buy if they’re spread out throughout a deck of coppers ($1 cards).  Provinces (6 VP cards) come with a hefty pricetag ($8), so what you need is some way to get at least $8 in your hand, and you want to do it before anyone else can.  Most every game ends up being a race for the Provinces and you want to get a hold of as many as possible before your opponents can.  So how do you get an edge?

That’s where action cards come in.  Action cards allow you to manipulate probability in order to get the hands you need.  You start your turn with 1 action, or the ability to play one action card.  Currently there are over a hundred different types of action cards spread out over five different expansions, and more are probably being made as we speak.  They range from complicated to elementary, but the simple thing is that you just do what the card tells you.  Let’s go over an action card:

The Smithy may be the simplest action card in the game.  If you play it, it allows you to draw 3 more cards into your hand.  Let’s look at the Festival.

The first thing the Festival gives you is 2 more actions. Think of actions like slots you can play your action cards in.  To play a card you need a slot to park it in.  The Festival gives two actions, so after you play it, you have the ability to play two more action cards, (note that the Festival card itself takes up the slot you started in, so you’ll have two actions to play after the Festival card, not three).  If the next card you play also gives you additional actions then you add it on to the amount you had after playing that card.  Playing cards that give you +Actions allow you to play more action cards and increase the benefits.  If you drew a hand with a Festival and 2 Smithies for instance, then you would want to play the Festival first, then use the remaining 2 actions to play the two Smithies and draw a total of 6 cards into your hand!  Cool right?  I know.

The second thing is that a Festival gives you +1 Buy.  +1 Buy adds one more card to the number of cards you are allowed to buy that turn.  You start with the ability to buy one card, so playing the Festival would allow you, at the end of the turn to split your cash and buy 2 cards if you want to.

The third thing is that little gold circle with the number on it.  That means the card gives you +$2 to use that turn.  The value does not carry over to the next turn and it only counts if you played that card.  An unplayed Festival in your hand is not worth $2, you have to use an action to play the card to activate the money.

So for instance, let’s say you drew this hand:

        
          

First you’d want to play the Festival to give you 2 more slots to play your other action cards in.

    

Then you’d play the Smithy and draw three more cards:

    

You draw:

    

Next you play the Woodcutter, filling out your remaining action.

  

So your hand ends with these cards:

First you add up your treasures – $6 in total, then add up the money you got from your action cards $2 for the Festival, $2 for the Woodcutter.  So you’ve got $10 to spend.  The Festival and the Woodcutter both gave you +1 Buy, so adding that to your starting buy, you end the turn with $10 to spend across a maximum of 3 card buys.  you choose to buy a Province costing $8

and a Cellar costing$2.

The game amounts to a fast-paced cycle through your deck of cards. As you play, you’ll learn to use your action cards in combination.  Also the kinds of cards you buy strongly affects the kind of game you’ll have.  Buy a bunch of cards that don’t synergize well (say cards that give you +cards but no +action) and you’re end up not being able to draft the money you need into your hand.  Buy too many action cards and not enough money, and you’ll be cycling through your deck quickly, but not have much money to buy better cards.  The strategy comes in deciding which cards you’ll want to use and which you’ll want to stay away from.

Trashing:

You’ll always need to be streamlining your deck to maximize your card draws.  A lean deck of powerful cards can be much more effective than a bloated deck full of low value and medium value cards.  Even if you have more golds than your opponent, he could have a better ratio of golds to coppers so he’ll be drawing them more often than you.  There are several ways to manipulate this.  For instance, some action cards allow you to ‘trash’ cards.  That means you can eject them from your deck for good.  It may seem counterintuitive, but trashing your three Estates at the beginning of the game can be a good way to ensure you get the money you need in your hand to get at those Provinces.  Since VP cards are essentially dead weight in your deck, getting rid of them early on in favor of getting a lean deck is a good path to victory.

Curses:

Other action cards allow you to deal a ‘Curse’ card to your opponent. This card is both a dead card and it’s worth -1 VP at the end of the game.  Dastardly!

Play time?

Pretty quick.  Depending upon how many play, it can range from 20 to 40 minutes.  Dominion really shouldn’t last longer than that unless you’ve got 6 people sitting around who are inexperienced.  Even starting out, a 2-player game takes 30 minutes tops.  La La and I have gotten down to a cool 15 minutes on our two-player deathmatch sessions.

Complicated?

It can seem fairly intimidating just because of the sheer volume of different action cards you’re initially unfamiliar with.  Each one has a use that you haven’t fully grasped yet, and it just takes sitting down and playing it a few times to really get it, but it’s not really necessary.  The great thing about Dominion is that you don’t have to pay attention to cards you don’t understand.  If you know you have a good strategy with cards you understand, then you don’t need to even look at the other ones.  Then again, if you just got beat because your opponent started using some wicked new card, then you may wanna read it and see how you can work it into your gameplay.

Strategy?

Both deep and intuitive.  Heavy emphasis on logic.  The fun of Dominion is surveying the action cards at your disposal and cooking up interesting ways to use them together in order to get good cards into your hand.  It takes some thought, but the play is very fluid.  My favorite thing about Dominion is talking out your turns so that the game turns into a showcase of everyone’s own flavor of strategy allowing everyone to congratulate you on your deft use of card combination (or groan in defeat!).  The randomness comes in the shuffling and the reality that you may not draw the combination you need, but the action cards allow you to manipulate probability to such a fine degree that playing as a beginner with experience deck builders will show you just how efficient the right set of action cards can make you.

Conflict?

Mild to devilish.  On the whole I’d classify Dominion more on the self-contained side since most of the cards don’t affect other players, but there are plenty of Attack cards out there to screw your opponents up with.  You can steal treasure from other people, deal out Curses, make them discard their hands or bloat their decks with useless Copper.  Then again, if you’re the nonconfrontational sort, you can just opt to play without these attacks, but if you’re in for some head-to-head there are plenty of ways to cripple your opponent.

The cards also do a good job of letting you counter attacks.  If someone is using an attack card on you, chances are there’s another card or combination of cards out there that can turn that attack to your advantage.  Say, if someone plays a Torturer (which causes you to discard two cards from your hand) and you have a Library (which lets you draw up to 7 cards into your hand), then essentially your opponent attacking you with the Torturer allows you to get rid of two cards you didn’t want anyway, and replace them from your deck, plus two more.  There are always ways to counterattack, and you’re never helpless.

Customization

This is where Dominion really shines.  With all the expansions there are well over a hundred different kinds of action cards you can play with, making it such that no game is the same twice unless you want it to be.  I like to pick action cards at random, but some folks like to stick to preset boards that channel the strategy in one way or another.  The rules come with a few of these suggested action sets.

Verdict

10 out of 10:  Dominion is a rare game, exceptional in its simplicity and depth of strategy.  It really is as simple, as complex, as casual or involved as you make it, and it doesn’t punish you for not having read the entire rulebook.  However, though Dominion is a game with a shallow learning curve, it has a steep winning curve.  It’s fast fun that is a blast to play even if you lose, but after a while you may realize you’re still losing after quite a few plays, and you’ll wonder why, and you’ll take a closer look at those action cards and you’ll start to cook up new combos and strategies in your head and before you know it, you’re a nerd!  Its strategy draws you in and coaxes you to learn more, buy more expansions, get into it more.  Build on!

Armond White’s Latest Review Disappoints. Read It Anyway.

I have two objectives in this article:  1.  To keep you interested in film critique.  2.  To get you to read Armond White.

White is the most universally reviled film critic writing today.  He’s a classically educated critic known for his off-the-rails opinions.  Ebert called him “a troll”.  Darren Aronofsky publicly insulted him at the New York Film Critics’ Circle awards dinner (the what?  I don’t know either).  He’s the guy that hates what you love and loves what you hate.  He panned Inception while lauding Transformers 2.  He typically lifts up trashy, middle-of-the-road action fare and, if his detractors are to be believed, looks up the Rotten Tomatoes score on whatever’s hot and writes in the opposite direction to the trend.

Thing is:  I love the guy.  I can’t help it.  He’s an excellent writer and he’s one of the few critics out there with some pointed philosophy to his film critiques.  He is best defined by what he’s against:  a unique concoction of mass-media, racism and secularism all cooked up in his own mind.  It may lead to some distorted reviews but it also leads to some very, very good ones.  Nowhere else will you get the sort of criticism this guy offers.  He’s parroting no-one.  His Inception review was airtight logic which I happen to agree with.

But extreme intellect comes with some serious drawbacks, particularly in being rather out-of-touch with taste.  His joylessness comes through in his faulty analysis of who the good guys and the bad guys are in Hollywoodland.  I love him because he acknowledges a culture war.  I pity him because he’s drawn the lines wrong.  Among other oddities, the man.  hates. Toy Story.  I guess you gotta have some principles in life, but that is not the right one.  He cannot miss an opportunity to blast Toy Story for its inherent marketability and he’s still doing it.  In his latest review of The Hunger Games, with all the deftness of a post-modern comedian, he places Lasseter’s brainchild in a list of much-hyped young adult novel-film franchises:  Harry Potter, Twilight, Toy Story.  So that gives you an idea of what the man is capable of.

The Hunger Games review is a classic example of his script:  take something marketable, explain the pernicious forces behind its marketability and feed that into critique of the director’s abilities and style, as if each cut and take is made with $_$ signs in their eyes.  He does manage to give a decent laundry list of the myriad dystopian stories the series steals from:  Running Man, 1984, Battle Royale and…Death Race?  though he unfortunately leaves out Brave New World.  The rest is re-interpreting any pathos and passion as marketing, and flat, unsupported contradiction that the film had any deeper meaning, its emotional core had any value, sincerity or well-crafted performances.

But…gosh, he’s right about the lack of irony.  I fully expected White to go for The Hunger Games for its commentary on consumerism, oppression and the unflappable genuineness of its filmmakers.  But he’s eluded me again.  White rightly points out that sincerity in film has to correspond with the film’s premise, and the fact that The Hunger Games was filmed without a whit of irony, all the while playing out an extremely ironic premise (we’re watching children die in an entertaining movie about children dying for entertainment value) is definitely an inherent flaw.  This is the classic White bait-and-switch.  Wrong about the movie.  Right about what we’re doing while we’re watching it.  So so wrong and then so so right.

It turns out, that White is a lot harder to peg than people think.  They label him as a contrarian, intentionally reviewing films opposite of the broad swath of critics.  Folks usually cite his distaste for Nolan’s passion project, Inception and preferring Bay’s cash cow CGI-fest Transformers 2.  But he also hated Transformers 3.  And he loved True Grit (even though he said Jonah Hex was better, but still…).

There’s no question the man is in love with his own crusade, mostly because he’s convinced that he’s the only one on a crusade that isn’t for a paycheck.  He’s wrong about that, but I appreciate his one-man quest against cinematic nihilism and marketability.  Nobody else cares about nihilism.  As far as most other critics are concerned, cinematic themes, if well-shot and edited might as well be gospel truth.  There’s no pushback and certainly no discussion of what films do to our souls.

But The Hunger Games was just really really good.  It’s a plain fact.  I was totally into this film whose premise I cared little for (see the previous post) and invested in characters as two-dimensional as any TV cast.  I (and just about everyone else I saw it with) had some nitpicks about the shaky-cam, but this is simply, a good movie.  A good movie that proves it’s not hard to make a good movie as long as you’re honest about it.  Ross channels Suzanne Collins’ guilelessness.  They are sincere about this film.  They don’t have dollar-signs in their eyes.  That’s already promised.  The Hunger Games film would have been a cash cow regardless of its quality.  It’s laudable that Ross took that leeway of assured box-office success and didn’t rest on his haunches, but actually made a harrowing, exciting and emotional film.  It’s an interesting situation, much like the Harry Potter series, where the critical mass of hype surrounding a film can actually be an opportunity to make a good movie with a good script, good acting and good, visceral action, one that doesn’t pander, over-explain the premise or play to the lowest common denominator.  Shaky-cam aside, he tells the story visually, instead of using narration or stupid, shoehorned dialogue.  It’s a straight-faced, gut-wrenching and ultimately very emotional film.

Am I a sucker?  White thinks I am.  I think White is out of touch and gives his critical missiles bad guidance.  On my read White is mostly right on about America, he just picks the wrong movies to crucify.  The Hunger Games is the latest.  You won’t agree with Armond White.  But you’ll be forced to explain why.

Fume away at all his reviews here.

Missing the Mark?

Disclaimer:  This is not a formal review of either The Hunger Games books or the movie.  For the record, I LOVED this movie.  It’s first rate popcorn cinema.  I’d go see it again in a heartbeat.  However, my conscience will revolt if I don’t get this off my chest:

“Our version of Big Brother, unlike Orwell’s, is the product of the free choice of both its viewers and participants. It wasn’t created by corporate monsters or the military-industrial complex to keep us in our place. If, as The Hunger Games seems to imply, reality TV is an evil opiate for the masses, we’re eagerly doping ourselves. Panem’s problem is straightforward compared with our own: sadly, the failings of our free society are our own fault, and can only be addressed on that basis.

Nonetheless, the film sticks to the comforting message that misery stems from the actions of the authorities. Its protagonists are the innocent victims of a system that they’re powerless to influence. Its target audience, the young, are invited to pride themselves on the blameless nobility of their age-group, but not expected to interrogate the realities of their world, or question their own passion for The X Factor.”

-David Cox, from his article “The Hunger Games fails to give teenagers food for thought” in The Guardian

While I don’t entirely agree that every failing of a free society can be blamed on (all) its people, Cox is right to point out how uneasily Suzanne Collins’ simultaneous critique of vanity culture and totalitarianism sit side-by-side in her world-famous novel series.  The Hunger Games is a deft mixture of criticizing pleasure-seeking via mass media a la Brave New World spliced into an oppressive and controlling government dystopia reminiscent of 1984 and V for Vendetta.

The disappointment here is the shotgun marriage of two opposing themes to create a middling sci-fi scenario that misses the opportunity to come down convincingly on one side or another.  Seen in this light, The Hunger Games is a way to eat your cake and have it too.  It’s V for Vanity Fair.  Giving a nod to A Culture of Narcissism while spinning a, by all accounts, pedantically similar tale as countless dystopian scenarios before it.  The Hunger Games manages to dodge all the uncomfortable realities of what actually drives the voracious media-machine and the inequalities of our nation, namely, our own appetites.  

There is certainly room for a dual attack on consumerism and inequality, but it’s important to keep the themes straight so as to be properly relevant.  It’s very telling that the most widely-watched reality series is called ‘Big Brother’.  But the trouble is, dystopia is already here, and it doesn’t take too much sci-fi speculation to bring it to light.  Reality TV is here.  Ravenous sports culture is here.  Social media is here.  Mind-consuming subcultures of video games and fantasy roleplaying is here.  The uncomfortable reality is that it’s our own penchant for voyeurism, not the insidious forces of societal oppression that drives it all.  To truly attack our own appetites would be both bad for business and the sort of self-reflection that America is incapable of:  the notion that freedom of choice and a boundless horizon from which to explore human freedom may be just the thing that has brought about a ubiquitous media machine, countless violations of human rights and the degradation of education and critical thought.

This, incidentally, is also why we’ll never see a big-screen version of the original and perhaps best-loved teen dystopian novel:  The Giver.  Inconveniently for our own dystopian times, the evil in that great book is the callous euthanising of unwanted infants which sure sounds a lot like…um…abortion?  Oops!  Sorry evil America.  Didn’t mean to step on the toes of freedom of choice.  We’ll turn our sights back on dictators and stuff.  Mainstream America can only handle one kind of dystopia:  the kind that we’re not.

The Hunger Games is a great film, but it’s another nail in the coffin for my dream:  to see a decent version of Brave New World hit the screen.  The elements of Huxley’s singular, prescient vision of our future, the only one to actually come true, have been so thoroughly cherry-picked by other cinematic pretenders that it’s unlikely a faithful film version will ever be allowed to exist.  The Hunger Games, for all its cinematic grace, is just another one of those pretenders.  A shot just left of the consistent vision of Brave New World.  It keeps our attention trained on the insidious nature of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, painting it in the flavor of a Huxleyan pleasure-culture.  The truth is that there is a selfish pleasure in the fantasy that one’s personhood and freedom of expression is being oppressed by a dominant force, and this is exactly the kind of ‘feely’ The Hunger Games is.  Once again, as The Hunger Games goes mainstream in cinemas, the real villainy of self-love and consumerism will go unnoticed.  How do I know this?  Because China Glaze launched a line of cosmetics based on the wild fashion tastes of the twisted vision of America in The Hunger Games.  The only way a corporation would create such a boldly ironic product is if they were confident enough in the American dystopia of self-interest that it would not affect sales.

Carcassone: You make the board!

Ah, the simple joy of Carcassonne!  This was a game I was exposed to early on in my NBG career.  It gently introduces you to a few more common NBG concepts:  a customizable board, victory points, and a vaguely medieval theme.  2-5 Players, (6 with an expansion)

The charm of Carcassone is that you actually make the board as you play.  You lay down tiles that connect roads, cities and fields and create a sunny provincial countryside…full of delicious victory points!

Here’s how the game works.  All the board tiles have one or more of four different kinds of landmark:  cities, fields, roads and cloisters.  Each turn a player blindly draws a tile and connects it to another tile on the board.  The landmarks must be contiguous to surrounding tiles.  Roads must connect to roads, cities to cities and fields to fields.  Playing near the edges of the board allows for most freedom in tile-placing since roads and cities may be left incomplete, but may not conflict with other landmarks.

The goal is to complete and control landmarks to gain the most victory points that are counted along a track.  The game ends when all the tiles are placed.  There is no cap on victory points.

Here are the landmarks in the basic game (each tile contains more than one landmark):

You start the game with nine little guys that look like this:

These are your ‘followers’ popularly known as ‘meeple’ (get with the lingo!).  You can choose to populate the tiles you lay down with them in order to gain victory points.  If you set a follower down onto a landmark, it stays there until the landmark is completed.  Then you get your follower back to use again on another turn and you immediately get the victory points associated with completing a landmark.

Each landmark has different scoring rules:

Cities: Worth two points per tile for a completed city, one point per tile on an incomplete city (double with shield).  Get your follower back when city is complete

Roads:  Worth one point per connected road tile.  Get your follower back after tying off both ends

Cloisters:  Worth one point per connected tile (including diagonals), maximum of nine possible points and your follower back.

Fields:  Worth three points per completed city it touches.  Fields are the green space in between the other landmarks.  The other landmarks also define field boundaries, so a field bisected by a road is actually two fields until connected elsewhere.  Fields are scored at the end of the game, so a field is never ‘complete’ meaning you never get your follower back once you place it to claim a field.  Think of your fields like investments as opposed to the immediate profits of cities and roads.

Conflict?

Of a sort.  A landmark is controlled by having more followers on it than any other player.  In case of a tie, the point value goes to all tied players.  No open invasion of other people’s property is permitted (this is a peaceful land after all).  BUT players can (and should) encroach on other people’s property indirectly.  For example:

You, the yellow player, want to take over the green player’s city.  You draw this tile:

You may NOT do this:

But you MAY do this!

Now, if on a later turn you draw a piece like this:

You may connect it to the city and share in the point value!

At that point, you get to pull your followers off the board and use them again.  If you somehow managed, through the same process of indirect aggression, to get one more follower on the city, so that it ended up like this…

Then you would score the full +18 points for the city!  However, if your opponent managed to place this tile:

Like so:

…then he would have separated the two cities, leaving you with the smaller, less valuable one and preserving his lead with the more valuable one.  Often, ensuring your opponent has a deficit of points is more important than scoring higher and higher points.  Your 32 point city doesn’t mean squat if your opponent(s) has an equal share in it!

Logic

Heavy emphasis on spacial reasoning.  If numbers are your game then you may not like this one.  However, for the rest of us who did okay in geometry, this game is loads of fun.

Complicated?

Not really.  once you get the scoring in your head and the rules of taking over others’ landmarks then it’s pretty straightforward.  Further expansions have altered the game majorly, but simply variate on the theme.

Strategy?

Sort of.   You may find your though-out designs achievable toward the start when there’s a big mound of tiles to be drawn and a lot of potential, but things get a little trickier once there are a lot of tiles on the board.  Maximizing your potential often means knowing which tiles have yet to be played (the game supplies you with a cheat sheet).  You don’t want to commit your followers to a city that can’t be completed!

This makes strategy fairly fluid, as other players may thwart your attempts to activate your master plan.  Every good game should allow players to do this, but when you’re also blind-drawing tiles, the game changes pretty much every turn, and makes the best strategies the ones that provide you with the most immediate gain.  The fields are meant to offset this, but since immediate point-gains allow you to take your followers back to use again, field population often amounts to late-game maneuvers in which the players who have had the fortune to get the most immediate points use their regained followers to neutralize enemy fields.

Play time?

20 minutes for 2 players, 40 for 3-4 and at least an hour for 5 or 6.

Verdict

8 out of 10.  This is one of the most well-loved NBGs out there.  It’s only got one mechanic in the base set:  tile-laying.  The interaction is fast and fun, and subsequent expansions have changed the game dynamics very interestingly.  The fun thing about the expansions is that any number and combination of them can be applied.

The only limiting factor which has yet to be altered (to my knowledge) is blind tile-laying.  It’s the game’s random factor, and it has advantages as well as drawbacks.  It keeps the game simple, but it limits the amount of strategies one can employ.  It’s deeper than Ticket to Ride, but not by much.  Still, I like it a lot better and it’s quite satisfying to have built an bit, pretty, vaguely medieval wonderland throughout!  Cloist on, meeple!

Ticket To Ride: a NBG for everyone

Ticket to Ride pushes the elasticity of the term ‘nerd’.  There’s really nothing objectively nerdy about this game.  It has a familiar theme:  charting railroad routes across the country.  Ticket to Ride is really one of the most casual Eurogames you can buy and perfectly accessible, especially in a family setting.

TTR contains all the major NBG traits:  Victory points, actions, card combinations, but it packages it all with a trademark simplicity.  It’s so easy, I’ll just go ahead and explain right here.  You get a board charting railroad routes across the United States:

You receive ‘tickets’ that require you to establish a connecting route between two cities (e.g. NY to LA).  You get 45 little plastic railroad cars and your job is to claim routes of various colors by drawing differently colored cars.  If you have three green cards in your hand, you can claim a three-space green route.  Each ticket has a certain point value that you’ll receive at the end of the game.  If you successfully connect your two cities, you’ll gain the listed points, if you fail, those points will be subtracted.  Claiming routes comes with its own point system, so scoring is a balance between the immediate benefits of claiming routes, the future benefit of completing tickets and one additional bonus for whomever can construct the longest continual route.

How does it play?

Pretty quickly regardless of whether or not you know what you’re doing.  Claiming routes is instinctive and comes with a little thrill of cashing in accumulated cards and watching your lines grow.  It’s all anticipation and release.  You snap up cards for a few turns until you get the hand that you need, and it feels good to cash them all in to claim a really long route that gives you immediate score and adds to your overall goal of completing your ticket(s).   There is some spacial reasoning involved in completing routes, but it’s linear, since the board is essentially just a network of connecting lines.  There’s really no logic involved.  Bottom line:  quick, immediate benefit, not a lot of spacial or forward thinking required.

How many people can play it?

The basic game comes with enough for two to five players.  I think the best experience comes from playing with at least three.

Competition type

This depends on how many players are involved.  If two, then you’ll probably find the game to be a rollicking race to accumulate points, with little on-board interaction since there’s typically more than enough routes to accommodate both of your networks.

With three to five players, the board gets a little more crowded and the game can turn fairly confrontational.  Depending upon how you like to play, it can be fun to intentionally try and screw people’s routes up which makes playing your train routes a bit more strategic.  Since the players keep their tickets secret from each other, a secondary goal to block other players’ routes can form, but this kind of play is not strictly part of the mechanics.  It’s a good example of how a well-designed game can generate varying strategies without structurally forcing players to pursue them.

Time?

Around 20 minutes with two players.  Budget 30-40 with three to five.  Very low explanation time.

Any problems?

Not really.  TTR plays pretty perfectly for what it is.  It’s constantly engaging, involves just enough decision-making to decide which action you want to take on each turn:  draw train cards, draw tickets, or claim a route.  It involves some skeletal spacial reasoning:  connecting linear routes.  When played with more than two players, players’ turns can affect each other massively.

If you’re really into deep strategy and the ability to ‘out-think’ the other players, then this is not the game that will satisfy that desire.  Also, playing this game multiple times won’t necessarily make you significantly better at it.  Once you learn to play, there’s not really much nuance to it, but that’s not to say that each game will turn out the same.  There’s still enough randomness and variety to make each game a unique play experience, in which you’ll need to react to new developments on the board and your decisions will have big consequences on the outcome, you just probably won’t be able to predict anything like that.  This is a game a genius can lose just as easily as a ten year old, and that’s not a bad thing.  Though there’s little strategy involved, there’s still a very high chance that you’ll enjoy playing this game no matter who you are.  It is, in my mind, the most across the board (tom roll-cymbal splash) enjoyable game I’ve ever played and one that never fails in the party scene whether it’s couples over for dinner or a kids’ birthday party.

Expansions?

Many.  Check them all out here.  I’ve never played any of them, but some expand the play of the original game and others are just completely standalone ‘sequels’.  If you really enjoy the basic mechanics of TTR, and would like some expanded play styles, I’ve heard they’re really good.

Verdict

9 out of 10.  Perfect for what it is, pretty and fun to play.  Innovative in its simplicity, though not necessarily in depth.  Everyone will enjoy.

Nerdy Board Games – good social fun for the strategist in you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve broken down my friends’ post-college hobbies into three distinct activities.  With few exceptions, most all of my young adult friends currently participate in at least one of these activities.

1.  Photography – This is by no means male specific, but a lot of folks are finding rich creative output through the camera lens.  Here’s one such photo blog from my very talented buddy Aaron.  http://aaronhuberty.wordpress.com/  I’m no good at photography.  My idea of ‘artsy’ is Kincaide-esque shots of sun shining on trees and rural churches.  Sickening and unfeasible in the city.   Also, I never really know which parts of urban decay are worth immortalizing; when I tried, I just ended up with a roll of shots of the dumpsters behind 7-Eleven), and the only photos I really even like to look at are underwater pictures of sea life.  Keep on snappin’ folks.

2.  Home-brewing beer – This one is a tasty variation on the ‘hot-rod-in-the-garage’ type man project.  Unfortunately, I’m not dedicated enough to pursue.  Plus, I like my beer in bottles, kegs, mini-kegs or in my belly.  Things I’ve heard from some of my pals about explosions and such give me the willies.  However, I’m a strong supporter and freelance bottling volunteer for the sole reason that I like drinking my friends’ beer.  My buddy C-Joy (<–rapper name) just made a delightful porter.

3.  NERDY BOARD GAMES.  Here we go!  While less creative, board games have become my hobby of choice.  What follows is a full breakdown of what these sorts of games tend to offer, why I love ‘em, why they’re fun and why there’s a board game out there for everyone if only you can suspend revulsion to terms like “Victory Points”, “Special Abilities”, and, if you’ve been unlucky enough to play me in Dominion:  Intrigue, “Minions.”

What I have termed “Nerdy Board Games” (NBGs*) is not an entirely accurate description, since the games I’m profiling here run the gamut of complicated to accessible.  ’Eurogames’ is a term that’s often used, but the board game craze is alive and well in the States.  I say ‘nerd’ in order to indicate that these games are more intellectually stimulating then your average trip around the Sorry board.  One need not be a ‘nerd’ to enjoy them, but it is a bit off the beaten path for the average shee–ah…citizen.  I use the term loosely, and in the parlance of the times.  NBGs are mechanically, no different than Monopoly  or Skip-Bo, except that they’re typically a lot more fun and better-constructed.  I’ll be comparing my profiles of NBGs to well known games for clarity’s sake, but expect a vastly different experience playing them.

That said, there are a couple of low hurdles that need to be cleared in opening the mind to a NBG.

First, these games have ‘themes’.  A theme is really just packaging for internal mechanics.  Somewhere along the line, someone decided that these games would be more fun if instead of just colors and numbers, they introduced art and an overall scenario.  Consider the difference between a Skip-Bo card and a card in Dominion, a similar card-based game in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Both cards do roughly the same thing.  However you will notice that, in Dominion, you have not been dealt a ‘draw-three card’ (you have), you have enlisted the services of the village smithy!

The theme just gives a little pizzazz to what is essentially, a mechanical game with a set of rules and conditions of victory.  Forbidden Island, you’re not moving from one tile to another before they’re flipped over (you are), you’re escaping from a sinking island!!!!  Dun dun duuun!.  In Dominion, you’re not just cycling through decks of cards and playing against probability (you are), you’re establishing a vaguely medieval kingdom!!!!!  In Race for the Galaxy, you’re not putting down combinations of cards to get you points (you are) you’re racing for the galaxy!!!!  If these thematic elements turn you off, then consider why there are Kings, Queens and Jacks in a deck of cards.  The mind often recognizes symbols more readily than numerical values, and themes give you symbolic cues to allow you to pick up on complicated rules more quickly.  For instance, I may not remember that a ‘draw three card’ works well with a ‘+2 actions’ card, but I may remember that a ‘Smithy’ goes well with a ‘Village’ and reflexively use the two in succession.  Themes don’t replace the numerical basics of gameplay, they just offer some symbolic triggers to what you’re doing and, I think, make the game more fun by offering some campy set dressing.  There are mainstream precedents for themed games: Monopoly is certainly a themed game, as is LIFE, but NBGs tend to have historical, sci-fi or fantasy themes.  This can certainly be a hurdle, but for the most part, my favorite games have themes that aren’t very complicated.  You know what spaceships are, you know what knights are, you can go with it.

Now, to clear up some common misconceptions:

1. THESE ARE NOT COLLECTIBLE CARD GAMES.  None of these games, no matter how geeky-looking are in any way ‘collectible’.  No Pokemon, no Magic: The Gathering, no Dungeons and Dragons.  These are all self-contained games in which you and the other players have everything you need and an equal chance at victory.  Everyone’s on the same footing, and you don’t need to know anything about Pokemons, Star Warriors or Necromancer Trolls to be able to play them.  Additionally, there is typically no ‘broader universe’.

2. THERE ARE NO STORYLINES.  With very few exceptions, there are no underlying ‘plots’ in these games.  These aren’t the games you weren’t allowed to play when you were a kid because they supposedly spawned satanic spirits (if you know what I’m talking about then we need say no more on that).  You’re not acting out a story or playing a role.  You’re trying to freaking beat the other players (or in some cases, the board itself!) and win.  Competition is the driving force and NBGs never stray from that.  Though the creative mechanics often make these games just as fun to play as they are to win, there are always winners and losers.  I’m not very competitive, but it’s important to put this down because it’s a universal concept that resonates with everyone.  No matter how geeky the game may seem, you can always count on a motivation to win!

3.  THESE GAMES DON’T (usually) TAKE HOURS TO PLAY!  As much as I loved playing a three-week long game of Risk with my floormates in college, this is typically not the kind of thing anybody is jonesing for in real life.  Listen, I’m with you.  As much as I’d like to convince myself otherwise, I don’t actually have that kind of time.  The ones I’m going to be profiling usually take about 30 minutes.  There are some exceptions of course, and some hour to two hour games are very fun, but it should definitely affect your decision.  It’s no fun starting out a game thinking it’ll take a few minutes and still be stuck two hours later slogging through card shuffling and tile-flipping.  Now, explaining the game does usually take some additional time, but once that’s done (as my family will attest to), the game itself tends to go quickly and usually ends with strong demand to play again.

4.  THESE GAMES ARE DIFFERENT, BUT NOT BORING!  When was the last time you actually had fun playing Monopoly…and you weren’t ten?  Yeah, never ago.  In my mind, the right NBG can guarantee a fun social experience.  It’s all about estimating the level of complication your audience is willing to handle (i.e. Does one of your friends work with statistics?  Complicated strategy will be stimulating.  Does another of your friends teach crafts?  Might wanna go simpler.  Are these people married?  Best to find a game that will meet in the middle).  You may think a conceptually challenging game would be boring.  This can certainly be a danger (don’t play Twilight Imperium), but with the right instructions, it can really be a good mix of a new activity infused with some good competition.  See figure 2 for proof:

Fig. 2

See?  See how much fun these young men are having?  Well, that leads me to my next point.

5.  GIRLS LIKE PLAYING NBGs TOO!  They may take some convincing, and it’s an extra plus if they’re already married to you, but this is not a gender exclusive activity.  It may be slanted a little toward the male (as most nerdity is), but NBGs are not just physical versions of video games.  They are highly participatory, interactive and intellectually challenging.  See figure 3 for proof.

This simply reiterates the fact that the point of these games is fun and active social interaction.  These aren’t video games where you’re absorbed in a screen, these can really be fun reasons to gather.  The ‘Bridge Club’ for the 21st Century.

And now…Pick the right NBG for you to enjoy!  Pick the one that’s right for you.  I’ll be publishing a series of posts on each game.  Stay tuned!

*Not all of these games involve boards, however, to term them NCGs may unfairly place them in the realm of collectible card games such as Pokemon, Magic, etc.  I’ve attempted to draw the distinction in strong terms.  Also, many of the card-based games I’ll be profiling are board-game mechanics translated into card game form.  So NBGs stands.